Tag: Christian living

making plans to waste my life

I’m making plans, friends. And why shouldn’t I get swept up in the wave of everyone making plans for the future (some full of hope and others full of dread)? I’m making plans, but they sometimes come out of an undignified and broken down place.

Have you ever been there?

It’s a place of exposure and pain, but it’s a place where desperation reaches for solid ground… and the reaching is revelry because the solid ground is so firm that it can be built upon.

The blueprints are looking like this and it’s feeling like beautiful.

Breaking Down by John Mark McMillan

I’m making plans to waste my life on You
I’m making plans to waste my life on You
Cause New York City and Hollywood combined
They ain’t got enough lights
To make me want change my mind about You

Cause I’m breaking down
I don’t even care if there’s anyone else around
Cause I’m breaking down
I always fall to pieces whenever You’re around

I’m Mary Magdalene and tonight is a bottle of perfume
I’m Mary Magdalene and tonight is a bottle of perfume
There’s not enough dignity to hold me now
When I know You’re going to meet me here
There’s not enough gravity
To keep me away from You

Cause I’m breaking down
I don’t even care if there’s anyone else around
Cause I’m breaking down
I always fall to pieces whenever You’re around

So, meet me here
Where we shine like gold
Like the light beneath the embers
Of the burning coals
And I will spill my bottle
Like in days of old
On the song that bleeds from the breaking down

Posted on by Caroline 0

dream sessions

No, I’m not in Nashville trying to outdo Taylor Swift by recording “Blue” (the teen/country/bubble-gum/southern anthem album for adolescents whose emotions are speeding like the 1990 Caravan you just retired from the road). No, it’s nothing like that.

The dream sessions are accountability – a window of time where Emma and I sit in the coffee shop and lay our dreams bare on the table space in between. We get ridiculous about what’s possible and then we keep going, keep dreaming.

I knew early on that these little encounters would need some structure, mostly because I know myself and I cannot finish a good idea without structure. So, we decided these dream sessions would be about sharing, inspiring, and then working.

Well, it’s natural, isn’t it? Once you’ve laid your dreams out like undergarments on a clothesline you feel… a bit exposed. It takes everything in you to refrain from gathering up all the unmentionables in a large, haphazard bundle and running inside to hide them in the farthest corner of the house. That’s why we needed structure. So, we get together every week to remind one another what it is we are working toward and to nudge each other toward baby steps to get there.

We share about steps we’ve made toward our dream.
We inspire each other with conversation and prayer.
and then…
We go to work like our dream is our real job, because it is (kind of).

We bend our heads over the coffee table to work on something that uses our gifts, stretches our abilities, and reflects the creativity of the One who made creative desires in us. We take turns breaking into the silence with questions and challenges before honoring our gifts with the grindstone again. We really do believe that we are called to steward well our resources – that working for the Lord might mean digging deeper than what appears on a job description to find what is written on our hearts.

Sundays are for dream sessions.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

believing the gospel is beautiful means sitting in the theatre

There is a way of sharing the gospel that makes people wish it was true, even if they believe it’s not. At least, Tim Keller thinks so (The Faith to Doubt Christianity).

There is a way of sharing the gospel that draws people in first because it’s beautiful. Not at first because it’s reasonable or socially responsible or sweet sounding, but because it is simply beautiful.

I know we can do battle about beauty – what it is and who decides – but that’s for another day (and a day that’s already been).

Today, I’m trying to be a student of this kind of gospel sharing. I’m trying to understand what it means to put the beauty of redemption on display – to draw back the curtain on the glorious story acted out on the living stage. I’m trying to remember what it felt like to see the hero die for the villain… and the horrible knot in my gut when I realized the villain was me.

To share a beautiful story, one must believe the story is beautiful.

And for that, I must go and sit in the theatre. I must watch wide-eyed and remember every interaction and every awe-inspiring stage direction. I must hang on every word because every time I know the villain is doomed, but every time the story plays out opposite what I am sure I know. And it is beautiful.

To share a beautiful story, one must first believe the story is beautiful.

There is a way to share the gospel that makes a person sit on the edge of their seat and hang on every word. There is a way to share the gospel that makes one appreciate and even wonder at the beauty so much that one wishes it was true.

I want to learn this way.
And so I must go again to the theatre.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 11