Divine Secrets of the Grace Brotherhood

In praying for a friend recently, I was reminded of a story line from the book, "The Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood." (The book had it all over the movie, by the way.) As a teenager, one of the Yayas was pretty and vivacious, so full of life that I believe the character's name was Vivian. Her parents' relationship was strained, and her mother was jealous of her daughter's close relationship with her dad, and of the liveliness and freedom that characterized the daughter's personality. So the mother shipped her daughter off to a convent, the cloistered and cold stone kind, to "knock some sense" into the girl. Vivian began a horrible spiral downward into depression and began to head toward madness, being deprived of the beauty and the freedom she needed to be herself, even to survive.

My friend sustained wounds in her youth that had a similar effect. But God, who loves her, wants to rescue her, as Vivian's dad finally did in the book. Neither father could stand seeing the life being squashed out of their child, watching the light of the soul being snuffed out. A true father wants freedom for his child.

Our God is just like that. He is the one who makes us with all our individuality, loves our personality and traits, and desires that we be able to fully be ourselves. There's a lot of confusion about that in the Body of Christ. Sometimes we think we have to turn ourselves inside out, that there is something wrong with just being ourselves. But it is only genuine vessels that the Lord can anoint for his work. His Spirit can't come upon the false self, upon a mask. His Spirit can only fall upon a real person.

Lord, would you free me, free us, from anything that keeps us tied up, unable to simply live our lives in the freedom you desire for us. Help us to accept ourselves and be ourselves, so that your love can reach us, and so your love can reach others through us. In Jesus' name...

Law and Love

The Lord is expanding on a theme I touched on in the last blog, when I talked about experiencing God's love for me, that it is totally unrelated to what I do. But I'm realizing that this is turning into the theme for the year, for our church, and for more than just us. I hear it on TV, and there are other confirmations that keep coming to me daily. I'm excited about this, because it's such a wonderful reality, and God's focus on it fills me with expectation of the freedom he wants to bring me, and to his people, the Church.

There will be more blog entries on this topic. For tonight, I will just state it: We Are No Longer Under the Law, but Under Grace. Oh, that sounds so bland, so boring. They are words we've heard and read so many times. How can I say it in a way that even partially communicates the meaning?

No more guilt. No more striving to be good enough. Stop it! You are loved, beautifully, deeply, intensely, joyfully, freely, wonderfully. It's ok, you can stop now. It's over, and love won.

Isn't that good?

The Lord's Love

As I thought about what I'd like to write about for today's blog, what's clearest at this moment is the Lord's love for me. Just that. Wonderfully that. Affirming, securing, connecting. Totally unrelated to what I do for him. He loves me. God, do I need that. If you need that, ask him to pour his love on you, into you, right now.

God, we need you so badly. How much mess there is in the world, just because we don't know that you love us. That's how it all started isn't it, in the Garden? "No, he doesn't really love you, he's holding out on you. He's stealing from you, withholding, acting like he loves you, when he is really selfish, calculating -- he doesn't really love you." "Master, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid...." (Matt 25:24-25)

I think all kinds of things. I worry about doing the right thing, if I've gotten done what I need to, if I've "satisfied" him. Awful. I'm sorry. How would I feel if my child were thinking that about me? I mean, I want to please you, yes, but the fear and the worrying...

Thanks for the reminder. You love me. The rest, we'll do together. And you'll love me regardless, no matter the successes or failures. Can I live in that place? Well, at least I can try to remember what you showed me today. No, what I really need to do is just be quiet and let you remind me, tomorrow.

Hoppy New Year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgtDAqIp0xo

Have you seen this Pixar short, Boundin'? I just love it, loved it when I first saw it a few years ago. I saw it again last week on a TV special. It goes right along with my current theme, Letting Go of the Old to Embrace the New. Poor little lamb was stuck in the past, what he'd had, and what he'd lost. Little did he know that it would be returned to him in time. But for the time being, he needed to shift his gaze, get his eyes off of the loss, and rejoice in the present. "Now sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down. When you find that you're down, well, just look around. You've still got a body, good legs and fine feet. Get your head in the right place and hey, you're complete."

I don't know much about the author, or the origins of the jackalope, that "rare hare of hope", but to me, he's a great Christ figure.

I'll be preaching on this soon ("Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice...I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound...." Phil 4:4,11-12) -- I want to show this short!

Toward a Hoppy New Year, I invite you to join me in Boundin'.

Letting Go of the Old to Embrace the New - 2

I've been trying to figure out exactly how to do this. There's some part of me that wants to clutch the old, hold on for dear life, like a dog gnawing on a bone long denuded of anything tasty. So here's the question: why not? If that's what "comes naturally" to me, why not continue? Because, God has new, wonderful, challenging, sometimes painful, sometimes fun, very worthwhile experiences for me to tackle, but they are that: NEW. New ones. Not old, dead, hard and cold ones. New, meaty, chewy -- able to sustain me, things I can do something with/about. (You know, the Serenity prayer....) If I'm busy gnawing my old bits of the past, I can't have the life he wants for me today. I'll miss it. And that would be a shame.

Yeah, it's been a process. I've been working on this for a while. Too long. Enough. So, I'm doing it. No more gnawing. I'm saying "goodbye" to the old year, and the old things, so I can embrace the new.

Lord, I give them all to you. The dead pieces, the ones that have no place in my life today. I've done what I can with them, now they're yours. You deal with them. All of them. I'm choosing to move on to all you have for me today, and tomorrow. Please forgive me for not trusting you with the past sooner. Help me to stay in today, and look forward to tomorrow, with faith. "For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day." (2 Timothy 1:12). So take care of it, ok? Thanks.

So... what's new?

Letting Go of the Old to Embrace the New

A new year is about to begin.

God's been speaking to me for a few weeks about the need to let go of the old, so we can embrace the new. It's clear in the calendar, marking inanimate time -- you can't start a new year without first leaving the old one. Nice and sequential. The Old Year is ready to die, with Baby New Year sitting right there, poised to take the stage, unwrinkled and unafraid, bursting with opportunity, waiting to begin life.

As I think about this, it seems to me that people are time travelers, after all. We can live in the present, a few choose to live in the future, but many of us seem to live much of our time in the past. I often do. And isn't it ridiculous? Mostly it isn't the pleasant past, but the difficult times, the painful ones, that occupy my thoughts way too often.

Of course there is a value to looking at the old, to see what can be gleaned. Is there anything I need to pursue? Fix? Change? Can I learn something, perhaps gain some wisdom or grow in some way? But there is a limit, and it comes a lot quicker than most of us seem to think. For me, what it comes down to is this: Lord, what do you have to say about this? Anything you want to say about it all?

When he's done, I should be done. You and I should be able to let it go, and move on. Ah, there's the rub.

It's hard for me to let go of some old things. It's painful to let go of broken relationships, things that didn't go well, mistakes, betrayals. What do I think, that the next time I go through that conversation or series of events in my head, that there's going to be a different outcome? That I'll get to say what I should have said, get things off my chest, make myself feel better, defend myself, make it all work? As my friend Don told me a few months ago, "Give up all hope of ever having a better past." Somebody ought to carve that in stone.

It can be tough to say "goodbye" to the good things, too. I could echo Nicodemus, asking how I might return to the womb. Honestly, sometimes I wistfully look back to the warm and fuzzy nest of a life I had before I accepted this call of planting and pastoring a church. My husband Paul tells me I would be bored to return to the way things were. I know he's right, but sometimes, if I let myself look back, I ache for it.

God never stands still, and neither do we. I have changed, the nest has changed, the world has changed. Every person or situation of my past has changed. God is the only element that never changes. Though he seems to, because I am still learning about him. Guess I always will.

So back to the title. Next post.