Observations from the Window

Observations from the Window

I spend a lot of time at my kitchen window. I don’t have a very big kitchen. It is adequate, and pretty much everything centers around or near the window. I wash dishes there. I chop, slice and dice from there. I make coffee for my husband there. My cookbooks set on the counter there. My children’s tokens of “love for mommy” art set in the windowsill so I can look upon them. Most importantly I have had many conversations with my Abba there. The kitchen window is a pretty special and very busy place.

Behind our home we have a good amount of wooded property. On any given day you can see all kinds of critters great and small living in and sometimes coming out of the woods behind our home. Feral cats, squirrels, chipmunks, aardvarks, raccoons, fox and of course many, many deer. We have a big population of them as the area our subdivision is built on used to be a gaming range. The deer, for the most part, do not wonder out of the woods unless it is dark or they hear no human activity around them. The forest provides good cover and protection for them. My neighbor puts out corn for them and sometimes that will draw them into her yard. However, most of the time they are deep in the cover of the woods and can’t be seen.

Last week I was working hard to conquer another huge pile of dishes from a meal we had just had and I was gazing out the window into the woods. It is about winter now and most of the trees have dropped their leaves. The trees rather than thick, green and lush are now bare, dry and gray. I noticed white tails and graceful, slow movements far into the distance and realized that I could see the deer quite deeply in the woods. There is no place for them to hide anymore. With the lack of foliage they are almost completely exposed and vulnerable. It is hunting season right now. I had never thought about it much, because I am not a hunter, but it makes sense that it is this time of year. They are very easy to spot.

There are “winters” in our lives. No one is completely immune to those moments. There are times when things seem bare, dry and gray. Like the deer we can be very vulnerable during those times. We can be vulnerable to attack, suggestion and lies from the adversary. The enemy infrequently takes aim when we are covered and protected by abiding in Him and His Word, but has a very sure shot during the times that we have wondered into the barren woods apart from Him and are alone and exposed. Unlike the deer, however, we have a choice to be vulnerable and exposed or to remain in the cover of His Word and in Him. We also have a choice to be alone or not because He is available to us. Sometimes it does not feel as if the choice is ours. Life can hand us circumstances that can convince us that He is a million miles away, but again that is a lie, planted by the evil one at a time that we are exposed and vulnerable. His Word is clear that if we remain in Him, He will remain in us! This is great news.

John 15:4-5 reads as follows:
4 Stay united with me, as I will with you -- for just as the branch can't put forth fruit by itself apart from the vine, so you can't bear fruit apart from me. 5 "I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who stay united with me, and I with them, are the ones who bear much fruit; because apart from me you can't do a thing. (CJB)

It is encouraging to me and I hope to you too, that the Word gives us great examples of men and women that faced the same human emotion and struggles that we do in our own lives and were able to overcome through His strength. One such example is that of the Prophet Elijah.

1Kings 19:1 Ach'av told Izevel everything Eliyahu had done and how he had put all the prophets to the sword. 2 Then Izevel sent a messenger to say to Eliyahu, "May the gods do terrible things to me and worse ones besides if by this time tomorrow I haven't taken your life, just as you took theirs!" 3 On seeing that, he got up and fled for his life. When he arrived in Be'er-Sheva, in Y'hudah, he left his servant there; 4 but he himself went a day farther into the desert, until he came to a broom tree. He sat down under it and prayed for his own death. "Enough!" he said. "Now, ADONAI, take my life. I'm no better than my ancestors."


Here was a man that was a mighty man of G-d, yet even he stumbled into a dry, barren place. Elijah was pretty down and beat from dealing with the murderous Jezebel and her husband Ahab. She had set her sights on killing him! We see later on in the text that the Father meets him and lifts him out of that state and that he overcomes in the power of the Lord! Like I said, no one is immune to those moments……not even superstars of the Word like the Prophet Elijah. We all have a tendency to try to do it on our own and go it alone.

So, if you have found yourself in a place where you are vulnerable and exposed don’t lose heart and do not grow weary. He is right there and He will not leave you. Remain in Him and in His Word. Or if you have wondered away a bit, go back. Go to the shelter that he provides for you and remain in Him.


Much love and shalom,
More than a Conqueror