Bare, Brown, and Beautiful Landscape

 

March is known for its mud, brown, and drab appearance.  It gets a bad rap as the white winter snows melt away and the ground thaws leaving mud in its wake and weather that gives way to spring rains mixed with winter's slushy precipitation.  One day it's warm with the tantalizing promise of spring only to have winter's grip grace us with water that comes in the form of sleet or snow.

What do we do with this month?

As I look at the landscape as the trees stand without their leaves and exposed.  I am reminded of a truth - life is hidden within.  I can complain about the brown and mud (and yes, I do too sometimes) or I can be aware and reminded that the tree is not beautiful because of its leaves or fruit; no, it's beautiful because it's life.  We don't have to like the mud and brown landscape but we can choose to see what's beyond and within it.

The tree stands as it is.  What you see is really who the tree is.  Without what you see - there would be no leaves or fruit in a few months.  Right now the life is within and the tree is resting inside and can stand in the harsh winds of winter because of the life within itself.

The landscape of brown grass that stretches out before us, contains the life within, waiting for the warmth of the sun and the longer light of the days to stir it to green and lush.

This truth hits home to my heart.  I too, can stand in life's hard and harsh winds and storms because of the life within me - the breath and life of Jesus.  I am not defined by what I do or what I say.  I am not defined by the leaves of success as the world defines it or even my own definition.  I am not defined by the bareness that I feel without at times, and that I may feel within.  I am not who I am because of what I do or don't do.  I am who I am because of Jesus.

This changes the way I view the trees and the landscape.  It also changes the way I see myself and the way I weather the storms.

It is holy ground.  I stand in awe and worship.  

When we see ourselves through the eyes of God, our Creator and Lover, we will bend in the winds but not  be knocked over.  We can stand tall as we stand bare and vulnerable.  We're not defined by the changing seasons and times because the Life within us defines us.

I invite you to see the brown and bare as beautiful.  It's beautiful because in all the vulnerability of the tree, the life is within.  Sometimes in all honesty, I, too, feel stripped - bare and brown to the world around me.  Even here, the life that can happen within is the beauty of the bare, brown, and beautiful vulnerability.

It's so freeing to not be defined by what 'hangs on the tree' of who I am.  For whether I am successful or hidden, whether I am producing or resting - I am loved!

You see, when I am stripped of what seems to be my identity and I stand bare and vulnerable, it creates the space for me to find out who I really am and gives opportunity for me to keep on remembering Whose I am - God's.

Settle in closer to God.  Worship Him with your wounds and your joys.  Worship Him with the both/and of life that you may be walking through.  Stay with Jesus - with hope because spring will come.

The Faith of Seeing Beyond

 

What's ahead? What awaits me around the bend? In the fog, I can't see far.  What's enshrouded in the mist?

Unknowns. Disappointments. Anxiety. Hard places.

These are the fertile soil where fears can take root in our hearts. The tender, worked up soil where faith can take root is also the place where fears can take root.

Without faith it is impossible to please God. So, if it's that important, what is faith?

Faith - Webster defines it as an unquestioning belief that does not require evidence; trust, confidence.

God defines faith in Hebrews 11:1.  It says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. "

Assurance. Conviction. The assurance and conviction that God is for me.  So I then can choose to believe what is unseen above what I'm seeing in my circumstances and what they are screaming to me in the moment. 

It takes faith to see beyond, to learn the heartbeat of the One Who created us and to trust Him.

How do we catch a glimpse of eternity to stay engaged with Jesus in the middle of unanswered petitions, watching wrong choices being chosen by loved ones, relationships gone awry, and more? 

To see beyond, is the wrestling of faith and fear. It's the space of finding Jesus and choosing at times, to stay and believe Him and His words of truth, even if it doesn't make sense or all is so unclear. 

To see beyond gives us the strength to keep on, keeping on.

To see beyond is to know and find God in our stories. 

I get so embroiled in the happenings of my life and all the details playing out before me.  Some days I can see through it all, the joys, the sorrows, the lovely things and hard, the peace and the chaos.  But some days the negative and hard threaten to sink my ship with all its turbulent waters. 

How God, do I make sense of all this? How do I keep going?

May I hide? May I walk away?

Jesus whispers, "What did I do?" 

"I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. I came.  I came to be present, to show you the way through is the way with Me."

II Kings 6 tells us the story of an army that surrounds prophet Elisha and his servant.  The servant awoke just like any other day only to discover the army surrounding the mountain they were on.  All fear rose up within him and he cried out, "What shall we do?!?"

Elisha's response beckons us to remember who is with us.  His reply was, "Don't be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them".

Then he prays a prayer, "O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see".  And He did.  The servant saw the horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha.  God was with Elisha on that mountain, surrounding him with His presence.

Elisha was confident in God's provision.  (I really wonder what Elisha was seeing...)

Open our eyes to see... 

Yes, Lord, I get it just a little bit more. You are in our stories, just like You were a part of Elisha's story and many others.

You want us to see You. And when we see You, we get a glimpse of beyond. 

While all this is good and true, how do we live the way of seeing beyond??

I have found it's not an easy 1,2,3 to find God but there are a few things I have learned that helps make this tangible and ways that God has become visible in all the muck and mire, joys and successes of life.

1) Gratefulness - learning to view life through the lens of gratefulness is a powerful shift.  In every sorrow there is a gift or something we can say thanks for.  We don't have to be grateful for what is happening, but in every happening there is something to find and give thanks for.  Reframing sorrow is a step toward finding God and His healing love.

2) Acknowledge the both/and - in life we experience joy and sorrow; pain and healing.  It's not one or the other, but both.  When I learned to be okay with both and didn't need to choose one, I found life to be full, for the depth of pain or sorrow I was experiencing is the height of knowing God's love and His peace and joy beyond measure.

3) To live today - to wake up each day, claiming the grace of God and His new morning mercies. (Lamentations 3)  Learning to live with grace for today and sometimes only the moment that is right before me, was to live in rest from all the lies and frantic expectations.  To not let yesterday's choices affect today. Today is a new day, another beginning, a fresh start.  Living in God's new morning mercies is so freeing, it's grace.  Today is God's manna grace, just what is needed for today!

Elisha eyes - seeing beyond what is surrounding me because I am learning there is more with us than with them.

Seeing -

Beyond me to You. 

Beyond my strength to Yours.

Beyond my finite to glimpsing a bit of Your infinity.

Beyond my control to Your all-seeing eye. 

Beyond my workings to orchestrate plans to trusting Your working all things for good. 

Beyond my doubts, questions, confusions,  to see a choosing of staying with You because You hold us in Your everlasting arms.

Beyond temporal to get a glimpse of eternal.

So, LORD, as only You can do, untangle all the threads that threaten to ensnare us and keep us caught in the web of fear and unrest and guilt.

To see beyond is to find You present and rise on the  eagle's wings to soar in the confidence and belief of Your power, strength, and goodness, in spite of and because of.

To see beyond is to let God's love sink into our hearts and see others through that lens. 

One of many of my favorite quotes, "To love someone means to SEE them as God intended them." Fyodor Dostoyersky

To see beyond can only be seen when I allow His grace, love, and mercy to impact my heart deeper and deeper.  For God's vision is beyond and above ours. We are finite, He is infinite. 

He is here. He is present, with us.

Quote, "For the Author has written Himself into the Story and now walks with us until the Story is finished in His time, in His way, for His honour and His glory. All is well."  -Peretti 

And all is well with my soul for the Author of my story is the Finisher of my story and He'll keeps us all in the middle moments of our story. 

Faith, the vision of seeing beyond, shifting, so our heart's eyes can catch a glimpse of the Author who truly loves us deeply. 

Faith the vision of staying with Jesus, abiding in His presence when our flesh says, "Leave, God is not trustworthy".

Faith is seeing beyond.

The Ache of our Souls and a Place to Go

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and YOU WILL FIND REST for your souls.  Matthew 11:28-29

This is one of my favourite verses and yet if you look closely there's a piece that I want to skip... "take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me..."

Why do I want to skip that part??  

I am asked to let go.  To embrace a path I may not want.

But the exchange is, rest. 

Rest from striving. Rest from orchestrating life's activities.  Rest from the control that I so easily settle into.

A heart at rest, a settledness, right in the middle of walking, right in the middle of the storm sometimes.

Jesus.
Says come.
To Me.

To Him.
For REST.

A yoke is a joining together of two.
Two oxen.
Two people.

Jesus is inviting us to join Him and learn from Him.

Jesus does not promise life to be easy. 
The fact is life is not easy whether you follow God or not.  Whether you believe in Him or you don't.  Life became broken in the garden and life remains broken and disjointed.

But in that moment, God came and voiced a promise to Adam and Eve.  A promise of redemption.  A promise of a Saviour.

So, why follow God? Why believe His promises??

Because He promises to join us as we navigate life.  He wants to yoke with us and help to bear our burden.  Life is harder without Him.

Come.

Jesus came.  He is God incarnate.  Holy and Perfect made human.

Human so he showed us He identifies with us.

He came to partner with us in every way.  And now He says, "Come."

Bring every ache, every tear, every lonely moment, every hard, every angry moment, everything and learn of Him.  Learn more of His tenderness for those tears.  Learn more of His love even when it doesn't feel like it's there.  

Let go of walking alone and yoke with Him.

Trusting His steering, His guiding on the journey.

Breath of Life

We all face hard things... disappointments, disillusionments, sickness, rejection, death... something...  Something that hurts and causes us to want to protect our hearts.  We want to run and hide, cowering against the harsh blast of pain and hurt.

But when we do we limit ourselves.  We limit ourselves to the power of what happened and who caused it, whether it be a human being or God.

We can't see very far when we are cowering and hiding our hearts. (note to self ;))

Ok.  Before you run away and think I'm telling you your pain doesn't matter, stay.
Because what happened matters.  How you feel matters.  What it did to you matters.

But there is something more and in time, the right time, I want to encourage you to see a little further.  To shift your gaze upward as you lay there, hurting.  To shift your gaze as we are sometimes left limping.

When we get gut-punched with pain and hard things it sends us reeling and the breath sometimes gets knocked out of us.
A job loss.
A failed marriage or relationship.
A death.
Another's choice that affects us deeply.
You fill in the blank ____________.

We are left grasping for air, clutching our sides.  Broken.  Devastated.

The LORD is nigh to the brokenhearted.  He hears the cry and bottles the tears. Psalm 56:8

How He cares... to bottle our tears.  Jesus wept.  He agonized in the Garden.  He agonizes with us because He knows.
He knows the pain of denial.  The sting of betrayal.  The gut-wrenching agony of not being understood.
After all, He is Life.  He has the power of Life...  How He wants to give that to us!  And that reality makes the stings of pain so much greater.

But He went to the Cross anyway.  He saw something and knew something that carried Him beyond that reality.

Pain, hard, disappointment were all a reality.
But so was the Presence of His Father.

Jesus never lost sight of His Father and I wonder if that was why He so often slipped away, alone.  Alone with the Father to shift His focus off of the pain and on to the Greater Truth of what His Father says.  To keep in focus the reason He was here on this earth.  To take the pain and agony and hear what the Father had to really say.

Alone with the Father.  To shift gaze.  To breathe.

God BREATHED INTO Adam the BREATH OF LIFE.
Breathe.
In, out.  In, out.  Inhale, exhale.  Inhale, exhale.

When we take a breath there is an exchange.  We take in oxygen and push out carbon dioxide.  We breathe in life and breathe out poison.

God still wants to breathe into us the breath of life.
His Truth.  His Words.  His statements.

He wants to exchange our agony with His Presence and His Words of Truth.
Our worry with His peace.

I will never leave you or forsake you.
When you walk through the waters, I will be with you, they will not overwhelm you.
The LORD is a refuge.
He is our Strength.
And so much more.

That broken relationship or marriage...  What does God say??
That rejection, whether it be loss of job or someone else getting a position you wanted, or simply another person....  What does God say??
Loss of health... What does God say??
In the midst of losing a loved one, death... What does God say??
What you put in the blank ___________ ... What does God say??

And when the breath is knocked out of us and we lay there clutching our sides... What does God say??

Picture with me.... you're running and you get a side ache to where you bend over trying to breathe but with every breath, it hurts.  Or you're playing a game and you get knocked over or punched in the gut, and you're struggling for the next breath...
The coach or someone comes running to you.  They put their arm around you, supporting you, most likely saying something to guide you until your breath evens out.
A mother labouring to bring a child into this world has someone telling her to breathe.  I remember taking those birth classes and one session included the teaching on how to breathe and the coach was given instructions on how to instruct the mother to breathe during those painful contractions.

And so, it is with God.  He is our Coach.  Our Father.  And when we're gut-punched with the hard things of life, He doesn't walk away or punch us some more.  No, He comes running, supporting us with His Truths, whispering what we need to hear until our breath evens out.  Telling us how to breathe in the middle of it all.

Inhale His Words.  His Truth.
Exhale the disappointments.

Inhale His Truth.  What does He say??
Exhale our lies and bitterness.

Sometimes to take a breath, hurts, but we do it anyway.
But at some point there will be more healing and the breath we take will be life abundantly.

Breathing exercises.  Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
And receive the Breath of Life because our very life depends on it.

Life.  He came to earth so that we may have life and have it abundantly.  John 10:10

Living the sacred dance of grief and seeing the gifts and joys of life.
Living again because I shift my gaze to the One who gives peace which passes my understanding.
Living again knowing I'm loved and cared for in spite of the circumstances that I'm experiencing.

Our circumstances don't always change or life doesn't necessarily become smooth, but we exchange our angst and worry for His promises and Presence.

Doing those breathing exercises because my life depends on it.
Inhale,exhale.
The Breath of Life.

We Experience One to Know The Other

Jesus responded to Peter's indignation towards the woman wiping his feet with her hair after she had anointed them, with these words... He who is forgiven much, loves much.  He who is forgiven little, loves little.  Luke 7:47

This woman knew the deep pain of costly mistakes.  She understood her complete undoneness and because of that recognized her need of Saviour.  She came to Jesus, when Jesus was in a group of men, and was completely vulnerable... poured ointment on Jesus' feet and then took her hair and wiped them.

How could she do it??

She was extremely grateful.

She experienced deep pain.  She knew unbounding forgiveness.  And she was extremely grateful.  To where she risked her reputation and became vulnerable.

She was forgiven much, so she loved much.

Hebrews 7:11 ... Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood.., what further need would there have been for another priest to arise ...?

Hebrews 8:7 also says, For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for the second.

To experience one thing is to open our hearts up for something else.  To experience the  lack of something helps us to realize and long for that something better.

Counselors will tell you that you will not seek change out of a bad situation until the pain of where you are is greater than the fear of the unknown.

The Jews were a people whom God chose and He gave them the Law and the Law was to point to something greater.  It also showed them their undoneness and incapability to do what was right on their own.  He promised them a Saviour, a Redeemer.

When we experience a deep loss of any kind we open ourselves to knowing what's on the other side of the door.  And we often don't realize or appreciate what we had until we don't have it anymore.
There are two sides to a door.  Two sides of a coin.

There is an opportunity ... Pain/Hard = Redemption.

If there is no mess up, there is no need of redemption.
If there is no death, there will be no resurrection.

God has promised to redeem us.
He will restore the years the locusts have eaten.

To the extent that we experience the depth of hard and loss we understand the height of redemption and healing.

Jesus experienced death and because of that He could know and experience the resurrection.

The darker the night, the brighter the light.
The deeper the depths we go, the higher the heights we'll know.

The songs that touches the deepest chords of our hearts were written out of the broken cry of someone else's heart.

One morning as I was doing my usual morning walk, I breathed deep because I was experiencing the joy of a clearer brain and the simple joy of a friendship that was refreshing.  Those days of clarity and feeling good are limited for me right now and so when I experience one, the delight is extremely delightful.

To have known pain in many ways opens my eyes and heart to know the joy of health and healing.
To know the loss of one friendship is to awaken me to the delight of another.
To experience the sickness of mind and brain is to know the joy and delight of its slowly healing.
To know many days of pain is to rejoice and be exceeding grateful for the day of lesser or no pain.

As  one family experienced the near loss of a husband/father an anniversary date holds extra special meaning.

To experience one is to know the other.

To know joy we experience loss.
To know God's love deeply we experience rejection.
To know light we walk in darkness.
To know the freedom of God's new covenant, people lived the old.
To know forgiveness we made a mistake.

To experience one.  Is to know the other.

In the valleys of hard there is the fact of what we have lost or are experiencing but there is also the reality of new joys to discover.
The pain of the hard is a storm that shakes the soil our hearts and sometimes it's more like an earthquake, but one day we realize that it has loosened the soil and a 'flower' is growing in the crevice.  Our hearts are awakened and we appreciate and receive the gifts of today as richer, fuller, and more simplistic.

There are new and fresh gifts to see and experience.  And I am realizing that in the newness there is a simplicity that is refreshing.  Like the refining of gold, a fire that removed the dross and the metal now shines, till it reflects the face of the Master.

All hard must be grieved and in its own time will find healing.
But there comes a time when we must choose what we are focusing on.  We must decide which side of the door we will be, which side of the coin we will face... the hard stuff or the simple and pure joys and gifts in the middle of the hard.

To focus on one is not to deny the other, it simply is giving one the greater attention.  And the one we focus on will be the one that dictates our days and moments.  It will be one of despondency or walking in hope.

And when sadness overwhelms you because of the hard, take a moment to grieve and cry because as you do that you will find healing, again.
It is not a once and done deal when you live with a chronic illness or the loss of a loved one, etc, so the grieving will not be a once and done deal either.

But remember... to turn your face and your sights to the sun/Son.  Turn your gaze to look around you and see if you can find a pure and simple joy that may be there to surprise you.

He is our Promised Redeemer!

And if you don't find anything right then because the storm cloud is too dark, turn your heart's eyes of faith to Jesus, the One who is with you and wait, holding on to His hand in faith.