All That Glitters

 

All that glitters is not gold.
Shakespeare wrote that 400 years ago, but they are words which will never prove untrue. Because we like to think that all that glitters
is gold.
But just because the new, shiny obsession has come into the public eye,
and just because the revolutionary idea seems so wonderful,
and just because an object, or person, or want, seems so glorious and so valid,
most all are plastic underneath.
And even if, at first, they seem to hold lasting treasure or value, it only takes a matter of time for the top coat to chip off,
and the true colors to show through.

Don't chase after plastic dreams. Search for gold. And set your heart above,
where Christ is.

I'm sorry I am not attributing the pictures; they were in my folder and I do not know where I got them. Someone took them, and I shall do better next time to tell you who.

{The Desperate}

            
              There is a frightened child inside of each of us. There is a broken criminal, a grieving soul, a torn heart beating in every chest. All around you, mentally, there are castaways locked in stone cells. All around you there are cowering people who are crying from fear; silent people who have been screaming for too long for help and have finally lost their voice

                The voice of the desperate is a voice we can all understand, because we have all been desperate at some point. It is a cry that passes races, passes borders, passes ages. Everyone has been the blood-shot, wide-eyed victim with nowhere to go. Everyone has been through the nights when you wonder if you'll come out alright with the rising sun.

                And yet this voice, this voice we all know so well: it is the easiest one to ignore. The easiest one not to hear.

                Because we're selfish.

                And we don't want to be reminded what desperate looks like and what desperate sounds like. We were desperate once, and it was painful, and we don't want to hurt again. We don't want to remember the time we were lost.

                So we look away from those who are hurting now, as if they're some taboo substance. As if what they're going through is more shameful than what we went through. As if, somehow, they are sinning more than we sinned. As if they are less people because they've been desperate so long.

         We're less people because it's taken us this long to hear them.

                And what we don't seem to understand is that these desperate people are normal. They are the majority. But we've thwarted our view so much that we think they're the minority. We think happy  people like ourselves are the majority and our peaceful lives are more normal in the world.

                But they're not.

                There are hundreds of abortions performed every day. There are  thousands of people caught in slavery. One out of every 2 children live in a single-parent home. 45 people are murdered every day, (besides abortion.) Dieing alone. Living alone. Living invisible lives. Living lives shaped by immense grief.

            And this is normal to so many people. This is what they're living in. This is what they're living with. This is who they are. 

            This is what has molded them.

            And they're crying. The tears are breaking away their heart because no one is willing to bend down to where they are lying to lift them up. No one is willing to show them the love of God because we haven't taught our knees to bend that much or our neck to stoop that low.

            Because we think that we're being good Christians by staying away from these things. We think that God has commanded us to have nothing to do with these sins. But, actually, he's commanded  us not to sin in these areas ourselves. But He never said that we shouldn't help those caught in them.

            And we're just being down-right selfish to say otherwise.

            Jesus dined with a tax-collector. He spoke with an adulteress. He encountered the demon-possessed. He worked his will through redeemed murderers. He was crucified between two criminals.

            Jesus had everything to do with the desperate.

            In Luke 18:35-42 there is a story of a blind beggar sitting by the side of the road. When this man hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, he cries out that the Lord would have mercy on him, because this man is desperate. He is desperate to be released from his blindness that has shaped his life.

            Jesus is in a crowd in the street at this time. I see these people as the ones who are in some way following this King of Nazareth. This is the general crowd which has heard his teachings and seen his miracles or at least heard of them. And yet when they hear this blind beggar calling out,

            they silence him.

            Verse 39:And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

           

            Sometimes I think we are that crowd, professing to follow Jesus, but silencing the very ones for which he has come to show mercy. We have read his words and have learned of this majestic Father who mercifully reached down and brought us to life while we were dead in desperation.

            But we see the desperate ones around us, and we walk on. We silence them.

            They're not good enough for us to associate with. They are a part of taboo lives that good Christians have nothing to do with.

            We disregard the dirt in the world around us, shake the dust from our clothes, turn our eyes politely, and walk on by. Walk on to our gold-gilded church buildings to read from our new Bibles and wear our silk suits. To impress us. To impress those around us. To make some statement that we are the good ones.

            But we're selfish. We're disgustingly selfish.

            Because we have been given mercy boundless and free, even we when were desperate. And to whom much is given, much is required.

           

            The desperate need love. They need the mercy and grace of those who say they're been saved by a loving God. We need to stop turning up our holy noses. If we say we are followers of Christ, then we need to walk where he walked.

            And he walked among the loveless so he could show his love.

            You once stunk as bad as they. You once screamed as loud as they. You were once them.  

 And Jesus did not pass by you.

I am not discrediting God's sovereign work, and the fact that He can save without man's work on earth. He does not have to work through us to save the desperate. But he chooses to work through us for His glory, and He has commanded us to live lives reflecting the love he has shown us.

We are loving Christ when we love the broken, and his purposes are worked through us when we obey his call to reach out to the least of these. For whatever we have done unto them people, we have done unto Christ. 

{They Have Not}

We have water.

We have food.

We have love.

We have medicine.

We have homes.

We are warm, and we are dry, and we are whole, and we are filled.

We have.

They have not.

And yet how often we are silent.

From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

And from our hearts come all the issues of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

And from the thoughts of our hearts, and the thoughts of our minds, our actions take form.

And yet so often we do not act. And so often we are silent.

Therefore, our hearts are empty, because nothing is pouring forth.

And if our hearts did have a love for others - if there was something in our hearts -

no one would

ever

know.

Because we do not move.

We sit. We eat. We drink.

We revel in the fullness of our lives.

While people are hungry. People are thirsty.

And people are in darkness.

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily, I say unto you,

Inasmuch as ye have cone it unto one of the lease of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

(Matthew 25:35-40)

Katie in Uganda

When the Saints


What don't have to go across the country. We don't have to be called to war-torn areas. We don't have to start a website or sell tee-shirts or raise thousands of dollars.

We have to be the hands of Christ wherever we are and everywhere we are. And the world will know us by our Love.

{Homecoming}

{Homecoming}

There's no place like home.

It's a comfort to think that phrase, when we are sleeping on hard mattresses in a hotel across the country, or eating sticky airplane food, or living out of an unorganized suitcase, or hiking through unforgiving brush on a backpacking trip; this is when we think those words. It's when we are someplace that we don't belong, that we long to go back to where we know we are meant to be.

When we are somewhere where we won't be staying long,

when we are somewhere strange,

we long to be back at home.

Because we can't get the love and the care – and the food and familiar beds and familiar sounds – anywhere else.

We know that at home, we are loved.

We can run away, seeking that love other places. But we never find it. No one know us and loves us as our family does, at home.

There's no place like home.

We wander through the world, working and traveling and building out lives and our fortunes: where thieves break through and steal.

We search for love, but it's never as perfect as out Father's love. Everywhere we travel, we know it will be no more like home than any other place on this earth. Because we have no home on this earth. We won't be staying here long.

This isn't where we belong.

Our home is in heaven, where thieves do not break through, nor steal.

And there is no place like that home.

We await the day when we will no longer wish to be home and when we will no longer have to longingly say that there is no place like home – because we will be home. The Celestial City will be the the place we will never want to wander from.

There, our Father knows us and loves us.

There we will be free from searching.

There we won't be aliens and strangers in a hostile land, as we are here on earth.

Here we are always wandering.

There, we will be home.

{Conditioned}

{Conditioned}

In my mind, there are two ways of doing things: the right way...

and everything else.

There is one right way to put on conditioner, and the back of the bottle says how, and I read it obediently before applying to be sure I'm not doing it wrong.

Conditioner?

That's how I view life. I say that I have an imagination, and that you should live life to its fullest, and that there is freedom and joy in a Christian's life, and you should enjoy every part of life -

and then I box myself in.

And I cage myself up.

Listening to that little, worried voice in my mind, saying: “You're too afraid to try something new.”

“You're too afraid of doing something wrong.”

To an extent, we all fear making mistakes.

But to a few of us, we are petrified and terrified of making mistakes. Because we have forgotten:

mistakes are proof that you are trying.

We work and struggle and fight to always be right, forgetting that God has no ears for the ones who are always right. He honors the ones who know that they are wrong.

He did not call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.

The whole need not a physician, but the sick.

There may only be one right way to put on conditioner, but it's not the right way that matters.

It's that I've been conditioned into letting the instructions on the back of that bottle

rule my life.

{Mortality}

I am starting a series today. I would call it a new series, but that would imply that I have had an old series, which I have not. If you haven't noticed, there hasn't been any series at all on this blog, nor methods to the madness of my posting.

So the decision is final: I am stopping this madness. Or at least I am attempting to. And this comes with the disclaimer that I am still human and I may miss a week from time to time.

What I jot down on my paper during service is usually incoherent, mixed in with a thousand references and quick lines scribbled out that the pastor said which I would do well to remember. Once I get home and look at the mess I've created with my notes, something I've written down usually pops out at me, and pulling out my trusty laptop, I expound on it.

This series is what I end up with after quiet Sunday afternoons of writing. These are short musings from my heart that have made me aware of something in my life, assured me of a promise God has made, or are my own personal re-dedications to live each day like I was dying.

I hope they in some way spur you on to do the same. I know I'm not the first person to say this, but we will always have something to learn, no matter how long we live. I have a life time of revelations still ahead of me.

So welcome to Sunday.

{Mortality}

This life is 100% mortal.

1 out of 1 people will die, and 1 out of 1 people know it. Right now, in the particular season of life we are in, we may not be staring death in the face. But someday we will.

We will face it with our friends. We will face it with those we love and cherish dearest. There will be weeping, and mourning, and sorrow to match no other earthly sorrow.

Many have already begun to face death. Day after day there are funeral processions. There are graveside services. There are half-mast flags. All will, at sometime, walk to the valley of the shadow with someone, and then stand weeping on the shore as the one they love leaves them to go to a place they cannot yet follow.

But the day will arrive we when enter that valley for ourselves. When we become a worldly fatality. When we join the mortality rate as 1 out of 1.

Death, grief, and pain come to everyone.
And everyone chooses, in that moment, how they are going to deal with it.

I was first confronted with death at eight years old, when my Papa died. I didn't really understand what was happening. My innocent mind was acquainted with a weight that it had no clue how to carry.
So I let the weight lie.

I felt the hole of Papa being gone, but I knew that he was in heaven, and so with that sole comfort, I willingly let go of the burden that I couldn't bear.
My simple, childlike faith carried me through. I had the strength I needed for the season of sorrow I faced, and the strength was sufficient.

I wasn't planning on meeting death again. But I don't plan my life. God blessed me with five years of not having to face the valley. Five years of dealing with other things in my life.
And then I was blindsided. One Sunday night in November when I was 13, I learned that the 19 year old son of dear, dear friends had been killed in a car crash.

I was suddenly standing on the brink of eternity, but I couldn't follow. I couldn't go any further than the brink. His grieving family couldn't follow. His best friends couldn't follow.

Where was God? It felt that way at times.
In that hopeless, helpless state, God began to teach me something about death.
He taught me that when I was asking where he was, He was actually right there.

I knew of five young men who were killed that horrific year. My mind suddenly came to the understanding, for the first time, that I lived in a world of death. I lived around death and in death and faced with death. And it wasn't going to go away. Ever.

We live in a deathly world.

But Christ is life.

He is the God of the living, even in the face of death. And when His saints die, they are actually going into true life – so He is still the God of the living.
When we belong to Christ, we need not stand on the brink of death with hopelessness, because we know that the end of the this life is just the beginning of another. Dying, here, allows us to live more truly than we have ever lived before.

I was blessed to know believers who were taken away. I was blessed to learn to grieve with hope, because God doesn't just take us from this world into nothing. He takes us from this world into Glory. He took those believers from pain to painlessness. From danger to safety.

1 out of 1 people will die.

But 1 out of 1 Christians will never feel sorrow again. And there is going to be a huge family reunion in heaven. And that earthly mortality rate,

it won't matter any more.

Because Christ died, so that when he calls us to walk the Valley of the Shadow, we need not fear death. Because as His children, in death, we live.

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. Luke 20:38