My brother's getting married in a few weeks--astonishing really!
Not that he's incapable or unworthy of love--but just love, in itself, is an astonishing bit of joy. Sometimes its the craziest thing ever showing up in the middle of pain and the brokenness that can sometimes surround a life. Pouf!--bang!--something new happens and you're never the same! haha
I was working on the "Bride" chapter in my book yesterday--that call is on all of our lives. Heidi Baker puts it really well--I was reading one of her books the other day and she talked about how this love--loving our Father--will cost us everything, but why should we be surprised? That's what it takes to have a great love story. You truly have to give yourself up, completely, for the sake of the other person. At first it's easy because that love is so all consuming--you would literally do anything for them. And then, hopefully, it becomes a lifestyle for you--your life is about seeing this other person become well and whole (not in a co-dependent, "he needs me!" way, but in a "I love seeing Jesus work out His life through you" way that stays near and keeps hoping even in the roughest times), seeing them come fully to life in Him.
That takes a lifetime, a true commitment--and it's never easy. Falling in love with and then choosing to follow God is a lot the same--you must learn a steady commitment, faithfulness--and it's never going to be super easy. It's soul work--hard soul work--to stand by someone, to stand by God and see this journey through to the end. But that's the call on our lives--to live out our lives fully and completely before Him and each other, in this glorious, breaking, joyfully, painful, beautiful and vastly ugly way--all your flaws exposed and yet, at the same time, redeemed.
That's a marriage.
Showing posts with label Jesus (as always) our hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus (as always) our hope. Show all posts
Friday, May 30, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
This is Why We Go...Isaiah 61
I know I should be asleep--so don't tell me about it!
But it's just a turn-Laura-Hackett-on-and-write-it-all-out kind of night...
When all the melancholy of the world and all the things you can't control and don't know about your future come creeping round and hug you tight--and you--sort of enjoy the feeling but wish you were past this point and that the "something more" had happened and you could move into that fairy tale part of your life where all the pieces fit together and you love your husband and know exactly where you'll be for the next twenty years and are perfectly happy and then realize that that's an illusion too.
That even when you're married...
And live in that nation where you have been dreaming you'll be placed...
And doing the "life's work" that you know will be yours...
...it still won't be enough.
You have to recognize your idols for what they are and sacrifice them before the only One worthy of the praise, worship and adoration that you tend to put toward all your ordinary dreams. You have to recognize this tendency to "idolize" the future and learn to live in your present, right now...
Right now...
Because Right Now is the place where you get to meet Jesus...
Remember His love...
And survive "all of this" by living in the complete dependence on Him that He deserves and created you for.
It's...interesting...that Laura Hackett is the one I put on today. She is not Jesus (of course) but she brings Jesus close, you know? And the day I looked up the Haiti footage, all of the wreckage and chaos after the 2010 earthquake, hers is the music that was playing in my ears. So as I read about piles of dead bodies and no real medical help and grief and trauma I heard her letting Jesus sing, "Let's survive this together" and "I'm living in the light of your smile...taking in the newness of life, the abundance...I have a living hope...".
I have a living hope.
What does that statement mean to you? Do you realize the enormity of that declaration! While I stared death in the face, I had life playing in my ears.
I hope my whole life will be summarized in that one statement--staring death in the face while life plays behind my eyes.
Because that is all we do in the world--declare life when none is to be seen...bring hope to the destitute...proclaim freedom to captives...bind up the brokenhearted...
Bind up the brokenhearted...
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, it's just all becoming clear to me. There is one chapter in the Bible which is indelibly, unutterably massaged into my soul. It has been pronounced and prayed, read and sang, cried out and proclaimed over my life more times than I can count. My ears perk up every time that they begin reading, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me..."
And I know its presumptous, becuase this was Jesus' Scripture when He came into His ministry--but I know it's also my own.
There comes a point when you hear a word spoken over your life--from many silly, crazy and reliable sources--enough that you finally get it. It's been on repeat so much that it is FINALLY the song of your soul. It's the life playing when death is all around--that is what Isaiah 61 has become to me.
When I think about my life, pondering calling and loneliness and isolation and hope and joy and pain and the other million fragments that make up a life--I remember that my life is hidden with Christ in God and that there are good works that the Lord had prepared way before I took my first breath--and even if not one person had ever spoken hope into my dream to see Haiti whole...
The Lord has given me Isaiah 61.
And asked me to join Him.
And if that was all--if I didn't have journals filled with prayers and prophecies and experiences about and in and in the midst of loving them--which has become my life...I would still go, just because I keep hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop bringing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop living out Isaiah 61, wherever He deems fit to put me.
But it's just a turn-Laura-Hackett-on-and-write-it-all-out kind of night...
When all the melancholy of the world and all the things you can't control and don't know about your future come creeping round and hug you tight--and you--sort of enjoy the feeling but wish you were past this point and that the "something more" had happened and you could move into that fairy tale part of your life where all the pieces fit together and you love your husband and know exactly where you'll be for the next twenty years and are perfectly happy and then realize that that's an illusion too.
That even when you're married...
And live in that nation where you have been dreaming you'll be placed...
And doing the "life's work" that you know will be yours...
...it still won't be enough.
You have to recognize your idols for what they are and sacrifice them before the only One worthy of the praise, worship and adoration that you tend to put toward all your ordinary dreams. You have to recognize this tendency to "idolize" the future and learn to live in your present, right now...
Right now...
Because Right Now is the place where you get to meet Jesus...
Remember His love...
And survive "all of this" by living in the complete dependence on Him that He deserves and created you for.
It's...interesting...that Laura Hackett is the one I put on today. She is not Jesus (of course) but she brings Jesus close, you know? And the day I looked up the Haiti footage, all of the wreckage and chaos after the 2010 earthquake, hers is the music that was playing in my ears. So as I read about piles of dead bodies and no real medical help and grief and trauma I heard her letting Jesus sing, "Let's survive this together" and "I'm living in the light of your smile...taking in the newness of life, the abundance...I have a living hope...".
I have a living hope.
What does that statement mean to you? Do you realize the enormity of that declaration! While I stared death in the face, I had life playing in my ears.
I hope my whole life will be summarized in that one statement--staring death in the face while life plays behind my eyes.
Because that is all we do in the world--declare life when none is to be seen...bring hope to the destitute...proclaim freedom to captives...bind up the brokenhearted...
Bind up the brokenhearted...
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, it's just all becoming clear to me. There is one chapter in the Bible which is indelibly, unutterably massaged into my soul. It has been pronounced and prayed, read and sang, cried out and proclaimed over my life more times than I can count. My ears perk up every time that they begin reading, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for the Lord has annointed me..."
And I know its presumptous, becuase this was Jesus' Scripture when He came into His ministry--but I know it's also my own.
There comes a point when you hear a word spoken over your life--from many silly, crazy and reliable sources--enough that you finally get it. It's been on repeat so much that it is FINALLY the song of your soul. It's the life playing when death is all around--that is what Isaiah 61 has become to me.
When I think about my life, pondering calling and loneliness and isolation and hope and joy and pain and the other million fragments that make up a life--I remember that my life is hidden with Christ in God and that there are good works that the Lord had prepared way before I took my first breath--and even if not one person had ever spoken hope into my dream to see Haiti whole...
The Lord has given me Isaiah 61.
And asked me to join Him.
And if that was all--if I didn't have journals filled with prayers and prophecies and experiences about and in and in the midst of loving them--which has become my life...I would still go, just because I keep hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop hearing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop bringing Isaiah 61.
And I will never stop living out Isaiah 61, wherever He deems fit to put me.
Just knowing that you're here with me now
It changes everything
Just knowing that you're here with me now
It changes everything, Lord
Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own
But you stopped that and claimed me as your own
Cause I thought that I had to make it on my own
But you stopped that
And called me Yours
And called me Yours
Just don't give up on me now cause I'm scared
and I need you strong when I'm weak
Hold on and believe in me
When my heart just can't figure out what it wants
please give me a reason to trust
You'll still fight for me
from Laura Hackett's song, "Here With Me Now"
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Frederick Buechner Got it Right...Again
God has me on a journey, amen? He has you on one too, whether you're aware of it or not :)
Lately I've been learning my absolute dependence on the Lord, that my status with Him never changes no matter what I am or am not doing (thinking especially of recent unemployment and ensuing struggle) and that He is enough. Everything left, you know? I had been depending on and looking to a lot of things--money, having a job, being independent, going to the mission field--and God has done some purifying...at times it has been difficult, but I have chosen not to shrink back. When all the doors close, it makes you start looking for new direction--and sometimes all He wants is just to spend some quality time with Him, looking into His face and asking questions and getting familiar with Him and His voice. I've been praying a lot and just being with Him in this season--and I've come to a place where its all I want to do. I would take a job that He set in front of me, if it was given with His blessing and guiding, but that's no longer my focus. I just want to see His face and have the glory of His Presence shine down around me--you know?
I feel that these few paragraphs from Frederick Buechner sum up all I've been learning from the Lord recently--well, actually throughout my whole life and especially in the last few months the lesson has really come home to my heart and made its home there. May these words bless you as they've blessed me and helped me see the reality of this God who loves me despite all my faults, the ways I'll fail Him and my crazy heart in need of renewal--He's good!
A little bit of context: in this section of the book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale Buechner approaches the parable of the prodigal son (and the other true stories of the Bible) as the joke of God which only a few get:
"Is it possible, I wonder, to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the preacher's thing, the lecturer's thing. Heard as a joke--high and unbidden and ringing with laughter--it can only be God's thing.
"And if it is a joke about the preposterousness of God, it is also a joke about the preposterousness of man as the sequel to the parable exemplifies. The word sin is somehow too grand a word to apply to the reaction of the prodigal's elder brother when the sound of the hoedown reaches him out in the pasture among the cow flops, and yet in another way it is just the right word because nowhere is the deadliness of all seven of the deadly sins deadlier or more ludicrous than it is in him. Envy and pride and anger and covetousness, they are all there. Even sloth is there as he sits on his patrimony and lets it gain interest for him without lifting a hand, even lust as he slavers over the harlots whom he he points out the prodigal has squandered his cash on. The elder brother is Pecksniff. He is Tartuffe. He is what Mark Twain called a good man in the worst sense of the word. He is a caricature of all that is joyless and petty and self-serving about all of us. The joke of it is that of course his father loves him even so, and has always loved him and will always love him, only the elder brother never noticed it because it was never love he was bucking for but only his due. The fatted calf, the best Scotch, the hoedown could all have been his, too, any time he asked for them except that he never thought to ask for them because he was too busy trying cheerlessly and religiously to earn them. 'The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up' even as the prodigal himself was raised up, Jesus says, 'and blessed is he who takes no offense at me' (Matt. 11:5-6). Blessed is he who is not offended that no man receives what he deserves but vastly more. Blessed is he who gets that joke, who sees that miracle."(pgs. 68-69)
Are you getting it in your own life? Take joy! Your Father has given you the Kingdom!
I relate to this passage so well because as a Christian at first I was totally of this mindset: trying to earn my way into the kingdom, too afraid to try for love because I didn't even realize it was what I was missing. I've been on a big journey--still am--to learn to love those around me and see them the way they are--worthy and beloved of God, destined to know Him well if they so chose. I grew up in the church and I was very good at following the moral rules and doing what was right in man's eyes--my salvation was something I was earning (how preposterous!!! seen from my new vantage point). Then I grew up and learned how little and completely unable I was (enter Haiti) but God still loved me in the midst of that breaking down and showed me how He is able--He is at work and faithful in this wacky world from which we live. I was never the same after that season! but I still had to unlearn (and am unlearning and will always unlearn) my elder brother mindset--thank God for His grace. He took my fears and taught me to search out His love--O! the Glory!
I'm so grateful for where He has me and how He chooses to be good to me--it's beyond what I could have hoped, asked or imagined--but that's just how good He is. Find out the ways He's working in your life and thank Him today. He is good to us.
Lately I've been learning my absolute dependence on the Lord, that my status with Him never changes no matter what I am or am not doing (thinking especially of recent unemployment and ensuing struggle) and that He is enough. Everything left, you know? I had been depending on and looking to a lot of things--money, having a job, being independent, going to the mission field--and God has done some purifying...at times it has been difficult, but I have chosen not to shrink back. When all the doors close, it makes you start looking for new direction--and sometimes all He wants is just to spend some quality time with Him, looking into His face and asking questions and getting familiar with Him and His voice. I've been praying a lot and just being with Him in this season--and I've come to a place where its all I want to do. I would take a job that He set in front of me, if it was given with His blessing and guiding, but that's no longer my focus. I just want to see His face and have the glory of His Presence shine down around me--you know?
I feel that these few paragraphs from Frederick Buechner sum up all I've been learning from the Lord recently--well, actually throughout my whole life and especially in the last few months the lesson has really come home to my heart and made its home there. May these words bless you as they've blessed me and helped me see the reality of this God who loves me despite all my faults, the ways I'll fail Him and my crazy heart in need of renewal--He's good!
A little bit of context: in this section of the book Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale Buechner approaches the parable of the prodigal son (and the other true stories of the Bible) as the joke of God which only a few get:
"Is it possible, I wonder, to say that it is only when you hear the Gospel as a wild and marvelous joke that you really hear it at all? Heard as anything else, the Gospel is the church's thing, the preacher's thing, the lecturer's thing. Heard as a joke--high and unbidden and ringing with laughter--it can only be God's thing.
"And if it is a joke about the preposterousness of God, it is also a joke about the preposterousness of man as the sequel to the parable exemplifies. The word sin is somehow too grand a word to apply to the reaction of the prodigal's elder brother when the sound of the hoedown reaches him out in the pasture among the cow flops, and yet in another way it is just the right word because nowhere is the deadliness of all seven of the deadly sins deadlier or more ludicrous than it is in him. Envy and pride and anger and covetousness, they are all there. Even sloth is there as he sits on his patrimony and lets it gain interest for him without lifting a hand, even lust as he slavers over the harlots whom he he points out the prodigal has squandered his cash on. The elder brother is Pecksniff. He is Tartuffe. He is what Mark Twain called a good man in the worst sense of the word. He is a caricature of all that is joyless and petty and self-serving about all of us. The joke of it is that of course his father loves him even so, and has always loved him and will always love him, only the elder brother never noticed it because it was never love he was bucking for but only his due. The fatted calf, the best Scotch, the hoedown could all have been his, too, any time he asked for them except that he never thought to ask for them because he was too busy trying cheerlessly and religiously to earn them. 'The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up' even as the prodigal himself was raised up, Jesus says, 'and blessed is he who takes no offense at me' (Matt. 11:5-6). Blessed is he who is not offended that no man receives what he deserves but vastly more. Blessed is he who gets that joke, who sees that miracle."(pgs. 68-69)
Are you getting it in your own life? Take joy! Your Father has given you the Kingdom!
I relate to this passage so well because as a Christian at first I was totally of this mindset: trying to earn my way into the kingdom, too afraid to try for love because I didn't even realize it was what I was missing. I've been on a big journey--still am--to learn to love those around me and see them the way they are--worthy and beloved of God, destined to know Him well if they so chose. I grew up in the church and I was very good at following the moral rules and doing what was right in man's eyes--my salvation was something I was earning (how preposterous!!! seen from my new vantage point). Then I grew up and learned how little and completely unable I was (enter Haiti) but God still loved me in the midst of that breaking down and showed me how He is able--He is at work and faithful in this wacky world from which we live. I was never the same after that season! but I still had to unlearn (and am unlearning and will always unlearn) my elder brother mindset--thank God for His grace. He took my fears and taught me to search out His love--O! the Glory!
I'm so grateful for where He has me and how He chooses to be good to me--it's beyond what I could have hoped, asked or imagined--but that's just how good He is. Find out the ways He's working in your life and thank Him today. He is good to us.
Friday, May 7, 2010
The Love of the world
I can't believe it's only been a week :)
Hmm...
My room is vaguely unpacked...clothes hung up, my random papers hung on the walls, lots of color!
I have walked...18? miles as I have traveled from the place I volunteer to home...and it all feels great!
I sang a Psalm (#100) as I walked home yesterday and memorized it...I'll be sure and do that again (Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His Presence with singing)
I'm educating myself as to the predicament that drugs cause and why kids choose to drop out of school (Philippe Bourgois writes good stuff)
My make up was done by a six year old today :)
I played hide and seek with two sixth graders and walked home with my siblings. We talked about "sticky balls". (The berries on manzanita bushes are sticky on the outside before they're ripe...I never noticed that before!)
I got to talk with the moms of kindergarteners and see them delight in their kids...what a pleasure.
We all have a small part to play (and it's usually not that small, it only looks small to us) in the world as we go through our daily lives. Are you connecting with people? Are you showing love? When you leave a room, is there a sigh of relief that follows you (hopefully not!) or a sigh of hope? What do you bring when you walk into your world?
I want to bring Jesus. I pray on the way to school that I would be a peace bringer, a joy bringer, a wisdom bringer, a love bringer. All these are found in our precious Savior. When we walk in His Presence, abiding in Him, the world around us has to change.
Watch yourself. All of us will be judged by our actions. What are you showing the world today?
My God shows His miracles, His wonder working power, every day. I see it in m friend Matt's life who, after being in a car accident approximately 24 days ago, is now ready to move into a rehab center after what should have been a fatal accident.
Should have been...but it wasn't.
My God is good.
And there are people who never wake up from comas. And there are people, many people, who will go to bed hungry tonight.
My hope does not lie in this world. I am waiting on a new day...
But there are glimpses here of glory...and that, truly, is what I live for.
May I be a glimpse of Your Glory Lord, as I walk this earth.
Move in me/ Sing with me/ Delight in me/ Dance with me/ Love with me...
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