Category: Thoughts

oh, to be covered

Ash Wednesday.

Breathe.

Today marks the start of Lent and my soul is stirring with discontent. Living in this flesh is uncomfortable. I’m aware of my awkwardness inside this dusty skin; distressed at my nakedness.

I’m in need of a covering – something imperishable and outside myself that I put on as garment to guard against the world’s weather. A covering that allows me audience with the Almighty and release for my shame.

In 1 Corinthians 15:42-49 Paul writes,

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

 

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

I think back to Genesis – to the first Adam – when he became dishonorable and weak by his act of disobedience. I remember the way shame clothed them in their nakedness and sent them cowering behind leaves. I remember how uncomfortable man was inside his own skin.

God, in his grace, provided covering. He shed the blood of an animal to provide a way for man to keep company with God once again. He provided covering and man saw  that nothing could happen outside God’s power and providence. The story could have ended there.

God could have started over with a new plan.

But God provided a covering.

Today, that covering is the second Adam, Jesus. Jesus shed his own blood so that no other sacrifice is necessary. No sacrifice is capable of the eternal covering that lifts us from perishable to imperishable, from dishonor to glory, from weakness to power.

This covering is Christ and I’m longing today to shed my skin and get wrapped up in Him. I know Christ’s covering is sufficient and forever, only that my faith daily wavers.

As we prepare for Easter, let us reflect on the already, not yet nature of this covering. We  stand righteous and accepted before God because of Christ’s sacrifice, yet our hope is rooted in a not yet reality that God has still to reconcile all things to Himself.

I’m uncomfortable in this skin, but today I am covered clear to the return of my precious Savior and King.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Here’s a helpful guide for Lent if you are interested: http://www.aholyexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Forgiveness.freshstarts.pdf

Posted on by Caroline 0

a rebuke past due

Last night, around the dinner table, we got into a pretty heated discussion (which is unfortunately my modus operandi). The topic is not as important to me as my conversation this morning with my cousin. I guess you could say it was one of those personal revelations – where the layers peeled back and the “real me” was exposed.

I’ve mentioned before my grappling with the meaning of a “gentle and quiet” spirit that Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3:3-4,

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

I wrestle these words.

I want to justify my crazy personality, want to know that “who I am” is okay – even if I’m not the quiet girl praying in the corner. I do believe God sanctifies our personalities, but I’m just not sure how to balance my uniqueness with the ways God desires to transform me to His image.

Enter my cousin Vince.

This morning, I asked him about last night’s discussion. I knew the argument ruffled his feathers and I wanted to know what I could do better. I also, selfishly, wanted to know how to achieve that “quiet and gentle spirit” and still be, well, me.

In the course of our conversation, I realized a major character flaw that needs to be seriously refined by fire.

In a conversation/argument/debate, I often appear confident and decided in my view even if I’m not convinced of it myself.

Even writing it looks lame, but it’s true. I’m not sure who to blame – my brothers for their ruthless monopoly bullying or my sister for all those squabbles over borrowing clothes. In the end, I know it’s my own heart that is so stubborn. It’s my own pride that prevents me from saying, “I’m not really sure. What do you think?” It’s my selfishness that refuses to ask questions and instead offers, “Well, I think…” statements.

I love to process through ideas, philosophies, and theological dilemmas. I welcome questions because every assumption/belief must be challenged to reveal its roots. But, I’ve often made my mind up to be defensive before I am convinced of my own position. I don’t ask questions or consider another as better than myself (Philippians 2:3) on the debate floor. My main focus is to be heard and understood, not to hear and understand.

Oh, dear. This confession is getting ugly.

Over omelettes and coffee this morning, my heart looked sour and silly. Vince saw through my selfishness to ways it has blinded my own heart. He saw my veneer of pride and called me out.

This is a rebuke past due that makes me wonder how many relationships and conversations would have ended differently.

My own pride keeps me from conforming to my Creator, but I would probably argue to the death that it’s not so.

Oh, that I would throw off all that entangles so that I can truly

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 8

inconvenience

Today is pretty regular.

work job #1
go for a run against the wind so I don’t have to shower
work job #2
run errands
read/write/think

I’ve always packed my schedule airtight and then fought for space to dream between the scheduled lines. Today, on my between-works-run I started to think about all the things I pass over because it would inconvenience me (if I’m looking to add anything to my packed day, it better not be inconvenient).

I pounded the ground and wondered about my selfishness. Some of the most pressing needs of those around me will make my life most inconvenient. Those are also usually the most blessed encounters.

I hope I can train my brain to look for the inconvenient ways I can serve others and be willing to do those with a joyful heart. In the end, “inconvenient” is just another way I look to serve myself instead of others around me. I want to be like Timothy, who took a genuine interest in the welfare of others (Philippians 2:20).

My guess is that Timothy was inconvenienced like we wouldn’t believe. I want to be more like that.

Today is pretty regular.
How can I train my heart to look for ways to make it irregular by serving – even if it means inconvenience?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 3

yet

If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love.

I know – weird to bring up breaking hearts on a day like today, but I couldn’t resist. There are so many hearts flying around I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. Truly, this day is a beautiful one for too many reasons (see last year’s Sweet Dinner). I’ve kind of got a love affair with this celebration and I’m missing the ladies I’ve spent it with for the past three years. It’s a time when I remember how beautiful it is to be made in God’s image and that His image is relational. So beautiful!

It also means that today I’m reflecting a bit on how we’re a broken reflection of Christ. Our relationships aren’t the way they were designed to be.

And that’ll break your heart.
But, I love the bold statement in this song: I’ll sing until my heart caves in. And I will – even though there are oh-so-many reasons to lament the brokenness, God hasn’t let go of His purpose to pursue people with His love.

Oh that my heart would break for what breaks His!
And that He would sing songs on my heart to overwhelm the pain.

If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

lost in translation

"Luke", mixed media on canvas (Makoto Fujimura)

As I sat listening to Nancy Pearcey, my pen wavered, scribbled, wavered, and surrendered. Her masterful articulation put my pen strokes to shame. I won’t try to summarize or capture her description of Francis Schaeffer‘s two story dichotomy in our society today. For that, I will wait to dive into the pages of Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.

For now, I want to mention one thought: lost in translation.

When Pearcey was asked, “How can we bring this message to our culture today – what do we do practically to get this message out?” at the end of her seminar, she lamented a dreadful linguistic loss. She sighed, “Well, we talk about it.”

Sadly, it’s hard to find words and harder to find conversants. As we rush into “progress” and grow out of our too-small, sacred shoes, the Gospel gets lost in translation. As Makoto Fujimura, prominent NYC artist, describes it,

“We, today, have a language to celebrate waywardness, but we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”

Tonight, I watched the film 50/50 with some friends. I was struck by all the ways language broke down around the main character diagnosed with cancer.
His friend fails to communicate love as he follows the haphazard advice of a book.
His girlfriend can’t find words to describe her guilt.
His therapist can only speak textbook and theory.
His father speaks the language of forget and his mother, worry.
And he, the main character, tries hard to speak no language at all.

Today, we have all sorts of language to walk people out to the ledge, but (in all our progress) we struggle to give a living translation of the Gospel in a way that brings people to the only safe Refuge.

God designed us for relationship – a right relationship with Him and Creation. So far, we’ve used great word wizardry to narrate – even glorify – the ways these relationships are wrong. We flood the cinemas with the drama and doom of this language. We overwhelm bookshelves with this unsettling lexicon.

So where is the Gospel in the language of this culture?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 1

upheld

L’abri Conference
Rochester, Minnesota
February 10-11

Today I’m surrounded by eager minds and running pens.

“Christ brought the universe into existence with His speech and only by His speech does it continue to be upheld.”

It was some version of this sentence that settled deep – especially that one word: upheld.

There is not one movement, material, musical note, or molecular formation that exists in this day without being upheld by Christ through His speech. His words – most powerful words – hold all things together. All things.

We fret over governments and institutions and the unraveling of societies, but we forget the One who is sovereign over all things, Whose word alone holds all things together.

Calvin writes, in his Institutes,

“While it becomes man seriously to employ his eyes in considering the works of God, since a place has been assigned him in this most glorious theater that he may be a spectator of them, his special duty is to give ear to the Word, that he may the better profit.”

I can only imagine the kind of “becoming” Calvin meant – perhaps that our taking an active role in marveling at the glory of Creation would send us on the most beautiful earthly course toward heaven. But it is this second phrase which captures me now, “…his special duty is to give ear to the Word, that he may the better profit.”

“In the beginning was the Word,” we read in John, “and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Let us respond to our special duty and so better profit – give ear to the Word, Christ Himself. By Him our very existence is upheld.

When Christ was tempted in the desert, how did He respond?
“It is written…”
Wasn’t he, in fact, saying, “I Am He.”

The very words that held the desert together as a backdrop for this dramatic scene were breathed out of Christ Himself – the Living Word. In Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). Miraculous.

And can it be that in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28)? Inside the Word, we live and move and have our being?

This is what it means to be human: to be in the Word, marveling at a universe hanging on the very words of its Creator.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

human eyes; heaven sight

This morning the ice clung to brown, lifeless branches.
And we are all dying.

This past weekend my mom sent an email my aunt wrote about my grandpa’s graceful, shuffling steps into this strange season of life. I’ve re-read these words so many times – grateful for the way they hug my soul. I know my dad and his seven siblings feel the weight of love and the weight of age in this man in a way I cannot, but as I read my aunt’s words my eyes were wet with something new.

She wrote,

Dad’s prayers were so personal and full of thanksgiving to His Savior, especially mentioned was the gift of Eternity and his family.  He didn’t want to walk this road, but it’s here, and he is going to walk it with grace and dignity to the best of his ability, and with his Savior’s and his family’s help.

Our bodies fail. They fall apart.
And we shuffle where we once skipped.
We shake where we once snapped with the energy of youth. We age.
Our eyes grow dim and our ears faint. Mortals.

But the stiffness of his joints has not crept to his heart.

Eternity looks just as glorious on the horizon with shuffled steps as it does with skips.
The promise of salvation is as bright with eyes of age as it is with the eyes of youth.

And with every sunset, one can turn to face the rest of the sky and see a glorious reflection. All the mysterious hues that explode before night falls, chasing after the golden orb, light up the rest of the blue expanse and color the clouds.

I’m witnessing this reflection as I watch my grandpa – human eyes with heaven sight.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.                                                    2 Corinthians 4:18

There is no way around it – we have human eyes confined to human bodies and human limits. But our sight – oh, our sight – is able to see clear through to heaven.

As Grandpa fixes his eyes on the unseen, we are blessed to watch the sky light up with the glory of his heavenly pursuit.

The ice will melt and the trees will bloom.
Let the winter come, for it is the only path to Spring.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
with human eyes and heaven sight 

Posted on by Caroline 4

abide

Today, the Sabbath.

Today is a deep breath – to shed the strivings of six days toil and put on the Savior’s rest. Return, my friends. Return to rest.

Even if this day finds you in front of a screen, screaming for grown men in tight suits… even then, my friends, won’t you return to rest?

Today, I pray we abide in our Savior – in His love. I pray we regain our sight for the Kingdom of God – for the glorious already and not yet promises fulfilled in Christ. Because our eyes too often settle on a predictable horizon and we miss what lies beyond.

Our toil for this day – the Sabbath – is to trust the Savior is every bit of what He claims.

Trust. And return to rest, friends.

Posted on by Caroline 4

where is the floor in the morning?

She was special. All my students were, but she was especially special.

I listened again this past week, via text, to the valleys that seem to stretch too long in her still-young life. I felt the too-familiar cringe curling my insides with the empty question, “Why?”

This child – God’s beloved child – walks every day a lone candle into a dark place. She has seen more messes in this life than I can count, but she is a candle all the same and her light shines on and dispells darkness.

And I remembered.
I wrote,
“Where will you find the floor tomorrow morning?”
She said, “right under my feet, beside my bed… everywhere I place my foot.”

I smiled.

It had come out in the middle of one of our ‘pep talks,’ sitting on furniture that had been rejected from all other offices. I don’t remember the subject exactly, but I remember how it ended. I was asking this very special girl if there was anything to know for certain when the world swirled like crazy around her. I was asking her if she could be sure of anything at all inside the broken mess of her days.

And that’s when I asked,
“When you get out of bed tomorrow morning, where will your feet land?”
“…on the floor?”
“And have you ever gotten out of bed in the morning to find the floor is gone?”
“… Um, no.”
“God is like that. You are His child and He is forever. He will not change with the amount of mess or blessing in your life. He will always, always be what your faith and hope stand on – and He will not move.”

Our whole house can crumble around us, but there is always this ground – this terra firma where we walk out our existence. There is always this ground, a solid foundation for each shaky step.

God is this foundation when the sunlight breaks through the window in the morning to shine on what was dark during the night.
God is this foundation when the shadows scurry under beds and behind doors.
God is this foundation when friendships dissolve and sadness overwhelms.

God is this foundation when we swing our feet out of bed every morning.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy
in the refuge of the King

Posted on by Caroline 2

ampersands

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

Tonight it struck me, facing a beautiful piece of stained glass in the cozy, stone room that tucked itself in as an afterthought of the grand cathedral. I sat in the corner and scanned the room, drank in the faces, and then closed my eyes to let the lilting music of rolled r’s and long o’s seep behind my watery eyes.

Tonight I found myself (at 5:15 pm and on time to the 5 pm service) at the Spanish Mass and I started to feel the weight of my most recent ampersand.

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

The weight is not wrong, only sometimes I forget what I joyfully carry around – three years of my life lived with kingdom eyes to hold the gaze of beauty in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. With every ampersand added to my life, I found the blessing of my daily rhythm beholding the beauty of God.

I sang & jumped & talked
& listened & wrote
& learned & prayed
& crafted & played
& taught & watched
& loved…

because God showed me boundless grace & mercy.

God commissions me, with His blessing, to be a blessing… to stuff my life full of ampersands that PROCLAIM His glory.

Some ampersands are harder than others to etch into my life sentences. Some ampersands are carved painfully because I’d really rather not add anything else.

But, no matter how they find their way into my story, I love ’em… because what else can we do with the life God gives us? Every ampersand is a blessing, every day and each moment – an ampersand stamped on our existence this side of heaven.

I’m looking at my long list of ampersands tonight and counting my many blessings… counting them like currency that should be spent lavishly on gifts.

“… & now I live in Ames, Iowa.”

Thank you, Lord, for stamping this ampersand on my 27-year-old life. Thank you for bringing me here and adding dump trucks of blessings on my already overflowing soul. Thank you for the hard days and the brilliant days and the days I wish I were somewhere other than here.

I pray I make every ampersand (every blessing added to my days, every moment) available to others in a way that brings them face to face with the Giver – no matter where my ampersands land me.

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Posted on by Caroline 3