Monday, January 30, 2017

What Am I Holding Onto?

This week both pastor Jerry and pastor Rob spoke on willingness. Specifically the need in believers to cast aside whatever plans we think we have figured out, or boxes we've found to put our faith in and entrust our every action to God. As an attendee of two church services in order to keep tradition with two sets of dearly loved people, there is always a sense of urgency comes when both of my pastors end up sermoning on the same topic. Maybe because it doesn't often happen, and perhaps more because the separate churches stand about an hour's drive apart from each other, I feel that God is speaking directly to me something that I desperately need to hear.

Proverbs 16:03 "Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established".

These things are so, so difficult for me. I've always thought that I was something of a free spirit, not being able to sit down and make a five-year plan for my life was something I saw a failure on my part, something I struggled hard against. But here I sit, realizing that (despite my supposed long-term flexibility) there must be something I'm holding on desperately to in my version of what following should look like that I shouldn't be holding on to and I can't seem to figure out exactly what it is. A very dangerous place to be. As in so many cases, I can easily see the flaws in others and judge them for it, but even with what seems to be an arrow pointing directly at it, I can't seem to glimpse my own disfigurement. Until I find it, I will be learning to pray as Elijah did that out of great discomfort will come realization and change, even if I may not like the method.



Happy Monday,
Ladybird

Monday, January 2, 2017

Peace Like Snow

Apologies for the two-year absence.

As a dusting of January snow falls to grace the frozen ground here on my mountain, my thoughts replicate its numerous and drifting qualities. But one overlying theme seems to speak to me over the quiet hush that is more inspiring that the proverbial clean slate that the New Year seems to offer or the bubbling joviality that has characterized the Christmas season over the last several weeks. The theme is peace. Not peace on earth, the grownup Christmas wish (though I would readily accept it were the offer there), nor even the peaceful rest of a break from hard work. It is not the peace of a quiet household with sleeping children, or the eventual ceasing of the joyous din that is family celebration. No not a visible peace like any of these things. The peace that I am thinking of is peace in God, in love, and in self.
If the last year or two of your life has been anything like mine or my family's there are things that have happened that would seem very difficult to find peace with. We have all been blessed by God with enormous hearts which have the capacity to love as His Son does if we are willing to learn it. Sometimes, however, those hearts have an incredibly troublesome time letting go of things we have grown to love dearly. Change is deeply painful. We miss those who we must for a time lose here on earth, we ache for the days which we didn't seem to appreciate when they were had, and we fear, intensely, things which have not yet happened or that we don't understand. All these things are normal, and beautifully so. but change has also been found to be wonderfully good; just when we are at our worst we might find a piece of ourselves that has always been absent-- a kindred spirit to love wholly or a passion for something we never knew existed. It is part of being God's creation, humanity, to feel strongly and to express those feelings.
This last year in particular has been full of heart-wrenching emotions for nearly all of us. We have seen so much of the change I just spoke of. We have feared much, and angered much, and loved perhaps not as much as we should have-- the same could be said about any day in earth's past. But this year feels different doesn't it?
Of all the things about this year that have reared their dangerous heads up out of our cavernous society, the hate has been the strongest. Hate enough to kill, hate of those who do the killing, hate of ourselves and of each other, hate of who we think each other have become. Hate coupled with fear has, in the last few months, taken over our capacity for love. And before any of us get self righteous (including myself) because clearly we haven't done anything to perpetuate the hate, please take a moment to recall your reactionary thoughts to each of our most turbulent moments in the last year, review your posts on social media about "the other side", and question the integrity of them.
You may be wondering how I started a post about peace and have somehow wound up talking about hate, but the point is drawing closer. The thing about hate, and unrighteous anger, is that it doesn't get us anywhere new. It is merely another of Satan's tools to draw us further and further apart. I'm not saying that we can't react to the horrible things that we see, or even gently correct each other if we find it necessary, if you'll recall, only a couple paragraphs ago I mentioned how our ability to feel is a good gift. We are made in God's image, and God is not on suppressants. What I am suggesting is that we return to hating only the sin and never each other. And when I say never, I mean it. Never. No buts. Never.
That peace I mentioned earlier is not going to come if we don't look to God's word in order to check the feelings that we have against the purest of standards. If we want peace that alters our perception of our own lives and allows us to improve the lives of those around us, we need to stop trying to do the job of judgement which belongs only to God. We will never get it right, surely we have learned by now that it will only bring us deeper pain. We can only bring God's peace to the world by finding it ourselves.
My prayer for this coming year is that, like the snow that hides the impurities of a half-finished patio from my hillside, we can begin to allow God's peace to mend the brokenness that we were all born with.