Lady Eire’

My prayer for Eire’

Beautiful Eiren! You fill both my heart and my dreams. May God defend you long after you would look for another to call your hope. May your lands be filled with reconciliation and honor…not to defend denomination, or tenor traditions with tyranny, but to dismiss all that would seem a grudge and count it all as loss, to know the true God over which you still fued. I pray the Lord to galvanize you my lady. May your name once again be not just fanciful, festal noise to the world’s ears, but a stronghold of passion falling as faithful euphony upon the Lord’s. 

May you not yearn to be known as Catholic or Protestant…but above all else, as Christ’s alone. You are already beautiful, but if you could but remember your first Love, you could be resplendent again.

 

 

 

Piper and prosperity

If Jesus held to the truest form of prosperity gospel…we’d still have no Savior. For the cross atop Golgotha never bade the fearless and cushioned faiths of those we promote, tenor and tolerate today. You show me where in Jesus’ life…anywhere…where He consumed Himself with the priority of health, wealth and prosperity…and I will follow Him to such an end.

I think however you’ll always find Him sojourning into antithesis to prosperity…for the glory He had to fulfill and live out far out-shined and superseded our pitiful pinnacles of what we would call a “good” life. And yet…in that pain, in that infamous suffering on our behalf, in that raw and determined danger that found His life…there too was Joy.! A serious joy in fact… one to be had and beheld with no guarantee of the safe stuff; Only immovable eternal promises, acting the fulcrum of everything angels bow before and still plot against. Jesus was no follower of prosperity… He was a Prince bent on one thing…Love. No matter what…Love!

May we not become subtly idolatrous to the on-looking world and blatantly debauched before Majestic halls of Grace by ever thinking to exalt the gift above the giver! I will forever pit the prosperity of Jesus’ life so well lived against the prosperity of man’s plans any day until all is settled.

So…drive your bmw, but let it not carry your heart’s desires in it. Be prepared to show your faith’s resolve as your little girl goes flying out the windshield of that safe, expensive car…and then you will feel your heart go…and so too should your faith trench itself in resilience…for riches count for nothing when your heart is broken at such lofty speeds, standing naked before your maker one day, being asked…not whom do you Love…but whom did you Love the most?

May God keep you from such suffering as to have to bury a child, but may He ever prepare you to praise Him in any shade of such a trial. “For when you are made weak, then and there you are made strong!” (2Cor.12:9-10)  

hunted with thunderstorm

It’s that little thought that starts the whole thing…that small little whisper that mimics majesty and True intimacy, bading you, come and listen.

“What you have in God is not enough…He cannot be a teardrop and terrential downpour. He cannot be the specifics and the stars…Somewhere in between all that depth, your heart will always want and need more!” 

For me, almost always it starts as an outrageous whisper…First spilling mutiny into the air…declaring open war against my heart and my energies…it asks me to choose outright rebellion against God.

“You deserve to be happy, to be filled, to eat and drink your contentment in any and all forms…you alone know your heart Justin…who better than you to dictate everything and anything that should surround it and enter it? It’s your right to choose what’s best. You know you think God to be too lofty at times to truly be of absolute portion to you, for you, all the time, in the little times…(whispered) right now.”

Often times I try and interrupt this forked-tongue sermon, as that’s the best as I can describe it…for it truly must slither its way up to me in order to go unnoticed, and yet, be just noticed enough. The enemy is a poet to me, aquanited with my intimacy. He is the the father of Lies, but all too easily I think we demote such sinister and insidious character as to being incapable.

I think we like to think…

cue the 1:00am Geese

I was sitting outside around 1:00am the other night. I was doing nothing more than trying to escape the rare 90 degree Portland late-night heat. I set down my book after absorbing another chapter and thought I would just listen for a while…to the night…to the unfortunate sounds of the the law enforcement and the petty crime that wage war in the nooks and crannies of our neighborhood…perhaps I was hoping to just hear the ’still small voice’ that He often opts for.

I sat there laying in the thick grass which could have used a haircut…although I preferred it sidewalk wild unarguably more than it’s pending fresh cut which was surely only days away. Nothing more than a few sounds filled the air in any direction…trees rustling, murmuring car motors, wind tip-toeing in and out of the more docile ambiance. And just then, as though it were some divine practical joke, a flock of a good 50 or so geese flew over head. At first their collective honking blended in with the distant murmuring of car motors…although awkwardly different. It couldn’t hide its true identity for very long, for as they neared the only thing keeping me convinced it was not a flock of geese was the hour in which they chose flight.

A season apart

It’s the Friday before the beginning of a long, quiet summer here in Portland. An energetic warm wind carries this quiet campus around like a sun-blasted kid aboard for a piggy-back, darting in and out of it’s once normal semester sounds, now opting for a milder laughter…one that can he heard on the air, not simply in it. 

Most of the undergrad and many of the Seminary students have either already packed up and headed back home, or are doing just that come tomorrow afternoon. It’s a beautiful thing to think that God lovingly scatters this campus, these lives, these kids (myself included) for a season…a kind of intentional, tailor-made season of exodus from the familiars of life…in this case school. God does this for a number of reasons, most of which are so draped in His will that I will never fully understand their depth and grace. But among the reasons, I feel it is done in an effort to grow us all apart from one another. Just Him and us.

Ironically as I listened in to a number of people’s prospective summers, they might be filled with more obligation, less rest and even more chaos than the semesters brought. Even still…it is a chance to be challenged in chaos, have your life made into parable as your sift through endless obligation, and perhaps conquer exhaustion’s ceaseless pull…all alongside God’s particular getaway with you.

As we started scattering this afternoon I started to think about all we might do this summer… We will sit beneath His sun this summer for hours, letting His healing warmth snug our skin. We will find grass and shade and take in the sheer smells of the Gospel. We will be blissfully uncreative and find 21st century watering holes, either as pools, lakes or oceans, and just wade in the wisdom of His perpetual wave and wakes…being nothing more than spent far beyond ourselves. We will be awakened by glorious undertones of summer’s heraled passtime as sunflower seeds, baseball and naps once again slow us down in all the right ways. Some of us will get sunburned…

the Pearl kids…

 Last week on May 4th I officially taught children the bible for the first time. I recently, by God’s wonderful Grace, happened upon a church here in Portland called the Pearl Church. That might seem like a simple enough answer to perhaps a mild pursuit…but I assure you, it was an answer to a prayer that had left me looking all semester long. I went nearly 3 months without attending an official church. I made on-line sermons my Sunday morning fill-ins where pulpits once stood. But no more!

The Pearl found me and I wasted no time jumping right in. I met with Sara, the Children’s Ministry team leader later that first Sunday (Apr. 20th), and then met up with them later that that following week to figure out when I’d be teaching Sunday school in the monthly rotation. I observed the following Sunday closely, as I was teaching the following week.

This might seem like a simple thing, but for the longest time I have run into many close people I trust that have suggested to me that I should not follow my heart to want to teach kids because it is simply something that comes too easy, and might not challenge me or stretch me in my faith. Heeding their words over the past handful of years I have steered clear of officially teaching kids…which is funny, because I am always unofficially finding little groups of them and seizing opportunities to teach them.

That said, this last Sunday was like long awaited rains on my parched heart’s landscape. I’ve been banging hard on many doors in ministry trying to find my niche so to speak, and while I have not been perfect by any means, I have been pounding upon doors nonetheless. Sitting in front of the kids and teaching them lit up my heart in ways a girl should only hope to mimic if pursuing me. I felt like I could have melted right then and there, except for the fact that I was beautifully on fire and strengthened by every bit of it.

I was asked to teach on Communion (Luke. 22:19-20) and while I could have given them the age-old lesson along these lines, I walked them instead down through the festival of Passover, the amount of days the festival lasted, the bitter herbs, why the bread was unleavened, etc. These kids are brilliant and have this stuff written on their heart, often finishing my sentences for me…but I did manage to stump them a bit…haha, as well as the other teachers looking on a bit too…which is perfectly fine, as I too learned stuff I did not know when preparing for the kids. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…my little teachers make my heart so very alive!

There’s currently a Children’s Pastor position opening up at the Pearl and I’ve been encouraged to apply by members of the church. I don’t expect to get the position as I lack much official experience in the area, but I actually did a really good job on Sunday and absolutely love preparing for them, teaching them and watching them further their walks with our Lord. So, to call something as precious as this my job…haha, let’s just say I, regardless of whether I ever end up officially working at the Pearl, may have found a niche God had in mind for me all along. God bless His little ones! 

www.pearlchurch.org

Proverbs

Reading through Proverbs this week I discovered three things, that in turn discovered me…

I’ve often been drawn to Prov. 31, as it in my opinion encapsulates, although not exhaustively by any means, many formidable and desirous qualities to be sought after by all of God’s daughters. Some of the principles listed from vv. 10-33 speak of a woman working with an incredible resolve both in her hands and in her heart, as she presses on through tiredness and enlisting affections to relentlessly love on those God has given to her (husband, children, etc). If Proverbs 31:10 is an honest cry of a Christian man looking to find not just someone to Love God alongside, but the someone to do this with…then equally the companion-cry of a single Christian woman’s heart would be that of Prov. 20:6, “Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find?”  This proves to be a divine dialogue between many of God’s children these days all across this world…all our questions, fears, expectations, and desires, flung  high in the heavens like a sensuous moon, often unable to hide or voice its particular kind of loud and hush to the hearts below (including our own). 

Another verse that stood out to me was 6:26 “…but a married woman hunts down a precious life.” Although this passage is pitted against the backdrop of a prostitute, and is certainly targeting wives, it lends a rather interesting thought as to what ought to be filling up the the hearts and days of those wishing to be wives one day. This of course makes me think very seriously about what I am actually observingm and looking for when I look upon one of His daughters in those forever kind of ways. How is she loving on those around her? How is she viewed by her small part of the world? Instead of could a relationship between her and I work…a better question is how are her and God doing right now. I’d find it refreshing to see a woman that doesn’t need me because she has her fill with God, but still wants me! These important questions allow for some very necessary introspection on a very real and honest level…often flushing and fleshing out the heart’s motives…ones that need to be recognized before ever they’re acted upon.

The last part that truly stood out to me was more of wonderful Proverbs: 20. We often belittle children in such incredible ways that we assume their little hearts and faiths to be just that…little in quality as well as quantity. They make better kids than we could rarely to hope even approach again, and, they often put us to shame in how they wield with an amazing matter-of-factness all the grown up struggles we incessantly trip up over. That said, let’s be reminded of Prov. 20:11 “Even a child makes themself known by their acts, by whether they are pure and upright.” They are held accountable just as we are before God. So next time we think to look at them with sympathetic eyes, spilling over with sobriquets to refer to their “little faiths” and their “little hearts”, perhaps we are best found questioning our own sprawling hearts, to explore just where our heart’s begin to fall short, and where Grace begins its yarn of rescue to our helpless endeavours.

Thank you Lord for Your words in the Proverbs.