Category: theology and philosophy

forget yourself in worship

Last week, I smiled with eyes closed at the woman sing-shouting several rows behind me and across the aisle at church. Her honest, lung-filled offering grated on me at first – silently wishing she would find her place in the worship chord and slide in a little less loudly.

Then, I smiled. Her sharp, wide-mouthed notes didn’t irritate me less (growing up a musician’s daughter has its drawbacks), but with eyes closed I imagined a different worship setting.

I imagined a crowd of people of all shapes and sizes and colors and tongues flooding a throne with an uproarious and joyful noise. I imagined new chords and instruments and I imagined that no individual voice could be identified. Every noise jumping out to make the song got swallowed up in the glory of the sound and there was a distinct awareness on the faces of the worshippers that the sound wouldn’t be as beautiful if every single person was not singing.

I smiled because that prideful irritation got planted in me but Christ, in His grace, could uproot it and He did.

This morning as I was reading this reflection by Tony Reinke, my thoughts drifted back to that moment. Why do I guard the Sunday morning experience as if the music is for me? Not that the offering should not be excellent (like I said, I am a musician’s daughter and it is not intolerant to say good music sounds different than bad music), because we should strive to make the best, most beautiful and joyful noise unto the Lord. Our praise offerings should be excellent.

But the Sunday morning experience, the behind the steering wheel radio experience, the living room stage experience and the robed choir experience should all make bold proclamation that the music is for a King seated on a throne. It might, but it doesn’t have to please me.

I’ll admit there are times when I have no audience but the cold air in my Civic, but I’m secretly more interested in my rendition of the Gungor song than I am in its object.

After showing several places in Scripture where Jesus sings, Reinke writes,

God is worshipped around the globe as a result of the all-sufficient work of the resurrected Christ. In this way, Jesus is the Perfect Worshipper of his Father. And from heaven he fulfills the role of Chief Worship Leader of the global church.

We are led in worship in the auditoriums and living rooms and driver’s seats of cars by Christ who directed all praise to the Father.

What song is in your soul today?
How is Christ leading you to join with Him in song?
How can you forget yourself in worship?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 2

being innocent

Last night, I tried to give an update in the form of a limerick. It didn’t pan out, so I’ll spare you, but I did realize that I must discover again what it means to be childlike.

My beautiful friends asked, “Do you find joy in what you do?” in the incredulous ways friends do when you’ve just thoroughly depressed them. I snapped out of the glazed-over “here’s-how-I-answer-questions-about-my-job” mode and realized I will not survive if I forget to be as innocent as a dove.

Being innocent is possible.

Evil is not a new thing. It has not developed with the introduction of new laws and the deterioration of others. Evil has been around since those two lovebirds had a forbidden meal in paradise. Jesus’s “sending out” was not to go into the world and build houses to hide inside, away from the evil. Wisdom like serpents doesn’t come from staying safe, incubated from the weary world outside our doors. Jesus admonishes his followers to be innocent as doves – to step into all the ugliness and evil and somehow stay innocent.

Jesus was well aware of how twisted and sinful the world was when he gave this directive.

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

Being innocent is possible because Jesus is involved and he said so. That’s the bottomline. He would not command his followers to do something impossible – something He would not make possible in His power. I believe being innocent in this ugly, evil world is possible because God said so.

Being innocent is painful.

For a long time, I had the wrong view of innocence – a sheltered and unexposed upbringing fashioned it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond thankful that I didn’t know many things of the world until recently (and still am pretty clueless). I am thankful for all the ways I was trained up by my parents in righteousness and pointed towards Truth. Where my view of innocence got tangled up was when I started equating my experience to innocence. This does not match up with the experience for which Jesus was preparing His disciples. They would see horrible things, hear horrible things, and experience horrible things. They were not to sit comfortably indoors, far from the evil raging outside. Jesus commanded them to walk towards the pain and even into the pain so they could speak words He would give them. I love that His recruiting schpeel is probably the least persuasive invitation you’ll ever read. “Come, you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” There is no sugarcoating this gig. Jesus is clearly not out to win the crowds into his service.

Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. (Matthew 10:17-22)

Being innocent ends in reward.

But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.(Matthew 10:22-23 ESV)

Jesus sent them out, into the evil, and told them to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. I often turn this over and over in search of something spelled out in letters that can slice a dividing line. When am I too much like a serpent and when am I too fearful and distant like a dove? How does one straddle two extremes perfectly as she walks out the kingdom directive to go?

Christ.

I mean that as simply and mysteriously as it sounds. Christ answers our questions of when and how by telling us to be both wise and innocent, an impossible thing. In this impossibility, we begin to understand He is also the reward. Only someone who is God could give an impossible directive. Christ enables the straddling of two extremes in a way that brings us to our knees in praise. This most powerful God calls us into the impossible at the same time that He invites us into His presence. How deep the Father’s love that He would enter such a twisted, evil world and invite us to be with Him – to share in His heart for the nations. How deep the Father’s love. This is our reward.

Christ is the way we walk out wisdom and fly out innocence. Christ is the reason I can laugh and jump and play like a child even while I am learning the evils of worldly wisdom.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 3

I am a sinner, in the first person

Yesterday, I stood in a new church singing a song with all the old, redemptive swagger of a classic hymn. We rested on the chorus in repeat and I finally sang in the first person.

“I am a sinner, if it’s not one thing it’s another
caught up in words, tangled in lies
You are a Savior and you take brokenness aside
and make it beautiful, beautiful.”
(Brokenness Aside by All Sons & Daughters)

I am a sinner. 

Have you ever been challenged to make “I am …” statements? I often asked my students in Honduras to make a list of ways they could finish that sentence. We would then look through the list and talk about which of those statements were true, which were false, and which were within his/her power to change. All those conversations are nice and tidy when I’m on the counseling end, encouraging people to examine their inner being and ask God to reveal if there is any wrong thing.

As I stood there singing, “I am a sinner” in the first person, something broke. “Sinner” is not the first thing I’d like to have follow my “I am” statements. I’d like to have an impressive list before I make that admission. I always have a hard time thinking about specific ways I sin when I’m standing in church (so convenient, I know). But not yesterday. With every repeating chorus I thought of ways I’d made my heart ugly.

I am a sinner.

The pastor introduced the sermon series on generosity and we read from Luke 18 about the offerings of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
(Luke 18:9-14 ESV)

I work with the kind of stories that would tear your heart out – parents, children, families, neighbors capable of things we try not to know about. There’s a distance that threatens to creep in to my posture when I come before the Lord. There are so many things I haven’t done and would never do.

I pictured the posture of the tax collector at the temple and his first person proclamations struck me. Both the Pharisee and the tax collector prayed for favor. The Pharisee was grateful for what he was not. The tax collector was grateful for who God was. 

The tax collector prayed with a posture that honored the Lord, recognizing how great God would have to be to save him – a sinner.

It is this kind of posture that produces a generous heart – a desperate, first person statement that begs for mercy from the One who is merciful.

I am a sinner, but You are my Savior and you take brokenness aside and make it beautiful, beautiful.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 2

carried away

With news like this morning, the world suddenly sees what ripples underneath the culture’s glossy veneer. It’s horrible. It makes us sick. It’s ugly.

The world is not okay.

No amount of money or brick walls or achievements of institutions will suffice to mend it.

The world is not okay.

It’s painful to peek through the blinds and view the world outside ourselves – outside the way we’ve arranged our lives to make things comfortable and proper. It hurts because what we see outside our windows is ugly. When we pull back the curtains, it’s horror we see when people can walk into a school and kill our little children. And how startling, once the drapes have been drawn, our own reflection in the window as we look out.

The world is not okay and it’s not just the horrors in the news.
It’s the horrors that don’t make the news, too.

Oh, friends. Be encouraged before you get carried away with fear and doubt and pain and sadness. Ask the Lord to teach you to know the number of your days (Psalm 39:4) and then ask Him to be the strength to keep your heart grounded in His Word and His promises.

Teach me to know my number of days
hold on, my heart, from gettin’ carried away

The world is not okay.

But what better reason to introduce a Savior?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 0

He chose “No Vacancy”

This morning in the Advent devotional,

“God’s will was that though Christ was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. The “No Vacancy” signs over all the motels in Bethlehem were  for your sake. “For your sake he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9).” Good News of Great Joy

Christ was rich, but it was God’s will for Him to become poor. It was not enough that Christ became human. He first emptied his divine pockets of all value and then no room could be found for a proper arrival.

As we run after Christ, it should be no surprise when we see “no vacancy” signs. The greatest man who ever walked the earth – the man who could have had the biggest entourage and could have kept company with the most powerful the world had to offer arrived in a barn and lived his whole life with empty pockets.

Why are we afraid to live with empty pockets in this world when it is but a breath? Why do we still cling to what will pass away?

Today, I’m setting my eyes on the eternal and keeping close in my mind the image of Christ cuddling with his mom… in a barn.

And he did this for my sake. “No vacancy” was no accident. He chose to find “No vacancy” for me.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Posted on by Caroline 0

sparkling, healing, light

“Gather ‘round that fire this Advent season. It is warm. It is sparkling with colors of grace. It is healing for a thousand hurts. It is light for dark nights.” – Good News of Great Joy, p. 2

These words wrapped up the first reading from the Advent eBook, Good News of Great Joy that Emma and I read during our dream session last night. The reflection redirected the night’s agenda and sent me to spinning with delight.

sparkling with colors of grace

What an altogether perfect description of this season. Even without the shimmery snowfall, we anticipate a love that illuminated the sky 2000 years ago. The very heavens shone with the news of a Savior and with that news came the shining splendor of our gracious pardon. I love thinking that grace has many colors – even an inexhaustible amount. So that just when I think I’ve pushed the limit, God takes my hand and leads me to a new sparkly, colorful display.

And Jesus was born.

healing for a thousand hurts

Oh, goodness the hurts that need healed. It’s too much – no one solution could possibly bear the weight of the need. And then Jesus was born; the only man who could possibly bear the weight of the need of humankind.

We are clearly broken and bruised. No one can dispute that fact. With wars waging and empires crumbling; with children starving and parents abandoning; with greed overtaking and apathy ruining – we are hurting and our hurt needs healing.

And Jesus was born.

light for dark nights

Sometimes, a dark night stretches so long it feels like it’s swallowed up the morning. The darkness is a blanket like despair that wraps itself around your collar and hugs your sides tight. Darkness tries with all it’s might to squeeze out any flicker of hope.

Maybe that’s why God painted the stars – to remind us that those darkest, most dreary nights stretching like eternity are not eternity. Those determined pin pricks of blazing fire on the sky’s black canvas remind us that we have hope.

Jesus was born and those very stars told of His arrival.

do not fear

Do you know what it feels like to push against fear? To physically march up to fear like you would a military fortress and then push against it as though you believe it will move? Yesterday, during the sermon on generosity, we read Jesus’s words recorded in Luke 12,

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
(Luke 12:22-34 ESV)

Fear not, you little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Pushing against that fortress doesn’t feel so silly when we are oriented to eternity. We push against the immovable wall knowing God can move it. Though we are hurting sinners – in need of grace and caught in dark nights – we are commanded to not fear.

As God calls us into places swarming with wolves, He reminds us, “I sent my Son. I am always victorious. You have absolutely nothing to fear.”

This is the sparkling, healing, light of Christmas: Christ.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

if I have to sell my soul

“This is *Christmas*. The season of perpetual hope. And I don’t care if I have to get out on your runway and hitchhike. If it costs me everything I own, if I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, I am going to get home to my son.” (Kate McCallister to the Scranton ticket agent in “Home Alone”)
Do you remember that scene? We see the raw desperation of a mom who loves her son with a love that says crazy things. Why do I bring it up, other than the fact that Home Alone ranks as one of the best movies of this season?
Because it reminds me of Paul’s desperate words for the Jews in Romans 9:
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5 ESV)

If you can’t hear Paul’s heart of love in this passage, read it until you do. The truth he speaks about has taken hold of him in such a way that he cannot bear to see others believe lies. He had “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart. This is not just a movement Paul joined or an experience or a short-lived passion. His heart got ill over the lost.

If you are not in anguish over the lost around you this morning, consider God’s great mercy in calling them to Himself. Consider that as one child chooses Him, she passes from a life of separation from Christ into a life of union with Christ.

Wow.

The knowledge impresses me into silence, but it also motivates. There are many motivators to do the good deeds God has prepared for us (Ephesians 2:10). We can be motivated by anguish and sorrow to share with urgency, but we can also be motivated by joy and gratitude to share with patience. Both motivators come from an understanding of the crazy love we’ve been shown. Crazy love speaks crazy things. 

Let’s be willing to speak crazy things as a result of God’s love for us and in us.

I’m not petitioning for the words “Merry Christmas” to be shared at the checkout counter. Nope, I’m talking about getting on our knees to ask for crazy love so that we can open up our hearts to share that crazy love with others. 

Imagine saying Kate McCallister’s words about your neighbors, your co-workers, your family, your best friend. Does it feel awkward? Might we ask God to grow that kind of crazy love in us so we can pray as Paul did?

Christmas is a miracle. How are you going to tell the story?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy 

Posted on by Caroline 0

counting blessings, and what to do when there are too many

We sang, crowded in concentric circles around the basement with my mom pounding out the hymn on the piano. We sang the familiar song that has accompanied every Thanksgiving I can remember – even the Thanksgivings where I have been far from this little countryside gathering. It seems that counting blessings got into my bloodstream real early and has never left.

When we had little, we counted. When we had much, we counted. When we struggled, we counted. When we prevailed, we counted.

The blessings always seemed to outnumber our math, so we counted by song and we’re still counting.

I can’t put my finger on the emotion hanging in that long skinny room this past Thursday, but every year it seems to swell for the new little ones and the ones married in. The emotion is heavier than the scent of turkey and stuffing and Aunt Jane’s coconut pecan pie. The emotion of counting blessings is a heavy one.

I wonder if we count our blessings like someone counts a harvest… and we’re accountable for what happens after it’s been stored away.

Sometimes I find myself getting caught up in the counting, overwhelmed by what I’ve been given. I’m drawn into thanks and into joy as I reflect on these gifts – as I look on the storehouses of blessings that are bent to bursting. And as I get caught up, I get stuck.

I stop at counting and thanking.

This year, I’m feeling the Lord asking me to count my blessings so that I know exactly what I am giving back to Him. It is not enough to be thankful. It is not enough to get overwhelmed and weepy at the Lord’s provision. It is not enough.

Thanksgiving and joy are part of the journey into greater joy and greater thanksgiving as we count the blessings as they go out from our possession. In the same way that we count the blessings we’ve been given, we must also count the blessings as we give. Because we were never meant to hold fast to anything but Christ.

I have so many blessings to count, but having many blessings is never the problem. The problem is my hoarding what has been counted.

As I read through Kevin DeYoung‘s Hole in Our Holiness, I came to his reflection on this passage from Timothy 4 and specifically verse 15, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.”

I thought of all the ways I make excuses for my slow progress on the holiness road and the excuses I allow others to make for me. I thought of the conversations in my head where I’ve said, “But you aren’t making hardly any money right now…” and “No one really expects you to give…” and “No one really knows your schedule, anyway…”

And I thought about how my beliefs about blessings sometimes stretch a great distance from my behavior with blessings.

Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

1 Timothy 4:11-16 ESV (emphasis mine)

Counting blessings is only the first of a two-part transfer. The second part is the way you transfer the blessings to others. This I must practice in a way that my progress is noticeable. I must make my behavior – my speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity – match my beliefs in a way that transfers blessings into the lives of others.

I’m not discounting the ways I have succeeded in blessing others – by God’s grace I hope it does happen. But, we have never arrived at a final destination on the holiness road, so we must keep journeying.

And when my pack gets full of blessings, I know I must transfer the joyful load so I may travel light.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

freed from bondage | freed to weakness

I was thinking about the Exodus as I climbed out of my dreams and into the morning. I can’t explain why I had Exodus on the brain, but I remember reaching for a blog title and rolling around the words “bondage” and “weakness.”

This pre-waking creative exercise faded into daylight tasks until a friend sent me a text update. The jumbled Exodus-freed-bondage-weakness message popped into my head and came out as encouragement that my friend and I both needed to hear.

Remember that slogan that appeared on every men’s athletic shirt in high school?
“Pain is weakness leaving the body”

It’s not true.

Pain might remind us of our weakness, but no matter how many hours we spend in life’s weight room we will always be weak. No matter how strong we manage to make our muscles or how disciplined our diets, we will always be weak. No matter how many times we beat the diseases that threaten our health or how many tragedies our hearts weary through, we will always be weak.

When the Israelites marched in a freedom parade out of the place of their bondage, they might have felt like they conquered. I imagine they felt a sense of national pride at what had been accomplished by way of the (somewhat questionable) negotiating techniques of their leader. As they put one free foot in front of the other, I wonder if they spoke to each other, “We are no longer slaves to those who oppressed us! We are absolutely free to order the day as we please!”

Free. They probably waved their own kind of flag that day – proud to be a nation set apart and not defined by slavery.

But, O! how their hearts forgot who bought their freedom!

Freedom has a way of emboldening a person – planting a seed of misplaced courage. I wonder if a strong, newly freed man turned to another and said, “Look – we are free! Think what we can do now!”

We know what they did with their freedom and it wasn’t praise God for life and breath and rescue.

I’ve been thinking about weakness and not because I want to get rid of it.
I’ve been thinking about weakness because the white flag is the only one that can fly when we walk out our exodus.

The only reason I am freed from the bondage of sin rests squarely on the shoulders of Christ – the sacrifice planned by God’s grace to release me from my chains. But it is not a singular freeing event. The victory He won over my sin is not simply a mark in the timeline of my sanctification.

If I shake the Eqypt dust off my feet and believe the glory of the sin defying victories was a one time event, I will forget that I will always be weak.

My weakness is an invitation for Christ to be strong.
My weakness is a proclamation that I have nothing in which to boast.
My weakness is a reminder that it is to this we have been freed.

We are freed to be weak and our sanctification will never lead us to be anything else.

Posted on by Caroline 2

The Tower of B84

I got off the airport tram at terminal B, following the calm recorded directions on the loudspeakers, and I meandered my way toward Gate B84.

My airport method is simple when it comes to layovers and connecting flights (mostly because I once missed a flight because I was making lazy conversation at Customs): make mad pace to get to your gate and then determine whether you have time to wander.

Last Monday, I made mad pace to get to B84 and then I snuggled in to people watch. Coming, going, waiting, boarding – I sat comfortably underneath the B84 sign until I realized there was an arrow beside it that pointed down a hallway.

Then I scrambled into mad pace mode thinking with the giggles, “I would sit comfortably people watching just outside of earshot of my boarding plane. I would do something like that!”

The hallway opened up into a mess of crowded activity and 5 or 6 attendants with overlapping announcements,

“Flight 10667 to Albuquerque is now boarding, we’d like to board any military and–“
“As a reminder, passengers traveling to Pensacola will need to check your carry on baggage with a pink tag. The flight attendant–”
“We are now boarding zones 1-7 on flight 4584 to Lafayette. Flight 4584 is now boarding in B84C – that’s C as in Cat. Enter through the door marked C and continue–“
“Those passengers with small children on flight 33092 to Grand Rapids are welcome to board at this time out of B84D. That’s D as in Dog.”
“And that’s the last and final call for Flight 10667. Last and final call for Albuquerque.”

Gate B84 in Houston is actually the hub for about 8 gates with planes pointed in all sorts of directions, from Florida to Arkansas, Texas to Michigan, and from Louisiana to Nebraska. Passengers are amassed in the mayhem and these continuous announcements seem aimed at corralling the chaos.

The attendants keep a practiced calm over the loudspeaker and then immediately panicked over their walkie-talkies (which were just as loud), “We’ve got someone here for  Daytona Beach! Have you left? … I sent down two–“

And there was one very little man. I imagine Zaccheus looking exactly like this little man, although I don’t know if this robed figure would have clamored up a sycamore tree to get a good look at Jesus. He walked steadily and slowly right up to the attendant, rolling his small suitcase behind the burnt brown of his robe that touched the floor. I couldn’t hear his words, but the attendant replied, “Oh, Memphis? That’s Door E” and waved her left arm in the general direction of Door E and 4 other doors.

The robed man calmly turned and wheeled his suitcase over to a chair where he seemed to survey the scene.

I should have offered to help, but I couldn’t have known that this very little man would stand in my boarding line for Omaha. I couldn’t have known that the attendant would look at him astonished and say, “Oh, you want the Memphis plane? That plane has already left, but you were here!” She turned to a neighbor attendant, “He was here when it was boarding…” and then turned back to the little man, “You will have to speak to someone upstairs about booking another flight.” And all the time, the very little man maintained his calm, blank stare.

As I walked down the jetway to board my plane, I realized what caused this mess keeping the very little man from Memphis: Babel.

When man became obsessed with self-promotion and protection instead of submitting in obedience to the Lord, confusion and chaos caused a division that cut clear into the 21st century. I don’t know the heart of the little man or the intention of the attendant who failed to communicate his boarding procedure, but I do know our chaos and disorder are a direct result of our proclivity to wander. Systems and structures designed with the greatest efficiency and engineered for the highest efficacy still fall short of the original design.

We still resemble those folks in Genesis 11 who thought they could improve God’s design and what we get is B84 in Houston.

In God’s grace, there’s a redemptive “rest of the story” in the person of Christ that translates truth with divine clarity and invites the chaotic crowd out of confusion.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0