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Nothing But Snowflakes... (Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Nothing But Snowflakes…
(Photo by Susanne Schuberth)

Yes, it’s no coincidence that my headline might remind you, not only a bit, of Michael Jackson’s song “Bad”.

Meanwhile I really KNOW that our God is funny despite all the pain His presence has caused my old self which dies hard (oh – another allusion).  😉 The pain of being deeper and deeper exposed in His light as a true “nothingness” in God’s and in my own eyes (cf. Romans 7), finally means the beginning of real freedom. The freedom to admit every bad thought at once – and you might be surprised, but there are ONLY bad thoughts springing from the old self. The freedom I experience today is so different from anything I knew before that I thought I should share it with you.

In the late afternoon I decided to leave the house for a prayer walk, no, to be honest, it was so cold at home because our heating and warm water system had broken down once again and God’s consuming fire only warmed my heart up, however, not the rest of my body.  😛
I was not really sure whether I wanted to pray or rather keep on grumbling and mumbling which has been my favorite prayer habit recently. Well, after about 20 minutes during which God’s merciless light exposed one bad thought in my heart after the other – always finding myself angry with God or with others, most often because of nullities – I suddenly began to laugh out loud. What was this???
In a split second I saw the grace of God in the midst of that painful chaos inside me. And I began to love what He has been doing in me, realizing that it is indeed a blessing to know that I am totally wretched and that I will never find the tiniest trace of goodness inside me. NEVER!! HALLELUJAH!!!  🙂

“Well, Susanne, are you crazy??”

Yes, I think so. But let me tell you a bit more. As I began to laugh about my badness, God directed my eyes toward the sky. I watched the snowflakes that came down quickly and disappeared immediately as they would touch the ground. Whether they melted or became connected with others, their individual beauty was gone in the wink of an eye. At the same moment I realized that I was thirsty and that I had nothing with me, not even candy. Why not “eating” snowflakes? I opened my mouth and a bigger snowflake touched my tongue. Mmh….. good…..but still thirsty. I opened my mouth again, watching the sky, yet the snowflakes landed everywhere in my face by carefully avoiding to meet my mouth. Of course, prayer didn’t help either.  😉

Suddenly I perceived that God had just told me something. Not that I “heard” Him saying anything. But there was a truth in my heart which I thought could turn out into another blog article. God asked me whether I would rather have and experience many of His blessings – every snowflake representing a specific blessing – or rather a glass of water so that I would not get thirsty again. Of course, a glass of water would be better, I said to Him in my mind. But then I was reminded of Jesus’ words to the woman at the well. He did not want to give her water to quench a temporary thirst, nooo, He wanted that His Spirit became the source inside her heart from which others could be fed. Which heart? A new heart, of course, for it is written,

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ez 36:26-27 ESV)

A heart created by God on which the law of divine love has been written so that we can love God and everyone else with the same unconditional love. However, the old self must die completely before this miracle can take place.