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The Cake That Cost Me

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Even though the mix and the icing cost less than $10, my son and I made a costly cake today. It cost him humility and responsibility; it cost me sacrificial love and forgiveness.

Over the years as a family, we have learned about breaches and repairs, connection and correction. We know that we will not love each other perfectly, but we do seek to love each other well. Even with all that knowledge, we hurt one another. I am surprised how much those hurts smart.

More than a wound from a friend or a congregant, wounds in our family sting, less from lack of love and more from excess of love. Breaches with those whom we work the hardest at loving, for whom sacrifice the most, and with whom we spend the bulk of our time sting more. From a rational standpoint this makes sense: vulnerability is proportional to strength of love.

This family thing is both sensitive and strong. And I am so thankful it is both.

Today, some big feelings were felt. Some unintentionally hurtful words were said. Space was given. Repair was needed. But today, I needed my Redeemer to help me with the repair. He was so gracious to remind me of a few things that I know in my head but needed to be reminded in my heart.

Souls Don’t Open Up on a Schedule

I am continually shocked at the timetable of souls. We don’t get notices alerting us of construction in the human heart. We give ample space for connection in our home. We try really hard to be intentional with family meals, solo times with each kid, adventures, and check-ins. It’s easy to slip into a version of the parenting prosperity gospel (if we do these things well, our children won’t experience pain rather than we do these things to provide space for our children to process the pain they are promised in this life). But souls don’t always crack during the allotted crevices of time. In fact, they very rarely do. Those times do provide the security of relationship which fosters a home where fissures and fractures are free to show themselves.

Souls need space to surface. And presenting emotions are usually not the source. Deep-watered souls require time for deep-water exploration (Prov. 20:5). These things cannot be rushed; thus things must be cancelled, schedules rearranged.

After an initial sense of being inconvenienced and the annoyance that hurts surface when I am most fatigued, God was so gracious to remind me that fractures are really invitations for deeper fusion.

Seeming Inconveniences are Subtle Invitations

This was not how I imagined our Saturday going. It was such a long week, I was hoping for some peaceful alone time. These were my initial thoughts. But God was not surprised by our Saturday. In fact, he had even prepared me through a few simple phrases that jumped out at me in my prayer book: Lord, make “able to love, strong to suffer, steady to persevere.” I’ve been praying these words multiple times a day for most of the week. And God graciously set up an opportunity for me to practice them today.

I think of Christ and the hemorrhaging woman. Every one else was put off by Jesus’s stopping in the midst of the crowd. Jairus’s daughter needed healing, and time was of the essence. But Jesus had another daughter to see to, one whom wasn’t even aware she was a delighted in daughter yet (Luke 8:43-48). Love lets itself be “inconvenienced.” Love will take detours to help the one in whom it delights.

Love Absorbs, but it Still Addresses

I have learned so much from the reunion of Jesus and Peter on the shores of Galilee. Peter was more overcome with joy at seeing Jesus than he was initially impeded by the guilt he carried over denying him three times. Thus, in his particularly dramatic fashion, he strips off his cloak, jumps in the water, and gives Jesus a wet welcome!

Jesus intentionally prepares a fish breakfast over a charcoal fire (which was a subtle recreation of the scene in which Peter denied him). Even though Jesus’s agape love has absorbed Peter’s failure, he still addresses it with him. He does Peter the favor of not pretending that something had not happened. A relational breach had occurred. This was not for Jesus’s sake; it was for the good of Peter. Three times in love, Jesus went there, offering Peter a chance to completely own and be forgiven of his three-fold failure (John 21: 9-19).

Peter needed to see the care in Christ’s eyes. He also needed to see the kind of love that absorbed the real relational costs he created. Such an eye-to-eye, face-to-face encounter transformed him.

Jesus was torn that I might have the ability to repair with my children. Through him, I have access to costly forgiveness, agape love that absorbs but still addresses, and love that makes itself vulnerable.

That cake we made today? It was costly. But it was nothing compared to the cross. In fact, in little moments like these, I am able to act out for my children (and reinforce for myself) the glories of the gospel. The Apostle Paul calls it filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ (Col. 1:24). Today, for us, it looked like processing over tears, taking our tired, beat-up souls to the grocery store together, and baking a cake as an act of redemptive repair.

Loving these children is changing me. It presses me into the One who loves perfectly. It invites me into his pain. It also invites me his absolute joy of repair and reconnection.

Addendum: we ate the costly cake tonight together as a family. The cake was scrumptious. The look on my son’s face as we enjoyed it together was far better!

Followers, Not Admirers

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We are approaching Easter weekend. Outside of Christmas, these days commemorating the death and resurrection are among the most approachable and accessible to the watching world.

For at least a few days, even those who would not consider themselves devout slow down to admire Jesus. While this is a beautiful access point, it was never Jesus’s end goal in going to the Cross. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard, Jesus does not want admirers, he wants followers.

Born & Bored on the Same Day

People love a show; we always have. I remember being a little girl and watching the circus train arrive in our small town on the Jersey Shore. We would watch them unload the animals and scatter hay all over the muddy, trodden grounds. There was such a sense of eager anticipation that I thought my tiny heart would burst.

Entirely too much candy and popcorn would be consumed. There would be a few minutes of wonder. And then, we would head home and promptly forget about it for a calendar year.

Annie Dillard notices a similar tendency in the human heart in her book Teaching A Stone to Talk. She describes the crowds of people she joined to watch a full solar eclipse on Mount Adams. She remembers the screams of wonder, shock, and delight as the sun went dark. As shocking as it was to experience something so other-worldly together, she was equally shocked at how quickly everyone moved on:

“I remember now: we all hurried away. We were born and bored at a stroke. We rushed down the hill. We found our car; we saw the other people streaming down the hillsides; we joined the highway traffic and drove away.”

I fear that my heart often responds the same to the events of Easter each year: the build up, the anticipation, the emotion, the wonder, the disassembling and moving on.

We dress up; we prepare an extra full worship band; we up our signage game. Then we move on as admirers rather than pick up our crosses as followers. We are tempted to treat the resurrection of Christ as a day worth noting rather than the revolutionary day that it is. This day we remember, this day when a dead Savior breathed again, conquering death, this day demands a lifelong response not a check box on a response card.

Followers vs. Admirers

Pastor/poet George Herbert captures this conundrum we face at Easter so well in his poem “Easter (II)” :

“Can there be any day but this, 
Though many suns to shine endeavor?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.”

An admirer says this day is significant and moves on. A follower says there is no day but this. According to Kierkegaard, “An admirer…keeps himself personally detached. He fails to see that what is admired involves a claim upon him.” He goes on to say the following convicting words about admirers of Christ:

“The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in word he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, will not reconstruct his life, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires. Not so the follower. No, No. The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires.”

I long to be a follower, not a mere admirer. I don’t want to be born and bored on the same day. I want to be born and bored through by the reality of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

In the words of the Apostle Paul, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinth. 15:19-20).

The right response to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is to hidden in life, death, and resurrection:

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live now in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Access Goes Both Ways: Thoughts on Triune Love

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I have an admission and accompanying apology to make.

I am that girl that has to be reminded to respond to an invitation. And I don’t mean one or two reminders. Evite and Paperless post need to stalk me via text and email multiple times before I reply. I think I have a mild allergy to calendaring and date-remembering.

One invitation won’t do for a girl like me who is so easily distracted by all the daily demands. What is true for small invitations like baby showers and birthday parties is also true for invitations from God.

Unfortunately, God has to send me multiple push notifications before I begin to pay attention to the invitations he is continually extending to me. Fortunately, God is the most gracious host. He patiently pursues me and points me back to the invitation at hand until I finally respond.

The Love Within the Trinity

God has been inviting me for a few months to come and check out the love that exists within the Trinity. He has been using the poetry of St. John of the Cross and the conversations between Jesus and his friends (the Upper Room discourse) and Jesus and his Father (the high priestly prayer of John 17) to show me a fullness of love I could never have imagined. The little flecks of Triune love that I have glimpsed show all the best human love to be flat and fickle in comparison.

Even as he is facing the imminent cross, Jesus is still able to bask in Triune love:

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him…I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17: 1-5).

Jesus left this fullness to come and make a way for us to be invited back into it! St. John of the Cross poetically captures this love in his poem “Of the Incarnation” :

“I have no will but yours,
the son to the father replied.
My glory is all in this:
I do, and you decide…

I go to be close to the bride
and to take on my back (for it’s strong)
the weight of the wearisome toil
that bent the poor back for so long.

To make certain-sure of her life
I’ll manfully die in her place,
and drawing her safe from the pit
present her alive to your face.”

In the Upper Room discourse, Jesus says something astounding to his disciples:

“If anyone love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).

I’ve had to reread it multiple times in the past few weeks to believe it. Jesus told his disciples that the Trinity would come and make its home in them. Do you hear that mutuality?

As St. John of the Cross so poetically captured, Jesus died to make a way for us to have access to the love of the Trinity (from which and for which we were made and from which we were severed by our sin). But he also said that the Trinity wanted access to our hearts and lives.

Mutuality of Invitation

Jesus’s stance towards those who trust in his life, death, and resurrection is invitation. He invites us back into the Trinitarian love for which and from which we were born. The Apostle Paul lived in a state of wonder at these unbelievable invitations: Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27) and our lives hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3: 3-4).

But the Triune God also wants to make his home in us. As C.S.Lewis so beautifully writes in The Screwtape Letters, “He cannot ravish; he can only woo.” He waits for invitations into deeper parts of our hearts and lives. As Os Guinness writes in The Allure of Gentleness, “The human will is perhaps the one thing in the universe, because it is so precious and important, that God respects ultimately.”

The more God invites me to gaze into the beauty of the Trinity, mysterious as it is, the more I am sensing his patient presence in my own heart. I sense him eagerly waiting to be given access to more of me: my thoughts, my hidden shame and fears, my time, my tears, talents, time, and treasures.

I don’t think I realized until recently that I have been keeping the fullness of the Trinity cramped in the hallway of my soul. Such a large love needs full access to every nook and cranny of my life and heart. Letting such a large love and such an exposing light into areas of darkness seems scary until I realize that it is both opportunity and invitation. As long as the Trinity is crammed into a hallway, the life coming out of my life will be muddled, at best. But when God has access to all of me, his light will shine more brightly for his glory.

“If your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light” (Luke 11:35-36).

What an incredible invitation God constantly extends to us. May we respond in humility, awe, and obedience!

Living in His Largesse

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Largesse is not a word we use often. In fact, most of us have no clue that it means, “generosity in bestowing gifts upon others.” While the word is distant, it bears great relevance to the life of a Christ follower.

Largesse

I was reintroduced to the word and its accompanying concept when I recently reread A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I probably read this book twelve times as a child, but the story struck me in different places as an adult.

Sara, a formerly doted-upon and beloved daughter now orphaned, fights to remember her identity even as she lives as a starving maid in a decrepit attic.

“If I was a princess – a real princess, ” she murmured, “I could scatter largess to the populace. But even if I am only a pretend princess, I can invent little things to do for people…I’ll pretend that to do things people like is like scattering largess. I’ve scattered largess.”

Sara lives faithfully scattering her largess despite her poverty. After she is adopted by a wealthy neighbor, she continues to show largess.

The Largesse of the Lord

Long before the 12th century when the word became popularly used, the Triune God has been living with largesse.

Creation itself is an incredible act of largesse, an overflow of the fullness of love and creativity within the three persons of the Trinity (Gen. 1:27-28).

God’s early act of sacrificing an animal to clothe our fig-laden forebears is an act of largesse (Gen. 3: 21).

God’s promise-pregnant initiation toward Abram who lived in a city of moon-worshippers was an act of largesse (Gen. 12: 1-3).

God’s continued covenant keeping toward a continually covenant-breaking people was largesse (Ex. 34: 6-9).

I could go on and on about the Lord’s acts of largesse, as his every interaction with his fallen humanity is an act of mercy. However, his largesse culminates in his lowering of himself to us in the incarnation. In Jesus Christ, God emptied himself of the glory that enabled his largesse (John 17:1-2). He became a servant and did exactly what the little princess Sara Crews sought to do (Phil. 2: 1-11). He lived with largesse out of perfect obedience to the Father. Even when he was starving in the wilderness and being tempted by his Father’s sworn enemy, he responded as one who knew his true identity as the Son of God, the prince of peace (Luke 4).

God, the Father, showed largesse in sending God, the Son. God, the Son showed largesse in sending God, the Holy Spirit to be with us in the already/not yet of the kingdom of God (John 14: 15-21).

Learning to Live in His Largesse

I know these realities factually and theologically (clearly, I just spouted out a few examples). But I have still often lived like an orphaned pauper. I have forgotten that I have full access to the abundance of God (which is intended not to be hoarded selfishly but rather to shed abroad in smaller acts of largesse).

I am learning that I don’t look like the Lord in his tendencies towards largesse because I am wildly uncomfortable with receiving his largesse. It’s hard to let him hold my gaze. It’s exposing to sit under such a steady and powerful stream of love. It feels vulnerable to be delighted in without protective layers of self-justification or merit to shield me from the warmth of such love.

But he keeps pulling me in, gently and patiently. He keeps loving me an everlasting love, and such love is slowly shaping me. I am more aware of my entitlement which arrogantly sees his acts of largesse as a form of payment I think I have earned.I am more aware of the small little acts of largesse I used to not notice (a particularly beautiful flower, a sweet smile from one of my sons, a hawk soaring overhead).

Lately, I am blown away by this act of his largesse: he is helping me live in his largesse. And it is a spacious place, no matter how tightening or trying circumstances.

On Sending Sons

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Everyone goes out of their way to prepare you for parenthood. At baby showers, new parents gratefully receive all the necessary supplies (and some precious, though unnecessary accoutrements). In countless conversations, new parents have to pick through loads of unsolicited advice to mine out the gems. But few people prepare you for the sending season.

If I had to whittle down the innumerable stages of parenting into three seasons, I would choose receiving, shaping, sending. The receiving season is poignant and powerful whether it happens suddenly and seemingly effortlessly or is a painful and involved process of waiting. The sending stage seems to come suddenly even though it’s out there lingering all along. We know that one day, these children we have received and have spent decades intentionally shaping (and being shaped by) will likely be independent in some form or fashion. But the shaping season is so involved, so time-consuming, so all-encompassing, that it rarely allows us to look up as the far-off sending point approaches with haste.

Lately, the Lord has been lifting my eyes often to the sending season. I have found myself as weepy and thin-souled as I did during those early days of receiving these sons. We will be doing something normal and necessary in the shaping season (chores, driving to sports practices, eating dinner) and my soul and sight will suddenly shoot out back to the receiving and then forward to the sending season.

I’ll be folding huge, mens-sized sweatpants. Suddenly, I am remembering the days when their entire wardrobes fit into one small basket. Then, I am imagining them avoiding laundry in college and wearing one pair of sweatpants ad nauseam. Then I am crying and treasuring up the days.

Or, I’ll be driving them to school, listening to their silly banter or helping them with vocabulary. Suddenly, I am remembering the days when they learned a new word. Then, I am thinking of how quiet (and clean) my car will be one day. Next, I am a puddle.

Yesterday, at church, my husband (who is also my pastor), mentioned John 20:21 in passing: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” It was a passing point, not even a tertiary point of his sermon; however, it is looming large on my heart and in my mind.

I know there are dangers of forcing human experience onto the godhead. I know that God speaks anthropomorphically as a concession and condescension to our limited natures. I know that God exists outside the constraints of time. But I keep thinking of that interchange. The Father sent the Son. The son leaves the Father.

Realities of Sending

  1. The sending informs the shaping. Before creation was spoken into existence, God knew Christ would take the path of the Cross. Jesus needed no shaping, as he was and is and will be as he is. We, however, as adopted children of God, require unthinkable amounts of shaping. God’s shaping of his people hinged upon the sending of his Son. My shaping of my sons is informed by the reality that they are to be sent out. I am shaping my spouse to stay and my children to be sent. Keeping the sending (and the Sent One, Christ) on the forefront allows me to enjoy the days I have with them and to invest intentionally and sacrificially in this shaping season.
  2. The sending involves sacrifice. The eternal status quo was shaken up when God sent the Son to become a man who stepped into time and space. I don’t know much about time/space continuum, but I know a little about the heart of a father. Fathers loves the presence of their children, and they are pained when their children are not near to them. When I send these boys out, there will be pain and discomfort on both sides. We will be shaken, things will shift, and we will experience sadness and sacrifice. But if it doesn’t bleed, it is not a sacrifice. And there are purposes to be fulfilled for both parents and sent sons.
  3. The sending is also a receiving. God sent his Son so that he would receive many sons. God allowed his Son to be slaughtered for our sin because he wanted to receive back to his lap his once-wayward, now-adopted sons and daughters. I love listening in to the conversation Jesus had with his Father in the high priestly prayer (John 17). You can feel not only the impending agony, but also the eager anticipation of being reunited with the Father having done the work he was sent to accomplish. When these sons are sent out, there will be new receiving to be done (by them and their parents). Seasons change, but the Savior who ushers them in stands unchanging (Heb. 13:8).

I am almost the mother sending out sons even though I feel like I just received them. I long for our shaping to be informed by the sending. The end bathes the means in fresh light. I long for our sending to accomplish deeper shaping in our lives. I long for our sending to be centered on and sustained by the Sent One. One day, we will be gathered back to him. Then, we will be the satisfied ones. Until then, there is much receiving and shaping and sending to be done.

Everyday Eschatology

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My eschatology keeps showing up in seemingly strange places. Recently, I’ve caught myself thinking of eschatological matters in the Magnolia section of Target. Last week, it showed up on my living room couch. I’m thankful that my eschatology is showing up in my everyday life, as it belongs there more than merely in a theological paper or ivory-tower discussion.

Even those who may be wondering what eschatology means have a lived eschatology. Eschatology, coming from two Greek words meaning study and last things, is the theological term for the study of end things. Eschatology thinks deeply about the end of an individual’s life but also the ultimate end of all earthly things through death and final judgement. Far from being bookish, boring topics to be tackled by intellectual elites, eschatological matters affect the way we as everyday people live our lives every day.

Eschatological conversations often come up when people are discussing the book of Revelation; however, they should show up far more frequently in the lives of believers. When we think eschatologically, we think with God’s ultimate aims and the end in mind. We reverse engineer our days so that our today lines with up the tomorrow upon which we are hanging all our hope.

Though the Israelites who walked by faith did not have the term eschatology, they modeled eschatological living and thinking, as seen in the book of Hebrews. Abraham, who was to be the father of many nations and who trusted God to lead him to a city he knew not, spent all his money to buy a tiny plot of land on which to bury his wife (Genesis 23). He was able to do so without giving in to despair and defeat only because he “was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 12:10).

Peter and Paul, along with the other Apostles, were constantly reminding me the early church to think with the end in mind. While they did not use the word eschatology, they swam in the concept. Peter wrote, “The end of all things is at hand: therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers (1 Pet. 4:7)” Similarly, Paul constantly urged his disciples to keep their eyes on the ultimate finish line so that they might run the race with integrity and purpose (1 Tim. 6: 12; Titus 2:11-14).

Lived vs. Spoken Eschatology

I think it is important to spend time not only studying and thinking deeply about eschatology but also learning to speak of it in a winsome way to others. But, of late, I have been more concerned lately with my lived eschatology than my spoken eschatology. I am seeing gaps in the way I spend my time and my money, places where my lived eschatology looks much more like an unbeliever than a follower of Christ.

When I am in Target and I’m deeply tempted to spend money we don’t need to spend to make my house look like a Pinterest board or a Magnolia Silo, my eschatology matters. I have to remind myself that this world is not my ultimate home. I have to think about standing in the presence of God and giving an account for my choices and the way I spent my time, my talent, my tears, and my treasures. Then, and only then, do the cute BoHo-styled housewares lose their hold on my heart.

When I am sitting on my couch and listening to a believing friend share about her suffering, my lived eschatology shows up beside us. I realize that I am quick to offer tissues and to remind her of the coming day when there will be no more tears, no more sin, no more suffering. And those things are right and good, but I am quicker to offer them than to remind her that the presence of Christ is the centerpiece of that day. In the age of therapy, it is easier to offer the kingdom of God and its benefits while minimizing the King.

As D.A. Carson wrote, “The supreme hope of the church has always been the return of Jesus Christ. But in contemplating that happy prospect, we must never lose sight of the fact that the goal is to be with Christ.”

Longing & Labor in Eschatology

I am forcing myself to ask two important questions about my lived eschatology: Is there room for longing in my eschatology? Am I laboring toward my eschatology?

In the already/not yet of the kingdom of God, it is hard to live balanced amid its accompanying tensions. There will be a day when tears will be no more, but that does not mean that we grow callous or flippant about the tears we experience here and now (Rev. 21:4). God will come and make all things new, and we will never experience perfection on this side of glory (Rev. 21: 5). Yes and amen. But there is also room in our eschatology to labor as we long. There is work to be done now that matters to help alleviate some of the tears.

On the other hand, it can be easy to get so busy working to help do God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven that we forget that part of our work on earth is to look and long expectantly for the return of Christ (Matt. 6:10). We can do all the “right” things, but suffering will still show up and wreak havoc in the havens we are working so hard to create.

While we labor, we long. While we long, we labor. We fight to live out our spoken eschatology until it is our lived reality. Come, Lord, Jesus. Your church longs for your appearing!

Control, Care, and Christ: Teenage Edition

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When my oldest two children were beginning to eat solid food, I was that momma who ground her own brown rice and millet to make rice cereal. I pureed fruits and vegetables that I honestly would not want to eat myself. I was never going to raise picky eaters.

My facade of food control was quickly shattered. For a good solid three or four years, my kids survived on Dino Nuggets, quesadillas, and various pastas with butter.

I would like to say that this was the watershed moment of me releasing the idol of control in regards to my children. Alas, I cannot. At nearly every new season or stage of parenting, my attempts to grab on even to the illusion of control come back with a vengeance.

Care & Control

The more we care about someone, the more we tend to want to control outcomes for them. And there are few people I love on earth more than the children God entrusted to me.

When our children were younger, it was easier to feel like we were in control. I picked out their clothes, arranged their playdates, and curated their learning experiences. As they have grown older and more mature, there are no more illusions of control. They have their own tastes of clothes (which changes quicker than the weather in South Carolina). They are making their own choices of friends. They make and remake plans with said friends every other minute.

Their feet, their hair, and their worlds are becoming larger. There are great joys that come with this enlarging world, but there are also accompanying risks. I have had multiple mentors tell me, “Small children, small problem. Big children, bigger problems.” At first I did not like this advice, but I am beginning to understand the bits of wisdom it contains.

Care and control have become buzzwords on my daily walks with my husband as we continue to walk through the teenage years alongside our older boys. My deep, motherly care for my boys has only grown while my ability to pretend control over their lives has shrunk. This tension between care and control presses us back to the only One who holds perfect care and total control simultaneously.

The Care-full Controller of All Things

While on the earth, Christ continually taught his disciples about the constant, attentive, intimate care of God. Into a culture that, out of respect for God, would not even write his name, he brought the image of God as “our father” (Matthew 6:9). He pointed out flora and fauna, explaining God’s delighted, detailed care for even them (Matthew 6:26-30). He assured them they were more precious than many sparrows (Matthew 10:31). He was aware of and attuned to even the slightest touch of his garment (Mark 5: 24-34). Christ was always full of care.

Yet, he simultaneously revealed God as the One in control of all things. He knew the thoughts and words of his disciples and even strangers like the woman at the well (John 1:43-51; John 4). He went toe to toe with the rulers of the time and was absolutely clear that he was in the one making the choices (John 18:28-38). Most significantly, he showed us that God controlled even death itself in his resurrection (John 20).

I find myself walking multiple times a day in this season (and not to reach my steps). As I walk, I wrestle my worried, helpless heart into the presence of the God of all care and control. Things I have claimed and believed for myself I am learning to claim and believe again over their lives.

I daily set my overwhelming, sometimes paralyzing love for my boys on the scale of his love for them to remind myself that his love far outweighs mine forever. And then, I remind myself that this God who cares for them is ordering all things for their good (Romans 8:28-32). He has an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure (2 Samuel 23:5). He is the blessed and only sovereign who is both immortal and unapproachably full of light (1 Timothy 6:15-16).

In view of the care-full controller of all things, I am freed to care for these boys. When they get cut from the team or don’t get invited to the gathering, when they are laughed out for living for Christ, when their hearts ache with loneliness or disappointment, I can place them in the hands of the One who is faithful in all his word and kind in all his works (Psalm 145:13; 17). By day, he commands his steadfast love on their behalf, and at night, he sings his song of deliverance over them (Psalm 42:8).

These are not new truths, but they are meeting me in new ways in this new season as a mother of teenagers.

Displaced

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Confession: I spent a few weeks avoiding dropping off gifts for three families I love. The members of our small church each sponsored various family members from three Afghan families we have come to know and love. The gifts collected in a corner of my bedroom while guilt collected in the corners of my heart.

When our displaced friends first arrived about a year or so ago, it was easier to prioritize setting aside longer periods of time to visit with them or serve them. The urgency was felt on all sides as news reports continually reminded me of the trying circumstances that led them to flee. Their needs were obvious: They needed food; they needed apartments; they needed beds; they needed shots; they needed to get into schools.

A year later, the news has largely moved on. Our families are more settled. They know bus routes and have licenses. They have rugs on their floor. Their children are in school and learning the language well. But they are still displaced.

Displaced

Displaced.
Dislocated.
Shuffled.
Temporarily housed in a tent.
Relocated.
Placed.
Housed but still not home.
I haven’t moved, but your courage moves me.

Now that their physical needs are largely met, it is actually harder for me to see them still experiencing homesickness and the lingering effects of having left everything they knew. Their needs are more relational. They need time. And, as I am realizing, my heart is quicker to buy clothes than to sit for conversation. It costs emotional energy to listen to their stories of trauma which are often redundant because healing requires repetition. To love their kids often means time away from my own. Thus, my avoidance during this busy holiday season.

Delivering gifts to two families and attending the zoo with another in the past few days, I am freshly reminded of God’s command to his people in Deuteronomy 10. Before Moses reminds his people of a list of significant commands (the imperative), he spends time reminding them of the very nature of their God and all he has done on their behalf (the indicative).

“Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day…He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10: 14-15 & 18).

While I have read these verses many times, the Spirit made the word love stand out in technicolor this time. God does not call us to merely serve the sojourner. Rather, he invites us to love the stranger. The service flows from the love. The offering of clothes and food is a natural outpouring when we love people. But love goes beyond the offering of such things. Love offers the self.

The only way I will ever do this in a sustained way is by remembering God’s love for me when I was displaced – without hope and without God in this world (Eph. 2:12-13). God set his love on me and attached himself to my cause not on the basis of any merit in me. He did not do that for a moment and then move on. He continually sets his love on me and attaches himself to my cause. And he asks me to model my love for others on his love for me.

His love for me is costly. It is patient. It is time-consuming. It enters into my messes. It perseveres. It does not simply leave a provision at the doorstep and proceed to peace out. It offers presence. It keeps showing up.

I have so much to learn from my displaced friends. They remind that me that my ultimate home is not a place, but a person: the person of Jesus Christ.

Lord, help me to love those who are displaced in my life the way you have loved me. In a year in which 103 million people have been displaced by war, persecution, climate crises, and other unthinkable realities, may you attach each individual to one of your people as you attached your love to us. May your body live out the love that we have received in sacrificial ways. May those we love connect acts of mercy and justice to the God of all mercy and justice. May they find their permanent place in you. Amen.



The King Tide & The King of Tides

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In the midst of the holiday season, there is an event that has become its own quiet holiday in my heart: the king tide.

Once a year, the sun and moon align perfectly, thus combining their gravitational pull on the tides. The king tide is the pairing of the highest and lowest tides of the entire year. For the past five or six years, I have looked forward to this tide like a child looks forward to Christmas.

In the quiet, salty air, you get to poke around to see what happens all the time in the tide pools beyond our gaze. There are whole worlds down there in small crevices that the Lord constantly sees and enjoys but we get to see a few times a year.

Simply by reading the tide charts, you can pinpoint the absolute lowest and highest points of the year down to the minute and the meter. Doing so made me wish the weather and tides of souls were so precisely predicted.

Madeline L’Engle’s poem “To a Long Loved Love 3” talks about the peculiarities of the weather of the soul.

“I know why a star gives light
Shining quietly in the night;
Arithmetic helps me unravel
The hours and years this light must travel
To penetrate our atmosphere.
I count the craters on the moon
With telescopes to make them clear.
With delicate instruments I measure
Secrets of barometric pressure.

Therefore I find it inexpressibly queer
That with my own soul I am out of tune,
That I have not stumbled on the art
Of forecasting the weather of the heart.”

L’Engle’s wishing for instruments that can solve and predict the mysterious weather of her own soul resonates with me, especially during the holiday season, especially when I think of the king tides.

If only we could read a chart to discern our souls’ yearly king tides, we might find the strong pull back and the powerful push forward exhilarating rather than exhausting and scary. We could brace for them; we could count and celebrate each demarcation line.

But God has not seen fit to give us such a chart. He prefers we live by faith and in dependence day by day. We don’t know when the a storm will settle in our souls; we don’t know the peaks until we reach them; we don’t know how long we must sit in low tide before recession reverses to procession.

If I don’t know this about my own soul, I most assuredly cannot predict or understand the mysterious weather of the souls who share my household. Yet, so often, I try. I feel such pressure during the holidays and on breaks to have all our high tides align in glorious evenings together. I want to know their low tide times so I can prepare to love and serve them well.

But neither I nor they are so predictable. This reality forces me to move from attempts at control to a posture of care for all the distinct soul atmospheres in my family.

God did not task me as their mother with being the regulator of their moods and tides, as if sentient souls could be directed with an air traffic controller. Thank goodness! If he had there would be wreckage everywhere. I am not qualified for such a role. Only God can go to those sacred spaces (1 Corinthians 2:10-11; Romans 8: 26-27).

God invites me to step toward the weather of their souls (and my own) with what Eugene Peterson calls, “a stance of wonderment.”

The physical practice of enjoying the king tide this year reminded me that God alone is the King of tides, both physically and spiritually.

He is not scared by the storms that come upon me or them. He speaks into such chaos, calming soul storms just as spoke over the squalls on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35-41).

It is his to control and mine to yield, wonder, and trust.

Deep as the Curse Has Dug

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He comes to make His blessings flow/
Far as the curse is found/
Far as the curse is found/
Far as, far as the curse is found. 

Few Christmas carols have had the staying power of Isaac Watt’s Joy to the World. Even those who don’t practice the Christian faith loudly belt out its chorus at candle-lighting ceremonies and holiday gatherings. We hum to it while shopping for stocking stuffers. Its tune floods our kitchens as we make cookies enough for a small nation.

The catchy, well-known tune is undergirded by a bedrock of rich theological realities meant to inform our living well beyond the holiday season. The Coming of Christ as an infant into time and space left eternal ripples that changed the very fabric of human  existence. The song reminds us that the ripples of His coming are to reach to the farthermost places where the curse has been wreaking its havoc.

When Adam and Eve first distrusted and then quickly disobeyed the Lord’s protective commands, shalom was shattered. Devastating fissures were fixed between God and man, within mankind  both inter-personally and intra-personally, and between mankind and nature.The Son born in Bethlehem of Judea was the beginning of shalom being restored.

I know this theologically; however, I deeply struggle to believe this personally and experientially.  Sometimes I am overcome and overwhelmed with the darkness out there in the world. Other times, I am completely paralyzed and appalled at the darkness in here, within me. This past few weeks have been the latter.

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Despite the innumerable blessings around me, I find complaining and discontentment squatting in my heart. Even though I am attempting to fight the consumerism that marks Christmas, my heart gets distracted by the siren songs of the Dollar Zone. Even though I want to live intentionally, I still find myself frittering time away on screens or through an  instinctive desire to keep busy. In these patterns, I realize just how deeply the curse has dug into the caverns of my soul.

I need to know that Christ came not only to make his blessings known far as the curse is found, but to let them drip as deep as the curse has dug.

Deep as the Curse Has Dug

You came to make mercy known
As far as the curse is found;
But can it be possibly drip
Into dungeons underground?

The curse has crept into crevices,
Pooling in pockets of my soul.
I’ve so grown used to its effects,
It’s hard to imagine being whole.

Deep as the curse has dug
Can Your love descend?
It seems unthinkable that you
My damaged heart could mend.

May Your Triune Presence
Pervade both far and deep.
Let Your Agape love into
My deep darknesses creep.

Son of God Most High
Who descended into Hell,
With Your power permeate
This my soul’s murky well. 

Change me into Your image,
As Your love casts out fear.
It is cold, damp and dark,
But there’s room for you here.

Contrary to the popular notion of a barn, our Christ was most likely born in a cave. The custom of the time was to keep one’s animals sheltered in caves underground, as barns as we think of them were not common. As such, it seems fitting that Spirit would descend to make His home among the caverns of the human heart. There, He does His work of applying the gospel deep as the curse has dug.