A Mug of Boiled Water

I can promise you, I'm not happy.  I have only two habits--one of which is extremely annoying--that have stuck throughout the years.  Playing with my hair (that's the annoying one which leaves both my husband and my brother-in-law cringing and renders my hair perpetually uneven in length due to the breakage caused by said habit) and drinking coffee first thing in the morning.  Rain, shine, spring, fall, 100 degrees or twenty, I.drink.coffee.  Preferably two mugs. Supersized ones.  Period.  I have exchanged vanity for coffee stained teeth, and frankly (because I'm sure you'd like to know this) it prevents me from ever needing to buy Metamucil.  So, that's the redemptive thing behind the habit.

When spring climbs her way into the north Georgia mountains sprinkling her colors, her drops of green and blackberry-foam purple on violets, her salmon and sangria on the tulips, I like to be present.  I do not want to miss one millimeter of growth, of new life exploding as she passes by.  I have a routine.
Wake up.
Look out the window and thank God for another day.
Acknowledge Nathan. (who is already awake no matter how early I rise)
Make coffee. (I'm not telling you how many cups.  I already told you about the Metamucil)
Get the dog leash. (By now, Jango is shoving me out the door)
Pour coffee.
Walk Jango . . . while sipping coffee.
View Spring as she drips and drops about the hills . . . while sipping coffee.
Examine her work closely in my garden . . . while sipping coffee.
That's it.  The rest of the day may not commence until I've done this routine.

So I am sure you will understand my dilemma when I tell you that the first month of my personal SEVEN is food.  (If you're wondering what in the world I'm talking about, read my blog post from a couple days ago.)  And guess what God just insisted I give up first?  Yeah, redundant, I know.  Coffee.
Hence the first sentence of this little post.  I'm in an extremely agitated-would-bite-someones-head-off-if-I-wasn't-also-in-deep-brain-fog-due-to-caffeine-withdrawal state. Did I mention I have a headache?

For seven months I will commit to seven different themes.  The purpose will be in essence a fast with the chief aim being to empty myself that Christ might fill me with His thoughts, His desires, His plans, His goals.  Because I really feel strongly about being characterized by what I do and not what I don't do, I've phrased my list for this first month--The Food Month--in this slant.  These are things that, after some prayer and good old fashioned honesty with myself, (Yes, self, you are indeed a greedy glutton.) I want to commit a month to pursuing.

1. Do eat organic/unprocessed foods (With a budget that lacks wiggle room, the organic part is going to have to be a little flexible, but I will give it a hearty attempt.  Does anyone know if Ramen Noodles come unprocessed and organic?)

2. Do eat only whole grains. (Sadness.  I'm baking fresh  WHITE bread tomorrow for a friend's birthday, and I would normally double the batch and keep a loaf for us.)

3. Do eat fruit/veggie with every meal, and only fruits and veggies for snacks.  (Here I will try to use things from my garden every day.  We are in salad season, so this will help offset some of the organic cost since I keep my garden pretty much organic.)

4. Do walk away from caffeine. (I’m going to die, starting now.)

5. Do walk away from all sweeteners. (This month has nothing to do with dieting for me.  There have been times--like when Cort left a few of his infant pounds in my stomach after he was born--when I needed to kick sugar to the curb from a calorie standpoint.  This is different.  I'm leaving sweetness, period.  I think to live in hunger must be a very bitter thing, and I don't want to sweeten this month artificially, organically, or any other way.  I love sweets.  Have you ever seen my pictures?  My profile picture on facebook was a cake for 2 months for crying out loud! Ignoring that box of Krispy Kremes, the homemade sour cream coffee cake, and the two logs of double chocolate cookie dough in my freezer will be a very...VERY constant reminder of the blessings I have, and the hunger of over 85% of the world.)

6. Do eat before 7PM (I chose 7 PM for obvious reasons—seven. Also, because it gives us time to get late dinners in.  We aren't much of a schedule family so I’m not going to be legalistic about supper. The real reason I'm choosing to do this is because I want to cull the savory snacks I treat myself to when the boys have finally settled under their IKEA comforters for the night.  I hesitated on this particular one because I didn't want it to be about not eating after seven.  You always hear you shouldn't do that if you are dieting.  But this is NOT a diet.  The bottom line is this is a snack I don't need--a luxury--and there are children in the world who don't get snacks period. I want to feel that.  I want to go to bed a little bit hungry.  I want, somehow, in some small, microscopic, way to understand what it means to go without something I want.)

7. Do read either In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto or Animal Vegetable Miracle: A year of Food Life (I did the Omnivore's Dilemma thing and it was great for about the first three chapters.  Then I started falling asleep.  He made his point . . . more than once.  I'm hoping these books will give me a little more understanding of the reality of what we eat and its impact on the world as a whole and on my family's bodies too.)

I also hope to visit or view online a processing plant for meat. And I intend to take one day each week and attempt to eat like the poor of Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador. These are four countries that pinch at my heart.  This part I will do with the boys; we'll go online to learn more about the conditions of these particular nations.  And speaking of the boys, so far, they've been very kind.  I had anticipated them giving me the mom, you are going to slowly torture us for an entire month? look, but they haven't.  Already, they're willing to quit the processed/fast food stuff for the month, though one of them is begging for the remaining Dr. Bob (I know, I'm cheap) that's been sitting on the counter over a week.

Basically, I've chosen to do food for a few reasons.  One--I'm a glutton, and I know it.  Two--every five seconds a child dies from hunger or preventable disease.  I need to get my head wrapped around that from a compassion standpoint.  I also need to process that fact in light of the fact that I just might be able to sponsor a child from Compassion if I am willing to eliminate/drastically reduce consumption of things like coffee.  Three--Jen Hatmaker says in her book Seven that we get to vote every day with our fork.  And we do.  I do.  I'm guilty of supporting some not so great, definitely not ethical (But who cares about animals and the environment...right? Apparently God.) practices when it comes to growing and butchering meat.  When I eat foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, again, I'm voting.  And I need to explore that from a stewardship of my body and the earth standpoint.

I have no idea where I will land, and I'm not making any granola'ish promises that I will become a wild mushroom, poke salad eating vegan.  That's pretty unlikely.  Some of you may think I'm a little off my rocker and others of you may be thinking my SEVEN are pretty lame.  No matter--you don't have to read :-)  I really debated even posting any of this.  Do they even care about this sort of thing?  Do they want to read about my addiction to coffee and sweets?  Does anyone read the blog at all?Probably not.  But, maybe, just maybe there are a few of you out there who understand where I'm coming from.  See for me, food can be my life, and my only concern is that I don't get too fat. (What? I'm being honest.)  So, if I eat what I want, have a jog, and can still fit in my Ann Taylor jeans, then it's all good.  But is it?  Really?  Because for some people in our world, food really is their life.  And they haven't any.  And Jesus said He came that they might have life.  Dare I withhold the very thing Christ came to give?  I stole this Thomas More quote from a friend's facebook page because he says it better than me.  “It's wrong to deprive someone else of a pleasure so that you can enjoy one yourself, but to deprive yourself of a pleasure so that you can add to someone else's enjoyment is an act of humanity by which you always gain more than you lose.”

A theme for me this month will be this verse.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body,"  (II Cor. 6:19-20)

You are not your own.

Really?  Because I'm afraid I've been eating like I am entirely my own and that I'm entitled to have what I want.  I'm afraid I've eaten from a vain perspective instead of a tending of the frame that God crafted approach.

Therefore honor God with your body.

The choices I make either honor my God or mar His image.  Just because I can get away with eating whatever I want from a physical standpoint doesn't mean I have honored God.  And if what I eat causes another person to have less, than I have in fact, dishonored Him.

So, here I am beginning.  Already today while sipping my boiled water from a Tim Horton's (the best coffee place in the world for my American friends who don't know) mug, I doubted this entire thing.  Why would anyone want to torture themselves?  God allowed me to be born in North America; He must have wanted me to have these things.  At church tonight I had to bring my own supper because I wasn't very confident that their meal would be SEVEN approved.  Someone immediately noticed my organic Greek yogurt and said . . . and I kid you not, "Yogurt? Really?  You live in North America with all these choices and you pick yogurt?"  (She had no idea I was doing this . . . otherwise she'd have been a thousand percent supportive.)  But, it proves my point exactly.

I do live in North America ,and I have so many choices that I no longer understand what it means to live without any choices.  Here we are in what some call Holy Week . . . those sacred days that we've placed on the calendar to remind us of the brokenness of Christ.  Surely Jesus ached with thoughts of what He would face, what He would endure that we might have life. 

 "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."  (II Cor. 8:9) 

He became poor.  Gave up.  Sacrificed.  Relinquished.

That I might gain the riches of eternity.

May I become poor that someone else may gain those same blessings.

Amen.

SEVEN: A New Kind of Fast

     I like to blame things on my parents.  They gave me their genes--wide feet, chubby cheeks (all four), and the-caterpillar-for-eyebrows.  Thanks for that, Mom and Dad.  They nurtured me too.  That meant tea parties with Mom, endless hours soaking sun at the lake (so yeah, that's gonna mean skin cancer), loving food, loving the outcasts and misfits (never a holiday where we didn't sit elbow to elbow with some eclectic conglomeration of people who may not have had any other place to celebrate that year), and loving Jesus.  With Dad it has always been about the underdogs of the world.  His heart is tender; he cries over chickens squashed in cages and about went bankrupt feeding stray cats who I swear migrated from all six other continents when they heard he was filling Rubbermaid bins with food for them.  He is color blind for real, but it wouldn't matter if he could see color correctly.  He still wouldn't see it.  The world, for him, is shaded by justice, inequality/equality, and thinking critically about what we believe to be true.  So, what you are about to read is entirely their fault.  You've been warned.
      I just can't accept status quo.  I can't NOT rock the boat.  Not in my nature.  I think about things. (I explained this in the first paragraph.)  For quite some time now I've been uncomfortable with a few things--namely, I don't go hungry, nor do my children, but starvation manages to murder a child every five seconds, I live in a large, comfortable, 72 degree house while almost 1.5 million (can't even fathom that number) were without shelter in 2011 in the US alone, and a few pesky verses like that one about how religion that's pure and faultless tends to look after widows and orphans, and there are something like 15 million without mother or father in the world. So, while most of us are thinking about where we are taking our annual beach vacay, I'm haunted by the justice gene, the loving of the downtrodden gene, and I can't manage to pull the trigger on all the new GROUPON vacation bargains to viva la Mexico.  Thanks, Mom.  Thanks, Dad.  
      In reality, I'm a tough nut to crack.  God has to peel back the scales that seal my eyes to the truths of His Word and how He intended them to be applied.  If I'm being honest, both spiritually speaking and economically speaking, in comparison with the rest of the world, I'm a saturated sponge.  Completely saturated.  I grew up in church, learned to read using the King James Bible as my primary text, and I've never gone hungry a day in my life.  Never.  So, that puts me in a privileged category.  Privileged and so full, I can't always fathom what it means to need, to want, to hunger, to thirst.  And in a spiritual sense, I've read the red words of Jesus so many times, heard the sermons so many times, sung the songs, that they have become like white noise in the background.  So, God has to peel back these scales, cause a bit of a ruckus until I'm raw, squeeze the sponge until it thirsts again for Living Water.
     Enter a chance post from a dear Canadian friend (Hi, Dani!) that linked me to a random blog that tugged at scales like you tug at a Band-Aid when you're trying to rip it off fast.  Ouch and Wow!  It was here, at Jen Hatmaker's website that I first saw her book Seven: an experimental mutiny against excess.  (Leave me alone grammar police; she didn't capitalize the letters in her title, and she has an editor!  K?)  Jen's premise?  We have far more say in what happens in our world than we realize.  We vote everyday with our wallets, with our forks, with our garbage, with our time.  We are called to love God and love others, and we are doing a shoddy job at best.  She started with herself and decided to commit seven months to purge seven specific areas of excess in her life.
     Her words:  "I started praying about what God wanted; what would move me closer to His agenda and further from mine?  How could this be meaningful, not just narcissistic and futile?  What areas needed the most renovation?  How am I blind and why?  Where have I substituted The American Dream for God's kingdom?  What in my life, in the lives of most westerners, is just too stinking much?

• Food
• Clothes
• Possessions
• Media
• Waste
• Spending
• Stress

     Seven months, seven areas, reduced to seven simple choices.  I'm embarking on a journey of less.  It's time to purge the junk and pare down to what is necessary, what is noble.  7 will be an exercise in simplicity with one goal:  to create space for God's kingdom to break through.
     I approach this project in the spirit of a fast:  an intentional reduction, a deliberate abstinence to summon God's movement in my life.  A fast creates margin for God to move."  (pg. 4)
    How am I blind and why?  Mmmm.  Most people unable to see are aware of their deficiency, but I'm afraid I've been a blind gal thinking she knew where she was going.  And when Jesus said, "Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God," (Matt. 6:33) I'm afraid I understood Him to mean, "As long as you seek me a lot, squeeze in everything else you possibly can, Sarah."
     Where have I substituted the American Dream for God's kingdom?  Okay, I'm reading Radical for the second time through.  This whole American Dream vs. God's kingdom business?  Just.Starting.To.Sink.In.  Just starting.  I don't even know if I should say it's sinking in--remember the saturated sponge problem?  We can spend so much time listening, reading, hearing about God loving us that we become sopping,heavy, wet with love and yet it is that very love that "compels us" (II Cor. 5:14) to motion.  Mary, sweet Mary (I kinda hate her) may have chosen the more excellent thing when she sat, soaking at Jesus' feet, but I can promise you that if she remained at his feet, he would have eventually told her to get up, go pick up her cross, and FOLLOW Him.  Surely He didn't praise her choice because she was sitting; I have to believe it had to do with the fact that she was filling herself up.  But, fellow Americans, our threshold for fullness is broken.  We are so prone to excess we no longer even know how to stop feeding.  We are a engorged people.  I am an engorged woman.
     Follow Me.   "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."  (Luke 9:23)  Jesus called us into action, motion.  And in truth, He modelled it for us, didn't He?  At the cross?  Like dressing the the sun or the moon, Christ clothed his holiness in the cloak of mortality, and walked among wayward, willful, wandering humanity.  And though there were only a few steps up the Golgotha's hill where carried his crucifixion cross, he had carried it his entire earthly life, hadn't he?
     So I'm thinking of His words--the follow me words--and wondering, where?  Where will I follow Him?  When I was young I thought the ultimate test of my willingness to follow would be geographical.  Would I go to Africa?  Would I?  But now I'm not so sure.  It turns out Africa might have been easier for me than denying myself here in the have-it-your-way-right-away culture of North America.  In fact, it turns out, you can run clear across the globe shouting the salvation of Jesus and never once pick up your cross and follow Him. 
     And what, my friends, if that's me?  Plucking at keys and yakking in small groups and I'm only a resounding gong, a clanging symbol whose sound causes Christ to cringe?
     What if when we post Joshua's Words in walnut frames on the walls of our homes, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord..." (Joshua 24:15) we are foolish enough to think that our commitment to go to church on Sunday, maybe teach a Sunday School class, attend a small group, and tithe exactly ten percent reads as a life of solidarity with the man who obeyed God in CRAZY ways (Would you fight a battle by walking around some city walls in silence repeatedly, day after day?)  when in reality we are really hiding behind a modern version of the Mosaic Law?   Solidarity?  I'm thinking not.
     What if I raise my hands in worship on Sunday, but my life is a pair of hands clenched into fists grasping, gripping, groping for my American Dream when the world is hungry for true worship.  The worship of a life lived out of love.  A life of motion.  A life that sacrifices in this life to gain that which cannot be taken in the next life.
     What if I'm a part of a corporate body of Christ that has gone into a sugared-life induced coma and we lay, lifeless, motionless while the world dies?
     What if my two cup of coffee a morning habit is the cause of a Compassion child NOT being sponsored because I say there's no room in the budget.  I mean are you kidding me?  I can't give up coffee in this temporary life so a child will have a chance to live, period? To one day hear of Jesus' love?  I mean don't the rivers flow Columbian brew in heaven?  Could I not wait 'til eternity to continue the habbit? Yeah, what if?
     I read her entire book in a very short amount of time.  (Okay, it may have been a good distraction from the ten million pages of our Family Book Club book, Atlas Shrugged.  Sorry, guys, I'll get back to it, I promise.)  You should too. (Read her book--The verdict's still out on Atlas)  Go here to find out more about SEVEN.  Three words in and I knew I'd have to do this.  Knew I needed to do this.  Knew God brought me to this.  And the timing is perfect.  One week before Easter, I'm a little late for Lent, but maybe I'm right on time to Follow Him into the Garden.  I see Him there, praying.  I see his face, washed red with blood vessels broken--a foreshadowing of what would come.  I see Him there, releasing every single ounce of personal ambition and desire.  My Savior, planting surrender.  My Savior, watering it with drops of bloody sweat so it would grow into a ransom for my muddy mired heart, and not just for mine, but for mankind's.
     I too want that level of surrender, and I wonder if a fasting time might not be the way to train myself.  In her book, Jen Hatmaker says, "After saying "no" to things I wanted for nearly a year, I guess I gained some control over my emotions and impulses.  God used fasting as a tool to curb my appetites and regulate my reactions.  It was a concise realization:  "Something in  me has deeply changed." 
     Perhaps this is why Scripture calls us to the practise of fasting--from food, from greed, from selfishness, from luxuries.  It isn't just the experience; it's the discipline.  It changes us.  Fasting helps us develop mastery over the competing voices in our heads that urge us toward more, toward indulgence, toward emotional volatility.  Like consistent discipline eventually shapes our children's behavior, so it is with us.  Believe it or not, God can still change us.  Not just our habits but our hearts.  Say "no" for a year and see for yourself." (Seven, pg. 219)
     I'm going to see for myself, friends.  Along the way, I hope to share with you what I'm learning, what I'm seeing.  For now, I'm standing aware of the thousands of competing voices demanding I seek them first, but my hands are open, my ears are strained.  I'm listening for the still, small voice.

Pray with me:
Lord, what are my SEVEN? 

Unraveling Our Rows-Us at the Plow

     "Gaze straight ahead, Sarah, gaze straight ahead."  It's mom's alto voice offering me her very best err only ( since she's had WAY more tickets than I) wisdom for driving.  We all remember--my four sisters and I--how mom would say this phrase over and over, like a 45 skipping, as we passed any other vehicle. A lot of good it did us--we all managed to back into one towering tree at the foot of our driveway so many times, mom finally had it cut down.  But it turns out, it may have been the best advice for life anyone has ever given me. Jesus once said something similar. "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62) 
     It's a passage I've read, thought I understood, and read again--maybe fifty times.  I always felt it was the verse that sort of targeted the "Lot's Wives" of the world--those people who are rescued from their sinful selves and yet they look back. With a harlot's heart, I've longed for what might have been, what used to be.  I've been one of those gals. Yeah, more than once.  But, recently, I was listening to this missionary from Australia and he expressed something further, something more than that longing for what might have been.  Looking back can also be the longing for what is.  "How," he asked, "can you plow a straight row if you are looking back?" 
     Not a bad question, and I know from experience, you can't.  Gaze straight ahead, Sarah . . . Mom always told me to look straight because if I stared at the tractor trailer in the oncoming lane, I'd inevitably veer towards it.  A veerer.  That's a good word for me, maybe for all humans. Veer comes from virer.  A French word from the 16th century, it means to turn.  Turners.  The veering kind.  I wonder, when God molded the heart of man, did he think  I will give them the ability to turn, to change course, to choose, to go to the left, to go to the right.  I'll give them head-eyes to see physical things, and heart-eyes to see spiritual things, the eyes that will allow them to long for things and people and ME.
     And I see myself, hands hoisted on worn wood handles, eyes tunneled straight ahead, plowing.  The words of Hebrews 12:2 vibrate in my heart, "keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith . . ."  My eyes are fixed, and I'm plowing this row.  Not just any row.  It's my row, the row God chose for me when he placed my soul in the womb of a Jesus loving hippie thirty-five years ago.  He knew then, chose for me then, the place, the position of this row.  Knew my row would have four biological sisters and a passel full of spiritual sisters that keep me tethered to sanity, knew my row would have a dad who thinks hard on life, a mom who has the Jesus-Spirit, and eventually a husband who would mirror God's heart to me. He knew my row would get filthy when two tumbling, bumbling, boys started littering it with their giggles, their footballs and wiggling worms.  He knew.  And he knew I'd get bogged down in the thick of loving and living.  He knew I'd start looking at all the living loves in my row and forget The Pioneer, The Perfecter. Knew I'd forget the gazing straight ahead.  Yeah, I'm the veering kind. 
     When a wheel turns over and over in the same place (veers completely, repeatedly) we call it spinning our wheels. And is it possible that just by loving the blessings more than The Blesser, we plowers can plow ourselves into a rut?  Never blatant sin.  Never adultery or murder or drugs.  Just loving creation more than The Creator.  (Shhh. It's called idolatry, but I don't like to think of myself as that.)
     Just the other day I had to drive The Marshmallow--Jeff's white F150--onto a lawn and turn it around.  I'm careful with that old tank.  It's always had a grudge against me, that truck, it insisted on getting stuck.  Naturally, the wheels started to spin on the wet grass and red clay, and my cheeks, sensing their predicament grew as red as that spattering mud.  See I've gotten that dadgum Marshmallow stuck more than once, and we've had to dig out with a shovel and stick a board under the wheel to get traction again.  So, I knew better than to get myself spun into a hole I couldn't get out of.  I put her in park and hailed down the first camouflage-hat-Justin-Roper-boot wearing guy in a four wheel drive truck I saw. 
     It's in our (the row-plowers, follower of Jesus) nature, we can tend to spin our wheels sometimes, and we don't even realize we're doing it.  We fall in love with a man and forget The Man.  We begin a career, make a decent salary, and forget The Provider.  We get busy with life and forget The Alpha and The Omega-Beginning and End.  We become absorbed in causes, in needs and forget that apart from ME you can do nothing.  We want a fancier home, and we forget we Aren't Home. We look at our neighbors row and covet.  We see sites along the way and start creating our own agenda. (Come now, let's be honest.  We plan for our retirements, our vacations, our income tax refunds based on our personal goals, and forget that Jesus gave us clear direction--The Great Commission.) We start deciding why we are here, where our row will go.  We do that. We veer. We do.
     Sometimes, though, we are like those people Paul talked about in Romans when he said, "For although they knew God (And I do know Him, don't I?  I've known Him since I was a gangly girl and he held a heart broken by divorce, when I was a tender teen and  He held a heart broken by a red-haired boy, when later He provided for husband and I because the money envelope we kept in my hand-me-down bureau was empty,when He healed though we thought death had come to take my physical body.  Yes, I have known this God.) they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened.  (And I have been senseless, haven't I?  Forgotten it was God who provides and not my husband, not the toil of our hands, but the God who gave us hands.  Forgotten it is God whose children these boys really belong to, and mine is just the honored position of steward.  And who built this house we live in . . . really?  Jeff and I for fourteen and sixteen hour days?  Or The Sustaining God that strengthened the arms and feet and sent help along the way?)  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings . . . They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."  (Romans 1:21-24) 
     They exchanged the truth of God.  I am the way, the truth . . .  Yes, I spin sometimes because I forget that the things I see along the plowing journey--the people, the contents of a full life--are all merely images, reflections of the truth of God, but the truth?  The Truth?  That is God and God alone.  And this idea of gazing straight ahead takes on real meaning.
     "Let your eyes look directly in front of you and let your gaze look straight before you.  Make the path for your feet level, so that all your ways may be established.  Do not turn to the right or to the left; turn yourself away from evil." (Proverbs 4:25-27)
     Look directly in front of you.  That word look?  It means to consider, to see, to rest one's hope in.  It isn't a mere taking in, it's a stopping, a gazing at something long enough to attach a sense of trust or hope in the reality of a thing.  And for a follower of Jesus, we don't get the luxury of attaching reality to anything but the face of our God.  We do get to love, we do get to enjoy, we do get to embrace all the beauty that fills our rows, but our hope, our reality?  God.  Just God.  And that guy that put his hand to the plow and looked back that Luke talks about?  Luke used a Greek word that means to look at long enough to know by experience.  If we choose to experience the created and know it better than The Creator, we're not well suited for the Kingdom of God because we'll be strangers in the place that was truly our home all along.
    To plow straight, we need to look at God long enough to know Him by experience.  We need to know Him more than the other loves in our lives.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, you strength  . . . (Mark 12:30)  And how can we love Him if we don't know Him by experience, and how can we know Him by experience if first we don't gaze.  Gaze straight ahead, my friends, straight ahead at The Pioneer, The Perfecter of our faith.

Pray with Me:
Truth, My Reality, unravel my row.  Father, draw me to your face.  Teach me to hunger for You above all else.  Straighten my row for your name's sake.  I love you.

Listen with Me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6Z1-e7UgU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mJFFrVnczE

Shhhh, I'm listening for the Whisperer (Unpacking the passage Part 3)

I was thinking this morning of the lyrics of Patsy Cline's song, "Stop the world and let me off. I'm tired of spinning round and round." Of course she was lamenting the game of love and that isn't the case where I am concerned. What I understand though is that Patsy felt like she was on a merry-go-round spinning in vicious circles, faster and faster, never slower. Sometimes, I just want to get off that merry-go-round and watch the world spin at warp speed while I collect my thoughts and regain my equilibrium. In the last few weeks while the tyranny of the world's urgencies pounds relentlessly on the door of my life, I've felt like a butler run over a thousand times. I answer the door and boom I'm knocked out before I ever knew what was coming. And two seconds later, the door is pulsing again with someone or something else's knock. Now, don't misunderstand me at all, please. I firmly believe that our lives are only filled with the urgencies we allow. God does not call us to take on more than we can handle (and by handle, I don't mean maximum number of balls we can frantically juggle and generally when we need a vacation from our day to day living, I believe the truth is that we are probably taking on more than what God desires. (Controversial words for a world full of Marthas, I know) In addition, I'm not bellyaching over a busy schedule, or singing the Woe Is Me song because we're busy building a house and schooling our children and entertaining guests and being involved in our church and on and on. Quite the opposite is true; our lives are filled with the blessings of God and I am grateful. My day to day minutes however have been filled with a combination of God ordained things and people and a few that He didn't schedule--oops. As a result, I've been left wanting to raise my index finger to my lips and quietly say, "shhhhhhh" to the rest of the world and all it's urgencies. "Shhhhhhh, I'm trying to hear the whispers of my heavenly Father." We all have seasons that are extremely full from time to time--weddings, funerals, getting children off to college, moving. But, they should be seasons that come and then pass. Without question we are in a chosen season of busyness and as a family we've taken steps to protect valuable family time one day each week where we just enjoy one another completely. But as a child of God, what have I done to make sure that I remain connected to God? A few days ago I said to my husband, "It's just so important to me that at the end of this season in our lives the things that remain are our marriage and our relationship with our children." To that list, I obviously need to add "and my love relationship with God." To love someone, to know them, to remain connected, time must be spent. When Jeff and I were engaged we lived hundreds of miles apart for six months, but we had "phone dates" and we wrote letters everyday. We logged a great deal of quality time getting to know one another and nurturing our relationship during those months. It was not traditional, but I'd never trade those letters for all the "dinner and a movie dates" in the world. Deuteronomy 30:6 (the passage just before the one we've been unpacking) says, "The Lord your God will also cleanse your heart and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your mind and being and so that you may live." In order to choose life, something needs to first happen in our hearts. What a beautiful picture of God--clothe in hand--gently washing away the things that clutter and dirty our hearts so that we are free to love Him. How poignant that our Father will come in and clean up our hearts just so we can love Him. Indeed "we love Him because He first loved us...." To love God with all our mind and being we must quiet the masses in our lives--schedules, finances, people, commitments, yes, even ministry--and sit still while He cleanses our hearts so that we are free to really live. The abundant life He wants for us--gave His life to offer us is not about a "God is good, but I'm barely hanging on and I can't really remember the last time we truly connected in a powerful and meaningful way" kind of life. In Psalm 51 David wrote, "Create in me a clean heart, Oh God and renew a right spirit within me. Restore unto me, the joy of my salvation..." He was writing in reference to the sin of adultery that he committed, but adultery comes in many forms and busyness could possibly be chief. It has been said so many times that the greatest tool of Satan in this century is distraction. I can't tell you how many times I've heard my kids say to me, "Mom, are you listening to me?" Sometimes we have to turn the volume down in our lives so that we can hear the voice of The Source of Life. I wonder how often God is saying to me, "Sarah, are you listening to me?" This is in no way meant to condemn. The truth is that when I read the first verses of Deuteronomy 30 what struck me most is the heart of a God as a Father. There have been moments this summer when my kids have been busy with sleepovers and visiting aunties and cousins and my heart has literally ached to be snuggled up on the couch reading a story with each of my precious boys under the crook of my arms. And there have been moments when I've sensed like the wind being knocked out of me a distance between their hearts and mine as they run the race of their lives and I run my own race. And I am desperate to recapture their hearts and walk through their young lives together, hand in hand. Surely there is nothing harder for a parent than to love their child so desperately and have their own flesh and blood not return that love. This is the heart of our Father who is desperate to "reverse your captivity and have pity on" us; a Father who wants to "turn and gather {us} from all the peoples among whom He has scattered" us. (Deut. 30:3) The only thing He needs from us is that we "turn to him with our whole mind and being." (Deut. 30:10) He will do the cleansing of our hearts and minds, He will restore. He will revive. He will refresh. We only need to turn our eyes, shift our gaze toward the lover of our souls. I hear Him now--calling me to quietness, calling me to simplify, to reduce. "Come to me, Sarah--let go of all that is clouding your vision and screaming so loudly in your ears....I'm not concerned with what you do for me, I'm concerned with the condition of your heart. Do you love me with your heart and your mind and your soul? Do you?" Yes, Lord, I do. Create in me a clean heart God as you did for David. Let me not love another person or thing more than I do You. Let me not put anything else before you, the source of life. Lord I want to live in the freedom and joy you intended for me daily--help me clear out anything that is hindering that relationship. Yes, Lord, I love you and today, I choose You--The Life. Amen.