VALidations

"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong."  Psalm 37:23, 24 I have read this psalm before but these verses created a powerful image in my mind today.  Imagine a loving and kind father preparing to walk along a precarious path with his toddling daughter.  He reaches down and she places her tiny hand in his.  They continue on their way and before long she stumbles over a rock in the path.  Her daddy quickly reacts, squeezing her hand more tightly and lifting her up, preventing the child from hitting her head. This is a great picture of the Christian life.  At some point in our lives, we recognized that God was reaching out to us for us to hold onto his hand...instead of trying to make it on our own, we saw that we needed his help and trusted enough to place our lives into his hands.  Did he immediately whisk us over the difficult path to the other side?  Not if we...

We have high expectations for life, don't we?  But how much of what we expect is actually guaranteed?  We also expect a lot from the people we share life with...but how fair are those expectations?  We set ourselves up for a lot of disappointment when we put our hope in things that are not promised. Letting go of our expectations can be painful...especially when things change suddenly.  But over time it will produce a greater joy than we could have expected.  John Piper describes this transition as the birth of a new joy.  "The first joy dies.  It's a real death, and that death is painful.  That wonderful joy disappears.  It's gone.  All that joy is struggling like a little seed to push its way up through rocks of disappointment and fear and sorrow.  There are days, and weeks, and maybe months of transition from the death of one joy to the full flower of another joy, and those are not easy days.  They require enormous patie...

Oh Lord, you are the sea we are the shore your waves crash churning up hidden treasure. Lord, you are the sea we are but a vapor a shadow of you mist that will soon vanish. Can the sand contain the ocean? Who can number its depths or heights? Who can name where the sky touches the sea, where they meet at last and are one? Glorious are your tempests devouring the shorelines eating them away until your waves are grey with millions of grains of sand. In your depths they sparkle They dance, weightless twirling to the music of your currents at last one with the sea. God, help us to welcome your waves your terrifying, sanctifying waves condense the vapor of our lives turn the sand to diamonds...the mist to ocean. Set us free to dance to the rhythm of your breaking waves.

I am falling in love with paradoxes...A paradox is defined as "a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true."  What a perfect definition for experiencing life with God.  He's both loving and terrifying, both meek and majestic, both gentle and wrathful, the list goes on and on.  Looking through our limited lens it is often difficult to make sense of these attributes of God.  But with further investigation and explanation (and I would add experience), these paradoxes of God are proven to be  the only truth and the only reality; a reality we will all face someday. During the week leading up to Easter, some call it Holy Week, I stumbled upon a daily devotional by John Piper.  He wrote a beautiful word-picture of Christ that I would like to share with you. "A little lamb was born all wooly-white with skinny legs and a wet nose, pretty much like all the other little ...

I believe that all our problems stem from misplaced desires.  God has made us in His image...and along with that image-bearing comes strong desire.  Let's look at some basic human desires...the desire to be loved, the desire for comfort, the desire for peace, the desire for forgiveness, the desire for success, the desire for recognition, the desire for intimacy.  We seek the fulfillment of these desires...they drive us.  Desire is a good thing.  "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12  The problem, though, is with the source of our fulfillment.  If we seek perfect love in another person, or in ourselves, we will be let down.  If we seek success by the way of money or possessions, that can all disappear.  It doesn't take much for the house of cards we build through earthly relationships or material things to come crashing down.  Just a breath, and it's all gone.  That's the n...

I have two dogs, a lab-beagle mix named Penny, and a German Shepard-something mix named Lucy.  Penny, being part beagle, will follow her nose into all kinds of danger and no amount of calling can get her off the trail and back toward home.  Our yard is not fenced in, so we have to attach Penny to a leash every time she goes outside.  I am sure she would happily follow a scent all day and possibly find her way home eventually...that is, if she survived the busy road nearby.  So, for her protection, she is allowed only a certain amount of freedom.  We let her outside, but she can only go so far so that she doesn't get hurt. There are many ways to contain your dog.  A. You can let her roam free and if she gets hit, you are at fault.  B. You can build a fence around your yard, though she may find a way under or over if she is determined.  C. You can keep her on a leash and guide every direction she turns. Or, D. You can bury a wire and put a speci...

I am not God, I am your mother many mistakes I'll make So I pray that it will be His hand that you take I am not God, I am your mother though you cling to me So I pray that onto Him you'll cling more tightly I am not God, I am your mother And my love is fierce But greater love has He than I  for nails His hands did pierce I am not God, I am your mother You are His, not mine So I pray that you would know  that He is Joy Devine I am not God, I am your mother I make this solemn plea That we might be together with Him for all eternity

This is a good year for dandelions.  Lawns everywhere are sprinkled with their golden hue and dusted with their white tufts of seeds.  Every Spring our neighbor across the street takes his weed killer and sprays each dandelion individually.  This always makes me a little sad because each one of my girls has loved picking dandelions, bringing me the soft yellow blossom with its awkward gangly stem saying, "Here Mommy, I got you a flower."  Some wicked person, however, has told my oldest daughter that dandelions are in fact weeds.   Innocence lost.  Still, once the dandelions have seemingly overnight grown tall and turned to white puffs, she picks them and makes a wish before blowing the seeds away.  So as I watch my neighbor labor (probably in vain since my kids are little dandelion seed dispersers) to eradicate all the dandelions from his lawn I begin to wonder what a world free of dandelions would be like.  We love to label things...to classify...

There is nothing more wonderful this side of heaven than experiencing the revelation of God's nature little by little each passing day.  He will use anything and everything to teach us more about Himself, and knowing Him is pure JOY.  So, I had the idea to chronicle these wonderful revelations as God puts them into my heart.  I thought, "I'll start a blog!", totally forgetting that I already had one from several years ago.  Well, it has a new name, courtesy of my dad who is ever so good with words: VALidations.  My nickname is Val, and my initials are V. A. L.  See what he did there?  Pretty clever.  Validation.....that is what we constantly crave, isn't it?  Especially those of us who feel unseen and underappreciated.  I am a stay-at-home mom.  My daily life is one of very little glamour and even less praise.  Who will validate me by saying, "Hooray!  That's officially the one-thousandth time you have washed, folded, an...

Mere Christianity , Book Two What Christians Believe, Chapter 5 The Practical Conclusion "The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man."  I would change the past-tense "was" to present-tense "is" but CS Lewis was the Oxford professor of English, not me!  Jesus is God and He is man.  But the point is that Christians who share in Jesus' surrender and humiliation (admitting that we are imperfect to say the least and must surrender our lives) will also share in His victory over death and have new life.  How is this possible?  How can Christ put His new life into us?  Lewis believes there are three things that "spread the Christ-life to us": baptism, belief, and communion.  This is one point from which the many "denominations" of Christianity disperse.  I personally believe that the only way to receive new life in Christ is by simply believing i...

Not a single soul born on this planet has been spared suffering...not even God's perfect and blameless Son, Jesus.  Thank you, Lord, for sending Jesus to suffer with us on this planet, so that we are never alone. The Hurt and the Healer (Mercy Me) Why? The question that is never far away The healing doesn't come from the explained Jesus please don't let this go in vain You're all I have All that remains So here I am What's left of me Where glory meets my suffering I'm alive Even though a part of me has died You take my heart and breathe it back to life I've fallen into Your arms open wide When the hurt and the healer collide Breathe Sometimes I feel it's all that I can do Pain so deep that I can hardly move Just keep my eyes completely fixed on You Lord take and hold and pull me through So here I am What's left of me Where glory meets my suffering I'm alive Even though a part of me has died You take my heart and b...

Mere Christianity, Book II What Christians Believe, Chapter Four  The Perfect Penitent If Jesus was not a crazy person or a liar, then we are left with only one possibility.  He was in fact who He claimed to be: God in human form.  But why?  When He was alive, He did do a lot of teaching, but Christians will tell you that the main reason He came was to suffer and die, and then be raised from the dead.  Believing this is the foundation of Christianity.  Every Christian, regardless of his or her denomination, believes that Jesus was God, and that He died and rose again, and that this single unimaginable act somehow put us right with God.  That, in a nutshell, is Christianity. Now, there are many different theories out there to explain how  Jesus' death and resurrection put us right with our Creator once again, and defeated death (and the devil) for all time.  But please remember that these theories are not  Christianity.  "The cen...

Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 3, The Shocking Alternative Christians believe that the devil is real, and that he is a fallen angel.  This causes some difficulties.  If God is good, why would something He created go so horribly wrong?  If He is all-powerful, why allow Satan to do any harm, and if He is all-knowing, why create him in the first place?  Lewis proposes that these difficulties are the price to be paid for free will. He responds to the question, "How can anything happen contrary to the will or a being with absolute power?" with this example: "It may be quite sensible for a mother to say to the children, 'I'm not going to go and make you tidy the school-room every night.  You've got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.'  Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate.  That is against her will.  She would prefer the children to be tidy.  But on the other hand, ...

Mere Christianity, Book II, Chapter 2, The Invasion We are actually going to talk about two other ideas about how the universe operates: Christianity-and-water and Dualism.  Please remember I am not a philosophy or world religions expert.  I am just doing my best to follow what Lewis is proposing here.  If he is wrong, I wouldn't know, so please inform me if he is mistaken on his explanation of these philosophies. He ended the last chapter by explaining how atheism is too simple.  He also believes the "Christianity-and-water" view to be overly simple.  This view says that God is good and everything is great, leaving out the stuff nobody likes to hear about sin and hell and the devil (and also, therefore, redemption).  He calls atheism and this idea "boy's philosophies."  Pretty harsh, huh? Lewis then goes on to describe how real things are not simple.  If something is too simple, we are often suspicious of it, are we not?  He gives an ...

As promised, here is the next section of  Mere Christianity.   Book II, Chapter 1, The Rival Conceptions of God In this chapter, CS Lewis explains what he believes are the divisions of humanity as far as what people believe about God.  The first paragraph is one of my favorites, and something I've not heard many Christians say (at least not in this particular way), so I thought I'd include the whole paragraph in this post. "I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe.  If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.  If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.  If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.  When ...

Don't worry, I will be getting back to Mere Christianity  next time, I promise.  But tonight I can't sleep until I write down the things that won't turn off in my brain.  After writing my last two posts, sharing with you my doubts and fears, I feel like I HAVE to share what I've learned.  It wouldn't be right to leave this one hanging.  So, here goes: God is VERY real.  He is more real than ANYTHING.  How have I come to this conclusion?  Well, that is pretty much impossible to put into words, but I suppose I should try.  I guess the process could be described by Jeremiah 29:13 "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."  In my own words, I think God was getting fed up with me doubting Him, and showed me how absurd those thoughts are.  He kind of said, "Seriously?  How can you even say you aren't sure about me?"  I don't think it is wrong to have doubts and that you should just blindly accept ever...

Related to the beginning of my last post, I just wanted to share the lyrics to a song by Nickel Creek, written by Chris Thile, an AMAZING mandolin player. Doubting Thomas what will be left when i've drawn my last breath besides the folks i've met and the folks who know me will i discover a soul cleansing love or just the dirt above and below me i'm a doubting thomas i took a promise but i don't know what's safe oh me of little faith sometimes i pray for a slap in the face then i beg to be spared 'cause i'm a coward if there's a master of death i'll bet he's holding his breath as i show the blind and tell the deaf about his power i'm a doubting thomas i can't keep my promises 'cause i don't know what's safe oh me of little faith can i be used to help others find truth when i'm scared i'll find proof that it's a lie can i be lead down a trail dropping bread crumbs that prove i'm not rea...

Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 5, We Have Cause to Be Uneasy Let me start by telling you some of the things that go through my head.  I'm not sure what event it was that started this, but the last year or two, there have been times when I think, "What if there is no God?"  I became a Christian when I was just six years old, and as a child it was so easy to believe in the ideas of God creating the world, and of Jesus being raised from the dead.  Those things just made sense and were easy to accept.  Perhaps this is just my coming of age, and I actually want more explanations for those things, outside of what the Bible says.  I hear all the time that Christians are stupid, and are blind to the reality of the world we live in, even that we are evil.  Is that true?  I wouldn't call myself a stupid or evil person.  So, what's the problem then?  Should someone like me really believe all that stuff about God?  If someone would ask me why ...

Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 4: What Lies Behind the Law In very broad terms, there are two explanations for how our universe came to be.  The first is the idea that the universe is here by chance.  I am not an expert on the subject, but the very basic theory, in layman's terms, is that the big bang happened and since then the universe has been expanding, gases have formed stars, matter has formed planets and moons, and on our own planet, matter has formed over the years into living things with minds, all by chance.  (How is that for a run-on sentence?)  The second idea says that "what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know.  That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another."  This thing like a mind made the universe and made things like itself, things with minds.  I know there are other ideas but most of them fall into one of these two categories. Lewis asks us not ...

Mere Christianity, Book I, Chapter 3: The Reality of the Law In this chapter, Lewis continues to describe the characteristics of the Moral Law we all find pressing on us, specifically, the fact that humans break the Moral Law.  His first illustration concerns rocks and trees.  "If you take a thing like a stone or a tree, it is what it is and there seems to be no sense in saying it ought to have been otherwise."  A stone or a tree could be inconvenient to us at one point, due to it's shape or size, but it would be silly to say that it is "bad" and blame it, for it is simply following the laws of it's nature, just the same as a rock or tree that is convenient to us.  So that rock or tree is obeying the Natural Laws.  If you drop a rock, it will fall to the ground.  This is the Law of Gravity.  But these Natural Laws are not really laws as we usually mean.  "You do not really think that when a stone is let go, it suddenly remembers that it is under...