Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 159
November 5, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [11.05.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Emily Gibson
Emily Gibson
Emily Gibson
and fall comes through in all its splendor
nothing but love for these two
this might kinda have been a bit like heaven when I was little?
because all of a need a little back up at times
Robert Szucs
these vibrant maps visualize the feather-like flow of rivers all around our world — stunning
so…did you know? mark your calendar and enjoy the superman light on Nov 14
Emily Freeman
how playing an instrument benefits your brain – fascinating research
at 117? the world’s oldest living woman reveals the one food she’s been eating every day for decades
so they adopted a 20 year old cat? and in their short time together, he had so much love to give
he’s on to something good here — and we’re cheering
“I think he’s amazing. And somewhere along the way he became amazing to other people too.” ~his mom
Thank you: a message to the ‘Piano Guy’ from the ‘Cello Guy’ :
“The Earth is a softer place because of your strength in struggle”
does your work matter to God?
The Broken Way Together Tour
if you live in Dallas, Atlanta or Toronto?
it’d be absolute craziest grace to meet you on The Broken Way Together Tour this week
#TheBrokenWay #BeTheGIFT
out of evil there can come good
…you know, there can be a thousand ways to feel like everything is breaking around us?
But in the midst, there’s this & we’ve all got to hold on:
how to love your enemies ( & the people you disagree with politically & theologically)
how she’s using scraps of clothing and turning into so much good
Post of the week from these parts here
… the secret to soul, spiritual formation? and cultural transformation? Right here:
when you’re looking for spiritual formation & cultural transformation
and they asked kids: if you could have any wish, what would you wish for? some wise answers in here
the more likely you are to live for others – the more likely you are to live happily ever after
Thank you. For making The Broken Way debut on New York Time’s Best Seller’s List in its very first week out in the world —
and for Being Part of the Revolution: #TheBrokenWay #BeTheGIFT
Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way — and Experience Deep Transformation
when did I forget that you’ve always been: The King of the World
thank you, Natalie Grant
…and somehow? Maybe our hearts are made to be broken. Broken open. Broken free. Maybe the deepest wounds birth deepest wisdom.
We are made in the image of God. And wasn’t God’s heart made to be broken too? Wounds can be openings to the beauty in us. And our weaknesses can be a container for God’s glory.
Our bad brokenness is made whole by His good brokenness.
If we could figure that out – live that out – then could we know the grace that knows how to live fully, even though we’re brokenhearted?
Keep believing as you look into the week ahead: In Christ—no matter the way, the storm, the story—we always know the outcome.
Our Savior—surrounds. Our future—secure. Our joy—certain.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
November 4, 2016
Links for 2016-11-03 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
November 3, 2016
how to love your enemies ( & the people you disagree with politically & theologically)
Not all enemies carry arrows.
All my life I had liked to think it was only David who had his enemies.
Is it easier to say we don’t have any enemies — so we don’t have to figure out how to really love them?
Even if we passionately politically and theologically disagree with each other — we’re still called to be compassionate toward each other.
Who hasn’t argued hard, been misunderstood, wounded, hurt, who hasn’t been cheated on, talked down, lied about, pierced right through and left heart-broken on some beaten-down back road?
There are a thousand ways to bleed, to nurse wounds and bitterness, and no one knows, a thousand ways to feel like everything is breaking around you.
And I have twisted limbs on my family tree, but no one burnt the fig tree down.
How many years have I have stood in sanctuaries and murmured that one line of the Apostles Creed? “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Have I really believed?
Do all the creed-keepers believe only in the forgiveness of their own sins and shortcomings alone?
Or do they, the Christ-bearers, really believe in the forgiveness of sins and shortcomings and sinners?
In a culture of wholesale forgiveness?
Weren’t we once the enemies? Aren’t our enemies our kin and even when we don’t believe the same as each other, we still belong to each other. Don’t we have to discuss, debate, disagree — and still let each other into the amazingness of grace?
My dad loved another woman and another woman belittled my mama while she slept in her bedroom and scrubbed mama’s memories out of her own house and I’ve done my own spiteful share of burning. I’m the fig branch that should have been hacked off.
I have bowed and said it aloud for decades. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Who lives this?
If we only got into the Christ-faith through the door of forgiveness, how can we claim Christ as our home if we aren’t people who forgive?
Words and ideology on a page are cheap. Grace and incarnating the love of Christ isn’t.
I do want there to be another way —another way, where they pay their debt of pain. I forget that I haven’t had to pay, me bought with the blood of God.
If forgiveness isn’t central to our faith, is our faith really Christian?
And 39 years ago yesterday, a stranger drove over my sister and he drove home to his family. The grief of her gravestone drove us mad.
My little brother and I used to imagine finding that man. Does “love your enemies” have any loop holes? How far can forgiveness go?
I have known this though: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves us all starving and groping in the dark.
In the evenings, in the dark setting in, I sit and knit a bit.
There are flowers on the table, a bouquet spraying over the vase, over the edge. A twisted old limb that somehow bore grace, somehow blossomed.
And I move them, these two wooden needles, these two pieces of wood pointed, sharpened at the ends.
I knit and pray my own wandering version through of an old prayer for old pain:
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.
Enemies have loosed me from earth more than friends have…
Enemies have made me a hunted animal, finding safer shelter than an unhunted animal does.
I found safest sanctuary in You…may too my enemies-made-grace.
I found greatest grace in You… may my enemies-made-grace find Your generous grace alive and radical in me.
I found fullest forgiveness in You… may my enemies-made-grace find faith and freedom in You and Your forgiveness working surprising ways in me.
The longer I walk with you, Lord, I find I have no enemies: only your gift of chisels etching me deep.
Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
In the shadows, there is this — the murmured prayers and the needles with pointed edges touching each other, theses needles looking like arrows.
Looking like they’re looking for loop holes out of love…
But then the needles do the unexpected —
this knitting and uniting of us through a merciful, healing grace.
These strings all knotting now close…
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Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world.
This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
November 2, 2016
when you want to escape from the suffering & brokenness in the world
What do you to do when you want to escape from the suffering and brokenness in the world?
How do you respond to all the brokenness that just keeps coming at you?
Let’s go there in this special video gift just for you, right now, for whatever you’re facing — I’m with you.
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This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
November 1, 2016
when you’re looking for spiritual formation & cultural transformation
The Sunday morning that our little baby from China is dedicated to God?
Our Syrian Muslim refugee family steps through the doors of our little country chapel for the first time, sit in the back row, and Jesus is lifted high and tell me how the world is being made new and I will believe you.
When the whole little country congregation welcomes our Muslim friends, when Arabic words of greeting flash up in front of us farmers and carpenters and and tired mothers, one Muslim mama, Fatin, she blinks back, wipes away, her thanks running down.
And when they say our Chinese baby’s name, call us to the front, and pray that our little found and chosen China baby would walk with Jesus all the days of her life, she turns to me, her broken half heart pounding loud under my hand, her eyes as large as small reflecting worlds looking up into mine —
and I don’t know how any of us are ever found, how any of us are chosen, how any of us, all of us, get the grace of all this being alive together, holding on to each other.
On the eve of the 499th anniversary of Reformation Day — our Muslim refugee family sit next to us in a chapel with a cross held high and the preacher says that there is a way for the needy to be rescued and there’s that little boy in Aleppo, caked in dust and blood, waiting for someone to come, for someone to reach out, and the world changes when we’ve been changed. There is good news that is realer than any headlines because it resuscitates flat-lining hearts.
On the eve of the 499th anniversary of Reformation Day — Fatin calls our baby name across the sanctuary and they come to each other with arms outstretched and the Middle East meets China under a cross in the middle of country corn fields and the axis of the cross is revolutionizing the world and it is possible to see these things with your own eyes.
On the eve of the 499th anniversary of Reformation Day — this cultural moment is begging for a hope reformation, a healing reformation, a hands reaching out reformation.
This cultural moment is begging for transformation — and a nation transforms when God’s people live cruciform.
Cruciform — formed and shaped like a cross, arms out-stretched like the beam of the cross, broken and given out into a broken-hearted world.
Over 400,000 kids are sitting in foster care right now in the United States. There are airstrikes raining in Aleppo and children bleeding through the streets. There are broken hearts beating and bleeding within your reach.
And the call of the cross is relentless and it is ruthless and it will resurrect and make everything new and it will have it’s way and it will cost.
We don’t get to be people of the cross in the world — without being people who die to the world.
We don’t get to be people of the cross in the world — without being people who die to self to bring the love of Christ to the world.
We don’t get to be people of the cross in the world — without being people who live shaped and formed like a cross — cruciform — in this world.
People who love the Cross — are people who will die to things they love.
To carry a cross means you come to an intersection, and you choose Him and never look back.
To become cross-centered, cross-shaped means —
Choosing Christ in the midst of everything else — may mean losing everything else.
But gaining everything that lasts forever.
Spiritual formation — is ultimately cruciformation.
And this cultural moment is begging for a new way, a different way, a broken way of living broken and given like bread into a starving world.
Reformation and transformation happens in places where there is cruciformation.
Cruciformation — it’s is a a scientific definition, a term in molecular biology referring to the transformation from lineform DNA to cruciform (cross-shaped) DNA.
And this cultural moment is begging the DNA of all things to transform from a linear worldview, from a flat-line view of the world, to a cross-shaped view of everything.
From flat screens, from flat faith, from flat-line living — to cross-shaped thinking, cross-shaped seeing, cross-shaped choosing, cross-shaped living, to cruciformation.
The way a life transforms is to become cruciform.
On the first day of the 500th year since Reformation Day — this is the time, for such a time as now, that the people of the Cross commit to cruciformation.
Fatin leans in and kisses our little baby girl from China and the world can transform into the form of something beautiful everywhere our paths cross — cruciform.
[image error]
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
Related:
how we could get to be the kind of people the world needs right now
October 29, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.29.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
grin.02
come meet the 5 year old photographer on the campaign trail
dare you not to smile
new screen time rules for kids, by doctors
teamwork: this is about as real as it gets
“I think being kind and not mean will change the world.” yes, yes, yes, he’s got it
come see what he’s been doing
fascinating right here…must see
how taking the broken way leads you to real wholeness
never underestimate the power of love and caring for another
Rick Wanless
come see how this couple is transforming their farm and sharing it with others
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
this is love — and we can do this!
yes, that: Some Saw What You Did this Week and Wants to Give You a Medal
he serenades their souls
To let myself be broken and loved…
around the world in 343 days
Today Parenting
THIS is what it’s all about – and we can do this!
it’s true: everybody’s going through something
The Broken Way Together Tour
#TheBrokenWay #BeTheGIFT
How to sing your part in a hurting & brokenhearted world:
Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Download Your November G.I.F.T list and #BeTheGift cards and more free printable right here & take the dare to a beautiful life!
come see how these architects work to bring faith into their designs
…no matter how hard or dark things are right now, do this — guaranteed to make a heart burst with more than a bit of light:
if you want to really live when life gets a bit dark, do this
Operation Christmas Child: sharing the love of Jesus year after year
Post of the Week from these parts here:
how to live through the breaking waves of stress, life, and grief
Scott Hamilton on being diagnosed with a brain tumor for the third time, and how he perseveres by always moving forward. Good, good words here
Be Part of a Revolution: How to sing your part in a hurting and brokenhearted world:
The Broken Way
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance — and you could be one of them, one who believes freedom can be found not only beyond the fear and pain, but actually within it.
Pick up your copy of The Broken Way — and break free.
… so that time Christianity Today came up to the farm to do their own little expose :
the two words that entirely changes a life: (that time Christianity Today came to the farm)
give Him all your broken pieces…you don’t have to hide who you are
..real life is happening, and it’s happening right now.
What if instead of waiting for good enough things to happen to us, we could be the good thing to happen to someone else who’s waiting?
What if we could cure our own waiting room addiction by making room in our life to be the good others are waiting for?
What if instead of sitting in life’s waiting room, waiting for a chance for something good enough to happen to check off a bucket list—what if abundant living isn’t about what you can expect from life, but what life can expect from you?
Be the GIFT — give forward the grace you’ve tasted, the comfort you’ve known, the love you’ve felt.
Because the best answer to the suffering in the world is to dare to take The Broken Way —
Dare to be brave — break free from fears…
Dare to live vulnerable — break open your heart…
Dare to sacrifice and surrender — live broken & given into the greatest abundance.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
October 28, 2016
the two words that entirely changes a life: (that time Christianity Today came to the farm)
If you want to know Ann Voskamp, you first have to know her land.
Specifically, the county of North Perth (pop. 12,600), 90 minutes west of Toronto, Ontario. It’s where the mother and writer will spend her whole life—because she is adamant she will die in the same place where she was born.
North Perth’s hayfields and rolling hills belong to farmers who wake at 5 a.m. to work the land that belonged to the grandfathers of their grandfathers, who emigrated from the Netherlands and Ireland and who never set their ambitions on anything more than dwelling in the place God gave them.
These people live close to the ground, like Adam (“groundling”), only they can also make a wicked Dutch butter cake.
This land is one reason—despite her appearance on the New York Times bestseller list for 60 weeks, her ability to alone raise a million dollars for refugees, and her ubiquity on Christian bookshelves and Facebook feeds—Voskamp still won’t call herself a writer.
She says that she’s a “wait-er”—“I have to wait on the Lord for words.” Even her name is plain, she says, “without even the fanciful e.”
Amid her remarkable success since her 2010 breakout, One Thousand Gifts, these farms and fields ground her.
On the release of her second major book—The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life (Zondervan)—Voskamp, 43, is especially mindful of the temptation to grow bigger than her roots.
An extreme introvert for whom fun means curling up and reading Jonathan Edwards, Voskamp is ambivalent about the 10-city book tour she’s about to take. In conversations with her bubbly publicist, she’s trying to secure as many days at home.
“We need to break the ladders and go lower,” Voskamp tells CT on a visit to her farmhouse this summer.
“That means destroying platforms and living hidden lives that have dirt underneath our fingernails, as opposed to everyone striving to get behind a microphone. . . . Numbers can be toxic to our souls.”
Even still, Voskamp has some pretty interesting numbers in her life: 7 children, ages 21 to 2; 600 acres, on which her husband, Darryl (“The Farmer” to her readers), grows corn and raises pigs; 1,000 gifts, which Voskamp made herself write down in a time when gratitude was elusive and which spawned her first book; 1 million–plus copies, which that book went on to sell; and 1 Tim Keller sermon, a different one of which Voskamp tries to read every night before bed.
Readers of Voskamp’s blog, A Holy Experience, will recognize many of these details, recounted in a grammatically intrepid style that has drawn fans and critics alike.
Signature Voskamp is replacing adverbs with adjectives (“he brushed my hand gentle”) and avoiding possessive pronouns (“Christ fills the thoughts”). Some find her free association style moving; others find it distracting.
Even still, says Sandra Vander Zicht, executive editor at Zondervan, the singular style is why her publishing team greenlit the Canadian homeschooler despite not having the ever-coveted “platform.”
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This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
[ We’d love to offer all of our friends this discount code: “Voskamp” to receive a 1 year subscription to CT for only $10. ]
October 27, 2016
if you want to really live when life gets a bit dark, do this
For thirty spins around the sun, these nine old nanas kept a secret from their men.
They did it in the middle of the night.
When that old ball of sun sunk down low and pulled a cover of dark up over the backside of the world, those nine nanas creaked open their back doors and made a their way through the cracked dark.
They called them Drive-Bys.
They did it because of MaMaw Ruth. I had my own Grandma Ruth; I knew about women named Ruth who make clandestine meetings with grace.
“MaMaw Ruth would read in the paper that someone had died and she didn’t have to know the family,” is what one of the Nine Nanas, Mary Ellen said. “She’d send off one of her special pound cakes. She just wanted to put a little smile on their faces.”
It was a girl’s night for Mary Ellen and her four sisters and their three girlfriends, sitting around a table reminiscing and laughing loud over old times.
“We started thinking about what we could do to make a difference like that. What if we had a million dollars? How would we spend it?’ she said.
Those nine women knew it: we’re not here to make an impression —- we’re here to make a difference.
The size of our houses, our wallets, our closets, our trophy case and our cheerleading squad doesn’t make any difference compared to the size of our hearts.
And frankly: The opinions that we have don’t make a difference like the love that we give. We may be known for many things but we will be remembered only by one thing: our giving love.
Anyone can have any size of heart they want.
Those Nine Nanas began brainstorming around a kitchen table, and it was one of the sisters who came up with the idea: start doing their own laundry instead of using the dry cleaner. They sat there and came up with a list of scrimping and saving and shaving their lives clean.
“So among the nine of us, we’d put aside about $400 a month. Our husbands never noticed a thing.”
Then came part two of the Nine Nana Plan: How do you make a difference? You make a difference — by doing things different.
You can’t make a difference by climbing the exact same ladder everyone else, by living exactly the same as everyone else, by consuming the same, buying the same, striving the same, dreaming the same.
You can’t make a difference until you listen to the world differently than everyone else does.
That’s what those Nine Nanas did — they started leaning in and listening at the local beauty shop or where they picked up their groceries.
And when they heard about a widow or a single mother who was in need, guess who would anonymously pay a utility bill or buy new clothes for the children?
Those Nanas would ferret out where that hurting person lived and send a package with a note that simply read, ‘Somebody loves you’ —- and the love they sent always had to come with one of MaMaw Ruth’s special pound cakes.
In the middle of the darkest night, love is always coming for you.
In the middle of the pitch black night, those Nine Nanas drove slow through neighbourhoods looking for fans stuck in windows.
“That told us that the people who live there? Don’t have air-conditioning,” Mary Ellen said.
‘Or we see that there are no lights on at night, which means there is a good chance their utilities have been turned off. Then we return before the sun came up, like cat burglars, and drop off a little care package.’
For 35 years, these love stealthers have been breaking the dark.
35 years. 9 women. 4 am pitch black. Whipping up MaMaw Ruth’s pound cakes. Sending pound cakes all across the country to people making a difference in their community. Opening up the phone book and sending pound cakes to complete strangers.
35 years of hundreds of pound cakes delivered in the dead of night — and not one husband being none the wiser.
There are women who do not need to be noticed out on the street corners to have their backs patted — because there are women who know those who work in the dark are the ones shattering the dark in ways those in the spotlights never can.
There are women who work in secret because they know you always make real love in secret.
There are women who don’t let the right hand know what the left hand is doing because hands that move unbeknownst are most known by the Beloved.
That which is done in secret, that which is broken and given in secret, is a practicing communion.
Live eucharist. Practice communion. Taste koinonia.
Mary Ellen didn’t know when her husband started puzzling over the extra mileage on the car. Didn’t know when he started scratching his head over withdrawals from their savings account of not small amounts of cash. Pulled out his highlighter and started charting a path through their confounding bank statements.
Mary Ellen and those Nine Nanas just knew they had to gather their men and ‘fess up’ to what was suspected: an affair of the heart.
It could start a revolution and change the way this world revolves: What if the world focused on affairs of the heart instead of spending our one life on business affairs?
Kiss open wounds. Caress the bruised back of the broken. Embrace suffering because this is how you embrace the broken-hearted Christ.
Frankly, though, the husbands had had it — they wanted in on the eavesdropping and the drive-bys and the night gift-blitzing the town.
They wanted in on writing down addresses and anonymously paying utility bills.
They wanted to deliver a pound cake and press beauty out of the world.
They wanted in on the giving and the getting joy, they wanted in on breaking a thread or two of themselves to weave strength and hope into where the fabric of society was weak and torn, they wanted in on breaking out of the emptiness of themselves and breaking into the fullness of koinonia and community.
Those 9 husbands looked at how their wives were breaking and giving themselves away — and they wanted to break into the happy abundance of all that.
Small gifts of kindness are contagious. Start a joy epidemic.
Sometimes….
Sometimes you just want to break out of yourself and break into the sacred space of the other. And that Sacred Space of the Other you seek is found when you give to the Other.
The Nine Nanas said that:
“This is our way of giving forward.” Mary Ellen nodded. “We want to make sure that happiness happens.”
The way forward —- is always to give forward.
Life happens. And grace happens. Gifts happen. Happiness can happen. Love gives. Live given.
I do this: bake pound cake.
Bake a pound cake and pound out of hopelessness.
Bake a pound cake made in any old kitchen — and bring it out into the dark and pound out of your pitch black and out of yourself and break the isolation.
Taste Koinonia in the middle of the dark.
The sun will rise.
Dare to take The Broken Way into the abundant life
Take the dare? We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.
Grab the free compliment cards just over at TheBrokenWay.com and gift-blitz a bit of your corner of the world today & hashtag us with #BeTheGIFT #TheBrokenWay!
Download Your November G.I.F.T list and #BeTheGift cards here & take the dare to beautiful life
Find all kinds of free tools at thebrokenway.com
Links for 2016-10-26 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
October 25, 2016
how to sing your part in the world’s broken-hearted hallelujah
If I lay close enough to her at night
I can hear my baby girl’s literal broken heart beating under her scars.
And under stars, I pull her closer,
and tell her a secret she’s got to know about this blue spinning marble of a planet:
Though this World is broken, it is beautiful.
Though your heart will break, that’s where the love will get in,
and though you may feel kinda broken, that’s right where the kindest love will leak out.
This could change everything.
A Dad jumps off a bridge in New Jersery with his two kids.
ISIS is being pummelled with more airstrikes than any other 7-day period in this war against the Islamic state.
50 million children sit as refugees this very moment… and more than half of those refugees fleeing from conflict are Child Refugees.
Headlines scaled with the most contentious campaign in living history.
My daughter breathes deep in sleep, her every breath a hoping that the world, that all of us figure it out. And this, this is the miracle that can happen in a broken world and we can be those making a broken world into a more beautiful world:
Love is really love—when you are loving the unlovable.
Forgiveness is really forgiveness—when you are forgiving the unforgivable.
Faith is really faith—when you believe for the unbelievable.
And there is a grace that says even this is not impossible and that makes you one of the impossables.
In a world of confusion and contention, of war of and strife and suffering and brokenness, we could get to be one of the imposs-ABLE who do imposs-able things:
The world needs us who will wage love in the face of war.
The world hurting for people who will daily choose intentional acts of kindness to preemptively destroy acts of violence.
The world’s begging for us to be the broken and brave who know when the stakes are the highest, kindness matters the greatest, who believe that the strange brokenness of the world can be healed a bit by the kindness of strangers and the smallest seeds of kindness can begin to break the worst kind of brokenness.
I know, Brave Heart, I know — Your heart may be busted and bruised and a kind of broken but this is the healing secret of what you do with your one broken heart — you give glorious bits of it away, because this is the way you begin to heal.
Because there is no deep healing in our hearts — until we are part of deep healing in the world. We keep healing as we keep being healers.
Because the best way to love in a brokenhearted world, is to feel along for the brokenness in things,
and then break off bits of our own hearts and pour them into that brokenness — to make a kind of wholeness.
Listen for the pain in the world today and pour love into it.
Listen for the ache of things today and lodge a bit of your heart in right there.
Listen today, listen — the broken beat of the world needs a bit of the grace of you, of Him.
So serenade strangers on the street and smile at the neighbour next door today and wave longer and harder at the mailman and strand on a street corner, any corner,
your corner and hand out as many compliments as you can and tell one woman she is beautiful and tell one old man how needed he is, and Give It Forward Today into the ache of the world —
– be the GIFT — give forward the grace you’ve tasted, the comfort you’ve known, the love you’ve felt, give forward a bit of the kindness you have found and the gifts you’ve seen and the wounds of the world are counting on the people of the Word to bind up the brokenness with broken off bits of their own heart.
Because the best answer to the suffering in the world is to dare to take The Broken Way —
Dare to be brave — break free from fears…
Dare to live vulnerable — break open your heart…
Dare to sacrifice and surrender — live broken & given into the greatest abundance.
Because with-ness breaks brokenness and shame is a bully and grace is a shield and never be afraid of broken things, because this is how He is remaking everything.
So, Beat, broken heart, beat on in the world.
You will be broken and you will be loved.
Dare to take The Broken way.
You don’t ever have to be afraid.
The Broken Way – A Daring Path into the Abundant Life: Take the Dare
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This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
How to sing your part in a hurting & brokenhearted world:
Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Download Your November G.I.F.T list and #BeTheGift cards here & take the dare to beautiful life
Resources:
The Broken Way: A Daring Path into The Abundant Life (available today)
Print your November #BeTheGift Calendar
Print your own set of #BeTheGift cards
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