Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 50
February 21, 2022
Dare to be Delighted In
Jess Thompson is one of those people who makes you laugh hard and then slow down and sigh with relief when she preaches the Good News. You know that feeling that maybe God just tolerates you but isn’t very glad to see you? Perhaps you grew up believing He was far off, but can I tell you a good thing? He actually delights in you. Don’t believe me? Let Jess encourage your heart today. A mama and daughter, she reminds us of the beauty of everyday life and how to find Christ in the valleys and victories. It turns out, he’s right there in the middle, welcoming us in. It’s a grace to welcome Jess to the farm’s front porch today….
Guest post by Jess Thompson
We called my grandmother on my father’s side “Candy Grandma” because she gave us candy every single time we visited. She’d say hot dogs were her “favorite fruit.” When I would take my kids to visit her, I would go at times of the day when one wouldn’t typically eat a meal because I didn’t want her to go to the trouble of preparing something for us, but inevitably we would end up eating a second lunch because she insisted on “having a party.” This woman who informed and shaped me in a multitude of ways often called me Hephzibah. I had no idea what it meant at the time, and it was normal for her to make up words (Hootsycadoodle was one of her favorite expressions when she was happily surprised, for example) so I didn’t think much of it. Then one day I was reading my Bible and I came across Isaiah 62:4–5.
No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah,
and your land Beulah;
for the Lord will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
I saw the word Hephzibah, and I was astonished. There was a tiny a next to it, so I went racing down the page to find out what Hephzibah meant. At the bottom of the page was a definition that broke me and thrilled me all at once: “My delight is in her.” Every time Candy Grandma called me by this nickname she was telling me she delighted in me. To be loved so deeply by a grandparent is a wonderful gift.
“We may feel “deserted” or “desolate,” but God changes us by His wonderful love and we are called “my delight is in her.” “
You may have experienced a love like that from a grandparent and understand what I am talking about, or maybe you haven’t experienced a love like that and are grieved or even angry that you haven’t known that feeling. To those who know that love and to those who don’t, we have a God who says those words about us. His delight is in us. We may feel “deserted” or “desolate,” but God changes us by His wonderful love and we are called “my delight is in her.”
We are not alone any longer. If that truth weren’t magnificent enough, we are loved by God as a young man who marries a young woman. His love for us is consuming. His love for us gives Him delight. His love for us gives Him joy. He is a joyful God because of how He feels about you and me.
So many of us think that God is disappointed in us or that He just tolerates us. We know He loves us, but we entertain a sneaking suspicion that He loves us because He has to. These verses tell those thoughts to “Hush up” (another of Candy Grandma’s favorite sayings).
Your God rejoices over you!
My God rejoices over me.
Our God rejoices over us!
“We must choose to believe what God says, and He says He delights in us.”
How is this true? I literally shake my head in wonder over this truth. Tears well in my eyes because I just can’t believe it is true. But to my own doubt and to yours, I echo my grandma, “Hush up.”
We must choose to believe what God says, and He says He delights in us. What a tremendous sense of relief and happiness and joy that brings to my tired, anxious heart. I pray it does the same for you, filling you with the fullness of joy today. I pray that you extend that joy to everyone you encounter today.
I pray that His joy in us spills over into the whole world so we might all know the unspeakable pleasure of knowing we are delighted in because our God is just that good.
*****
Jess Thompson lives in southern California where she is a co-host with her wildly fun family on their podcast, “Front Porch with the Fitzes” Her new book, “How God Loves Us” is a stirring devotional that show us the power of the fruit of the spirit and how God shows us his care through things like love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, and gentleness. You can find her at jessicathompson.co and on Instagram @thejesslou
(Our humble thanks to Moody Publishing for partnership in this devotional today.)
February 19, 2022
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins For Your Weekend [2.19.2022]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Photo by Joshua Fuller
…a little Winter glory to start your weekend.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Dog (@goodnewsdog)
…this little snowboarding dino is the weekend motivation we all need!
This kitty! Yep, decided to #BETHEGIFT by giving hundreds of stolen toys to his neighbors!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Fantastic owls (@fantastic.owls)
Who knew owls in a basket could be this heart-melting?
…bringing people together, one homemade ice rink at a time. Beautiful.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by #riskhappy (@riskhappy)
…sometimes, all we need is someone to cheer us on!
okay, if this 75-year-old man can use garbage cans to bless his neighbors? Talk about inspiring! #BETHEGIFT
You’ve listened to with Morgan Harper Nichols on the practice of peace? Good listen for your weekend.
Check out That Sounds Fun here
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Farm Animals !!! (@ilovefarmanimals)
What’s not to love about this pup/butterfly duo?
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Movement (@goodnews_movement)
…pretty powerful to see people using their gifts to make others feel seen, known, and loved!
…oh the joy of a beloved childhood toy! This lost teddy bear was reunited with its owner —
after going viral on social media.
12 Heart-Melting Pictures of Kids With Their Animal Buddies
Dare you: Want to really make a difference this weekend? Start here. Really.
…you’re still my rock, my hope remains. I’ll rest in the arms of Jesus, come what may…
observe the 40 days between Easter and Jesus’ Ascension to Heaven with the Cradle-to-Cross Wreath, using a candle or perhaps a homemade paper flower or butterfly to trace the days until the Savior was taken up into Heaven.
This and so much more at The Keeping Company
If you’re kinda wishing your story was different…
…this one might be for you.
The WayMaker is making his way to you…
Are you catching our Voskamp Family Vlog series?
Oh join us for episode 3 ! “The Way Through with the Voskamp Family”
Run on over to grab Episode 3 where you’ll get to:
Meet our little flock of sheep! Find out whether we might have lambs this spring! Watch us ultrasound the sheep – and watch right to the end to watch the Farmer and one of his farm boys pulling out the tractors to blow snow!This weekend — the WayMaker always making miraculous ways to us, so we know the most passionate love, transformative love of all.
Get Episode 3 in your inbox today — with a preorder of my next book WayMaker, Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of — and we will get not only the whole 6 part video series into your hands, but more than $75 worth of free gifts!
$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order WayMaker
What Authors are Saying about WayMaker
And we’d absolutely love to thank you with our 6 part family video series!
Preview clips from all of our previous episodes
View this post on InstagramA post shared by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp)
View this post on InstagramA post shared by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp)
View this post on InstagramA post shared by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp)
with your pre-Order of my next book, WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of
A free printable for you from the WayMaker Art Collection when you pre-order WayMaker
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 14, 2022
Your Divine Valentine: For All of Us
It’s okay that you may be quietly wishing today
that your story was somehow different,
because your WayMaker makes His tender way to you,
to be your Word and your Story, and He won’t stop writing healing into every line, your very own lifeline.
You may be silently grieving today
in ways no one can really understand,
and your WayMaker makes His gentle way to you, cups your face, lifts your chin, and His kind eyes find and hold yours, gently assuring that all the sad ways will someday turn around and be forever made into the perfect ways that were always meant to be.
Wooden Hands: The Keeping Company
You may be deeply tender today,
in ways that it’s hard to wrap words around,
and your WayMaker comes the whole long way to wrap His presence completely around you, making you forever safe in His closeness, that fully knows and gently traces all the raw edges and contours of your tender places and couldn’t love you more.
You may be desperately hoping today,
and your WayMaker, who is your real Way through, He’s the only One who can truly make things turn, make lives turn, make dark turn into light, make no ways and hard ways turn into highways, that are the ways into even more than what we want, because they are the ways into the embracing arms of Love Himself who forever and always wants us.
You may be looking today,
for someone really looking for you, for someone to deeply see you, the real you, and your WayMaker comes the whole long way to find you, (you!) and thrills: “There you are! There you are!” smiling a universe wide when He sees you (you!), and you can hear it, especially today, straight from the heart of the only One who has ever loved you to death and back to the realest life with His love, how His swooning baritone, “celebrates and sings because of you, and He will refresh your life with His love.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
Wooden Hands: The Keeping Company
Whatever way you are today,
your WayMaker is your Way through to the realest and truest Love you’ve ever dreamed of,
because Love is who He is,
and He etched your name into hands,
stretched out His arms as far as the east is from the west for you and said, “Here, I give you my whole heart and you will always, always, always have Me.
Be Mine.”
*****
WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of is a tender story for every single one of us who had quiet expectations for maybe something different for our lives.
And this brokenhearted, vulnerable story unfolds the most passionate love of the WayMaker who makes a way to us, holds us, and carries us the whole way through.
WayMaker‘s the love story we’re all dreaming of — because it’s ultimately about the One who dreamed us into being, and loves us beyond our wildest dreams — the only One who has ever loved us to death and back to the fullest, truly beloved life. Tenderly handing you all the free gifts with your preorder of WayMaker, from our hearts, from His heart, to yours.
February 12, 2022
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins For Your Weekend [2.12.2022]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Lake of ice by Cristiano Vendramin, Italy
Shelter from the rain by Ashleigh McCord, USA
Hope in a burned plantation by Jo-Anne McArthur, Canada
The eagle and the bear by Jeroen Hoekendijk, The Netherland
Dancing in the snow by Qiang Guo, ChinaCelebrating God’s amazing creatures and the creative gifting He has given to these photography artists.
These five pictures are winners from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest, developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Mental Health Advice ❤️ (@noteforself)
…. deep breath this weekend! It’s all in the timing!
How to love your neighbor? Sometimes it’s just a simple act of kindness #BETHEGIFT
A UPS driver found that out and the blessing was his.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by 𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 (@majicallynews)
…a love like this, after 64 years — old love the most beautiful love of all
When You Feel Small, Look to the Cosmos and the Cross
a powerful reflection by Philip Yancey
View this post on InstagramA post shared by SportsCenter (@sportscenter)
dedication, determination, partnership, camaraderie, love! You are on the Way!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by The Happy News (@thehappynewspaper)
… beautiful! creating memories and loving and teaching!
A new podcast with some of my favorite people. Subscribe to FAITHFUL Podcast and listen in to conversations between these spectacular women discussing living out God’s Word
Time-lapse camera over this beautiful, painful, God-loved planet
…inspiration to SOAR this weekend! 19-year-old woman flies solo around the world!
If cute babies competed in the Winter Games. #Olympics pic.twitter.com/MVX7jDElvE
— Olympics (@Olympics) February 6, 2022
…okay, maybe– the baby Winter Olympics are way cuter ❤️
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Mental Health Advice ❤️ (@noteforself)
… isn’t this a tender picture of love?!
so… a banjo player serenades a Fox – and look at this! He comes back for more!
Every prayer today is a seed for tomorrow
Keep praying, keep praying
These wooden hands are a one of a kind way to display reminders of words of Hope, or reminders for prayer.
This and so much more at The Keeping Company
They are also a great compliment to the free cards
from the WayFarer Art Collection available with your pre-order of WayMaker!
Post of the Week from these Parts: I had the direction of love all wrong
The love you’re looking for is really found in the last place you’d look…
... your weekend really needs this
How Real People Make Real Honest Love:
If you’re kinda scared about all things love (especially this weekend) START HERE
…. Kindle your heart & your weekend with this one
Fire up some tender romance this weekend?
The Farmer and I are sharing, in Episode 2 of our 6 part video series,
“The Way Through with the Voskamp Family” —
more of our story, the good, the hard, and 5 Secrets to Falling in Love Again!
Get Episode 2 in your inbox today — perfect watch for Valentine’s weekend! — with a preorder of my next book WayMaker, Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of — and we will get not only the whole 6 part video series into your hands, but more than $75 worth of free gifts!
$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order WayMaker
with your pre-Order of my next book, WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of
View this post on InstagramA post shared by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp)
You’ve seen this, right? It’s one of the most powerful things the Farmer has ever said to me — EVER.
Tear up every time. This moment in time — totally changed our lives.
(From Episode 1 of our family Vlog — we’d love to send the whole series to you!)
A Free Valentine’s Printable for you from the WayMaker Art Collection, with an order of WayMaker
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 11, 2022
How Real Honest People Make (Real Honest) Love
So yeah—- yeah, our mattress sags in the middle.
You can see it, even when the sheets are pulled up taut, how the springs at the centre have been cratered by the sheer weight of glory, like how after a fire, there’s an impression left in the earth.
This is a man and a woman becoming one.
Some would say this has been the boring, every day love of us.
How many times have I forgot to shave my legs? He said it never mattered.
My waist thickened and rolled and softened, stretch-marked thin over this love of ours that grew me larger with all these kids.
My sagging, rounded mother body wears it like a badge: I’ve surrendered to love in a thousand ways.
It’s been decades of this, us there in the dark:
We roll to the middle of the mattress, he and I, finding each other in the valleys.
Who knew that every valley is being held in the valley of cupped hands?
There have been too many of those valleys to count.
The nights after my dad died, the nights after his mother died. We clung quiet to each other in the middle, the springs sagging silently under us, the words scraped raw from the sides of us.
And yeah, sure, we’ve felt it too, in the hollow of some awful nights, laying there in the middle of the mattress, in our own valley of dry bones:
Don’t buy what anybody else is selling: Everyone always marry wrong.
Because what’s wrong in the world is always us.
“The promise of the vows is to fall in love with the stranger to whom you find yourself married.”Marriage and love and time, these are the enormous forces that inevitably chisel and change us into strangers. The springs sag. Mattresses sigh. Marriage changes us into strangers who have to meet and introduce each other to love all over again.
None of us ever know whom we marry.
And falling in love never made anyone angels… falling in love only eventually makes it clear how far we’ve actually fallen.
Who we say ‘I do’ to — is not who we roll over to touch twenty years later.
The promise of the vows is to keep finding a way fall in love with the stranger to whom you find yourself married.
The vows are a vow to make the new stranger you’ve long been married to — feel the intimacy of an old and known love everyday.
Every pillow on the other side of the bed needs the note:
You can change, but nothing will change how I see you as my rarest gift.
Your dreams burn in my heart too, and where life’s burned you, I’ll heart graft from my heart to yours and we can be healed together, stronger.
And whomever you become, I’m always coming looking for you, I’m always coming for you, to be with you.
This is the only way we ever become the right people to be married to.
“The vows are a vow to make the new stranger you’ve long been married to — feel the intimacy of an old and known love everyday.”And though he has been smacked by my flaws, slack-jawed by my flaws, and it ain’t at all been Hallmark pretty. It’s been holy.
The real romantics know that stretchmarks are beauty marks, and that different shaped women fit into the different shapes of men souls, and that real romance is really sacrifice.
So after he’s been up before 5 am, fed a couple hundred mama sows, taken care of more than a couple of hundred baby pigs, loaded a truck of wheat, blown out the farmyard of snow, picked up groceries when he’s got tractor parts in town, worked in the barn tonight till after 7:30, after he’s read from 2 Timothy to us around the dinner table —
I slip back into the kitchen after fitting clean sheets on a bed, to find him standing there at the sink.
Standing there doing up the last of the pots and pans.
I could weep for a quiet redeemed love like this, the kind of love they don’t write movies about, but the Maker writes down in a book of His own.
It doesn’t matter one iota what the checkout glossies tout: Sacrifice is the most attractive of all.
“The value of loving is not what we get out of it; the value of loving is always in being like Christ.”And there are women who have loved men as the hero-of-few-words who have rescued them day in and day out, without any fanfare or flash.
There are men and women who have lived and bore the weight of it: “I am far worse than I ever dreamed. And yet you have loved me beyond what I could ever dream. You have lived Gospel to me.”
The guy buying chocolates for the lady who lost it with him last week (uh yeah, that would be he and I), well, we’re finding the Way:
Love, without Truth, isn’t reality— it’s sentimentality.
And Truth, without Love, isn’t sustainable —- it’s terminal.
Real Love truthfully sees the flaws — and still really loves fully.
Love isn’t blind — Love is the only way of really seeing. There are men who have loved women real.
And regardless of how he changes, how I change, how everything can change or nothing might change at all:
The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving.
The real success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving – regardless if any thing else changes.
The value of loving is not what we get out of it; the value of loving is always in being like Christ.
“The only ones who get to escape the doom of the star-crossed lovers are the Cross-formed lovers.”And maybe that is how real people always make real love — they vulnerably keep opening their arms and heart wide open to each other, to fully know and receive and embrace each other — like very Love Himself formed Himself into the embrace of a Cross.
The only ones who get to escape the doom of the star-crossed lovers are the Cross-formed lovers.
So yeah, yeah — so what if the mattress sags and gives way in the centre? The self-centredness of the two can give way to this rolling down into the middle and into a glorious one.
He and I entangled in these romanced cotton sheets of an old and practiced grace.
*****
Want to Spark a Great Date Night with a Valentine’s Video to Watch this Weekend?
Fire up some tender romance this weekend? The Farmer and I are sharing, in Episode 2 of our 6 part video series, “The Way Through with the Voskamp Family” — dropping today! And every Friday for the next 5 weeks! — more of our story, the good, the hard, and 5 Secrets to Falling in Love Again!
Get Episode 2 in your inbox today — perfect watch for Valentine’s weekend! — with a preorder of WayMaker, Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of — and we will get not only the whole 6 part video series into your hands, but more than $75 worth of free gifts!
$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order WayMaker
And? Your Episode 1 of the Voskamp Family Video Series is Already Waiting for You!
— and Valentine’s Episode 2 dropping TODay! — all 6 episodes with your preorder of WayMaker right here
February 9, 2022
How to Find Directions to Real Love
Dear One, I am sorry I didn’t know.
I had the direction of love all wrong
I didn’t know that first Valentine’s day when you gave me chocolate covered cherries, or 4 years later when you pulled out that red velvet ring box, asked me if I would, and slipped that diamond ring on my finger, or even after I walked down the aisle on cloud nine and in a poof of white — I didn’t know then, that our love wouldn’t actually find its realest, truest version in any of the mountain top peak moments.
I had the direction of love all wrong.
I mean, it’s everywhere, the songs and the reels and Kool aid that Love is all the pinnacle, posed moments, the glam and roses and framed moments, the high moments when we are about walking on air.
But you showed me:
The love you’re looking for is found in the last place you’d look: in the valleys, and in the pits, and when everything else gives way — and one person reaches out and gives you their hand.
Love is when you got down on the floor and gathered me up close when the bottom fell out of everything, and I was sobbing like a baby, and your chest was my only soft place to land and you didn’t just hold me, you held me together.
When we had to get dressed for the funeral and I didn’t quite know how I was going to keep standing, you stayed close enough to bear the whole weight of my busted ache, and when I’m inferno of pain, you’re the person who doesn’t glance around for the exit sign, but runs right into my heart burning down, and you sit with me in my fire, so I never sit alone in the flames.
The paced hospital halls through bleary-eyed nights, and the cold bathroom floors when nothing seemed right, and the barf buckets and crying kids and puked-on sheets when we finally fumbled for the light — and you, always you there at rock bottom, not when life was shiny framed and sparkly filtered, but when life was downright ugly and hard, and my heart got ugly and hard, and nothing was particularly lovely but your love.
You showed me the way to realest love.
Real love isn’t made on the heights but made in the depths, real love isn’t a peak experience, but experienced in the pits, and real love is found strong right at rock bottom.
I didn’t know:
The love you’re looking for is found in the last place you’d look: in the valleys, and in the pits, and when everything else gives way — and one person reaches out and gives you their hand.
Love Himself saves you not because you earned it at the mountain top, but because He holds you at Rock bottom.
The direction of love is always going lower, where it’s not flashy but faithful, and the way to real love is not upward but downward, where only the real cruciform heroes go.
The bliss of real love is what alone holds you through the abyss.
Love is forged in flame, and loved is carved through canyons and love is made at the bottom of mines — when there’s a whisper in the dark that says: “I’m still here and you’re still mine.”
The bliss of real love is what alone holds you through the abyss.
So you and I? We will take the downward direction and way of real love, the way that can say:
When it’s hardest, I’m right here.
When you’re at your lowest, my love goes lower,
And when you feel lost and alone, I’m coming looking for you, to find you and love you all the way up to the skies.
*********
Don’t want to miss more of our love story? The Farmer and I are sharing, in Episode 2 of our 6 part video series, “The Way Through with the Voskamp Family” — dropping tomorrow! and every Friday for the next 5 weeks! — more of our story, the good, the hard, and 5 Secrets to Falling in Love Again!
Get Episode 2 in your inbox Friday — perfect watch for Valentine’s weekend! — with a preorder of WayMaker, Finding the Way to the Life You Always Dreamed Of — and we will get not only the whole 6 part video series into your hands, but more than $75 worth of free gifts!
$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order WayMaker
And? Your Episode 1 is Already waiting for you — and Valentine’s Episode 2 dropping this Friday !—with your preorder of WayMaker right here
February 8, 2022
How Love Overcomes Evil
Dear one, are you ever afraid? Your nodding head tells me I’m not alone. But in this world, for such a time as this, we must be people of courage, taking risks for the sake of love. Catherine McNiel tells us that fear, while real, does not define the life of the Christ-follower. As she writes in her book, Fearing Bravely is part of our calling to reach our neighbors, strangers, and even our enemies so that evil can be overcome with good. It’s a grace to welcome Catherine to the farm’s front porch today….
Guest blog post by Catherine McNiel
My family has an enormous garden—which means that, in addition to an enormous harvest, we have an enormous weed problem. I have a special tool that uproots the weeds. A long, narrow strip of metal goes deep, deep underground; I give it just a bit of a nudge and sever the stalks at the root. Then, the entire plant pulls up easily. I go down the rows inch by inch, uprooting one at a time for hours. It would take much less time to simply pull them out by hand.
But weeds have not survived in my carefully cultivated bed for nothing: Their strategy is impressive. However small and delicate these plants look above ground, they are thickly and firmly rooted below. I could reconcile my garden quickly, making it look lovely and Instagram-worthy with little effort. But this will not even lightly damage the weeds. By the time the Instagram likes start pouring in, the thick roots will have sent new shoots above ground.
Surface-level repentance that demands forgiveness without change does nothing to produce reconciliation.
Our real-life sins and evils are just as difficult to uproot. Surface-level repentance that demands forgiveness without change does nothing to produce reconciliation.
When Isaiah talks about God’s new creation based on justice and righteousness, he describes the wolf living in harmony with the lamb, the leopard snuggling up to the goat, the calf with the lion, the cow with the bear, a human infant playing in a cobra’s nest! What is notable is not that the vulnerable in these pairings have learned to forgive; the point is that the predators have utterly and completely changed their ways.
How much upheaval to the natural order would I need to experience before I would place my baby in a cobra’s den?
In God’s justice system, there will be safety for all only when the powerful cease to cause harm. That’s the level of reconciliation the church is asked to take on.
Shortly after apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to allow both victims and perpetrators of gross human- rights violations to give their statement and tell their story. Thirty- five years of human- rights abuses could not simply be left unaddressed if the country was to transition from oppression to democracy. Real abuse requires real truth-telling. The goal was restorative justice.
Those who were there— and those who listened to the radio and television broadcasts worldwide— recall the voices of men and women wailing, screaming, crying as they spoke the truth of what they had lived through, what they had seen, what had happened to them, and what they had done.
There was no asking the oppressed to be silent lest they hurt the feelings of their oppressors. The country of South Africa— under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others—committed to a long, hard look at injustice and the tools of repentance, forgiveness, restoration, and reparation. The love that turns enemies into neighbors does not smooth things over with sweet words of unity but allows the ferocity of suffering to shout itself out, allows lament and restorative justice to do its work.
In God’s justice system, there will be safety for all only when the powerful cease to cause harm.
Love requires truth, pain, and confrontation. It requires the powerful “good guys” to publicly reconsider what role they play in the story.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, the USA dropped another bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki. Over a hundred thousand people were instantly killed when the bombs leveled each city for miles. Another hundred thousand died from injury and radiation sickness in the subsequent weeks and months.
As the world faltered under the weight of two entire cities wiped from the planet— nearly all the dead were civilians, families, and children— the United States and her allies celebrated the end of a terrible war and the victory of justice over tyranny.
Koko Kondo was a baby when this bomb fell on her home city, trapping her in the rubble. Her mother dragged her out to relative safety, but the long-term impact on Koko could never be erased. Her childhood was filled with fear and hate, radiation poisoning, and a crystal-clear understanding of the enemy who had stolen everything.
At ten years old, Koko had the opportunity to meet the co-pilot of the plane, the American man who dropped the bomb. He told her what he wrote in his log that terrible day: “My God, what have I done.” When Koko saw the tears streaming down his face, she thought, He’s the same human being as me. If I hate, I should not hate this guy. I should hate the war itself, which we human beings caused. In this moment her life’s work began: fighting for peace and abolishing nuclear weapons.
In 2018, Rachael Denhollander spoke at the sentencing of Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor. Near the end of her forty-minute talk, she extended forgiveness to the man who had molested her and countless other girls and young women.
A love like this, rooted in this counter-culture, counter-intuitive way of Christ, makes the world into more of a garden of hope, harvesting a yield that overcomes with good.
But her forgiveness did not stand alone. It was surrounded by a compelling speech in which Rachael vividly outlined Nassar’s evil acts, calling for the truth to be spoken aloud and for him to receive the fullest penalty possible under the law. These words came after years of costly truth-telling work to indict and convict Nassar.
What Rachael’s confrontation made clear is that in Christ, she forgave her enemy. But forgiveness was just the first step; justice against him under the law was still required. Even this form of justice was not enough: The truth must be spoken so resoundingly that restorative justice could begin.
Only with each of these in place—truth-telling, forgiveness, legal justice, and restorative justice—could the lamb consider approaching the lion. Only then does active, agapē love become sincere. With each of these in place, we are positioned to abhor evil and cling to what is good, to overcome evil with good.
Christ followers are called to enter this world and love. Love our neighbors. Take care of strangers. Love and pray even for our enemies. Jesus said His followers would be recognized not by our labels but by our love – a love that conquers fear.
And a love like this, rooted in this counter-culture, counter-intuitive way of Christ, makes the world into more of a garden of hope, harvesting a yield that overcomes with good.
******
Catherine McNiel writes about the creative and redemptive work of God in our real, ordinary lives. She is the author of Fearing Bravely: Risking Love for Our Neighbors, Strangers, and Enemies, Long Days of Small Things: Motherhood as a Spiritual Discipline, and All Shall Be Well: Awakening to God’s Presence in His Messy, Abundant World. Catherine studies theology while caring for three kids, two jobs, and one enormous garden. Visit Catherine on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 5, 2022
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins For Your Weekend [2.5.2022]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Photo by Deborah J. Flora
Photo by Deborah J. Flora
Photo by Deborah J. Florahectic week? take a moment and enjoy the stillness of winter
.@DUALIPA shows off her interview skills and asks Stephen about his faith and his comedy. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/h293PqyQOK
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) February 4, 2022
How are you laughing and loving this weekend? This is beautiful!
so encouraging when people use their platform to share the love of God
Read here about comedian Michael Jr. and his commitment to love God and his neighbor
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Passion Conferences (@passion268)
This moment changed countless lives 🔥 and once you see it — you can’t forget it 🔥
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Husky Match (@huskymatch)
Let a happy husky dance put a smile on your face…
My good friend Ruth Chou Simons has launched a new podcast and it’s just the best.
Listen here to the Podcast of the Week!
From Compassion International, a powerful story of rescue for girls in Kenya.
Please be warned: this story contains Sensitive content
too good to miss: weary? Maybe burned out? Sharing some hope and a way forward right here… listen in
when it’s as special as a wedding, you just take your time …
View this post on InstagramA post shared by @priscillashirer
Wise and precious words from Priscilla captioned above ^^
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Upworthy (@upworthy)
loving your neighbor…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Upworthy (@upworthy)
awe inspiring…
Kindergartners in Florida have never seen snow, until now!
Your Name is Power, Your Name is Healing, Your Name is Life
The most vulnerable story I’ve ever told.
A vulnerable love story – the story of how I lost my way, the story of how I just about lost my marriage, the story of our daughter who I almost didn’t find — and how to find the way forward exactly where there seems to be absolutely no way.
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS:
You want to turn your life around. You want to think a new way, you want to be a new way, you want to have a new way of being. You’ve been looking for a sign. You want to hand a very real compass to your own soul. You wish someone would hand you a life map. You’re tired of your heart hurting. You’re looking for a way through.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by annvoskamp (@annvoskamp)
A quick sneak peek at the first episode of our Voskamp Family Vlog! See the full video, and get access to the entire 6-part series, when you pre-order WayMaker! New episodes drop every Friday!
These wooden hands are a one of a kind way to display reminders of words of Hope, or reminders for prayer.
This and so much more at The Keeping Company
They are also a great compliment to the free cards from the WayFarer Art Collection available with your pre-order of WayMaker!
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
February 3, 2022
Dear You, Looking for A Way Through
I confess: I’ve lost my way.
I only wish I meant that only metaphorically, rhetorically, instead of in the realest, most heartbreaking ways.
If I were sitting across the table from you right now, having a steaming cup of hot coffee with you, I would look you in the eye, and I would see it there in your soul, if I really lingered with your eyes:
You are fighting hard for a way through on so many fronts, a way through to what you’ve dreamed for your one and only life.
You are trying not to lose your way, trying to find your way, trying to make a way through.
I see you.
And I see how tired you are, in ways no one even knows. I see how you keep running into “no ways”, and it hurts and you are being so brave to keep putting one step in front of the other and to keep hoping, believing, fiercely moving forward.
And if you peered straight into my eyes, you’d see me holding your story with the deepest understanding. You would see the barest honesty in my eyes, the last traces of nervous fear in mine, and I would just slide it across the table to you, my next book, right there.
The most vulnerable story I’ve ever told.
A vulnerable love story – the story of how I lost my way, the story of how I just about lost my marriage, the story of our daughter who I almost didn’t find — and how to find the way forward exactly where there seems to be absolutely no way.
The honest story is, in the midst of breaking my husband’s heart in all kinds of ways, and facing the open heart surgery of our youngest daughter, I found myself hospitalized for my own literal heart failure.
And lying there in a hospital bed, I finally found the way to the very heart of everything: a sacred way of life — a rule of life — that turns the whole of a life around.
Life keeps coming at you, and will just keep coming at you, crashing over you like waves — your dreams, your loves, your heartaches, your hopes — all ebbing and flowing, rising and falling.
Life keeps coming in waves and there is no controlling life’s storms – there is only actually learning an actual way of life that can walk through waves.
This is my story.
This is our deeply personal, vulnerable story — of heartbreak and therapy and U-turns and open heart surgeries and being very lost and being actually found and getting to really begin again.
This is one real, honest-to-God love story.
This is the most passionate story I know how to tell.
In a disorienting world, with obstacle after obstacle, with the landscape of our lives shifting under us in ways we never expected, this is the charting our own tender, and brutally hard, journey out of deep, churning waters — to discover an actual compass.
What we all need more than anything, especially at the beginning of a new year, with new hopes, is to really find our way to the actual life we always dreamed of.
To discover a new way of thinking, a new way of being, a powerfully transformative way to a meaningful life, a SACRED way of life — an effective, daily way of life that drowns out an army of fears, reshapes and redirects our days, and offers a fresh revelation of real, practical hope.
And if I poured you another cup of coffee, handed it to you across the table as we’re talking about how to find a way through when you realize your relationships, your work, your hopes, your marriage, maybe don’t look quite the way you imagined, or when you thought your dreams, your kids, your life trajectory, would be headed a different way — or you thought you would be a different way — we’d both nod:
What we all need more than anything, especially at the beginning of a new year, with new hopes, is to really find our way to the actual life we always dreamed of.
Because every day is about finding our way from Point A to Point B — and not missing the point of our lives.
But just as you might open the first page of the most soul-vulnerable story I’ve ever put down on paper, I would (Nervously! Awkwardly!) grab your hand just to look you in the eye and tell you:
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS:
You want to turn your life around. You want to think a new way, you want to be a new way, you want to have a new way of being. You’ve been looking for a sign. You want to hand a very real compass to your own soul. You wish someone would hand you a life map. You’re tired of your heart hurting. You’re looking for a way through.And then I’d quietly mention to you how I talked to a woman last week who had just finished reading this WayMaker love story of ours, who said:
“I read your One Thousand Gifts , and then The Broken Way — and WayMaker is truly exquisite and I can see how this was your next step, your real journey, I can see how this is the whole story.”
And I’d nodded.
Because it’s true: One Thousand Gifts and The Broken Way ( are lived corners of the same map, but it’s WayMaker that sketches out the road in between the corners.
Waymaker connects the dots between the grateful thanksgiving of One Thousand Gifts, and the given cruciformity of The Broken Way, and WayMaker hands the soul a sacred compass to know the whole Way through.
And I would tell you this, you, Brave Heart, looking for the way through.
How I’d read it once, and how I have never have forgot it, and returned to it time and again, what that race car driver Mario Andretti said:
“Don’t look at the Wall. Your car goes where your eyes go.”
Your life goes where you keep looking.
Which is to say:
Don’t look at what’s in the way — because your life goes the way your eyes go.
Don’t look at the walls in the way — your way goes where your heart goes.
Don’t look at the wall in the way — unless you want to crash into the wall on the way.
Your heart goes where your eyes go.
Your life goes where you keep looking.
Gaze long at the Way Himself — and you’ll find the Way to the life you’ve always dreamed of.
Gaze the way you want to go.
And then I’d squeeze your hand — and hand you the WayMaker.
$75 of Free Gifts When You Pre-Order
January 31, 2022
Your Purpose Is Your Superpower: Are You Ready to Fly?
For many years, Michael Phillips believed he had no destiny other than crime and poverty. That was what most of his teachers, his society, and his own heart communicated to him. But it wasn’t always that way. As a child, he knew the truth innate in each one of us: God created us for a purpose and that purpose is simply to be who we are. It took many wounds, losses, and wrong turns for Michael to return to that sense of mission. Now he dedicates his life to helping others live out their God-given worth. It’s a privilege to welcome Michael to the front porch today….
Guest post by Michael Phillips
When I was ten years old, I jumped off the second-floor balcony of our duplex. You could not convince me that I was not Superman. I leaped! In my Fruit of the Loom Underoos, red Superman boots, and the cape I had gotten for Christmas.
We were not created to discover our purpose; we were created because we have purpose.
Why did I jump? I had an intuitive feeling, this inherent belief (plus I was a little bit crazy). I sensed that I was made for a special mission and built with the power to pull it off.
Needless to say, the laws of gravity put my flying skills to the test. The garage roof directly beneath our balcony broke my fall, the clothesline in our yard tangled my legs, and I didn’t hit the ground. I had a few scrapes and bruises, but no bones were broken.
My grandmother ran out of the house and found me entangled, crying, and hanging upside down. She unhooked my legs and took me in the house. My sister looked at me with a face that said it all: Stupid! Perhaps she had a point.
Later that day, my mom came home from work and went straight to my room and asked a question that instantly reinvigorated me. She said, “Baby, what made you think you could fly?”
Then it hit me. It wasn’t the cape or the boots. It wasn’t the S on my shirt that made me leap. It was the personal sense of significance. I mattered. I was here for a reason. Even though my flying didn’t succeed, my worth did. I knew that I was supposed to help people; however, at the age of ten, the only way I could imagine that was to transform into a superhero. At that early stage I accepted the fact that I was born to do what no one else could but that no superhuman ability was required. All I had to be was myself.
Regardless of how broken you have become, your purpose is still intact.
We are all created with purpose. We do not have to spend the precious years that we have trying to find it, because we already have it. We were not created to discover our purpose; we were created because we have purpose. Not one of the more than 7.7 billion people on this planet is here by accident. Until we realize why we are here, our existence can lack meaning, but once we comprehend our importance, then we must take the next step to use what we have to make our highest contribution to the world.
My lived experience of understanding my purpose was and still is filled with perils, pitfalls, plateaus, and promises. The internal benchmark that indicates personal fulfillment and the sense of a positive direction is difficult to navigate at times.
So we leap incorrectly, attempting to do what we are not born to do. Then we allow our bruises and scars to become our identities instead of part of our histories. Navigating through the meandering twists of life’s trials requires help and truth.
Regardless of what you’ve been through, your purpose is still an essential part of you. Regardless of how broken you have become, your purpose is still intact. You have something important to offer to the world, and you don’t need to be superhuman to make your contribution. Purpose is not what you do; purpose is who you are. Plans change, but purpose is permanent. Purpose is your superpower.
May we all leap into it.
******
Michael Phillips is the founder of LifePrep and currently serves as the chief engagement and fulfillment officer for the T.D. Jakes Foundation. He is the chairman of 50CAN and serves as a board member of KuriosEd. His powerful story and message of collateral hope has transformed many lives and helped to revitalize communities. Michael Phillips and his wife, Dr. Anita Phillips, reside in Dallas, Texas.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook Publishing for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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