Children of Divorce, Bride of Christ

When I was 13 years old my parents had the sort of fight where you run for cover. I don't remember anything about it except that I fearfully went to one parent the next morning asking if they were going to get divorced. They promised me they were not.

Ten springs later I was living in Guatemala and the words, "The divorce is finalized," came over the phone from one of my parents. I dissolved in tears when I hung up the phone, set my face like steel, resolved to never make a promise I couldn't keep—to a husband or to my children.

It is now ten years from then and I hope I have a bit more perspective, and empathy, toward both of my parents. Divorce wasn't their first choice—and it hasn't been their last. Even today they are facing off in court again—divorce is rarely in the best interest of everyone, but we only count by ones when we shatter, each shard collected, regarded, and disposed.

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Every time I want to speak about divorce I hesitate for a few reasons, one is that I have no idea of the complexities of marriage. I have a better idea today than I did last year, but even the complexities of my broken relationship cannot compare to the one flesh union between two flesh entities.

Another reason I hesitate is because this is a deeply personal issue. The complexities of one couple's marriage cannot compare to the complexities of another couple's. There are histories, stories, theologies, broken and beautiful things coming together in a grand clash of a lifetime together. There is no easy way to navigate these things. How could one person speak with any sort of authority on these matters?

I shared a bit of my story there to extend an olive branch to those who think I could not understand the complexities of marriage. While it is true that I could not understand it for myself, I can understand it deeply and profoundly as the adult child of divorce—and one who has watched my siblings respond in different and distinct ways. Are we the story of everyman? No. But neither are each of our stories, as siblings, the same. We each experienced divorce, brokenness, abandonment, abuse, fear, hurt, betrayal, death, disappointment in different ways. I only have my side of things, my story.

Beneath the deeply layered stories of divorce, there are true things about marriage, and what makes the gospel so profound is that it makes all the sad things come untrue. The world is broken and breaking, and afterward we are, as Hemingway said, strong at the broken places.

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One of the great weaknesses in our world today, even within the Church, is the brokenness of marriage, how it is fractured and divided and fracturing and dividing. But at the crux of that brokenness, we are strong in that place because the great metaphor of Christ's love for us is marriage. From the very first glimpse of his bride, the first Adam loved her, and the second Adam has done no less.

When we understand the sanctity and holy depth of what marriage is to God, we understand this fractured piecemeal one-flesh difficult thing is simply a broken reflection—and cannot give us the whole picture of Christ's love for His bride.

That comforts me today because I am the child of divorce and I am the child of broken promises and I am the breaker of promises—but none of that touches the deepest reality of what marriage means to Christ. He doesn't break His promises; He never leaves His bride; His plan has always been to take what is battered, bruised, soiled, and spotted, and to present her perfect, without blemish.

There are many miraculous metaphors for  life in Christ, dead men brought to life, lame men walking, but none so profound, I think, as the miracle of taking what is broken and making it wholly whole.

If your marriage is buckling under the weight of life and all its complexities today, if you have broken promises to your children and your spouse, if you are the child of divorce and fear marriage (as I do), never forget that if you are His child, He is taking what is broken and making it whole. Today, right now, He is refining and cleansing.

Let these words comfort you today:

...As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:27

The Good Ground

It is a good place where one can say, "I do not trust you," to God. These are the places where God becomes real. Realer than theology books and good sermons, more real than dark nights and soul talk, realer than heaven and hell and all the variances in between. To stand barefoot by the burning bush of your life—or the Spirit—and to say, I do not, I can not, even maybe I will not. These can be good places.

There is a realness to the God of that moment, a reckoning with all the ways in which we have felt the realness of life hurt and bruise us. It is, in some ways, the moment of coming to our senses. It is touch, sight, sound, scent—the aching reality that this is hard, so hard. Harder than it was ever meant to be, and yet, the only way we could come at last home.

Whenever I find myself in the company of one who doubts, I know I am on hallowed ground. Holy ground. I want to take off my shoes and stand there with them for a while. The ground is often a pigsty: it smells, it is muddy, full of animal waste and the rottenest fares of the richest feasts, but it is the place of coming to.

To say, "I do not believe, but God, I want to," can be the first step toward coming home.

God Saves Little Boys

My family had just moved from an affluent Bucks County five acre lot in Pennsylvania to 120 acres in the middle of seeming nowhere New York state. I was 18 and my two youngest brothers were attached to my hip. They snuck into my bed at night, or just slept on a mattress beside my bed. I read them stories all day long and every night, and they are in every one of my life's favorite memories. The Little Boys, we called them, one tow-headed and green-eyed, and the other just like me, brown haired and startling blue eyes. They were my right and left hands, my favorite people, and my joy.

When death snuck in one rainy April morning and then a fractured family followed shortly after, I clung to those boys—if not in body, in soul. They who were a part of my every favorite memory, were also the ones caught in the crosshairs of a court system who rarely has the child's best interest in mind—even if they say they do.

Through all of that, one memory stands above them all. It was right after the move to New York state, the walls not yet painted and the boxes not yet unpacked. My best friend and I took those two Little Boys to the top of a hill across the street. We had no way of knowing that a year later we would bury my 14 year old brother on that same hill. The sun was setting and the sky streaked blue and orange and black.

We sat in the tall grass and those boys ran circles around us while we sat on the grass and talked about Best Friends things. When that tow-headed three year old stopped and fell into best friend's lap, the one who looked like me stood tall, raised his hands to the sky, and with the bold confidence of a five-year old, said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a pastor so I can worship God all the time."

That five year old is a grown man now, has tumbled back and forth through the angst of a broken family along with his two younger brothers for the entirety of his life. There were many times in the past 15 years where I have held onto those hilltop words, praying them to even be a fraction prophetic—if only that their salvation would be secure, that their faith in God would not break.

In December I spent some time with that young man, who is now the age I was on that hilltop. He studies graphic design at a local university and keeps a blog; he works hard at everything he does and yet knows his salvation is not worked for or earned; he is so very far ahead of where I was at his age.

And every time I think of him, I think of that hilltop and those words and all the brokenness that followed, and how God does not let one thing out of His sight, not one thing.

Friends, I'm weeping as I write this, not only because I love that boy and his gentle heart and big fierce love for his family and God. But also because for a lot of years I asked for fruit that I didn't see. All I saw was the brokenness, the courtrooms, the wooden casket lowered into the ground, the arguments, the shuffling back and forth of their young bodies and souls. It is still ongoing, even now, with the two youngest of my family. But God saves. He saves.

He plants seeds and covers over and for a long time there is just deep, earthy darkness, but then one day, a decade and a half later, there is a strong branch grown bearing good fruit.

Because God saves.

What feels dark and covered over to you today? Where are you waiting for something broken to come untrue? He is with you in those moments, and He is working in you a better prize, a more lasting one. Just you wait.

Leadership is Lonely (and it should be)

A wise, and lonely, leader once told me, "Leadership is lonely, so choose your friends wisely." I believed him without hesitation because I saw the aching loneliness whenever he was in a crowd, the uncomfortable posture of one who longs for depth and fears it for the work it will bring.

I've been reading Paul's letters from prison thinking often of how long stretches of time alone might have been the fuel he needed to write those letters—and yet, in prison? Alone? In those days, there is no more lonely place I can think of.

Leadership is lonely. It doesn't look like it, of course, because every leader is surrounded by others, called on by others, even known, in some respect, by others. It seems like all the aching loneliness of being unknown would dissipate if only you stood with the leaders of the pack.

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One of the most helpful verses I've ever memorized is John 3:30, "He must increase, I must decrease."

Those six words have meant more to me in the swirling storms of suffering and rejoicing, lack and plenty, contentment and desire, than any six words I know. They are the mantra of my life and they are prophetic in a way, speaking future truth into what is not fully realized. They comfort me when I feel the aching loneliness of being both unknown and very known, a nobody and a leader, a friend and a stranger.

Leadership is lonely because decreasing is lonely. The larger the Lord of your life becomes to others, the less they see you, and isn't that what we all want? Just a bit? To be seen, known, and truly loved? To be unshackled from the collective prison of our minds and hearts, to be free to roam among other commoners, to find our place at the fire or the table, to fit in?

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This morning I read an article about a couple who were removed from leadership at a school in New England. They were serving Jesus faithfully, wouldn't sign a paper demanding more from them than their faithfulness to His word, and they were given the boot, stripped of their leadership.

And yet, not.

Because the crowning achievement of every kingdom leader is to be the least, the last, and the lowest. To fulfill their mission in the prison of lonely leadership or unrecognized leadership—a prophet who has no respect.

If you seek leadership, know that what you're asking for is a life of service and loneliness. It may not look like the glamorous service you suspect lies there. It may be the simple act of looking others in the face, hearing their stories while knowing yours is ever decreasing. It may be a life of quiet prayer. It may be behind a pulpit, which may be one of the loneliest places of all.

But, good and faithful—and lonely—servant, find your joy not in being known, but in making Him known.

Makerness

I'm a first generation college graduate, and the only one of my seven siblings to have completed secondary or tertiary education. Growing up, neither of my parents had college degrees. My mother put herself through a degree in early childhood education for the past several years—the irony being is she is the last person who I think needs it. She's now working on her graduate degree.

The reason I say that is because my hard-working parents taught me the value of using my hands from my early childhood. Laziness was not permitted in our home and using the word "bored" was as near to cursing as any of us would ever get.

From the moment we woke up until the dinner dishes were done, and the candles lit for evening read-aloud, our hands were kept busy.

My father is a gifted artist, talented writer, and has been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember, working hard, long and late hours. He has always been inventing some new gadget or brainstorming some crazy idea. We never went hungry.

My mother quilted, baked, created lesson plans, gardened, refinished furniture, and always encouraged us to work hard at the things that gave us joy. Since my parents divorce, she has built her own successful business—while putting herself through school.

I'm grateful for my college degrees. I worked hard for them, paid for them myself, supplemented with scholarships. In no way am I discouraging a college education, but I know my best education came from watching my parents work hard. Start businesses. Give homemade gifts. Make things from scratch. Look at what others had done and decide to make it themselves—only better.

Whenever people ask me how I learned to sew or write or design or crochet or cook or make flower arrangements or make a home or anything, I tell them I taught myself, which is true. But not entirely.

The whole truth is my parents taught me to value hard work.

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Paul encourages the Thessalonians like this,

"[We urge you] to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." I Thessalonians 4:11-12

Don't under value the work of the hands. Teach your kids to work hard when they are young, let them puzzle their way through diagrams and difficult words, give them tasks that are too difficult for them, encourage them in the work that gives them joy. But don't let them simply value work because it gives them or you joy, teach them to value it because it gives the original Maker joy. Teach your children they are literally imaging God when they work hard, carefully, with attention to detail.

All of life is a muscle waiting to be worked. We bring glory to our Maker when we reflect His Makerness. His creativity. His near constant work.

Hearing and Being God

Since the beginning of December I have been thinking about what it means to "hear" God's voice. I cut my faith teeth in Charismatic circles, so hearing from God for ten years was commonplace in my life. I have pages full of things people heard from God about on my behalf and I am in Texas today because of a small feeling I had one June morning on my back stoop. He said, "Move to Texas," and I said, "Hell, no." But then I did. I don't handle His voice lightly, but I think I have handled the hearing of His voice lightly.

Because we are His children and He is our father and we know this with our heads—even if we struggle with it in our hearts—we want to believe that He speaks and He speaks to us. This is why we have books like Jesus Calling given back and forth at every holiday gathering and as last minute birthday gifts. Who doesn't want to hear Jesus Calling?

But what happens when what you were sure that you were sure that you were sure that God said, turns out to be, well, not?

What then?

I don't have an answer to this question. The only answer I have is to go back to His infallible, inerrant word, and trust His character to be true. Jared Wilson posted a blog today that might be the most important thing we'll read online this week, or month.

Something happens when you stop submitting to the communal listening of congregational worship and start filling the air with your own free range spiritual rhetoric. Your talk of God starts to sound less like God. He starts sounding like an idea, a theory, a concept. He stops sounding like the God of the Bible, the God who commands and demands, the God who is love but also holy, gracious but also just, et cetera. He begins to sound less like the God “who is who he is” and more like the God who is as you like him.

Read that twice if you need to. I needed to read it three times.

Now think, just for a few moments, about the times in our lives where what God says sounds an awful lot like what we'd like Him to say, or God help us, an awful lot just like us.

The truth is I don't need that god in my life because I already am that god.

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I've had some good, good people pressing back on me in recent months, asking the same question the enemy asked in Eden and again in the wilderness to Jesus: Did God really say?

Strange how the enemy can ask a question and a friend can ask the same question and we still get their intentions flip-flopped.

I want to ask you the same question today: Did God really say?

If you don't have an answer to that question, that's good because it means you can go back to His word and instead of listening for His voice, you can read exactly what He does say (about you, about others, about His character). If you're hung up on something you think He might have said or you wish He would say, there's great comfort to be found in knowing for sure He did say.

If you don't know where to start, start here, in Isaiah 45. It is packed, full and brimming over with what God says.

I am the Lord, and there is no other. I did not speak in secret, in a land of darkness; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, ‘Seek me in vain. I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right. Isaiah 45:18-19

Know that I am praying for you today as you and I both relinquish what we think He's said, and submit ourselves to the truth of His character and word.

Talk it In/Out

I process internally. I'm rarely ready to discuss anything or contribute anything to a conversation until I've chewed on and distilled every possible scenario in my head. Because I'm bent this way, I always think it is more helpful to process things internally. You know who doesn't agree? All of my friends.

Yup. For some reason I seem to attract verbal processors like hipsters to coffee bars. Nearly every one of my close friends is someone who wants to hash and rehash every thought process. They want the counsel of many, and talking through things helps them distill the good counsel from the bad.

The downside? They want to do that with me.

I don't seem to mind it when they want to hash around their own problems in that way, but when they want to process my situations in that way, nine times out of ten, I end up feeling bullied or not heard. I feel like a project to be fixed instead of someone to just be heard. But all they're doing is loving me the way they love to be loved.

However, when they want to talk over things with me, and all I do is listen, they can feel like I don't care about their problems. I do. I really do. I'm just not ready to give my thoughts until I've thought through them.

The other side of the coin is I'll have thought through a situation for a long, long time, and come to someone with every possible angle considered. I'm rarely looking for their advice, I just feel like I need to say, "Here's what I've been thinking about." But because I'm coming with a neat bullet-point list, the problem figured out, the best option to take, fully processed, my friends can feel like I'm the one bullying them.

It's a no win, right?

Well, without Christ it's a no win.

James says, "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." Because I am naturally bent toward that, I can take this verse and vilify everyone I know who just wants to "talk it out."

But the book of Proverbs says, "Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed." So which is it? Shut up or get talking?

I don't think it's either or, honestly. But I do think we need to keep three things in mind in every relationship:

1. The necessity of keeping the Holy Spirit and Fruit of the Spirit central in every conversation we have. When we're motivated by the things of the Spirit, we're going to be motivated not to be heard or responded to, but to be like Christ in our listening and in our counsel. Good advice is meaningless if it's not empowered by the Spirit. Likewise, good listening is active listening, not just thought-filing.

2. If you're an external processor, be mindful of trying to do so with internal processors. It can feel bullying, even if you mean it in earnest helpfulness.

3. If you're an internal processor, be mindful of bringing your fully processed ideas to external processors. It can feel condescending, even meant kindly.

Sometimes the best thing, even for verbal processors, is to be slow to speak. And sometimes, even for internal processors, it is to seek the counsel of many. Above all, the counsel we need most is Christ's, and the voice we should be listening to the most is His.

Pot, Meet Kettle

My first blog was on a Live Journal domain (remember those?). I took its name from a Burlap to Cashmere song that, to this day, I still don't really understand the full meaning behind. I just knew I loved the three words strung together. The year was 2000 and my family was turned upside down in about a year. You name it, we experienced it in that year. I didn't know where to turn, or to whom, and so I turned to anonymity. I became a blogger.

In 2000 a blogger was either Jason Kottke, posting links to interesting content on the rising web, or it was an angsty teenager ranting about life. I wrote voraciously. Sometimes three posts a day. I didn't care who read, or if anyone did, but I began to find a community of other bloggers. There was this brotherhood among us of sorts, people from all over the United States who stumbled on words not their own but which could be. I don't have other words for it but divine. It was divine in the sense that it was almost otherworldly at that point. There were no dating sites, chat rooms were still a little strange, actually meeting someone in real life was rare and coated with suspicion. But it was also divine in the sense that it was a timely gift from God.

I spent years working out my salvation on the pages of the internet. By the time Sayable was birthed in 2008, I was one of the seasoned bloggers. My readership was still small by comparison, but in the annals of history, I was nearing mid-life at least. Every thought I've had about God has somehow been worked out on Sayable, or its younger siblings.

Writing is sanctification, if you'll let it be.

This morning I opened my feed reader and read, as I do every morning. I find more and more often, I am just skimming. I open the posts with catchy titles or intriguing photos, so I am guilty of that which I complain of, I know. But I am so weary of the noise of blogging: the effort to churn out content instead of cherish the conviction.

One of my favorite quotes is by Lindford Detweiler, and I'll never forget it. I love it so much that I screen printed it and it is the welcoming art as you walk into our home:

Music and art and writing: extravagant, essential, the act of spilling something, a cup running over...The simultaneous cry of 'you must change your life, and welcome home.' I've been trying to write songs again, and I've been hitting a maze of dead ends. I want the songs to reveal something to me, teach me something. It's slow going. I'm not sure where I'm going. Uncertainty abounds. But the writing works on me little by little and begins to change me. That's why I would recommend not putting off writing if it's something you feel called to: if you put it off, then the writing can't do the work that it needs to do to you. Yes, I think there's something there. If you don't do the work, the work can't change you. (No one expects to change overnight.)

I'm weeping even now, as I read over that quote again by one of the finest lyricists I know. Here is a man who lets the writing do the work in himself. And I want that, friend and fellow writer, I want that for us. No matter what work it is that we put our hands to, I want it to do the deep work in us. The hard work, the cleansing work, the sanctifying work.

Blogging is hard work, I would never tell anyone otherwise, don't make it easy by simply building a platform or gaining readers. That is not the point of blogging, and it is not the point of writing. We write to do the work in us, and God willing, in others. The publishers will use those big words about marketing and growth, but at the end of the day, those things will steal the soul of the writing you need to do.

Writing is sanctification and writing is God's blessed gift to only a few of us. If you are a writer, don't sell that sanctification for a contract or a deal. Turn your palms up, slow your mind, and do the upside-down work of the kingdom: your name always decreasing, ever increasing His.

Wipe that Glass

The first thing we know about God is He is Creator. He takes nothing and makes something. He makes many somethings. More somethings than any one of us will ever see in our entire lifetime. Staggering.

I understand God as Creator, but if He is Creator, that means He is infinitely creative—and that is something I will never be able to grasp or understand.

He is involved in every iota, every molecule, every atom, every gene, every thought, every action—and He is infinitely creative, which means He never stops creating.

Just thinking about that for three minutes staggers me.

But it becomes so real, so personal, when I think about all the ways He has been creative with me—and the accompanying realization that He isn't finished with me yet. He is still creating, still teaching, still growing, still perfecting, still forming.

So an infinitely creative God, constantly creating and recreating His people, is a God who can be trusted to not make mistakes. Every scrap of my spectacular story, every rag of my richest rich, every moment of my mind—these form who I am and who I am becoming. He knew the washed up, backwards, inside-out, upside-down story He'd bring me through and He knew that through the mess I'd see Him.

And I'd see Him through a glass dimly, but that dirt and grime, that's mine. I own that grime. God let me have that grime because otherwise I'd never understand His holiness, His set-apartness. Now all I can do is never stop asking Him to wipe that glass clean.

I love that.

I really love that.

I love it because it's my hope, more than anything, that we'd spend our lives helping others to clean that grime. To take a rag and say, "You too? Me too. Let's clean it together. Let's see Him more clearly, love Him more for Who He truly is."

I don't know what your grime is, but I know God knows it. He made it, every atom and molecule. He knows your issues with fundamentalism, gender roles, abuse, theology, culture, suffering, depression, death, divorce, fear. He knows it all. And He's so creative that He knows how to draw you in, grime covered you, and show you Himself, holy and splendid, majestic and clean.

It's spectacular.

Counting Down

It is midmorning and I spread the logs apart, the time for morning fires over, the day's work ahead. The embers still crack and spark and I stare at their orange and grey glare for a few minutes more. There has been a dormant joy in my heart these last months. Depression is never such a stranger to me that I don't recognize her creeping around the eaves and windows of my heart. We are old enemies, she and I, and old friends too.

She is different this time around. She knows where my faith lies and my certainty rests, and it isn't in my hope or future, but His glory. I count all my hope and future as loss in the surpassing joy of knowing Him. But I have to count it and the counting never ceases.

If all I count are the blessings and joys, will I hold to tightly to the losses when they come? I ask it rhetorically but I ask it earnestly. I know idolatry, we have been friends too. If I do the math, it must only be that I decrease and He increases. In this life only one of us gets to live. It is in heaven, in final glory, that we are both alive.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose," said the man who would be a martyr. I look around me and grasp at things, hopes, dreams, losses, always keeping, never giving.

God, help me lose.

Help me spread wide the logs, chance the death of flame, let the embers burn themselves out, and help me do the work of the day. Help me count as loss all things—even good things. Turn my wins upside down and my face to you. Let my counting not be accumulating but subtracting til there is nothing left but You.

Sleeping Through a Year

My word for 2013 was rest and it wasn't until yesterday that I saw the humor in it. I came into 2013 sleep deprived and exhausted. By the time I finished the year long theological training program in May (in which I needed to rise by 4:30am to make it to class on time), I wanted to swear off middle of the nights for the rest of time. This year sleep has been my elusive friend and favorite companion. In other years I'd have said I was depressed, but this year was different. I honestly was tired. I was soul tired, heart tired, mind tired. I wanted emotional rest, yes, but really, I just wanted to rest.

There were so many times this year when I resented the sleep I craved. "What is wrong with me," I'd ask myself. I've never been a snooze-button pusher and I would press it three, four, five times every morning. I'd keep myself up later than I needed, simply because the thought of more than seven hours of sleep sounded lazy, unnecessary, and entitled.

I know there are some of you who may roll your eyes at the luxury of being able to press the snooze button at all; your alarm clocks cry themselves awake intermittently through the night and early into the morning. It's okay, there are other things you get that I don't that are much nicer, so we're even-steven.

As I reviewed my year, asking myself a dozen questions I ask every January 1st, I realized I've been given exactly what I asked for, rest, but I hadn't seen it for what it was. God gives his beloved rest and sometimes that's just plain shut eye. Sometimes what we seek is a haven, a quietness, a trust, and strength, thinking that will bring us rest, and rightfully so:

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15

But sometimes we just need to trust the times and sunlight and darkness, and just go to sleep.

I'm grateful I slept through 2013. It wasn't the rest I thought I wanted, or craved, but at the end of the year it was the rest I needed. I can trust that because God never sleeps, never slumbers, always keeps watch over His children.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. Psalm 121

My word for 2014 is work. Let's see how this one turns out ;)

The Promise of Place

Grey Texas days are my favorite. Because they are so rare, or because I love grey more than blue, I don't know. Back home trees enclose me and so I feel safe. Here there are no towering pines or old maples, so I take the clouds instead and find a haven in them. Being away for a month was good for me. I did not miss Texas, but I missed place.

The truth is I feel misplaced these days. Misplaced by God, misplaced by men, misplaced, mostly, by myself. I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, but these past months I have felt a foreigner even to myself.

Who is this person? I ask as I roll over awake in the morning, when I hug a friend, when I try to explain myself, excuse myself, examine myself. I feel a stranger to her and estranged from her. As though I've forgotten how to take my own pulse, as though I am unsure I have a pulse.

That sounds hyperbole and I know it, but I feel it all the same. The creeping darkness of discouragement snatches away courage, not its opposite, affirmation, as it might seem.

It is a dark day outside and there are dark days all around us. Have you felt it? I am not prone to pessimism except when I am.

I am reading Hebrews this morning, about Abraham and the promise, and I remember the promises God gave him: land, east and west and north and south; descendants as many as the stars; a son, a babe, just one. Just one.

God put Abraham in his place and gave him place and then gave him a place in history. We know him because of his son, and his son's son, and his son's son's son and so on. Because God took a man on a mountainside, an old man, and gave him place.

I wonder sometimes if Abraham knew the gift of place on that day. If he knew he was destined for good things, a forefather of faith and many mentions in the canon. Or if he only stood there and just believed what God told him.

Romans says that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness (Rom. 4.22). The truth is my righteous anything has felt like a failure this year, but faith? Faith, not in the promise itself, but the giver of the promise? The promise of place, not for place's sake, but for the promise-giver? Faith I can muster up, if I try.

He said He's prepared good works for us (Eph. 2.10) and I have to believe that. When good anything feels very far off and very impossible today. He has prepared a place for us (John 14.2) and whether that is here, in this home, or in a new heaven and new earth, God said it.

Father, help me to know my place. That the very safest place for me is at the foot of the cross, as a temple of the Holy Spirit, as your daughter, as a discipler and learner, a friend. Most of all, help me to see Christ in His place, high and lifted up, seated on the throne, parenting a world, and following the direction of His Father, wholly unconcerned with His place even while He prepares a place for us.

Do the Work

If something is difficult for you consider two things: The first is it is difficult to do because it is worth doing.

I read a quote the other day, "Let’s allow our tables to distress at their own pace, as a result of years of real conversation and sometimes awkward – not so picture perfect – meals." There is something holistic and beautiful about the long obedience—parenting children, crafting a book, making a well-made meal, sanctification. These things, as Lindford Detweiler said, "do the work in us." We need them to do the work in us. Simply because they are difficult, doesn't mean they ought to be avoided.

The second thing to consider is the task is difficult for you because you are not the best person to do the work.

There is no shame in not being the right person for a particular task or creation or job. If you have something to say, but struggle to form the written words necessary to say it, consider that God might have designed you to live that something, instead of write it. If you yearn to make furniture or meals or art—and yet they don't come easily and somewhat naturally, consider that you are not meant to make furniture or art or meals. But perhaps you are meant to make people laugh or to be a good storyteller. Or perhaps you are simply meant to make a good cup of tea and set a place at your table for someone who needs to be listened to.

Jesus swept sawdust for 30 years before His public ministry.

That comforts me so many times in so many ways. Sweeping sawdust was what His Father called Him to do, faithful and steady, until His Father was ready for Him to do good works of a different sort.

Embrace the difficult work of today. It is working in you a more lasting treasure.

Righteousness and Peace

I was reading Psalm 85 this morning and it spoke of how righteousness and peace kiss each other and I thought, "How beautiful." Under the reign of God, justice and peace join together, are for one another, perfectly complementing one another. There is no hierarchy of one over the other. They simply are, and then they meet, and they join in intimacy.

God, help there be more evidence of that in my life.

Keeping Your Heart and Giving it Away

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Proverbs 4:23

It's a misquoted, misused, and abused little proverb that has given a lot of people a lot of heartache. Here's all it means:

Life happens, it springs forth out of you and me and everyone we know. Life is beautiful and messy and complicated and confusing and joyful. And it can be all those things without all those things being wrong or evil.

So keep your heart, know it, put it daily before the Lord, because you will create beauty with it, you will mess things up with it, and you will complicate life with it. But our hearts are not eternal and these angsts of life are not either.

When you guard your heart, guard its greatest treasure, Jesus alone. And trust that He is doing all the guarding necessary too.