Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 240
April 28, 2014
When You Need Mother’s Day Gift that’s Honest, Powerful & Healing [Free Printable]
She keeps it by her Bible.
Clay shaped by hands, a pottery jar, there on the kitchen table, always there by her Bible, both open for the taking.
I don’t ask her about it.
At the end of a phone call, late spring, leaves unfurling, Mama brings it up.
“Ann… the jar.”
I pause at the sink, pause in the scouring, the scrubbing it all away.
“Yes, Mama?”
I gave her the jar, thrift store find, for Mother’s Day last year, filled it with slips of paper.
“I just wanted you to know what it’s meant to me. I pick out one every day…. sometimes more.”
The Manitoba Maple outside my window glints with coming green, and I watch the light ponding across the floor, smile for Mama gathering…
“Things in that jar I never would have remembered… things I didn’t know you remembered.”
There were Jesus’ words read on Sunday, the living it out during the week now: Give thanks anyways — do this in re-membrance of Me
God say to give thanks, to do this in remembrance of Him — because in the remembering to give thanks, it’s our broken places that are re-membered — and we are the ones made whole.
A joyful heart is good medicine and our broken bones can be re-memembered when we remember to thank a good God.
Standing at the sink, watching the spring winds bring hope and life again, I remember sitting in the sun of a May day last year, writing out those slips of paper…. Dipping back into pool of memories and specifically winding them in and writing them down, line by line.
“Thank you, Mama, for all the nights you sang me to sleep, me so scared of dark and of dying in my sleep, and you so tired. You never got frustrated with me… just kept rubbing my feet and singing… Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mama, for quizzing me on all of the dates for Mr. Manoryk’s world history tests… I passed!”
“Thank you, Mama, for still loving me, always loving me, even when I was a saucy twelve-year-old with hair-sprayed bangs who thought she knew what to wear and what to eat and where to go and was really too hard to endure…”
I scratched down a sheet with spontaneous gratitude, memories I too had forgotten before pen found page.
But gratitude is a magnet, attracting filings of goodness out of the expanse of the past.
I remember having written some of the memories slow…. looked through the shadows of the past and remembered the good… and saw how it was happening: Authentic thanks in all things is possible because our God is a God kneading all things together into a bread that sustains.
Through hard, lean years — mama and I, we had been the busted up who had hurt each other, the unlikely still sustained.
And we both had lived it, come out the other side of it:
When we stop seeing reasons to give thanks, we stop thinking there are reasons to live.
When we don’t focus on what we can thank God for, we can’t focus on living for God.
Giving thanks can help us want to take —
the next breath.
“When I read those slips of paper, one little thanks at a time, it’s like —- a long hug from you.” Her voice is breaking up and the tender coming leaves outside the window blur a bit in wind, in me brimming. Her brimming.
“It’s like the past redeemed. Thank you.”
I can hardly hear her whisper through the feeling. I can see her though, my heart can, my heart can see my mama unfolding each note. I had felt it too as I wrote each memory, line by line: A bit of gratitude for the past goes a long way to redeem the past.
The therapy is in the thanks.
Thanks therapy is God’s prescription for joy.
“Oh, but the thanks is all mine, Mama. All mine.”
Thanksgiving is always the gift back.
The late spring winds blow away a bit of the cold, the warmth surely coming.
And there’s this way that one can sit silent with a mama who was brave and gave.
The mama who tried, who could use a thousand thanks for all her worn and comforting grace.
Resources:
Free Printables for notes for The Grateful Jar for a Great Person… with matching gift tag
~ a copy for Mom [or any recipient of The Grateful Jar] of One Thousand Gifts, one gift that is one thousand gifts: the paperback copy of One Thousand Gifts at CBD for $5, or the hardcover is here: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are | One Thousand Gifts Devotional | Photography book of One Thousand Gifts … [Harper Collins announces One Thousand Gifts surpasses 1 Million Copies Sold ... and the best part? That with you, we all got to #betheGIFT with you & give it all away through Compassion, to bless the least of these in Jesus' name -- thank you.]
~ our oldest son has made up these nest necklaces for Mother’s Day and I’ll send it out to your mama with a tag I’ll sign with all my prayers: All is Grace
~ Handwarming Mug for your brave mama to wrap her hands around something warm
~ Lidded Bird Jar for a Grateful Jar for a Great Person … and if you’d like to write some thankful notes on papered feathers
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 26, 2014
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [04.26.14]
Your free invitation to exhale:
every Saturday needs a pause for a mini-vacation around the world
Recorded memories of his daughter every day for 14 years? Just wow.
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“The traumas she heals are unfathomable, but the reach of her love is boundless.”
Absolutely fascinating: Time’s 100 of the Most Influential People
This young boy? He sang his way to safety. Only God.
And what did he sing?
“Every Praise” — THIS: on repeat on the farm today…
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“…anyone without this disabling fear may not understand…”
Profound video of blind people describing how they experience beauty:
“Losing my sight has been a blessing,” one man says, a smile spreading on his face. “I don’t care what nationality somebody is, I don’t care how tall somebody is, I don’t care how big or small they are. A person is beautiful because they are… themselves.”
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A 9 yr old’s gift to his town is pretty unbelievable –
who has words for this? Only Glory, glory, glory….{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
100 years young and a celebration like this
Yes, this.
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What if we were Eliza’s parents?
One for the fridge?
Free printable for your weekend!
Post of the Week from here …
Unlock Your Marriage? The Daily Vow of a 10 Second Kiss for Wedded Bliss
(The Conscious Coupling Series)
Our creator showing off like you’ve never seen him before. Prepare to lose your breath.
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Hey Soul? Stress is soul toxic. Grace is a soul cleanser.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out…?
Come to Me. Get away with Me & you’ll recover your life… Learn the unforced rhythms of grace… Keep company with Me & you’ll learn to live freely & lightly.” ~ Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30MSG
Faith diets from stress & feasts on Grace. Simply: Faith refuses to stress.
[excerpted from our morning devotions in our little Facebook community
where every morning we share a word like this to encourage each other & #PreachGospeltoOurselves... 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.
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 25, 2014
How to Care for the Most Important Part of You
More than 2 decades ago, John Ortberg drove to a modest house to meet a spiritual giant. He supposed the truth of why he went to see him is that he was (in his small world) a celebrity and that he thought if he could be around someone important, perhaps a little importance could rub off on him too. And maybe he could help John become more successful. John did not know then what he would learn over many years —that he was a healer of souls. “The most important thing in your life,” Dallas Willard said, “is not what you do; it’s who you become. That’s what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe. Your soul is not just something that lives on after your body dies. It’s the most important thing about you. It is your life.” Over the years John sought Dallas’ wisdom to help him understand the human soul, and in his new book Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You, he shares what he has learned. A grace to welcome John Ortberg to the farm’s front porch today:
I and no one else am responsible for the condition of my soul. The soul needs a keeper.
Our world has replaced the word soul with the word self, and they are not the same thing.
The more that we focus on our selves, the more we neglect our souls.
In our day, we talk a lot about self-talk.
Books get written about the importance of self-talk. Apparently, that’s a really important part of the human condition.
Everybody here talks to themselves.
In the Bible, people talk to their souls.
The difference between talking to yourself and talking to your soul is the soul exists in the presence of God.
So you will see in the Psalms and elsewhere people speaking to their souls because when you speak to the soul, it naturally turns to prayer because in the soul God is always present.
Your soul is not the same thing as your emotions.
We live in a world where we’re encouraged to think that our feelings dominate our lives and that we are powerless over them.
Normally when we are angry about something, we mutter under our breath: “Well that sure was stupid, you big dummy.”
We beat up on ourselves or worse, on others. We may find temporary relief from that, but the soul still cries for attention.
The next time you blow something — when you’re frightened, when you’re dissatisfied — instead of mindless self-talk, speak to your soul: “Why are you afraid, O my soul?”
At first it might seem a little silly, but remember, you are the keeper of your soul. Only you.
Not long ago I got really angry at somebody. Finally I literally stopped in my tracks because I was so immersed in anger and said, “Soul, why are you so angry?”
Something interesting happened. I found that I just began to pray, and it was like God saying to me, “John, you are not your anger.” It’s like my soul had a place to stand with God, and we could talk sensibly about my anger, even as it ebbed from my soul.
“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
No, I am its keeper, not its captain. I did not make it, and I cannot save it from death.
That’s why soul-care is a different task than self-care. I do not care for my soul only for my own sake. It is only mine on loan, and it is coming due soon.
The psalmist wrote that blessed people are like trees planted by rivers of water, which yield their fruit in season, and whose leaves do not wither; they prosper in all they do.
In the ancient Middle East, trees were rare. Rain was scarce. Deserts were plentiful. But if a tree were planted by a river, it was no longer dependent on uncertain weather or the surface condition of the soil. It could flourish at all times because its roots allowed the water to stream into each part of the tree to bring it life. You couldn’t see the roots, but no one could miss the green leaves or fresh fruit.
Our soul is like an inner stream of water that gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other area of life.
We will always take the most care of that which we value most deeply.
John Ortberg is a bestselling author, international speaker, and the senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (MPPC) in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His books include, Who Is This Man?; The Life You’ve Always Wanted; Know Doubt; and The Me I Want To Be. John holds a Master of Divinity and a doctorate degree in clinical psychology. Now that their children are grown, he and his wife, Nancy enjoy surfing the Pacific to care for their souls.
With a hot cup to wrap your hands around: Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You.
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 23, 2014
Unlock Your Marriage? The Daily Vow of a 10 Second Kiss for Wedded Bliss [The Conscious Coupling Series]
So when you come to me and tell me that one of the kid locked the keys in your truck — again — I see how your shoulders sag.
How life wears at a man, weighs at a man.
We do that, you and I.
We let the bulk of the details of a life press us down, drag us down.
The vet came last week Thursday. You had a production report to finish. Unopened bills stack on the desk by the phone with it’s blinking messages demanding answers. One of the kids is emotionally imploding. It’s taped to the one chalkboard: “Jesus answered them, Do not grumble among yourselves.”
This is hard.
There are 3 kids with piano lessons on Mondays, 2 with pick up basketball on Wednesdays, and one kid who has get to back to the doctor this week to have his stitches taken out, and when do I just get to take you out?
When does a woman get to sit across the table from the man she gave her I do to — and not think about her to-do list?
When do we get to re-member why we fell in love and re-member us in a world that tries to dis-member us with the sharp edge of a thousand little things? When do we make it stop: Death by daily things can be painfully slow.
When is there time for us to do what will undo our coupled stress?
Because who needs conscious uncoupling when life seems to be trying to unconsciously uncouple us all the time?
What we really need is conscious coupling. What we really need is intentional coupling.
What we really need to do is to make time.
Yeah, I know: Time is a supreme gift — and the one thing nobody really wants to give to anybody.
But I’m slowing down for you. The way the waves slow down to kiss the shore. The way time used to slow down when you looked into me and I looked into you and our hearts about stopped, ridiculously alive.
The way there are hands on the clock but they are always hands bound by our free hands and we always get to decide the day’s only decision — what will we do with the time we’ve been given?
I decide you. I decide us.
Because marriage is about making all the minutes tell the truth of the glorious gospel.
There is always time for us to find one another again.
I meet a guy last week who only refers to his wife as his bride.
It struck me — a man with 4 kids calling his wife of decades his Bride. Like he remembered a moment when he wanted her and he had never gotten over it, never stopped wanting her.
I think about this as I fold your underwear, swish our toilet, pick up our kids’ shoes and all this chaos that our love has made.
And I whisper it to you in the dark, why that man calling his wife his Bride struck me:
When you call the woman that you’re married to your wife it can sound like you’re naming something that you own.
When you call the woman that you’re married to your Bride, it can sound like you’re naming her your beloved.
Call the woman that you’re married to your bride and you remember the moment you kissed her slow.
Call the woman that you’re married to your wife and you can forget to kiss her at all.
And you whispered it back in the dark: Bride.
And then the kiss came long and slow.
And you’ve done it every day since.
You grin and call me Bride. And I roll my eyes and blush but don’t think for a moment that it doesn’t do something or I don’t remember and you don’t look wildly young all over again.
And what do you do but kiss a bride?
And ain’t nobody here talking about a quick peck on the cheek either.
Pecks on the cheek can leave you feeling more hen pecked than anything else.
So we’re the married fools committed to it now everyday, like our dance step through life’s minefield: Bride. Kiss. A long and slow 10 seconds.
[The Real 5 Second Rule Times Two]
Bills. Laundry. Kids.
Groceries. Kids. Dishes. Kids. Garbage.
No Grumbling amongst ourselves.
Errands. To-Do lists. Kids.
Bride. Kiss. A long and Slow 10 Seconds.
[The Real 5 Second Rule Times Two]
It could be the vow of the married: The 10 Second Kiss for Wedded Bliss. And yeah, a kiss may not mean bliss — but it may mean a beginning? So there’s that: Every day we’ll kiss each other 10 seconds or longer — like we did at the altar. Like we have the time to be living sacrifices for each other.
Like there isn’t time to go to sleep at night until there is time for The Real 5 Second Rule Times Two:
The 10 Second Kiss for Wedded Bliss.
Why we didn’t frame it and title the moment before? Because every married mother, every married father, ever married wage earner, mortgage maker, bill payer, needs to remember how they are still a married lover.
I have no idea why we haven’t done this before. No idea why they don’t tell you on your wedding day that there is a ‘disproportionate amount of brain space taken up with processing information from the lips compared to the rest of our bodies,’ how even a light brush of the lips lights up a large part of our brain…
How didn’t we know that cortisol levels, which determines our stress levels, decreases after kissing. Who knew that the 10 Second kiss of Wedded Bliss nixes hours of stress?
Who knew that locking of lips unlocks oxytocin, the hormone that makes us bond and keeps us bonded, keeps us attached, keeps us connected.
It’s our Conscious Commitment that keeps us from unconsciously uncoupling.
Conscious Conversation —- you take the one second longer to make sure our eyes linger when we’re talking.
Conscious Serving — you take the two seconds longer to make the bed. I take the 5 seconds longer to rub the back of your neck at the end of the day.
Conscious Gratitude — you take just a moment to thank me for dinner, I take just a moment after the kids are in bed to thank you for helping us get through. We take a moment, many, to bite our tongues and not grumble, a moment to bravely focus on gifts.
Conscious Affection — and we take the 10 seconds longer to let go of everything else and to just give each other the ministry of presence, the longing of the slowing kiss.
The Conscious Coupling of the The 10 Second Kiss for Wedded Bliss. [ #10SecKissVow ]
We could be the winning fools living this:
Love is more than simply a warm feeling; Love is ultimately a daily forging. Marriage could live the heat of a love like this.
We could the be the ones telling the kids, the ones living it because we believe it:
Your body should only be shared with someone who is covenanted to always love your soul.
Your body needs to shared with someone who is covenanted to always love your soul.
So that day you share that sigh with me?
Share that one of the kids locked your keys in the pick-up truck again? The business of life doesn’t get in the way of the business of our marriage, but rather the business of a life becomes the way in which the tender work of our marriage unlocks us into free.
Yeah, our life is hard. And our love is stronger.
And we slip of arms around waists and we’re conscious of our coupling and there is always time to share this unlocking and a locking of us.
This brushing against the warmth of glory.
[The Conscious Coupling Series will be unfolding here, Lord willing, over the next several months]
Related: The Real Truth About The ‘Boring’ Men
3 Habits Every Marriage Needs to Fall in Love Again
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 21, 2014
The Truth You’ve Got To Know About After Easter
That first call was from the hospital.
Right about the cracking dawn on Resurrection Sunday, her whispering on the other end of the line.
Two weeks so far. Not that we all aren’t counting or anything. Who knows how many more weeks my sister has in front of her, how many more clattering hospital trays of soggy toast and watery jello and runny eggs?
Takes about 40 weeks to unfurl the plumped soul of a baby. She’s got about 9 more weeks to pass of laying the stiffness of a dead woman, not moving, so she can birth a life. Strange, how bed rest can make it sore hard to find the rest of God.
There are five little girls at home (or here. or at my mama’s) who keep counting every day that their Mama’s laugher’s not with them.
I tell my sister that we’re setting the table for her 5 and her good man to join our ridiculous 6 for Resurrection Sunday dinner and I’ve already got the two legs of lamb in the oven. Oh, c’mon, what kids don’t like a platter of leg of lamb?
Our kids straggle in from barn chores and I’m a banshee telling them to hurry to be in time for church because only amateurs hurry and yeah, there are days when I am sadly the reigning losing queen of amateur.
“And if you’re ready to go, Levi, clean up your room and then finish up setting the table — 11 kids. 4 adults. — 15 place settings.” I’m madly squeezing garlic through press like a woman desperate to squeeze her life right dry. Pans of roasted potatoes wait patiently for their seasoning by sprinkling. There are pans of patience waiting in the midst of every oven.
Then some kid howls bloody murder.
Like all hell can really just break loose on Resurrection Sunday morning.
Like he’s screaming and there’s this stream of blood draining from his hand and dripping across the plank floor and what in the wounded world?
How in the world do you turn around and go from a call from the hospital to 15 for dinner to clean your room and get ready for church to a bloody messy pooling on the kitchen floor?
“Yeah, we’ve got to go into ER.” The Farmer’s got Levi’s bleeding hand in his. “His finger’s cut about half way through, right there at the tendon.”
“I just —“ Levi’s choking it out, “I just picked up that helicopter blade on the floor of my room…”
“See?” Malakai’s muttering. “Told you that having to clean up your room is dangerous to your health.”
Parental glare down of younger brother.
Yeah, these are all our monkeys and yep, definitely our circus.
The Farmer heads east in the pickup truck, toward town and the hospital, Levi hunched over his hand bound up in this towel.
And I head west in the van, toward a little country chapel and the 5 other kids with vainly smoothed down rooster tails and cock-eyed collars, hoping to sing about the Man who unfolded from the grave bandages and walked out of the death clothes that bound us all.
We’re the last ones in the service, 15 minutes late. Because always.
Because the whole congregation is belting out 10,000 reasons for my heart to find, Bless the Lord Oh My soul, and I dial my sister.
Turn it to speaker phone and raise the worship and the wounded high and she sing with us from a hospital bed and there are tears that can taste like salted glory.
I have no idea what verse we’re crescendoing through when Archie Bonsma’s pager sirens in the middle of Diane Goodkey’s piano notes.
And all six foot 3 inches of Archie Bonsma flings down the aisle, his lanky hand trying to muffle the shrieking pager right out the back door of the chapel.
Fire.
Everybody glances at each other hoping no one notices because we all know that Archie Bonsma’s a volunteer fireman.
And somewhere on Resurrection Sunday morning there are flames and a pillar of smoke and a life burning down.
And Archie Bonsma flung out of his 10,000 Reasons to go put a fire out and become someone else’s reason and my sister’s in my raised hand on speaker phone still, singing from her hospital bed with Diane Goodkey on the piano.
And the Farmer and Levi are sitting in an ER waiting room in town, waiting on a doctor and stitches because we’re gashed open and haemorrhaging a bit here and there is a fire in bones that you can’t put out.
Because we know that whatever stone that’s been trapping, whatever boulder that’s been blocking, whatever rock that’s been locking — we know our God heaves stones because He loves and we know our God tears off grave clothes because He resurrects and we know our God upends to right.
We are the Resurrection People who know that hope can rise from the dead places
and that impossible stones can be rolled back to light
and right now all the sad things are becoming undone.
No matter how the world turns, there’s no turning that stone back now.
We’re the Resurrection People and we won’t live like that stone’s been rolled back. We won’t live like it isn’t the truth: The sad things are all becoming undone now. There’s no turning that stone back now. There’s no turning back now.
What’s been wearing death clothes in a life can get up and walk, what we’ve felt as wounds, by His wounds, are being healed, what’s being burnt to ashes will birth beauty. Ashes are always the papery birth announcement of beauty rising.
Us bound in that sin that’s always been, us with that heartbreak that just won’t take a break, us who feel locked up in these patterns and someone’s thrown away the key — we’re the people who’ve seen that the stone’s been rolled away.
We’re the Resurrection People who push back against the dark of impossible, because we’ve seen the impossible stone’s been pushed back against the dark. We’re the Resurrection People who walk in strong hope because we’ve seen the strong stones moved and Hope come right out to meet us and move us.
We’re the Resurrection people who believe that we can turn back, that people can turn back, that situations can turn around, because we’ve seen that stone’s been rolled back.
Nothing and no one is impossible now
because impossible stones have now been rolled away.
And sure, let the rest of folks go ahead and pack up their Easter decorations and turn the calendar page over and they can roll up the banners and swags but there’s this Resurrection People who aren’t going back to before and we refuse to live like that stone’s been rolled back.
He is alive and He is risen and I’m going to keep that on the chalkboard and keep saying it over the burnt pots and the overflowing sinks and I’m going to keep singing it like a refrain: He is Risen Indeed— because I want Him to be risen in Me.
I’m standing there singing on Resurrection morning with a bleeding kid in ER and a preeclampsia sister in the hospital and the sister and the singing are held high in my hand on speaker phone, a broadcast of defiant worship out into a world that feels like it’s burning down and I’m blinking it back:
We’re the Resurrection People and the brave Hosanna is our forever song.
The way we roll — is that the stone’s been rolled away.
I make dinner for 15, and Levi comes home with his swollen hand and stitches and the arm of his father around his shoulder, and Archie Bonsma put out that fire.
Levi eats his lamb with one hand held over his head to help hush the loud throb.
I text my sister pictures of her girls and she text me back tears from a hospital bed.
At the end of the Resurrection Sunday, before the real beginning again, the kids and all the cousins gather close and sing it again, 10,000 Reasons, bless the Lord, oh my soul, though we’re pretty sure there are more than 10,000 Reasons, and we’ll be singing them off key and loud for all eternity.
They say that the most hilarious line in the Bible is Pilate speaking about Jesus’ tomb: “Go, make it as secure as you can.“
Good luck with that.
Because the thing is:
We now get to live secure through family messes and wearying trials and bloody places because nothing could secure that tomb.
We can live secure through anything now because nothing could secure that tomb.
And I scrawl it across on a chalkboard on the Monday: The way we roll — is that the stone’s been rolled away.
The sun slants warm across the lawn, across the planked floors and I go ahead and just leave a stone out on the counter, there by the worn out old cutting boards.
The practice of your faith every day is the practice of resurrection in everything.
And the light keeps lifting the dark right there across the cut up old cutting boards, like a cracking back of the black.
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy ! Take the dare to Fully Live!
1. Grab the free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2014. Jot them down in the numbered One Thousand Gifts Devotional Journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community or on Twitter (label with #1000gifts #JoyDare) to enter for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2014 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 20, 2014
What the ‘In Need’ People Really Need, Indeed… [Holy Week: 7]
And all the people in need, in desperate need, in broken need,
whisper it like a breaking dawn in the dark,
He is risen indeed, indeed, indeed.
and the cornerstone of Christianity
is this rotting cell sparking,
a heart valve quivering in the pitch,
a beetle scratching in the black while
convex chest cavity shudders,
sunken death inflating with His hot breath,
atoms of the second Adam recreating
resurrecting
all the impossible things and the universe.
::
::
Can you feel it, within, in your darkest places?
He is alive! And in us!
(Consider pausing the music in the left sidebar in the very bottom corner, clicking the music icon.
If reading in a reader or via email, click here to view this video
We’ve watched countless times — and it has me in the happiest tears and every time!)
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 19, 2014
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [04.19.14]
A photographic celebration of new life: day by day.
Beautiful.
What she does? And her smile? No. Words.
More than just beautiful faces. This story is amazing.
The artist? The medium? You aren’t going to believe this
Gather the family? A must see.
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Who would have thought this hope out of the Boston Marathon? 1 year later
How one extraordinary educator works first to build an emotional bond with her students
Smiling through tears at this dream come true.
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Can you see him? Search for this dog in each these photos!
This mama? This story? Only tears.
“What we do have is each other. And we have love. And we have prayer. And we have friends. And family.
God did not do this.”
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Basking in the beauty of the short-lived cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C.
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This week (in)courage shared the world premier of a beautiful new (in)RL music video! ”We Can Do Something Extraordinary” was written for the (in)courage community by the amazing Christa Wells & Nicole Witt in celebration of what we can accomplish in Christ when we do it together –
Brave beating hearts – we can do something EXTRAordinary.
If you haven’t yet registered for (in)RL – the virtual girl’s weekend that comes to you, wherever you are in the world – you can do that here for free!
When you register you’ll receive a brand new (in)RL eBook and complete access to all of the videos, including a Friday AND Saturday keynote! This year we’re talking about the power of sharing our stories – and we’d just love to have you join us on April 25th & 26th.
Yes! Everything you need to host a Mother’s Day Tea –
including the perfect read, recipes, and free printables too!
Hank and the Milwaukee Brewers? Don’t miss this.
A story of hope and faith. And rescue.
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Do not disdain the small : the small adds up to glory…
what we watched this weekend — that opened up a worthwhile conversation as a family:
releasing now in Canada and the UK
What happens between the pages of a book and an open heart
Impossible to witness the wonder of this, this weekend, and not choke up… On repeat here
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Post of the Week from here …
When You’re Struggling & Holy Week is Just Hard
[- excerpted from One Thousand Gifts]
That’s all for this weekend, friends. Sunday Morning is Coming!
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re - joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 18, 2014
When You’re Tired of Being Torn: Why He Came [ Holy Week: Good Friday ]
Our Pastor calls to ask if I’d do one of a few dramatic monologues for Good Friday service— a moment through the eyes of the mother of Jesus? So I write down words… and imagine the mother of our Lord… fingering the bloody tunic of her Son.
Son…. Son of God… Son of mine…
God.
Why?
From the beginning I have watched and I have listened and I have pondered all these things quiet in my heart — but now I have to ask:
why?
Why didn’t You come down from that Cross in all Your power and Glory?
Why didn’t You blind the chief priests with Your divine radiance?
Why didn’t You still all their blasphemous tongues with the army of the heavenly host, with Your burning holiness, with Your flaming sword?
Isn’t that who You really are?
Oh Son — why?
I know… I know.
Only Your blood flow can extinguish the flames of hell.
There was no other way.
How could You let a lost world burn?
You took fire so we could walk free.
You took violence so we could be victors.
You took hell so we could be healed.
Sin hurt You far deeper than the spikes.
And You let the horrors of satan take a swipe at You so that all horrific sin could be wiped clean.
And You knew it all along.
You were conceived into skin for the Cross — the cave of that manger beginning glimpsing the cave of Your Messiah, martyred endings.
You who had no beginning, You were born for this, for the blood, that we might be reborn to life.
Oh Son….
I know… how could You have been our Saviour if You hadn’t known suffering?
How could we have worshiped You if You weren’t wounded?
How could we bow to You if You were not bruised?
We could only believe in You because You have lived in us — in our mangled world, in our aching pain, in all our hurting humanity.
You alone are the God for us — because You alone are the God who has been one of us.
You felt what we feel, You touched the death that we know, You came to us as Immanuel: God with us.
I remember when Joseph first told me… that the angel had told him that You would be called Immanuel… God with us.
I started weaving your robe right then.
The loom work was soothing, the shuttle slipping back and forth, like rocking, a lullaby. And I dreamed of You and holding You and how someday You would wear this cloth…. this tunic without seams.
It’s tradition, what all Jewish mothers give to their sons when they leave home: a seamless robe.
And I began Your one-piece before I even beheld You and I wove late through the nights, under that circle of moon and I thought of You who has no beginning and no end, You from which all things are from and through and to… and I gave you the robe and I watched You walk this sod and I was there.
I was there at Calvary and I stood near that Cross with my sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas and with Mary Magdalene and I saw you heave breathe.
And I saw the blood trickling down from the iron pierced holes in your feet and I saw the soldiers take Your clothes… this one-piece robe… and I hardly breathed… and I heard them say, “Let us not tear it.”
And when they already had tore you right through…
“This all happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
And I heard you say, your voice gurgling blood, “Dear Woman… here is your son.”
And I went home with John, my mind thinking of you torn and your one-piece robe still whole…
How You let your side be ripped open that our lives need never be split into sacred and secular.
How you were slashed that our lives could be seamless — all holy.
That the veil in the temple rents in two because of You, and there is no longer a divide between the common and the hallowed and the whole earth is full of your glory and You are the continuous, unending, divine thread that weaves through all of the world, holding all together… even when you, Son, are rent apart.
And hanging naked and blood smeared and dirt defiled, You nodded slow and You said yes — You gave us your one-piece robe of seamless holiness and You clothed us, the filthy ones, in all your white righteousness.
Your blood wasn’t enough.
Your buying us back wasn’t enough.
Your being our brother wasn’t enough.
Nothing short of dressing us beautifully and calling us Beloved would be enough.
O Son…
That I’d take up this cloth that You give me and be who You name me — Beloved.
That there’s no more being torn in a million directions — that no matter what pulls, I have a one-piece life life in You: One direction, One purpose, One audience, One Love, One Joy — a one-piece life — all holy, all meaningful, all offered to You.
That I’d wear a One-Piece life and see Your face in a thousand faces, in a thousand humble and unseen places, and all my life would be all with You. And the moon will shine round and the threads of all my moments will shine with Your glory. And this one-piece life — that it’d be all be for the One and True God alone…
I swaddled You in the beginning…
And now You hold me and robe me in You.
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 17, 2014
The Miracle That Happens Every Time You Come to the Table & Eat [Holy Week: Day 4]
Shauna Niequist is a soul sister, a kindred spirit, a writer, a mama–and she’s a table girl, someone who has seen the goodness of God over and over in the faces of the people she gathers around her table. Bread & Wine is a love letter to life around the table, with recipes that take you by the hand and urge you gently into your own kitchen—knife, onion, oil, pan.
I love the table.
Love the gathering, love what God does when we look one another full in the face, when we listen to the whole story, not just the textable sound byte, when we let the candles burn down and the truth spill out over hours.
And that’s why I learned to cook, because I believe so deeply in what happens around a table.
For all my hours in the kitchen, though, I didn’t bake until very recently, until something drew me to breadbaking.
And bread baking drew me to consider the sacraments…
The sacraments are tangible ways to represent intangible ideas: The idea of a Savior, of a sacrifice, of body and blood so many centuries ago, fills our senses and invades our present when our fingers break bread and our mouths fill with wine.
We don’t experience this connection, this remembering, this intimate memory and celebration of Christ, only at the altar. We experience it, or at least we could, every time the bread and wine are present — essentially, every time we are fed.
During that last meal, that last gathering of dear friends and disciples, Jesus was inviting us to gather around a table and remember, in church buildings and outside of them, during the sacrament of Communion and outside of it.
Body of Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you. “Every time you eat the bread and drink the wine,” Jesus says, “remember me.” Communion is connection, remembrance.
My friend Shane says the genius of Communion, of bread and wine, is that bread is the food of the poor and wine the drink of the privileged, and that every time we see those two together, we are reminded of what we share instead of what divides us.
In our tradition, we take Communion as a part of the church service every month or so. We pass a plate of bread, and another with tiny cups of wine — juice, actually. The taste of grape juice always reminds me of church, because until I had children, that was the only time I ever encountered it.
We also celebrate Communion in less formal places — at a camp, or on a retreat. It isn’t terribly uncommon to take Communion together in a makeshift way, in a home or a backyard or on a beach, one person reading the Scripture, another passing the bread and wine around a circle of friends, a small group, or a team that serves together.
I believe that Jesus asked for us to remember Him during the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine every time, every meal, every day—no matter where we are, who we are, what we’ve done.
If we only practice remembrance every time we take Communion at church, we miss three opportunities a day to remember. What a travesty!
Eugene Peterson says that “to eyes that see, every bush is a burning bush.” Yes, that, exactly.
To those of us who believe that all of life is sacred, every crumb of bread and sip of wine is a Eucharist, a remembrance, a call to awareness of holiness right where we are.
I believe this bread and wine is to be torn and handled, gulped. I believe that we can practice the sacrament of Communion anywhere at all, that a forest clearing can become a church and any one of us like a priest as we bless the bread and the wine.
I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond the church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular, grubby people like you and me, onto our tables, in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards.
Holiness abounds, should we choose to look for it.
The whisper and drumbeat of God’s Spirit are all around us, should we choose to listen for them.
The building blocks of the most common meal — the bread and the wine — are reminders to us: “He’s here! God is here, and He is good.”
Every time we eat, every time we gather, every time the table is filled: He’s here. He’s here, and He is good.
Shauna Niequist is the author of Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet.
She lives outside Chicago with her husband, Aaron, and their sons, Henry and Mac. Shauna writes about family, friendship, faith, and life around the table.
She offers a veritable feast, a love letter to life around the table with recipes, with the rich & filling wisdom on the powerful pages of Bread & Wine.
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 16, 2014
When You’re Feeling Spiritually Dry during Holy Week [Holy Week: Day 3]
[Scroll down for the three posts shared here today?]
Dad always did that after the meat and potatoes, after the plates were cleared and stacked.
He’d ask for a toothpick.
Him in his plaid flannel shirt and Levi’s, looking for a bit of a tree to right everything again.
That’s what he’d do before he left the table: He’d snap the wood between his fingers.
He’d snap the brittle wood right between his fingers.
And he’d say that to us women.
To us at the sink when he passed through the kitchen, when he went looking for his work boots again, for his sun-frayed hat and his honest earthy work.
He’d say, “A woman can be a dry and brittle thing, ready to snap.” Then he’d wink and dodge his way out of the kitchen, dishtowel snapping loud in his direction.
I have no idea why it took me twenty years to know it:
The days that are dry and brittle, ready to snap — these days are perfect kindling for a burning bush.
The days after Psalm Sunday, we eat figs.
Because the day after Palm Sunday, Jesus, hungry for fruit, he sees a fig tree and
“He went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only.
And He said to it, “May no fruit every come from you again!”
And the fig tree withered at once” (Matthew 21:18).
The first act after the fall, it’s the first Adam come looking for fig leaves.
The last miracle before being nailed to the Tree, it’s the Second Adam, Jesus, come looking for figs.
Ask Adam: The authentic Christian life has got to be more than leafage.
Faith has to have fruit.
It’s the fig-bearers who live a faith that bears fruit. And it’s the leaf-wearers who just live this front that wears thin.
Ask me.
I can’t even remember the last time we’ve sung that hymn in the pews:
For thou art our salvation, Lord,
our refuge and our great reward;
without thy grace we waste away
like flowers that wither and decay
Forget the fig tree withering.
Whole family trees wither away without a grace that produces fruit.
Without thy grace we waste away.
When the boys eye that plate on the counter, when they ask if they can have more figs, I say yes.
I say yes.
And Christ? He inspects our lives for more than intentions; He intends for intimacy.
He searches the limbs not for leaves — not leaving for conferences or for meetings or for front seats. He looks along the the leaves for the love.
For the seed that swells with the Spirit, the faith that unfurls, the flower that unfolds into fruit. Can belief ever be barren? Doesn’t belief always mean living in the Beloved? Living like the Beloved?
Shalom breaks her fig open and I can see all the seeds, all this possibility.
“They’re so sweet.” She eats her’s slow.
I clear the counter.
What if you’re the one feeling dry and brittle?
What if all you feel like you ever bear is…. frustrated kids and edgy words and a whole string of “grin and bear it days”?
What if you’re the one who feels like you’re withering right up?
I move the plate of figs off the table and it’s there.
The silhouette of the the Bent Beloved, all tenderness.
Him leaving the withered fig tree to lay down on the worn Tree so all the weary can revive.
And me, this woman too often like Aaron’s rod, dry and brittle, who just has to lay everything about before the Lord —
I lay out a bowl of almonds too.
Because Aaron’s dry -as-death rod, that rod budded and blossomed, white almond flowers unfurling this impossible faith by grace.
These brittle, dry days — they can be kindle for burning bushes and God can come upon the dry bones and they can bud and blossom. And we can eat almonds and taste miraculous fruit from limbs just surrendered.
Though the fig tree doesn’t blossom nor fruit be on the vine, yet I will rejoice– and there is the reviving. He can make the dry bones dance.
After Palm Sunday and before Good Friday, that’s what we eat — the almonds and the figs and the fruit, because by Grace, God can get a fig out of even this dry stick. Levi sets out the third bowl.
A small dish of toothpicks. Dry, like dead trees.
“It’s what we’ll do when we repent.” He tells my Mama when she stops in. He shows her, holding up this grapevine wreath, this wood withered and wound.
“These wreaths that we made from the vines back in the wood? Every time we need to repent this Holy Week,” he reaches for the bowl… ” — we’ll slip in one of these sticks.”
“Yes,” she nods.
“Yes, exactly.”
I’m fingering the sharp edge of one brittle point.
And I go first.
I slip in a toothpick thorn, repenting of fruit that isn’t and believing in Him who is, and it’s there in these hands, this snapped, withered wood that will bear the impossible life and right everything again.
This hope encircling like a crown…
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3 Bowls & a Crown of Thorns: Holy Week Activity
Three Bowls & a Crown of Thorns :
Items Needed:
1. Figs in a bowl
2. Almonds in a bowl
3. Toothpicks, tea or coffee stained in a bowl
4. a grapevine wreath, crowned-sized
Set the Three Bowls (figs, almonds, toothpicks) & a Crown of Thorns on a table during Holy Week.
1. Read of Jesus’ last miracle before His death: The Withering of the Fig Tree.
Share how Christ is looking for fruit in our lives of faith. And the first fruit is to believe that Jesus Christ is our Saviour, that without Him, there is no fruit. Have a time of personal and family reflection: What are the fruits of the Spirit? How does my life bear each of the fruits of the Spirit?
2. Read the story of Aaron’s dry as death rod budding and blossoming and bearing fruit.
Give glory to God for doing miraculous work in your life, to bear unlikely faith, by His grace alone! Share God-glorifying stories of unexpected fruit!
3. Leave out the bowl of figs and almonds to eat throughout Holy Week
A literal reminder of what Christ seeks and how He surprisingly saves.
4. Set out the bowl of thorns {toothpicks stained} and the Thorn
Throughout Holy Week, as issues arise that beg repenting, slip a toothpick thorn into the grapevine wreath — and thank Him for His painful grace that He offers to bear fruit in our lives…
Without thy grace, we waste and wither away.
Three posts are shared here today for Holy Week: Day 3
Post 1: When You’re Feeling Spiritually Dry during Holy Week [Holy Week: Day 3]
Post 2: [How to Serve a Christian Passover] When Your Holy Week is Far from Perfect & You Just Need a Perfect Lamb
Post 3: When You Need a Garden Getaway in the Middle of Holy Week: Make A Garden Getaway
Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
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