Keeping the Need - Accepting his Grace

          

I consider it an honor to have you visit my blog. I am still learning the many threads of WordPress.com, but something I am well acquainted with are the circumstances of life; both the little and the much. In this new artistic endeavor, I will strive to intertwine my Holy Threads of faith through the little and much of your life and bind them together with HOPE. It is my desire that all of the journal reflections; along with expressions of art and music, will go beyond the circumstances of your life and find their way into the depths of your heart. May our meeting here be not by chance, but by God’s Design.

A RAGAMUFFIN BEGINNING

When I was a little girl,  my mother and father struggled to put food on the table and dressed my brother and I in hand-me-down clothes. However, my brother and I didn’t think about being poor or that we lived in a “project”. We were just kids who had our needs taken care of…unaware of our parents financial condition or concerns. We ate cornmeal mush for breakfast, had clothes to wear, a place to sleep, and the love of our father and mother. Our minds were on the excitement to seize the day and play in the dirt with our friends.

My mother lovingly called me a “ragamuffin” because I wore hand me down clothes, was always dirty, and had scuffed up knees most of the time. I was also a sensitive ragamuffin and I cried when my brother teased me or if my mother or father looked at me cross-eyed. But, none-the-less, I woke up every morning with a smile to welcome a new day.

As I look back, I see the Holy Threads my mother intertwined into my heart by teaching me to say a prayer every night “Now I lay me down to Sleep.”  Through that prayer, I learned beyond reason and doubt that I had a God whom I could trust and entrust myself in His arms, whether I lived or died.

Like many of us, somewhere along the way, in my so-called grown up years, I lost the joy of that child-like faith. I had too many hurts tucked away in my heart, some in my control, but also some out of my control. I no longer had that morning smile on my face. Although there were many wonderful moments of joy in my heart,  there were too many times of deep pain when I cried much and learned little about those Holy Threads.

If the word ragamuffin in the Bible truly means “poor in spirit” and the dictionary interpretation means “a dirty child with ragged clothes”, it was true, I had a real Ragamuffin heart and was assuredly poor in spirit. I buried my childlike trust and tears in the dirt and walls of circumstance.

Eventually, through much soul-searching and surrender, I found my smallest hope to be God’s strongest thread. I learned that Holy Threads do run through. I discovered it wasn’t just my parents that grew me up in those early years, but  someone bigger than them or myself, even in those not so sacred places of hurt, disappointment, and fear.  I learned positively that when I am weak, His Holy threads are strong. My human condition?…Still a ragamuffin and still poor in spirit, but with the inherited joy of  serving Christ.

And what about today? It is just like yesterday as a child, because I know that I know God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  I have my morning smile (after I wake up) and God doesn’t notice the dirt when I play in the garden or at the beach.

From My Ragamuffin Heart to Yours

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”

Matthew 5:3