Category: Recommendations

I asked the Lord

Oh, friends.

What happens when you reach the end of your rope? What’s after the end – another rope?

Today, I’m asking the Lord.
Actually, I just kind of sat for a few minutes and let space pass between me and the Lord. I let this song do all the asking, because it seems to write the kind of lyric my heart is singing. Hymns pack a pretty hearty punch when it comes to expressing what feels hidden too deep for language. John Newton first penned these words in 1879, so their strength does not surprise me. What does surprise me is how accurate his description is (after 133 years) of the woeful condition of my heart. Even as I seek the Lord in earnest prayer, I often ask for what most benefits me – what most quickly satisfies or appeases or quiets or calms. I am earnest, but I am disappointed when what He gives is abundant in every opposite way.

I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He’d answer my request
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest

Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part

My conversation in quiet moments with the Lord that started with an honest desire to grow in grace and faith ends with frustrated confusion. God must not have understood – I wanted to grow in grace and faith. 

And here I feel, again, the guilt and weight of my sin – the hidden evils of my heart that lead even my prayer life away from the Lord. O, how gracious to set me free from self and pride – again and again so that I might seek my all in Him.

Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
“Tis in this way” The Lord replied
“I answer prayer for grace and faith”

“These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”

Posted on by Caroline 4

Captivated, Prometheus, Eugenics, and Yosemite

It has been a LONG while since I posted links for “this & that.” I’ll just trust you’ve been doing your own sleuthing. In the chance that you haven’t, here are some things you should look up.

  • Friends, please watch this trailer for the documentary, “Captivated.” The lure of media-saturated living is so great and happened so subtly that we barely realize our bondage.
  • I mostly get my movie recommendations from the blogs I read and this post by Thabiti Anyabwile makes me want to look up listings for Prometheus right away. Now, for finding the time to go to the theatre…
  • Oh, did you think eugenics was a thing of the past? This brilliant piece in the NYTimes, “Eugenics, Past and Future” reveals where the idea (because things like public policy always start with ideas and end up with society-altering implications) originated and which great minds were involved in its inception. Now, what does the conversation look like today? I wish there wasn’t one.
  • This timelapse video of Yosemite is breathtaking. Such beauty – really unexplainable beauty. If you’ve got 4 minutes, you won’t be wasting it by watching this video.
  • This is a hard story to read, so don’t click unless you are ready. It’s not one that is filled with hope in the last lines or rings of redemption – this story is streaked with pain.  This freelance writer (and blogger) writes about her very real and frightful struggle with a daughter who has acute mental illness, “In the never after.“

Now, can I make a shameless plug? Um, I’m trying to … well, I’m trying to “be” a blogger. I guess I mean that in the sense that I’d love to have more “hits” and “pings” and all those things that make your readership grow. Not because I have something to say, or maybe it is because of that. In any case, I’ve been told one of the ways to find more readers is to have them “like” you on facebook. There is a facebook image on my sidebar and if you click on it, you can “like” my blog on facebook. There, I said it and I can’t give you anything for doing it. Just do it if you want to and don’t do it if you don’t.

Okay, friends. Please

let LOVE fly like cRaZy!

Posted on by Caroline 0

longing for a home

On my 15 hour trip across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, I finally had time to process Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. The lyrics to the new Matthew Perryman Jones song, “O Theo” have accompanied many of my night runs, but I hadn’t realized they were so old. They date back to intimate correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother and one such letter inspired this especially earnest and confessional song.

There’s something magnetic about the words – something that pulls you in and makes you listen to what was painfully penned from a brother to a brother of a dreadful waywardness.

Under the silence of water,
Into a sky full of birds
Out from the land of our fathers,
I am falling on your words,
Oh…

Dark as the night of a preacher,
I made a bed out of hay
They paid me a handful of money,
I gave it all away…
All away…

And the righteous raised their stones
And the devil threw his arrow
That was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

In the half-life of the city,
She took off all of her clothes
I flew from the height of the mountains
Into a valley of dry bones
All alone

Then my heart was still unknown
I was drunk and full of sorrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

So, I set fires of starlight,
To burn up against the despair
I was caught in the tangles of midnight’s
Long, unanswered prayer:
‘Are you there?’

And the light of morning grows
On a field of fallen sparrows
I was longing for a home
With nowhere to go,
Oh, Theo…

Are you pulled in to Van Gogh’s plea for a home? Does something deep inside turn over when you read about his waywardness?

Van Gogh describes his desperate and failed attempts to cure himself of loneliness. He reaches out and lays all things bare, longing for a home.

In a phone conversation the other night, I heard the same longing – a beautiful soul captured by grace who longed for the security of “home” without the fear of abandonment. I heard her confession of sin and her fragile hope of new life. I heard fear drip from every excuse as she listed reasons why now is a hard time to turn from sin.

And right there we called spades “spades.” We agreed about her sin and the fear that made her cling to it. We agreed that her life looked like Jesus hadn’t accomplished anything on the cross – that He wasn’t capable of holding her up when her world crashed.

We agreed that Jesus wanted a complete turn from sin so that she could look Him fully in the face and hear the words, “Child, you are mine.”

I remember sitting on my friend’s porch a cool, August night in high school. I remember trying desperately to convince my friend that I had sin to deal with. I remember my friend saying, “That’s it?”

We all get desperate and blinded by sin. The only hope of redemption we have is to believe that Christ willingly stood in the place of that sin (because it is sin) and continually sits at the right hand of God interceding for us, not that we would continue in sin but that we would enjoy the freedom that comes through repentance.

And it is with this honest, repentant heart that we do find a home that is secure.

Posted on by Caroline 0

on guilt in life

No guilt in life, no fear in death.
This is the power of Christ in me.

These lines from “In Christ Alone” make my bottom lip tremble. Now more than yesterday and tomorrow more than today. More and more I feel the power of Christ in me conquering the death in me.  Because, with awful dread in my bones, my guilt grows as my soul expresses all the ways it’s prone to wander. And I hate it.

I hate feeling schmoozed and stunted by temptation, knowing I can look back and see my own willful footsteps led me to the place I despise.

Jared Wilson writes in his book, “Gospel Wakefulness,”

The gradual dawn of gospel wakefulness is occurring for you as the Spirit brings your sin to mind, pours more grace upon you, and bears more fruit of good character and good works in you. To this end, then, you should read the gospel, listen to the gospel, sing the gospel, write the gospel, share the gospel, and preach the gospel, all the while asking God to administer its power more and more to your life.

As my sin comes to mind (and there’s never a shortage), I pray the gospel quickly follows to fill in all that’s empty and mend all that’s broken.

The gospel is news like the tsunami was news and the presidential race is news and the fall of the Berlin wall was big news. The gospel is news because it happened.

But, if the gospel is going to transform the way I wake up, the way I look at the night sky, and the way I grieve after a funeral, then the heavy joy of the gospel news must come from my heavy and agonizing awareness of what it accomplished.

“No guilt in life” is not so simply stated. The power of Christ in me reminds me of my guilt, of the weight of it. Christ overcame a world of guilt in my life – a world of growing, messy guilt that weighs more than I can bear.

Christ did not die for my sin. Christ died for me, a sinner.

And there is sweet, sweet joy for broken spirits. Sweet, deep, beautiful joy for those keenly aware of the power and depth of their rescue.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

*This reflection will be one of many as I read through Jared Wilson’s “Gospel Wakefulness.” 

Posted on by Caroline 0

let us never grow weary of God

Paul Tripp shared his frustration in this post, “No Longer Amazed by Grace” after hearing the director of a national ministry claim nothing excites him anymore. He shared something from B.B. Warfield that has my heart all in rumbles with agreement. Read the whole thing, but here’s the last bit where Warfield sums up his warning to the seminarian who has become numb to divine things due to his constant contact with divine things.

Think of what your privilege is when your greatest danger is that the great things of religion may become common to you! Other men, oppressed by the hard conditions of life, sunk in the daily struggle for bread perhaps, distracted at any rate by the dreadful drag of the world upon them and the awful rush of the world’s work, find it hard to get time and opportunity so much as to pause and consider whether there be such things as God, and religion, and salvation from the sin that compasses them about and holds them captive. The very atmosphere of your life is these things; you breathe them in at every pore: they surround you, encompass you, press in upon you from every side. It is all in danger of becoming common to you! God forgive you, you are in danger of becoming weary of God!

O, that we would never lose our awe of God. No matter how many books, studies, conferences, or personal devotions at sunrise – may we never get bored of meeting with the Creator of the universe. May we always hold this gift of communion with tender gratitude, knowing we have no right to know anything of His mysteries. Every little bit revealed is pure gift.

Several weeks ago, I was babysitting a 6-year-old and his 4-year-old sister. Moments after their parents left, Connor found his sister and I in the middle of a stuffed animal introduction. He picked up some silver Mardi Gras beads and said, “Let’s play a game. Here’s what we do: I drop the beads on the ground and then we see what shapes we make.” He let the beads fall to the carpet and then we all just looked at the squiggles until shapes emerged. Our observations overlapped, “I see a heart!” and “Oh, there’s a butterfly” and “Do you see the snake?”

Once we’d exhausted the shapes, it was someone else’s turn to throw the beads to the carpet. The whole time, I was absolutely giddy with excitement. How many adults would think of such a game? This 6-year-old is brilliant! I loved how matter-of-fact he was about the game and about spotting shapes and about including his sister. I mostly loved the rasp in their voices right before they found something wonderful “..Oh, oh! Look at this flower!” The shapes came alive in those silver dots in a mess on the floor.

And if we can get excited – even giddy – about silver dots, then how much more should our excitement soar at the wonder of creation? How can we be amused by far lesser (yet still wonderful) things, and bored with the greatest and most wonderful things?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

parody, tarp surfing, learning to teach, and open heaven

It’s been awhile since a “this & that” post. There’s plenty to look at, click on, hear, watch, and do. Do as little or as lot as you wish, but whatever you do – let knowledge be something that produces action. It’s my hope that the more I know, the more I can translate that knowledge into love actions in a way that pleases my Lord. Just like all Truth is God’s, all knowledge is possible only because He’s allowed it to be so.

  • Andrée Seu is a woman I’d love to meet. This piece, “Under an Open Heaven,” seems to be a page right out of my heart. Here’s a taste, now please go read the rest!

My lover is the fresh wind of the Spirit, blowing through the rafters of my melancholy. My lover speaks of God “in season and out of season,” like Jesus at the well in Sychar, in his fatigue and hunger. There is no difference between his “religious” talk and his regular talk. He does not sound one way in church and another at the mall.

Walking with him I feel no sides, no floor, no ceiling, and everything all new: No past, no future. No rules but God’s. No servitude but to Him. No man-made impossibilities. We do the adventure called “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Let me be blunt: This is fun!

  • Wanna know what makes a great story? Seems like this post would answer it, “1+1=3 Ken Burn on what makes a great story” but it may not answer your math questions.
  • If I could choose a conference to go to this summer (in addition to the Muslim Missions Conference in Dearborn, Michigan), it would be the gem of a conference in Florida – The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference. The next best thing, of course, is to read/listen to everything. Carrie Sandom, hailing from the UK, will be speaking and here’s an introduction that makes me excited to hear more from her. “Learn the Bible to Teach the Bible” makes a bunch of sense.
  • Do you doubt that a landlocked country could surf waves? Doubt no more. This is really sweet.

  • Not to be “that kind of fan,” but Metaxas has proved himself as a brilliant writer and historian (Amazing Grace and Bonhoeffer). This article, “Spirituality as Parody” is definitely worth the read as well (and a lot shorter than Bonhoeffer).
  • What does your view of Scripture have to do with your view of God? See what J.I. Packer has to say about that, “Your View of Scripture and Your View of God.”
  • If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been grooving to the new band Citizen. They’re cool enough to spend $3 on, for sure.

Okay, friends. That’s all for now. Click, read, listen, watch, and… then DO something.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

practice resurrection

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

.
.

Practice resurrection.

(snippets from Wendell Berry’s 1973 poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”from The Country of Marriage)

I’ve been meaning to read more of Wendell Berry and summer seems like a good time to “get around to it.” The vibrant green leaves and the smell of blooming peonies seem a fitting backdrop to his poetry. I map my runs to intentionally include the rowdy peony bushes on S. 3rd Street. I always “stretch” long enough to fill my lungs with peony air before putting my race face on again.

The smell of peony makes me sad for people who don’t lean over to breathe in their beauty.

And that’s why Wendell Berry’s advice to, “practice resurrection” is nestling nicely somewhere deep in my soul. We are so forgetful. We live like we don’t know we’re resurrected. We live like we’re not sure how this day will end. We live like Christ’s resurrection was too long ago to rearrange my daily toil. We live like all the wonder in the wind moving through the trees is something not everyone has the time to admire.

We live like we’ve forgotten how to practice resurrection.

We were dead in our trespasses and sins. Dead. Gone. Lost. Limp. Lifeless. Stuck. Trapped. Suffocated. Dead.

There’s no way to make that sound nice or easy. But if that were the end, I would have a hard time getting you to stop and smell the peonies.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

(Ephesians 2:4-10 ESV)

But, God…

What a beautiful interjection!
What an altogether unexpected and undeserved display of mercy!
What glorious gratitude is birthed when life displaces death!

This is our resurrection. We are made alive together with Christ. We are raised up from the grave to sit with Him, to search out the immeasurable riches of His grace, to seek all the beauty of His face reflected in the glory of creation. This is our resurrection.

Practice resurrection today, friends.
Practice resurrection and do not forget.
Practice resurrection because, in Christ, life has displaced death.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

sought

In tenderness He sought me
Weary and sick with sin
And on His shoulders brought me
Back to His fold again
While angels in His presence sang,
until the courts of heaven rang

Something about being sought in tenderness.
Something about being shown grace and favor while sick with sin.
Something about the vantage point of His shoulders and the heavenly accompaniment that swelled.

I imagine when Jesus chases after those prone to wander, his pace is not frenzied and his voice does not growl. I imagine His eyes set like flint (just as they were for the cross) and joy filling the creases in His face. I imagine He knows just where to look – all the best hiding places and dark corners. I imagine His touch tender as He cradles the fragile soul in the arms of His grace.

Oh the love that sought me!
Oh the blood that bought me!
Oh the grace that brought me to the fold of God
Grace that brought me to the fold of God

Oh the love.

It makes no sense and I’m the more grateful for it. He sought me out in my favorite, darkest corner and then swung me up on His shoulders and carried me out of darkness and into His marvelous light. And with tenderness He sought me.

What a glorious and merciful Savior!

This new song by Citizen is a beautiful reminder of how we came to know our Savior.

Posted on by Caroline 1

to wait and to hope

It’s like finding the door to secret garden or discovering a hidden cave or tapping on the right rock in an Indiana Jones movie.

No matter how many times my pride tries to convince me otherwise, studying the Word never gets old. Sure, I have my seasons where the words look like black text on a white page and little more. But, go ahead and tell a child that there is no cave or secret garden or hidden passage while they are inside it and see what kind of response you get. Laughter seems most fitting. This is the joy of the Scripture – to be inside a mystery that never grows old.

As I was reading Psalm 130, I crawled inside this mystery and stared out in wonder. The urgency leaps from the misery and clings to the Lord’s forgiveness as the only hope against His righteous standard. My thoughts drifted toward Spanish again and the word, “esperar.” It means both “to wait” and “to hope” and, though I don’t know the original text, the interchange in verses 5-8 makes all kinds of sense.

1,2 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
3,4 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
5,6 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
7,8 O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.
(Psalm 130 ESV)

Our waiting is hoping and our hoping is waiting. And it all rests on the Lord – the waiting and the hoping – not on our willpower to do it. The Psalmist makes certain we understand the intensity of his waiting. I’m sure watchmen assume the highest form of vigilance, filled with the gravest kind of hope. Twice the Psalmist says his soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. How closely a watchman must hope for the dawn to break the darkness, for the sun to shed its light on the sky. Even more than a person whose purpose it is to wait and hope – he waits even more than him. What great expectation!

What a rush of beauty, to wait and hope in the One who offers steadfast love and plentiful redemption! Redeemed, restored, renewed… and we find these things in abundance!

Fo what else could we hope, my friends?
For what else should we wait?

go ahead, dive in to the mystery and

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

you are not enough

What a funny word.
“Enough” means sufficient, even if it means barely squeaking by.

I wonder what happens when enough is a challenge. Are you man enough? Are you strong enough? Are you brave enough? Are you mom enough?

These questions issue a challenge to those places in us that can’t resist – those places in us that say, “I’ll show you…” in response. We might even get a little carried away in proving that we are, indeed, enough of whatever quality is in question. We might even, on the wild proving grounds of this challenge, reveal just how great is our need. Because when we start to think that our adequacy is found in what we do, we’re beat from the start.

We were never meant to rise to the challenge of enough. We were meant to see our not enough and recognize our need.
We were made to find our enough in Another who is always sufficient, always abundant, and always.

This little excerpt (thanks, Tim Challies) from John Piper’s book Pierced by God gives helpful perspective. I realize it’s a bit much for this morning, so if you don’t read the excerpt below, just know that you are not enough.

You will never be brave enough, strong enough, smart enough, or mom enough. You can’t reach down deep and muster up the willpower. It’s not in you. And it’s not failure to admit that – it’s just recognizing that you are not God. You are made to depend on God’s enough-ness (if you will) and bring Him glory.

We are not God. So by comparison to ultimate, absolute Reality, we are not much. Our existence is secondary and dependent on the absolute Reality of God. He is the only Given in the universe. We are derivative. …We were. He simply is. But we become, “I Am Who I Am” in His name (Exodus 3:14).

Nevertheless, because He made us with the highest creaturely purpose in mind—to enjoy and display the Creator’s glory—we may have a very substantial life that lasts forever. This is why we were made (“All things were created through Him and for Him”, Colossians 1:16). …This is why we eat and drink (“So whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”, 1 Cor. 10:31). …This is why we do good deeds, (“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven”, Matthew 5:16).

That is why we exist—to display the glory of God. Human life is all about God. That is the meaning of being human. It is our created nature to make much of God. When we fulfill this reason for being, we have substance. There is weight and significance in our existence. Knowing, enjoying, and thus displaying the glory of God is a sharing in the glory of God. Not that we become God. But something of His greatness and beauty is on us as we realize this purpose for our being—to image-forth His excellence. This is our substance.

Not to fulfill this purpose for human existence is to be a mere shadow of the substance we were created to have. Not to display God’s worth by enjoying Him above all things is to be a mere echo of the music we were created to make.

This is a great tragedy. Humans are not meant to be mere shadows and echoes. We were to have God-like substance and make God-like music and have God-like impact. That is what it means to be created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). But when humans forsake their Maker and love other things more, they become like the things they love—small, insignificant, weightless, inconsequential, and God-diminishing.

Human life is all about God, isn’t it? So, why do we love being enough more than the One who is enough? Piper continues,

Listen to the way the Psalmist put it: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes but they do not see; they have ears but they do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 135:15-18: see also 115:4-8).

Think and tremble. You become like the man-made things that you trust: mute, blind, deaf. This is a shadow existence. It is an echo of what you were meant to be. It is an empty mime on the stage of history with much movement and no meaning.

Dear reader, be not shadows and echoes. Break free from the epidemic of the manward spirit of our age. Set your face like flint to see and know and enjoy and live in light of the Lord. “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5). In His light you will see Him and all things as they truly are. You will wake up from the slumbers of shadowland existence. You will crave and find substance. You will make God-like music with your life. Death will dispatch you to paradise. And what you leave behind will not be a mere shadow or echo, but a tribute on earth, written in heaven, to the triumphant grace of God.

In God, we find all our desire for enough so that our lives can be a tribute on earth to the triumphant grace of God. You are not enough, but in Him we have more than enough to

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2