Good Math

In the span of time when today and tomorrow collide, I wait for you
Suddenly the dim is clear, the dawn no longer impending
The new day is a promise of hope and life
All in the space where you are mine
Where one is one the sum of two and we are us together
In this space between yesterday, now and morning.
And I breathe in this, precious gift revealing the endless love of God delivered in the simple yet complex blessing of this communion

Wine & Airy Dresses

Image

We can’t always trust our eyes. They lie. This morning I kept glancing at a magazine on my table (pictured above). I could have sworn it said “Wine and airy dresses to indulge your sweet tooth”. I kept thinking it just didn’t quite make sense. It wasn’t until much later when it caught my eye again that I looked closer and realized “dresses” was actually “dessert”.

Life is like that too. My pastor always says, “Lord, stamp eternity on my eyes so I can see things as they really are and not as they appear to be.” We look at our lives through earthen glasses and miss the bigger picture. God is looking from beginning to end with a plan in mind. We need to trust that He’s got it all under control and not let our senses fool us.

I encourage you to trust Him fully today!  Have a wonderful Monday everyone!

What to do while you wait

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The thing about being in the Potter’s hands (Jeremiah 18, Isaiah 45) is that we don’t always know what he’s forming us into. Sometimes it might even seem like we’re sitting on a shelf and waiting until He’s ready to do something with us. Isaiah 45 taught us not to argue with the Potter about the final outcome, but what should we do while we wait?

In I Kings 19, God tells Elijah to go anoint Elisha as prophet in his place. God has a mighty purpose for Elisha. We have the benefit of being able to read the whole story so we know that Elisha will do mighty works for the Kingdom of God. God will use him to perform miracles, obliterate wickedness, speak the word of the Lord. His ministry will be great.

I’m sure Elisha knew God had called him too, even before that day when Elijah showed up. He was quick to recognize the mantle and anointing of Elijah and follow him when he called. He didn’t just follow him, he gave EVERYTHING to follow him. That shows me that he was already following the Lord with his whole heart. He was waiting for instructions and activation in his ministry. God was faithful to give it.

waiting

But what was he doing while he waited?

I Kings 19:19 “He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair.”

When Elijah found him, he was plowing the field, tilling the soil, planting seed. He was already using what he had to make something.

When it feels like you are waiting around for life to start, for God to use you to do something big, why don’t you use what you have in your hand to make something beautiful. Start plowing. Plant a seed. Speak words of life to those around you. Be a smile to a hurting heart. Be a willing ear to someone who needs to let it all out. Help carry someone else’s burden. Pray with a neighbor. Talk to a stranger. What’s in your hand? What can you do now?

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Don’t wait around for something big to happen, start spreading life NOW. The big things will come but even if they don’t, your life is about right now. Today always impacts tomorrow so spend it wisely. Make like Elisha and grab a plow!

 

Signs, Confusion and Forever

I confess, I’ve been known to take a shortcut or two. Time is a precious commodity in my life. Somehow, I’m convinced that I have less of it than most people, so occasionally, I improvise. Usually, it gets the job done so I don’t sweat the small stuff.

Still, there are suggested uses provided by manufacturers for a reason. This becomes apparent when I grab my favorite sweater out of the dryer only to realize it now needs to be passed down to an 8-year-old since it was intended to dry flat. Just like that, it’s gone.

Tag

I must also confess that I’ve never taken the time to figure those dumb laundry labels out. When I do take the time to read the label, I’m greeted with Pictionary instead of language. I know I could easily look up their meanings, but ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’. So I guess and just wing it. It’s usually just fine, but not always…

But maybe the world operates on symbols and not just words. I get it in some cases. Road signs could become very tedious if we clearly spelled out the meaning on everyone. How many accidents would be blamed on “I was trying to read the sign”? Some things you just have to make an effort to learn. sign

I haven’t decided which category marriage falls into yet. Sometimes I find myself trying to decode the symbols and I just know I’m shrinking a sweater. I wish we could just find a way to clearly spell it all out so there would never be any confusion. Yet, there’s a lot of wisdom in NOT saying everything that pops into your head in the heat of argument. 

So maybe it’s just part of the adventure. There’s an art to marital communication. It’s a blend of language and charades, verbal and non-verbal, argue and make up.

Sure, I’m going to mess up A LOT, but you better believe I’m going to keep trying. I may be far from perfect, but forever is always worth the effort.

When You Stop and Think About It

Have you ever read something that’s going viral that you agree with completely and then you can’t get it out of your head? Not because it was any new concept or trans formative thought, but because you’re suddenly struck by the notion that it isn’t common sense to the mass populace. You realize that the way you try to live your life is foreign to others. Somehow you’ve become the anomaly. Selfishness has taken the place of selfishness everywhere like an epidemic.

Then everywhere you look, there are reminders of this fact and you wonder how you never saw it before. Then you grow increasingly concerned about others because of this realization and you wonder if maybe a small voice in the mass void can make a difference.

Then you realize that by nature of the fact that the aforementioned viral piece went viral, one lone voice already has. Then you realize that if that voice called to the masses, maybe yours can too.

Then you sit down and write the circular reasoning down and send it out into the void so maybe someone else can come to the same conclusion and stop and write or speak up or sing or do whatever it is they do. Then maybe one voice will become two voices or one hundred or one thousand or one million. Then maybe the collective voices will proclaim in unison that there is a better way.

Give of yourself. Make a difference.

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” Francis Chan

Who Told You that You Were Naked?

The lizard in the rough

There they were in the garden.  Man created in the image of God. A single rib taken to craft stunning beauty, a helper designed with detailed intent, a companion worthy of him. The crowning achievement of the Father warranting an affirmation of “goodness” from the lips of the one who’d just spoken the world into existence.

There were no thorns to prick the skin. There was no need to till the ground. The earth yielded abundance to them from divine mist that covered creation each morning. That alone is phenomenal to me, to think what it must have felt like to be covered by a mist sent from His own hand. What was it like to truly be kept…to walk with God in the cool of the day?

Then along came a serpent…

Even now his slanderous tongue spews poison to our souls. Did God REALLY say? Is there something more He’s not telling you? You can be like God. Dig deep within and listen and you may hear it. The scar on humanity left at the scene of the slandering. The whispered notion that it’s not quite good enough.

I hear it from time to time, the echoing accusations slither in to tell me that at the core of me I am naked and I should be ashamed. At the end of the day, when I’ve done all I could do before collapse, I hear the whisper that I have not done enough. I don’t think I’m alone in this. The scores of books written telling us how to a better parent, a better wife, a better lover, a better businessman, all serve as proof that we humans have an innate drive to be better. We forget that God looked at His creation and called it “good”.

perspective

So we sew leaves into coverings and though we are firmly planted in the garden of His grace, we feel the need to hide. We are ashamed and lulled to discontent by the siren song of something more. It looked good and pleasant to eat. Maybe the wisdom we attained, the knowledge of good and evil, was only the ability to discern the complete goodness of God juxtaposed against the inadequacies of man. We look at what God created as good and pure and view it as neither.

Don’t misunderstand me, when sin entered the world, it brought with it a world of death and ugliness. I do not in any way think that we should look upon sin as acceptable and call the ugly beautiful. But Adam and Eve didn’t just hide their sin. They also hid themselves, their beauty, their security, their intimacy. They hid from God.

God didn’t despise them, he called to them, “Where are you?” He longed for them. They felt exposed and unworthy…naked and ashamed. His simple question still rings out over the earth. “Who told you that you were naked?”

Who told you that you aren’t good enough? Who told you that you are a bad mother? Who told you that you aren’t a good enough wife? Who told you that you don’t make enough money? Who told you that you’ll never amount to anything? Who told you that you are ugly or not thin enough or too thin? Who told you that your ears are too big or your nose or your eyes?

Whoever it was and whatever it was, it wasn’t God. He looks at His creation and rests and calls it good. He looks at your abilities, your talents, your personality, who you are at the core of your being and he sees a masterpiece. You are the only you. He knows everything about you, even the ugly stuff and he still loves you.

Fortunately for us, He made provision for the ugly stuff. That day in the garden, he promised that would bruise the head of the liar and crush him underneath the heel of the redeemer (Genesis 3:15). He made good on that promise using some wood, nails and an empty tomb and exalting forever a Savior. So the next time those whispers try to slither into your soul, remember that you aren’t naked anymore and drown those whispers out with gladness.

Isaiah 61:10 “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness”