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

“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.

Copyright © July 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

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

“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.

Copyright © July 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

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On the Back Side of Eleven

“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

“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.

Copyright © July 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

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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!

Living Our Consecrated Deserts (part five): Stepping Down Into the Water

To Billy and Nick. You both embody the heart of a Philip, and I draw courage and strength from your obedience to embrace the Great Commission. God go with you and meet you on the Bolivian soil.

If you are joining us for the first time in our desert series, please take time to read our scripture focus, Acts 8:26-40.
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“As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’ And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.’” (Acts 8:36-38).

The Great Commission. The going and making and baptizing and teaching of people, all in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19-20).

How is it living in your life today?

It lived as holy consecration in the life of Philip as he traveled the uncertainty of a desert road in obedience to the certainty of his calling. He went. He made. He taught, and in one final act of servant discipleship, he baptized. He stepped down into the water with his new brother to give him a drink of holy cleansing.

It is what he came to the desert to do. To bring water to the thirsty. To bring understanding to the confused. To bring life to the dying. To bring consecration to a journey—both to his and to the eunuch’s.

One came to the desert because of his thirst. He sought the Truth. The other came to the desert because of his obedience. He hoped to offer someone the Truth. Both men walked the heat, and both men allowed God his way in the matter. This is how a life lives as consecrated in the desert.

Yielded. Simply yielded to God and to his intended purposes for our every day.

Philip yielded, never stopping short of the finish. He followed through, and follow through is a mark of a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Being in the desert is not enough. In fact, often just being there is more than we can handle. But our Truth calls for a stronger witness. No matter our reasons for our heated current, God charges us with the task of moving past self-interest to embrace his best interest. And his best interest is always people.

I don’t know about you, but I am a girl who wants that label. I want to be about my Father’s business. So often I fail in the matter. Most days, I’m good with my going and with my teaching. But my follow through? Seeing my brothers and sisters all the way down into the water? Well, obedience doesn’t always breathe genuine through these hands. Perhaps in the heart of my “want to”, but not always in the hands of my actual.

I find it easier to serve God’s purpose when the heat is not my portion. The Great Commission finds its voice more readily through me when I can pick and choose my deserts. But when God picks one for me that requires my welcome, my grit for the follow through hosts a singular focus.

Me.

Rarely do I choose a greater grace that allows the companioning of others alongside. Instead, I am careful to crawl as prickly and to horde as selfishly, without realizing that that God’s fountain flows to everlasting and is intended to harbor the entirety of humanity’s thirst.

It is time for my focus to change. To grow up and to embrace the sacred perspective of desert dwelling rather than abandoning it at the first sign of a heated hard. I want to pilgrim through the desert with God’s purpose in mind. I want to move forward in faith, without needing all the particulars of God’s plan up front. I want to live as Philip did.

He began his day without seeing its end, but when the ending arrived, he closed his eyes knowing that his faith had served the kingdom of God in its fullness.

That is follow through. That is consecrated living. That is the Great Commission fleshed out and served up as God intended for it to breathe.

A few days from now, my husband and son, along with eleven others, will be traveling to a desert of sorts. Bolivia. They have tended to the Voice within who issued them the call to go and to make and to teach and to serve. I have no doubt that, should they be called to the water’s edge, they will follow through. You see, I married a Philip, and I birthed one. They are true servants of Jesus Christ, and they go with my blessing.

And while they serve there, I will serve here within the sands of a North Carolina heat. The people on my road won’t look the same as the ones they meet in Bolivia, but there is a thread that unifies and ties as common. All people, every last one of us, share the best interest of God. We are the heart of his matter.

He willingly entered into our deserts. To bring water to our thirst. To bring understanding to our confusion. To bring life to our dying. To bring consecration to a journey—both to his and to ours. He didn’t stop short of the water’s edge. Instead, he took to his baptism so that we could know the bathing of a lavish and most sacred grace.

I have been to those waters, my friends, and it is a cleansing beyond the portion I am due. What I am due is hell. What I have been given is everlasting life. It is the one gift that should not be horded, and so I pray…

Pour it out of me, Lord…this gift of your Truth. Your requirement of me is nothing less than the absolute and total embrace of the Great Commission. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, I can go and make and baptize and teach. I can do all things through your power, Father. Forgive me when I settle for less and for the times when the desert seems too much, and I find my retreat within its sands. I long to be a better pilgrim. Today, I ask you for the courage and tenacity of a sacred “follow through” and for the faith of Philip. Amen.

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