Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 247
January 22, 2014
How to Get Through the Dark Places [#TheJesusProject 2 ]
The old cahoot ran in his boots.
Weren’t too many of anybody who believed he could.
The kids and I read about the old guy one night after supper and the dishwasher’s moaning away, crumbs still across the counter.
How the old guy ran for 544 miles. His name was Cliff Young and he wasn’t so much. He was 61 years old. He was a farmer. Levi grins big.
Mr. Young showed up for the race in his Osh Kosh overalls and with his workboots on, with galoshes over top. In case it rained.
He had no Nike sponsorship.
He had no wife – hadn’t had one ever.
Lived with his mother. Never drank. Never ran in any kind of race before. Never ran a 5 mile race, or a half-marathon, not even a marathon.
But here he was standing in his workboots at the starting line of an ultra-marathon, the most gruelling marathon in the world, a 544 mile marathon.
Try wrapping your head around pounding the concrete with one foot after another for 544 endless, stretching miles. They don’t measure races like that in yards – -but in zip codes.
First thing Cliff did was take out his teeth.
Said his false teeth rattled when he ran.
Said he grew up on a farm with sheep and no four wheelers, no horses, so the only way to round up sheep was on the run. Sometimes the best training for the really big things is just the everyday things.
That’s what Cliff said: “Whenever the storms would roll in, I’d have to go run and round up the sheep.” 2,000 head of sheep. 2,000 acres of land.
“Sometimes I’d have to run those sheep for two or three days. I can run this race; it’s only two more days. Five days. I’ve run sheep for three.”
“Got any backers?” Reporters shoved their microphones around old Cliff like a spike belt.
“No….” Cliff slipped his hands into his overall pockets.
“Then you can’t run.”
Cliff looked down at his boots. Does man need backers or does a man need to believe? What you believe is the biggest backer you’ll ever have.
The other runners, all under a buffed 30 years of age, they take off like pumped shots from that starting line. And scruffy old Cliff staggers forward. He doesn’t run. Shuffles, more like it. Straight back. Arms dangling. Feet awkwardly shuffling along.
Cliff eats dust.
For 18 hours, the racers blow down the road, far down the road, and old Cliff shuffles on behind.
Come the pitch black of night, the runners in their $400 ergonomic Nikes and Adidas, lay down by the roadside, because that’s the plan to win an ultra-marathon, to run 544 straight miles: 18 hours of running, 6 hours of sleeping, rinse and repeat for 5 days, 6 days, 7 days.
The dark falls in. Runners sleep. Cameras get turned off. Reporters go to bed.
And through the black night, one 61-year-old man far behind keeps shuffling on.
And all I can think is:
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
The light shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.
καταλαμβάνω Katalambanō – Comprehend. Understand. Master.
Cliff Young runs on through the night and there is a Light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not master it.
The darkness doesn’t understand the light, doesn’t comprehend the light, doesn’t get the light, doesn’t overcome the light, doesn’t master the light.
Darkness doesn’t have anything on light, on hope, on faith.
The darkness that sucks at the prodigal kid doesn’t have anything on the light of his mother’s prayers.
The black of pornography that threatens at the edges doesn’t master the blazing light of Jesus at the center.
The pit of depression that plunges deep doesn’t go deeper than the love of your Jesus and there is no place His light won’t go to find you, to save you, to hold you.
That low lying storm cloud that hangs over you can’t master the light of Christ that raises you.
“Darkness can’t drive out darkness. Only light can do that,” Martin Luther King had said it, had lived it.
Only words of Light can drive out worlds of dark.
Only deeds of Light can drive out depths of dark.
Only lives of Light can drive out lies of dark.
Darkness can never travel as fast as Light. No matter how bad things get, no matter how black the dark seeps in, no matter the depths of the night — the dark can never travel as fast as Light. The Light is always there first, waiting to shatter the dark.
You can always hold His Word like a ball of light right there your hand, right up there next to your warming heart.
You can always count on it: Jesus is bendable Light, warmth around every unexpected corner.
Cliff Young runs on through the dark — because he didn’t know you were supposed to stop.
The accepted way professional runners approached the race was to run 18 hours, sleep 6, for7 days straight. But Cliff Young didn’t know that. He didn’t know the accepted way. He only knew what he did regularly back home, the way he had always done it: You run through the dark.
Turns out when Cliff Young said he gathered sheep around his farm for three days, he meant he’d run across 2,000 acres of farmland for three days straight without stopping or sleeping, without the dark ever stopping him. You gathered sheep by running through the dark.
So along the endless stretches of highway, a tiny shadow of an old man shuffled along, one foot after another, right through the heat, right through the night. Cliff gained ground.
Cliff gained ground because he didn’t lose ground to the dark. Cliff gained ground because he ran through the dark.
And somewhere at the outset of the night, Cliff Young in his overalls, he shuffled passed the toned runners half his age. And by the morning light, teethless Cliff Young who wasn’t young at all, he was a tiny shadow — far, far ahead of the professional athletes.
For five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes straight, Cliff Young ran, never once stopping for the dark – never stopping until the old sheep farmer crossed the finish line – First. He crossed the finish line first. Beating a world record. By two. whole. days.
The second place runner crossed the finish line 9 hours after old Cliff.
And when they handed old Cliff Young his $10,000 prize , he said he hadn’t known there was a prize. Said he’d run for the wonder of it. Said that all the other runners had worked hard too. So Cliff Young waited at the finish line and handed each of the runners an equal share of the 10K.
While others run fast, you can just shuffle with perseverance.
While others impress, you can simply press on.
While others stop for the dark, you can run through the dark.
The race is won by those who keep running through the dark.
Could be the year to pull a Cliff Young.
When those reporters asked Old Cliff that afterward, what had kept him running through the nights, Cliff had said, “I imagined I was outrunning a storm to gather up my sheep.”
And I sit there in the thickening dark.
With the One who mastered the dark and overcame the storm to gather His sheep and now there is a Light Who shines in the darkness and the darkness can never overcome it.
And you can see them out the front window, far away to the west, out on there the highway —
the lights all going on through the dark.
Your Virtual Bible Study Community: Every Wednesday in 2014, Lord willing, we’ll unpack that wk’s #TheJesusProject memory verse from the book of John: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us
Next Wednesday, we are memorizing and unpacking the #3rd verse of #TheJesusProject: ”And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Related: Print Out all #TheJesusProject Memory Prints from the book of John here: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us: #TheJesus Project
Week 1 of #TheJesusProject’s Study: The #1 Organizing Tip Nobody Tells You
Resource: Light of the World and Morning Star Lanterns
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!}
January 21, 2014
Because it’s never too late to find your wings
Because really —
it’s never too late too find your wings…
[Would really love to hear how it's going for you over here today ... come chime in? ]
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!}
January 20, 2014
When You’re Desperate for More Than Barely Surviving Your Life
On Saturday night when the snow falls large, like feathers from heaven’s tick, I kneel in the muck of the barn and milk a sow.
Rub her udder, warm and swollen right heavy round, nudge at the vessel fullness of her, and wait for her drip.
Wait for the sticky whiteness of her dripping sweet, the snow piling without a sound on the roof.
When I’m bent over her udder with a pail of chop for her trough, her last, this mirage of a runt, it slips out of her and feebly scrapes its way out of its blooming fetal bag. I watch it struggle for untried legs, these wet twigs.
She can’t stop her thin, begging tremor. Quakes in a cold and broken world. Presses her wet shiver up against the unwilling back thigh of the sow.
Malakai wore his suede shoes through the snow this afternoon and they puddle this sad, soggy mess of ruin in the mudroom.
Three packages have been sitting in the mud room for two weeks waiting for just one person to finally make the 4 mile pilgrimage to the post office.
There were no clean underwear in the top drawer on Friday morning and tell me, what do you do there, just standing in your flimsy towel?
What saves you everyday from going a little bit insane?
This isn’t a crazy question.
I cup the runt to the sow’s belly up udder.
I nuzzle her bare offering with my hand, nuzzle for the shivering runt, believing the saving white drip will come. If he wants half a chance, he’s got to get some warm cream into him.
Somedays we all are desperate for something, Someone, to save us. The pitiful thing feels like a cold pebble in my hand.
C’mon — Live. Drink. I massage the sow’s udder hard.
Once this woman, she’d bravely told me that she’d sent for it to come in the mail, this story of counting 1000 gifts and taking the dare to joy right right where you are, and she walked hand in hand with her husband to pick up the book up at the post office.
And who could know then, that even that night, her husband would send an email from his midnight shift, pixels that made letters that could detonate one woman’s only world — that he wanted a divorce. That he’d run into an old girlfriend and was up and walking away from his old life and those certain sermons that he’d preached for a month of Sundays from the pulpit.
She said she couldn’t remember getting off the floor a few days later.
Or remember packing up the cat or that small overnight bag or grabbing that package with its ridiculous dare of one thousand gifts or making her way to her daughter’s couch.
She said the pain just went on and on and on. She said she knew God was her only way through this; that she’d listened to enough of her husband’s sermons to believe even that.
She said, “I begged to die.”
C’mon — Live!
The sow lets down and grunts slow and steady and there’s this leak of creamed hope. We need you — we. need. you. — please, please, open your mouth up, girl.
The runt’s only ribs, this concaved prayer.
The woman said that the pounds, they just kept slipping off her laying there on her daughter’s couch. The part of her that was left, it hoped that she’d lose the last of herself and fade invisible.
“One thing I did do: I read about counting one thousand gifts.” She said this. And then she punctuated it with all the breath she still had:
“I HAD to count all my gifts — had to.
To keep me ‘here‘.”
Live! Live! C’mon, we need you to LIVE! The runt’s opened her begging mouth and I can feel her in my hand — I can feel her every warming swallow. I can feel her belly warming. Drink.
When you are dying of thirst, passively reading about water quenches little; the only way to be quenched is to actually get a cup and drink. We have to do more than read and think and plan, we’ll have to do something.
You’ve got to open up your mouth and swallow.
You’ve got to taste and see He’s good —
God isn’t asking us to earn His love.
He’s simply asking us to turn towards His love.
You’ve got to taste His love.
You’ve got to grab a pen and count gifts. You’ve got to look for the glory and hunt for the grace and seize beauty in ugly and laugh brave and defiant in the dark and you can lose everything but nothing can steal Jesus and He is enough and you have got. to. live.
She said that later: “We don’t see God in so much (if any) of what we do. But He IS there. Using all our pain to help others. And we’ve got this privilege of bringing Him glory. Imagine...!”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine that…. Her being brave in the face of pain, her counting it a privilege to bring God glory in the midst of gutting pain…
I could hardly believe you could say something like that after your vowed, tender heart had been abandoned like that, after your heart had been gorged like that.
But she was the one who had lived it and could give real testimony, who hadn’t right bled to death and she had counted gifts because she had to, had to if she was going to stay here, and she’d brought Him impossible glory in the impossible and she had testified He had saved her, so how can you not want to live a truth like that?
Believing something is one thing.
But the best things only come when you decide to Be Living it.
It’s leaking at the edges of the runt’s mouth, the best of her, the milk of her. Why is it hardest, to open yourself up and let yourself be blessed?
It’s literally saving this runt, one glory, milky swallow at a time, each swallow just like one murmured thank you after another.
Spacibo in Russian. Thank you, spacibo, thank you. Spacibo, thank you, in Russian — the literal translation of thank you in Russian is: God saves you.
There is a to-do list I can’t do. And there are demons I can’t slay. And there are these thin, cold days that make me quake dead weary.
And there is a pen that nuzzles at the day, one number at a time, and Spacibo could be an English word: Thank you. God saves you.
God saves you! Live! Live!
And at the very end in the dark in the kitchen, Kai’s shoes lay upside down over the heat register at the back door, the washing machine’s slogging on faithful.
I sit in the still, smelling a bit like a pig and the barn and one runt determined to drink and really live.
And I take the journal from the drawer and open the pages to count.
This swallowing the richness of living, it comes in letting yourself be blessed. Letting yourself be loved.
Let yourself be loved by Him. Count all the ways He loves you and Live!
The ink numbering joy….
just one saving drip at a time.
Related:
The Most Important Skill That Your 2014 Really Needs
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
One Thousand Gifts 60 Day Devotional : Reflections on Finding Everyday Graces
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 this month’s 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 2013. Jot them down in the new 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 to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 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!}
January 18, 2014
Only the Good Stuff: Sharing the Joy this Weekend
Golden hour across the world – stunning photos
“Ask God to help you let your light shine.”
Just nothing less than amazing in this post
“We hope one day our expectations of her, as a society, are more limitless than limited.”
Beautiful words from a father on the life of his daughter …
Absolutely unforgettable. The kids and I were wowed by these. These photos — That boy?
Running into the rainbow, like he might fly?
Yes, that – It’s good to be alive.
One of the most unique photography projects I’ve seen –
More fascinating research on the effects of gratitude on a life…
A must read indeed!
No words – except maybe two – only God.
The cure for the slow discontentment that creeps into a life: Yes, yes, yes!
Free printable – Perfect as we approach Valentine’s Day?
A generous act of kindness goes viral
Hidden camera reveals all – the lengths this dog went to for the prize
And when you know that it’s Jesus within?
Yes — We can have trust that knows no borders.
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
So… how is your beautiful seeping in John going? Got John 1:1 & John 1:5 down?
I’d love to hear your voice as you memorize #TheJesusProject?
Share your video with our community?
Every Wednesday in 2014, we’re unpacking each verse of #TheJesusProject here on the blog, putting real skin on what it means to really live #theJesusProject and the Gospel of John.
We’d love to do real life with you… Join us every Wednesday?
Yep: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us [download of 24 free frame able Printables]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re - joice.
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!}
January 17, 2014
How to Really Enjoy this Weekend
What does it mean to think “Christianly” about our possessions? Through 30 years of ministry and marriage, pastor Jeff Manion has explored the beauty of virtues like contentment, gratitude, and generosity. But recently, while mining passages of scripture for his book Satisfied: Discovering Contentment in a World of Consumption, he was reminded of an additional, often overlooked quality: Enjoyment. To enjoy God, the Giver of all — and give His gifts to others that they may in turn, turn to God and enjoy Him. Welcoming Jeff Manion to the farm’s front porch:
by Jeff Manion
It’s Saturday morning.
Stan has determined to fully take the day off.
No responding to e-mails from work, no repeated checking of his phone for text messages.
He stands at the stove flipping pancakes and frying eggs. Coffee brews.
His wife sleeps in as his two pajama clad, preschool age sons watch cartoons in the adjacent family room. Mingled aromas fill the kitchen.
He pours a mug of coffee and plates the pancakes and eggs-calling his boys to the table.
Stan’s heart is full.
In this simple moment of cooking breakfast for his boys on an unrushed weekend morning, he is swept away by a wave of God’s goodness.
He feels rich. If he listens carefully in this moment, he will detect a whisper: “Enjoy this.”
As the boys scamper to the table, Stan breathes a response. “Thanks.“
This is worship. Simple, pure, spontaneous gratitude to the Giver.
There have been other moments when Stan has felt this sensation. The previous summer, things had been tight financially.
One Sunday afternoon the family made an excursion to a county park 20 minutes from their home. The boys splashed in a shallow stream as he prepared a bed of coals on which to grill hotdogs.
It was a postcard day, shade from massive oaks, warm but not oppressively hot. And laughter. Pure glee as his sons waded and splashed. A common adage proclaims that the best things in life are free.
This expedition was not totally free but pretty close-the combined cost of dogs, buns, chips and iced tea was around $10.00. But the richness of the day far exceeded the investment.
Again, there was the whispered voice “enjoy this” and the responsive worship. “Thanks.”
Imbedded in the wise council given by the Apostle Paul to his protégé Timothy, we find these challenging words regarding wealth.
“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth,
which is so uncertain,
but to put their hope in God,
who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” (I Timothy 6:17)
Those final words may come as something of a surprise.
In this caution to wealthy Christians is a reminder that God abundantly provides everything for our enjoyment. Our gracious Father provides innumerable gifts and wants you to enjoy them.
I reflected on these words early last spring as I sat on my backyard deck in the darkness.
A small fountain gurgled a dozen feet away augmenting the sounds of the summer evening with that of bubbling water, the area illuminated by the flame of an outdoor fireplace. I inhaled the aroma of fresh bark spread in the flower garden below. It was a cool spring night, chilly enough to deter mosquitoes, yet warm enough to sit outside-a truly glorious May evening.
This night was a gift.
In the simple luxuries of fountain and flame, I detected the whisper of my Lord. “Enjoy this.” In that moment, I experienced a flood of deep grateful — I was blessed beyond anything I had done or deserve.
Now here’s my challenge: how to fall deeper in love with God and not my deck furniture. How to find my hope in God and not in my stuff. Will the enjoyment of these blessings stir or eclipse my affection for the Giver?
I must humbly move toward receiving the gift of my backyard, the blessing of this wondrous evening, from the hand of a generous Creator, but not hold God in contempt by loving His gifts more than Himself.
What daily enjoyments flood your life? From our world we enjoy bread, and cheese and we dine on pasta. We savor the flavors of rich coffee, tangy oranges, tart apples and crisp carrots. And He, the creator, provides this for us with the intent that we would find His generous hand behind the dozen enjoyments of each day and turn to Him in gratitude.
Do you hear his voice inviting you to enter into joy? The invitation calls to you, as you sit beside a fireplace on a winter evening, or sip a steaming mug of tea, or view the bouquet of autumn trees. “Enjoy this.“
Hear the voice as your pick fresh vegetables from your garden, recline in the summer shade, enjoy morning espresso, or as your senses awaken to the scent of spring rain, or the crisp winter air.
Respond to the goodness of the Creator with deep thanks and unbridled joy as you dig into a great salad, a peanut butter sandwich, or share an unrushed dinner with friends.
As you walk along the beach, hike beside a stream, or sit beside a fountain open your heart to thank the Giver, who in Paul’s words, “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”
The pair of hiking shoes, the warm blanket, view of the snow from your window –
Enjoy this.
by Jeff Manion
Jeff Manion is the senior teaching pastor of Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he has served for 30 years. His great joy is digging deeply into Scripture and passionately teaching the story of the Bible in a clear and relevant way. Jeff is an avid runner and enjoys cycling and hiking. He and his wife, Chris, have three adult children. Jeff’s first book, The Land Between, released in 2010 and his second book, Satisfied: Discovering Contentment in a World of Consumption may be a grace way to begin to enjoy this weekend, this year?
Tomorrow’s post, Lord willing: Only the Really Good Stuff: Links Guaranteed to make you Laugh in your coffee, Be Moved in your world, Feel Inspired right now & Be the G.I.F.T. to others so they may be Satisfied and deeply enjoy God …
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!}
January 15, 2014
The #1 Organizing Secret that No One Tells You — That Can Change Everyone’s Life
Just after midnight, I’m standing there in the kitchen swigging back a bit of a bottle.
The house that looks like a stampede of wild horses had rode through mad sometime after dinner.
I have no idea why there are several splayed dolls, tangled balls of yarn and the innards of some mechanical car remains strewn across the living room floor — with a gentle dusting of allen wrenches everywhere.
I’m not saying that the whole thing wouldn’t drive a woman to drink whatever she found in the fridge.
I’m just saying that a swig or two (okay, it was more like four or five) from that slender necked bottle of pure maple syrup was sweet relief there in the dark.
I’ll deal with the mess in the morning.
The clock ticks likes a huffy tsk, tsk, get to bed.
Malakai couldn’t find batteries for it today. He’d shrugged and said we should just hang it back up on the wall anyway. “It doesn’t care that it doesn’t tell time.”
“It doesn’t matter…. it doesn’t matter,” the flukey grammar teacher in me had slammed the emphasis down on the word— “It doesn’t matter — and it does matter.” I feel a bit crazy.
“Look — can you find some new batteries?” I’d taken the clock out of his hands. “You could hang the clock as art. It would be beautiful.” And I believe it: What is beautiful in our lives is what actually becomes the most useful in our lives.
And there is this— if you let the clock do what it is meant to do? It will be beautiful and make your life beautiful. I don’t think the 11-year-old kid with tousled hair got it.
“It looks nice enough to just hang.” He’d half grinned. “I don’t know where any batteries are.”
Uh huh.
On the splattered old chalkboard by the kitchen table, I’d taped it up with white bandage tape (because we’re classy like that, yes ma’am):
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….” A verse scrolled on paper to highlight the essence of its internal beauty…
Is Jesus merely useful to you — or is He ultimately beautiful to you?
When Jesus is merely useful to me, I want Him to move my world.
When Jesus is ultimately beautiful to me, it’s my heart that is moved – and this begins to change the world.
In the beginning was the Word —
When the beginning began — the Word was already there. The Word was never created, never had a beginning, the Word has always been. If you’re looking for one, if you need one, there is a Rock for any of your storms.
Everything that has ever had a beginning — had its beginning in Him.
And I swallow hard in a dark house: The beginning of any change in me begins with Him being my beginning.
The beginning of my everyday, my every thought, my every plan, my every conversation, my every step forward. If, in the beginning of anything, there is something different than the Word, the ending will be different than you hoped.
Beautiful — He is beautiful to me. I wipe off a sticky counter. He is all my beautiful beginnings. I inhale that.
In the beginning was the Word — the Logos.
And there was that guy who lived beside me in dorm at university —
That had this mullet cut, drove an old Ford yellow pick up with these orange flames burning up the fenders, who wanted to be a truck driver like his dad, just right after he got his 4 year degree in Latin and Greek philosophy.
He gave me long stem red roses and told me that he was a better pick for me than that Farmer-Boy I had waiting for me back home – but all that is another story for another time.
The part of that story that is this story in a messy house at midnight with a loud clock ticking on the wall is what the Greek philosophy books said on that guy’s shelf: That more than half a century before the Gospel of John was ever written, more than 500 years before God pulled on flesh and stretched out on straw, Heraclitus was the first Greek philosopher who used that word: Logos.
Heraclitus was this Greek philosopher who looked at the world, at the skies, at nature, and said that there had to be some unity, some governing principle, some harmonious order to the cosmos…and Heraclitus concluded that what gives the world all coherent structure — is a principle he called Logos.
Heraclitus said that the coherent structure of everything, the order behind the world, the order of all things — was Logos.
Heraclitus said that the principle of all cosmic organization — was Logos.
And for 500 years after Heraclitus, the Greeks lived by Logos. They lived their life by Logos, the principle of meaning and balance and profound order in the universe.
A slave was meant to serve, a cup was meant to contain, a horse was meant to haul. This was logic. This was Logos. This is why, Son, the clock needs to have batteries – it’s Logos is meant to tell time.
A slave didn’t contain wine, a cup didn’t haul bags, a horse didn’t serve dinner. Life had a Logos, a logic of being, a reason for existence, and you aligned yourself with the Logos.
Align yourself with the Logos and your life was rightly organized.
And then 500 years after Heraclitus — John picks up picks up a pen, chooses his words carefully, purposefully, divinely, and his ink blows the top right off the whole down and out world:
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God — and the Logos was God. The first lines of John’s book reorients the cosmos:
The Logos isn’t an organizing Principle — It’s an organizing Person.
The Absolute behind the universe is absolutely Jesus.
The order behind the World — is Jesus in the World.
The organizing structure of the world isn’t a philosophy — the organizing structure of the world is the Word — the Word of God. The words of Jesus.
All cosmic organization is not around one principle – but around One Person.
There is a slide of banana peels across the counter. My mind felt scrambled with a mess of worries all morning. No one can find the toilet bowl cleaner. Malakai did find batteries. The clock ticks on the wall, beating out a steady grace at the day’s weary close. It’s found it’s beautiful Logos.
There are the sticky notes of verses, Romans, at my sink, on my mirror, on my phone.
There is The Word that’s getting underlined, a Bible in a year, that teeters atop a stack of lesser books by my bed.
There’s the chimes on my phone that call like church bells at nine, at noon, at night, calling me to stop and pray stop and pray in the midst of the chaos and the undone – calling me to hard stops – because God wants knees more than work.
You can always choose a hard stop to keep you from crashing.
I run my hand along a sticky counter. The Person of Jesus is the world’s only real organizing principle.
The Words of Jesus are the only real logic. Jesus is the only real logic. Jesus is my only real logic.
Align a life with Logos, with the Word, with Jesus, and your life’s rightly organized. What is beautiful in our lives is what actually becomes the most useful in our lives. The clock up there on the wall is making art; it’s doing what it’s meant to do. It’s living out its Logos.
When my life is organized around Jesus, who is Beautiful, my messy life is organized beautifully.
I pick up a trail of dirty balled socks, sprawled books, the clock still ticking, being the beautiful it’s meant to be, and I organize around the beautiful like I’m meant to and murmur it into the dark: In the beginning was the Word, Logos — and the Logos was God…
And right there —
the lighting beauty of Him organizes the messes within.
Every Wednesday: Your Virtual Bible Study Community: #TheJesusProject: Every Wednesday in 2014, Lord willing, we’ll unpack that wk’s #TheJesusProject memory verse from the book of John: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us
Next Wednesday, we are memorizing and unpacking the 2nd verse of #TheJesusProject: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Related: Print Out all #TheJesusProject Memory Prints from the book of John here: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us: #TheJesus Project
My Read-the-Bible-in-a-Year Plan
My app to stop and pray throughout the day: Hard Stops
Make Hard Stops:How to Avoid Life Crashes
Seven Way to Keep Your Home Strong
When It’s Hard to Find Time for God and Prayer
The Only Way a Soul Can Live
The Simplicity of Prayer for Beginners
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!}
January 14, 2014
How to Cure Burn Out
So this rabid symphony lover invites me to a concert, a box seat, up over the orchestra.
It’s cold.
Chicago in January.
The violinists warm up.
The whole northern hemisphere keeps trying to warm up.
From anywhere in the building, you can see the guy up front, the conductor.
Somebody’s ironed his black threads pretty smooth. His hair – not so much. It’s this perfect balance of grace.
The lights dim, papers stop rustling. A thousand smart phones are rendered dumb.
The conductor raises his arms and in one moment it’s like he’s pulled a million strings and the music rises — and there it is, clear as a spotlight:
The only way to lead a symphony is to turn your back to the crowd, the critics, the court.
Unpacking “How to Cure Burn Out” over at Catalyst today
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!}
January 13, 2014
How to Draft an Ideal Day & Get New Habits Down {Free Daily Planner}
Good thing every dawn is Day One.
Because it’s the third week of January.
You know — when the rubber meets the road, when the glossy on the resolutions begins to chip off like flaking nail polish, when things get, oh — just plain ol’ hard.
The Farmer wraps his arm around me in the early morning dark. “Hear it?” He whispers the words close. The window panes, the roof, they’re thrumming quiet with everything coming down in a song.
“Mmmm…. ” I nuzzle into my pillow. “Rain.”
“Late January thaw.” We lay there listening. Mid-winter and there’s this melting away. He turns in the greying light, sits on the edge of the bed before the window and the sky all slipping down in rivulets. “Well — we’ll lose some this snow now.” I can see a patch of green across the fields.
“Yeah, there’ll be more winter coming,” he reaches for his jeans. “But this is so good — now we begin afresh.”
And I get out of bed on the third Monday of a new year, when the freshness starts to fade, and there are dishes in the sink and a long to-do list in my hand-writing on the counter and the laundry floods out of mudroom baskets.
From the kitchen window, I can see a fog rising like a veil off the skirt of snow around the woods. The fresh year’s begins in a cloud of mystery and I whisper to myself what heaven always whispers to those on holy ground: “Do not be afraid.” Deep breath.
A day’s only made of fresh hope.
And gratitude is what makes the past a grace, here holy, and tomorrow a gift.
I think I see the way to begin again, to just keep beginning again.
Because the kids and I, we’d left a pile of dirty plates on the counter and had sat down for just 25 minutes to read this book , and there’s this character that just goes ahead and puts on her “habit.”
Shalom pats my shoulder and asks, “What’s a habit?”
There’s this amaryllis on the sill — it’s swelling defiant hope.
And I tell Shalom what a habit is, though I hadn’t thought of that way until that girl in the book “pulled on her habit” –
A habit is something that is worn.
Shalom had nodded, turns back to the page. She waits for me to read the next line.
I’m sort of struck — stuck — trying to get unstuck. Literally. Maybe it isn’t so much about getting new habit down – as it was about getting those habit on — wearing your habits?
A habit is what we wear. A habit is the way we wear our days.
Wear new habits and your life gets a makeover.
Consistently do things at the same time everyday and find yourself a new person.
I look down at my jeans and a threadbare knee. I have habits that desperately need changing.
I lay out new threads: clip this sheet of paper, The Day’s Draft, to one clipboard.
Clip my 100 Day Calendar – to another clipboard.
Lay January’s Joy Dare out by the numbered journal.
And I scratch down a plan for an ideal day each day, The Day’s Draft — working on habits and consistency.
And I keep it close, the other clipboard with my 100 Day Calendar, one hundred days to write down and check off three new habits, day after day, writing down each of the habits and checking them off, this consistently being consistent, the deliberate work of making a new habit.
Using that 100 Day Calendar sort of like this?
Creativity – a project that’d be bliss to finish in 100 Days? Each day for 100 days, write it down… and after working on it — after even spending 2 minutes (you may find yourself spending longer, but just tell yourself you only have to do it for one minute!)– then check it off for that day….
New Habits – A morning routine? Times of prayer? Scripture Memorization? Playing games with the kids? Reading aloud each evening? Just pick one or two habits, and jot them down each of the days, for 100 days on the 100 Day Calendar. Free bonus: You get to smile over the accumulating check marks — no charge.
Health – as a way to encourage 100 days of healthy patterns … exercise/sleep/eating patterns? Choose one health habit and write it down each day — writing it down beside the day’s number is my commitment to follow through for that day — and to make that check mark happen! Who wants to break the string of 100 Days?
There’s only three spaces for scratching down 3 practices for each of the 100 Days. So as not to overwhelm with many new practices — and just get a few under our belt at a time?
[Post Script, Crazy Free Bonus #2: When the children saw the 100 Days Calendar on the clipboard with my three daily practices written in and waiting for a string of little check marks? They all wanted their own 100 Days Calendar too! They each chose which 3 habits, or practices, they wanted to undertake for the first 100 Days -- and have been enthusiastically checking off each day! Intrinsic motivation!]
So keeping a clipboard near and just trying it — try on new habits. Forward!
And too, to just keep jotting down thanks, because I’m a mess knowing only one thing: The Next Thing is always to Give Thanks.
It’s an astonishing thing to know God’s clear will for you in the next year: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this. is. God’s. will. for. you…” (Thess. 5:18)
And the thing is, if I can just keep setting the timer and doing pomodoros for each of the tasks on The Day’s Draft – even this hick might wear new threads.
Because there’s realizing this too:
If it matters, you make the time.
If it doesn’t, you make excuses.
Standing in an imperfect place is always the perfect place to begin.
Then, come the end of the day, to be done with the day because you’ve done what you could do. The accomplishment of a day isn’t so much about accomplishing goals but abiding in God.
Yeah, the day may have stumbled and fallen – but in Christ we are the saved.
Tomorrow, it will descend like a fresh dew, a fresh snow, slow rain, and it will come again — Fresh grace all over again.
The amaryllis on the sill, it resolves to unfold beauty.
And it does, it blooms wide open. It does it right there on the sill — wears this habit of hope, keeps leaning forward toward the sun.
Right here in winter, the rain still falling on snow in the orchard.
Related:
1. The Grace Plan: A Doable, Practical Plan for Life-Transforming Change
2. The Most Important Skill that Your New Year Needs
3. How to Know God’s Will for Your Life: The Art of Fully Living
4. Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us: #TheJesusProject
5. 100 days to Pull New Habits On (free download of the 100 Days Calendar)
6. Drafting the Idea Day? Free Download of the Day’s Draft
7. And the Third place I lay my pen everyday: The 60 Day 1000 Gifts Devotional: 60 Devos and 1000 numbered fresh lines
8. Next week: This is the Habit Paper System — next week, if you prefer apps, or a combination thereof paper and pen and apps, this hick will be sharing her favorite apps that are making it the year to fly!
Wear new habits and your life gets a makeover.
Consistently do things at the same time everyday and find yourself a new person.
If it matters, you make the time.
If it doesn’t, you make excuses.
And the accomplishment of a day isn’t so much about accomplishing goals but abiding in God.
Today, if you’d like to share your own celebrating, your own marking towards 1000 Gifts of thanks — (please, jump in!) — 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 by sharing the community’s graphic within your post…
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!}
January 11, 2014
Only the Really Good Stuff: 18 Links for a No Fear New Year
“Hope is really about rest.
Resting in the imperfections of today because you believe that tomorrow there is possibility”.
This inspires — yes, power lines and all –
The beauty of blowing bubbles in the freezing temps!
Have you seen these? Beauty is everywhere, the whole earth full of His Glory
This one-legged woman strides (sort of) into a world of suffering and makes it better for being there.
2014 Game changer:
“Reconciling a lousy world with a good, loving and powerful God”.
Too incredible to deny?
A dream coming true for a brave young boy
How encouraging is that?
Yes! Let’s do this: How to Live Outside of the Box this Year
Less on our “to-do lists”, and more on our “to-Be” lists?
From our days in the polar vortex:
“… every road closed across 4 counties and the blizzard blows on. The Farmer’s blown in from the barn. Blueberry crumble’s warm out of the oven. And the quiet in the wind:
Stay the mind on God and there isn’t a storm that can move the soul from the peace of God.“
from our Favorite Instagram this week
[Connect on Instagram? Together we're slowing every day to see #1000gifts in 2014]
Go make amazing things this year!
Gather the kids to look at this 23 foot work of art!
This year, she is slowing… to gain.
Yes, yes, yes — a must read for us all.
Make beautiful things happen everywhere this year!
Amena Brown? Asks one powerful question for 2014. And your answer changes everything.
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
So selfless and kind…just — ah, yeah — this for a new year.
Just — no words. A must see –
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
Got your #JesusProject On? So… where did you hang up your 24 Free “More than Useful: He is Beautiful” Memory Prints? It’s working for us here on the farm: Scripture Memorization for the Rest of Us
Lord willing, the first Study & Devotional unpacking the first #JesusProject Memory Print, John 1:1, this Wednesday? It’s happening already — this is changing our life.
Pray these words with me in 2014?
Yours will be the only name that matters to me… Jesus
{Consider turning off music by clicking the speaker bar near the bottom of the left margin?}
This habit for 2014: Why We Need Total Darkness to Sleep: A link to breast Cancer
Starting a No Fear New Year, On the Stack at the Farm:
Renewed: Finding Your Inner Happy in an Overwhelmed World
Lucille Zimmerman’s a life coach in a loud world…
How Malcolm Gladwell Rediscovered Faith
Profound shaping for a fresh year
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re - joice.
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!}
January 10, 2014
What Jesus Said is a Life-Changer: The Sozo Habit [Camera Giveaway Winners]
‘I sit at the prayer bench before my bedroom window.
Outside, our boys roll millions of flakes into a snow fort.
I read the passage in the Bible open in front of me, one I remember from the musty basement of the Knox Presbyterian Church Sunday school. uh, yeah — I think I know this one. Yeah…. Jesus restores ten lepers to wholeness. And only one returns to offer any thanks. I remember the moral too, Mrs. Morrison and her glossy red lipstick: “How often do you remember to say thanks?” Yeah, I think I know this one.
I skim.
“One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan” (Luke 17:15–16 NIV). Yeah, yeah, thankfulness, I know. Next verse.
Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:17–19 NIV)
Wait.
I trace back. Hadn’t Jesus already completely healed him? Exactly like the other nine who were cured who hadn’t bothered to return and thank Him.
So what does Jesus mean, “Your faith has made you well”? Had I underinterpreted this passage, missed some hidden mystery?
I slow down and dig. Read Jesus’ words in Young’s Literal Translation, “And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Having risen, be going on, thy faith has saved thee.’”
Saved thee? I dig deeper. It’s sozo in the Greek. Many translations render sozo as being made “well” or “whole,” but its literal meaning, I read it— “to save.” Sozo means salvation.
Sozo — it means true wellness, complete wholeness. To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus came that we might live life to the full; He came to give us sozo.
And when did the leper receive sozo—the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks. I lay down my pen.
Our very saving is associated with our gratitude.
Mrs. Morrison hadn’t mentioned this. But … yeah, of course.
If our fall in the Garden of Eden was the non-eucharisteo, non-thanksgiving, the ingratitude for all that God had given and longing from the one tree He’d forbidden us to eat from — then salvation must be intimately related to eucharisteo, the giving of thanks.
I look back to the text. That is what it says: “Thy faith has saved thee.” And the leper’s faith was a faith that said thank you. Is that it?
Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves.
We only enter into the full life — into sozo — if our faith gives thanks.
Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.
Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His Grace.
Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life — sozo!
“If the church is in Christ, its initial act is always an act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God,” writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. If I am truly in Christ, mustn’t my initial act, too, always be an act of thanksgiving, returning to Jesus with thanks on the lips?
I would read it much later in the pages of the Psalms. At the close of a Communion service as the bread and the wine were returned to the table. The Farmer would hand his Bible over to me, his finger holding the verse for me to see because he had just read it there, what I had been saying, living, believing —- and the chin would quiver before I’d brim at the way God shows His salvation:
“He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God” (Psalm 50:23 NIV).
Thanksgiving – giving thanks in everything — prepares the way that God might show us His fullest salvation in Christ.
The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God—even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion –—this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him.
At the Eucharist, Christ breaks His heart to heal ours — Christ, the complete accomplishment of our salvation.
And the miracle of eucharisteo never ends: thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives.
Thanksgiving –giving thanks in everything — is what prepares the way for salvation’s whole restoration. Our salvation in Christ is real, yet the completeness of that salvation is not fully realized in a life until the life realizes the need to fully give thanks. In everything?
I would never experience the fullness of my salvation until I expressed the fullness of my thanks everyday, and eucharisteo is elemental to living the saved life.
Mrs. Morrison hadn’t told me this either.
And sitting there before the window, I’m struck, a comet blazing across the dark places in my life. All those years thinking I was saved and had said my yes to God, but was really living the no. Was it because I had never fully experienced the whole of my salvation? Had never lived out the fullest expression of my salvation in Christ?
Because I wasn’t taking everything in my life and returning to Jesus, falling at His feet and thanking Him.
I sit still, blinded by the light of it, the truth of it — and am unblinded. This is why I sat all those years in church but my soul holes had never fully healed.
Eucharisteo, the Greek word with the hard meaning and the harder meaning to live—this is the only way from emptiness to full.
I watch our boys carve in the wall of their snowfort.
They dig and their cheeks flame with the heat of the work, their hair damp with the effort.
The packed snow of the fort gives way and there it is. A door in the wall.
~ excerpt from One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Related:
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
The 60 DAY DEVOTIONAL with 1000 numbered journal:
One Thousand Gifts Devotional: Reflecting on Finding Everyday Graces
Who has words for all this?!?
Just a Glimpse of the hundreds, thousands, of your stories:
I have No. Words. for what Jesus is doing in all of your lives… your God stories take my breath away.
In awe of the glory of Jesus in every. single. one. of. you.
Soul beautiful. Look at all of you beautiful people!
I want to send letters to each of you!
Wrap a thousand packages for each of you!
So us hicks couldn’t stop at one, but found four, randomly picked 4 winners:
Camera winner!
[To Count 1000 gifts, change your life and enter 2014's draw for a camera, see here]
Next Wednesday we will begin our first unpacking of The Jesus Project
Sozo! This is the year we FLY!
Begin to count 1000 gifts?
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!}
Ann Voskamp's Blog
- Ann Voskamp's profile
- 1369 followers
