–
Faith is the champion of grace,
and love the nurse;
but humility is the beauty of grace.
-Thomas Brooks
Category: Flowers
Like!
Tonight as I gave approval to a friend’s pithy observation, it dawned on me that clicking on LIKE on Facebook or on blog posts is the modern equivalent of saying “Amen.”
I looked it up to make sure it meant what I thought it did.
amen
Expression of agreement or confirmation used in worship by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The word derives from a Semitic root meaning “fixed” or “sure.” The Greek Old Testament usually translates it as “so be it”; in the English Bible it is often translated as “verily” or “truly.” By the 4th century BC, it was a common response to a doxology or other prayer in the Jewish temple liturgy. By the 2nd century AD, Christians had adopted it in the liturgy of the Eucharist, and in Christian worship a final amen now often sums up and confirms a prayer or hymn. Though less common in Islam, it is used after reading of the first sura. (Concise Encylopedia)
So instead of amen we Canadians could correctly say, “For sure, eh?” or click on LIKE.
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete. ( 1 Corinthians 1:20-22 The Message)
God’s promises come with a yes. To which the response is (altogether now) Yes! or Oh yeah! or Right on! or I solemnly affirm or —--LIKE!
This evening I was asking the Lord the rather useless question, “How long?” (Useless because “soon” to him seldom seems like soon to me when we’re talking about seeing promises fulfilled.) In my frustration I dropped my work and went for a walk around the neighbourhood.
As I was taking photos of flowers I remembered a post I made on April 14, about how God always keeps his promise, that spring was coming even though, at the time, we couldn’t see it and the robins were sitting in a snow-filled tree. It was like He said, “Did I not keep my promise?”
He did indeed. Spring has turned to summer. The flowers bloom and the fruit is beginning to ripen.
He showed me more and more of his beautiful promises fulfilled.
And as a special gift -a robin in a big old pine tree. When I looked at my photos I saw the heart shape the branches made.
You’re good, Abba. I praise you for your faithfulness. You do keep your promises.
And I give you great big LIKE.
Related post: Are We There Yet? https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/springter/
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Unspent Joy
Morning Prayer:
How long will we wait here alone?
Return, O Eternal One, with mercy.
Rescue Your servants with compassion.
With every sun’s rising, surprise us with Your love,
satisfy us with Your kindness.
Then we will sing with joy and celebrate every day we are alive.
You have spent many days afflicting us with pain and sorrow;
now match those with years of unspent joy.
Let Your work of love be on display for all Your servants;
let Your children see Your majesty.
And then let the beauty and grace of the Lord—our God—rest upon us
and bring success to all we do;
yes, bring success to all we do.
(Psalm 90:13-19)
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Always Something
There
Is
Always
Something
There is always something to be thankful for.
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.
Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
Then you will experience God’s peace,
which exceeds anything we can understand.
His peace will guard your hearts and minds
as you live in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 4:6,7)
There is always something to be thankful for.
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Multiplication
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul.
(Psalm 94: 19)
In school we learned that in the physical realm for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I wonder if, in the spiritual realm, for every anxiety there is an equal and opposite consolation available.
I wonder if there is, hidden in every adversity, an opportunity for greater blessing.
I wonder if, in His grace, God allows some losses in our lives knowing that His justice requires the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy to pay back many times over what he took.
Now that’s multiplication.
Be still in the presence of the Lord,
and wait patiently for him to act…
The wicked plot against the godly;
they snarl at them in defiance.
But the Lord just laughs,
for he sees their day of judgment coming.
(Psalm 37:7, 12,13)
Seek the Lord.
Seek the Lord.
Seek the Lord.
And wait.
This is going to be good!
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Quite Contrary
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)
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The Power of Weakness
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
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Don’t Stop Thinkin’ About Tomorrow
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)
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What? Me worry?
“And why do you worry about clothes?
See how the flowers of the field grow.
They do not labor or spin.
Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
If that is how God clothes the grass of the field,
which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire,
will he not much more clothe you
—you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’
or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the pagans run after all these things,
and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
-Jesus (Matthew 6)
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The Power of Gentleness
You have given me the shield of your salvation,
and your right hand supported me,
and your gentleness made me great.
(Psalm 18:35)
He could have blasted us right out of our seats if he wanted to. Instead he sang with the most exquisitely sensitive pianissimo. He made us want to lean forward and be willing to strain to hear every note. I was privileged to hear a recital given in our small local theatre by one of the world’s greatest tenors. These guys have powerful voices that can easily carry over a large orchestra with significant brass sections. I have heard that the easiest way to obtain tickets to hear him in Bayreuth in Europe is to inherit them, but he often does concerts in the type of small remote Canadian town he grew up in, in town halls with less than perfect acoustics and accompanied by pianos usually banged upon by reluctant nine-year old recitalists. God bless Ben Heppner for honouring his roots. Every once in a while that voice would totally fill the room and ring with the power and beauty that made him famous, but it was the still small perfectly controlled sound that impressed me. Such musicality. Power under control. Gentleness.
Somehow gentleness becomes greatness only when it is connected to power.
I once watched a young singer walk away from a music competition looking very discouraged. I knew he didn’t understand the reason for the judge’s harsh critique so I spoke to him, hoping to encourage his pursuit of developing a considerable talent. (Alas, I have witnessed far too many judges who seem to feel their role is to cut down the field to the very best of the very best, rather than encourage all young musicians to enjoy music and to aspire to be the best they can be.) The baritone had a powerful voice that could shake the rafters, and like many young singers who discover they have a range and a power that is the envy of the less endowed, he was tempted to sing “blastissimo” to show it off, even though the song he sang was about wooing a young maiden.
After chatting and telling him I admired his voice he asked me what I thought of his performance. I told him I was indeed impressed with his obvious strength and then winked and said, “A woman may be very impressed by your muscles, but you will win her heart more thoroughly with gentleness and self-control than with your fists. ”
I guess I spoke his language, because he then went on to give me entirely too much information about his love life, which essentially can be boiled down to, “My girlfriend admires my body-builder physique and that I can protect her from any guy in the bar, but she says it is my gentleness in bed that pleases her most.”
He understood the advice instantly -and went home to work on his dynamic range. A comment about the spirit of gentleness on an earlier blog reminded me of this conversation (and set me to blushing again) but there is a strong connection between power and gentleness.
Power is task oriented and gentleness is relationship oriented. Power gets the job done, but gentleness demonstrates love and uses no more power or strength or authority than is necessary. Gentleness includes consideration of another person’s sensitivities and weaknesses as well as their strengths. A good daddy applies a different level of gentleness when cuddling his baby boy than he does play-wrestling with his four-year old or teaching his adolescent self-defence skills, but all of them require a restraint of the kind of power that would show up should an evil person threaten his child.
We all long to be protected, but we also need to know we are safe. Gentleness is not wimpiness. The juxtaposition of the symbolic language of violence in Psalm 18 gives all the more strength to the phrase, “Your gentleness has made me great.” The Creator of the universe could blast us right out of our seats with a whisper, but he knows that we are as frail as a woodland rosebud. He cradles us, provokes us, and trains us with no more power than is essential to help us develop every talent he has given us to be the people he intended us to be. He sets the example for how leaders in the church are to teach, encourage and correct, with a spirit of gentleness based on relationship -and backed by authority and power in Christ Jesus.
His gentleness makes us great.
Charis: Subject to Change 