Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 267

Why You need an Island of Quiet right now

Sunday, there’d been the crowning, the waving of the palms.

Monday, then the cleansing, the cursing of the fig.

Tuesday, the conflict, the plotting of the Pharisee.

Then come Thursday —  there would be the communion, the breaking of the bread.

And Friday, the crucifixion, the hanging of the impossible dead.

And at no point could  anyone have imagined the confusion of Saturday or the culmination of Sunday.

But Wednesday?

Wednesday, the calm, the calm, the silence of the Christ.

There’s no record of what Christ did on the Wednesday of Holy Week. Did He pray on Wednesday?

Did He go up on a mountainside and watch the sky and feel the blood in his veins, the air in his lungs, the weight of the world bearing down?

Did He prepare quietly for suffering on Wednesday because He knew: the quieter you are, the more grace you hear.

Because He knew –

be still

means stop trying to achieve great things…

and simply receive grace. 

The Wednesday of Holy Week, it comes quiet and stilled. The clouds lie low. There are prayers.

The fuel of public service is always ignited by private communion with God.  

Waiting for a son on Wednesday afternoon, every act of patience this learning to wait on God,  there is Christ too in the silent middle of Holy Week –

there with the patience of 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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Forget Perfect: When All You Need for Easter is the Lamb {Free Easter Printable}

So on a week when you feel messy and behind and burdened and it’s obvious that you’re flailing and aching just a bit —

it’s the small things.

A few plants in dirt for an Easter Grace Garden. Some figs and almonds from the store on Tuesday and some thorns in a crown — even just one or two.  Read just one devotional  (download here) between now and Sunday and hang an ornament on the Easter Tree.

And have a Passover meal on Thursday.

The house won’t be perfect. There’s drywall dust in the mudroom. I’ve failed in ways that feel like a piercing.

But the lamb?

I need a Passover Lamb more than anything else.

Need to prepare a Passover meal, rub the marinate into the lamb,

blood ponding on plate,  my hand massaging the meat,

fingers pressing out more of that impossible red,

all the necessary essence of Easter, all very non-Hallmark,

the nostrils filling with this wretched stench of sin,

and this one beating heart hurting for the only God

whose wild love

had Him pass over perfect and tear open a vein

and  become a lamb dragged to the slaughter

without bleating or begging

to cleanse the bloody mess of all those who’ve fallen

behind.

this mess

stained deep into my skin.

 

 

One Passover Meal. Same Passover Program. Two different print options:

Print the Lamb Edition (click the dowload in the top right (arrow on a paper icon) and then print)

or Print the Traditional “Haggadah” Edition (click the dowload in the top right (arrow on a paper icon) and then print)

(with historical background of a Messianic Passover meal & table requirements, thanks to  a partnering with www.CrossroadsChurch.com )

(The actual text of each, to lead you through a Passover Meal, is the same in both free printables)

To Set a Simple Table for a Christian Passover:

1. matzah (or Wholewheat Unleavened Bread)

2. juice of the vine (wine, grape juice, non-alcoholic wine)

3. sprigs of lush green parsley

4. horseradish (bitter herbs)

5. chopped apples and raisins (called haroset)

6. heavy shank bone of lamb

7. boiled egg

8. small dish of salted water

Make it Simple Menu:

Roast Leg of Lamb with Rosemary



Balsamic Roasted Red Potatoes

Baked Asparagus with Balsamic Butter Sauce

Haroset (Chopped Apples & Raisins) for Passover

Wholewheat Unleavened Bread

Baby carrots

And for dessert: New Life

Resources:

I AM – Messianic Passover Seder Plate

I AM – Communion / Passover Cup

I AM – Passover / Communion Candle Holders

Our Easter Essentials this week:

The Free Easter Family Devotional with Ornaments

The 3 Bowls and a Thorn Crown

The Easter Grace Garden

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

When You’re Feeling Dry for Holy Week . . . . {Christian Easter Activity}

{Two posts today… second one will be up around 3:00 pm EST}

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 Palm 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 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 hers 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, it 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 woods? 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…

:

:

:

:

Three Bowls & a Crown of Thorns :

A 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 with tea} and a grapevine wreath

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.

 

Related: This is part of a series preparing a family’s heart for Easter –

Make a Family Easter Garden this week

Free Family Devotional for Easter Week

 

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How To Get Through Cancer, Dark Times, & Suffering {…and an interview @Desiring God}

So this Palm Sunday weekend found me gathering with the women from Perimeter Church.

Where songwriter Laura Story, and her soul beautiful friend,Tiffany both attend…. and I pray their God stories in the midst of suffering forever change me:

{Consider muting Mr. Nevue’s music over in the left sidebar, clicking on the speaker icon? and RSS readers may click here for the video}

“ As Easter approaches, gratitude is a virtue most worthy of our cultivation.

Indeed, in all the Christian life, gratitude is to be planted, watered, dressed, and harvested. Gratitude gets at the very essence of what it means to be created, finite, fallen, redeemed, and sustained by the God of all grace.

Ingratitude was at the heart of the fall, and at the heart of what’s fallen about us to this day. “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). Again and again through the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, it was gratitude — giving God thanks — that was the fitting response to God’s gracious acts of deliverance.

It was gratitude to the Father that Jesus expressed at that first Maundy Thursday table as he held the bread and cup before his disciples (Matthew 26:27; Mark 14:23; Luke 22:17–19; 1 Corinthians 11:24). And it is profound and enduring gratitude…” from my interview at Desiring God today…

In the midst of suffering, as we look toward the Cross this Holy Week, come join me in an audio interview at Desiring God today?

The Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, and a holy life begins with opening palm to God, living the grateful yes.

Give thanks to the Lord for His love endures not just today but forever: the hard times, the dark times and all times.

 

 

Resources:

Tiffany, mother living through childhood cancer, her blog

The song: Blessings by Laura Story

Laura’s story behind her song, Blessing

Laura’s story of her husband’s brain tumor

and One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

and the new One Thousand Gifts Devotional (with numbered Journalling pages)

Giving thanks in everything because we fiercely believe that Christ can redeem anything.

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!

button code here

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

5 Links for a Lovely Weekend

1. For a Saturday morning: Make Resurrection Eggs for next week? Print this printable. And then these simple directions.

2. For deep consideration, an open letter to the church from a lesbian, at Gospel Coalition.

3. For resurrection hope: Free Watercolor Spring Butterfly Printable — just perfect for the Family Easter Grace Garden

4. For Joy: Easter Chalkboard Printable for this week… These 4 Chalkboard prints focus on Christ this week.

5. For healing… beautiful healing:

{Consider muting Mr. Nevue’s music over in the left sidebar, clicking on the speaker icon?

and RSS readers may click here for the video}

 

 

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace.

Live Truth. Give Thanks. Love well. Become the gift.

May the grace and truth of our Lord and Savior surprise you all over again this weekend, friends!

{… in the midst of the hard and hurting places, Jennifer at Studio JRU’s prints, like the one on our wall, “By His Grace” can be a healing balm… Her artwork is beautiful and focused on Christ. She’s graciously offering  a coupon for our community here  that can be used for 20% off through the end of March. Please use the code  ‘ann20′ at checkout… yes — By. His. Grace. alone…  }

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

just… quietly praying

Just quietly praying with the hurting…

Thank you for quietly folding your prayers in with Him who never ceases to make intercession for us…

 

Related Post:

About Steubenville: 25 things Our Sons need to know about Manhood

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

After Steubenville: 25 Things Our Sons need to know about Manhood

Dear Son,

When you’re the mother of four sons, Steubenville is about us.

Steubenville is about having a conversation with sons about hard things and asking you to do holy things.

Because a Steubenville doesn’t begin with football and it doesn’t begin with alcohol and it doesn’t begin with unsupervised jocks with inflated egos and shriveled morals. It begins with one woman bringing home a man-child in her arms, one mama unwrapping that blanket and what it means to raise up a man.

It begins with one mama looking into her son’s eyes for the next 18 years and showing him what it means to be a woman.

I brought you home when I was 21.

I cradled you, you crying and me crying, and the essence of me ran liquid and milky and a woman poured out of herself to keep you alive. You rooted hungry and it was the roots of a woman that nourished you. It was a woman who gave you life, who was the grace of God that kept you alive, who is the mother of all the living.

I held you when fever burned your forehead. And I stroked back your hair when your stomach churned and I cleaned us both up when you vomited all over everything. I opened books for you and stoked your mind and unpacked a world before you and I laid down me to make more of you and it wasn’t a sacrifice but the unexpected grace of motherhood.

We talked about life being much more than you can see, so you knew that a woman is always more more than you can see. I kept trying to be at peace in my own body so that you would always see women as more than a body. And I always told you that I’ve only ever met beautiful people. Ugly is only a state of soul.

In 8 short weeks from today, you’ll blow out your candles and look up across the table and that baby I brought home at 21 will be 18. I don’t know how that happened. I got a lot wrong. And there’ll be a mother in Steubenville who will be shattered that her teen son’s behind bars and how in the world did that happen. We’re all getting a lot wrong.

Like that night I was 19 and I saw it in my rear view mirror, how a 20-something man reached over and started fondling a terrified 14 year-old sleeping girl. How he shrugged his shoulders when we confronted him, like he was brushing away an annoying fly. How there were girls that whispered that he’d grabbed them too in the dark of a car when he drove them home from youth group, how there were all these shy and ashamed girls who were violated and forced and indifferently robbed.

I want to tell you, son — we were all church kids. There was no alcohol. There were no parties. There were no football teams.

There were young men who opened their Bibles and didn’t value the worth of a God-fashioned woman made for glory, young men who sang worship songs and satiated their lust by ripping off the dignity of a sacred human being, young men who said women were the weaker vessel meant let’s drink them dry and be merry.

We went to the church elders.

A handful of us girls with one teenage boy who knew what he saw and wasn’t afraid, we went to the elders and sat there with our hands literally shaking and our mouths impossibly dry and we tried to find words for what should never have to be said. My cheeks and throat burned.

And I have never told anyone what happened next, but after Steubenville, to stay silent is to let perpetrators perpetuate.

We were looked in the eye, Son, and what we were told, those words tried to shatter God —

“Boys will be boys.”

Son. When the prevailing thinking is boys will be boys — girls will be garbage.

And that is never the heart of God.

That’s what you have to get, Son — Real Manhood knows the heart of God for the daughters of His heart.

Your Dad is one of those men. When he heard of what happened in Steubenville, how boys your age had violated a young woman with such indifference and ignorance, he said it to me quiet –

Unless a man looks to Jesus, a man doesn’t know how to treat a woman.

So this is what your dad and I want you to get, to get this and never forget it: that when God decided to pull on skin and make His visitation into the world, He didn’t show up in some backroom of an inner boy’s club or regale us with some black tie inaugural affair.

This is what God chose as best, this is where He first became one of us: God chose to make His entry point into the world through the holy space of a woman, to enfold Himself inside of a woman, to drink of a woman, be held and nourished and cared for by a woman — that’s the jolting truth of how God loves His daughters with His honor.

That Christ never beat down a woman with harsh words or lusting eyes or sneering innuendos, but He stepped in and stopped a broken woman from the abuse of angry men. Christ came to the defense of a hurting woman and the Son of Man stood between her ache and her attackers and He lifted the weight of shame from her and cupped her heart with hope and wrote a new future into the dust and dirt of everything and he saved. her. life. That’s how God loves His daughters with His defense.

That Christ didn’t degrade women in His talk, but He made women heroes in His stories. He invited a woman with a coin and broom to reveal the truth about the Kingdom of God. He honored an intentional woman with an unjust judge as unveiling the character of God. He elevated a lonely, unmarried woman who dropped her meager resources into the temple treasury as the rebuke of God for all the rich and religious. That’s how God loves His daughters with His words.

That Christ didn’t demonize women but He accepted the presence of a woman reviled by the self-righteous, He sat with the scandalous woman the righteous regarded as damaged goods, He welcomed the rejected and the immodest though he lost the respect of the religious. That’s how God loves His daughter with His grace.

That when Christ stepped out of that black tomb, he still didn’t choose to first manifest Himself to prestigious officials, religious leaders, the Twelve, but instead He revealed Himself first to the women, He entrusted the veracity of His resurrection to the testimony of the women, He offered the privilege of proclaiming Christ as the risen Savior to the women, though no court at the time would accept their testimony. That’s how God loves His daughters with His regard.

So your Dad wanted you to know — when you turn the pages of the Bible, Son, let everything you read of women be shaped by how Jesus sealed His view and value of women.

Let Christ shape you and not the magazine covers of the Walmart checkout: Real Manhood never objectifies women. Real Manhood edifies women.

Real Manhood means you don’t get drunk, and a man can get drunk on a lot more than alcohol.

Men drunk on power, on control, on ego, lose more than all inhibition — they lose The Way, their own souls. Men drunk on anything can destroy everything and real manhood thirsts for righteousness.

Real Manhood means peer pressure only makes you stronger in Christ.

That in a culture where it’s the tendency to bend, you’ll stand. That in situations where there’s tendency to look the other way, you’ll look for help. That, at times in the church when there’s a tendency to be divisive on the secondary and a unified front of silence on the painful, you’ll seek to rightly divide the truth and unify the brokenhearted.

Because if Christ is The Truth — then where there isn’t Truth, there isn’t Christ. Why ever be afraid of the Truth?

Because if you’re at peace in Christ, you fight injustice.

And Son?

Real Manhood means you take responsibility for your body.

A woman’s immodesty is never an excuse for a man’s irresponsibility. Responsible men — are response-able. This is your job. A woman has her’s. Focus on yours. Real Men don’t focus responsibility on women staying “pure” but on men not pressuring. (Truth is, none of us are pure, Son, and the onus is on you, Son, to pursue holiness.)

Your Dad and I need you to know:

Real Men never pressure but treasure. No one tries to crush a diamond.

Because pressuring a girl? Is blackmail, coercion and repeated robbery attempts. You’re meant to be a man, not the mafia. When you’re pressuring a girl for what you want — is your flag to lean into Jesus who will give you what you need.

The thing is: Real Manhood means you hallow womanhood. A woman isn’t a toy to amuse your lusts, a thing to aggrandize your ego, a trophy to adorn your manhood. A woman is of your rib, who birthed your rib, who cupped your rib, who is meant to be gently cherished at your rib, at your side.

The culture of boys will be boys — means girls will be garbage and you were made for more than this, Son. Your Dad and I believe boys will be godly and boys will be honoring and boys will be humble.

And that teenage boy from youth group, who saw how girls were hurting and violated in shadows and shame, who stood with the wounded because he believed real men of God are men for the hurting?

That brave teenage boy, Son?

He’s now your Dad.

There are more than a few good men, Son.

Real men like their Father — who laid down His life for His daughters.

 

 

 

Related:

How to be the Parent You Want to Be: 40 Things a Child needs to know Before they Leave Home

Letters to the Wounded

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Daring Greatly to Live Fully — Right Where You Are

When Monday gets caught in your teeth like a piece of spinach, the crazy thing is you could dare to laugh  — it gets things unstuck.

You know how it goes — Laugh or die. A joyful heart is good medicine, not just a good platitude.

You could — you could dare not to take yourself so seriously; dare to take yourself as Beloved.

Dare to not to give yourself a lecture, but dare to give yourself grace. His Grace is always the most amazing of all.

And you could dare not to honk if you’re happy, but honk to be happy, dare to realize joy isn’t a function of what happens, but of what you think. Joy is a function of how you thank.

So go ahead — Dare to be brilliant — just seek the light in everything. Dare to believe joy is revolutionary: it goes straight against the way this dark world spins.  Light is always a radical thing in a dark world.

Dare to Give Big because this is how you Live Big. Dare to believe that it’s only your own sacrifices that show up at your funeral.

Dare not to quit when you’re tired, but dare to quit when you’re done.

So just do it, because this is you how you get things done — dare to regularly stop the work of your hands and give God your knees because you believe God can do more than you. Dare to believe God doesn’t want your perfectionism — He wants our praise.

Dare to be grateful for every good thing. And dare to know it’s all good. That’s what God does: God works everything for good.

Dare to never make pain invisible but dare to say injustice is intolerable. This takes courage. This takes Christ.

Dare to give up clarity — because God gives a call. Dare to give up life road maps — because God gives a relationship.

Dare to live without answers — because God gives His hand.

Dare to live by faith — not by feelings, formulas, facts or fences.

Nothing is impossible with God.

 

 

 

Related:

Free Printable: A Life Plan When You’re Overwhelmed: Sanity Manifesto

Free Printable: 10 Point Manifesto of Joyful Parenting

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

 

Giving thanks in everything because we fiercely believe that Christ can redeem anything.

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 January’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!

button code here

 

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

The 1 Thing Radical Really Definitely Has to Look Like — Right Where We Are

No one just straight up tells you that the things you’ve seen — become what you see.

That you’ll close your eyes a thousand nights from now and it will all be real again — where you were and what they wore, that one look, that one moment, that one frame.

That you’ll see the world through what you’ve seen of the world and there’s no going back ever again and you get tinted by what you’ve touched, you get changed by what you’ve been shown.

And I can close my eyes and I’m laying on some steps under a Haitian sun.

And there’s never enough wind for the way the earth burns close here and I shield my eyes and Levi asks me what I just asked him:

“What’s the one word you’re going to carry home from Haiti with you, Mom?“

And I want to roll off that step and dig my hands into this piece of the blurring planet and you can’t drag me from here, can’t make me leave my kin, and what if you find your home with people who only have a home in Him? But I lay still. Take this deep breath. No matter how scared you are about what everything means now, you can’t scare a kid. So I stare up at the sun. And when it comes, I murmur it like a plea: radical.

“Radical? What do you mean, Mom?” Levi leans over me like the shade of a tree.

And I want to loose this heart howl — that I have no idea, that I’m wild to become because it’s got to be more than doing but actually becoming, that radical has to be the Christian’s new normal, that radical isn’t radical but the regular to the disciple of Christ, and what if we’re all fooling ourselves with the American Dream instead of waking up to the Christian Reality and His Kingdom Come?

God forgive.

God forgive all the lukewarm blood.

“It was those boys, wasn’t it?” Levi kneels down on the step beside me stretched out like it’s time to be an altar.

“Yeah…. yeah, Levi, it was them too.”

They’d wanted to tear a Bible up, for crying out loud.

They’d taken the Bible the Farmer had in his hand to give to the boy who could read —- and these 3 boys in Minotiere who have never owned a book, who have never had a Bible of their own, they’d decided amongst themselves in this grand generous gesture — to split the Bible between the three of them, to tear the Bible down its bloody spine so each of them could carry a bit of the God-breathed home under his arm.

They were going to rip up a Bible so they all had a bit of God.

I’d looked into the Farmer’s eyes and shook my head: all three of those boys had decided that it was better for them all to have less, so they all had something, than for one to have everything and the rest have nothing.

And at home we’ve got a bathroom in the basement, 2 on the main floor and one off our bedroom, a garage, and 20 Bibles on how many shelves, and who is ready to have less so we all have something, or do we all want everything so most get nothing?

We’ve got all of God. Why not share the rest ?

Or maybe we don’t — because we don’t really have Him at all?

I have no idea. I have no idea about anything.

I just know that we carried 3 Bibles back with us to Minotiere the next day. And after we picked up the garbage, after our hands got dirty, I sat in the street under a relentless sun and pulled a Haitian Jesus Storybook Bible out of my bag and asked if anyone could read.

His name was John Peter. He read regally. Like every word was a decree. Especially the lines about “I will bless you” — benediction, that word rolled off his tongue.

(Want John Peter to read to you too? See video I shot of him here).

When he looked up from Abraham, after he’d read the same page out loud twice, benediction twice, I said it was his, the whole love letter of God. He held it to his chest.

“Where you from?” His halting English startled me.

“Canada.” I looked into his eyes. Benediction.

“Ottawa?”

I smiled. The boy knew his way around this globe. “No, near Toronto.”

Somebody hollers that it’s late. That it’s time to go back to the mission. And we stand and John Peter walks beside me, half step ahead of me, toward the bus, Bible clung to his chest.

“You love Jesus?” His voice sears me like a brand.

I stop in the middle of the street.

John Peter turns. Our eyes hold. The words choke out like a chest pounding.

“With all my heart.” As if that makes any difference? Like it’s meant to?

And it’s right there, Paul’s words, one’s I’m memorizing, that I pound on my chest like a repentance: “God, whom I serve with my wholeheart in preaching the gospel of his Son… “

And that’s what preaches the gospel: it’s the arteries that preach the gospel, a whole heart.

That the best preachers embody gospel, make words move through their skin and their synapses, and the best sermons are the flooding whoosh of a heart wholly living it, a life poured out.

Give me preachers who can also lay aside microphones and make the whole of a body be a megaphone of grace and truth and Christ.

That’s what Paul said, “I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.” And there are prayers to be made eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in the kitchen hungry, you in the nameless streets needing love, you in the nursing home, you in the mudroom, you around the corner needing a meal and a long hug and a longer, lingering ear.

Make a whole host of us who will preach this gospel on our knees, with dirt under our fingernails and tears in our eyes and there will be no applause and there will be no sound, only this ringing of a hammer in our ears, the way a life lays itself down. This gospel preached most clearly in the going lower, always lower, this surrender to a suffering love, this biting of too-quick tongues and getting down and washing feet.

Give the world that. Be that.

And maybe — your life doesn’t preach the gospel of Christ as much as your life gets gripped by the gospel of Christ. And then Christ becomes your life and your days breathe the realest sermon and Christ exhales His own Amen.

And John Peter nodded his august head.

What does my whole pounding heart testify?

After the three Word-starved boys who were ready to tear the Bible back at the spine to share God, and after the majestic John Peter and his benediction and his Bible clung to his chest, and after Levi pierces me down with what I am going to do about all of this, I find my shaky legs and pack our bags because there are these plane tickets mocking my heart.

The boys and the Farmer haul our bags down to the dining hall.

We donate our water bottles, work gloves, empty suitcases to the mission. We wait for the bus. There is less than an hour left now. There isn’t much time left now.

I wander back up to the guest house. I drag my hand along the chain link fence that gives way to the razed foothills and fields that cry.

Two Haitians hack a way at long dead grasses with these rusting machetes.

And when I climb a few steps out of the sun, into the shade of the now empty guesthouse portico, that’s when I see him come up out of the grasses.

Up out of nowhere, out of nothing, out of badlands, a hilly mile from the road, this child on the other side of the fence.

This dark and dusted child, he’s crouching on just the other side of a chain link fence.

The men just keep swinging, whacking their clanging machetes, slicing everything down.

I step off the step. The boy crouches closer. What in the holy name of God am I doing in a world where I am on one side of a fence and a lone child is on the other? Who’s building these fences? And what if it’s me? I take another few steps, slow, not to scare him, and I kneel, fingers through a chain link before a child, and how did I get here and what am I going to do now? It’s more than one rolling mile down to the road and any gate in this whole stretch of wire.

He points to his lips.

His dry-white chapped lips. He opens his mouth, and he points a dirty finger to his mouth and those cracked lips and do I see what he’s saying without a sound? The whole rotation of everything slows. My mind races. My fingers can’t get to him. I’ve got nothing. Everything’s packed, donated, given away. There’s only —

There’s that one Creole children’s storybook bible we’d left in the guesthouse, left for the next guest to give away, and I motion wait.

I fly up those steps on where I’d whispered “radical” like a mad fool, and I grab the Bible off the shelf, and there I am climbing up a chain link fence to get a Bible to a child. The boy climbs the other side. We’re both hanging on by our fingers, trying to reach through everything that needlessly separates us, and our fingers touch. Touch.

I reach through the barb wire at the top.

I give him all I’ve got and it’s God.

And I’m just fool enough to believe He’s enough and something aches in my gut.

The Bible drops into his open hands and the boy drops to the earth and everything else falls away.

The boy’s cracked lips part and he breaks into this gleaming smile.

And I don’t know what we’re all here for, but it’s got to be this.

It’s got to be those Words that he holds in his hands, it’s got to be about being bread for the begging, it’s got to be about being willing to be broken and given and giving away. People are dying here people.

People are dying because they are wild to see Jesus and know that there’s really more to all this than any of us can see. People are dying here because they need to find the very real space of their own souls and find the very real Saviour who can fill it and all their hollow space. People are dying here because they need bread and we’ve got it in our hands and we either don’t think it’s real bread or we really don’t care.

Why be ashamed of the gospel? Why not be brave enough to use words? Why not be brave enough to break open your own broken life and be real because He really broke Himself for us? Is Christ bread and are people starving to death and if we know it, why won’t we open our hands? Love is always good news.

Never doubt that there’s a love letter to bind up all the brokenhearted and it’s signed with the scars of the Wounded God. Lay your weary head down on it, feed on it, break it and share it with all the hurting world, everywhere you go. Love is always good news.

Preach the gospel and use your words and your hands and your heart because they are all necessary.

When that one lone child walks away carrying all I had, all the bread of the Word of God, I had stood there watching him through the chain link fence, watched him walk away into all that vast emptiness with bread in his hands.

The machetes swung behind me, rolling back the earth and the sky and everything right to the bare radical roots.

Radical — that word that means “of roots.”

This Word, this Book, has to be the radical root of anything that will grow up to radically feed anybody.

I stood there watching the boy walk away, till  he was smaller and smaller and gone, till I could see him no more.

No one told me that I’d see that boy again in all my dreams.

How he’d open his mouth and point to his parched lips and you could hear it, clear as day, like the heavens come down—

“Then if you really love Me? Feed My sheep.”

 

 

Related Posts:

“When we love the least of these — we love Him… If not us — who will be like Jesus to the least of these?“

Americans wanting to reach through a fence in Jesus’ name, find a child here, and Canadians, reach out in Jesus’ name, here….

When You are Weary of Watered-Down, Vanilla Christianity {Pt 1: Radical Series}

What Does a bit of Radical Christianity Really Look Like —- Right Where You Are? {Pt 2: Radical Series}

What Radical Christianity Looks Like Right Where You Are {Pt 3: Radical Series}

Why Weak is the New Strong: Radical Right Where You Are {Pt 4: Radical Series}

 

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Come to the Easter Garden {A Christian Easter Family Activity}

So the thing is, back there in the beginning, we all had this shattering fall in a garden.

And we mark it on the calendar, Christ, falling in the garden of Gethsemane.

Christ, righting our messy fall.

So the kids and I, we put our hands into dirt,

and we remember our garden fall and His garden grace,

and we make a Grace Garden for Easter.

:

How to Make a Grace Garden for Easter

This is what we did:

We gathered

1. a basket, some dirt,

2. some plants at the nursery, a beginning too,

3. tramped to the woods for just the perfect moss

4. found a wee glass dish for a pond, a few shells too {optional}

5. and drilled a hole in a stone. {or use a small planting pot or peat pot, laying on its side}

6. We planted a garden, {filled a pond with water}, laid the flattest, the smallest  stones from our lane, as a winding path to the tomb and our great freedom coming.

7. We found a stone that read GRACE and put it at the entrance of the Garden Tomb. That seemed perfect. (write Grace or Resurrection or Joy on a flat stone?)

8. And come Palm Sunday, we’ll plant some seeds, resurrection hope in the dark of the earth, and line the little stone path with smalls candles, one for each night of Holy Week, miniature garden torches, for the Light is coming.

And each night, all week we’ll light another wick… until Good Friday, when all went dark.

9. And in the evening of Good Friday, the children will shape a caterpillar out of modeling wax, swath it in small square of silk, tuck it in the moss outside the stone over the entrance of the tomb….

10. On Saturday, we’ll remember and we’ll wait.

11. And come Sunday, Easter morn early, in first light dawning, we’ll roll back the tomb, see only the husk of silk left behind, a butterfly a light in the branches of tree over the Tomb.

Tutorial to Make Easter Sunday Morning Butterfly: Click Here

12. And we’ll ask it, incredulous at grace all over again, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk. 24:5) He is alive!

So this is the path we’ll walk the last week of Easter, right across the Grace Garden.

From dark to Light.

From cocoon confinement to conquering in Christ.

From sin grit to saving Grace.

And an Easter Grace Garden will unfold, a parable, a living visual of the metamorphosis of all the cosmos…

And we’ll walk with Him again,

in the garden in the cool of the evening,

reunited by the truth of His grace alone.

::

Related Easter Activities:

A Family Sorry Box {a box of repentance} for Lent

A Free Easter Family Devotional with Ornaments to Make Your own Easter Tree

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!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}