July 2008 | Elaine Olsen

A Zoo’s Pondering (part three): Made for the Boast

July 24, 2008

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he knows and understands me, … .’” (Jeremiah 9:23-24a).

I am reminded again this day that my words, both written and spoken, are of little consequence to the world, but hold sacred relevance to God. What God deems worthy is not often received as such in the eyes of man.

I could boast of my stripes.

I could boast of my strut.

I could boast of wisdom, strength, and riches, but at the end of the day, the only boast worthy of my lips is the boast that speaks and lives the name Jesus.

Simply…Jesus.

All other entitlements won’t linger once I’m in the grave. Oh, they may make their way onto a tombstone or into a scrapbook or maybe even documented within history books. But the only book that holds significance for me is the one that my Father holds.

When I stand before God, it matters not what men say. It matters what he will say, and the words I most long to hear are his words of sacred commendation about the life I lived while on this earth.

Well done, child. You lived it like you meant it. You listened and you learned. You gave and then you gave some more. You poured it out, even when the reserves ran low. You kept to the task at hand. You pressed on when the pressing was hard. You loved the most excellent way, and you led others to do the same. You put the spotlight where it was best served, while you were content to linger in the shadows. You did it, child. You lived life as I intended for you to walk it. With faith. With hope. With love and with trust. Come now and share in your Master’s happiness for always.

That’s it. That’s a lot. That’s everything to me.

Too often, however, my boast is leveled at self. God has trusted me with certain gifts. He’s done the same with you. Our temptation is to linger in the truth of that gift and to make more of it than we should. We package our boast with just the right polish and pride and take to the stage with a sanctified, yet sometimes reckless intent. He allows us our stage. In fact, he trusts us with it. But when the spotlight shifts from the Sacred to the self, the intent of our giftedness lays as waste before the threshold of heaven.

We forsake the purpose of heaven for the pursuit of worldly praise. We don’t mean to. Not really. But our best intentions are not enough to keep us from making the subtle shift from Thee to me. In our flesh we are prone to posing for the camera. To boasting about our stripes and our strut and our penchant for showing our backside when things don’t go our way.

Our flesh left “as is” will never suffice the framing of sacred intent. Flesh and blood and will and want must find its way to the fire of a holy purification if it is ever to breathe with kingdom focus and kingdom gain.

Riches and wisdom and strength may carry us through this lifetime. But it is Jesus Christ who will carry us into our next.

And at the end of the day…at the end of this life, my next is all that matters to me.

I am no longer content to do life as usual. Quite frankly, most days I grow weary with the usual. It’s hard to keep focus on the here and the now, when the ache in my heart cries out for my there and my then.

“Then, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’” (Rev. 21:1-4).

That, my friends is my then. And my then, is the only boast that is worthy of these lips. For as long as my words can voice and my pen can write, you will find me keeping to the task of God’s sacred intention. Should I stray toward an unordained spotlight that allows this heart any other boast, I pray for the mighty arm of my God to knock me to my knees and to send me to my humbling.

I speak that from the purest place of my heart this night. My tears drop as my witness.

This life is going fast. I don’t have to tell you that. You have your own ways of measuring such a truth. Let us not spend it on the little, my friends. Let us spend on the lot. His name is Jesus, and he can be known and understood and lived on purpose for a greater gain that exists beyond ourselves. No applause of man can exceed the applause of heaven.

And in case you haven’t heard, every last one of us was made for the ovation of a Savior who stood on our behalf over 2000 years ago on a stage where we gladly gave him the spotlight. His gift, alone, should be enough to sanctify our lives from this point forward. Wouldn’t you agree? It is time we get over ourselves—our strut, our stripes, and our boast—and get on with the business of boasting in Him. This is the prayer of my heart tonight, and so I pray…

Sanctify my life with the boast of heaven. Let not my words breathe as hollow, but let them breathe with the sacred intent of bringing others into the knowledge and truth of Jesus Christ. For whatever time I have left on this earth, let it spend for you, Lord. Not for the accolades of mankind. You are my King, and you have promised me a crown that far exceeds my temporal treasures. When I close my eyes on this earth, let them close in peace, knowing that I have walked your purpose for my life. Amen and Amen.

A Zoo’s Pondering (part two): Made for the Stretch

July 22, 2008

“However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. … We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” (1 Corinthians 1:9-10, 12).

What was God thinking?

I tell you what I think that he was thinking about when he made this magnificent creature.

Perception.

Of all the created land animals God placed in the garden, none stands taller than the giraffe. They frame long and lean. They paint gold and brown. They pattern significant and intentional. They stand strong and proud. And they stretch deep and high with a neck designed…

for perception.
for seeing above and beyond the horizontal.
for reaching high to grasp the provision of One higher.

Of all the creatures I witnessed on my recent trip to the zoo, the giraffes were the ones that garnered my heartiest admiration. They are beautiful beyond description. Seeing them in picture books and movies falls short of the real thing. Pictures don’t breathe as three dimensional. They paint flat. But witnessing a giraffe first hand is like walking into the canvas of a painter’s work in progress. This kind of palette colors vivid and real and alive with a garden’s pulse.

There is something about a giraffe that speaks of Eden.

Giraffes embody man’s impossibility. No test tube or scientific mutation could birth such a divine oddity. Science is too exacting for such an extreme. But God? Well, impossible and extremes are in keeping with his divinity. Eden birthed the limitless possibility of perfection. Its soil grew with the lush and green and abundance of a Father’s creative genius. No creature was too great or too small to pasture its soil. They simply fit.

And woven into that fitting is the one creature that offers a dimensional perspective that completes the picture of sacred visioning.

Giraffes were created with the stretch in mind. Their chins lift higher. Their mouths taste higher. Their eyes see higher. Their thoughts conceive higher, for higher is their assigned portion. Bending to taste from a soil’s dirt is a difficult stretch for a giraffe. But stretching to taste from a tree’s first fruits is an easy and reasonable reach. Giraffes were designed for higher living.

So are we.

God designed us for the stretch. For a perspective that breeds hope and faith and the conceiving of the inconceivable. God intends for us to live tall with our chins toward heaven for the receiving. All too often, though, we are content to mire our thoughts at ground level and to grovel for our soul’s sustenance within the soil of a well-trodden path. Problem is…

Well worn paths have known a good picking and no longer soil the seed of perception.

Giraffes never have that problem. They find pasture with the untasted, less trampled fruits of a higher perspective. Their stretch allows them unlimited possibilities for the feeding. They walk above and beyond the horizontal in order to take hold an abundance that can only be found in high places.

I want to be like a giraffe. I want to find my stretch. I want to see with my eyes, and hear with my ears, and conceive with my mind the sure promise of high living. I think you want this too. But here’s the deal. For high living to happen, we have got to trade in our well-worn perspective for kingdom perspective.

We will never live our stretch until we get our noses out of the dirt and begin to feast on the fruit of an untasted abundance. God has filled our lives with an edenic portion of lush and green and fertile. It seeds in the pages of his Word and in the fellowship of his Holy Spirit.

We have been given everything we need to live at this higher level. We have been given the mind of Christ and the capacity to know the One and only living God. Through the power of his Holy Spirit we can more fully comprehend his thoughts and the spiritual truths that radiate from his core.

This, my friends, is three dimensional living on the canvas of a Painter’s work in progress. It breathes with the palette of Eden’s perfection. It paints with the vertical in mind and with a heart’s stretch that isn’t afraid…

to perceive higher.
to reach further.
to strain for the better.
to press on to take hold of a first fruits’ provision, seeded by the very hands of God.

Indeed, our God was thinking when he made this magnificent creature. Mr. Giraffe has certainly made an impression on me. Thus, I pray…

Thank you, Father, for dreaming the giraffe. I cannot imagine the full measure of your wisdom in the matter, but I am confident that he brings you much joy. He’s led me to my pondering this day and taught me something about living with perception. Forgive me, Lord, when I keep my chin down and refuse the provision of a higher sustenance. Remind me to look up. To live up, and to stretch up in order to take hold of your kingdom perspective. Thank you for perceiving my possibility even when my eyes refuse the vision. You are my mind and my heart’s desire this day. Give me the faith to conceive the inconceivable. Amen.

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A Zoo’s Pondering (part one): Made for the Roar

July 21, 2008

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27).

I’ve been to the zoo this week. No, not the one that currently shares my mailing address but, instead, the one that includes real animals. The Asheboro Zoo.

It has been eight years since my last visit. I imagine it will be at least another eight before I muster the “want to” to go again. On this occasion, my “want to” was largely based on my children’s desire. With dad out of the country, I thought it a good occasion to make our pilgrimage. It was. Sort of.

Good because…

*My parents made the trip with us.
*The crowds were way down.
*It was relatively cheap entertainment.
*It wore my kids out (not to mention their three chaperones).
*The animals provided enough fodder for a week’s worth of blogging.

Less good because…

*The temperatures soared to 90+ degrees.
*The real life habitats (while ideal for the animals) required a great deal of walking.
*The animals were apparently notified of the heat and the diminishing crowds and responded accordingly.
*Worn out kids make for ill-fitted companions.
*If you’re not into pondering the sacred possibilities of a zoo’s visit, I may lose you as a reader.

Zoos are not God’s design. They are man’s way of containing and controlling some species that were originally designed for life without boundaries. They’re not evil. They’re simply not perfect. In a perfect world, animals and man cohabitate as one. In a fallen world, they separate and live as individual.

I noticed this tension more profoundly with my visit. Perhaps it is my age. When younger, my fear of the unknown warranted and validated the separation. But as I have matured, so has my desire for some unity with God’s creatures. I want to touch and to talk with and to tend them with the familiarity that was first birthed in a garden. I want the bars of our separation to disappear and the freedom of Eden to breathe its return upon this soil.

But what I want awaits another season—a time when God finally clarifies the matter within beast and man alike. Thus, I’m left with cages and confinement and contemplation at a distance. And the contemplation that most deeply stirs my spirit this night is the realization that…

Cages breed lethargy. Confinement breeds less than.

What I wanted to see was a roaring lion.

What I saw instead was this.

The king of the created four-footers was hot and tired. He had no use for the onlookers and even less use for the roar bottled up within his seemingly gaunt frame. No amount of my cajoling could rouse him from his lethargy. He is simply living as he is parametered.

Less than.

This the way of man’s confinement. It always lives as captive and breeds a posture of defeat. An imperfect existence. A functional one, but never the perfection that God intended on the front end of things.

What God intends for his created is freedom. A posture of victory. An existence that exceeds function to breed and to breathe the truth of a lavish grace that brings all creatures to a completed and perfected end.

He means for us to roar and to take ownership of the liberty that is ours in Jesus Christ. Bars and cages and control have no place inside the kingdom that belongs to the King. For…

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1).

A high price was paid for our emancipation. Walking the value of such a sacred exchange is left up to us. We can allow man his framing of our existence or we can stand firm in the freedom that comes to us through the framing of the cross. Christ willingly embraced man’s confinement via two wooden beams, but even then, nails and timber could not hold him…not forever. They simply held him long enough for love’s redeeming work to walk its course.

And when that course was finished, the Lion of the tribe of Judah had some roar still bottled up within. On the third day, he allowed it the voice that reverberates freedom’s battle cry two thousand years down the road. He broke the chains of confining sin and death so that we could chorus our roar in unison with his. Our choice in the matter remains exactly that. Ours.

We can choose our less than or we can throw our head back, open our mouths, and sound the victory that echoes loud and large and as an everlasting witness to the liberty found in Jesus Christ alone.

I don’t know about you, but that is some sacred possibility drawn from a visit to the zoo. It is something that’s got me thinking tonight and so I pray…

Thank you, Father, for the gift of perspective…for a lesson from a lion. You knew how it would speak even before it was voiced. Keep me from my lethargy and less than, and move me toward the freedom that is mine because of your confinement at Calvary. Thank you for your created creatures that breathe the witness of your magnificent plan. Brings us all to our everlasting that will walk without parameters and that will allow us to live as one. Amen.

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On the Back Side of Eleven

July 19, 2008

“This is what the LORD says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:10-11).

1997 …………………………………………………………………………………….2008

On the front end of things, I couldn’t have known…couldn’t have fathomed how it all would go. I simply walked it. One foot in front of the other until I found myself face to face with the man I now call husband.

Eleven years have passed since that hot July afternoon when Billy took me as his bride and my two sons as his own. If I had only known then what I know now I would have…

fought less for control.
accepted personality quirks as normal.
blessed instead of criticized.
admitted my wrong without needing to be right.
loved “as is” instead of loving when fixed.
praised his heart before picking it weary.
prayed for him instead of praying for God to change him.
showed more affection in front of the kids.
showed more affection behind closed doors.
made more of his good intentions instead of expecting perfection.

Yes, if I had known then what I know now, I would have been a better wife on the front end. But on the front end, I didn’t know how to be a better wife. In fact, I’m not sure I even believed we would get to this day—the backside of eleven years. The only thing I did know on July 19, 1997, was a simple faith that breathed with a little hope that love would carry us all into a better future.

It has. Love has covered a multitude of sins and selfish to bleed a truer red into the hearts of the family I call mine. Only by the gracious grace of God have we arrived from our years of captive living to know a spacious and breathing joy that delights in the journey of a “two as one” kind of yoking.

We fit…Billy and me. To those on the outside looking in, it may seem an odd fit. There are times when it felt strangely peculiar to me as well. But these days, our love wraps like a favorite quilt—comfortable and perfectly molded to the shape beneath its layers. God has given us our layers. I see them now, and I am thankful for the strength they harbor. They will carry us into the next season of loving one another.

Tonight, we sit on opposite sides of the equator. I don’t know if he is thinking about me, but I am thinking about him. Thinking about the back side of eleven years and how grateful I am to God for dreaming some dreams for me that included a young preacher man named Billy.

As a people in search for a better tomorrow, we are prone to contextualizing Jeremiah 29:11 for our seasons yet to come. Rightly so. But in our searching for the next best promise, I wonder how many of us take the occasion to frame this verse within the context of our seasons past? To look back one, five, ten, even eleven years ago and think about the hopes and dreams that our Father seeded on our behalf?

I’m living some of those dreams now. I bet you are too. Problem is, we didn’t see them on the front end. And what is often unseen rarely breeds our thankfulness. Rather than acknowledging the fulfilled promises that reside in our current, we busy ourselves with our “yet to be.” Our now is not enough, but our next? Well, surely it holds the milk and honey and prospering plans of our Jeremiah 29:11, God.

This is faulty thinking. Not because it’s not true. It is. There is still so much more to come—more plans, more dreams, more hopes, and more forever. But now—this day—we are living and breathing the milk and honey of some long ago planted promises. Our now pulses with the cultivated seed of yesterday’s sacred sowing. God is forever tending to our soil and bringing to fruition his plans for our lives. His tending is rooted in a lavish and unprecedented love. Because of his love, we know the love of others.

And tonight, I am thankful for the love of a man who has faithfully loved me for over eleven years. We share the seeded hope that God planted on our behalf on the front end of a hot, July afternoon.

July is still hot, my friends. And my marriage?

On fire…

for one another and for God’s magnificent schemes for our life together!

So tonight, dear husband, I tell you again, that I do. I will. I promise, for as long as God allows us this side of eternity. You cannot read my words on our special day. It doesn’t matter. Some things simply need to be spoken even when continents preclude the listening. May our Father carry the love of my heart to yours in those Bolivian mountains as you rest. Dream dreams for our tomorrow, and breathe thankfulness for our today. We have come to the backside of our eleven years.

If I had only known then, what I know now…

I’d still say yes.

I love you. And so I pray,

Thank you Father, for dreaming Billy and for allowing me the joy to dream him also. He is your lavish expression of love to me. Keep us Father, close to your hands and your heart. Give us sense enough to allow you your molding and your vision over our lives. Teach us how to love better, and grow us in our understanding of your purpose for marriage. Thank you for dreams that come on the front end of our experiences and for the dreams you seed this day. Grow us Father, into the likeness of those dreams until we taste the full measure of your sacred intention. Amen.

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Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part six): Stepping on in Joy

July 16, 2008

“When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.” (Acts 8:29-40).

Some of us will walk it through. Some of us will be delivered from it en route. But all of us, every last one of us, will come to the end of our desert road.

We have come to ours…at least as far as our focused time on the life of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is concerned. It is time. It has been a hard write for me, but it has been worth my pause. I hope that you can say the same. As I’m writing, I realize that the “ending” of my words in the matter, doesn’t necessarily mean the ending of our deserts. In many ways, desert dwelling will be our portion until we see our Jesus face to face.

How you finish this thing—this one life that you have been given—will walk its own unique and highly individualized cadence. Your conclusion may not punctuate like mine. Your timing may sequence different than mine. Your difficult may temperature hotter than mine. That is the way of a desert walk. Each uncertain sand that we pilgrim is allowed us by God for an intent that sometimes exceeds our appreciation.

How he chooses to flesh out his intention is exactly that—his choosing. There is mystery divinely woven into a desert’s allowance. We will not always understand God’s sovereignty in the matter. And what is not always understood often becomes the breeding ground for…

doubt.
frustration.
anger.
silence.
guilt.
tears.
depression.
quit.
_________________.

Indeed, if our focus remains mired in our misunderstandings, we fall prey to spiritual blindness. To eyes that cloud with the current rather than vision toward the horizon. But when our focus shifts to the providence of God’s leading in the desert, our eyes and our hearts birth something far greater than confusion. Consecrated focus yields seeds of…

faith.
trust.
peace.
perserverance.
wholeness.
witness.
joy.
follow through.
want to.

Philip and the Ethiopian kept their focus in the desert, and at the end of the day, each man received a portion of God’s consecrated provision and promise for his life. They received Jesus, both in the giving and in the receiving of Truth. They couldn’t have known on the front end of a desert’s embrace how the ending would paint. They simply took to the road with God as the objective.

And when you and I pilgrim a desert road for the same reason, we can rest in the assurance that, like Philip and the eunuch, our Father holds the brush on our behalf. He is after a masterpiece in each one of us—a portrait worthy of the throne room of heaven. He never rushes the process. He times it for his advantage, and ultimately for ours. Our hand in that process?

Relinquishing the brush and the canvas and the palette of colors to the One who always paints with holy consecration in mind.

The portrait that God painted in Acts, chapter eight, is completed with the brushstrokes of two men rejoicing and moving on. One returned, most likely, to his Ethiopian homeland with fresh perspective. One was literally snatched from the scene by the Spirit of God and painted onto the landscape of a Caesarean community where he would continue in the ministry of the Gospel (see Acts 21:8). Their paths would never cross again on this side of eternity, but I believe that both men would tell us that their desert detour was worth the gain.

This, my friends, is the way of a desert road when Jesus is sought. When he becomes the focus of our pursuit—no matter the climate, the terrain, the hot and the hard—he is found. He is the Gain. The great Reward on the front end, at the close, and with every pause in between.

Jesus is the joy of the desert. Regardless of your current condition…regardless of how tedious your now…there is holy consecration to be found in all seasons of living. This is the sure promise we take with us as we move on from here.

Let us walk it like we mean it. Let us live it like God means for us to live it. On purpose. With purpose. For his holy and consecrated purpose, now and forever. And by all means, let us do it together. And so I pray…

Burn your purpose into my life, Lord. Let it breathe the witness of your presence, no matter my road. Whether in heat or in mild…in sands or in solid…keep my eyes fixed to the horizon. Bolster my “want to” and shepherd my “follow through” until I see your consecrated purpose birthed within me. Keep my heart in tune with yours, and never let me forsake the needs of the brethren because my needs breathe too needy. Thank you for the desert, Lord. Thank you for its heated embrace that has brought me refinement. Thank you for the road that leads me home to you. Amen.

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Today we finish this series on “Living Our Consecrated Deserts.” Thank you for coming alongside and studying this portion of Scripture with me. I welcome your thoughts and comments in the matter. I will be stepping away from the computer for a few days to spend some time with my young ones while the other members of my family are in Bolivia. I will be checking in from time to time, but strongly feel I need a pause. God bless you each one. I look forward to hearing from you in the days ahead. Shalom!

Monthly Archives: July 2008