Category Archives: living God’s truth

Beginning Days… {the ocean is still free}

Beginning Days… {the ocean is still free}

 

The ocean is still free. So I said to myself this past weekend while spending a few days on the shores of the Atlantic.

The ocean is still free. Free to roam. Free to breathe. Free to birth. Free to be.

Mankind has tried to control it, has sloppily put its fingerprints into it, but mankind has been unable to stop it. Freely the tide rolls in; freely it retracts. The ocean keeps a pace all its own, unwilling to cede ownership to anyone but its Creator. The ocean knows to Whom it belongs. The ocean remembers its beginning.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” –Genesis 1:1-2

Beginning days. God, darkness, and deep waters. Indeed, the ocean remembers its beginning. Do you remember yours?

” —the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. … But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” –Genesis 2:7, 20-25

Beginning days. God, dust, breath, man.

Beginning days. God, man, rib, woman.

Beginning days. God, man, woman, one flesh.

a beautiful momen to watch taking place… just God, the preacher, man, woman, and a couple of curious on-lookers

 

Life was simpler back then, in those beginning days. Life was perfect. Life was, as God meant for it to be.

But then, life changed. Less perfect. Less edenic. Confused and greatly burdened by sin’s curse. Somewhere between those beginning days and these days… our days, life got very messy and our remembrances of Eden mostly forgotten. And when Eden is forgotten—when beginning understanding and truth are traded in for modern day theory—then our nakedness no longer matters. We no longer notice it; instead, we’re hell-bent on exposing it… all in the name of personal freedom.

But this isn’t freedom, friends. This is bondage. This is being chained to our flesh, and this is when we find ourselves in grave danger of missing the great point of our lives—to surrender our flesh over to faith and back into the hands of the One who created it… in the beginning. To not allow our flesh to master us but, instead, to master our flesh through the blood-stained covering of Christ’s cross and through the transformational work of the Holy Spirit’s willing presence and power in our lives. This is freedom… God’s way. This is why the ocean is still free. The ocean is still willing to let God be in control.

The ocean is still free because the ocean has not forgotten its beginning. We would do well not to forget ours.

Peace for the journey,
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walking all the day long…

“What… do you just walk all day long?”

So asked my neighbor while pulling out of his driveway this morning. I broke routine with my walking today. Normally, I wait until the afternoon before hitting the pavement. That’s when he usually walks, our paths almost always crossing. Thus, the reason behind his humorous remark to me.

I know he didn’t really mean it… didn’t really assume that I walked all day long; it was just his way of connecting with me. But after he pulled away, I thought about his question, his false assumption—that I was an all-day walker. What would that look like… walking all day? What if my daily focus was more about the steps I am taking rather than the ones I’m not? What if life was more about moving forward rather than staying in place? How differently might my heart beat… my faith beat if I kept a steady pace 24-7? If heart-health is attached to foot work, then a full day’s worth of walking would yield a stronger foundation, don’t you think?

The problem is… I’m not an all-day walker. I’m a part-time walker. I walk some of each day… try to clock in at least an hour and 10,000 steps on my pedometer. But when the prescribed stepping is over, I am tempted to rest. To stop my forward progression in favor of the couch and the four walls that often serve as confinement rather than refreshment.

As it goes with my physical walking, so it goes with my spiritual walking. Oh that I could walk with faith, in faith all day long—an all-day faith walker! Now that kind of movement would yield some heart-health.

Faith doesn’t stop when the prescribed number of steps has been mastered. Faith keeps moving forward. Faith isn’t cultivated on the couch; faith is cultivated on the streets where movement isn’t an option but rather a requirement for those wanting to find their way home. When faith stops walking, faith stops growing. And a faith that stops growing is a faith in danger of quitting. Stopping. Relinquishing all hope for and in the promise of home.

So, for the love of home and God and heart-health, let’s get moving, friends. Let’s get off the couch of spiritual bankruptcy and start walking forward in faith. Make your goal, even as I’m making it mine, to be an all-day faith walker, so that others won’t have to wonder about our walking “all day long.” Instead, they’ll just know it’s the truth.

Movement wins. I’ll meet you on the road. As always…

Peace for the journey,

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Rediscovering Your Song…

Being a survivor isn’t about defeating the cancer. Being a survivor is about defeating the silence.

That’s what I told a group of cancer survivors last Sunday night at a Relay for Life banquet. It’s what I’ve come to believe. To survive cancer is to survive the silence—the deafening quiet that creeps in alongside suffering in hopes of suffocating the song that once sang its melody so gracefully, so faithfully, so willingly, so naturally.

There is a great price that often accompanies a great suffering. That price? A great silence. A time when the previous witness and words of a great faith are stifled by the traumatic strain of simply staying alive. Singing isn’t a priority when suffering steps to the front of the line. The song often gets buried, cast aside and forgotten, to simmer beneath the weightiness of pain and of what once was.

But here is the truth of the eternal song. Once the music has made its way into a heart, no amount of throwing and crying and denying its pulse can keep it buried forever. We can go to the grave refusing it a voice, but in the end, the music remains. It will find its chorus, even without our participation, because the King’s music is meant to be sung (peace for the journey: in the pleasure of his company,” 2010, pg. 7). 

Some songs don’t die. Some songs are just that strong, certain, truthful, and demanding. Some songs, God’s song, your song and my song, are still singing. Maybe you haven’t heard it in a long time; maybe, like me, it’s been buried beneath a season of grief and suffering. I want to encourage you today to not give up on the reality of the music that’s hiding deep within your heart. The melody remains, and whether or not you’ve been victimized by cancer or by another soul-eating something, you can know that your survivorship isn’t solely dependent on a pill or a program or the best resources available to you by doctors. The best of all of these remedies will only carry you so far in the process of healing. In fact, none of these may help you as it pertains to defeating your cancer.

But if you can defeat the silence that surrounds your cancer? If you can dig deeply to retrieve the melody that once sang so beautifully through your lips? Well, then you’ll have survived your disease in a way that yields eternal value. For our pain to matter, our pain needs a voice that is surrendered to the process of renewal. It’s a slow process that walks its own timetable. Silence doesn’t turn into song over night. But over night, a step in the right direction will yield a few notes… one or two or ten at first. One verse building on another until the music makes a melody that takes what once was and sings it more gracefully, more faithfully, more willingly, and more naturally. Almost as if that’s what God had in mind all along—a better song, refined and renewed through suffering.

To get there? Well, I don’t have the perfect strategy for curing your silence, but I have a few thoughts about how you might begin the process of rediscovering your song.

Remember. Take time to review the melody of your yesterdays—the days before your suffering began. Remember your voice, your faith, your hope. Reflect on the beauty that once was. Write it down, retrieve those memories, and linger upon them long enough until the refrain finds its way to your lips. And then, with that old song fresh in your memory…

Resist thinking that your old song was your best song. Refuse the enemy’s lie that the best has already been. Your best song is your next song—the one tempered and refined by the trials of life. God can and does write new notes into your musical score, not in an attempt to cover up the old ones, but rather to enhance them. To energize them. To fully empower them with the truth of his Spirit so that when you sing, you sing with understanding and with the certainty that all has not been lost in the suffering. God has been gained in the midst of great peril, and you have lived another day to sing the witness of his grace. And then, once you’ve made it past your remembering and your resisting, by God’s grace and with his permission,…

Rehearse. Start practicing your new song. A few notes today; a few more tomorrow, until you get the melody down, until it starts sounding familiar. Sing to yourself. Sing to your kids. Sing to your spouse. Sing to your friends. Sing to the mirror. Sing to God. Don’t worry about your voice. You’ll probably warble at first, crack your voice a time or two and turn a few heads in the process. Who cares? Songs of faith aren’t written to shame you. Songs of faith are written to reframe you. It doesn’t matter your performance with the melody. What matters is your willingness to try—to be so bold as to believe that you were meant to sing and that nobody, not one single person, can sing your new song as beautifully as you can. And finally, if you’ve made it this far with your remembering, resisting, and rehearsing, then…

Rejoice. Thank God for the gift of the song. Thank God for the gift of the song. Thank God for the gift of the song. Over and over again, rejoice in the gift of the song, because the song begins and ends with God. In the beginning, he wrote the melody. Through his Son, he retrieved the melody from the depths of the deepest grave. And through the power of his Holy Spirit, his melody still sings through flesh—through you and me. What a gift! What privilege! What renewal is ours because of the song!

Being a survivor isn’t about defeating the cancer. Being a survivor is about defeating the silence.

Are you willing to do the hard work of soul-survivorship? I pray so, because no one can sing God’s song through you better than you. I believe this with my whole heart, and by God’s very good grace, I’m endeavoring to live accordingly. Remembering, resisting, rehearsing, and rejoicing all the way home to heaven. As always…

Peace for the journey,

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loose ends…

Loose ends. Frayed threads. Separated strands of life dangling mid-air. Waiting. Hoping. Praying that somehow, some way they might be found by Master Weaver. Touched by the Master Weaver. Worked into a portrait of grace by the Master Weaver. Some day by the Master Weaver… loose ends tied up and woven as purpose into a story that currently doesn’t make sense.

Loose ends. I have some. How about you? Any dangling unknowns hanging around your heart, your mind, your soul? Any situations, complications that you’re still scratching your head over, wondering what in the wide-world-of-lovin’-and-livin’-Jesus was that all about?

If I could peel back the layers of my heart and give you open access to my loose ends, you might be surprised by what you’d see. My frayed threads aren’t pretty; not yet. Safe to say, ministry days can be hard days. I know you understand. You’ve probably had a few, because as Christians, we cannot escape our ministry days. They are our assignments. The message of the cross is our requirement, regardless of the pulpits that rest beneath our feet.

Ministry is not always well-received. Sometimes it is rejected; sometimes by those you trust most fully with your heart, your story, your faith. And if you’ve loved well in the midst of your ministry days (loved intentionally and without boundaries), then your heart aches, your heart breaks with the rejection… just enough to make you scratch your head a time or two and offer a few questions to the Master Weaver.

Really God? This? After everything else? Seriously?

“Seriously. After everything else. This. Really. Now about your faith, Elaine? I’ve got a few questions of my own.”

And so we talk about ministry days, back and forth, forth and back, the Master Weaver and me. And I pray for more strength, more obedience, more endurance to see the thing through. More hand-to-the-plow fortitude and more long-term visioning to match the faith of my spiritual ancestors—those who, perhaps, scratched their heads and offered their questions but who did so while moving forward… always forward, always proclaiming the God of their youth… the God of their forevers. And in this prayerful exchange between the Weaver and me… I give my messy, frayed, and separated loose ends to him because none of them currently make any sense to me. And I say the only words I know to say…

I trust you, God. I trust you, God. I trust you, God.

Over and over again and then some more I repeat these four words, believing that if I just say them enough, I might actually arrive at a point of doing them… of trusting God. And this one act of obedience, sweet companions on the journey, feels something like faith. Just a little bit of faith; just enough to keep me moving forward with hope.

I don’t know what trust has become difficult for you in this ministry season… what loose ends have attached themselves to your faith, but I do know the only One who is capable of weaving them into something more than the confusing mess that is currently swirling around your heart. I don’t know the “how and when” behind it making sense for you… for me, but I whole-heartedly believe that the Master Weaver hasn’t left the loom. God is still in the house, still weighing in on our loose ends, and still heavily invested in our spiritual progress.

If I didn’t believe this, my loose ends would be the death of me. Instead, they have become my lifelines… my link to the Almighty. To let go now would be to let go too soon. Instead, I’m holding on to them for dear life. I know that it won’t be long before the Master Weaver will also take hold of them, and when that happens, I will touch the hands that have touched the cross. Hands of mercy, grace, and love. And I will begin in my understanding, because life starts making sense when Jesus is attached to me.

Hand to hand, with all loose ends in between.

As always…

Peace for the journey,
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burning the bridge to Egypt..

“The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul—then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.” –Deuteronomy 11:10-15
There is a thought I’ve been chewing on for a couple of weeks now… a truth from God that is beautifully emphasized by this photograph I found online (although I’m fairly certain the photographer had few intentions of it doing so). It is titled The Old Bridge Passing Through the Jordan River. Funny thing… I can’t even see the Jordan River. I can only see what man has built across it—an accessible passageway between two parcels of dry land.

No more struggling through flood-stage waters to get to the other side; only a casual walk-thru. What once would have required more strength, more intention, and more faith has now become less of a requirement. Man has found a way to manage the crossing of the River Jordan, thereby making the trip from Egypt to Canaan and back again an easier journey. Problem is, God doesn’t mean for us to return to our Egypts. He means for us to stay with him in Canaan.

For the Israelites, a trip back to Egypt was met by a formidable barrier—the Jordan River. For us, the barriers are lessened by the bridges we’ve built. We thought we were doing everyone a favor—giving easy access to Canaan so that others might quickly make entrance into the Promised Land. But something is lost when easy access is given to Canaan. Christ is lost in the process. Man-made bridges do little to keep souls connected to the kingdom of God. Man-made bridges allow for a return trip to bondage. Only in the bridge made by Christ and his cross are we able to make the pilgrimage into freedom and stay there.

And in the cross of Jesus Christ, there is always struggle. Always strain. Always choice. Always pain. This is the way of the crucified life. Faith is forged in the Jordan. Saints are birthed in the walk toward freedom.

For the children of God, there is a difference between Egypt and Canaan. At least there should be. A noticeable change between how life used to be and how life currently lives.

In Egypt, life is less. Less freedom; less abundance; less assurance; less hope. In Canaan, life is more. More freedom; more abundance; more assurance; more hope.

In Egypt, God is dismissed from the growing season. In Canaan, God is in charge of it.

In Egypt, self reigns. In Canaan, God rains.

In Egypt, the slave master keeps watch. In Canaan, God keeps vigilance.

In Egypt, obedience is mandated. In Canaan, obedience is chosen.

In Egypt, love for God is half-hearted, half-focused. In Canaan, love for God is whole-hearted, singularly focused.

In Egypt, there is stale bread and bitter wine. In Canaan, fresh bread and new wine.

In Egypt, the ground is hard, void of color and flavor. In Canaan, the grass is growing and green.

In Egypt, the view is horizontal. In Canaan, the view goes vertical.

In Egypt, the landscape is fixed. In Canaan, the landscape is limitless.

In Egypt, man possesses man. In Canaan, man possesses the kingdom of God.

Indeed, there is a difference between life in Egypt and life in Canaan. For the children of God, the contrast should be obvious, our choice of residency all the more. All too often, though, we’re tempted to access the bridges we’ve built between the two countries. A walk backward to Egypt (back to the captivity of our once bitter complaint) takes less energy these days, less intention than it did for our spiritual ancestors. It only takes a moment to return there. A single decision for less. None of us are exempt. Our flesh keeps us tethered to that one possibility. Until we drop this covering that holds our inward parts together, we’ll always have access to Egypt.

Time to burn some bridges, friends. Time to make it harder for our hearts to go backward. Time to, instead, live in the freedom that is ours as children of God. Time to saturate our lives with kingdom words, kingdom songs, kingdom walks, and kingdom company until the bridges back to our yesterdays fall prey to the waters of the Jordan and no longer serve as a convenient catalyst to captivity.

Where are you living today? In Canaan, in Egypt? On the bridge in between?

Do what you have to do to stay with God. God is in Canaan. Do what you have to do to get there. Do what you have to do to stay there, and make sure to burn any bridges that would allow you to leave there.

My match is lit. My heart resolved. My faith most certain. It is good to keep company with the King in Canaan. As always…

Peace for the journey,
elaine

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