An excerpt from this evening's porch-sitting reflection on disheartened emotions living alongside an awe of the cross:
The disparity, perhaps, is the feeling of the cross. The deed which afforded life but cost death is the greatest emotionally-confusing and bittersweet act that ever was.
Jesus, Fully God, asked that it be not this way: "remove it," "take it away," "some other way, please." That is, remove the separation caused by sin followed by death and the divorcing of Son from Father which were to occur on the cross. A pain, relative to the physical, infinitely more tortuous.
So, perhaps on the exhale of Easter's celebration there indeed comes a "what now?" and a "wait why?" and a "how much longer?" soul-level sentiment in those of us who see the crucifixion moment and resurrection victory as indicating so much more than what we will fully recognize on this side of Heaven.
Which is the Spirit coaching and reminding, "Yes, absolution has come, and so much more is on the way." Eagerly anticipating that so much more can feel like Christ on the garden-side of the cross: in a painful placement, anticipating reunion.
So Much More
Sunday, January 24, 2016
When you close your eyes and imagine what it is to be at peace, what do you see?
Listen as you continue reading below.
(That is not to say that self-recognizing a state of peace is a prerequisite of allowing oneself to be swayed. In fact, I think amidst turmoil we still are called to be "swayed". Thus the aforementioned donkey analogy to suggest that even as stubborn caravanning Christians, we can be given the identity of recipients of peace.)
To be at peace is a state. And as movers and shakers of the Gospel, ambassadors, scent-spreaders, diffusers and climbers, we know a "state" of peace is an active one. In fact, we are "led forth" in peace, almost as if we are donkeys in a train tethered together as a community of ass-swinging hee-haws, and we're being propelled or pulled forward, even, by an acting force or agent. In this case, peace.
In this way, to be at peace is to be controlled, in a way.
Our God, our Great Father and King, pre-planned and deemed His Son the Prince of Peace. That is to suggest that peace is the very mission and cause of our Savior. Which we know to be true since His very "covenant of peace" shall never be shaken, He tells us.
Thus, if peace was and is the very mission of our Savior, then through the remnant of Himself in us, His Spirit, we are propelled, driven and controlled. In other words, since it was the mission of our Savior to usher in peace to His people, so it is the mission of our Spirit to give peace. This is the crowning jewel of a lasting covenant to the people of God, now both Jews and ingrafted-olive-branch Gentiles.
To answer my own question, I was sitting in worship this morning thinking what it would look like to be at such peace that I might be "swayed by the Spirit".*
I think it would look like a stalk of wheat in a sea of stalks that bend reactively when the wind blows. The wheat cannot resist it.
"Spirit, control our feet, our hearts, our tongue. Take over our bodies, our mind, our hearts. Sway us. Overcome us. Flood us. Harvest us. Make us hum."
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Friday, October 30, 2015
In God's economy, every day is a Friday.
This phrase popped in my head on my drive into work this morning. As I was listening to Josh Garrells' "Pilot Me," it occurred to me that my smile was perkier and my shoulders slightly less tense that the commutes just a few days prior.
On Friday we are on the cusp of rest after a long week of work. Looking to Saturday and Sunday for respite, and being just a day away. It's that light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel realization that fuels the final 8-hour lap.
With a heavenward gaze, having the assurance of such a pardon, so are we: on the cusp of eternal rest. And so we can rejoice in our present suffering, knowing that as we follow the Calvary-directed steps of our now-crowned King, so will we share in His glory... soon. In the words of a wise fish, "Just keep swimming." For perseverance brings character and character hope.
This phrase popped in my head on my drive into work this morning. As I was listening to Josh Garrells' "Pilot Me," it occurred to me that my smile was perkier and my shoulders slightly less tense that the commutes just a few days prior.
On Friday we are on the cusp of rest after a long week of work. Looking to Saturday and Sunday for respite, and being just a day away. It's that light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel realization that fuels the final 8-hour lap.
With a heavenward gaze, having the assurance of such a pardon, so are we: on the cusp of eternal rest. And so we can rejoice in our present suffering, knowing that as we follow the Calvary-directed steps of our now-crowned King, so will we share in His glory... soon. In the words of a wise fish, "Just keep swimming." For perseverance brings character and character hope.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Oh, Great God of Completion -
Sometimes I like to play this old Puritan-based game of calling God all of His wonders to His face. And I truly believe He is glorified by these creative, child-like, awe-filled adjectival addresses.
One of my favorites came walking around campus at UNC several years ago, realizing the vastness of this so-called "people" God created. And that a day in His courts, with His perspective, with the fullness of His love for all of His people, would be better than any day elsewhere. To see as He sees, to walk as He walked when manifested as Jesus here on this earth... the thoughts stopped me in my tracks. In that moment, He promptly became "God with the Desirable FannyPack", one in which I am hemmed into, held and gladly ride in every day, thanks to Holy Spirit, Counselor God.
So, here we are, God of Total Completion. Tonight, watching the bats squawk their way between trees, I am reminded of my frame (don't ask my why bats had anything to do with this). And yet in this frame, this measly (I mean curvy) frame, I am a recipient of our Creator God's Love. Not just any kind of imbued or imparted love, but a specifically-articulated Love, delivered in such a predestined, predetermined way. In fact, one that I am convinced demands we thank our God for how He loves us.
When you think of completion in our epistle context (often out of context, might I add), we think, "Aah yes, the God that's going to end my suffering and bring this awful trial to eventual completion. I just know He will. Yes, of course, He's gonna." Well, sure. But isn't there more? Yes, the answer is always "Yes!" with our God.
This notion of completion is expanded when we view God as bringing into full completeness all the fragments of Himself that we represent. In reference to His Love, you see He loves us passionately - perhaps like a boyfriend who broke your heart in high school but represented all things passionate and red hot (gag!), so to speak. Yet He loves us tenderly - perhaps like a father who scoops us up and cares for our wounds and holds our head when we're crying. But then again, He loves us fiercely - like a husband who can vigorously approach and win you over with his desire in a moment of intense and overwhelming intimacy. Contrasting and yet complimenting, He loves us constantly - like a sister who never goes away or abandons even after years of ups and downs, distance and nearness, separation and closeness. In all of these ways and millions more, He loves us.
And so our God, our great and loving, covenant-keeping God, with the most desirable FannyPack in which we wish to be forever tucked away and zipped in, with the most incredible humanly-demonstrative form of forgiveness on the cross, with the most perfectly-executed buy-back plan for our souls... this God is the completeness of all the pieces and parts He created us to be of His image. In other words, He made us to be teeny, tiny wedges in His identity pie chart by creating each of us as a unique piece of Himself - that He and He alone completes. Therefore, He is the completion of all the good things that we are.
Taking it a step farther, anything good that we ever are or ever do or ever say is due to His humorous grace allowing it. Without Him, we are nothing good. In the words of a dear pastor, reminded to me recently by an even-dearer friend, "We deserve nothing but hell." Apart from our God, who sent our Savior from Himself, we are nothing. But, I digress.
When I see God as this type of completion - not only a God that "brings" completion but "is" completion - and in this way is the end to my be all, it fosters in me a sense of gratefulness. I am grateful that He invited me into His identity equation and dubbed me as His image bearer. It also encourages the realest sense of obedience for me, that I may bear Him well. That the piece of Him that I am may be rendered and represented correctly - as if I am speaking the very words of God, says Peter. Ultimately, I think, this encourages a reciprocal love. That our God, our "Lover to the Uttermost," the One who loves us unchangeably and everlastingly, would invoke in us a reciprocal passionate, tender, fierce and constant love for Him.
"Deepen in me a sense of my holy relationship to thee,
as spiritual Bridegroom,
as Jehovah's Fellow,
as sinners' Friend." *
as spiritual Bridegroom,
as Jehovah's Fellow,
as sinners' Friend." *
So here we are, fractions of a Fully Complete God. And though our view is eclipsed, we, through ourselves and others, experience and encounter God Himself.
Oh, God of dual-meanings and nuances, you are indeed incarnate. Not only once, but forevermore through Your people. You leave traces of Yourself in us, thread together by Your Spirit. Thank you for doing that. You love us so incredibly well.
*Reference: "Christ is All" from the Valley of Vision
Friday, August 7, 2015
"There is nothing sweeter and more consoling, no better remedy for homesickness, no more lasting memory."
Binding our hearts to Your Word, O Lord.
Deuteronomy 5:4-9
Monday, July 13, 2015
Tonight the sky was on a flicker loop. Lightening shuttered every few seconds. Oddly, there was no accompanying sound, which meant there was no thunderous warning. It just popped light and projected it through the southeastern sky as a "derecho" front moved its way through the southern half of our city on the way to the ocean. At one point I may have even thought I could see the ocean, which is ridiculous given we live 4-hrs from the nearest beach. But it was THAT magical!
After a grueling attempt at a workout, getting started much later than I had wanted, I walked in the door to a giddy husband who had just caught a glimpse of the light show through our floor-to-ceiling windows.
Like the adventurers we can sometimes be, we hopped on the elevator and headed up to the roof. We beheld 15-minutes of light beams. A few things that seemed revelatory while on the roof in the evening with warm wind slapping me in the face:
(1) our apartment looks like a resort - don't be fooled, it's expensive and frat house-y.
(2) clouds appear to shift between light flashes.
(3) we are so small.
(4) the sky at night looks no different than the sky during the day when illuminated.
(5) weather photography is hard
My husband was on his phone for 87% of the time we were on the roof, trying to snap a photo or video. This frustrated me slightly, and I could philosophize more about being present in these fleeting moments. At the same time, we all worship and absorb and process differently... And how we do that today may not be the same in a few years. In fact, what a better picture of shifting shadows, seasons and seconds than a light storm moving 2 miles per minute?
Praise God from whom all light storms are conceived and crafted. God of Great Contrast from Your people, Oh that You would lend us part of who You are... It's entirely too good and yet true.
"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17
After a grueling attempt at a workout, getting started much later than I had wanted, I walked in the door to a giddy husband who had just caught a glimpse of the light show through our floor-to-ceiling windows.
Like the adventurers we can sometimes be, we hopped on the elevator and headed up to the roof. We beheld 15-minutes of light beams. A few things that seemed revelatory while on the roof in the evening with warm wind slapping me in the face:
(1) our apartment looks like a resort - don't be fooled, it's expensive and frat house-y.
(2) clouds appear to shift between light flashes.
(3) we are so small.
(4) the sky at night looks no different than the sky during the day when illuminated.
(5) weather photography is hard
My husband was on his phone for 87% of the time we were on the roof, trying to snap a photo or video. This frustrated me slightly, and I could philosophize more about being present in these fleeting moments. At the same time, we all worship and absorb and process differently... And how we do that today may not be the same in a few years. In fact, what a better picture of shifting shadows, seasons and seconds than a light storm moving 2 miles per minute?
Praise God from whom all light storms are conceived and crafted. God of Great Contrast from Your people, Oh that You would lend us part of who You are... It's entirely too good and yet true.
"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17
Sunday, July 5, 2015
After a weekend spent celebrating our fine country's birthday, I'm found in want. You see, we spend every 4th of July with my husband's family in Linville, North Carolina. Nestled at the foot of Grandfather Mountain, it is heaven in the form of rhododendron, afternoon rain storms and Milky Way night-viewing. It is also the summer home to some of the wealthiest families in the South: golf course moguls, heart surgeons, brewery owners and major land developers to "name" a few.
I grew up on a farm in a small rural town, where I was never in need and always cared for... but there was very little excess until later in life. My mom was a Dave Ramsey fanatic (still is!), and we lived most all of our days painfully aware of how "we" (and I mean "we" to suggest a very strong collective familial responsibility) were doing with our monthly budget.
My mom championed the "envelope method" to managing money on a monthly basis - every dollar had a name. And I carried a lot of that hyper-awareness about money into my marriage. "These are our golden years," I tell my husband. Seriously every dollar we save in our twenties may as well turn to gold... or platinum by the time we reap the benefits at retirement age. $1,000 monthly dollars saved, from now until we are 70, will set us up for multiple vacation houses when we're 80. Compound interest, my friend.
And yet, for why? And for what?
Only to want more. Only to sit and watch others always have more.
It struck me on the ride home today, as we nauseously wound our way down and out of the mountains, that we are so quick to trade in a gift from God for the figment of human gain. Similarly, we forsake our identity as an adoptee into the "Kingdom for the Brokenhearted," when we mend what we have been told shall remain broken. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
In other words, when we step out from under God's saving grace, we become our own mini-gods - a side step we see time and time again in Scripture to be a fatal move.
This summer I am helping a dear friend to lead a 6-week-long high school girls' Bible Study through our church. Some of the issues these girls face are beyond belief... high school seems so rough these days. So, our attempt at drilling Gospel grace into these girls' heads led us to the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke this coming week. (Luke 15:11-32) And so, as I was marinating in this story that shows the true nature of repentance, it became so evident that the Lord's prize is for all who return to Him in full recognition of the misery of sin and humble recognition that truly "better is one day in your courts (or servant quarters, in this case!) than a thousand elsewhere." (Psalm 84:10) In fact, God's joy, His celebratory and festal joy, is to lavish a poor sinner with the tokens of His forgiving love.
The son is absolutely in bondage to his sin, provisioning for his flesh, and fulfilling his lusts, which ends up being no better than feeding swine. And so, I believe, the story absolutely demands we confront our response to sin when we see the very type of man that the son was when he returned to the Father asking for servant status.
What's more, the state of our sin requires drastic recovery that can only be found when we, as enlightened sinners by God's gracious convincing of our misery, turn and view everything in a different light. By this light we see not only the bondage we must quit but also the humble posture in which we must return to our Father, who sees us coming from a distance ready to receive and celebrate our return. We are then "clothed in the robe of our Redeemer's righteousness, made partaker of the Spirit of adoption, prepared by peace of conscience and Gospel grace to walk in the ways of holiness, and feasted with Divine consolations. Principles of grace and holiness are wrought in him, to do, as well as to will." (Matthew Henry)
Thus, it is us being not awesome, that God flexes, as Matt Chandler, likes to say, and glorifies Himself in a way that becomes all about Him, and our hearts, which are made by Him, get happy in that.
So why would we ever want to move away from the profile of the person that Christ came to save and bring near to himself? Why would we ever want to outgrow or better yet out-earn that? When in fact we have been called as Christians to a role reversal:
"Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?" (James 2:5)
My sweet, blonde-haired beauty of a sister (1 of 2 sisters I'm honored to have!) and I were sitting under one of the white tents for the Linville picnic yesterday evening, watching a well-aged lady eat with her every finger covered in diamonds, rubies, pearls, David Yurman and emeralds. I kid you not, every finger... except for both of her thumbs. That was topped off with a long pearl necklace, pearl bracelets and diamond earrings. Basically she was a walking dollar sign. Welcome to Linville, where only the elite can eat pulled pork with ringed fingers. And yet the environment there is so alluring, so inviting, so safe and so friendly - at least for those to whom they are partial.
And so as we were on that nauseatingly windy drive home, brainstorming how we can be getting ahead financially at our age, I was slapped in the face with my forsaking of God's gift: His grace and His mercy which He traded for His judgement so that I would be set free - so why am I building myself back into bondage? All for a heartier 401k and the figment of future vacation homes?
We may be called to stay in a low-paying job when it was abundantly clear at the time we got the job that God opened major doors to place us there and is asserting each day through the people we meet and the connections we make that we are there for definitive reasons... even if only for a season. We may be called to give our money, to love the poor as to become poor in spirit ourselves, as an indicator of genuine faith through our care for the needy, the lesser, the destitute, the fatherless... This is the genuine faith our Father sees a pure and faultless. (James 1:19-27)
And yet I still want a blossoming portfolio, and I want my husband and I to be making more, so that we can save more so that we can have more... more... more. Always more.
A hunger for money encourages a prodigal heart.
The beauty of the Gospel of grace is that we will never be in a position where we need to pad what God provides with something of our own. In other words, what He gives is and always will be sufficient - it doesn't need a little human garnish to be complete.
So friends, be encouraged, our worst and our best is level set at the foot of the cross as sufficiently insufficient to save our souls. And cue grace again. Because of grace, our destitute, fallen, cheating, lying, scandalous pasts are unexpectedly forgiven, thanks to the kindness of our Sacrificial Jesus, and the incomparable riches of that grace are on display for eternity. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
Out of the swine trough to the head of the table we are seated with all of God's glory imparted to us.
I grew up on a farm in a small rural town, where I was never in need and always cared for... but there was very little excess until later in life. My mom was a Dave Ramsey fanatic (still is!), and we lived most all of our days painfully aware of how "we" (and I mean "we" to suggest a very strong collective familial responsibility) were doing with our monthly budget.
My mom championed the "envelope method" to managing money on a monthly basis - every dollar had a name. And I carried a lot of that hyper-awareness about money into my marriage. "These are our golden years," I tell my husband. Seriously every dollar we save in our twenties may as well turn to gold... or platinum by the time we reap the benefits at retirement age. $1,000 monthly dollars saved, from now until we are 70, will set us up for multiple vacation houses when we're 80. Compound interest, my friend.
And yet, for why? And for what?
Only to want more. Only to sit and watch others always have more.
It struck me on the ride home today, as we nauseously wound our way down and out of the mountains, that we are so quick to trade in a gift from God for the figment of human gain. Similarly, we forsake our identity as an adoptee into the "Kingdom for the Brokenhearted," when we mend what we have been told shall remain broken. (2 Corinthians 12:10)
In other words, when we step out from under God's saving grace, we become our own mini-gods - a side step we see time and time again in Scripture to be a fatal move.
This summer I am helping a dear friend to lead a 6-week-long high school girls' Bible Study through our church. Some of the issues these girls face are beyond belief... high school seems so rough these days. So, our attempt at drilling Gospel grace into these girls' heads led us to the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke this coming week. (Luke 15:11-32) And so, as I was marinating in this story that shows the true nature of repentance, it became so evident that the Lord's prize is for all who return to Him in full recognition of the misery of sin and humble recognition that truly "better is one day in your courts (or servant quarters, in this case!) than a thousand elsewhere." (Psalm 84:10) In fact, God's joy, His celebratory and festal joy, is to lavish a poor sinner with the tokens of His forgiving love.
The son is absolutely in bondage to his sin, provisioning for his flesh, and fulfilling his lusts, which ends up being no better than feeding swine. And so, I believe, the story absolutely demands we confront our response to sin when we see the very type of man that the son was when he returned to the Father asking for servant status.
What's more, the state of our sin requires drastic recovery that can only be found when we, as enlightened sinners by God's gracious convincing of our misery, turn and view everything in a different light. By this light we see not only the bondage we must quit but also the humble posture in which we must return to our Father, who sees us coming from a distance ready to receive and celebrate our return. We are then "clothed in the robe of our Redeemer's righteousness, made partaker of the Spirit of adoption, prepared by peace of conscience and Gospel grace to walk in the ways of holiness, and feasted with Divine consolations. Principles of grace and holiness are wrought in him, to do, as well as to will." (Matthew Henry)
Thus, it is us being not awesome, that God flexes, as Matt Chandler, likes to say, and glorifies Himself in a way that becomes all about Him, and our hearts, which are made by Him, get happy in that.
So why would we ever want to move away from the profile of the person that Christ came to save and bring near to himself? Why would we ever want to outgrow or better yet out-earn that? When in fact we have been called as Christians to a role reversal:
"Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?" (James 2:5)
My sweet, blonde-haired beauty of a sister (1 of 2 sisters I'm honored to have!) and I were sitting under one of the white tents for the Linville picnic yesterday evening, watching a well-aged lady eat with her every finger covered in diamonds, rubies, pearls, David Yurman and emeralds. I kid you not, every finger... except for both of her thumbs. That was topped off with a long pearl necklace, pearl bracelets and diamond earrings. Basically she was a walking dollar sign. Welcome to Linville, where only the elite can eat pulled pork with ringed fingers. And yet the environment there is so alluring, so inviting, so safe and so friendly - at least for those to whom they are partial.
And so as we were on that nauseatingly windy drive home, brainstorming how we can be getting ahead financially at our age, I was slapped in the face with my forsaking of God's gift: His grace and His mercy which He traded for His judgement so that I would be set free - so why am I building myself back into bondage? All for a heartier 401k and the figment of future vacation homes?
We may be called to stay in a low-paying job when it was abundantly clear at the time we got the job that God opened major doors to place us there and is asserting each day through the people we meet and the connections we make that we are there for definitive reasons... even if only for a season. We may be called to give our money, to love the poor as to become poor in spirit ourselves, as an indicator of genuine faith through our care for the needy, the lesser, the destitute, the fatherless... This is the genuine faith our Father sees a pure and faultless. (James 1:19-27)
And yet I still want a blossoming portfolio, and I want my husband and I to be making more, so that we can save more so that we can have more... more... more. Always more.
A hunger for money encourages a prodigal heart.
The beauty of the Gospel of grace is that we will never be in a position where we need to pad what God provides with something of our own. In other words, what He gives is and always will be sufficient - it doesn't need a little human garnish to be complete.
So friends, be encouraged, our worst and our best is level set at the foot of the cross as sufficiently insufficient to save our souls. And cue grace again. Because of grace, our destitute, fallen, cheating, lying, scandalous pasts are unexpectedly forgiven, thanks to the kindness of our Sacrificial Jesus, and the incomparable riches of that grace are on display for eternity. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
Out of the swine trough to the head of the table we are seated with all of God's glory imparted to us.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
I've got to ask you something
but please don't be afraid
there's a promise that's heavier
than your answer might weight
baby it's me, it's me
It's a sweet, sweet thing
standing here with you and nothing to hide
light shining down to our very insides
sharing our secrets, bearing our souls,
helping each other come clean.
-Sara Groves, "Different Kinds of Happy"
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Sometimes I can be too entirely philosophical that I forget "catharticisms" or little moments of catharsis are not the norm for most of God's beautiful personality creations out there. In fact, I - alongside my sister - have to come to realize we are quiet sojourners in a lot of those moments.
Those moments when things came into true view just because I dug a hole, started a fire, heard a wind chime, laid down next to him, gave water to plants, put glasses on tired eyes... Foolish or just strikingly imaginary? Sometimes both.
Put me on stage with a bow, shaking through every plow across the bridge. Watch the sun creep through the blinds and project slats onto the bed spread. In the middle of everything, they propel you backwards, making you measure memories as they compare to that moment and merge present with past with future. At times, all you know is that it feels like one of those "life to the full" moments.
And then like a puff of smoke it dissipates and you're left changed or unchanged. That's for you to decide. Many carry these like charms on a bracelet or locks on a bridge. As if a lengthy bibliography and hoarding polaroids in a shoe box makes you the person in the photograph.
So I think we just encounter and offer praise in the details. Praise God of the cold breath that crystallizes, the freedom of a Friday evening and the loosened muscles after long stretching. That in His protection, refuge and hiding place we can tromp like children in circles, laughing at their stringy hair and too-big bracelets. We can play and notice the teensy glitter specks of his Great Love.
Those moments when things came into true view just because I dug a hole, started a fire, heard a wind chime, laid down next to him, gave water to plants, put glasses on tired eyes... Foolish or just strikingly imaginary? Sometimes both.
Put me on stage with a bow, shaking through every plow across the bridge. Watch the sun creep through the blinds and project slats onto the bed spread. In the middle of everything, they propel you backwards, making you measure memories as they compare to that moment and merge present with past with future. At times, all you know is that it feels like one of those "life to the full" moments.
And then like a puff of smoke it dissipates and you're left changed or unchanged. That's for you to decide. Many carry these like charms on a bracelet or locks on a bridge. As if a lengthy bibliography and hoarding polaroids in a shoe box makes you the person in the photograph.
So I think we just encounter and offer praise in the details. Praise God of the cold breath that crystallizes, the freedom of a Friday evening and the loosened muscles after long stretching. That in His protection, refuge and hiding place we can tromp like children in circles, laughing at their stringy hair and too-big bracelets. We can play and notice the teensy glitter specks of his Great Love.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Have you ever asked the question, "What do you see in me?"
I have often slumped into this question when feeling flattered beyond qualification. Sometimes it's the words I have spat out when seething under someone's grace. Like a go-to defensive stab when you have wronged someone and can't honestly believe they didn't bat an eyelash but instead forgave.
Receiving anything undeserved seems to somehow puncture pride slowly, like a needle prick in an air mattress... it takes nights of bottoming out and re-puffing yourself back up only to realize you're a steadily deflating piece of plastic.
So in John 2 when Jesus commands empty stoneware to be filled with water, which acquired the new form of wine to meet a sober need, the newlyweds and their wedding director were fumbling for a proof of origin. Previously shame-stricken, they were saved from the embarrassment of a dry reception (trust me, my husband and I had one!), and the celebration was restored by new wine. Best of all, Jesus bestowed his first miracle on a humble, small-town group of people.
Cana, the Israeli version of Marshville (where cousins marry cousins marry cousins), was far from the buzzing lights of Jerusalem, where the public scene of action would have better showcased the first sign from the Messiah. In fact, Cana, the tribe of Asher, was an obscure little corner of the country where Jesus could put honor on the lowly like Genesis promised: "He shall yield royal danties." Debuting choice wine for half-drunk Galilean country mice mid-week during a wedding festival was a move only a King could afford to make.
Gracing the institute of marriage with his first miracle, Jesus' work reminds us of what the Father did for Adam and Eve - pardon and remove shame. He would do the same thing for us in time. Yet, His time "had not yet come," something He reminds His mother and followers multiple times. In some contexts, it seems Jesus is waiting on the infancy faith of His own disciples to mature before He begins doing miracles as a part of His ministry. And other times, it seems Jesus simply isn't ready to face what He knows is coming, for reasons and conversations only could He have with His Father. Regardless, it seems abundantly clear that at the bottom of the Galileans' wine casks, then and only there was Jesus able to intercede. Likewise, man's extremity is God's opportunity to appear for the help and relief of his people. Mercy delayed until man's dire strait, but "at the end it shall speak."
Thus when Jesus shrouded the shame of these poor newlyweds, He kicked off a ministry of law breaking, table flipping, leper touching and whore loving. In all cases, He replaced water with wine, trumping Moses' previous miracle of water into blood. For the Jews in Jesus' day, all this did was highlight and underline the difference between their law of Moses and the new Gospel of Christ.
He replaced death with life even before He encountered death Himself. He traded lack for abundance. Such that by the end, when indeed His hour had come, He was the despised and rejected like all those previously broken and diseased folk He had healed and radicalized for good. Like a friend once said, "Jesus is not a bandaid dealer, He is a heart surgeon who does not simply save face for us."
And like the animal slaughtered to clothe the naked shame of two horny and hungry gardeners, Jesus was nailed and hung so that we could all be shrouded in grace instead of shame. God the Father pronated His anger away from man toward His Son, in order to lend final grace on the shameful. In essence, God looked at the charisma, compassion, mercy, and perfection of His Son and said, "Shame on You."
Thanks be to God for doing the most unfair just act of Love. Now we drink a new wine, that will be in new casks at the ultimate, unending wedding feast of the Bride and Bridegroom at the end of time for all of eternity. Take me there!
I have often slumped into this question when feeling flattered beyond qualification. Sometimes it's the words I have spat out when seething under someone's grace. Like a go-to defensive stab when you have wronged someone and can't honestly believe they didn't bat an eyelash but instead forgave.
Receiving anything undeserved seems to somehow puncture pride slowly, like a needle prick in an air mattress... it takes nights of bottoming out and re-puffing yourself back up only to realize you're a steadily deflating piece of plastic.
So in John 2 when Jesus commands empty stoneware to be filled with water, which acquired the new form of wine to meet a sober need, the newlyweds and their wedding director were fumbling for a proof of origin. Previously shame-stricken, they were saved from the embarrassment of a dry reception (trust me, my husband and I had one!), and the celebration was restored by new wine. Best of all, Jesus bestowed his first miracle on a humble, small-town group of people.
Cana, the Israeli version of Marshville (where cousins marry cousins marry cousins), was far from the buzzing lights of Jerusalem, where the public scene of action would have better showcased the first sign from the Messiah. In fact, Cana, the tribe of Asher, was an obscure little corner of the country where Jesus could put honor on the lowly like Genesis promised: "He shall yield royal danties." Debuting choice wine for half-drunk Galilean country mice mid-week during a wedding festival was a move only a King could afford to make.
Gracing the institute of marriage with his first miracle, Jesus' work reminds us of what the Father did for Adam and Eve - pardon and remove shame. He would do the same thing for us in time. Yet, His time "had not yet come," something He reminds His mother and followers multiple times. In some contexts, it seems Jesus is waiting on the infancy faith of His own disciples to mature before He begins doing miracles as a part of His ministry. And other times, it seems Jesus simply isn't ready to face what He knows is coming, for reasons and conversations only could He have with His Father. Regardless, it seems abundantly clear that at the bottom of the Galileans' wine casks, then and only there was Jesus able to intercede. Likewise, man's extremity is God's opportunity to appear for the help and relief of his people. Mercy delayed until man's dire strait, but "at the end it shall speak."
Thus when Jesus shrouded the shame of these poor newlyweds, He kicked off a ministry of law breaking, table flipping, leper touching and whore loving. In all cases, He replaced water with wine, trumping Moses' previous miracle of water into blood. For the Jews in Jesus' day, all this did was highlight and underline the difference between their law of Moses and the new Gospel of Christ.
He replaced death with life even before He encountered death Himself. He traded lack for abundance. Such that by the end, when indeed His hour had come, He was the despised and rejected like all those previously broken and diseased folk He had healed and radicalized for good. Like a friend once said, "Jesus is not a bandaid dealer, He is a heart surgeon who does not simply save face for us."
And like the animal slaughtered to clothe the naked shame of two horny and hungry gardeners, Jesus was nailed and hung so that we could all be shrouded in grace instead of shame. God the Father pronated His anger away from man toward His Son, in order to lend final grace on the shameful. In essence, God looked at the charisma, compassion, mercy, and perfection of His Son and said, "Shame on You."
Thanks be to God for doing the most unfair just act of Love. Now we drink a new wine, that will be in new casks at the ultimate, unending wedding feast of the Bride and Bridegroom at the end of time for all of eternity. Take me there!
Friday, February 28, 2014
Recently, I joined a group of ladies to study the Bible on Tuesday mornings. Majority of them lived through the 60s, some of them have teenagers, many of them have little kids and then there's me: 23, newlywed, no kids, no pets, and in their words, "Honey, enjoy it while life is still easy." Each week the cotton tops and the breast-feeding momma's convene to talk about Jesus. It's a beautiful sight.
Nineteen chapters into Matthew, we hit a grumbling rut when Jesus decided to redefine the Pharisees' idea of divorce. My group leader Gina has had a divorce, and so has Debbie and Peggy and Carol... Are they all adulterers? You could see how clarity was far from some, while others had found peace over the years. Somehow we navigated around these icebergs of scar tissue and found our ways back home to read the lesson that would give answers/cross-references/explanations for the discussion we just had.
Side note: I love the design of this study. All during the week you go out on a limb with the Holy Spirit while reading Matthew, keeping all commentaries and google searches off the table, and see where He takes you. Then the next Tuesday, we meet and discuss which trails He took us down, what dead ends we stopped at and what new fields we frolicked through in the revelatory landscape of our God's Word. No sharing which church you go to, your judgments and conclusions on this, that and the other. It's not that we're that disciplined, it's simply not allowed. Just Scripture. Then we go separate ways and read a handout given with all the answers you maybe didn't have and all the connections, truths and references you needed to come full circle. Even then, sometimes it still leaves a knot in your back.
So when Ann said, "So, is my daughter committing adultery now that she's remarried?" I was quick to think, "Of course not." But where, besides the person of Christ and knowing Him well enough to think He would say the same, do I have proof in my pudding? That had me spiraling, until I got to Jeremiah.
My new (not for sale!) husband and I began reading Jeremiah together but separate, if that makes sense. We discuss it as it germinates but read it on our own. So while taking a break from the divorce dialogue, I flipped over to chapter 2 only to hear God saying, "What did your ancestors find fault with in me that they drifted so far from me?" Is it just me or do you hear the desperate plea of an abandoned husband? He is a heartbroken Lover. I began to sob.
As I've grown older, when I see my dad as a man who has pains and troubles yet still loves fully and still believes there is Truth to be had, I cry. Now as a wife, when I see my husband as a man, who works for our good, who serves with every fiber, who takes off each garment to be vulnerable and to love, who fights the world's candy-coated lies, instead nourishing His soul on Bread that gives Life, I nearly weep. It's too good, it's too tender, it's too Christ. This is to see man elevated to new heights of his being because he is doing as he is told: "Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?"
What joy we have to witness Christ's cross made effective as believers now carry theirs! As heart-wrenching as it is to see man sanctified into truer form, Christ's form, what greater breakage must our heart experience when we see our God articulating His Supremacy in our terms: human emotions.
There is greater understanding when we read Scripture in His voice to us as a grand narrative of an eternity-long courtship, especially with the divorce debacle. What the Pharisees clearly missed was the temporary concession Moses made for hard heartedness and not for the convenience of men, but to protect women. It was not God's purpose. Divorce reveals what is true of every one of us. Sin binds the three branches from which God demands love: our hearts, our minds, our souls.
So, on to Matthew, Jesus changes nothing, instead keeps the protective measure for women, and actually re-illustrates marriage, knowing full well His soon-to-be-died-upon cross was His deathbed for His marital love of the church. We see that God rejected divorce then because it damaged His picture of His own faithful love for His people! He hates it because it causes suffering, a deeply scarring, deserting, innocence-stripping, covenant-breaking kind of suffering. He has experienced it!
And while we're on a roll, let's address on more thing. Perhaps this is why women are given protection. As the Hosea prostitute lover Israel was, crawling back to their Magnificent God after whittling mini-god figurines out of balsa wood, He withholds His wrath and instead embraces His inglorious, prodigal people. ONLY GOD is capable of this grace. God knew no mere mortal man could ever reroute such anger to show grace until Jesus came to buy us the ability and rewire hearts. Thus Moses' concession.
So what about Ann's daughter? Now knowing God's heart behind what we initially read as His condemnation, which believers and innocent divorcees find themselves pinned beneath, we reread Jesus' command in new light. No believer who truly repents should consider themselves as living in a state of adultery. Even further, not all who are divorced are guilty of the sin of divorce. He said, "In this world, you will have trouble..." and then "Take heart! I have overcome the world."
We stand victoriously healed. In fact, we have a compensating joy for the world's bitter pill of suffering and our own hard heartedness. As a young married girl with no authority outside of Christ to even address this topic, I have been encouraged by these women around me as they shared a closing truth last Tuesday: "Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it."
Nineteen chapters into Matthew, we hit a grumbling rut when Jesus decided to redefine the Pharisees' idea of divorce. My group leader Gina has had a divorce, and so has Debbie and Peggy and Carol... Are they all adulterers? You could see how clarity was far from some, while others had found peace over the years. Somehow we navigated around these icebergs of scar tissue and found our ways back home to read the lesson that would give answers/cross-references/explanations for the discussion we just had.
Side note: I love the design of this study. All during the week you go out on a limb with the Holy Spirit while reading Matthew, keeping all commentaries and google searches off the table, and see where He takes you. Then the next Tuesday, we meet and discuss which trails He took us down, what dead ends we stopped at and what new fields we frolicked through in the revelatory landscape of our God's Word. No sharing which church you go to, your judgments and conclusions on this, that and the other. It's not that we're that disciplined, it's simply not allowed. Just Scripture. Then we go separate ways and read a handout given with all the answers you maybe didn't have and all the connections, truths and references you needed to come full circle. Even then, sometimes it still leaves a knot in your back.
So when Ann said, "So, is my daughter committing adultery now that she's remarried?" I was quick to think, "Of course not." But where, besides the person of Christ and knowing Him well enough to think He would say the same, do I have proof in my pudding? That had me spiraling, until I got to Jeremiah.
My new (not for sale!) husband and I began reading Jeremiah together but separate, if that makes sense. We discuss it as it germinates but read it on our own. So while taking a break from the divorce dialogue, I flipped over to chapter 2 only to hear God saying, "What did your ancestors find fault with in me that they drifted so far from me?" Is it just me or do you hear the desperate plea of an abandoned husband? He is a heartbroken Lover. I began to sob.
As I've grown older, when I see my dad as a man who has pains and troubles yet still loves fully and still believes there is Truth to be had, I cry. Now as a wife, when I see my husband as a man, who works for our good, who serves with every fiber, who takes off each garment to be vulnerable and to love, who fights the world's candy-coated lies, instead nourishing His soul on Bread that gives Life, I nearly weep. It's too good, it's too tender, it's too Christ. This is to see man elevated to new heights of his being because he is doing as he is told: "Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?"
What joy we have to witness Christ's cross made effective as believers now carry theirs! As heart-wrenching as it is to see man sanctified into truer form, Christ's form, what greater breakage must our heart experience when we see our God articulating His Supremacy in our terms: human emotions.
There is greater understanding when we read Scripture in His voice to us as a grand narrative of an eternity-long courtship, especially with the divorce debacle. What the Pharisees clearly missed was the temporary concession Moses made for hard heartedness and not for the convenience of men, but to protect women. It was not God's purpose. Divorce reveals what is true of every one of us. Sin binds the three branches from which God demands love: our hearts, our minds, our souls.
So, on to Matthew, Jesus changes nothing, instead keeps the protective measure for women, and actually re-illustrates marriage, knowing full well His soon-to-be-died-upon cross was His deathbed for His marital love of the church. We see that God rejected divorce then because it damaged His picture of His own faithful love for His people! He hates it because it causes suffering, a deeply scarring, deserting, innocence-stripping, covenant-breaking kind of suffering. He has experienced it!
And while we're on a roll, let's address on more thing. Perhaps this is why women are given protection. As the Hosea prostitute lover Israel was, crawling back to their Magnificent God after whittling mini-god figurines out of balsa wood, He withholds His wrath and instead embraces His inglorious, prodigal people. ONLY GOD is capable of this grace. God knew no mere mortal man could ever reroute such anger to show grace until Jesus came to buy us the ability and rewire hearts. Thus Moses' concession.
So what about Ann's daughter? Now knowing God's heart behind what we initially read as His condemnation, which believers and innocent divorcees find themselves pinned beneath, we reread Jesus' command in new light. No believer who truly repents should consider themselves as living in a state of adultery. Even further, not all who are divorced are guilty of the sin of divorce. He said, "In this world, you will have trouble..." and then "Take heart! I have overcome the world."
We stand victoriously healed. In fact, we have a compensating joy for the world's bitter pill of suffering and our own hard heartedness. As a young married girl with no authority outside of Christ to even address this topic, I have been encouraged by these women around me as they shared a closing truth last Tuesday: "Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it."
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Knee deep in a book given me by my new brother, I am cooking transformatively and philosophizing like I did my last semester in Tyson's class. This is not a book for the lighthearted. While most of the progress I've made the past few days has been accomplished waiting at one of our many state governmental offices (DMV, car title, social security... aaah the reality of the name change), the author ever-so-convivially transcribes your preconceived notions. At the beginning of chapter 10, he acknowledged something I had been feeling: "If you are still with me at this point, it can only be because you are a serious drinker of being: a man who will walk back ten paces to smell privet in bloom; a woman who loves to rap sound turnips with her knuckles." Prey tell, how did you know I enjoy a good turnip overture?
While I plan to divulge a bit more later, for now take this...
"Creation is God's living room, the place where He sits down and relishes the exquisite taste of His decoration. Things, therefore, as things, are inseparable from God, as God. Separate the secular from the sacred, and the world becomes an idol shrouded in interpretations; creation becomes too meaningful to make love to. As religion devoured life for the pagan, so significance consumes the world of the secularist. Delectability goes by the boards, dullness reigns and earth becomes a sitting duck for confidence men and tin-fiddle manufacturers of all sorts. Poor earth, poor stars, poor flesh. Without a Giver, they never become themselves."
While I plan to divulge a bit more later, for now take this...
"Creation is God's living room, the place where He sits down and relishes the exquisite taste of His decoration. Things, therefore, as things, are inseparable from God, as God. Separate the secular from the sacred, and the world becomes an idol shrouded in interpretations; creation becomes too meaningful to make love to. As religion devoured life for the pagan, so significance consumes the world of the secularist. Delectability goes by the boards, dullness reigns and earth becomes a sitting duck for confidence men and tin-fiddle manufacturers of all sorts. Poor earth, poor stars, poor flesh. Without a Giver, they never become themselves."
Monday, February 17, 2014
Inspired by my good friend Kelsey's interior design prowess and simultaneous prompting by curious friends and family for a look at our uptown bungalow, I've decided to do a mini-series of posts much like one of my favorite websites: Apartment Therapy. Spoiler alert: we live in 800 square feet of 1-bedroom-1-bathroom-corner-unit paradise, so there won't be much to show. However, we are quite proud of the work that has gone into making it look our own.
So a bit of background on Superman Groves (code for Brian, my husband): if you can dream it, he can build it. Last night we broke ground on our newest project which takes up our entire living room (more to come!). As the girl who can swing a hammer, use a measuring tape and hold my own with the cordless drill, I make a pretty handy assistant... but I am convinced this man could take a caulk gun and his router and remodel the Taj Mahal.
Long before I moved in, Brian began putting his touches on what he considered a stock apartment. Obliterating our lease contract with no hope for a return on our deposit, we now have custom-built bookshelves (installed in the wall), a walnut King-size bed frame, upholstered headboard and ottoman, bathroom shelving, and a beautiful color palate on our walls. I look to him with intense admiration and desire now living in the space he created and customized for us in which to build our lives together. What an easy environment to fully experience the truth and reality of our future hope that we are going to a place that has been prepared for us!
That being said, let us begin. Today: the bedroom!
So a bit of background on Superman Groves (code for Brian, my husband): if you can dream it, he can build it. Last night we broke ground on our newest project which takes up our entire living room (more to come!). As the girl who can swing a hammer, use a measuring tape and hold my own with the cordless drill, I make a pretty handy assistant... but I am convinced this man could take a caulk gun and his router and remodel the Taj Mahal.
Long before I moved in, Brian began putting his touches on what he considered a stock apartment. Obliterating our lease contract with no hope for a return on our deposit, we now have custom-built bookshelves (installed in the wall), a walnut King-size bed frame, upholstered headboard and ottoman, bathroom shelving, and a beautiful color palate on our walls. I look to him with intense admiration and desire now living in the space he created and customized for us in which to build our lives together. What an easy environment to fully experience the truth and reality of our future hope that we are going to a place that has been prepared for us!
That being said, let us begin. Today: the bedroom!
How about that red blanket? It all started with Ol' Glory, our American Flag throw from Faribault Mills, an American Woolen Mills company that got their start making blankets during the Civil War. Brian gave me Ol' Glory last year for Christmas and thus began our picnicking and blanket acquisition habits. Last year, J.C. Penny was selling them like hot cakes on super sale... Alas not anymore. Every few months we would save up and buy another. Big Red is a king-size blanket that found its way at the foot of our bed. And yes, they all have names.
Last year (note: when we were still dating), Brian asked me to write his last name on a piece of paper. Thinking not much of it, "Sure," and I wrote "Groves" in my thoughtless lowercase cursive. What you see above the bed is the product.
Bedding
1. Cream Duvet and Shams - Pottery Barn
2. Ikat Stripe Sheets - West Elm
3. Big Red - Faribault Mill
4. "Always Kiss Me Good Night..." Pillows - Gift from a dear friend
Lighting
1. Floral Toile Lamp Shades - Threshold Brand by Target
2. Clear Turned Glass Lamp Bases - Threshold Brand by Target
Headboard - Homemade
Bed Frame - Homemade
Side Tables - Thrifted and Hand-me-downs
Accent Wall Paint - Valspar Lariat Tan
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
As Brian likes to say, we're tier 2 hipsters... Instagram was too mainstream hipster for us, so we had to go a step further and join "the grid." Basically there's a photo camera app called VSCO cam, which just stands for Visual Supply Company. They also make and sell photoshop software and other things, but their iPhone app has some wonderful filters and photo editing capabilities. The company has an online hosting site for your photos... add a caption, upload and you're done. No one "likes" them, shares them, or tweets them. It's a portfolio of sorts.
All that to say, we have one! I listed the link to the right under "The Groves" in hopes it would be a good way for friends and family to check in with our daily life every now and then:
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Soon - as in 3 days from now - my nominal identity will undergo a change. As I vow a covenant that I hope will last 100 years, I willfully and excitedly lose my old self and put on a new. For a metaphor junkie, this a pretty appealing transformation.
My mother-to-be (my affectionate wording for mother-in-law) asked if I was at all sad to part with it. Growing up, Hyatt was a sort of synonym for toughness. We actually have a home video of my sister when she was no more than 3 years old with stringy blonde curls, naked, playing duck-duck-goose in our living room. She stumps her toe, begins to whimper into a cry. Very determinately, in his little-girl voice, my dad says, "Noooo. Don't cry, you're a Hyatt." And thus a name embodied a family attitude that continues to this day.
But it's time. I feel like I've molted my skin, and I'm naked and baking in the sun. It's time to grow a new skin. I'm past the point of being ready for this transition. Oddly enough, before I fell in love with him, I loved him. That's a proclamation not many can herald. But when you meet someone who is everything you knew to hope for, then you realize they're everything you prefer, and they equally enjoy you... well there's not much else to do but promise to make it last a lifetime sealed with a few kisses. Taking on a name with that kind of a story is an honor to say the least.
And so soon I shall be the newest Olivia Groves. I say "newest," because he has a 10-year-old little diva, rainbow-looming cousin who has very insistently self-identified herself to me as "Olivia #1," followed by, "You can be my back up!" Nevertheless, I join the ranks of a pretty incredible namesake.
Maybe one day I'll change how I say it. Olivia may age into Livy as I wrinkle and grow gray. For now, my significance of an "olive tree" morphs from my singular entity rather to a whole grove of them. As two become one, as we multiply through ministry and build a family, the grove will grow. From it many heads will be crowned, in it many quiet days will be spent, with it we will furnish and feed as each of us are pressed and poured into the finest of oil. Pardon me for perhaps outstretching this imagery, but I can't help but think I am gaining the most incredibly symbolic nominal treasure!
Enjoy the blog makeover!
O.G.
My mother-to-be (my affectionate wording for mother-in-law) asked if I was at all sad to part with it. Growing up, Hyatt was a sort of synonym for toughness. We actually have a home video of my sister when she was no more than 3 years old with stringy blonde curls, naked, playing duck-duck-goose in our living room. She stumps her toe, begins to whimper into a cry. Very determinately, in his little-girl voice, my dad says, "Noooo. Don't cry, you're a Hyatt." And thus a name embodied a family attitude that continues to this day.
But it's time. I feel like I've molted my skin, and I'm naked and baking in the sun. It's time to grow a new skin. I'm past the point of being ready for this transition. Oddly enough, before I fell in love with him, I loved him. That's a proclamation not many can herald. But when you meet someone who is everything you knew to hope for, then you realize they're everything you prefer, and they equally enjoy you... well there's not much else to do but promise to make it last a lifetime sealed with a few kisses. Taking on a name with that kind of a story is an honor to say the least.
And so soon I shall be the newest Olivia Groves. I say "newest," because he has a 10-year-old little diva, rainbow-looming cousin who has very insistently self-identified herself to me as "Olivia #1," followed by, "You can be my back up!" Nevertheless, I join the ranks of a pretty incredible namesake.
Maybe one day I'll change how I say it. Olivia may age into Livy as I wrinkle and grow gray. For now, my significance of an "olive tree" morphs from my singular entity rather to a whole grove of them. As two become one, as we multiply through ministry and build a family, the grove will grow. From it many heads will be crowned, in it many quiet days will be spent, with it we will furnish and feed as each of us are pressed and poured into the finest of oil. Pardon me for perhaps outstretching this imagery, but I can't help but think I am gaining the most incredibly symbolic nominal treasure!
Enjoy the blog makeover!
O.G.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
My most recent "extra-curricular" activity (in the vast supply of my free time living in an internet-less apartment) has been designing a photobook on Shutterfly to recap my summer studies and travels in Italy, Greece and Switzerland last year. Sure, the website was designed for people like me to feel swanky and creative. Nevertheless it was a moment of self-discovery for me: I LOVE designing. After working for a campus ministry and a quarterly publication in college, I knew I enjoyed graphics, but the thought of it being a side production post-college hit me for the first time yesterday. What's better than electronic washi tape?!
When you buy a photobook on Shutterfly, and post about it on your blog, they send you a $10 gift card for future use!
So if you want to check out my new "skeels" then flip through a few of the pages below. Or better, yet, let (pay) me to design yours!
When you buy a photobook on Shutterfly, and post about it on your blog, they send you a $10 gift card for future use!
So if you want to check out my new "skeels" then flip through a few of the pages below. Or better, yet, let (pay) me to design yours!
Photo books are the perfect gift for any occasion.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Palm Sunday is a 24-hour-ago event of the past. The branches that sweeped through the center aisles of traditional churches are bagged and tossed. "Hosanna" likewise is finished being uttered on the lips of Christ's preparatory children and people for this week before the coming crucifixion. It is a week of mourning; the week when dawns brought not yet joy. In fact, dawn brought the commencement of disobedience, betrayal and suffering. Christ's strength tried in this dread act of crucifixion and now victory remains with love. What a joy we see peeping up over the horizon, under a week away with the risen Paschal lamb. Praise be to God!
For as the Old Testament ended in a curse the New begins with an inherited blessing. An eight-part harmony of blessing pronounced on a mount. Aware of what He would make the Jews remember, the mounts where from the law rattled off the implied blessing and certain cursings on Ebal and Gerizim, Jesus shifts the paradigm. Now as He expresses beatus - for we read "he came into the world to bless us" - the Gospel is a dispensation of life whereas the law an administration of death. This new promise allures us to Christ. From the hand of the One who cures to the gracious words that precede out of His mouth, indeed we can say "This must be our sweet and loving Savior!"
From now until Easter Monday there is a beatitude to rest in. This week I plan to highlight one or two a day for meditation. As we light daily incense of prayer before God's throne of grace, we see the success of His mercy ministry on His people as responsive to our pleading. Nothing passes between God-all-hearing and fallen man but through His hand.
The beauty of these blessings and their divine revelation is that we see what God expects from us, the meek impoverished spirits that we are, and what we may expect from Him. The covenant is an enjoyable communion. The agreement between God and man is settled and summed.
Is not faith then but a conformity to these characters and a dependence on these promises? For each of these joy-ushering blessings we see a present blessing pronounced and a future blessing promised. This week, the Holy week - each day one Moriah step closer to the cross - we demarcate this exchange of the law for the cup when we acknowledge for what Christ came "as the great High Priest of our profession in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed."
May we be attitudinally bound to this pronouncement of our new identity, given to rectify the mistakes of a blind and carnal world, removing discouragement from we who are weak and poor, and inviting souls to Christ, making a way for His law in our hearts!
For as the Old Testament ended in a curse the New begins with an inherited blessing. An eight-part harmony of blessing pronounced on a mount. Aware of what He would make the Jews remember, the mounts where from the law rattled off the implied blessing and certain cursings on Ebal and Gerizim, Jesus shifts the paradigm. Now as He expresses beatus - for we read "he came into the world to bless us" - the Gospel is a dispensation of life whereas the law an administration of death. This new promise allures us to Christ. From the hand of the One who cures to the gracious words that precede out of His mouth, indeed we can say "This must be our sweet and loving Savior!"
From now until Easter Monday there is a beatitude to rest in. This week I plan to highlight one or two a day for meditation. As we light daily incense of prayer before God's throne of grace, we see the success of His mercy ministry on His people as responsive to our pleading. Nothing passes between God-all-hearing and fallen man but through His hand.
The beauty of these blessings and their divine revelation is that we see what God expects from us, the meek impoverished spirits that we are, and what we may expect from Him. The covenant is an enjoyable communion. The agreement between God and man is settled and summed.
Is not faith then but a conformity to these characters and a dependence on these promises? For each of these joy-ushering blessings we see a present blessing pronounced and a future blessing promised. This week, the Holy week - each day one Moriah step closer to the cross - we demarcate this exchange of the law for the cup when we acknowledge for what Christ came "as the great High Priest of our profession in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed."
May we be attitudinally bound to this pronouncement of our new identity, given to rectify the mistakes of a blind and carnal world, removing discouragement from we who are weak and poor, and inviting souls to Christ, making a way for His law in our hearts!
*Any wisdom that seems too good to come from my lips most likely comes from Matthew Henry's Commentaries.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Why are boundaries so hard to keep? Because people get flustered when you do. As if there has been no precedent or forethought that setting one may be the more appropriate action to take. What is worse, I get flustered when I try to erect them. Having to put up a fence on your own land is never what you want to spend time doing, nor does it uphold the vision of free-ranging expanse. Just let me be. But it is a protective measure, because vulnerability could be the death of me. Ah-ha! Now we've pinned it.
Vulnerability is double-faced. On one hand, as someone who believes in Someone, I have to be open, honest and staking out my claim to truth. Boring holes, displacing dirt, drilling posts, stringing chicken wire. On the other hand, I am to take refuge, reject self-sufficiency, lean not on the understanding that comes from me, myself and I.
So what am I to do? Lean so heavily that I fall, find myself prostrate, face down. Let my Defender do his job. And then what? Utter in order to adopt the fact that I have been set free to live in freedom. Upon persistence, a second dinner invitation, I can fence myself in with confidence. This is my pre-paid liberty. It's a trickily tight rope to walk across. I was shaky, delivered it poorly, hardly held on, but I made it to the other side. Respect, though it has dissolved and fizzled out of human relation, is something I choose to cling to. Therefore, just as I was declared respectable enough by the Craftsman to be made into something new while I was still splintery (I have written all about these splinters before), so too do His other creations deserve to be utilized similarly. It is a labor of love.
Can I then see this conversation as ground breaking? It is so easy to yell my gossip to eager ears, "NEWS, NEWS, read all about it!"Or in my language community, "Guess what he/she did!!!" Instead, this beat-down principle, respect, that underlies the greatest display of it in all human history, the Cross, perhaps penetrated that disgruntled response of his. I do not expect astonishment. I shut him down, I told him no, I am taken, claimed, accounted for, loved. The first time I saw the Great Gesture truly defended, it was no eye-catching moment for me either. It too came to me in the form of rejection; and quite a bit more devastating, I might add (take a look back at 2009).
But I can pause and recall this little victory dance we call "assurance." It, this snippet of a conversation, this claim to the way of Christ, was not in vain.
Vulnerability is double-faced. On one hand, as someone who believes in Someone, I have to be open, honest and staking out my claim to truth. Boring holes, displacing dirt, drilling posts, stringing chicken wire. On the other hand, I am to take refuge, reject self-sufficiency, lean not on the understanding that comes from me, myself and I.
So what am I to do? Lean so heavily that I fall, find myself prostrate, face down. Let my Defender do his job. And then what? Utter in order to adopt the fact that I have been set free to live in freedom. Upon persistence, a second dinner invitation, I can fence myself in with confidence. This is my pre-paid liberty. It's a trickily tight rope to walk across. I was shaky, delivered it poorly, hardly held on, but I made it to the other side. Respect, though it has dissolved and fizzled out of human relation, is something I choose to cling to. Therefore, just as I was declared respectable enough by the Craftsman to be made into something new while I was still splintery (I have written all about these splinters before), so too do His other creations deserve to be utilized similarly. It is a labor of love.
Can I then see this conversation as ground breaking? It is so easy to yell my gossip to eager ears, "NEWS, NEWS, read all about it!"Or in my language community, "Guess what he/she did!!!" Instead, this beat-down principle, respect, that underlies the greatest display of it in all human history, the Cross, perhaps penetrated that disgruntled response of his. I do not expect astonishment. I shut him down, I told him no, I am taken, claimed, accounted for, loved. The first time I saw the Great Gesture truly defended, it was no eye-catching moment for me either. It too came to me in the form of rejection; and quite a bit more devastating, I might add (take a look back at 2009).
But I can pause and recall this little victory dance we call "assurance." It, this snippet of a conversation, this claim to the way of Christ, was not in vain.
"Help me to see
that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed,
that faith brings a man nearer to thee,
raising him above mere man."
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Charted territory
began to cause problems. So, as the equally-yoked wife of a farmer that my
mother was, she bundled her babies, buckled our bodies in the car seats – mine one-size
bigger for the almost one-year older that I am – and in the direction of the
Monroe, NC, courthouse we proceeded.
Our land was in deed
ours, but the government still and always will own the particulars. So knowing,
via extensive paper trail, more about the plot than we did ourselves, the
topography maps storeroom in the basement of that corinthian-columned building
was our destination.
The irony, you see,
is kinesthetic. A map is not a territory, but in our 4-year-old bodies, the
3-dimensionality confused our developing senses: our fingers, a kibitzer to the
eyes.
Momma borrowed the
county’s version of our farm to take home for water table research, buckled us
into place, and we faded out of the city and its brown, tactile knowledge into
the real land where dirt was dirt.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool."
E.A. Poe pokes fun at himself, at fellow artisans, at his trade. This little insider's jab struck my fancy. Like an embedded meta-pun.
Pioneer of the short story, designer of the literary template, Poe and his contemporaries like Hawthorne, Melville, James...lobbied for parable-like levels of pensive provocation. A short story can and should be "read at one sitting."
Fragmentation was thought to be a fatal blow to experience. But is not the short story a fragment embodied?
From start to finish, tunnel your vision, stop the dog-earing and commit until the final full stop.
Become a poet. "Make a place to sit down. / Sit down. Be quiet."
Become a fool.
Happy Menocal watercolors are happy indeed.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Tapping into the idea of dislocation, put a quartet in a Brooklyn book store and we quickly wade knee deep into the lapping tides of esoteric relationships. Now, please don't go google "esoteric." Instead, assume it to be the spider web of knowledge that so slightly and iridescently can be detected in the right light. And yet, without proper alertness, you'd run smack into it and only later feel the filmy residue of something unexamined.
For the less ambiguous-minded, more scientific, think of it as the supernatural traces that can be detected in the details of certain experiences, occurring distinct from overt divinity. Déjà vu in its obscurity gives us a name for that phenomenon which esoterically connects muddled memories to your present taste or smell or movement or location.
Walter Benjamin warded off homesickness when he was away at college by scribbling his childhood memories. In the process of transferring memory to thought to writing, he found a rather accurate compass for the esoteric charting. He connected the color red to blurred recollections of market streets, the sounds of carpet being beaten to releasing clinging dust particles, the shadow plays he would create betwixt linen sheets to his year of bed-ridden fever. His memoir was his poetic melody. And for this reason, the senses, all en"compass"ing smell, taste, hearing, touch, and seeing became his detective work to best unearth the knowledge that was buried beneath surfaces.
To locate these graven bones, we actually must dislocate ourselves. What catches your attention? When something is disruptive, perhaps? A piece of chicken makes its way onto a waffle with a lacing drizzle of honey. Metallic crystalline infrastructures cupping cardboard bird feeders go up in a public walkway imbuing garden significance onto what was once purely transitional. How about this: a quartet of Mendelssohn sawing musicians engaging in the rhythmic chaos next to genre-organized book shelves.
When anything puts a filibuster on what has until now only ever been routine, we literally and figuratively come to a screeching halt. And if we are lucky enough to be breakable, we will be redirected off our walk-the-plank interstates and taken down back roads to observe what dwells in the solitudes.
This takes me to a Biblical threshold that I must cross. When we make the "un"believable our mode of inquiry, we see Christ as the crazy man He was. The vampirish suggestion that paved a perpendicular intersection to Jewish credence and culture saying, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink," displaced even the disciples well beyond their understanding and comfort: "'This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?'"
This bread and wine Jesus was saying would be the new standard for meal sharing meant that the conditional followers of His ministry could no longer beg for the gift like the pattern of manna-hungry Jewish wanderers in the Old Testament. Putting Himself between the Giver and the gift as if to say, "This is your second chance to get the manna thing right," He refused to let the people spoil their appetites. Making Himself the bread, a peace offering, the meal now is a place of repentance and acceptance. Meals where either plant or animals must die before the partaking meant Jesus was to be on the altar. The cross was before Him, a bloody, flesh tearing feast. And one from which we must eat to be vertically (God) and horizontally (man) reconciled.
This bread is the ipecac of humanity, the thing we eat initially and vomit up, incompatible with our sin corpuses and simply hard to swallow in a world that posits it as poison. Yet "we are what we eat,"so the more we nibble on the bread of Christ, we taste and derive from its sustenance the ability to do crazy things, good things, holy things, sacrificial things, that are surprising to us as the doers.
We come full circle. We have been dislocated. Our initial appetite for this thing we thought was bread now becomes the world's decaying flesh that tricks the eye and leaves the soul's stomach growling, and Christ's flesh becomes this incarnated tangible bread of Heaven.
For the less ambiguous-minded, more scientific, think of it as the supernatural traces that can be detected in the details of certain experiences, occurring distinct from overt divinity. Déjà vu in its obscurity gives us a name for that phenomenon which esoterically connects muddled memories to your present taste or smell or movement or location.
Walter Benjamin warded off homesickness when he was away at college by scribbling his childhood memories. In the process of transferring memory to thought to writing, he found a rather accurate compass for the esoteric charting. He connected the color red to blurred recollections of market streets, the sounds of carpet being beaten to releasing clinging dust particles, the shadow plays he would create betwixt linen sheets to his year of bed-ridden fever. His memoir was his poetic melody. And for this reason, the senses, all en"compass"ing smell, taste, hearing, touch, and seeing became his detective work to best unearth the knowledge that was buried beneath surfaces.
To locate these graven bones, we actually must dislocate ourselves. What catches your attention? When something is disruptive, perhaps? A piece of chicken makes its way onto a waffle with a lacing drizzle of honey. Metallic crystalline infrastructures cupping cardboard bird feeders go up in a public walkway imbuing garden significance onto what was once purely transitional. How about this: a quartet of Mendelssohn sawing musicians engaging in the rhythmic chaos next to genre-organized book shelves.
When anything puts a filibuster on what has until now only ever been routine, we literally and figuratively come to a screeching halt. And if we are lucky enough to be breakable, we will be redirected off our walk-the-plank interstates and taken down back roads to observe what dwells in the solitudes.
This takes me to a Biblical threshold that I must cross. When we make the "un"believable our mode of inquiry, we see Christ as the crazy man He was. The vampirish suggestion that paved a perpendicular intersection to Jewish credence and culture saying, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink," displaced even the disciples well beyond their understanding and comfort: "'This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?'"
This bread and wine Jesus was saying would be the new standard for meal sharing meant that the conditional followers of His ministry could no longer beg for the gift like the pattern of manna-hungry Jewish wanderers in the Old Testament. Putting Himself between the Giver and the gift as if to say, "This is your second chance to get the manna thing right," He refused to let the people spoil their appetites. Making Himself the bread, a peace offering, the meal now is a place of repentance and acceptance. Meals where either plant or animals must die before the partaking meant Jesus was to be on the altar. The cross was before Him, a bloody, flesh tearing feast. And one from which we must eat to be vertically (God) and horizontally (man) reconciled.
This bread is the ipecac of humanity, the thing we eat initially and vomit up, incompatible with our sin corpuses and simply hard to swallow in a world that posits it as poison. Yet "we are what we eat,"so the more we nibble on the bread of Christ, we taste and derive from its sustenance the ability to do crazy things, good things, holy things, sacrificial things, that are surprising to us as the doers.
We come full circle. We have been dislocated. Our initial appetite for this thing we thought was bread now becomes the world's decaying flesh that tricks the eye and leaves the soul's stomach growling, and Christ's flesh becomes this incarnated tangible bread of Heaven.
"Oh the ravel of sleeve of care." -Macbeth
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
A little wiki digging will tell you where this whole Harlem Shake thing supposedly came from. The origin of all origins is the Ethiopian "Eskista" dance...
Which was then taken up in the 1980s and 90s and turned into this...
And then has recently gone viral in millions of forms, normally performed with your group or club association of choice, such as this swim team...
And then brilliant people take this general concept and clip together shots of some of our favorite people, namely John Piper, doing what is now called the "Harlem Shake"...
If you were as clueless about this whole shake thing as I was as of two days ago, hopefully this was enlightening. So next time you are on the dance floor and this little ditty comes on, think Ethiopia and John Piper. Surely, somewhere between those two ends of the spectrum, you will find the well-balanced shake.
Happy Wednesday!
Happy Wednesday!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
The venerable Franz Kafka has been a sort of heralded voice in one of my classes this semester. Our professor, a man of astounding insight, both borrowed and original, who self-referentially enforces his affinity to be called "Tyson," employs Kafka often as our compass for the unnavigable territory of esoteric knowledge.
So to precede a typical Kafkian or Kafkaesque (if you will) posting, here's the runoff of my rainy day thoughts:
Parable and parabola are two things that look in a mirror and gesture each other. They are caught in a game of shadows. The literary and the literal shape a relationship that is simultaneously bilateral and unilateral like following a pre-drawn line on a light pad to transfer an image onto the new, clean paper. Using an image like this to in some way embody all the little images and the grander ones that a parable itself will enliven is an effective illustration tool, I think... Now, look into a mirror, take the tuft of hair closest to the center of your forehead, turn it into a curlicue and then say aloud a sentence-long history about it. Isn't that a parable and parabola all in one?
And now for the milk man himself...(drum roll)...
So to precede a typical Kafkian or Kafkaesque (if you will) posting, here's the runoff of my rainy day thoughts:
Parable and parabola are two things that look in a mirror and gesture each other. They are caught in a game of shadows. The literary and the literal shape a relationship that is simultaneously bilateral and unilateral like following a pre-drawn line on a light pad to transfer an image onto the new, clean paper. Using an image like this to in some way embody all the little images and the grander ones that a parable itself will enliven is an effective illustration tool, I think... Now, look into a mirror, take the tuft of hair closest to the center of your forehead, turn it into a curlicue and then say aloud a sentence-long history about it. Isn't that a parable and parabola all in one?
And now for the milk man himself...(drum roll)...
Leopards break into the temple and
drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over
and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part
of the ceremony.
And now for my attempt at a response; titled ever-appropriately, "Kafka's Leopards' Exit"
The leopards leave their playground, lolloping through the
foyer, purple-tongued and proud; the temple can now be lit, mopped and
decorated for the other play to begin. Encore!
"Think long and hard, my friends. Then read, write, revise." -Tyson
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