Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 69
December 14, 2020
What 2020 Needs: The Beatitudes Project
I was introduced to Stu G at The Justice Conference in Chicago a few years back. If you’ve been anywhere near the global church in the last two and a half decades, you will have sung his songs and heard his music, but that day as he placed a book and CD in my hands, I sensed there was something different about this man, a passion for the life and words of Jesus to be lived out in our chaotic and divided time. Instead of talking about his own songs, he talked about songs from men and women he had befriended in his travels. Instead of telling his own stories, he told the stories of people who’d been abused, forgotten, marginalized. Stu is a man who uses his voice to lift people up, who is using his talent to draw out the talent of others, who is using his influence to tell a story of hope. My prayers for this hurting world resonate deeply with Stu’s heart and vision to help us live our stories through the lens of The Beatitudes. It’s an absolute grace to welcome Stu to the farm’s front porch today…
How on earth are you doing?
How are you inside this ache, lack, and longing called 2020?
You’ve made it to another day, another week, and that’s worth celebrating!
“We want to make a change, but we don’t know where to start.”
It breaks your heart, though, doesn’t it?
What are we supposed to do with all the noise? All the division, brokenness, anger, hatred, racism, protests, conspiracies, and election news that jumps from our screens to our brains every day?
If you’re like me, then it isn’t easy to know how to respond, so often, I don’t know what to say or if I should say anything at all.
So many are hungry and thirsty for love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
But the Spirit’s fruit appears to be missing in action in 2020.
We want to make a change, but we don’t know where to start.
If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d love to offer some hope in the chaos of this life.
The Beatitude art prints are part of the eCourse, available to download on your device.
You see, this feels a bit familiar to me and reminds me of a time when it felt like the world stopped turning. At that moment, I felt like I’d reached the end of my rope, but God opened my eyes to see some truth I’d never seen before.
“You’re blessed at the end of your rope.” ~The Beatitudes, MSG
It was 2009, and the year that a huge part of my life was over.
I’d spent the previous 16 years with a band of brothers called Delirious? (yes, with a question mark). We started life writing songs and playing music at a youth worship event on the south coast of England with 70 kids. We went on to play in stadiums around the world. We took our blend of rock and pop-infused worship music to some unlikely places: The UK pop charts, Glastonbury Festival, a stadium tour supporting Bon Jovi, to name a few.
It was more than a band and music. It was a movement of history makers where the folks who came to our concerts, who bought our records, and sang our songs, felt like they were in the band themselves.
All that purpose, unity of vision, and how we made our living came to an end in 2009. I got as much help and advice as I could. I wanted to do all I could to help us “end well.”
“I turned my eyes and reliance away from God, and I tried to control everything myself.”
Indeed, all seemed well on the outside, but it turned out I was not a good listener, and on the inside, I was sinking fast and didn’t know what to do. I isolated myself, which is what grief does.
I turned my eyes and reliance away from God, and I tried to control everything myself.
What followed was a tough couple of years that we (my wife and girls) made it through but not without some pain and bad decisions on my part.
The very next year, my family and I moved from England to Nashville, Tennessee. It felt like the right next step to continue in music and to begin to thrive again as a family.
Transition is a funny thing. Endings need grieving, and beginnings need celebrating.
“Endings need grieving, and beginnings need celebrating.”
But what do you do in that bit in between—you know, the bit where you feel a bit lost and feel like everything’s out of control?
I needed to change my behavior, get my vision, and focus back on God, and eventually, it hit me like a train. There I was in my self-induced-bottom-of-life-moment, and I had this sense that God was not far away. Indeed the Spirit of Jesus had been with me all along because that’s what Jesus does. He takes on the flesh and suffering of the world and joins us inside it.
I began to read The Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
How can that be? What are you on about Jesus? The Message version says, “You’re blessed at the end of your rope.”
Jesus, via Eugene Peterson, had my attention.
I read on:
“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
“We want certainty and answers, a way out of our mess, but what we are offered is Divine Presence. God is on our side.”
“Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice for they shall be satisfied.”
I was shocked at how upside down, counter-intuitive, and provocative, these ancient announcements are.
Surely the crushed in spirit and those who mourn aren’t blessed, are they? What about those without power or who are unseen? Or those who lack justice and ache for it, surely they aren’t blessed?
That’s when I began to realize that I had the idea of blessing all wrong.
I discovered that the blessing in these announcements is Presence. When life doesn’t follow our instructions, and we get knocked off track. When all gets flipped upside down, and we find ourselves at the end of our rope or the bottom of life. We want certainty and answers, a way out of our mess, but what we are offered is Divine Presence. God is on our side.
Seeing blessing this way changes everything. Perhaps we’ve grown up asking for nice things and seeing these as blessings, you know, like when we need a parking space and one “miraculously” appears (I’m laughing here).
But Jesus wants us to know what God is already blessing with His Presence and invites us to push alongside these things.
The first four “poor” Beatitudes are about Grace. The Presence of God for those at the bottom of life.
The second half or “help” Beatitudes are about the invitation to live a different way.
“Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown Mercy.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”
“Our objective is to see what life could look like if we live through The Beatitudes’ lens.”
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, and justice for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
There is so much to unpack here. What does Mercy look like in the twenty-first century during a pandemic? What is a pure heart? Is this about moral purity, or is it about a divided heart? What is a peacemaker? And how do we find peace within ourselves as well as in our contested spaces?
We know that persecution happens in other countries, but what does this “persecution announcement” mean to someone like me in a town with 900 churches? I’m not going to be persecuted for my faith.
I have a curious and artistic mind, and I began to create. Songs, writings, prayers, meditations…
“Together we can see what the View From Here looks like—a world with more compassion and kindness, where engagement is greater than tolerance.”
I sought out a community of people who somehow embody The Beatitudes, and I wanted to find a way to tell their stories. The Beatitudes Project was born.
The Beatitudes Project is an album of songs, a documentary film, a book called Words From The Hill, painted art, poetry, a podcast, and a study for groups and individuals wrapped in an easy to access online eCourse.
Our objective is to see what life could look like if we live through The Beatitudes’ lens.
Are you overwhelmed by all that’s happening in the world?
You are not alone.
Together we can see what the View From Here looks like—a world with more compassion and kindness, where engagement is greater than tolerance.
Where the poor find help, the grieving find comfort, the meek acknowledged, those who ache for justice find justice.
A world where Mercy flows and extends in every direction, hearts become whole, and peace is the norm.
Amen.
Check this out: The Beatitudes Project is an album of songs, a documentary film, a book called Words From The Hill, painted art, poetry, a podcast, and a study for groups and individuals wrapped in an easy to access online eCourse.
In The Beatitudes Project eCourse, they begin by learning how to listen. Then we hear stories from the poor in India and “the poor” on Wall Street. Stories from refugees and those we see as “other.” Stories of Mercy from a woman who spent 27 years on death row and survivors of prostitution, addiction, and trafficking along with a song about Mercy from Amy Grant. We went to The Holy Land to learn from Israeli and Palestinian Peacemakers. We learn from some Holy Troublemakers about swimming upstream against the dominant powers in the world. There are many other stories, and you’ll see some folks you will recognize who so generously came alongside and collaborated with me both in story and songs.
Teachers, artists, musicians, poets, and activists, such as; Hillsong United, Shane Claiborne, John Mark Mcmillan, Becca Stevens, Matt Maher, Audrey Assad, Amanda Cook, Jeremy Courtney, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Martin Smith, Propaganda, Terrian Bass, and All Sons and Daughters to name a few. Many more incredible people contributed to this project.
Here’s your invitation to join Stu on the Mount of The Beatitudes. He encourages you to look at The Beatitudes of Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 5, and listen to Jesus’ words with fresh ears. Stu’s prayer is that you would hear the invitation to a different way of being in the world and that these words of Jesus will become your anthem of hope.
Please visit TheBeatitudesProject.com and see all the resources they have in the eCourse. In regards to the beautiful Beatitude art prints in this post – they are in integral part of the project, but not available for purchase. The prints are part of the eCourse, available to download on your device.
December 12, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.12.20]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
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 — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Kyle Fredrickson
Kyle Fredrickson
Kyle Fredricksonhe captures landscapes in extraordinary ways
View this post on InstagramA post shared by BEAUTIFUL DESTINATIONS (@beautifuldestinations)
smiling at this one
I’m all in with everything they do at World Relief, truly ALL IN
Give the gift that keeps on giving! For the person in your life who is passionate about advocacy, justice and fighting back against poverty, violence and oppression, gift a membership to The Path — World Relief’s giving community.
The Path community is committed to advocating for people in vulnerable situations and doing whatever it takes to see our world transformed. Through a $25, $50, $100 a month membership you will be a part of creating welcoming communities and providing vital services for refugees and other immigrants, reducing early marriages and supporting women’s empowerment initiatives across the globe and so much more.
Spread hope, healing and transformation this holiday season by gifting someone you love a membership to The Path.
…everyday since COVID shutdowns — she climbs to the top of the church steeple to play Amazing Grace on the church bells.
Because no matter what Grace never stops coming to meet us
helpful ideas here: 11 Minutes of Exercise a Day May Help Counter the Effects of Sitting
cheering loudly: Chicago 7-year-old raises money for hospital’s pandemic gear
“I want to do it until coronavirus is over…it feels like I’m helping a lot of people.”
now this is good news: Grandmother graduates college with her granddaughter
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Movement (@goodnews_movement)
cheering for them! job well done… so well done
…now talk about baptism and new life in Christ!
… a baptism in Russia!
81-year-old man separated from his family becomes ‘grandpa’ to local Dunkin’ staff
“If you want to see the best in people, be as generous as you can and as nice as you can…you get to see a side of people you don’t normally see.”
thank you, Rend Collective! You are a family fave! Bring on the jolly!
AGoldPhoto Pet Photography‘Best buddies’: Grieving pit bull finds joy again with new kitten companion
… it’s the onions, honest! If this doesn’t inspire you, check your pulse #BeTheGift
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Q Ideas (@qideas)
he just keeps bringing it!
25 Powerful Photos of Children’s Rooms That Will Move You
Beyond grateful for the life saving work of Compassion International
…thank your mail person for helping us all stay a little closer to each other in a crazy year #BeTheGift
…Yeah, we could all kinda light things up on a year where everything seems a bit off #BeTheGift
Oh my goodness — this may be the best yet. You’re crying, I’m not crying.
Post of the week from these parts here
…yeah, sure, the holidays this year can feel more like divisive days and who is singing peace on earth on the street corners right now —
but if in the crazy of 2020, your soul would love some practical ways to unpack legit peace:
What Finding Real Peace in 2020 REALLY Means (Because it’s Not Escaping To Somewhere Else & We All NEED it Right Where We Are)
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Christine Caine (@christinecaine)
Amen: You don’t have to wait until the storm passes before you can have peace, joy or hope. When you realize that Jesus is with you in the storm, you can TAKE HEART in the midst of the inevitable challenges of life.
…yeah, it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’ve wrecked what you desperately wish you could fix. Ask me how I know.
But there’s a way for all of us who are carrying unspoken broken to find the relief of peace this season:
How to Evict Worry, Anxiousness & Fears from Your Holidays (& Your Life)
just so beautiful… Silent Night
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto
Print this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day, to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
… it kinda comes today like a whisper in the midst of all the noise:
What was intended to tear you apart—God intends it to set you apart.
What has torn you — God makes a thin place to see glory.
The places where you’re torn to pieces can be thin places where you touch the peace of God.
No matter what tries to tear you apart, God holds your heart.
No matter what bad was meant to harm you, God’s good arms have you.
You can stand around your Christmas tree with a family tree as messy as Joseph’s, with cheaters and beaters and deceivers, with a family like Jacob’s, who ran away and ran around and ran folks down.
But out of a family that felt just like a mess, God brought Jesus, the Messiah. God always brings good out of bad. God always turns hard things into good gifts.
~excerpt from The Greatest Gift
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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.
December 11, 2020
How to Evict Worry, Anxiousness & Fears from Your Holidays (& Your Life)
S
ure, you can go straight ahead & light the Peace candle, but it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’ve wrecked good and holy things, crushed your precious people with expectations, been a hypocrite in more than a thousand wincing ways.
Ask me how I know.
It’d be kinda pious, if that was all humbly self-deprecating — instead of devastatingly honest.
“The pieces of us that we try to keep hidden and buried — is what keeps burying our peace.”
I don’t know who left out this devotional titled, “Still Point” but it beckons to me the second week of Advent, the Peace week.
I just happen to open it to this unexpected excerpt from the Scarlet Letter, with the shame-ridden Reverend Dimmesdale stumbling through the night streets to climb the town’s public scaffold — the Puritans’ own rendition of Calvary. The tortured, self-loathing pastor’s desperate to somehow publicly pay his pound of flesh for all that relentlessly haunts.
He’s wild for his own scarlet letter — and yet can’t bear the shame.
I close the book, lay it on the bedroom windowsill.
Who isn’t haunted by all kinds of inner thoughts — that you don’t want anyone to know? Who isn’t undone by all kinds of failures — that you’d never want on display?
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
The snow soundlessly falls outside the window, burying the fields, all the woods, in white.
“When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.”
Hiding anything is an illusion — b ecause can anything hide from God?
And maybe that’s the moment I start to dig out, start to find myself:
The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.
When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.
Gusts of December cold air leak in around the edges of the window. I wonder if: What drives some of our anxiousness — is anxiousness to not be found out for all of who we are. Maybe if we were really known — we don’t know if anyone would really love us?
Maybe: There are things in our minds and hearts that we never want fully found out — because we’re terrified we’d find out that no one fully loves us.
Maybe: Our ache to be taken and accepted as we are — is what drives us to take and hide parts of ourselves we believe are unacceptable.
A blast of wind blows a skiff of snow off the back step.
Maybe the secret to peace — is to have no secrets.
I press my forehead against the clear glass. And maybe — there is actually no question at all:
“Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space, for worry.”
God fully knows what you never want anyone to know — and He needs you to know, even now, that you are His Beloved.
What had my brother-in-law messaged last week?
“Hey — just following up on our conversation at church….” We’d all lingered long afterward the last prayer, kinda oblivious to the cold, standing there talking about how we are all called to carry each other’s brokenness — but we can’t do that if we’re all wearing masks of fake holiness.
“What if we really knew: There is nothing that has been said, done, or thought is so big that it requires it be paid for twice….He paid for it all….all the known and not known.”
That’s when his words started to swim a bit in a brimming grace. Yes:
If Christ didn’t pay for all the unspeakable things, the shameful things, the things only He knows — then our salvation isn’t the real thing.
If Christ doesn’t take all of us, in all of our judgement — then our salvation would actually be fraudulent.
What if — the judgement, the abandonment, the rejection you are anxious about in ways you try to ignore — doesn’t even exist.
What if — the peace you long for is yours right now because no matter what happens, ever — you always, miraculously, get to belong?
What if there is no maybe about it, ever:
“Therefore is now no condemnation… “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you…” Romans 8 MSG.
“There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.”
A gust blows snow off the edge of the eave, like burdens can lift.
As I turn from the window, I just happen to glance down at my wrist — and it jolts me.
There it is.
I’m wearing my own scarlet letter.
Right there, a small cross.
First inked on my wrist on a late summer afternoon, not far from the actual Calvary, on a hushed back street of Jerusalem itself.
Permanently inked by a man who introduced himself as Wassim Razzouk, whose family has been serving Christian pilgrims since the 1300s — more than 26 generations — inking proof for pilgrims of their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. To the Cross.
I’d sat in front of Wassim in that stillness of a stone-walled Jerusalem shop and traced how small I wanted that cross, that one symbol, right there on my wrist, and he’d drawn it slow and I’d nodded.
That.
And there it is, etched right into me, my own Scarlet Letter, unashamedly right there under my fingertips, what pays the price for everything — and gives the greatest gift of peace through everything. A Cross that patently proclaims my brokenness — and yet piercingly renames me Beloved.
And that one Scarlet Letter?
That one Scarlet Letter Cross is
my penance,
my providence,
my path,
my protection,
my purpose,
my passion,
my peace —
my person.
“Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.”
That Scarlet Letter Cross — is my alpha and omega, my beginning and my end, my everything. Like learning that one letter by heart could transform my heart, I find myself tracing and retracing that Cross countless times a day, right there like peace speaking under fingertips.
Whatever love, provision, hope, acceptance, grace, restoration you need — will not run out — because Your God will never run out on you.
Whatever you fear, doesn’t actually exist — because your God exists.
Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.
There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
When I light the Peace Candle — I can read it there in the middle of the Advent Wreath — etched in the side of the manger, the only gift we need: Emmanuel.
God with us.
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
The Peace candle burns with a red hot love that brands even us as His — and all that doesn’t matter burns away.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 9, 2020
What Finding Real Peace in 2020 REALLY Means (Because it’s Not Escaping To Somewhere Else & We All NEED it Right Where We Are)
I think of that later, how his hands look like they are worn with peace, the way he’s won a good life by forging peace no matter the heat of things.
His hand had reached for mine in the woods.
When the world grows warring loud, a walk in the woods calls the weary away.
Maybe all we all want for Christmas is some heart-lifting peace.
“Anxiety is a function of divided attention. When we divide our attention, we make ourselves anxious. Our lives fall to pieces when we give anxiety the power to shatter our peace.”
Snow falls like manna through cedars. The woods looks like Narnia and yes, it’s winter, but not always winter only: Christmas is coming. The second week of Advent settles in. The Peace candle’s been lit.
Because, yeah, sure, peace on earth can be sung on the street corners right now, but most of us would be mighty happy with even a blink or two of peace just on the internet?
Or maybe just some peace in the kitchen with those well-meaning human beings who are actually tied and knotted forever to us by blood lines or covenant promises but are kinda struggling to navigate their way through a tilted and spinning world without side-swiping an innocent bystander or two.
Holidays can feel more like warring days.
They say that: Peace is trusting that God won’t let things fall to pieces. The opposite of peacefulness is anxiousness. And the word in Greek for anxiety is merimna —- which means pieces.
Anxiety is a function of divided attention. When we divide our attention, we make ourselves anxious.
Our lives fall to pieces when we give anxiety the power to shatter our peace.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
Inner peacefulness requires single-mindedness.
Centre on Christ.
Peace isn’t matter of circumstances — it is a matter of focus. Singleminded centering on Christ gives a singular peace.
When we make space in the PACE of things — we find PEACE. They say that.
“Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place you escape to out of your every day life, but a Person you walk with every day.”
Make SPACE in your Pace to find PEACE.
I say that to myself, again and again, crunching through the hushed snow.
They say that too: The way to weather life every day is to get out into the weather every day. A half hour walk in nature can change the nature of all the other hours. Apparently doctors and the Healer Himself prescribe creation to recreate broken places.
We walk in the woods for hours. We’re a broken, limping people, and there is light in the trees.
Peace can be a startlingly ugly thing.
Peace is biting your tongue hard, because when you have to choose between winning and being kind, you choose kind. Because kind is always winning.
Peace is made when you give people a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind.
We are all the walking blind if we live an eye for an eye. These could be the holidays that are holy days because we do it a different way.
Peacemaking is about making yourself into a screen door whenever someone difficult walks through your door — so no harmful words can slam into your heart, but everything hurtful sails right on through.
“Keeping the peace doesn’t mean you keep quiet, it means you quietly tell the truth with a grace that brings peace.”
Keeping the peace means you keep good boundaries.
And keeping the peace doesn’t mean repressing your needs but pressing into the need to be like Him.
This flips the entire peace paradigm and process:
Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place you escape to out of your every day life, but a Person you walk with every day.
And that person is Christ and the Christ-life always looks cruciform.
The Peace Makers are always the ones who make their lives look cruciform — cross-shaped.
Peace Makers know it: The only way to reach the life you want, you have to keep reaching out. That the answer to a whole host of problems in us, is to keep reaching out.
The cruciform life is as profound as living a life that’s about keep reaching out.
The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
Peace only happens where we wage peace: love bomb when it’s least expected, shock and awe with amazing grace, intentionally strategize with acts of kindness. The world changes when we aren’t just peace keepers but peace makers.
“Finding some peace is about living a life you don’t need to run from, but living a life you want to run into.”
Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone — means you can’t do it all but you can do all that you can do.
Finding some peace is more than closing the bathroom door and drawing a bubble bath or jetting off to some beachside resort for a week of sun therapy. Finding some peace is about living a life you don’t need to run from, but living a life you want to run into.
If you find yourself having to regularly run away from your life to get some peace — it’s because you are disconnected from the actual Person of Peace who meets our embattled places with peace, and shows us the way to embody peace in all of our battles.
Finding some peace means you stop being the victim in your life and let the hard and holy ways of Christ give you victory over the hard things in your own life.
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Best little #FairTrade Subscription box, The Grace Case — give a gift that changes the world & 100% of proceeds support Mercy House Global
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
(VIDEO ABOVE ^ by Levi Voskamp, filmed during our walk in the woods: do nothing at all for a few sceonds but watch & let Peace really meet you & make it well with your soul)
Peace means making a life that doesn’t look good on Instagram but looks good before God. Real peace is about giving up a life that merely looks good — for a life that actually is good.
You win real peace when give up winning every battle — so you win the war that matters.
Peace often means —
“Peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.”
There is no peace unless you give up pieces of yourself to gain more of the life you really want. Exhale and let go.
Peace happens when everything & everyone who seems against you — brings out the best in you.
Brings out Christ in you, because He is the best in you, and He transforms you cruciform and Love lives given.
Peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.
Every step through the snow, I think of those ten steps toward the shalom life:
Label less, Love more
Pace less, Pray more
Worry less, Worship more
Consume less, Create more
Complain less, Care more
Grip less, Give more
Snap less, Smile more
Harp less, Hear more
Rebuff less, Reach more
Fear never, Forward always.
Every step forward through the woods, all this stays close and we stay close to the water, to the stream’s moving waters, making a way through the snow. The best way forward is never outrage but outreach.
It’s strange how that is: Everyone wants world peace, but who does what’s needed for peace in their own world? Under their own roof? In their own heart?
Exhale. Reach out.
The snow falls soundlessly in the woods like it’s falling on listening ears.
All through the woods, snow falls like it’s making a new world, and peace like a river makes the only way for the soul that is well with the soul.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 7, 2020
The 1 Unexpected Word that Heals All (Christmas) Loneliness & Brokenness
When I take it out of its storage box and see it etched into the side of the cradle, that word engraved right into the wood… I kinda catch my breath at how it erases a bit of the pain.
Emmanuel.
God with us.
I run my fingers across the etched letters of the manger, like I’m reading Braille, like I’ve been blind and now I see.
“Christ-followers do more than believe somethings are true, they trust that SomeOne is here.”
But I don’t just see it, don’t just assent to it — I actually sense it, like the way you sense the wind turning, the way you can’t see it, but feel it on your face. Emmanuel.
EMMANUEL. God not against us, God not far from us, God not abandoning us, God not forsaking us, God not punishing us — but God with us and for us, always and forever.
Christ-followers do more than believe somethings are true, they trust that SomeOne is here.
SomeOne is actually here — SomeOne unseen who is actually closer than the next unseen breath that fills your lungs, and that which is unseen can be here, keeping you alive.
“We follow more than words on a page: we follow a Person who stays at our side.”
SomeOne is actually here, and the weight carried in the knots across shoulders, the tender hurts that don’t know how to fit into words, the hope that’s grown heavier than bearing but there is no letting go of this hope, SomeOne is here to lean in, touch the tenderness of those places and put the whole of Himself under the bulk of that load.
Breathe. SomeOne is here.
Not some idea, not some philosophy, not some theology — SomeOne. I could not go to Him, so He has come to me. We follow more than words on a page: we follow a Person who stays at our side.
“I feel utterly alone,“ a friend texts me those four words, and I crack a bit. There is no fixing this. I have no idea how to fix this for her.
How do I tell her: We all feel that.
We all feel alone, especially this year.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
Fave Christmas Resource: New Family Book, “The Light Gift”
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
Fave Christmas Resource: New Family Book, “The Light Gift”
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Our favorite family heirloom We all are starkly alone in our own skin — no one will ever see the world the way you do, through your eyes, from your vantage point.
“I do not want someone to reach out and touch my hand, but to reach out and touch my soul and this is why I need God.”
You are utterly alone looking through your eyes into the world — and sometimes there is existential terror in this. No one will feel exactly what you feel, when you feel it, how you feel it — the feelings that run through your being are forever yours alone.
You are locked up in the aloneness of you.
Feeling lonely is more dangerous to your health than smoking or high blood pressure — and there are public service announcements warnings about both, why not about the risks of loneliness?
Maybe the loneliest moment in your whole life is when it feels like all your hopes are imploding in on you — and you wonder if anyone is with you, and you reach for a hand — and there is no one anywhere reaching back.
I may know a bit of this implosion:
I may miserably fail at this mothering deal and not seem good enough to pass muster in all kinds of eyes.
And we may have no niggling of an idea what’s around the corner for the farm or the fields or the animals in the barn come this next spring, and the doctor’s report for Mama’s next round of tests could end up as some alarming news being batted around on the church’s prayer chain for the next 6 years, and the diabetes alarm that jolts us awake at 3:17 am may have us holding a seizuring son while his eyes roll back in his head and someone fumbles with the glucagon needle to shoot a lifeline of glucose into his blood.
Prodigals may never come home. Addictions might suck the hope right out of the veins. Mental illness may lurk omnimous around the edges of family, strained relationships may yank out chunks of pulpy heart, and I may go ahead and let myself down so hard for the gazillionth time that I smash all my hope in any shiny tomorrows.
But God. But. God.
“We do not need to understand all the things — we simply need to know not to stand alone.”
That is what I text her — what her Maker, her Lover, her Rescuer says:
“Do not yield to fear, for I am always near. Never turn your gaze from me, for I am your faithful God. I will infuse you with my strength and help you in every situation. I will hold you firmly with my victorious right hand.’” Isaiah 41:10 TPT
Somethings are brutally hard — but SomeOne is literally here.
We do not face the way alone, we face the face of God.
That is the bare truth: We do not need to understand all the things — we simply need to know not to stand alone.
And by this, I simply mean: We do not want someone to reach out and touch our hand, but to reach out and touch our actual soul — and this is why we need God.
Either we are utterly alone in this universe or God is utterly close. Both can take your breath away — until God takes your hand.
God stands with you in the imploding, and God infuses you with strength to withstand. It is only the with-ness of Emmanuel, God with us, that lets us withstand.
We can only withstand life because we have a God who stands with us.
My crisis needs His withness. Selah.
“Christ-followers know that suffering is a given, and suffering alone is unbearable, but we are given SomeOne who bears the suffering with us.”
His withness is all my hopefulness. Selah.
I do not know why the way is so long, and so hard, and at so many times, so terribly dark.
But I know this:
I need not know the way — I only need to know the WayMaker’s here with me. And when it feels like all the things are not working out, the WayMaker never stops working a way for us to move higher up and deeper into His presence.
We light the candle of the wooden Advent Wreath and witness the silhouette of Mary on the donkey moving closer everyday to Bethlehem, to Emmanuel coming, to His coming close live in Withness with us. Three times a day, I hand our baby girl her beta-blocker to slow down her racing heart. I lose count of how many times a night the diabetes alarm goes off, and I stumble through the dark with a glass of juice for our diabetic boy.
All through the wait of Advent, we keep moving, we keep following the Light, waiting and trusting, and turning toward the Light. We are not alone and I believe.
Christ-followers actually do more than turn pages of ancient text — we turn to the Ancient One who reads our soul.
Christ-followers know that suffering is a given, and suffering alone is unbearable, but we are given SomeOne who bears the suffering with us.
Christ-followers hold to certain truths— and know ultimately that they are truly held by SomeOne.
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
Fave Christmas Resource: New Family Book, “The Light Gift”
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
Fave Christmas Resource: New Family Book, “The Light Gift” 
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
“Whatever heartbreak is with us, we have One infinitely greater who is with us, who sutures the fractures of our broken hearts together with the very real presence of Himself.”
The advent candle flickers and kids lean in and there is light even here and a moment can feel like relief: We believe that God is not only in the world — we believe that all the world is in God.
This is a heart-broken planet, but this is not a forsaken planet.
When our baby girl with her brave, broken heart reaches across the Advent wreath, light falls into the waiting manger and right across that one word that remakes our reality.
Emmanuel. No one is alone. All our aloneness is healed by Emmanuel alone.
Yes, there will be hardships and hard days and times we hardly know how to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Yes, there will be striking moments of sharp aloneness in our own skin, bewildering moments that don’t seem to make any kind or good sense, heartbreaking moments that seem too much to bear, seeming to bear no semblance of hope.
“What electrifies all the dark is that Emmanuel is with us, and the current of His love holds the power to transform the darkest parts of our story into light.”
But whatever heartbreak is with us, we have One infinitely greater who is with us, who sutures the fractures of our broken hearts together with the very real presence of Himself.
Light the candles, light the candles.
What electrifies all the dark is that Emmanuel is with us, and the current of His love holds the power to transform the darkest parts of our story into light.
His Withness heals all this brokenness.
I move the candle a day closer on our winding way to Bethlehem — and this journey of Advent feels more than walking the road to Bethlehem; it feel like walking the Emmaus Road and waking to Emmanuel here with us.
Is that why Advent is all this light, all this lights everywhere — all our hearts burning within us?
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 5, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.05.20]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
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 — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Mary Ann Morgan 
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morganwhen I sit with her photos, the world stop & exhales
47 years of marriage. And when he can’t be with his wife as she lays dying in a hospital room, the 81 yr. old serenades her with love from below her window.
Love always finds a way.
just stunning: 30 Winners Of The 2020 International Landscape Photographer of The Year Competition Have Been Announced and They’re Amazing
because we all need a friend to sing along with us
I’m all in with everything they do at World Relief, truly ALL IN
Give the Gift of Lasting Change this Christmas season!
Gift someone you love a membership to The Path and you can send a child to school in Sudan for a year, sponsor a training on anti-human trafficking awareness, provide seeds, tools and training for one farmer to start a vegetable garden and so much more.
Spread hope, healing and transformation this holiday season by gifting someone you love a membership to The Path.
“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it…
White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.” (Tolkien)
“The Final Shore” captures a foretaste of what hope awaits us all on the Other Side.
Pause & let your soul exhale with wonder & hope
because we all need someone who still believes in us
Best of 2020: The Best “Good News” Stories of the Year…
warning: they’ll bring a huge smile
Amen and Amen: O Come O Come Emmanuel
so we found this fascinating!
andreamartinphoto
andreamartinphoto
andreamartinphotoshe captures the innocent moments… oh my heart!
… Teary smiler… there are all kinds of ways to be the perfect gift. #betheGift
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family this Christmas
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
A tribute to some of the families who’ve said YES this year…and a prayer request for those who are still waiting…
Follow Open Hearts for Orphans on Facebook, Instagram, or visit the website to learn more about their mission to serve orphaned and abandoned children around the world. If you wish to take action and help more families say YES, you can do that here.
Andrew McCarthy 
Andrew McCarthy 
Andrew McCarthy how he explores and captures our universe? it’s kinda jawdropping
because we all need to love
A third-grade teacher donated a kidney to her school’s custodian
“She’s our miracle, our angel…we’ll forever be grateful for her.”
View this post on Instagram
what a story
never too late… to be this kind of parent, by His grace
always grateful for her words… she’s speaks here about humility, modesty and gratitude
please don’t miss these powerful words she shares
(interview with Kathie Lee Gifford begins at the 1 minute mark)
My eyes aren’t leaking, yours are. It’s the onions, really! Just. Beautiful.
So the beginning of Advent, & any talk of Hope, in a year like this one, make you want to kinda laugh & roll your eyes? Yeah, while we’re all kinda laugh-crying over 2020, this one question gives us the answer we’ve all been looking for:
Hard to Keep Hoping? The Secret to Finding a Way Forward (Or: First Candle of Advent- Hope)
Worth a listen as we consider how we can share the good news of Jesus. “Perry, Kruger, and Holmes reflect on how they all came to faith in Christ from very different places and perspectives before sharing ways in which believers can share the Gospel with people they meet.”
Post of the week from these parts here:
Someone told me that this Advent has felt more like a Lent — a grieving. How in the world does a weary world rejoice? Maybe this is where we start:
How to Not let Loss or Grief or Division Steal Your Merry Christmas This Year
tears with this one… O Holy Night
… yeah, holidays can be crazy hard & messy — & honestly, after this whole wild year, we can feel real tattered & messy.
My secret for getting through is this: The Secret of The Four
Hard Holidays? Every Woman Needs the Secret of “The Four”
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto
Print this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day, to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
on repeat: Born on the Day
Our God refuses to give up on you.
Your God looks for you when you’re feeling lost,
and your God seeks you out when you’re down,
and your God calls for you when you feel cast aside.
He doesn’t run down the rebel.
He doesn’t strike down the sinner.
He doesn’t flog the failure.
No matter what the day holds, how the season unfolds, God holds and enfolds: “I am come to find you wherever you may be. I will look for you till the eyes of My pity see you. I will follow you till the hands of My mercy reach you — and I will still hold you . . . to My heart.” -Spurgeon
And that moment when your heart turns to His heart that’s turned to you? All your falls can turn into a falling into His everlasting arms (Deu. 33:27).
~excerpt from The Greatest Gift
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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.
December 4, 2020
Hard Holidays? Every Woman Needs The Secret of “The Four”
Snow’s coming down here now like confetti for a party that a hard year’s cancelled, but the orchard just keeps on welcoming all the big white flakes coming down.
That’s what Advent means — “coming.”
Advent whispers, “Hope is coming to crush all the hard incoming.”
Kai’s shaking trees like a big kid at the party, and grinning that there are apples still hanging on the trees in the orchard in the middle of all our snow globe world shaking with all kinds of hard news.
Kai’s got the trees feting him now and the girls are feeding the sheep and the dog’s romping like some circus act under the shaking branches –and if snow falls off trees in the orchard does anybody hear the sound of wonders coming?
“You have to understand Christ’s family tree for your Christmas tree to stand.”
And I’m standing out in the winter quiet of all these orchard trees and the snow’s coming straight down and all this feels like relief:
If you don’t come to Christmas through Christ’s family tree and you come into the Christmas story just at the Christmas tree — it’s hard then to understand the hope of His coming.
It happens for a reason when you open the pages of Scripture to read of His coming, of this first Advent: Before you ever read of the birth of Jesus — you always have the family tree genealogy of Jesus.
Because without the genealogy of Christ,
the limbs of His past,
the branches of His family,
the love story of His heart that has been coming for you since before the beginning –
how does Christmas and its tree stand?
Its roots would be sheared.
The arresting pause of the miracle would be lost.
Because in the time of prophets and kings,
the time of Mary and Joseph,
it wasn’t your line of credit,
line of work,
or line of accomplishments
that explained who you were.
“The coming of Christ was right through families of messed-up monarchs and battling brothers, through affairs and adultery and more than a feud or two, through skeletons in closets and cheaters at tables.”
It was your family line. It was your family tree. It was family that mattered.
Family gives you context,
and origin gives you understanding,
and the family tree of Christ always gives you hope.
The coming of Christ was right through families of messed-up monarchs
and battling brothers,
through affairs and adultery
and more than a feud or two,
through skeletons in closets
and cheaters at tables.
It was in that time of prophets and kings, the time of Mary and Joseph, that men were in genealogies, and women were invisible.
But for Jesus,
women had names
and stories
and lives
that mattered.
The family tree of Christ startlingly notes
not one woman but four.
The Four: Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Ruth.
Four broken women—
women who felt like outsiders,
like has-beens,
like never-beens.
Tricia Robinson Art“For Jesus, women mattered. The family tree of Christ startlingly notes, not one woman, but four. The Four: Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, & Ruth. Four women who were weary of being unnoticed, & uncherished, & unappreciated”
Women who were weary
of being taken advantage of,
of being unnoticed
and uncherished
and unappreciated;
women who didn’t fit in,
who didn’t know how to keep going,
what to believe,
where to go—
women who had thought about giving up.
And Jesus claims exactly these who are
wandering
and wondering
and wounded
and worn out as
His.
And then?
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift available on Amazon at 60% off!
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger, 20% off today
Then He turns to you, right where you are — and:
He grafts you into His line
and His story
and His heart,
and He gives you
His name,
His lineage,
His righteousness.
“No matter your story —Jesus is writing you even now into a restorative story. “
He graces you with plain grace.
Is there a greater Gift you could want or need or have?
Christ comes right to your Christmas tree
and looks at your family tree and says,
“I am your God,
and I am one of you,
and I’ll be the Gift,
and I’ll take you.
Take Me?”
This, this, is the love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning.
You don’t want to miss it — miss Him.
Tricia Robinson Art
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger, 20% off today
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
“Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved. Wait for the coming Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out. Wait for the hope of our coming Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can, but all of us want: Christmas.“
So there’s this pause and investing in what matters.
There is a Stilling.
Pondering.
Hushing.
Each day of Advent, in the middle of the hard, He gives the gift of time — so we have time to be still and wait.
Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved.
Wait for the coming Savior in swaddlings who makes Himself the robe of righteousness for us worn out.
Wait for the hope of our coming Jesus, who makes precisely what none of us can, but all of us want: Christmas.
There, here, in the midst of
the loud claims,
the hard sells,
the big spectacles,
Christ comes small,
who comes in the whisper and says,
“Seek Me. Take Me.
I take you… I still take you.”
When Kai turns with Shalom to run in from the orchard with the sheep, you can see it — hear it.
The apple trees hanging out in the orchard — they look ornaments hanging waiting, even in these hard moments, at the end of a very long hard year, like the decking has begun.
And when snow falls off a tree in the orchard and you are there to hear it — maybe it makes the sound of certain hope?
Advent, it is made of these moments of waiting through the hard, faces turned upward to all this hope from the heavens, falling around us like manna.
~excerpted from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift
Come, especially when it’s hard, & experience a Christmas that restores Hope again
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award , 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Especially in the hard & the hurting, we can have The Greatest little Christmas
December 2, 2020
How to Not let Loss or Grief or Division Steal Your Merry Christmas This Year
This old guy had said that there’s a Love that holds this whole shebang together —
even when, especially when, everything & everyone feels a bit banged & busted up.
He’d turned & said just that to me, right there in the airport terminal, a few years back, and I never forgot it, what the guy said.
We were both just sitting there on those blue vinyl seats, looking up at the news flashing loud across the screen they had hanging from the ceiling there at Gate G21, like the whole world was suspended right there in this waiting.
In this painful, expecting waiting and the piped in Christmas carols trying to drown out the news.
Someone told me that this Advent has felt more like a Lent — a grieving.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger, 20% off today
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath, 20% off today
Fave Christmas Resource: New Family Book, “The Light Gift” 33% off today
The Wonder of The Greatest Gift is 37% off here at Christianbook.com!
People had streamed by hauling their luggage under Christmas lights. And I had felt it then and now, the overweight baggage of a year that just ached at the seams.
You don’t have to close your eyes to see how the news has been screaming for months and we are all exhausted and bruised. In the face of a global pandemic, the battle over truth, science, data, lockdowns and the efficacy of masks has unmasked gaping chasms of division. Fractured race relations ruptured into the streets and the pain runs deep and how to remember that we are all related to one another and re-member all our brokenness?
The music’s echoing it this time of year, singing something about how it’s the most wonderful time of the year, singing it all through the empty malls and airport terminals, like they forget that we’re all terminal, forget that we’re all grieving, forget that we’ve got people we love fighting, fighting each other and fighting cancer under twinkly lights by these radios that just keep spinning all these Christmas tunes that can seem all out of tune to the howl of our pain.
“God is so moved by our being entangled in suffering — that He moved Himself into our world and entangled Himself in the suffering with us. God with us.”
How in the world does a weary world rejoice?
We may not know why God doesn’t stop all the different kinds of suffering — but we definitely know it’s not because He’s indifferent.
God is so moved by our being entangled in suffering — that He moved Himself into our world and entangled Himself in the suffering with us. God with us.
God knows suffering.
He chose to be born in the middle of a genocide.
God knows suffering. He chose to be born as a minority, a refugee.
God knows suffering. He chose to come from a place where people said no good thing could come from.
God knows suffering. He chose to be poor. He chose to absorb pain. He chose to be powerless.
God penetrates the ache of our world through the willing yes of a poor, unwed teen. In both the Incarnation and the Resurrection, God reveals Himself first to the dismissed and disregarded and dissed.
“Christmas is the end of thinking anyone is better than anyone else, because Christmas says that everyone needed Christ to come down from heaven and carry every single one of us, every single step of the way back to heaven.”
God chose the first witnesses to both His nativity, & to His nailed hands, to be the very people who suffered because they were regarded as suspect, small, sketchy.
Because the point is: Christmas is the end of division. Christmas is the beginning of the end of all suffering. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
The road’s been weary, but we can rest beside the road, beside the boarding gate, beside each other, and listen to how the angels sing.
Christmas is the end of thinking anyone is better than anyone else, because Christmas says that everyone needed Christ to come down from heaven and carry every single one of us, every single step of the way back to heaven. Christmas says that we all need rescuing, we all need a Savior.
Christmas is the end of racism, elitism, egotism. Christmas is the end of thinking, “Oh, them.” Christmas is the end of us vs. them — because it is now us with Him. God had to come for all of us.
“His glory in the highest always runs down to meet us who are at our lowest.”
This is what His glory does —- like a river, His glory in the highest runs down to meet us who are at our lowest, those left out in the field, those who’ve lost our flock, lost our way, lost our hope, His glory in the highest always runs down to meet us who are at our lowest.
This is what lets us sing like the angels did.
And it strikes me then, and yeah, why not just go ahead and straight up confess it, because it’s happened and way too often: One of our kids used to forget (?!? really? how do you forget? but, that’s their story and they’re sticking to it!) — they forget to shower out of the barn after chores, after feeding hogs, tending sows.
So yeah, more times than I can count, we’ve ended up sitting there on Sunday morning, right there in the middle of a spit and polished congregation and Sunday preaching — with one of our kids smelling like the barn. Smelling to high heaven of manure stink and hogs.
Which is the exact same stench as Jesus’ family after they left that reeking stable and wandered into the town square with all the people.
And if it were you standing next to Jesus’ family how would you have felt about them? How easy would it have been to be offended by their presence?
“The greatest gift we can give at Christmas time is the greatest gift we can give to anyone at anytime — and that is the gift of Grace.”
What if Christmas was about seeing Christ in that family member you think just stinks —- seeing Christ in that neighbour you’re tempted to be offended by, in those politics you’re offended by, in the people you’re offended by, in the point of view you’re offended by?
What if the greatest gift we can give at Christmas time is the greatest gift we can give to anyone at anytime — and that is the gift of Grace.
What if Christmas demonstrated how to overcome suffering and evil with good, demonstrated how God overcame the world’s suffering and evil forces by willingly laying aside His power and becoming a helpless babe, demonstrated how the strong turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, seek peace — quietly lay themselves down so that there might be peace on earth and good will toward men.
What if Christmas gave us the Gift we need to walk through suffering, live for justice, lay down prejudice?
What if Christmas was about drawing close enough to listen to each other’s pain?
Let the ear hear the Advent laments of those who can’t breathe for their sadness.
“Only speak words that make souls stronger. We know what words can do — because we know what the Word has done.”
The act of hearing each other destroys all fearing each other… And the discipline of listening is the quickening and the signalling of the repositioning of the great commissioning of the Kingdom to Love the marginalized because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.
God comes to the suffering and the marginalized — because this is where the Word writes the greatest words.
Let the shield of our eardrums be beat into the cupping edge of a gentle plow because if we’re always defending our point of view, we’re always missing the point that could point us toward growth.
Let us listen to one another in the depths of our suffering and sadness — and only speak words that make souls stronger. We know what words can do — because we know what the Word has done.
We know and won’t forget that Christmas is more than a story about sleigh bells jing-jing-jingling — Christmas is the beginning of the story where death itself gets slain.
We know & won’t forget: Christmas is the story that turns around the story of suffering in our lives.
“Merry Christmas in its original language means all wrongness is happily being made right because of Christ.”
We know & won’t forget: Merry Christmas in its original language means all wrongness is happily being made right because of Christ.
Bethlehem’s the opening of the shock and awe of God to end a long war against all suffering & oppression & wrong. The promised seed of the woman, Jesus, will snap that snake, crush the skull of that snake, heal us from the insanity of sin and suffering and destroy that snake.
Infinite God comes as an infant and we won’t forget it: Dragon slayers can come looking like small beginnings.
And He is the One Who comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found — He comes to make His blessings known to you, far as the curse is found near you.
Advent means “expectation” and hope is our expectation, peace is our anticipation, and He is our transformation, and everywhere right now, even amongst us:
In the midst of our lament & our suffering we will be the humble and the brave who “prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God… And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
And all of us together will reach out —
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.
All of us together will make space for Jesus to come into our centre and be God amongst us, God remaking us, and all of us will not detach ourselves from the suffering of others, from our own suffering, but we will be the peacemakers, the Kingdom keepers, the wounded healers, because He came to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found — which means Christmas belongs precisely right where the curse is found.
So we hum those carols loud throughout the empty airport terminals, light those candles around our tables like we’re torching back the night, and we whisper it brave: Merry Christmas — take that dark night of our trouble.
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift available on Amazon at 60% off!
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath, 20% off today
NYT Bestseller The Greatest Gift is available here!
Merry Christmas —
Take that hopelessness, take that misery, take that despair.
Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection & a resurrection.
Because Merry Christmas is an insurrection against all the darkness, & a resurrection of all His Light into all our night.
There’s a Love that holds this whole shebang together — even when, especially when, everything & everyone feels a bit banged & busted up —
and we can turn the tunes up louder:
‘Oh Holy Night… Truly He taught us to love one another…
And in His name all oppression shall cease ….
A thrill of hope — the weary world rejoices.’
And there it is in the candle light of that one wooden Advent wreath, with the waiting manger there at the center, there at the center of this whole spinning planet:
Jesus there, holding us all together at our centre through the lament and grief and darkness, beckoning us to say it and believe what it really means:
This is the year — to Stay in the Story.
Read the whole Christmas Love Story, from Creation to the Creche, with all 3 of our Advent Books:
The Greatest Gift (adult 25 devotions edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud 25 devotions edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)And find all the FREE Biblically inspired Jesse Tree ornaments here.
This year we aren’t missing out on Jesus & the The Greatest Christmas.
November 30, 2020
Hard to Keep Hoping? The Secret to Finding a Way Forward (Or: First Candle of Advent- Hope)
I’ve never lost hope down some rabbit hole. Honestly? I’ve lost hope looking into reflections in mirrors.
I’ve lost hope looking straight into my own eyes and feeling like there’s no way out of your own skin, out of your past, out of your own tattered story, no way to rip out the smeared and ugly pages of your one story.
I thought I lost hope when life tore a hole in my back pocket of my heart, and my creased and worn-out hope fell out when the bottom of things fell out — you know:
“You may feel like you’ve lost hope — but Hope never loses track of you. Hope is always coming home to you.”
when the door clicked close for the last time. When that email landed and kicked hard right in the gut. When the doctor shook his head slow and the room kinda spun, when too many mattering things felt impossibly wrecked, and it’s your life that can feel sorta totalled, and how do you keep going on hoping — when it’s the important parts of your life that are write offs?
But who knew that folded and creased Hope unfolds into wings?
Turns out: You can think you’ve lost hope, or you can try to shield yourself from it, abandon it, mock it, guard against it or try to trash it.
But hope is a rising thing and flies to you.
No matter where you are — in the unknown and unfamiliar — Hope is like a homing pigeon that knows how to find its way back home to you.
Because Hope has an inner map and will always wing its way back to you.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger, 20% off today
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath, 20% off today
Fave Christmas Resource:
New Family Book, “The Light Gift” 33% off today
2018 ECPA award winner: The Wonder of The Greatest, 70% off today only, just $10.36
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath, 20% off today
“Hope is the one constant, because Jesus is constantly with you.”
You may feel like you’ve lost hope — but Hope never loses track of you.
Hope is always coming home to you.
I’ve lit the first Advent candle, Hope, and I’ve looked long at its reflection in windows and saw myself in the pane:
When you feel like you’ve lost hope — the question to ask is, “But where could my hope go?”
Hope in things, and you can lose Hope.
Hope in plans, in expectations, in dreams, in outcomes, in jobs, in bank accounts, in medicine, in people, in timelines, and you can lose Hope. Any of those things can wander off, fall through, disappear, taking your Hope with it.
We’re not meant to find hope in anything in this world, we are meant to lose hope in all the things here.
We don’t hope in anything of this world — we hope in God.
Hope in Jesus and your Hope goes wherever you go, because Jesus goes with you.
“And Jesus knows turns you never heard of, makes roads you wouldn’t have dreamed of, makes miracles happen exactly where you never would have imagined. There is a reason He is called The Way.”
When you’re going through dark days, keep on going, because Jesus goes with you and He is your Hope, going through whatever you’re going through.
Hope only seems lost — when you can’t find a way forward.
You don’t need to know the way forward, because Hope has a map, and Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus — and Jesus is The Way and when He is your way, there is always a way forward.
And I touch the window pane, touch reflection of face and Advent flame, touch all kinds of pain — and maybe that’s what I feel, how I’m found, how Hope is found … and I can feel Hope’s returning:
Hope is the one constant, because Jesus is constantly with you.
And Jesus knows turns you never heard of, makes roads you wouldn’t have dreamed of, makes miracles happen exactly where you never would have imagined.
There is a reason He is called The Way.
And I whisper the three words that breakthrough the darkest days of the year: Hope in God.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 candle wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger & the coming of Emmanuel — (and 20% off today)!
And here is an heirloom, a Christmas tradition, a wonder for the child in all of us!
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
The Greatest Gift (adult edition),
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (family read aloud edition),
and The Wonder of the Greatest Gift (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
November 28, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [11.28.20]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
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 — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Matt Trivett
Matt Trivett
Matt Trivetthe captures our world in beautiful ways…exhale and step outside this weekend
never, ever ditch your friends
smiling: 88 piano keys and oh so many lights!
because kindness matters…
what a story here:
He showed them kindness. Now strangers are rallying around this sanitation worker
Be the Spark: because we all need a little hope
How do you pray when the suffering you’re facing chokes out all your words, when worries and pain and tears are all you can muster?
Can you set aside the “nice” prayers and be completely transparent with God?
How to Pray When There are No Words
an extraordinary invitation to fly
I’m all in with everything they do at World Relief, truly ALL IN
Give the gift that keeps on giving! For the person in your life who is passionate about advocacy, justice and fighting back against poverty, violence and oppression, gift a membership to The Path — World Relief’s giving community.
The Path community is committed to advocating for people in vulnerable situations and doing whatever it takes to see our world transformed. Through a $25, $50, $100 a month membership you will be a part of creating welcoming communities and providing vital services for refugees and other immigrants, reducing early marriages and supporting women’s empowerment initiatives across the globe and so much more.
Spread hope, healing and transformation this holiday season by gifting someone you love a membership to The Path.
Jem Cresswell
Jem Cresswell
Jem CresswellThis Underwater Photographer Captures the Unique Beauty of Swimming With Humpback Whales
pause right here with this one:
My chains are gone, I’ve been set free, unending love, Amazing Grace
View this post on Instagram
cheering for kids doing really great things
go ahead: Lift up your eyes – you are loved
Scarves in the Park FBlove, love, love: ‘Scarves in the Park’ gets warm clothing to people in need-no questions asked
Each item has a special tag with a message that reads “I am not lost or forgotten and neither are you.”
must come listen! Today is The Savior’s Day
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
When our holidays are about Staying in the Story, being with Him —
Hope finds us again — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
Celebrate Advent by retelling the greatest love story every told!
We get to begin together on December 1!
…in the middle of days like these, on the edge of Advent and on the cusp of this new season, turns out what we all want most is not more gifts, but more meaning…what we need is a tradition that somehow changes our condition—and this is what changes the conditions of everything: He is coming.
Honestly? This tradition may be just the thing you need this year…a Coming and a Christmas that is so glorious you can’t just unwrap it in a day or two, but you have to unwrap it over a whole season—so you can be wrapped up in everything you’d always dreamed of.
You don’t want to miss this: No Way I’m Getting Ready for Christmas. Instead? We’re Getting Ready for Christ
(And New Free “Night Before Advent” Tradition Printable Party Kit)
just so so beautiful… The Prayer
Loving Sufferers Begins with Listening
just a gentle reminder: this Christmas, may you be grateful for all of the gifts around you
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto
Print this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day, to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
let’s give a little love
so much perspective here.. what are you thankful for?
Post of the week from these parts here
…you feeling it, too? How this year’s kinda crashed and burned in all kinds of painful ways?
This is literally saving my life:
How Thanksgiving Will Save Us (Especially This Year)
The Hope of Christmas
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT. Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
on repeat this week: The Reason for Christmas Day
Stress is soul toxic. Grace is a soul cleanser.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out…? Come to Me. Get away with Me & you’ll recover your life… Learn the unforced rhythms of grace… Keep company with Me & you’ll learn to live freely & lightly.” ~ Jesus, MT11:28-30MSG
Faith fasts from stress & feasts on Grace.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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.
Ann Voskamp's Blog
- Ann Voskamp's profile
- 1368 followers
