Looking Back, Looking Forward

My friend and co-worker Jill posted this on her facebook page the other day:  “Summarize your 2016 in three words…”

My reply was: "God showed up."

I am pondering the events of a year that is wrapping up that had many peaks and valleys.  It held deaths and weddings, chaos and peace, need and provision, endings and new beginnings.  I have seen miracles happen in it.  I am not expecting anything different than that to keep unfolding in 2017. 

I ordered a little book that arrived this week.  This morning in it I came across this sentence:

“Miracles can only be exhibited in brokenness.”  That short statement fits what I have been considering in the last several months—His power to heal and restore, His endless invitation for us to come close, to know Him, to believe in His goodness, to witness and participate in His provision coming to earth.

As we enter 2017, be confident in the care and power of a God who is going to be there, doing His work, waiting for those who will believe Him and live in a way that will open the doors for miracles.  The ones we read about in the scripture occurred because a human being was in a circumstance of difficulty of one kind or another, heard His word, believed His intent was good, and followed His call.  I am counting on seeing God do more magnificent things in the year ahead. 

I wish you all a happy new year, and one where you believe Him and are filled with wonder at how He meets you in it.

Barriers Broken

He came in flesh to live with us, this God of restoration and will do the most unlikely things to woo us back and to reveal His vast and strong love. 

This morning as I was thinking about this amazing series of events unfolding, it occurred to me for the first time that at the very moment when He was born a tiny picture of His greater coming work was happening in miniature.  Mary, being a virgin, would have had her hymen still intact until that moment of Jesus’s birth.  It was a thin veil of skin broken and a symbol of the intimacy that had now begun for us all by His work.  This incarnation was a whole new way of God coming to meet us, to live with us, to have the barrier between us removed.  That tiny piece of flesh in Mary was torn, some blood spilling out at this arrival of a new king and a new kingdom.  This young woman who had trusted His greater plan, experienced the first breaking barrier as He entered the world. 

And so it can be for each of us as we align our wills to yield to His, that more and more barriers are broken because His death for us tore the big barrier forever.  Through this freedom He won for us, we are now enabled to win the little victories that we are here to bring to earth.

Photograph from morguefile.com by diannehope  

The Unexpected

We would have thought God would choose a more spectacular way to save the world. Perhaps His Son would be sent in glistening armor, followed by a massive army of angels to plow through the evil in the world in an unquestionable display of power and simply set up a new government.  Instead He sent a baby boy who would take another thirty years to begin doing something extraordinary.  Even then, the things Jesus used...water, bread, fish, words, wine, fishermen were not anything beyond the norm.  What He did, however, with the ingredients of the everyday was superb. 

We can notice a few things:  His perspective was different. His motivation was different, and His goal uncompromised.  It is stunning what happens when belief and willingness are added ingredients to the stuff we find all around ourselves as we mix together the activities of our lives into the recipe of a day. 

Jesus has never forced anyone to hear, see, or follow.  In fact He seems remarkably satisfied with those who are frayed but honest, gritty but humble, average but available to see what He is up to in each moment.  It has always been simply an invitation, never a demand.  Rare is the person with so much power who chooses not to exert it over someone they could easily control.

The opportunity is to pause and notice, to taste and see, and it happens when we step into the water of faith and walk through the waves believing that a God who loves lavishly will somehow, eventually work all the things of our real lives together for the good.  We can easily opt for hanging our own glittering baubles and tinsel and lights over our lives to make them look good and feel satisfying.  Or we can wait and trust and watch our burlap rough circumstances be the very things that miracles are birthed from.  The older I get and the more I understand that His way and economy are never the way that mankind would run things, the more excited I get about what He will do with a life that will offer itself to the Wild and Grand Invitation. 

Warning:  You may be called into some difficult days.  Those are the places He has the fewest willing participants.  Those are the places He wants to make the most amazing miracles happen because someone was willing to love there.  It isn’t always going to be fast food service or instant results like an ATM.  But the more we draw on Him, the more we savor His company, the more we see His faithfulness, the sweeter the taste of following Him becomes.  And, after all, He IS the gift.  We are invited to unwrap each day with expectation to find His presence.

I wish you a merry Christmas and the most delicious new year.

Photograph from morguefile.com by  Jogonesoft

The Nativity

Mary SAID YES, then WALKED OUT HER FAITH.  She LABORED to bring God to earth.

Joseph TRUSTED what God said and planned, even if there were skeptics who would forever raise their eyebrows, spread rumors, and shun his family.

Jesus CAME, and YIELDED to His Loving Father’s greater plan every moment of His life.

Shepherds were amazed, and REJOICED.

Wise men traveled far, knowing that to SEEK HIM was a divine and amazing opportunity.

These were all living people who made choices, some of them in extremely difficult circumstances, to respond to God.  It wasn’t just theory for any of them.  They adjusted the rest of life to be participants in His plans, to share what they were observing, to discover more of who He is and meet Him in person.  They ended up with incredible stories to tell.  It is the invitation to all of us.

Photograph from morguefile.com by paulabflat

The Impression We Leave

It is the irony of the Christian life and the paradox of a Savior who was both Lamb and Shepherd.  We are invited into a life of yielding and following Him.  Along the way, it will often feel like lying naked in the snow…vulnerable, shocking, stark.  

As we decide to offer it all, in the moments as they come, and spread ourselves fully to His will, a mystery occurs.  In that point of challenge, and a decision of trust in His goodness, we will leave a mark of heaven on earth.  Walking in our own strength looks only like two footprints, that we were here.  Discipleship will leave something more beautiful.  We get to choose the imprint we leave.

Photograph from morguefile.com by mmainco

Using the Scraps

This isn’t the time of year when birds are making nests, but it is the season, leaves long gone now, when the nests used in the previous months can be more clearly seen tucked in the branches that held them securely through the warm spring and summer. 

In the seasons past, each bird was building something for the future.  Each chose a secure place in which to build a nest that would hold her eggs.  But consider what each used to build that nest.  Birds gather a whole lot of things that do not hold life in themselves anymore to make those nests.  They use broken pieces of twigs and sticks, cut grass and clippings, dead leaves, yarn, string or thread, human hair or animal fur, feathers.

This week I noticed two nests in a tree just outside our living room windows.  Even in the now stark days, snow falling, wind blowing, they sit securely.  They succeeded in their purpose of being a good place for the laying of eggs and the nurturing of young life of the baby birds who were gaining strength to set out on their own.

I have been impressed for weeks now about the reality of restoration that is available to us.  God is mightily at work to build strong and beautiful things out of our broken lives and use us for holy purposes in the realities of a messy world.  Those nests showed me something else.  They reminded me that I can take the dead things of my life and gather them with the mud of His grace and care and promises, and instead of trying to discard the messy stuff, let it be used, now redeemed, for the birthing of new things. 

Our painful experiences hold the very ingredients that can enable us to be compassionate with those who are suffering, and are the grace-nests or sorts…evidence that whatever our past, even our current struggles, we have a very good reason to hope. In these weeks of Advent, of waiting for the coming and all that that meant and means still, let our hearts burn brightly with the hope that is embedded in His story.  He came, He isn’t afraid of the realities, He is brilliant and picks up every available piece and winds it together to become useful for His purposes.  He has peace and joy for us, and we don’t have to chuck the mess of our own stories to have them.  Some of the brightest things forward will be birthed from the scraps we make available to His work.

Photograph from morguefile.com by TwoCherryFarm

Christmas Preparation

One small piece in my morning readings (from Oswald Chambers).  In the midst of holiday preparations and busyness of the weekend, perhaps you could carve out a few minutes to pause and consider this.  It ultimately is not about what we lose or give up, but the amazing life and relationship with Him that we make room for. 

 “Sanctification means more than deliverance from sin, it means the deliberate commitment of myself whom God has saved to God, and that I do not care what it costs.” 

This is part of Advent…”Let every heart, prepare Him room.”  The result?  “And Heaven and nature sing.”

Photograph from morguefile.com by luisrock62

Cynic?

I realized this morning that I am at a crossroads of sorts.  I have been in a rhythm of faith and belief for more than four decades.  I have also been in some rough situations that stretch and frustrate me.  Granted, I have considered and prayed about them, about my heart/actions and the heart/actions of others, but I also find that I have let my mouth speak too critically too often and am realizing the cost it could take.  Although I have a high degree of hope in transformation and in God’s faithfulness, I also can get cranky when I don’t see it unfolding, especially when apathy seems to be the prominent tone in any given circumstance. 

I have a choice.  I can dive into a pool of cynicism or stand on the presence of an utterly brilliant God who is assuredly at work, and wait for His answers to arrive.  I can complain or I can join Him by quiet listening, quick responsiveness, and vulnerable availability to what He wants to shape in me along the way.  I am sensing that this is a crucial time.  What kind of woman I will be in the years ahead, and how I influence the atmosphere anywhere I am will likely be determined in part by how I choose to live out these things now.   Paying attention to these nudges is a part of the shaping He does in us.  I don’t want to be resistant to His mercy and wisdom in them; it is a gift.

Photograph from morguefile.com by 5demayo

A Reason for Hope

Hope is not logical.  Hope anyway.  

Nothing in the unfolding of God coming to earth is logical.  The Son of God planted into the womb of a virgin by the Holy Spirit…The Creator tucked small into a tiny human body—a baby, for heaven’s sake…The ultimate visionary growing up as part of a family…The Holy One gathering a company of friends who weren’t the cream of the crop…God serving man…The perfect One dying…The dead one rising again to bust through the boundaries our sin had caused.  His life offered to save ours, His resurrection announcing eternal (and for every single day of our gritty lives) Hope, His reign continuing still and expanding wherever love and forgiveness and grace are expressed. 

Religion packages things neatly.  God is continually surprising those who are willing to follow Him around the unexpected turn in the road.  They are drawn to believe for this moment because their hearts burn with some awareness that He is real, He is good, and He is for us. 

In these days, faith is still looked upon as foolishness by many.  It will always be the diamond in the rough, the unexpected response to a world that is not fair.  Faith will never be the most popular thing on the planet, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t the most trustworthy path. 

Photograph from morguefile.com by doctor_bob