Confession: I just spent the last 15 minutes looking for a good, sad, and juicy song lyric to post on my facebook wall. Something intriguing and provocative. Something to perfectly match my mood.
Then I stopped and asked myself, "Why?"
What is it about stringing a dozen words together and putting it up there for all of my "friends" to see? What is the purpose of that?
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate and even "like" interesting, funny, or thoughtful posts that other people put up. But there is definitely something satisfying and almost relieving in writing a good status update. There is something about it that enhances your feelings of goodness and suppresses your feelings of badness.
But what is it?
I may have an answer.
It's the same answer that a classmate gave in my Writing Fiction and Poetry class nearly 5 years ago when the professor asked, "Why do we write?" His answer came after a few others. "To inform people." "To invoke emotion." "To change ideas."
He said, "To make sure we're not alone."
We write to make sure we're not alone. To see if anyone else out there feels the same way we do. And I would venture to say that, whether you are talking about a newspaper article, a science paper, a blog, or a facebook post...most of them are written to make sure we're not alone.
There is a thrill with getting "like"d. And even more-so with getting comments. The thrill says, "Yes! Someone gets me. Someone has felt this way too."
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Feathers
Two nights ago, we were having dinner with some new friends. After dinner, their just-turned-one-year-old baby boy kept reaching out toward the center of the dining room table, like he wanted something. There was a bottle there, so I handed it to him. No interest, but he kept reaching. I started handing him other things, but he just kept reaching.
I asked his mom, "What is he reaching for?" And I was surprised at her answer. And at the nonchalance of it.
"Oh, I think there's an angel in our kitchen. He reaches out like that a lot, and sometimes I see feathers falling while I'm doing dishes."
She went on to tell us how feathers can often be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. How when she first heard about this phenomenon, she asked the Lord about it, and He reminded her of Psalm 91:4.
"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge."
She said that, for her, the small feathers are a reminder that God is seeing her, and that He is present.
I don't know if it's my childhood, my church background, my education, my chemical makeup, or just my personality. But when I hear things like this, my initial reactions are ones of skepticism. My tendency is to rationalize. To reason. To come up with a good, logical explanation.
But in the past month or so, that has begun to change. Our boss (who is our pastor) has been pushing us (the church staff) to stretch our faith a bit more, to look into things that are unfamiliar for us, and to ask the Lord if He wants to teach us anything new.
Well. If you've ever asked the Lord to teach you something new, you know the answer. It's always yes.
So on my way home from this friend's house, I prayed.
"Lord, I want to have strong faith, and I want to walk in spiritual ways. I don't want to test You, but I also don't want to just believe everything I hear. If I have faith in something, I want it to be from You. If making feathers appear is really something You do, will You do it for me?"
And here's what happened.
Yesterday afternoon, I was in my kitchen talking to a friend who is in the midst of a big, messy relational situation. She is battling hopelessness, faithlessness, bitterness, and so many other things, and we were discussing it all. And while we were talking, guess what just appeared in mid-air.
{Insert Dora the Explorer awkward pause while we all wait for the kids to shout out the obvious answer here.}
You guessed it! It was a tiny feather, and it just sort of floated out between us. I caught a hold of it and it was small and brown and about the size of a fingernail clipping.
Now. Here's what I could do. I could fall on my face trembling and weeping before the Lord, thanking Him for His goodness and faithfulness and presence. I could carry the feather around with me forever. I could end up praying to the feather and I could trap it in a tiny glass case and charge my neighbors $5 to catch a glimpse of the relic. You see where I'm going with this.
Or I could explain it away. "Well, she probably sleeps on a feather pillow, so this feather was trapped in her shirt and when she gestured just now, the wind picked it up and shot it out toward me. What a funny coincidence."
Or I could do this. I could silently thank the Lord for reminding me that He is watching my friend. That He continues to hold onto hope. That He is working things out and keeping us safe under His wings in the meantime. Then I could let the feather go.
Because, do you know what? It doesn't matter to me whether the feather appeared out of thin air from an invisible wing in my kitchen or from a feather pillow. The point is that I asked God for a feather and He gave it to me. He knew it would remind me of Him. That it would strengthen my faith. That it would get my attention. And after all that's really what our days are about anyway, aren't they? Remembering God and pointing our attention to Him.
And do you know what else? I've seen two more feathers today.
I asked his mom, "What is he reaching for?" And I was surprised at her answer. And at the nonchalance of it.
"Oh, I think there's an angel in our kitchen. He reaches out like that a lot, and sometimes I see feathers falling while I'm doing dishes."
She went on to tell us how feathers can often be a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. How when she first heard about this phenomenon, she asked the Lord about it, and He reminded her of Psalm 91:4.
"He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge."
She said that, for her, the small feathers are a reminder that God is seeing her, and that He is present.
I don't know if it's my childhood, my church background, my education, my chemical makeup, or just my personality. But when I hear things like this, my initial reactions are ones of skepticism. My tendency is to rationalize. To reason. To come up with a good, logical explanation.
But in the past month or so, that has begun to change. Our boss (who is our pastor) has been pushing us (the church staff) to stretch our faith a bit more, to look into things that are unfamiliar for us, and to ask the Lord if He wants to teach us anything new.
Well. If you've ever asked the Lord to teach you something new, you know the answer. It's always yes.
So on my way home from this friend's house, I prayed.
"Lord, I want to have strong faith, and I want to walk in spiritual ways. I don't want to test You, but I also don't want to just believe everything I hear. If I have faith in something, I want it to be from You. If making feathers appear is really something You do, will You do it for me?"
And here's what happened.
Yesterday afternoon, I was in my kitchen talking to a friend who is in the midst of a big, messy relational situation. She is battling hopelessness, faithlessness, bitterness, and so many other things, and we were discussing it all. And while we were talking, guess what just appeared in mid-air.
{Insert Dora the Explorer awkward pause while we all wait for the kids to shout out the obvious answer here.}
You guessed it! It was a tiny feather, and it just sort of floated out between us. I caught a hold of it and it was small and brown and about the size of a fingernail clipping.
Now. Here's what I could do. I could fall on my face trembling and weeping before the Lord, thanking Him for His goodness and faithfulness and presence. I could carry the feather around with me forever. I could end up praying to the feather and I could trap it in a tiny glass case and charge my neighbors $5 to catch a glimpse of the relic. You see where I'm going with this.
Or I could explain it away. "Well, she probably sleeps on a feather pillow, so this feather was trapped in her shirt and when she gestured just now, the wind picked it up and shot it out toward me. What a funny coincidence."
Or I could do this. I could silently thank the Lord for reminding me that He is watching my friend. That He continues to hold onto hope. That He is working things out and keeping us safe under His wings in the meantime. Then I could let the feather go.
Because, do you know what? It doesn't matter to me whether the feather appeared out of thin air from an invisible wing in my kitchen or from a feather pillow. The point is that I asked God for a feather and He gave it to me. He knew it would remind me of Him. That it would strengthen my faith. That it would get my attention. And after all that's really what our days are about anyway, aren't they? Remembering God and pointing our attention to Him.
And do you know what else? I've seen two more feathers today.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Something Very Personal
I am not pregnant. However, a lot of my friends are pregnant and having babies, so lately, I have been thinking about it a lot....a LOT.
As of late, I have spent at least a little time every day imagining what it will be like when I am pregnant. Will I be sick? (This is almost always my first wondering.) Will I look cute? (This is almost always my second wondering.) Will I glow? (My goodness, how self-consumed can I be?) Will I have an easy pregnancy? How weird will it be to feel a person inside me? Where will I be living? How will I make all of those decisions? (Names, home birth or hospital birth, which car seat is safest, what color high-chair to get, and so on.)
But my favorite thing to imagine and to think about is that for 40 weeks, I will have a tiny person inside of me and for those 40 weeks, I will literally never be by myself. Every morning when I come out to sit on the couch, someone will be with me. Every time Rod and I go on a date, there will actually be three of us. I imagine that I will almost constantly be aware of the fact that I am pregnant. (You moms can speak into this one...is it true?) And, I hope, because I am continually aware of it, I will continually be praying for that little tiny one.
Right now, Rod and I enjoy praying for our future kids. We pray that they will grow up to know the Lord. We pray for the people who are going to be their mentors, their best friends, their spouses. We pray that my body will produce healthy children. We pray for the Lord's blessing and favor over their lives. We pray that we will have world-changing kids.
But over the last month or more, Jesus has really been bringing something to light for me.
It started in December, when a friend told me about a mother of three that she had met. This mother was abusive to her three sons and she knew it, so this mother asked my friend to help her find a family to adopt her kids. She said it had to happen soon or else she would bring her three boys to DCFS and give them up.
My friend asked if we would pray about adopting one or two or all of them.
It only lasted about a week before the mom changed her mind and the whole thing sort of flew out the window. But in that short period of time, my instincts must have kicked in, because I saw a picture of those boys and I really, truly began thinking of them as my own. I prayed for their protection and for their healing. I prayed for this woman to stop hurting them. I prayed Jesus would bring them to us safely if they were meant to be ours.
And for some reason, in the last maybe 3 weeks, those feelings have come up again. Not for those boys specifically, but I wake up in the morning thinking, "My baby might be out there with someone else." "My baby might be born today." Or, "My baby might be three years old today." And I pray even more for that baby's blessing, health, and most of all protection.
In all of these thoughts and these prayers, I am reminded again of how little control I have. How the fact that I can go to the doctor and take pre-natal vitamins and read about all of the best exercises to do and the best foods to eat while pregnanct really is just an illusion of control. That ultimately, I have to live with open hands and trust the Lord to carry out His perfect will.
Maybe His will is for us to only have children come through my body. But more and more, I don't believe that's true. More and more, I believe some (or all) of our babies are out "there" somewhere. It makes me sick to think that someone else could be abusing my child right now, but that just drives me ever and ever closer to the Lord, because if that is the case, my only choice is to trust in His promises and believe that He will work all things out for good.
The truth is, we are never in control. We can do our best to make good decisions and to educate ourselves. But HE is the one Who is holding it all. That is a very scary thing to think about - having to trust Someone else to take care of things for you. But when you look around at the pain and the evil that you are capable of (I can be so mean to my husband. I can be so selfish when I want something.) doesn't it make you glad that you don't have the final say? That there is Someone bigger and wiser and more loving than you Who is taking care of things and making beauty out of your ashes?
We serve such a good God.
As of late, I have spent at least a little time every day imagining what it will be like when I am pregnant. Will I be sick? (This is almost always my first wondering.) Will I look cute? (This is almost always my second wondering.) Will I glow? (My goodness, how self-consumed can I be?) Will I have an easy pregnancy? How weird will it be to feel a person inside me? Where will I be living? How will I make all of those decisions? (Names, home birth or hospital birth, which car seat is safest, what color high-chair to get, and so on.)
But my favorite thing to imagine and to think about is that for 40 weeks, I will have a tiny person inside of me and for those 40 weeks, I will literally never be by myself. Every morning when I come out to sit on the couch, someone will be with me. Every time Rod and I go on a date, there will actually be three of us. I imagine that I will almost constantly be aware of the fact that I am pregnant. (You moms can speak into this one...is it true?) And, I hope, because I am continually aware of it, I will continually be praying for that little tiny one.
Right now, Rod and I enjoy praying for our future kids. We pray that they will grow up to know the Lord. We pray for the people who are going to be their mentors, their best friends, their spouses. We pray that my body will produce healthy children. We pray for the Lord's blessing and favor over their lives. We pray that we will have world-changing kids.
But over the last month or more, Jesus has really been bringing something to light for me.
It started in December, when a friend told me about a mother of three that she had met. This mother was abusive to her three sons and she knew it, so this mother asked my friend to help her find a family to adopt her kids. She said it had to happen soon or else she would bring her three boys to DCFS and give them up.
My friend asked if we would pray about adopting one or two or all of them.
It only lasted about a week before the mom changed her mind and the whole thing sort of flew out the window. But in that short period of time, my instincts must have kicked in, because I saw a picture of those boys and I really, truly began thinking of them as my own. I prayed for their protection and for their healing. I prayed for this woman to stop hurting them. I prayed Jesus would bring them to us safely if they were meant to be ours.
And for some reason, in the last maybe 3 weeks, those feelings have come up again. Not for those boys specifically, but I wake up in the morning thinking, "My baby might be out there with someone else." "My baby might be born today." Or, "My baby might be three years old today." And I pray even more for that baby's blessing, health, and most of all protection.
In all of these thoughts and these prayers, I am reminded again of how little control I have. How the fact that I can go to the doctor and take pre-natal vitamins and read about all of the best exercises to do and the best foods to eat while pregnanct really is just an illusion of control. That ultimately, I have to live with open hands and trust the Lord to carry out His perfect will.
Maybe His will is for us to only have children come through my body. But more and more, I don't believe that's true. More and more, I believe some (or all) of our babies are out "there" somewhere. It makes me sick to think that someone else could be abusing my child right now, but that just drives me ever and ever closer to the Lord, because if that is the case, my only choice is to trust in His promises and believe that He will work all things out for good.
The truth is, we are never in control. We can do our best to make good decisions and to educate ourselves. But HE is the one Who is holding it all. That is a very scary thing to think about - having to trust Someone else to take care of things for you. But when you look around at the pain and the evil that you are capable of (I can be so mean to my husband. I can be so selfish when I want something.) doesn't it make you glad that you don't have the final say? That there is Someone bigger and wiser and more loving than you Who is taking care of things and making beauty out of your ashes?
We serve such a good God.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Album of the Month - January, "Shorter Days"
I have a few Resolutions this year...
Number One. Fast from pop. (Especially hard when you're at the movie theater and you're eating handfuls of salty popcorn...it's just not the same with water.)
Number Two. Memorize two Scripture passages each month. For this, I am joining together with a dozen lovely women from my church, and I am learning a lot.
Number Three (and the one I am sharing with you now). Create an Album of the Month. I first heard about this idea from my friend, Emily. So I adapted it and made it my own.
Remember getting/making mix tapes for road trips or for special events or for friends' birthdays? This is like that.
This year, as a way to broaden my musical horizons, I am spending time each month discovering new music, and I am putting the best of what I find on the Album of the Month and then I will be sharing it here with you. I find myself stuck in the same music for years at a time, only adopting new music when someone tells me to check it out. So the whole point of this is to give me a tangible, measurable goal to work toward, which will force me to be proactive.
It really is quite a narcissistic project, because the only requirement for a song to make it onto the album is that I like it. I can bet that the vast majority of the songs will be low-key, acoustic, folksy stuff, but you never know when I will whip out a surprise (particularly if Justin Bieber releases any new stuff this year...I've admittedly got a little fever).
My goal is for 80-90% of the album to be music that I have newly discovered (because there are just so many great songs that I already know, and I will want to share those too), and my other goal is to at least have one of my own originals on there each month, too. The recordings won't be great, but again, it will force me each month to make an effort to write (or record, if it's already written) at least one song that I'm proud of.
For the sake of accountability and feedback, I have several friends who are helping me in this by being my "audience". They are people who have agreed to give my album a listen each month, let me know what they think of it, and suggest new music to me as they come across it.
I would like the same from you. If you ever hear of music you think I would like (based on the songs I list each month), please feel free to share it with me! This project has been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to the new discoveries I will make. Hope you like it too! (And as soon as I figure out how to use Spotify, I will create a playlist on there, which should make this album much easier to share.)
January - "Shorter Days"
1. "1957" by Milo Greene
2. "When the City Comes" by Chuck E. Costa
3. "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch
4. "In the Garden (Live)" by Susan Tedeschi
5. "Grand Central Station" by Mary Chapin Carpenter
6. "So Within" by Seryn
7. "Mario Kart Love Song" by Sam Hart"
8. "Ready to Leave" by Anna Joy
9. "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg
10. "Making Pies" by Patty Grifin
11. "Ever Could" by William Fitzsimmons
12. "Much Farther to Go" by Rosie Thomas
13. "Songbird" by Jillian Edwards
14. "Hazy" by Rosi Golan (featuring William Fitzsimmons)
15. "Hawthorne" by Mat Kearney
16. "On My Knees" by Seryn
17. "We Will Follow" by Jars of Clay (featuring Gungor)
Number One. Fast from pop. (Especially hard when you're at the movie theater and you're eating handfuls of salty popcorn...it's just not the same with water.)
Number Two. Memorize two Scripture passages each month. For this, I am joining together with a dozen lovely women from my church, and I am learning a lot.
Number Three (and the one I am sharing with you now). Create an Album of the Month. I first heard about this idea from my friend, Emily. So I adapted it and made it my own.
Remember getting/making mix tapes for road trips or for special events or for friends' birthdays? This is like that.
This year, as a way to broaden my musical horizons, I am spending time each month discovering new music, and I am putting the best of what I find on the Album of the Month and then I will be sharing it here with you. I find myself stuck in the same music for years at a time, only adopting new music when someone tells me to check it out. So the whole point of this is to give me a tangible, measurable goal to work toward, which will force me to be proactive.
It really is quite a narcissistic project, because the only requirement for a song to make it onto the album is that I like it. I can bet that the vast majority of the songs will be low-key, acoustic, folksy stuff, but you never know when I will whip out a surprise (particularly if Justin Bieber releases any new stuff this year...I've admittedly got a little fever).
My goal is for 80-90% of the album to be music that I have newly discovered (because there are just so many great songs that I already know, and I will want to share those too), and my other goal is to at least have one of my own originals on there each month, too. The recordings won't be great, but again, it will force me each month to make an effort to write (or record, if it's already written) at least one song that I'm proud of.
For the sake of accountability and feedback, I have several friends who are helping me in this by being my "audience". They are people who have agreed to give my album a listen each month, let me know what they think of it, and suggest new music to me as they come across it.
I would like the same from you. If you ever hear of music you think I would like (based on the songs I list each month), please feel free to share it with me! This project has been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to the new discoveries I will make. Hope you like it too! (And as soon as I figure out how to use Spotify, I will create a playlist on there, which should make this album much easier to share.)
January - "Shorter Days"
1. "1957" by Milo Greene
2. "When the City Comes" by Chuck E. Costa
3. "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch
4. "In the Garden (Live)" by Susan Tedeschi
5. "Grand Central Station" by Mary Chapin Carpenter
6. "So Within" by Seryn
7. "Mario Kart Love Song" by Sam Hart"
8. "Ready to Leave" by Anna Joy
9. "Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg
10. "Making Pies" by Patty Grifin
11. "Ever Could" by William Fitzsimmons
12. "Much Farther to Go" by Rosie Thomas
13. "Songbird" by Jillian Edwards
14. "Hazy" by Rosi Golan (featuring William Fitzsimmons)
15. "Hawthorne" by Mat Kearney
16. "On My Knees" by Seryn
17. "We Will Follow" by Jars of Clay (featuring Gungor)
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Liturgy
I can still remember the awful, burning anger I felt toward my professor, the tension in my guts between wanting to respect him and have an open mind and wanting to argue his logic until the sun went down and came back up again. Our class on Liberal Arts, Christian thought, and learning how to live in community had been meeting for several weeks when one student asked if we could take prayer requests and in praying for each other build stronger relationships. As always in a room full of new students who don't know each other or the school, argument broke out, tempers rose, opinions flew around and bounced off the walls unheard.
Here was the issue: at the mention of taking prayer requests, which is usually a pretty insignificant, quickly accepted and easy thing to do and get done in a Christian school, our professor in a way hemmed and hawed, started bringing up the fact that who-are-we-to-tell-God-what-to-do, and laid out all these rules about how we would speak the need - "For my mother who has cancer" or "For families who have unreconciled hearts" - and the rest of the class would respond with, "Lord, have mercy", and that would be the end of it. There would be no, “Please God do this” or “Dearlordthankyouforthisday” and “Father, Father, Father, God, God, God, just, just, just”.
I was confused and infuriated. He was being ridiculous. Of course we’re not telling God what to do. We’re presenting our requests to Him and explaining to Him what we would prefer, yes. But we are trusting Him to make the best decision. What could possibly be wrong with that? And how can there be any meaning in anything if we’re just repeating a script? How is the Spirit moving if we’re just responding in unison like some mundane robots? And why is he spending this entire three-hour class talking about this and trying to get his way when we have other things to get to?
Now, if this instance had occurred later in my time at college, after I learned to trust this professor and believe in his intention and consider his ideas and admit that he loved me, I might have responded a little more audaciously and a little less like a scared porcupine. I might have listened.
He was teaching us about liturgy. He was introducing us to the notion that maybe just maybe there is power in speaking something in unison. That if we use a form of prayer that has been used for centuries, we are not boring God or acting like robots but we are joining with a larger community than just these thirty students in this class who can physically hear us. And we are training ourselves to trust the millennia of Christians who have gone before us and hashed a lot of this stuff out already.
I did not want to accept any of this. I had come to this college from a mega church where everything was about being on the cutting-edge and finding fresh ways to worship and doing church differently. But because it was college and because God gave me some magical extra dose of grace to challenge myself and to run cannon-balling into new situations, I began attending the church where this professor was a pastor. A liturgical, traditional church, where we sang out of hymnals and the pastors wore long, dark robes (a fact that one of my mega church friends literally threw her head back and laughed about on one of my first visits home), and we spoke the same exact words before communion every Sunday. “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy name, through Christ the Lord. Amen.”
I attended this church until I had memorized all of these words and until I could speak them joyfully into the air because I didn’t have to read them anymore. And then I kept attending until the words became rote and boring and I could have used a change. And then I kept attending until I didn’t mean any of these words anymore and I recited them with my mouth while falling asleep in my brain or thinking about the hair color of the person in front of me or trying to count how many times throughout the service people coughed. And then I kept attending until I hated these words.
And then do you know what? After several months of being bored out of my skull at church, these words began to mean something again. As though repeating them again and again had slowly and softly drilled a hole through my chest and all of the sudden the hole reached my very heart. It was like looking at one of those illusion paintings that first looks like a bunch of specks and then turns into a picture of dolphins or clowns or reindeer and then it was as if I looked deeper still and saw my own face reflected in the glossy paper of the painting and then I looked even harder and saw my own features and habits painted into each little orange and red and brown speck.
These words, “The Collect”, had become some of my best friends. I found out that these words pretty much cover it. That in saying these words, I am saying so much more; I am saying that I trust in God’s best and that really all I want is to worship Him anyway and that He knows all of my deepest wonderings and questions and wounds and desires, and He loves me anyway.
So it turns out my professor actually knew what he was talking about. Go figure. And now I regularly use liturgical prayers before meals and while falling asleep and when I am so desperately needy and lost that I don’t know what else to pray. Because now I recognize the depth, the meaning, the tradition and the community behind these prayers, and I truly believe that I am saying more than just these words. That I am using these words as the safety net to fall into when my own tightrope of made up prayers is no longer sturdy enough to stand on.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
The Beautiful Exchange
Some time ago, a close friend of mine was in desperate need of some physical healing. Her friends were praying for it. Her family. Her church elders. Even people who didn't know her were agreeing in prayer that she would be healed.
And she wasn't.
I have frequently heard stories of sick people being made well. Addictions being broken. Relationships restored. I have even experienced healing in myself. In my own body. In my own family. A man at my church once had a tumor the size of a softball in his stomach. The biopsy showed that the tumor was cancerous, so before he went in for surgery, a bunch of us laid our hands on him and prayed in Jesus' name that he would be healed. Doctors removed the tumor, and when they opened it up for further testing, they found it was hollow. A shell. Emptiness where the cancer had been. And (as the story usually goes with healings), there was no medical explanation for it.
But this is not always the case. Sometimes people don't get better. Sometimes people die. Or worse, sometimes they live the rest of their days in extreme discomfort and suffering. And the question that never seems to go away arises once again - why?
I have a dear friend who loves the Lord very much, who desires to please Him, and who walks with Him daily. She believes that God always ALWAYS desires to heal and that He always can heal. So the reason we are not healed when we ask for it has nothing to do with God. He would if He "could", but either we are doing something wrong, there is a spiritual attack happening, or something else is not right. This friend argues that if God is not healing the problem, it is not God's fault.
Many people disagree with her, pointing out that God may be withholding His power from His sick children to teach them about patience, to give them experiences that will help someone else in the future, to strengthen their faith. But this friend of mine, she doesn't like that. She says, "That would be like me breaking my son's arm just to teach him a lesson. Or giving my daughter food poisoning just to make my other kids thankful that they have healthy bodies. No, God would not do that. If I, a wicked human, know how to give good things to my children, how much more would a perfect God know how to do that? If someone is not receiving healing, God is not the one making that happen. He would not do that." Makes sense, huh?
But the thing I always go back to when talking to this friend is, but isn't that exactly what God did?
Didn't God take His perfect Son, who lived in eternal bliss, and send Him to earth? To a place of selfishness, destruction, disease, pain. Just so we could experience Emmanuel - God with us?
And didn't God allow His Son to be beat up, mocked, and killed by a bunch of evil, misguided men? Just so those very men could experience salvation and forgiveness?
Didn't God Himself reject His own Son for the sin that was piled on top of Him on the cross? Just so the rest of us could be accepted with open arms into the Kingdom of God?
Jesus was the perfect child - He obeyed and respected His family, He listened to directions and followed the rules, He cared for others, He shared, He put Himself last.
And I was the dirty little neighbor girl, who pulled other kids' hair, who stole toys, who shoved, who peed in other people's lawns.
And I find myself shocked anew that God would exchange that perfect child. For me. The nasty little reject. He took His Only Son and said, "No, Jesus. I don't want you right now. I want her."
Oh, His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. May I be always willing to accept God's "unfairness" - both the bad and the good. May I accept His, "No, I'm not going to heal you right now," just as easily as I accept His, "Yes, child, I want you."
May we all.
And she wasn't.
I have frequently heard stories of sick people being made well. Addictions being broken. Relationships restored. I have even experienced healing in myself. In my own body. In my own family. A man at my church once had a tumor the size of a softball in his stomach. The biopsy showed that the tumor was cancerous, so before he went in for surgery, a bunch of us laid our hands on him and prayed in Jesus' name that he would be healed. Doctors removed the tumor, and when they opened it up for further testing, they found it was hollow. A shell. Emptiness where the cancer had been. And (as the story usually goes with healings), there was no medical explanation for it.
But this is not always the case. Sometimes people don't get better. Sometimes people die. Or worse, sometimes they live the rest of their days in extreme discomfort and suffering. And the question that never seems to go away arises once again - why?
I have a dear friend who loves the Lord very much, who desires to please Him, and who walks with Him daily. She believes that God always ALWAYS desires to heal and that He always can heal. So the reason we are not healed when we ask for it has nothing to do with God. He would if He "could", but either we are doing something wrong, there is a spiritual attack happening, or something else is not right. This friend argues that if God is not healing the problem, it is not God's fault.
Many people disagree with her, pointing out that God may be withholding His power from His sick children to teach them about patience, to give them experiences that will help someone else in the future, to strengthen their faith. But this friend of mine, she doesn't like that. She says, "That would be like me breaking my son's arm just to teach him a lesson. Or giving my daughter food poisoning just to make my other kids thankful that they have healthy bodies. No, God would not do that. If I, a wicked human, know how to give good things to my children, how much more would a perfect God know how to do that? If someone is not receiving healing, God is not the one making that happen. He would not do that." Makes sense, huh?
But the thing I always go back to when talking to this friend is, but isn't that exactly what God did?
Didn't God take His perfect Son, who lived in eternal bliss, and send Him to earth? To a place of selfishness, destruction, disease, pain. Just so we could experience Emmanuel - God with us?
And didn't God allow His Son to be beat up, mocked, and killed by a bunch of evil, misguided men? Just so those very men could experience salvation and forgiveness?
Didn't God Himself reject His own Son for the sin that was piled on top of Him on the cross? Just so the rest of us could be accepted with open arms into the Kingdom of God?
Jesus was the perfect child - He obeyed and respected His family, He listened to directions and followed the rules, He cared for others, He shared, He put Himself last.
And I was the dirty little neighbor girl, who pulled other kids' hair, who stole toys, who shoved, who peed in other people's lawns.
And I find myself shocked anew that God would exchange that perfect child. For me. The nasty little reject. He took His Only Son and said, "No, Jesus. I don't want you right now. I want her."
Oh, His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. May I be always willing to accept God's "unfairness" - both the bad and the good. May I accept His, "No, I'm not going to heal you right now," just as easily as I accept His, "Yes, child, I want you."
May we all.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Pinned
Have you heard of Pinterest? It's basically on online ideas folder where you can keep track of all of the beautiful images you find online - whether they involve fashion, crafts, books, home decor, wedding plans, whatever! It keeps all your images in one place and (best of all), attached to each image is a link to the original source, so you never have to go back and figure out where you found the website that showed how to make those adorable light bulb vases, or who sells those fun fall boots! You can also browse other people's Pinboards and find millions (literally!) of things to add to your own Pinboard. So maybe it's a waste of time, but hey. For people like me who love crafts, learning new things, and collecting information, this is going to be a very useful tool.
I'm talking as if I already use it. But I don't...not yet anyway. I went online to start my own Pinboard today, but it turns out you have to request an invitation from Pinterest to join their community. So, while I'm waiting for my invitation to grace (pun) my inbox, I have already found several deliciously fun things that I want to "pin"...so here they are.
http://www.suzyssitcom.com/2010/12/feature-friday-faux-metal-wall-art.html - pretty wall hangings made out of toilet paper rolls! Talk about redemption...
http://www.lifeinmotionphotography.com/photoblog/?p=1230 - footprint reindeer. The first Christmas after Rod and I have a baby, I WILL use this as a Christmas card.
http://pinterest.com/pin/213544406/ - I knew my love for empty frames would come in handy someday.
http://pinterest.com/pin/213719001/ - I knew as soon as my baby niece was born in April that I would be going broke for her...this is why.
Then there are things that I would probably never actually make, but they are just beautiful and inspiring...
http://pinterest.com/pin/213760389/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213766464/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213762817/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213765619/
Enjoy!
I'm talking as if I already use it. But I don't...not yet anyway. I went online to start my own Pinboard today, but it turns out you have to request an invitation from Pinterest to join their community. So, while I'm waiting for my invitation to grace (pun) my inbox, I have already found several deliciously fun things that I want to "pin"...so here they are.
http://www.suzyssitcom.com/2010/12/feature-friday-faux-metal-wall-art.html - pretty wall hangings made out of toilet paper rolls! Talk about redemption...
http://www.lifeinmotionphotography.com/photoblog/?p=1230 - footprint reindeer. The first Christmas after Rod and I have a baby, I WILL use this as a Christmas card.
http://pinterest.com/pin/213544406/ - I knew my love for empty frames would come in handy someday.
http://pinterest.com/pin/213719001/ - I knew as soon as my baby niece was born in April that I would be going broke for her...this is why.
Then there are things that I would probably never actually make, but they are just beautiful and inspiring...
http://pinterest.com/pin/213760389/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213766464/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213762817/
http://pinterest.com/pin/213765619/
Enjoy!
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