Category Archives: God’s Nature

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Why I’m Voting No on 1

Just about the time I get all calmed down and peaceful like, I pick up another paper, or watch yet another news story on how James Dobson, Dick Land or Jerry Sutton want me to be sure to "keep my Christian values in mind" when I go to the polls this November (or this week…). It happened again today.

I sat down at Crest Honda to wait on my baby’s first oil change (that’s "ohl" to you Tennesseans) and as I’m flipping through the latest version of The Scene, I come across an article about Monday night’s dueling rallies for Amendment One. The language quoted from the Two Rivers rally both angered and saddened me.

I realize I am an anomaly in Tennessee. Even more so considering I am, what most statisticians and pollsters would classify an "evangelical/born again/fundamentalist Christian." (why do they lump us all together like that????) –Truthfully, I’m evangelical and born again, but I doubt I’m really a true fundamentalist. But I still end up lumped in with them. Anyway –Current polls show this amendment will pass with between 60% to 70% of the vote. So why am I swimming upstream against my "fellow" born-againer fundies? Well, let me tell you.

First, for those of you outside Tennessee — and those inside who have been living in a cave lo this past year — "1" (or "One"… whatever…) is an amendment to Tennessee’s constitution. Officially called "Tennessee Marriage Amendment", it would limit any recognized marriages in Tennessee to those between a man and a woman. Even if a gay couple has been legally married in another state, Tennessee will not, cannot, recognize it.

I can already hear my some of my friends gasping, exclaiming, "why on earth would you vote no on such a thing, Lu? Don’t you believe in the sanctity of marriage? Don’t you know that God sees same-sex marriage as sin?"

Yes, I do. And, No, I don’t — at least not any more so than same-sex sex/relationship outside of marriage.

Look, I could write a whole post just on my deep conviction that homosexuality is sin, with all the Scriptural references to back it up. It would include my own understanding of how sin, from Adam on, has impacted every aspect and element of creation; including genetics, which can strongly influence a person’s proclivity for same-sex attraction.

But that’s not the point here. And its not the reason why I’m voting NO on this amendment.

There are a couple of facts that need to be stated. First, this amendment is wholly unnecessary. In 1996, a proposition was put on the Tennessee ballot and passed, which effectively banned same-sex marriage in this state. The amendment was proposed after the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in 2003, struck down a similar proposition passed in that state. It is a way of ensuring that ’96 proposition will not be set aside as "unconstitutional".

Second, and obviously connected to the first, the failure of Amendment One would not open wide Tennessee’s doors to the possibility of gay marriage becoming legal in the state. For reasons clearly stated above (1996).

Those are the facts. This amendment is unnecessary. This amendment is redundant.

Here’s the Truth.  Passing this amendment will not "save", "protect" or in any way salvage the "sanctity" or "purity" of marriage. It cannot. It is powerless to effect the heart changes necessary to do such a thing. It is not the homosexual community who has ravaged the purity and sanctity, the set-apartness, of marriage. It is the heterosexual community, and dare I say, the "Christian" community, who has done the most damage to the institution of marriage and could ultimately destroy the ideal of it in our culture. It is those who choose mediocrity in their relationship with their spouse over sacrifice and passion, who change marriage partners as often as they change their wardrobe, who value their own comfort and their own needs above those of their spouses and children who destroy its sanctity. And it is those who wield marriage and family as weapons in a "values war" who destroy the purity of the marriage commitment and the sanctity of the marriage vow.

Jerry Sutton, pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church, claimed at Monday night’s rally that we Christians are at "war against homosexual militants" and "debauchery". How can a pastor of such a large church be so incredibly clueless? No wonder we’re vilified in television shows and ridiculed in comedy clubs. No wonder we’re disliked by so many. We have idiots preaching from our "pulpits".

Even a cursory glance at the Bible brings abundant clarity that Jerry Sutton is flat-out wrong. Perhaps he is waging a personal war against "homosexual militants", but God certainly is not. He never has and He never will.

Paul makes it very clear that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in this world and against every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. (Eph 6:12, 2 Cor 10:4-5). The Message puts it this way:

The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.

Jerry Sutton, rather than demolishing corruption, instead erected a barrier against the truth of God with his statements Monday night. Many others have done the same, all in the name of "preserving," and "protecting" marriage. Jerry Sutton has a warped philosophy and its time we as his sisters and brothers stood up and said, "no more."

Jesus did not rage against homosexuals or "sinners" when He walked this earth. To the contrary, He openly embraced and loved them, fellowshipped with them, and made it clear it was for them that He came, for them He died and for them He conquered death and lives today. So that they may have Life.

Nor did Jesus ever demand that the sinners He fellowshipped with ever live up to laws of Moses given to God’s people. Rather, He loved them just as they were, accepted them just as they were and invited them to follow Him and learn a new, more abundant way to live. He never forced His will or His rules upon them.  He is the same today. He does not force His will or His law upon anyone.

The religious zealots, on the other hand, like those of Jerry Sutton, Dick Land and James Dobson, those are the people that Jesus raged against. Them He declared "war" against — overturning tables, calling them hypocrites and snakes. For they were the ones that kept writing more and more rules for everyone to follow, more and more laws for everyone to obey, more and more hoops for a person to jump through in order to be found acceptable to God.

Amendment One will not protect marriage. All it will do is create yet another barrier between those Jesus loves and those of us who claim to follow Him. The gay community is already denied legal rights regarding the care of their own children, their own partners and their own loved ones that even an unmarried heterosexual couple enjoy under the law. Why kick them in the stomach when they’re already down?

I have said it before, the United States is not a "Christian" nation, nor was it ever meant to be. It was created as a safe haven for people of all religions. However, it is a Christianized nation, with a brand of Christianity that is more cultural than Biblical. If we are going to perpetrate Christianity on our country, let it at least be Biblical, with all the love and grace and respect God reveals in His Word.

Forcing nonbelievers to live like they are believers may seem "morally righteous" but, in truth, it’s cruel. They have neither the understanding nor the power of the Holy Spirit with which to overcome the enemy and live in freedom under the standards God sets for us, His followers. God never forces nonbelievers to live by the same standards as His people. Rather, He calls His people to live by standards that would cause the world around us to stand up and take notice, in order that HE might have the glory and honor when His people are able to point to Him as the source of the ability to live by such freedom, grace, hope and love.

That is why I’m voting NO on One.

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Jesus Loves Me

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…this I know
For he sent me a friend named Joe…
who sent Beignets. 🙂 Look at this cool thing!

Now all I need is a deep fryer or electric skillet to cook them in.

Hey, Wendy! You should come over, you could make creepies (crepes for the rest of ya’ll) and I’ll make beignets — and there’s a can of coffee and chicory… and we’ll just go to town! Yummmmm.

I wasn’t feelin’ so hot today but now I’m a happy girl.

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Enough

All of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough

I freaked out last night. I looked at my budget, which I haven’t lived by in ages. I looked at my credit card charges and balance. I looked at what I still need to buy. I looked at the next few months’ bills and expenses. And I freaked. Money is slipping through my fingers like raw eggs. I can’t catch it or stem the flow.

You are my supply
My breath of life
And still more awesome than I know
You are my reward
worth living for
And still more awesome than I know

Then I looked around my apartment. Its the perfect size for me. For one person. Which is all that was in the room. Me. And I became once again acutely aware of the depth of loneliness inside me. The silence in the place was deafening. I felt the empty places my parents once occupied, the ache of missing friends and the gut-wrenching hopelessness of life-long singleness. The silence in my heart was too overwhelming. So I wept.

All of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough

It’s an amazing fact that the more comfortable we get in life, the less it takes to unbalance and unhinge us. And I was unhinged last night. I called Nina. It was 11:30pm her time (10:30p mine). As the phone rang I prayed I she wasn’t in bed yet. She wasn’t.

We talked for nearly two hours. I needed just to hear another voice; someone telling me, reminding me, that God is faithful; reminding me I am not alone in my aches and unmet desires and encouraging me to hang in there, that I can live by a budget, regardless how tight the pinch.

You’re my sacrifice
Of greatest price
And still more awesome than I know
You’re my coming King
You are everything
And still more awesome than I know

It’s crazy — how much is enough? I’m earning more than I ever have in my life, yet it still doesn’t seem like enough to cover my dreams. Are they that grandiose? I have friends I can call, yet my heart still cries out, begs for, bleeds for, that special best-friend husband to live out my days with. Do I want too much?

All of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough

My friend, Conna, posted last night about her own freak-out and how God brought her some perspective through another friend. She wrote about Iraq and how she realized how small her problems were in relation to what a woman in Iraq faces each day. She pointed out that we don’t live with a life-and-death reality every day of life. We don’t need to worry that someone is going to shoot at us, try to blow us or those we love up with bombs every moment of the day. How blessed we are to live where and how we do!

More than all I want
More than all I need
You are more than enough for me
More than all I know
More than all I can see
You are more than enough for me

How is it that I was chosen to be blessed to live where and how I live and not live in war-torn parts of the world? To live a life filled with money and relationship woes rather than life-and-death fears on a daily basis? Is it just "the luck of the draw" or does God have some sort of over-arching criteria determining who lives where — and when, and for how long? I don’t understand. Am I too weak in faith to handle living somewhere else? Or is it more about who I was created to be, and what I can do here, that puts me where I am?

Life so rarely makes sense to me. Even stepping back and getting a global perspective doesn’t help with the questions that swirl. After reading Conna’s post and reflecting on my own life, a song began softly playing over and over in my heart, the chorus echoing in my mind. And my soul finally reminds me its not about me, or all the unanswered questions I have. Its about the love-affair God wants to have with me.

All of You is more than enough for all of me
For every thirst and every need
You satisfy me with Your love
And all I have in You is more than enough

So often I forget the truth of these words. I allow my own fears and the whispers of my mind and of the enemy to drown out the soft cries of my soul as it sings this song with conviction. My soul knows what my mind cannot grasp and what my heart will not believe: God is more than enough. God longs to be more than enough for me. God created me to be overwhelmed by His love and His enough-ness. Not out of ego, but out of a crazy passionate love of giving  — giving the unbelievable, providing the impossible and doing the unthinkable. For me.

God is a giver. A crazy, passionate, overly generous, wildly lavish giver. That’s why He’s more than enough. That’s why He gives and blesses and graciously lavishes us with every imaginable gift. That’s why He longs to be more than enough to me. So He can freely give. How wild!

More than all I want
More than all I need
You are more than enough for me
More than all I know
More than all I can see
You are more than enough for me

"Enough" — by Chris Tomlin

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Solitude & Meditation

Take a moment to meditate on this passage. Don’t just read through it, but linger on each phrase, each word, and allow God to speak to you.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. — Romans 5:1-5

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Invaded

in·vade v. – To enter and permeate; to overrun as if by invading; infest

Sometimes God just kisses me on the cheek. Sometimes He gives me a whole day full of kisses. Yesterday was one of those days.

From the moment I got up to the moment I fell asleep, I felt wrapped in God’s arms and loved on. At one point, after checking out a wonderful, promising new place to live, I bounded out to my car audibly praising Jesus and telling Him, my answer was yes — and what did He think. We talked together and joked and laughed with joy as I drove to meet up with a new group of friends.

My time with my friends was also amazing. Stimulating,powerfull conversation, insights and laughter all mingled together. The kind I haven’t had here. Oh, how I’ve missed this kind of community! It felt like home.

In the midst of all this, God quietly, gently chided me about some things; attitudes that have crept into my heart. It was an amazing thing, and so different than all the other times I’ve felt His rebuke. It wasn’t harsh, or heavy-handed, or even stern. There was no anger in His voice, no sting in His words, no sense of guilt or shame in my heart. Just quiet love and gentle chiding. I saw the truth in His words and realized something I’d allowed into my heart without ever realizing it. I didn’t sense that this was inherently bad or wrong; just that I needed to recognize and acknowledge its there.

I wonder, has Jesus so invaded my heart and soul that those layers, those filters that caused me to see Him, as a judging God, heavy-handed with my sin, has He so invaded my life that those filters have been stripped away?

Is this who He really has been all along? This loving, gentle, gracious, compassionate, merciful God, who is more concerned that I see what’s in my own heart than how I’ve wronged Him with it? How did I not see this for so long??

Jesus, come and walk the halls of this house
Tread this place and turn it inside out
With Your mercy…
Jesus, teach us the prayers that open these doors
Until Your light floods in and illuminates these floors
And let Your truth be on our steps and in these rooms
Jesus invade…

Invade – By Christy Nockels

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Dust

I saw a great little DVD called "Dust" last night. Rob Bell talked about being a rabbi’s disciple and what it really means. It was so rich with gold dust, things I’ve heard and yet never knew, things I’d been taught but never understood and things I’d forgotten in the passion of following Jesus.

Like this passage, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matt 29:11)

I’ve never really understood that. Someone last night joked that when they were a kid they thought Jesus was talking about egg-yokes. I always pictured one of those wooden things you use to connect two oxen or cows or something together to pull something. You know, the things that look like a guillotine noose, just minus the blade. Nice image to associate with Jesus….

But Rob Bell explained that back in the time that Jesus lived, Rabbi’s often took on disciples. No, they chose disciples. One had to be chosen to be a disciple of a rabbi. And The rabbi chose disciples he believed could learn all that he knew and become like him. It became a saying of a rabbi to his disciple to "take my yoke", which literally meant "become like me." It had less to do with "slavery" or "being bound" to something — as today’s teachings often tell us — than it had to do with learning and becoming.

When you became a rabbi’s disciple, you followed him wherever he went. Often, at the end of the day you would be caked in the mud and dirt of all the places your rabbi had been. It was seen as a mark of a true disciple and a saying arose, "May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi."

I recently found Matt 11:29 in the Message "version" (whatever its called). "Walk with me and work with me–watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly." This really gets that point across; that Jesus, our Rabbi, our Teacher as well as God and Savior and Redeemer and Lord, is inviting us to be like Him. Not just to follow Him, obey Him, learn from Him, but be like Him.

I remember as a child learning that I could be "like" Jesus — that I "should" be like Jesus. But in the same breath, I was told no one will ever be like Jesus because we are just human and He is God. What my child’s mind took away from those lessons is that, while I "should" strive to be like Jesus, I should never expect to be like Him.

As I listened to Rob Bell on that DVD, heard him repeat again, "The rabbi doesn’t choose you unless he thinks you can be like him." I heard Jesus whisper to me, "are you listening? Do you hear? Do you believe? Will you believe?"

Rob went on to explain that when Peter stepped out of the boat and into the water, he was proving he really was a disciple of his rabbi. He was determined to be like his rabbi and do what his rabbi did. If Jesus was walking on the water, then Peter wanted to.

When Peter started to sink, Jesus caught him and gently asked, "why did you doubt?" Who was Peter doubting? Not, Jesus — Jesus wasn’t sinking. He didn’t doubt Jesus, his rabbi, could walk on the water. Peter doubted himself. He doubted that he could do what his Rabbi did. Remember, rabbis chose their disciples based on a confidence the rabbi had that the disciple could be like him.

As Rob explained this, I again heard Jesus whisper, "Do you hear that? Are you listening? Do you believe? I believe. I have faith you can."
These two passages have been rattling around my spirit for several weeks now. God keeps pulling me back to them over and over and I finally see the connection between the two. I see what Jesus wants me learn right now:

I can be like Him. He. Chose. Me. He chose me because He knew I could be like Him. Jesus has faith in me. Isn’t that the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard??? Jesus has faith in US. Jesus has faith that we can follow Him and that we can be like Him. Not just obey. Not just follow. Not just journey together. But be like Him.

Rob Bell closed the study guide with the following words. They have echoed in my heart and spirit since I first read them:

"May you believe in God. But may you come to see that God believes in you. May you have faith in Jesus. But may you come to see that Jesus has faith that you can be like him. A person of love and compassion and truth. A person of forgiveness, and peace, and grace, and joy, and hope. And may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus."

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Being Real with Ourselves

I found this blog, Being Real with Ourselves by following a link from my stats report. Neal Christopher is a pastor at a church called Sandals in my high school hometown of Riverside.

I really like the title of his blog. It just struck a cord with me the moment I first stepped "into" it. So often in my life I have not been real with myself! How can I be real with others if I can’t even be so with the one human being who knows me inside and out — ME?

And if I can’t be real with me, how can I be real with God? If I’m hiding from myself, who knows all (or at least most) of my secrets (some I’ve hidden so well, I no longer "remember" them) but is biased and subjective enough to always see things "my way" —if I can’t be real with such a biased audience, then of course I’m going to hide from the One, the only One, who can see all of me, who knows my every thought before I do, and knows even the secrets I’ve hidden from myself, and Who is not subjective and biased, but Just and Righteous.

"Being Real With Ourselves." I want that. I want that kind of community. I’m trying to be that now. It’s hard to break a lifetime habit of running. But I like the freedom I experience when I stop running and just get real.

You’ve got all things suspended
All things connected
Nothing was forgotten
Your love was perfect
You are Healer and
You know what’s broken
We’re not a mystery to you.

Mended – by Nathan and Christy Nockels

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Back Porch Blogging

It’s 10pm and it’s still 71 degrees outside. I love the South!!

I’m on my porch, enjoying the evening and reading friends’ blogs. I’ve also been watching a couple of lightning bugs float around the trees in the (small) forest a few feet from my porch. Last night, coming home from Mosaic I drove through Ellington natural preserve. As I came across the long field that separates the preserve from civilization I saw literally hundreds of twinkling lights — fireflies blinking and dancing in the moonlight.

I love this place. It’s so magical. Everywhere I look, at every time of day, there is something beautiful to grab my attention and arrest my soul. Trees with all manner of flowering buds, streams running under canopies of green speckled with sunlight, ponds and small waterfalls, fireflies, thunderstorms, rocky hillsides, log cabins and tudor-style homes sitting side-by-side, an amazing diversity of people — the old country folk, the aspiring musicians, true-blue artists, Indians (not the native American kind, though I’m sure they’re here too), Latinos, African-Americans, Moroccans, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Thai, Greek and Egyptian. And then there are the immigrants…. 🙂

God is good to me. He gives me so much and seems to expect nothing in return. Last night it was the firefly field. Today is was good friends and good conversations. Tomorrow it will be a sunrise… and who knows what else.

I’m glad He loves me.  I feel like the luckiest, most blessed woman in the world.

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Learning Curve

"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me." — Isa 43:10

Nearly three years ago Beth Moore’s Breaking Free study challenged me with this verse. Do I really believe God? Not believe IN Him but BELIEVE Him? I struggled through that lesson for a year. Then everything else in my life fell apart.

Two years later I find myself faced with the same lesson. With God asking me, point blank, "Do you believe Me?"

It seems that I am re-evaluating everything I once believed about who God is. I realized recently that up till now I have pretty much rested in the faith of others, allowing their faith and belief in God’s character, their definitions of who He is and their trust in those definitions to carry me through life. I think God is using this time in my life, with all the losses I’ve suffered, to help me face the reality of what I really believe and re-examine if that is indeed the truth. Events of the last two years completely demolished my faith-house of cards, completely stripping away all I once trusted. I saw this as a horrible thing; a disaster equal to a 10.0 earthquake in downtown LA.

Until last night.

A couple of weeks ago I realized the truth that the events two years ago didn’t destroy my faith and trust as much as it uncovered my lack of it. Its as if God took my life, turned it upside down and shook it with mighty force. Everything was dumped out and I was left to pick up the broken pieces. However, I realize now that what I thought was broken from the shaking was actually broken long ago.

I’m not a more broken person now. The truth is, I was ALWAYS this broken. I just had lots of things in my heart and life I could hide that truth behind. I hid it so well, I couldn’t even see the truth of myself.

Again, I saw this as a "bad" thing. An ugly truth. A failure. An unfixable situation.

Last night God got in my face about another aspect of His character. I’m still struggling to believe Him. Was it really Him I heard? Or was it the enemy trying to puff me up? What is the Truth?

In the midst of all that questioning, and a long conversation with Adria, I began to think that perhaps all the shaking of my life isn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps all this questioning and seeking isn’t a bad thing either. At the end of it all I will know what I believe. And be convinced of its truth.

I want to know God. I want to believe God. I want to come out of this time of pain and fire refined by my encounters with Him.

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Grace & Daddy’s Voice

An old hymn is bouncing around my head, but I can’t remember the exact title….

"Grace, grace. God’s Grace.
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.
Grace, Grace. God’s Grace.
Grace that is greater than all my sin."

I want so desperately to pick up the phone and call my dad. Ask him what the name of it is, and listen to him sing it to me over the phone. Though he probably wouldn’t have sung it, but grabbed mom, whom he deemed the real musician in the family, and have her sing it to me. I don’t care. I’d take either one. I just want to hear their voices again.

I saved a couple of messages on my answering machine that daddy left me while I was overseas. I just listened to them again. Just to hear his voice. I wish I had something like that of mom….

Romans 8 seems to be where I’m parked Scripturally right now. For one thing, I’m trying to learn, soul-learn and experience-learn the truth of verse 1:

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"

I think I’m harder on myself than anyone dares to even think of being on me. I somehow learned as I  grew up to condemn myself for anything and everything that went wrong. And certainly not to take credit for anything that went right. UNlearning that habit is hard. I’m working on it, but it’s hard.

Lately, however, I’ve been drawn to a section later in the chapter. Especially the way it’s written in The Message:

So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it–yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What’s next, Papa?" God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us–an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him! That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

I confess, I’m not there right now. Oh, I’ve been there before. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be there again. But right now, right now I’m not "adventurously expectant" and greeting God with a childlike "what’s next, papa?" My "what’s next?" is much more haggard and perhaps even a little cynical right now. A more "now what?" delivery.

I read this passage and I see hope. Yet I still feel rather hopeless. Or at the least, sad or melancholy or discouraged… or perhaps all three rolled into one big globby mess. Yet I SEE hope.

Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to it right now. I read it over and over, letting the words swirling around in my soul as if they were a glass of vintage wine to be savored, all the while pondering the deepening "joyful anticipation" Paul talks about.

Is this pain I feel, this longing for a place I’ve never seen but that I am convinced is where my parents now reside, is this joyful anticipation? Is this frustration with life, this aching to see Jesus face to face, to finally feel with my body what only my spirit and soul have felt all these years —  the caress of His hand, the sweet warmth of His breath on my face as He whispers my name, the special one HE’s given me, and His soft lips kiss my cheek before breaking into a smile, and hear with my ears His roaring laughter as we dance our first dance in heaven… is this aching "joyful anticipation"? Whatever it is, Paul is right about one thing. It’s deepening. Nearly to the point of madness.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

Oh, thank GOD!! Someone finally acknowledges that we DO get tired in the waiting. Thank GOD He made a provision for this! Because THIS is where I am. As much as I’d like to say I’m charging forward like a Rhino — or should that be crashing forward — and living life on the Barbarian edge, the truth is much less glamourous or "spiritual". The truth is, I’m just hanging on for dear life right now. I’m not just tired in the waiting, I’m exhausted and beat up from the journey. I’m John the Baptist in prison awaiting a beheading and sending disciples to Jesus to ask, "Are you the one or should we look for another?" No, I’m not doubting Jesus. Just wondering why He’s going about healing everyone else and leaving me in this prison of depression. I’m Anna, widowed and bereft of a family of my own, serving out my days in the temple and awaiting the promised Messiah…. and waiting… and waiting…. and waiting….

God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us–who was raised to life for us!-is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing–nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable–absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Hope. So much hope. I can SEE it. Why can’t I touch it? Why can’t I FEEL it?

And then I come back to Grace. I am not who I want to be. I am not all I think I "should" be. Yet every morning God’s laughter awakens me and He greets me as if I am perfect. Absolutely scratch-resistantly perfect. I am showered with Grace upon Grace upon Grace. And, finally, I FEEL a little hope…..