Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [05.09.15]

come away for just a few moments & enjoy this sunrise? glory!

take a look — really. it’s all a matter of perspective…

now this might be just the way to live

 hot day — and someone said water?!?!

sometimes you just need to go be awed

so  when you lose 3 of your own kittens — you go do this

have you seen this!?

what happens when 5 team finalists from around the world compete to …. save our oceans?

what a brain looks look on happy

hard to believe these were all just taken on a phone…. slowing down to see His wonder everywhere 

 you’ve really got to see these libraries

honest — in Him, you’re good enough, because He’s enough

This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul: 

One for the Fridge this week?

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what happens when a pro quarterback thanks a soldier — by doing this on the plane

just. be. you. being shaped to be like Him… one to share with a sister?

so who knew this about the moon? 

don’t. ever. quit.

at 80? she’s graduating from college with her grandchildren & inspires with this

what they gave the boy who bullied them? one to share with the kids?

misdiagnosed for 33 years —  and cured with one pill?

homeless teen is honored for doing —- the right thing

the joys of owning a pet – she captures it perfectly

 

What’s on the Stack Here at the Farm:

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

My friend, Rachel, sent me a copy of her latest book, Searching for Sunday. Rachel writes raw-honest and exquisitely about her personal, deep disagreements with evangelical Christianity, which lead her to leaving the evangelical church and finding a home in the larger church. This is an achingly beautiful story about struggling through questions and doubts and hurts with the evangelical church, but loving and finding God in the greater Church. As an evangelical, I grieved — grieved for Rachel’s hurt and pain, because I deeply and genuinely love her… and I grieved to see her leave the evangelical community within the Church, of which our family is gratefully a part.

I humbly understand why Rachel chose to leave evangelicalism, because of her disagreement with certain historic evangelical beliefs that evangelicals like our family hold — and yet I also deeply believe that, though people reach elemental disagreements, that does not at all mean that they don’t continue to be warm friends or continue to genuinely love and humbly listen to each other.

It may be that this is exactly the time we’re called to reach out even more to each other…. 

That’s what we do with disagreement, even deep disagreement — we reach out to those in pain, through our pain, to each other in pain. 

Which is why, after Rachel announced she was leaving evangelicalism, I quietly reached out to her…. And when Rachel sent me a copy of Searching for Sunday, she quietly bookmarked these pages where she honestly writes about that part of her story, about how she’s still in deep relationship with her evangelical friends, family & neighbors….  As Rachel so beautifully and powerfully expresses, in the midst of differences, we accept grace from each other — knowing that grace doesn’t demand agreement before it’s offered. We can always, always, always be God’s kind grace to each other….

From Rachel’s Searching for Sunday’s chapter, Open Hands:

“A writer friend of mine recently sent me a bouquet of orchids that sat on our dining room table for weeks in a perpetual explosion of magenta. She sent them because she knew I was in one of those seasons when I wanted little to do with God and nothing to do with the church. Christians had been cruel to one another and cruel to me, and it had all happened in a public forum.

I was in no mood to accept any acts of mercy, particularly from the very sort of Christians against whom I was revolting.

Embarrassed by her generosity, I sent a quick thank-you in response and resolved to return the favor sometime. If I owed her, maybe I wouldn’t have to let her in.

I was in possession of my friend’s gift long before I received it, on a gray day when its stubborn, irresponsible beauty could no longer be ignored. Until then, I didn’t want to admit how badly I needed her kindness, how helpless I was at sorting all this out on my own. I didn’t want to see myself in those fragile, thirsty orchids, fighting against the gloom to trestle toward the light.

But this friend knows better than most the nature of eucharisteo — thanksgiving — how it enters through our soft spots and seeps in through our cracks. She knew God would unclench my fists and unfurl my fingers and that grace would eventually get through.

And so it did, when I finally opened my hands, when I received grace the way I receive communion, with nothing to offer back but thanks.

“Grace cannot prevail,” writes Robert Farrar Capon, “until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.”

This is why I need the Eucharist.

I need the Eucharist because I need to begin each week with open hands….

It’s a scary thing to open your hands. It’s a scary thing to receive, to say yes. I resist it every time.

But somehow, whether it sneaks in through a piece of bread, a sip of wine, or a hatching bud, grace always, eventually gets through.

And finally, at long last, I exhale my thanksgiving.”  ~Searching for Sunday, a vulnerable memoir of returning to church in spite of doubts, questions, fears, & frustrations

 

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God :  “Cosmic ingratitude is living in the illusion that you are spiritually self-sufficient. It is taking credit for something that was a gift…

To understand the Scripture is not simply to get information about God. If attended to with trust and faith, the Bible is the way to actually hear God speaking and also to meet God Himself…. We are not called to choose between a Christian life based on truth and doctrine or a life filled with spiritual power and experience. They go together…

Prayer turns theology into experience… Prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through His Word and His grace— which eventually becomes a full encounter with Him.” Keller’s written a classic, profound book I keep returning to again and again.

Post of the Week from these part here:

yeah… that would be this mother of 6 a whole lot of days:

the mother who wants to give up.

But with two homeschooled kids now graduated? Yeah, there’s a bit of clarity:

Help for Mothers Who Want to Give Up:

10 Keys to Raising This Generation of Boys into #GoodYoungMen

no one was expecting a man who’s been walking for more than a century —

to walk out of the rubble of Nepal

there’s all kinds of barriers and obstacles and pain around this weekend —

and there’s all kind of tender, beautiful and creative ways to get around them.

A must watch.

what do you say to the officer who saved your  life 25 years ago? Maybe just this

… I wish someone had told me sooner? But it’s not too late…

especially for this, it’s not ever too late. So I’m learning:

The Most Life-Giving Thing Every Mother Can Do For Herself this Mother’s Day

a new perspective for moms

an unforgettable Mother’s Day delivery

I’m alive! — because He lives

[ print’s free for you here ]

The thing is? God knew that to love is to suffer so God made a Mother.

He needed someone who knows that in every hard place is exactly where you extend grace

Someone willing to keep loving when it makes no sense because that is what love does

Someone who knows that life is not an emergency but a gift — one thousand gifts.

Someone who knows that umbilical cords can be cut — but heart strings never can.

So God made a Mother.

[ ‪#‎ChangedMyLife‬: bit.ly/PickUpTheDareToLiveFully ]

[excerpted from our morning prayers in our little Facebook community … come join us?]

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.