Born to be Free

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 obtain c

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 helps. I'

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's n

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

It has come to my attention that people  misunderstood me in my last post - (hence, the deletion).  So, I'll offer a word on that here. What I write is an outpouring of the way I think.  Oftentimes I'll have thoughts that make sense to me and when I write them down, they become all the more clear.  Writing is how I best process things. Unfortunately, if anyone reads what I write, they are free to interpret it for themselves.  Sometimes my writings can seem to have a "depressed undertone".  I've had people ask me if I'm okay, if I "need help".  My answer is no, and here's why: I believe that although we are Christians, none of us are immune to pain.  God created us with emotions, as beautifully complex as they are.  When we look at the injustice of the world, the weight of our sin apart from Christ and the pain of others around us, how can we not be moved? Fear, sadness and worry do not reign my life.  Jesus does.  Does that mean I never,

One Sunday this summer, my pastor had decided to preach on the topic of forgiveness.  A topic that perhaps many of us have a tendency to glance over. It's easy enough to forgive someone when they bump into you, take the last sandwich or forget to call you, right?  But as my pastor was preaching through the Lord's Prayer and came to "forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", that sentence - even though I've heard it read, recited and preached over hundreds of times before - pierced my soul that day. I'd always viewed myself as a forgiving person, but in that moment I remembered one person who I'd never even  tried  to forgive. It's easy to look past minor offenses, but when someone has hurt you so deeply that you find it hard to trust anyone, your heart will shut itself up in a tower and refuse to come down. Because of how my friend had treated me and the things they'd done and said - I had let bitterness and anger well up i