About Elizabeth

Hello! I'm glad to meet you! My name is Elizabeth. I am a wife and a stay-at-home mommy to three beautiful girls; I am a musician and a writer. I would love for you to visit with me at MadeSacred.com where I write and try to thoughtfully engage life and culture as a way of loving God and loving others. After all, God has made everything to be sacred, things in our daily lives and things in the world around us.

Lift Up Your Head

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Elizabeth

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. If you choose to listen, be sure to also scroll through the photos while listening…the photos are the main point of today’s post.

The deep darkness in this world can sometimes weigh our heads down. Our eyes remain fixed on our next step, our minds focused on not stumbling, not falling flat on our faces.

It is easy to become mired in the muck of a broken world. We struggle and strive, our backs bent under the bulk of all that is upon us.

Yet God is here.

Right here.

Closer than your breath.

The evidence is all around you. So lift up your head just for a moment.

You who are bowed down with physical pain, lift up your head.

You who dwell under the weight of loneliness or depression, lift up your head.

You who are crushed by a grief that prevents you from even getting out of bed in the morning, lift up your head.

You who are burdened by the venom between fellow countrymen and fellow Christ followers, lift up your head.

You who plead with God to do something, to rescue you, to save you, for God’s sake doesn’t He even care,

lift up your head.

Lift up your head and take a breath of wonder. He is all around you. This beauty is for you.

It doesn’t fully dispel the darkness, at least not yet, but it will give you the strength to keep shining your own light for another day.

And that’s all you need. Just one more day.

Lift up your head.

Art credits: Mountain photos and tulip photo by Kirk Sewell; Space photos by NASA; Elk photo by Kevin Tuck; Elephant photo by Stella Bogdanic; all other photos are mine

Stop Slicing Off Ears

Posted on October 7, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

It is early October.

An election is fast approaching, along with all of its requisite vitriol.

As emotions become more volatile, as words become our weapon of choice, I offer a word of warning. A plea, to myself as well as to you.

I’ve already spoken of how important it is for us, the Church, to be unified.

Not for us to agree on everything, but to love each other. To love each other no matter what.

This is so important that it was one of the last things Jesus asked of God before He was crucified.

Why is this particularly important right now, in this month, in this country?

As this election looms closer and larger before our wide open eyes, we are afraid.

And fear causes us to do crazy things, both to each other and to those around us who are outside of the Church.

You and I, we who claim to follow Christ, we are falling out of power.

The America of the past – the America of white, Protestant government, is becoming just that. A thing of the past.

Abortion.

Gay marriage.

Transgenders in the military.

Whatever you personally believe about these and other similar issues, most would admit that they are not generally promoted as God-sanctioned by the Evangelical church as a whole.

Just a look at these issues in our country today strips away the illusion that we are in control.

Many are fighting back against this. “Make America great again!” “Take back America!”

We as a Church are good at fighting.

Throughout our history, we have fought wars, both collectively and personally, against anyone who tries to take away our power.

Our earthly power, that is.

You can look as far back as the first twelve leaders of our church, as far back as Peter, to see our blind tendency to misinterpret what Jesus actually seems to teach.

When Jesus speaks of His kingdom, we assume that He means a kingdom here on earth.

A kingdom that forces everyone to live under God’s rule.

The sort of kingdom we seem to want America to be.

This is what Peter believed. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God and how close it was, and Peter decided to help it along by using his sword to start slicing off ears.

Jesus, however, picked up that ear, placed it back onto it’s owner’s head, and walked quietly off to meet His death.

We are losing power in this country, and perhaps this is a good thing.

The kingdom of God has never increased by force; rather, the kingdom seems to expand most quickly when those who are in power are against it.

Jesus speaks over and over again about His kingdom coming through the humble, the weak, the foolish. He is adamant that the kingdom of God is not about force or any kind of earthly power.

Jesus tells His disciples in Matthew that all of the kings and rulers exercise their authority in one way but you, you who call yourself My disciples, are to do things another way.

He tells them that you are to bring forth My kingdom by becoming a servant, by giving up your life for all.

Everything we do to live out God’s kingdom here on earth must be done under the shadow of the cross.

Perhaps we should stop fighting to regain political power and start figuring out how to further God’s kingdom in this new America. Perhaps we should remember that God’s kingdom grows best one soul at a time through lives lived in quiet love and service.

Perhaps we should stop slicing off ears and instead begin the work of healing by dying to ourselves as we live as Jesus did. We can start by loving each other.

Art credit: Photograph of cathedral by Kirk Sewell; Image of the Croisés from 1922; St. Peter Cuts the Slave’s Ear by Duccio di Buoninsegna

What Jesus Thought Was Most Important

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

We are the Church.

You and me.

Whatever our stage of life or economic status, whatever bits of theology on which we might differ, whatever our politics or race, we are the Church.

When the world wants to know about Jesus, to know what He thought was most important, they look to us.

What did Jesus think was important?

Well, He said that loving God with all of your being was the most important thing of all, followed by loving others. In fact, the Bible teaches that one of the main ways you love God is by loving others.

Jesus thought that this loving others business was so important, in fact, that He named it as the main way that the world would know we follow Him.

Would the world know that today’s church follows Jesus?

If you knew you were going to die in the next day, what would you pray for? Trivialities and side issues, or would you pray for whatever was paramount in your heart?

When Jesus was about to leave His disciples and head toward the cross, what did He pray for? What did He think was most essential?

He prayed for His followers to love each other. He prayed for unity. He prayed that His followers would be one in the same way that He and the Father were one.

We are the Church.

You and me.

Is that what the world sees?

Jesus is no longer on this earth. His Spirit is inside of each of us, but we the Church are now His body to bring God’s kingdom to this world.

Are we acting like a body or is the hand slapping the head in the face? Is the right foot kicking the left leg?

Jesus pleaded with God to make us one. Why? So that we could be happier and have easier lives while treating each other more kindly?

So that the world would know God’s love.

This is how those in the world can know that God loves them – by the way that we love each other.

What does the world see when it looks at the Church?

That question makes me want to weep.

What does the world see when it looks at you?

Whatever has come before, I implore you now. Love each other. Be unified.

Invite someone from another faith tradition to go along with you the next time you head out to serve the hungry and the orphans.

Find someone who grew up in another culture or another part of the country or even just a different side of town, and take them out to lunch. Listen to them. Ask questions.

After this particularly nasty election is over, invite someone who voted for the other candidate over to your home for a meal.

We are the Church.

You and me.

I entreat you to show the world what Jesus valued. Astound the little piece of your world with your love for other Jesus followers nearby.

Our world needs some astonishment. And it is up to us.

Art credit: Photos of various cathedrals by Kirk Sewell

Layers of Meaning in Scripture

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Elizabeth

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 am often astonished at the beauty of Scripture.

Not only astonished at the beauty of individual books or passages, although that happens too.

What often takes me aback is the elegance of how the entire Bible fits seamlessly together, flowing in and out of itself like a river flowing into the sea.

The Old Testament points toward the New Testament, while the New Testament points back to the Old as well as forward into the future.

There are layers of meaning to everything – the personal inside the theological inside the historical – and every layer is truth.

Everything that Jesus said and did points back to what God did for Israel and forward to what He was going to do for all the nations.

Exquisite.

Look at the Crucifixion.

It was certainly historical and political. It happened to one man in one place on earth at one particular time, a man caught between two powers struggling for supremacy.

It was theological. When Jesus died, He took upon Himself the sins of the world to atone for them once and for all.

It was personal. Jesus paying the penalty for your own sins is about as personal as it can get.

Look at the meeting between Jesus and the disciples after the resurrection. The one after the disciples had been out fishing and Jesus called them to shore for breakfast.

Jesus spoke to Peter and told him, If you love Me, then feed My sheep. That is a very personal calling.

A calling which is nestled inside of the layer of Jesus as the Passover Lamb and all of the theological meanings implied therein.

The theological meanings that are nestled inside the first Passover and Israel overthrowing Egypt in their escape through the Red Sea and all the historical and political pieces of those events.

Personal meaning burrowed inside theological meaning burrowed inside historical meaning.

You see? Go look for it. Find it everywhere and be astonished.

See the Word as beautiful.

What Should We Truly Fear?

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

Fear is a powerful force.

I have done things of which I am not proud out of fear. I have done things that were good from the same motivation.

The Bible speaks often about fear.

Fear God. Don’t fear anything else. Simplified, perhaps, but that is about the sum of it.

Yet we are also told that in Christ, we do not need to fear God. We are instructed to come boldly before His throne. We are told that perfect love casts out fear. How are these reconciled?

It is certainly true that God tells us to fear nothing but Him. We are told that we will have trouble in this world but that we can take heart because Jesus has overcome the world.

Jesus tells His disciples not to fear those who can harm only the body but to fear only the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

He had, however, just been speaking about the Pharisees who had the power to cast them out of the temple which, for a first century Jew, was about the worst thing imaginable. The temple was an integral part of who they were. If they were cast out, not even their family would be allowed to associate with them. They became untouchables.

Jesus reassures His followers, though. He tells them that the Pharisees truly are not to be feared and that to be cast from the temple is not the worst thing imaginable. He warns them that the worst thing would be for God to cast your soul into hell.

Frightening words.

Then come comforting words, as Jesus is wont to do.

He then reassures them that if you trust in God you don’t have to fear the worst (being cast into hell) because God cares even for the tiny sparrows and you are worth so more than a sparrow to God.

So fear God. But don’t fear God.

Clear, yes?

I find clarification in the writings by John, one of Jesus’ disciples. He was there when Jesus spoke of fearing God rather than one who can harm only the body. Perhaps he was thinking of that moment when he wrote about fear in one of his letters.

John, speaking to those who have confessed that Jesus is Lord, says that there is no fear in love. He says that fear has to do with punishment, which has no place in those who are in Christ. Matthew Henry, in his commentary, speaks of this kind of fear as a dread arising from feelings of guilt. And perfect love drives out dread.

Perhaps it is a bit like our feelings about fire.

We all treat fire with caution and care when it is contained in our fireplace or firepit, but perhaps do not fear it. We have a healthy respect for it when checked by the confines of the fireplace, but I venture to guess that if a raging wildfire were headed straight for us with no way to escape, we would feel just a smidge of fear.

Perhaps fire truly is a good example in its limited way. If we follow the rules of caring for fire, it is beautiful and bestows many benefits upon us but if we disobey those rules it can consume us.

In the same way, if we obey God, if we accept His gift of Jesus’ blood covering us, we need not worry about punishment from God, and in that sense we do not need to fear Him. We should, however, still have fear in the sense of reverence and awe of what He could do if He were to choose, what He will do to those who reject Him.

So if we are in Christ, we do not have to be afraid of anything at all: nothing in this world, because Christ has overcome the world, and not of God, for we are in Christ who has taken on Himself the punishment for our sins.

So let us fear God out of awe and reverence rather than out of dread, for He is, in Scripture’s own words, a consuming fire.

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. ~ Hebrews 12.28-29

Art credits: Creation of the Sun and Moon by Michelangelo; Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Jan Vermeer

What Is the Gospel?

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

Our culture is passionate about the importance of the individual.

We believe deeply that each person (especially our own person) should have all they need to be happy.

We are also quite certain that anything which claims to be good news must primarily be about benefiting us as individuals.

Even the Good News.

Many of us in the church were taught that the word gospel means good news.

It does.

The word gospel is translated from the Greek word evangelion/evangelizo which means good news or one who brings good news.

But what is the Good News?

Many of us in the church were taught that the Good News is that Jesus died to rescue us.

It’s not.

Don’t get me wrong. Jesus dying to rescue us is good news, indeed.

But it’s not the Good News. It’s not the best news.

The Good News of the Gospels is not that Jesus saved the world; it is not that He died so that we can be with Him forever, although these certainly are pieces of very good news.

The Good News of Scripture, rather, is that the Jesus who died and rose from the dead is Lord of all.

He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and because of this He has power over all of creation, even death itself, power over Satan.

Within that is a personal good news, of course, but a personal good news is not the primary Good News.

The primary Good News is not just good news for the individual person. It is not even good news for all of mankind. The primary Good News is good news for all of creation.

This is so much bigger than us and is so much more excellent than our attempts to confine the Gospel by our tiny definitions of what is good for me.

The news that Jesus is Lord of all is news that can be celebrated by the singing of mountains and the clapping of trees.

This is true Good News for all.

Art credits: page from a 1769 German Luther Bible; Rembrandt’s The Three Crosses; final photo of mountains and trees by Kirk Sewell; all other photographs copyright by Elizabeth Giger

Never! Said I

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Elizabeth

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 would never do that.

No, never! Said I.

Horrified, confident, righteous within.

Never? He said

with a gleam in his eye.

Perhaps, yes perhaps, and yet.

This little thing?

What about this small little thing?

Oh, that? That’s nothing.

Said I with a grin.

That surely won’t matter

in the vast scope of life.

So yes, I’ll do that and enjoy.

Well, what about this?

Just a teensy bit larger.

And the pleasure is much larger still

Oh, that? That’s still nothing.

Said I, standing tall

This too, doesn’t matter

it surely won’t hurt

those around me or go against God’s will.

Said he with the gleam

You’re so close, just look

at what could be savored and gained.

I turned ’round

and suddenly saw with despair

my righteousness lying quite stained.

I did it, yes did it.

How could I? Said I.

with shock and confusion within.

Your confidence blinded.

Said he with the gleam.

You trusted in self not in Him.

from the archives

God in the Darkness

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

Sometimes it happens this way.

Sometimes when you are closest to God, you feel as though you are farthest away.

It seems to happen that when you are a new Christian, God speaks clearly, you feel His presence solidly, light is all around you.

As you progress in your faith, God’s voice gets fainter, His presence is harder to grasp, the clouds begin to form around you.

This is how it was for Mother Theresa who began her life full of fire and certainty and spent the last fifty years of her life full of darkness and silence. She continued to obey, even when the dry times outnumbered the rich times.

As a baby, you need God to discernibly carry you. When you become more mature, you need to trust that God is still carrying you.

When God first showed Himself to Moses, it was in the light.

In a miracle of a fiery bush that did not become ash, He revealed Himself to a man who did not yet know Him.

Later, God showed Himself to Moses in a cloud.

In the middle of the cloudy dimness of a pillar of cloud, God spoke to a man who was learning to trust Him.

Once Moses became more perfected, he saw God in the darkness.

In the darkness on the top of a mountain, God gave His Word to a man who knew Him.

We should not think that this is unusual. We should not despair when we must enter the darkness. We should not give up on God when we can no longer see Him.

Rather, we should continue to obey, continue to trust, continue to speak and to listen.

What you discovered about God in the fiery light does not disappear once He cloaks Himself in darkness.

He is still there, He still loves you, and He is still working to perfect you.

Especially in the darkness.

Ideas in this post come from St. Gregory of Nissa (335-395 AD)

Art Credits: God Appears to Moses from Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg; Pillar of Cloud is a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company; Promulgation of the Law by Gerard Hoet

Taking Time

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Elizabeth

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’ve written before in this space about the beauty and goodness of time.

I’ve written about this time we are in now, the thousands of years between creation and restoration, and how the delay of Christ’s coming is a gift to us.

I’ve written of the idea that it is not a failing of the created world that it reaches its fulfillment only through time. This is part of the way God made things. The created world takes time to be what it is. ~ Jeremy Begbie, Resounding Truth

Sometimes, though, it is easier for me to accept this idea in the abstract than it is to accept it in my own little life.

It is easier to be okay with Christ’s delay in returning, because that feels a long way off anyway, than it is to be okay with a delay in God fulfilling a dream that I think is His will for my life.

I feel sure that I am not alone.

We think that if God wants us to do something, to accomplish some purpose, then it should happen now. Or at least within a year or two. If it doesn’t happen quickly, perhaps it really wasn’t God’s will.

I am certainly guilty of this thinking. I dream of writing in a way that changes hearts for God. I dream of articles and books, of ministry that is a part of the story of God’s kingdom.

When I get yet another rejection, I wonder if perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps God does not want to use my writing after all.

I forget.

I forget about Joseph who spent thirteen years in slavery before becoming second to Pharaoh. I forget that it took Moses forty years to get from the burning bush to Canaan. (Yes, I know he didn’t actually make it to Canaan, but that’s another story for another essay.) I forget that David waited over twenty years from when Samuel anointed him as king before he actually became king over all of Israel.

Like many of you, I forget that part of fulfilling God’s purpose means delay. It takes time to become what God created us to be.

Would Joseph or Moses or David have been the leaders they were without the waiting? Would they have been able to live out God’s story and lead His people without the process that shaped them into those very leaders?

No.

And neither can we do anything within God’s story without allowing Him the time to change our hearts into the beauty He intended.

Whether it takes thirteen years or forty, we must accept where we are now, we must be faithful and obedient now, trusting that waiting is not bad, that delay is not ugly.

Growing into our role in God’s story takes time, so rather than chafing as though it were a setback, let Him use that time to make you into who He created you to be.

It will be beautiful, I promise.

Art credit: World Time by rizeli53; Ornate Clock by Kevin Tuck; Just In Time by Adrian van Leen; Clock Tower by Miriam Wickett

When You Are Desperate to Understand

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Elizabeth

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.

There is much that I don’t understand about this life we live.

I don’t understand why good prayers often go unanswered. Prayers that even an indifferent parent would grant.

I don’t understand why young mothers die horrible deaths or why four year old little girls suffer abuse.

I don’t understand why God often seems so distant, especially in our darkest moments.

I simply don’t understand.

Yet this thing I know to be true, even if I don’t understand why:

Sometimes God asks us to choose between understanding and Him.

This is the story of Job. Horrific things happened; God was silent.

Job’s friends offered their limited understanding; God offered the fullness of Himself.

And that’s the thing about understanding, you see. When we demand it, we usually don’t get it and in the demanding we lose the grace that God offers to us.

If you choose God, however, you gain what you need most of all.

We will all receive understanding someday, whether on this or that side of death, but we need God now. Always.

If you have to choose, choose God.

That was Job’s choice. He admitted his incomprehension and bowed before the God he had seen. And he was satisfied, ending his life full of days.

When we choose God, we receive the gift of His presence and that will satisfy us more than any understanding ever could.

We need God desperately. More than we need anything else.

If you choose God, you will eventually gain understanding. If you demand understanding, you may lose the presence of God and yet never receive the understanding you gave up everything to gain.

If you have to choose, choose God. It is this grace that will get you through the hard thing you do not understand.

This grace that is the presence of God Himself.

Art credit: Photo of space by NASA