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

Role Reversal

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.