Grace Note . . . Part II

Another metaphor came to mind.
You know the metaphor it's raining cats and dogs + the metaphor money grows on trees.
You get it's raining money. Grace is kind of like free money in my mind.
If it was raining money would you take some? Not even just some . . . would you take all you could?

Yeah, I think you would.

Grace Note . . .

A lot of people struggle with the concept of grace. Especially the grace of God.

They can't handle the fact that God would just freely give and freely forgive.

They can't handle the fact that they don't have to give anything in return. Which is partially understandable I think. We thank people for their good acts with good acts of our own. This is the truth of our day.

I'm not going to argue for or against this misunderstanding, which I do believe it is, above all else. But I was hit with an interesting metaphor yesterday as I heard a song that I had heard many times.

Grace Like Rain, that song we sing all the time, has a catchy melody and an interesting little twist on the song Amazing Grace. However, I never put together the real emphasis of the comparison of grace to rain.

I love rain; it kind of makes my life. Unfortunately living in Saskatchewan where we clearly prefer dry, I haven't had much experience in the concept. The experience I have had, however, has been incredible. I love to just stand out in the rain and get absolutely soaked. So that my clothes feel about a thousand pounds and I look like something that could be compared to a drowned rat.

Todd Agnew, or whoever wrote that song, may or may not have had that experience too, but he nonetheless makes the comparison. Grace like rain falls down on me . . . can you imagine standing out in a grace storm? (as in rain storm, just in case you didn't get it).

This is the reality of the Grace of God . . . this is what we refuse to understand. If you're standing in the middle of a field during a rain storm, there's probably not going to be a lot of shelter for you to shield yourself against the grace . . . I mean rain. All you can do is love it and allow yourself to get covered in it.

I hope this doesn't sound too morbid...

There's always rain isn't there...

So...we all know about those times in our lives that we wish would just work themselves out. They never seem to do they? We try to not dwell on them because we know that He's got them, but somehow, they make us someone we don't want to be; someone we shouldn't become. Continually frustrated, we eventually begin to wonder if it would just be easier if we just left...altogether left. We just want to go home to Jesus. This would be so much easier wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be easier to just avoid and sit in the safety of the perfection of heaven? Yeah, I think it would be...

These are the thoughts I had as I woke up this morning and remembered how I was feeling as I went to bed at nine-thirty last night. I asked Him to take me home. I asked Him to have mercy and take all of these frustrations away by taking me away. And then I remembered what a friend told me once during a time when he was having these exact same thoughts.

He told me that though it would be easier to escape just by going home, we can still sit in the safety of the perfection of Christ. It is easier with Christ and the best part is that we don't have to go home to get that ease. It's here waiting for us.

It always rains. Gilbert Keith Chesterton once said that we shouldn't hate the rain, for without the rain there would be no rainbow. This is a wonderfully true statement, but the rain still hurts while its here. So while it's here, my aim is to simply sit under the ever protecting wing of Christ my savior and stay as dry as I possibly can.

Then I can sit and look for my rainbow.

Good-bye Summer.....

There’re two concepts that I have heard and ‘practiced’ for quite some time but never really understood in a way that affected anything that I did. These two concepts are purity and surrender. You know that concept of purity; it comes to your mind and as a good Christian who’s grown up in the church and youth group you immediately think of sexual purity. Yet as I think about it now, that is not at all the definition of purity that comes to my mind.

We think to the Old Testament and we think about the sacrificial lambs. They were to be pure, spotless lambs sacrificed to take away our sins and create in us purity that God would see as good and acceptable. They had to be pure so that we could be pure. Moving into the New Testament, Jesus became that lamb sacrificed to make us pure. He had to perfect so we could be made perfect in him. Holiness is another word that goes along with this. Holy is something which is perfect and pure beyond compare. Think back to Isaiah when he was allowed to enter into the Temple into the Holy of holies; the perfect of perfects. The seraphs which flew above him said to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6.3 NASB). They stated it three times. The Lord is perfect, perfect, perfect; pure, pure, pure; holy, holy, holy. Blayne Banting always uses this awesome cliché that goes, “Repetition is God’s Highlighter . . .” It has never been more true than in this circumstance. God isn’t just perfect; He’s perfect x3.

Tonight I went to Surrender. Mostly because someone asked me if I was going and I stated I generally do not go and then was convicted of that. The guy who was leading it focused on the name that we have chosen to give that gathering of people in God’s name and stated to us that it was truly time to surrender. As we sang songs about God’s love and our need to surrender to it in order to experience everything he has for us, I was convicted that if I wanted to surrender, I was going to need to become pure. That’s kind of a big jump . . . let me explain.

There are parts of this world that I really like. Parts like the OC. I love[d] that show. It’s so funny and awesomely lame and even right now, though it’s been gone for only an hour and a half, I miss it. This show was keeping me impure. For one thing, though it’s not as dirty as I made it up to be in my mind when I wasn’t allowed to watch it in High School, there are aspects of it that as a child of God who should have a mind and heart worthy of God, or at least aim to have, I didn’t need to be watching. Also, it was keeping me from spending time with Him and even really thinking about Him. Time that I had originally set aside to talk to Him or read His word, I would avoid just so I could find out what happens next with Seth and Summer (No matter if I never watch it again, I will always have a connection with Seth Cohen, I hold to that). As I worked myself up to justify watching it, I knew this was not what was asked of me, but it was none the less what I was giving into. And no matter how many times He asked me, I refused to give it up.

On the way home from church today, I asked God to help me to want only what he wants and nothing more. This was a continuation of that conversation I believe. What he wants is not for me to avoid him for the OC. What he wants is for me to not get frustrated over the things that he’s working out. What he wants is for us to be close; for us to know each other and for me to have a clear dependence on him and his strength and his knowledge and power that I clearly don’t have.

This is what is pure. This is called surrender. I miss the OC, but I will not pass up the opportunity to live the life that someone so creatively planned all the way out for me to live. Who does that anyway? I can’t and won’t look past the fact that someone would care enough to create a really big adventure for me to go on.

Those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books just popped into my mind. The wonderful thing is that we have a way to get to the best ending possible. We just have to be willing to give up the choices that we think will get us there and make the ones that we’re called to.

Proactive . . . what an ugly word.

When I was in High School, my best friend's little brother had to read a book for one of his classes. It was called "Habits of Highly Effective Teens." Their teacher thought it would be good to encourage them to develop their leadership skills by forcing them to read this book, which ultimately completely unmotivated their already unmotivated selves from being effective. One of the habits described encouraged them to be proactive; to take the initiative; to make the first move; to get things done. Later on, I used 'proactive' in conversation and AJ cringed, withdrew, and with a distorted look on his face said, "Ugh, proactive, what an ugly word." The memory of the concept up to and including the word been so distorted for him that everything in him led him towards the opposite.

The fact is, however, in a world, centered around motivation, this is exactly the thing we, as we grow are encouraged towards. We are encouraged to get things done; and not only get them done but be the first to do them. Waiting is not as encouraged as it once was.

Sometimes when things arise in our lives that we are at a loss as to how to deal with them, this kind of thinking kicks in; sometimes without us even knowing it. Our first instinct is to deal with it. We sit and we complain thinking and saying "I don't know what to do." My question is, what makes us say this?

I want to suggest that it is in fact an unnecessary reliance on ourselves. Ah, yes, confidence in the flesh. It takes me back to my Pentateuch class in my first year of college. This is what kills us in life. We look at our lives and say, "It is up to me to live this life rightly, make it work and deal with everything that comes up." We all know that we can't do this. We've tried and tried again, just to fail. Yet we still ask the question, "What should I do?"

What if I told you the answer is more often than not, nothing. I'm still trying to tell myself the answer is more often than not nothing. But it's true. The reason for this being, there is often nothing to be done and the reason for that being, our plans and resolutions don't often fit within the plans and resolutions of God. Apart from those we can do nothing.

I developed an anxiety disorder because I refused to believe just this. I spent so long trying to figure out what I could do. But the reality was that there wasn't anything I could do. No move I could make; no action I could take. By the grace of God I began to realize this. It's an ongoing process, and I was reminded of it tonight as something arose and I immediately thought of the thing I should do.

I don't want the pressure of having to solve everything anymore; firstly because it's not mine to take, and secondly because it's a futile pressure to put on myself because I will just continually be frustrated in my lack of clarity to be a solvent. I'm sorry, that's quite the sentence.

Proactive, is often an beautiful word. Often, however, it's also a very ugly word. Somehow, I think we need to come to grips with the fact that we aren't the end all be all. God is, and he's going to remain that way forever.

And while we go about that, may we enjoy this encouragement to continually become less proactive.

Beautiful.

Discovery seems to be the theme of my life. I'm like a child who has never seen the world before and everything that is shown to her is new and exciting and surprising.
I made a discovery. Yesterday. I was standing in the entry way of Marv and Lois Penner's house and I looked in their mirror and this is what I thought . . . I'm beautiful. It was a startling discover as I have never thought that before; not like that. I thought that for the first time in the way that I was meant to think it. I am beautiful not because the world wants me to be. Or because I measure up to the world's standards of beautiful. I am beautiful because I am. It's a clear and simple statement and a clear and simple truth. I am beautiful because God created me; beautifully and wholly in love.
I had an eating disorder once. Not very long ago. I could not, would not look at myself in the mirror and accept what was there. Even if I did, it was only because that was the only choice I had. Somehow that image, that lack of acceptance of myself is gone. I look at myself now and I instead say, "Well that's nice, isn't it."
It might seem selfish; it might seem vain. You can sing that Carly Simon song to me if you want. The truth is, however, that we were meant to be accepting of ourselves in this way. God created us and we need to be accepting of what the way he has chosen to do that. We also need to respect ourselves as though the creator of the universe formed us. This means treating your body lovingly, healthily and carefully.
Ephesians five says, "for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it . . . " That verse used to make me feel mega guilty, but now I read it and feel not guilt, but opportunity. Opportunity to live up to the person God has created me to be. That's not easy. In this world it's never going to be easy. That's not exactly the point. The point is that God is bigger than the world.
So live in him.

• I love wearing bold lipstick.
• I love laughing loud.
• I love smiling my big smile which for most of my teenage years I hated because it was so big. A guy in college told me once that one day I would understand the magic of my smile and I always thought he was so full of . . .
• I love wearing sweat pants.
• I love not wearing make-up at all and still feeling pretty.
• I love dressing classy.
• I love not being skinny, even though I secretly still wish I was.
• I love not dwelling on every little thing I eat.
• I love pizza (Thank the Lord. There was a time when that love had left.)
• I love God for giving me the opportunity to remain beautiful in Him.