Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 307
April 7, 2012
weekends are for waiting
For thinking on the lamb
and the gift of that Door that will open wide
at the end of the road
of grace.
:
Waiting with you for Sunday morning,
All's grace because of Christ alone,
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:
Beauty for the Weekend : On this Saturday morning… pause here to consider that He Chose the Nails with Max Lucado… the laying low He grace of this… … {A family tradition, to listen to this the full length "He Chose the Nails"
over Easter weekend… }
Creative Inspiration for the Weekend : Beautiful easy art to make for Resurrection Weekend… {You're making happy time everyday to be creative, yes?}
Kitchen Love for the Weekend : Are you making up your Resurrection Cookies tonight – a family tradition here. And we alway bake up Resurrection Rolls this weekend, these. Making up a double match with wholewheat today.
Free Printable for the Weekend : Here's one for the wall this weekend! (And download this printable for making your own set of Resurrection Eggs {or this set instead?} )
Kid Fun on the Weekend : Aren't these beautiful? And so natural… I'd like to try today? {and if we have nativity scenes … what if Resurrection Morning scenes?}
Heart Turning for the weekend : Last night, Good Friday evening, we gathered here (via simulcast) with David Platt's Secret Church for seven hours of pouring over God's Word — from 7pm and finishing up @ 2 am. Like my sister said, one of the most powerful 7 hours of our lives. The study guide we worked through on the purpose of suffering is available here… Life-changing.
Worship for the weekend : Jesus Christ — You are my Life … have it on replay this weekend?
Appalling grace, 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!}
Links for 2012-04-06 [del.icio.us]
... "How You let your side be ripped open that our lives need never be split into sacred and secular."
Thomas Kinkade, 'Painter of Light,' Has Died Suddenly at 54
@ Christianity Today... join me in praying for his family?
April 6, 2012
The Shocking Theology of Good Friday
The children sleep on the eve of Good Friday
and in a still house
I pour blood down the drain.
Scarlet drips from bowl's edge and I'm struck
with images of the cutting of a throat, pools and reek of
of plasma, cells, platelets,
and this appeal of peaceable vegetarianism.
I rub the marinate into the lamb,
blood ponding on plate,
my hand massaging the meat,
fingers pressing out more red,
all the necessary essence of Easter,
all very non-Hallmark,
the offensive theology of blood,
and nostrils fill with this wretched stench of sin,
and this one beating heart hurting for the only God
whose wild love
had Him tear open a vein
and do the repulsive,
become a lamb dragged to the slaughter
without bleating or begging
only bared
for the outrageous shedding of blood
to cleanse this mess
stained deep into my skin.
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Stricken, Smitten & Afflicted: Fernando Ortega
{Consider pausing music by clicking the slider directly under the header? If reading in a reader or via email, click here to listen to this profoundly moving hymn…? }
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every year, preparing the lamb, I return to this…
{This is part of a series this week on preparing hearts for Easter.
Part 1: How to Start Everything Well: can be found here}
Part 2: A Family Activity for Passion Week can be found here
Part 3: The Cross-Centered Life
Part 4: Where in this World do you Find Joy?
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 2012-04-05 [del.icio.us]
... comparing yourself with someone else? Mothering, homeschooling, dreams.... this post, this post. "Shame erases hope." Amber writes exquisite truth....
Inspiration for whatever you are praying about...
@ NYTimes... "Life can bestow unexpected gifts, and sometime in her late 40s, Martin, a busy working mother who had never been in a track meet, discovered a glorious secret..." It's never too late to begin!
April 5, 2012
How in this World Do You Find Joy? ……. {Holy Week: Part 4}
In the middle of Passion Week, we work dirt.
We pick stones off the field, haul off rocks to ready a seed bed.
There are eggs in an incubator downstairs in a closet.
The whole world is this ticking, waiting, readying thing, on the brink of something cosmic, on the brink of the Biggest Bang — that slamming hammer and the howl of God ringing to the stars.
That's what someone asked me on the Wednesday evening of Passion week, in this quiet and frantic tone:
"Where can you find joy?"
They say Wednesday is the lost day.
Right there in the middle of holy week, it's the missing link in a chain of passion days that are bound to free us. Who knows what Jesus did on Wednesday? Who knows where to find joy?
Somewhere, while Judas presses his nervous baritone up against the ear of a priest, while a woman sweeps her broom in this hush across the floor of an upper room, the God-Man he feels the fullness of time swelling in His veins and His Wednesday prepares for the passion of Thursday.
Thursday will secure the Upper Room — literally, "the guest room." He who first breathed the air of this world in a barnyard feed trough in the stable muck of Bethlehem, that house of bread, because there was no room for any guest anywhere — in the end?
He'll kneel and break bread in the upper guest room, the guest ready to take our place, to clear the muck and make room for us all to come in.
John will be on Jesus' right. There at the spread, there before the bread. John the one who leans against his chest and who'll hear His pounding heart. Hear how the universe pounds, this begging for release.
It's the seat to the left that the host reserves for the guest of honor. "Here," Jesus will beckon. "You, you come sit here on my left." Judas will lower himself the left of the Lord.
And the cosmos, it will start to crack.
Loving your enemies can break your heart and this is how you break free and Gospel-love recklessly makes all the enemies friends.
Is joy found in the upside-down places that upright everything?
The Farmer turns over the soil in the field.
In the basement, the eggs in the incubator turn over.
On Thursday, God will bend Himself before the bread and God will unclothe, lay aside His robe, this laying aside of His life. He will wash feet. He will keep unveiling joy.
He will hold the dirt between their toes of dust and He will cup their heels and He will feel what He will crush entirely under his own. In His last hours, He won't run out to buy something or catch a flight to go see something, but He will wrap a towel around his waist and kneel low in service. In these last hours of the holiest week of the year, I will clean and cook and He will beckon and Oh Lord, make me bend.
The height of joy isn't simply to be blessed — but to become the blessing.
The height of joy isn't to have blessings actualized — but to become the actual blessing.
Not to be blessed with stuff — but to become the blessing in service.
This is place He begs all the beggars and betrayers to take:
"To receive all with grace, then, with thanks, break the bread and pass it; move out into the larger circle of life and wash the feet of the world with that grace.
Without the breaking and giving away, without the bending and washing of feet — the communion service isn't complete.
That's what His bent body language preaches: The Communion service is only complete in service.
Communion, by necessity, always leads us into community."
The dirt, and the rocks, and the eggs — this holy week it does work: You can behold life's as all joy or you can believe life's all work. Or you can become the joy in all your work.
There are dishes all week.
And on Thursday, He will pick up the cup.
On Sunday, when He rode into town on that donkey, it was the day the Jews picked their Passover lamb, and they waved the palm leaves and they picked perfect Him and by Thursday, the blood of more than 250,000 Passover lambs would drain down the wadi on the backside of town and He would pick up the cup.
Why the cup? In the Biblical Passover story, there's lamb, there's blood, there's bread without yeast — but there's no mention of a cup. But by the time of Jesus, there was a certain cup at Passover, the ancient Mishnah instructing the drinking of the cup no less than four times during the Passover meal (Pesahim 10:1).
Did He take the cup like was the custom of Jewish men in Biblical times?
Like what I had sat and heard a pastor tell of studying in Jerusalem, sitting in an Orthodox Jewish classroom? "I remember it clearly — A Jewish man, he was teaching the marriage customs of the first century Jewish people in the land of Israel.
"The young man's father would take a flask of wine. He would pour a cup of wine and hand it to his son. The son would then turn to the young woman, and with all the solemnity of an oath before Almighty God Himself, that young man would take that cup of wine and say to that young woman, 'This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which I offer to you."
"In other words, "I love you. I'll be your faithful husband. Will you be my bride?' "
Like a young man offering His very veins as the exorbitant price for the bride? Offering her the cup of His heart ? Waiting for her to take? And if she took it, if she drank of it, she accepted his life and offered him hers, and the two were betrothed, love sealed by a cup to the lips.
Is that why he takes the cup? To take us?
Who can bear a love like this?
And every time I take it, look into that cup of blood-wine and the depths of His heart – aren't I saying yes with the lips that swallow completely down?
At communion, Christ is offering no less than communion — and who will say yes with their life?
The Passion is a proposal and every communion is a call to come say yes.
What does is say about me when that makes me feel awkward and I want more distance from a God who offers that kind of love?
But isn't this the story at the center of Scripture? The one I've been trying to live? When He takes that cup on Thursday, that's what He does: He gives thanks. Thanks on a Thursday.
Eucharisteo is what it reads in the Greek, Thanksgiving. And the root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took the blood-wine cup and saw it as grace and gave thanks. Eucharisteo, also enfolds the Greek word chara, meaning "joy."
Where find joy? It's there at the table on Thursday night.
"Aren't the heights of our joy always dependent on the depths of our thanks?" {~ One Thousand Gifts}
Hadn't Augustine said it: "Without exception … all try their hardest to reach the same goal — joy." This isn't about merely Thursday or holy week — this is about how to make a life. How to live a life of Holy Joy.
And it's all right there in that one Greek word that makes sense of everything: eucharisteo: grace, gratitude, joy. As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.
Even before a Cross.
I could learn. It's there too by the cross and the crown this week — a pen and place to give thanks for all the gifts and grace and God. How can there be any other response but thanksgiving to a love like this?
Thursday night, the Bridegroom, He will take the cup and He will offer the Bride His blood in covenant, and late under stars, He'll hunch in the garden of Gethsemane, the very name that means oil-press, the garden where the olives were pressed.
It's the weight of all my faithlessness pressing like the whole black sky and all countless stars upon Him.
He will be pressed and He will pour because He saw what was in that cup when I handed it back to Him.
He'll pour these great drops of blood from His forehead, my hardened, sin-filled heart pressing His soft and ready one right out.
And He'll see in this "sore amazement, in "ekthambeo," in bruised horror, what is in the cup that His Bride begs Him to now drink, the one His Father's handed Him: "Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath…"
In the Bride's place, He holds it, He holds it in my place — the cup of wrath. And He will drink it instead of the nations.
He'll drink from the cup of wrath that He pleads the Father to take from Him — because He doesn't want us taken from Him.
He takes that unfathomable cup because He can't fathom not taking His Bride.
Thursday is the day I will weep.
Who knows love like this? Eucharisteo — thanks, grace, joy.
Who knows joy like this?
It echoes even now amidst the gnarled and twisted olive trees, echoes out past the sacrificing trees with limbs stretched wide open, "Yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)
We work dirt on Wednesday.
We pick rocks on Thursday, roll away all these stones.
We have lamb in the fridge and no yeast anywhere and there will be a cup on the table for Passover.
"One hour," he said in the Thursday moonlight of the garden-pressing. "Can you not keep watch with me one hour?"
Late tonight, after they have washed up from the fields, and the dishes are washed and the feet are washed, there will be that.
The Thursday "Night of Watching" — the staying up in prayer, kneeling at the windowsill, folding the hands and bowing the head, and turning it there on the finger, the wedding band, turning everything over in prayer, in this love that can't stop murmuring thanks.
And in the basement, inside the eggs, the unimaginable impossible, it will begin to happen.
This joy breaking through everything live a vow…
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{This is part of a series this week on preparing hearts for Easter.
Part 1: How to Start Everything Well: can be found here}
Part 2: A Family Activity for Passion Week can be found here
Part 3: The Cross-Centered Life
Related posts elsewhere:
Communion as a Proposal : A Focus on the Family transcript about Communion & Proposing
Related: The book One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are goes deeper into the meaning of those days before Easter, eucharisteo, communion, living a life of service — and finding joy in what really matters. Making a life of holy joy — fresh starts.
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 2012-04-04 [del.icio.us]
@ NYTimes.... inspiration for your gardening this year
Love Upside Down
@ The High Calling ... powerful words for this week
April 4, 2012
Figuring Out the Cross-Centered Life
{This is part of a series this week on preparing hearts for Easter.
Part 1 of A Holy Week can be found here
Part 2 of a Holy Week: A Family Activity for Passion Week can be found here}On the road to Calvary… two years ago this week…
Life only emerges from black depths.
And she's a farmer's daughter and she knows how new shoots come out of the dark earth and she says she wants to die.
To tell everyone she's dead.
It's a plea in the night, my hand still on the light switch, and I turn and I hear it again, her entreaty from the shadows.
"Pray? Please, Mom, I really want to. Pray?"
I say it sure and certain in a house laid down for the night, a commitment. "Yes, Pray. I will pray."
And then I stand in the still and I think she's too young to announce her death. I mean, is she really ready? Will she stay dead?
And no, I don't want her to resurrect.
We had murmured the verse after the night's prayers for she had it memorized too:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
And I had curled in beside her on her bed. When she had asked me again if she really could, her voice a tremble of nerves, I had told her again that personal crucifixion is what she'd be saying if she let's go of it all and falls away into the dark waters of baptism. That she's as good as dead, or as bad as dead, as the case may more accurately be and she'd be telling the world her only identity was in Christ.
That for a Christian, identity isn't so much about figuring out who he is —- but accepting Whose he is.
That Christians are the walking dead, fully —and only — alive in Christ.
For that is what the Easter People really are: Rotting cadavers to the flesh, resurrected Christs in the faith.
That to be baptized is to publicly and permanently proclaim Christ as sovereign, Saviour, and all your satisfaction.
I reach over in the dark and touch her hair silken, a veil of gold threads across her pillow.
Was she really ready to release her obituary?
I find it next to the keyboard in the morning, her testimony written out.
The one she'd share on Easter Sunday if she too is baptized, the one that recounts the thoughts of that dimpled six-year old with the page-boy bob who had bowed her head with me and said she'd inherited Blood Type S for Sinner and she wanted a transfusion and salvation.
I read her typed words:
"And I knew then I wanted to be a Christian for three reasons:
1. To be washed clean of all my sins
2. So that I could be forever with Jesus and be new and obey Him and love.
I smile. I like how she simply says that and I want to do that too, "… and love."
Her #3 is scratched out with ink.
I try to make it out.
3. And because Mom is a Christian and she is nice and if I became a Christian I could be like her.
That reason's crossed out. I hold the paper and I still stand but I'm slain right through. That reason's crossed out.
Was it because I had snapped harsh yesterday after lunch when kids tangled in a knot of wrestling? Because I hadn't listened with the eyes and the full attention when she told me about what Sonya had said that Sarah had told her? Because she had called me to come tuck her in last night and I had one more thing to do and one more thing and just one more and when I finally made it to her bed, she breathed in the heavy deep sleep and I murmured sad prayers alone?
I run my fingers along the ink that went back and forth and blotted me out.
Maybe I can justify that it's just that she had slashed out reason #3 because she wasn't sure of its theological correctness?
That it was too emotionally transparent, socially unsophisticated, preteen uncool? And it's lame and yes…
Parenting is this daily life detector test and it's through the eyes of our children we read our own souls.
I lay down the piece of paper.
And I know why I am so scared of her getting baptized.
Because she could become like me — and make this terrifying public declaration of her allegiance to Christ and the tenants of the Kingdom and then daily betray all she claims to hold dear, daily find herself an unintentional turncoat, a coward and a liability to the Cause.
How many times after I was baptized as a teen did my Dad assess my tongue, my behaviour, my attitude and shake his head in disgust and slap me sharp with the words: "And you call yourself a Christian?" He himself wasn't — and even he knew that I wasn't acting like one.
The pulse of the old, dead man can flicker long after the burial and new life in Christ can be a war.
And years of the battle-scars has given me this and this I know:
Nail pierced grace will never let you go and Christianity is a lifetime of becoming who you really are.
On Easter Sunday, she stands before the microphone in her blue baptismal robe.
And I watch her shaking hand hold her typed out testimony, and I listen to her read it breathless and quaking, and my chest burns holy joy and the confession of her tongue drifts down the rows of the chapel, the people like furrows, a plowing on Easter Sunday for the growth of souls.
My Dad sits in the centre row.
My Dad sits in the centre row, and he wouldn't claim Christ as his own but he's witnessed the baptizing of each of his three children and now this is the first of the next generation, and I didn't know he was coming.
I burn holy joy and our daughter Hope, she reads it,
"My name is Hope Voskamp and my parents named me Hope because of Jeremiah 29:11, that God would have plans for me to give me a future and a hope… And all their years of prayers have been answered today as I claim that Jesus is my only future and all my hope and who can thank God enough for plans like these?"
My burning holy joy can't be extinguished by the falling tears.
I can see it there on her quavering baby finger, the ring I gave her only this morning but had bought for her years ago in future hopes, silver etched with her name, the whisper of all our prayers, and Christ's certain promise: Hope : Hope : Hope.
The silver flashes on her and hand and Hope, she finishes her testimony with the humble asking, her eyes for the first time looking up to meet eyes: "Might you pray for me, that I might live for Jesus… and I would love?"
Yes… and I would love. Me too, Hope, me too.
And it's The Farmer who holds her as she declares her own death, burial and resurrection on Easter Sunday. She is the first of the children we have birthed to declare her own death.
She goes down and she comes up and she breaks wet wonder and she sloshes wet across the sanctuary. I watch her footprints lay down fresh, the old amniotic fluid of her new life in Christ now dripping straight across the floor and I kneel down.
I touch her steps choosing to walk in The Way.
Already, she is following. Already.
He won't let her go.
Grace leads. Always Grace.
And later when I help her peel the wet gown off her back, she would tell me that it has weights in the hem, to stop it from billowing, from floating up and around her, a shroud, and she would say that not even that, nothing could stop her from leaving behind her funerary clothes.
And later I would hug my Dad close and grip his shoulders hard and I'd look into his eyes and I would thank him for coming and ache for all his coming that I am still waiting for. He'd squeeze Hope's arm, her hair still dripping wet and he'd say, "You did good." Good.
I'd burn joy.
And later that Easter night, after the candles and the hymns and the sitting in the burning joy and the miracle, she would leave me a note, "Mom, can I do it too, with you, count One Thousand Gifts? I am so grateful."
And in a sleeping house again, again I'd burn joy.
And I pray.
I pray for her and I pilgrimage with her and I praise with her. I do and I will.
And I petition God for the prodigal parent I am and the paternal one I am still waiting for.
And I hope and I love. For our daughter, for my father.
Because of the Son who offers us His name, all His righteousness, all His life, new life, tender hope up out of the dark.
I leave the light on out in the hall.
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Related: Baptized
Part 1 of A Holy Week can be found here
Part 2 of a Holy Week: A Family Activity for Passion Week can be found here
Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.To read the entire series of spiritual practices
Next week, might we consider: The Practice of Gospel. We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….
Today, if you'd like to share with community The Practice of Sacrifice … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. 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 a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
April 3, 2012
3 Bowls & a Crown of Thorns on Holy Week … {A Holy Week: Day 2}
{This is part of a series this week on preparing hearts for Easter.Part 1 of A Holy Week can be found here}
Dad always did that after the meat and potatoes, after the plates were cleared and stacked.
He'd ask for a toothpick.
Him in his plaid flannel shirt and Levi's, looking for a bit of a tree to right everything again.
That's what he'd do before he left the table: He'd snap the wood between his fingers.
He'd snap the brittle wood right between his fingers.
And he'd say that to us women.
To us at the sink when he passed through the kitchen, when he went looking for his work boots again, for his sun-frayed hat and his honest earthy work.
He'd say, "A woman can be a dry and brittle thing, ready to snap." Then he'd wink and dodge his way out of the kitchen, dishtowel snapping loud in his direction.
I have no idea why it took me twenty years to know it:
The days that are dry and brittle, ready to snap — these days are perfect kindling for a burning bush.
The days after Psalm Sunday, we eat figs.
Because the day after Palm Sunday, Jesus, hungry for fruit, he sees a fig tree and
"He went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only.
And He said to it, "May no fruit every come from you again!"
And the fig tree withered at once" (Matthew 21:18).
The first act after the fall, it's the first Adam come looking for fig leaves.
The last miracle before being nailed to the Tree, it's the Second Adam, Jesus, come looking for figs.
Ask Adam: The authentic Christian life has got to be more than leafage.
Faith has to have fruit.
It's the fig-bearers who live a faith that bears fruit. And it's the leaf-wearers who just live this front that wears thin.
Ask me.
I can't even remember the last time we've sung that hymn in the pews:
For thou art our salvation, Lord,
our refuge and our great reward;
without thy grace we waste away
like flowers that wither and decay
Forget the fig tree withering.
Whole family trees wither away without a grace that produces fruit.
Without thy grace we waste away.
When the boys eye that plate on the counter, when they ask if they can have more figs, I say yes.
I say yes.
And Christ? He inspects our lives for more than intentions; He intends for intimacy.
He searches the limbs not for leaves — not leaving for conferences or for meetings or for front seats. He looks along the the leaves for the love.
For the seed that swells with the Spirit, the faith that unfurls, the flower that unfolds into fruit. Can belief ever be barren? Doesn't belief always mean living in the Beloved? Living like the Beloved?
Shalom breaks her fig open and I can see all the seeds, all this possibility.
"They're so sweet." She eats her's slow.
I clear the counter.
What if you're the one feeling dry and brittle?
What if all you feel like you ever bear is…. frustrated kids and edgy words and a whole string of "grin and bear it days"?
What if you're the one who feels like you're withering right up?
I move the plate of figs off the table and it's there.
The silhouette of the the Bent Beloved, all tenderness.
Him leaving the withered fig tree to lay down on the worn Tree so all the weary can revive.
And me, this woman too often like Aaron's rod, dry and brittle, who just has to lay everything about before the Lord —
I lay out a bowl of almonds too.
Because Aaron's dry -as-death rod, that rod budded and blossomed, white almond flowers unfurling this impossible faith by grace.
These brittle, dry days — they can be kindle for burning bushes and God can come upon the dry bones and they can bud and blossom. And we can eat almonds and taste miraculous fruit from limbs just surrendered.
Though the fig tree doesn't blossom nor fruit be on the vine, yet I will rejoice– and there is the reviving. He can make the dry bones dance.
After Palm Sunday and before Good Friday, that's what we eat — the almonds and the figs and the fruit, because by Grace, God can get a fig out of even this dry stick. Levi sets out the third bowl.
A small dish of toothpicks. Dry, like dead trees.
"It's what we'll do when we repent." He tells my Mama when she stops in. He shows her, holding up this grapevine wreath, this wood withered and wound.
"These wreaths that we made from the vines back in the wood? Every time we need to repent this Holy Week," he reaches for the bowl… " — we'll slip in one of these sticks."
"Yes," she nods.
"Yes, exactly."
I'm fingering the sharp edge of one brittle point.
And I go first.
I slip in a toothpick thorn, repenting of fruit that isn't and believing in Him who is, and it's there in these hands, this snapped, withered wood that will bear the impossible life and right everything again.
This hope encircling like a crown…
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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} and the Thorn
Throughout Holy Week, as issues arise that beg repenting, slip a toothpick thorn into the grapevine wreath — and thank Him for His painful grace that He offers to bear fruit in our lives…
Without thy grace, we waste and wither away.
Related: This is part of a series preparing hearts for Easter. Part 1 of A Holy Week can be found here
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 2012-04-02 [del.icio.us]
@Mom Heart ... I'm quietly sharing over there today too... because don't our kids need more than our scraps?
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