Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 301

Because Hard Days are White Horse Days

When that window shattered into 7 billion pieces, a sliver stuck my heart and maybe a sliver is all we ever have?

It wasn’t so much that our farm boy had turned the tractor too sharp.

It wasn’t that he’d backed the tractor into the auger of the wagon hitched behind him.

It wasn’t even so much that the steel auger had slammed into the full window of the tractor — exploding the glass into a torrent of shards all over our boy, the tractor cab, across the yard.

It was the way I saw our boy turn his face, turn away from sharp fist of the moment.

It was the way I saw him turn to hide what was slipping down all stinging wet, him more broken than any pane of glass.

The farm boy swept a million shards off his lap.

Brushed that stinging wet away with the back of his hand.

And then I watched the farm boy drive the tractor back out to the field, back to the Farmer in the combine,back to fill up with his next load of wheat.

How did he know? That even when we’re broken, we battle onward, all the fixing coming in the moving forward.

When the Farmer looks up from the combine steering wheel to his boy in the shattered tractor, he nods quiet. The farm boy turns his eyes away. Sometimes it’s hard to look love square in the eye and accept the acceptance. Is this why we turn from God?

I crawl up in the combine cab, sat down beside the Farmer. The Farmer hits the button and the combine auger begins to unload into the farm boy’s wagon.

“What do we do?” I hardly murmur it above the roar of the combine, my hands twisted and wrung in my lap. The Farmer senses my words more than he hears them. He knows I don’t mean the window. I can’t look away from our son bent and busted over that tractor steering wheel.

“You know how it is, Ann…” The Farmer glances over at the wagon, our son driving alongside of us, and then back to the wheat he’s combining. “From where we stand, we can’t see whether it’s something’s good or bad. All we can see is that God’s sovereign and He is always good, working all things for good.”

The wheat’s bowed before the combine, willing.

“The window’s gone and the tractor cab dented and sure, we can think about how shook up and heartsick our boy is, and we can think about the cost… but how do we know if this is really a bad thing?” The Farmer’s speaking quiet, focused on the wheat heads laying down before the combine. “You know that story you told me years ago — the story of the white horse? Well — I think this is another hour of the White Horse.”

I had written down that story of the White Horse when I had first heard it from Max Lucado, an old story from South America, written out my own version of it, what I remembered of it:

How a white stallion had rode into the paddocks of an old man and all the villagers had congratulated him on such good fortune.

And the old man had only offered this: “Is it a curse or a blessing? All we can see is a sliver. Who can see what will come next?”

When the white horse ran off, the townsfolk were convinced the white stallion had been a curse. The old man lived surrendered and satisfied in the will of God alone:  “I cannot see as He sees.”

And when the horse returned with a dozen more horses, the townsfolk declared it a blessing, yet the old man said only, “It is as He wills and I give thanks for His will.”

Then the man’s only son broke his leg when thrown from the white stallion. The town folk all bemoaned the bad fortune of that white stallion. And the old man had only offered, “We’ll see. We’ll see. It is as He wills and I give thanks for His will.”

When a draft for a war took all the young men off to battle but the son with the broken leg, the villagers all proclaimed the good fortune of that white horse. And the old man said but this, “We see only a sliver of the sum. We cannot see how the bad might be good. God is sovereign and He is good and He sees and work all things together for good.”

Hasn’t that been the lie right since our Genesis beginning – that we can see? When we ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Satan hissed then that we’d know what is good and evil — that we’d really see.

But the father of lies, he’d duped us in the whole nine yards. Though we ate of that tree we did not become like God.

We have no knowledge of good and evil apart from God. Our heart optics are not omniscient.

How can I really see if a seeming disaster or dilemma, is actually dire?

My focus need only be on Him, to only faithfully see His Word, to wholly obey. Therein is the tree of life.

The Farmer slows towards the end of the field. Turns off the combine auger.

The farm boy nods to his dad through that hole where there used to be a window. The window that broke — but who are we to see?

The son pulls with the now full wagon to take up to unload at the grain bin.

“Yes – it’s just a White Horse Hour.” The Farmer turns on the headland, pulls back into the field.

He looks up at the farm boy headed towards the bin.

“We may have taken a boy to the field. But I think we may be bringing home a man. God’s only up to good work.”

I reach over and lay my hand on the knee of the Farmer’s work worn wranglers. Say it quiet. “All we can see is Christ – and in Him all is grace.”

And in the combine’s rear view mirror, I can see it, just what we always have, what we can always only see —

Just a sliver, a sliver of the sum, swaying behind us there in a whisper of wind.

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“Whatever You may do, I will thank You.

I am ready for all; I accept all.

Let only Your will be done in me…

And I’ll ask for nothing else, my Lord.”

~Charles de Foucauld

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…  Romans 8:28-29

 

repost from the archives

 Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

The 1 Habit at Every Meal that Will Change Your Life {or When Beth Moore Tells You She’d Like to Come for Dinner}

and then the most gracious Beth Moore sends a tweet to the farm yesterday:

and the kids and the Farmer all gather around & marvel at Mrs. Beth’s very real Farmer: “He has a real John Deere hat on!” We smile grace at the thought of a meal with Mrs. Beth Moore & family … & think of the 1 habit at every meal that has transformed and reshaped this family:

Words around here are always dessert…

I was sixteen when I first I ate dinner at the Farmer’s house.

And when the plates were cleaned, forks laid down, when it’d seem commonplace to nod thanks to the cook and push back the chairs, the Farmer’s family would bow their heads and his Father opened a Bible.

It was thick and tattered, had a multitude of bookmarks sticking out from all the pages, and my future father-in-law,  he read from that Scripture in an even thicker Dutch accent.

The chapter finished, he’d close the book, look around the table, choose one of the sons to close the meal the way it began, in a word of prayer.

And then, only then, would the chairs would push away, the souls fed.

It’s the way the Father was raised, the way his parents had been raised back in the homeland. You never leave the table without chewing the Real Bread.

Even if there were cows to milk and you had to run, or you were late for prayer meeting at the church, or you had company for dinner. If you sat down to eat, you never left the table without eating Words.

Because the food served on plates, isn’t it the rotting and dead?

“Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse,” offers theologian Alexander Schmemann.

The food served on plates is but a a corpse, the dead food, and when we partake of it, we eat of the dying world. But when we eat Scripture, we eat the only real food, for Christ is Living Bread and eating He who sustains all things, sustains body and soul.

When we eat His Words, we eat of the eternal world.

“Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” ~ Deu. 8:3

The Word of God is what is living and active, Word that can revive the hungry and when we eat the Book, the cells in the body, they rejuvenate, enlivened with the true strength.

Broken and starving, I need that.

Eating Scripture three times a day, it’s the one spiritual habit that has most changed us — because a body, famished, needs to eat and there’s only one way to eat life.

To live Christ-centric is to live Word-Centric.

When we married, woke together in a home that we were to make, he first hung a shelf by the kitchen table: a place to keep Food that didn’t need a fridge.

This way of eating, the way all his siblings ate now in their own families, it was new to me, a new way of eating, living, being.

It came strange at first, awkward.

But it was his quiet way: he never got up from a meal without opening the Bible.

Babies came and toddlers sat at the table. If they ate from a spoon, they too ate the sweet of Scripture, even just a verse or two. Not long, not arduous… but Words, the rich and the divine, our dessert.

Babies cried and toddlers squirmed and company came and we had appointments and there were places to go and work to be done, but Farmer Husband gently taught by simple habits, everyday rhythms, that if we’ve eaten the dead food, we eat the Living Food.

It’s a menu that becomes second nature, like putting a pitcher of water always on the table — its not hard to eat or drink –

What is our appetite for? Who satisfies our hunger?

Babies became children, the toddlers, teens, and the shelf is now a box with a Bible for each one, and we pass them out at the end of each meal and the Farmer, he quietly, humbly, takes us through the Bible, a few verses at a time, a book at a time.

Breakfast, lunch and supper, we swallow morsels, Real Life, whole down.

:: :: ::

Every family happily eats uniquely, menus and routines and foods that suit their lifestyle, their tastes….

For us here…

6 Ways to Develop the Habit of Daily Family Bible Reading

1. We read 10-15 verses at a time, chronologically through a book of the Bible, less with little children, more with older. We want to savor, chew long.

2. We give each person their own Bible, their own serving, so each person can see Words, what they’re eating.

3. We read the Words aloud together, eat like a communal meal. Like we help little ones eat with the fork, we help little ones with words — oh how they smile, reading Scripture on their own…

4. We discuss, serve the Words around. Children explain meaning, offer summaries, ask questions. Parents taste conviction, confess, repent.

5. We reflect, let each quietly chew the words

6. We close in prayer, voices around the table, sometimes too with a hymn

It seems long. It isn’t.

It seems good. It is — but only for us. But there are many ways for a family to eat Living Words and no one right way. As gathering in each family’s home is a beautiful one-of-a-kind experience, so each family eats Words in their own special, creative way.

It seems perfect. It isn’t. Days when I sadly want to rush, when children tussle over Bibles (and they are all the same!), when we read too fast and a little cries and no one pays attention. But some meals too are simply edible, hardly memorable –but we don’t stop eating. We try the dish again or we change the way we eat or we just smile and set the table with candles next time. Always, we just eat again — we don’t give up.

After the plates are scraped clean of after every meal, then always this rhythm that’s messy but certain,

“Open the Bible box? Pass out the Bibles?”

The wooden lid opens like a fridge to stacks of Bibles and the only food living, sweet and filling and alive — radical life to the bones and all that hungers deep….

:: :: ::

Five Ways to Eat the Bible Together:

There are varied ways to eat healthy, and we often eat differently in different seasons… so it goes with Manna from heaven.

Here are some spiritual diets we’ve lived:

1. In Slow time…

Instead of swallowing large portions of scripture, certain seasons we eat very slowly, savoring only a few verses at a time by first listening to His Word, reading only a few verses…. then I linger, quietly meditating on those 2-3 verses, turning the words over and over…. then to lift voice in prayer, pray the Scriptures back to God… and then live the Words, contemplate on the verses long, and throughout the day, that hand and feet and tongue might do them.

For more: How to Savor the Bible

2. In Community…

In addition to meal-time meditations, there have been seasons where we’ve had personal quiet time together as a family, so children see parents savoring truth and parents can model how to eat.

For more: Communal Quiet Time

3. In Audio …

I’m making it a habit that when I clean, or run the morning routine, do domestic tasks, to always slip in another disk of the audio Bible: clean the heart while cleaning the house.

For More: Listen for free every day to the Daily Audio Bible and what I have in the stereo: Inspired By . . . The Bible Experience

4. In a Year …

There have been many seasons where I’ve read the Bible in a year. Perhaps my most favorite plan was with this plan on a bookmark, that has only 25 readings slotted a month, allowing for five catch-up days. And no flipping back and forth to find the plan…. Just tuck in the bookmarks. And begin whatever time of the year with whatever Bible you have.

Free Bookmarks for easy Bible-in-a-year Reading Plan — from John Piper’s Bethlehem Baptist

5. In Book Repeat …

This way of eating Scripture has yielded very toned, healthy souls and I highly recommend it to hungry hearts. I have found “the book repeat” way of Scripture reading truly lets a soul ruminate on Truth powerfully and effectively. Simply:

a. select a shorter book of the Bible (I’ve chosen Philippians once, Colossians another)

b. read it through

c. Then repeat, twenty times, reading at a your usual pace, considering the book as a whole meal…

As recommended by James M. Gray (1851-1935), in “How to Master the English Bible”

“The first practical help I ever received in the mastery of the English Bible was from a layman. We were fellow-attendants at a certain Christian conference or convention and thrown together a good deal for several days, and I saw something in his Christian life to which I was a comparative stranger –a peace, a rest, a joy, a kind of spiritual poise I knew little about.

One day I ventured to ask him how he had become possessed of the experience, when he replied, “By reading the epistle to the Ephesians.” I was surprised, for I had read it without such results, and therefore asked him to explain the manner of his reading, when he related the following:

He had gone into the country to spend the Sabbath with his family on one occasion, taking with him a pocket copy of Ephesians, and in the afternoon, going out into the woods and lying down under a tree, he began to read it; he read it through at a single reading, and finding his interest aroused, read it through again in the same way, and, his interest increasing, again and again.

I think he added that he read it some twelve or fifteen times, “and when I arose to go into the house,” said he, “I was in possession of Ephesians, or better yet, it was in possession of me, and I had been ‘lifted up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ in an experimental sense in which that had not been true in me before, and will never cease to be true in me again.”

I confess that as I listened to this simple recital my heart was going up in thanksgiving to God for answered prayer, the prayer really of months, if not years, that I might come to know how to master His Word.”

For More info on Repeat method: Evangelical Outpost: How to Change Your Mind… HT: Tonia

The only way that one really must read the Bible? Regularly…. Like Jesus did it, by habit: “He stood up to read as was his custom” (Lk. 4:26).

Daily…

Just like it is our custom to sit down at the table hungry, and pass down the bowl of potatoes, steaming and heaped….

 

 

Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll…

So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll.

He said to me, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.”

Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.

~Ez. 3:1-3

… a repost from the archives…

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

The Best Way to Start the Week

If we aren’t thankful to God for now — 

why would we be joyful for more?

The dandelions keep shaking out their happy manes on the lawn, roaring summer’s triumphant entry.

There are campfires and hymns and these boys with sparking light at the end of their fingertips.

There is the sun coming up in the dark and a way to begin again.

When your heart’s grateful to God at the start of the day, you can trust God in the hurtful of the day.

The grateful heart can trust God in the hurtful.

A woman taking chemo, she counts His graces, and the mama of a prodigal and the wife abandoned and overwhelmed, they keep count and know the rhythm of trust — and all is grace only because our God will use it all and all is being transfigured to bring glory to Christ and to restore us to the image of Christ.

The world tips a bit on a summer evening.

Everything is being spun around and upside down and everything steadies with this: Practice gratitude to God to practice your Faith in God.

The hymns around the campfire, you can hear them on a summer night — how they rise like this inextinguishable praise.

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giving thanks here and now and always… the endless One Thousand Gifts:

boys wearing hats on summer days #3588

mama’s long hair blowing in the wind #3589

fireworks in a mason jar #3590

he and I switching pillows in the middle of the night #3591

evening rhythms that make mornings harmonious #3592

what to remember this weekend #3593

Saturday afternoon serving with another family of 10 to wash windows & do spring cleaning at a Pregnancy Crisis & Care Home #3594

Hope whispering while we peel squash: “what’s one thing we can thank the Lord for right now?” #3595

thanks be to God who does not squander the painful but uses it to purify #3596

a woman who reaches over and squeezes my hand after the sermon #3597

transparent church #3598

a neighbor stopping in after Sunday dinner, just to chat #3598

the whole family lingering long out on the porch, laughing too loud #3599

60 Summer activities for kids #3600

This prayer:#3601

“Whom have I in heaven but you?

    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

  My flesh and my heart may fail,

    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Ps. 73: 24-26

…. thanks be to God

 

Take May’s Joy Dare? Print it for the fridge and dare everyone in the family to find these 3 gifts from His hand each day:

Click here to print May’s Joy Dare:  and begin this week right!

Count three gifts a day, 1000 gifts in 2012 (and be entered to win the NikonD90 camera?) Thank-you is a word that can change you, your world – the whole world!

HOW TO ENTER MAY’S GIVEAWAY:

Each day of May, either share your gifts on on Twitter {label with #1000gifts #JoyDare so we can find you!}, or with us in the gratitude community at Facebook , or on Pinterest (#1000gifts).

Each day, 3 people will who share their gifts via Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest will be randomly selected & entered into a drawing for JOY BASKET: a gift card @ Amazon {100$} & {signed copies of One Thousand Gifts, the photographic gift book, the DayBrightner, and the family gratitude journal} Give thanks to Him in the assembly!

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?

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!

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 Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-05-26 [del.icio.us]

Why Christians are the ones out in the Gardens:

... Jonathan Edwards and John Piper: "That is, we see the glory of God, not just the glory of the heavens. We don’t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty – the original Beauty, God himself... All of God’s creation becomes a beam to be ‘looked along’ or a sound to be ‘heard along’ or a fragrance to be ‘smelled along’... All our senses become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God through the physical world” ... a compelling must read to encourage you to get out for more walks this summer.
one thing that will make your soul explode

@ chatting at the sky ... yes. What Emily said... Beautiful truth.
Downward Mobility

@ Shaun Groves ... for long consideration... with excellent comments....

weekends are for true treasure

‘The man who has God as his treasure

has all things as in one

and he has it purely,

legitimately,

and forever… ‘ 

 

~A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

 

 

Blessings on your weekend, wondrous friends, as you treasure Him!



All’s grace

because all’s being transfigured for the glory of Christ alone,



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Creative Inspiration for the Weekend : If you want to be a better DSLR photographer, this is very helpful {You’re making happy time everyday to be creative, yes?}

Kitchen Love for the Weekend :  just a bit of chopping = 14 Crockpot Freezer meals … with a shopping list in the comments! a way to love the whole family: easy meals for the next two weeks!

Free Printable for the Weekend : A free printable gift for the kitchen (aren’t these perfect!)

Green on the Weekend :  10 Common Gardening mistakes to avoid  and oh, how to attract hummingbirds {lovely way for a family to make good memories this summer!}

Make a Memory on the Weekend : What 1-2 hours on a Saturday afternoon and the kids (or grands) will always remember the wonder of doing this with you!  Now isn’t that too fun?

Clean on the Weekend : 15-20 minutes a day to a clean house

Heart for the Weekend:  On God’s Presence … what we really have this weekend… He promises

Prayers for the Weekend :    A Prayer for Casting Away all Anxiety {and thank you for prayers for my dear Gran who is still in the hospital}

Gift for the Weekend: Teacher to thank at year end? A friend who needs encouragement? The mail person, the doctor, the dentist? This little free printable: Thanks a latte for all you do – and slip in a gift card for a local coffee shop!

{And if they need a book to curl up with as they sip that latte? Christian Book Distributors let me know that they’re offering a sweet little sale of 50% off of One Thousand Gifts. And, yes, ma’am, then print out these bevy of free printables to go along with it, to make give a bit of happy joy-in-a-box?}

Worship for the weekend :  Our God is in Control {Steve Curtis Chapman} Soulful and honest and for whatever you are facing right now — this song is the perfect soundtrack  – singing it with you this weekend, friends… 

{Consider pausing the music player slider directly under the header at the top of the page? Worshipping with you}

 

 

May His grace and truth surprise you all over again this weekend, friends…

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

How to Really Survive a Heart Attack

Mama calls me to tell me that her mama’s had a heart attack.

I hold the receiver close. Lower myself into a chair.

Granny of the tea biscuits and the white light netted up in her white hair —

she’s hardly standing at the side of her bed when her heart gets blocked and bits of her on the inside explode.

On the other end of the line, Mama unwinds the day like a roll of easel paper and it’s all there in full color:

The emergency room and monitors, the labored breathing, the low blood pressure. Granny used to pat the dough before she’d cut out a perfect circle with a cup.

When you’re 91 and an artery clogs, does it feel like shards of the heart are shattering your lung and grace might come full circle?

“Is she alone?” I ask Mama. Granny lives seven hours away in a room with a stack of Reader’s Digests.

No, Mama says, my aunt who lives across town is there — no, she is not alone.

There are a thousand ways to experience a heart attack. In a thousand ways we don’t stand alone.

“You okay, Mama?”

“Oh…” she murmurs. “I’ve been steeping myself all afternoon in Scripture and Truth. Leaning on the sovereignty of God, listening to John Piper sermons, studying Romans.”

I have known this.

I don’t stand alone.

John Piper, his books all stand on my shelf. I know and love his pulse, for Jesus and the Cross and the exaltation of the glory of God and joy in His exquisite gospel, and how he knows of the importance of poetry and pain and words. At times he’s quoted a Catholic, though both he and I may not see Scriptural rooting of such distinctives as papal authority, purgatory, or the veneration of Mary.

Does quoting a Catholic does not mean one agrees with the entirety of Catholicism any more than quoting C.S. Lewis means one agrees with the whole of Anglican/Episcopal theology? I don’t know…  Piper claims a Catholic’s book as one of his favorite books. ”I will keep coming back to anyone who helps me see and be astonished at what is in front of my face,” writes Piper ” — anyone who can help heal me from the disease of “seeing they do not see.’”

There are a thousand ways to have the heart disease of “seeing they do not see.” Oh, help us all, Lord.  

Piper urges the reading of the Catholic Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, and specifically writes that this is one of Chesterton’s gems to mine for: “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health. When you destroy mystery you create morbidity.”

As Piper agrees with Chesterton — when you drop mystery from Biblical Christianity, you drop these drops of morbidity into the cup of true faith.

I pray health for a pale woman in an ER hospital bed.

I pray health for the Body of Christ.

Piper writes of Joshua “who loved the glory of God! He was a kind of warrior mystic. He loved the mountain and the tent. He loved nature and church. He had a heart for God. Wherever he smelled the aroma of God he lingered.” And Piper asks where are the warrior mystics?  ”Where are the Joshuas? The warrior mystics of Bethlehem—the men and women whose hearts are aflame with the conquest and who linger at the tent? Where are the men and women whose knees are as calloused as their hands?”

I don’t read “mystics,” I don’t know what the word precisely means, don’t write or speak or own that word, don’t  know of mystics or mysticism—  but only of Christ and His Word and the Cross and real reality — but of Piper’s call to be a warrior mystic? To have a heart for God and have knees as calloused as hands? I pray I know this. Mama and I, we join together and pray for a ninety-one year old woman in a hospital bed. Hearts might be aflame for everything right.

John Calvin himself writes, “Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed.” {emphasis mine}

There are gifts and they are all from Christ, and all the giving of thanks is for Him alone. That indwelling of Christ in our heart — what Calvin calls that mystical union — isn’t this what heals all our hearts? Could there be a greater gift?  Could there be anything of higher degree of importance? Without that joining of Head and members, wouldn’t all our hearts explode?

I can hear piano music on Mama’s end. I can hear her humming. “Amazing grace… ”

The wind lifts the green hem of the Manitoba Maple leaves outside our window. A patch of late afternoon light lingers on the floor.

“God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon, and stars…” that’s what Jonathan Edwards wrote. 

“I often used to sit and view the moon, for a long time; and so in the daytime, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the meantime, singing forth with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer.”

I know the woman who’s had a heart attack is not alone. And I know I am not alone. 

Piper too walks this way:

“That is, we see the glory of God, not just the glory of the heavens. We don’t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty – the original Beauty, God himself.” ~John Piper 

And Piper says of Edwards, “In other words, for all his rationalism, Edwards had a healthy dose of the romantic and mystic in him.” That’s what Piper says of Edwards, the theologian who Piper says “ushered me closer into the presence of God than any other writer has.”

We all stand together, with a whole body of believers and all the Truth that came before, and our hearts, I can hear it, might beat strong and brave and true with His life-giving love. I pray that one worn woman I love might know it right in the center of her — that even now He sings over her and He woos her {Hosea 2:14-20 (ESV)} and our God is Love and He is the Word and He can’t stop writing out His heart.

His relentless love is what heals all our clogged hearts….

The man whose writings profoundly shaped Jonathan Edwards and who was quoted by Edwards more often than anyone else in his “Religious Affections“, the Puritan mentor to Edwards,  Thomas Shephard, he preached in his sermon Love Him Because He first Loved You:

“Consider he makes love to thee…

Whatever the secret purpose of Christ is, I regard not. In this evangelical dispensation of grace, he makes love to all.…”

To which Spurgeon agreed, 

“The kiss of daily, present communion, is that which we pant after to be repeated day after day…  

O lover of our souls, be not strange to us; let the lips of Thy blessing meet the lips of our asking; let the lips of Thy fulness touch the lips of our need, and straightway the kiss will be effected.” ~Spurgeon

Timothy Keller writes, “Positively, we are called to experience the spousal love of Jesus.”

I once was invited to sit across the table and break bread with Gene Edward Veith, provost of Patrick Henry College and noted author with Crossway, and with Marvin Olasky, editor of WORLD Magazine. When they brought up the subject of the last chapter of One Thousand Gifts, of ” God as Husband in sacred wedlock” my hand trembled so, my fork dropped to the floor. There are things so hallowed and personal and true, it’s hard for the quiet to hear them out loud. The farm girl had fumbled for her fork under the table.

And they waited until my heart stilled, waited until I looked up, waited until my hand stopped its shy, awkward quake. And in a soft and certain voice, Mr. Veith looked me in the eye and assured “It is profoundly biblical.” I nodded, chin trembling, eyes dropping away. And Mr. Olasky encouraged me to change nothing, to stand by Scriptural truth.

Sometimes standing by Scriptural truth can feel a bit like surviving a heart attack.

But what can feel like the exploding of your heart might be the way Truth slams out of your chest like a fireworks of grace. 

“Think Granny’s going to get well and come home, Mama?”

The light is flooding now right across the floor.

And I’m thinking of one of the ten lepers that Christ healed, the one who returned to give thanks, and when he gave thanks, Jesus said to him, “Your faith has made you well.”  I wrote of it in One Thousand Gifts — how that word, well, it is sozo in the Greek. Many translations render sozo as made “well” or “whole,” but its literal meaning is—“to save.” Sozo means salvation. It means true wellness, complete wholeness, and it’s only found in Christ.

To live sozo, is to live the wellest, fullest life and Jesus came that we might live well and to the full; He came to give us sozo.

And when did the leper receive sozo—saving to the full, well, whole life? He received sozo from Christ when he returned and gave thanks to Christ. Gratitude isn’t a condition of our salvation — it is our manifest joy in salvation. Because gratitude to Christ — is evidence that we’ve received the gift of faith – as a gift. 

H ow can anyone accept His free gift of salvation —  if not with thanksgiving? 

 A Christian giving thanks is never about trying to ascend to some ‘higher spiritual plain’ — it’s about giving thanks to Christ who descended to plainly save us.  

In His presence alone is fullness of joy and the way to enter into His courts is through those gates of thanksgiving for Who He is and what He gives and He alone is enough.  

“She may be released from the hospital and … and she may not.” Mama whispers it and I can see how Granny and Mama used to stand by the oven, how their hands would move the  tea biscuits so round. How soon she might even beautifully know it, the one tired right out —- the fading away of everything broken and busted up here and the falling into His forever embrace.

I murmur it into my end of the line, to Mama, and to Him from whom all is perfectly from and to and through, whisper that truth that keeps exploding in me, “All is grace.”

And those words fall like splitting fireworks,

like a healing of the heart,

like bits of blazing embers rupturing all the dark —-  lighting us with a love  that gives us the gift of eyes that see….

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Related: What others have really said of One Thousand Gifts

Regarding the last chapter of One Thousand Gifts

Who I am

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-05-23 [del.icio.us]

Why Christians, not pantheists, are the ones out in the Gardens:

... Jonathan Edwards and John Piper: "That is, we see the glory of God, not just the glory of the heavens. We don’t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty – the original Beauty, God himself... All of God’s creation becomes a beam to be ‘looked along’ or a sound to be ‘heard along’ or a fragrance to be ‘smelled along’... All our senses become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God through the physical world” ... a compelling must read to encourage you to get out for more walks this summer.
A Mystic In The Garden?

@Shaun Groves ... I wonder if Shaun's post actually reads more like Jonathan Edwards: “God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything: in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind.

I often used to sit and view the moon, for a long time; and so in the daytime, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the meantime, singing forth with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer.” ... I think you are in good company, sir...

What Grateful Love May Look Like

The bride, she always wears white.

And the day I get married, I do, yet most of my life I’ve worn black.

I know who I’ve been.

The first memory I ever held was the blood of my sister running, ponding, everything alive draining away. I came from there.

We breathed grief. Black fears formed me.

There were years I cut myself along the thin skin of the wrists, wild for a way out of a darkness that chokes.

On a Sunday morning, we sit in our country chapel. Shalom slips up on the Farmer’s lap. I sit waiting, rubbing my wrist. Rubbing the edge of my black cuff. Before us is the bread and the juice of the vine.

The loaf of bread will be broken in half. It will be pure white. I can never thank Him enough.

It’s still in the sanctuary. The notes begin. One woman’s quavering voice beginning alone.

“When I survey…”

The wondrous Cross with a Savior.

The nails right through.

The Glorious Way out of everything that has been.

Out of all this black … the horror of death, the relentless prison of fear, the way pain pursued, a whole family aching endless with wounds we couldn’t heal. Him the only Way out of….

And when I survey, she’s there too, way in the back of my past, on a long-ago platform.

Her voice is quaking with Calvary’s Love — it’s Hell and it’s Healing, and I’m not yet twenty one, and when she tells me what Love saved me, the spit and the beard plucked cruel, His ribs rising and falling hard, wild gasp for breath, the purest God-Man subjected to vilest humanity — all my hard exterior cracks right open and runs liquid and what do we know of true love?

See from His head, His hands, His feet….

Sorrow and love flow mingled down…

And I’m sitting there before communion, rubbing my wrist.

And all I can think of is that woman in Luke, the one in the shadows with her alabaster jar. She’s weeping in the black of the back. She knows who she’s been.

A dark storm, she cries. She “rains”, it reads in the Greek. Brecho in the original Greek — rain. She’s this brecho that breaks.

She’s this full rain falling.

She’s this heart water let loose.

Him so pure and his feet so dirty. Her so filthy and Him her only purity.

Will any one wash His feet with their love?

And that woman, she has no pitcher but she has passion –  the kind no Pharisee could ever understand and she has no water but she has her heart.

She pours it out. She pours it out.

And with no towel but tresses, no handcloth but her hair, she does the unthinkable, the scorned and the disgraced.

When all Jewish women were required to keep their hair done up, less they be seen as shameful and loose, she lets her locks down.

Rabbis, men of the law, said that if a woman loosed her hair in public, let her hair flow mingled down, it was grounds for divorce. Grounds to be shamed and sent away.

But there is a love far greater than law.

That Luke woman, she let her hair loose, lets her love loose and she looks loose and there will be always be Michals who will scorn David’s dancing before the ark.

But Jesus? He lets her kiss Him.

It seems shocking, appalling, too intimate, and this kataphileo, these kisses, this is the same word, katephileo, of the father kissing the prodigal son, a symbolic picture of God embracing, the father falling on the neck of his child and kissing, and doesn’t the whole realm of earth need to be seized with a power of a great affection, “for we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.” (Eph. 5:30).

The Pharisee had no water for His feet, but she gave her heart water.

And the Pharisee had no towel, but she laid out her loose, silken hair.

And the Pharisee gave no kiss, but she could couldn’t stop kissing His feet, her grateful love the most expensive perfume — the kind that cost her the respect of men, but earned her the pearl of great price, the acceptance of Jesus — “for she loved much” (Luke 7:47 ESV). …

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

She gave her grateful love as an intimate gift.

And her heart water and costly love are gifts fully received and accepted by Christ.

And our God is the God who whispers, “Call Me Husband.”

The God who says, “yet you were naked and bare and then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness… and entered a covenant with you so that you became Mine.” (Ez. 16:8-9).

God of the holy love who can’t stop writing a love story –  His sacred canon opening in the Genesis with two becoming one flesh — and in the last book of the holy writ, the culmination of His heart, the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:19).

The Saviour celebrates communion with His Bride, the spiritual oneness He made her for and He is spirit and we speak not of physical but of spiritual and His worshippers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

God’s own hallowed metaphor for His love is the Friend who invites us to call Him more than friend, the very Husband, and He calls our idolatry nothing short of adultery (Jer. 3:8-10).

Will any one wash His feet with their love?

Were the whole realm of nature mine

That were an offering far too small…

I’m murmuring the notes of the song before communion and these inner dark clouds split into white, the brecho that breaks, and “No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” (Elie Wiesel).

In the middle of the hymn, Shalom’s leans off the Farmer’s lap, leans her face into mine that’s emerged from the dark, her long hair, curling wisps, framing everything and she reaches out to touch my cheek…

My wet cheek. I can never thank Him enough.

She who’s been freed of much, freely loves and she who knows how she’s forgiven, how she gives thanks. She gives back everything.

It is possible to have a form of religion and not be formed by love for Christ.

And it’s possible to see the law but be blind to love.

And love that is Truth, no matter what, is what never fails…

Who feels such gratitude for their salvation in Christ that they live such affection for Christ?

Who can say just this, “Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you“? O Please, Lord… let it be said of us.

What’s greater proof to the world of the power of the gospel of Christ — than the world witnessing the power of profuse love for Christ?

Shalom brushes away what’s running down, all my rain, and she barely whispers it, “Why you cryin’, Mama… and smiling?”

I have no words. Just shake my head. Just eyes on the words of the hymn.

Just love falling.

“Because of Jesus, Mama?”

Love so amazing, so divine,

demands my soul,

demands my soul,

love demands my soul,

my life,

my all.

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A Hymn of Grateful Love

(RSS Readers: click here to view “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross” video in post… just click off the music slider at the very top of the blog, right under the header. Thank you for grace…)

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“Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance.”  ~John Calvin

“lean on Christ his beloved and live by communications of grace from Him.” ~ Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards

“So again, we being united to a divine person, as his members – can have a more intimate union and intercourse with God the Father.” ~~ Jonathan Edwards: the Excellency of Christ

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-05-22 [del.icio.us]

Jonathan Edwards & John Piper on Intimacy with God

.... "For Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a more free and full enjoyment of him"... I keep returning to this...
What John Piper learned from a Catholic Chesterton

.... "Like C. S. Lewis, he sees more wonder in an ordinary day than most of us see in a hundred miracles. I will keep coming back to anyone who helps me see and be astonished at what is in front of my face — anyone who can help heal me from the disease of “seeing they do not see.”
What Calvin said was of Utmost Importance...

from Desiring God... Yes.

When the World gets Loud & Divisive

Standing out there in the garden, all the spinach leaves offered up like bunches of bouquets there at her feet, she listened for the quiet.

The corn grew in straight rows.

The apple blossoms made promises.

The irises unfolded bold hope.

Roots would wait for rain.

Seeds would be faithful to soil.

The weary would wait on God.

The waiting would be unwaveringly faithful to the Word.

And the Christians would be careful with words because they are the Christ-full.

Grace and truth were embodied in the Son of God who opened not His mouth — but opened His hands and heart.

And standing there still, in a world growing all around her, in a world that could grow too loud with rhetoric and debate and opinions and contention, she saw how the harvest could come.

How one could wait for the fruit of humble truth…

And the yield of a quiet and steady grace.

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“And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” ~Micah 6:8

 

“Humility is the secret of fellowship, and pride the secret of division.”

~ Robert C. Chapman

 

“He that is not a son of Peace is not a son of God.

All other sins destroy the Church consequentially; but Division and Separation demolish it directly…”

~ Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

 

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}