Torn ACL's and Forests...

"For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." -Jeremiah 29:11

"What if your blessings come through raindrops? What if your healing comes through tears?... What if the trials of this life are your mercies in disguise?" -Laura Story

I hope you tear your ACL. There it is. The cat is out of the bag. I hope you tear your ACL.

Ok, maybe I don't mean that exactly how it came out I suppose. But then again, I kind of do. I'd love to share a story. In the middle of the summer before my junior year at Furman, I tore my ACL in my left knee playing Capture the Flag at Clemson. CAPTURE THE FLAG?! Yeah, the game you played in elementary school out on the blacktop. And here I was 20 years old and tearing ligaments in my knee. It wasn't until the end of the summer that I actually learned I'd torn something, so surgery got put off until December (a whole 5 months away.)

I was bitter! I was REALLY angry! I was the captain of the ultimate frisbee team and an RA for a freshman hall that was playing intramurals, but I was stuck on the sideline watching. I couldn't do ANYTHING but sit and watch from afar! I felt cheated, like I had lost a whole year of school fun because one of my legs was disfunctional and half the size of the other. I felt like a year was being stolen from me.

And then something amazing happened about a month before surgery. Peace filled all the bitterness. Patience replaced the yearning. Trust took the place of the anger. There wasn't a moment when this all came to be. But I distinctly remember that month before surgery knowing that I was SUPPOSED to tear my knee up. It was as if I had a glimpse into the awesome blessing I was receiving. I was able to understand that nothing was being taken from me, but that this was another way God was molding me into the man He was making me to be.

I learned patience in ways I never could have without the injury. I learned to encourage others from afar, not always having to take the lead. But most importantly, I learned to be still and just stop...

Jesus doesn't promise life is easy when we follow him. That's a little, misunderstood idea. In fact, he even says that there will be pain, suffering. But he didn't stop there. That's a bit hopeless. No, instead he goes on to say not to fret, because in the end, he has overcome all of it. All throughout the bible one thing becomes unbelievably clear, God is God, and I am not! God created time. He created this earth and everything on it. He created me and has a perfect plan in store for me!

His Word constantly reminds that there are just things we are not meant to understand. Like in Job, when Job wants to understand why God would allow of his suffering. God replies, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?" Or in Isaiah, when God says through the prophet, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand?" There are things we are just not meant to understand. It reminds me of an analogy Donald Miller makes in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

He compares our lives to a tree in the middle of the forest. Without that tree, the beauty of the forest would be a little bit diminished. It wouldn't look the same and would lose something unique. But in the end, the story is not about the tree. It's a story about the forest.

I get caught up in what I want way too often. That's what tearing my ACL taught me. It taught me that everything (the good, the bad, and the downright heartbreaking) all points back to the God who created me and created the universe. It reminded me that even when things don't go the way I want or the way I think they should, it doesn't mean that they are wrong. It means God has something infinitely more beautiful in store. And in the midst of life's disappointments, He's always teaching.

So today I hope you go out and tear your ACL. Or if not that, at least I hope you find a moment that makes you stop, take a deep breath and remember that God is behind all of it, and what a beautiful thing that is...

forever unfinished...

Love is...

"Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." -1 Corinthians 13:4-8

"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." -1 John 4:8

We love a lot of things these days. We've probably loved a lot of things for a while, I've just only been around for 22 years of it. We love a good steak and mashed potatoes. We love our girlfriends and boyfriends. We love our favorite college football teams. We love winter (or spring or fall or summer.) We love a lot of things!

I used to think of love in terms like "The Notebook" or a cute love letter on Valentine's Day. I mean, that's what love is all about right? A fairy tale ending with the someone we fall madly in love with? Finding that perfect someone you can't stand to be away from? Love used to be a feeling for me, something for me to fall in and out of. How I was wrong...

I've come to think of love more as a verb now than a noun, more as an action than an emotion. I've stopped using it as much. Not because I am loving any less, mind you. Hopefully I'm loving more in fact! But I don't want to cheapen what love is to reduce it to a simple feeling of attraction or desire. Love is SO much bigger than things I like! It requires movement and risk, not just smiles and dates.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about love recently. My youth at PHOTOS and I have been reading through Crazy Love by Francis Chan for the last couple of months on Wednesday nights. A couple of chapters ago he challenged us a bit. He asked us to read 1 Corinthians 13 and everywhere we saw "love" to replace it with our names. And let me tell you, it was a humbling experience!

But it opened my eyes to just how BIG love is! When I need to remember how big, I just look up at the night sky. I think of just how big the God of the universe is to have created the galaxies and the stars, and yet He intimately loves me and shows me exactly what love looks like. It looks like the God of all things seeing the people He created caught up in their sin, not realizing they even needed to be made clean, and coming into that world. And even bigger than that, He was arrested, beaten, abused, mocked and crucified. The God who created the stars and the moon and the oceans and the mountains became nothing more than a sacrificial lamb for a people who would never appreciate it and could never repay the debt. That is love!

Love is so much bigger than we even understand! It looks like a Samaritan, a man on the very fringes of the Israelite people, helping a traveler (most likely a Jew) he finds on the side of the road. Not satisfied with just getting him up, the Samaritan takes him to an inn and pays for all of his needs. It looks like feeding the poor, living with lepers, forgiving our enemies. It looks like a single mom working two jobs for kids she barely sees. It looks like a college senior taking weekends out of her year to hang out with and take care of a girl who she knows won't be around forever because of her terminal diagnosis. It's easy for us to love the people we like. Love requires a little more risk than just loving the people we know will love us back. Love means dropping all we have to help people who may never be able to repay us.

I read 1 Corinthians 13 and can't help but be a little ashamed at the thought that I love well. If it describes something love is, I'm usually not. If there's something love isn't, I usually am in abundance. But that's not the point I'm learning. There's a God who IS all those things! And as I become less and He becomes more, incredibly love begins to shine through more and more in my life. And as that light shines, it has nothing to do with me! It has everything to do with the God who IS love!

I'm in the season of my life where people all around me are getting engaged and married and it seems like love is all around. Marriage is the biggest "I love you" we can give to one another. But I'm realizing how big that really is. It's so much bigger than "I really like hanging out with you and you're really cute and we have great chemistry." It's more like, from today forward, we're one. And I'm committing to daily being patient, being kind, being all these things that sin tries to tell us not to be, even when it's hard and when there are troubles. It reminds me of the way God loves! No matter what, no matter how you may be hurting or may not return it, my love is never leaving you. I'm not giving up on you, no matter whether you want me to or not!

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Cameron and Ian...

"The Lord your God is with you, hi is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." -Zephaniah 3:20
  
"In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed not just endured." -Gordon B. Hinckley

Last Wednesday I was in a funk. You ever have those days? No reason. No explanation. Nothing bad had happened. I'd even slept well the night before. I was just tired and energyless and just kind of BLAH! A bit irritated and probably impatient to be around. Mopey. Ever happen to you?

Well I'd like to thank my two friends Ian and Cameron for pulling me out of it. I was in the science library at Furman killing time before practice and just moping about, trying to work on some stuff for our trip to Barnabas this summer when I came across a video. And that inspired me to find some old Facebook pictures of these two buddies of mine. And I couldn't help but smile, even laugh. The funk broke, the clouds parted. I'd love to share a little bit about these two friends of mine.

Cameron.

Cameron is a young man who is probably about 13 by now. Two summers ago, I had the pleasure of meeting him at Camp Barnabas. Not just that, he was my camper. Let me just tell you, this man is a bundle of energy! He sees the world as if everything was new and exciting, the way a child does. Except he was the energy of maniac to go explore that world! And he gets the googly eyes around the ladies. You know what I mean: the blind stare, stuttering for words, might even drool if she's pretty enough. Needless to say, he doesn't hide his crushes well! Oh yeah, and he has a chromosomal deletion in his 13th chromosome or one of those, which has delayed his mental age by about 6 years and has greatly diminished his social awareness. He takes "No!" about as well as a two-year-old :)

Ian.

If Cameron was the brains of the operation, Ian was the brawn, more bowling ball than kid some days. Whether it is climbing bunk beds or rolling around in bed naked, the man goes full-steam ahead. You might get his shirt on, and before you got a sock on his left foot, the shirt would be on the floor and his face would be covered with a smile and laugh reaching from one ear to the other. Ian has one great love in his life: Spongebob Squarepants (or as he more accurately calls it, "Ba-ba-diggity.") A little momentum and this man cannot be stopped, no matter the wall in front of him. Oh yeah, he also has a developmental disorder in his chromosomes. It is extremely difficult to understand what he says and his mental age is about half his actual one. Right and wrong are relative for him, although no one would love him any other way!

I have these two men to thank for breaking my funk. I mean look at them! How could you not laugh and smile thinking about these two. And more than anything else: they'd have it no other way! All Cameron and Ian know how to do is have fun and enjoy themselves. Whether it be picking up rocks with pretty girls or sitting in the shallow end of the pool or holding the Spongebob DVD case, it's all joy to them. They remind me that life is mean to be lived and enjoyed, not tolerated. Not "blaaaahed" through. I CANNOT think of them and not smile. It's not possible. They remind me there is joy all around us. Amazing how kids with chromosome disorders can see that better than me most days...

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Stones... (Forgive us our debts...)

"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" -Matthew 6:12

"7 times 70 times. There's healing in the air tonight. I'm reaching up to pull it down. Gonna wrap it all around" -Chris August

Stones and rocks can be really heavy, especially when we spend weeks, months, even years carrying them. And when your hands are busy holding onto rocks, it gets pretty difficult to grab onto anything else.

Jesus once met some people with stones in their hands. They were ready to stone a woman caught in adultery! And here's the crazy part, as far as they were concerned, it was what they were SUPPOSED to be doing. "It's what Moses to do to such women," they shouted. But let's set the scene a bit better...

The story tells us that while teaching in the temple courts, the priests brought in a woman caught in adultery. After hearing someone talk about it, I imagine this meant they pulled her FROM the act itself, naked and totally ashamed. So they stood her in front of Jesus and explained the situation and why she should be stoned to death. "What do you say?" they asked. At this Jesus did something strange. He bent over and started drawing with his finger in the dirt.

So they kept asking him with anger pouring from their lips. And after tuning it out for long enough, he slowly stood up, asked the crowd, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Then he went right be down to his drawing! One by one, they began to drop their stones and walked off, until it was just Jesus and the woman left. Then he said something amazing!

"Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"

"No one, sir."

"Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin."

He stood there and offered her a fresh start, a new life. He didn't condemn her as the law of Moses had called for. He didn't stone her. He blotted out all the anger of the crowd and offered her renewal and forgiveness.

We all have people in our lives that there is tension with, people who have hurt us. Sometimes they are people who have done things we just can't let go of. Maybe it's a parent who failed to love us. Maybe it's a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse who has cheated or lied. Maybe it's a friend who has talked behind our back. No matter their story, we all have stones with specific people's names on them. We have people we just can't forgive.

But if God can forgive and redeem and restore a naked woman pulled out of a bed committing adultery and he can forgive me, with all of the hurts I have committed and all of the sin that comes between him and me, then I'm positive He can forgive the people who have hurt me and the people who have hurt you.

I've seen those people in my life. That's why I've sent some of the most loving e-mails I've ever written to Glynis Bethel over the past few months (to understand this, just visit susanleathers.com.) That's why I've started to pray for the people who have hurt me the most over the past few weeks. Because life is so much more beautiful and wonderful when our hands aren't full of stones we could drop whenever we're ready. Because God is ready to heal the wounds that have left us scarred and to restore us where we've fallen short. Because it's so much easier to embrace each other when our hands aren't clinched around stones but around our brothers and sisters...

 As a related aside, I've had this song on repeat for the last week. I heard it live last Thursday and have not been able to get it out of my head. For anybody fighting to forgive, to let go of those stones, particularly when it is our families that have hurt us, this is for you.

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Our Daily Bread...

"Give us today our daily bread." -Matthew 6:11

"A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it"- Cool Runnings

This is Part 2 of this little walk through the Lord's Prayer.

Let me first say that I'm not a huge bread guy. Sure, I love a good peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat or a great french toast and I do love a nice loaf of sourdough. But couldn't God have given us something with a little more toast? Like, "Give us today our daily burrito, or our daily milkshake?" Why settle for bread if that's what we're going to ask for?

Obviously, that's not the point, just a disclaimer. The point is slightly more profound. And the question becomes, what does it mean to ask for our daily bread? I've got an idea.

When the Israelites first began to wander in the desert after God PARTED A SEA and ALLOWED THEM TO ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY they began to bicker. They complained?! Here they were free, and they were complaining and actually saying they would prefer death in Egypt to where they were! "At least we had food there," they called out. So God said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day." Sound familiar?

Jesus was Jewish. He would've known this story since the time he was a boy. And it seems to me there's a little overlap. When the Israelites went out and gathered the bread God placed for them in the morning, they all had just enough for every person in their tent. Then there was a little stipulation. They weren't supposed to save it! They had to trust that God would provide what they needed again the next day, and the next. I'm sorry, but I might've tried to save just a little. I mean, what happens if God forgets or something?

But God didn't forget. He provided each day their daily bread. He sustained them. He hasn't stopped yet.

Money has never been a big temptation for me in my life, for which I am eternally grateful. But please don't misunderstand, money is not a bad thing! It is an incredible blessing for us. It can be used for incredible and wonderful things! But it will NEVER provide infinite security or comfort. There will never be enough. And let's face it, money can go just as fast as it can come.

I think that's why Jesus says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Stuff has limits. Stuff can only bring so much joy. It's finite. When we store it up, what need is there for faith? If our stuff can satisfy all of our needs, there doesn't seem to be much need for a God who can provide daily bread.

But God doesn't stop providing. He never leaves us lacking. He never stops satisfying our needs. He will never fail us nor forsake us. That's what Jesus' prayer calls us to remember: that it's not about what we have, but remembering there's a God who provided it and at the end of the day, if we're not satisfied with him, we'll never be satisfied with what He gives...

forever unfinished...

Broken Jars and a Confession...

"I am just a beggar here at your door. I am just a shipwreck here on your shore" -Starfield

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?" -Psalm 13:1-2

This is an in-between in the Lord's Prayer blogs :)

I was talking to Pastor David the other day and somehow we got to talking about church architecture (which is probably #1023 on my list of most interesting topics,) and he said something really interesting that has stuck with me the past few weeks. "I like cathedrals with confessionals," he said. "It reminds me we're not perfect and that we have something to confess to the God of the universe."

But it's SO true. Church is a place where broken, imperfect people come to worship a perfect God. And yet I, we, come to church with all the masks of the world on, dressed up putting our best foot forward. We make sure we don't show any of our pains or weaknesses or sin or imperfections because that would mean we don't measure up to everyone else. Or even more scary and painful, we think we somehow might not deserve to be in the presence of the God who knit us together.

One of my favorite images is a cracked jar with a candle in it. At first glance, the jar is worthless with its cracks and breaks. But then you light the candle, and realize that without those cracks, no light could get out. It takes a few cracks before the light can start shining through... Nobody is perfect. When we cover up those cracks and act like everything is always perfect, it becomes about us, and Jesus never gets a chance to shine through. But when we embrace our sin, our pain, our struggles and lay them before our merciful God, He is faithful to fill those voids, to fill in the places where we are cracked.

The bible is FULL of people like Moses and Abraham and David who were TOTALLY flawed! But in the midst of those flaws, God shined through. The Psalms are full of David's crying out because he is at the end of his rope. Job CANNOT understand why God would allow everything he has to be destroyed. Jacob wrestled with God. I count myself among these broken brothers, and as Usher says, this is my confession...

I feel pain. A LOT! When relationships aren't perfect or life doesn't take the turns I expect, it hurts! There are nights when I cry out, yell out, scream out to God asking to understand why. I lie to people because I'm afraid of the truth. I make excuses for bailing when I get afraid of committing or going out on a limb. I judge people the second I see them. My tongue is often more full of sarcasm, gossip and words to bring people down than it is with love to build people up. I'm selfish and can be terribly impatient when it comes to other people's desires and dreams. I promise to be there for people and then fall flat on following through. There are days that I feel like David, feeling like the last thing I want to do is open my bible because He feels far away.

I am not perfect. I am broken and flawed. And yet, I know there is a God who fills in those cracks and shines through. I cry out to a God who takes those flaws and makes something beautiful. None of us can say we don't need the same thing. It seems to me, the more we embrace our cracks, the brighter the candle shines through. And it's a beautiful thing...

forever unfinished...