Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 168
July 8, 2016
because we need space to be held for us to just weep
T
he world weeps.
The world weeps, needing peacemakers who let the broken bits of their heart fill in all the cracked pieces & places in the world, us all becoming bridges.
The world weeps, needing to hear a lot more good news — and maybe that starts with each of us beggars who’ve found bread sharing more of the sustenance of Good News.
The news that there is a Wounded Healer who touches our scars with His scars and says, ‘I know & I see & no matter how it seems, there’s more happening than you see, and this isn’t over yet.‘
The news that these days that are dry & brittle, ready to snap — these days are perfect kindling for a burning bush. Watch for burning bushes on days like this. God will meet us here, speak to us here, lead us through here.
Hope is a salve that keeps our broken hearts soft…
And maybe now more than ever, we need to hold on to the hope and the desperate need of us all being kind to one another. No one ever killed anyone with kindness —- evil is killed by kindness. The rest of us are resurrected by kindness…
Kindle us with kindness, Lord, keep us with kindness, kiss us with kindness.
Please, resurrect us all with the bravest, revolutionary kindness…
Because the world weeps, needing prayer warriors who don’t see prayer as the least we can do but the most we can do — and then literally get down on their knees & pray us all through this heart ache and into His healing light.
In the name of Jesus, the only One who loved all of us to death & back to real & forever life again,
Amen.
July 6, 2016
dear You: 5 brave things to keep in your pocket for hard days in a hard world
So this is what it comes to, huh, Kid?
You pack your bags, heading out for a bit of leadership and work this summer…
I know, I know — The whole point of welcoming kids into your life is to wave good-bye to adults embarking out on their own lives. And this? Is a little closer to that.
So — Braveheart, Beautiful Girl, quiet and lovely in a loud world — before you pack up and head out this summer to do good work in the world, this is the thing… maybe everything boils down to a handful of things?
Can I hand you handful of Brave and Beautiful Things for your every day?
Straight off the top, can I just quietly say — no one needs to go around with that parental policing voice in your head — you know?
The parent, superego voice that lives in your head: You always get things wrong… You are always behind and I can’t believe you didn’t get this right and how did you blow it again?!
Parents aren’t supposed to be the loud police voice in your head — but the gentle pastor at your side.
It’s always there — if you always listen for that quiet, gentle voice of Grace on the inside: You don’t have to get it perfect — you just have to get back up and keep going.
So maybe yeah, think of all this as a gentle note to tuck in your back pocket — and that this getting up every day and listening for His Voice, that’s Number One of the handful of brave and beautiful things for your every day:
Number One: Fall in love with the One who is The Way — and the way you’re supposed to go will follow…. as you follow Him.
You’ve got to want to be one with Him — more than you want to be a Someone.
You’ve got to want to serve more than you want to be seen, you’ve got to care more than you want to be comfortable, you’ve got to want to give more than you want to get.
You’ve got to want His approval more than all the other things that will prove to be worthless.
Promise yourself you’ll remember this because you will need this most: You can always have as much as God as you want.
Number Two: Taste the grittiness of work — or you won’t ever taste success.
Every day you can get up and get scared — or you can get up and get yourself ready.
Nothing erases stress quite like preparation.
Bury all your nagging fears in your faithful work — or your fears will bury you in nagging doubts.
Promise yourself you’ll remember this because it will effect your joy: Be entirely engaged in the process of your work, and be entirely disengaged in outcome of your work. You can’t determine outcome — but you can determine to come and put in everything you have.
Let your joy always be in doing the work — not in the outcome of the work. The journey not only matters more than the destination — the journey actually becomes the destination.
Success is always showing up and bending down. Full stop.
Number Three: Don’t love your present self more than you love your future self.
Give your future self the present of being loved more than your present self.
That means: Make your present self a gift to your future self. Trust me — this is what really want — more than what you think you want. Love your future self — more than your present self. This is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.
That means: Do hard things in the short run — to give yourself holy and happy things in the long run.
Though everywhere tells you the point of living is to avoid suffering — please: Always embrace the struggle:
You know there’s no way around pain — there’s always either the pain of disappointment or the pain of discipline.
And don’t ever, ever, ever be concerned with failing — only be concerned about failing to keep on going.
Number 4: Be a Giver.
Get up every day and just do that: Volunteer to be a Giver. Never stop looking for a way to be the Giver. The world’s going around with a big sign: Wanted: GIVERS. (Sorry — The world already has enough takers.)
Be a Giver — and you will get the most.
People may forget what you did or didn’t do — but they won’t forget how you made them feel. Hearts have the longest memories. This is what makes you love people people and love life and never be intimidated in any setting: Lean in and make eye contact and simply listen to hearts.
Listening is a revolutionary act of liberation — it will liberate you from the prison of your prejudices and free you to love large.
And? Always speak through your heart — not through your expectations or your frustrations or your provocations or even your lips. Always let every word you speak come through your heart.
Because the bottom line is:
It doesn’t matter if you have some big title — what matters is that you have a big heart. A big heart will outshine a big title every time.
Number 5: Watch your fingers so your heart can care.
Maybe the most important part of your body to control is your index finger — because it’s most like the devil: It most wants to point and prosecute.
At all costs — don’t be a finger pointer… and avoid joining packs of finger-pointers — who point and blame peers and parents and circumstances and society and somebody else.
The world doesn’t need any more finger-pointers.
It needs more people to honestly point out their own sins — and humbly point up to everyone’s Savior.
The world doesn’t need more loud people who think they have it all right — it needs more compassionate people to sit down and listen long enough to quietly realize they had some of it wrong.
The world needs people whose sacrificial giving is loudest and largest thing about them. People who quietly weep with the wounded and listen to the hurting and generously serve the Other — because that’s what it means to genuinely love one another: not to love people just like you, but to Love the Other.
The Givers and the Listeners and the Lovers — we can be part of His beautiful healing of the world….
So when you get to the end of the day, when you get down far down that road your on, when you get to wondering what it’s all about that — I don’t know, maybe it’s just this handful of 5 Brave and Beautiful Things I wanted to tuck in your back pocket in a world that’s hurting everywhere?
And maybe I just wanted to look you long in the eyes and memorize this in the midst of everything: Trust that Grace will always meet you.
Believe that when God made the universe, that He breathed Grace as the air of the universe.
When you believe that the earth’s atmosphere is actually Grace:
You aren’t afraid of people or asking questions or risking big or laughing loud or believing the best or believing in beauty or loving across fences or walking up to people and taking off your mask and making every step you take into a leap of faith.
Please, always: Believe that Grace will always, always, always meet you.
Because Grace has a name. And He always meets you. In everything, through everything, in spite of anything.
Grace has a name — and He always, always meets you.
So go on, keep going on, Braveheart — you are loved more than you know, liked more than you can imagine, and are stronger than you dreamed…. so: Give love. And live large — And love larger.
You can’t even begin to imagine how there’s always amazing grace up ahead.
Links for 2016-07-05 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
July 4, 2016
when we the people all want a real declaration of freedom
Straight up — the guy just liked the frame.
Four bucks.
That’s all this guy had to dig out of wallet at that flew market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania that morning in 1989 to buy one old, odd picture frame.
He handed over the four dollars and frankly, didn’t care one wit about the painting.
It was just a dismal little country scene dabbed across a grimy, torn canvas with a signature he couldn’t even make out — it was only the gilded and ornate frame that caught his eye.
The flea market seller took his four bucks — with absolutely no idea. With not the faintest idea that the frame and painting — were not at all what you’d think.
When the guy got home? The crudely-made frame pathetically fell apart in his hands. Unsalvageable.
Great — four bucks wasted on a bunch of garbage.
But when the unsalvageable frame fell apart in this hands, fell away from the torn canvas?
There, between the slashed canvas and the wood backing of the crumbled frame — was this crisp, folded up piece of paper, the size of a business envelope.
He unfolded it slow. Ran his finger across the inked calligraphy.
It couldn’t be what it read — or was it?
When a friend who collected historical memorabilia dropped by, he took out that crisp piece of paper, unfolded it slow, for him to take a look at it. Laughed a bit when his friend shook his head, mouth agape.
“Well —- what do you think?”
“Get it appraised.”
Turns out?
That folded up piece of paper, one-tenth of an inch thick, that had fallen out between a torn canvas and a falling-apart frame? Was printed by John Dunlap. On July 4th, 1776.
Turns out that it’s one of only 500 copies of the first printing of — the Declaration of Independence.
Turns out only 23 copies are known to still exist, only of which a mere two were privately owned — and then this one.
A flea market find.
That copy was auctioned off on June 4, 1991 — and when the gavel finally sounded “Sold!” —- that four buck flea market frame — had become a 2.4 million dollar find.
And it’s not the only time it’s happened.
Stan Caffy, a pipe fitter, bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence at yard sale in Donelson Hills in 1996. He nailed it to the wall of his garage. He thought it was a dime-a-dozen dollar store copy. Not everything is what you think it is.
The piece of faded paper hung there on the garage wall for 10 years, while Stan fixed a steady stream of old bicycles.
Till finally Stan’s wife, Linda, said it was time for Stan to clean out the garage. “I used to be a packrat” Stan admitted. “The best I can recall, we had a little debate about whether to keep it that copy up on the wall or donate it —- and Linda won.”
So Linda took an antique table, a shower massage head, and a faucet — and the supposed every day copy of the Declaration of Independence —to the Music City Thrift Store in Nashville on a morning in March.
Where Michael Sparks ended up browsing and stumbled upon this yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up piece of paper.
Two bucks and 48 cents. That’s all Michael Sparks had to shell out for the document.
Which turned out to be?
One of the 200 official copies of the Declaration of Independence that had been commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820.
Which turned out to be sold at an auction for —- $477,650. Nearly half a million dollars.
When Stan heard? All he could say was:
“I’m happy for that Michael Sparks guy,” Stan said.
“If I still had it, it would still be hanging here in the garage and I still wouldn’t know it was worth all that….
But… can’t help but feel not very smart.”
Turns out?
You can have in your possession an actual declaration of freedom — and not actually value it.
You can hold in your hands something valuable enough that it could change everything about your life — and you could send it right out of your life.
You can think you know what to think — and it turns out: it’s not what you think.
Maybe that’s the whole point?
You don’t think Jesus is your everything — until you have nothing but Jesus.
You don’t think of Jesus as anything but ultimately useful to getting the life you want — until you experience Jesus as ultimately the most beautiful in the life you already have.
When you become God’s, all duty becomes beauty.
You don’t think of Jesus as anything but an example to follow — until you experience Him as a Lover to fall into, as a Lamb to forgive you, as your Lord to free you.
Like having an exorbitantly valuable declaration of freedom in your hands but not thinking you do, Christianity and a life of faith — may not be what you think:
Christianity is more than going to heaven when you die; it’s about dying with Christ now — so you can live now.
Christianity is more than performing a good life —- it’s about Christ performing an entirely perfect life for you — so you can live the abundant life in its entirety.
Christianity is more than going through the motions — it’s about letting about Christ touch the heart of your emotions — and going through life with Him.
It’s time to check behind the cheap frame of things — because it turns out:
A life of faith may not be what what you think — or what most people live.
It’s infinitely more.
And there is a Freedom that rings and won’t be silenced — freedom that calls out the false freedom that a man can do whatever he likes, and rings of the true freedom — that gives a man the freedom to do what is right.
Freedom that grace can be found and hope rises here and this life of faith is infinitely more freedom, a world of higher up and deeper in.
The greatest freedom we have is the freedom to come right to God at any time.
There under the bloom of fireworks, you can feel it —
the love of Christ exploding a heart —
the way a people can live a declaration of independence from all else and breathe the freedom of dependence in the One who explodes grace across all our skies.
July 2, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.02.16]
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:
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
have you got time to come along & enjoy this view?
just opened to the public – ready for a ride?
so, who knew?
This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul:
FREE daily printables to cheer you on!
Simply fill in your email here and the whole library of free printables and tools unfolds right before you:
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Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleSIGN-IN »
new birth…never ever gets old!
the power of a great photo: How to Style Overhead Still Life Photos (it’s SO fun!)
inspiring and unbelievable story:
just goes to show how human kindness can change things…even the most dangerous of animals
the wonder of it
Norfolk Fire-Rescue
a bouquet of flowers and a round of applause for a very special reason
serving them up since 1850
an impromptu National Anthem live at the Lincoln Memorial
Hidenobu Suzuki
Hidenobu Suzuki
Hidenobu Suzuki
sharing the beautiful around our world
these future Olympians share some good good words here
The Skye High Foundation
the profoundly important hidden meaning to this purple butterfly
love what you do
a chain of giving – with no stopping in sight
“Understand that having problems is not an excuse to give up – just an opportunity to fight harder and win… I won today. Today, I am a winner. My mishap does not define me. It does not limit me. It just helps the fighter in me stay alive.”
This is historical
…. these days kinda leave you thinking that we’ve never needed this more than we do right about now. Fill the mall. Be one of a million standing for Jesus in DC in just 2 weekends — on 07.16.16.
Moments of historic change? Are marked by historic gatherings. Make your mark now — it matters now.
Together 2016 is the day our generation will meet on the National Mall to come together around Jesus in unified prayer, worship, & a call for catalytic change.
We’re all coming together with as many people as possible — people who believe Jesus changes everything.
If you believe #JesusChangesEverything? Be there — make your mark, be heard & tell the world: #JesusChangesEverything. Can you join us? This is historical: https://reset2016.com
You may also join us via live stream!
#IFPray #Together16 @ifgathering
the Christian life is gain
…your wounds are where the Light shines through
Post of the Week from these parts here:
… so our world has kind of blown up
— and it’s been it’s own kind of perfect:
How to Catch a Falling Star: Our Adoption Story
[or why you thought shouldn’t adopt or care for orphans — & were wrong]
a mom’s extraordinary love transforms the short lives of hospice babies
from inside of a silo?!
serving up dignity and love
the love of family
Great are You, Lord
…thank You come the end of the day, Lord
there’s no condemnation for those in Christ,
for those in over their heads, in a mess, in a bad way.
Thank You there’s no condemnation for those who blew it — because they’ve found You,
who gently takes the disillusioned & disappointed & disoriented
and say, “I don’t condemn your brokenness, I carry your burdens.
I don’t condemn you. I came to take it all, shoulder it all, cover it all.
I don’t care about your past, about what you did or didn’t get perfect — I care about your pain. I care about you — I don’t condemn you. I care about you.”
Whatever mess I am in… I can exhale relief: I have a Messiah who meets me in it, won’t leave me in it, and will carry me through it.
There is never, ever, ever anything to ever fear: Our. God. is. Here.
In the name of Jesus, the only One who ever loved us to death and back to the real & forever life,
Amen.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
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.
July 1, 2016
Links for 2016-06-30 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
June 29, 2016
how to catch a falling star: an adoption story [or why you thought should not adopt or care for an orphan — and were wrong]
There’s no way I could have known when I first saw her file that she was a bit of stardust and holding her would light bits of me on fire.
The day I go to meet her at a place called Morning Star, there are lilacs erupting in the China street.
Strange, how a scent 10,000 kilometres around the curve of the planet can make you inhale home and all of us can be homesick to be wanted. In the blur of Beijing, I stop to smell a burst of lilacs.
I’ve stopped everything because I want to inhale the scent of her, the way a bit of the sky could fall into your hands and you could close your eyes tight and know you’ve been graced with a bit of a miracle, grazed with a bit of God. Adoption has stopped our whole little careening world — or , I don’t know — maybe started a world we ultimately were meant to find our way to? Who knows….
I just know that no one need adopt if they think they get to sign up to be some Savior White Barbie swooping into rescuing any abandoned child because the truth of it is:
You’re the one rescued — you can’t rescue anybody. You only get to hold on to the Rescuer.
I just know that no one gets to mug for the camera with a flash of pearly whites and their newly adopted family without stepping into a story of trauma. The only way a family is made through adoption — is for someone to lose a family first. The only way anyone gets to adoption is through a door of loss and unless you fully feel the depth of that loss, the door you’re walking through leads to nowhere honest.
I just know there’s a whole lot I don’t know at all and no one ever brings home any new child, born or adopted, without pain. Children only come to us through pain — like love only comes to us with pain.
When her ayi steps into the room lit with a rising China sun, carrying her high in her arms, she is all I can see, she is all the light I can see.
She isn’t two.
She isn’t astronomical, so uncommonly tiny, but she has gravity, she means a whole world to a bunch of us a world away.
They say that she’s less than the 3rd percentile for weight, they say that her broken heart makes her light.
Maybe a broken heart — makes you break into a kind of light.
They’ve dressed her in a bit of lace, pulled her hair back into 3 spouts, like she’s ready. Her ayi points to me, calls to me — “Mama. Mama.”
Motherhood is a calling to come closer, not a command to be more. I step nearer.
But never once does the littlest one look up at me. A star in arms, she’s this little tight knot of combustion, twisting her fingers, head right bowed, chin tucked in, her focused singularly on her little hands, darkening the whole world around her by peering only at her wringing hands, wringing out all this light. Fears that drive our focus — can drive us away from love. She’s so small. It is possible to somehow stay standing and feel the whole length of your heart crack.
I want to reach out, reach out across the expanse of everything and touch her — hold her. But she holds her own fears, she holds her own stories, her own past, her own loves. She cannot stop wringing and twisting her little fingers. I want to touch her and take away all those fears and all those scars and there’s no way I ever can.
There are scars you can’t erase —- all you can do is write more love into them.
Her ayi nanny brushes her bangs out of her eyes, whispering assurance in her ear, pointing to me, and she keeps turning her hands through her own hands, her own scared orbit. I witness her terror and I don’t insert myself as if I’m an answer and I don’t turn away. All of our wounds need a witness — to feel how love is with us.
I honour her with shy space. She has universe of her own that doesn’t know where to place me. Who knew that right now, 18 million children spin about in galaxies of their own, completely untethered orphans, with both parents dead — that’s enough children to fill 180 Superbowl stadiums — 18 million children who have no people of their own anywhere on the planet.
They say that 77% of practicing Christians believe Christians have a responsibility to adopt, but only 5% of Christians have adopted — and I get why it’s tempting to think you shouldn’t adopt and someone else should and I get the choking fears and I get the questions that won’t stop haunting and I get that supporting adoption doesn’t mean that we’re all called to adopt because caring for orphans looks different for each of us, but it has to look like something — and I never stop getting over how Jesus left the 99 for the 1 and the whole focus of our Father is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters.
God searched for you, found you, fought for you, signed the papers with His blood and He adopted you and brought you Home –and the only way any of us get into the family of God is through the most painful adoption.
If real belief cares for the orphans — can one be a believer and not be caring for at least one orphan in some small way?
Adoption is all of the broken’s story.
We’re all sort of a different kind of the same kind of broken.
I watch her eyes — witness.
In the the interim of waiting for a forever family, love has been with her in that rare and brilliant place in the universe called Morning Star, where Brave Warriors fight voluntourism and blithely rotating teams of visitors, so orphans can know steady attachment and certain, dependable arms.
Where uncommon young women are less worried about how to do their hair and more focused on doing the hard and holy things, the giving up of North American comfort to bring comfort to literal broken hearts of forgotten children. There are places where there is more than believing — –there is living what you believe.
Places where Hope Wielders are about the daily sacredness of making this thing called love and it’s dangerous because it means pain, it means they will recklessly hope and love — and love enough to let go. Love enough to make a family of dozens of children, to medically advocate for their complex congenital heart defects, paying for surgery after surgery, and then Meredith and her ayis love them enough to let them go to forever families and love like this is nothing short of — otherworldly.
This is the part that feels like a morning star grazing you, marking you — the way love can be made anywhere. The way adoption can make more love, and risk can make more hope, and giving dangerously can make a heart miraculously fuller.
The way — fractured breaks in hearts can become doors. The way home happens wherever there is a willingness to let someone in. We can do this for each other in a thousand ways — we can welcome abandoned parts of each other in.
Home happens wherever there’s a willingness to pay attention.
And being relentlessly present to each other — is a tonic for each other’s relentless homesickness.
This is for all of us, for all of us and the parts of us that feel forgotten and and abandoned and want to come Home to being wanted.
The day she lets me hold her, enfold her, the day I get to pull her slowly close—
when I touch her cheek and inhale the scent of her skin warm against mine —
I listen to the thrumming heart of her and it’s so faint, it’s almost like a murmur, this cry against abandonment that beats like a drumming in her broken heart, that echoes like a howl through the chambers of every single one of our broken hearts —
If I broke into a thousand pieces — who would come to gather and pick me up?
If I up and lost my way —- who would come look for me until all of me was found?
If I forgot who I really am — who would come make me remember my real name?
I will. I will — my heart beats it back like a promise to hers.
And it can feel like a rising, all our voices saying to the forgotten: I will be your astronomer — I will find the pieces of you, connect the blazing bits of you in the black, gather you into a constellation of the brave, point the way to the Truest North Morning Star, and I will keep murmuring your realest name.
We are the exact same, her and I, the whole universe: Lost — and He found me.
Pull her closer.
Broken — and He picked me up. Picked me. Chosen.
Cup her face.
Forgotten — And He reminded me of my name.
Renamed. The way stars are.
Adoption isn’t picture perfect — adoption is a picture of the Gospel.
I couldn’t yet know what the days ahead would hold, after we sign the adoption papers.
Couldn’t yet know what the flight across the world would look like with a child who’s just lost her whole world, couldn’t yet know then what the spring would be like letting us be made into hers, long after the lilacs had burst into a blooming memory.
But there’s a certain knowing that Grace reaches through broken skies and lets stars be found and held right in hand. She doesn’t stop feeling like light.
Always: I will be your astronomer. Find you, gather you, connect you, name you.
It’s a whisper right there at the ear: Right now is only the beginning.
Ignite.
Related:
* Follow a kind of miracle worker & soul sister on Instagram, Meredith Toering, international director of Morning Star, orphan emancipator, Hope wielder & foster mama to dozens of broken heart babies in China
* Keep a baby from becoming an orphan & keep a family together with Morning Star
* Sponsor your own orphaned, broken-hearted baby in China — because true faith always has to care for the orphan
How our own adoption story began
June 28, 2016
the reason why it’s deeply okay — to not be okay
Why is it okay not to be okay? How can we be loved just as we are if we were made to be image bearers of a God who says, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect?” Kimm Crandall began to notice that the phrase, “Nobody’s perfect” didn’t bring the freedom that she longed for. While this statement brought freedom in the moment, it always eventuated in her getting back to work on ways to prove herself worthy. It was exhausting. What if — no, she wasn’t perfect — and that was okay because she had Christ’s record of perfection. She could now live with her imperfection knowing that because of Christ she is loved in the midst of all of her messiness. This was the freedom she was looking for and the freedom that she shares like dropping keys… It’s a humbling grace to welcome Kimm to the farm’s front porch today…
The weakest believer among us receives the same strong Christ as does the believer whose faith seems unmoved.to
This is good news for all of us because it’s not the strength of our faith that gives us hope; it’s the strength of Jesus’s faith.
Let me explain — and it might not be what you’d think?
One summer my family was invited to enjoy a day of waterskiing and lounging on the lake with some friends.
The lake was choppy and with each passing speedboat came a wake that caused a big thump and jolt of our boat, which subsequently elicited a scream from my then four-year-old son.
You see, he had very little faith in our safety as we hit those large bumps in the water. However, having grown up and spending my days on ski boats, I knew that we were perfectly safe.
I had complete faith that those wakes that were tossing us from side to side were merely bumps and that the boat was certainly strong enough to endure them. My calm demeanour showed my trust. I could relax.
My child, however, showed very little faith as he screamed with each wave and ripple.
We couldn’t have been more different: me, a grown woman with full assurance, knowing that we were safe, showing my confidence in the boat, free to enjoy the sun and spray splashing up on me; and him, my four-year-old, huddled on the floor trying to eat a granola bar, certain that it was his last meal.
My faith in the boat was unshakable while my son’s was just barely hanging by a thread.
And yet here we were, two souls on the same strong boat, heading toward the same destination.
Here’s the big question: Did the strength of our faith make any difference in the strength of the boat?
Of course not.
The boat’s strength was not affected by how much faith either of us had put in it on that particular day. It wasn’t weakened by my son’s doubt, nor was it strengthened by my confidence.
Just as the boat was immovable and never swaying in its ability to bring us safely home, Christ remains our strength even when doubts fill our minds and our faith wavers.
In fact, it’s Christ’s faith we stand on! It’s His strength that gets us through and not our own.
Christ’s life was one constant stream of unwavering faith.
Even though He had the power to abandon the mission at any moment, He continued on in humility and perfect faith to fulfill God’s redeeming plan. Knowing the pain that was to come, He pleaded with his Father to let the cup pass from His lips (Luke 22:42).
As the answer became clear—that the cup would not pass from Him, that He was to be beaten, mocked, and stricken with sorrow at the separation of perfect union with His Father—He remained faithful on our behalf.
This has become our record. This is now our strength.
Even in our moments of greatest weakness and doubt, Christ remains our strength, holding us up out of the water, confidently taking each blow from the waves with which life is unrelentingly battering us.
When everything around you is falling apart,
the job is lost,
the child rebels,
the spouse falls in love with someone else,
the friends who said they’d never leave walk away,
life has fallen apart at the seams,
and you just don’t know how to find hope.
All the while Christ is unmoved and you are perfectly safe. He will hold on to you to the very end.
Your strong faith—or, more appropriately, your lack thereof—is not connected to some cosmic feeding tube of God’s grace.
God does not dole out His love and faithfulness based on the strength of our trust.
The gospel assures you that He loves you and is holding on to you whether you are lounging about enjoying a time of confident faith or clinging to the bottom of the boat, waiting for the ride to be over.
His perfect faith —
is counted as yours.
We all have messes. And whether our mess is lived outwardly or is hidden in the depths of our heart, one thing is true: we all need Jesus. Kimm Crandall, a mother of four and the founder of Dropping Keys Ministries, gives Jesus.
Kimm’s newest book, Beloved Mess, shares the good news that frees Christians to truly believe that, because of Christ, they are loved just as they are.
Who doesn’t desperately need that?
[ Our humble thanks to Baker Publishing for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
June 27, 2016
when it’s hard to keep hoping — when the world keeps breaking your hope
So… it didn’t work out.
You know — That Thing.
You got that letter that said no to that thing that you were dreaming of, praying for, hoping about.
No to what your heart was holding on to though your head was telling you not to, no to that dream that you kept telling yourself it was foolish to even dream but you couldn’t — for the life of yourself — stop yourself.
You opened that envelope and you stood there with that paper in your hardly trembling hands and you skimmed the words, and you got the gist of it—that you were, frankly, a little wild to ungist.
Or, you got that call and you heard the words that you prayed against, begged against, braced against. You found it hard to hear, your heart banging like a sledge hammer, trying to pound its way out.
Or… you never got a call at all. The silence about drove you mad.
There’s only about one thing worse than a no — it’s an unknown. It’s this hanging in the balance that can make you lose your equilibrium.
And it’s being deemed not even worthy of a response that can leave you with questions that you cannot gag quiet.
Waiting can feel like an insane asylum of its own.
I got a call this week, a letter, and I was wild to send the words back, rearrange them so that maybe that a secret, hidden 20 year-old impossible hope might unfold.
Standing there feeling it all implode felt like some dark roof caving in that I couldn’t stop. I choked on the disappointment caught like dust in my lungs.
For days, I distracted with this mad, futile racing to hold up my house of cards that refused to stand. At night, sleep wouldn’t come.
In the dark, in the middle of the night, it gets very clear:
He who is hurried by worry, delays the comfort of God.
You can want someone to reach over and touch your unspoken broken, your thin bruised places and smooth out the pain you can hardly speak of:
Pain begs us to believe that only action can end our ache — when actually only God can.
Action doesn’t end pain — God does.
It takes incredible courage to wait on God in what feels like a wrong place— until He gives us the incredible gift of the right action.
And the making of one’s whole life takes time. Goals take longer than you think; the ways of God take longer than you want. It takes time, a lifetime, to turn the ache of our longings toward Him.
You don’t want to know how many nights I laid there, letting the tenderness of it massage out the knots of my worry:
We can simply want our situation solved — when God simply wants to be our answer.
And the best situation — is always what makes God your best hope.
In the middle of things seemingly not working out for us —- God is working out something in us.
Do not ever fear, ever. Simply do not ever stop patiently waiting on God.
“But hope that is seen is no hope at all.
Who hopes for what they already have?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” (Roman 18:24-15)
This is the epiphany that comes straight up through a thousand dark places:
The Spirit is married to patience.
Be impatient — and you drive a wedge between you and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
In a world of fists and demands and tight grips for control — patiently waiting with open hand is a radical act — a radical art.
Open hands defy the dark — and testify to a radical act of trust.
Grace beyond our imaginings can fall into open hands.
New things will happen to us — unknown, unwanted, unexpected things — and we can name those things grace.
In a world preoccupied with control — the most radical act is openhanded trust.
It’s happening slowly now: I am learning to fall asleep with hands open, palms waiting and open to the willing sky.
* * * * *
One evening this spring, walking home from the woods, I’d paused to watch a butterfly slip the casing of its jewel of a cocoon.
The sun was warm on my back. I waited. I wanted.
I wanted to see wings, I wanted to see fluttering and soaring, I wanted a miracle to unfurl. I had expectations of glory.
I waited more. The sun slid down my back. The butterfly stirred, then paused, rustled slowly— impossibly, frustratingly slowly.
I exhaled. Warm breath on the waiting.
The cocoon case cracked a bit. And I exhaled again, impatience unleashed.
Each impatient exhale on that cocoon — kindled the butterfly and you can come to think that you can grow a miracle on your own timeline.
Then it all tumbled faster than life, on the kind of timeline I like — the case split open, the butterfly braved the outside — and right there was the crumpled horror — wet and wrinkled wings that the trembling butterfly heaved relentlessly, pointlessly, to unfold.
I had forced my way, my timing — instead of letting things unfold in His perfect timing, under the gradual warmth of the sun — and it didn’t bring forth life.
I’d stood there, nauseated, and I could touch the truth of it:
Impatience always inflicts injury to wings.
The wings in my palm flailed.
Wanting things your way — can destroy any way at all.
Its whole body quaked with the effort to make wet and hurried wings impossibly part and lift.
It takes courage to listen with our whole heart to the tick of God’s timing, rather than march to the loud beat of our fears.
The butterfly shrivelled soundlessly in the palm of my hand…. stilled… died.
I hadn’t known. I had never seen it as clearly:
All sins and brokenness — turn out to be watered by impatience.
Walking up through the grasses home, it’s like every blade, every leaf, ever aching, broken, hoping place knew it, murmured it:
We cannot make things grow… ours is only to grow in grace.
Ours is only to let God grow good things in us.
One could learn to walk with the palms open, walk that way in broad daylight. It could change, it could be different. When I opened the back door, that followed me in too:
There’s never been anything so far gone — that hopefulness can’t come back.
The air turned right then.
True, debates rage about politics and terrorism and racism, and Facebook streams scream with opinions and rhetoric and rage, and headlines burn with all this unimaginable and it all scalds our hearts, and the world feels mad.
And on the margins, we touch our own wounds that no one sees, we trace the outlines of our own unspoken broken — but we rise. We all rise.
Together we all rise.
We can laugh right in the face of hopelessness — because we are held right in the arms of God.
June 25, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [06.25.16]
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:
AV Wakefield
AV Wakefield
AV Wakefield
come away for a bit? enjoy this glory in Newfoundland
yes.
Facebook/lifeofdad
okay, are you up for the challenge? how many can you stack?
we gathered ’round this one — so much fun to watch
a bear sighting you gotta see to believe
Dorothy Greco
simply interesting
a birds eye view – can you keep up?
KSG Photography
highlight sought after wedding photographer – and she’s only 9 years old!
the sound of a lesson learned, one bike at a time
okay, wow: temporary works of art for the public to experience and enjoy
stories like this? never get old – teens reaching out & helping those in need
signefotar.com
signefotar.com
signefotar.com
stop here? just breathtaking…
to all the men who step up and become role models
Girls Love Mail
power of hand-written letters: providing immeasurable love & support
a performance in the Arctics – like maybe you’ve never seen
meet the 18yr old who has a painting in the Met
reunited – and this never ever ever gets old
3 words to stop the comparison thief that keeps robbing all joy
Sisterhood Soap: Pure soap. Made by refugees. Creating jobs in Iraq.
Grow the Sisterhood. Empower a soapmaker.
This is historical
…. these days kinda leave you thinking that we’ve never needed this more than we do right about now. Fill the mall. Be one of a million standing for Jesus in DC on 07.16.16.
Moments of historic change? Are marked by historic gatherings. Make your mark now — it matters now.
Together 2016 is the day our generation will meet on the National Mall to come together around Jesus in unified prayer, worship, & a call for catalytic change.
We’re all coming together with as many people as possible — people who believe Jesus changes everything.
If you believe #JesusChangesEverything? Be there — make your mark, be heard & tell the world: #JesusChangesEverything. Can you join us? This is historical: https://reset2016.com
Join us via live stream or in D.C. Do not miss this.
#IFPray #Together16 @ifgathering
World Help: Help for Today, Hope for Tomorrow
how to be the mom who is deeply okay with not getting it all right
never too young to make a difference and change a life
a beautiful story of sitting and waiting in God’s sovereignty — not to be missed
I wanna know you, Lord
Because He LOVES you
…fear can’t get to us, Lord, panic can’t upend us, worry can’t undo us — because when we exhale, we can hear You like a warm breath:
“I am with you. There’s no need to fear the big things, the little things, anything, for I’m your God. I’ll give you strength when the weight of it all wears you down, I’ll help you when you’re hurting, when everyone’s hurting, I’ll hold you steady when everything wildly tilts, I’ll keep a firm grip on you — so you can rest tonight, because you are held.”
And all the people held on to each other because they belonged to each other and they all beheld a Grace
that held them all.
In the name of Jesus, the only One who ever loved us to death and back to the real & forever life,
Amen.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
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.
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