From Eyes of Grace: Part One

I really wasn't sure how it was going to go.

I felt like we were behind where we normally were for tech week, I felt like I hadn't led well enough, and I felt unsure if it would live up to all my expectations.

I've been doing She Reads Truth devos through Lent, but I stopped at the newest study because it was on a topic I didn't find that interesting: Miracles. They're cool and all, but they feel far away, stuck in a time forgotten by the age of science and medicine. While I knew that they could happen today, I typically approached them skeptically, if at all.

And yet, I felt a compelling to read some of the missed days on Wednesday morning. A few things struck me as I looked over the familiar stories from the Gospels: the way that people who experienced the miracles didn't always understand them, the strange rage that the religious leaders expressed when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and how often Jesus responded to faith with healing. 

Part of the reason I'm skeptical is because I know it isn't that simple. Lack of healing is not a lack of faith. God's will for us often looks very different than ours. But there was an element of faith that I couldn't ignore.

It reminded me of some songs from Elevation Worship's newest album. There are lyrics like "I've seen you move/ you move the mountains/ and I believe/ I'll see you do it again." There are whole songs about God's blessing coming like the cloud in the Old Testament story that signified rain to the prophet. That song's chorus cries, "We receive your rain!"

So I prayed. About my stress, my doubts, my worries. Asking all the while that God would do not just what I expected, but more and beyond what I could imagine. I felt more peace at that moment, but it wasn't until a few hours later that it really hit me. I was going down the list of requests, praying as I drove to the show. Sound, lights, remembering lines, choreography, and then-- that God would be with them.

It floored me for some reason. God was going to be there. Present. His people would be gathered in His name, and He's promised to be with them. Of course it was going to be okay; the purpose of the whole show would be in the room in His people. 

I couldn't dismiss my fear no matter how hard I tried, yet in a moment He replaced it with faith. I felt Him with me there, and I knew He would be with us in every scene, every song.

And He was.

He was there as I watched my kids worship, as I felt the truth of the songs pulsing through my heart, as the Gospel drama gave me goosebumps. And He was there in the invitation. I felt it, so I prayed, "Please, move here. Move in this room. Bring people to life."

And He did. 

No, we can't measure things like this in terms of numbers. Success means only presenting the Gospel and letting God do the changing. But I saw God do miracles here, and it fills me with wonder. It fills me with hope because He is a good Father and He does move in wonderful and often unexpected ways.

And it fills me with love for the God who is with us and the people He gives us.

So, looking ahead with open hands, we receive Your rain. Do not what we expect, but what You will.

From the Cup

I had to make a strange request today; I went to Dunkin' Donuts and asked for an empty cup. Thankfully, due to the fact that I work there, they obliged and I had my prop for "Eyes of Grace", which I took back to church and put in the hands of one of our bow-tie-clad characters.

The request was strange because our cups are never given to us empty.

(Okay, this isn't from Dunkin')

As I've been wrestling with God this week, He keeps bringing me back to Jesus's cup. The one that He asked the Father to take away because it would be so painful to drink. Yet He did drink in the suffering because it was what His Father asked, and it would save the people He loved.

He drank the cup so that we don't have to--but maybe He also drank it to show us how. 

See, this week has been stressful to the max. Between tech week and finals and planning for Alaska, it feels like life is dragging me along at this point. Don't get me wrong; I love what I do. I wouldn't trade where I'm at for anything because I love these kids and this message and this art. But when everything feels like it's running past me, my first reaction is to take control of whatever I can get my hands on. And when it doesn't work? I let stress and fear and anxiety rob me of the joy of doing what I am called to do. I let it isolate me from community and push me further into being the kind of person I don't want to be.

As I've struggled with this, I've felt God pressing something upon me:

Drink the cup that is given.   

In one way, that means to take what is put in front of me and use it well.
But in a more specific way,  it means choosing to drink the cup I don't always want.

It means choosing to drink the cup of patience when what I want is control.
It means drinking gentleness when I want to be angry.
It means drinking kindness when I want my own way.
It means drinking trust when it feels like things aren't working.

More than that, it means accepting that I am not strong enough to drink this cup on my own. It means not just Christ going before me, but going with me. To bear what I can't and be what I can't be. It means letting go of the reins and letting Him do what He wills, not what I expect. 

In the midst of this I realized that the cup, although it is sometimes painful, is a gift. The gift of being given not what we want, but what we need. The gift of being reminded that we are not our own Savior. If we drink in full what God is placing in front of us, we will be different people on the other side; not the kind of people that we expected to be, but the kind of people we were created to be.

So as I go into tomorrow wishing we had more time to prepare, wishing I had done this or that differently, or wishing that I had been given a different cup, I remember that the cup given me is a gift. It is the gift of getting to stay late and work on lines, getting to interpret the Gospel in fresh ways, getting to put faces on Popsicle sticks and laugh like nobody's business. It is the gift of being in a community of students that constantly challenges, encourages, and stretches me in ways I never imagined. It is the gift of getting to discuss the things in my heart with the people in my heart, and it is good. 

So I'm trying to let go. To surrender my desire for control and accept what God has willed for me, not what I want for myself. Because in saying, "Thy will be done," He is changing our will to look like His. In fact, He is making us desire what is good for us because we don't always know what's best.

So I take this cup as a gift and pray for the strength to drink it in full. 

To the Guilty: War is Over

In light of my upcoming crazy summer of travel and the increasing itch to write, it's time to dust off this blog and pick it up again.

But I don't want to talk about travel or schedules or school. I want to talk about guilt.

Guilt. It's an ugly word, evoking nothing but negative feelings and downcast eyes. It's a weight strapped on our shoulders or hiding in our closets. 

It's something that I think I'm past over and over, but I've been realizing that it's far worse than I thought. I've carried guilt for most of my life. Sometimes over specific things I've done, but more often than not over things I haven't done. Over the kind of Christian I can't be, no matter how hard I try.

Growing up immersed in Christian culture, especially Southern Christian culture, we're made aware of guilt at a young age. This isn't all bad- we are sinners, and knowing that is part of how God saves us,

But there comes a point where it can be a bit dangerous. Where guilt becomes shame becomes legalism. As a kid, I was hyper-aware of what I should be doing, what I wasn't doing. I swung from extremes of guilt to extremes of self-righteousness, never sure where I should be. I grew up believing that, at best, God was disappointed with me, if not angry.

The point that I missed as a kid was that Jesus did not die to make me a good person. He died to bring me life. My salvation was never dependent on me.

Granted, to be a believer and have Christ within you will, inevitably, change you as it makes you more like Christ. And yes, there are certain things that teach us how to do that- discipleship, Bible study, worship. Our heart must match our hands, and vice versa. But the most that these things can ever do is orient us in the right direction because it is God Himself who does the changing.

When I don't make the cut, when I fail, when I run, when I choose myself over Him and over those around me- I tend to avoid Him because I fear that it will only make me feel guilty. I'm afraid He'll be disappointed that I'm such a mess...again.

But the God I find when I do come?

"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord double for all her sins." 

This passage is in Isaiah chapter 40, and it comes after 39 chapters of chaos. Isaiah has been telling the people that because of their sin God will give them up to the Assyrians. In the end He will bring the remnant back and crush their captors, but it's going to hurt.. They're going to lose it all.

Yet in the midst of all this, after all they've done, He speaks peace. The Israelites don't know what's coming; they're still waiting for the Messiah, and He's feeling farther away than ever. But us? We've seen the fulfillment of the promise. Jesus has come and done as He said He would.

War is over.

We don't have to feel guilty for all we aren't. We don't have to punish ourselves for all that we are. God will never be disappointed in us because He knows us intimately-good and bad.

And He calls us to more than obedience out of fear of not being good enough. He never asked us to earn His love, His favor, or His grace. Because if we're His, He gives it regardless of us. He gives grace when we don't ask, love when we don't want it, favor when we least deserve it. And although our experience of these things-our ability to see them-may change based on our relationship with Him, God Himself does not change.

I can't pretend like I still don't feel guilty. It's so ingrained in my understanding of faith that it won't be rooted out overnight. But I know that there's freedom to be found. And it's a freedom that offers more than moralism and more than selfish hedonism- it's a freedom that offers Jesus Himself.

From Finding Dory: Home

So, I saw Finding Dory for the first time the other day and it low-key wrecked me. I mean, sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-crowd-sobbing kind of wrecked, and for all the right reasons. If you haven't seen it yet, maybe don't keep reading, but if you have (or you don't care) carry on.

 There comes a point at one of the climaxes where Dory is left completely alone. She doesn't know what to do. She's lost everything, including hope that she'll find her parents. But then, she sees the shells, and she remembers. She remembers her mom telling her as a kid to follow the shells if she couldn't find her way home. As she begins to follow the line, she sees lines of shells going out in all directions, all leading to a little home deep in the kelp.

And then the moment we've all been waiting for. In the distance, her parents appear, and when they see her, they run (er...swim?). They embrace her, telling her that they had stayed all these years, knowing she'd come back. Dory starts trying to apologize for losing them, for forgetting, and yet they won't hear any of it. She's home.

Isn't that us? We run from God. We forget Him. Sometimes we get so far we don't even remember what we lost in the first place, we only know that something's missing.

We don't know that He hasn't moved. We don't know that He's been active, pursuing us, leaving us reminders to come home. 

Home has always been an idea close to my heart. It's always been something I've studied and sought for and hungered for.
I think I've realized that there's home and there's Home. 
Our home can be plural, and it can be places or people. Lee is home for me. Bayside is home for me. My family is home. My church family is home. My roommates and my friends are home. They're places where I belong, where I'm known and seen and I have a role. Places where my heart and dreams are safe.

But, unlike Home, they're not perfect (and they don't have to be).

Because Home is one person, one place.
I'll know I'm home when I hear those words, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Some people think they'll drop to their knees, or dance, or weep when they get there. But I think that maybe I'll run straight to Him because after all that time, I won't want to be apart ever again.

I know Christ is my home because He is the only one who knows me completely and loves me completely. He knows all the things I hide even from myself. He knows all the mistakes I've made, all the evil hidden within me. He was there for every moment of the darkest nights, and He was the only one who could bring me back into the light. He never runs, never fails, never leaves. He's more than I understand, more than I'll ever imagine, and sometimes it's hard to handle.

But I know that there's nowhere else where I belong perfectly because it's the place that I was created to be: with Him.  

Yet how often do I run Home, only to trip over my apologies for being away? How often do I forget His face, forget His words, forget His love? When I resurface from burying myself in busyness, why do I hide from the only One who can give me rest?

Maybe that's what life is, a constant being home and coming Home. Being a place for others to belong and seeking the One who you belong to. 

Where You Measure

During VBS, amidst all the rah, rah, rahs and the paper clips, we have a clear purpose; to tell the kids in our area about Jesus.

As a worker, Wednesday is an exciting day. It's the day we pile everyone in the sanctuary for the official Gospel presentation, and we give them a chance to respond. I missed it this year because I had to work, and so by the time I saw my co-leaders the first thing on my mind was to ask how it went.

Here's the thing: it's tempting to miss Jesus in the numbers. Not that there's anything wrong with counting-it can be so encouraging to hear the fruit of what God did this week-but there's a temptation when we measure success that way.

See, when we measure success by numbers, it's easy to think that if God doesn't move where you measure that He isn't moving at all. 

It's easy to think that if none of the kids in your group said they got saved that you didn't do enough. It's easy to keep the "better luck next year" mentality and write off the week as just "okay".

I say this because I do this. I get to Thursday night and I don't have any crazy amazing stories to tell and I wonder what went wrong.

But God's making me realize that I'm missing it.

What if He doesn't measure that way?
Whoever said that God works in ways we expect? (Plot twist: no one.)
I don't know what gave me the idea that He has to do exactly what I should do when and how I think He should do it. Last time I checked, He knows better than I do. Always.

Whether I see Him move or not doesn't change the fact that God is sovereign-and He's always moving. 

And to think I almost missed it. My team may not have a number for our success this week, but we have a girl who knows that I love her no matter how many times she jumps on my back when I'm not looking. We have a boy who knows that even though he's shy, Jesus sees him and knows him.

There are 18 kids whose lives I've had the honor to intersect with, and I'm foolish enough to forget that God knew exactly who would put on that pink or green name tag Monday. 

And if God is working here, why would He stop when they walk out the door tomorrow? Why would He stop when I walk into work Saturday morning?

He won't stop making all things for our good because He is good, and I choose to trust that He knows what He's doing. 

"Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." (Psalm 139:14)