It is true that God's love is magnificent, yes. But it is also true that our capacity for the same sort of love is not magnificent. We are frail creatures, we people. We are made from dirt and breath, earth and wind, flesh and spirit.

He out-loves us, yes, but only because He can. He reaches in, deeply in, and tears bone from our body, makes something new through our pain. He breathes heavy on us, sometimes a furious wind, toppling us over, sometimes a breeze, soothing and comforting. But he always creates. He always plans.

And this I take comfort in today.

He plans.
He creates.

There is nothing in me that He did not know about in advance. There is nothing in me that surprises him. There is no part of this wretched flesh that He did not craft to perfectly reflect Him. There is no part of my intricate spirit that He did not fit to communicate Him. There is nothing in me that He is ashamed of and no part of me at which He shakes His head, afraid I will never get it.

He plans and creates and is not surprised by me.

There is nothing about me that is unlovable to Him. He is not afraid that I will never learn the extent of His love. He knows there is all the time in the world because He has numbered my days and my eternity, that too.

There is nothing that He has not provided for me and the things He has not provided are not because He does not see my need, but because He is acutely aware of my need for Him alone.

He provides and loves.

It is true that He is careful in His watching over of me, but it is also true that He is delighted when I am content to watch Him. He is not bored by me and He is most delighted in me when I am not bored by Him. He is creative in his lessons, crafting them for my good and His glory. He is unending in His methods, never finished with my education.

He is a gentle and kind friend, a protective and wise father, a just and merciful teacher, a loving and forgiving savior.

He is.

He surpasses.

He extends.

He encompasses.

This frees me to trust. Fully. Expectantly. Happily. Freely.

"There is therefore now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Romans 8.1

It is not lost on me that the last of the fruits of the spirit mentioned is self-control. What I didn't expect is that this would be the most difficult fruit for me to eat and also bear.

People are prone to affirmation when it comes to commentary on one's goodness or their kindness, but rarely do I hear someone say, "Wow, your self-control is really stellar. You've got it going on in that department."

Why?

Because you can't see my self-control unless I give you opportunity and opportunities like that are few. Before you can see me exercise my will power you have to know that there's a struggle of my wills.

And I don't let people see those things.

Because the cup itself wasn't evidence enough,
I wrote myself a note just to make sure I know how weak I am.

Oh, you know about my Lenten fasts and my coffee addiction and perhaps you're familiar with someone's tendencies to rage or their ego, but Lent is cool to celebrate and there's no way I can hide how very much I love coffee and all things coffee. But what about the things I do in secret? At home alone? In the car when someone cuts me off? That stuff is not cool to share and I hide it at all costs.

Self-preservation is also a way of self-control, did you know that? We preserve self by controlling self--by being in charge of our actions to the bitter end. I choose to fast coffee. I choose when to exhibit my road rage. I choose to whom and when I let my mouth run aimlessly. So I am still controlling self, but I am not bearing fruit.

These days I am thinking a lot (a lot a lot) about what compels me. Self-preservation has been the default mode for my entire life: how can I save self in this situation? How can I experience the least amount of pain and how can I control this situation in such a way that I will be seen as bearing fruit?

The more I experience the love of Christ, the more I find myself compelled by a different sort of control. And this is what I think Paul was talking about in Galations. He wasn't preaching a white-knuckled tumble into heaven, making it there on the merit of our good works and will-power. He was saying get the Spirit and you'll bear the fruit. Trees don't white knuckle their way into bearing fruit, the fruit is the natural effect of a healthy tree.

When Jesus said "I'm giving you the Holy Spirit and he'll guide you into all truth," he wasn't providing a warden to keep us in bounds. He was saying, "Hey, listen, all the truth is a lot of truth and I know you can't do it on your own. I don't want you to do it on your own. I want you to have a fully compelling, fully inhabitant spiritual force behind your every action. I want to give you something so that you're reminded that gritting your teeth and bearing it, doesn't produce lasting fruit."

There is nothing self-induced about self-control. There is nothing self-controlling about self-control.

There is life in the Spirit and a sweet surprising love that rises up within us and empowers us to do what is most natural to us: bear fruit.

day eight of 30 day challenge put down by one Jason Alan Churchill Thorburne Morris.

Well, technically it will be after midnight when I post this, so does that mean I missed a day?

Oh well, I'm not a legalist.

Oh wait, maybe I am?

See, I've ruffled some feathers the past two days and I'm a sensitive enough person that 5% bad feedback and 210% positive feedback doesn't even out. I'm also sensitive about my math skills, so please don't correct my wildly absurd percentages.

I mean that I'm a legalist in the sense that when my lifestyle or theology feels barged in on by others, all the latent pride in me bursts out inside and complains to the highest bidder about how right I am and how wrong whoever else is. They are that 5% in case you didn't know.

I have always known legalism to be my besetting sin (and the sin from which all my other besetting sins branch off). My parents were generous when I was young, they called it stubbornness. I believe it was termed "rebellion" when I was a teenager. After age 20 it was all legalism though, a long stubborness in a different direction. Still the same sin, though. Still that same, I'm right, you're wrong and you're not changing my mind about it.

One of the things I am so grateful to be learning about God's character is His unchangeableness. He is unsurprised by my sin, my faults, my failures or my mishaps and He does not change His will one iota when I manifest one of the aforementioned. My pastor here says, "God's doesn't drive an ambulance. He isn't surprised by your accident."

But another thing I am learning about God is that He does not reveal one iota of His plan to us until His timing is right.

Which means that sometimes we don't have the whole picture.

Which means that I get it wrong sometimes, you do too.

Which means that though the Word does not change, His revelation to us through it might and should!

Which means that sometimes, we just put one foot in front of the other, believing with all our hearts that we're doing the right thing, only to find that there might have been a better thing and He will lead us into that too.

He will lead us into all righteousness. I love that.

I love that He is holding reveal party after reveal party, unfolding pieces of life and goodness and His word and theology and heaven, small glimpses that keep us putting one foot in front of the other in faith. He's that good.

So I am a legalist at heart, holding on tightly to theologies on which I've staked my life, but be patient with me: He's revealing slowly.

Too much would be too much for this soul.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,
for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak,
and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine;
therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
John 16:12-15

day five of 30 day challenge put down by one Jason Alan Churchill Thorburne Morris.

He makes all things new and for a long time I think that this means he exchanges the old for the new, out with the old car, in with the new car, out with the old house, in with the new house. Circumstances don't make things all better, but newness doesn't hurt.

I think this every time someone succeeds in life, in ways that I dream of succeeding: someday I won't be doing this and He makes all things new, I won't always live like this. I think this every time I see another friend walk down the aisle and my heart constricts with the simultaneous thoughts: when will it be my turn and He makes all things new, these days will be exchanged for new days.

It's 70 degrees in the Dallas area today and while she sleeps on a chair in the middle of our yard, I pull all of our plants off the front sill to the back porch.

I clip and shift, cup dirt in my hands and push it around roots. I pile the bottom of containers with rocks and layer soil on top. Some get moss; some get chopsticks and strings, keeping them standing tall and strong; some are clipped off just above the root and the root is all I plant, these are the kind I worry about the most. Can the roots be enough to push up green and living things again?

Six months ago a part of me died. You may laugh here when I tell you it was only because the plants that I love so much, the things that kept giving life when I felt mine wilting in every direction, they died. All of them. It took a month of driving through the continental United States, a month of conversations and moving, a month of different temperatures, but at the end of that month, my plants were wilted, broken, shriveled and dead. They couldn't handle the move that I so desperately wanted.

I wept over one. I know. Pitiful. But it felt like just one more thing that was going to have to start new, brand new. And this is the picture I have of God in September. He kills and then gives something as a consolation prize: I know that hurt, but look what I have for you now!

And that's not a bad picture. Ask anyone in the world if that is a bad picture and I think they will agree that it is not. That sort of thing feels good. It makes the pain and the pleas feel a little worth it.

But it's a hopelessly incorrect picture of God. And this is what I learn today when I pull out the Jade plant for his grooming. He, whose leaves were shriveled and dying just four months ago, whose stem was brown and dry, there at the top of his body are dozens of green shoots. And there, at his roots, there is a fallen leaf who has taken root himself. And I learn that God is not in the business of exchanging, of giving and taking our lesser or best. He is in the business of restoration and redemption.

He makes things new and sometimes he makes them new again and again and again.

I feel this every day in my heart, even if I cannot articulate it. I feel that all the hopes and dreams and plans haven't changed, but the hope I have placed in them has. And though the circumstances have changed a bit, he is not fixing my heart by making my circumstances new. He is fixing my heart by making me new. There was death involved, wilting and shriveling, but bursting in me there is life involved, hope renewed, joy restored.

"You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!" Psalm 30.11, 12

Texas has been a state of quiet the past week. Today the temperatures crept above freezing, the snow crept slowly back toward the shadows, and traffic crept along slowly on every highway. Even I crept, with my New York plates and head knowledge of how to handle the slush and a two-wheel drive car. We are so puffed up with can-do when the elements are right, when the rug is pulled out from beneath though, we crumble under the unknown.

I've been thinking about fear a lot recently. The melting pot of life I'm in right now has the right ingredients for thoughts like these. People moving away, spring love springing forth, new jobs, friends suffering under the weight of sin and their own nature, we are faced with an opportune fear in every direction.

Even if we feel invincible, we can bet that there are circumstances that make us so. Pull those circumstances away and the fear bounds in.

For the entirety of my Christian life, I have viewed life like a maze, a choose your own adventure story. Which way should we go? Which is the right? Which will keep us safest? Happiest? Most successful? Most complete? Most humble? Pick your superlative and then choose your direction, and don't be surprised if you come to a dead-end---turn around and try another way. The concept that God was sovereign tickled my fancy, but never settled fully in my heart: what about my responsibility in it all?

This week I've been thinking about labyrinths, that ancient tradition of what is not a maze at all, but instead of a meditative walk in every direction with no dead-ends. The circumstances are such that you cannot make a wrong turn. You are intended for God's glory and your good--you enter in one way, walk one way, and leave one way. You cannot get lost because He cannot lose you.

I feel like that a lot this past few months, a certain confidence rises in me when I hear people talking about choices or when I think of my own. I think: I cannot get lost. I cannot. The circumstances might seem hopeless and this path I walk along might seem eternal, but I am not forgotten and I am not lost.

When my spirit faints within me,
you know my way. Psalm 142.3

I guess we don't need grace if we don't first miss the mark and I guess I'm learning that.

Since I moved here I've been starting at the beginning in so many ways, but perhaps the most tangible of them is the original beginning, Genesis. My new Bible still looks new everywhere but the first 11 chapters. These are marked and wrinkled, coffee and tear stained. When you are left staring at the floor of your faith, there is nowhere to go but up and nowhere to start but here.

Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Cain and Abel, first sins and serpents, skins and sacrifices--this is the stuff God pulls back the curtains on for us. We are characters in a story of unbelievable occurrence. I mean that. Even if I have always believed what to you is pure foolishness, at the core of me it was still just a story, a telling of something that affected me and yet didn't affect me at all. What do we know, after all, of animal skins and sheep offerings?

This week I am thinking of my sins and faults. I am parked on the ways in which I have failed and the reticence of my heart to change. I am walking with Adam and Even in the garden, gathering leaves to cover my shame and hiding from the One who sees it all anyway.

For so long I have been acutely aware of the curse, the eternal struggle we have against the design of a Creator who knew better. I am familiar with every part of my sin and the consequences. And I am learning about grace, I am. I am learning that my real wrestle is not really against my sin, but against accepting the righteousness of Christ that covers it.

But this week I think about the animal skins, the blood shed, and the perfectly formed provision for our faults.

Because we are all legalistic at heart, fair in principle and meticulous in our categorizing, the wrestle is against the mindset that the punishment fits the crime. We do not execute for stolen cookies and broken hearts and we do not slap the hands of murderers and thieves. But I think, even more, we struggle to believe that God is keeping track of our sins only so that His provision is always exceeding the crime.

They were naked and ashamed, He sacrificed and covered.

Exceeding their sin's wrong with the largeness of His grace. In a perfect way. Providing what they lacked with a picture of what His goodness would look like time and time and time again.

He was preparing them for the gospel even then. Covering them with His righteousness even then.

This week I land on this: every awareness of my sin is another opportunity for me to see how God extends grace to me through his provision for me.

I stumble around on Jeremiah 17 these days, and by stumble I mean it catches me off guard, teasing me with how much I think I have it all figured out and how much I really don't: I trip over words like prosperity and cursed and no worries.

I am not afraid of poverty. Really. I'm not. Peanut butter and jelly are familiar friends and I can pinch a penny as far as you can throw one. I am happy to buy used and on sale and even not buy at all (ask me the last time I bought a stitch of clothing?). I've lived budgeting every cent for years on end and no matter what, I never felt completely covered. Provision was an unattainable goal for me--getting by creatively became my focus and the worry that I wouldn't became my favorite friend.

Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good (prosperity) come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

It is strange how we do not see prosperity when it comes, strange how we are always looking for tomorrow's manna today. Strange how every day feels like a parched place. We are like the Israelites: maybe this will be the day our Messiah comes?

Six months ago I let go of the worry. I sold the table and every book. I let fear out the front door and didn't even give it a proper send off. I determined that I was going to live until the money ran out and I was going to do so with joy and expectation. I was not going to work my fingers to the bone and I was not going to love my bank account or my budget more than Jesus or people. I was going to pay my bills, not go into debt, and spend my energy and my heart on seeing every penny as provision.

It surprised me today when I checked my bank balance.

I mean, it really surprised me. I thought: how is that possible? How is it possible that I have spent my savings and made one third of what I normally make and there is still an abundance in my account?

Here's how: my perception of abundance has changed radically in the past half year--and it is not attached to a dollar amount or a stocked refrigerator or bills paid or Starbucks once a week.

Abundance, I am learning, is everywhere, but maybe we are too busy trusting in our strength to see it. Maybe we are like shrubs in the desert, sticking our roots down in parched soil, holding on for dear life, immovable and unfruitful.

Maybe moving to Texas was foolish, maybe, but I was moving. Maybe quitting my job was foolish, but I was trusting. Maybe living off of little for six months was ridiculous, but I was desperate. And here is what I have learned: my strength is not trustworthy and my accounting does not insure prosperity. Even with money in the bank, as long as I was trusting in me to put it there, I was dwelling in a parched land.

I don't have this down, I promise. But I am learning it and I am learning it all the more because never have I felt the provision of Jesus like I have felt it in this season. I am still not rich, but when someone says to me today, "Lo, you're POOR. I know you're poor!" what catches in my heart is not the fear that I will always be poor or frustration at that, but instead a strong and joy-filled rebuttal: I'm not! I'm rich! I have enough, more than I ever have before.

*This is also a good time to tell you that today was my first day at Sower of Seeds as their full time graphic artist. Which means, yes folks, my six months here is nearly up and I'm staying in Texas! Parched land and all!

I have been thinking about this post for a few weeks, "What am I going to say on December 30? What can I shout about all the ways God has changed me this year and the ways He is working in me? What pithy thing can I say to encapsulate 2010 and prove to you all that I am a new thing?"

This morning I find it hard to wake up. I find it hard to start my day, staying in my sweatshirt and pink plaid flannels past lunch time. True, I was working til the eleventh hour, handing in things by deadlines, but there's no excuse for my Kiss Me I'm Irish sweatshirt and grumbling over the lack of coffee. My head already hurts.

I start a blog. I stop mid-first-sentence.

I start another one. I am lying through my teeth.

I delete them both and take a shower.

It's not that there aren't a million and five things going through my head to tell you. It's not that God hasn't pulled through in the most magnificent and simple ways. It's not that I haven't been torn down and built up in ways that make me weep. And it's not that I don't want to tell you those things. I do.

It's just that today feels weak and humbling. Sad and forced.

And I'm somehow a little grateful for that.

My exercise this afternoon was to ask myself seven pertinent questions about 2010, declare it over and then ask five pertinent questions about 2011 and declare it begun. And I did it, wrote it all down, scrawled in the notebook that tucks in my Bible. And I'm glad for it, maybe at some point I'll tell you what I declared this year to be, what theme will be the making and undoing of me for the next 365 days.

But not today.

Today I am just reminded that God isn't bound by new year days or 52 weeks or time or declarative themes at all. Today I am just reminded of all the things I hated at the beginning of this year, God himself included, and how He has surprised me at every turn. I don't even remember New Year's Eve 2010. I remember the new year of my heart that happened so many, many times this year. I remember moments when I would come face to face with my wickedness and weakness, and shrug my shoulders at the hopelessness of it all.

I don't remember my resolutions, I remember giving up.

So maybe that's why today hits me so hard, squarely between the temples, pounding in my head--my resolutions stink of the flesh.

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Galations 3.2-5

Today is a giving up day. Today is a day when I intentionally acknowledge that I cannot begin this in the Spirit and perfect it through my flesh. My dreams, my goals, my hopes, my aspirations, my spiritual disciplines--these keep me perfecting the flesh. These keep me returning to a god in a box and not the Maker of heaven and earth, Father of all good things, Savior to my deepest doubts and most secreted fears.

Today is an ending day. But it's not the only one. Every day of my life is an ending day.

And a beginning day.

And that's the truth about 2010.

He Defends His Cause

"He defends His cause."

That's what the heading to Psalm 74 says in my bible. Then David goes on to give God a litany of reasons he feels He is not defending His cause: your foes have roared; they set your sanctuary on fire; they profane your name; we don't see any signs; why do you hold back your hand?

I wept with a friend the other night, a litany of reasons making us sure God is not defending his cause. There has been a burden on my heart for weeks now for another friend, one prayer fighting for space amongst the others: why, oh God, won't you pull through for them? I get an email last night asking: where is God in the middle of this?

I won't deny there's a flame of hope in me making it easier for me to have faith, and I won't deny that at the thought of the gospel my tears are close at hand, it is easy for me to see God these days. But I'm not so far from three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, that I forget kicking the tires of my totaled car or shouting at God for His lack of provision. I haven't forgotten the lump in my throat walking through the doors every single Sunday, the guilt accompanying a girl without faith. I'm not so far from asking "Why do you hold back your hand?"

I remember that.

Another translation captions Psalm 74 this way: He remembers His cause.

What that means is, "I remember how hard this is; I remember how difficult it is to believe in Me; I remember your pangs and your tears and the pain that accompanies all of these questions. I remember you."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sometimes I think God's cause is to bring heaven to earth. I think His cause is to prove to us that we are peons, but He is gracious to us anyway. Sometimes I think God's cause, His end-goal, is to establish a grand kingdom with Him as King. Sometimes I think He is heading up his army of pro-bono volunteers to work this grand plan of His, kept secret from us until the very end.

But today, this week, this month, I remember that I am His cause. I am part of His kingdom on earth, part of the army who prays, "...on earth as it is in heaven." I am his cause and Jesus is the way.

And He remembers me.

And He shapes and crafts these hard things through which I walk for me.

And He defends me. My squabbles and failures and falters and wrong turns--He defends against people who might object to them being a part of His design for me.

I know how selfish this sounds, how egotistical I must be to believe that God isn't more concerned with wars and rumors of wars, starving children and world politics. But this is why I am a Christian after all. Because He has dipped Himself down to earth and made Himself real to me. Because I haven't been forgotten.

Because thousands of years ago He delivered a message to a young girl-child, impregnated that single girl, birthed a baby in the middle of squalor, raised that boy in the sight of people who wanted to murder him, nailed that man to a cross and accomplished His plan for His Son.

Because He defends His cause and we are His cause. We are the cause.