Glimpse of Light

Sometimes I feel as if life is in a fog.

  A grey mist that swirls about everything we know, everything we do. It distracts us from our real purpose, it distracts us from God. It distracts us from really living the life we were made to live.

 
  This grey fog is filled up with our busy days, stretching and pulling at us. The grey is the lies we've believed, who we've made ourselves to be.The perfect image that we compare ourselves too.

  This fog is deadly.

  But there's something about it that can be even deadlier.

  The fogs wraps around who we're made God out to be. It shadows God in lies and ideas and assumptions. It injects lofty religion and loftier rules. It takes away the beauty, power, glory and mystery of God and replaces them with a boring, mundane god that knows nothing about our dreams and nothing about who we are.

  But there are times when a ray of sunlight cuts through the fog, the beam shines onto our soul and awakens and warms our hearts.
It resurrects the mystery, the beauty of God once more by banishing this fog. It's as if God is whispering, "I'm here. Behind those ideas and lies you've made me out to be. Let me show you who I really am. I'm here." God is trying to break through this fog that holds us captive by showing us the light.

  These beautiful, sunlit moments shatter the fog and break into our lives. We're often caught unawares and such pure beauty cuts to our souls. It's something we feel, something deep, mysterious, as if you've just stumbled upon the truth. For that's what it is: Truth. It resonates in your heart and makes you say, "Yes, this, THIS is what I was made for. THIS is the God I know."
 
  These moments are beautiful: In DTS when I read and truly believed that I was a conqueror in Christ and it had me jumping for joy. The first time I heard 'The Way' by Jeremy Camp and knew my soul was made to cry out to Jesus! The first time I read Zephaniah 3:17 and realized God's love is so much greater. When I cried listening to Gandalf describe those white shores because I knew someday I would stand on those white shores with my Savior. When a blog post about grace takes my breath away.
  You know what I'm talking about. Moments when you finally understand. When you finally see.

 These things make us feel, and for a time, illuminate our life and dispel the fog around us.

  It's for these moments, those beautiful, glorious moments; that we are alive.

  Let us fight against this fog, for this is a very real fight. But by these small glimpses of light we shall see everything. 

1 Corinthians 13:12, "We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!" The Message

Waiting for the Son to rise

Some thoughts I was having on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday....

Holy Saturday. A day of reflecting on what happened and what will happen. A day of anticipation.

I can't help but think what that first Holy Saturday was like. I wonder what the disciples must have felt. They had just seen their very best friend and their Lord, brutally murdered before their very eyes. The shock and despair had to overwhelm them. They believed nothing could stop Him but He was laid dead in a tomb. He left them with a promise that He would rise and it was to this they had to be desperately clinging too. His promise. His Word.

I wonder if any of them faced doubt. Death looked like death. Death looked very final. They knew that they had targets on their backs. They were afraid, they were deathly scared so they hid in the Upper Room. They mourning, hiding....They had to wonder if the sun would ever shine again. I imagine that they didn't want to talk to each other much. Sifting through their thoughts, re-playing over and over their final conversation with Jesus. Looking for some hint of hope. I imagine them trying to fight off the guilt that laid so heavily on their hearts, because when Jesus faced death alone, they abandoned Him.  They ran. They hid for their own safety.

Where would they go from here? How did they approach that first day of waiting? I think maybe some were doubtful, some were afraid, but I bet they all had broken hearts. Maybe they wanted to full-heartily look towards Sunday and believe without a doubt that Jesus was coming. But maybe the questions hung too closely to see much else.

Can you imagine as they went to sleep that night before the most beautiful morning? They fell asleep with questions, despair hung close, but the sun rose in the morning; bringing with it hope. Bringing back their best friend.

The new day dawned, and the Savior was risen. 

Stepping Out of Your Shire

There comes a point in life (possibly more than one) when you stop and think, What in the world was I thinking? I've come to this point.
 I have a perfectly comfortable, normal life. But I felt as if God was calling me to do a Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission. If you don't know what that is, YWAM spreads the Word of God throughout the world and equips people to do the same. So the school is three months at the base, two months mission trip. And for me, this will mean stepping so far out of my comfort zone, doing things I'm not used to doing (praying outloud, speaking in front of people), meeting new people and going new places.... What was I thinking?! I guess I'm at that point where faith and fear collide. We'll see where God takes it!
 Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a devotional on stepping out of your comfort zone based on the Lord of the Rings. I found it pretty relevant to what I'm going through now, so I thought you might be interested:
                     
                        Stepping Out of Your Shire

The little company of Frodo and friends is gathered in Rivendell, discussing what should be done with the Ring (if you don't follow the Lord of the Rings, the ring is something that must be destroyed so peace can return to the land. Got it? :P). Someone suggests giving it to Tom Bombabil, the sweet although odd, caretaker of the Old forest; who seems untouched and unworried by evil. Seems like a perfect solution! But Gandalf soon brings that idea to a halt, saying that Tom's power is limited only to his land:
 'And now he is withdrawn into a little land, within bounds he has set, though none can see them, waiting perhaps for a change of days.'- Gandalf, The Fellowship of The Ring page 298
 Somewhere in life, we draw our bounds, we set our lines. We chalk out the area of our comfort zone. We say, "This is the line I will not cross.  Even one step out means danger, uncertainty, and maybe even adventure. I'm not doing it! I'll stay right here!" As Christians should we even have comfort zones?! Caution, in some cases, yes. Boundaries that keep you from sinning, absolutely. But a comfort zone that boxes us in from the rest of the world? We're missing that freedom of Christ. Do you think Jesus had a comfort zone? I'm not thinking so. He touched lepers,  He talked to Samaritans, He ate dinner with tax collectors! He had no comfort zone. He wasn't afraid to step out, touch others, challenge the normal. And we shouldn't be either.

We're kind of like hobbits. Perfectly content in our own little world, in our shire, while the rest of the world moves along without us. Adventure is frowned upon and we keep busy floating in our own little world. We never step outside the Shire, never come in contact with people outside. And that's how they live their lives. But one day, a hobbit is called on a adventure that takes him far beyond the shire. And in the end Frodo Baggins from the Shire, changed the world. Changes the course of history.
 God is calling us little hobbits out of our shire. Out of our comfortable lives to go on our own adventure. To serve Him and maybe touch a few lives along the way. Whether that adventure includes lighting the beacons of Minas Tirith or lighting the fire of faith, rousing the Ents of Fangorn or rousing Christian soldiers to pray, or storming the gates of Mordor itself, I don't know. But we'll never know unless we take a chance and step out of our own shire.
 Frodo made a decision that day that he was the one to take the ring to Mordor. He stepped out of his shire and his life was never the same.

But Frodo wasn't unchanged by his journey. He was so changed that in the end, he couldn't find happiness in his own little shire anymore. So at the end of his journey, he made one last journey, to the Undying Land.
 We won't remain unchanged if we step out of our shire either. God will change us. We won't be content by our shire any longer. For we were made for more. So much more. And our true home will be in Heaven, the ultimate Undying Land.

        But the first step, is stepping out of our shire. 

"We are too quick to accept the life we know and not quick enough to embrace the life we can only imagine."
    -The First King of Shannara pg. 107

Lessons from a Pre-schooler

Sometimes God teaches us a lesson that makes us stop and wonder, how have I never seen this before? This is one of those:

I work as a gymnastics coach. And one of my most memorable experiences was one class that I filled in that was a pre-school class. Pre-school gymnastics....oh what fun! So the night before I was supposed to fill in, I sat there and prayed for patience with this class and that it would go well, and that the kids would listen because no matter how many times you yell-

And it's there that I stopped. It was one of those moments where you groan and kind of put your head into your hands. You know? I am a pre-schooler! Coaching a class of them, well it could be crazy... They have an attention span of about ten seconds. And their listening skills aren't much better. Soon you start to sound like a broken record, "Katie, sit down. Ryder, stay in line. Don't do that Jenna. Katie, please sit down. Bobby, keep your hands to yourself. Katie, sit down...." The good mood you went into the class with, doesn't always come back out.

Like them, our attention span is about ten seconds compared to God's. We can't even pray for more than five minutes! And our listening skills are worse! He tries to get through to us over and over again. He's practically shouting down at us. It's amazing that God never gets tired of us! Thank goodness God has more patience with us than I do with a bunch of three and four year olds! But even when we are like those pre-schoolers and it takes forever for God to get through to us and we don't listen and we're just running around around crazy, God loves us even then.

One of my favorite parts of coaching is when a kid gets a new skill. Their eyes light up and their so excited. And they can't wait to show the world, well at least their mom and dads. They finally understand, they finally get it. And when they look to their parents and show them, they're just as excited, if not more so, than their kid.

I wonder if God is like that when we finally learn something that He's been trying to teach us. When we finally get it, when we finally understand. I can imagine God looking down and and His eyes shining with excitement. Being our proud Father. And He can't wait for us to share it with the world.

I know I'll never know everything about God. I'm not supposed to. That's where faith comes in. But we have to be ready and listening to what God does want us to learn.

And I'm so thankful that He's so patient with this pre-schooler.

*And since then, I regularly coach pre-school classes and I love them now!