Hope

Slowly at the end of a long year - hope dawns,

Its been a year of revisiting the foundations of my faith, self and my relationships.

Its hard to put the journey on paper, and even harder to have done so in a way that was uplifting.

Why, well its a year where I've walked through the ugliness of seeing just how much sin affects our lives. How the desire to be genuinely loved, nurtured and encouraged, our need to be unconditionally loved that can only be met in Christ, becomes screwed up because our first inclinations is always to look for love from the people around us. And always, we come up short, react, and find ourselves to a greater or lessor effect hurt, angry and confused.

This year God said no,

stop,

deal with it,

Let me walk you through it, 

find me,

trust that I love you enough...

sounds simple, but the reality is more like a series of false starts and painful steps to let Him hold the wounds and heal the soul.

The journey isn't over, I suspect its just beginning, but the hope of  deeper relationship with God, joy and encouragement is enough to give me the courage to keep reaching up, and traveling onward.

Breathe

It seems like this year has been punctuated by conflict and its resolution - ok hopefully.  Some days progress is hard to see - it seems like He has brought to the light everything I would have chosen to keep hidden, all the scars, all the faults, all on the promise that that was the only way forward.

Other days faith and forgiveness shine bright - and there is movement forward, progress growth. I'm so glad in all of this that God is ultimately in control, in the good times, in the hard, in the rejoicing and in the condemnation.

Each step makes me stronger, helps me to resolve the issues, become more whole. Each step though is an act of faith. 

He who calls us is faithful, he works all things for our good, no matter how hard that might seem along the way.

Grace, Love and Hope

God is awesome, there is no limit to his strength. He created everything we know. He commands an army more powerful than we can imagine.

Yet alongside that power is a love that is equally strong, a love greater than we can comprehend. A love that even when we rejected him, refused to let us go, but instead, called us by name, came to rescue us, died in our place for everything we have ever done wrong, and rose again to show us that we were safe

A love that continues to seek our good, no matter what we do, How badly we stuff up, how far we fun, will find us restore us in relationship. 

Rain

After days of long , hot, dry, muggy, weather, often cloudy, we finally had real steady rain. The kind or rain that leaves the ground soaked, the plants gently dripping,  the air clean and an overall feeling of cleansing and refreshment. That reminds us rain is good.

But as I looked out into the garden, I ended up wondering, is rain one of those things we will miss in heaven. When there is no longer the need for dry and parched ground to be softened and broken up - for refreshment and cleansing...the marks of God's grace and forgiveness.

I guess after our tears are wiped away we won't notice, but for now, even though I fear the rough times, I am grateful for His gentle work of cleansing and renewing us, the highs that follow from His working to right the wrong, and the change to follow Him in His work of redeeming us.

A Friends's Prayers...

Its been a while. There's been a general heaviness over the last couple of weeks, the slowly rising feeling of things coming to  a head so that they can be dealt with. Something which  in the end is always a grace-filled thing.  But recently the catalyst has been as much a heavy seated feeling of condemnation as the clear bright grace filled  call to repentance of the Spirit's conviction.

In hindsight I deserved the condemnation. After all  I was being pulled up on my heavy-handedness in dealing with an ongoing, unsolvable and increasingly frustrating situation. Self control, desperately seeking wisdom, a willingness to try and discuss and explain hadn't managed to bring a solution, it only seemed to make the issue bigger. Maybe it was never my problem to solve. However, my reaction of frustration and anger created a bigger issue. An issue with no solution.

What brought the change - a friend started praying for our school year. Grace lead prayer that gave me the courage to admit failure and shame. Prayer that allowed  the mess to be seen and solutions to be proposed. In another's prayer I found the strength to know that it would be safe to open up, to talk, not for condemnation but to have a way out, a way forward and a fresh start. Grace and Mercy.

The fresh start will take time, I have to remind myself that time and a willingness to take time out are part of the process. But it remains, without my friend's prayers - I wouldn't have opened the door.  Prayer builds relationship. Not only does it let God into the discussions, but it give security, grace and understanding where there otherwise would be fear and condemnation. It changes both the prayer's heart  and the person prayed for to align them with God's will, grace and purpose.

Eternity

Today, in the midst of ongoing discussions, theology and the words we choose to acknowledge truth, we ended up for that breif moment talking about the life to come, and our reactions to what we imagined it would be like when we arrived on the other side of this life and met God face to face.

I've always imagined that the initial awe  would automatically leave me on my knees, face down before my creator, but then the thrill as the most amazing being in existence lifted my head, looked at me and called me His beloved, for no other reason that he who spoke all things into being choose to define me as such, to die for my sin and graciously cover me with his very own perfection.  To be in that place where finally every tear would be wiped away, every hurt healed, my true, sinless identity renewed in me, and I would be as He always intended me to be. A breathtaking thought. 

We who Christ has called his own have a blessed future,

 it is good,

very good,

exceedingly good

to rejoice in Christ our amazing Savior.

When Faith sits on a knife edge

Some days seem like that. The cold reality of the everyday seems like a mess of contradictions to the hope and the promise of the Spirit.

Today has been one of those. Where every step taken is either a step of faith or a step without God. 

Walking with him, a Statement  of Faith for church grew and blossomed.

Stepping out without him, confusion, cowardice and defeat reigned.

I didn't create the elements of space apart from God, and yet the refrain "Against you and you alone have I sinned and done what was evil in your sight." kept repeating itself.

I can think of a few possibilities, but maybe the refrain is the failure to hold fast to faith in the face of the worlds definitions.  To not simply take the easy way out. With God all things are possible. With God we have the option of seeing him do for more than we can ever imagine in his relentless pursuit of extending his kingdom.  CS Lewis would claim that "He is not a tame Lion but he is Good." in his description of Aslan, his allegory for God in Narnia. 

When all the world has to offer is doubt I choose faith, even in the face of faithlessness.  Forgive my doubt Lord and grow my faith.  Even if it is only in the smallest of things I choose to look for your fingerprints in tomorrow.

And thank you for the oppourtunity to reground in you regardless of the outcome of tomorrow.

Fresh beginnings

Its a long time since I have been tempted to write a blog post, in part because life for the past year has been one of change and transition, but several months ago, in an exercise to find a purpose statement for our church these words came together, and well somehow it seems like they deserve to live.

In a world where too often our faith is shaped by our culture, our understanding of God by our concrete attachment to what we can see and hear and touch, it seems like we are missing something of the amazing reality of the person who shaped us, loved us, redeemed us and called us to join him in his work of reclaiming HIS world.

In the last few months HE has threatened to turn that concreteness upside down. Its taken me a while to want to take the plunge, and yet the call to live by grace, to follow and to trust is s Calvin would state it - irresistible.