Peace for the Journey | Elaine Olsen

Setting the Table for Communion (part five): A Worthy Meal

September 17, 2008

“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:30-32).

We urged Him last night.

Asked Him to come and to stay with us awhile around our tables at Bible study.

He did, for he is faithful to entertain our invitations for his presence. Where two or more are gathered in his name, he is there among us, and last night was no exception. Bible study always brings an Audience with it. We may not see him, hear him, touch him or be able to feel him, but rest assured that if he is earnestly sought, we will always taste him.

Jesus Christ, the Word—Logos—is the bread of heaven.

And while others may prefer chips and salsa with their meal, my palate prefers the loaf.

I am a bread girl. Always have been. It was a staple at our table throughout my youth and has followed me to the table in years since. I’ve grown accustomed to its presence, and I miss it when it’s not there. Mealtime doesn’t feed the same in the absence of bread.

Bread comforts. Bread fills. Bread completes a table in a way that only bread can satisfy.

Jesus—the Bread of life—completed a table in Emmaus on his day of resurrection. It was fitting that one of his first acts of revelatory fellowship would include a loaf, blessed and broken and given from his very hands. It mirrored an earlier memory, one that included the same Bread who was broken with a different purpose in mind.

Earlier, prior to the cross, the Bread was broken to redeem. On this day, following the cross, the Bread was broken to reveal. To announce truth and to sear truth’s shield over the hearts of two who burned internally from the sacred flames of its heated embrace.

Jesus revealed the truth of his identity to his followers around a table and through a loaf of bread.

Not much has changed in 2000 years. Jesus is still in the business of revealing himself. Often around a table, and always through the giving and receiving of his bread. And lest you think I’m speaking solely about our reverent act of the occasioned sacrament, let me assure you that communion with Jesus exceeds our managed and calendared attempts of remembrance.

If we depended on church protocol for our feeding of God’s Bread, we would starve. That being said, it is good and fine and perfectly right for us to collectively remember Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. He has commanded us to do so—to remember his body that was broken and his blood that was shed on our behalf for our redemption.

But what do we do with this second table of grace? This time of further communion with Jesus in our Emmaus moments, when the focus is no longer the forthcoming cup of redemption, but rather ladles with the revelation that love’s redeeming work has been accomplished. Finished. Completed and written down as history rather than as a prophetic yearning yet to be fulfilled. What do we do with this second feeding of Bread?

Could I be so bold as to suggest that this second table of grace is where we are to live in our today? If we linger at a last supper’s loaf, we linger in possibility. We level our faith at a yet to be realized redemption. But when we move beyond the Upper Room, when we walk the truth of Calvary’s embrace and Easter’s resurrection, we no longer linger in possibility.

We live in promise.

We walk to the table knowing that the Bread who awaits us will comfort us. Will fill us. Will complete us in a way that only his Bread can satisfy. The Bread of remembrance doesn’t feed the same as the Bread of revelation, and if we stop short of this second table of grace, hunger will be our constant and abiding portion.

God doesn’t intend for us to walk away from his table hungry. He means for us to walk away well satisfied from the sacred feeding of his hands. He made us to be a people of Bread, both as partakers and as sharers of his abundance. To limit our “intake” is to limit his intention for our lives. Why would we limit Him? How have we arrived as such a pitiful conclusion about our Father’s capacity to feed us? Have we not yet tasted his bread?

Have we only…

walked,

talked,

listened,

invited?

Have we stopped short of partaking from his hands? If we have, then we’ve missed the point of his resurrection. To come to the table and to refuse the feeding is a choice to live hungry for the rest of our days. It is a foolish choice—a poorly reasoned choice—yet, one that we make every time we neglect our tabled moments with him.

I don’t know about you, friends, but I’ve grown weary with my foolish and childish thinking. It is time to move on. To fortify my frame and my flesh with the faith that walks obediently to the table, knowing that the Bread Who awaits me will fill my stomach full and feed my heart to overflow.

“Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’” (John 6:35).

And, perhaps, somewhere in our “coming” to this second table of grace, we too will recognize our Jesus for who he is and echo the stirred pulse of our spiritual ancestors…

‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’

I want a heart’s stir for always, and thus I pray…

Feed me, Father, with the bread of heaven. Push me past my refusal, and instead, open wide my mouth for the feeding. Let the filling from the world’s table be the starvation that leads me to yours. Burn in me a daily desire for your bread—a desire that leads me to my Emmaus table and that keeps me there until I reach the shores of my forever and dine with you face to face…at the table of grace, for always. Amen.

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In my next post, we will finish up this series on Luke 24:13-35. Until then, shalom.

Setting the Table for Communion (part four): A Worthy Invitation

September 15, 2008

“As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them.” (Luke 24:28-29).

When was the last time you urged Jesus to come and to stay with you?

Urge. Parabiazomai in the transliterated Greek meaning, “to employ force contrary to nature, right; to compel by employing force; to constrain one by treaties.”[i]

It’s a strong word carrying with it, in this case, a strong invitation directed toward Jesus. Not to perform miracles. Not to soothe their ache with comforting words of untruth. Not to diminish the happenings of the past weekend, but rather, simply…

to stay.

Stay. Meno in the transliterated Greek meaning, “to remain, abide; to continue to be present; to be held—kept continually.”[ii]

What they asked of Jesus is not unlike what we ask of him in our times of deepest sorrow and confusion. They urged him to participate in their suffering through the gift of his presence. To share more of his heart with them over a common meal. To break bread and to receive the words of life from this one who spoke so eloquently about the One on whom they had hung their messianic hopes.

Everything that had transpired along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus was ample fuel to warrant their desire for a further taste. And therein lies a truth for each one of us this day as we continue to set our table for communion with our Lord.

When Jesus Christ walks among us on our road to Emmaus and reveals the truth of who he is, a fire is fueled. Either a fire toward repentance or a fire toward rejection. If toward repentance, then our invitation for his lingering presence urges the same as it did for those disciples some 2000 years ago. If toward rejection, then our urges voice otherwise—in a safer, more sheltered direction that refuses the heat of the flames. But either way, when Jesus reveals…a fire burns, and a choice must be made.

Invitation or rejection.

The disciples chose well. They embraced the flames of this burning Truth that seared into their deep and dark with the penetrating light of Calvary’s victory. They didn’t scoff at the stranger’s words; instead they urged him toward further clarification in the matter. They didn’t dismiss him from their walk of grief; instead, they asked him to stay and to minister to their bleeding hearts and wounded confusion.

They didn’t come home empty-handed and empty-hearted. They came home with Jesus. Why?

Because our Savior is a kind a gracious Father whose agenda will never refuse an urgent invitation for his presence to be in our midst.

And so I ask you again, when was the last time you urged your Jesus to stay with you?

True and deep communion with Jesus…

Begins with an intentional walk toward the table (part one).
Continues with the worthy boast of his name (part two).
Deepens as the Word of God is revealed (part three).
Strengthens as an invitation for his presence is strongly urged (part four).

I don’t know where you are in your journey with Jesus this day, but as for me, I’m urging him for a deeper work. For more fire and more truth. Not because I desire the suffering heat, but rather because I know that God has ordained my refining process and to stop short of the flames is to stop short of my perfection.

I cannot always reason this walk between Jerusalem and Emmaus. Between spiritual blindness and sacred visioning. Between doubt and an absolute faith. Between rumors of his death and the reality of his resurrection. The struggle doesn’t make sense, especially since I’ve walked in God’s light for so long and tasted his truth at the deepest level of my being.

Still and yet, it is my struggle. But rather than walk away from God and hide in my confusion, I walk in obedience and with deliberate intention toward Him. With a worthy boast upon my lips and a worthy word within my heart because I know that my Father is faithful to come and to stay with me when my urging voices in his direction.

I’m urging Him today because he is my necessary and my very much needed. I long to sit by the fire and to break bread with him. Thus I pray,

Stay with me, Lord, at the table of my unbelief today. Linger long and with the words of truth that will reclaim my vision for all things eternal. Forgive me my doubts and replace them with the sure seeds of trust that harvest faithful and with the promise of your resurrection within. Let not my complacency be my satisfaction. Instead, stir my heart toward a greater conclusion in the matter…one that includes your magnificent imaginings for my life. Give me grace for the moment and hope for the ‘morrow. You are the sufficiency who keeps me in them both. Amen.

[i] http://studylight.org/desk/?l=en&query=Luke+24%3A28-29&section=0&translation=nsn&oq=&sr=1
[ii] http://studylight.org/desk/?l=en&query=Luke+24%3A28-29&section=0&translation=nsn&oq=&sr=1

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Setting the Table for Communion (part three): A Worthy Word

September 13, 2008

Please read our focus Scripture before beginning: Luke 24:13-35.

“He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’” (Luke 24:25-27).

Do you know what I love?

A human interest story. One that’s compelling and provocative and full of cutting edge drama. It will grab me every time, whether headlined on the cable news’ networks or on an internet website or splashed across the front page of the local newspaper. I’m a person who loves a catchy headline and one who will almost invariably lean in for a closer look.

Do you know what I love even more than a great human interest story?

A human interest story that is relayed to me by a live witness—a carrier of the truth as it was personally seen and, sometimes, lived out first hand. There is always an element of deeply rooted passion portrayed through an eyewitness account, allowing me a portion of an “in the moment” kind of understanding that cannot be gleaned through second-hand testimony.

I ran across one of these stories the other day. By the time I had finished reading, my heart was pounding and my tears were pouring. I clearly was in the moment as I read, understanding that I had been allowed a walk upon a small portion of sacred ground that belonged to someone I’ve never met, but someone who allowed me a window’s peek into her soul.

I love that, don’t you? Isn’t it a great privilege when we can walk away from a moment, realizing that we are better off because of the pilgrimage?

I think it’s a profound gift of God to be allowed such moments. And while there are always plenty of human interest stories to catch my attention, there are but a few that seed something further in me…something deeper and lasting, reminding me of my fond attachment to the human spirit that houses the eternal Spirit of the living God. When this happens…

I am changed for the better.

Life changed for the better for two people who took to an Emmaus road some 2000 years ago in search of some clarity. Some answers. Some thread of truth woven into the story they had just witnessed. They found the Truth. They didn’t recognize him, but they walked the better part of seven miles with him as they listened to his version of the truth.

He chided them for their lack of remembrance and asked them to recall a few prophetic things that had been said about him; things taught to them in their youth by the teachers of the Law and things taught to them in their maturity by this One who now walked alongside them in anonymity. Things about…

A serpent’s belly crawl and the heel splitting crush that would be exacted upon his head (Genesis 3:15).

A scepter that would not depart from Judah and about a donkey and a vine and robe dipped in the blood of grapes (Genesis 49:10-12).

A throne and a forever kingdom, floggings and an enduring love that would outlast the scorn of a whip and the disdain of a people (2 Samuel 7:12-14).

A virgin birth and a son named Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

A Wonderful Counselor, a Mighty God, an Everlasting Father, a Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7).

A precious cornerstone laid in Zion (Isaiah 28:16).

A tender shoot lacking beauty and majesty and summarily despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 53:2-5).

A new, inward covenant of grace to replace the old, outward law (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

A Bethlehem birth (Micah 5:2).

A Palm Sunday’s arrival (Zechariah 9:9).

A betrayal lined with thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12).

A criminal’s death (Isaiah 53:12).

A third day resurrection (Matthew 12:40; Mark 8:31; John 2:19).

A few things like that; partial and incomplete, but things I believe to be included in their conversation that day on that occasioned walk from utter desperation to renewed hope. Can you feel their pulse quicken even as you read? Can you feel yours?

You should, and here’s why.

These aren’t just idle words, my friends. These are you life (Deuteronomy 32:47). This is your history, spoken to you by an Eyewitness who was there. By One who partook of each and every occasion because “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:1-2).

He was in the “then” as it was happening. He is in the “now” as we are reading and recalling the faith of generations past. His Word is alive and active and accomplishing his work in us, even when we remain unaware of its effectual power. His Spirit lives in us, testifying to the truth of all that has happened, and He is reliable because of his abiding presence in all of history.

He spoke the first Word of creation’s sentence, and he will punctuate it with his blessed and eternal Amen when he so chooses. And because He Is, his story levels as the most compelling human interest story that will ever be read. We don’t have to take someone else’s word in the matter. We can simply take his. Right now. In this very moment, as we walk to the table of grace to share in fellowship with our Lord.

A table set with the Word of God is a table set for deep and lasting communion with the Creator of our hearts.

I don’t know about you, but my heart is burning within for the truth of who my God is. He is compelling. He is provocative. He is cutting edge, and he is definitely worth my leaning in for a closer look. And whenever I’m allowed a soul’s peek into the sacred understanding of my Father’s heart, I am always and eternally…

changed for the better. Thus I pray…

Keep me to your Word, Father, and stretch my mind and my heart for a deeper embrace of your truth. Teach me my spiritual history by reminding me of all that’s been said about you through Moses and the prophets and the glorious revelation of the New Testament’s scripting. Thank you for your abiding Holy Spirit who enables me to understand you more and who puts voice to the witness of the story that has become my everlasting portion and my sure and final forever. You are the greatest “read” of my life. Amen.

PS: For those of you who would like to read the “compelling story” that I spoke about above, please visit LauraLee at her blog LauraLee’s Lifesong and her post, “Remember Glory.” She is a fabulous writer, and this story is an incredible read. Shalom.

A Turn Toward the Better (part two): A Desert’s Bloom

September 11, 2008

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on the earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have the opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

To quell the rumors…

I have NOT, in fact, climbed the heights of Mt. Nebo and taken my plunge into eternity (please refer last post). I’m still here, walking with the view of Promise in my mind and living with the truth of God’s love in my heart. I’ve heard from many of you over the past few days, and I appreciate your concern. But what I want you to know is that my last post didn’t write from a place of deep depression. Instead, I wrote it from a place of deep introspection. A point of deep conviction and with a sense of urgency that required my obedience via my pen.

Sometimes, these moments come to a soul and pulse so loudly within that, if not spoken aloud, they will bury their voice long and deep, never to sing the melody they were meant to chorus. I learned a long time ago to tend to these melodies. This was one of those occasions, and without risking the integrity of the writing, I would like to unpack it a little more for you today.

Here’s something you need to know.

I don’t climb Mt. Nebo so that I can fast forward into my next. No, I climb Mt. Nebo so that I can better live in my now. The view is breathtaking, even as it was for Moses. It reminds me that I am not home yet. That for all of the promise that can be tasted on this side of eternity, there is a greater promise yet to come.

Moses was quickly ushered into his next without time enough to linger in his lust for the now. He moved from an earthly best into God’s best in a single pause. I find this profound and revelatory and a sacred gift from God to this servant who lived his life as a desert dweller, more than he did as a promise taster. It simply was his journey to make.

As it was with Moses, so it is with me. I am a desert dweller. In fact I wrote an entire series of posts on the topic. It is not a popular view in Christian circles. Most pulpits won’t preach it, and most retreats won’t teach it. Desert living simply doesn’t package well with promotions aimed toward promise and abundance and lush and green.

I love these packages. I’ve purchased most of them. I believe in them and want more than anything to walk in them. But in my daily, I don’t. Not usually. I’ve monitored the condition of my heart for years. I’ve tended to my spiritual pilgrimage and been careful to administer the daily checklists of a Christian obedience. I live Jesus, each and every day, and I am bold enough, or perhaps just crazy enough, to admit that…

most of them walk dusty and hot and hard.

Now, before you send me your books on abundant living and on breaking free from my sands of struggle, you also need to know this.

I’m learning contentment in the desert because I believe that my life was meant to walk as such. I am a pilgrim in search of a better country—a place of perfected promise and full abundance and a pure truth that breathes lush and green. It is an incomparable glory that far outweighs the “all” of my now. Thus, my reasoning for my dusty roads and my acceptance of them accordingly.

Try as I may, I can’t shake them. They have been my portion for as long as I can remember. So here’s the deal.

I can keep trying to shake them and nearly wear myself out with the prescribed and well-intentioned gymnastics of self-help and spiritual disciplines, or I can learn to walk them in faith and with the full expectation that my temporary is seeding for me an eternity that will blow the dust from my eyes and my feet with the full force of God’s forever.

I can learn the beauty and abundance of a long and hard obedience, even in the desert. What choice levels better in the heat of a summer season?

Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, knew what it was to walk a desert road. He lived it. His fleshly frame was cloaked with it. Like me, He was a pilgrim in search of a better country who managed to hold onto and to cherish the sacred perspective of an unseen tomorrow. He never lost sight of it. Not once, because he knew that his Father was seeding in him an eternity that would blow away the sands of our temporal once and for all.

Calvary. Easter. Forever.

A resurrection Bloom that has bled vibrant and alive and lush and green for over 2000 years. Jesus is the desert’s bloom, and thus, I can find the strength and the contentment for the dusty road I currently step.

I am a desert pilgrim. Perhaps it will be my life’s assignment. The desert may not be your portion. You may be walking in the beauty and blossoms of a Spring season. I love this about you. I celebrate this with you, and I relish in your joy. But don’t make the mistake of crying for me in my summer’s walk. God has deemed it important. He is teaching me to trust and to watch and to wait for the beauty of unseen vistas and untouched blossoms. Even as he did for Moses, he does for me.

He walks the journey alongside, whether we’re climbing the difficult mountains toward surrender, or we’re walking the glorious resurrection of such an obedience. Either way, Jesus understands the gap between things visioned and things yet to be tasted.

Either way, he is the bloom of both. In the desert and in promise.

And thus I pray,

For the mighty displays of your witness in all seasons of this journey, I thank you Lord. For being the bloom along my weary and well-worn path, I bow in humble adoration for your companioned beauty and your lasting aroma. I may never understand the fullness of my desert, but I will always endeavor to do so from your guiding watch within. Let me not balk at summer’s heat or falter in my steps toward your forever. You are good and gracious to give me this day, regardless of how it breathes. May I never discount the sacred value of the current road that we travel together. Open my eyes to see, my mind to conceive, and my heart to believe that all is living as you intended for it to live. In me. Through me. And most days, in spite of me…until my now crosses over into my next. Amen.

I haven’t forgotten our walk to Emmaus. We will return to our series in my next post. Shalom!

A Turn Toward the Better

September 9, 2008

Congrats to Joan (#13) at More God = Less Me for winning Chris Tomlin’s new CD (please email me your snail mail, so I can get it to you ASAP). Today, we pause in our study of “Setting the Table for Communion.” There is greater thought that pulses in my heart today and requires my attention. It’s a hard teaching, especially when our hearts cry out for an easy road…a quick fix to the problems of our lives. If that is what you’re after, you won’t find it here. Instead, you will walk my heart’s strain as I seek to make sense of all of the nonsense that crowds and confronts my current. If I can’t live as authentic before you and before God, then why bother? That being said, let’s get to the doing and to the digging in hopes of hearing Him somewhere within the penned thoughts, breathing his truth as only he can.

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“Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land … Then the LORD said to him, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’ And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.” (Deuteronomy 34:1, 4-5).

Life hasn’t turned out the way that I thought it would.

I thought it would turn toward all things lovely. Instead, it turned differently. Sometimes lovely. Sometimes in stark contrast, but never quite in the direction that I thought it would. I feel the profundity of it today, as I lie upon my prayer quilt and hammer out my thoughts with God.

He understands. We’ve been here before. Perhaps, he too, shares in my disappointment. Not because his love for me breathes less as a result of my sin, but simply because he knows that my life could have lived differently. A better different, but it hasn’t. And this has been his surrendered gift to me.

A gift that allows a life to walk within the parameters of a freely chosen will. Mine, not his.

I’ve taken God up on his offer many times. Too many to count. Too awfully painful to chronicle in this moment. I don’t tell you this to warrant your sympathy. I simply offer it to you as my explanation for a life that currently lives differently than how I imagined it would live all those many years ago—when life walked young and free and full of ideals that had room to breathe and with the ample innocence to fuel their imagining.

That was then. This is now. And the life lived between innocence’s conception and innocence’s death was a vast territory of wild and reckless exploration that weeps its remembrance this day.

There are portions of the Promised Land that I will never walk on this side of eternity. Not because my Father doesn’t delight in giving me his grace-filled abundance, but rather because my sin has kept me from it. Forty-two years worth of living have authored some seasons of regrets—times in life that have been lost to the indulgence of fleshly appetites over the reasoned pursuit of holiness.

I understand this. I accept it. I know and live the ramifications of my choices everyday. This doesn’t mean that life breathes a pitiful existence for me; it would be a quick leap to live within that conclusion. No, what it means is that life simply walks different and with a full awareness that some of the dreams birthed on the front end of my existence will only find their completed rest on the backside of eternity.

Not here. Not yet, but in the Promised Land that lies just beyond these years of my desert pilgrimage.

Moses walked the territory between a promise given and its final fruition. He would never taste the milk and honey of a God-given dream, much less walk upon its soil. He would only witness it from a distance. From atop a mountain where God would open up his eyes to the wild imaginings of sacred possibility. Moses didn’t come to the mountain with the hope of God changing his mind in the matter. He’d walked with his Father long enough to reason better.

No, when Moses made the climb up Mt. Nebo that day, he did so knowing that death awaited his arrival. Moses came to the mountain to die. To witness with his eyes a final taste of earth’s best and then to witness through life’s surrender his first taste of eternity’s forever—a lasting best that far exceeds any lovely we could walk on this side of heaven.

Indeed, Moses’ life hadn’t turned out the way that he thought it would. His sin kept him from walking God’s perfect and best will. But his finish?

Well, it turned out better than he could have ever imagined. It turned out perfect and lovely and full of the wild imaginings that had followed him since his youth.

The Promised Land…forever beneath his feet.

It is the same for us, even if life isn’t walking the way that we thought that it would. There is coming a better day when all of this will be left behind and traded in for something far more wonderful than our minds and hearts can currently conceive.

If you don’t believe this—if for some reason you’re convinced that your “current” is as good as it gets and that it will breathe as similar in your “next”—then can I be so bold as to suggest that you’ve cast your faith with the wrong King?

This isn’t it, oh sleepy pilgrim. What you and I are living today isn’t the final word on our forever. This life isn’t perfectly lovely, and it certainly isn’t God’s final best. If I believed this, I would walk away in an instant and pay homage to the closest golden calf, because, quite frankly, this faith walk has been hard fought and painfully lived and deserves a final promise that exceeds my mind’s capacity for imagining.

If I could take hold of everything that God intends for me in my now, if I could capture the true pulse of a perfected good within my heart and on this side of eternity, then I’m pretty sure I would stop trying to get there. My pressing on would walk in vain. If this is as good as it gets, then I’m done because life has not turned in the direction that I thought it would.

But it will, even as it did for Moses.

One day soon, because my faith exceeds my flesh, and for all of the sins that have kept me from the fullness of God’s best in my “now,” there is none so great that will keep me from God’s best in my next.

My Promised Land—where milk and honey will be my portion and where God’s lovely will be my perfected end.

That, my friends, is what I’m after. That is the day that I am longing for, for me and for you. And until we make our final climb of surrender, may God grant us all the strength and the wisdom to walk with intention and with the promise of forever pulsing in our veins.

As always,

~elaine