fresh from the soil:

oh, you know, its okay to need this.

Sun, 12 May 2013 21:05:14 -0400

oh, you know, its okay to need this.

Photo

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:29:00 -0400

"Oh, God, be my everything, be my delight. Be, Jesus, my glory. My soul’s satisfied."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:46:00 -0400

“Oh, God, be my everything, be my delight.
Be, Jesus, my glory. My soul’s satisfied.”

i am Your child, beloved. all of my days, my future is laidin...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:56:53 -0400

i am Your child, beloved.
all of my days, my future is laid
in Your promise, Jesus.
to the end of the age,
i am not alone or forgotten.
so i will not worry or fret.

When you have to trust God... again.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:59:00 -0400

My dad has worked his whole life to make things better. He takes care of people. There was never a night that I stayed out too late that he was not awake, waiting for me. He never fails to ask what he can do for someone else, whether it be picking up frozen peas for my roommate or remodeling a house for a pastor. He shows up every time. This is who he is.

I get this from him… this need to take care of things. And at twenty-two years old, I am learning how to be responsible.

Sometimes, If I am not worried, I fear I am failing to take care of things and be responsible. So I worry a lot. To the point of tears and paralysis, often.

How can we possibly survive living paycheck to paycheck, feeling like there is never enough oil in our jars, the summer my brother’s car broke down, I had to balance my bill for college in order to graduate… the winter my dad lost his job at home and I had a hundred and four degree flu at school and I was too afraid to tell him because I knew he would worry because that’s what he does.

How do we make it when it feels like the world has rolled on top of us and this time its going to be different, you’re so sure that you won’t make it. When I’m exhausted, and just want to be finished because I don’t know if I’ll survive another day of this uncertainty and things falling apart.

And it doesn’t seem to ever stop. I can’t get Simon Bolivar’s last words out of my head: “damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?”

When you reach the light at the end of this tunnel, you know it will scorch you, leave you gasping, and its all a cruel trick because there are always more lines you have to cross and hoops you have to jump through just to get through the day. The mornings you wake up tired and it takes every ounce of courage to get out of bed and face whatever is waiting for you on the other side of your bedroom door.

I have a lot of those mornings. More than I care to count. The devil lures me into fear and then laughs at me, making me feel like a complete and total failure when I give in.

I need to get it together, I tell myself.

But what I really need is to grab onto grace sufficient for my weakness.

To sing in faith: I will not fear the war. I will not fear the storm, my help is on the way.

Even if I have to sing through tears, curled up on the floor. To finally breathe, calmed by the measures, by the repeating of scripture over and over and over again.

Because when you breathe panic, there is no way to be filled. Chest rises and falls out of control and its just so fast and you barely receive any oxygen that way.

You must come empty to the altar. Because the God who spoke into the chaos of darkness brought about a living, breathing world, all for the sake of loving it. He is before all things, and in Him, everything is held together.

When I lack faith, He is faithful. He who has promised is faithful.

He sustains me because he loves me. And surely He knows what I need before I ask. So I allow myself to breathe in slow the mercy. The grace that never leaves me where it found me, because He who began this work will be faithful to bring it to completion.

Shalom, selah.

Audio

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:37:14 -0400

Photo

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 23:31:13 -0400

"‘It is finished.’ May those words land on your bones for the nights when fear tells you..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:23:00 -0400

““‘It is finished.’ May those words land on your bones for the nights when fear tells you that the cross was a beginning, and you must finish grace.””

- Jon Acuff

You, me, and everyone we know.

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:54:00 -0400

Somebody tell me where God lives because if God is truth, God doesn’t live here. — Andrea Gibson

I am slowly learning how to live a quiet life. That said, words are truly the only way that I know how to meet with the Good One, and so this is my altar. This is how I reach up, and one of the ways that I know to reach out. Sometimes, I cannot come in peace, so I come in the only other way I know how, which is in pieces. It takes strength to be weak. I write because I believe in the Bride. I write because what I want to do, I cannot muster the courage to do, but what mindsets and behaviors I don’t want, I find myself addicted to. We could all be so much better. Things can be different, if we choose.

I realize that the Truth is divisive. Some have manipulated this mindset to excuse their malice towards others that they deem less. But the table turning Jesus was far more concerned about the people on the outside of the temple than he was about those who thought better of themselves on the inside. He came for the sick. He left the ninety-nine for the one. To use Christ’s actions in the temple as justification for our own hatred of others not only displays a gross misunderstanding of the scriptures, but a gross misrepresentation of the gospel.

We have so many lofty theological discussions, and can recite our dogma forwards and backwards, but I wonder if we really understand. I wonder if when we look at the living and active Word we can really say that we know Father God’s heart and character well enough to understand that His ways are not our own. Hallelujah, His ways are not my own.

Again and again, we have chosen the lie that leads to our fall. Moreover, we have become the liars. We tell those who struggle with homosexual attraction, people of different political affiliations, people of different religious constructs, girls who sell themselves on street corners and the men who buy them, fearful women who see abortion as their only option, and the doctors who scrape out their wombs that they are not worthy of what Jesus did for them. We have created the culture of “us four and no more,” and have clung to it out of fear of what we don’t understand. We are prideful and rebellious, labeling our own sin, our lies, our lust, our adultery, our idolatry, as somehow less shameful than others. But Christ met with the foreign woman at the well, he allowed the bloodied woman to touch him, and he reached for the leper. Our lights are off, and we like it better that way. We don’t like seeing ourselves, don’t like others seeing our broken parts. We are both the prodigal, and the older son, who feels as though he has been forgotten and allows himself to become bitter. Yet the Father says “everything I have is yours.” The book of James says that we do not have because we do not ask. Scripture is beautiful that way. It is convicting that way.

From the fall, humanity has had in mind that God is somehow holding out on us. Why then, are we not satisfied with all that we have here on this earth? Why do we not answer the knock on the door and allow the Lord to come in and eat with us? This craving to experience glory has been rooted in our souls since the beginning of time. Knowing this, how could every breath not be worship? We have been called out of the darkness and depravity of the grave, and yet we still wear our grave clothes around like security blankets. We live by a law that emphasizes our shame over his grace, condemning both ourselves and our brothers and sisters. We don’t want to know who we are, because that would mean realizing our responsibility to live in light of his gracious response to our depravity.

We do not act justly, and we do not love mercy. We have become like the pharisees whom Jesus himself rebuked. We know the law, and we debate it down to the punctuation in order to prove ourselves wise and others wrong. There is a vast difference in calling out sin in someone’s life in order to prove that you are right, and bringing something to their attention for the sole purpose of becoming holy. Somewhere along the way, that got blurry. So we end up obsessing over sins that we do not struggle with, pointing them out in others, saying to ourselves “well at least I’m not that person.” We walk around like we don’t have the answers, as if we are not the best representation of love that people have to go on. We still don’t know what love is.

As we approach Easter, I think of what has become known as the Triumphal Entry. Israel was looking for a king who could defeat Rome and put the nation back on top of the political chain. But Jesus didn’t come to agree with anybody’s politics. He was a king who came to be a servant. He offered himself, he met people’s needs before he ever offered his opinion. As he entered Jerusalem on a donkey, he was met with scores of people who expected him to save them from Caesar, instead of saving them from their sin. He wept over the city, knowing that he would soon be viewing them from the tree that he had been nailed to, beckoning them to come and take up their own crosses as well.

Recently, I read a friend’s Facebook post about an aunt who recently passed away from cancer. She wanted the comfort that her aunt was in heaven, as she did know the Lord, but her aunt was a lesbian, and because of this, my friend was unsure. My friend was met with people quoting scripture about how the unrighteous will never inherit the kingdom of God. My fiance and I are currently looking for a church for our wedding that is geographically favorable for both of our families, who live four hours apart. As we have contacted pastors, many of them have told us point blank that they only allow members of their church to get married there. One even said that “they can’t let just anyone in their church.”

Nine out of ten young people walk away from their faith in college. It is a staggering statistic, one that I have heard many times in my four years at a Christian college. I finally understand why the number is so high. Why would anyone want to become part of this?

So to you, me, and everyone we know, I am so sorry. I’m sorry for the lies I have believed that have made me less of a person. There have been too many to count, and they sneak into my soul looking for what they may destroy. They never deliver on their promises. They have planted fear in my heart that only Christ has the power to uproot. Lies about my body, lies about the world and love and sex and how to reach the top. Lies about how close I should get to you. I believed them all. I swear I didn’t want to, but I drank the poison because it brought the numbness. The poison was easy.

I’m sorry for repeating these lies to you. Perhaps not in words, but in ever more powerful actions.

I am sorry for treating your dreams and hopes and fears and troubles as if they are somehow less than my own. I’m sorry for my graceless inability to rejoice when you rejoice and mourn when you mourn. I’m sorry for my lack of humility, and what things I have said out of my own unstable understanding. I attempted to offer silver and gold, but had none but cheap counterfeits. Lies about holiness and grace and standards, and how close you can get to me.

My friend Andy once told me that everyday is an opportunity to react well to the gospel. If sin is not responding well, not believing the truth, then living according to these lies would certainly more than qualify.

The outrageous thing about grace is that it destroys our economy. I want my walls to be torn down.

I want a fire strong enough to burn down every bricked building, every pew and pulpit, until all that remains is the Church. We could be so much more.

Audio

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:04:00 -0400

The spring of the forest fire.

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:57:00 -0400

Oh, how quickly a forest is destroyed with only a single spark. Scripture says that only ashes remain when a rumor is ignited. I have been burned alive, left in smolders by those who thrive on spreading the blaze.

Sabrina Ward Harrison once mused that she was afraid that others would find out who she was before she did, and that she would be the last to know. This used to be me, too. I have spent my twenty-two years wrestling. But I finally feel like I know who I am. Once, I felt as though I lacked something to fight for, but today, I know what I am protecting. Ever more importantly, I know whose I am, and who is protecting me.

One of my greatest ambitions is to lead a quiet life, unplagued by the hustle, bustle, and emergency that is screamed to me from every angle. To be in the world and not of it. I have craved strength and dignity, the ability to laugh at the days to come. This is truly the desire of my heart.

I have been hurt countless times by the sword words and judgment of others. I’ve repeated their darkness over and over to myself, but I’m done with that now. I must also confess that I, too, am prone to these judgmental tendencies, and yet through grace alone, I have been proven wrong about many things and people.

I never wanted to punish anyone… nearly as much as I do not want to be punished.

But sometimes, inevitably, the flint messes in our lives rub each other the wrong way. When a fire erupts, the soil can respond one of two ways: sometimes, the soil can benefit, but under other circumstances, the flames could cause detrimental erosion.

And what of grace? Can it really reach down to where we are when we’re at the end of our rope?

Could a garden come up from this ground at all?

Depending on my heart’s response, this is not the end of the story. I choose the good. I choose right now to be better. The nutrients in the soil increase when there is a fire. The flames may destroy, but they leave quiet room for restoration. What death is experienced in the heat is miraculously contributing to the creation of something new.

Out of chaos, life is being found.

Grace prevails every time. I am left with no room for doubt.

Yes, I know who I am. My identity is no longer found in what man might say about me. I have been redefined. Love really is amazing, and I am fighting to the death to protect it. In his book “The Cost of Discipleship,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated that “by judging others, we blind ourselves to our evil and to the grace that others are entitled to as we are.”

May I speak grace as the gentle answer, so as to turn away wrath. What man has meant for harm, God has redeemed in order to accomplish His will.

I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. He alone is my rock and salvation, my...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:44:08 -0400

I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. He alone is my rock and salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken. Let all that I am wait quietly before the Lord, for my hope is in Him. — Psalm 62:1-2, 5

Betrothed.

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:37:00 -0500

Milton says that gratitude bestows reverence. What in the world, in all this world, he sees in me, that he would give me his one heart to nurture and protect for the rest of our days. I will never fully understand. My heart swells and my eyes fill beyond the brim as I am reminded that the power of love makes us recognize how brief we are. I believe this moment has been in the making since the foundation of the universe. Every breath, every touch is a gift of love, a lens through which I might gaze into the holiness and sovereignty of the Father. I’ve never craved anything as much as I crave for these moments to house millenniums.

Perfect love casts out fear. It is the shalom light we carry into the darkness and void. To love is to image our Creator, making something new. To love is to become less, so that He might become great within us. Love, teach me to be patient and kind. Teach me not to be jealous. Teach me to not be rude or proud. Show me how to put my own will aside. Help me not to be irritable or resentful. Teach me to not be satisfied by injustice, but to be joyful when the truth wins. Remind me not to give up, but to have faith, and be hopeful through every season. And we know that the storms will come, but love brings order out of chaos. We are not our own.

And we love because He first loved us.

Of all the wild graces, that I might be chosen for love in spite of myself.

I know it could be different. I had to watch him love me so I could learn to love myself.

A season of hunger has led me to this place. It was a call to worship that I never fully knew how to answer, a craving for intimacy. The search for an altar. The altar really is what this is all about. This life, this breath, this overwhelming need that consumes my being. The answer, I’m finding, is to count it all joy. To answer His proposal yes, when the sun rises and when it descends. To say that it is well with my soul.

He surely has made everything beautiful in its own time. These days have only solidified that His ways are not mine. Grace is real. That is the truest thing I know. Equally true is the fact that I do not deserve it, and yet I encounter it all the time - even when I look the other way, which I often do. One of the amazing things about true love is that it breaks me of my pride. When grace captures my attention, I am moved to a state of gratitude. And gratitude produces awe.

May I not look to the right or the left.

This is how we reach up.

I am thankful that hearts meet where words fail. There are no words to describe how I leap inside at the sound of his voice speaking my name, how my fingers feel when filled with his and I realize that I am known and loved in spite of myself; when we become frustrated with our falleness only to realize that we are still becoming together. The elation that comes from the thrum of his heart against my ear. To see the world with carefree eyes, knowing that as long as the other is in reach, there is safety. There is joy and laughter and peace and rest. The absence of fear or expectation. Gratitude produces awe.

I am his and he is mine. For better for worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as I live.

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent..."

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:25:05 -0500

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

- John Milton

"You took your life – and took a chance on me.You took your one whole, wild life and took your chance..."

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:42:08 -0500

“You took your life – and took a chance on me.You took your one whole, wild life and took your chance on me. That’s the miracle that rents the sky, that explodes a heart – that you chose me.”

- Ann Voskamp

"The real work of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me...."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:12:53 -0500

“The real work of prayer is to become silent and listen to the voice that says good things about me. To gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and to trust that I will hear the voice of blessing… that demands real effort.”

- Henri Nouwen

sim·plic·i·ty

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:41:49 -0500

freedom from complexity, intricacy, or division into parts.
absence of luxury, pretentiousness, ornament, et cetera.
freedom from deceit or guile. sincerity, naturalness.

freedom.

I need to be weak for awhile.

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:54:00 -0500

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
— Hebrews 4:16

Sometimes its easy to forget how unfairly blessed I am. Most of the time, I can make it through the day without any semblance of hardship, and the truth is, while things often aren’t as easy as I’d like for them to be, in the eyes of most, I have never really experienced hardship at all. But pain is relative. Pain is what happens on the inside, sometimes without regard to what is taking place outside of ourselves. Perhaps I’ve never been in a literal gutter, but my heart has known anxiety and despair.

And sometimes, despite the countless times in my life when I have seen God at work, moving in his mighty love and goodness and provision, my eyes begin to wander down to the waves crashing around me and I sink back into the oblivion of cautiousness and haphazard, the halfhearted and afraid. I give into the chaos. I realize that I’m drowning, and my instinct is to save face, because drowning can be a violent way to go and I would rather not draw so much attention to the downward spiral happening within. I crave the control.

But His love goes further, still.

I realize my need for Him, and that when the waters overwhelm and the climb seems to be insurmountable, it is okay to reach up. It is okay to be weak. Scripture says that we should boast in our weakness, because when we are weak, He is strong. Father God will be good. He breathes the victory over us.

So I learn, hard and softly all in the same silent and fleeting moment, that I must be weak, but for a brief following moment, I resist. Knees buckle and fists clench in the tension that comes before the delicate letting go. Lord, let there be nothing in my life that points to me.

My heart craves quiet solitude in a world that screams the emergency of life. This is the lie that we have taken up in place of the truth. How can I become less so that Christ may become more?

Lord, may I cling only to the Mercy Seat.

Nothing in me has the power to save.

It takes boldness to be weak.

"‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the..."

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:19:19 -0500

“‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘and you became mine.’”

- Ezekiel 16:8

i see the question mark atop your spine.i’ve got a ladder,...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:50:55 -0500

i see the question mark atop your spine.
i’ve got a ladder, honey won’t you let me climb?