The Mothering Chronicles 6: The Choosing Time

I remember still, the first time he consciously, willingly disobeyed.  That over seven hundred times the sun had laddered her way to the sky, and the same number of moons had taken the midnight shift for her before he made a choice to take the consequence instead of our advice is really far longer than many parents experience. 

"Nathan, if you throw that toy you will have a consequence.  You need to listen and choose.  Do you understand?"  It was Daddy that said those words, and Daddy has always been very clear.
And he did understand.  He nodded, turned, and threw the toy. 

He knew. 
He chose. 
He broke my heart.
They get to do that, you know?  Get to choose.
They do.

And it can knock the feet from beneath a surefooted person, knock the wind from a fighter, and knock a weaker person out.  Period.

Here's the thing with mothering.  We don't get to choose for them forever, and the sooner we realize this, the easier it will be when they begin to make real decision for themselves.  I've seen some moms, and I'm not gonna lie--I envy them,that wield influence over their children like carrots to rabbits and sweet feed to quarter horses.  Their children just live, eat, breathe what their momma lives, eats, breathes.  I marvel at them, wonder how they managed it.  And secretly, I wonder if it will last. 

Because though I'm convinced my own mother could hang the moon with her love of God and faithfulness in life, I just don't think like her.  She raised me, nursed me, bathed me, brought me tea and toast when I was sick, prayed--still prays--for me, bought me school clothes, took me to visit colleges, and I have to say, she has a purple and silver Christmas tree.  Purple and silver.  Never. Will. I. Have. A. Purple. Tree.  Never.

 We are both fearfully, wonderfully crafted individuals.  Individuals. 

God did the hand-making of mankind.

No two alike.

Unique.

One of a kinds.

Like infinite etsy.com, humanity consists of the flesh and bone original creations of God.  And if that is the case, then I think it is safe to say, at some point, even those mommas who raise little mini-mommas will someday be forced to accept that their little cookie cuts are gonna iron out all those folds that fit them to the pattern of mom or dad and, like wind catching a kite, the breath of their Creator will blow them full of His plan, His design.

And if they get to choose, they also get to break our hearts.  They do.

Because they will not always choose what we believe to be the best.  They won't always heed our counsel, our warnings, our guidance.  Sometimes they'll be right, sometimes they won't. 
He's almost twelve now--that little guy that threw the toy ten years ago.  I can count on one hand the number of times he has willfully disobeyed since that day.  He's a line tower.  He's a rule follower.  He's a tell-me-what-you-want-and-I-will-do-everything-in-my-power--to-obey kind of guy. So far.  But there are no guarantees. No flawless formulas for forever promises.

Just tonight he told me,  "Mom, sometimes I get a little annoyed."
"Why's that?" 
"Because there are so many Christians, and they know they should help people, know that there are people who don't have enough, but they don't.  Why do we always have to be the ones to do it?  It's hard giving things up so other people can have." 

I knew he wasn't really annoyed--the only thing he gets annoyed with is my sister's cocker spaniel that refuses to follow the rules of dogdom.  What he was really talking about was the tug-of-war between selfless and selfish choices. I knew he had Christmas in mind--our family choosing not to go over the top tipping the scales in retail's favor when there are orphans, and parched people without water.  I've struggled too.  His heart is gripped, like Paul's with the good that he should, and the fact that that good is not exactly what his heart always wants.  And I hear him.  I understand.

The choice.  The choosing of direction in life.  It's his now.  Because now, despite what his outward actions may indicate, it is his heart that is deciding what direction it will take.  He may fall in line on the outside, but what about his spirit?  Where is it walking?

Robert Frost whispered over my shoulder.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. "

And claiming credit for the thought because really, there is nothing new under the sun, Mathew chimed in with, "Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." (Mathew 7:13)

There is the reality that our children may choose wrong over right, and I don't want to think about that because it feels like a thousand mice chewing at my heart.  Mothering is a guiding of the heart, but there comes a point when the heart will choose its path. 

When reading the Christmas story from Mark's gospel, John the Baptist's words got stuck in my mouth.  I'm still chewing them.  "Prepare ye the way for the Lord." (Mark 1:3)

Could that be the great mandate of mothers, to prepare the way?

Could it really be just that? Mothering?
Preparing the way for the Jesus choice? 

We have family coming for Christmas.  Our home will, the day before their arrival, be a hive of activity.  The final mopping of floors, the sloshing of suds in toilet bowls, the fresh bedding, the special groceries.  It seems so simple to prepare the way for guests.  They don't stay forever, though.  They visit and leave.

With mothering, we're preparing the heart-home for a permanent resident. 

Jeff and I designed our home--before the first thrusting and heaving of 6X6 wall ever occurred, we knew every single centimeter, every corner, every closet.  But we didn't design our children's hearts.  Their hearts are like buying a home sight unseen.  I remember once when my dad sold real estate, a lady who, I think came from California, bought a house without having ever been through it.  She showed up, with her kids, her husband, her grand piano, and her home made toffee that stuck to dad's dentures and nearly choked him to death, without the slightest idea what it was really like here.  It's that way when our own burst free from womb-water into hands that hunger to hold forever.  We don't know their hearts.  We weren't the designers.

To prepare them, we must know them.

To know them, we must be with them, spend time, get low on the floor, get scuffed, get muddied, get dirty, get bored--Candy Land is only exciting the first five hundred times you play.  Then later, to continue to know them, we must watch football when we'd rather be quilting, have a tea-party when we'd rather be watching football, and stay up until four in the morning because they get talkative at midnight.

It's in the mundane, the hard, that we discover the closets and corners of their hearts.

But it is dangerous territory--the heart knowing.  Because it leads to heart-loving, and there is a fine line between heart-love and heart-control, and our Father knows the line, shows the line. He loves perfectly and with perfect love comes the freedom of choice.  He gives us that freedom.

And, when they are ready, we must give it to our children.  The freedom to choose.

Sometimes it will be like standing before a magnificent orchestra--they are the players, and we are the audience--every note on key.  But other times, they are the waterfall, and we are crushed beneath the rush of their choosing.  We'll lose our breath, and it will hurt.  Hurt to let them choose wrong.  Hurt to see them live the consequences.  Hurt to stand back when our muscle memory insists on running to rescue because that is what mothers do.  Rescue.

For a season.

Preparing the way begins with rescues, but eventually, it involves letting them tumble, letting them wrestle with the tough thinking, the mom-sometimes-I'm-annoyed-kind-of-thinking.  The kind of thinking that is heart-path choosing. 

Mothering is preparing the way for the greatest choice they will ever make.  Will they allow Jesus as their permanent resident? 

Essentially, Jesus did that with the disciples.  He prepared the way for them to accept Him as their Messiah. 
He spent time.  He told them stories in a language they understood.  He ate with them, slept near them, prayed around them.  He trusted God before their eyes.  He wrestled with God's will in His life to the point of bleeding, broken capillaries, and ultimately said, "If it is possible, let this cup pass, nevertheless, not my will but thine." (Matthew 26:42) 

In preparing the way, He surrendered His will.
The prepared heart has born witness to a parent's surrendered heart.  And that sentence is like The Great Wall of China before me--there's no getting around it.  To prepare my boys' hearts, I must be surrendered myself. 

Surrendered to His plans for them.  His purposes for them.  His ways for them.  His care of them.  His love for them.

Because whether or not I can see or understand them, His are all better than mine.  Are they not?
As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the LORD is tried; He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. (Psalm 18:30)

Choices.  They will have them.  But so do I.  And the thing I'm discovering in mothering is this:  If my goal is to prepare the way for God's perfect way, I must first live out the belief that His way is, indeed, perfect.  They will know He is trustworthy by the proof of my life.

After he--that little boy who barely needs to wear deodorant and yet wrestles with choosing a yielded life or a self-centered life--went to sleep, I lingered long by his side.  I cried for the past, and I cried for the future. 
"God, I want him to want you always.  Want your ways.  I want him to agree, to see that Your way is joy, life, that it will make all the difference."

I am a shield to all who take refuge in Me.

"It is so hard, Lord, to trust You with this child.  It is so hard to let him make his own decisions, form his own opinions.  Help me, Father, to let You woo Him to Yourself.  Help me to trust the mind You molded in him, help me to hold him with hands opened."

I won't have the privilege of choosing forever for these that God has forged through the love of mother and father.  None of us get that privilege.  So, in our mothering, we must prepare the way of the heart-home for a resident who will care more completely, wield greater wisdom, and love to fulfill fully all their soul-longings.

It's a gut wrenching task.

But along the way, there is a fulfilling of our great soul-longings too.  And mothering becomes receiving.
Receiving the loving of Father.

And in receiving, we're freed to free them.
To free them to receive him.
We'll be unraveled, but He is the Great Weaver of life.

Pray with me:
God, when it comes to mothering, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  And grant me trust in Your unwavering commitment, unfailing love for my children.  Help me to prepare the way.  Help me to receive from you, Peace.  Amen.

Inertia of the Soul

So the boys and I are studying science and inevitably my youngest asks me to explain inertia--like that's just something that I should know without needing to google it. If there's one thing I've learned teaching the boys it's that I'll never have all the answers to their questions, but google will. And naturally, I google it because any explanation I give will be sketchy at best. Inertia is the resistance of any object to a change in its state of motion. As I sat there--flanked by two dusty-haired boys --discussing with them how if something is still, it wants to stay that way. Take a rock for example--it doesn't really want to move. It's kind of lazy. In the same way though, when that rock gets pushed down a hill, it doesn't want to stop either. Motivation for change is apparently rather hard to come by in the world of inanimate objects. Then again, perhaps inertia is not exclusive. Perhaps mankind too suffers from a form of inertia--inertia of the soul. Look how long it took humans to recognize slavery as an abuse of our fellow man? I'm not talking slaves that came from Africa here to the United States. We didn't write that book--slavery was around since the earliest of civilizations. There were Spartan slaves and Chinese slaves, there were slaves in Rome and frankly, there are still slaves to this day. Thousands of years and we can't seem to quit moving in that direction. Inertia. Consider the heart of Pharaoh--a man whom Egyptians considered a god. Surely he could change his mind and free the Israelite people. Yet he was steadily moving towards massive pyramids and he needed those Israelites to make bricks. It didn't matter what plague hammered his country, he was moving in the direction of bricks. That my friends, is inertia personified. So I am holding this concept of inertia in my heart, mulling over it, and I can't help but consider how I may be affected by it. I'm a task oriented person, so there's that--don't interrupt me when I'm in the middle of washing the dishes or I may need to take a pill. But I'm talking deeper than epidermal personality type stuff. I'm talking about the organs of my soul--the core of who I am. Do I resist the prodding of the Holy Spirit without even realizing that I'm doing it? Do I insist on mobility when He's whispering Stop, Sarah? What areas are there in my life where I've become completely still and yet God wishes me to move? What areas are there in my life where determined not to stop, I've run for so long while God longs for me to be still? My eldest son has this thing with being teachable. Though tender and generally very amiable and compliant, when it comes to doing something differently from how he has already started to do it, be ready. You'll encounter resistance. Take lay-ups for example. I saw he was struggling with making them consistently. So, like any other mother would do, I got a DVD on the fundamentals of layups and watched the entire thing. Then, I went outside and tried my hand at the new set of skills. And presto! Momma's making lay-ups in her thirties! Then I walked Nate through the process, step by step. He understood, but felt like he was doing just fine the other way. After all, his real problem wasn't his fundamentals, it was that he was doing them on a gravel driveway. Well, that's the way he saw it anyway. He took one or two shots and then just went right back to what he was doing before. I'll spare you the two weeks of teaching details, but eventually with lots more help from dad and some real encouragement, he figured out he wasn't listening to us. And he realized that as soon as he actually stopped and listened to what we were saying and then changed his state of motion, he could hit those shots. Now he's still got some inertia going on, but it's in the right direction and he's making lay-ups in the process. I don't think inertia itself is the problem, I think the problem we encounter is when we find ourselves going one way and God's heart for our lives is another. Consider Jonah--he headed the opposite direction from Nineveh because he did not want to be where God sent him. Sometimes it's as simple as sharing the love of Christ with our neighbor by bringing them some muffins, but our favorite cooking show is on and who wants to leave during Rachel Ray? Sometimes it's an addiction we can't even admit out in the open and we've stayed in the direction of that addiction for so long. We are intert...in the wrong way. And how that must break the heart of our Father. Not because we are not doing what we were created to do, but because we are not experiencing the joy of being who He created us to be. I find it encouraging to consider the definition of inertia. I think we naturally resist change. The devil we know is better than the one we don't. We'd rather keep eating ice cream by the bucketfuls and get fat than we would change that behavior and get onto the treadmill. The treadmill is hard, it's difficult and it's foreign to our muscle memory. We'd rather keep spending out of control than stop spending and start dealing with our debt. We tell ourselves we'll make changes next week, next month, next year. Those are the natural tendencies or the proclivities of a man's heart. We tend toward negative inertia. So, we're not alone. Adam and Eve kind of had the same thing going on. It's an ancient dilemma. Newton's first law of motion says that every object will continue in that state of motion unless acted on by an outside force. I like that. I really like that. In fact, I think this is where it really gets good. This is what I just absolutely love about God. He gets that we are very, very human and He does not leave us in that state of motion. He makes a way. He always has. Pharaoh changed his mind about the Israelites when God softened his heart. If you are like me and can readily identify some areas where you have become inert, then perhaps you'll join me in asking God to change the course of your life. Invite Him to soften the determination of your heart and provide the gentle force necessary to alter its course. We bring Him glory when we are yielding to His directions. We bring Him glory when we are surrendered to His course for our lives. Alternatively I am considering the ramifications of one right step. Then another. And another. Before long we have momentum built up--the whole thirty days to develop a new habit could in fact be true when you factor in the idea of inertia. What would the my world be like if I took just one or two areas and said I'm going to take one small step for thirty days in a row? Because once that momentum starts, I'm going to resist a reversal of my new motion. Only days away from a New Year, isn't it a perfect time to open our hands and release the reins? Isn't today, when we are celebrating the season of His birth, a great time to take hold of the peace He sent Jesus to bring into our lives? If we are holding tightly to our present state of motion we are not free to hold tightly to joy, to peace, to hope--the things that Christ came to give. I don't write to discourage. If you live the rest of your life in a muddy rut your Heavenly Father will love you no less. What we do doesn't make God love us more, but when we yield to His ways, the quality of our life drastically improves. Pray with me: Lord, thank you for the spiritual truths that lie in nature, in science. Thank you for the joy and peace you came to give. Please give me eyes to see where I am resisting a change and give me a heart that is soft in your hands. Replace my heart of stone, Father, with your heart. Overcome me that I might bring you glory and that I may fully enjoy the life you have given me. Amen. Read with me: Psalm 95 Luke 22:42 Colossians 1:9-14

Are You Striving?

The school year and a full season of family getting together, apples bobbed and birthday songs sung, curriculum and gardens,--they've all left me with little time for recording here the words God speaks to my heart. And today is as full as all the rest so I'll only tell you briefly the outline of a melody I pray God is setting to music within me. The book of Zephaniah is a short one--short enough for me to read each day for a while now. And a beloved sister in Christ shared a verse recently in her own blog that turned me onto the book. (http://jewelsightings.blogspot.com/2009/08/ache-of-love.html) There's this third verse in the second chapter that gives me pause when I pass through. "Seek the Lord's favor, all you humble people of the land who have obeyed his commands! Strive to do what is right! Strive to be humble! Maybe you will be protected on the day of the Lord's angry judgment." And I can't help but wonder how many of us are committing our lives to seeking God's favor. I can't help but ask how many of us are waking up each day insisting it is a fresh start and that today, on this new day, we will strive to do the right thing. Today we will strive for humility and pray for God's protection. I can't help but consider how many of my greatest efforts include striving and seeking after God. And I can't help but picture Jesus, hands pierced, side scarred at the right side of God uttering prayers so intense, so full of pleadings and grief saying, "Father, Father let them cease. It was already finished so long ago. I paid for this already, Father. I ended the striving. God, open their eyes that they might see the truth. Father, was my death in vain? Father, was the suffering in vain that they would walk still as uncertain, unloved people seeking the favor that was already bought with my life? God make them see." So often when we read old testament passages we take them to mean we too should follow their advice. In context though, they are generally the reality of the Israelites and if we continue on we will discover as is the case in Zephaniah, that God knew all along humanity would never attain his favor, would never measure up. We will discover that He had a plan to restore all mankind to himself that didn't include human effort. Towards the end of Zephaniah God starts talking about the bigger picture when he tells the Israelites that "they will find safety in the Lord's presence...they will graze peacefully like sheep and lie down; no one will terrify them." What a beautiful picture of peace--a sheep who grazes to fullness and lays himself down on a bed of sweet swaying grass! Sheep don't strive, they don't stress, they don't attempt and work. They eat, and they rest. Do I? Is that my life's chief purpose when I rise? To drink in the goodness and sweetness of my Father and to rest in His capable, powerful, loving, perfect character would appear to be all that He ever intended for me. Let me just say, Satan may not know you, but apparently he knows me well. He is very clear on one point with me--I tend to like to buy the striving material and ignore the resting stuff. I tend to love to work, to do, to aim for, to seek after and that is his golden ticket with me. It goes a little something like this: Sarah, why aren't you teaching Sunday School? Sarah, shouldn't you volunteer for the nursery? Sarah, shouldn't you make a cake for the ministry staff and drop it off at the church office? Sarah, shouldn't you pray longer? Sarah, why aren't you getting up even earlier--reading more scripture? Let me just be clear on this: acts birthed from guilt or obligation have not found their origin in a loving, living relationship with our Savior. It's as though he's literally saying, Sarah, God doesn't love you because He created you, He loves you when you do the right things. And that, my friends is a lie from the very pits of hell. He LOVES us because we are his fearfully and wonderfully made creation. He loves us because He invented LOVE, because to not love us would mean He was no longer God because GOD IS LOVE. We have His eternal favor because Jesus said one evening in a garden of surrender, "If it's possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done." And then only hours later while breathing his last He said, "It is finished." In those moments the curtain in a temple that signified the holiness and righteousness of God and the pathetic attempts at reaching and appeasing Him, was literally shredded in half forever removing the barrier between us and our Father. Long ago, it was finished. Why in the world would we continue then, to bring modern day sheep and lamb and doves as offerings to a God who is no longer waiting in the holy of holies, but is literally walking beside us as we carry our ridiculous cages filled with atonement offerings to present before Him. He's not waiting at the alter for our efforts. He's just not there. He's not hungry for the aroma of burnt lamb, his nostrils are full of the fragrance of His Son and that is all he smells when we stand before Him clothed in the garments of our Savior. Zephaniah goes on to say, "Shout for joy, Daughter Zion! Shout out, Israel! Be happy and boast with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has removed the judgment against you; he has turned back your enemy. Israel's king, The LORD, is in your midst! You no longer need to fear disaster." To live as a sheep involves some serious release--release of our preconceived ideas of religion, of Christianity, of God. It also involves some letting go of our own personal pride--we'll never be good enough. We need to just decide that now. Never. We'll always come up short. So, we might as well stop trying. Here's the beauty though--a life that has ceased to try is free to be the new creation it already is in Christ. Yesterday the boys and I were bouncing on the trampoline. Up and down we bounced and bounced never really getting anywhere, just bouncing. Eventually I bounced myself into complete exhaustion and I lay down on that big stretchy black circle. I looked up and the leaves were floating in the sky, their green backs saturated with the sun. I thought what would it be like to hang from the branch with my only job being to take in The Son? There's something to be said for exhaustion--it forces us to lay down and look up. Pray with me: Lord, you already earned our favor before God. I'm so sorry for trying to continue to get what you already paid for. Show me where I'm striving and teach me to cease. Teach me to graze and rest in who you are. Let the rest be an overflow of that grazing and resting. Amen. Read with me: Romans 5:18-21 II Corinthians 5:17

Song of the Whip-Poor-Will

It's a relentless call--that of the whip-poor-will--a lullaby that blankets the dusk as she fades into night. I've known her song since I was old enough to remember she was a bird whose face wouldn't be seen in the daytime. And I've loved her. Who wouldn't? Her voice almost speaks into the darkness insisting that her lover join her on some distant tree's limb. Her call continues long past other nighttime voices repeating the same words over and over and over again. She won't quit her song until it has accomplished it's goal. From the jam-froth pink bedroom of the cabin my father crafted to the bayou-mist of the bedroom my mother let me paint and then finally the slumbering hues of these walls where I now lay down my head, I have always heard a whip-poor-will's call. Just last week it was some time after 3 in the morning and still she sang. I had cracked the window to hear her more clearly and let her song shush my heart back to sleep when God whispered, "That's how I pursue you, Sarah." And just like that I saw Him differently that I had before. I imagined His own words to me, "Sarah, I love you. I love you. I love you. " Over and over and over again. They never stop. He never stops. His love never fails. It's like a cliche and because it is like a cliche our ears get to the point where they don't hear the words anymore. Growing up in a Christian family I heard those words my entire life. When that's the case, their meaning becomes diluted with the passing of time until one day the fact that God's love never fails, never ends doesn't alter our outlook on life. We no longer see life through His love, we see His love as a faded childhood photo somewhere on a distant wall. And yet He calls still. Again and again. In speaking of the restoration of Israel, Jeremiah 31:3 holds one of my favorite passages in scripture. "In a far-off land the Lord will manifest himself to them. He will say to them, 'I have loved you with an everlasting love. That is why I have continued to be faithful to you." It didn't matter what the Israelites had done--how many times they sold out to the nearest bidder--God's love for them continued. He pursued them across deserts, He called them across seas, He sang to them when they were in distant lands and He loved them no matter where they were. The beauty of His song is that it is for all mankind--He sings for you and He sings for me. He sings for our children and for our families. He sings for those who do not hear and for those who choose not to hear. He sings for those who will not listen and He'll never quit; never. And I can't help but think of the times in my own life when His call has gone unanswered. How many times have His words floated beyond my heart and scattered amidst the debris of my life while I chose instead to cling to worldly wisdom, to whatever was clear and right in front of me. How many times have I chosen to accept the things that are seen instead of believing in His love? And I can't help but think of the people in my life now who I wish could hear His song. I want to grip their hearts and pry them open making room for this tender love song, and yet I cannot. You know people like that too. You have children for whom you've prayed and prayed. You have Fathers and grandmothers and sisters for whom you've interceded, and yet they do not hear. May I just say to you He still sings--even in places far off. When our voices have grown hoarse with our own attempts to share the truth, His has only grown stronger. Sometimes I think Christians get so caught up in the newest book or theology or new approaches to having church that we drown out our Father's song. We make so much of our own noise that we can't even hear His call let alone those we love and want to reach. There are the great theologians and the lofty thinkers, but I resolve to remain a simple follower--a follower of my Savior's song. As long as I hear His song, I know I am near Him, following Him, in the right place. I know I am home. May our own response to His song be so vivid that those around want to join in the chorus. The whip-poor-will sang long that night. I lost my wakefulness while still she sang. Our heavenly Father's pursuit continues too. May we have ears to hear. Pray with me: Father, thank you for your pursuit of my heart. Thank you that you call to me long into the nightimes in my life. Thank you that you sing when I listen and you sing when I join in and you sing when I hold my hands over my ears in stubborn rebellion. Forgive me for ignoring you. Teach me to believe that your love is greater than the sum of my life and that somehow in relaxing into your unfailing love, I will find rest. Amen. Read with me: I Cor. 13 Psalm 89

Thankful for the Meat of Things: The I AM

If Thanksgiving had fallen on the day Christ hung lifeless from the trunk of a tree driven into the hill of Golgotha I wonder for what Mary would have given thanks. If 9--11 had delivered it's death jets on Thanksgiving Day I can't help but ask what we would have thanked God for. But upon Thanksgiving's arrival today there are fresh winds and blueberry frosh skies. The sausage rice stuffing is prepared and the sweet potato souffle is waiting for it's turn in the oven. Coffee is brewed and the news seems somehow void of any major events--for this one day. Thanksgiving. For centuries we've honored this day as a day to stop, just stop, and be thankful. I've always been one that likes to look beneath all the fixings, the trimmings, the fluff if you will. Show me the roots, the meat, the core, the crux. Get to the bottom line. Often when my husband has something to share with me I'll stop him and request that he tell me the end of his story first so I know exactly where we're going--then he can fill it in with all the details and dare I say bunny trails that make his stories so unique. And I find myself this morning in the same place--just saying, Lord, if everything and everyone I know and love were gone, what then would I be thankful for? What Lord, are those who awake today in barren lands or with barren hearts to give thanks for? This morning in my quiet time I was reading Isaiah 40 and like an anthem God's Word heralded the core of my Thanksgiving Offering. (Follow along in Isaiah 40) For what, Sarah can you always be grateful though flowers wither and grass turns brown with autumns parching wind? For what, Sarah can you say thank you when people die and holidays are spent alone, when stomachs are empty and dreams are unthinkable? This, Sarah, be thankful for this. I AM Comfort. I AM the God who comforts my people. I speak kindly to my people. There will come a day when I will end their time of warfare, when punishment will cease. Clear a way for me, for my comfort. Out of the desert regions within your souls will you open a road for me? I AM Adonai. I will elevate the valleys and I will level the mountains and hills. I will take the rugged, ravaged places and make them a smooth plain on which you will stand. I will reveal my splendor and everyone will see it. Don't doubt this because of what you see. Believe it because I have decreed it. Don't you realize that people are no different than grass yet you cling to them? Imagine clinging to a blade of grass when the winds rise and the rains rail against the shell of your souls? You are clinging to nothing if you cling to people. And dare you cling to their promises? You might as well cling to the fragrant petals of a wild Cherokee Rose. Hold on tight, now. Your grass will become brittle and flake within your grasp, and your flower will wilt and melt into nothing more than its perfume. What then will you cling to? When you cling to my decrees, then you are clinging to hope. When I, the Lord decree something it is forever. Go now to the nearest mountain and cry out. Don't be afraid or embarrassed or ashamed to shout out my introduction. "Here is your God." Here is your God! I will tell you who I AM. I AM a victorious warrior. I AM sovereign--don't miss this. I AM sovereign--there is not a thing, NOT ONE SINGLE thing in your life that somehow slipped beyond my grasp. And I am a warrior whose military power is greater than every nuclear bomb and hidden stronghold in the world. Greater. And I AM a shepherd who does not neglect his flock. Do you understand me? I'll never neglect you. I will tend, I will gather, I will carry and I will lead, but I will never ever neglect my flock. I AM your Shepherd when you need me and when you don't. I'm still there. It is I who measured out the waters of earth in the very hollow of my hand and it was I who measured the sky with precision. I weighed the soil of the earth on which you toil and I hold the mountains and the hills in balance. Do you think gravity is merely a scientific term? You need to know that I invented, formed, created gravity--it is nothing more than the inhaling and exhaling of my power. Can you internalize what I am telling you? These are the decrees, the truths you hold to when skies are clear and when they are grey, and these truths will not change. No one teaches me. No one instructs me. I am never in need of assistance or directions. You will never find an accurate earthly comparison to me because there is NONE like me. No. Not even one! There will be those who seek the golden faces of some idol but in time they will discover it is silent when they cry out. In time they will discover it is still when they plead for help. In time they will discover it's heart is stone when their grief overwhelms them. But, I am the one who stretched out the sky like a curtain and it is I who pitched it like a tent above you. Can you see that I gave it to you like a picture of how my sovereignty covers your very life? I reduce rulers to nothing. There is no country or ruler that bares any significance apart from me. Don't you see that when you fear who will rule your nation I am calmly orchestrating the events on earth as they play out in the timeline of eternity? And if you thought for a brief moment that you could compare me to someone--maybe just some small resemblance I would call out to you, "Not even close. I am HOLY. I am set apart, different and unlike any other." It was I who created and named every heavenly light and there is not one that is missing though you may not see them. Now, tell me, created one, why is it that you say, "The Lord is not concerned with me?" Allow me now to tell you with emphatic intensity, "I AM concerned. I AM the eternal God, the Creator of the entire earth and I AM not tired. I AM not weary. There is no limit to my wisdom. And I AM concerned with you. I will give strength to those who are tired and I will renew the energy of the man who has become weak. There is no man or woman who will not one day find themselves weary or stumbling and I AM there. I AM present. I AM ready to give strength to those who wait for me. When you wait for my intervention it will be as if you were swept up into the heavens on the wingspan of the mighty eagle. Those who wait on the Holy God of Israel will run through the mountains and the hills and the valleys. They will walk without falling. This, child, this, is who I AM. And this, child, will not change. For this you can be grateful both today and tomorrow no matter what that day brings. And so when scripture exclaims, "This is your God" I respond with "Yes, this is my God. The I AM. And it is for Him that I offer thanks today." Amen. (And Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours--may you offer thanks today for the meat of things.)

When we Live as Though we are Loved

Recently when I logged into my email there was waiting for me a 'check-up' email from a very dear friend. An area with which I have been wrestling was the topic of the email and I had asked my friend to hold me accountable. The truth is that I hadn't had a lot of success in this area in the last week and typically I would be dreading the faithful accountability my friend offered but when I saw the email sitting like a candle in my inbox I felt encouraged--even happy. I thought to myself, "How odd that I am happy to see that email when I have so little good to report." The truth of the matter is that I know her heart so well that I know without a single question that this person loves me to pieces and her sincere hope is for God's goodness to come about in my life. I also realize that she does not judge me based on failure or success, but based on my heart. She knows my heart's intentions and loves me for the contents within my soul. Though I knew I'd have to report some failures I also knew that her disappointment would not be "in me" but "for me" as I had before me this week the choice between God's very best and some mediocre counterfeits. If she suffered any grief over my report it would not be in me as a person but a sincere sadness that someone she loved made poor choices. Few humans can separate people's actions from people's hearts. But her unconditional love changed how I felt about her faithful encouragment in my life. Here's the thing--God's love for us is that way times a million, and most of us just don't live like we believe that. We say we believe it, but we do not live like it. God used my friend's email to remind me of His own feelings towards me despite my inadequacies. Ephesians 1:4 says, "For He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we may be holy and unblemished in his sight in love." That verse packs a whole lot of truth into one relatively short sentence. For the God of the universe, of all creation, of you and of I, chose us -before the earth was formed, before the sky shone light or dark, before the stars were strung--to be encased in Jesus. When God sees us, He sees two things--a person who is holy and a person who is unblemished. Do you follow that with me? As a follower of Jesus, standing before God with our failures, our lists of mess-ups and our relative unrighteousness God still sees holiness and an unblemished creation. I know. I know. He sees holiness because we are in Christ and Christ is holy. He sees unblemished people because we are clothed in Christ's righteousness and therefore we appear like a spotless lamb. And none of that is really us. That's all Christ. But when He really looks at just us....WOE. Stop right there. That's the point. We've got to get our heads around this reality--it's NOT just us anymore. "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is NO LONGER I WHO LIVE, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2:20) From the moment we become a follower of Jesus we are never again seen alone in the nakedness and shame of our sinful and broken state. When God looks on us He sees Jesus--every single time. We are dressed in Jesus. We may not behave like Jesus, we may not think like Jesus, we may not act like Jesus, but we are in Him nonetheless. We need to know that because so much of our theology comes from the words we hear instead of The Word and we don't always realize the two don't line up. We hear things like, 'we don't want to disappoint God' and assume that somehow if we can disappoint him we must also be able to please Him. He is pleased--trust me--He is "well pleased." He's well pleased with us, but not because of us, because of who we are in--Christ. "I do not set aside God's grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing." (Gal. 2:21) The thing is that we are loved in such a way that is completely apart from ourselves and anything we will ever do or not do. We are loved without condition because we are not loved based on our own righteousness, but based on the perfect spotless lamb of Jesus and if we think that in anyway we can appear before God in a pleasing way in our own merit we sell short all that Jesus did for us on the cross. When we say with our mouths that we can't earn God's favor but then turn around and nearly deify people who appear to have it altogether. The question must be asked, if God's pleasure in us can be related to our good doings, then, as believers, can it not also be related to our wrong doings? The answer, I believe--however controversial, is NO. Like a candle glowing in a windowsill over the holiday season, God's love is an everlasting love. It's presence in our lives is not in anyway conditional on how we behave, how together we are, or how much of a failure we are. And when He checks up on us, like my friend did, it is for our good. It is not God's intention to condemn us but to empower us. His desire is not to point out our failures, but to spur us on toward love and good deeds. When we sing of God's amazing grace we are singing of God's amazing "unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor" not His grace that saves us and then somehow becomes conditional. It's my hope that in a world where even amongst Christians we can feel a spirit of condemnation and a sense that in some way we need to perform in order to prove our worth, I may walk as one who is loved. Loved not for what I've done but because I am God's creation and I am dressed in God's Son. Those two things will never change and therefore, I am forever loved. If we can learn to walk in that truth, I believe the world will inevitably be drawn toward the irresistible warmth of the God whose scripture insists that above all "the greatest of these is love." (I Cor. 13:13) Perhaps Christ Himself said best what I fear happens all too often among sincere people who desperately want to obey and honor their heavenly Father. "Therefore pay attention to what they (experts in the law or scribes) tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy loads hard to carry, and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them..." (Matthew 23:4) If after walking away from a sermon or a book intended for spiritual growth we feel weight like a burden or that there are a list of things we need to do to improve upon ourselves could it be possible we have misunderstood the intent? Consider again Christ's own words, "Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry." (Matthew 11:29-30) Jesus Himself insisted He came not to condemn the world but to seek and save those who were lost. And the question must be asked if as Christ followers we are walking with a sense of failure and condemnation, then by whom are we being condemned? Many years ago I lead a Bible study on women's character. We went through a book and many were affronted by the contents of the book. Many of the ladies said it felt next to impossible to carry out the author's instructions. I followed the instructions laid out in that book to the letter for a very long time. And I'll be frank with you, I felt like I had something finally figured out. It was a difficult pace I can promise you, and after a couple of years I realized that while her ideas were excellent and well intended they were not a miraculous formula for achieving spirituality. My most spiritual moments in those years were probably on the days when I bombed big time and sat before my heavenly Father looking into His eyes soaking in His love. When I get to heaven I know that God will not commend my efforts in those years as any greater than the years when I basked in His presence and drank up His love like a warming wine. I'm ashamed to have to tell you that I remember looking into some of those women's eyes and saying, "I know this is difficult, but it is right, and your life will be better if you live like this." That I was sincerely trying to obey God and honor Him goes without saying. But as I look back on that study, my heart aches for those young mothers who were struggling to follow a God who seemed so unattainable, so righteous and perfect that to bring Him joy would be nearly impossible. For some, sadly, I believe they came to the conclusion that the goal was too lofty and that the exhaustion that resulted from their noble attempts was just not worth it. They could be better moms and wives if they just focused on their families and quit worrying about trying to please God. Man if I could have a do-over! I'd take those women's hands in my own and I'd say, "God does not care about how perfect you are, He is madly in love with you right now--while you are completely imperfect. He loves you when you are tired from being up all night with that new baby and He loves you when you fall asleep trying to pray. He loves you when you snap at your children and He loves you when you intend to make a romantic dinner for your husband and have the kids in bed early and in fact you end up eating hot dogs with kids crawling under the table. He loves you because you are His creation and He sees in you the perfection of His Son." I'd say it every single week that they came to that study because if we don't believe, live and breathe the reality of God's love in our lives we will not experience the freedom and fullness of life God intends for us here on earth. I write all of this at the risk of being criticized for not discussing James' words about being "doers" of the Word. I write all this knowing people will say you are selling God's love as a ticket to live life as you please. Knowing that people will ask what about the "working out of your salvation?" I know. Trust me, I know it's all in there. But I believe that when a person knows they are completely, madly, unconditionally loved their lives will be transformed. Do we want to live lives that are full of God and discover that we can be more in this life than we ever imagined? Paul prayed to that end when he said, "I pray...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:16-21) God's love changes everything. Do we know that love? Really know it? I pray we do. Amen.