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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
What are you clutching in white-knuckled fists?
Blessed are you who hold your possessions loosely, knowing that they are a gift to be stewarded rather than a treasure to be hoarded.
What fear keeps you awake at night?
Blessed are you who are grateful for each year you grow older, knowing that old age deepens beauty and wisdom rather than bringing a loss of beauty or worth.
Which loss are you afraid would bring you to your knees?
Blessed are you who allow your beloveds the freedom to belong to God, knowing that He will care for them far better than you ever could.
Possessions, youth, loved ones. Some of you have already lost these things. All of us will eventually.
What will you do when your arms grow weary, when your hands lose their grip and these things you hold so dear are gone?
We are all already poor, whether we understand this or not.
If clutching what you love is not the way to possess it forever, what should you do instead?
Open your hands. Relax your grip.
Surrender it to God.
Whatever it is, whomever it is, surrender it to God.
Acknowledge what is already true, that you are poor. Acknowledge the reality that you are in possession of nothing.
When you surrender that which does not truly belong to you, God gives to you in return the most precious gift of all.
He gives you the gift of Himself, of His presence in that place where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
I couldn’t live where there were no trees – something vital in me would starve. ~ Anne of Green Gables
I love coming across new evidence of God’s love for us.
I have always loved trees, have always felt much like Anne did about living without them, but the most I’d really thought about them in terms of their relation to God is what an amazing job He did in creating them.
I recently listened to an interview with a couple of artists on Mars Hill Audio Journal. It was only a minute or two of the entire segment, but they mentioned that after the human face and figure, trees are the main focal point for artists. Whenever there is a tree in a painting, it automatically draws the eye to it.
Why is that true? One of their hypotheses was that it has something to do with our deep subconscious knowing that we need trees to survive, our knowing that we depend upon trees for life. I wonder, though, if it is even deeper than that.
My mind is drawn to the tree that God chose as our point of obedience. We chose foolishly and we disobeyed.
My mind is also drawn to the tree that God chose as our point of redemption. He chose beautifully and we were saved.
God has chosen trees for great purposes. Did He have those purposes in mind as He created trees? I wonder.
Trees are often used in God’s Word to show strength and constancy. One of my favorites is the Psalm that says that a man who delights in and meditates on God’s law is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaves never wither.
I wonder. And I imagine.
I can imagine that God knew that He would create Man to love images, to hunger after metaphors to help explain the unexplainable.
I can imagine that same God, before He ever spoke light into being, planning out His world to contain specific metaphors of meaning, just because He loves us.
I can imagine Him planning His trees to look a certain way, planning to use them in a particular manner, so that we would see them and draw meaning from them and be satisfied, just because He loves us.
Perhaps that is a stretch. Perhaps it didn’t really happen that way. But it seems like something that would be just like our God: to carefully plan out His creation in the way that would give His children the most joy.
One of the ideas in which I believe strongly, one of the basic premises, in fact, behind the writing of this blog, is that there can be no division between sacred and secular. There can be no segmenting out pieces of life, saying that this is for faith and that is not.
For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. ~ Colossians 1.16-17
If all of life is under the authority of Christ, then the opposite supposition is also true, that there is nothing that is outside of Christ. The point seems inarguable, yet it seems easier to say that all is in Christ than it is to begin to name specific arenas that therefore matter to Him.
If singing hymns in church is in Christ, then scrubbing filthy toilets is also in Him.
If working in the food pantry is in Christ, then creating a PowerPoint presentation for work is also in Him.
If learning about Old Testament Prophets is in Christ, then politics is also in Him.
It seems unreasonable, yet the conclusion is inescapable. If in Christ all things hold together, then there can be nothing that falls outside of His realm of influence.
If politics, too, must fall within the confines of our faith, then we should spend time considering the best way that our land should be governed. Especially when we live in a land that gives us a voice. Especially when we live in a year that is an election year.
And so I have been pondering and wondering. None of my wonderings have produced anything that I could change, yet I still believe that the process of considering our country’s politics in light of the way God created life to work is valuable.
There is much in the Bible about teaching and training, about people being gifted to do specific tasks, about being and doing what you were created to be and do.
All of which makes me wonder if the idea of citizen governance is as good an idea as our founders believed. I understand, I think, that part of the reason behind term limits and bringing in ordinary citizens to do the job for a time is to prevent anyone from taking and keeping too much power.
It is easy to become drunk on the trappings of power.
Or so I’ve heard.
Yet would we want our children to learn under someone who just comes in and teaches for a few years and then is replaced by another community member? Would anyone trust a citizen surgeon?
Then why do we trust a job like governing our country to amateurs?
What if we treated politics like we treat other careers? What if we had a governing body that developed training and schooling requirements? What if people who have the talent for governance could attend a study program and go through an apprenticeship? What if that same governing body helped the governors of our land decide when it was time to retire, like the governing body that decides when it is time for us to give up our driver’s license?
I know that there are probably hundreds of issues that would make this improbable. I understand that none of this is likely to happen.
Yet isn’t it better to think through something as important as how our country is governed rather than just falling in line with how it has always been done?
If part of loving God means loving Him with all of your mind, then shouldn’t we use our mind to consider how all things would be best under His authority?
These feel like frightening times. The world at large keeps crashing into my small frame of reference.
It doesn’t feel as though I can do anything against the hatred, fear, and violence that keeps cropping up all around us.
Part of my helpless feeling comes from my own world currently being very small.
My days revolve around nursing babies, napping toddlers, and newly-become elementary students.
What I have to give, what I have to offer to stem this dark tide is small.
Our season in life leaves little room for discretionary income and time.
I wonder if anything I do makes much difference.
In this season of Advent, this season of preparing ourselves for the biggest Gift of all, the gifts that I bring to our God, to our world, seem insignificant, tiny.
Leaving my own book to read one more story aloud? Trifling.
Baking cookies to give to our neighbors? Inconsequential.
Giving up a meal out to purchase toys for a toy drive? Insufficient.
Yet as I read still another version of the Christmas Story to my girls I am reminded that an act does not have to be big to be sacred.
Small acts of kindness to those I know, small smiles and gentle words in passing to those who seem different from us, small gifts to strangers are all as sacred and beautiful as the act of preaching to thousands.
You don’t have to have endless resources to be able to change the world. You don’t have to accomplish something enormous to let a glimpse of light in to the darkness.
After all, what is Advent but the remembrance that it was the smallest, most fragile gift of all that was sacred enough to change our world forever.
That there can be ugliness in this life is not questioned by anyone. No one would argue with the idea that we all go through times of darkness, times of weeping, times of where in the world, where in all of this hurting world are You, God?
If the question then is not will I suffer, then the question must be what will I choose when I suffer.
When I hurt, will I believe that God works for the best in everything or will I wonder whether God is working at all? When I ache, will I believe that God is most present when I am at the end of myself or will I wonder whether God is really in anything at all? When I don’t know how long I can hold on, will I believe in God when I cannot see Him through the dark or will I wonder if the darkness is all that there is?
What do we do when we are sinking, when we are drowning, when we are at the end of ourselves and are pleading for relief?
Paul pleaded with God to remove his thorn. He begged God three times for release. The first two times? Heaven was silent. The third time? God said no.
Jesus asked if there was any other way but the Cross. God’s answer? No.
Why do we think it should be different for us? Why do we think that we should be exempt?
If God is most present and works most powerfully when we are at the end of our own limits, then shouldn’t we want to lean into our suffering rather than try to escape it?
Paul chose to boast of his weakness, to be content with his hardship. He chose to immerse himself in his thorn in order to gain more of Christ.
We don’t have a choice about whether we will hurt.
Our choice is in how we will respond.
Will we spend our time begging for respite? Will we beg God to take it away and then curse Him when He does not?
Or will we receive our suffering as a gift? A gift with a purpose, even though we may never know the purpose. A gift with a promise, a promise of grace and God’s presence.
When God says no, when God says My grace is sufficient for you, instead of arguing with Him about it, instead of fighting Him with all of your strength, ask Him to help you get to the place where you can receive your adversity as a gift from a loving Father.
A gift that brings you more of His grace. A gift that brings you more of Him.
I have learned to kiss the waves that dash me against the Rock of Ages. ~ Charles Spurgeon
We dance and dream and die, and through it all we long.
We long for something else, for something more. We long for something bigger, for something more real.
Some understand what they long for and others do not. We long for what is true. We long for a world that is fully real.
We catch breaths of the morning air, fresh and clean and pure. We catch glimpses of the morning light, startling and bright and glorious.
Yet we stand outside the world and these hints of morning air do not change us. We do not become pure or glorious.
We stand outside the world and we hear a Word. We hear a Word that spreads a rumor.
It is a rumor that this shall not always be so. It is a rumor that one day we will be allowed to walk through the door and stand on the right side. On the inside.
It is a rumor that one day we will finally be changed by the Morning. Through the Morning Star we will become pure and clean, bright and glorious.
We will be as we were made. We will become as we are remade. Remade into the very image of the Word.
And by moving through the Word we will be allowed to stand. To stand in desperate gratitude. To stand covered in another’s glory.
We will dance and we will dream, but we will not die.
I couldn’t live where there were no trees – something vital in me would starve. ~ Anne of Green Gables
I love coming across new evidence of God’s love for us.
I have always loved trees, have always felt much like Anne did about living without them, but the most I’d really thought about them in terms of their relation to God is what an amazing job He did in creating them.
I recently listened to an interview with a couple of artists on Mars Hill Audio Journal. It was only a minute or two of the entire segment, but they mentioned that after the human face and figure, trees are the main focal point for artists. Whenever there is a tree in a painting, it automatically draws the eye to it.
Why is that true? One of their hypotheses was that it has something to do with our deep subconscious knowing that we need trees to survive, our knowing that we depend upon trees for life. I wonder, though, if it is even deeper than that.
My mind is drawn to the tree that God chose as our point of obedience. We chose foolishly and we disobeyed.
My mind is also drawn to the tree that God chose as our point of redemption. He chose beautifully and we were saved.
God has chosen trees for great purposes. Did He have those purposes in mind as He created trees? I wonder.
Trees are often used in God’s Word to show strength and constancy. One of my favorites is the Psalm that says that a man who delights in and meditates on God’s law is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and whose leaves never wither.
I wonder. And I imagine. I can imagine that God knew that He would create Man to love images, to hunger after metaphors to help explain the unexplainable. I can imagine that same God, before He ever spoke light into being, planning out His world to contain specific metaphors of meaning, just because He loves us. I can imagine Him planning His trees to look a certain way, planning to use them in a particular manner, so that we would see them and draw meaning from them and be satisfied, just because He loves us.
Perhaps that is a stretch. Perhaps it didn’t really happen that way. But it seems like something that would be just like our God: to carefully plan out His creation in the way that would give His children the most joy.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I am only beginning to explore this journey that is Lent. This season was not a part of my faith tradition growing up, but it seems to be growing more popular among evangelicals these days.
This long season of Lent is not a frivolous sort of giving up as it appeared to a fairly oblivious teenage self (fasting from M&M’s anyone?) but a giving up for the purpose of giving away. It is a period of self-denial in order to become more unified with the Spirit of Christ.
It is a difficult thing to be unified with Jesus. Gazing into the eyes of Christ for too long has frightening consequences. When you stare at the cross, you find yourself looking at your own death, at your sin and its just consequence. You come face to face with all of the spiritual deformities that are in your own soul and find yourself tempted to turn away from the harsh reflection.
When you gaze at Christ crucified for these forty days that are Lent, you are pulled close to the grace and forgiveness of your death finished for you. But it is a dangerous grace. This grace is one that does not leave you unfinished. It is a grace that purges and renews.
The purpose of Lent is to awaken in you a sense of your own sin, your guilt for your sin, and your sorrow over your sin. The purpose of Lent is to awaken “the sense of gratitude for the forgiveness of sins. To (awaken) or to motivate the works of love and the work for justice that one does out of the gratitude for the forgiveness of one’s sins.” (Edna Hong in Bread andWine)
This grace can only be approached at the end of Lent. It is a long journey, these forty days. It is a necessary journey, one that fights the apathy and smugness of this world in which we often find it easy to spot deformities in the souls of others and find it also easy to turn away from the crippled places of our own souls.
Yet we do not travel this path of Lent alone. God’s Spirit Himself travels with us, maneuvering us down this steep path that ends at the foot of the cross. As we stand at the foot of the cross, stripped of our illusions about ourselves, we gaze at the battered and broken body of the One who came to rescue us. This body of Jesus that is our grace. This grace that brings fire. This fire that purges and cleanses and does not consume but instead resurrects us into a new self.
It is beautiful, this amazing and dangerous grace.
When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie
My grace all sufficient shall be your supply.
The flame shall not hurt you, my only design
Your dross to consume and your gold to refine.
~ How Firm a Foundation
Credit to Edna Hong and Walter Wangerin in Bread and Wine for many of the ideas in this post.
I am always yearning for perfection. I long for this battle to be done, for the result of a war won to become more evident. I want my internal battle to be finished as well as the battle over this world of ours. I get tired, you see, of fighting. I want to love perfectly, to obey perfectly, to forgive perfectly.
I want our world to be able to quit fighting.
I want all of us to love perfectly, to love in a way that results in bodies getting fed, animals feeling safe, hearts being healed, trees growing tall.
I’m ready for the lion and the lamb to lie down together.
Yet if I had been born into perfection, I would never have experienced the gift that is grace. This grace-gift of being loved at my most unlovable, of being shaped into perfection at my most imperfect. Is it worth it? A hard question.
If I had been perfect from the start, I wouldn’t know battle and I wouldn’t know mercy. I would, perhaps, trust more in myself than in the One who made me. Are heights of joy made richer by the depths carved by sorrow?
Grace is having a commitment to – or at least an acceptance of – being ineffective and foolish. ~ Anne Lamott
I don’t know why this is so. I don’t know why we can only experience grace while being ineffective and foolish. I don’t know why we must experience battle in order to grasp this gift full of beauty. I wish it were not this way.
I do know that God does nothing by accident. I do know that God created with a purpose of love and I do know that someday His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Is grace worth all of this?
There is much that I don’t know. And there are a few things I do.
Logs piled high with fire bright to keep
away pain of deep freeze snow night;
Brilliant sun rises on even a dark day reminding
that peace our despair will allay;
Fears faced with soft laughter and voices
loud that flit high toward rafter;
These are gift
Hand offered up to tightly hold while heart
searches hard to discover it is bold;
One timid smile offered slow on a troubled
day that conspires to bring heart low;
Tiny dimpled fingers tightly wrap around
a thumb with paper skin deep in nap;
These are gift
One who spoke earth and star is found
wrapped in small by those traveling far;
He who is Creator’s song takes on
all our discord, killed for our wrong;
Promise of freedom from fear, of healing
our broken, of wiped away tear;
These are gift
