smoke. i've the smell of smoke in my nostrils. i typically don't smell anything. my sniffer stinks if you know what i mean. but i've been smelling the fires of heaven the past two weeks.
i asked a prophetic friend, why am i smelling smoke? because deborah asked me, is it a sweet smell? and i knew it was not.
my prophetic friend said, the sweet smells are the praises of His people, the sacrifice of praise, the prayers of the saints.
the smoky smell is the gutteral heart cry, the gut wrenching sacrifice.
yes.
she said, i believe you are right where the Lord wants you to be and the smoke is the confirmation.
yes. i agree.
think me strange if you will, but life has become a great metaphor for me. the more days i log, the more otherworldly i become, the more aware of intangibles i am. i know it sounds strange. if i were you reading this, i would think, she's mad. she's gone off the deep end.
believe what you will.
i smell the fires of heaven, the burning of my heart's cry, the smoke rising up to God. i smell it everywhere i go. i smell it when i rise, i smell it when i lie down. it has become a comfort to me.
prayer has long since left my lips, i've lost the ability to communicate in ways other than tears and silence. but the smoke, the smell of the sacrifice. that is a prayer wafting up to God most unexpectedly.
my heart groans within me, and i've no words to convey this place, to capture it for you and help you see through these darkening eyes, or to smell through this woefully ineffective nose. i've no words.
but i can smell the fires of heaven burning, even now.
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3 comments:
I went to a book store to pick up a couple of prayer books and was looking at some of the books by Henri Nouwen. What you write here reminds me of some of the entries in one of his books from the darkest time in his life.
They don't tell you when you go forward to accept Christ that you might come to these places where words fail you, where you are left only with your ache for God and it is huge.
I don't think though that until you've come to this place that you ever really begin to experience God fully. We have to come to the end of ourselves. His strength made perfect in our weakness, phrases like this might come off our lips as pat phrases until we really experience our weakness in all its abject poverty. And then, what do we see? The mighty holy power of God.
Our God is a consuming fire.
wow, henri. i love him. never been equated with him in any sense, and it is simply a privledge and honor to read those words even now. humbling. and it is hopeful to me. thank you. it's gonna be worth it...
i did that for a great many years jules. i copied entire psalms into my journals, not just the short ones either. but this is a place beyond the experience of others, i have found. i am abraham, walking in an uncharted, untrodden territory. i am setting out on my own and while the words of scripture are my plumbline and how i determine if things are "true" it is no longer a source of comfort to me. does that make any sense? it was for a great many years. no longer. the only comfort i find, is at the feet of God. worshipping before Him. i can find comfort nowhere else.
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