Today

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Elizabeth

Today, our world seems darker.

Today, my heart is heavy and grieving.

Today, I acknowledge my guilt and wrap myself around my shame.

Today, I try to fully take in the magnitude of this beautiful, amazing Love.

On this day, creation mourned and the sun hid itself in grief.

On this day, Jesus chose to stay nailed down, for His heart was full of love.

On this day, Jesus took my guilt into His own body and gave up, for a time, His perfect closeness with God the Father.

On this day, God once for all proved His love for us.

On this day, He proved His Word, that He truly meant it when He said

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

He loves me. He came to rescue me and to make me perfect and holy. He came to conquer death and to make me alive.

On this day, God proved through Jesus that He means to accomplish all of these things.

And yet.

Is He able?

Today, I do not yet know.

I suppose I’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out.

art credit: Sketch by Rembrandt, The Three Crosses

Ordinary

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Elizabeth

Ordinary.

Is there such a thing?

I’m tempted to think so.

In the midst of the dishes and laundry and cleaning toilets, snotty noses and bedtime stories, the routine can seem mundane, dull…

Ordinary.

Until I really look. Until I really stop. Until I really see what is around me.

Nothing is ordinary.

Those dishes mean a miracle of earth producing food that can be purchased and eaten at our table.

That laundry means a miracle of cotton growing from the ground and being woven into fabric that keeps our bodies warm in this cold winter.

This filthy toilet means an act of service, a deliberate dying to myself in a beautiful sacrifice for my family.

Those snotty noses mean a miracle of beautiful, sturdy bodies that are growing so very quickly.

These bedtime stories mean a miracle of imagination, of minds that eagerly search for and grasp new meanings and ideas every day.

These very things that seem so ordinary are the very fabric of the miracle that is my life.

The Christian faith does not simply, or even mainly, propose a few additional facts about the world. Rather, belief in the Christian God invites a new way to understand everything. ~ Andrew Davison in Imaginative Apologetics

Because all is created, because all is love, than nothing is ordinary. Everything is sacred.

I cannot separate my life into ordinary parts and miraculous parts, into secular parts and sacred parts.

Without Christ, nothing was made that has been made. In Christ, all things hold together.

No matter what surrounds you, it is not ordinary, it is not solely of this world.

No matter how tempted I am to name something as mundane, as secular, it is not so.

Nothing that God has created is ordinary.

All is miracle. All is sacred.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. ~ Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water

When I Don’t Understand

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Elizabeth

It has been a beautiful time and a difficult time, this time I have spent away from this space.

Breathing in the scent of my newborn, surrounded by the warmth of family and friends, secluding myself from the world while I both soak up and exude the love and joy of my little family.

Passing my baby on his way out of this world, my Papa said farewell to us and greeted his Father with joy.

Unable to travel long miles that soon after giving birth, I did much of my grieving alone.

My heart was reminded too often of our Kristina, of the thoughts and emotions of her loss only a year and a half ago.

Birth and death. Being and dying.

I often think of and long to know the meaning of this cycle of life and death.

in the light of love of the Creator, who brought them all into being, who brought me into being, and you…It is part of the deepest longing of the human psyche, a recurrent ache in the hearts of all of God’s creatures.

I am reminded once again of Love.

Of Love that wants the best for us, regardless of the cost.

Of Love that walked this earth with us and died for us and then showed us how to have everlasting life.

Of Love that promises that this is not the end, these dying breaths, that promises that we have life.

As I open myself up once again to loving another baby, to making myself vulnerable to the possibility of pain that loving brings, I wonder long about meaning and whether any of this is truly worth it.

Yet even as I wonder, I know. I know that love is always worth it. I know, even in the ugly and the pain, that this life is beautiful because we are loved by One who gives Himself with no hesitation, no conditions.

I know because even though I don’t understand our God, even though I don’t understand this life or the next or how any of this works and fits together, I find yet that I know what it is about. I know what HE is about.

As long as we know what it’s about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.

And there is where the joy and beauty lie.

In knowing what it’s about even when we don’t understand.

Art credits: quotes are by Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water; Road to Emmaus painting by Robert Zund; Cross photograph by Asta Rastauskiene

Receiving Grace with Grace

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Elizabeth

This week’s post is the last guest post. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing from some other talented and wise writers! Next week you’ll be stuck with me again. 🙂 This essay was written by yet another old friend from my undergrad days at Harding University, Kelly Wiggains (known as Kelly Duncan back in the day). I am grateful that we have kept in touch over the years, as she is not only a talented writer (she writes regularly about words, books and beauty over at kellywiggains.com. You should definitely head over and explore her blog…you’ll love it! Go ahead and subscribe to receive her posts by email. While I’m thinking about it, you can subscribe to receive mine as well. Go on…I’ll wait…), but she is a wise and godly woman who is also a beautiful wife and momma. I keep her around as a friend because she is incredibly intelligent and can give me much needed advice. She’s also stinkin’ hilarious. I’ll admit that I’m not sure why she keeps me around. Enjoy her beautiful thoughts!

Michael W. May via Compfight cc

“Before I tell you what happened, where are you?” my husband asked. I replied, “Well, I’m sitting in the McDonald’s parking lot. Starbucks was too cold.” One night a week, I spend a few hours all by myself outside of the house to go and write, and my husband watches the kids. On this unusually windy and cold night, I was about to spend my time of solitude in the local McDonald’s, indulging in some coffee and the free wifi.

My husband continued with his story. He and the kids were spending their evening with some Papa Murphy’s pizza and Star Wars (typical “Writing Night” fare) when someone rang the doorbell. Tyler opened up the door to an older man, standing on our front porch with a Christmas gift bag. The man smiled and said, “Tyler?” My husband replied, “Yes.” The man handed him the bag, offered a quick, “Merry Christmas,” and left. Tyler mumbled, “Merry Christmas to you,” in return and walked back into the house.

The package easily weighed five pounds, a deceptive weight in a decorative Christmas bag meant for a bottle of wine. Inside the bag, Tyler found a book, a letter, and a quart-sized mason jar filled with change and small bills. Our family just received a little Christmas miracle of almost $100.

All too often, I’ve heard sermons about the amazing power of being selfless, how giving of your time, effort, money, talents to other people in the name of God’s glory brings joy to your life. We hear about how we should approach those acts of kindness in humility, never letting our left hand know what our right hand is doing. We should give generously, only seeking praise for our Father and not for ourselves.

I’ve learned how to give with love and without expectation. However, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a sermon about how to receive an act of kindness. How should I accept someone else’s sacrifice? Have you ever accepted help with no way to repay that help? Have you ever been the recipient of truly unconditional love and sacrifice?

I’ve seen this kind of love and sacrifice tangibly, vividly in my life several times. As a teenager, my dad fought a battle with cancer for about a year. I can remember my church taking up a special collection for our family. I wept at the sight of my church family readily grabbing at their purses under the pew or digging in their coat pockets for their checkbook. Not long after that, our family received another stack of cash, collected from the merchants of my hometown. My dad sat on his hospital bed in shock before his sister said, “How many times have you thrown in $20 or $50 like that for someone else?” I remember watching this unfold as a teenager. I remember being humbled by it, feeling a sense of gratitude, yet I did not feel the true weight of the sacrifice because I had no idea about the concept of money.

Recently, my mom has been struggling with her own battle with cancer. In the past year, I’ve received cards in the mail from extended family with an unexpected check and a note of encouragement. We’ve only lived in our current city for about six months, yet I’ve had cash slipped into my hand after an embrace with a new friend at church. The only explanation? “A friend wanted me to give this to you. So you can go see your momma.”

Every day acts of sacrifice like this always point me to the The Cross. How much more is the sacrifice of our Father and his Son? Our Father allowed the sacrifice of His only Son to bring an avenue back to His people. Our Brother and Lord, Jesus, gave his life unselfishly for all of mankind. I’ve been taught about this sacrifice all of my life. The enormity of it only washes over me once in a while. Rarely, I can make a tangible connection to the unfathomable sacrifice of our God and his gift of grace to us. More than anything else this year, I’ve learned about the power of grace, unconditional love, and true generosity from normal, everyday, broken, amazing friends and family. There is nothing more humbling or more empowering than seeing this at work.

Tolerance or Love?

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Elizabeth

Personal holiness or justice in our world?

If we have decided that “both” is the answer we believe, if we resolve to strive for both ideals, what do we do with those who disagree?

What do we do, for that matter, with anyone with whom we disagree?

We are exhorted by our leaders, our culture, to show tolerance to those around us. Everywhere I turn, I am pleaded with to be tolerant, to show tolerance to anyone who is different, anyone who thinks or behaves differently than I.

Is this what we who are Christ followers are called to be? Tolerant?

Is this really all that we can manage, all that we can aspire to do?

Tolerance is easy. It costs me nothing.

Tolerance shrugs its shoulders and walks away, leaving you to your own devices. Tolerance doesn’t care.

And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ~ Matthew 22.39

Love is much harder.

Love affirms the reality of the other person, culture and way of life.

Love takes the trouble to get to know the other person and find out what makes them special.

Love wants what is best for that person or culture.

It was love that brought the world to oppose an apartheid regime in South Africa, not tolerance.

It was love that lead Martin Luther King to pursue civil rights, not tolerance.

It was love that drove William Wilberforce to lead the British parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, not tolerance.

It was love that sent Jesus to the cross on our behalf, not tolerance.

Before November 6th and afterward, as I live my life in contact with people who are different than me, I will pray for strength to choose the harder way.

If I am to be Jesus to those around me, if I am to make a difference for Him in this world, I must choose love, not tolerance.

Love must confront Tolerance and insist, as it has always done, on a better way. ~ Tim Keller in Generous Justice

art credit: The Three Crosses etching by Rembrandt

Losing My Temper Again

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Elizabeth

Her eyes begin to flood, her hands creep up to cover her open mouth, and her body caves in on itself, trying to hide from the world around her.

My eyes narrow, my hands clench into tight balls of anger, and my body tenses up as if ready for battle.

By this sixth meltdown of the day, occurring because we took a different route home from the game, my heart is weary and my patience is gone.

My voice is low but harsh as I demand that she stop fussing and quit crying, and I spit at her to just be quiet if she can’t be happy.

Hurt radiates from her eyes as her sobs get even louder. Guilt pierces my heart as I once again realize that I lost my temper because I didn’t want to deal with her. Hard truth: She was inconvenient to me.

I remember that she hasn’t had much sleep because her sister just moved into her bed to make room for Baby. I remember that she is struggling with a new sport and feels afraid of too many kids all crowded around the same object. I remember that she is only four and that if I sometimes have irrational meltdowns, perhaps she is allowed a few as well.

This feels like my moment-by-moment cycle: I forget, I am harsh to those I love, I remember, I am guilty.

I now speak harshly to myself, trying to will myself into perfection, into loving without fail. This always fails. I am not perfect and my will is not strong enough.

And

I am loved by One Who is pouring more than I could even imagine into the lives of my husband and children.

I and my family are loved by One Who loves us enough to call us His children.

We are loved by One Who, before the world was even made, loved each one of us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault.

I am loved by One Who can make up for all of my mistakes, Who tells me that His power is made perfect in my weakness, Who reassures me that His grace is sufficient. (II Cor 12.9)

My strength is not sufficient to calm my temper.

My will is not sufficient for me to love my loved ones perfectly.

My fierce desire is not sufficient to force my little ones’ hearts into a state of loving God and each other.

His grace. This is sufficient.

I am struck with relief and gratitude, and so I sing.

He is good when there is nothing good in me.

He is love, when I am not, on display for all to see.

He is my hope because He has covered all my sin.

He is true even in my wandering.

I run to His arms and allow His power to be made perfect in my weakness. I trust all of our hearts to His love.

(song adapted from Forever Reign by Hillsong)

Slinging Mashed Potatoes

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Elizabeth

My eldest has had trouble loving her sister lately.

When she gets angry, even if it is with herself, her first instinct is to lash out and hurt Little Sister. We’ve been working on this, trying to teach her other ways of expressing her anger, but it is a long and difficult road. She seems to lose all common sense when her emotions run high.

Sadly, this reminds me all too much of the adults in our country this time of year.

Ah, election season.

Time for everyone to lose logic and common sense and to begin slinging hateful words around like mashed potatoes in a junior high camp cafeteria.

I have been wondering how we got to this place. How did we get to the place where it seems impossible to have a compassionate discussion of ideas?

In my most recent Mars Hill Audio Journal, it was suggested that this has become part of our culture because of the direction that our public schools have taken. When we emphasize math and science to the exclusion of teaching ethics and civics and philosophy, our citizens grow up without knowing about logic, without knowing how to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion.

Here is a clip of one of my favorite authors, N.T. Wright, speaking about the problem that we don’t even have the debate but rather have bits and pieces of a shouting match (if you are viewing this via email/in a reader, click here to view this video):

I can see, having been a teacher myself, how cutting logic and philosophy out of schools would appeal. It is much easier to control the flow of ideas than to teach people to think for themselves. (I am not proposing that this has been a deliberate conspiracy against free thinking in our country, rather that this has been the unintended consequence of placing a higher value on sciences than humanities. It simply helps the cause that the things that are cut out are subjects that tend to make governing more difficult.)

As I thought about how we got to this place, though, and as I listened to respected leaders speak about this issue, I realized that this is not a new problem, this problem of not teaching young people to think for themselves, of not teaching children how to think logically about an idea and spot the fallacies contained within.

In the 14th century, John Wycliffe was one of the first advocates for translating the Bible from Latin, a language that only priests and rulers could read, into the common language, accessible to all. The leaders of his day violently opposed him, wanting to keep the power of ideas to themselves. Wycliffe’s opponents cried out, “The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity”. In the end, Wycliffe was declared to be a heretic and his body was exhumed and burned, and the ashes were scattered.

As much as I would like to swell with indignation at the thought of trying to control ideas, if I am honest with myself, I can relate. It is difficult for me to trust my own children. I want to control the flow of ideas, to control what they know and understand. This would be much easier than teaching them to think critically and then dealing with the inevitable hard questions that will come.

Thankfully, I know better. God has instructed me to trust. Not other people, but Him. I must trust His Spirit inside my children.

So I will continually ask for help in relinquishing control. I will trust my girls to the care of God’s Spirit and trust that He will show them what is good.

As for our country, our election season, let us be the first to use logic and common sense, to show compassion to those with whom we disagree, and trust in God’s plan and His Spirit working rather than taking the easier route of slinging mashed potatoes all over their faces.

Art Credits: Vote photo by woodsy; photos of N.T. Wright and Wycliffe stained glass from Wikipedia images

I Am Angry

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Elizabeth

I am really angry.

On Sunday, I began thinking about every wrong and ugly thing that has touched my life recently.

My brother and his little boy, missing their wife and mommy for more than a year now.

My Papa, getting weaker and weaker, and my Gram, facing life without her husband of 63 years.

My sweet friend, who has struggled for years with disease and multiple transplants and who now has to stay at a rehab center in a town not her own, away from all she knows well.

A dear family from church, whose seven year old son was hit by a car and who is struggling to figure out their new normal as well as how to care for their other children (including a newly adopted daughter) while also caring for their son in long-term care in a far-away city.

I know that each one of you has your own list.

Are you angry yet? This world is broken and we have an enemy that takes full advantage of our brokenness. He is prowling and trying to devour all of us. He is hurting people who are dear to me, and that makes me angry.

It also makes me grateful.

I am grateful for a God Who has already fought this enemy, has died in the battle, and has won the war through His resurrection.

I am grateful for a God Who cares so much about bringing people to Himself, that He was willing to die.

I am grateful for a God Who loves us so much that even though we were the ones who brought death into the world, He works crazy hard to help people stop running away from Him.

Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, He devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from Him. ~ II Samuel 14.14

I am grateful for a God Who cares more about molding people into the image of His Son than about protecting them from danger or pain, and so is willing to allow our enemy to continue prowling.

I am grateful that our enemy’s time is limited.

I am angry. And I will allow my anger to drive me. I will allow my anger to motivate me to work, to show God’s love to the hurting around me, to do my part in bringing God’s kingdom to earth here and now. As my dear friend said, “Give fully, believing He will fill the space.”

Why?

Because I am grateful.

Are you angry too? As I tell my four year old (and myself, too!) when rage threatens to erupt, getting angry is not wrong. It is what you do with that anger that is right or wrong. Instead of allowing that anger to harden your heart, allow it to soften your heart towards God and send you clinging to His peace. Let it send you off to battle for those that He loves.

God has already done all the work through Jesus’s death and resurrection. Now God allows me to join in the defeat of our enemy through the all-powerful love of God that moves through me.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. ~ I Corinthians 15.54-58

Why You Should Make Mistakes With Your Kids

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Elizabeth

Our middle daughter (can I say “middle” when the youngest is still inside my belly?) turned two years old this week.

As I watch her and her four-year-old sister growing up so incredibly quickly, I sometimes start thinking about how much of what I do, both with them and in front of them, influences who they become.

This thought almost makes me start hyperventilating. I start feeling almost physically weighed down with the pressure to do things perfectly with my children.

I was recently reminded, however, of how much God loves these girls. He loves them even more than I love them. That idea is difficult for me to wrap my mind around, considering how deep is my love for them, but it is truth.

God loves my girls more than I do, and He wants them to fall in love with Him even more than I want that to happen.

And if God wants something to happen, well…

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all–how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? ~ Romans 8.31-32

This is, like most issues in my life, a refusal to trust, a difficulty in letting go of my pride. I have to trust God with the hearts and lives of my children and I have to realize that I am not the most important influence on them.

God is more than able to make up for my myriad of mistakes.

In fact, I am learning that it is good for me to make mistakes.

When I make mistakes with my little ones, when I mess up in front of them, I have the chance (if only I took it more consistently!) to show them how to make mistakes. I have the opportunity to teach them how to apologize, how to ask for forgiveness, how to ask God to change your heart and help you to do better.

How to do this, how to wisely use this chance, is something that is indelibly imprinted in my heart: it is the image of my dad asking me (a tiny, humble kid!) for my forgiveness. His actions taught me a beautiful lesson.

By messing up in front of my girls, I can show them that God loves them no matter what they do.

My eldest is already learning this lesson. Every night, as part of her four-year-old routine, she says, “Mommy? Did you know that God loves you even when you disobey?” And I respond “Yes, darling. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?”

This is what I want to teach my girls. That God loves them no matter what. That we can’t ever be good enough and that is why Jesus came to rescue us, why the Holy Spirit has to work in our hearts to heal them. I want them to rest secure in God’s love, enjoying His presence and loving Him right back.

I sit in awe and praise God that in His mercy and grace, He uses my mistakes, my imperfect and messed-up self, to show my girls just that.

A Difficult Anniversary

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Elizabeth

He buried his wife one year ago today.

I sat at the feet of this younger brother of mine as he said goodbye to his wife of four years, the mother of his one-year-old son.

Over the past year, I watched him struggle through despair, depression, doubt as he faced a long road of raising his son alone.

I watched my nephew cry and cling to his daddy, looking for his mommy and feeling afraid that his daddy will leave him too.

Through this long struggle that still is not done, through one piece of bad news after another, through the next days and months and years of memories, where is God?

When all pleas seem to go unanswered, when even let the end be peaceful is ignored, what are we to think?

What do I really believe about God in all of this?

God’s Words tell us clearly that there is pain, there is heartbreak in this world. We should not be surprised.

More often than not, God chooses not to save His people, chooses not to spare them sorrow and hardship. Hebrews 11 gives a long list of those who were killed or lost ones they loved, Jesus’ closest friends died martyr’s deaths, even His earthly father died without His intervention.

I have pondered long and hard this question of what I believe about God in the midst of “it wasn’t supposed to be like this”. Here is my conclusion.

I know my God, His character, well enough to trust Him when I don’t understand, when I cannot see in the darkness. I know, from what He has said about Himself and from what I have seen, that He is always good and always love. I know that, if we only knew the reasons, we would adore Him for what He does.

God promises that we will have trouble in this world. He also promises that if we are grateful to Him He will give us peace. He doesn’t promise that He will take the pain away but that we will be at peace, that we will have joy.

Isn’t that a much bigger promise?

No matter what, God is still God.

Will I only praise and thank Him when He does what I like? Will I only accept from Him what I deem to be good?

When I deeply think through the idea of declaring my circumstance to be bad, it seems incredibly arrogant.

How can I think that I know better than God what is good? How am I more capable of naming something to be good than the One who is good?

Will I trust that God has a beautiful, amazing plan only when I can see the beauty of it? Either God is God, and capable of having plans and reasons that I cannot comprehend, or He isn’t God, and I am silly for blaming a myth. There is not really any in-between place for the things with which I do not agree.

…if I go to Jesus, he’s not under my control either. He lets things happen that I don’t understand. He doesn’t do things according to my plan, or in a way that makes sense to me. But if Jesus is God, then he’s got to be great enough to have some reasons to let you go through things you can’t understand. His power is unbounded, but so are his wisdom and love…He can love somebody and still let bad things happen to them, because he is God–because he knows better than they do. If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he doesn’t stop your suffering, you also have a God who’s great enough and powerful enough to have reasons that you can’t understand.
~ King’s Cross by Timothy Keller

God is God, and since he is God, he is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in his will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurable, unspeakable beyond my largest notions of what he is up to. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

I can trust God, trust in His nature.

Of course he’s not safe. Who said anything about being safe? But he’s good. He’s the king. ~ Mr. Beaver in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

When faced with the fiery furnace, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego told King Nebuchadnezzar that

If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. ~ Daniel 3

When Job lost all of his children and all that he owned and was himself in great physical pain, he declared

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him. ~ Job 13.15

No matter what, I will praise God and offer Him my gratitude, my sacrifice of praise.

God tells us over and over in His word that He has a beautiful plan for humanity and creation as a whole.

And that he has a beautiful plan for each of our lives.

Sometimes I doubt this promise, this truth.

And then I look at Jesus, at His cross.

I’ve been clinging to Romans 8.32 through all of this:

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

If God ever had to prove Himself, prove His love for us, prove that He is taking care of us, He has more than proved it all through the cross.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about Hezekiah. In II Kings 20, he pleaded with God to “change his story”, to give him more life when God had told him (through Isaiah) that he was going to die. God did change His mind that time, gave him fifteen more years of life. And in that fifteen extra years, Hezekiah’s son Manasseh was born. This son that wouldn’t have been born if Hezekiah hadn’t asked God to change the ending of his story ended up as king and “lead (Israel) astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed before the Israelites”. ~ II Kings 21.9

Our desired story ending versus God’s desired story ending.

Perhaps, just perhaps, God really does know best. Perhaps He does know which story will bring about a beautiful, redeemed, transfigured people.

When through the deep waters I call you to go,
The rivers of woe shall not overflow;
For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
And sanctify to you your deepest distress.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.
~ How Firm a Foundation, att. John Keith, 1787 (modernized)

a re-post from the archives for today, the anniversary of Kristina’s death
credit for images: Lion photo, painting by Simeon Solomon, Cross photo

Today, our world seems darker.

Today, my heart is heavy and grieving.

Today, I acknowledge my guilt and wrap myself around my shame.

Today, I try to fully take in the magnitude of this beautiful, amazing Love.

On this day, creation mourned and the sun hid itself in grief.

On this day, Jesus chose to stay nailed down, for His heart was full of love.

On this day, Jesus took my guilt into His own body and gave up, for a time, His perfect closeness with God the Father.

On this day, God once for all proved His love for us.

On this day, He proved His Word, that He truly meant it when He said

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

He loves me. He came to rescue me and to make me perfect and holy. He came to conquer death and to make me alive.

On this day, God proved through Jesus that He means to accomplish all of these things.

And yet.

Is He able?

Today, I do not yet know.

I suppose I’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out.

Ordinary.

Is there such a thing?

I’m tempted to think so.

In the midst of the dishes and laundry and cleaning toilets, snotty noses and bedtime stories, the routine can seem mundane, dull…

Ordinary.

Until I really look. Until I really stop. Until I really see what is around me.

Nothing is ordinary.

Those dishes mean a miracle of earth producing food that can be purchased and eaten at our table.

That laundry means a miracle of cotton growing from the ground and being woven into fabric that keeps our bodies warm in this cold winter.

This filthy toilet means an act of service, a deliberate dying to myself in a beautiful sacrifice for my family.

Those snotty noses mean a miracle of beautiful, sturdy bodies that are growing so very quickly.

These bedtime stories mean a miracle of imagination, of minds that eagerly search for and grasp new meanings and ideas every day.

These very things that seem so ordinary are the very fabric of the miracle that is my life.

The Christian faith does not simply, or even mainly, propose a few additional facts about the world. Rather, belief in the Christian God invites a new way to understand everything. ~ Andrew Davison in Imaginative Apologetics

Because all is created, because all is love, than nothing is ordinary. Everything is sacred.

I cannot separate my life into ordinary parts and miraculous parts, into secular parts and sacred parts.

Without Christ, nothing was made that has been made. In Christ, all things hold together.

No matter what surrounds you, it is not ordinary, it is not solely of this world.

No matter how tempted I am to name something as mundane, as secular, it is not so.

Nothing that God has created is ordinary.

All is miracle. All is sacred.

There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation. ~ Madeleine L’Engle in Walking on Water

It has been a beautiful time and a difficult time, this time I have spent away from this space.

Breathing in the scent of my newborn, surrounded by the warmth of family and friends, secluding myself from the world while I both soak up and exude the love and joy of my little family.

Passing my baby on his way out of this world, my Papa said farewell to us and greeted his Father with joy.

Unable to travel long miles that soon after giving birth, I did much of my grieving alone.

My heart was reminded too often of our Kristina, of the thoughts and emotions of her loss only a year and a half ago.

Birth and death. Being and dying.

I often think of and long to know the meaning of this cycle of life and death.

in the light of love of the Creator, who brought them all into being, who brought me into being, and you…It is part of the deepest longing of the human psyche, a recurrent ache in the hearts of all of God’s creatures.

I am reminded once again of Love.

Of Love that wants the best for us, regardless of the cost.

Of Love that walked this earth with us and died for us and then showed us how to have everlasting life.

Of Love that promises that this is not the end, these dying breaths, that promises that we have life.

As I open myself up once again to loving another baby, to making myself vulnerable to the possibility of pain that loving brings, I wonder long about meaning and whether any of this is truly worth it.

Yet even as I wonder, I know. I know that love is always worth it. I know, even in the ugly and the pain, that this life is beautiful because we are loved by One who gives Himself with no hesitation, no conditions.

I know because even though I don’t understand our God, even though I don’t understand this life or the next or how any of this works and fits together, I find yet that I know what it is about. I know what HE is about.

As long as we know what it’s about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.

And there is where the joy and beauty lie.

In knowing what it’s about even when we don’t understand.

The package easily weighed five pounds, a deceptive weight in a decorative Christmas bag meant for a bottle of wine. Inside the bag, Tyler found a book, a letter, and a quart-sized mason jar filled with change and small bills. Our family just received a little Christmas miracle of almost $100.

If we have decided that “both” is the answer we believe, if we resolve to strive for both ideals, what do we do with those who disagree? What do we do, for that matter, with anyone with whom we disagree?

And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ~ Matthew 22.39

Love is much harder. Love affirms the reality of the other person, culture and way of life.

Love takes the trouble to get to know the other person and find out what makes them special.

Before November 6th and afterward, as I live my life in contact with people who are different than me, I will pray for strength to choose the harder way. If I am to be Jesus to those around me, if I am to make a difference for Him in this world, I must choose love, not tolerance.

Love must confront Tolerance and insist, as it has always done, on a better way. ~ Tim Keller in Generous Justice

art credit: The Three Crosses etching by Rembrandt

If we have decided that “both” is the answer we believe, if we resolve to strive for both ideals, what do we do with those who disagree?

What do we do, for that matter, with anyone with whom we disagree?

Love is much harder.

Love affirms the reality of the other person, culture and way of life.

Before November 6th and afterward, as I live my life in contact with people who are different than me, I will pray for strength to choose the harder way.

If I am to be Jesus to those around me, if I am to make a difference for Him in this world, I must choose love, not tolerance.