Hear my cry, O God;
Give heed to my prayer.
From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
For You have been a refuge for me,
A tower of strength against the enemy.
Let me dwell in Your tent forever;
Let me take refuge in the shelter of Your wings.
(Psalm 61:1-4)
Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
(James 4:8)
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.
(Hebrews 4:15-16)
Anyone who has spent time with a toddler knows about free will. One of the first words nearly all of us learn to say is NO.
Someone pointed out to me this morning that Jesus never preached about grace. It’s as if, for him, grace was a given. He demonstrated grace and lived the Father’s love, but his verbal message to us over and over was “You must have faith. Faith is your part.”
Faith is what engages grace.
I wanted to give my little granddaughter a frozen strawberry yogurt on a stick as a treat. She loves strawberry yogurt. It was very hot and I knew she would enjoy what I had prepared for her.
But she is 18 months old. She has free will. A parent learns quickly that you can pick up a child and take them where they do not want to go, but you cannot make them eat, or sleep, or use the potty or give grandma a hug. You can cajole, entice, plead, reward, punish and otherwise manipulate them, but you cannot make them do any one of these things – nor do it for them. They have a will.
Love does not permit me to shove a treat down her throat.
I had a yogurtsicle (and a warm wash cloth to help with the consequences of her inexperience). I also had a lot of love and hugs for her, which she did not earn, that I wanted to lavish on her, but in order to receive it she had to turn and respond to me.
I think this is a picture of our relationship with God. He has infinite grace and love to offer us, and we have the ability to say no. If we did not have the ability to say no, we would not have the ability to say yes.
I want a relationship with my granddaughter. I love her simply because she is my granddaughter. She doesn’t need to do anything to earn that love. I will love her even if she doesn’t turn around, but she will miss everything I have for her if she doesn’t make the choice to come to me.
God has so much love, so much grace, so much goodness waiting for us. He only wants us to respond to him. Trusting him enough to turn around from our ability to say no and acting upon our ability to say yes is called faith. It’s essential. Love does not permit him to shove his goodness down our throats. It is written, And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)
It’s all about relationship. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)
Reblogged from October 31, 2012.
Can you hear it?
Photo: dead tree
“In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!
It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail. And it is plain, too, that…
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I saw a bumper sticker once that said: He who dies with the most toys wins.
Ha!
We are part owners of a house, still partially under water, and not covered by insurance with an “act of God clause”, that is tagged “no entry.” That’s not a good sign.
We we also spent the weekend with some of our grandchildren, a daughter and son and our son-in-love who doctors gave a 0% chance of survival to just this spring. As we sat in the shade of the house (because our big shade tree blew over in a sudden micro-burst storm last summer) watching the children laughing as they played around the little inflatable swimming pool, I felt tremendous joy. Shade trees, houses, baubles? It all pales in comparison to life. It pales even more compared to eternal life in Christ.
Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity. (1 John 2:15-17 Msg)
God is still good.
This morning as I was editing photos of flowers a nursery rhyme came to mind: Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?
It struck me that a garden grows without a lot of effort on our part. Yes, we need to remove weeds and water and feed, but pulling plants up by the roots to measure progress tends to have a deleterious effect. Even pulling out weeds before seedlings are established with their own clear identities will become an act of violence and rip them out of the ground as well.
So often we think of the gift of discernment as the gift of point/counterpoint adversarial doctrinal debate rather than what the Bible calls it: the gift of discerning of spirits. Argument for the sake of argument may work in a science faculty in a university where theories are launched and frequently shot down, but it doesn’t work well in matters of the heart. By heart here I mean the deep longing for connection with our Creator part of us, the place where spirit and soul communicate. Try knocking down a point God is making and see how far it gets you.
Some people can detach themselves from emotional investment in an idea. Most of us can’t. That’s why endless debate over how a Christian grows, who’s in and who’s out or how the mechanism of transferring a person from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light actually works, or the proper way to organize a gathering of believers feels more disruptive to many people than providing them with a loving, supportive, safe environment
and leaving the rest up to God.
Sometimes we need to plant seeds and let Holy Spirit take responsibility for turning them into flowers or fruit.
So my re-interpretation of the song today might be, “Mary, Mary, good grief, girl! How can anything possibly grow in your garden if you have to be so contrary and come up with a counterpoint to debate every single little thing? If it weren’t for grace those silver bells and cockle shells would be a pile of dead dissected seedlings by now.”
He gives us our part to do in preparing the soil, planting seeds, watering, and harvesting the fruit, but it’s God who pulls off the miracles. He says, “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Then Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time! (Mark 4:26)
But He said to me,
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ, then,
I am content with weaknesses,
insults,
hardships,
persecutions,
and calamities.
For when I am weak,
then I am strong.
(2 Corinthians 12:9,10)
“When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus – born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death – I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about “winning the world.” His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life. He had nothing in the world and everything in God and the Spirit.”
― Gayle D. Erwin, The Jesus Style
“…and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
(Revelation 5:8)
God keep our land glorious and free.
I woke up with a song in my head. I’ve learned to pay attention to the seemingly random songs in my head, particularly if the music comes unbidden, is insistent, and like this one, is a song I don’t know very well. God speaks to people in different ways and for me it is often through music.
The song is “Don’t Stop Thinkin’ about Tomorrow.” That single line kept going through my head. I had to look it up. It’s by Fleetwood Mac from the 70’s. That’s why I didn’t remember it. In the 70’s I was a sleep-deprived young mother just trying to get to bed before my babies woke up. Who had time to listen to anything but nursery ditties?
If you wake up and don’t want to smile
If it takes just a little while
Open your eyes and look at the day
You’ll see things in a different way
Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be, better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
Why not think about times to come
And not about the things that you’ve done
If your life was bad to you
Just think what tomorrow will do
Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be, better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
All I want is to see you smile
If it takes just a little while
I know you don’t believe that it’s true
I never meant any harm to you
Don’t stop, thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be, better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
-Christine McVie
I’ve been thinking about loss. My son and my daughter-in-love and my granddaughter and my grandson are grieving the loss of all their belongings but for a car and three days worth of clothes. My heart ached for my granddaughter when she told me the thing she would miss the most was her treasure box which included some baby clothes and photos and precious little things wrapped in beautiful memories like the tissue paper scrunched around them. We often sat on her bedroom floor going through the box together.
My grandson said he would miss his games, especially his first computer game, which apparently is no longer made. And all his Lego. I’ve spent hours on the floor snapping Lego together with him -and quite a few more hours pushing wrong buttons as he tried to explain the proper way to play a wii game. The children have a beautiful attitude about losing all their toys and games and books -and the computer and the wii- but it still hurts.
My daughter-in-love has lost all the family photos lovingly and creatively displayed in scrapbooks she spent hours making. She is also a fine teacher who has lost her personal stash of teaching aids built up over years of teaching special-needs students.
My son is a fine hobby carpenter. He built my beautiful kitchen for me. Now all of his tools lie under flood water mixed with sewage — irretrievable, and uninsured because they were lost to “an act of God.” (Man, I hate bad theology!)
It’s so hard to see your children and grandchildren suffer, especially when on a retirement income it is impossible for us to do much to help them. It’s so easy to take up a cause for someone else and give into resentment, but trusting the Lord to take care of my needs means trusting him to take care the people I love as well, and thanking the Him for His faithfulness and for solutions to their problems that we cannot yet see. It means not only hearing the music of the future, but being able to dance to it today.
The reason I chose to post these flowers (“painted with light” on my computer using my photo as a template) is because it reminds me of all the things I planted in that spot that I eventually had to dig up and throw out because they died. My neighbours can grow luscious hydrangeas and dramatic astilbes. I can’t seem to. I despaired of ever growing a pretty shrub in that shady corner of the garden.
Then this mock orange showed up one spring. I never planted it. I think the previous owner may have, but it never flourished because I kept planting other things too close to that spot. When that place in the garden was empty it suddenly shot up, covered in white blossoms.
I believe God has something better in mind for my family -and for all the people in High River and other places in Alberta where faithful, diligent folk have seen the work of their hands swept away by flood waters. So, since yesterday is gone, I will choose to think about tomorrow, and give God room to do what he wants to do, which is always better than our own designs. My prayer is simply, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I trust You, Lord.”
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 3:8-14)
Charis: Subject to Change 