backsliding

Everything feels possible in the Spring. Hope and life start sprouting up everywhere, and even our hearts feel ready for something new. If any season were perfect for Easter's grace to come to humanity, it is now. 

---

Backsliding

Why after spring,

after being quickened and taught to sing,

knowing He has taken our death and made us green and growing,

why would we go back to winter

so willingly,

and drop so soon our little leaves and stems and fine new fruit

with so much promise,

as if the sun had never shone upon us,

living water never washed our skin?

Why do we hide again our heads and bury deep our souls

in the killing frost of sin?
---

Turning away from the source of life is about as senseless it would be to try going back to Winter after May is here. But however weary we are, however many times we have failed, however cold and hardened we have become against the light's grace, Christ will not leave us there. He is stronger even than the sun, more faithful than the seasons. Alleluia.

"If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come." 2 Cor 5: 17

"If we are not faithful, He remains faithful, because He cannot be false to Himself." 2 Timothy 2:13

poem and pictures: growth, sanctification, spring

 

                                                    Jefferson Street 2013: from the roof

                                                  Garfield Street 2012: by the driveway

                                                North of Moscow 2014: highway ditch gold

                                                Potlatch nursery 2014: geranium explosion

                                                      First Street 2014: first flowers

                               our home 2014: borrowed branches & a favorite chair

 Backsliding

Why after spring,

after being quickened and taught to sing,

knowing He has taken our death and made us green and growing,

why would we go back to winter

so willingly,

and drop so soon our little leaves and stems and fine new fruit

with so much promise,

as if the sun had never shone upon us,

living water never washed our skin?

Why do we hide again our heads and bury deep our souls

in the killing frost of sin?

on weakness

I hate being weak.

I like to feel like I'm the tough one who is unique in her do-it-myself-ness and farm-raised-muscle-ness and emotionally-not-needy-ness and easygoing-hard-to-offend-ness and show-me-once-and-I'll-do-it-perfectly-ness...

Truth be told, we are probably all like that in some way. We hate feeling helpless, feeling confused, feeling childish, feeling broken, feeling delicate and unable to handle the world and this life.

Lately I've been realizing that even though I might be able to do some things well, there are hundreds or thousands of millions of thing that I can't... and as I discover those things, feeling like I shrink in importance, interest, worth and even stature bit by bit. I hate feeling helpless. I hate not knowing something I should. I hate spilling and dropping things. I hate being in a conversation where I can't contribute something because it's over my head. I hate indecision, and tears, and worry. I hate not being able to think up something to do, or something to make. I hate feeling lost and asking for help, and admitting I was wrong, and realizing I will never be perfect, and realizing there are people closer to perfect in certain areas than I am. And I can get completely miserable dwelling on thoughts of my weakness.

And then sometimes I realize that I have been letting the unknown, the tiredness, the fear, the missing a turn or missing an appointment or missing someone and feeling lonely - that I have been letting those be bigger than me, by focusing on them and by letting them take over my thoughts.

But our God says He loves us even when we are small.
He says He loves us even when we are weak.
Because we are weak.
Because we are needy.
He comes and finds us because we are lost.
He says that in our brokenness He shows His power.

Joy in Him is our strength, and our identity, and our perfection, and our worth, not in these crumbling, broken bodies and souls, hurting and hurtful, losers and lost, trying and giving up.

It's ok if we are weak.
THAT we are weak. Because, you know, we always are in some way.

But His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

Love that gives

Love gives. God gave His only Son. The Son gave His life. Friends give gifts and time to be with you. Parents give everything for their children. Teachers give because they love their subjct and their students. A man and a woman give up their own lives and names and plans to build a new one together.

When love gives, it creates. It creates worth, it makes new things, and it makes beautiful. The sun gives to the earth, and the earth returns in fruit and green. When God loves, His people are sanctified and glorified. "The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation. (Psalm 149:4)

Love adorns with gifts, sometimes outward objects like a circle of gold for a finger, and sometimes just by strengthening the beloved with good words: praise and wonder, accountability and correction, and shared stories and histories.

Love, karis, grace, gifts don't take away. They give by adding. They give by building up. Through it we become more who we are meant to be, can have more confidence in who we are. Confidence is a part of faith, of trust, and makes secure, makes steady. We have boldness to stand before our Maker. We know we are not alone. We feel more lovely, and that is based less on ourselves and more on one we trust, and so we don't hide ourselves or go hesitant about our lives. We have rest concerning our future, because love never fails.

---
Yesterday, it was 100 days to our wedding day. Fraser brought me roses and chocolate at lunchtime, and I made him pie in the evening. We have a long way to go together: may we learn to give more like our Lord in the coming 99 days, and every one after that.

To always remember

When grace rescues you, then giving thanks is the responding action.
When grace delivers you, then action defines you.
When grace takes you in right where you are, then you act out your gratitude wherever you are.



I found these words on Ann Voskamp's blog today. Sometimes I forget things like this. In the same way I forgot that I was reading Isaiah because I hadn't actually picked up my Bible in several days and opened it to where the dark red bookmark hung, I forget His grace. When I look at it, I am overwhelmed by God's goodness, but sometimes I forget. I forget where and how His grace found and still finds me, and I forget what I need to give Him back. 

Rock that is Higher than I

Pastor Wilson gave an excellent sermon this morning on Psalm 61. Excellent. I told my roommates when I got home that I feel like it is cliched when someone asks you how the sermon was to say it was just what you needed... but sometimes that is 100% true. Much of the time it is, in fact.

I wish I could post a link to a video of this, but I don't think that it was filmed. There is probably audio available for it a couple days afterwards. I'll find out. Here is a link to the sermon notes. A couple things that I think weren't on there that stuck in my mind were, "Pray about your troubles. If it's big enough to trouble you, it's big enough to trouble God with," and at the end of the sermon, "Don't live like your troubles ARE'NT present; but live as though Christ IS present."

charis: gift and counter-gift

http://www.leithart.com/2012/05/26/grace-and-gratitude/

#3 for national poetry month: Paschal Paradox

Paschal Paradox

Only the one who willingly let his flesh
be flayed and forced to hang
can fall to Hades, fall with death
and lift the dead again with him.

Only the hands stretched out wide
and tortured between wood and nail
can stretch in love to those
who tore them, and restore them.

Romans 8:31-34

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

Happy New Year

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17

Doug Jones: Mary Bursting

Great essay on the inexpressible glory of this season we are celebrating.

muddy and tattered

This picture made me think of this nugget from C. S. Lewis:

“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience et cetera doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.
We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of his presence.”

poem for Holy Week

Easter Communion
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

Ben Alexander: GOD'S HOSPITALITY

Benjamin's Tribe: GOD'S HOSPITALITY: "The hospitality of the Lord Jesus for us is a home filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread and a feast for all senses. He makes a fuss..."

Christ in all

Make-believe and everyday living look forward to completion in the transmuting realism of the revealed Word. He makes all myths true and life itself mythical in his person, human and divine. . .

Christ creates and sustains nature: all things are from him and in him, stars, wind, and sky. . .

The hand. . . that draws men and stars into being is stretched out everywhere in gracious nature to aim the graceless heart providentially back to its temporal and eternal beginning. Jesus is the "Orion of light" - harbinger of spring's "scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers" - that mildly and steadily pursues men and directs them to their mark. He rises, a transfigured hero, over a world no longer bound by winter and night. . .

-from James Cotter's Inscape: The Christology and Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins