What God Sees

When you got out of bed this morning, did you see Joy?  Were you filled with possibility or stifled by your list before you even opened your eyes?  

When you got dressed, did you see Holiness?  Did you clothe yourself in fine linen and purple because you are a temple or did you shame the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit for its cellulite and hide it under black stretchy pants?

When you ate breakfast, did you see Manna?  Did you nourish yourself with goodness or did you feel fat and guilty for every bite?  Or did you even feed yourself at all?

When you dressed your kids, did you see Love?  Did you see capable hands that fed and clothed and nurtured?  Or did you see clumsy fingers that cling when they should let go and sometimes neglect to hold at all?

When you hugged your husband good bye, did you see Desire?  Did you pause to love and be loved or did you pull away because, honestly, it just reminds you of your failure to be beautiful?

When you looked in the bathroom mirror this morning, did you see your Self?  Or did you long since hide her away, sealing her heart shut with resignation and pursed lips?  

What did you see?

Let me tell you what God sees.

God first made the heavens and the earth, the dark and the light, and He saw that it was good.

But that wasn’t enough, so He made the sky and saw that it was good too.

Still He wasn’t satisfied, so He added land and sea and plants and trees.  And He saw that it was good.

But the sky was dark.  So He hung the moon and the sun and the stars to make it bright.  Again, He saw that it was good, but still....

He filled the sky with birds and the water with fish.  And these too He saw good, but there is more.

He set animals on the land to roam and to graze, each according to their kind.  Also good, but not yet complete.

He formed a man from the dust and breathed into him His very own breath of life.  And all of this He saw was very good.  But the Creator of the universe yearned for one more thing.... 

And so He made you, daughter of Eve.

And then He rested.

You created the deepest parts of my being.

You put me together inside my mother’s body.

How You made me is amazing and wonderful.

I praise You for that.

 Psalm 139:13-14

This blog post inspired by the book Captivating by Staci Eldredge.  Great book!  Wild at Heart by her husband John is even better...

Throwing Rocks

When I was a kid, I lived out in the country.  I didn’t really have a lot of other kids to play with, but there were two particular playmates that I will never forget because these two kids left a mark on my heart.

Brother and sister, a couple of years younger than me, they were a little bit of a neighborhood enigma.  Their family moved into the ‘big’ house on my tired country road, the one with the terraced front yard and cool modern staircase, the one brick dot on a map of trailers and old farmhouses.  They didn’t live there long, maybe a year, and they didn’t go to public school.  I can’t tell you one thing about their parents, not one single thing- what they looked like, where they worked- nothing except that they were religious.  

We, however, were not.  We went to church for weddings and funerals.  We said grace at Thanksgiving.  We breezed past Jesus on the way to see Santa Claus, but that’s about it. 

One good thing, though, about my churchless upbringing is that The Hymnbook for Christian Worship was totally lost on me.  As a child, this ignorance would nearly condemn me, but today I love traditional hymns.  They're new to me.  Their simple worship makes my striving heart stand down.  This is one of my favorites:

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Man, I feel those words in my soul.  Me - made right with the One who set the sun in the sky, bathed in the balm of merciful love and made whole - all of it done amidst the spite of 6 year old Pharisees and their misguided exhortations. 

Back then, I didn’t know church songs, didn’t know Bible stories, didn’t know about rainbows or talking donkeys or the belly of any fish; and I certainly didn’t know about the drenching grace of a savior who loves me.

I wasn’t about to learn it from these kids either.

One summer afternoon, they decided to evangelize me.  Right there at the end of my dusty driveway, two barefoot prophets ate Squirrel Nut Zippers and preached hell-fire and damnation to a freckle-faced little sinner.

“Is your dad a Christian?  Our dad says you’re not Christians.”

“Um, yeah, my dad’s a Christian.”

“Are you saved?”

“I don’t know.  I guess so.”

“If you had Jesus in your heart, you would know it.  Do you go to church?”

“No, we don’t go to church.”

“Why don't you go to church?  Do you even know the words to Amazing Grace?”

“No.”

“Well, then you're not a Christian.  You need to go to church and get saved.  If you don’t repent, you’ll go to hell.”

Well, I let them know exactly how un-sanctified I was with a few choice words about shutting up and kissing my butt, surely heathen words if ever I’ve said any.  Then I ran home.  And they threw rocks at me.

Yep.  They stoned me because I didn’t know grace.

30-some odd years later, I know that if I were the only person on Earth who couldn’t sing Amazing Grace, Jesus still would have died for me.  No rejection I could suffer was not first suffered by him.  I know that he KNOWS and it’s ok.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  Psalm 147:3

Sadly, though, some lessons are too soon forgotten.

I’m still a freckle-faced sinner, but now all grown up and full of myself in Jesus’ name.  I play nice with the other mommies at the park until it comes to the one who can’t sing grace - you know the one, twice divorced with wild kids and a worn out heart.  When it comes to that mom, I'm likely as not to eat up all my mercy like sticky, sweet candy and throw rocks at her instead.  

It lays my heart open raw to think of some of the hurt I’ve judged into being.  Some things I can go back and apologize for.  Some things I can fix.  But some things are too far gone.

Jesus please fix the hearts I’ve broken and bind up their wounds too.

Nothing can for sin atone,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
Naught of good that I have done,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

When we put our sins at the foot of the cross, it’s not just for our own atonement.  We give them to Jesus so he can make all things right.  All things.  

This is all my hope and peace,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
This is all my righteousness,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

He still claims me.  He pries open my self-righteous fists and lets the rocks fall to the ground.  And then he washes my dirty hands clean.

I can clean the mud you sling just as surely as I have cleaned you, He says.

Glory! Glory! This I sing—
Nothing but the blood of Jesus,
All my praise for this I bring—
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The Enemy

I want to share something that my husband wrote about 2 years ago.  Today is our 16th wedding anniversary.  Thank you for building our house on the Rock.  The boy and I could not have a better husband and father to take care of us!

(And if you're reading this and you don't know me, my husband's name is, ironically, Rocky....)

The Enemy walks toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea.  As he looks down he takes note of every detail.  He wants to affix this moment in his memory forever. He has planned this moment for years.

 He looks below at the small home that contains the source of his contempt.  Finally he will gain the victory he has sought.   He feels the breeze pick up and he pulls the hood back from his head so he can take in the coming storm with all of his senses.  He smells the storm on the air now and he knows it will not be long. 

A knowing smile creeps onto his visage as he looks down once again.  He knows that there is no way for the family below to predict the kind of storm he has set in motion.  He smiles wider as he recalls all the preparation for this one event.  Each step along the way was a deception to build the coming storm. 

The wind is biting now and cold.  The first few raindrops begin to sting his cheeks as he lifts his head to the sky in victory. He has seen this play out before. The storm will wreck the home below.  The waves will claim their prize, scatter those within, and the wreckage of the home will float out to sea.  The family will be destroyed. 

The rain is falling hard now and he has to concentrate to see the home below.  He knows the home has only minutes before it is claimed by the storm.  The wind is assaulting the beach and the cliff but the real danger is building.  The waves are crashing on shore now and he knows they will soon reach the home. He looks out to the sea and notes the swelling waves.  

With each flash of lightning he can make out the increasing danger. The waves are now crashing against the base of the home.   The Enemy smiles more broadly now.  This is his favorite part.  For he craves most not the power that is being displayed but the destruction that it will bring. 

He recalls the countless storms he has set in motion and the destruction they have caused.  He waits to hear the creaking and cracking sound that announces that the sea has claimed the home. He can see now with each lightning flash the intensifying waves and then he spots the one, the wave that will engulf the home completely.  He watches it violently come ashore and crash over the home.  He notes with some pride that this storm is proving to be more destructive than most.  He leans over the cliff and listens intently for the sound of the home being crushed. 

As the wave breaks over the home his smile falters.   He realizes that he heard no sounds of destruction.  By the next lightning flash he can see why.  The home is still standing! 

He thinks to himself that this storm will soon claim this home.  The very beach is being assaulted by the ocean.  He can see the sand being torn from the beach by the violence of this storm.   Another wave crashes over the home.  There is still no damage. 

His smile is gone now. It has been replaced by a look of puzzlement and a slight hint of fear.  He knows the storm is exceptionally violent.  He takes a closer look as a third and fourth wave crash over the home totally engulfing it in the angry sea. As the water resides and the sky is lit by a brilliant flash he sees his failure.  The storm has washed away the sand and revealed solid rock!  

As he watches the storm rage he knows that he has failed.  For all of his preparation and cunning he failed to realize that the home was built upon the rock. The rage the enemy feels is growing.  With his anger and hatred also comes an empty feeling of impotence.  He knows that once a home is build upon the rock it will draw strength and power from the rock.  The home can break any storm because the rock can break any storm. 

The storm is fading now, as all storms must.  The enemy looks to the east and notes the rising sun.  He quickly pulls his rain soaked hood over his head to protect him from the light.   As the first rays of light shine on the home on the rock the enemy retreats.  He has been defeated and he knows it is so.      

Just Ask Him

One night last summer, my son brought me a present. The three of us had been hanging out by the campfire until well after bedtime, listening to crickets and gazing at stars.  We were three peas in a pod, growing in the red clay of our backyard, watered by popsicles and lighted by fireflies.

Now, it's balmy enough on an Alabama summer night, but add to it a smokey hot fire and a good layer of bug spray and you have painted yourself...sticky. The boy, bless him, abandoned us for the house when it was time to clean up. But when he trudged back up the hill toward me with a secret sweet on his lips and dirty little hands hidden behind him, I thought, "He loves me. He's brought me a Diet Coke. I am a most-favored mother." 

I held out my hands to receive my gift, that sweet cold nectar of caffeinated goodness.  What I got, though, was a toad.  A fat, nasty, wriggling, toad.

I am afraid of toads.

I am convinced that the greatest desire of every single toad living in this world today is to jump on my face and stick there unrelenting with its nasty little claw feet.  Also, I'm pretty sure that if I were to squeeze one, even just the tiniest little bit, it would ooze...something- I don't know what, but something.  Yuck. 

Just the thought makes my adrenaline flow like the mighty Mississippi.  Fight or Flight?  I'll take flight, please.  So I dropped the toad to the ground and did a screeching heebie-jeebie dance right there at the top of the hill.

The boy was delighted.

There aren't many things that scare me. Toads. Grotesquely broken bones.  Maybe that creepy chick crawling out of the TV in the movie The Ring, but not much else.

Well, also the words, "Honey, I have cancer."  Those scare me.

It wasn't too long after the toad incident that my husband spoke those words to me, standing in our bathroom, stunned pale and faltering. It scared him too. And that scared me the most.

We know that God is in control of all things. We know that what the enemy intends for death, God brings to life. We know that God has peace that surpasses all.  But we don't know how. And that filled our home with heavy fear. What if God's idea of 'OK' is not the same as ours?

Fast forward a few days to another balmy night when three more peas in a pod planted themselves at my doorstep. Eleanna - calm with wisdom and confident in knowing, Melinda - scrappy and bold and steeled for battle, and Nina - beautiful with joy and praise pressed down and running over.

These women came to pray over me and my family, right there bathed in moths and porch light. They came to claim Christ's finished work on the cross for me, to clothe me in God's armor, to rebuke fear in Christ's name.  And they came to thank God and recognize his goodness when I was knocked too nearly breathless to say it myself.

When I walked back in the house, the heaviness was gone.  My husband, not knowing anything spoken on that porch, said to me, "I feel better now."

Of course you do.

Three women came to speak words of prayer over us. But words are just words; they have no power over life and death. Someone must have heard and given life to the words.

God heard and God breathed life.

Provider God.

Healer God.

Father God.

Abba Daddy God.

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

Through the cross, we have the amazing privilege in Christ's good name to approach the one true God with boldness and in confidence. This is the beauty of it, y'all.  Do you know this?  I mean do you really, truly know it? 

With borrowed righteousness in hand, we can ask for what we need as rightly as Jesus asked in the Garden of Gethsemane, and God will embrace our prayers. There is nothing we can't petition him for, no need that will tire his great love for his beloved, no want or fear that we cannot lay at his feet- not Diet Coke or toads or scary movies or even cancer. All of it lies in the palm of his hand, and he desires to give good and holy gifts to us, to give them to you child of God, because he loves us.

Graceless Places

...and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.   Isaiah 61:3

Some mountains rise from the earth in violence, ripping, burning and pushing their way to life.  Others are eroded from what was, washed again and again until they are worn into greatness.

Over time, struggle and relentlessness are ordered to rest.  Mt. Everest is not a pile of charred rocks.  The Grand Canyon is not a river of mud.  What makes the difference between destruction and splendor?

The difference is grace.

“...in pain you will give birth....”  Gen 3:16

Pain gives way.  Splendor brings with it a new brow to kiss, soft with newborn skin and not yet furrowed by life.  Wanting only to be fed.  Wanting only to be held.  

Wanting only grace. 

If God were here in flesh, I would sit at His feet and lay my head on his lap.

I would tell him that I sent my heart, my greatest gift, into the world and they despised it.

And he would say I know.  They despised mine too.

Anger grows in a graceless place.  The only way to sooth it is to give it the grace it needs.  But today I have no grace.

It's ok.  My grace is sufficient.  Let me purge the venom from your snakebitten heart.  It will take time.  And it will be painful.  But it will be worth it.

If that’s what it takes Lord, then wash me.  Again and again and again.  Living water and cleansing blood, hollow me out and carve grace into my graceless places.

If Grace is an Ocean...

I just love a fresh perspective on an old Bible story, especially those stories we like tell our kids in Sunday School.  Noah, Jonah, little boy David with his 5 stones, each a shining example of obedience and faith.  But put grit to the shiny polish of these childhood heroes and you will see that there is much more below the surface.  Grate them with the seasoned fragments of understanding and experience and they will confess the depth of their texture - the grain of the wood, the smell of the sawdust, the marked rings of age and growth collected over life lived in the wilderness.

Of all these beloved Bible characters, Peter is becoming my favorite - passionate and temperamental Peter, the rock on which Jesus would build his church.  I like Peter because he is like me, boldly jumping in with both feet and yet reluctant in faith.  Remember Peter jumping in the water to walk to Jesus?  He sank in his fear.  How many times I’ve shared that story with my own son!  Each time though, I hang my head and limp away from this lesson for the little in faith.  If only I had kept my eyes on Jesus.  If only I had more faith.  Better faith.  Stronger faith.  I wouldn’t sink and disappoint Jesus in the one thing he asks of me.

But then I found a fresh perspective.

When I get sprayed by the storms of life and find my faith has faltered, my courage has gone south, I often turn to Matthew 14:22-33.  Jesus sees the disciples caught up in a squall.  It is between three and six am.  He comes walking toward them on the water.  They are terrified.  “It’s a ghost,” they cry out in fear.  He says, “Courage!  It is I!  Do not be afraid.”

Peter, nothing if not brash, decides to test the voice.  “Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you across the water.”  The tentative faith of that fearful “if” quickly deteriorates into sheer terror as Peter begins to walk to Jesus.  I find comfort (perhaps perverse pleasure) in knowing that the rock on which Jesus would build the church sank like a stone.*

Jesus sees me in the squall and he comes to me where I am.  I am terrified.  Scared of the storm, scared of failure, scared of the wrath I know I deserve.  What if Jesus is not who he says he is, but only the specter of grace and mercy?

"I am the resurrection and the life,” he says.  Are you really?  I step out of the boat.  And the wind breathes doubt and fear into my mind.  You may be Jesus, but I am unworthy.  I can’t do this.  

And I sink.

I share this with you because I think if I open my eyes under the water, I will see you there.  You.  Me.  Peter.  We’re all sinking.

But the beautiful thing is that Jesus is already there to pull us up and out of the water.  Don’t you think he knew that Peter would jump out of the boat in a flash of bravado and nearly drown himself?

“O, you of little faith.  Why did you doubt?”  It’s not a reproach.  It’s a lament.  One that I love, do not doubt.  I will always come for you.  And do not feel ashamed for there is no condemnation in me.

And so soggy, sputtering Peter will still become the rock on which Jesus built his church.  And I will still serve and so will you.  Our failures and weakness do not make us useless because Jesus already knows and he will meet us where we are.

*Manning, Brennan (2002). Abba’s Child. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress. p. 143.

Broken Cisterns

Watching my son through the rearview mirror this morning on the way to school, I found myself thinking:  I wish you could know how much I love you.  He wasn’t doing anything particular to elicit this love.  He was actually in a pretty foul mood, rumpled and grumpy in the backseat with the weight of the day on his little eight-year-old shoulders.  I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.  If he could, he would see that all of his struggles are unnecessary because I could help him if he’d only let me.  

He would see that no amount of grump or grouch could take away the joy he brings to me just by his very presence.  He would see how his awkward run, backpack swinging behind him, makes me smile.  He would see the charm of his too-big two front teeth.  He would see how his beautiful, ever-sticky little boy hands look like his father’s.  

He doesn’t see any of that though.  He sees himself through the lens of the world, all scratched up and dirty.  And it hurts his little soul.  But I know who he really is.

We started out our day the same way we always do.  I woke up late.  I stumbled to his room.  I stepped on legos in the dark.  I sang to him.  

Let me just say that being a convincing perky morning mom through my woke-up-late-in-the-middle-of-a-dream adrenaline rush was not so easy.  I tried, but the lump under the covers did not respond.  I rubbed it’s back.  Nothing.  I kissed it’s little noggin.  Nothing.  Finally, I peeled back the blanket and said “I’m not leaving until I see some eyeballs and hear some words.”

The lump under the blanket peeped one eye open and said “Crap.”  

Fair enough.

As it turned out ‘crap’ was a fitting word for the day because on this particular morning there was a knot in his shoelace.

“Ugghhh!!!!!!  I can’t even TIE MY SHOES!!!!”  Shoes hit the dresser with an angry clunk.

“Bring me your shoes and I’ll help you.”

“No!  It’s too humiliating.”  

Too humiliating.

Humiliating seems like an awfully strong word to apply to shoe-tying.  But it’s not about the shoes.  It’s about measuring up to everyone else.  At eight years old, my son is late joining the shoe tying club and he is keenly aware of it.  Never mind all of the other wonderful things he can do.  He tests grade levels ahead in math and reading.  He understands abstract concepts like the difference between communism and socialism and the conversion of mass to energy.  He’s eight.  Eight.  Yet he still sees himself as deficient because of a simple struggle with shoe tying that, in his mind, marks him as different from everyone else.  And he is too humiliated by it to even get up and go to the one who can help him.

I’ve been there myself.

Life is full of hurts that leave their mark on us.  Some hurts are just the common frustrations of everyday life.  Some are things we’ve done to ourselves.  Some are superficial wounds that leave us tripping over our own shoelaces.  And some hurts leave a wound so deep that it cuts to the very core of us, forever changing our gait.

But when we take these wounds, big or small, into ourselves and let them define us, we are in effect saying that the world knows who we are better than God.  All too often we let the shame of past hurts keep us from turning to a loving God.  Salvation?  Ok.  We buy that.  But an abundant life?  Grace?  God’s love and friendship?  Nope.  Not for us.  We are God’s red-headed step children, convinced that he is letting us in to Heaven on a technicality, but never believing that he would really want us.  That he would love us.

Why do we think like this?  Because we have taken it upon ourselves to decide that God was wrong.  All of the rest of creation might be good, but not us.  We are faulty.  We have decided that we are, at the very core of ourselves, unlovable.  Someone once made us feel like trash and we agreed.  Someone degraded us and we assumed that we deserved it.  Someone told us that we are shameful and we decided to believe them.  And now we are too humiliated to go to the only one who can help us.

The only one who knows who we really are. 

Eve was first to eat forbidden fruit.  She rejected God’s wisdom and chose her own way.  The result was shame.  And so she hid.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.    Genesis 3:8

Notice though, that God came to the garden looking for Eve.  He knew what she had done.  “Where are you?,” He called.  

“No!” she said.  “It’s too humiliating.”

In the book of Jeremiah, God’s people had abandoned him and worshipped false gods.  They turned away from their father who had led them to the promised land and they chose their own way.    

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and they have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.  Jer 2:13

They replaced the living God with their own broken constructs, rejected the image of God for the image of world.  Like Eve, they had eaten tainted fruit.  And like Eve, they were separated from God.  But love wholly triumphs and God has made a way for His exiled children to come back to Him. 

Bring me your woes and I’ll help you.

The love your Father has for you is real.  Trust him.  Seek him.  Receive his wisdom when life gives you lies.  Look to God instead of the world and believe that you are treasured even when you can’t feel it.  Trust that you, at the very center of who you are, are lovable simply because God loves you.