Time exists in circles now. Busy morning routines, getting children out the door before 8:15 in the morning, 9:00 am classes, lunch rituals of prayer, food, recording thankful moments, collecting children at the end of the work day, preparing meals, smiles and misbehavior around the dinner table with 3 boys, cleaning up after meals, bedtime routines, storytime, prayer, sleep, stillness. And then I get up and do it all again. These circles are beginning to spin.
I am experiencing motion sickness! Does this happen to you? There is also the dizziness of doctor appointments, errands, homework checks, and trips to the grocery store. I am spun sick dizzy before 9 in the morning. And then there is the mundane going into the fridge and getting pomegranate concentrate to add to the pitcher of water. And then I stir. I stir and stare at the pitcher of water as it spins. I am ridiculously concentrating on the concentrate. I drank the juice this morning and thought about another circling. "Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures forever." I can hear Michael W. Smith singing it in my head. Every thought of the psalm had to be circled, had to be held together, by the only sinew that holds: Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures forever. A theologian once said that God teaches us this method of repetition through Scripture with good reason. The human mind is incurably centrifugal, forever flying off on a tangent. It needs to be brought back to the great central truths of the gospel, over and over. Our minds must be made literally to concentrate. The earth spins, the days circle, so Scripture keeps spinning around the central point because the mind is chronically centrifugal. In a circling world, we keep flying off on tangents. I need to intentionally con-centrate - to circle again and around again on the central thing. So none of this ever gets old: giving thanks, giving thanks every day and again, for a thousand things. This old path never really gets old - its what renews. Nobody lives Gospel-centered lives, until literally, intentionally con-centrating: circling the mind around and around Christ again. In the vortex of life, you keep your head above water by literally con-centrating your thinking. We are only as Christ-centered as our minds our concentric: thoughts circling around Christ - concentrating. The laundry smells like dirty socks. The sink is full of dishes again. There are tears over some homework not done. Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures - without expiry date, without end - Forever. All fear is the lie that God's love ends. Untie that lie. Untie that strangling lie by circling your life with Truth. Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures - it endures laundry, cancer, students, sleepless nights, debt, despair, broken dreams, brokenness - His Love Endures Forever Say it again, like a refrain on repeat. In the whirling, circling, circle thoughts around gratitude to Christ. Live concentrically. Go in circles around the right things. Circle around Christ. Concentrate on Him. I wash off the counter, soak up this ring, this life giving juice. Life tastes better and is lived better when concentrated. I pull out a pen and begin to write the day's joy
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It's been a while since I posted. One of the reasons is that I can feel the Lord prompting me to write on beauty. Not just physical beauty but internal beauty. It's a huge topic, and this has been a challenge. To reflect on beauty and what it means from a Christian perspective, is to be faced with ugliness and sin. I have been struggling with my own ugliness, my sin. On beauty. God doesn't leave us in our darkness, our failure, our ruins, our ugliness. Confessions of needing Him as Lord and Savior changes us to something else. Our darkness becomes light and we become a part of that light. Our failures become something that is used for His success. Our ruins become glorious as we call on Him. Our ugliness becomes something beautiful. Physically beautiful people, beautiful things these are candy for the eyes. These people and things have their place and they bring momentary pleasure. Christ's beauty is not a momentary pleasure. Christ's beauty is to face our own ugliness, our sin, and redeem it. As we face our ugliness, Christ faces us with other uglies. Injustice is all around us. As we learn to face the ugliness of injustice, we learn to see as Christ sees. We must look more deeply at something that by the world's standards is ugly and slowly discover that it is gem. We see beauty as we learn service to others. Beauty is found in the giving to others. Christ teaches us sacrificial love. He sacrificed himself for us. What defines beauty? The nails on the cross defines beauty. The broken ways of Christ define beauty. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 Dear woman, why are you crying?" Jesus asked her. "Who are you looking for?" She thought he was the gardener. "Sir," she said, "if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him." This verse is a passage that generates a lot of sermons and discussions around Easter. Mary, distraught with grief over Christ’s death, is unable to recognize Him. She sees Him, but doesn't recognize Him fully.
First, she recognizes him as a servant. Perhaps he was simply dressed, in a white tunic, scanty, old and worn. The cloth may have been colored from the sweat of his body, tight fitting, short, as if it is a hand’s breath below the knee, looking thread-bare. He probably looked like a servant. There is something miraculous here to think about. He had done the greatest labor and the hardest work there is. Secondly, she recognized him as the gardener. He was the one who takes care of the garden, caring for fragile, new life in spring. He digs and sweats, turning soil over and over. He waters at the proper time. He continues in his work, eventually making sweet streams to run, and fine plenteous fruit to grow. He was a servant in the garden on that day Mary saw him. He was also a gardener. By his labor—his passion, death, descent into Hades, resurrection and ascension—Christ reveals himself as the Master Gardener who gardens our humanity and returns us to health and newness of life. “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). -John 20:16 Christ was recognized as a servant and a gardener, and then he revealed himself to Mary. Christ is the ultimate servant. He placed himself on a cross as a living sacrifice to all who would call on his name. His life, death, resurrection, and ascension show his unbounding love for a lost humanity, transplanting us to a new garden where health and new life is embraced. He is the Master Gardener. This little person is easy to love most of the time. I am not as in love with him when he bites. And he bites a few too many times for my liking. Despite repeated attempts at punishment to get him to stop, he bites as a means of communication. He bites when he is hungry, thirsty, or tired. Love bites.
I am not thinking about love when he bites. I am thinking about how to get him to stop that. But love does this amazing thing. Love bears all things. It's stego in the Greek, a thatch roof. Love is a roof. What does a roof do? It absorbs storms when the weather takes a turn for the worst. Love bears all things - like a roof bears wind and rain. Love willingly carries one another's burdens. How does a mother continue to do that in the rainstorms of missed homework, a full time job, a husband, learning struggles, bedtime angst, childhood fears. They just need me to love them. Christ's love carries the burdens that sets us all free. Love bends and unfolds itself around others like a roof. This is love. And often, when I have thought about how much God loves us, those moments of bearing one another are not even painful. They are beautifully weightless. It's not always a bite I am still thinking about holding fast to Christ. To be in humble adoration of Him. Who held fast to Him?
The woman with the alabaster flask. That was an act of absolute adoration. So absolute that it made everyone except Christ uncomfortable. "But there were some who said to themselves indignantly, 'Why was this ointment thus wasted? For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.' And they reproached her." Mark 14: 4-5. Christ's response is one of grace, mercy, and acceptance. "Let her alone! Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me." Mark 14: 6. He sees the beauty in the moment. He accepts her gifts as an anointing before he is buried. She gives whole-heartedly. He loves her. She becomes known because of her deed, her act of adoration, the anointing of our Christ before his burial. I pray God that I might do the same. Can I? She does this before the Great Sacrifice. Love has seen the truth. It enhances and names the truth. It is rare and rich. It is beauty. She has become one known for one act of simple beauty. And she held fast to our Lord and Savior. How do I hold fast to Christ? Lay out my hands. Lay it out flat. Lord, take me, use me, my will, my body, me. And in that small, dented moment of my hands held out I feel God's grace, his pulse over me. |
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November 2022
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Lilies from Heaven |
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