Scripture

Abiding–even in traffic

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This is the slightest bit fuzzy, but I couldn't resist blowing this up a bit to see this beautiful bird's detail. He was hanging out in my yard last week, and I managed to get a couple shots of him.

This is the slightest bit fuzzy, but I couldn’t resist blowing this up a bit to see this beautiful bird’s detail. He was hanging out in my yard last week, and I managed to get a couple shots of him.

It was mid-morning on a Saturday. I’d already taken the boys to their soccer games and returned home. The afternoon had been claimed by the three teens, who needed to shop for school spirit week items. I was their transportation. After that, I would fix dinner, run a younger child to-from a party, and finally collapse.

It was going to be a long day, much of it filled with shopping crowds–always a stressor for my introverted side–and I knew I needed a space of solitude before I plunged into the second part of it. I shut myself in the downstairs bathroom and tried to quiet my mind, to stop the responsibilities and concerns that shout so loud, that so often drown out the Spirit’s whispers.

Into the stillness came a verse, each word in it distinct, like the notes in a simple melody.

I realized it was a melody, was the Scripture I’d set to a tune so I could sing it over my younger daughter each night. “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of our God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit abide with you, now and forever. Amen.”*

That was my prayer, my gift for that time, for the day ahead.

Again I prayed it. Again, focusing on phrases: Grace of Christ, love of God, fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Forever.

And then on the one word: abide.

May grace, love, and fellowship abide in me…

as I abide in God.

Abide.

Help me to abide, I prayed, and an image appeared now in my mind: a life-giving Vine, its clinging branch strong and vibrant.

“Mom, when are we leaving?”

The quiet was broken, and the next, crazy phase of the day began. It was full of traffic, of driving, of crowds, of noise.

Yet Abide ruled the day, inserting itself again and again…

And this led to miracles

Calm in the thrift store. I get jumpy so easily when I have to shop, when I’m in crowds, when I see no end in sight to the shopping. Abide, I heard. And I enjoyed time with the three older girls as we hunted for crazy items for spirit week: tutu skirts, Hawaiian leis, “mom jeans,” ugly sweaters. I even found myself some jeans—ones Em approved of, definitely not “mom jeans”—and didn’t go nuts in the process.

Miracles.

Twelve hours after praying in the bathroom, I was close to sleep. I readied my computer for shutdown, clearing all my screens and then closing my Web pages one at a time. The final page to close: Bible Gateway. The previous day’s verse-of-the-day was still on the screen. On a sudden whim, I refreshed the site to read the verse for the current day, less than one hour before it would change to the next day’s Scripture.

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.”

No way!

But yes!

God had worked miracles as I’d shopped in crowded stores and while my car guzzled gasoline and I was stuck behind its wheel. Why was I surprised that the last one of the day was delivered via technology?!

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of our God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit ABIDE with us, now and forever!

So be it.

*I made the song with the word “abide” in it, but I can’t find a Scripture version that actually includes that word (I have no idea why I began singing it with “abide” included).  BUT the morning I prayed that verse, it came to my mind with the word “abide,” which then led to my envisioning the vine and branches and thinking about Christ’s words about abiding in Him. SO, I’m using the word “abide” in the song version, but not, of course, in Bible Gateway’s verse of the day. That link includes a couple parallel versions.

I’m grateful for Immutability

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Immutability: a big word meaning changeless, not capable of or susceptible to change

I’ve been very grateful for that attribute of God lately. As if it’s not enough that I live in a culture in which change is constant (in fact, change is one of its few constants), in a home with so many personalities (six kids, three of them teenage girls), and in a schedule that is both crazy and fluctuating…

I also am crazy and fluctuating.

I can be happy and joyous one hour and overwhelmed by all the pain and injustice in the world the next. One moment I can be confident in the sovereignty of God; in the next I am doubting and fearful. I remember at times that my security and identity rest in God, but I forget that truth daily (okay, more like every hour–or more) and find myself swinging between insecurity and pride as I compare myself with others.

With all that, God’s immutability is a wonder, a blessing, a miracle.

So when I reached the end of Hebrews today and read these words, I found in them a treasure. I hope they are the same for you.

8 Jesus Christ (the Messiah) is [always] the same, yesterday, today, [yes] and forever (to the ages).*

And because that is true–that Jesus Christ is never swayed because HE IS the great I AM (never the “I was” or the “I will be,” always the “I AM”)–then the benediction that follows can also be constantly true.

20 Now may the God of peace [Who is the Author and the Giver of peace], Who brought again from among the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood [that sealed, ratified] the everlasting agreement (covenant, testament),

21 Strengthen (complete, perfect) and make you what you ought to be and equip you with everything good that you may carry out His will; [while He Himself] works in you and accomplishes that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ (the Messiah); to Whom be the glory forever and ever (to the ages of the ages). Amen (so be it).**

Amen!

*This link is to the entire chapter of Hebrews 13 in the Amplified version.

**This link is to Hebrews 13:20-21 in a parallel view of the AMP and the New Living Translation.

 

Not so “ordinary”

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There is no such thing as ordinary.
The daily grind, whatever it is for each of us, becomes “ordinary,” but it is anything but. In reality, what we consider “ordinary” is supernatural, filled with the common grace of God.
I remember an idea from a Tim Keller sermon (he’s been a favorite of late): Does someone in your life love you? Is there someone to hold your hand? Does someone ask you how your day is going and sometimes even listen when it’s not going so well?
Grace—it’s all grace. You didn’t do anything to deserve any of that, and without Grace, you wouldn’t experience any of it.
I remember a comment I heard a family counselor make on a radio show. “We humans are not hard-wired for real relationship. Deep down, if we are truthful, we have a “what’s in it for me?” expectation about every single relationship we are in—even the parent-to-child relationship. The only reason I can see for any human relationship retaining even a trace of goodness is completely the grace of God.”
Thinking of these two comments, I try to imagine “ordinary” with all common grace removed. The first images that pop up are from Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic book The Road, in which lawlessness prevails; the strong prey upon any weaker than they, with no pity; and no “human decency” remains. The one relationship readers would call “normal”—that of a father and son who care for each other—is in stark contrast to everyone else. For the sake of food and shelter, people will do anything, even kill and eat their own children.
For those who have not read The Road, just imagine “ordinary” without common grace as the worst moments of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, as the inside of a brothel; as the continual torture inflicted upon prisoners of war.
In this kind of “ordinary,” there is no such thing as a mother’s and father’s natural love for children, no sense of morality or “right,” no conscience at all. There is no such thing as respect and concern for one’s fellow man.
This is hard to fathom in my “ordinary” world. Common grace is so, well, common. But if God withdrew His active goodness–which is present in this world without us giving Him a single reason to give it—the result would be hellish, brutal.
This should transform my idea of “ordinary”—which I far too often think of as a burden. It should enable me to see my ordinary—with its daily grind and up-and-down relationships and disappointments and boredom and longing for “something more”—as truly a miracle.
When I think of my family and friends as miraculous gifts, then all the daily grind related to relationship with them can be transformed as well: meal prep, grocery shopping, carpooling, laundry, maybe even cleaning (though I’m not sure if that one fits in my “ordinary” category—extraordinary perhaps?).
We humans often want a change IN our ordinary. We often covet the “ordinary” of other people. “If only…” we think. But, in truth, a change in mindset, not a change in circumstances, is what transforms our ordinary.
And that, God reminds us, is a job the He is eager to do for and with us.
Hallelujah!
Verses for study:
Romans 12:2– The Amplified has so much richness, but the New Living lays it out plain and clear. The link above takes you to a page with both translations side by side.
Romans 8:6– This link, too, takes you to both the Amp and the NLT side by side.

Story Sharing

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See the note at the bottom of the post for more information about Cafe K'Tizo.

See the note at the bottom of the post for more information about Cafe K’Tizo.

This morning I interviewed Kertes, a Wheaton Academy (WA) alumna who is now a student at Wheaton College, for a story I’m writing about WA’s international students (Kertes was one). I picked her up from her dorm and we drove to Café K’Tizo, where we enjoyed coconut matchas (Kertes’s suggestion) and she answered all my questions.
One of them was about her journey to faith in Christ. She began her answer by going back to her sophomore year, her first year at the Academy. She recounted how all the talk about Jesus that she heard in her Bible class and chapel and at church was new to her. “I didn’t know the deep meaning behind it,” she said. “I just thought it was something people did.” Her initial surprise and interest soon gave way to questions. She became defensive and confused by the gap she often saw between what Christians said they should do and actually did.
Her difficulties grew during her junior year, a tough year filled with pressures from a rigorous class load, college decisions, and troubles in her living situation. By the end of it, she was more than ready for summer break. “It will all be better when I get home,” she thought. And it was—but not quite. She did enjoy the deep relationship she has with her parents and good connections with friends, but somehow these weren’t enough. The very things she had thought would make her happy again, didn’t. “Something was still missing,” she said, and she found herself watching the non-Christians who surrounded her. She saw that they, too, were experiencing a deep emptiness.
When she returned to the States for her senior year, she went to church and a miracle happened. Christianity suddenly made sense to her. “I realized nothing else would ever fulfill me, only Jesus. All the knowledge I’d learned came back to me, and I was overwhelmed. I cried that morning in church and then took communion. That was when I came to the Lord. I realized I still didn’t understand everything about Christianity, but I believed it.”
Her life still had its pressures, but as she took those to God in prayer, she experienced His comfort. “My relationship with Christ gave me peace, and it changed me. I began looking at others’ needs rather than just my own.”
When she told her parents of her decision to become a Christian, her father shared with her that his own father, whom he never met, had been one, too. “That made me feel amazed,” Kertes said, “about how God had been working in my life.”
Our time was up then, and when we stood to go, Kertes thanked me. “No,” I said,” “Thank you. I love getting to hear testimonies of how God draws people to Himself.”
She smiled. “But it was also encouraging to me, to get to tell it and remember God’s work all over again.”
I dropped her off at the College and then drove home, her words running through my head. I was reminded of a conversation I had last spring during a meeting at church. Each person attending had shared a short testimony of seeing God’s faithfulness, and after the meeting, the young man sitting next to me turned to me and said, “I need this. When I’m in my everyday, individual life, I struggle with doubts and fears. Sometimes I wonder if Christianity is really true. What I’m experiencing individually doesn’t seem like it’s enough. But when we come together, proclaiming the faith and sharing all our stories of God working in us, it affirms reality. I am encouraged by others’ stories and reminded of God’s work past and present.”
An image jumped into my mind. “It’s like the stones the Israelites dropped in the river Jordan as they crossed into the Promised Land. One stone dropped in would barely make a ripple, but one after another, all together, the pile of them disrupted the flow of the river. My own stone of remembering God’s work for me is often not enough to disrupt the flow of my doubts and fears. But when you drop your stone on top of mine, and then another person does, and another, my doubts get disrupted, and the Truth is evident.”
In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he wrote, “For I am yearning to see you, that I may impart and share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen and establish you; that is, that we may be mutually strengthened and encouraged and comforted by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” Paul, the great apostle, understood that his own faith benefited when he heard others’ testimonies.
Let’s share stones of remembrance with each other today.

*I’m plugging here for Café K’Tizo, which is owned and operated by Judy and Bruce Duncan, who love Jesus and love people of all cultures and have combined their loves [including tea, of course] in this absolutely wonderful café/teashop. If you’re in the Wheaton area, check it out; if not, you can order K’Tizo teas online.

Longing for the Presence

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Elisabeth Elliot wrote that a clam glorifies God better than we do because the clam is doing what it was created to do, and we are not. I thought of that quote when I saw this picture I took of a dragonfly, basking in the sunlight--just as we were meant to rejoice in the presence of God.

Elisabeth Elliot wrote that a clam glorifies God better than we do because the clam is doing what it was created to do, and we are not. I thought of that quote when I saw this picture I took of a dragonfly, basking in the sunlight–just as we were meant to rejoice in the presence of God.

“If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.”

Moses said that. It’s recorded in Exodus 33, just after the Israelites rebelled against God by worshipping the golden calf. Despite this flagrant sin, God extends mercy. He tells them He will still send them to the “land flowing with milk and honey” with angels clearing the way ahead of them, “But I will not go with you,” He says, “because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”

Moses has been experiencing the presence of God, though, in some incredible ways. God’s presence was a visible cloud by day and a fire by night. Moses went into the tent of meeting, and the Lord spoke with him there “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Moses has gotten a taste of God in His reality, and he doesn’t want to give it up.

So he pushes back against God’s pronouncement. He says, ““You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”

The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.  How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

“If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.”

Moses refused to live without the presence of God in his everyday life.

That sentence has stuck in my mind for months, and I’ve wondered what it would be like to walk through my days in the presence of God.

Then, just a few weeks ago, I was reading the Amplified version of Hebrews, and I got to the section where the writer expounds on Christ’s qualifications to be our High Priest, our go-between, the one who offers the worthy sacrifice as well as being the sacrifice Himself. Christ’s petition as High Priest was heard, it says in Heb. 5:7, “because of His reverence toward God.” Then the Amplified adds this explanatory phrase: “in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father.”

I immediately thought of Moses’ protest.

Moses experienced just a taste of God’s presence, and he couldn’t live without it. In fact, it made him want more. Further on in Exodus 33, he begs to see God’s glory, and God reminds him that while he is in his earthly, death-bound body, he can’t see all of it.

But God covers him with His hand and passes behind him and still, despite the “protection,” Moses’ face shines so much the Israelites are afraid of him.

Christ, as God Himself, and as a human in complete fellowship with God the Father, had experienced far more than Moses. He knew the fullness of God’s bright presence, and “life” without it was a “horror.” No independence (like that offered to Christ by Satan during His temptation) was worth that horror.

Yet we live with this horror every day. We chose this horror in the garden, when humanity turned away from the presence of God and sought independence from His presence. We’ve been doing the same ever since, and the longing for and joy we were meant to experience in God’s presence has been turned to fear and hiding and even loathing. You might say we were given what we asked for.

Yet, through Christ, the perfect High Priest who longed to stay in God’s presence continually—and did, we have the opportunity, like Moses, to long for God’s presence again, to even boldly ask for it! F. B. Meyer, in his book Moses, the Servant of God, wrote, “The apostle Paul expressly refers to this incident when he says that we all may, with unveiled faces, behold the glory of the Lord, and be transformed (II Cor. 3:13-18). That blessed vision, which of old was given only to the great leader of Israel, is now within reach of each individual believer. The Gospel has no fences to keep the crowd off the mount of vision; the lowliest and most unworthy of its children may pass upward where the shining glory is to be seen. ‘We all… are changed.’”

Through Christ we can long for God again. We can understand that our deepest desperation is not a need for independence or personal significance but is in actuality a desire for the living Presence of God.

And through Christ we have the opportunity to enter that Presence.

Let’s take it.

a suggested read

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I link all Scripture references I use in my posts to Bible Gateway. If you haven’t used the resource before, it’s an excellent online tool. It’s not only easy to search for a particular Scripture or theme or key word, you can also view the same verse in multiple versions (and languages), listen to it read aloud, and read commentary on it.

Bible Gateway also has an excellent blog, contributed to by its own staff and guest writers. The common theme, of course, is that each and every post has to do with Scripture.

All of that to say, I found this great post on the BG blog this morning related to the book of Job (which fascinates me more and more as I grow older), and I thought I would pass it on. It’s titled “Job is a Book About Jesus: an Interview with Christopher Ash.”

Hope you enjoy!

the inner eye

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Thought I would share some pictures we've actually taken of our recent moments. This is a picture Em took of PJ.

Thought I would share some pictures we’ve actually taken of our recent moments. This is a picture Em took of PJ.

During her freshman year of high school, Judy took a media arts class. (Judy and her younger sister, Kelly, are international students at Wheaton Academy and have lived with us during the past two school years. They are currently at home with their beloved mom and dad but will return to the Underwood household in a little under a month. We are quite excited about that–at the same time we know it is very hard for their parents.) One of the emphases of the media arts class was photography, and Judy made good use of my Nikon. It was fun to download pictures and see the various styles of the three different users

Another picture taken by Em

Another picture taken by Em

(Judy, Emily, and I).

One day, while Judy and I were out walking, I saw something beautiful and bemoaned the fact I didn’t have a camera with me. “You have to take a picture with your inner eye,” she told me. It was something her media arts teacher, the very talented and bighearted Matt Hockett, taught her. “He said when we take special note of something beautiful, we carry it with us, and it is a gift forever.”

And another by Em--of her favorite subject matter: PJ

And another by Em–of her favorite subject matter: PJ

I’ve remembered that, and I was reminded of it when we recently watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Photographer Sean O’Connell (played by Sean Penn) has gone to great effort to take a picture of the reclusive snow leopard, but when it finally appears, he moves his head away from the camera.

Walter Mitty asks him, “When are you going to take it?”

Sean says, “Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

“Stay in it?” Mitty asks.

“Yeah. Right there. Right here.”

This scene in turn reminded me of a conversation I had a while back with a friend. We talked about not living in the past or the future but accepting the present moment as exactly where (or when) God wants us to be. We rob ourselves of His intent in our lives when we fail or refuse to stay in the present. We discussed the “waiting patiently” so often mentioned in the Psalms–that perhaps it is not waiting in the sense of wanting the moment or time period to pass so we can experience something different, but it is waiting in that place/time with the expectation that there is purpose in the moment/time period itself, no matter how difficult it is. We brainstormed other things that seem to relate, such as the “abiding” that Christ emphasizes in John 15. We brought in the creation of time, and how God has made and is making a day specifically for her and another specifically for me–with some points of overlap (the Amplified version speaks of it as God “bringing about” a day). That wowed us! We used the words “stay,” “sojourn,” and “continue” to help us grasp the idea of living in the present moment in a God-honoring way.

I’ve been practicing taking “photos” with my inner eye: the snail-like trail I leave behind me when I walk through the wet grass at the dog park, and how the sun’s early rays turn it silver; the house sparrow swaying on a thin limb above a gathering of other small birds–the white band around his neck reminds me of a clerical collar, and I imagine him delivering a well-crafted sermon to his audience; the exquisite spider web that glistens with dew.

Perhaps we can also practice the active treasuring of each moment, and as we practice we can learn to rejoice and be glad in each day, in each moment (Psalm 118:24). We can see our days with an inner eye that is informed by eternity and Truth, and we can carry them within as gifts that remind us of God’s faithfulness and sovereignty.

 

 

Not an Agent

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I took this shot the other night when the kids were doing sparklers.

I took this shot the other night when the kids were doing sparklers.

I am in the process of getting my young adult (YA) novel ready for submission to an agent. I’ve created an entire file full of synopses and “back of the book” blurbs of different lengths, character descriptions, chapter summaries, market analyses, etc,–all the elements different agents want in the proposals writers send to them.

In the middle of writing all these documents, I realized I must also trim the novel itself because right now its word count—which is often required on the first page of the proposal—is long enough that many agents won’t even read all those other carefully crafted pieces—or the manuscript itself.

When I told my husband this, he protested (sweet man). “What if it needs to be that long? What if it actually decreases its quality to shorten it?”

Years of cutting news and magazine articles down to word count specifications make me doubtful of that. A good cutting generally clears the fluff so the essential and good stand out more clearly.

Besides, the question of quality is moot. I read my husband this quote from Chuck Sambuchino at Writer’s Digest:

“Agents have so many queries that they are looking for reasons to say no. They are looking for mistakes, chinks in the armor, to cut their query stack down by one. And if you adopt the mentality that your book has to be long, then you are giving them ammunition to reject you.”

I transition here to the real point of this blog post.

As I was cutting last week, feeling a bit overwhelmed and very uncertain, I thought, “Oh, God, I am so thankful you are not like an agent!”

It’s true! God is not looking for reasons to turn us away, to narrow the field.

He is longing, in fact, to accept us, all of us, with open arms. He calls for us.

But as I thought about this more, I realized I/we act as though God were an agent.

Following his quote above, Chuck Sambuchino went on to say that writers can, of course, assume that all the fine points of their manuscript will outweigh the flaws, that agents will be so amazed by them, they will overlook the too-long word count or editing errors or…

We do the same with God. We come speaking of our tidy editing, acceptable word counts, stunning plot, or brilliant characters; we spread chapter summaries, 35- 50- and 75-word summaries, a 2-page synopsis, character descriptions, and a back-of-book blurb out on the table.

We pretend God is an agent we must impress.

We pretend we can impress Him.

Agents’ requirements remind me of the Old Testament Law, which Hebrews tells us could never make us perfect and Galatians calls “our guardian until Christ came.”

When we continue to live under the Law, coming to God with hands full of our offerings, our work, He will not accept any of it; He rejects it because every bit of it is flawed.

But here is an incredible difference: He hopes we will agree with His assessment.

Because that is the one thing, the only thing, that will gain us entrance with God: our acknowledgment that we need His provision (Christ), that we are incapable of producing anything acceptable.

He wants us to cry out in desperation for Him.

When we do, He crushes us in His arms.

Because though He can’t accept our work, doesn’t want our work…

He does want us.

When praying stretches long

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Just for fun--When PJ cracked this nut open, he found a heart!

Just for fun–When PJ cracked this nut open, he found a heart!

If you are praying, like I am, for a loved one to turn to Christ’s open arms, and that praying has stretched now for years, even decades, don’t give up hope. Remember that our God does not save because we turn to Him. Rather He saves because He longs to draw human hearts to Himself, to their right place of belonging in Him. He is not reluctant to save, and His love for our dear ones is far greater than our own.

I have been encouraged by Psalm 107 in this, and I would like to share it. Psalm 107 is a message for the redeemed: it includes the well-known phrase “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” Less well-known are the words that follows that phrase: “whom He has delivered from the hand of the adversary.”

As the rest of the psalm then describes, God is very creative and masterful in His methods of delivery, no matter who or what the adversary is. Verses 3-5 depict people wandering without a home. Rather than providing them with a home, God allows them to suffer, longing for shelter, until “…they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.” In Charles Spurgeon’s commentary on this psalm, he wrote, “Not till they were in extremities did they pray…(but) supplications which are forced out of us by stern necessity are none the less acceptable with God.” Is your loved one trying one thing after another to find satisfaction, and each thing fails? This disappointment may very well be the means of causing them to cry out to God for help, though, at first, they may cry out against Him.

Verses 10-12 speak of people in direct rebellion against God. They “spurned the counsel of the Most High.” God again used difficulties to bring them to a place of helplessness, but in that place they, too, cried out!

Verses 17 and 18 speak of those who are sick because of sin, but I also see in these verses a description of depression. These people take no joy in anything; they want to die. Yet in verse 19, they, too cry out.

Verses 23 and 24 describe those who are very much the opposite. They are busy with work and making money. They have experienced positive results, and they don’t see these as gifts from God but as effects of their own efforts. It takes a storm in their lives to reveal to them that their own wisdom and capabilities cannot save them. They, too, cry out.

And God, in each situation, draws near and delivers.

My own grandfather, a self-made man with a lot of rebellion in him, resisted God his entire life, despite the prayers of my grandmother and mother. But on his deathbed, this man, who had always insisted he would choose his own destiny, was confronted with eternity, and he cried out.

I am grateful for the story of the thief on the cross next to Christ. His cry, just before death—much like my grandfather’s—was answered, and we have that answer written down in Scripture. “This day you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus told him, and this gives me certainty my grandfather received the same answer. What a gift!

We may be praying for a rebel, a wanderer, one struggling with mental or emotional issues, or a very successful person.

God is willing and able to draw each one.

Keep praying that they will cry out. (Galatians 6:9)

And be assured that God will answer.

Like we’re loved

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*Scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.

We puppy-sat Nora, a 14-week-old English Bulldog, last week, and my children, as well as many of the neighborhood kids, were enamored with her.

PJ, Nora, and Chai playing tug of war

PJ, Nora, and Chai playing tug of war

But soon they discovered the not-so-pleasant side of caring for a pup. “She’s like a baby in her judgment but with a lot more mobility,” I reminded them when she chomped a plant in the garden, peed on the living room rug, or left tooth pricks in a Barbie doll’s arm.

“It’s a good thing she’s cute, huh?” I asked them. “Children and puppies. They require a lot of work, but at least they’re adorable.”

Chai was the only one who was happy to see Nora go back to her owners. Of course, the rest of us didn't have a puppy clawing at our face all week either.

Chai was the only one who was happy to see Nora go back to her owners. Of course, the rest of us didn’t have a puppy clawing at our face all week either.

They glared at her squashed face a moment more and then relented.

“Yeah.”

I find I still have that mentality with God.

He loves me because there is something inherently endearing about me.

I would never say it aloud, but the belief is there sometimes.

But the older I get, the more I understand how untrue it is—of myself or anyone, no matter how honorable or upright we seem.

In Lamentations, Jeremiah speaks of “compassionate” women of Jerusalem cooking and eating their own children (4:10). Before the starvation brought about by the siege of Babylon, these same women would have been appalled at the thought, but distress revealed a darkness in their hearts that had been there all along.

It is hard for me, too, to imagine myself capable of the horrific acts I read about in news articles. But I am. Put me in the right (or wrong) circumstances, strip me of comforts and necessities, replace my upbringing with an abusive situation…

“But for the grace of God,” my father used to say.

This truth is actually not discouraging (despite how it makes us feel). Reminders of our incapacity for good help us see that the love of God is certain—no matter what we do or don’t do.

This past season my husband’s soccer team made a poster for their locker room, and they put it right above the doorway they walk through on their way to the field. It read, big and bold, “Play like you’re loved.”

Perfect love casts out fear.

The fear we all have of God (it’s a good and necessary place to start in our relationship with Him) is based on the right belief that we can never measure up. God answered this fear with a love that fully accepts our inability to deserve it. His love has no conditions for us. We cannot earn it, and He has never expected us to.

Yet we still “play to be loved,” and we are always disappointed to find that all our efforts effect no true change in us. We do all kinds of good works and find that the bitterness or envy or self-loathing in our hearts is still there!

How paradoxical that only when we give up the striving to change ourselves can we be changed—by a love that is not dependent on our changing!

In the early pages of The Practice of the Presence of God, written about and by Brother Lawrence, a lay monk in the 17th century, his interviewer shared this about him. “When he sinned, he confessed it to God with these words: ‘I can do nothing better without You. Please keep me from falling and correct the mistakes I make.’ After that he did not feel guilty about the sin.” … “Brother Lawrence was aware of his sins and was not at all surprised by them. ‘That is my nature,’ he would say, ‘the only thing I know how to do.’ He simply confessed his sins to God, without pleading with Him or making excuses. After this, he was able to peacefully resume his regular activity of love and adoration. If Brother Lawrence didn’t sin, he thanked God for it, because only God’s grace could keep him from sinning.”

It is biblical to sorrow over our sin, but when we beat ourselves up over it, it is a reverse kind of pride. We get down on ourselves because we believe we are capable of better.

But we’re not, and it is far more profitable to confess and move on into God’s unconditional love. Confession is simply admitting to God, “I am sinful, and You are not. I acknowledge that great difference and Your perfection, and I am grateful You did something about it.”

He did do something about our inability! He did something incredible! And the result of that amazing sacrifice is that He is in us! We are in Him!

The “Play like you’re loved” poster came from the team’s season verse, John 17:23, in which Christ says, “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

This day, let’s play, live, work, and be like we are loved!