living God’s truth | Elaine Olsen

Mike

January 13, 2010

He’s found his way into my thoughts this morning. I can’t imagine why. I certainly wouldn’t have brought him to my remembrance on my own accord. I had other plans for my devotional time with God, but then I read these words from Sarah Young’s Jesus Lives:

“In the presence of a loving, strong father even the most frightened child eventually calms down. You have a perfectly loving, infinitely strong Father, so bring your fears freely to Him.” (Sarah Young, Jesus Lives, Thomas Nelson-2009, pg.28)

And then there he was. A boy named Mike. A boy from my adolescent years. An “unlovely” boy. Smelly, unkempt, poorly dressed, even more poorly mannered. His impulsive behavior and inappropriate responses to those around him quickly labeled him as the “creature” amongst us. Most of us feared him; not because he was overly mean or vindictive in character, but simply because he was different. Mike didn’t fit the high school “norm.” In that season of my life, it was a stretch for me to think of him fitting into any kind of societal “norm.” Mike was the most abnormal boy I knew. I never really saw him as anything more, and I was content with the labels that we had assigned him.

Until that day. The day he rode the bus home with me.

For whatever reason, the bus schedule had been revised. When Mike got on my bus at the end of the school day, we all assumed he’d made a misstep in his afternoon routine. The driver assured us otherwise. Mike would now be on our route for pick-up and delivery. I don’t remember talking to him that day. Most days I avoided him for fear that any interaction between us might signal to him my desire for something further. I do remember smelling him that day, wishing quietly to myself that he had chosen a seat further back on the bus. After what seemed to be forever, the bus stopped on a dusty road, and Mike made his move to the front door.

He exited, and I watched him as he went. Watched him for a long time as he walked along that one-lane path which would eventually land him home—a small farm house barely fit for human consumption. In that moment, I realized something I hadn’t realized before.

Mike had a home. Had a life apart from all the teasing and trouble that followed him throughout the school day. Had a family who loved him, claimed him, and did their level best to support him despite his struggles at being “normal.” The Mike I witnessed everyday at school was only a scratching at the surface of who he really was. There was so much more to this person that I didn’t understand. So much of a life that existed apart from me… a life I would never know, all because I was too afraid to cross the great divide that existed between my world and his.

I wish I could say that Mike and I became friends. We didn’t. I do remember my being more courteous and kind to Mike after that day. Saying hello; waving good-bye, occasionally including him in casual, bus conversation. Mostly, I kept my distance, but now with a little more love and understanding in my heart for him. More grace and more compassion.

I don’t know what happened to Mike. Maybe some of you who shared those days with me do. I’d love an update. But this one thing I do know.

Mike is everywhere. We don’t have to look very hard to find a person who makes a strange fit with our “norm.” The smelly, unkempt are right beneath our noses, within reach and more than ready for some love from someone who has taken the time to imagine them beyond the labels that consume them. Someone who is willing to cross that great divide and offer them the hand of fellowship and the heart of God.

And while my tangible, physical life never cried out for rescue as Mike’s perhaps did, my inward life cried out in accordance with Mike’s voice. For someone willing to cross that great divide and to offer me the hand and heart of sacred fellowship. And because Someone did, I realize that Mike and I aren’t as different as I once thought we were. All of us, every last one of us, are in need of that kind of rescue, friends. All of us need a safe place to run home to—a family who loves us, claims and supports us, most days in spite of us.

God has given us one another to be that body of grace. We are God’s church. A church not based on denomination and regulation, but rather on the one truth that cuts through all the peripheral rest of it to stand alone as the sole requirement for membership into God’s kingdom.

Faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in who he is and in what he has done through his shed blood on the cross.

Jesus is the common thread that links all hearts to home. Perhaps the reason my heart stirred for Mike nearly three decades ago as I watched him exit his school life to embrace his safe life. It certainly is the reason my heart stirs this morning. For all the Mike’s of this world. For those who’ve yet to realize that there is a safe place to land at the end of the day… at the end of this life. And lest we think we’re so far removed from them, all of us at some point in our journeys were the smelly, unkempt, poorly mannered creatures roaming God’s earth in need of God’s rescue.

How thankful I am for the Savior who found me, who bridged the chasm between my great need and his great grace to say “hello” to me and to invite me into the sacred conversation that continues to this day. It’s been a good morning to ride the bus with Jesus, friends. If you’ve yet to climb aboard, there are plenty of seats awaiting your need. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

PS: I will draw a winner to Shirley’s book with my next post. I haven’t forgotten…

the elephant in the room…

January 11, 2010

“Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD until he comes and showers righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12).

He spoke some words to me this morning, somewhere between my dreaming and my waking.

Not God.

An elephant.

Yes, that’s what I wrote. An elephant. Yesterday’s headline news about a woman and her child being killed by a mother elephant intent on protecting her African turf somehow made its way into my dreaming. Instead of this woman being chased by an angry elephant, I was the object of his fury. Funny how that happens. Reality merging with the subconscious, all playing itself out upon the stage of our slumbering. All making sense in the moment, calling on emotion to interject its full witness throughout.

The emotions in that moment for me?

Panic. Fear. Retreat.

Thank heavens for the makeshift rest area that existed feet away from my frightful encounter. It sheltered me in one of its two, crudely fashioned stalls, concealing my presence from the formidable beast which seemed, for the moment, a bit confused as to my whereabouts. I practiced being hidden until she rudely entered in. Apparently bamboo doors aren’t equal to the strength of an angry, momma elephant.

I kept quiet, eyeing her mammoth frame through the narrow slit in the stall door. Rather than knocking the entire structure to the ground, she turned her head and drew near to my fright. Her eye was big. Her eye was penetrating. Her eye was eyeing me, dressing me down and reading me through that narrow slit—a space now ample enough for her intervention and my swift destruction.

She didn’t go there; instead she spoke there.

“Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been, drab and undisturbed.”

An elephant’s exact words to my slumbering soul. I’m not kidding, and for what it’s worth, I wrote them down. In fact, I carried them to church. Been thinking about them all day long.

~About drab and undisturbed ground.

~About the brave few who are willing to walk its breadth in faith believing that their feet were meant to go there.

~About breaking up the unplowed ground of a dreary and untouched soil.

~About an angry elephant who’d rather leave things as they are; keep the “baby” protected and unaffected by outside influence.

~About lives that live out their days unaltered because no one dared to step out for their sakes… speak up for kingdom’s sake.

~About those who let the threats of the enemy keep them immobilized in fear and from moving into the spacious place deeded to them by a gracious and very good God.

~About a country that remains as it is because no one dreamed beyond its borders.

Stuff like that. All marinating inside my head and ruminating within my heart for an entire day. And tonight I’m wondering where that line is between dreaming and waking. Between what’s imagined and what’s real. Between voices that author from heaven and threats that author from hell. Located somewhere in an elephant’s words to me, I find them both… hell’s threat and heaven’s hope.

“Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been, drab and undisturbed.”

Hear the threat. Hear the hope.

The hope precedes the threat. Without hope—without the anticipation of what might be discovered because of what will be disturbed—then there would be no angry elephant in the room. And lest we haven’t noticed in recent days, there’s an angry elephant in the room, friends. Rather than sidestep him, avoid him and pretend that he doesn’t exist, don’t you think it’s time we deal with him? His threats? His false impressions regarding what’s his and what’s not?

Makeshift stalls are poor excuses for spiritual progress. They are exactly as they were created to be… a temporary dwelling to stall your forward progress. If fear is what has led you there, what is keeping you there, then an elephant’s anger has raged successfully. You’re right where she… where he wants you to be. As he wants you to live.

Unproductive. Ineffective. Incapable of “disturbing” the ground beneath your feet, unplowed or otherwise.

It is time to disturb the ground beneath your feet, sisters and brothers in Christ. It is time to face the elephant in the room. Time to look the angry momma squarely in the eye and echo back to her some familiar words…

Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been.

God’s.

I don’t know what that means to you today. It’s meant a great deal to me. I have a feeling it just might be the right encouragement for someone who’s stuck in a makeshift stall right now, stuck in fear and more than willing to concede some sacred ground to an angry elephant rather than claim that soil as kingdom inheritance. If so, then receive my dream as yours, and carry the truth of its witness into your week. You and I were empowered with God’s Spirit to deal with our elephants. Let us not walk God’s earth in fear. Let us, instead, disturb it for his sake and for his heaven’s gain.

In the name of the Father who created us, the Son who paid the highest price to redeem us, and the Holy Spirit who tabernacles within us, Amen. So be it.

peace for the journey,

my half-lived day…

January 7, 2010

We all woke up this morning with a message written across our hearts, either penned by our hand or by God’s.

What was your message? Mine?

Well, I’m gonna live this day better than yesterday, Lord. Through your strength and by your grace, I’m gonna live this one better.

And I have lived it better. God’s presence has been genuine and his hands gentle to me. It’s only 2:30 in the afternoon. I’ve made my bed, done some laundry, wrote 1,400 words in my WIP, ran four miles, and had a bath. Oh, I almost forgot… I’ve also had numerous e-mail chats with my Kentucky friend, Shirley, who is graciously lending her creative eye and photographs to a project I’m working on. Have you ever stopped by to visit her to read her heart and to see our world through her photographic lens? You’re missing something if you haven’t. She’s as home grown and genuine as they come. I’m not sure how our paths first crossed; perhaps, through Exemplify. Regardless of the prompt, I’m glad it arrived. She is a gracious portion of God’s love on this earth. I am the better for having her life intertwined with mine.

I don’t know how the rest of this day is going to play out. My kids arrive home in swift order. There will be homework to manage. A meal to make… well, to imagine (oh Billy, sweet man of mine, what’s on the menu tonight?). Dishes to clean. Baths to administer. Books to read and perhaps a movie to watch with my older boys before their pilgrimages back to college. Yes, I’ve got an “idea” as to how this day is going to end. Getting there from this moment seems a short leap, but when I do… when I close my eyes on this day, if I don’t do a single thing more than what I’ve currently done up to this point, then today has already been a better day than yesterday.

Today, I woke up to a good message. Tomorrow, I pray to wake accordingly.

What was your message this morning? Cut honestly through to the truth of the matter, and wrestle with your answer. Did you wake up to pain? To heartache? To joy? To expectation? To your “here we go again, Lord” or “I can’t possibly face my life right now.” Your answer tells you a great deal about who is holding the pen.

If your morning message wasn’t what you wanted it to be, then re-write it. Yes, re-write it. Right now. If you could do your 6:30 AM wake-up call all over again, how would you want your message to write?

How thankful I am for a God who allows me re-writes, right smack dab in the middle of my day. I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to start again. Neither do you. God is the Author of our blessed “do it better’s” no matter the time of the day we feel his prompt along these lines. The key to doing it better resides with God’s pen, not ours. So do yourself a favor…

Hand him the pen. Allow God his moments with your heart in order to re-write the rest of your day. It matters not if you’re reading this at 10:00 PM or 10:00 AM or any other hour in between. What matters is the moment you call right now and the message you want attached to your right now.

I value your right now. So does our heavenly Father. May his lavish love and continuing presence be your portion as you march your way through the rest of this day, living the message he’s written onto your heart.

Now, let’s see…

I can add “writing a blog post” to a day that continues to live better than yesterday. I’m on a roll. There is more day left to live. I think I’ll get busy living it. As always…

peace for the journey,

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PS: Leave me a comment about the “message” of your heart this day, and you’ll be entered to win one of Shirley’s latest photo/devotional books, Meditations of an Autumn Heart or Simply Light (your pick). You can preview them by clicking on these links. Also, take time to visit Shirley and her work at Sketches of a Common Life. She’s anything but common, friends. Shalom.

returning light…

January 6, 2010

“You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.” (Psalm 18:28)

God’s returning light.

It’s returning to me after a long six-week season of diminishing dimness. Not elimination; God’s light always flames within me, but there are times when it decreases in its intensity. Not because of anything he’s done, but rather because life and its many messy circumstances have flickers all their own. A heart has a hard time highlighting them both; thus, when one takes the stage—flames fuller and burns brighter—the other retreats to the wings and waits its turn.

It’s God’s turn in my life, friends, and I feel the intensity of his flame returning in me. It matters not the situations that led to his light’s retreat. It began around Thanksgiving and continued its solid march through the month of December. In many ways, I had to break free from Christmas in order to live my Christmas. I realize that in writing this, some of you will be confused and left to your imaginations as to what I could possibly mean. But I think if you live with that statement for a few minutes, understanding will come.

Christmas wasn’t designed for its cramming into a confined calendar slot. Christmas was meant for a twelve month existence. For me (and this is Elaine talking for herself), I live the witness of Christmas better in the eleven months preceding its planned remembrance. Those months are less messy for me, less crowded, less programmed. And while Christmas isn’t to blame for my season of recent struggle, they happened to share the same month. I imagine there are others who could voice the same.

Through it all, I pressed into my faith because that is what faith does. It presses into known truth—a truth that relies on God’s strength to carry us through to resolution. Faith carries us in times of darkness. Faith anchors us, holds us, reminds us that on the other side of smoldering embers lies the hot breath of a Holy God who bends at the ready to flame them into significance.

My life has hosted many seasons of diminishing flames like this past one. I don’t imagine it will be my last. And while I don’t welcome them, I’m better prepared for them because I’ve lived each one of them successfully through to victory. To feeling the warmth of God’s returning light and to embracing the dawn as dawn was meant to be embraced.

With celebration … anticipation … high and holy expectation for the day that births anew with unlimited opportunities to unpack my God further. That is how I awoke this morning; by his grace, tomorrow will birth the same.

It’s good to be in fellowship with a God who understands the seasons of our lives, who walks them with us despite our willingness to walk them in isolation. Without the embers of his enduring love, our struggling seasons suffer deeper, linger longer, fester wider. There is little hope of emerging victory when we fail to tend to the wick of God’s sacred flame within us.

I’ve tended to that wick, even when my flesh cried out its resistance. I prayed about it, wrote about, spoke to God about it, and read about it in his holy Word. God’s Word is replete with a people who have stood where I have stood. They, too, pressed into their faith in order to move past their flesh.

God’s returning light. It’s found its way to my soul again, and I am eternally grateful for the mustard seed’s worth of faith within me that pushed me through to victory.

I don’t know where you are in your journey with God right now. Perhaps your faith is burning brightly with little wiggle room for doubt. If so, thank God for his continuing illumination. Perhaps your faith flickers with intermittent warmth and sporadic guidance, just enough to quell your worries regarding its diminishment. If so, pray to God for clearer vision and for firmer resolve. Perhaps your faith is down to a few smoldering embers as other “lights” have taken to the stage to voice their opposition. If so, cling to God as if your life depended on it.

Our lives depend on it, friends, on him no matter the season we’re walking. Without his continuing presence in our lives, we have little hope of emerging from the darkness. Thus, keep pressing into our faithful God. Keep running with him; keep walking beside him; keep crawling toward him, all the way through to final victory. I know it’s not an easy journey. In fact, “easy” doesn’t fit with an extraordinary faith. But extraordinary is exactly what we’ve been given. The heart of our Father could give no less. “Less” isn’t in keeping with his character.

I love you, am willing to pray for you, and am writing you my heart this day because it is all that I have to give to you. It seems to me that, perhaps, at least one of you needs the witness of my last six weeks. If so, know this…

God is approaching your soul in this very moment. His light is returning to you, even as the dawn is approaching its birth, and God’s hot and very holy breath would like nothing more than to fan into flame the embers of your struggling faith. May our good Father grant you, precious one, the witness of his presence as you close your eyes to slumber this night. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

PS: I don’t know when I’ll be here again. As the Lord prompts my heart, I will be faithful to add a few words and post them here. I’m giving intentional focus to my latest WIP with a goal of finishing by February’s end. I would appreciate your prayers along those lines. In the meantime, if you have a special prayer request you’d be willing to entrust to me, I’d be most privileged to receive it. You are the reason I keep to my pen. Shalom.

"unpack me"… a night Visitor re-visits

January 2, 2010

{Hadn’t planned on being here today; hadn’t planned on writing today. Some days, however, our experiences call for some words, some remembrance. This was one of them. Maybe I wrote them for you as well. Shalom.}

“But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.” –John 16:13-14

“Unpack me.”

Words that haunt me eleven hours beyond the moment they first enveloped me. Somewhere along 1:30 AM, I awoke with the startling awareness that God’s presence was within reach. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him… the kind of feeling that frightens me, all the while enlivening me. A deep, rich peace surrounding me, calling for my attention and my willingness to entreat the “voice” of my Father. Past experience has taught me not to run from his voice, but instead, to wait for it.

This time, it was immediate. Not audible in the exterior, but loud and clear in my interior. I groped for the pen and notebook that resides on my bedside bookshelf and scribbled down these words in the dark:

“There is none so mysterious as the One standing in this room with you at this very minute.”

“Then what am I to do with you, Lord?”

“Unpack me.”

As quickly as the words arrived, they stopped; the pen and paper found their way home, and I snuggled deeper beneath the cover of night, cradling the gift I’d just been given—

The voice of God.

It arrived on the heels of an evening prayer where I’d wrestled some things out with my Father on my face and with some ample tears to chorus my questions. Questions about his character and his trustworthiness as they pertain to my life. Dangerous questions to ask, yet ones I needed to articulate because my faith had been challenged along these lines earlier in the week (thanks, friend, for the call, the faith, and the prod).

Can I trust the character of God? What is sum total of God’s character? Am I operating from his reality—the truest truth—or from a reality based on my perceptions regarding his interaction in my life? Can I know the character of God, and if so, how do I get there? How do I piece together a better understanding of who he is, so that I can begin to operate my faith from there rather than from a place of skewed awareness? Could it be that a lack of faith stems from ignorance regarding the true nature of faith’s Creator—faith’s Author and Perfecter?

Dangerous questions, yet ones that my Father was willing to entreat on my behalf last evening, because when it comes to his character and his child’s willingness to know him more fully, he bends low to listen, even further to deliver his answer.

“Unpack me.”

And with his voice, I discover something most distinctive about the character of my God.

He is near, and he wants to be known. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the time to startle my soul from slumber and give witness to his mysteriousness, all the while allowing me an unpacking of him therein.

Are we meant to hold mystery and revelation all in the same moment?

Apparently so.

I held it last evening; it holds me today. It leads me to worship. It moves me to faith.

Perhaps today, at the beginning of a new beginning, you have some similar questions for our Father. Perhaps you languish in your understanding of God’s character. Perhaps you’re wondering if he can be trusted with your life. Perhaps you’ve seen much, lived through much, fought through much, to the point where your “much” seems too much in keeping with the character of a good God. Your faith is shaken, and you’re heart is asking…

“What am I to do with you, Lord?”

If that is the earnest and honest and purest plea of your heart, would you be willing to leave it with our Father? I don’t have the answers to all of your questions; I certainly haven’t found the answers to all of mine. But I know where to bring them. I trust the character of God enough to know that he receives them, hears them, ponders them, and then in his own time, his own way—

He answers them.

Sometimes in a whisper. Sometimes through a loud roar in the midst of loud day. Sometimes in the reading of his Word. Sometimes at the altar of grace. Sometimes through another’s kindness. Sometimes in a storm. Sometimes in peaceful waters, and sometimes in the middle of the night—bending low and standing bedside to honor the request of his daughter’s heart.

All the times, I think, through a simple two word command that leads all hearts to a greater point of sacred understanding.

“Unpack me.”

Are you willing to move past the questions, friends, into a greater revelation of our Father’s character? I am willing because today I hold the worth of a night’s pause with a night Visitor. I don’t imagine I shall ever recover; I’m certain that I don’t want to…

ever recover from God.

Let’s unpack him together in 2010. It would be my privilege to come alongside you in your night’s pause to entreat the voice of our King. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

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