“…You are God, Ready to pardon, Gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, Abundant in kindness…”
There are a lot of folds in the weaving of life, and when it comes down to it, the thread that can pull all of the fragility and beauty out of life is the (lack of the) thread of forgiveness (unforgiveness). A friend of mine named Richard (the Italian gadget man) used to say, “Hate is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Richard, who is now with the Lord, was a smart man, and while we never really connected on a really personal level, now he knows Jesus more than he ever even knew himself.
Forgiveness is so important to the quality of life. The absence of forgiveness makes for an open ended life with unresolve and shut doors on emotions that are meant to be swung open at all times (if not torn down).
I analyze everything, and not necessarily in a negative way. I like getting to the throat of why I like things, despise other things, and even why I feel no particular way about other things. I usually don’t develop an opinion (or at least a solid one) until I’ve had a chance to digest the facts. I need to digest things before I can pull them out of my gut to give life to them in my own way. Thus is the case in the present season of my life. This thing of mercy is consuming me right now. A gangling of mercy (of what I believe God is doing in me right now) is forgiveness. When it comes down to it, I realize (CONSTANTLY) that the person I’m none-to-good at forgiving would be an Arizonan mountain boy: quiet until you get to know him, funny unless you don’t “get” his humor, and seemingly melancholy until you listen to his heart. The person, the object of my unforgiveness is…me. “What have I become?” is sometimes the question that I ask when I glance at myself in the morning’s bathroom mirror. It’s often like rolling out of bed into a raging river. And as I fight the current, I pull myself coherent enough to see Christ sealed over my heart. And in a second that seems like an eternity, I remember the years. Hurt and joy duke it out in my mind for mere moments as I forget that I am me and start to remember that it’s not me who I really want people to see. The whole “being conformed to the likeness of Christ” is something I’m quite serious about…and I know that I can only be serious about that because of the Spirit of the indwelling Christ alive in me. And so as I scramble to get into my day, the raging river of God’s love is the flow that I want to jump into, and as I jump into that river I sort of just get pulled away in who Christ is...it's happening, it's really happening. I have more joy, more peace, and all in all I just feel free.
I need to get better at forgiving the people around me…but especially myself too. So the thread that often gets pulled out of the weaving of my knitting of life is being sewn back in. It’s a part of healing. How can I forgive my brother (not Josh or John…”brother” in the broad sense of mankind) if I can’t forgive myself?
Jesus, let your healing run deep into my heart. Purify me. Refine me in the hot fire of Your love. Let my life be like a love song to Your heart, and let it become Your heart to the world. I long to be swept away in the raging current of Your love, and to be forever pulled under into the depths of the knowledge of You. ~Amen
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Mercy: Part 1
The rain is running down the windows of the house I’m staying in right now. A little after midnight, the only tones lingering are the reverberations of a settling house…or maybe it’s my heart that’s just slipping into a mode of sleepfullness that will strike soon before I'm aware (as it always does). Regardless, something is different tonight. It’s like there’s an eeriness that just rolls out its heart like the humidity outside that eventually grew so heavy that it had to burst open with rain. Maybe that’s what had me write tonight, or maybe it was something deeper...the Spirit within my spirit.
Life moves in seasons. If it’s not one season it’s another, and if you’re anything like me, you usually spend each season wishing for another season to come your way to deliver you from any negative weather of the present season, when really in reality you know that that’s not the answer. There’s no use trading radishes for brussel sprouts if you hate them both. Lately I’ve been scrounging for radish sprouts, which I don’t think are real, but are something that sound good because I don’t completely like one over the other, and maybe (just maybe) together they will be the answer to contentment.
Right now I’m staying in a house with a friend named Jim (the green thumbed contemplative) in his late 30s and a band of 3 guys in their twenty-somethings. Right now I sleep on the couch. It’s reasonably comfortable, and apart from zig zagged schedules it’s rather low keyed in the house. I believe that God has me here for a season because the storms of life have me tossed a bit to where I think I just need some good old fashioned camaradarie. While I’m sure I’ll share more about my present home later, I must tell you about Bob. Now, Jim, being the green thumbed contemplative that he is, has an interest in Bonsai trees. Bob is an uncut Bonsai. Sitting a foot or so away from me right now, Bob is a noble little tree with his small stature and smooth little pebbles and moss making his bed. Bob is by far the friendliest Bonsai I’ve ever met…and he’s a good listener too which comes in handy because if he could talk he probably wouldn’t get much in edge-wise in our ragamuffin monastery. Uncut and untrained, Bob looks a little like the Christmas tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas. Bob doesn’t care though. God has brought loving people along to water, nuture and (who knows) maybe even prune Bob. Bob doesn’t worry, and while Solomon may have been dressed better than Bob, Bob (I’m sure) could give Solomon’s sock drawer a run for its money. But Bob has taught me a lot in his silence, which may make one worry about my sanity. Regardless, I’m learning about contentment. In Matthew 6, Jesus said:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Now that I’ve strayed you out of state, when I was just wanting to go to the grocery store, the purpose of all of this is just that there’s an element in all my rambling that’s hidden deep, and if I just shut up and listen, I can hear a truth whisper through the rain outside. The issue right now is not my worrying, even though I believe it strikes right down to my lack of contentment. I nearly hear it in the sounds of the bugs outside, and the random drip of the rain gutters. “…His compassions fail not, they are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) His mercy is new this morning, before the sun rises and temperature climbs again. In all seriousness, when it all comes down to the line, my wanderings and contentment issues are all pulled up in the mercy of God. My heart has been captured with worry, and fear; when it was designed for something different, and I feel (in this moment) something drawing me back. I don’t get what I deserve, and while I shutter to think what I should really get, I wrestle with this: God loves me more than I could ever love Him. More than I could try, hope, or dream. God’s love for me out did mine when I was in my mother’s womb, on my best day as a child, and my most successful day as an adult. His mercy is drummed up in the truth that He designed me to be loved by Him…and to love Him back with the love He puts inside of me to love Him with. His mercy is more than a clean slate…it’s a new slate. Brand new. With this morning He’s brought a new hope, new heart, and a new start; not stale left-overs from yesterday. Through the worries and lack of contentment in my flesh, He parts my stirred heart this morning for me to walk in to tomorrow on dry ground. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed.” (Ps 85:10)
Mercy is the beginning in this new season.
Life moves in seasons. If it’s not one season it’s another, and if you’re anything like me, you usually spend each season wishing for another season to come your way to deliver you from any negative weather of the present season, when really in reality you know that that’s not the answer. There’s no use trading radishes for brussel sprouts if you hate them both. Lately I’ve been scrounging for radish sprouts, which I don’t think are real, but are something that sound good because I don’t completely like one over the other, and maybe (just maybe) together they will be the answer to contentment.
Right now I’m staying in a house with a friend named Jim (the green thumbed contemplative) in his late 30s and a band of 3 guys in their twenty-somethings. Right now I sleep on the couch. It’s reasonably comfortable, and apart from zig zagged schedules it’s rather low keyed in the house. I believe that God has me here for a season because the storms of life have me tossed a bit to where I think I just need some good old fashioned camaradarie. While I’m sure I’ll share more about my present home later, I must tell you about Bob. Now, Jim, being the green thumbed contemplative that he is, has an interest in Bonsai trees. Bob is an uncut Bonsai. Sitting a foot or so away from me right now, Bob is a noble little tree with his small stature and smooth little pebbles and moss making his bed. Bob is by far the friendliest Bonsai I’ve ever met…and he’s a good listener too which comes in handy because if he could talk he probably wouldn’t get much in edge-wise in our ragamuffin monastery. Uncut and untrained, Bob looks a little like the Christmas tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas. Bob doesn’t care though. God has brought loving people along to water, nuture and (who knows) maybe even prune Bob. Bob doesn’t worry, and while Solomon may have been dressed better than Bob, Bob (I’m sure) could give Solomon’s sock drawer a run for its money. But Bob has taught me a lot in his silence, which may make one worry about my sanity. Regardless, I’m learning about contentment. In Matthew 6, Jesus said:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Now that I’ve strayed you out of state, when I was just wanting to go to the grocery store, the purpose of all of this is just that there’s an element in all my rambling that’s hidden deep, and if I just shut up and listen, I can hear a truth whisper through the rain outside. The issue right now is not my worrying, even though I believe it strikes right down to my lack of contentment. I nearly hear it in the sounds of the bugs outside, and the random drip of the rain gutters. “…His compassions fail not, they are new every morning.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) His mercy is new this morning, before the sun rises and temperature climbs again. In all seriousness, when it all comes down to the line, my wanderings and contentment issues are all pulled up in the mercy of God. My heart has been captured with worry, and fear; when it was designed for something different, and I feel (in this moment) something drawing me back. I don’t get what I deserve, and while I shutter to think what I should really get, I wrestle with this: God loves me more than I could ever love Him. More than I could try, hope, or dream. God’s love for me out did mine when I was in my mother’s womb, on my best day as a child, and my most successful day as an adult. His mercy is drummed up in the truth that He designed me to be loved by Him…and to love Him back with the love He puts inside of me to love Him with. His mercy is more than a clean slate…it’s a new slate. Brand new. With this morning He’s brought a new hope, new heart, and a new start; not stale left-overs from yesterday. Through the worries and lack of contentment in my flesh, He parts my stirred heart this morning for me to walk in to tomorrow on dry ground. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed.” (Ps 85:10)
Mercy is the beginning in this new season.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
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