Born to be Free

Are you ready?  We're asked this a lot - heading out the door, making important phone calls, getting around for a formal event. Maybe we're asking ourselves the same question, only more frequently. Am I ready...? Ready for the beginning of the semester, to start a new job, embrace the distanced family member, start a study group, or raise a child?  Ready to relocate to chase God's dreams for your life, ready to start your business, or find a way to survive in less than great circumstances? We each face our own questions, and some may seem too daunting to try and think through. What if it doesn't work out?  What if I've mistaken God's call on my life, or can't find what I need to do this...? I'm sure sometimes your mind swims like mine can. Someone asked me at the start of this year what my long-term plan is.  Two, three, five years out.  To be honest, I had no words.  My first thought was "I can't believe people do that." I...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the topic of rest. Physical rest just isn't something I normally get much of right now, and that's okay - for multiple reasons. Being pushed beyond what you believe to be capable of flings the door wide open for the Spirit of God to take over. Because Peace is a Person.  Not a circumstance.  Rest is found in the same Person.  Not in how much or how little sleep I get. I had no idea how the Holy Spirit can take over even physical needs until this summer. My soul often finds itself restless.  Anxious.  Running way too fast on way too little. I think often of how Jesus Himself "withdrew to a desolate place". He knew what satisfied His soul and He sought it - God Himself. His presence.  His peace. Rest for the restless. Paul speaks of the peace which can rule in our hearts as "surpassing understanding". Even as we uproot and wander across the vast expanse of the world and of our souls - we find our...

Seventy-five degree weather has finally made its way back to my habitation.  It's been long in coming. This year there wasn't a gradual slip from winter to spring.  One day you rise from sleep and find things to be far different than you anticipated. My life has become punctuated with sudden changes as of late.  You'll find that when you lay your future in the hands of God, you never know what it's going to end up looking like.  In the words of Arthur Conan Doyle, "The unexpected has happened so frequently in my life that it ceases to deserve the name." And yet, it turns out to be quite beautiful.  For what seems like ages I've held onto the words of Martin Luther, reformer of the 16th century Church: "All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired, although not in the hour or in the measure, or the very thing which they ask; yet they will obtain somethin...

I work as a librarian, perhaps one of the most suitable positions for me.  It is my job to remember stories.  To read them, re-tell them and let them live again. Often we may result to reading tales crafted by other hands to escape our own narrative. We try not to think about our own stories. Within the paper and ink we find order.  Sentences with punctuation.  Chapters in numerical order.  Plots that twist and thicken till that very last page where somehow it all works out. But maybe that's not what our lives look like. You could take the route I've tried, checking out books about "how to know God's will" and trying to make long-term plans to soothe the questions of ever-nosy relatives.  But chances are, you too will come up empty. Now I'm beginning to see some things a bit clearer, perceive them in a different sense. I think we want to believe we're the authors of our own stories.  That we can direct our paths, that we can somehow obta...

Most everyone looks to another year as a chance to start anew.  Schedules, book lists, fitness plans.  It would seem most people will stay strong for perhaps two weeks, maybe more if you're dedicated and disciplined.  Those of you who stick with it longer amaze me, and perhaps here's why. Maybe I'm one of few to experience this - but my ambitions, aspirations, etc. hardly ever go uninterrupted.  Good grief, my own trains of thought interrupt themselves.  Focus can be a hard issue to fix...I'm thankful my attention span doesn't determine my salvation. Where December meets January, I don't necessarily make more self-care or exercise goals (though maybe I should?).  Instead I've made a practice of spending that precious thirty-first listening intently to my soul. I make a list.  Not a to-do list, not a numbering of things to check off as an attempt at perfection.  But writing can be therapy, a way to sort out jumbled thoughts.  It h...

God speaks to each of us in different ways.  He may choose to speak through the Scriptures, the world around us, through other people who cross our paths.......He is certainly capable of putting thoughts into our minds as well.  He is limitless, no matter how badly we might wish to rationalize the things He does. Over the past few weeks, there has been a word that seems to follow me everywhere.  It will show up in my readings.  People bring it up when I talk to them, or in podcasts I've listened to.  God puts it at the forefront of my mind during times of prayer. Overflow . This would seem a more difficult word to interpret, versus something like "rest" or "take courage", though they also would require considerable thought.  So I began the task of unpacking the meaning of what He was wishing to get across to me. You've heard that whatever is in your heart will spill out when you're shaken up.  An important point to be sure.  But maybe it'...

I'm amazed at how many times I can read over a passage and still find new things revealed through it. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God ." (Philippians 4:6) I think many of us have (at least at one point) believed supplication to be a "necessary evil" in prayer.  Allow me to try and explain. It's been said that you become like the five people you spend the most time with.  I think the types of churches we find ourselves in have a lot to do with that as well.   Many churches I know of like to talk a lot about how God's grace is greater than we can fathom.  They also discuss how we as corrupted outcasts are beyond unworthy and how we could never come close to God. Both of these points have sufficient biblical support.  We certainly do not deserve God's grace in any measure, and why He decided to give it to us is difficult to understa...