Post Category → scripture

sums.

Sometimes I find myself with a lull. Both boys are napping, and I just don’t feel like jumping right into household chores. Usually it’s because I’m super tired. So instead of working, I decide to ponder. (When you’re super tired, work is ALWAYS a better option than pondering.)

I ponder my current life. I contemplate how the weeks, days, hours are being spent. I reflect on the grand goal of my life — to glorify God — and visualize the trajectory of my actual life and the bulls eye of said goal.

You know where this is going, right?

Yeah. I come to the conclusion that I’m clearly way off the mark. I’m never going to hit it. How can

1. getting dressed
2. getting two more people dressed
3. helping my son make his bed and brush his teeth
4. nursing the hysterical baby
5. making pb&j
6. cleaning up the spilled milk
7. removing the pb&j plastered to little arms and hands and mouths
8. changing a diaper
9. reading a book
10. not losing my temper when my nose get bashed while little people get comfy for storytime
11. starting the book again
12. settling disputes over who touched who
13. taking care of the kid who disobeyed by not laying his head down
14. praying for the 3 year old as loudly as i can because the 1 year old has totally lost it
15. wiping the huge tears off chubby cheeks
16. nursing the baby to sleep
17. deciding to tackle the day’s demands (i.e. washing dishes, vacuuming, making dinner, folding laundry…)

amount to glorifying God??

I certainly don’t feel like I have to be living in Africa in a hut in order to be living a radical Christian life, but don’t I have to be doing more than the above? I’m suddenly panicking. How am I ever going to see the glory of God in my life doing this? I want my kids to know and love Jesus. I want the fruit of the Spirit to ooze out of me. I want our lives to be spent in service to the Church and the world around us. I DON’T SEE THIS ADDING UP!!

(I warned you, there’s panic involved.)

My head is hurting, trying to figure it out, trying to decide what radical thing I need to start doing in order to get a radical outcome. There are tears.

And then there’s a whisper:

Faithfulness.

Oh. I’ve heard this before. In fact, I’ve been here before. (Would you believe that young motherhood is NOT the first time I’ve found myself in a hum-drum sort of season? It’s true!)

Be faithful. Do what you know to do… faithfully.

And I suddenly realize what this is: a challenge to faithful sowing. Faithfulness is obviously a highly-valued attribute, but I forget that being faithful doesn’t necessarily mean doing some Really Big Hard Thing. It usually means doing Some Little Thing Every Single Day No Matter What. That’s what faithfulness means.

It means that even when I look at what I’ve accomplished today and some niggling little voice says, “Feel like a hamster in a wheel yet?”, I don’t cave. I don’t quit sowing these plain-jane little seeds in search of a huge glamorous job — because that would be unfaithful.

And it’s sowing those plain brown seeds with eyes of faith, knowing that there’s some sort of miracle inside that befuddles the human mind. It’s knowing that the sum is greater than its parts. It’s being content to just trust and obey.

“Trust in the LORD and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the LORD;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light
And your judgment as the noonday.”

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked…” — psalm 37; galations 6

thinking out loud

Thinking about:

— “For I am convinced…” (Romans 8.38)
— “…we overwhelmingly conquer.” (Romans 8.37)
— “Happy is the people…” (Psalm 144.5)

— About joy. About living out Good News. And how it boils down to this conviction — this being convinced — of God’s love. How that sense of being convinced needs to be my first response to life’s situations.

There are so many ups and downs — that’s just the way life is. But living Good News means that somehow my “downs” are framed by this joy, happiness, conquering, and conviction.

And I think that first response needs to be learned every day, a discipline of the soul. It won’t just appear on the day when my world gets turned upside down. My feet need to already be familiar with this Rock. I need to be well-practiced at choosing joy, being persuaded, living happy.

— Thinking that there’s a lot to all this. It’s a lot of work. And my soul isn’t always very responsive to disciplines. (Well, it is responsive. Digging in your heels and increasing your scowl is a response, I guess.)

— About how I’d rather be convinced of God’s love for me than sulk in my corner about how tired I am. Doesn’t that just sound much more fun? (God’s ideas are always the best ones, I tell ya.)

are you convinced?

Paul is:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For I am convinced.

That’s how I want to be.

romans 12

This little chunk from Romans 12 has been in my scripture memorization rotation for the last few months. Each time it comes up for review, I am challenged and inspired:

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor;
Not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,
Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer,
Contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

leftovers

Years ago I heard that Susan Brown, mother of many, would say that some days all the devotions she could get was reading a Bible story to her kids. That, I knew, was something worth remembering.

Fast forward to this past week, and you’ll find me reading Bible stories to Jameson at lunch every day. He’s recently become very enamored with Jesus, and wants nothing to do with Old Testament stories (even though, you know, every story whispers His name…) He’s not happy unless I can point to the illustration of Jesus — and then we can proceed. Anyway, his very favorite selection he calls The Food Story, otherwise known to us more learned adults as The Feeding of the 5,000. We’ve read it many times.

And can I just say, wow.

I’m so blessed by that story.

I’ve noticed this week that:

:: Jesus used kid food. Nothing fancy, just, you know, pb&j. Kinda like me. I don’t usually feel much more special than that.

:: Jesus took what wasn’t enough to begin with and managed to end up with leftovers. Leftovers. The mere mention of the word abundance makes my dry and tired soul stir, and that’s the word I see all over Jesus’ miracle.

:: Jesus lifted this piddly little lunchbox to heaven, blessed it, and… it was still a piddly lunchbox. But it managed to feed 5,000. And I think, how often do I say, “God, You’re going to have to multiply my grace/patience/ability/energy, because it’s just not enough,” and then I expect to see some abra cadabra za-za-zing thing happen, when that’s just not Jesus’ style. There was no *poof* moment when suddenly, before their very eyes, the mountaintop was covered with loaves and fish[es]. And there just may not ever be that moment in my life, either. And that’s okay. He can still feed 5,000.

:: And there will be leftovers. Did I mention that? Amazing.

So yeah. I look around at the untidy corners and surfaces of my house, see my boys who need, need, need, wonder what’s for dinner because I’m starving, not to even mention my poor husband, and there is never a Fairy Godmother who shows up and snaps her magic fingers. But there’s me, humble and pb&j-ish as I am, and I never look like much more than how I started, but amazingly, He multiplies. I put my hand to the plow, lift my efforts to heaven, say, “Use me to feed them,” and He does.

And maybe, just maybe, there will even be leftovers.

why we’re not emergent.

Now that I’ve finished this book — and yes, I was sad to see it end! — I thought I would just give a little plug for it.

My friend tells me that the Emergent church “died” a couple of weeks ago. I suppose that could make this book a bit irrelevant, except that the thinking and attitudes behind the movement still exist. Theooze.com is still up and running, and to me, that makes the book still worth reading.

Kluck and DeYoung do a great job at treating this subject. While there certainly are a few jabs at the emergent church, and a laugh here and there at their expense, it is primarily a fantastic apologetic work — meaning, here’s what they say, here’s what that means theologically, and here’s what the Bible says. I really appreciated them keeping on track. Meaning, it’s not a big long diatribe against a movement that happened to get under their skin. It’s a sincere warning sounded by two guys who see very real danger ahead.

They also do a good job at pointing out historical errors the emergent church makes. Truthfully (and these are my words), the emergent church movement is much like the 14 year old son who thinks his dad is so dumb, not realizing that in seven more years, he will discover his dad a genius. In a fit of adolescent pride and self-indulgence, “leaders” of the emergent movement are ready to throw out 2000 years of church history and claim to have discovered the true meaning of Jesus’ teachings. One can only hope that in seven years, they’ll discover the countless churches around the world who have embraced solid doctrine and are serving orphans and widows.

After reading this book, I was reminded again of how very central the gospel must be in our teaching, and in our message to the world. Anything other than Christ crucified, risen, and returning, and you have just another message of bondage to the law, and the false hope of utopia on earth. Jesus is the Head of the Church and the hope of the world.

I want to live for Him.