New Excitement, Old Concepts...

Grace IS Amazing!

"But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love."
-- Galatians 5:5-6

I was reading Galatians this morning for the first time in a long while and it kind of feels brand new...

I'm back in Sweden and I've unpacked my "proper" bible for the first time since December 2010! I have been in a constant state of travel, it seems, since then, and so have just been using my mini travel one. I can't tell you how good it feels to sit down in the morning with a cup of coffee (which I'm sweetening with honey and cinnamon now after reading about the health benefits-- and it's yummy!) under the window of my friend's house where I'm staying for awhile in Sweden, and cracking open the weighty leather-bound book and gold-gilded pages (So... I'm a little bit easy to please and find my whole mood improves around beauty, even if that be a beautiful thing like a pretty bible!)

Since returning to Sweden and my beloved church plant Brunnen, I have been hooked up with a new accountability partner. She's new in town, a lovely Swedish girl with a heart for world missions and a living love for Jesus. We've only been able to manage one meeting so far, but we clicked over our downtown coffee date and have been working out way through 2 Corinthians and Galatians to meet and discuss this week. And you know how we're always told the bible is the LIVING Word of God? Goodness, I love that it's true...

I've been dwelling on the difference between living under the law and living under grace. After some heavy time spent in some spiritually abusive climates, this concept has become a confusing one to me. I found myself being catapulted from an atmosphere where the law was maybe treated too legalistically ("For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace." -- Gal 5:4), to an atmosphere where freedom was being abused ("For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature." -- Gal 5:13) and those who were genuinely confused by what was happening, and wanting to lovingly ask for clarification and walk the narrow road together, were being told they were living by the law and being judgmental.

Paul instructs neither of those sides and yet both of those sides: "Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another." -- Gal 5:13-15)

The Spirit in me (and the moral of the story in Galatians) was saying that the law and grace could both be met by simply sharing each others' burdens-- being open to accountability and willing to listen to one anothers' hearts. We are human and we are hopelessly flawed, and yet God, knowing exactly what we would struggle with, chose to adopt us as His own and cover us with the righteousness of His Son ("But when the right time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent Him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that He could adopt us as His very own children. And because we are His children, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, 'Abba, Father.' Now you are no longer a slave but God's own child. And since you are His child, God has made you His heir." -- Gal 4:4-7). How much more should we then accept one another, worts and all? But constantly reminding one another of our new status as His children, and reminding one another how then to live... Not as slaves (to the law), but as heirs (rejecting the ways of our old status pre-adoption).

"But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love."
-- Galatians 5:5-6

It struck me anew how we are clothed in righteousness. We are not righteous in ourselves (hence our tendency to abuse our freedom by sliding into acting out sinful desires), nor can we earn it (by religious rituals-- Paul talks about being circumcised or uncircumcised-- or living perfectly sinless lives), but as His adopted children, we are covered in His righteousness-- the pressure's off! We don't have to be a certain way, one way or the other! It is our inheritance. And though we live earthly lives now where it can be so hard to see and therefore so hard to live out, we must trust it's true by faith. And during this blink-of-an-eye existence on earth (which most of the time feels SO LONG), "what is important is faith expressing itself in love" (vv. 6)

So let's love on, love on, love on, and toe the balance of fulfilling the law by living in grace by faith...

Whew. Am I a total dork to get so excited about this old concept again? Grace IS truly amazing, and I desperately needed the hope of this reminder. How about you?

An Excerpt by Oswald Chambers

I have a soft spot for Oswald Chambers (Or am I just a sucker for a good ol' godly British man when I see one!?). Anything I have ever picked up by him has pierced right to the heart of whatever season I've been tramping through at the time... While home, I often root through my mom's book shelves and this time I fell upon a little gem by Chambers called, quite simply, "The Love of God". Using Jude 1:21, Chambers expounds on my God's love in a way that challenges me to be "driven further and further out into the ocean fullness of the love of God", and I can't help but share it with you!

"Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."
--Jude 1:21

"We know how to keep ourselves in health. how to keep ourselves in knowledge, and so on; but to keep ourselves in the love of God is a big order, and our minds are exercised to know what Jude means by this exhortation. Does relaxing all stringency and carefulness mean that we slip out into a broad, humanitarian spirit that says, 'God is love,' and 'God's in His heaven; all's right with the world'? No, it cannot mean anything so natural as that, otherwise we had no need of an inspired writer to tell us to do it, and besides, Jude strikes terrible notes of warning (see vv.17-19). 'Keep yourselves in the love of God' refers very clearly to something distinct and special, something revealed in the direct will of God; a spiritual endeavor that we must consider and consider carefully with the Holy Spirit's help.

'Keep' means work. It is not a lazy floating, it is work. Work, or you will depart from the love of God [I need to stress here that he is not taking about earning God's love here, but about the work it takes to keep ourselves aware of it, to remind ourselves, and to choose to live in the knowledge of it!]. Begin to trace the finger of God and the love of God in the great calamities of earth, and in the calamities that have befallen you. In sweat of brain and spirit, work, agonizing at times, to keep yourself in the love of God. It is our wisdom, our happiness, our security to keep ourselves in the love of God. How do I keep myself in any sphere but by using every means to abide in it? If I wish to keep in the spiritual sphere of the love of God I must use the great organ of the spiritual realm, faith. 'God loves me'. Say it over and over and over, heedless of your feelings that come and go. Do not live at a distance from God, live near Him, delighting yourself in Him. Remove all barriers of selfishness and fear and plunge into the fathomless love of God.

'Keep yourselves in the love of God,' not 'keep on loving God.' None can do that. When once you have understood the truth about your own heart's sinfulness, think not again of it, but look at the great, vast, illimitable magnificence of the love of God. Oh, may we be driven-- driven further and further out into the ocean fullness of the love of God, taking care that nothing entices us out of that fullness again.

'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' (Romans 8:35). Oh, the fullness of peace and joy and gladness when we are persuaded that nothing 'shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

I want to be driven further and further out into the ocean fullness of the love of God. I want to take care that nothing entices me out of that fullness again. I want to trust that every single day-- even if those days include horrid and hard goodbyes with dear ones I love, and long journeys back to lonely and discouraging places-- He is inviting me to know more of His love. And from that place of receiving it, to every day give and reflect more and more of it. To watch Him transform this world with my own little piece of the mirror reflecting the truth of His love and mercy.

Let's keep ourselves in this love til our every decision, every action, every word, even every hope reflects it out to a dying world...

Thanks again, dear Oswald :)

Beauty on a Bus

“Excuse me?”

I swung my head around back toward the bus I’d just exited and took in the image of the man approaching me. He wasn’t the kind of gent I’d hope to meet on a dark alley. Baggy pants, over-sized winter coat, the hoodie underneath it worn up, keeping the dark skin of his face in shadows. Whatever it is you’d call a grown boy of the inner-city ghetto, he looked and sounded it as he sauntered up beside me.

“I wanted to tell you back in Chicago,” He spoke when I responded to his ‘excuse me’ with slowing my walk and turning to him, “You are beautiful. Very, very beautiful.”

Of anything that I might have been expecting to hear, that was not it. I smiled, a bit taken aback, and squeezed out a timid, “Thank you!” with a bit of a nervous laugh.

“Very beautiful,” he repeated. 

I braced myself for what would follow, thinking briefly how I would navigate the uncomfortable come-ons gracefully and politely. I knew for a fact that I looked anything but beautiful that day. I had rolled out of bed at 6am, tossed on some comfy clothes, threw my hair up in a messy bun, and neglected all forms of make-up in anticipation of the 8 hour bus ride I would be making from Chicago to Minneapolis. I had just woken up from napping in a crumpled ball in my restrictive bus seat. It was surely an empty compliment delivered in hopes that he might achieve something with it… 

But as we continued to walk towards the station where our bus stopped somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin, he said nothing more. I held the door open for him, feeling obliged, and he waved it off, stopping outside for a smoke instead. 

I didn’t see him again the rest of the bus journey. He seemingly wanted nothing more than just to tell me that he found me beautiful; no strings attached... 

And as the fact of his random kindness sunk in, I was puzzled and touched.

For the first time in perhaps 8 or 9 years, I was in the Chicago area for longer than an airport layover. I had had the last few relaxed and pampering days with my dear dear Auntie Melissa. We had existed in an on-going soul-giving conversation of depth and laughter and tears-- while cooking, while going on walks through the neighbourhood, while having facials, while doing yoga at the gym, while driving, while enjoying a glass of sweet white wine. I cannot quite explain the beauty of such friendships as this. A few nights before my long bus ride home, I had the delightful opportunity of facing one of my many fears and speaking to my Aunt Melissa’s 8^th grade youth group girls about the journey God has me on, and His faithfulness in my life. I had spoken to them about self-worth, about the lies we believe as young girls and the truth of how He assigns to us our worth; how our beauty is intrinsic. Speaking to those girls, remembering being in 8^th grade myself, looking back over the years of His plan for me unfolding, was a powerful reminder to me of what it means to belong to this God.

And as I walked back out to board the bus and finish my journey, I could only look up at him with a smile. His beauty covers me. There is no striving in this beauty, there is no manufacturing it. It is Him, giving His gift of grace, regardless of what I do. 

And suddenly I am reminded again to rest on this journey of life. I am reminded again to stand before Him with open hands, receiving all that He has planned-- what I'd considered difficult as well as what I would consider sweet-- knowing that He is inherently trustworthy (and "why should the heart not dance" in all of it?), and He is all I need. Realizing that this is what Grace is-- His offering me His trustworthiness through every season, through every circumstance!

Somehow, it’s His beauty and grace which invites me to trust again and again and again as I walk on in all the unknown...

Approaching the Throne with Faith Like a Child

It dawned on me this morning how much the two year old ball-of-adorableness who is my nephew has to speak to me from God's heart.

I was recalling to mind how I'd stopped in at his house last night after Zumba and how he had run up to me and grabbed me around the legs, smiling up at me with his mega-watt grin. "Na-na!" He exclaimed, his baby-talk for 'Auntie'. Then he'd swiftly done the same for my mom. "Maw-maw!", his baby-talk for 'Grandma'. Again and again he ran between us, hugging himself to us, and when I picked him up, he rested his chubby cheek against my face and patted my back.

Ooh, he is irresistable!

I sat at my bible study this morning recalling his joyful greeting and how much it always means for me to see it.

And then it fell into my heart-- "faith like a child". Kenan never for a moment pauses to wonder if he is loved. He never stands back when Auntie (or most anyone! hehe :)) enters the house, debating how he should approach me. He leaps into my arms, with the faith that I will encase him in my embrace and kiss him up from one side of his rosy face to the other! It felt like a revelation this morning when I heard God whisper to my heart, "If you can love this little one so, how then can you wonder at my love for you? Do you ever wish to withhold your love from him? How can you not see Me too aching always to give it out, in mercy and grace?" How often do I run to Him and throw my arms around His heavenly neck, just expecting Him to lavish His love on me, like my Keebie-beebie and I? Not nearly often enough these days...

And suddenly Hebrews 4:16, which I've been dwelling on in my bible study, takes on a whole new meaning as I picture myself confidently approaching His throne of grace like Kenan confidently throws himself into my adoring hugs-- the ones I am so ready and willing and desiring to give!

"Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help."
-- Hebrews 4:14-16, The Message

And I am so thankful when He opens up my eyes in these little ways to these big, big things...

Goodness, I love that little man!

A Year Out of Africa

It has been on my mind a great deal that this time last year, I was in Africa.

I just never saw it coming. Nor could I have seen the irony that, in hindsight, I felt more peace in my heart those crazy few months in Africa than I really have since!

 

I have never been one of those people with Africa on the heart. But my heart has been forever altered since He walked my timid feet on that dusty red Ugandan soil. From the very first day it was as if I had no choice but to trust Him like never before. My delayed flight meant I missed my ride from the airport, which meant I was on my own to get from the airport out to the tiny village hour away to the home where I was to meet the friend I was going to work with. The problem is, Ugandan villages don't have conventional addresses, and no one had yet heard of the previously nonexistent ministry we were arriving to set up. So getting there on my own, totally jet-lagged and utterly frightened, was only by His intervention. And I could do nothing but follow Him.

My plane arrived in the middle of the night and I was terrified. The months before going to Uganda, I had wrestled with strange fears over everything. I was not prone to such fears. I awoke to nightmares and I wrestled in prayer. But again and again and again, God confirmed that this was His direction and encouraged me to follow Him. But that first night in Africa, I spent in a tiny and sparsely populated airport, afraid to venture out into the pitch blackness of night, having no idea what awaited me outside those glass doors. I spotted 2 cockroaches scurrying around on the chairs near to where I sat with my bags. I wrote Charles a letter, to feel less alone, and I prayed.

An elderly lady who had come in on my same flight sat nearby and in the early hours of morning we exchanged a few words, learned each others stories. She was a German missionary, and this was her 3rd time in Uganda. She was waiting for her pastor friend to come and collect her in the morning. We kept one another company for hours, waiting for daylight, and I know she was God's gift of provision to me. I ought to know by now that He promises to provide when we step out in faith and obey...

Her pastor friend came and invited me to ride along with them to Kampala, where he could put me on a bus toward Jinja, and then have the bus driver point me in the right direction to get out to the village from there. I could have cried in relief, but I was too tired. Instead, I stared wide-eyed out the window of his car at the red dust, banana trees, roadside shacks, free-range goats and chickens, and beautiful Ugandan people dressed in the brightest colours and patterns carrying massive baskets and buckets and general loads on their heads...

What a different world.

And then there were the sunsets. When the sun would start to set on the horizon, it's shape a perfectly massive red-orange orb over the green of the tropical trees, it wouldn't dally. It seemed to take mere minutes to get from the top of the sky to far below the horizon, leaving us in the darkest dark I've ever known. It always mystified me how quickly it happened. And God's grace in keeping us safe and getting us home the nights we didn't make it in before nightfall...

Walking down the dusty streets in Uganda was always an adventure to me, but one I relished so much. In my first month, I would find myself alone to reflect and talk to God and talk to people on these walks about once a week, and I would hop on a boda-boda and direct the driver to take me "home" feeling refreshed somehow. Chatting with the lady in the lean-to shop or laughing with the old man missing his front teeth sitting on the street corner selling fruit on a dusty blanket was somehow... good for the soul. I found the people He led me to there just beautiful souls with so much to teach me just in the way they responded to their lives... And the strange sense of peace which blanketted me those months of facing one unknown after another. I just felt, in a way I cannot possibly explain, as if he tangible "had my back" like never before. And greeted each day with His confidence... It was such a gift.

Mostly, I think of the children.

I think of how my arms just couldn't open wide enough to hold all the little ones I longed to hold, and how every precious pair of big brown eyes that looked up at me incited my heart to grow that much bigger. Walking through the villages and hearing "Mzungu, how are you?" called out again and again and seeing their eyes light up when we waved at them made my heart light. Visiting orphanages where I could literally wrap my arms around as many little wiggly bodies as would fit made my heart dance... And thinking of the babies in Entebbe I cared for and loved on daily makes my heart long to be back, taking in those sunsets, getting covered each day in red dust sticking to my own sweat, and loving the little ones so hungry for attention and a little bit of tenderness. I was made for such nurturing. In that sense, I was made for those few months in Africa.

And will carry Uganda in my heart no matter how many years pass, picturing those pairs of deep brown eyes, sparkling despite being orphaned, abandoned, infected with AIDS, hungry, poor, or homeless. Yet never hopeless.

Oh, the lessons the little ones of Africa have to teach me....
And you?

****You CAN make a difference right from where you are! Help families with the heart to adopt by donating to Lifesong for Orphans. Or get in touch with my friends at Sun Shines Hope International and help to improve the lives of villagers in Uganda, send children to school whose families are too poor to afford it, teach sustainable living and sanitation to needy villages, all while sharing with them the love of Christ! Get in touch!! We are His hands and His feet here. Do you ever wonder if when we ask Him why suffering exists in this world, He might ask us the same thing?****

Intrepid Explorers and Awakenings

Being the most non-typical Minnesota winter I have ever seen, it was nearly 50 degrees outside today. I found myself out in it pulling my two favourite little intrepid explorers all over kingdom come in a little red wagon. We wheeled around Grandma and Grandpa's yard, petting horse noses, moo-ing at cows in the pastures, and having conversations at a 2-year-old level about all that we were excitedly observing (Only as the daughter of a funeral director/cattle rancher can you find yourself trekking through a horse arena past farm machinery on your left and burial vaults on your right...)

My little explorers chattered together as they were happily pulled along down the driveway of my childhood home. The unlikely January weather made it feel like a day in early spring, not the dead of winter, and the earth smelled like a hundred memories of growing up here, making "forts" in the woods, playing house where I pretended to be a settler like Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a Native American princess like Pocahontas, or a lost orphan from England (I grew up constantly putting on an English accent when I played pretend-- go figure!).  We turned that old familiar bend in my parents' long driveway and the memory of the feeling of His presence on so many night prayer walks down this driveway throughout high school and summers home from college just struck me like deja vu. The memory of that hunger for Him, that desperate knowledge that nothing else would satisfy but Him, speaking to my heart out under the bright stars hung over my childhood home, singing praise songs to Him as I walked down that dark driveway...

The day gave me a Spring-time feeling; that time when all that has been lying dormant is beginning to awaken, to come back to life.

So many friends in my life have been confessing to me a similar experience of so many elements of faith in our walks with Him feeling like they've been lying dormant. And we have been asking one another to pray-- pray that they will start to feel alive to us again. That moment today, pulling my little men in that red wagon around that bend in the driveway, was like a little experience of awakening.


I know that walking with God is just that-- walking; it is an active journey. It is a series of seasons of life. It ebbs and flows. The weather changes with the seasons and He changes me with them, forever inviting me to trust Him, whether in the summery seasons of faith or the wintery ones. To keep walking that road, exploring its contours whether blanketed by snow, covered by leaves, smelling of fresh spring earth, or humid from the heat of the sun as we walk...  And wherever I plant a foot, His have already trod that ground.


I am struck by His mercy. For the way he deigns to walk so close, to lead if we ask, to quiet if we don't genuinely want to hear Him, and to speak up if we do. I just want to live a life which is set up to amplify the sound of His voice, and to have a heart which is poised to receive what He says, and to have feet ready to move on it whatever the earthly risk may seem.

Lord, I know that everything comes from you and there is nothing I can muster up on my own-- Oh, that you would give me a ready faith. And always always make me an intrepid explorer of Who You are, Lord Jesus, in whatever season (And draw my little nephews to seek Your heart above all else as they grow into men, too!)
Amen.

Ardently Loved

“The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.”
-- Langston Hughes

This little poem struck me deeply when I came across it the other day. All I could hear was God's voice speaking about us. And the idea stopped me in my tracks for a moment. The tangible image of His love and adoration for us, for me.

It struck me that I had forgotten. I had forgotten how great the Father's love for me was. Yes, I know He sent His Son to give His very life as ransom to save mine if I only believe ["...For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only son that whoever will believe in Him will have eternal life." (John 3:16)] Didn't we just remember His coming with our Christmas celebrations? But somehow, the knowledge of it is so constant that I... forgot to remember the extraordinary truth behind it. And what it means to our lives in the here and now.

It was this simple bit of Langston Hughes poetry that grabbed the eyes of my heart and begged them to settle here for a moment and breathe it in...

It was because He's in love with the whole wide world; 

captivated by us like a Bridegroom with His bride. 

"As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:5). 

"How beautiful you are, my darling. There is no flaw in you" (Song of Songs 4:1).

"...that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle or any other defect" (Ephesians 5:27).

"And I will take you as my bride for ever; truly, I will take you as my bride in righteousness and in right judging, in love and in mercies" (Hosea 2:19).

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39).

Webster's dictionary says that when the word "Bride" is used figuratively, it means, "an object ardently loved." Do you know how ardently loved you are? And if you did, how would it change how you believe, and how you act on what you believe? Somehow, the scriptures upon scriptures which told me so, had faded in my mind, in my experience, and I feel like my life has begun to reflect that forgetting... So, I've been asking God to teach me anew what it means to be ardently loved by the King of the Universe, and what He would have me do resting in that knowledge (because what wouldn't we do with this blink-if-an-eye-existence when we know we are ardently loved by the King overseeing it all?)... 

And suddenly, I am feeling more hope than I have in a while.

Maybe you too need to ask Him to show you again how He sees you, and how He would have you live in light of it? It's a brand new year, a fresh slate for His goodness and love to transform our hearts and lives. Let's seek His heart, running out to meet Him by our prayers....

"Behold! The Bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet Him!"
-- Matthew 25:6

 "In Him our hearts rejoice, for we are trusting in His holy name. Let Your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in You."
-- Psalm 33:21-22