The wind sure fought hard, but the sun definitely stole this Saturday show. It came in through our front windows like we invited him in for morning coffee, like God knew we needed real warmth and not the manufactured kind.
Can a day ever just be brilliant all on its own?
Can it be beautiful without something specific making it so?
Can a day make you all kinds of emotional?
This day did.
So, I am singing the songs stored inside my heart and believing God is good for His promises. There’s a miracle making merry in my soul – a miracle on the other side of every believing step.
Step.
[He is faithful!]
Step.
[He is faithful!]
Step.
[He is faithful!]
When I believe the Lord is good for His promises, the boldness of my steps proclaim the greatness of One who keeps His word. And with each step, my heart wants more of His glory to be proclaimed – it’s a crazy exponential equation. Get more grace, believe more grace, proclaim more grace, all to the magnifying glory of the Lord.
Everyone warned me – these kids were going to go ballistic when they left their mom.
My heart melted a little bit when the little guy practically raced into my arms at daycare; it was like he knew where we were headed. We gathered up all the day’s things (and mercy! the day has so many papers and mittens and shoes and stray toys) and then we gathered sister and got into the car.
I had been told they didn’t do well in the car, especially little Mr. Man. But apparently the other folks didn’t know the secret. The little fusses almost immediately died down when we set out on the road and I cranked the tunes.
It was like magic.
I saw heads bopping and I think I heard a few notes floating around in the backseat, too. We got into a groove, those kiddos and me. I finger played my steering wheel like animal on the drum and that was a big hit. Sister shouted accounts of the day’s events while brother cooed and I multi-tasked my prayers for safety and peace and joy and the classic “help!” And we made it. We pulled up still friends with dry faces.
After the visit with mom, we gathered all the day’s things once again (how they can get multiplied and strewn about, I do not know) and I braced myself for the breakdown. I had been warned that it would get apocalyptic up in my car once they said goodbye. I got quiet and let the farewells fill all the space in the air. Mom loves these littles, of that I am sure.
They got belted in my backseat and there was a moment we just kind of teetered there on the cliff. Would we fall over that edge and spend the car ride in apocalypse freefall or would we fly instead?
The music accompanied our ascent and we sang all the way home.
It was like magic.
Why is this round trip car ride so significant? Does it deserve to be published into anonymity on the internet? I say yes and let me tell you why.
These little ones have had life ripped out from under them like a rug. Everything familiar and everything “home” is no longer true – it’s all turned upside down. Nothing is as it should be and no one makes sense when they try to explain it to their sweet little souls.
And then they get into my car and I get overwhelmed at the moments we share. What do I say? How do I pour out dump trucks of love when they are belted in the backseat and we only have 30 minutes? How do I become someone familiar?
I’ve never been so thankful for Christian radio in my life. We sing, I drum, they hum, and we all bop our heads to the sound of truth making melody.
The reality is I don’t know. I just don’t know how to make them believe they are precious and all this mix up isn’t their fault. I don’t know how to tell them that their little people world is turned upside down because some big people made bad choices. I don’t know how to make them understand there is a God who made them, loves them, and wants to be known by them.
And so we sing.
And I pray with broken heart that the truth sinks in: Jesus loves them and keeps every promise He makes.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
…
Boys become kings, girls will be queens
Wrapped in Your majesty
When we love, when we love the least of these
Then they will be brave and free
Shout Your name in victory
When we love, when we love the least of these
When we love the least of these
…
Break our hearts once again
Help us to remember when
We were only children hoping for a friend
Won’t you look around
These are the lives that the world has forgotten
Waiting for doors of our hearts and our homes to open
…
If not us, who will be like Jesus
To the least of these
If not us tell me who will be like Jesus
Like Jesus to the least of these
**As part of my job, I regularly supervise interactions between children and parents with the hope that they can be reunified after the issues have been resolved.
I used to feel guilty when I had the conversation with the Lord.
Do you know the one I mean? It always starts incredibly sheepish and shameful – littered with my apologies for not coming sooner, not trusting deeper, not being a more regular penitent.
The words come like a flood at the beginning, offering all sorts of explanations for why I’ve been away, and then everything calms down and God reminds me of His promises – those beautiful truths with a floor that won’t fall out.
I used to feel guilty when I had the conversation, but now I just feel freedom because I’m not bargaining anymore. I’m not asking for fair exchange or bartering for a better deal. My apologies and excuses and guilt feelings change nothing about the transaction about to take place when I commune with my Savior.
Now the conversation is like sewing a tapestry instead of sewing a button hole. Have you ever sewed a button hole? You need very little thread and it takes very little time… you’ll also likely have to come back and sew it on again when it comes off because buttons get a lot of wear and tear. A tapestry is very different – 12 inches of thread and a needle won’t do it. The thread weaves in and out and in and out.
Yesterday, there was a beautiful baby in my backseat. She didn’t let out a single complaint about my driving or about our little road trip to see her mom for a supervised visit. She didn’t seem to mind that I needed to have the conversation with the Lord the whole way to our destination, but it wasn’t a bargain she heard.
I think I’m beginning to understand the sweet grace of the Lord’s promises. The salvation He offers daily is filled with everything I haven’t earned. I know I will be on the receiving end before the first word of apology can leave my lips. But a funny thing happens when I trust His freely given promises – love prompts me to promise back.
I don’t mean the rushed-and-desperate promises that I’ll get better, do more, try harder.
What I mean is that a conversation wove into my yesterday – a day that would have bent me to bargaining in the past. Yesterday was a day that I desperately needed everything to go well for my job and for the kiddos involved. Normally, the conversation might have happened a couple times in those real clinch moments but instead it got woven in.
As I made my morning coffee, I prayed for love that casts out fear and then claimed the casting out. When I got anxious, I petitioned for peace and then walked with calm, bold steps. With the little ones in transit, I trusted the Lord to cover my car and I drove.
Promises are a big deal. But my promises to God are held together by His promises to me. I cannot bargain and barter with the Creator of the universe, but I can live out the promises He has made for me and in me.
I can promise becauseHe is faithful and my promises are nestled deep in the well of my salvation. I can promise because it magnifies the Lord who saved me.
What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Psalms 116:12-14
I don’t feel guilty about the conversation anymore. I just feel freed.
Dear, Father
I just-
Lord, be with-
Oh, I just lift up-
There is so much-
Lord, you know-
There is just so much-
I don’t know-
Help me to-
God, please-
You are good.
This morning, my prayers got jumbled in a bunch of starts like water rushing a roadblock – just a massive surge leaving no time to consider convenient direction or map a course that makes sense.
Sometimes my soul wells up like that.
Sometimes my prayers swell in a most inconvenient and nonsensical way.
Sometimes my prayers sound like a flash flood.
And those times I rest in the knowledge that God hears my heart. God sees the needs I can’t express. God knew before the flash flood hit my morning news bulletin that the world needs Him.
He knows better than anyone knows the depth of that need.
God sent His Son to stand in the unfathomable depth of that need so now there is hope for flash flood mornings.
“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.
“Seems like kids don’t respect anyone these days… they don’t even respect themselves.” Gram was telling me stories of the kids on her afternoon bus route, “I just don’t know anymore.”
“Well, we’ve got to hold on to hope… because if we don’t have hope what do we have?” I kind of threw it out there hoping it wouldn’t sound as trite as it felt.
I told her to pass that on to Grandpa and that’s when I found out he was on the line too. I could see the whole scene unfold in my mind: Grandma picked up the phone by the computer and when she said, “Well, Caroline, hello!” she made a motion for Gramps to get on the other line and he went into the kitchen to listen in.
Anyway, so Grandpa was in the kitchen, Grandma was in the living room and I was on my way to make my lunch and walk the dog. Grandpa said, “I just wake up every morning and thank God for another day. I say, ‘God, help me not waste this day because it’s a gift.’ And I just got to keep thinking like that.”
I smiled and I hoped they heard it in my voice. Grace and thanks. Thanks and grace.
We can’t persuade ourselves into an attitude of thanks. We are predisposed to passivity when it comes to thanks, if it wasn’t for grace. Only by the grace of God can we look at the world (and at the children who lack respect for themselves or others) and see hope. But it is also only by the grace of God that we can look at the world and see how dark and dreadful it is without hope.
God gives us grace to see darkness and grace to see light and grace to recognize the difference, because we must know from where we came.
Paul writes to the church in Corinth,
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-11 ESV)
And such were some of you. Paul is clear about who will inherit the kingdom of God, but he is also clear that the Gospel is not about keeping people out. The Gospel is about bringing people in and, with the transforming power of God alone, making them new. When Paul writes to the church in Corinth, he doesn’t have them all stand by the windows so he can point out sinners walking down the street. No, Paul reminds them of their own lives before they were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.
After youth group tonight, I invited a student out to coffee and while I was in the bathroom she overheard a table of middle-aged men chatting about how one of them “scored” on a young blonde.
It’s true – people don’t respect others or even themselves anymore and it’s not just the children on my grandparents’ bus routes. It’s so true it makes me sick to my stomach. Sin has a way of smothering my heart and suffocating my lungs. It’s just so … dreadfully ugly.
But weren’t we once this dreadfully ugly?
God is gracious in allowing us to see sin and evil because only then will we see the weight of grace in our own deliverance.
Don’t fold, Gram and Gramps. Don’t you fold when you’re driving those precious children and they’re running the aisles with arms flailing and curses like sailors. Love because He first loved you.
There’s a lot a darkness out there, so don’t you fold.
Don’t you fold
When the mountain is high,
When the river is wide
Don’t you fold
When you’re out of your mind,
When you’re walking the line
I was driving around today, overlapping errands with more errands while the next few weeks ran circles in my brain. The breeze picked up as I accelerated little Eddie down the road with the windows wide open. My arm reached out as Ellie Holcomb came over my radio and I had a moment there on George Washington Carver Ave. I started smiling to myself because I was strapped in and my brain couldn’t run away without my body. I was stuck in my car for a stretch of minutes – confined to enjoy the wind and the sun and the melodies in my speakers. I was stuck and I loved it.
With my hand out the window, I thought about those times in our lives where we feel we are holding on for dear life. I pictured my hands clenched around a vine with knuckles white. Then, the picture in my mind zoomed out and I knew the vine could take all my weight. I also realized I was not only holding on for dear life – I was enjoying the greatest rush as I swung over lakes and rivers and treetops in the jungle. “Holding on for dear life” might feel desperate, but it is also feels exciting and unafraid.
Today, I am praising the Lord and forgetting not His benefits.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Bless the LORD, O you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his word,
obeying the voice of his word!
Bless the LORD, all his hosts,
his ministers, who do his will!
Bless the LORD, all his works,
in all places of his dominion.
Bless the LORD, O my soul!
(Psalm 103 ESV)
Last night I was listening to my grandparents tell me all their secrets for staying regular. Grandpa, a self-proclaimed cereal connoisseur, has got a mix for his mornings that’s a perfect combination of taste and function (so he tells me).
I think the recipe goes something like this:
1/2 bar of shredded wheat
a “shot” of All Bran nuts
a shot of Wheat Chex
some sweetened Puffed Wheat
a tablespoon of peach juice
peaches (optional)
milk poured over the whole masterpiece
Grandma rolled her eyes through the telling of this recipe and then plopped a container of prunes in front of her finished dinner plate. “He does all that cereal stuff and I do prunes,” she told me.
There are a lot of things people do regularly, but not all of them serve a function as important as our internal pipelines. Our culture makes sure to get a regular dose of TV programming every week, meet for regular happy hours, and be a “regular” at the corner coffee shop. As crazy as our culture loves to be, we still like pieces of our lives to be regular. There’s a certain steadiness and safety about knowing what happens every Tuesday at 7 pm and every morning at 8:35. We like regularities because they serve as mile markers on our journey that remind us we’re still on a road (even if we’re lost).
When we’re young, we can be cavalier about what we make regular. When you get older, though, your body starts to decide for you – it makes priorities about what needs to be regular and you’ll know it when you’re not.
The body has a way of reminding you that you can’t escape it’s function.
And even in this we see the intentionality and creativity of the Father. Our bodies are made with a rhythm.
And sometimes (can I say this?), faith is like that.
Meeting with the Lord every day is as regular as the way our body functions… and sometimes just as unsophisticated.
Sometimes we can easily identify what is holding us back or caging us in. You know, the kinds of things that press in on every side, with no chance of escape? Sometimes, though, the cause of our caging is a little more illusive.
You might be thinking of your stressful job or dreadful deadlines or the incorrigible nature of your sister. If you are thinking these things, then you might be surprised at my suggestion that worry is one of worst cages in which we willingly confine ourselves.
In a recent conversation with a good friend, we marveled at how worry can so quickly steal our freedom. When you graduate from high school and then college, worry often imposes a rude rhythm where “the future” looms like a thundercloud. Questions start flying, “what if” scenarios plague your sleep, and the most dreadful start to a conversation begins with the words, “So, what are your plans… for the future?”
Worry is an uncomfortable and crafty little cage, but there is a way out. Yes, there absolutely is a way out.
The lovely and liberating “flip side” lies in one very familiar word: faith. You may well have memorized the definition from Hebrews 11, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things yet unseen.”
What do your assurance and convictions have to do with worry?
Well, actually, a whole lot.
If you truly believe nothing happens outside God’s control, then you can live the way God intended – with confidence that the God who holds all things together will hold you together, too. You can greet the day with a joyful bounce in your step because you have faith in the Creator of the universe and He is always faithful.
As my friend and I reveled in the possibilities of this faith-freedom connection, I pictured a young girl climbing up a tree (in oversized dress-up clothes) to enter the imaginary world of Gumdrop-larkenwood, where she would conspire with her closest friend and warrior-king. Why did this strange scene interrupt the near-intellectual banter? Because this young girl is not caged by worries over provision. She is completely free to wander about enjoying every minute because she (whether she knows it or not) has faith that she will be provided for. It’s a simple, child-like faith and sometimes it doesn’t make sense. But, oh the sweet freedom!
Maybe the “sin that so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12) in your life today is worry. Maybe you are locked up in worry over your family or your future plans or your incorrigible sister. If these words find you huddled in the corner of the uncomfortable cage of worry, remember who is in charge.
Your faith will be your freedom!
A slightly different version of this appeared in our guidance newsletter this month.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 