The running God

"So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found." Luke 15:20-24

When it has been three days since you have prayed...

When it has been a week since you opened your Bible...

When the worship has been hollow for months...

When the world has been home for years...

He still runs to us with open arms.

The God who rejoices with dancing when one sinner returns, is the same God who sprints to His child who has forgotten Him for a season. Just a flicker of a glance over our shoulder, and His loving pursuit takes off.

Sometimes I still don't understand grace.

It's usually when prayers lapse into business, and communion will be tomorrow. Or the next day.

I want to run back to Him. Instead I crawl. I slink into the throne room sideways, groveling at the door. I apologize. I excuse. I justify. I promise. I plead.

As if the God I expect to find on His throne is not the one who poured out His blood on Calvary. As if the God who heaped up grace on a wretch like me, might stop loving me at any moment. As if I might need to bring another sacrifice, more atonement, fuller mercy.

When we enter the throne room with prayers of repentance, He laughs with joy, jumps up, and runs  to embrace us. Grace means you can always turn your feet toward home.

Do you give up on relationship with Christ because you are unworthy? Indeed, we are! Turn your eyes upon Jesus, and be bowled over in His eager embrace.

Communion

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.
1 Corinthians 11:26

Communion. A moment to remember and commune with the Lord. But we do not only join the Lord at the table. Communion is not about isolation, guilt, or shame. It is about grace and family.

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:5-6

We understand our salvation through metaphors of individuality. One man or woman broken at the foot of the cross, bought out of the market, set free in the court room. Some days we forget the beautiful metaphor of adoption. We are not just adopted as sons. We are adopted as daughters, sisters, brothers, grand children, nieces, and nephews. We are ransomed from a life and eternity of loneliness into a life and eternity of belonging as the beloved. The adopted does not receive a parent; they receive a family.

As a young woman in church communion was lonely. We were asked to examine ourselves quietly, confess, pray no one saw the thoughts as they formed at the front of our minds. If they knew... I would not be welcome at the table. We passed individual cups in silence, downcast eyes, closed up hearts. Drown out everything but memory.

Memories live in communion. With Him. With others. His death was not only grace enough for me. It is grace enough for my brothers, my sisters, my daughters, and sons. We remember together. We live together. We endure together. And we will reign together.

How could the understanding of your adoption transform this (and these) Christian life (lives)? When loneliness and shame beckon are you brave enough to come to the table?

It is not just dancing

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Romans 8:18-19

As a child I looked forward expectantly to what I would do in heaven. I would run through fields of flowers and dance on the clouds. I would hold discussion with people from the Bible and brave men  and women of the past. I would laugh with my sister at this brief moment called life and hear her every thought saved up for a lifetime. As I have grown a little older and been levelled to awe by my God time and again, this expectation  has changed. All I want to do now is see my Jesus. I want to fall down and worship the Lamb who was slain for me. I want to cry out with the angels "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty!" He is faithful. He is patient. He is good. He has redeemed my life and filled it with all grace necessary to carry me to heaven's threshold. Jesus is our inheritance. His presence, His Lordship, His glory and blessings are our reward.

There are no tears in eternity, but I imagine there are heaping mounds of laughter.

What has stolen your hope?  Is heaven so far away?  Before we worship in heaven, let us practice our joy here.

Just who I am, is not who I am

"That's just who I am." In the face of criticism, opposition, or correction even Christians have clung to this personal right, this rigid existence, the war cry of idolatry. Some have gone far enough to declare, "That is how God made me." And since the Almighty is perfect, He must have created perfectly, and this quirk of self-righteousness can be in no way a fault?

These phrases do not only grate against my eardrums when the quirk pointed out is a sin. Sometimes we cling to the most benign of personality traits with a selfish rigor that becomes sin. Anyone played softball lately? When a brother lovingly points out that our aggression over a call at first may not be the battlefield on which to slay our integrity, out it comes: the venom of self-righteousness.

"God made me competitive."

Which may be true. But, He did not make you a jerk. That comes from a personal reservoir of our own ungodliness.

What on this earth is truly worth the corruption of our witness? What pieces of injustice, soon to be consumed in fire and forgotten, are worth the bruising of our character? What fleeting moment in time is worth all of a stranger's eternity? Maybe keeping our temper, sacrificing our wants, or dying to ourselves won't change the destination of a soul. We aren't promised that taking up our cross will get anyone saved.

But it might.

"For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became a Jew, so that I might win the Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some."1 Corinthians 9:19-22

Our personality, even the "good" parts of it, is not worth trading for our identity. You are not the competitive man. You are not the emotional woman. You are not the whip quick thinker. I am not the sum of my cowardice.

We are new creations in Christ. Made new once by His grace, and remade daily in the image of the Savior. There is nothing in me worth dying for. Except the Spirit of Christ proclaimed to the nations.

Where have you allowed you to become too rigid for Christ to move? What grace have you sacrificed for the sake of your personality? May we become all things for all people for the brief glimmer of a chance that maybe one soul might taste salvation and be satisfied. Let us not cling to our venom, but whisper honey and hope.

Exhaling Desert

I breathe in Your fluid dust,

thick crimson soot, inhalation

of my being. Why do You see me,

when I blend so well with earth,

sister of moment lapping morning

silt from the stems of cacti,

matching the soft contractions

of stone in vibratory praise?

You are the chasm in upright

pillars of rock allowing daylight

to wash this shadow, to awaken

deep hues of desert into oceans

of blushing sand. You

are the perfection of a desert blossom

which drinks the sun,

but does not close in the night chill;

rather, You await the eye

of Your love under the silhouette

of stars. My God of distant Mountains,

the clouds suspended thick and cold

only long to be at your feet,

bleed rain to feel the burn

of Your touch on the skin of them,

and we both gaze in awe of You,

both soon to vanish,

desperate to diminish

in the sandstone of Your palms.