Jonathan is over at A Life Overseas today, sharing a two-part message about the need to integrate the Psalms into our missiology. Check out Part 1 here and then read Part 2.
Fear & Trust
Grief on a Spindle (a poem)
I’ve been hesitant to publish this poem, as I’ve never written poetry before, and it came out of a very dark time in my life. But I’m no longer in that dark place, and I now feel I can offer it up to my readers, who may perhaps share my experience. ~Elizabeth
Will You draw out my grief,
Spin it on Your spindle?
For my grief is hard to spin,
I always resist it.
–
It lies in wait, it’s been misplaced,
Matted up with rage and fear.
The coil’s too tight, the thread’s not right
There is no bending here.
–
This wool’s unfit for weaving,
My heart is unprepared for healing.
And my pain demands disclosure:
Is Love enough to form my skein?
–
So spin my grief upon Your spindle
Gently draw out yarn afresh.
Spin my grief upon Your spindle,
For my soul, it needs to stretch.
–
Spin my grief upon Your spindle,
I want to learn Your love anew.
Spin my grief upon Your spindle,
Clear out the muck that sticks like glue.
–
Spin my grief upon Your spindle,
Coat it with Your oil of Love.
Spin my grief upon Your spindle,
Weave a tapestry above.
Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That
by Elizabeth
Rejection.
It’s the main story I tell myself.
“That person doesn’t like me.”
“That person is talking bad about me to others.”
“That person is rejecting me.”
But today I choose to reject rejection.
I choose to believe that God loves me and that I have a purpose and calling in life.
I choose to believe that the people closest to me, the most important people, love and accept me.
I choose not to give in to discouragement and the voices in my head that tell me I’m not wanted.
Or at least, today I’m choosing to choose those things.
Because I don’t have time for that.
I’ve got messages to share and people to encourage.
I’ve got calling and purpose, and I refuse to be waylaid by the voices in my head.
Who’s with me?
–
The Far Side of Somewhere {A Life Overseas}
by Elizabeth
I remember my first home service. All those awkward experiences like drinking water from the tap and flushing the toilet with potable water again. Or feeling naked and exposed with no metal security bars on the windows. Or handing payment to cashiers with two hands (like I do in Cambodia) and then being embarrassed, because normal people don’t do that here.
What was up with the laundry smelling nice, all the time? (Come to think of it, what was up with everything smelling nice, all the time?) Could a load of laundry really take a mere two hours to complete, all the way from wash to wear, without having to hang on the line for two or three days in rainy season andstill be damp — and smelling of fire and whatever dish the neighbors last cooked over said fire??
I wanted someone to explain to me why Americans felt the need to store hot water in a tank. Seemed like such a waste of energy when you could use a tankless water heater instead, thereby providing a never-ending source of hot water for yourself. (Running out of hot water in the winter is a big problem for me.)
Today I’m facing another home service. I’ll click publish on this blog post and leave my Cambodia home. I’ll board a plane and begin the process of temporarily re-entering my American home.
Continue reading at A Life Overseas…
Underwhelmed by God’s Love
by Elizabeth
As a family we recently read the story of Jacob fleeing Esau and sleeping on a stone and having that ladder dream. I’ll be honest, the ladder story has never done very much for me. Who cares about some dumb stairway in a dream? (Apparently, I didn’t.) But that night the story moved me like never before. In it, we learn that God interacts with us, relates to us, speaks to us, not because of what we’re doing or how well we’re following Him (because at that point Jacob wasn’t), but because He loves us.
He loves us? Yes, He loves us — loves us because we exist, because He made us, because He is Love. He loves us because He has chosen us, and our relationship with Him isn’t dependent upon our good behavior, our good standing, our proper obedience. It wasn’t until years later that Jacob was really following God with his heart, but here God gave Jacob an experience of Him that was so intense that he named the place Bethel, or “house of God.”
Jacob met God in that place, and it wasn’t because of anything Jacob had done. To think that God wants to interact with me no matter the state of my soul! How wondrous not to deserve this interaction with God, but to get it anyway. How incredible that He gives us His fellowship even though we are unworthy. His love is that big. And this kind of unconditional love is not just in the New Testament as we sometimes tell ourselves (or as I sometimes gathered growing up in church). No, God’s unconditional love is all over the Old Testament too. We don’t deserve this relationship, yet God gives it to us anyway — even before He sent His son.
Hearing my husband read this story out loud spoke to deep places inside me. Afterwards I tried to share my amazement. What I said may not yet make sense to such childlike faiths — young hearts that don’t yet doubt God’s love for us human beings. But I hope that planting these kinds of revelations in their little hearts and minds will help them later in life. I hope they will look back on what we taught them and be able to see His love written all across Scripture in a way that is sometimes hidden from the more legalistic among us.
So thank you, God. Thank you for including the story of Jacob’s ladder in your Word. Thank you that a passage I know so well and am usually so underwhelmed by could still touch me so deeply. To borrow a phrase from Connie Harrington, “Your grace still amazes me. Your love is still a mystery.”
