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Holiday Ruminations

This holiday season, I received the journal entry below from my daughter, Crystal (Tali). I thought you’d be blessed by it too.

God bless you this season and through the coming year!

Geneva Iijima

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Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

May this coming year bring a greater awareness of His love for you and an expansion of His greatness shining through you. Below is something i wrote today in my journal I thought was worth sharing with friends. Our God is amazing and wild!

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How out of the box.

How crazy.

You create little people – so much smaller than Your vastness, so foolish compared to Your infinite wisdom, always dirtying themselves and their world, making pain for themselves and others, yet quite proud of themselves in their fallacy.

Yet You loved those little people so much that You came up with a wild idea – take their form to create a connection with them. Take their dirtiness and pain on Yourself so they can be cleansed and healed.

Why would You want to limit Your vastness, Your wisdom, Your place of comfort and perfection and instead live in a world they have dirtied and filled with pain?

Your entrance to this adventure would mean a cutting off of awareness, and You knew Your exit would be unimaginably painful

Yet, what is a loving heart if it does not love? What is a gift to loved ones if it doesn’t cost us anything?

So You gave the most expensive gift possible to the ones You chose to love.

I would think angels might be easier to love. They treat You right — worshiping you, fulfilling your every request with joy. But we spit in Your face, ignore You, cheat on You, and deny we know You exist.

Honestly, You have bad taste in lovers!

But perhaps You see something in us that we ourselves don’t see.

Some beautiful deposit You put in us that we cover up with our silly efforts to prove our value.

Some neediness in us to be filled with Your love and strength, that we try to fill with other things.

But, with all our false pride and misguided pursuits, we weren’t ready to accept Your love.

It’s hard for our limited minds to perceive such an immense love that would step across the vast chasm between us and love us unconditionally, despite Your perfection and full knowledge of our lack.

So You have continued to pursue.

Like some crazy love-sick God, You chase after us, making a fool out of Yourself and proving Your love in so many extravagant ways til this day.

What a wild adventurer and lover You are!

Help us to open up and receive Your love! We want to go on wild adventures with you and love like you!
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Tali Iijima
Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
Dive into the deep of God’s river; there you will find revelation and strength.

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The Dragon's Head Is Broken

On this Resurrection weekend, I praise God for the wonderful salvation Christ purchased for me on the cross of Calvary. Because of the sacrifice of his life and subsequent resurrection, I have eternal life. How much better can it be?

For a deeper treatment of the cross, and what it means, I recommend an article www.lookoutmag.com/articles/articledisplay.asp?id=459.

Recently, I read a prayer I’d like to share with you.

Puritan Prayer

“O Lord, I bless Thee that the issue of the battle between Thyself and Satan has never been uncertain, and will end in victory.

Calvary broke the dragon’s head, and I contend with a vanquished foe, who with all his subtlety and strength has already been overcome.

When I feel the serpent at my heal may I remember Him whose heel was bruised, but Who, when bruised, broke the Devil’s head.

My soul with inward joy extols the mighty conqueror.

Heal me of any wounds received in the great conflict; if I have gathered defilement, if my faith has suffered damage, if my hope is less than bright, if my love is not fervent, if some creature-comfort occupies my heart, if my soul sinks under pressure of the fight.

O Thou whose every promise is balm, every touch life, draw near to thy weary warrior, refresh me, that I may rise again to wage the strife, and never tire until my enemy is trodden down.

Give me such fellowship with Thee that I may defy Satan, unbelief, the flesh, the world, with delight that comes not from a creature, and which a creature cannot mar.

Give me a draught of the eternal fountain that lieth in Thy immutable, everlasting love and decree.

Then shall my hand never weaken, my feet never stumble, my sword never rest, my shield never rust, my helmet never shatter, my breastplate never fall, as my strength rests in the power of Thy might.”

Amen