Lightness Of Being

Some said they'd noticed that she seemed to be getting tired.

Others were just amazed because she didn't seem to be slowing down much at all.

Whenever someone shared that they had begun to think it would soon be time, I listened carefully, curious to see what they had seen.

Each time, I heard only those seasonal things – the observations of aging that relate to movement, appearance, etc. The things already familiar to her children; we had been taking note and sharing notes for years.

She had a temper, and folks still called her sweet. I'd seen her fully charged, and I'd seen her weary. And this was true for all the years, traced from my childhood to the current day. I'd seen her revved-up and revved-down. Fragile and formidable.

Many times over the years, she'd share childhood memories, with the joy of remembering and recreating them to share with us. Often, she'd lament that she couldn't go back to the days when she was the baby of the family. What she always called the innocence of youth.

Sometimes the tone of world-weariness puzzled me, because these were my sweet years of early memory. And after the three of us left home and my father passed away, she admitted to some loneliness and depression. These were most visible in the years right before a seemingly destructive storm relocated her to my home. There she became part of my boys' sweet years of early memory. Her distress at being relocated from her lifelong hometown gave way to the affirming thrill of discovery, as she began to navigate a new town.

And when she was able to restore her home and move back, she continued to flourish, her faith deepening as she saw her own restoration and that of her hometown around her.

More and more in every conversation, I would hear her say how blessed she was. All the more after an accident led to long recovery from a broken ankle, instead of a fall that would have likely been fatal. In recent years, when she praised God, she did so with increasing awe that he not only cared for her, but that he still found purpose for her here.

She was childlike joy packaged in a woman who was a walking tour-de-force. That was quite a gift. That's quite a legacy.

Her funeral was amazingly both triumphant and warm, and I was thankful to see each and every one who came to show they cared. My sister and brother, as we loved and lived through this moment together, asked how I was doing. I could honestly say that while sorrow shows up – that each time, it finds my heart filled to standing-room-only capacity with joy. And it is just as quickly crowded out, retreating back through the door.

Joy that so many would celebrate my mom, and celebrate her so well. Joy that I had her so long – long enough to share with my children – and that I had her in the first place. Joy at the forceful impression she made on who we are, those of us in her family and in her community.

So when I asked myself whether I saw any indications right before she died, I only saw … a lightness of being.

In those seasonal changes of aging, I saw the coziness of one who remains warm in winter. She could watch an old TV show and laugh, as though it hadn't been on earlier that day. She listened pleasantly as I thanked her for encouraging me in a work dilemma, even though her pause made it clear she didn't recall speaking into the situation with words graced by God's perspective.

Most of all, each time we spoke, it was how she marveled that she was still here, and that God was so good to her. The words were not new, but the wonder had grown. This was the lightness of being that I saw. And it was the best indicator of a life transition that there ever could be. Because she was genuinely prepared to go home, thankfully more than she realized.

What lightness of being we know, when we allow God to be sovereign. When we begin to trust and give Him glory so.

The lightness of joy.

The Sharpest Sword

I had seen what it could do. Now it was my turn.

We were at a festival that celebrates the Renaissance period of history, with food and events that match the theme. While chewing on a huge turkey leg and watching a jousting match, we'd gotten a fresh surge of energy, and now we were exploring the shops.

My husband had admired the range of swords, and a worker at the shop invited him to try out his favorite. Behind the shop were bundles of reeds standing up in water barrels. They'd been soaked overnight, and the thick bundles were now dense and heavy.

First, the shop worker took aim. And swung, slicing in one steady, fluid movement. He showed us the swiftly dissected bundle, and reviewed what made the sword so effective and efficient. After giving us a lesson on careful use, he then handed it off to my husband, who readily did the same.

Now I had the sword in my hand.

I'd been fed. I'd been taught. The sword was sharper than we could have imagined. All I had to do was understand what it could do, and then choose to use it.

There's a sword that is so sharp it can divide bone and marrow, soul and spirit. You have this sword. And it's been placed in your hand.

You'll want to be fed first. The good news is that God's Word is a sword, and at the same time, God's Word is a daily bread. You'll want to be fed with that daily bread. Meaning that you'll want to taste and see that the Lord is good, first sampling what God has to say to you, and then coming to savor it. And then, when you're ready to read more than a verse or two, and begin to choose larger portions, you'll want to sit down to make a meal of it, and then another. You'll become filled with His love and His wisdom for your life. And you'll realize with each meal that the joy of the Lord is your strength.

You'll want to be taught. You can get a lesson on careful use of the word of God, if you seek a conversation with God.

Your prayers may begin with seeking God's intervention in the circumstances of your life.

As you pray, you will want to remember how God has already intervened in your life, and take time to be thankful. Not only will gratitude honor God as He is due, but thankfulness will renew your mind as to what God can and will do.

As you recall what God can do, God can reveal to you that what He has done reflects who He really is. As you seek to give God a role in your life, God can help you recognize that His role reaches beyond intervention, to sovereignty; that God was meant to be Lord of your life.

And as you realize, in greater and greater detail, who He really is, you realize that all of what He is, is what you need and want most. Realizing that God himself is what your heart is missing, your prayers can then become about seeking His presence – God himself.

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 KJV

Understand that God's Word can divide soul and spirit – defining your spirit as your truest self, which is restored fully by your saving faith in Him; and defining your soul as your mind and emotions. Just as marrow gives life and function to the body's joints, your thoughts and feelings were never meant to reign over your life, but to be given life and function by your spirit. Your soul, which needs daily healing and restoration, needs to be led by your spirit, which is the essential innermost substance of your existence. And your spirit by faith has a perfect connection to the perfect leadership of God's Holy Spirit.

In Ezekiel 37, a prophet in ancient Israel shares his vision of what God will do with His people regardless of what state they are in. He gave an eyewitness account of divine restoration far beyond human capacity when God restored dry bones, in a valley of death. In Psalm 23, another prophet named David shares the relationship with God that preserved him and his life, regardless of the valleys he walked through. Here I share my witness to what God can do. I relay to you that hope is never lost, when you place your hope in God.

What happened when it was my turn with the sword? I said I was ready. And I focused – more on what I had learned, than on what was before me.

I took aim, and sliced steady. The bundle fell to the sharp sword.

Take your turn.

Receive the Gift

It was ready. Long before I toyed with agnosticism at age 10. Long before I ever chose my adult value system and methodical reasoning as substitutes for seeking, exploring and following singularly triune Truth.

Long before I was lovingly anticipated or lovingly welcomed into the world, and long before I had ever disappointed, hurt or angered anyone, the gift was already ready.

And long before I had a name, my name was already on it.

It was my salvation, prepared long before I entered the world. My salvation came with redemption, justification and sanctification.

Salvation meant I would be freed from ties to sin; I would not be sin's servant. Redemption meant sin would not own me because of my debts, my transgressions, because those were now paid off and forgiven. The wages of sin – death – would be replaced by an inheritance, as a new child of God. And my value, set by God treasuring me, could not be reduced.

Justification meant that long before God's enduring law had defined what I lacked, God was ready to share his holiness with me. Sanctification meant that sharing God's holiness would immediately and ultimately redefine me.

All these riches, gifted to me in Jesus' name, were prepared long before I ever existed. Long before I knew my need, and long before I was ready to receive them.

All these riches are labeled by multisyllabic words. They only begin to define God in the human mind. When all is said and done, we must know for ourselves that God is love. And that He loves passionately and compassionately – long before we ever choose to love Him.

If you have yet to receive them, receive them today. By faith, turn from sin and all its shortages to receive your God, the giver of every good and perfect gift.

If you received these gifts long ago, invest them today. Recall that they were never meant to nestle back in tissue paper, and that the lid will not set back in place. Because these gifts were never meant for storage out of sight, out of mind.

Our actions and words will reflect God's ways, while presenting a reminder that God's ways are not our own – or they will be unproductive, bearing little fruit. We can choose day by day to invest and be further enriched by our gifts, or let distraction and discouragement stash them aside.

You are part of your Father's business. You – and those you either pass or do business with – are your Father's business. When you were commissioned to the work of sharing Jesus and His gospel with the world, you became His empowered hands and feet in the world. With each day, your face continues to take on resemblance to Him, and so you represent Him where you go.

Receive God's immeasurable gifts. Invest them to His glory. 

The Point of Yielding

There’s a yield sign, at the point where I’m ready to take the ramp to the highway and get to work. 

It’s not yet rush hour for most, so I rationalize that I can rush on ahead. I’ve got work to do, and the sooner the better. Or so it seems.

Sometimes after I’ve passed that sign, I’ll see a car approaching from the other direction. We each had time to enter the ramp safely, and so all is well. Or so it seems.

But when I stop to consider the purpose of the yield sign, I stop calculating my speed as due diligence, and my timing as precision.

The driver’s ed class I took in high school never said: Prepare to stop at the yield sign unless you have somewhere important to go.

My driver’s ed manual never had a page that read: Prepare to stop at the yield sign unless you can speed up to get by.

And the grace I’ve known in all my travels was never based on my plans or my handling at the wheel. The grace I know is God within and without, and too often I don’t prepare to stop at all to hear from Him. 

I’m eager to do the work He’s given me, but I’ve often let that work take my focus from Him – when it’s His guidance and empowerment that I need to depend on, moment by moment. I care about other people, but I’ve often rushed past someone He sent my way – when it’s His encouragement and love that both of us just missed out on sharing.

I have an opportunity to yield throughout the day, to stop for yet another moment. 

Just to interrupt what I’m doing, what I’m saying, even what I’m thinking long enough for God to get a Word in. To apply His ways to the situation at hand.

There’s a yield sign, at every point.

Compassion: Let it flow

In the contemporary Christian worship song Mighty to Save, there is a line: “Everyone 
needs compassion.”

This is true.

I need compassion. You need compassion. And not just the way we usually mean it.

It’s not just that we need to receive compassion, but we need to release compassion.

It is a need – not just an item on a to-do list, in our amateurish quests for self-improvement.

But an actual, hardwired need, because we were designed for that. We were designed to overflow with

everything that God is, most specifically His grace.

It’s His grace that we call out for, when we don’t know what else to say or do.

It’s His grace that we call out for, when we don’t know what else to call out for.

We call out in pain, or loneliness, or weariness, or fear – any number of things.

These are moments of necessity. It’s these times, when we're pushed beyond our own rediscovered

limits, that our human ability to recognize that ‘this is where I stop, and this is where God begins’ is really

activated.

But, just as important, are the moments in which we release compassion for someone else.

These are moments when compassion is like a dammed-up river, that now can flow through you. And all

that was dry and dusty and littered gets washed. Renewed. Restored.

And prepared. Because you are prepared for the next time someone does show compassion to you. 

You are prepared for the next time God is speaking one-on-one to you, and you recognize God’s 

mercy in your  life, flowing through your circumstances and your very existence. The riverbed has now 

been prepared.

The way has been made.

So let’s release compassion, not because we ought to, or we should.

But because we simply have to.

We simply have to.

When God Answers

We pray.

We may pray about what we want – for what we dream of receiving. We may pray about what we need – for relief from stress, pain or threat. We may pray for ourselves, or someone that we love.

We do not pray to persuade God to act. Instead, prayer is our act – our act of faith. When we pray, we embrace our belief that God can and will help. That God has excellent and abundant things stored up for us. We reach out in readiness to receive those blessings. And we honor God, because our eager anticipation of His best expresses and reinforces our trust in His faithfulness.

It is God’s will to hear His people’s prayers of faith. It is His will to answer.  And when God answers our prayers, it is cause for great joy.

If you have prayed those prayers at length – maybe even for years – your joy is even greater when God answers. If you have prayed those prayers for years for someone you love … when God answers, only the scale of heaven itself can be used to measure your joy.

            God has revealed to us in 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 that He has a great purpose for His people to seek and share encouragement with each other.  I am excited to realize that when I share my hopes, and ask someone to pray to God about them, I am inspiring someone else to exercise faith.  I am excited that when we join to pray in His name, we are magnifying Him.

My needs and wants now become part of my ministry to other believers. And their needs and wants can minister to me. If a nonbeliever witnesses our fellowship, our ministry has also become a mission.  All in all, it is a wondrous invitation to faith – an opportunity to advance God’s kingdom here on earth.

I marvel at the power of God’s plan for the interaction of those who love Him. I am gladdened to realize this great blessing of sustaining and strengthening one another. Even more, more and more, I begin to see the outline of the body of Christ as we learn to fully fellowship. How glorious it is to see our God.

            When God answers our prayers, we see Him more and more.

When he says “wait,” we see that He is a God who nurtures us as we wait. As we pray, God responds with encouragement in His word, in the fellowship of believers, in His presence felt in ways beyond number. We learn to trust Him, thanking Him right here and right now. We learn that blessings not yet perceived can still be blessings received – received in our spirits.

            When He says “no,” we see that He is a God who comforts us in our disappointments and our grief. We learn to trust that God’s viewpoint and ways are above ours. We see that He is a God who inspires us, when we don’t know what to do next. We see that He is a God who restores us, when we call out as the anguished father in Mark 9:24 did, saying: Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. And God does.

            When He says “yes,” we see that He is a God whose delight is our delight. We see that He is a God who rejoices over us with singing, and invites us to join in the song. We are reminded of His amazing abundance.

When we pray over our wants and our needs, we begin to see that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, whatever He answers. And we begin to realize the joy in all of God’s answers. As we come to see God, we see that that joy is part of His very nature.

When we pray, this joy of the Lord has a cleansing effect. It may wash like a trickle, in a moment that revives and refreshes you, interrupting your day-to-day routine. It may wash like a wave, in an event that quickens your heartbeat and compellingly sways your soul away from the routine. It may wash like a flood, in an occasion that saturates and transforms you, and transforms your routine into worship. However it washes, His joy washes like the Living Water that it is.

We find a joy in knowing God as Father, who communicates His love for us in daily blessings. We find a joy in knowing Jesus as Savior, who made himself a living example for our  earthly journey and a sacrifice for our eternal life. We find a joy in knowing the Holy Spirit as our counsel and comfort, leading us lovingly every step of the way in life.

When God answers, we find a joy.

Water and Stone

We thirst for righteousness. We thirst for what is holy. And yet, we walk around without quenching this thirst. We are made of the earth, and like that earth, we thirst. (Proverbs 30:15,16)

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Psalm 63:1

God formed us of the clay. Then he breathed life itself into us. When we are born, we begin breathing constantly and automatically. But even though water is so crucial for us that we die in only days without it, we drink only as an infrequent choice; people typically acknowledge that they don’t drink the 48-64 daily ounces advised for our health. We become accustomed to getting by on less than what our bodies need to be fully satisfied.

And so we spend our days in thirst, soon not even noticing our dehydration. Water is what we need, but it’s also what we must seek.

Breathing in and out, we have life, received from our Creator. But do we know our God? We need relationship with Him like we need water. And it is that relationship that we must seek.

O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter.
We all are formed by your hand.
Isaiah 64:8, NIV

When God creates us, He then gives us the choice: Will we continue to be crafted by Him? We are clay, but stone we can become. Clay on a potter’s wheel receives a steady hand and a touch of water that renews. This water keeps the clay from hardening before it is developed into useful form. Just so, our hearts need the touch of what Jesus called Living Water. Jesus introduced a way of living, which is delighting in God and living to delight God. This living water sustains even to eternal life. This living water refreshes spirits. This living water saturates hearts, making them malleable for reshaping.

People living to delight in God were in shortage even in the time of Noah. When men’s hearts hardened and evil was prevalent, God overwhelmed the world with water. He then resumed His craft with a man and his family that were still willing, still pliable enough, to obey Him.

When Moses and the Israelites were trapped by the Egyptians at the Red Sea, one group – the Israelites – received God’s saving grace. These were the descendants of Abraham, a man who chose God over everything else he knew. God had chosen him and his family to become His people, to show His glory among all the nations. When they called out to God for deliverance, God answered. God displayed his faithfulness, carrying out his plan for His chosen people and rewarding Moses’ obedient faith. He saved them in a way they could not anticipate – the parting of the Red Sea – and made them an example they did not comprehend: of deliverance from bondage that is not only physical and political, but spiritual as well.

Another group, the Egyptians, followed a man whose heart was unrelentingly hardened. Their pharoah’s hardness became part of the record of God’s plan. The Egyptians, who did not seek God and who would not hear from Him, were destroyed.

Later, it was the same Israelites who witnessed these miracles who eventually chose fear and pride over faith. Instead of trusting God, they despaired and defied Him. They too became brittle and unyielding, and those who would not be led were not led into the Promised Land. Instead, their children received the land, as evidence of God’s faithfulness.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.
Psalm 46:4

O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water.
Jeremiah 17:13

When the next generation of Israelites crossed the Jordan River, also parted by their God, He prompted them to build a stack of stones there to recall God’s care. The memorial of rocks stood in the midst of the Jordan just as they had, recalling their physical journey and their spiritual journey. These rocks testified to the survival of these Israelites. They likely also resembled a familiar stubbornness that lingered in their own hearts. Just as the Jordan river current washed over the memorial rocks, God’s presence remained with the Israelites over the ages, continuing to care for them faithfully, in spite of many more generations of rebellion. With time, water shapes and polishes rock. And generations of Israelites came to slowly learn just how faithful their Lord God was.

Awash in His ways, even our stony hearts can be smoothed, polished, reshaped. Overwhelmed at the fountain of grace, we can allow our wills to be broken like rocks into sand. Once broken, we are finally usable. Broken into dust, we are drenched and renewed by God’s purpose, and made once again like clay pliable to God’s will – found in His Word and revealed in relationship with Him.

Whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 6:35b

In Jesus’ first miracle, He changed water into wedding wine. First, he directed the servants to fill jars with water; then, He directed them to draw out from those jars. The wine that was drawn out and served was declared as the finest.

Over the years, I’ve brought myself and those I care about before God, seeking not only resolution to problems but also restoration of the people facing the problems. And I’ve come to realize that we who worship God are being shaped, like clay, into jars.

Whenever I've taken time to focus on Him – praying to Him, listening to His word in Scripture, and speaking or singing praises to Him, I have been filling up like a jar with living water, and filling the jars of anyone who took the time to pray with me, read with me, and praise with me.

Whenever I've acted in faith, I've drawn out from that water, which is Jesus’ brand of wine. It comes from Communion with Him, relationship with Him.

This living water, which restores, refreshes and sustains unto eternal life itself, is the finest served.