coventants

I was reading in Hebrews 9 tonight, and I was struck by how much of God's word is rooted in the Old Testiment culture that he had already established-- and how much of this culture I need to understand in order to grasp the full weight of God's love for me. One of my favorite things about the bible is how it all just fits together-- it is One. It isn't just the "old" part we don't need anymore and then the "new," shiny part that makes us feel less uncomfortable, but its all intertwined and referential; its almost like the entire book is like a dialogue between the how we were made to be and how God is getting us back there. I think its beautiful.

Anyway, the real point of this post is this article I found on followtherabbi about covenants that helped me decipher a little more of what the writer was trying to communicate in his letter to the Hebrews. Take a read and please add any thoughts or expertise on the issue of covenants-- its something I want to explore more.

So this week I have officially become one of the myspace crowd. I could comment on the saddness of my potential new addiciton, but I think I'll just let it go mostly because its fun and I like being able to at least look at pictures of my high school friends, even if i don't really have time to talk much with them.

Ahhh life. And so the much awaited, and yet strangely anti-climatic Thanksgiving break has ended. Its been a good week. Its been quite a week of reflection, of remembering, of reaction, of contemplation of where my life is, where it is going, and so on. I feel like my last few posts have been fairly criptic and also a little on the dark side. So i think this post will do well to just reflect back on some of the lessons that have surfaced this week.

Compassion. I have had the chance to do some reading this week and I've been able to continue on my slow re-reading of B. Manning's "Ragamuffin Gospel." Last nigth I read the chapter entitled "Freedom from Fear," and one of the key points that really hit me pretty hard was the importance Manning was placing on the need to have compassion for ourselves before we even attempt to have compassion for others. Compassion for myself. Letting myself off the hook. There is a Nooma about forgiveness in which Bell makes a ponient observation: forgiveness is letting ourselves off the hook. Maybe that's not exactly the same thing, but I think way too often the things that enable us to operate the best with other people begin first with ourselves, and yet we too often busy ourselves with "self-denial," forgetting all about ourselves in order to go through the motions in order to treat people the way we should, when in reality, none of it comes from the heart.

Relaxing. I think I had forgotten just how tense things often are around home. I'd forgotten about the anger and the pain that makes you feel as though you should tiptoe around life, be quiet, stay away from the trouble. And this week reminded me all over again. But I have been doing a lot of thinking this semester about having a soft heart-- a heart open and brave, a heart that truts in the capable and loving arms of Abba, a soft heart that is able to face the angry voices in order to see something a little deeper. A soft heart that is willing to feel the love that is deeper than the pain. Definately a destination long in coming, but I am happy to know that I am at least close enough to see it.

Its been a good week to be able to spend with my dad. I don't talk about my dad a great deal here, but thats something joyful about this week. I've been able to catch a glimpse of the beauty in him, even though he wants so badly to hide it. Dads. This semester I have found myself able to observe dads, wonder a bit what it would be like to have one who could really show how much he cares. Hhhmmm..

I've been thinking a lot about just trusting, letting go, coming out of hiding. Hard stuff, but refreshing just to think about. Thinking about a God, a Father, who cares about me. A few days before break, I was talking to God about all the things that are uncertain in my future-- the coming week, next semester, next summer, next year, and somethign just came to mind, this idea: God wants me to trust Him with my life. a bit of a obvious and yet hard-to-grasp idea. Trusting God with my life.

I'm not sure I'm really expressing what is running through my heart right now. It just seems to me, the rich, deep kind of life I want to live comes from being totally honest with God and still always trusting his gentle arms to catch me when I fall. I feel so exhausted from trying to predict the future, trying to make myself into somethingI think I need to be. And yet all I am really left to do is beg for mercy. Mercy.

As I was thinking tonight, it occured to me that I am spending a lot of my time doing things that I'm not sure I really want to do. And maybe I just need to do a little less all the way around, but I keep finding myself wanting to do more with music, join a group that really makes my heart sing-- but am not sure where to find that outlet. There is a Jazz group called "Cream of the Krop" made up of old retired men that plays around here. Its the cutest, although really professional, group of guys. My dad plays the trombone and someday would like to play with them, so we always go to watch them perform, especially around Christmastime. Watching them just always makes me want to be in a group like that. This doesn't have much spiritual depth or intelectual granduer, but my point is that this is something that I just really want to do-- this dream I have of actually doing something more with my music that just sitting around in the living room and playing for my mom. Where does this fit with my life? Can I trust God to take this an make it a reality in my life, or is it one of those dreams I should settle for letting go of?

These are the things that I want to be able to learn to just really trust God for. To trust him to keep him promises, to trust him to bring us the desires of our hearts. Strange. Earlier this week I had the great priveledge of spending some time with my aunt baking pies, and as we were talking about things that we wanted to do, she just mentioned how there have been so many things in her life in the past few years that God has just enabled her to do. What an encouraging thing. Could it be that God really wants for us to be able to do the things that he has put a passion in our hearts to do?

Allowing some compassion for myself.

So its been a bit of a week. For the most part, it has been little what I expected, but what is new about that. It seems the only thing that can lighten a heavy heart is to let go of it completely.

Belonging

Being home this week has forced me a lot to think about family, the people in my life, and its been hard to sort it out. I'm remembering what makes it so hard to be part of a family, remembering why I could hardly wait not to live here anymore-- to escape.

As I look over my life right now, I find myself wondering where I even belong. What is my life? Where is my life? Who are the people I am connected to? What happens when the people I find myself connected to are hard to be around? What happens when you come home to rest and then find you forgot how hard that was to do? What happens when you feel like people are continually swining axes and you don't know how to do more than escape or contribute? I feel wrong and lost and confused today. Why is love so hard?

impossible

i've been doing a lot of thinking lately about this idea of falling short. Mainly becuase I keep doing it. I mean, there is just a lot of stuff in life that I realize I am bad at-- selflessnes, love, sacrifice, stopping eating when I don't need anything else, spending money, giving money, giving in general, being devoted, actually having the desire to do things I know are the best way to live.

And I've been thinking a lot about what this Chirstian label that we stick on ourselves after we pray a certain prayer means. It seems like more often that not I fall into this rut of thinking that it creates this sort of us-against-them perogative, where "we" know the answers, and "they" are just unwashed miscreants. But honestly, I seem to be doing just about as crappy of job of being the right kind of person when I try to do it with just the stuff I was born with.

Worry. Thats another thing. I've been thinking about worrying a lot lately and how when I worry, its like instant distance between Abba and I. Wouldn't a faith in some big-time creator change the importance of a lot of things?

What does my life look like in light of this all-transforming God? Can people see this is me? In me, no. Thats the thing. I think so often, we look at our nametag and once we realize it says, "Christian," wherever that label even came from, we think we suddenly have to start living up to it,like we suddenly have to earn it. That's when everything gets out of whack. I love how Peterson paraphrases the end of Matthew 6 in The Message. The passage is already about not worrying and allowing God to live his kind of life in you, and he says, "Look at the birds, not tied down by a job description." How often do we become so tied down by our job description?

I was talking to someone tonight about how she is so disillusioned by this so called God-love. She just wanted to know if God's love we real, why she has never really seen or experienced it. And as she was talking, two things were running through my mind: 1) I really suck. and 2) I have no idea. That's the thing. I know that God's love is real becuase I have experienced it, but how have I failed in this person's life and how do I end this cycle of non-healing that has been going on in my own life. I don't have the answers for this person. And I've failed her in that respect that she hasn't seen that in me if in fact, I have experienced this so called transforming love.

But thats the beauty of grace. Its not really my job to have the answers for her and God knows that I'm just a little girl and I'm incapable of loving the way I was intended to love. God knows that he has me in a process and someday I'll get better, but wearing the "christian" nametag doesn't make me perfect, nor does it give me any right to claim to be good at life. In fact, it gives me even less right to claim such a thing because claiming such a label means I've admitted that I'm no good at living right apart from God's power living in me. I mean, honestly, I'm not even good at either admitting it or really living off of the unlimited power God supplies.

But God is gracious. He knows. He is the one claiming the credit and so he is also the one doing the work. These are just some of the questions I've been thinking about, wanting to put out there:

If God's love is so transforming, how are there entire people out there who have never actually seen it?

How am I being a part of this wounding rather than the healing?

How come as christians, we can often be the most uptight, the most graceless of all?

Could it have anything to do with this constant concern of keeping up this name that we have forgotten what sort of humbling or actions are actually the foundation of the name?

Lastly, I've been thinking about this question especially with "my Jeruselem," that is, the people living closest to me: Have I earned the right to share with people the hope I claim to have for thier lives?

Since YLI, I cannot get this idea of co-creators out of my heart. Its like this word just keeps echoing through my heart, resonating inside my head. Its this idea that the things that we love the most are the things that we are able to share with others, this inborn desire to... I don't even know... co-create. Maybe its just my personality, my mentality, the way God has got me wired. Something in me just keeps saying over and over co-creators, like a beautiful whisper. Not one of those aching desires you just can't reach, its just hanging there. Thats not even what this post is really about, but i just wanted to put that out there becuase its just been swimming around for a while and just the nature of the longing needs to be expressed.

So the real post... So tomorrrow I am going to somehow make it through my classes and then I am home! As I was thinking tonight, there are a lot of things just weighing on my heart that just need to be let go of.

I had the beautiful priveledge of talking to a very dear and old friend who has had quite a semester following a dream that didn't seem to be everything she hoped for. As I was talking with her over the phone, I was just overtaken by almost this sense of jealousy becuase she was just so much at peace, so much just fallen into the arms of her Abba. Do you ever talk to those people and you know, even if they don't say it in specific words, that they have this immense trust, that they are so far from worry its breathtaking? And I thought to myself, she has had such a challenge and she has so many reasons to be afraid and worrying, and yet, its like she's gone so far past herself that all she can do is trust.

And who am I? What do I have to worry about? Why am I still in this self-reliant state, with tense muscles, poised and ready to fight the battles that God wants to so something awsome with. I want that trust; I think I have that trust, but its burried deep, under the more surfacy "what if's" and the "what abouts."

I have a lot of anxieties about this summer, the next four years, how its all going to pan out. There are a lot of things like living and working and going to classes and still hanging on to the parts of my life that involve my soul that are a big jumble of a puzzle right now. But deep down, I am so excited to see how Abba works it all out, figures out the puzzle and blows my mind with all he can do.

If I had to name one thing about God that totally rocks my world is the fact that he never gives up on the things he wants to develop in us and he continually is working on the things that I ask him to work on in me. How he just answers prayer like its something he loves to do. One of the things that I've been wanting to see change in me is my interpretation of the important things; I want to learn to not make small things big deals. Also, over the summer, a verse that was totally impressed into my heart was Matthew 6, the one about seeking first the Kingdom and waiting for everything else to follow. It seems at the end of the day, I keep coming back to that passage, but it being paired with the idea that actually procedes it. Check it out:

"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? "And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. "But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! "Do not worry then, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear for clothing?' "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will carefor itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

And also, a verse that has caught my attention twice today:

"This is what the Lord says, 'When seventy years have completed for Baylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. 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 hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,' declares the Lord, ' and will bring you bakc from captivity. I will gather you for all the nations and places where I have banished you, " declares the Lord, ' and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." Jeremiah 29:10-14

And so God has this great beutiful thing he wants to do. I mean much more to him that his beutiful creations of sparrows and lillies and grasses. He has this amazing plan. All he calls me to do is to sit and his feet, to wait for it, to be patient and see him do his work. That is all he wants from me. Why is it that sometimes the hardest thing to do is not worry? Thats a good question. But i'm just glad to be free from it for tonight, to be free to go into my break rejoicing and ready to see what God has in store next.

My head and eyes ache from studying. Its been a bit of a full day of learning.

So I've been thinking for the past few days about this question:

Why is it that as christians, we sometimes can be the most graceless of all people?

Or really, more specifically, why do I have the least amount of grace for the shortcomings of other people, the way they have wronged me, when I claim that my only right for existence is God's immeasurable mercy for me? I hate this mentality that is so easy to adopt that becuase we are "on the right side of the line" we have a right to be the judge of other pople. How have we gotten so far away from the true gospel of grace.

Anyway, that seems to be the question of the week for me. I am really looking forward to thanksgiving break, when I can go home and just enjoy the life that I miss. Funny how you don't realize how much you value things until you are 45 minutes away from everything you used to think you knew. Its a wonderful, refreshing feeling to miss that which was once old and stagnant. Its a great experience to suddenly find yourself appreciating things that you thought you would be so happy to be far away from. Probably has something to do with growing up. retrospect.

I am learning something valuable about relationships. Appreciation is so important. It is totally transforming when you stop gracelessly nitpicking at everything and start listening to the things people love. WHen you open your eyes and begin to see that it is most possible to love other people when you see what they love. I heard a quote once that has really stuck with me: "You don't really love someone until you know what hurts them." What a powerful thought. I think though, you cannot begin to love someone until you begin to see what they love.

I want to become a person who listens for these things. A person who has the bravery to look people in the eye long enough to see the things that really hurt, the things that are important, the things people are passionate about. I want to have the courage to look long enough to look deeper.

An exercise in do not worry..

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore fo not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will sorry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

or someone else puts it:

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or mayno happen tomorrow. GOd wil help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

have you ever found yourself in such a frustrating and trying situation that you find yourself trembling? Physically shaking. This is the place I find myself. Totally out of control. And angry. Hurt. Nothing I can do but trust. And so I find myself in the midst of a lesson in worry. Last night I heard and interesting fact: The command not to be afraid or worry is used more than any other admonishment in the bible. So somehow I am going to use this situation simply to trust in that statement.

do not worry.