Hannah Farver's Blog, page 16

True on a lot of levels.

True on a lot of levels.

Matt Chandler said in church a couple of weeks ago, "You...

Matt Chandler said in church a couple of weeks ago, "You don't have to watch Saving Private Ryan over and over to feel part of an epic. You're in it. You just have to go play."

A lady I know told me yesterday that "if you pull back the skin of this town, you'll see a warzone." There are bodies everywhere but as we grow older, we are taught not to believe in monsters. Little babies see monsters, and we tell them none of that is real. The truth is, there are monsters everywhere—and the answer isn't believing they don't exist, but in running to Jesus to understand our place in fighting them.

Death is real. In a doctor's office the other day, I saw a certificate on the wall, noting that in January 2009 that person received their such-and-such medical certificate. And my mind rushed through the time tunnel back to January 2009, sitting in a medical waiting room, trying to be brave. Knuckles clenched tight and shivering in prayer for my little brother to live.

Life is short, yes. But more—it is a sacred, hopefilled, beautiful stage. We only have so much time to play here. And in this production (where real people really die) we can't afford to mess around. We can either crouch in the prompter's box, or we can yank the masterswitch, sing our piece, and flood our world with light.

This is the epic. The audience is heaven and earth.

Let love rip the skin off this place, so we can see it as it is. So we can see the bleeding with our own eyes; so we'll see why our voices need to ring out clear. Let the ferocity of our love force monsters to hide.

all is grace

"So to see through the ugliness to beauty, won't I need to wear a lens? I'll need my own transfiguration to enter a kingdom where the Prince is born into a manure-smeared feed trough, where Holy God touches leper sores, breaks bread with cheats, where God wounds Himself through with nails on a cross and we wear the symbol as beauty…

Is He repelled by the crazed eyes, the foul talk, or bad breath of the demon-possessed man. Staggeringly, doesn't even Beauty Himself become the ugly-beautiful? 'There was nothing beautiful…about His appearance.' (Isaiah 53:2). He became ugly that we might become beauty.

…And if all the work of transfiguring the ugly into the beautiful pleases God, it is a work of beauty. Is there anything in this world that is truly ugly? That is curse?

Maybe no—because nothing is irredeemable. And if there was something, anything, that we considered irredeemable, wouldn't we be secretly saying that that Thing is more powerful than an act of God? That God isn't truly greater/stronger/better?

…the transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart—and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty.

…I can say it certain now: All is grace."

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, 99-100.

God is working in the now. Redemption is a current process.

That sounds kind of like a familiar thought. Funny how truth seems to follow us sometimes—waving its arms like mad because truth is never satisfied to be noticed just once.

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"He says, "Yes, you're mine," as a matter of fact. Like the ocean is water. Like my Dad has a funny..."

"

He says, "Yes, you're mine," as a matter of fact. Like the ocean is water. Like my Dad has a funny laugh. He says it without hesitation. It is fact: "I am Yours like Texas summers are hotter than Siberia is cold."

Even when I question Him, He doesn't question who I am in Him.

"

what sarah said

Grace really gets me. I'll throw around the word like a hacky-sack until one day it explodes in my face firework-style. I forget its richness.

I'm counting graces right now.

Speaking on something we were grateful for, my friend Sarah said in passing: "—isn't that one of those loving graces we never see?" The phrase "loving graces" seeped into my mind after the conversation ended.

That phrase hasn't ever been in my vocabulary. Like a lot of people, I struggle with seeing God as loving. I put limits on His love. I fully expect Him to topple the economies of merciless dictators, but I secretly doubt He'll care to intervene in my own life.

[Really? Isn't it illogical to doubt Jesus would do miracles in your life when He's the same person who turned water into wine just 'cause the party ran out? Do you think He ever gets tired of being gracious to His people?

Yeah, I know it's illogical. But when did logic ever hold sway over lie-swayed hearts?]

One of my pastors said that discipline is grace, because "grace is that God would engage us." It's a gift to be engaged by God, even if that engagement feels like skinning your knees on what you expected to be green pastures.

That's a loving grace. Forget what it feels like. See it like it is. It is love that holds you back from running to your death. It's love that pins your arms behind your body when you try to reach for something that will kill you.

Every engagement is grace. Every time He intervenes in anything, is grace. From every time we wake up in the morning and don't feel pain to every day when we wake up and we do—there is grace in it.

And when He says He who watches over our lives "does not slumber or sleep"— that is an ABUNDANT everyday explosion of loving grace.

I just hardly ever notice…

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Basically the best quote from Charlotte Bronte ever.

Basically the best quote from Charlotte Bronte ever.

winds of heaven, stuff of earth

I fake spirituality all the time.

A friend tells me they had a rough day. We talk. After a few moments, I give the verbal form of a pat on the back: "Hang in there. His grace is greater still." Slap on a halo and build me a shrine, cause that sounded totally holy.

And inside my stomach twists, because it wasn't genuine; and really, I was thinking of how much I wanted some coffee, or how much I needed to get back to work. I wasn't marveling at God's grace at all.

What's my problem?

Sometimes, this isn't a problem. I'm not always going to feel like a Lucky Charm marshmallow that's been dissolving in a bowl of the grace of God. But declaring that He is gracious, even when I don't feel that to be true, can be an act of faith. It's saying that He is objectively good, even when I'm feeling myeh.
Sometimes I'm just being plain dishonest. Those are the times that make me feel nauseous. When a glowy Christian crosses my path on a bad day, I don't want to tell the truth. "Oh, I just had a tussle with my inner envy monster…all morning. That's all. How's your day?" Instead, if I say, "Oh, you know, God is so good" I sound bubbly, too. But it's far from heartfelt.

And truth be told, it sounds more like something a Pharisee would say than a saint.

The problem is, a lot of times I express truths that I believe with all the dryness of one who does not truly believe it. Why this urge toward fakeness?

Years ago, Rich Mullins released an album called "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth." That phrase is a description of who we are. Me. You.

I've been re-wired so I don't think like I used to. Crack the shudders, and I'll sometimes feel the winds of Heaven. But I'm also made of stuff of earth. Daughter of Eve, creature of the ground. Even on my best day, I'm still formed out of dust. I give into lies really quickly.

Herein lies the tension. The winds of heaven pull me one way, while my dust-filled-frame is subject to the pull of gravity. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Soon I will worship in full, with every idol swept away and every thought held captive by Christ; but not yet. I have not yet conquered every rebel strand of my stubborn will. It's part of the tension of my unfulfilled identity.

I do believe that God is good all the time. But I am not good all the time; my every emotion is not honest, my every declaration of worship not always fully-sincere. It is not because He is less, or because His work in me is inauthentic—

only that His work in me is not complete.

While I scrounge for a life that is both faith-filled and authentic, emotional but not emotions-based: I hope. Because even our hungerings are a sign of progress. The fact that I hate inauthenticity means I'm hovering closer toward honesty. Even on the days when I feel very little at all. 

When I am most a creature of this earth, the winds of heaven still rustles up hurricanes.

"The wounded surgeon plies the steel…Beneath the bleeding hands we feelThe sharp compassion..."

""The wounded surgeon plies the steel…

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art.""

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-T.S. Eliot

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