♥️ 3:05am. That’s what the phone said when I fumbled with it though it felt more like 10pm. Like I had only closed my eyes for mere seconds before looking at the time. I was wide awake like “rise and shine” kind of awake. Like “it’s the first day of school” kind of awake. I shake my head and tell myself to go back to sleep. But I can’t. It must be a hundred and something degrees in this van. Ugh. I lay there like a child waiting for their parents on Christmas morning. Tick tock. Only Slower. T-i-c-k-T-o-c-k. Only those periods and spaces and hyphens more like pregnant pauses. A pregnancy with twins. An eternity later, I check the clock again. 4. Straight up. 

I get up and begin the day’s routine. Only… it’s never really routine. Sure, there are things that need to get done. Some days I do them differently. Other days, in a different order. It’s routine-ish. Heavy on the “ish”. You know what ish means? It means man in Hebrew. Mankind, more specifically. And ishsha? It means out of mankind. One being a condition, the other an expression. Said another way: one a noun, the other a verb. Hmm.

So I do my thing. Sponge bathe. I wash my hair in a bucket (that’s been a while thanks to the new twist-beeswax-style I got going on now). I do my face stuff (that just means witch hazel and a rag) and get dressed (and that often means put on the same clothes I had on yesterday). Then… (now this one I can’t fully explain), I half filled a two and a half gallon bucket with water from the sprinker going off in the park just a few yards away and washed the van with a sponge. Yes. At 5 o’clock in the morning. We had been on the road (and off-road) for weeks and had since accumulated a good quarter inch of dust. We used this extra morning time (before the heat set in) to clean up the place. Praise Him! It’s like breathing brand new life into the van. Chavah! That’s the name ish gave ishsha after having been redeemed after the fall. It means living. Chavah. Also known as Eve.

Isn’t that interesting? Not just that I had the thought (and the energy) to wash the van at 5am but that death began once sin occurred and that life began at redemption? We got some things confused around here and at the pulpit. Maybe we need to heed some of these warnings the Bible so often talks about, such as: false prophets and churches that profit. Hmmm.

MORAL: Wash your van as guided, Ladies and gentleman. Don’t take it to an autowash.

Thank you, Lord, for meeting us right where we’re at. For providing for us just what we need. Whether in righteousness or in our inquity. For teaching us the lessons we ought to learn. Even the difficult ones. Especially those difficult ones.

You, God, are actively present in each of our lives. Delivering goodness or deliverying from wickedness. Thank you, Father. Even for the brief moment of forsakeness. For, after that, an eternity of unity. Of love. Amen.

SCRIPTURE TO MEDITATE ON: But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:5 (that’s like… how we, little by little, eliminate the goodness in us (the goodness which by another name is God) by our own selfish actions, which, in turn, eliminates our own peace within. If we look at the stripes, at what we’ve done, if we perceive it, we will be healed. Can I get an amen?!?! 🙌🏼 This is good news, ladies and gentlemen! And something to get excited about! ❤️