Tag: Christian life

same park, same path, different heart

The day was not more or less beautiful. The park was not more or less packed.

The children played soccer under the same sun’s evening glow, the same moving mass of strangers ran in circles around the same lake, the same warmth burst out from the tips of trees and into the same cool, autumn air.

Everything about my run was the same, except that it was different.

I rounded the curve last night on the East side when it starts to slope down and I realized a smile had stretched across my face. It was a facial expression that defines stupid grin and it was amplified by my oogly eyes marveling at the sky. For the entire steady slope, I grinned and oogled the sky.

I smiled at all the strangers who had made me feel uneasy and emotional a few days before, but I thought my delight might be entertaining (if they create stories in their minds about strangers like I do). I befriended one lady, in a runner’s world kind of way. She was about my height with a similar stride and a purple headband. We ran comfortably side by side and I imagined her story until she sped on ahead around the south curve (confirming my prediction after seeing her serious running tight/skirt combo and determined arm swing).

Everything was the same, but my heart was different.

I was not afraid.

I felt like Kevin from Home Alone when he opens the front door to his empty home and yells to the Christmas darkness, “Hey! I’m not afraid anymore! Do you hear me? I’m not afraid anymore!”

To get empty of fear is liberating, but only if I am getting filled up with something else. Otherwise I’m just yelling at darkness and hoping my endorphins will keep pumping boldness into my blood. The emptiness has to be displaced – the fear has to be replaced by something strong enough to shove it beyond the bounds of influence.

Christ got empty. He emptied Himself so that we could be emptied of emptiness – emptied of that vacancy we feel when fear screams out from our insides.

My salvation has pushed emptiness out and fear with it. Hope has displaced strife and faith has removed worry. I am not afraid anymore because I believe the fullness of Christ is pushing against and spilling beyond my boundaries.

I am not afraid of missing out. I am not afraid of being a stranger. I am not afraid of hugging this city when it doesn’t hug me back. I am not afraid of being unknown. I am not afraid.

I am not afraid because Christ emptied my fear when He got empty.

Posted on by Caroline 0

God’s grace in the taste of warmed peaches

I’ll spare you the details.

Yes, because the details look like a swollen face and dental office tears. I’ll spare you those, because that isn’t what greased my gears these past couple days. I haven’t written because my head felt like a fire breathing dragon in a breath holding contest. Something like that, anyway. So, I didn’t think my words would come out appropriately or coherently or worthy of my small readership (I really do think of you).

Do you want to know what has been marvelous about these past couple days? Autumn.

I think (in my more romantic moments) that Autumn is the heavenly concoction God cooked up to especially delight our senses. Just when we got used to deep green leaves and bright sunshine and bare shoulders, Creation shrugs into a different set of smells and sights and rhythms.

I love to think of God’s delight as Christ holds the universe together (Hebrews 1:3). He doesn’t just hold things as they are, though he could do that and it would still be miraculous. He holds things together and delights to play symphonies and paint tapestries and breathe seasons into reality.

Can you believe His great grace to us – that we get to watch as He traces His majesty into the sky and as He paints Autumn into the trees?

It is not easy to be sick in a new city. But His grace is like a gusty Autumn wind – it’ll meet you in a surprise attack and leave you laughing.

His grace looked like my sister ordering soup from a thousand miles away. It looked like making stovetop apples and lentil stew with my roommate. It looked like an opera with an old friend. It looked like the understanding of my coworkers. It looked like new friends checking in and referring an amazing dentist. His grace looked like the crisp breeze under my chin and the taste of warmed peaches in my morning oatmeal.

Can God’s grace be the taste of warmed peaches? Yes.

Yes, sometimes God’s grace to us and the ways He keeps His promise to protect and provide is surprisingly simple.

Because caring for His creation is not complicated, to Him anyway. He knows what will delight my heart and what will sustain my spirit. He knows because He made me and He knows what it means for His grace to be uniquely enough for my situation.

Of course, the best sufficiency is always more of Christ Himself. But I’m going to be honest. It was hard to make my swollen face focus on anything philosophical. So, I am thankful that in those moments Christ was made known to me in these other ways.

And as we receive grace we fight to believe that God is good to keep giving it because He is a promise keeper.

And He has promised more grace.

 

Posted on by Caroline 0

ordinary glory | mysterious miracle

There is nothing singularly spectacular about this Saturday, but that makes the mystery of all its ordinary glory so much more beautiful.

This ordinary glory is a mysterious miracle.

The clouds broke open early, uncertain of whether to hover or hibernate into the autumn wind. I still can’t figure out the morning rhythms – of the few footsteps that pound the city pavement in the early weekend hours. Maybe it’s because the pavement gets such a beating in the Monday – Friday traffic and the millions of feet have declared moratorium for Saturday and Sunday.

But I don’t mind the quiet traffic and few pedestrians. I don’t mind that I can hear the wind and appreciate the rustle of autumn leaves. I don’t mind that I can sit for over an hour in my favorite bagel place with no one crowding me out of my seat.

Because the most ordinary things – the man in full red track suit with a mini boombox walking on Nostrand Avenue, the little child making eyes at me inside Lula Bagel Cafe, the successful scavenging for a free bed with my adorable roommate, the spontaneous errands with new friends who prefer the windows rolled down, the swapping of life stories over tacos and margaritas – the most ordinary things are all mysterious miracles.

Yes, there are defeated and damaged days in this busy-hungry place, but there are also those days (like today) that stretch out in ordinary miracles. They are strung together like garland, wrapped around slow moving hours you can feel through your fingers as you ride the wind outside the car window.

Ordinary moments.

I call them miracles and perhaps I am too cavalier with the term. Perhaps “miracle” is a word that should be guarded and ordered and sequestered for more holy conversation. I’m not sure.

I just know that it feels miraculous to live today. It feels like a slice of heaven to walk and breathe and stretch out my living deep into this Saturday as I sip espresso and plan the evening’s activities. It feels like an impossible gift when the sunlight hits my cheekbones and when a laugh escapes my lips. The impossibility of this day – even the ordinariness of breathing in and out – is enough of a miracle to me.

And so, I walk and breathe and stretch out my living tonight, in the impossible and ordinary crisp Autumn air. I fill up my lungs with everything regular and I know that there is nothing ordinary about life.

The breath in my bones is a testimony, a moving monument constructed so that I remember my Creator.
Posted on by Caroline 4

coming home in a stranger’s clothes

Being a little less like Amelia just isn’t in the cards for me, I don’t think. Definitely not if I come home wearing a stranger’s clothes, which is what happened last night.

I left my apartment freshly dressed in (what I thought was) light rain attire and quickly learned that my 10 block walk to the church community group would be a very wet adventure.

After about block #2, I realized my shoes were squishing. After block #5, I ducked into an open apartment building doorway and had a one-way conversation with a nice man waiting for the rain to pass. I explained my options: forge on and arrive at a stranger’s house looking like a wet dog or return to my apartment looking like a wet dog without failing a first impression. He seemed to have no opinion either way, so of course I forged ahead, leaving him to laugh in the doorway.

Every bit of me was soaked, from my hooded head to my size six feet. My hair was matted down and my pants had turned a deeper green color. When I got to the house, I apologized instead of introduced myself because I knew I looked frightful. Before I knew it, I was changed into a nice woman’s clothes and munching on vegan chocolate blueberry biscotti on her sofa and listening to her tell their NYC relocation story.

My clothes never did dry, so I wore the nice woman’s clothes back home and made myself a saucepan of hot water (no teapot yet) and some ginseng green tea while I spread out the rain shower I had soaked up in my garments.

Oh, I am ever so grateful for Christian community – where no one is really a stranger and a dry change of clothes is only one knock away! It’s Christian community that keeps Amelia’s like myself clothed and safe. I suppose it takes many invisible miracles to keep my clumsy feet from slipping in this city and for that I am very grateful.

I’ll return the clothes soon and have another reason to knock on that door on Sterling Street. We won’t be strangers anymore (I mean, how can we after sharing closets?) and that has just added three more names to my very slim NYC rolodex.

Now, about getting that wisdom, maybe one can come by it on a round about path. Maybe “getting” wisdom can look like meeting strangers and rain walking and couch conversations, too.

Posted on by Caroline 0

get wisdom

When I read it in Proverbs 4, it sounds like something I should add to the grocery list – like it’s one of those things I can just pick up on the way home from work and in between stops on my hour-long commute.

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.” (Proverbs 4:7-9, ESV)

The beginning of wisdom is to get wisdom. Hm.

It’s a rough and tumble struggle when it comes to ironing out the practicalities of Proverbs. But this past Sunday and in recent conversations, the Lord has been so good to remind my heart why practicalities are as much a good gift as wooey-wooey, spiritual moments.

Practical is not a word I would use to describe myself. Two days ago there was a Blueberry Crisp cooling on my kitchen counter while various “extra” and “oops” leftover ingredients cooled in the fridge. I have taken a different train route to work every day and have a different very impractical story about each journey. While still in the process of moving in, baking ingredients are among the highest on my priority list and (though I stop often at the corner store) I rarely come home with more than a few items.

I am not naturally very practical, but I made peace with that a long time ago.

So, when Tim Keller said the new sermon series was on wisdom from the book of Proverbs, my ears perked up. Though a very impractical person about many ordinary things, I desperately want to be practically wise about the most important things. And God’s directive is very clear: get wisdom. God says to go get wisdom – actively and certainly. Get wisdom.

Okay, Lord. You have commanded this and I will obey, but how? Part of believing God for His promises is believing that He will never ask anything of me that is impossible. I do believe I can grow in wisdom. I believe that He will show me how and that He will make me able.

The possibility of His promises depends on His faithfulness because I cannot do anything He asks without His help.

Now, back to last Sunday in those plush, uncomfortable theatre seats at the Salvation Army downtown. As we read through Proverbs 1 and Keller started to outline the importance of wisdom and what it means to acquire it, this little gem rolled out:

You get wisdom through paradoxical fear and the foolishness of grace.

The paradoxical fear is reference to Proverbs 9:10 (fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom) and the foolishness of grace references 1 Corinthians 1:18 (the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing). How do you get wisdom? By a righteous and reverent fear of the Lord and through the unbelievable work of Christ on the cross. Keller gave an analogy that is helpful here. He described the fear one might have if he were holding a very valuable, very rare and very breakable vase. He does not fear the vase – that it will harm him – but, instead he fears that he will drop the vase because he values it so much.

This is where we start when we determine to “get wisdom” – the fear of the Lord. And how do we have a right fear of the Lord? The foolishness of the cross. This, more than anything else, speaks a spiritual language of value. The beauty of this language is that it translates into the practicalities of everyday questions and doubts.

I better get to “getting” … maybe along the way I’ll gain some knowledge that will make my life less like Amelia Bedelia.

Well, maybe not. But there is grace for Amelia too.
 

Posted on by Caroline 1

I can’t help myself

I’ll confess the things I’m afraid of, even if it takes a little convincing and arm-twisting out of a host of self-sufficient habits.

I can’t help myself, and that’s the honest truth.

This is week two of a new job and day five in a new apartment and week three of a new life in the city where my love lives. I can be pretty confident about my inability to help myself – decidedly confident in that one, unsettling thing.

My roommate and I are kind-of, officially “moved in” to our beautiful, spacious, street-facing 3rd floor apartment, but we’re still trying to cure it of the empty echo. We’ve moved furniture in and out (thanks to a lot of Patrick’s sweat and muscle), raced to the houses of strangers with listings on Craigslist, and scavenged for gems on the sidewalk. We’ve navigated (and failed) the subways and the streets and the sidewalks in our neighborhood and beyond. We’ve made friends with the hardware store, the flower store, the fruit stand, and our very nice neighbors across the street who (we suspect) have a car dealership that fronts for a drug operation.

This is not the easiest thing I’ve ever done, which is probably why I’m so aware that I can do absolutely nothing to help myself. This is not the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but I am overwhelmed with the way God makes hard things beautiful and rough things lovely.

And this is so beautiful and so lovely – even so much so that I forget I’m inside a whirlwind of transition. Somehow, in the madness of moving across the country, God orchestrated events so that I would live two avenues from Patrick. Somehow, in the hazy hurricane of details, God arranged for Tamara and I to be the kind of roommates who hope to make our NYC apartment a home. Somehow, in the slew of job applications I electronically threw toward the East months ago, God remembered my love for laughter and passion for service.

The only reasonable “somehow” of all this beautiful mess, is that the Lord is sovereign. He is not surprised by anything and He loves to give good gifts to His children. Not easy gifts (not all the time anyway), but it is good gifts He loves to give.

This move is a good gift in the superlative sense.

His provision of peace always surpasses my fear, always. This move is a good gift, but not because it is easy. It is good because God is good and He never changes.

I am believing more today than yesterday in God’s mercy and grace and peace. I think this might be part of His good gift – that I am pressing in to who He is and needing Him (desperately) to be who He claims to be. And even though He continues to prove Himself faithful, my hope does not come from history. My hope comes from His promises that today and tomorrow and this weekend, He will continue to be faithful to give grace.

I can’t help myself and this is my hope: He is my help. I lift my eyes to the hills and my empty hands to the sky, because nothing I can do or see or say can help myself.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 121, ESV)

He is my help and He can only be faithful.
Posted on by Caroline 2

when you’re in an earthquake, sing

God provides.

Sometimes, He provides less than what we ask because He wants to give more than what we think.

That’s what happened tonight, anyway. My new roommate and I plodded our way to the 5 pm service, weary of apartment hunting and feeling like the persistent widow at the Lord’s door. “Please, Lord, provide!” We thought we were asking for His provision of an apartment today. We thought that was the only way His provision would happen.

And He did provide, but we’re still without an apartment. Instead He gave us Himself. We sat and drank in the words of the sermon from Psalm 77 and then we broke bread and drank the wine of communion.

He provided Himself and we got filled up.

He provides always, because He is a Provider. It is not in His nature to do anything else. Today His provision was Himself – which is not technically an apartment – but is more than abundant to meet our needs.

This is the firm foundation I can sing upon when there is an earthquake underfoot.

Posted on by Caroline 1

joy falls like confetti

“The Gospel changes what I fundamentally boast in – it changes the whole basis for my identity. Nothing in the whole world has any power over me – I am free at last to enjoy the world, for I do not need the world. I feel neither inferior to anyone nor superior to anyone, and I am being made all over into someone and something entirely new.” Tim Keller

I probably could not have chosen a better book of the Bible to study leading up to my New York move. Galatians is freedom’s anthem and I’m loving it’s accompaniment to my new Brooklyn steps.

Freedom.

Nothing like couch-hopping to remind you of all the reasons you don’t have to boast. And in this beautiful in-between place before I find an apartment, I feel crazy freedom to enjoy my new “home.” Because the world does not have power over me – to make me less secure or less approved or less stable or less free.

The world cannot make me less free.

Even in the most in-between of places and most uncertain of phases, freedom means joy. The sun streaming in the window this morning, the breeze sweeping through Hawthorne Street, the full Saturday stretching out it’s weekend arms – in everything joy falls like confetti. This is a freedom the world cannot steal, a freedom hidden so deep and kept so safe because God has claimed the sacred space.

I am free to enjoy the world because I do not need the world. It’s really a very fabulous thing – because need means dependence. If my freedom depends on the world, I’m like a runner in a race without a finish line. I’m desperate to get to a place where I can be free of all the running, but the end never comes – the distance looms ahead of me and always increases.

But I do not need the world for freedom or fulfillment. Because Christ already crossed the finish line for me, I am free to enjoy the race. I can run with abandon and determination and the kind of joy that makes me giggle. I can run without worry or fear. Because I know Christ is for me, my footsteps are light and my eyes are open. This is my freedom in Christ – to enjoy the world because I don’t need the world.

I am being made over into something and someone entirely new and I am not in charge of that process. I’m just running with my eyes fixed like flint on the One who granted the grace for me to run at all. As I run, I will boast in Him.

And it is for freedom that we are set free.
Posted on by Caroline 1

the least likely place to feel worldly secure

Where, would you imagine, is the last place in the world you could feel secure?

A fashion trade show in Las Vegas, teeming with the fashion conscious, industry hungry, ladder climbers, perhaps?

This is a very legitimate “least likely place in the world” if you find security by way of comparison. There are beautiful people everywhere. Literally, we’ve spent the last 3 days looking across the aisle at American Apparel models parading around in front of their 8 foot poster likenesses in all their ‘made in the USA’ glory.

If you go down the hall or up the stairs to the big times, it’s even crazier – where the largest global market week for contemporary fashion earns its title.

Everybody’s got a limit and I think I just hit mine like a brick wall. I’m not a fashion conscious, industry ladder climber and I can still feel like 15 years old around people who are.

But, guess what? Sitting right smack dab in the middle of the least likely place to feel worldly secure (with my TJ Maxxed top and my thrifted jeans and my plump petite size), I’m the same amount of self-confident.

I’ve done a lot of people watching these last couple days. I’m sure people have done a lot of watching me too, but I didn’t really notice. There is a point, in the wee hours of 6 am, where I shrug at the mirror and say, “It’s not going to get any better than this” without too much fight. But often, in all my watching of fashion comings and goings this week, I would start to smile a little bit (hopefully underneath my facial expression, but I can’t promise that).

I would smile because even if I always feel 15 around people who are supremely fashionable, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t feel less accepted or less approved or less loved.

Isn’t that magical?

Worth is not negotiable. Approval is not a trend. Acceptance is not a fad – not for this girl, anyway.

I already have the approval of the most important audience and I did absolutely nothing to gain it. Not a single thing. It’ll shock me every time, but maybe this week more than others because it feels like people try so hard to gain worth and approval and acceptance.

I smile because this day is full of reasons to rejoice and worrying about what I eat or drink or wear or buy is a big distraction to that joy.

Tomorrow, I’ll get off the plane in Brooklyn and call it home for my weary, vagabond feet. I’ll figure out the trains and maybe someday soon stop living out of a carry-on suitcase. I’ll find a local deli and make friends with the neighbors. I’ll people watch on the corner and join the massive morning commute. I’ll put one foot in front of the other and every footstep will take me in the direction of something new. I will shake off the distractions of “all other things” and smile because of the first and best thing.

I can’t think of a better/worse place from which to set sail, because I’m not really leaving from anywhere and that can really confuse an identity. But, not this girl. Well, that’s what I’ll keep preaching to myself.

I am approved, accepted, and loved because God approves, accepts and loves.

He is gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He is steadfast and certain. He is kind and patient, tender and just. He is my rock and fortress. This is my Lord who gives me identity, wherever my nomad feet roam and whatever my little hands do.

This is my Lord and my security.

Posted on by Caroline 0

You who are greater

I heard a sermon a couple weeks back and this little bit of Scripture in 1 John 3 keeps coming on back to steady my heart.

Because my heart sometimes feels pretty powerful – like it has the full force of Jeremiah 17:9 and that’s a scary danger.

“The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?”

I surely do not. Even when we think we are making unselfish sense, our heart still deceives and traps and tricks and we can still get buried in a place that is “beyond cure.” There is a place where cure can’t reach and that’s where you’ll find our hearts. Ouch.

Sounds impossible to cure a deceitful heart, doesn’t it? So, I must believe God for impossible things. I must believe in this moment through to the next that He is a promise keeper, that He knows everything, and that He is greater than my heart.

Though my heart is deceitful and fickle and incurable and fret-filled, God is greater than my heart. When my heart runs circles around the narrow path where my feet tread with doubts and taunts, I must remember who made my heart.

He that formed my heart calls me “child” and is always faithful to be greater than my fears.

He is always greater, always. God knows everything – there’s nothing about the darkest part of our hearts that surprises Him – and He is still greater than those secrets. In 1 John 3, we read that our salvation means confidence, that even the most fickle and incurable heart issues we have must bend to the One who abides in us.

I am not afraid of my dangerous heart. I believe that God is greater.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (1 John 3:18-24, ESV)

When I believe God to be greater than my heart, I trust that fear is replaced with obedience. I am not afraid of my dangerous heart because I believe God can overcome it and help me pursue holiness. I am not afraid because He has authored miracles that I can act out by living a life of love. I am not afraid because I know, in Christ, what it means to abide. Because of His grace, I am not afraid.

 

Posted on by Caroline 1