Not Today

I know there are profound things stirring under the surface in me.  They are profound simply because God is profound and revealing more of Himself...  That is His kindness.

It is also His kindness to let these things be just out of my understanding, that I would seek and desire Him more.  Jesus is drawing me closer.   It is good.

I want to share these things.  I want to speak of the joy that is growing, the beauty coming from the ashes, and the dreams He's given me...

Not today...

Rest

Five minute Friday with The Gypsy Mama and others for 5 minutes of unedited writing.

Rest.  Stop.  Pause.  Break.  Breath.  Still.

The frenetic pace has worn me thin.  Some days it takes all I am just to stay on my feet.  But for all the days where it seems like stopping seems impossible without crashing, there is a simple and neglected command.

Rest.

Don't pick up that stack of papers to grade.  Don't head to the bus stop to travel here or there on errands.  Don't even study.

Set against the ever grinding flow.  Find that place where Shalom peace in the presence of God is reality and not a ever present wish not come true.

Where being is far more important than doing.   And there is actually trust that everything that needs to get done will get done, even if it can't be done today.

Love Came Down

Whether good days or bad days, I am Yours.

In the bad, it is the moments of worship, knowing that You conquered death.  You came to rescue me from sin and its wages of death.  That in the silence, You are everything.  You are the I AM even when I am shaking in sin or hardship.

In the good, it is the moments of worship, knowing that I deserve nothing, but You give Your riches of grace anyway.  The humility it takes to know that You are enough even when worldly abundance may blind me.  That even in the joy of seeing promises fulfilled, there is no way to ever separate the blessing from Creator.  You are where I hide, celebrating every bit of joy with You.

I am Yours, I'm Yours, forever.

Yours.  Forever.

Because Love came down.



This is a new favorite song and I really love this slowed down acoustic version.

No One Wins

I shifted uneasily, as words continued to fly.  As an observer of two people demanding their way.  What both of them want are good things.  But with no love, no one gives an inch except to save themselves the strain of the current argument.

A phone call breaks up the exchange and one person leaves the room.  I can feel the strain.  My own head trying to understand why I have both empathy and anger for both parties.  One deserves the promise filled, but also needs to give respect.  The other deserves a measure of empathy for the weight they carry, but also needs to give what was promised without manipulation.

At the end of the day, I retreat to my own abode and ask, "WHY?"

Seeing both sides, means despite the pull, I don't get to pick sides.  And...

No one wins, when you compete in relationships.

Because you're not just pushing a body around in a sporting competition, you're pushing and manipulating a human heart and human spirit.  One that is likely already broken, injured.  Physical wounds heal way faster, then the slashes of words or emotions ever will.

And the wounds don't just come from the person you're competing with; If I am going to compete for power in a relationship, I am most likely to harden a part of my heart to do it.  I close off part of myself that is actually meant to offer life.

To hold oneself open to wounds and say, "I will honor your need above mine."  doesn't mean you become a doormat, your needs invisible.  You can still ask, but put away the weapons.  Words creatively formed to knock the other person down, become questions that ask the questions that unlock the defensiveness of oneself and the other.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

For God sought to restore the relationship with man, that man had torn.  He gave all of Himself, He gave His Son, so that their is reconciliation and restoration.  

Older

Five minute Friday's at the Gypsy Mama

GO:

I used to think that as I got older, some things wouldn't hurt so much.

But then I would have gotten harder as I got older.  But with Jesus the opposite has happened.  My heart breaks for things even more than they used to.

But as I have gotten older, my framework for dealing with the pain, the bitterness, the lies, the abandonment, the rejection, has been transformed.  As I get older, I see things more and more in the light of Jesus.  I first seek where He is in the situation when I remember.  I don't always but, I've come to understand that even, if at first, I don't go to Christ, and the walls build up.

Hardness comes.  The same as the old life.  The same as I learned as a child.

But as I get older, as a Child of God, the moment I turn to Him, His fierceness and justice take what I used put forth in protecting myself.  And the walls come down.  I turn into His tenderness.

STOP

Coffee and Hope

호프

Korean phonics and English phonics are two fairly differently things.  There are some commonalities and both languages are very open and easily acquire new words.

Then there is hof.  Or hope because there isn't an 'f' sound in Korean so it phonetically pronounced as a 'p'.

Most places if the word is romanized it is spelled hof, but I saw this place, which is on my way to walk to church and I had to take picture to note the more accurate spelling of the word in English...

So what exactly is so interesting about hof or hope?  

Hof or hope is the Korean word for bar.

Coffee and Hope sounds like a Christian ministry.  In fact it sounds like all the hours I spent at coffee shops in college ministering and being ministered to in the love and hope of Jesus.  We shared in the caffeine lift to the body and the Holy Spirit lift of the heart and spirit.  As one friend and I half-way joked, and half-way said seriously that the coffee shop was where we "did" church before we went to church.

For all the irony of the way the Korean word for bar is pronounced, I am not going on a tirade against drinking. In fact, I enjoy a drink or two, but rather my take away is this:

Where do I find hope?  How does hope alter my life?

May the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace, in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope ~ Romans 15:13

Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.                     ~ Romans 5:1-5

I'm mulling over what these passages talk about hope.

God is the God of hope and He pours it out on me.    

Hope is the product of suffering, endurance and the growth of character.  

Hope is in the glory of God.  Him being magnified.

No matter what else I glean from the hope spoken of in the Bible: This is the all-encompassing hope.  It is not dependent on circumstances, or another broken, sinful human being.  It rests on Jesus.  The one who took an enemy of God, paid for salvation with His blood, justified a sinner who would rather go their own way, redeemed a heart broken by a Cruel and Deceptive Master, brought me into His kingdom with all the rights of a citizen and adopted me into His own family with all the inheritance and love of a Daughter.

So every morning as I drink my coffee, whether at home or tucked away in the corner of a coffee shop, alone, or gathered with friends, I'll be resting on Hope...God's full hope.

Lord of Hosts

Yahweh of Hosts.  The name used in Genesis to describe the Creator.

I've been stuck on this title of God for over a week.  Partly because I don't think I had read a ton of old testament lately, where this title occurs, in a translation that uses this title rather than Lord Almighty.

I knew that Lord Almighty translates to Yahweh, but Lord of Hosts gives me a different, more vivid picture.  Like this definition from Biblosdotcom

Evidently the meaning of the title is that all created agencies and forces are under the leadership or dominion of Yahweh, who made and maintains them. It is used to express Yahweh's great power.

 All created agencies and forces under His leadership...

Jaw-dropping visualization:  The forces of heaven and earth at His command.  Waiting on His word; ready to go battle for the Kingdom, with Him at the front.  I envision the fierceness, riding in on a the white horse of Revelation or the red horse of Zechariah 1.

And this picture puts my heart at rest.  Realizing the Lord of Hosts has gone to battle for me, returning from Hades with the keys...  And He continues to battle Satan and His forces for the salvation and redemption of every one of His creations.