Window Lessons

"I tried to help you, Ruthie. The problem is, you spend too much time looking out of windows."
.... from the film, Housekeeping


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Oh, but I prefer window lessons. They have changed me.

My windows are like classroom blackboards and it's God's fingers that write my lessons across them on mornings while the sun rises or afternoons when people and their dogs walk past. It's during the window silences when He whispers how much I am loved and the ways I should go. 

It's in the window silences there with my coffee and books that He teaches me, gives me my flight plan for the journeys we will take this day, whether I should go out or stay in, for only He knows when and where I--where He-- will be needed most. 

God knows, as in one Tuesday morning years ago when I'd planned to go shopping, but He told me to stay home instead, so I did. And then a woman from church called me from the bathroom where she worked, saying she was being so tempted to commit suicide and didn't know how to handle that temptation.

Had I skipped my window lesson or ignored what I'd heard, I would have been gone when she called.

I so need window lessons.

Our hearts break in different places and mine breaks for people who are afraid of silence, those who fear that God will only lecture them, frown and tell them of His extreme disappointment.

But it's during my window lessons where I hear God's whispers, thoughts of one who loves me more than anyone else ever had. The One who convicts, but doesn't condemn. The One who , with His finger, scribbles Hope!, Hope! all over my windows in huge, brilliant letters.

The One who loves simply to sit with me there at the window, sharing Himself with me, both of us wrapped in joy which clings, even later, when we step out the door to walk amongst a world of broken hearts.


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"...in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Psalm 16:11