The Lord Almighty says, “Give careful thought to your ways”…My house remains in ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.                        Haggai 1:8-9

This was a word about the temple needing to be rebuilt.  All of God’s Word is useful and beneficial to us today.  So how does a plea from the Lord, through a prophet of old, to a people passed over from exile about a building in Israel have any relevance to me today?

It’s just astounding.  Even in little books of such specific prophecy, there is truth and beauty and meaning and conviction for me.  There is encouragement and a piercing sword of Truth.

There is still a building that needs to go up.  The temple was built under Zerubbabel and eventually burned down by the Romans.  That temple awaits it’s rebuilding again.

But at some point we have to see that not all buildings needing construction require brick and mortar.

As Americans, we tend to abide rather closely to the reality that the dog to get fed is the one that barks the loudest.  You may have no dog, but I’d almost guarantee that you answer dogs all day long.  I often can’t take the time to think about what I NEED to do next because what I HAVE to do next is nipping at my heels too closely; the paper is due, the practice is starting, the dinner is uncooked, the boss is waiting, the baby is crying, the phone is ringing, bark, bark, bark.

We don’t have to give too much thought to our ways because it’s so easy to follow the way of the dog.  Feed the dog that barks the loudest.  Repeat.

God said to think about your ways, make decisions based on diligent consideration and wisdom.

He followed that command–which is repeated twice in three verses, by the way. He knew we wouldn’t get it the first time!–with another.

Build my house.

Don’t miss this.  God is not calling you to join a movement, He is not asking you to petition for the Jews to get back the Temple Mount, He isn’t asking you to donate your resources for the construction of a building built by human hands.  There is one building that has been eons under construction.

Build my church.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors, and here are the people. Which part is the church?

We all know the answer.  Every kid with hands knows the answer.

So go build the church.

And God pushes harder.  Each of you is busy with his own house. Busy cleaning it, busy buying things for it, busy showing it off, busy working to keep the bank from taking it back, busy, busy, busy.

You’re building the wrong house.

I don’t even know how to start a whole new career–from mere dwelling builder to master carpenter of an eternal housing of the God of all Creation, but I think maybe I’ll give some careful thought to how to make that switch today.

BARK, BARk, Bark, bark…

Quiet temporal dogs, I’m thinking.

I had the wonderful pleasure of serving alongside my son this week.  We joined his school class and volunteered in a hard part of our town–strangely only three streets over from the home that my son grew up in.  I walked freely through a neighborhood I had once gotten on to my husband for driving through.  High school kids wandered the streets and we covered two blocks like locusts.  We prayed for the redemption of our city.

There is a clear line in this neighborhood.  One side of the street is on the mend, some bad things happen there but they aren’t smiled upon.  The other side of the street is bad news.  All those bad things go on and every eye turns blindly aside.

I crossed that street.  As I stood looking into a dilapidated one room shack that had long passed the derelict stage, I noticed something that has burned in my head since it caught my eye.  Four days and I’m still grappling.

In this dark place, where sin and lostness and hunger and poverty and abuse reign supreme, all the tree needed was a sliver of son.  I mean sun.

I bet this tree will be quite full and beautiful come spring.  It appeared very healthy.  All it took was the slightest crack between the boards to give it the freedom to burst out from under the darkness below and thrive in the sunshine. It didn’t even need to push the boards aside on it’s way out or afterward.  It didn’t assert itself once it had gained enough momentum.  It didn’t need to push it’s weight around or rearrange it’s surroundings.  It just needed what little it was offered.  And from those meager offerings, it built a solid foundation for something beautiful.

So often in my life I have thought that I would have something really great to offer…later.  After the kids are grown, when the debt is gone, when I have a little more time, after football season.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that I needed a little more conducive an atmosphere to really put forth something beautiful.

This tree will have gorgeous blooms soon.  It could be such a pretty thing in such a lost and hurting place.  If we can just get a little bit of Sonshine in there, it has all the room it needs to become something beautiful.

You don’t have to have the perfect pot with the perfect soil planted in the perfect measure of sunshine.  You just have to be willing to let Him grow you where you’re planted.

And He can make something really beautiful.

I got a great birthday gift–actually it was purchased with a few monetary birthday gifts! In my bedroom now hangs a canvas print of a painting by Akiane Kramarik entitled Prince of Peace.  It is canvas, so I could have hung it with no glass, but I was afraid it might get dusty, dirtied, so I put glass in it.  There was really only one good wall to put it on, the one next to the door going into my bathroom.  (Wait for it…I’m getting somewhere, I promise!) This wall is adjacent to big bay windows that let in lots of sunshine.  There is a long stretch of the day where that beautiful sunshine glares right off of my new painting rendering it little more than a mirror.

This morning, I got out of bed, headed for the bathroom, and looked up just in time to see my reflection in that painting.  I had crazy hair.

But you know with anything that is reflecting sunlight you kind of have a choice. You can look at the image that is kind of dancing on the surface or you can focus a bit and look at the image that lies within.  I looked at that picture and saw crazy hair.  I took a step before it occurred to me that that is no mirror.

Prince of Peace is a portrait.  It is a picture of what an eight year old girl believed that Jesus looks like.  It really is stunning, it looks like a photograph it is so perfectly painted.

I looked at a picture of Christ and all I found to focus on was myself.

I see Jesus everyday.  His image stands before me in the grocery line.  His children sit beside me in restaurants.  His works catch my eye as I drive into the morning sunrise.  The old Ray Stevens song comes to mind, “He’s everywhere, He’s everywhere.”

And yet, as I stare at the portrait, all my eye sees fit to focus on is me.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.                                            Romans 1:20

The Presence, the ‘divine nature’ of the God of the Universe, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of your very life and soul, is ‘clearly seen.’ He’s right on the other side of the glass.  He’s in the faces of need, the distended bellies of the orphans, the hunger of the impoverished, the sadness in the eyes of the hurting kid, and even in the life of the nutty driver in front of me on the road, or the old lady taking too long to collect her change.  His face is on every surface of my life.  

How often do you see the reflection caused by the sun and miss the Son who lies beyond it?

Christ in the flesh is right within my grasp and all I see is crazy hair.  The God of my Salvation sits waiting for me in the quiet place and all I see is a daily to-do. The writer of the instruction manual of my life stands ready to dispense wisdom and all I see is a dirty kitchen, a good tv show, a newly refreshed Facebook feed, or an insurmountable obstacle.

Your Maker, your Creator, your Savior, the greatest Friend you will ever have, your perfect Physician, your Comforter, your Wise Counselor, He is as close as your bedroom wall.  Skip over the crazy hair and look at the man behind the glass.  Disregard the worldly pressure, the growing to-do list, the dog barking the loudest and turn your eyes to the beauty that stretches out before you today.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face.

And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

If you aren’t hearing a personal word from the Lord, it isn’t because He’s not talking.  It’s because you aren’t listening.

Call to me and I will answer you and I will tell you great and unsearchable things which you do not know.                                             Jeremiah 33:3

I’ve talked about the suitcases before–you can’t pick up the heavy ones until you’ve worked your way through the lighter ones first.  Sometimes in our angst to see progress, in our New Year’s resolution to be more ‘godly’ or grounded or religious, we set out to do it our way on our terms.  We have a reading plan, we set aside a certain part of the day for reading and prayer.  We do this for a few weeks maybe.  Then what happens?  We usually quit or back down a bit.  You want to know why I think this is?  Because if we put in weeks of our lives doing something ‘for the Lord,’ we start looking for the payoff.  And when it doesn’t come, we throw in the towel.

Don’t spend your days watching for the delivery boy of your personal revelation! Don’t sit in angst awaiting that targeted word for your day and your situation. Don’t nail Him down to the Word you want to hear, commit your time to hearing the Word He’s already delivered!  If you want to know what to do about a job, about a kid problem, about a life situation, and you plead with the Lord to ‘tell’ you what to do, you may get pretty frustrated if and when you realize that He’s not singing your tune.  He may not write the answer to your question in the night sky.  He may not have a stranger come up and deliver the answer to you in the grocery store (He may!  I’ve seen it happen! But the odds aren’t on your side!)

If you are not hearing what He’s already said, He may just be waiting for you to catch up.  He may be wishing desperately that you would pick up that first suitcase and start making some progress because He’s got some words for you!

Hearing from the Lord is not a condition of the body–it doesn’t require a pew or kneeling board, it doesn’t even require isolation or silence–it is a condition of the soul.  If you do not foster a soul that HEARS what the Lord is saying, you will never hear what the Lord is saying to you personally.

Don’t give up that resolution to draw nearer this year!  Don’t stop trying to hear from Him!  Don’t blame Him for the silence!  Start hearing what He said long ago, not just listening to His Word, but HEARING it!  Hearing involves concession. Listening concedes only to the fact that words were spoken.  Hearing concedes to their command.  Hearing involves action.  Hearing says yes to the parts you like and the parts you wish you could un-hear.  Listening is noncommittal.  Hearing is all in.

Pick up that first suitcase–hear the Word God has already delivered to us all! Then build those muscles over the second suitcase–take the stories and the inferences of God’s Word and then logically apply them to your life and situation. Progress to the life of those chosen to HEAR from the Lord!  Move to the third suitcase–hearing a word spoken directly to you in your situation, in your day, in your life, for your call, and in accordance with His Word.

So many of us want desperately to hear what God has to say about the course of our lives and the decisions we would do well to make.  But we get frustrated with God because we ask and we don’t hear Him answering.

It isn’t because He isn’t talking.  It’s because we aren’t listening.

Remember the parable of the talents?  If you take that talent of His written Word and you sit it on your dresser, hide it in the ground, whatever, will God reward you with more talents, aka Words?

The story says no.  The story says that when you don’t regard well the talent you’ve already been given, you won’t be getting any new ones.

Treasure God’s Word and heed it.  Don’t just read it, dive into it and seek to apply to your day, not just the big picture of your life, but the mundane moments of your day.  Build up a reservoir of truth today that will carry you through the days that are dry and dreary.  Get to know the God of Israel so intricately that you can easily discern when a word doesn’t coincide with His ways.  Build your spiritual muscles!  Tune your ears and turn your hearts.  Don’t wait for life conditions to predicate obedience, let contrition of the soul dictate concession to His will!

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.                                               Hosea 6:16

Hosea’s word to Israel was very repetitive, “You’re giving God lip-service.  Your hearts aren’t His, they belong to other gods.”  They maintained many rituals, but they were empty, meaningless rites that afforded them no standing with the Lord of Hosts.  They gave what He didn’t want and withheld what He did.  They were lousy gift-givers.

They offered sacrifices, they gave Him burnt offerings.  But those weren’t what their God was asking for.

My husband is an incredible gift-giver.  He puts a lot of thought into it and usually knows what I want much better than I do.

If my husband only gave me things he had on hand and would never miss, if he only gave me things that were free or thoughtless or that he wanted to give, he probably wouldn’t be considered such a great gift-giver.  Not many people get excited about getting gifts that they don’t want.  And if you’ve asked for something and that gift isn’t given while all these unwanted gifts are, well that makes it even worse!  You give me all these gifts I don’t want and deny me the one gift I do!? You might want to save your gift, it’s not gonna get you much of a genuine thanks.

All this makes sense in the world of gifts in wrapping doesn’t it?

What about the gifts that don’t come in a box?  What about the gifts that we lay on the table of the gods of our days?  What about the gifts you lay at the feet of the God who made you?

What all do I ‘sacrifice’ to the Lord that He doesn’t want?  Do I offer Him hard work, Sunday service, do I give Him every Sunday from ten to twelve?  That’s good sleeping in time!  That’s a perfect hunting moment or reading hour that I gave up for Him.  Surely, surely, that warrants a thank you. Do I offer Him rituals, do I offer Him my presence, my memorization, my service, my time?  What am I really willing to lay at His feet?

Does He want it?

All the gifts I tirelessly offer, does He have any desire of them?

What does He require that I withhold?  Acknowledgment of God.  Is there some part of me that thinks that because I ‘worked’ for it, I kind of earned a little piece of that throne?  Is there something in the way I offered those unwanted gifts that made me feel as though I deserve the right to say no the next day?  Do I, somewhere in me, feel as though my gift bought me something?  Is there a question of who really reigns here?

Say it’s my birthday and I really want and request this one thing.  I’ll even sweeten the pot and tell you that it is the cheapest gift you can buy.  You talk up your gift for weeks before hand.  You give it with the largest grin, your face belies the value you place on it.  But it isn’t what I requested.  It isn’t really even something I want at all.  You’re so offended that, even though I try, you can see I am not falling all over myself over the gift.  Now somehow I’m a bad person for not being more thankful, you’re the saint who just gets mistreated so terribly after all your hard work and tireless effort.  (In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “Get down off the cross, Honey, somebody needs the wood!”)

This is an unlikely extreme on your birthday.  It is an every day occurrence (or at least every Sunday) in the Kingdom.

God doesn’t want my lip-service.  He never asked me to show up every Sunday and never miss a service.  He couldn’t care less whether or not I can quote the Lord’s Prayer or a single catechism.  He does want my heart though.  He does want me to get my rear end off His throne and let Him rule.  He does want me to quit wasting my efforts offering Him trinkets when what He wants is of infinite value.  He does want mercy, love, selflessness, and acknowledgment of just Who it is that rightfully rules here.

I never want to stake my claim to eternal reward on gifts that weren’t joyfully received.  I don’t want to spend my life laying trinket after costly trinket on the altar of a misunderstood God only to find that I was a lousy gift-giver all the while.

What do I sacrifice, what do I offer that He does not desire?

And what do I withholding that He does?

Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.                                                                                         Jonah 2:8

I’m no gardener.  Both my parents have some giftedness in this area.  It isn’t genetic.

I know this about myself and, therefore, approach horticulture with much trepidation.  I love beautiful flowers, I love the gorgeous plants that flood my beds in the spring.  But I have absolutely NO idea how to keep these same plants doing that year after year.

I have Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangeas in my front beds.  They are incredible.  They get huge and so heavy they end up lying on the ground. After they die they just turn a dingy brown and hang there, waiting for someone who knows what to do to do something with them. That someone doesn’t live at my house.

This year those beautiful blooms just hung around until yesterday.  I knew they had to go and I really want to see them again in a few months, so I had to do something.  Google.  That’s what I did, Google.  Google said that I needed to cut those suckers off.  Google actually said I should and could have done it long ago.

I didn’t exactly prune them, it was more of what they call ‘deadheading,’ I just cut off the old blooms.  I did prune some of the others more severely though.  Before I made that first cut, I hesitated and said to myself, “Please don’t kill these!  Do I really have to do this?!” The answer was so clear and so fitting for all of life within and without of that flower bed:

“It’s my way.”

Forget the former things; do not dwell in the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?                                             Isaiah 43:18-19

Those blooms were absolutely breathtaking in their day!  They, just like the fame and infamy of the Israelite’s exodus, were phenomenal things to be treasured and told of for generations.  But our desire for the beauty that has not yet been revealed should so surpass our delight in the beauties of yester-year, that we should ‘forget’ them by comparison.

As I look out at my ‘winterized’ garden, my primary delight needs to be in the hope of the spring to come rather than in the visions of the days that have passed. In order for the new to come, however, the old must be allowed to go.  We have to be willing to cut out the old and dead.  We have to be willing to let Him trim and prune and deadhead.

I trimmed about four kinds of plants yesterday.  One was my Abelia.  Abelia can get a little whooly, but they are quite attractive if you can keep them reeled in.  If you trim the outside parts of an Abelia, for every one cut, the plant will replace it with three.  They shoot way off of the plant, multiply, and leave the center empty. An Abelia you must prune on the inside.  You have to cut right down at the soil.

One plant needs to be shaped on the outside.  Another has to be cut deep in the heart.  Sometimes cosmetics work to accomplish the long term goal, but sometimes you need to go much deeper.

If we want to be big and beautiful and flourishing year after year, we’re gonna need some pruning.  And it might get a little deep up in here.

If you never cut out the old, if you never trim off those wild unruly shoots, if you never shape the edges, you just aren’t going to have the prettiest flower on the lawn.  It’s His way.  His way is to trim off the old, His way is to shape and mold and train us into all the glory we were designed to express.  His way is that we let go of the old, forgetting even that which was astounding in it’s day, and perceive the new thing that God is blooming today.

You know what happens if you cling to this incredible flower forever?  It still fades.  And you may miss out on the new one that would have bloomed in it’s place.

God’s growing something beautiful today.  Do you not perceive it?

Our minds are so very limited.

I say that I’m learning to love change and rejoice at it’s arrival.  But my mind is just so small.  My imagination so very…limited.  I say change and I easily go to job, family, schedule, finances.  I can look at those big issues and say, “Yeah, like the seasons, Lord, have me to welcome this new dawning in my life.”  But then I’m shell shocked when God discloses that He might desire that I hear from Him differently.  I resist when He says, “That method worked yesterday, but it’s not going to do for today.”

I heard from Him at the patio table yesterday at noon.  I’m back.  Why don’t I hear today?

As a teacher, this can be a bit frustrating.  One series He gives me the whole game plan long before the first lesson begins.  Another series He tells me only so much as I need to know today.  Some ideas come, literally, months in advance.  Some build over the course of years.  And some He gave me last night.

I refuse to teach without Him.  I won’t make something up and let carnal knowledge be enough.  I insist on a Word.  And sometimes He doesn’t feel like speaking until the 11th hour.

Once I held firm on this so ardently that I basically blessed Him out and went to bed the night before I was to teach a lesson that I had not yet been given.  I don’t dream.  I did that night.  He wrote the whole thing on an old green chalk board.  I don’t wake up without a (very!) loud alarm either.  I did that day.  The dream ended, I awoke alert and ready, I ran to my computer and recreated what I’d seen. It was a great lesson.

He may make you wait, but it will always be worth it.

How God related to me last month may well be wholly different from the way He desires to relate to me today.  I seem to be ok with the new ways, but letting go of the old ones doesn’t sit so well.

I hate to be cliched, but when He closes a window He usually opens a door.  So often I sit and put my face in my hands and moan over the closing of the window and totally miss that door swinging wide.

This could be about embracing changes in your life that you didn’t initiate.  This could be about finding peace in the fact that life and family are ever moving into new seasons, some of which don’t involve much of you.  For me, this is about being willing to let the Lord have His way.  It’s about vigilantly watching the horizons of my life for the dawning of His appearing in new ways, with new challenges, instituting new norms.  It’s about not getting chagrin when the old methods show themselves now fruitless.  It’s about seeing the trials and disappointments, challenges and changes as segways into a new chapter with an incredibly creative Maker, Father, and Friend.

Look to the Old Testament prophets.  Just think about all the ways that God revealed Himself to them, and all the ways He had them reveal His Word to others.  There were visions, there were dreams, there were voices.  They stood outside of temples, they requested audiences with kings.  They humiliated themselves in public.  They bought trinkets design to invoke thoughts and mental connections.  They married prostitutes.  They walked about in sackcloth and ashes.  They wrote and they spoke and they cried and they pleaded and they loved and they did whatever He said to do.  And what He said was crazy creative.

I wonder if Hosea ever said, “Can’t I just go buy a jug and smash it like the last guy? (Jeremiah 19:1-15) Do I really have to go and buy her back?  My heart is dying here!  Can’t you let me do what he did instead?” (Hosea 3:1-5)

The answer then and now is no.  You and God are unique.  You and God today are unique. There is no other pairing and no other time like it.  The Lord has amazing things for me this year.  The amazing things He has for you won’t look like mine. There is no pattern, there is no road map.

There is only trust.

Let me, Lord, not look to anyone else, including the me of old, in order to find your hand at work today.  Let me not look at yesterday’s news for today’s living. Enable me– only by the unfathomable power of your Holy Spirit is it possible!– to follow the work of your hand in my life even when it comes from and takes me somewhere wholly new.  May my roots run deep into the only sustainable surface that endures, You.

There is a time for everything…a time to plant and a time to uproot…a time to tear down and a time to build…a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them…a time to search and a time to give up…a time to keep and a time to throw away…a time to be silent and a time to speak…                                           Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I am a traditionalist.  I may have said that before.  I really mean it.  I like for things to stay the same, feel the same, include the same people and events.  If the option were available, I’d be hunting Easter eggs in my jammies in my dad’s back yard this April.  Love me some traditions, even long after love for the tradition itself has died.

Most people don’t like change.  I used to hate it, that fits with the traditionalist in me.

But in the grand tradition of this very thought, I have changed and I now love and embrace change.  Every day is a change from the last.  Every season brings the excitement of what newness the winds will usher in.  There are no stagnant days in man’s life, they are always changing–babies grow, the clock winds down in just the way it wound up, the cycle simply finding it’s corresponding downhill of decline to the uphill of maturation. His mercies are new every morning.  Why do they need to be new?  Because the life you faced yesterday doesn’t look like the life that you will encounter today.  Yesterday’s manna will not stave off your hunger today.  Life is new, your needs are new, your task is new, His provision is new.  Because today is different from yesterday, life is ever changing.

I wouldn’t call myself a resolution maker, but I pretty much always think like one around this time of year.  I reassess life and schedule, dreams, desires, and agendas.  There are petty things one might ponder in this vein.  And then there are those that are not.

It is unwise to approach a new year or a new day without first conceding that God may have a plan for you in it.  He does.  And if we approach today just as we did yesterday, we may not be looking for the new plan He’s waiting for us to jump on board with.

This year I may need to let go.  I may be called to gather stones.  I may need to set aside some time for tearing down, giving up, and throwing away.  I may need to prepare my heart to be willing to do that.  God may say, “Let’s build something new today!”  God may say it’s time to cry, but hope dawns in the morning.  I may be asked to lead a war.

But if I face the day just as though it were a replica of the last, I’m unlikely to notice that the schedule has changed.

My husband wakes up every morning at just about the exact same time, work day or vacation, weekday or weekend.  It’s what his body has become accustomed to. Some things we do because that’s what we’ve done forever.  Some things we don’t really think about, we just find ourselves in the middle of doing…again.

May our lives be intentional, not merely familiar.

Every morning in the car I thank the Lord for the fact that today’s weather is never quite the same as yesterdays.  Today’s is something beautiful.  Change can be beautiful.  It’s only harsh and unattractive when we see it from behind the fingers of eye-covering hands.

There is a time today.  There is a time for us to lay down yesterday, to pick up on His plan for today, and to open our arms wide to the adventure that He has in store.

Do you have the time?