From Streams in the Desert

I awoke early this morning after a full nights sleep and opened up my devotional for todays entry. Streams in the Desert always speaks to be somehow but especially today's entry. I've been struggling with mastitis off and on for the past two weeks and its been a hard little patch for me. I've also been doing quite a bit of soul searching and seeing that old sins die hard and sometimes all I can do during this busy time is cry out O God please just help me. Sometimes that just means letting go and releasing myself and all my flood of emotions and fears to my Savior. That is such a hard thing for me because trust is an issue at times, well most times, and I'm so dog gone serious and intense it makes me sick (literally sometimes). And yet I know there is hope. I keep hearing whispers of it....this too shall pass.


"I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord (Phil. 3:8)
This is the happy season of ripening cornfields, of merry song of the reapers, of the secured and garnered grain. But let me hearken to the sermon of the field. This is its solemn word to me. You must die in order to live. You must refuse to consult your own ease and well-being. You must be crucified, not only in desires and habits which are sinful, but in many more which appear innocent and right.

If you would save others, you cannot save yourself. If you would bear much fruit, you must be buried in darkness and solitude.

My heart fails me as I listen. But, when Jesus asks it, let me tell myself that it is my high dignity to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings; and thus I am in the best of company. And let me tell myself again that it is all meant to make me a vessel meet for His use. His own Calvary has blossomed into fertility; and so shall mine. Plenty out of pain, life out of death: is it not the law of the kingdom?"

-From In the Hour of Silence

"Do we call it dying when the bud bursts into flower?"