The Brilliant Colors of Jesus

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Elizabeth

Autumn is my favorite time of year.

The cool, crisp air striking your skin, the blazing bonfire scent filling you up with every breath, the crunch of leaves underfoot. Most of all, the leaves. The dazzling display of fiery colors that fill your sight in every direction.

Those radiant colors that inspire poetry and art are, I recently discovered (or perhaps rediscovered as I feel sure I probably learned this at one time during my elementary school career), actually the true colors of the leaves. The green that we see for most of the year, the green that fills up our springtime and summer, is just the tree-feeding chlorophyll covering up the brightness. It is not until the tree is no longer making food, not until the leaves are beginning to die, that their true colors blaze out.

I want that.

Oh, how I desperately want that.

As I age, as my body moves closer to death, I want for the colors of this life to begin to fade away and the colors of Jesus in me to blaze out.

From the moment we choose life in Jesus, we are changing.

Little by little, day by day, the green of this world starts to fade.

Little by little, choice by choice, the light of the life to come begins to shine.

The older I become, the more I want people to look at me and see Jesus. I want the colors of me, the colors of my natural self, to fade away. I want the brilliance of Jesus to take over.

At the end of my life, my body will be bent and wrinkled, dry and withered. My prayer is that by then my own self will be so one with Christ that when people look into my eyes, they are taken aback with the dazzling display of Jesus that fills their sight.

What are some of the lessons that Mother Nature is teaching you about our common Creator? She speaks loudly if we will only listen.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. ~ Romans 1.20

Some Days Are Just Ugly

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Elizabeth

There are some days when it is easy to love.

I am able to surrender to the Spirit which causes peace to fill me up and overflow into the hearts of my daughters, my husband. I have the supernatural strength to stay calm in the midst of tantrums, kind in the midst of misunderstandings, and joyful in the midst of hurt.

Then there are days like today.

Days when something ugly wells up inside of me. Days when I want to be mean. Days when I feel resentful towards those I love best.

I hate these days.

What is this darkness, this nastiness that overwhelms me and threatens to spill out into the hearts of those I love?

My daughters cry to be held, fuss about wearing clothes, throw tantrums because school is hard, and my desire is not to comfort them but to scream like a crazed woman with fire in my eyes.

My husband makes an innocent comment and my desire is not to hear his loving intentions but to deliberately misunderstand and hiss a disparaging remark.

I intentionally fight against the changing of my mood. I want to savor, to wallow in my blackness.

I hate these days.

I get so tired of fighting this battle within me. I get so weary of fighting my very self. I long for the day when I finally look like Jesus, when my desire is to love rather than hate, when my heart is all light with no shadow at all.

As ugly as my heart can be, I am grateful that God refuses to give up on me. I am thankful that He does not save me and then leave me as I am. I am astounded that He is filling me up with Himself, crowding out the ugliness until there is nothing left but Beauty.

I try not to feel impatient.

Yet I know. I know. I know that I belong to Jesus. He gave Himself for me and therefore sin has lost its hold on me. I can hold on to that knowing even when I cannot feel it. Little by little, sin’s grasp is slipping away because Love has taken hold and nothing dark can hold on in the light of this fiercest Love.

As the recent hymn says, “No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand; ‘till He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”

No scheme of man. Not even my own schemes. Nothing can separate me from Love Himself.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Amen.

Whatever Is Necessary

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Elizabeth

What do we do with the truly awful things of this life? With a loss of love, with a deep constant pain, with a fear that pervades our depths?

It is dangerous to attribute it all to our not loving God enough, although perhaps we could say that is often the case.

Our faith is, as CS Lewis once said, often only a house of cards.

He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. ~ CS Lewis A Grief Observed

We walk around, believing that our foundation is solid, but in truth we are playing at faith. Our house needs a good breath of wind, for if it is never allowed to fall, it can never be rebuilt to last for eternity.

If my faith is only steady enough to endure this life, wouldn’t I want God to blow it down with whatever wind is necessary so that I can endure to the end?

I’m not sure.

I think I want this, but fear holds me back. Fear of what God, in His infinite love and wisdom, might deal out.

He never promised to be gentle.

Is any pain at all worthwhile if it brings us closer to Him, closer to the sort of life with God that Jesus lived?

The given answer should be yes, but I hesitate and pull back at the brink of giving it.

Which means that I do not yet desire God above all else.

Not truly.

Do many of us?

We give our hearts over to so many things other than God. . .As long as our happiness is tied to the things we can lose, we are vulnerable. ~ John Eldredge Walking With God

If God is truly enough, if He is what we need for happiness, for contentment, then we should be able to let go of those we love, endure that deep pain, rise above the pervasive fear, because we still have Him.

It is God who remains when all else is gone. It is God who fills us up with Himself so that we do not need anything or anyone else.

In truth, when we lose, when we hurt, we have more of Him than we have in the comfort and in the ease. That in itself should make us turn from the easy way.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. ~ Philippians 3. 7-12

If only I could believe that. Truly know it and live it.

But without the pain of learning it.

The Stakes Are High

Posted on September 25, 2015 by Elizabeth

From my high school band director days:

Mrs. Giger! My bassoon solo actually sounds good now!!

Well, I’m glad. What did you do differently?

I finally followed your advice to practice the song. And it worked!!

Aha.

It is something I’ve been trying to teach my seven year old. Working hard at a challenging task brings such a sweet reward.

Any excellent and beautiful ending is the result of working hard at something difficult.

We know this in our adult lives ~ we feel most satisfied after a day full of meaningful challenges that we tackled wholeheartedly; challenges that ended with accomplishment.

Why do we think that life should be different?

If this life is preparation for the life to come, why would we expect it to be easy? Shouldn’t we expect it to be more like boot camp?

…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…

We think that life should be comfortable, full of the things and people we desire.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

We are offended and outraged when things don’t go as planned.

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.

We decide that this is too hard.

Life is too lonely, too full of hurt, too saturated with grief.

True.

And this loneliness, this hurt, this grief can have purpose.

For it was fitting that (God), for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Eternity is high stakes. We shouldn’t be surprised that the preparation can be grueling.

Each day we have a choice. We can choose to accept what we are given and let God use it to mold us or we can dig in our heels and choose to look for the easy way, the way of least pain and effort, the way of bitterness and discontent.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. ~ C. S. Lewis

Life is. We can fight against it and live in a state of war. Or we can surrender to God and be molded into someone who is perfectly ready for eternity.

The stakes are high. Are you ready for the challenge?

Go Act Like It

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Elizabeth

Sometimes, when I forget who our King is, this world makes me want to run away and hide.

In a week when refugees number in the millions,

In a week when a friend, a friend with a wife and three small children, dies much too soon,

In a week when fellow believers choose to scream about gay marriage across the country rather than to do something about the poor on the other side of town,

It is easy to believe the lie that I can do nothing against the darkness of this world.

It is easy to believe that the darkness is too strong.

It is easy to believe that ISIS wins, that cancer wins, that politicism wins.

In a week like this, I want to give in to despair. To give up. To gather my babies around me and sit and wait for Jesus to come back and make all of this right again.

And then I remember.

I remember that Jesus calls us to fight. He calls us to be a royal priesthood. A people who rule on His behalf and a people who represent Him to the world around them.

If we hide from the darkness, the darkness will certainly overcome. At least, it will overcome those to whom God asked us to be the light. Perhaps it will overcome us as well.

God is light and He has commissioned us to bring that light to the world.

I often tell my children:

You are beautiful. You are loving.

Now act like it.

So now I tell myself and I tell you:

We are royal. We are priests.

We should act like it.

Go dish out food at a soup kitchen.

Go babysit the children of a parent who has lost someone they love.

Go take a meal to an elderly friend who broke their hip.

Go have patience with that tantrum-throwing child one more time.

Go bake some cookies and take them to the gay couple down the street. Without a note that tells them how wrong they are.

Go find out how to help those refugee children who are lost and hungry and afraid (here’s a good place to start: http://wewelcomerefugees.com/).

We are royal. We are priests.

Act like it.

Be the light that overcomes the darkness.

And take heart; Jesus has overcome the world.

Clutching at Gold Stars

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Elizabeth

We’re moving, so I’ll be fetching from the archives for the next two or three weeks. Enjoy!

It is a difficult and forever-long process, this learning how to make everything sacred.

It is also beautifully rewarding.

Learning how to make all things in your life sacred takes focus. It takes the sort of focus that teaches me how to be single-hearted towards God.

She is good at being very focused and single-minded, my youngest. Especially when she needs something.

The dreaded event of all mothers everywhere, her special lovey simply had to be washed at bedtime one night. She just couldn’t understand why she didn’t have her bunny.

“Bunny?” “Bunny is taking a bath, darling. I will bring you Bunny as soon as she is dry.” “O-hay.”

“Can I read you a bedtime story?” “Bunny?” “Bunny is taking a bath.” “Bass? Bunny?” “Yes, a bath. I’ll bring you Bunny when she is done.” “O-hay.”

“Let’s talk about our day, shall we?” “Mommy? Bunny?”

I sigh in frustration, yet feel a small stir in my heart.

What if I were that focused in my pursuit of God, my pursuit of making all things in my life meaningful?

What if I blocked out more of the mindless stories I read and the meaningless discussions I have online in order to pursue God? What would that look like?

You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You. ~ Isaiah 26.3

I read about a mother and daughter on a trip together through the world. During their journey, the mother speaks of a friend who accomplishes a marvelous amount of things during a day:

What’s allowed her to realize her dream where so many others fail, including me for many years, is how carefully and sanely she chooses exactly where to spend her time and energy…Kristin’s life illustrates that it takes more than passion and a lot of work to make a dream work–it takes focus. What you think about matters, a lot. Your thoughts drive your actions.

The mother continues to talk about the myriad of women who choose to please others, to accommodate others, rather than choosing to stand up for themselves and their families.

She says that many of us choose to be “good girls going for gold stars, instead of clasping tight the gold of our lives by living as we truly desire.”

This has the scent of truth that makes me pause. If I substitute “living as God desires”, this touches something deep in my heart.

How many times have I said “yes” to an activity, to a time commitment, even to a service opportunity, simply to please someone else or to create a certain image of myself?

So many times those “yeses” have cost me and my family. They have kept me from clasping tight the gold of obeying God’s desire that I should, for this season, focus most on these little disciples running around my feet.

I want desperately to be single-hearted. I desire to chase after God, to pursue and focus on only what He has called me to do rather than to fritter away my moments on activities that attempt to please others.

What does this look like? How do you do this in your own life? How do you carefully and sanely choose exactly where to spend your time and energy?

Do you have a goal, a purpose or mission statement for your family? Do you have a lens through which you filter every request, every moment’s choice?

The mother in my book says that “change happens in the small moments, when a sliver of light finds its way through the cracks”.

To help herself to focus, “I wrote down every single thing I did in fifteen-minute increments for three entire weeks…I asked myself a thousand times a day before acting – and, miraculously, speaking – What am I creating with this choice right now?”

I want to see everything around me as sacred, to be single-minded in pursuing God and His desires for me. I want to choose with intention rather than feelings, excuses, or circumstances. I want to please God rather than man.

I want to clasp tight the gold instead of aimlessly grasping for gold stars.

Choosing Our Activities

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Elizabeth

Our world is a busy place.

There is a lot of pressure on young families (very likely on those in other seasons of life as well – I can only speak to what I know) to keep our children as busy as possible. We are presented with a myriad of activities for our kids and are given the impression that we deprive our children if we choose to opt out.

Your kids won’t be well-rounded! They will fall behind their friends! They won’t learn as much, be as good, become as successful!

Whether the reference is to sports, the arts, languages or STEM, the implication is that if we love our children, we will give them as much chance for success in their later life as we possibly can.

If God is in all things and in Him all things hold together, if we are to view all pieces of our lives through a Christian lens, if there is no separation between sacred and secular, then even the activities we choose for our children should be considered carefully in light of our faith.

I have heard much lamenting from Christians recently about the busyness of our families, about how we should spend time together in our homes building character into our children rather than ferrying them around from activity to activity.

The argument is that it is much more important for our kids to know and love Jesus than to become successful in the eyes of our culture.

I don’t disagree at all with the impetus behind the lament. I fully believe that to know and love Jesus is the most important thing we can teach our children.

I also believe that it is important to teach our children to show Jesus to the people in their circle of influence.

And there is my dilemma. If the people who see us view us as failures, can they be receptive to what we have to say about Christ?

If God created arts, if philosophy and math are ways of looking at the world He created, shouldn’t we be helping our children to become well versed in such things?

For people who do not know God to respect what we have to say about God, they must also respect us. Yes, much of that will occur when they see how well we love them and each other. But some of that also comes with how successful we are in whatever tasks we set ourselves to accomplish.

So what do we do? What is most important?

Do we keep our families at home, focusing completely on helping them to love God and each other?

Do we sign our kids up for multiple activities, helping them to become successful and thus securing a foundation for their future witness to those around them?

Perhaps the answer lies in a balance between the two. This is often the case in our lives in Christ. We are not often asked to do solely one to the exclusion of the other; maybe that is true here as well.

If we are deliberate about carving out time to spend together as a family, being sure to be intentional in how we teach our children in that time, and also are intentionally wise in choosing a few activities for our children, being sure to consider the God-given passions of each child, then we should be able to fulfill both tasks set before us.

We should be able to help our children both to love God and those around them, and to gain the respect of their future friends and colleagues, laying the foundation of their ability to show Jesus to those around them.

Will you take a turn and share with me? What ideas do you have for not staying too busy as a family and yet at the same time helping your children to succeed?

Using My Mistakes

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Elizabeth

I am very good at parent guilt.

I can second-guess with the best of them.

I enjoy planning out our days (okay, okay, our years), and no matter what decisions I make, I’m usually half convinced they were the wrong ones.

Often I reassure myself with the notion that God can make up for my mistakes, that He can help my precious ones survive in spite of all the poor choices I make.

Yet recently I was struck in the heart with a very different perspective.

God can use my mistakes to make my girls into the women He wants them to be.

The idea that God already knows the mistakes I will make with my children and already has plans to use those mistakes to mold my girls into beautiful women who love Him and love others??

Well.

That is beyond beautiful.

It is grace. Pure grace.

It is a breath of freedom, a release from the lie that I have to parent perfectly in order for my children to grow up loving God. Ensuring the end for my children is not my job. My job is to be as faithful as I can and then to relax, being confident in God’s love for my girls.

A love that works for the best for them. A love that not only wants the best for them but is powerful enough to achieve that best.

It allows me to be present and just enjoy my girls without having to worry about their future.

Ah.

Let’s go play.

I am not sovereign over my children – God is. And God will use every aspect of my human parenting, even my sins and failures, to shape my children into who He desires them to be, for the sake of His kingdom. (Parenting is Your Highest Calling and Eight Other Myths… by Leslie Fields)

Seeking Perfection (and why that is bad)

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Elizabeth

She was being silly with her bowl and granola scattered all over the kitchen floor.

I took pride in not scattering my temper but in speaking in calm, low tones as I made her clean it up.

Not ten minutes later, my pride evaporated as I yelled in frustration over having to explain twelve divided by four yet again to her very distracted mind…

Even though I knew she had suffered a sleepless night and who can concentrate on very little sleep when you’re a supposedly mature grown-up, much less a tiny little six year old person?

I often become so frustrated with myself and my inability to love the way that I want to love. I yell and I fume, I am self-centered and harsh. I have good moments, when I am able to obey that greatest of commands, but my failings come fast and close between.

I have been on this journey of following Jesus for decades and can be hard on myself for not having improved faster. I vacillate between trying to love more fully by sheer force of will and trying to submit and let Jesus heal my heart, yet I always am impatient and I wish for Him to heal me more quickly.

Maybe, though, my progress (or lack thereof) is not the point.

David was a success story in the annals of Bible heroes. He is known as a man after God’s own heart, and God’s own Son is not ashamed to be known as the Son of David. You can’t be more successful than that.

Yet when we look at his life, we do not see perfection or even a nearing of perfection as his life moves forward. Far from it, we see instead murder and adultery, we see a warrior with an unimaginable body count to his credit, we see lying and coveting and keeping multiple wives and mistresses. In one particularly shameful moment, we see him taking back his wife Michal from her new husband Paltiel for purely political reasons and completely disregarding the pitiful Paltiel as he follows Michal, “weeping as he walked behind her”.

The story of David is not a story of what God wants us to be but a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us. ~ Eugene H. Peterson in The Jesus Way

How can a man like this be called a man after God’s heart?

The answer can only be found inside his own heart and God is gracious enough to share that with us in the Psalms.

The answer we find in the Psalms is not that he was perfect or even that he neared perfection. The answer is that he was forgiven and that he trusted that forgiveness.

The answer to my own sin and imperfections is not to try harder or to find the right training that eliminates my sin. The answer is my own confession and the forgiveness that can only come from God. No excuses, denials or justifications.

I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. ~ Psalms 32.5

Resolves and promises to “not do it again” wear thin. True confession, however, rings true and brings deliverance in God’s love.

Being honest about my inability to rid my heart of sin and throwing myself wholeheartedly on His compassion and ability to cleanse me is what makes me whole and perfect in His sight, not becoming actually perfect…because that, I’m afraid, will never happen on this side of resurrection.

My lack of perfection is frustrating, but only to me.

Confidence and Humility

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Elizabeth

I am spending this week waiting on our newest little one to arrive, so enjoy this old post edited from the archives and pray for a safe and quick labor and delivery, please!

There is a paradox in God’s dealings with us that I have trouble understanding.

There is this:

But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ~ Romans 5.8

And there is also this:

The LORD your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. ~ Zephaniah 3.17

This is a hard paradox for me to accept: I am loved and delighted in by God AND I am why Jesus had to come and die.

It is all too commonplace around here for me to hear a thud followed by the cry of one of my little ones. Most often the culprit is a sister, who stands triumphantly clutching some coveted toy.

As I ask for wisdom to know how to teach my children how to love, I wonder how I can possibly teach my children this very thing that I don’t understand. How can I teach them that God created something wonderful when He made them while at the same time helping them to understand that their hearts are ugly with sin and they desperately need Jesus and His grace? How can I teach them to be confident and humble at the same time?

One without the other brings disaster.

If I teach only that they are beautiful and wonderful and children of the King, they become arrogant and self-centered, entitled to the best.

If I teach only that they are sinful and ugly in their hearts, they become depressed and mired in self-pity, losing all confidence in themselves.

How do I teach both humility and confidence?

I must learn it first.

Paul says this in Philippians:

…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ~ Philippians 3.9

and this:

…filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ–to the glory and praise of God. ~ Philippians 1.11

Aha. Yes.

I am loved by God and He does delight in me…because He made me.

I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ~ Psalm 139.14

I am pure and clean before God and He does see me as righteous…because of Jesus’ blood.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. ~ Romans 3.22

All is gift.

Seeing the One behind my righteousness creates humility.

Seeing the cross in front of my sin creates confidence.

All is grace.

I turn and see my eldest giving my littlest one a toy and then a kiss. I smile, knowing that God is teaching their hearts and mine what it means to live a life of both confidence and humility in and through Him.

Autumn is my favorite time of year.

The cool, crisp air striking your skin, the blazing bonfire scent filling you up with every breath, the crunch of leaves underfoot. Most of all, the leaves. The dazzling display of fiery colors that fill your sight in every direction.

I want that.

Oh, how I desperately want that.

As I age, as my body moves closer to death, I want for the colors of this life to begin to fade away and the colors of Jesus in me to blaze out.

From the moment we choose life in Jesus, we are changing.

Little by little, day by day, the green of this world starts to fade.

Little by little, choice by choice, the light of the life to come begins to shine.

The older I become, the more I want people to look at me and see Jesus. I want the colors of me, the colors of my natural self, to fade away. I want the brilliance of Jesus to take over.

At the end of my life, my body will be bent and wrinkled, dry and withered. My prayer is that by then my own self will be so one with Christ that when people look into my eyes, they are taken aback with the dazzling display of Jesus that fills their sight.

What are some of the lessons that Mother Nature is teaching you about our common Creator? She speaks loudly if we will only listen.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. ~ Romans 1.20

There are some days when it is easy to love.

I am able to surrender to the Spirit which causes peace to fill me up and overflow into the hearts of my daughters, my husband. I have the supernatural strength to stay calm in the midst of tantrums, kind in the midst of misunderstandings, and joyful in the midst of hurt.

Then there are days like today.

Days when something ugly wells up inside of me. Days when I want to be mean. Days when I feel resentful towards those I love best.

I hate these days.

What is this darkness, this nastiness that overwhelms me and threatens to spill out into the hearts of those I love?

My daughters cry to be held, fuss about wearing clothes, throw tantrums because school is hard, and my desire is not to comfort them but to scream like a crazed woman with fire in my eyes.

My husband makes an innocent comment and my desire is not to hear his loving intentions but to deliberately misunderstand and hiss a disparaging remark.

I intentionally fight against the changing of my mood. I want to savor, to wallow in my blackness.

I hate these days.

I get so tired of fighting this battle within me. I get so weary of fighting my very self. I long for the day when I finally look like Jesus, when my desire is to love rather than hate, when my heart is all light with no shadow at all.

As ugly as my heart can be, I am grateful that God refuses to give up on me. I am thankful that He does not save me and then leave me as I am. I am astounded that He is filling me up with Himself, crowding out the ugliness until there is nothing left but Beauty.

I try not to feel impatient.

As the recent hymn says, “No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from His hand; ‘till He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”

No scheme of man. Not even my own schemes. Nothing can separate me from Love Himself.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Amen.

What do we do with the truly awful things of this life? With a loss of love, with a deep constant pain, with a fear that pervades our depths?

It is dangerous to attribute it all to our not loving God enough, although perhaps we could say that is often the case.

Our faith is, as CS Lewis once said, often only a house of cards.

He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. ~ CS Lewis A Grief Observed

We walk around, believing that our foundation is solid, but in truth we are playing at faith. Our house needs a good breath of wind, for if it is never allowed to fall, it can never be rebuilt to last for eternity.

If my faith is only steady enough to endure this life, wouldn’t I want God to blow it down with whatever wind is necessary so that I can endure to the end?

I’m not sure.

I think I want this, but fear holds me back. Fear of what God, in His infinite love and wisdom, might deal out.

He never promised to be gentle.

Is any pain at all worthwhile if it brings us closer to Him, closer to the sort of life with God that Jesus lived?

The given answer should be yes, but I hesitate and pull back at the brink of giving it.

Which means that I do not yet desire God above all else.

Not truly.

Do many of us?

We give our hearts over to so many things other than God. . .As long as our happiness is tied to the things we can lose, we are vulnerable. ~ John Eldredge Walking With God

If God is truly enough, if He is what we need for happiness, for contentment, then we should be able to let go of those we love, endure that deep pain, rise above the pervasive fear, because we still have Him.

It is God who remains when all else is gone. It is God who fills us up with Himself so that we do not need anything or anyone else.

In truth, when we lose, when we hurt, we have more of Him than we have in the comfort and in the ease. That in itself should make us turn from the easy way.

If only I could believe that. Truly know it and live it.

But without the pain of learning it.

From my high school band director days:

Mrs. Giger! My bassoon solo actually sounds good now!!

Well, I’m glad. What did you do differently?

I finally followed your advice to practice the song. And it worked!!

Aha.

It is something I’ve been trying to teach my seven year old. Working hard at a challenging task brings such a sweet reward.

Any excellent and beautiful ending is the result of working hard at something difficult.

We know this in our adult lives ~ we feel most satisfied after a day full of meaningful challenges that we tackled wholeheartedly; challenges that ended with accomplishment.

Why do we think that life should be different?

If this life is preparation for the life to come, why would we expect it to be easy? Shouldn’t we expect it to be more like boot camp?

…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…

We think that life should be comfortable, full of the things and people we desire.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

We are offended and outraged when things don’t go as planned.

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.

We decide that this is too hard.

Life is too lonely, too full of hurt, too saturated with grief.

True.

And this loneliness, this hurt, this grief can have purpose.

For it was fitting that (God), for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

Eternity is high stakes. We shouldn’t be surprised that the preparation can be grueling.

Each day we have a choice. We can choose to accept what we are given and let God use it to mold us or we can dig in our heels and choose to look for the easy way, the way of least pain and effort, the way of bitterness and discontent.

Life is. We can fight against it and live in a state of war. Or we can surrender to God and be molded into someone who is perfectly ready for eternity.

The stakes are high. Are you ready for the challenge?

Sometimes, when I forget who our King is, this world makes me want to run away and hide.

In a week when refugees number in the millions,

In a week when a friend, a friend with a wife and three small children, dies much too soon,

In a week when fellow believers choose to scream about gay marriage across the country rather than to do something about the poor on the other side of town,

It is easy to believe the lie that I can do nothing against the darkness of this world.