4 Tell Me A Story: Spotlights

Tell Me A Story:  Spotlights

#14 in the Series:  Daddy, It's Me--Conversations of an Ordinary Person with an Extraordinary Heavenly Father

This "parable" was originally posted on August 6, 2016

on my Joyful Savvy blog.  It is such a great example of how God speaks through nature, I could not resist sharing it again here along with an update.

Dead Wood, Spotlights and Fresh Opportunities

I have been very busy the last five months.  So busy that I have journaled very little and was beginning to feel drained physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Finally we got a chance to spend some undemanding time in the wilderness near the North Fork John Day River.

I went down to the river to get alone with God and to see what he might have to say to me.  It was late afternoon moving into evening and the sun was setting behind the pine covered hill across the river.  It didn’t set all at once but kept poking its rays out between the spires of evergreen…first here, then there, and farther and farther west.  Just before it disappeared altogether, it was as if there was suddenly a spotlight on just me!  There seemed to be a significance to that and I wrote what I thought the spirit was saying…but it was a bit out there for me.

I stayed a little longer until the cold chased me back toward the motorhome.  On the way, as I came up the hill, the sun was still playing peek-a-boo and suddenly I saw a dead tree that looked like it had a spotlight on it.  It seemed too much of a coincidence and I was compelled to take a picture before continuing to the campsite.

When I got back to the coach and was looking more closely at the photograph, I was amazed.  As my gaze followed the dead trunk upward, suddenly, there was a large branch that had sprouted and was thriving near the top of the tree.  It spoke to me about new life, new goals, new dreams being birthed out of what seemed dead. 

I can hardly wait to see what God has in mind…What sort of harbinger was this spotlight?

Do you see what I saw??

2019 Update
I went back and found that journal and the entry related to this occasion.  Here is what I found:

"The sun has just poked through some trees--Jesus, the Son--what do you want to say to me tonight?  The sun is like a spotlight on me!...I am being moved out of obscurity and into the spotlight.  It will soon become clear..."it" is my destiny."

On the way back to the campsite...


"It (the sighting of the tree and the discovery of the thriving branch) felt like confirmation of what I thought came from Jesus.  I was a little afraid to write it.  Although the obscurity I have been in has felt lifeless to me,  when I learned about and received the "sonship"... that I have in Christ and how much I am loved, a new branch sprouted from the dead "religion" I had.  That branch is growing and thriving... and somehow my destiny is wrapped up in that and it will soon be made clear!"

Perhaps this blog is a part of the fulfillment of that conversation and parable!

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God know the plans he has for YOU!  Plans to prosper you and free your mustang heart!

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