What do you call Hope?

"It's amazing to think that this small plant (inside the canyon) can survive here but it does."

(a quote from the photographer/author of the photo blog I follow where this shot can be found.)

Prayer and Prophetic Dreaming...Synergy of Imagery

Strange balance, these times when the thrill of waiting for the bizarre to be perfectly rationally "explained" by the Spirit of God because the explanation always comes with the call to some moral strain bearing witness to the depths He was willing to have His heart broken on our behalf.

Such is the beginning of explanations for things revealed to my friend, D., and me separately and corporately. Glimmers are flaring, suddenly offering many potentialities for study. Not long ago I sensed from You the following idea: expect more communication from Me, particularly regarding this idea of a transgressor being held to a proper boundary. Now in a rushing flood, I find other verses that contain all this imagery that D. and I have ben sifting through these last 6 months, and all that imagery shows up in a panoramic prelude to the verse she and her husband discovered prophesied over them in that stranger's prayer (so many things are proving providential in all this.)

First, the saga of all the revelation is found in entries last May--conversations with God, August 8, She Counts!, and one about the same time frame about the Courier and the Tinder. All these recently about D. and K. (her husband) and horses tie in here, too.

There are several places where the idea of taking someone's coat is mentioned. It is almost always in the context of a strong one taking the coat as a pledge for the debt a poorer one owes. There are rules about this sort of thing:

The basic rule of the coat as a pledge:
Exd 22:25
"If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest.
Exd 22:26
"If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.
Exd 22:27
"For that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to Me, I will hear, for I am gracious.

The dignity preserved of the one owing:
Deu 24:10
"When you lend your brother anything, you shall not go into his house to get his pledge.
Deu 24:11
"You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you lend shall bring the pledge out to you.
Deu 24:12
"And if the man is poor, you shall not keep his pledge overnight.
Deu 24:13
"You shall in any case return the pledge to him again when the sun goes down, that he may sleep in his own garment and bless you; and it shall be righteousness to you before the LORD your God.

The ones I saw first regarding the taking of a garment, in this place it seems to say the garment of one who vouches for a seductress, twice given. Joseph would say "As proof it is from God."
Pro 20:16
Take the garment of one who is surety for a stranger,
And hold it as a pledge when it is for a seductress.

Pro 27:13
Take the garment of him who is surety for a stranger,
And hold it in pledge when he is surety for a seductress.

Bible side notes explain that in the following passage, both father and son go in to the same woman--possibly in a cultic prostitution situation. "Here the worshipers lay down by the altars for luxurious feasts (religious ones) on garments taken in pledge, in order to keep their own clothing clean. The borrowed clothes were to have been returned before sundown so that the owners would not be deprived of their coverings." (See again the Exodus 22 commandment)
What strikes me profoundly in this one is that the point here is that these ones who are worshipers are more concerned with their own cleanliness than they are with the care of those who owe them a debt People who "went to the place of worship but defiled God's law and brought more misery to the least of His people." One thing about the coat dream I had: the coats I saw were suit coats, and they were all perfectly uniform and tidy, all identical in a row. I put them away in part because the water coming off me would make them messy. I remember the same idea of how when Stephen was being stoned, Paul kept the coats of those doing the stoning...again that idea of keeping one's own coat clean, even while doing work they blindly believe is for God but is actually despicable to Him.
It seems that when the question arises according to the prompt of the Holy Spirit: would you set aside the neat orderliness of things for the sake of repairing a breach--would you allow things to potentially get rather messy if I the Lord your God say it is my will to use that period of disarray and potential pain to make a greater healing a part of the total story, what would ye say?
But here is the passage from Amos:
Amo 2:7
They pant after (trample on) the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor,
And pervert the way of the humble.
A man and his father go in to the same girl,
To defile My holy name.
Amo 2:8
They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge,
And drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.

Amo 2:13
"Behold, I am weighed down by you,
As a cart full of sheaves is weighed down.
Amo 2:14
Therefore flight shall perish from the swift,
The strong shall not strengthen his power,
Nor shall the mighty deliver himself;
Amo 2:15
He shall not stand who handles the bow,
The swift of foot shall not escape,
Nor shall he who rides a horse deliver himself.
Amo 2:16
The most courageous men of might
Shall flee naked in that day,"
Says the LORD.

So I saw all these the other day. Then today, I found not only this idea of garments showing up, but just about all the imagery of these past days synthesized into these couple of chapters:

Interestingly, the staff here called Bands (in red) is the same Hebrew word I've been citing about in its usaga as "pledge" for it is the same word.
Zec 11:7
And I will feed 7462 the flock 6629 of slaughter 2028, [even] you 3651, O poor 6041 of the flock 6629. And I took 3947 unto me two 8147 staves 4731; the one 259 I called 7121 Beauty 5278, and the other 259 I called 7121 Bands 2254 ; and I fed 7462 the flock 6629.
Zec 11:14
Then I cut asunder 1438 mine other 8145 staff 4731, [even] Bands 2254 , that I might break 6565 the brotherhood 264 between Judah 3063 and Israel 3478.

I have more to consider from this chapter from Zechariah, and much from the one that follows it, and from some in Jeremiah, but do not have time right now. Bring me back to this, God.
May we continue to be evidence of this relationship with Thee in all these things:
Pro 20:5
Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,
But a man of understanding will draw it out.

The Warrior is Tested

So the man and the maiden met her father:
the possessor
of her beginnings.
Counsel in courtship they received,
that their way might be pleasing in those days.
The father opened his lips with prudence,
and the warrior with right speech.
So the courtship blossomed
in the integrity of the man and the maid.

With a diligent heart he took her to see
where the mountains were settled;
With an honorable one she took him to see
where the fountains abounded with water.
With the primal dust at their feet
and the mist of high clouds in their hair,
all things most desirable to them fell away but for one:
the knowing of each other.
And as their wisdom grew sound,
their understanding strong,
then their prayers grew rich in the merging,
their hearts began to meld...
but they were, as yet,
untested.

Then one day, a crafty woman
called out to the warrior
in passing,
called out through the lattice of her cool dark house.

"Ask me what is to come..." she said,
and her voice was dead leaves, the ones refusing
to fall from the branch that, in life,
was their home.

Something in that voice took him back
to the day of the dragon...a day long gone.
"She prefers you," said the woman, her tongue
spread so neatly with reassurances
--like a doily--
perched on that voice's darkly polished surface.
"But...she will accept him.
First for lust, strangely come here while you are absent.
Then, for the sake of the people...and somehow, hmmm--"
the voice paused
"for you."

The man ran then on swift foot,
no longer prone to listen,
but to act.
With sure foot, he took the palace gates,
but found the throne room garishly altered,
gem and stone replaced
by a faded sort of plushness.
Two women sat on lesser thrones there;
Women whose soft whiteness made gleam
the eyes of milling captains caped in purple,
men who--even in the palace halls--
felt need of swords and spurs;
who loudly rattled bucklers, shields and helmets,
comforts of war slung under every arm
and across every shoulder.
The would-be warrior saw one of the women
...was his woman. Sepulchre though she was.
She and the one who was her sister
(he now realized)
held a central throne empty, preserved
for the captain of this horrific vanguard troop.
So the man hid behind a pillar,
staring, though the horror of the view
shredded his heart, then left its threads
to whip on the billows of despair.

But even now, that captain took the room
with pomp and swagger,
in flashing vermilion, his belt well-tooled
with weaponry of a pearliest golden,
but still flimsy to a knowing eye.
Nevertheless, the women stood and shouted to the company assembled:
"Behold, of all the desirable young horsemen on horses--
of all the choice men--
here is the finest, our governor and commander: Rehum Rahim II!
Call to remembrance, O people,
the glory of his youth
and the strength of these days of his manhood!"

So the assembly applauded this warrior
whose eyes shone brilliant, but not at the sounding of his name...
for they were, instead, well set to deliver hatred's inheritance,
to uncover the nakedness and shame of a perplexed people,
delighting in it even as one might
delight to uncover a dish of delicacies for a parlor guest.
This was Rehum Rahim, but the people did not see it.
For to some, a word
(in particular, a name)
is larger than any deed done, or yet to do.

In shock and dismay did the man leave the great hall.
In despair did he seek a face---any face--
still familiar in its affections.

Past nine rooms, then ten he walked
unnoticed--
Drawing little attention from the confident siege force
now encamped there.
Rebellions were not even a fleeting concern for these usurpers.

Now the would-be warrior--
so full of horror and distaste at all things war-like--
found the kitchen
where his gaze met familiar eyes.
His wandering feet halted; his outcast soul paused.
He entered the room.

The old sage (who never aged)
squatted there,
stoking a fire built of smoking peat
and bones.
"Bring that pot there, Lad.
I wondered when I'd see you..."
So the horror-stricken warrior--
knowing something of the nature of this old man--
brought the pot to the fire
without a word, without a gesture of urgency,
though many words begged the speaking.
Together they put water in that pot,
filled it with choice cuts of meat
and spices.
For slaves, the fare a master consumes
is nothing more than a working aroma.
Thus this bowed-down man appeared a slave
of the new palace order.
The younger man's heart ached at the thought of it.

As the boiling meat began to give up its savory steam,
the old man finally found a comment worth the making.
"You surely wonder why your love is so stationed
at the side of--"
"Yes! How is she given so whole-heartedly to that Vermilion Prince?"

"I'd ask how are you so fully escaped?
Ah well, your freedom is to me opportunity
to open this old mute mouth.
She'll recover her sanity, when deceptions fall away
and truth ceases to be prey to the likes of him.
But it will not return to her easily."
The old one drew his gaze around the stony walls of the gritty kitchen
like hands move around the face of a clock
until a view of would-be warrior was in his sphere.
"But what of you? What will you do with the Lord's sign?
With this grace of knowing how far you've come
from the days of your own arrogance and vain-glorious ambition?
What will you do with this Vermilion Prince--
so much the man you once aspired to be--
when he does think to take with one stroke, the desire of your eyes?"

The warrior sat on the floor then and stared into the flames,
even as the bones baked to powder
--like chalk dust--
and still, the old man stoked the flame.
The hapless warrior stared into those flames
as one out of mind, but in truth,
as one gone deeper still into mind,
to the recesses where, like secret rooms,
the heart goes to do its thinking.
He searched, and he sat.

And as he did, the pot's scummy water boiled off.
Its meat charred and burned away..
Still, the old man stoked the flame,
until the pot itself appeared as a hunk of rippling orange glow.
Waste
--that long-forgotten proof of the true condition
of the Need-less,
where even the act of wasting
is an act of grace,
and mysterious comfort to the slowly waking--
Waste found its voice in the hissing metal.

"I believe it is finished," said the old man, kicking down the coals.

Billy Graham's Prayer for our Nation, as read on Paul Harvey

Got this as an email and wanted a record of it...

THIS MAN SURE HAS A GOOD VIEW OF WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY!> >> >> > 'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your > > forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your > > Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly > > what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and > > reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the > > lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have > > killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists > > and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our > > children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power > > and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions > > and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity > > and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have > > ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it > > enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; > > cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!'

> >> >> > Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, > > 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this > > program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may > > this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our > > desire so that we again can be called 'One nation under God.