This summer God worked in me to help me see and acknowledge just what kind of love He might have for me.  We all know the word Abba.  We’ve all heard He is our ‘Loving Father.’ And as great as my Dad is, I thought I had a pretty good vision of what God being all that for me might look like.  To add to my personal knowledge, I am a parent who knows the joy of giving good things to my children.

Surely I have a sufficient grasp of the love of my Father.  Right?

Not even close.

No other love like this.

I’ve spent the last hour pouring over my favorite chapter in the Bible.  Pop Quiz, what is it?

Revelation 19.  Get’s me every time.  That’s my God, that’s my King and my Deliverer!  It just doesn’t get any better than all that.

As the Rider of the white horse passes me by, set on His course to complete with grand exclamation His saving power on my behalf, I can see Him.  His name emblazoned on His chest and then again as He passes by, written across His thigh. He looks down on me as He thunders past to secure my victory so profoundly.  Close your eyes and see that look.  In the midst of battle, while treading the winepress of the wrath of God Almighty, you can still see it.  He can’t be distracted from it.  He doesn’t ‘turn it off’ until the work is done.  It doesn’t get ‘tabled’ while He’s at work.  It’s always there, always burning, always fierce and present.

He loves me.

In ways I can’t dream up.  To an extent I can’t even envision.  He loves me with a fervor and a sweetness and a selflessness that no relationship on this earth can possibly do justice to.

He won’t just show me all this One day.  He wants to show me today.  Because it’s so high above me, I stop looking at some point.  It’s as though I’ve set my eyes on a wonderful and distant expanse and excitedly look as far as that for His gifts and provisions, but the idea that His love could stretch further just doesn’t even register.

While in Costa Rica this summer I felt the Lord prod me.  Test me, He said.  Let’s do a little experiment.

I know all those thoughts and verses about testing.  But this one was God having fun with me.  Almost showing off.  Let me show you what I can really do. He wanted me to see just the tiniest realization of what all my eyes had never conceived.

So I prayed for monkeys.

Yep, monkeys.

I love monkeys and especially the sweet little capuchin ones.  And I’d never seen one.  They do live on Costa Rica, so I was still ‘playing it safe,’ but at least I was stepping in the water.

I really looked for them all week.  Everywhere I went and everything I did, I wondered with such excitement, will it be here?  Will I encounter my gift today? It was days in and still no monkeys and I’m so thankful that He kept me faithful to believe.

We went on a river cruise.  Literally dozens of these cruises went out that day.

Only one saw monkeys.

We sat in that boat and watched a whole slew of capuchin monkeys play and eat and frolic right in front of us, not 10 feet away. We watched until we just had to leave.  My heart was full.  I got to see monkeys yes.

But I got to see God.  The Abba who delights in me and who Himself got a great thrill out of giving me a childish desire. His gift to me put a smile on both our faces.

And His love goes so much deeper still.

He isn’t distant.  He isn’t callous. He isn’t too busy to be bothered by our needs nor our desires.  He longs for us to rush to Him– to, like a child, approach Him in love, longing, anticipation, and faith.

Does that sound like the God of your day?  Kids don’t avoid loving dads.  Kids don’t have to put, ‘spend time with daddy’ on their to-do lists and make themselves have to do it.  If you only knew what kind of Daddy you have and the love He’s longing to shower you with, you’d run.  You’d run hard after Him and long for a moment in His presence.

If ease is the goal of your day, there is a very good chance that the path you desire is not the one being dictated by the Lord. Our God has a long history of taking His children along the circuitous route.  Life with Him is never promised or slated as ‘easy.’ If your desires are for the path of least resistance, of ease, comfort, fluidity, certainty, or full disclosure, He’s not the Man for you.

Consider the daily lives of most Americans.  We eat ‘comfort food,’ we listen to the instruction of ‘time-saving’ electronics, we spend our money on that which isn’t even good, but is ‘fast.’ To most of us, if it isn’t easy that’s only because we haven’t invented the technology yet to perfect the process—but fear not, it’s on its way!

To endure that which isn’t easy simply isn’t sensible.  It isn’t necessary, economical, or wise.  The path of least resistance is well trodden and therefore easier to travel.

We all hold some level of belief in the validity of that thought. But is it biblical?

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter.                                 Exodus 13:17

I know your affliction and your poverty-yet you are rich!             Revelation 2:9

In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.                                                                                                                  John 16:33

Consider this: all but one of the original 12 disciples died a horrible, tragic, and painful martyr’s death.  And the last of the 12 was exiled in his old age only after, tradition holds, he was dropped into a boiling vat of oil only to escape unscathed!  Peter was crucified (upside down); Andrew was also crucified, but with ropes rather than nails to increase the duration of his pain; tradition holds that James the son of Alphaeus was very old at his martyrdom but that didn’t stop them from beating, stoning, and then clubbing him in the head!  They were beaten, stabbed, crucified, skinned, tortured.  Paul faired no better, his list of ills takes up many verses of his second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 11).

A New Testament occurrence alone?  Nope, the Israelites went many spells of numerous days without water in the desert.  Jacob laid his head to rest on rocks in the woods, was royally screwed over by his in-laws, and endured a lifetime of backbiting amongst his wives (not that he didn’t deserve a little of that torment!)  Abraham feared for his life among foreign peoples, to the point he felt compelled to lie and allow his wife to be taken by another (Genesis 12).  Levites were asked to kill their own brothers and children and friends at the base of Mt. Sinai (check Exodus 32). This list could get very long and follow the same theme precisely.

Life with the Lord is not a historically easy road.

I truly believe that almost all of us would say that this is a truth that we all concede to, grasp, and agree with.

Why then do we attempt to live our lives so centrally focused on the idea of finding ease?

Why do we dismiss that which is too difficult as being unrefined or poorly devised?  Why do we so often search out the ‘easy’ route?  Really sit down and think about how much of our lives is dictated by attempts and finding or following ease—from electronics that make answering questions easier, to chains that make feeding our families easier, to google maps that chart for us the easiest route, to contraptions making it easier to haul all the items necessary to make things easier!

Perhaps you tell people your day is going beautifully because it is easier than explaining the pain that’s marked your morning.

Perhaps you don’t tell co-workers that you’re a Christian because it’s easier than having to answer their deriding inquisitions of why.

Perhaps you talk only of others—their faults, their lives, and their persona—because it’s easier that talking about where you are.

Perhaps you leave the radio on all day because it’s easier than being left alone with yourself.

Perhaps you table the tough talks with your children, the discipline and guidance, because it’s easier than trying to slate out the one-on-one time in your busy schedule.

Perhaps you don’t make the time to be still before the Lord because it is just plain easier to not add one more seemingly unproductive thing to your calendar.

Perhaps.

Perhaps this isn’t at all what life with the Lord is supposed to look like.

Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.                         Matthew 7:13-14

Finding that which is hidden and valuable isn’t easy.  Be the few.

My husband’s grandfather passed away last week.  He was a sweet, diminutive man who loved the Braves.  My husband was named after him.  He was a World War II vet.

At his funeral, the local VFW (I assume) came to pay their respects.  They formed a procession in salute as his casket passed by with flag draped.

I tried to speak to many of them and I found I had trouble keeping my composure when doing so.  The first man I approached, I shook his hand and told him “Thank you for helping to secure my freedoms” through stifled tears.

In this day when I begin to feel my freedoms slipping through thoughtless, inactive, and trusting hands, I have become more acutely aware of the beauty of those freedoms to which I have so long become accustomed.  Someone didn’t sit on the sidelines.  Someone paid for that.  Someone wasn’t thoughtless, inactive, selfish or trusting.  This wasn’t free.

As I shook their hands and found myself overwhelmed with thanksgiving that they had done more, I flashed forward to a time yet future when I might have the opportunity to repeat the words of thanks.

These elderly men still saluting their comrades enabled me freedoms I’m so calloused to that I let them slip away without noticing their being stolen.  They fought so that I could live here with this ease and opportunity.  They helped supply the freedoms of this life.  And my sense of gratitude in that moment completely overwhelmed me.

There is One whose efforts secured for me far greater freedoms than they.

What will I do when the moment comes to shake His hand and express my thanks?

This life isn’t free.  Eternity isn’t free.  Relationships aren’t free.  Forgiveness isn’t free.   Freedom isn’t free.  Someone paid for this.

So often I neglect to notice the value of that which has been purchased for me on this earth.  Regrettably, so often I neglect to notice the value of that which has been purchased for me for eternity.

Where might I be without the sacrifice of others?  What ‘necessities’ might I be enduring life without?  What hope might I cling to then?

Thank a vet.  Then fall on your knees before God and practice the moment when we might thank a Savior just as personally.

Often we, like Moses, stand before a task of greatness and feel as though there must be someone more suited to the task than we ourselves.  We must be the most unlikely to do the job sufficiently, to be called to such greatness.  What began for Moses with a lisp and many doubts progressed with such clarity and correctness; he was clearly the man for the job.

Moses happens to be my favorite biblical character.  Knowing so much as we do about him and his life and ministry, I find it so easy to see why God would have called him to the life and purposes that He did.  But that’s not the way Moses saw it.  He saw himself as unlikely.  As clear as the bush aflame before him, he knew what he was being called to do, but even so he doubted that the calling was properly placed.  It is only in hindsight and from an outward perspective that the calling seems so well suited.

Today we lack creativity and we have an overabundance of good old common sense.  The combination has stifled the blaze of many a burning bush.  We feel a stirring over a ministry need, the Lord is brewing something.  It could be the beginnings of the miraculous, the calling to great things.  But.  But we lack the ability to dream in God-sized paint strokes.  But we aren’t the ‘right’ one for such a task as this, this one needs a decorator or an administrator or an accountant or just someone who has more time on their hands.  And we take the water bottle and we coat the flames of calling, gather our sheep, and move to the next hillside.

Moses was a murderous shepherd, David was an adultering little brother, the first witnesses were untrustworthy women, Christ’s mortician was from the enemy camp, His right hand man was an uneducated hot head.  They were all unlikely and yet so perfectly suited to the tasks before them.  Do you think they saw it that way?  Do you think that a single one of them looked at the life to which they were being called and said, “I totally get that!  I’m perfect for this job, I know just how to get started!” They felt ill-equipped and unlikely, they surely felt too small for the task and certain they must have heard things wrong.  The reality is that God probably wouldn’t have called them to it if they were sure from the outset that they could get it done.  There would be no need for them to depend on Him if they could carry the load alone.

He’s looking for the unlikely.  He’s used them all along.  Yesterday, today, and forever.

From history long past, God has, in His infinite, sovereign, and mysterious wisdom, partnered with mankind to bring about His will.  While He could, doubtless, do all things Himself without even having to stand, He chooses to use us, to intervene in the lives of men through the vehicles of men themselves; God-sized works through man-sized receptacles.  What man could possibly be big enough to house that load?  What mere human could ever feel up to the challenge of carrying a God-sized burden?  None.  None ever did and you will not be the first.

Take courage, He’s done this before.  You aren’t a test case.  You are a proven plan.  While the vessel hasn’t carried such precious cargo before, the manufacturer has filled many of these in His time– with beautiful results.  The world awaits the cargo you bear, they need the miracle that you are called to deliver.  You don’t have to be the one to create the thing, you just have to be willing to take it where it needs to go.

Take courage.  Though you may feel the most unlikely of candidates for the job to which you have been called, He knows what He’s doing and, if He chose you for it, you’re the perfect person for the job.

So put down the water bottle, look for the blaze of fire, concede to your own unlikeliness, and let Him do something grand.

(I apologize for my absence of late.  Satan is crafty with electronics and he’s nastily wiped out mine.  My husband’s computer will surely be his next target as it’s the last resort at which I now type.)

The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love.                                                     Psalm 147:11

Remember those old, yucky, long-dead flowers a few months ago? (See The Gardener’s Way) I pruned with fear and prayed I wasn’t killing them. I realized that it was God’s way to cut out the old and useless, pruning away that which was no longer of value.

From the death that was put away came this awe striking beauty of my flower beds.

The day I pruned them, they grew. They became stronger and more healthy. The pruning itself had value and added value. Today we see the second phase of the pruning, the new life that is possible because it was done.

There is mercy and then there is grace.

You see, mercy is taking the old, dead, and ugly away. Grace is having the breathtaking replace it.

He takes away the sorrow AND replaces it with joy. He ends the tears AND ushers in the dancing.

To get to the breathtaking part, we must first be willing to lay down the ugly, we have to concede to its being pruned, lifted, cut out, and burned. The sick truth is that sin and Satan and this world have so jaded our vision that we look upon the hideous and somehow believe that nothing could be more beautiful. Why would we trade this lovely disaster for a promise of some other show of greatness? Because our eyes are broken, we accepted the blinders, and true beauty is beyond our comprehension. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real and that it isn’t all true.

So often we look at the trash heaps of our lives and refuse to lay them down because we find them too valuable–or just too familiar–to possibly have a worthy replacement. We can’t imagine any greater reality (or maybe we can’t believe we could be deserving of it).

There is something infinitely more amazing available. But you can’t get there if you’re weighted down with yesterday’s garbage.

There are tell-tale signs of the greatness beyond; that hint that something is broken, that taste of death and incompleteness, that faint breath of the life aching to be fed.

Mercy says you are no longer a creature of brokenness and depravity. Grace says you are a masterpiece of delights.

Back to the flowers. My garden was a mess of death and need. Now I have a garden of delights. I pruned and the earth shot forth something new and healthy and all together lovely on its cleaned slate.

Look back at those flowers. Beautiful, huh?

It’s you. When God walks through His garden of delights–which He has a history of liking to do–His favorite spot of earth is right in front of a blossoming you.

Thank God for the mercy and flourish in the grace.

I offer myself as a mound of putty into the Great Master’s hands
In hopes that He might make of me His grand design.
As He picks up the lump which is me, I say from the mass,
“Watch out for the shards of glass.”
I thought they might keep me safe or enhance the beauty of His work.
I thought they might contribute in some way to the overall appeal, beauty, and passion of the finished piece.
So, do what you will with this putty in waiting, but you might beware of the glass.

How terribly often I pray for His will and wince as His hands go to form it.

I want more, Lord.  I don’t want a steak snack with a side of reluctant milk, I want the mammoth 40 ounce monster that people get their pictures on wood paneled walls for having knocked back.  There are these snapshots of fantastical dreams that play over the corners of my mind, seen almost as the color blind or the legally blind, traces of what’s there without really knowing much at all about what it is that is in front of me.  There are promises etched on my spirit.  

And life has crinkled the edges and splattered doubt and hurt over their surfaces.

I have relegated You to ‘Him who could start a fire in a bush if it were dry enough and He had matches,’ when the name You possess is so far greater:  Him who dwelt in the burning bush.  (Deuteronomy 33:16)

You planned greatness.  When long ago, before time was measured or planets swirled, you made me, you planned great fullness and fruit. You planned victories and growth, you planned work and emotion, you planned stories and influence, you planned a ministry-for my good and your glory.  Life and sin and Satan and sorrows put dents in the plan.  And at some points along the way, I have doubted that the plan would still fly.  

But thanks be to my great God, your plans don’t exist in our crumbling masses of flesh and heartbreak.  They exist in an eternity of grace and calling and love, hope, and opportunity.  They exist because your promises are lasting and true.  They exist because there once was a time when you wrote my name on the palm of your hand and spoke life into my soul.  They exist because by design and by purchase, you claimed the right to have your way.  

So life then is yours to make beautiful.

If I will but hand over the bumps and bruises, if I will but entrust this mass of flesh and sorrow into Your capable hands of love and grace, you will make me beautiful.  You will redeem that which life has worn out of me.  You will regrow that which I have allowed to die.  You will put onto course that which has been left abandoned by the wayside.  

Give me faith to dip my toes in the waters, Lord.  Give me the heart to dream that the God who parted the seas is the same God who sits perched, waiting, hoping that today is the day I take Him at His Word.  Let me encounter a lifetime of that which is not possible.  Let me walk in boldness right into the midst of all that simply can’t be done.  Teach me how to do that, Lord.  

Make me willing putty in the hands of Him who desires to mold me into greatness for His glory.

Well I’ve been gone awhile.  Good to go off and see the world, great to come home again.

The cloud of thoughts that hover over the tired surface of my brain are a mix of wonder and awe, sadness and confusion, longing and praise.  I have beheld immaculate beauty recently.  I have walked streets teeming with lostness.  I have seen religion doing it’s sad little victory dance.  I have seen hope overflowing the borders of despair.  And these were not mission trips!  God is good and present and working every where we go and for whatever reason we might find for going there.

I’m sure that my thoughts will find focus on certain particulars over the coming days and weeks, but today I’m at a crossroad.  While I was traveling, I read two books:  Miracles by Eric Metaxas and The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson.  The two weren’t planned to go together–not by myself anyway.  I believe they were very much in God’s plan though.  

And now two truths for the last few weeks of my life:  Our God has made one heck of a glorious planet here! And there are depths of lostness so old and so deep and so profound they steal hope and make one wonder, “Is my God big enough to beat THAT?”

If you haven’t traveled much, you should.  This country and this world are amazing testaments to the grandeur and creativity of the God we call Father and Friend.  The diversity and the vastness, the color and vibrance, the grace and awe are overwhelming and mystifying.  Go see the Grand Canyon, go take a look at the sulfur springs in Yellowstone.  Find a tree ladder somewhere in the tropics and see what the world looks like from the sky. Walk down brick streets in an ancient city.  Look down on the Caribbean from an airplane.  Stand on a mountain somewhere and behold the view.  Dip your feet in an ocean of wonder and delight.  Let your eyes be intoxicated by the colors of nature, flowers, trees in bloom, birds and animals.  Find a monkey in a jungle somewhere and watch in giddy rapture.  

If God can do all that with the mere Word of His lips, what might He do with you?

Yet life is this blessed tension of optimism and despair.  For the wonder of an emotional high, there is an equal and opposite oppression of defeat.  I believe there is a scientific Law about that.  

There is one city that haunts me.  I’m sure I’ll write about it in depth soon enough.  It is beautiful and OLD and steeped in history and tradition and built up in every way around an ancient church.  And so very very misguided.  Religion is more than strong there.  But Christ is conspicuously absent.  

After literally thousands of years of building Law around Love, can God win back the city?  Is my God big enough for THAT?

For some, we do things for so long, our parents did things for so long, our culture has done things for so long, we think we must be getting it super right by now because we’ve been perfecting it for years, right?  It seemed to work for the last generation, and we’re even more staunch than they.  We ‘tradition’ and we ‘serve’ and we ‘follow’ and we ‘work’ so blooming hard, it has to be enough, doesn’t it?

One of the things that breaks me down faster and more completely than anything else is seeing people work themselves to the bone for something they needn’t have worked for at all.  

Grace is free.  And the minute you start thinking you might have done enough to have earned it is the minute one ought to know for sure how terribly terribly far you have to go.  

How sad and despairing to see whole cultures put their stock in that which will not and does not deliver.  It’s just not how He meant for ‘religion’ to go.  At some point it is supposed to become painstakingly obvious that no amount of work will get us there.  But what for the ones who never see that?  What for those who have no hope for something greater?  What for those whose hearts have lost their visionary gene?  For those whose hearts have been altered so as to no longer dream?

Is my God big enough to fix all that?

Can He win back that which has so long been lost?

Can He make that distorted wreck of deceit into the beauty of the sunset dropping into the Haitian shoreline? Can my God do that?

Lord, make us dreamers.  Let us not live in contented slumber sadly believing that the realities of today are the heights of the greatness you offer us.  May we live in the knowledge that eternity has already begun and Heaven is not merely a permanent residence awaiting us, but a reality begging our attention and notice presently.  

Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.                     Ephesians 5:14

Mold us into believers who take you at your Word and stand firm in exultant anticipation of the fulfillment of your Promises.  Make us bold in our prayers and firm in our faith.  Make us miracle recipients and hope-filled servants.  Make us full.  Make us relentless and powerful, consumed by the Power of a God who is ABLE.  I don’t want to hedge my bets or play it safe.  I want to live in the fullness of one who is utterly and gloriously available.  

May we, every day, find ourselves faced with situations, people, and obstacles that beckon the question, “Is my God big enough for that?” and may we, every day, stand firm in our knowledge and belief in the resounding “YES!” that He has promised.  (2 Corinthians 1:20)