Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 166

Links for 2016-08-06 [del.icio.us]

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my new book & a new dare we all need right now

This is the moment we all need each other — that I need you.

This is the moment we look at each other and say we need each other and maybe there’s a better way.

The summer I turned 16 was a hot, muggy summer, and the tree frogs sang anxious like they do this summer and the wheat harvest was heavy with yield.

I spent humid nights cutting up the thin skin of my wrists, bleeding out of pain I could no longer contain. What do we do with pain we can’t contain? Is the worst human emotion feeling alone? 

Feeling like no one understands us may be what overwhelms us the most.  

That summer, my mom was in a locked psych ward, my dad was walled off to us, angry and silent, the grass drying and dying over my sister’s grave, the whole world teetering on the edge of some great chasm of despair, and me, hemorrhaging a bit. Or more than a bit.

What I know is this: Your unspoken broken will break you unless you release it. Unless you speak it.

You’ve let me do this here — and this is me taking your hand, looking you in the eye, and thanking you a thousand times for being my safe place, for letting here be our safe place us both to be real and unfold.

What I know is: We all carry our unspoken brokens. And they will break us unless we reach out.

The summer I turned 40 — I felt a whole new kind of broken. Turns out what can happen when you’re halfway through your life, you wonder if you’ve found a truly meaningful way through your life?

What can happen is you would give nearly everything for more time just to get more right, less wrong. You can change — change into someone who’s begun embracing a love so large it broke her heart all over again in a thousand aching places, a woman who surprises you by longing to meet the world’s suffering with her own, because she knows that wounds can heal wounds.  

You can find out your heart is exploding and love and suffering are kin in ways we may not want to admit. 

Honestly, what happened is — I didn’t quite know the way to put all these broken pieces back into place. And maybe that was the point?

Maybe — maybe instead of trying to put all the broken pieces of your life together again — maybe there’s deeper peace in reaching out to give those broken pieces away?

That’s what I had done. Instead of trying to put the pieces of my brokenness back together again, I began to give the pieces of my broken heart away though I didn’t know how, and I didn’t often want to even—didn’t even know what it truly meant. And I got it all wrong—in countless ways.

But, if I know anything, I know there’s no more powerful force in the world than giving. For God so loved — He gave.

I’d lived it  —in thanksgiving — I’d given thanks for a thousand gifts, and it had begun to radically transform my life. But what if the story didn’t end there? Giving can’t stop at thanksgiving. 

What if life is ultimately about living broken and given? Taking everything as grace, giving thanks for it — and then being broken and given.

What if brokenness itself was meant to be embraced and given? 

What if brokenness — could be made into abundance?

This I began — not to write about. Not laying the way down on paper. But to simply, quietly live — wrestling the way out in my own skin, with the shards of my own busted heart.

Because there is nothing we need to know more than how to live with our one broken heart.  How do you live with your unspoken broken? What is an honest answer to suffering in a broken world? What matters more than figuring all this out? 

This is what happened too: We found ourselves opening up our front door and letting the broken, the homeless, the abandoned in — and seeing ourselves. I traced my own scars —- and the scars I kept making. I sat with the brokenness under my own roof — and began to believe that brokenness is always the best beginning. I began to embrace it in startling ways: Sitting with brokenness is how wholeness comes to meet you.

I went to Iraq, Haiti, Rwanda, Uganda, Guatemala, Ecuador, inner city North America, backroad Canada, China and sat with the forgotten and marginalized, sat with women who saw their husband’s heads blown off by ISIS, women who could only carry two children in their arms as they fled the killing and had to choose between children — and had to live with themselves after the choosing.

Met you, all over the world — and you handed me your broken hearted hallelujahs and together, we broke a bit —- and began to break free.

And this is the one thing I kept fiercely doing:— I didn’t turn away from brokenness. I kept choosing to live the most authentic, transformative way I know: I chose to live given. Giving Thanks. Being Broken and Given. 

And then, very slowly, I started to write. Did any of this broken way make any sense in a broken world? At times, I wanted nothing more than to give up. Eventually, I passed the story to a woman who intimately, powerfully knows brokenness in her own life and the world’s, Christine Caine.

“Ann — I read The Broken Way with tears streaming down my face, my Spirit crying out YES, YES, YES, YES!

 If we can live out the truth contained within The Broken Way, I believe we will reach & impact our generation like never before. 

So powerful. So prophetic. So profound. Everyone needs to read this book.”

I reached out to a pastor and Senior Editor at the largest Christian publishing house:

“I’ve never felt more “wrecked,” more grateful, more transformed—on any other project I’ve been part of in thirty years of publishing experience.”

And an associate publisher said something I’ll never forget: “I believe this book is even better than One Thousand Gifts. Exquisite.

The signature of knock-out writing is this: it does more than touch people, it moves them—deeper into who they are meant to be. The Broken Way moves readers deeper into who they are meant to be…”

Sometimes you need other people to be your eyes and ears, to hear your own heart in ways you can’t. Anxiety and fear can make you blind to the abundance being made out of your brokenness.

So comes this summer and I turn around with this story of The Broken Way: The Daring Path to the Abundant Life —-and it turns out the world’s more than a bit broken with fear and shootings and anger and blood in the streets and horror on children’s faces and deepening chasms of division everywhere we turn.

This is the moment we all need each other. This is the moment I need you and maybe you need me and we need to move deeper into who we are meant to be…

This is the moment we could together dare to take The Broken Way and believe it leads to the abundance we all need right now.

And maybe — maybe before this little story releases in October, we could join together as the GIFTers, live out this dare of #365GIFT — be GIFTs and Give It Forward Today, sit a moment with weekly short videos dares, starting next week, that offer these Give It Forward Today daily dares, intentional acts of living broken and given, that become a bit of healing, a bit of genuine wholeness.

Because this is the moment, right now, here, we are at a crossroads. We can all feel it.

And what does not matter right now, is labels and rhetoric and loud arguing — what matters is that we love each other beyond labels, that we sacrifice for each other regardless of differences, that we live broken and given right into the brokenness, with bits of our own broken hearts.

We can be polarized by differences or be characterized by living given. 

We can debate about the national dialogue or we can engage in a neighbourly dialogue– listening well, hearing better, being kind always.

We can fall prey to the politics of division or fall on our knees and pray to be in a state of united kindness. 

Kindness isn’t weakness and humility isn’t a liability and giving forward to each other may be the only way forward with each other.

This is the moment a whole broken world needs us to be the lovers and the reachers, the GIFTers and the witnessers, to be the darers and the willing and the broken and the given.  

Right now is the time we need to not be afraid of broken things — because He is redeeming everything.

Now is the time, for such a time as this…

we could dare to maybe take a deeply more meaningful, powerful, transformative way — a broken way.

 

Email friends, come watch The Broken Way Mini-Movie with us right here 

PRE-ORDER TODAY

Join me in #365GIFT, starting with videos in your inbox next week — and become a GIFT to the world, every day for a year, a brokenhearted hallelujah, living broken and given, one intentional act of brokenhearted compassion at a time. Join us and let’s begin together next week?

  Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleJOIN ME »

Dare to be a GIFTer, to live broken & given. Take The Broken Way.

Related: 1 key way of great relationships, great lives, great countries [Pt #1: What We All Need Right Now]

Book cover and photo credits: Mary Anne Morgan and Hope Voskamp

Links for 2016-08-03 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

1 key way of great relationships, great lives, great countries [Pt #1: What We All Need Right Now]

When I carried her into ER the first time, with that brave, broken half heart of hers, the doctor asked me point blank:

How did she get into this country?

I keep it brief, to the point:

“Love got her here.”

And I don’t mean what he thinks I mean. 

Yeah, I don’t tell the doctor about that 10,000 KM flight from Beijing across the top of the world.

That there was a letter of approval from Immigration and the Ministry of Child and Family Services, there was nearly a year of relentlessly pounding paperwork and a million brave people in agencies and departments who locked arms to make a bridge from us to her — because none of that is the long and short of it, really.

Love got her here.

Love got all of us here.

And yeah, you bet, folks can yell across aisles and Facebook streams, at the other and the different and the loudly opinionated with an opinion far different than ours, but somewhere along the line, we’re all the same kind of different with the same kind of story:

Love made us all and love is what got us all here.

Which is another way of saying: Sacrifice got us all here.

Someone sacrificed something, and someone, to get us all here in this country.

Someone loved something more than themselves and sacrificed safety and ease and comfort and climbing higher up some flimsy ladder, so you could get to live in this country.

Someone sacrificed shavings off their own heart to get you into this relationship, this marriage, this community, this place right now.

And I hold our broken and brave baby right there at my shoulder, her hands clutching strands of my hair, her burying her head deeper into my neck, and I look around at a room of interns and doctors and surgeons and nurses with names like Cheruvadi and Maricor and DipChand and we’re a nation of Sacrificers.

A nation of Givers and Gifters and Sacrificers and Reachers, people who give when it costs and step up to lay it all down and choose to take less to give more.

People who know: The foundation of anything worth anything is always sacrifice.

Because the real Truth tellers and Freedom Dwellers believe that when things are crumbling, when foundations are giving away, when relationships and hopes and dreams and countries and our world feels like it’s falling apart —- there is only one shape the pieces of our brokenness can take to know wholeness —- and that is the shape of the Cross.

If your healing doesn’t look like a sacrificial cross — it isn’t healing and it won’t heal your soul. If your country, your relationships, your choices don’t look like a sacrificial Cross — you will end up dying in a thousand ways that never even crossed your mind.

You fit into the abundant life, the life you ultimately want — when you live shaped like a Cross. Cruciform. Sacrificing.

And you can say all you want about love and sacrifice and choosing a Truth-telling life — but your truth about love, it ain’t the whole truth if it doesn’t look like the sacrifice of the Cross.

The only form real happiness can ever take is cruciform .

The only way to break free into the abundant life — is to live broken and given. Because life’s not about choosing a lifestyle — but a way to serve.

In the middle of the night — she cries for me from her crib — and from our bed, I reach for her. And our hands meet — and she laces her fingers tight through mine… And that’s all she needs.

What dark places and hard times need us all to do is reach out and hold on.

She pulls my hand up to her face, then cups my face in her hands… She lies there cupping my face between her hands, slow sleep breaths warming my face. I kiss her forehead the gentlest.

Love got us all here.

Sacrifice got us all here.

You have got to sacrifice something for someone — or you will have nothing and no one. Because without sacrifice — we have nothing.

And there are 7 things that a country, relationship, or life, cannot have:

Power without principle.

Money without work.

Work without meaning.

Comfort without conscience.

Leading without character.

Love without sacrifice.


Ways without Christ.

It’s not necessary to feel great for a country, a relationship, a life, to be great — it’s only necessary to greatly sacrifice.

The doctor ends up saying her broken heart needs surgery soon, that she needs deep healing.

And I nod — healing. There’s a way, for all of us.  A way through brokenness…

I listen to it in the dark, her heart, one brave, sacrifice beat after another — steady and sure of the healing coming.

 

[Coming this week: Part 2 & a Kinda Big Announcement & a dare… to something better, something healing]

 

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.30.16]

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:  

Christine Anderson 
Christine Anderson
Christine Anderson

ready for a quiet walk?

smiling

a fascinating newly released study on how a hummingbird flies without crashing

bsbtauldl

you must come see some of the most clever invitations

anyone else want him too?!

Sugar Salt Pepper

not something you’ll see everyday!?

our pizza of the future? what do you think?

 This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul: 
FREE daily printables to encourage you

Simply fill in your email here and the whole library of free printables and tools unfolds right before you:

Sign-in/Subscribe here for immediate access to the whole library of free printables, framables & free tools!

  Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleSIGN-IN »

50 good people stepped up to help right here 

a beautiful listen

Shady Ramzy
Shady Ramzy
Shady Ramzy

some extraordinary sites captured in the rainforest

dare you not to laugh along

how she celebrated her 11th birthday? cheers from here 

wish I could share this with every parent — great ideas here

you’re welcome

now here’s an idea to cheer about

a hotel designed to give you the power to change lives: yes, yes, yes

Today Parents

she smashed the world record half marathon – while pushing a stroller

Andreea Berindei
Andreea Berindei
Andreea Berindei

self taught artist – you must come see her stunning work

turn it around

Sharon Hodde Miller

good words right here

Starting the days with @IFgathering’s new study Woven has been the best decision –

It’s not too late to join us!

standing ovation

how to face the challenge facing all women

[& how to support women to be all they’re called to be]

everyone needs an advocate

Post of the Week from these parts here:

Dear You… a letter for all of the hard weeks

there’s room for everyone

“the human race – we have more in common than we have different” please don’t miss this one

God is here

Spirit of the Living God

  [ Print’s FREE here: ]

 …this is going to get real personal:

You are seen & known.

You aren’t just another face in the crowd, you aren’t just left fighting your battle, trying to slay your giants, forgotten & alone on the backside of nowhere.

You aren’t just a number — your name, your name is engraved into the palm of His hands. 

He knows you — He knows that thing you can’t say out loud, He knows the soreness of the hidden wounds you’ve been carrying around on the inside, He knows the weight that you’ve been lifting & trying to pretend isn’t even there.

He wrote a love letter to you about it all; He didn’t just write the Word–He wrote it for you … He wrote it to you — personally.

He wrote your name on His hand — personally.
So let’s believe it and
Never buy the lie
that it matters how you’re ranked
in the eyes of the world — 
when what ultimately matters
is how you are ranked 
in the hearts of your people 
and the eyes of God.

 

[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us each day?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

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.

Dear You… a letter for all of the hard weeks

Dear you,

Dear Self and me and you and us,

Really, it’s all going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay.



Promise.

Remember when you were 16 with that ridiculous hair?

And how you’d thought that by the time you got to here, to now, it was going to be good? That by now everything would be all good.

That by now you’d know down in the very marrow of your bones, what it’s like to really live loved. That you’d be known. Fully known. And wholly embraced.

That the Big Dream would have happened, that the peace and the purpose and the Big Point would be under your skin, that the awkward would be gone and that you’d finally fit and that your life made a real difference, you’d made a real mark, and that you really mattered.

You don’t have to worry: We all get to make one unforgettable mark. And every day, with every word, we get to decide: Do we mar the world, or mark the world?

Why in the world disdain the small? It’s always the smallest strokes that add up to the greatest masterpieces.

Because the thing really is: Do we ever really know which mark we make — that will matter the most? The extraordinary things happen nowhere else but in the everyday and today can always be the beginning:

That card you signed and sealed and put in the mail, the way you smiled and nodded to the white-crowned woman bent over the still-green bananas, the way you dug around in the dirt and and left that seed or that gift of the knees and that prayer whispered for a stranger or that glass of water you handed to someone and winked because you just knew — You’ve got to remember: we don’t know when and how we are leaving the greatest marks on the world. It all matters.

Believe it: Every tremor of kindness might erupt in a miracle on the other side of the world.

And the only way to ever leave beauty marks on the world is with bits of yourself — and this will hurt. Things of realest beauty don’t bring us glory — but Him glory.

Dear you, and self, and me, and us, —  Just For Today —  take these words, words of Dag Hammarskjold[image error], Secretary-General of the United Nations, words that you can take to the bank, take to eternity: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.” Christ left the ninety-nine for the one.

Where you are, with that one child, that one street, that one call, it is a noble, Christ-called thing. It only takes one person to change the world — and one individual, one soul, can be all your world.

Really, beautiful You: The most exquisite marks anyone makes with their life — are the marks done in secret. The mark that no one — but One — will ever see.

And tell yourself this when you feel forgotten and invisible and unimportant: So the celebrities get their celebration here.

But the wise are the hidden who hold out for heaven — and the applause that comes from God.

This is to choose the far greater.

I know you’re brave … and you’re scared. Because you keep doing big things that seems so small and you wonder where all this is really going and you only get one life here —

And though you’re weary, you do hard things and you keep getting out of bed and this is always the hardest part — and you keep believing that Christ didn’t leave this world until He showed us His scars — and He won’t ever let you leave this world until you leave your most beautiful mark. To show Him.

So Just For Today — listen: you’ve got to keep going.

His Kingdom is Upside Down and in Him your part is large and lovely and needed and art.

So go get the milk and take out the trash and throw in the laundry and wave giddy to the neighbors because there is a plan and there is a purpose and there is a God in heaven who didn’t just ink you onto the palm of His hands but etched your name right into Himself with nails and He’s hasn’t just got your number, He’s got your heart.

He sees you, hidden in Him, and you aren’t ever forgotten because God can’t forget those right in Him. You’ve never missed the boat when you’re holding onto the Cross.

So really — you’ve got to believe it for your 16 year-old-self and 56 year-old-self and for yourself right now: really, it’s all working out okay.

Because God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story, and His perfect love absorbs all your fear and His perfect grace carries all your burdens, and your story is a happily ever after because Christ bought your happily ever after so you always know how this story ends:

You’re going to be okay.

Dear Self, tuck this away to read again whenever you need to know it again — and promise me, you’ll laugh and sing and dance a bit today?

Heaven and His Kingdom and The Feast is coming!  — so go ahead and pass down the fudge brownies.

Love,

Me.

 

 

Links for 2016-07-28 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

how to face the challenge facing all women [& how to support women to be all they’re called to be]

Rain on a tin roof this morning.

The rocking chairs out in the ash grove sit quiet, solid — steady in the wind.

Steady in the wind. They’re calling for another inch of rain today, for it to just keep coming.

Our Hope-girl makes brownies, shakes the popcorn over the stove.

And there’s this deep peace that keeps coming about not coming and going at all.

About listening to rain on the roof and riding down the river with the kids on old tractor tubes and picking cherries out in the orchard with the youngest boy and us all smelling like campfire for days.

About sitting on forgotten back gravel roads with our girl who is taller than me now, us licking spoons dipped in strawberry sundaes and watching the storm come in from the west.

About holding babies as light sun warmed pebbles in our arms.

It’s happens when we rest — that we relinquish our ambitions to be like God.

There was an invite to a retreat in Italy, an invite to a retreat in British Columbia.

Invitations aren’t obligations. Invitations are options.

The Farmer says it quiet to me over bacon and eggs flipped sunny side over: Every yes automatically says no somewhere else.

I say my quiet nos. And we wander away to the woods, pitch tents, walk bare foot, feeling how we’re tents of meeting and holy ground can be anywhere.

After stars come out and we finally zip the last tent flap close, you can hear this growling. You can hear our Hope-girl nudging Shalom dozing off in her sleeping bag: “Shalom — is that your stomach?” Um, no —- that would be two raccoons scrapping like wanna-be bears right on the other side of the tarping plastic, not your sister’s stomach!

So on the morning of our 20th wedding anniversary, the Farmer and I wake up in a tent on a leaking air mattress with a rock driving angry into my back and him smiling exhausted from chasing away racoons in the middle of the night — but we have all six of our bed head grinning kids right there around the campfire wanting to know where the sausage is?

Laughing hard over raccoons and growling stomachs and slapping down mosquitoes the size of water buffalo.

And their mama’s standing there like a fool memorizing their faces.

Because it doesn’t matter what any gatekeeper says: Mothering a mess of kids is as important as preaching to a stadium for a month of Sundays. 



The size of your ministry isn’t proof of the success of your ministry.

The very Son of God had a ministry to 12. And even one of them abandoned Him. Forget the numbers in your work. Focus on the net value of  your work. 

The internet age may try to sell you something different, but don’t ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness — and focusing on numbers can make you nauseated.

I begged grace from Max Lucado a few weeks ago with this note that I wouldn’t be able to speak as planned.

There was ocean-depth wisdom in his gentle words: “Ann, we have the option of hundreds of speakers. Your kids only have the option of one mom.”

Your most meaningful work in the Kingdom of God may not be the big things that you do — but the one little person you love. 

Someone sends me this interview last week that Indira Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, named by Fortune the #1 most powerful woman in business in the world in 2009 and 2010, and mother of two. who gave what some are deeming the interview of the year:

“I don’t think women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all… Every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those decisions…”

I think about Indira’s Insight while I make decisions in the garden.

While I bend over each strawberry plant, press the delicate white petals between thumb and index finger —and then just pluck it off. So there’ll be no strawberries this year.

It’s what you have to do: “Pick off all first blooms to ensure subsequent harvests are more plentiful.”

If you ever intend for the strawberries to produce heavily throughout the season, you have to choose to sacrifice the first harvest, so that all the growth and energy could be more efficiently invested into producing later crops.

Cut out that which seems good to invest in the best.

It is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty.

I stand over the schedule and there’s Indira’s Insight and there’s this saying no, there’s this trimming back, letting go.

It can be hard to prune good things that are blooming. It can be hard to remember why you are pruning.

Because there’s a counter-intuitiveness to it, this plucking off certain life activities that will yield good fruit. Some might even think it foolish to pare back, when the bloom and gifting apparent; a good harvest inevitable.

Yet it’s the pruning of seemingly good leaves that can grow a better life. 

To allow later seasons to yield the longed-for abundant crop.

It takes courage to crop a life back — but it’s exactly the way to have the best crop of all.

What seems like hard work that’s taking an eternity today — is exactly what may make the most difference in eternity.

Indira’s Insight rings loud. ‘You can have it all’ — isn’t the whole truth.

No matter where you are — it’s never all easy.

A crop is made by all the seasons and the only way to have it all — is not all at the same time… but letting one season bring its yield into the next.

This is how to have no fear — each season makes a full year.

What can seem like a plucking of dreams — may be the wisest of investments.  In the later harvest. The sweetest one.

You can see it when you pluck the strawberries, hoe the beans, cut the lettuce, when you stand there in the thickening dusk:

You can see that the garden is one and the garden is a myriad of plants flourishing in their own space, their own way, their own time. Heaven forbid that you’d try to make all the cherry tomatoes into zucchini plants.

Heaven forbid any woman would go around and try to make all women into an image of herself.

Heaven forbid any woman would set up her life as a standard instead of making grace the standard of her life.

One woman’s thrift store donation is happily another woman’s thrift store sensation. And one woman’s ‘no’ can happily be another woman’s ‘yes’. One isn’t necessarily wrong and the other one right.

It’s the differences between us that makes us a Body and not a uniform.

Christ makes us a Body — not a faith factory. He calls us to be Christ followers — not cookie cutters. Break the measuring sticks of comparison — or we break our own souls.

Because the bottom line simply is: If you aren’t encouraging women to live out their particular calling, you may just be idolizing a particular idealized form of yourself.

Malakai carries in a bowl of rain wet spinach from the garden. The tomatoes are still flowering, the peppers shooting up.

There’s this fierce trust that the Spirit will bring the bounty of a feast in His time to feed and grow the Body in His way.

And yeah — we each get to make our own unique decisions knowing we’ve heard God’s unique calling for us. 

People will always have opinions about you. But you live for God because He’s the only one who has intimate knowledge of you.

Hope and I wash the kitchen down while the brownies cool.

The sun breaks through. The roof falls silent now. Rocking chairs still in the grove, armrests dripping soundlessly. Steady in wind. Knowing what they’re about. The evening light falls long and quiet across the counters.

Often the evidence of maturity is response-ability — the ability to make the right response at the right time.

There are crops finally coming to maturity —  yeses and nos coming in their own right time.

“You want to have one of the brownies out in one of the rockers with me?” Hope looks up from the tap, her cloth in hand.

And there are holy yeses that are just to the one.

To a girl at the sink with a bunch of flowers.

 

 

Related:

How the Hidden Dangers of Comparison are Killing Us and our Daughters

Dear Women & Daughters: When You are Tired of Media Voices telling you what Beauty & Love are

when we all ache for justice in the world

Poverty, abuse, human trafficking… all forms of injustice stir the heart of God. God’s plan is to set the world right, and we can see His plan in every book of the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation. Tim Stafford traveled to five continents, gathering together over 50 international biblical scholars and activists, in order to bring a global perspective on justice issues for the NIV God’s Justice Bible. It’s a grace to welcome Tim to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Tim Stafford

It happened to me in a meeting.

I was helping to plan a new kind of Bible—one that would tell the story of justice.

This Justice Bible would have commentary from 55 writers around the world, many from the global South. As a planning group, we were discussing what form we wanted those writers to use when they set to work.

Some of it came easily.

For example, the writers should write introductions to each book in the Bible, explaining what it had to do with the story of justice.

(Our thesis was that justice is not an occasional scriptural interjection, but the Bible’s backbone—that the whole Bible is devoted to explaining how God sets the world right, doing justice for all his creation.)

One question made us pause. Should we include short articles on key justice issues? For example, sex trafficking, slavery, racial discrimination, bribery?

There seemed a crying need to discuss these issues, but wouldn’t the material soon go out of date?

Were there specific biblical comments to be made on each issue?

For example, does the Bible address female genital mutilation?

What issues should be included—surely there could be hundreds—and what left out?

How could we handle regional issues—for example, caste discrimination that is such a major justice issue in India, but not (at least in that form) in the rest of the world?

When we talked in detail, I felt a rift opening up between what we consider justice issues—specific, horrifying, identifiable phenomena you could sign up to fight—and the Bible itself.

Surely a Justice Bible should address these troubling issues. But it might seem as though we were sticking blog posts into the Bible, with little linkage to the Bible’s text.

Then somebody said it: “This isn’t the Injustice Bible, it’s the Justice Bible.” At that moment, something very important began to make itself clear to me.

I realized that all the issues we were considering described injustice.

Without realizing what we were doing, we left justice behind to talk about violations of justice.

Of course we have to talk about injustices. The Bible is explicit in addressing them.

The condemnation of evil, which is part of the story of justice, requires that we identify what evil consists of. We don’t, however, want to go straight there. The Bible doesn’t. It says far more about justice than injustice.

Justice begins with the Garden God created.

Not only are all its components good, the complete whole is very good. Justice reigns in the garden, because all the good components are in right relationship with each other—male and female, human and animal, humanity and the rest of creation. That is the world God intended — a world of just relations.

When that just world is spoiled by sin, God sets out to restore it. The rest of the Bible is dedicated to telling that story: how God works to set the world right. Through Abraham, through the nation of Israel, through David, through Jesus, ultimately through His followers—through us—God is setting the world right.

That story finds its final vindication in the Last Days—the vision expressed in Isaiah, in the gospels, in Revelation of a gleaming city.

Wars are no more, pain and death are gone, and all ethnicities come together to worship in the light of the Creator God. That is the world of justice realized.

Our tendency to skip this when we say the word “justice”—to go immediately from justice to injustice—undermines the cause of justice.

In many conversations about justice I’ve noticed how often people think of justice in terms of Crime and Punishment.

It’s all about catching the guilty and punishing them. While it’s true that criminal justice is part of justice, it’s a small, dark patch in a large and luminous piece of art.

By going from justice to injustice, we turn justice into a turn-off. It seems to assault people with their failings, rather than appealing to them through their hopes. Only a few people have unlimited energy to contemplate the evils of the world. Few can sustain the energy to battle endlessly against dragons that shape-shift and never seem to stay dead.

Such is the life of the reformer fighting injustice, without a vision of justice.

We are called to fight for Justice.

More, we are called to join a loving God who is fighting for us.

That’s inspiring.

That’s encouraging.

That’s something you can build into a joyful life.

The Bible we were planning, God’s Justice: the Holy Bible, is a reality now. It will change the way you read the Bible.

The world has never been more in need of those understanding and living justice —

More than changing how you read the Bible — reading this Bible could change the world. 

 

 

Tim Stafford is Senior Writer for Christianity Today and the author of more than thirty books including The Student Bible (with Philip Yancey).

Designed to inform and inspire, NIV God’s Justice: The Holy Bible carefully addresses the timeless and universal issues around injustice. Written by a team of international writers who bring a global perspective to these issues, NIV God’s Justice: The Holy Bible is designed to fire readers’ passion for social justice and take positive steps to bring justice issues to light in their own circle of influence. The writers come from every continent, representing organizations such as the International Justice Mission, Compassion, and World Vision. 4 years in the making, God’s Justice represents a new kind of Bible. Not only because of its emphasis on the story of God’s justice, but also because of its truly international character. For two thousand years we have known that God’s kingdom represents members of “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9), but only now has it been possible to gather them to work on a common publication. This is a new and wonderful day.

[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.23.16]

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: 

Warren Keelan 
Warren Keelan
Warren Keelan

your free invitation to exhale

yep, it’s hot out there

Bored Panda

We found this really fascinating – you may never look at the world the same again 

A mystery philanthropist has been spreading cheer

they’re catching on & seeing the beauty in the ugly

brand new concept — so what do you think?

 he’s doing something really extraordinary here

everyone needs a friend

people blessing Fred left and right. yes, yes, yes

 This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul: 
FREE daily printables to encourage you

Simply fill in your email here and the whole library of free printables and tools unfolds right before you:

Sign-in/Subscribe here for immediate access to the whole library of free printables, framables & free tools!

  Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleSIGN-IN »

beauty knows no age, trends, colours

please come join this raffle?  and help a mom of 12 who is battling cancer…

just — enjoy the gift of this

Coty Vincent/Facebook

a beautiful story that’s going viral:  We can do this! #BeAJohn

Chip & Joanna Gaines openly sharing from their heart

Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks 

just too beautiful not to share

inspiring friends

Anna Harris/VOX
Anna Harris/VOX

“I tripped and fell at my final Olympics. It was one of the best things to happen to me.”

this young girl is leading the way

Erika Jeorgean Swart

standing ovation right here

he had a seat belt and a prayer

Chad Cloward

one amazing duo: come meet them

yes, bald and beautiful

here’s something we can rally around –

The Purpose Hotel: Change the World in Your Sleep

Post of the Week from these parts here

Why Wait Till Marriage: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

giving people the dignity of work

what’s the first step in the direction of your dreams? come see

let’s pray

 [ Print’s FREE here: ]

…people may forget what you did or didn’t do — but they won’t forget how you made them feel. For hearts have the longest memories.

Let His love words shape your world: “Take to heart all these words… it’s your life” Deu.32:47

And then? That’s all today:

Speak every word today through your heart —

not through your expectations

or your frustrations

or your provocations

or even your lips.

Always let every word you speak —- just come through your heart.

The world needs us to belong to each other, to hear each other, to hurt with each other, to be kind to one another.

[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us each day?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

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.