As I ran this morning, I discovered a tendency that permeates far more of my life than just those quiet morning moments on the pavement.  I have recently found the most delightful route. It’s beautiful, quite scenic, placid and peaceful, and usually in the morning just after the sun has begun to rise across the sky. I chose it for these very reasons.

I was halfway through all that gloriousness when I realized that I had not lifted my eyes off of the sidewalk even once to behold this beauty I profess to enjoy so.  

It is totally logical, even sensible to watch the ground in front of you as you run, especially on sidewalks as you often encounter uneven slabs and pine cones and litter.  These things can turn an ankle if you don’t know to avoid them.  I tend to keep my eyes down, lost in my head and scanning for the pitfalls that may await me.  

Many years ago I took a picture of this wonderful man in Haiti feeding a toddler.  His name is Jimmy.  He’s a pretty big guy, but the most gentle servant there ever was.  He stood behind the child with his left hand beneath the boys chin and his right holding a spoon full of oatmeal.  It was so tender and moving to watch.  The little boy merely had to open his mouth to receive what was placed there before him.

Far too often I profess to have come to the table while stubbornly, blindly, methodically refusing to lift my eyes to the provisions just inches from my lips.  

When you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.                                    Psalm 104:28

We do this in everyday life.  We go to church and we go to our knees and we ask the Lord for His provisions and blessings and we confess the needs of our days and lives.  Then when He puts His hand beneath our chins to raise our eyes to receive that for which we have asked, we press against Him or deny the sensing at all.  And we continue to sit hungry and needy and wishing for that which we continue to long for–never realizing how incredibly near it is to us.  

We do this in moments of rest and vacation.  We go somewhere beautiful, peaceful, restorative, but we never lift our eyes to behold the beauty we’ve come to see.  We allow our sights to be hampered by the anxiety over what may lie ahead, by the exhaustion of just putting one foot before the other, by the habit of keeping our nose to the grindstone.  And all the beauty we’ve gone to behold is left to rise and set unbeheld.

We do this at Christmas.  We don’t want to ‘miss it.’ We try to slow down and ‘catch it.’ We know, we sense, we believe there is this great thing that the season has to offer us and we try in so many ways to encounter it fully or at all.  We put our heads down and press on as if we think we’ll eventually run headlong into it.

I can run with my eyes down and there is a certain amount of wisdom in that.  But if I never lift my eyes, I miss all that is so breathtaking just inches above my lowered lids.  And then the snare of vigilance, watchfulness, fear, anxiety, and control have their way and I live the cautious life.  And miss everything that is beautiful.  

I felt His hand today.  I heard Him say my name and call me to behold the greatness He had drawn me there to witness.  It was an incredible morning; the veiled sun, the fountain in the middle of the pond, the last changing leaves dangling from the otherwise barren trees, a horse in the far field, the breath of wind on my face, and the awareness of His hand beneath my chin.  

Sometimes we go so long without looking up, Lord, that our necks seem stuck in a paralysis of control and shortsightedness.  We spend our days watching for danger zones, trying to avoid the problem spots, laboring to put one foot before the other, watching the methodical drop of our own futile footfalls.  As the gentle servant You are, lift our eyes to You today.  Let us feel Your tender provision and Presence.  And make us aware of all that is miraculously ours just inches from our lips as You lift our faces to You.  May we fully take in all that You desire to reveal to and provide for us this season.  

As I was leaving Walmart today there was a man in a wheelchair putting groceries into his back seat.  I asked if he might need any help.  As it turned out, he was almost done and declined but then stopped and told me thank you for offering.  

I recently saw a story about a man who has a muscular disease and has the body of a small child.  He wanted to see the world but was limited by his wheelchair.  His friends built a custom backpack and traveled the world with and for him.

I have a sweet friend who is legally blind.  There is much she simply can’t do.  While there is so very much she can, she has to rely on others for everything else–to drive her, to tell her what things look like, to read signs and point out tricky spots in the sidewalk.  

You know what all these scenarios require?

Someone with a need who is willing to allow others to meet it.

In light of our being delegates with vital work to do, this may be the ‘how’ to accompany the ‘what.’ We all have these things we feel and are called to, burdened for, gifted toward, but the journey to accomplishment is a long, arduous, bumpy, and doubt-ridden road.  On any given day you can know your mission and have such a passion and vibrance for it that you feel you could fly.  Then you blink and that same task is heavy as lead and every step seems riddled with turmoil and bearing little or no fruit.  Then there are the days when it just seems pitch black dark as you stare down the road it feels you alone must travel! You have no idea how to proceed or maybe even where it is you’re really headed.

You know what we need?

We need to be people with a need who are willing to allow others to meet it.

Tell Archippus: See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord.                                                                           Colossians 4:17

We need others to come alongside us with whom we can share the ministry we have each received.  And we need for them to call us out.  We need for them to help ensure we ‘see to it’ that we live the lives we’ve been called to.  We need to be people who recognize our need.  We need to be people who turn to those offering to help us in love and humility and say thank you for reminding us of what we’re to be doing here.  We need to be people who don’t shun advice and help and accountability.  

Because you know what?  We all need a little help here.

There are two people in this scenario: the one needing help and the one offering it.  Be both.  And be both with grace, discernment, love, humility, patience, kindness, gentleness.  Not sure how to do that exactly?  Try.  Try to give it.  Try to take it.  Try to be moved to obedience by the gentle encouragements of others in the Body who know what you are called to be and need and desire that you be it.    

“The story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.”         -John Eldredge, Waking the Dead

Do you know what you could be?  Do others?  Do you “strenuously contend” (Colossians 1:29) to become daily that which Satan fears?  Can you become that alone?  Who will make sure you don’t have to? Are there others who are weak in the battle?  To whom might you be Aaron to the weak armed Moses? Perhaps it’s time we all just give little help here.

So my house isn’t exactly Christmas ready.  We do have a tree.  A huge, beautiful, bare tree. It’s so big that we put the ‘topper’ on it while we had the ladder in the house so it’s barren but for that one article.  My tiny topper is woefully inadequate for the size of this tree, but it’s what we have, what we’ve always had.  It’s an angel; a small billowing robe clad flying angel.  

As I enjoyed our one sign of the season the other night, I found myself considering that angel.  

Think of the tasks we know angels to have accomplished.  The big news of Christ’s upcoming birth announced, Daniel’s delayed prayer answer due to angelic battles involving whole nations, Jesus being ministered to in the Garden as He despaired and sweat blood.  

While humans don’t become angels, I find there is much to discover about myself and the Lord as I see how angels function.  I find that one of the many underlying themes of Revelation becomes apparent through the many mentionings of angels throughout the book.  

We see angels ‘holding back the four winds’ in chapter 7 as another angel ‘seals’ the 144,000.  We see angels holding trumpets in chapters 8 and 9.  We see the ‘mighty angel’ of chapter 10.  The whole book is replete with angels to whom great and impactful things have been delegated.

I believe my favorite such delegate is found in Revelation 16:

The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.  Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say:

‘You are just in these judgments, O Holy One, you who are and who were; for they have shed the blood of your holy people and your prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.’                                                                                                                     Revelation 16: 4-6

This angel was in charge of the waters!  Do you know how imperative water is to the life of everything on Earth!? This is a huge job to delegate!  You can almost hear the sadness in the angels words, “I know it is right and they deserve it.  But I’ve watched these waters for thousands of years and they are my baby.  Your will not mine.”

There is much that I do not understand about how God chooses to relate to His children.  Why is prayer so valuable and necessary?  If He already knows what’s going to happen, how is it I’m always choosing–and why can’t He just make me make better choices?  What’s the deal with fasting?  So many questions.  A profound one among them is this:

Why does God delegate such important things to people who mess up all the time?

Our God delegates.  He delegates hugely important things and blissfully minor ones, but He is very much in the business of giving others jobs to do.  And just in case you’re inclined to believe this is just for angels:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.                                                                                                                    Ephesians 2:10

There is work to be done and much of it is of enormous, eternal significance.  And we are the delegation He has marked to do it.  

This work that has been delegated to us is far more important than most of what we will spend our lives on today.  Being the gentleman, He will not push and shove His way into our schedules any more than He will into our hearts and lives.  

What matter of eternal importance has been pushed to the bottom of the to-do for too long? Or do we even believe there is one?  I don’t care who you are, if you are in Christ you have been delegated good works and we need for you to be about them.  He knew what He was doing when He set aside the task just for you and He surely stands by His decision.  As the angels who hold their eternal posts, let us show up today for the jobs we have been called to do.

We all ‘plug in’ to something. We get our life, our energy, our purpose from some source we tap into.   

We own a generator.  It’s very handy.  When the power goes out, we can hook the fridge and freezer up to it and not have to worry about losing our groceries.  It only has so many plugs though, so we can only power so many items with it.  And then there’s the need for fuel.  We have to constantly replenish the tank to keep the thing running.  

A generator could prove to have any number of inconsistencies (especially depending on your own watchfulness.)  They can glitch, have surges of power, spells of drought where they just cut off, or can stop working all together.  Rather finicky and a bit work intensive.  

My daughter and I were watching a television show last week and there was this sweet man who just seemed lost.  He explains that his wife of many years had passed away and she had been his whole world.  Without her he had no purpose, no life.  

This man had been plugged into her generator which cut off and left him in the dark.  Without her there, he had no source of life, light, warmth, purpose.  

We all walk around looking for plug ins.  Look at the rise of 5 Hour Energy and Red Bull.  We all need more oomph.  We find a substance that makes us feel lively and energetic.  We find a romance that makes us feel vibrant and useful.  We find a show that makes us feel a sense of belonging and distraction.  We find a job that makes us feel purposeful and proud.  We find a vacation spot that makes us feel peaceful and content.  We find….

While there may be a wonderful surge of power available to us from any of these sources, they don’t prove to be reliable generators.  They have relational glitches.  They surge us with power only to leave us feeling totally drained just minutes beyond the 5 hour mark.  They deliver us to cloud 9 only to send us crashing through the trees moments later.  And sometimes they just cut off for no discernible reason and leave us cold, lonely, hungry, and in the dark.  

There is no generator here that can fuel us consistently.  All that is temporal abides by it’s temporal nature and restrictions.  We need a power source that can deliver to us the life, energy, warmth, direction, and purpose we long for–and do that with such blissful dependability that we fear no storm or loss.  

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms….                                                         Ephesians 1:18-20

We can’t let the source of our strength– that which makes us feel alive, that which fuels us for lives that emanate light and heat and energy–be something that isn’t up for the task.  

God in Christ, the Great I AM, is the only generator big enough to fuel great, consistent, powerful lives of purpose.  To tap into any other source is to put ourselves under the strain of it’s limitations.  It is to entrust our own strengths to it’s weakness.  It is to settle for glitches and surges and seasons of darkness.  

There’s a generator that fuels with Perfection.  Plenty of plug in’s for the lot of us.  And a long history of unprecedented dependability.

I am a mom.  And like all children, mine are growing up.  The problem is that every new season of their lives tends to hurl me (without even asking!) into a new season of my own.  

We have just passed into a new season whereby much of my daily life has become rather…open.  Sounds lovely.  Right.

I feel as though my husband and I have done a fair job of prioritizing the closeness of our relationship knowing that one day it will again be just he and I.  I thought I had done the same for myself.  Bugger.  Life itself swoops in to prove me wrong.

By nature of the outlook of our daily lives, we come to see ourselves through a lens of activity, relationships, labels.  “I am so and so’s mom.  I am so and so’s husband.  I work for so and so.  I teach at so and so or do books at thus and such.”  The identity that we adhere to becomes one that is fragile at best.  And when that identity takes a shift, well, you feel like me this week.

Today I destroyed my bedroom with half done rearranging.  I washed the outside of my kitchen windows.  The outside mind you, not the inside.  I refilled the hummingbird feeder.  I gave my dog his anxiety pills. I tried out my new dust vac by getting the dead bugs out of the window sills. I sealed my name in every random book I own. And I walked a few miles…from my kitchen to bedroom and many times back again.  Fulfilling.

Then, thanks be to God, I sat down and let Him remind me! I am a saint.  I am a child and an apple of His eye.  I am a treasure and a prize. I am warrior and an instrument. I am a work in progress and a gifted soul.  

And I’m an alien.

Live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.                I Peter 1:17

Seasons will always change this side of Heaven because I’m not home yet.  In the meantime, I’ll figure out the shifts and sways of a life that’s lived in constant motion, longing for the day when my identity is my sight.

“What you call sin, I call freedom.  You disgust me.”  

This line is spoken by one of the pagan characters in Noah’s day in the video shown at the Ark Encounter.  It’s spoken by a burly man with a loin cloth and a spear, with primitive tattoos, and strange and archaic piercings.  And it’s been repeated by man throughout history.

As a matter of fact, I hear variations of this line everywhere I go.  The definition of sin being muddied and slurred, what is and is not sin being assaulted on every front.  It is the substance of our everyday lives.

The first chapter of Romans paints a picture of a people so lost and depraved, so fully committed to resistance to the Almighty that God “gave them over in their sinful desires.” So often I have read Paul’s description of that life and society and pictured the men in their loin clothes, with their spears and archaic tattoos and piercings.  I picture what Paul saw, the nature of the society that he called home.  

Then I set out to study the message God had for me in that letter and found the usefulness of God’s Word is not just in increasing my understanding of history, but of enlightening my awareness of my present reality. It isn’t difficult at all to envision those combatants, those of impure hearts and motives, those prone to disrespect, and those who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie.  

Back to the Ark Encounter.  I found it so insightful that scientists are in general agreement that there was some sort of flood on the planet Mars.  They looked at the current condition and were able to ascertain information about a historic occurrence.  They followed the evidence.  And all the evidence pointed to a planet-wide flood.  

That same evidence is in existence on planet Earth.  If the Bible had not first stated that such a flood had occurred here, then all science would likely state the fact themselves.  But the Bible did.  And in their hubris, they will defy the knowledge and wisdom they have in order to cling to the lie they must live with.  

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.                                                                                                                       Romans 1:22

Then there’s this obsession we have today with God’s creation.  The human body has become a work of art that must, at all cost, be perfected, displayed, appreciated, honed.  Plastic surgery, excessive physical rigor, provocative dress and all manner of eating disorders speak to the reality of man’s current obsession with the human body.  

They …worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.                                                                                        Romans 1:25

And I cannot even begin to touch the realities of societies devastating infatuation with sex.  We are destroying our own children, our own honor, our own families, and all the while voicing some pious outcry that someone should do something about the consequences of our own depravity.  

God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another….They invent ways of doing evil…they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.                                                                                                                          Romans 1:24, 30, 31

Why do we need note these realities?  That the intensity of our situation may be inflamed, that we may see with greater fervency and alarm the place in time in which we now stand.  That the need may be more pressing, that the grace may be more amazing.  We need to be reminded that we are on a clock, it is running down, we are indeed called to a job that is not yet complete.  And we need to be moved back into that place where grace and mercy, freedom from the bondage we have known, is so gripping, so overwhelming, so consuming, that our knees are calloused and our heads are low in humble gratitude for that which we can only call indescribable.

The times are dark and the message is urgent.  This isn’t a history lesson, it’s a call to an awareness of a present condition.  Be fervent, be alert, be humble, be wise, be prayerful, and be not deceived.

We do so much in the name of godliness.  We serve, we listen to the right radio stations, we decorate our houses with Scripture, and we take no major decision lightly but pray over it fervently before action.

How many acts of obedience do you think you’ve missed because you spent too much time asking if you should do it?

Sometimes it’s even more veiled, you don’t leave home because you’re not sure God’s told you to and so you never know what all you missed. You weren’t there to see the opportunity at all.

We don’t want to make any mistakes, right?  So we do what a good Christian should and we make extra certain that we have heard Him right before taking hasty action.  In the name of being diligent and submissive, we far too often miss the whole point.

There are times in life when God just wants us to get in the car.  Let’s ride, let me drive, can you just trust that I’m taking you to the right place?

I used to say that I trusted Him implicitly, it’s me I’m not so sure about.  I will tell you what I have come to discover about that line:

It’s a cop out.

If He’s sovereign, even I can’t screw up His plans.

I have to trust in the counsel of those He uses to lead me.  I have to trust my own abilities to discern His hand.  I have to trust that if I’m hanging with Him then I’m in the right place.  I have to trust that He can lead me and His purposes will prevail-even when I’m not sure, even if I haven’t got it all just right. I have to trust that the work He does in me daily is equipping me to succeed at the tasks to which He calls me.

Lives of obedience are ones in which moments of quiet study and surrender give rise to movements of decisive action.  You sit down to listen.  You get up to act.

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.                                       Proverbs 29:18  (KJV)

The word vision here is the same word used in Isaiah and Nahum to describe what God revealed to them about what was and what was to be.  

The word perish can also be translated chase or run wild, to be without restraint.  

This verse is not just for ministries looking to find their parameters or churches trying to figure out their niche. It is a truth that applies to young people attempting to discern their careers and life plans.  It is for parents as they make decisions for their children.  It is for the wealthy as they budget their money.  It is for the poor as they assess what their lives are actually rich in.  It is for every one who has a decision to make today.  

We might make those decisions based on any number of variables; what do I like, what do I want, what can I afford, what do I see as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for me, for my family, for my bottom line, for humanity. All of those variables are moving scales of my own vision.  They are attempts at discerning for myself what would be good for me. And every aspect of my own vision must be relegated to a reliance on His.  If I desire to save myself from the chasing and perishing of Proverbs, the ‘vision’ I have to live with isn’t mine. When chatter of my vision is gone, I’m open to hear about His.

Isaiah can lend to our understanding here.  He saw ‘visions’ about Babylon. Babylon is one of two cities that have a role in the entire human story.  It shows up in Genesis 11 and is still around in Revelation 19.  And, yes, it is still around today. Isaiah’s vision was well into this historical city’s existence.  The story was already well under way.  It didn’t start with Isaiah, he just jumped into a story that already was.  

If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; but when they attend to what He reveals, they are most blessed.                                                                                                                              Proverbs 29:18 (Message)

The decisions that we make are not made in a vacuum.  They affect other people, they are intertwined with all the world around us, and they influence the stories of others that are already being written.  

It is vital that we catch the vision.  It is imperative that we discern what God is already doing.  Without that, we flounder, we stumble, we become the walking perished.  

There will always be the temptation to cast our own vision, to make decisions that fall in line with what we see or desire or even expect of or for ourselves.  It’s like back seat drivers.  Everyone in the car that isn’t driving is quick to gauge what they would have done differently from the one who is driving.  We all want to be in that seat.  You know what you end up with if everybody is out on the road of life driving the way they see fit, taking the wheel on every issue in which they have an opinion?  Bumper cars.  If you make decisions based on your own vision for your life, you are a lone bumper car in that padded oval on the fairground of your days.  

God calls us to be a little less like the chaotic and destructive bumper cars and a bit more like the elegance and precision of synchronized swimmers.  There is a grand and unified design to life, not just our lives, all lives.  And when we discern the workings of God around us and join into that dance that is already in motion, we glide and we rhythmically sway in the eternal story of His glory.  We must find our place in what has long been established.  And our own designs for our lives and those of our children and families must not trump our attention to His.  

It isn’t hard to look around our country, even our homes at times, and see this bumper car mentality.  We collide, we crash, we cause damage, we end up with cuts and bruises and wounds that we won’t slow down enough to let heal.  

It’s the difference between life and perishing that we see what God is doing.  It is vital to true living that we catch His vision rather than cast our own.  There’s a dance that’s been going on for the ages and to crash into it recklessly damages us and all we encounter.  

Save that stumbling by seeing.  But we must not stop at seeing.  We must ‘attend.’ Relegate all other plans and desires and attend to that which He reveals.  It is then that we will be most blessed.

God called me to be a Bible teacher about 12 years ago.  When I was younger, I’d thought I would teach on the college level, but not Bible…maybe history or business.  I was actually quite stunned at the command because I honestly didn’t see it coming.  

Over the years I have found I had much faulty thinking about what it means to teach God’s Word.  The one I have in mind today is this: preachers and teachers live on spiritual mountaintops, it’s how they always know what God wants them to say and how they deliver that word with passion and conviction.  

Not true.  It’s not at all true. But I have come to see that somewhere in me I must have long believed it was.  

Early on in my teaching I was spiritually ‘wound up’ I guess you might say, just euphoric that I could be used this way–and it’s exhilarating to finally do one of those things for which you discover you were made.  Until.  Until I was scheduled to teach and I was in a spiritual valley and the passion wasn’t thrilling and the connection wasn’t so tight and I felt far too far away to be able to ‘transmit’ with any degree of accuracy.  I felt too distant from the Lord to be able to hear Him clearly for myself, much less for those under my care.

The problem was that I did, in fact, have people under my care.  

It was in that moment that I discovered my inaccurate presumption: teachers aren’t always on the mountain. Nor are they called to be. Our lives are not lived on mountains and yet we’re called to commune daily with the Lord. There must be a way to be near even when He feels far away.

In subsequent years, I have found that some of the greatest lessons I have ever delivered have come when all I felt I had to give was my presence.  But I was willing to give that.

What I have discovered in this journey is a sad but glorious reality: I’m never in a good enough place to do God-size work.  When I ‘feel’ like I am, I’m probably less likely than all!  It truly is in weakness that great things begin to happen.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.                                                                                                                                        2 Corinthians 12:10

I believe this may mistakenly be one of those lines where we think God was exaggerating to make a point.

All of this is something of a round about to say ‘hello again.’ I’ve been gone a while, but have been reminded of another particular call God has placed on me, and that is to write.  I have enjoyed both mountains and valleys in my absence.  All the while I have wondered if this particular venue was a part of the ‘call’ or just my delight.  (I’m not entirely certain there’s a difference.)  However, in my wondering, God has been so gracious yet again in revealing to me in a moment of deep humility of the soul that in this too He might like to show Himself mighty. So while I may at times have little more than my presence to offer, in His hands I’ll expect greatness of biblical resemblance.

There is no greater joy than to walk into a task feeling bereft, without even the most meager of anything to offer and finding it was just what He wanted.  To open your mouth without a thought in your head and find beauty on your tongue!  Just incredible.  

When you lack love yet find your heart moved to tears.  When you lack patience only to find hours have passed in the wait.  When you have no energy to finish the task but look up and see you’ve labored the whole night to see it through.  When we come to the end of ourselves, we find that’s where we should have started to begin with.

To God be all glory as we each offer the only thing He really wants:  hearts of surrender.