Beauty from Ashes

I think the end of one year and the beginning of another is a time almost everyone takes to look back and take stock, and look forward and wonder. For me, days and milestones carry great significance. Days that I can remember and look back and point to as the day something ended and a door closed or the day something else began or the day something changed irrevocably. I can look back over the past year and see a number of days that carry meaning for me in one way or another. May 3rd, June 4th, June 6th, June 12th, July 22nd, August 7th…a few that I see. The worst days of my year and the best days of my year. All days where something changed. Everything from finally meeting people I’d known for so long to loss of a sort I never imagined to my 20th birthday and realizing that for better or worse, I was really an adult now and needed to figure out what I was doing with my life. (I’m still working on that.)

This year has brought me some very good things. New friends and deeper relationships with other friends. The chance to go to the Gathering and finally meet in person my very best friends. The Gathering…there are no words. Anyone who was there needs no words. That one, Gathering, is enough. It is no exaggeration to say that it is like a tiny glimpse of heaven. These are the good things this year has brought me.

I also see the changes this year has given me. Little things and bigger things. Glasses changed for contacts. A new computer. Reading more non-fiction, though hardly less fiction. The coffee addiction. Falling in love with music.  Finally realizing how much I love playing the piano and then having to give up lessons. Growing independence and more of my own life separate from my family. Realizing how many different things I could do with my life and wondering what I should be doing with it.

I’ve seen changes this year. I’ve seen good things. Yet this year has also brought me down paths I never wanted to go down; ones that I have fought and dragged my heels every step of the way. Broken me in ways that made, and sometimes still make, me wonder if I can ever be whole again. And I’m not sorry to see this year end, for those reasons.

But above all, the most valuable thing this year has brought me is something that I cannot say I have learned, because sometimes I am barely holding on to it with only one finger. It’s something, though, that I am learning. It is one thing that, if I can someday finally say I have carried it out of this year, it will all have been worth it. The one thing I am holding on to if I can see nothing else is that God is faithful, and the one thing I am learning is to trust Him with everything.

God is faithful. He can be trusted. When I’m walking through darkness and when I cannot see what He is doing or how He could bring good out of it, He is still faithful. When I’m still walking through the darkness and thinking it’s high time for some light, when I’m still wondering and can’t see why, He is still faithful and He is there holding me and walking with me. When I forget that He is there, when I let go of His hand and feel like I’m completely alone, He is still faithful and He is there holding out His hand for me to take again.  When I trust Him with everything and hand it all to Him, and when I can’t see how to trust and take it all back again, He is faithful. When  I want Him to take me out of what I’m in, and He wants me to go through to the other side, He is still faithful. He is always faithful. I have not learned this. I am learning it. But He is faithful in my learning.

As 2009 ends and 2010 begins, remember that. It’s what I will be trying to always remember. God. Is. Faithful.

05 Faithful

Edit: The song I’ve just added comes from Steven Curtis Chapman’s newest album, Beauty Will Rise. I would highly, highly recommend the entire album, and this is one of my favorite songs from it.

I will proclaim it to the world.
I will declare it to my heart
And sing it when the sun is shining.
I will scream it in the dark.

You are faithful!
You are faithful!
When you give and when You take away,
even then still Your name
is faithful!
You are faithful!
And with everything inside of me,
I am choosing to believe
You are faithful.

It’s all about the Great Romance. This one nothing and no other is our heart, is what we were created for, what we were made to live and to die for. This one thing and no other. If only I could get ahold of that, truly internalize it and comprehend it, what would it change? How would it turn my life upside down…if I truly knew that love?

This love story is what all of history points to; from creation, where we were made to love, to the cross, where Christ gave us back the ability to fully love and know His love again,  to the coming marriage supper of the Lamb, beginning our eternity as His beloved bride. The Great Romance is everything…because not only is it the only message of all of the world’s history, it is each story individually. Your story. My story. The story of your best friend and the story of your worst enemy. The story of someone who means the world to you, and the story of the person who broke your heart. All unique, yet with a common thread running through each one.

It is a love story beyond imagining, the most beautiful one that could ever be. It is the story of a God who made us to love Him, one who is the greatest lover of all. One who made us because He longs for us to love Him…because our love is so valuable to Him that He would not force it, but wanted us to choose to love Him freely.

His love is passionate, desperate, beyond reason and beyond measure. We are—I am—His dream come true. That’s a really strange thought for me. So often I see myself as not good enough and not worthy of love, but the one who is love perfected disagrees. He is so crazy in love with me that He pursued me when I rejected His love, turned my back on Him, and broke His heart.

He had no obligation to chase after me and try to recapture my heart. But it was never about obligation. He was a lover heartbroken that His beloved had run from Him…a bridegroom heartbroken because His precious bride had chosen another and rejected His love.  But instead of leaving, giving up, and being angry, as He had more than every right to do, He ran after me. He pursued His beloved to the gates of hell and back again. He fought and won against death itself—all for my love. How could any love story be greater or anything more romantic than that?

For my love. The one thing He was desperate for, and the one thing He would not and will not compel. This one thing and no other. His heart and His greatest desire is for His love to be returned. That I will taste and see that His love is good, and not choose any other over Him. That I will see that I have captured His heart and won His love, and give Him mine in return. He is a jealous lover who will let no other take His place in my heart—but He is my more than enough.

I can’t quite get the words to say what I want them to; there is no way I could even begin to describe His love, and His desire for my love, for your love, for the love of each and every person He has created. It seems so fundamental. Of course a lover would desire to be loved in return. But when the thought first struck me that not only does God love us, but His greatest desire is for us to love Him and return His love, it stopped me in my tracks. That made His love real to me in a way I had never seen it before, and it is this one thing and no other that sums everything up: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. And we love Him because He first loved us.

What follows is something I wrote two years ago, slightly edited. Parts of reiterate my previous post, parts are new thoughts. Enjoy this rare occurrence of two posts in one day!

Easter is the most joyful day of the year for me, as a Christian. It’s like knowing a secret the rest of the world does not know. We know that we have reason to hope! Our Lord has defeated death! But to arrive at Easter Sunday, we have to first go through Friday.

Friday has precious little reason for hoping. Imagine, if you were a follower of Jesus in His lifetime, what “good” Friday must have been like. Seeing your reason for living, dying. Your Savior cursed and mocked, scourged and bruised, dying the worst death possible. Where is there any reason to hope in that? How could there be anything but despair and anguish?

Sometimes we would prefer to gloss over Friday. Skip the pain, go straight to the celebration. We know that Christ has risen, and would prefer to think about that because it’s much more pleasant. But Jesus’ followers then couldn’t do that. Jesus had told them what was going to happen to Him, but they didn’t understand. They didn’t know about the joy of Easter morning. It had to have been heartbreaking, to believe and love Jesus, and in one day to see your greatest hope destroyed.

Even after Friday is over, Saturday still has to be dealt with. Saturday’s numb despondency is not the raw despair of Friday, but is almost worse in its own way. The grim reality, or what appears to be reality, sets in. He’s dead. There’s no way around it, no way out of it, nothing that will change it. With Saturday comes the horrible idea of shaping your life minus the One who had become its center. You can’t imagine how to live without Him, but no longer can you be with Him.

Imagine, out of this most hopeless of situations comes the greatest hope of all. The unfettered joy of Sunday morning! That’s what Easter Sunday means, more than anything else at all. Joy! A joy the world doesn’t know, cannot know. We know something they don’t! Our Savior defeated death, once and for all broke the power of the grave, opened the chains of sin, and trampled the enemy under His feet! He provided the way for us to be with Him, and that is the secret the world doesn’t know. Jesus’ followers weren’t aware of it either, at first. Coming to the tomb early in the morning, they believed Him to be still held by death. If the joy is so great for us, imagine what it must have been for them! “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!”

I think Easter is my favorite holiday. To be perfectly honest, at Christmas or Thanksgiving or any other holiday, I would miss the trappings if they weren’t there. Important as the “reason” really is, I would not like to do without the presents and the dinner and the decorations and all that. But for me, this day is different. You could take away the candy, the baskets, the bunnies, the festive dinner–all of it!–and it would still be the most joyful day of the year!

Why? Because there is nothing that can compare to the knowledge that our Lord has conquered the enemy! He has defeated death itself, that which seemed so powerful. So final. So unalterable. But He broke it, conquered it, trampled it under His feet! He holds the keys of death and hell now, and death is swallowed up in victory!

It is the most central aspect of our faith; as Paul says “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!…If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” (1 Corinthians 15:17, 19) If one were to stop there, life would be hopeless and our celebration of Easter as the resurrection day would be a ridiculous mockery! But that’s not the end! The next verse continues: “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” And therein is our reason for hoping. That is what sets us apart. Not only did He die to free us from our sins, but He rose again to bring us life, and life more abundantly!

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been recognized by people I’ve never met! When I’m out shopping, customers where I work, and most recently, the receptionist at my eye doctor! I had never been there before last week, although my mom and several of my sisters had. I walked in and told the receptionist who I was. But when I did, she told me “I knew who you were the second I saw you!”

Why? Because I look and sound so much like my mother. I’ve heard that so many times that I’ve lost count of them as well! But this time, it got me thinking.

If I can be recognized as my mother’s daughter as soon as I am seen–if people who hear and see me hear and see her, instantly, without my having to say anything–how much more should I be instantly recognized as a daughter of the King? Do people see Christ in me as easily as they see my mother in me?

That’s how it should be. It should be so obvious that I am a follower of Jesus that I don’t even have to say it. Christ in me should shine through so evidently as to be unmistakable. Not flashily obvious, from trying too hard to show something that isn’t really there, but so naturally and irremoveably a part of me that He cannot be separated from me. To be perfectly honest, that’s not where I am right now. But by God’s grace, it’s what He will be continuting to make me.

This is a test post. My deepest apologies to anyone who may have seen that I updated, and is now disappointed to see that there is nothing really new.

In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul seems to have had the same idea that I did (although, to be fair, he probably had it first!). “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:1,2). In reading this passage, I’m struck again by that idea. We don’t always have to be eloquent. We don’t have to know it all. We don’t need all the answers. We need to know this one thing. Our Lord and Savior….Jesus. The One who opened the eyes of this one who was once blind, so that now I see. He is more than enough.

(just so you know, I do fully realize the irony in this title!

John 9 begins with the story of the man born blind, whom Jesus healed with the clay He made from saliva.  The Pharisees, instead of seeing God at work in their midst, see Jesus only as one who has broken the Sabbath, and a sinner in their eyes. They bring the man who was once blind before them to question him, wanting him call Jesus a sinner as well. The man does not argue with them, or attempt to convince them of the error of their ways. But he says something that strikes me as very interesting: “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.” One thing. I once was blind, but now I see.

There is a certainly time for fancy explanations, and a time for in depth conversations and debates and discussions. But sometimes, that’s not necessary. Sometimes, all we need is one thing. Sometimes all we need to know and all we need to say is that same thing: though I was blind, now I see. Sometimes, one thing is enough.

I know you’re all worried about me since I haven’t posted in almost two months now. Saying that makes me realize just how long it has been! I do apologize…

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my mind, and a few different posts that I’m working on. They’ll see the light of day eventually! For anyone who doesn’t know, I’ve also signed up for the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers program, which will force me to update a little more often! I promise it won’t be another two months until my next post here.

This post is rather a departure from my usual writing style. I wouldn’t really call it poetry, but I’m not sure what to call it. Just a few of the thoughts I’ve had lately on perspective and seeing God’s plans instead of mine.

It only takes a moment

for eyes to be opened

a blinding flash

of what should have been obvious

or just a subtle flutter of the veil.

Either way revealing

the truth of the matter

and the way things really are.

Just a glimpse into eternity

a looking from outside myself

seeing through another’s eyes,

through His eyes.

Just long enough to see

how exactly wrong I am

and how upside down

my perception of reality.

His is the true reality

the one that lies beyond

the skin of this world

and often beyond my understanding.

How many times I’ve cried

because I didn’t see

how He see differently

and works toward an end

which is not the one I had in mind.

Until those moments come

when by His grace I see

from a new perspective

if only for a moment.