Thoughts on Freedom...

What is freedom? Where does it come from and what does it require of me?

In the first 13 chapters of Exodus we meet a nation of enslaved people. God heard their cries, sent them a leader, and took 13 chapters to get them to walk out of the city. When God set the Israelites free from the Egyptians, it wasn’t just a matter of Him setting them free and then they sat around and were just “free” in their own little lives. Their freedom required something of them. If they wanted to be free, they had to not only accept the work that God was doing in their lives, but they had to pack up their stuff and actually walk out of the city of their captivity. They had to walk away from that which held them captive. Now, you wouldn’t think that that would be a difficult decision. You might not initially think that walking away from oppression would be something you would actually have to think over, but let’s look at this a different way.

The Egyptians were holding the Israelites captive and treating them like slaves. But what if the Egyptians were holding the Israelites captive but treated them like equals or better? Would the Israelites still recognize their enslavement or would they come to an acceptance and say, “well, that’s just how things are”? It’s easy to recognize enslavement when it’s painful or oppressive. It’s easy to look at slavery and say, “that’s bad and should never happen! We should fight that.”

What if enslavement is somehow masked as something that’s not so bad? What if we are walking around this world, thinking we are completely free, but in actuality are completely enslaved? Only this isn’t any kind of slavery history has ever recognized before. It’s completely unearthly and entirely spiritual. Ephesians 6:12 "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” Our freedom will not be gained by fighting people, or even by “just getting through today”. There are days when we feel like “just getting through” is doing pretty good, thank you very much. But is that the life of freedom Jesus died so that we could have? Of course not! I have a hard time believing that the Savior of the Universe DIED just so we could force ourselves to push through another day! But how do we break this dynamic we have with the world? It’s so easy to just jump on the “God bandwagon” and expect to go out and conquer the world and fall flat on our faces. How do we free ourselves from this tether that the world has on us?

I don’t have any magical answers that will somehow make that light bulb turn on over your head and help you see something you have never seen before. Like Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” Here is what I have found in my spirit to be true. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot free ourselves. We have to let ourselves die. The Bible says, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20 NLT). Crucified. Dead. No longer living. Powerless. That is what our old lives must become if we expect our new lives in Christ to gain any momentum. We simply cannot go on living our lives as we have been and still expect God to free us from those lives. We have to be willing to walk away from them. Now, we can’t always afford to walk away from our jobs, but we can walk away from the group of gossips around the coffee machine. We can’t always physically walk out of our situation the way the Israelites did, but ask and watch as God provides a place for your spirit to find freedom and rest within your stressful situation. Be willing to be changed, ask, and then watch as God takes a sinner and slave to sin and grants a freedom that no words can express!

Will you have troubles? Of course. Will you struggle on probably a daily basis? Naturally. Will people mock you and treat you badly? Probably. Will you sometimes wonder if this was a good idea? Could be. Will you be alone? Never! In your lowest valley, He is there. On your highest mountaintop, He is with you. On your way from one to the other, He travels by your side.

Romans 8:38-39 (New Living Translation) “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The shape of your heart

If you were to draw your heart, what shape would it take? Would it be battered and beaten? Would it be fresh and bright? Would it be held safely in someone's strong and capable hands? Would it be standing alone?

Mine would (big shock here) be a book. Not a new book, not an old book. Plain on the outside, so plain in fact that many people look over it without even noticing, but it is held securely and lovingly in the hands of Jesus. He has read it so many times, He knows it better than I do! Inside the pages are worn with use. Many passages are highlighted and underlined by people that have walked through my life and taught me something about myself. They have each written a little something in the margins, each leaving their own special mark on the pages of my heart. The story my heart tells is for the eyes of Jesus alone, for He is the Author. Many people catch a glimpse of it here and there, they can read a page or two, maybe even a whole chapter; but no one can know the fullness of it except the Author. He knows what it was created for and who will read bits and pieces of it.

Every time I hold a book in my hands, I think about my heart. The link is so direct for me that I cannot help but wonder what new page of my heart will turn next. What chapter of my life am I on and how many more chapters do I have to go? Am I nearing the middle of the book or still in the beginning?

What about your heart? What shape does it take?

The structure of a book

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”

- John Berger; Keeping a Rendezvous


I love the structure of books. I love to read a book and see the four walls, roof, basement, and all the different floors and rooms of a book. Each character, each situation, each event adds another layer, another dimension, another story to the structure of the book. When reading a book, I love to watch the structure slowly unfold, creating a new puzzle piece with each turn of a page. Every new twist in the unfolding of the story allows for a new room to be explored. As the characters wonder around the house of the story, each person's point of view in each room allows the reader's mind to expand and be made aware of possibilities yet unknown to them. With each book I read, I can only hope that my mind expands to include new possibilities in life, in imagination, and in dreams.

my love

I love books. I love stories. I love the world that books open up to your mind. I love the feel of a book in my hand. I love the smell of old books and the look of the yellowing pages. I love the comforting silence of the library. I love the vast feeling of knowledge that exists in such a palatable way that if I took in a deep breath, I would know more than I did before I breathed. I love the imagination that books bring to my life. I love the escape of a good story. I love the structure. I love to take a good story and build a house out of it. The easy way I can be taken so far away from my present place by a good book causes me to yearn for more and more.

“We needed books, we needed something on which to build dreams.”
Louis L’Amour

Things I hate about food...

Things I hate. I realize that maybe "hate" is a strong word, but today, this morning, these are things that are really grating on my nerves:

1. Feeling like I have to ration my food to make it to the next payday, even though I know that money needs to go someplace else. All I want is to pay bills and still be able to get food and gas. Apparently that is too much to ask right now.

2. Feeling the need to eat protein and only being able to grab the half eaten Slim Jim left in my drawer from the week before. Even though Slim Jims do have 6 grams of protein (the big ones do anyway), I still feel like this is an ultimately bad life choice.

3. People saying that you look like you've lost weight and you know the reason why, and it has nothing to do with a diet that you actually chose but rather the buying of more "economical" foods. Now hear this People, Ramen and Spaghettios do NOT a healthy diet make! And yet these and other similar items have been nearly the entirety of my food intake recently.

4. For those of us that sometimes struggle with anemic tendencies, this is NOT a good way to live your life! I have been showing signs of anemia all week and that is bad, very bad. I want a steak. Medium rare. I'm feeling very carnivorous.

I need some cheaper options here. Weekly, I'm super thankful for my amazing roommates and my wonderful boss who feed me! If not for them, I would be much skinnier, and not in the good way.

In about two weeks, my family is taking me on a 9 day cruise to celebrate my birthday. Is it bad that I'm most excited about getting to eat some really good food? Guilt-free (I feel guilty wasting yokes) Egg white omelets with lots of veggies, plenty of red meat and seafood, as much iced tea as I can drink, peanut butter that's not past its expiration date, and who knows what other glories lie before me!! (and since when did unexpired peanut butter become a "glory"?)

I'm looking forward to the day when I can eat healthier because I can afford it, not because I feel like I'm going to pass out if I don't. Today's lunch: one spicy black bean burger I found in the back of my freezer (no one claimed it, so I took it) and some frozen spinach (thank you Mr. Office Microwave).

A coworker just walked in with doughnuts... this might not be such a bad day after all. :-)

ponderation of the day...

What’s one thing you feel you can’t say in the church? Why?

"Sometimes I just don't understand human beings..." -C3PO, Star Wars

Sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my mind about humans. We were the last thing God created, the grand finale as it were... and yet, have you seen a sunset over the ocean? A sunrise over the mountains? Snow covered peaks against a brilliant blue sky? Lakes reflecting like mirrors? How can humans be so grand a thing when these and many more majestic creations exist?

I would like to say that we're the grand finale because we're actually conscious creations. We have a mind, a soul, and a spirit, unique from other creations. We also have opposable thumbs, but we're not the only ones, so that's not all that great  but sure helps when making tea and toast for breakfast. Last night, during a prayer meeting, I was just struck with my own inability to understand the idea that humans are so great. I mean, I know some pretty nice people and some very talented people, but as a whole, I'm looking for reason why God waited until the end to create us. He took a few days to make preparations for us on earth. He knew what we would need to survive and created those things first so that we wouldn't want for anything upon our creation. He knew we would need air to breathe, food and water, light and dark, and companionship.

Why would God create such a wonderful place for us when He knew we were going to do what we've done to it? Probably the same reason that parents give their children great gifts when they know the kid is going to just play with the box (I had some of the coolest spaceships with those boxes!). Love. I guess that's what it all comes down to: love. How many times in the Bible does it talk about God being love? How many times does Jesus show His perfect love to the people around him?

God is love. Perfect love. A love that never fails. So what's our problem? We miss it! We are surrounded by physical evidence of His love for us and yet we miss it on a regular basis! Look around you today and find the ways God has shown you His love today. Did you see something beautiful? Have you been hugged? Does someone love you and did something special to show it? Are you breathing?

Love. That's what it's all about.

Moving day is nearly upon me!

So, in case you don't already know, I'm moving. Not across the state, across the country, or across the world, just across town. I'm trying like crazy to get work done at the church office, trying to pay attention at Job #2, and still trying to pack up my small world so that when saturday comes the people who are helping me move won't hate me. I'm going through closets, cabinets, nooks, and crannies, trying to get everything packed up in an organized way and I'm noticing a trend. Through the past year that I have been living at the house, when I've had something that I didn't know what to do with, or just didn't want to deal with, I just stuck it someplace where I didn't have to look at it. My hall closet has the most random assortment of stuff that I've ever seen! The drawers in the baker's rack are full of random papers, fish food, and left over Christmas candy (super gross!).

I feel there's a metaphor here... when something comes along that we don't want to deal with, our first instinct is to push it away and just try to forget about it. We stuff it in the virtual nooks and crannies of our minds and refuse to deal with it. Even when it involves someone else and they don't want to deal, we collectively stuff it in our hall closet and try to forget about it.

The problem is this: eventually those closets are either going to get full and the door will stop closing, or we'll move and have to clean out the closet quickly. Rushing through anything tends to lead to mistakes, rushing through cleaning typically means throwing things out we wanted to keep, keeping things we needed to throw out, or just packing everything and hoping we'll have time to deal with it later (essentially bringing our closet of junk with us to wherever we're moving).

What does God have to say about our tendency to stock pile our junk because we don't want to deal? I guess that depends on why we don't want to deal with it. Here are a few reasons:

Anxiety/fear. God says this, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).

Doubt that God can actually handle it. Try this one on for size: 1 John 5:13-15 "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him."

Our reasons can seem as endless as the oceans, but we need to understand that God is bigger, stronger, and more able to handle our lives than we are! So why do we struggle through our lives as if we're the only ones who can hack it? On another level, why do we try to avoid enlisting help when we finally start to unpack our closet? Embarrassment? What keeps us from grabbing a close friend or leader and ask them to go through our crap with us? No one really enjoys airing out their dirty laundry in front of others, but we are made for community, made to need each other. In trying to do everything on our own when we really need help, we're denying ourselves the joy of working in the manner for which we are created. God knows we need Him and He knows we need each other. Jesus, while on this earth, surrounded Himself with 12 men and was especially close with 3 of them. Yes, He was training them, but they were His companions. If the Savior of the universe surrounded Himself with people He trusted and loved, why don't we? Are we better than Jesus? I mean, really?

Which one will I be?

I like the disciples. Sometimes I envy them a little bit. I think, "they got to physically walk with Jesus, see His face, touch His hand, and sit next to Him." Even the thought of the total lack of personal hygiene doesn't really phase me as much as you would think. The 12 disciples got to experience physically what we get to experience spiritually. They walked with Him physically, we walk with Him spiritually. They talked with Him physically, we talk with Him spiritually. They followed Him wherever He walked, we follow His direction in our walks.

As I go through their adventures in my mind, I see the 13 of them surrounded by crowds of people. I see them sitting alone around a fire talking, telling jokes, laughing, and loving being in each other's presence. I see them walking down a hot and dusty road, Jesus striding with purpose, Peter, James, and John close at His heals (kinda like large puppies), and the rest following behind, each one lost in his own thoughts. I see Jesus being led away from the 12 by soldiers, Peter, James, and John wanting to follow but are unsure, the rest run for their lives. I see eye contact being made, unspoken words being communicated, hearts being torn.

As I think about these 12 men, I wonder what they were thinking when the soldiers came. No doubt they were frightened, but what were they expecting Jesus to do? Peter's response was pretty obvious: pull out a weapon and fight. But what did they think when Jesus replaced the man's ear and actually told Peter to cut it out? When they were running for their lives, were they having regrets about following Jesus? Were they just concerned with their own skins? Did they even think about Jesus as they ran?

When it came down to the wire, when Jesus was on the cross, of the 12 disciples who had just spent the past three years getting dusty from the sand kicked up by Jesus' sandals, only 1 stayed the course to the end. Only 1 stood at the foot of the cross, close enough to hear Jesus' words when He charged this 1 to care for His mother. Perhaps even close enough to smell the stench of blood and dirt. Perhaps even close enough to touch His feet. Of the 12 men, 10 ran away, 1 killed himself, and 1 continued to follow Jesus.

Regardless of where the 12 disciples were at that time, I can't help but wonder where I would have been.  I look up those 12 men who left their lives to follow my Jesus, I ponder their choices. When I sit and really ponder their choices on that day, the question is put to my soul, "What kind of disciple will you be? Will you let yourself take the easy way out and die? Will you run away? Will you not have the strength to make it all the way? Or will you follow Jesus, even to the cross?" With tears in my eyes, I answer, "I want to be the one who makes it. I want to be at my Savior's feet, regardless of whether they are bloody, dirty, or white as snow." I ask what I had to do to make it. And God responds clear as day, "Stay at your post. Read scripture. Love my children. Talk to Me. Use your gifts."

Which disciple will you be? Will you run? Will you die? Will you follow?

Only Hope

There's a song that's inside of my soul. 
It's the one that I've tried to write over and over again 
I'm awake in the infinite cold. 
But You sing to me over and over and over again. 

So, I lay my head back down. 
And I lift my hands and pray 
To be only Yours, I pray, to be only Yours 
I know now You're my only Hope. 

Sing to me the song of the stars. 
Of Your galaxy dancing and laughing and laughing again. 
When it feels like my dreams are so far 
Sing to me of the plans that You have for me over again. 

So I lay my head back down. 
And I lift my hands and pray 
To be only Yours, I pray, to be only Yours 
I know now, You're my only Hope. 

I give You my destiny. 
I'm giving You all of me. 
I want Your symphony, singing in all that I am 
At the top of my lungs, I'm giving it back. 

So I lay my head back down. 
And I lift my hands and pray 
To be only Yours, I pray, to be only Yours 
I pray, to be only Yours 
I know now You're my only Hope.