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.
Friyay!
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.
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