The days of fir trees and myrtle

I dreamed the bushes that wept frozen tears were razed to the ground. And it happened. But even before it did, I felt God whisper in my ear a reminder of this verse when I asked Him if this cutting I saw was death or pruning:
Isa 55:13
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign [that] shall not be cut off.

Now it has all been accomplished, and I see many more of the images and prayers that have leapt between my Master and me are involved in this large living-out of things that was already "real" in that other place, in the "real-er" place in the place that this world has no choice but to somehow follow.

A year ago Easter, I mentioned my vision of facing Christ on the cross in that moment when He felt "forsaken." In the prayer dream, it was a sweet moment of being a type of the Church inspiring Him in his most desperate hour. But now I think of John's words in Revelation, when he said he ate a little book that was sweet in his mouth, but bitter in his belly. So, too, for me in the translation of this vision's taste in my mouth to its actual digesting into my life, for when this dream became manifest in the world of actualities, I began to understand that He could not look so lovely here. Who was I to think that when God thought Him unlovely, I could even yet see Him as lovely? And this was a thing of chastening, but did not change the question posed to me: would I stay at the Cross anyway, even as I had said I would do in the prayer-dream? My answer was, yes, because I did stay in the prayer dream until He said "It is finished."

I pondered on all the things I learned and noticed at the time of the vision: the fact that it aligned with the part of the Gospel of John wherein Jesus fulfills prophecy by saying He thirsts, and that they gave him a sponge to drink, and that we've "forgotten" the sponge that he actually received for the sake of an almost hypnotic focus on the first sponge that he rejected; also that these moments of the Cross-experience for the Lord drew up quotes from Psalm 22, and one of the lines in that Psalm has Him praying these words: Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog, although we've changed the word "darling" to "my precious soul" so that he is praying for himself only in that line. But as for me, I'm deeply thankful that some Bibles will put the original wording in the footnotes, for revisiting this Psalm took my breath away as I had also previously dreamed of being chased by these "spiritual dogs" only to find refuge in a garden of my Lord under angelic guard.

All these things spoke volumes to me from the domain of God's Kingdom. But when "real life" visited these themes, they came with the appearance of sin come like flood invading every bit of groundwork in my life, and as a thief come to betray me even in my own home. But I stayed at that cross, until all evidence of its work was finished. I waited while nothing changed-with my suspicions neither justified nor condemned, my expectations of post-storm damage hanging in the unknown realm. So I asked God, what is this time about? And He said to me, "You are in the between-time, between the Cross and the Resurrection. Even as you have walked a personal experience with the Cross, so shall you see the Resurrection. Do not attempt to understand why things are what they are or how they are to be judged until the Resurrection is real for you, too." So I have been waiting these last few days for that Resurrection revelation.

Then one afternoon--in fact 21 days exactly from the day I first faced this Cross--as I drove home from work there came to me suddenly, as a fully formed idea, this thought: my sojourn at the Cross is actually better proven if all claims of innocence around me are accepted as trustworthy in the days where this vision proves itself a reality. If it be Christ's Cross I face, I should expect to look on sin worn as guilt, but not on an actual sinner. Everything locked into a brilliant focus with that realization. And it was like when Jesus said to Peter, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed [it] unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven because it came to me in such an epiphany that my first thought was: Of course! How did I not see this before?

So I asked God the obvious question at the end of such a journey: why? I think of the verse He gave me, the one of the changed plants. Now that my brier is grown up a myrtle, what is the point of it? Am I being readied for something? And in answer, He reminded me of something that I prayed a year ago last July...a one-sentence prayer that I was revisiting with a shifted emphasis.

"Lord, break the power of sin over me." My first visit to this prayer held the obvious emphasis on the power of sin being removed from my life. But this later use of the breath-prayer was to focus on the last part, the "over me"part. It changed from being petitionary (Lord, break the power) to being intercessory (Lord, do it over me, let me be the flood wall that stops the breakers of sin in Your creation.) God's answer to this second layer of this little prayer's focus was the answer to the question of why and underpins the assurance that it will be for a sign forever...making it all especially fitting that it should be connected with images of the Cross and Resurrection.

Luk 1:37
For with God nothing shall be impossible.
Luk 1:38
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.