Author: Anna Smit

Day 26: Gleaning

Anna Smit2 Comments
A place I have so often gleaned among the sheaves of my Redeemer, as He has breathed His Words of hope, joy and faith into me. The poem below was written, as I sat alone on a tree stump to pray and God revealed His deep love for and comfort to me. I had been overcome with emotions that just kept bubbling to the surface, but not wanting to go there, not wanting to feel the depths of my anguish, nor the overwhelming yearning for the Promises of God to be revealed in my loved one. It felt like too much to carry, but God reminded me, that yes that anguish for His Body and that deep yearning of His heart in me is indeed too much to carry – in my own strength – but not carried in His strength: in His oustretched arms for me and all my loved ones.

When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her.  And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”

Ruth 2:15-16 ESV

I bless us to experience afresh today the streams of God’s river of love, that make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. I bless us to slow and savor God’s Presence with us in the moments of overwhelm, when it all feels like too much to carry. I bless us in those moments to glean joy, peace, faith, hope and love, as the Holy Spirit turns our faces toward Jesus – our way, truth and life.

I bless us to stand in awe of God and the fruit of the Holy Spirit He has been awaking and growing in us, and to taste and see that our God is so so good. I bless us to notice and praise our God for the overflowing stream of life flowing in and out of us. I bless us to look back and see that the years of slowing, savoring and lingering in His Word to us, have been so purposed by Him and so very precious to Him and His Body, and continue to bear abiding fruit today. I bless us to keep slowing, savoring and lingering with Jesus to worship Him with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength in Spirit and truth. I bless us to daily experience a fresh outpouring of His Spirit as we seek His face.

I listen
In the stillness 
Gleaning
Cadence of the hooves
Songs of morning birds
Gleaning love 
Abandoned in the rush.

I settle in Your seat
Remembering 
The waves
The rush and crash
And seeing 
How You 
Wept.

Tears 
For every moment 
I withheld my trust
Believing 
Holding tight 
Is faith.

Oh precious 
In Your sight
Are those 
Who die to self 
Who know they are

Welcome here.

Welcome 
As the waves return
Lapping, crashing
Thunderous
There they come.

Welcome
To lean 
Upon the Rock
And not succumb
But in Your arms
Become.

For in the stillness 
In the listening 
So far 
From striving's tongue
You're teaching me
Who You
Truly are.

A Father 
So tender 
A Love 
Full of mercy
Who holds me 
In His arms
As our tears
Release.

For faith 
Is not my own 
But Your laboring
In me.

It's believing
Not in my 
Own strength
But in the One
Whose love in me 
Speaks 
Steadfast, sure.

A sun-drenched warmth 
Beneath my feet 
The sun here shimmering
In morning's light
A testament 
To Your mercies
New every morning 
That carry me
In wave after wave
Into love everlasting.

And so I remain here 
Seeking the quiet
And let the waves return
My heart now cleaving
To Your heart 
Washing my face
With the tears of our longing 
Awakening life.

I listen
In the stillness 
Gleaning
Cadence of the hooves
Songs of morning birds
Gleaning Your heatbeat 
Never abandoned
My God is always with me.


The ransomed of Yahweh shall return, and come with singing to Zion; and everlasting joy shall be on their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Isaiah 51:11 (WEB)

Day 25: Harvest in Righteousness

Anna Smit2 Comments
Last night on a walk with a friend through the forest and farmlands, a harvesting we witnessed so touched our hearts. Later, on our walk, I began to share of how often I have walked and prayed through such deep heartache in these very forest and farmlands in the past few years, and how the Spirit has repeatedly flooded my heart and soul with such peace, turning my bitterness and pain into a heart broken open by Christ’s love for for His Body, as living Words of prayer have poured forth from my heart and lips. I told her that God had reminded me of this harvest of righteousness, when I had wanted to condemn and shame myself for the lack of harvest I saw in my simple and quiet life.

I had looked for physical manifestations of this righteousness, but God reminded me to look in faith to the unseen, and to His bountiful gifts to me in the simple and quiet, as He turned me to these Words from 1 Corinthians 12:22-26 (ESV): On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.  If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

Colossians 2:7


Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

John 12:24 (ESV)

I bless us to seek and find the joy of the LORD and His strength rising in us in prayer and worship, as we rejoice in the Lord and His abounding grace for us. I bless us to stand still in absolute awe of God’s bountiful and merciful gifts to us and to sing of His great love for us. I bless us to arise and shine in the light of God’s love, grace and truth – Jesus working in us, for us and through us.

I bless us to see how the once bitter seeds of the law of Moses sown into us as children are now breaking open unto sweet eternal abundant and abiding life in Christ Jesus and His all-sufficient sacrifice at the Cross for us. I bless the LORD to show us how all the fires of suffering and loss have only carried His gifts of new life to us.

I bless us to see Christ’s all-sufficient sacrifice reflected in our deeper rooting in His love through the fires of His jealous love. I bless us to see how God has repeatedly called forth a flooding of His Holy Spirit power in our weakness through these very fires to yield an abiding and abundant harvest in and through us .

I bless us to see and thank God for turning the law of Moses that once accused us into the sweet honey of His living and active Word, in Christ’s sacrifice for us. I bless us to see and praise God for giving us over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life might now be revealed in our mortal body, as death at work in us yields life for others.

Harvest in Righteousness

Guard thy heart
My child
Let not one bitter accusation
In thought or deed
Take root and 
Thistles reap.

Oh yes 
My dear
Pierce it does
Just as My crown of thorns
But even then 
Draw near.

Let each thorn
Beckon to you "come"  
Pour all out 
That not one bitter word 
Root where tender
Heart resides.

Come, I'll soothe
And bind and balm
For, this wound 
I have inflicted
Is not sent to harm you
But to heal you.

Now receive
Each and every 
Seed of Moses
No longer in condemnation 
At the feet of man
But buried in the good soil 
Of My heart for you
As life abundant.

In the dying
Of each bitter seed of wheat
Behold my love and mercy
 Now turn Your every 
Bitter
Into sweet.
 
See each Promise
You have clung to
Now no longer
Hope deferred remain
But in My death
And resurrection
Bountiful desires 
Manifest.

Not eye for eye
And tooth for tooth 
But love so strong 
Each seed of Moses
Be broken, bled
My blood for you

In undeserved mercy
Pouring.

Behold now 
In death's shadow
Your idols are no more
For taking up your Cross
To rest in Me
You see by faith
And not by sight
My broken Body
Now made whole.

Behold now
In the dying 
To your old
A tree of life 
In love's jealous fires 
Awaking.

Strongly rooted
Through desert fires 
Rising up to new life
In the Spirit's flooding
See Eden teeming
With fruit for food
And leaves 
For tender healing.

Grace upon grace
In the fullness
Of My love 
For My blessed Body
 Watch Me
Now every month 
A bountiful crop
Harvest in righteousness.


Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
    but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself,
    but he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded.

Proverbs 13:12-13 (ESV)


The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
And one who is wise gains souls.

Proverbs 11:30 (NASB)