In this place, I am weary yet rejoicing

It has been one of those days where I feel again that in this place, before these students, I feel His pleasure. He has given me high and lofty goals and I am trusting him with those, but in this classroom before my students from 7 or 8 different countries, it is pure joy.

   I listened to an interview done by Bethel Church recently. Two Olympic runners have started going to that church and attending the school of ministry. Can you imagine- being a professional runner. That career alone is proof that God made us all unique and different!!
 
   And Sarah Hall, who runs steeplechases, talked about how she knew that God wanted her to run. And she talked about her passion for justice, for the poor and how that felt so much more important. And yet God said, run. Run because I can do more through you running that by yourself-with just your two hands on the mission field. And it shook me a bit. Because you know I have struggled with my identity and finding it in a holy and high calling. And it has been a journey finding it in Jesus. I am still on the road and it is a long pilgrimage with new friends and unexpected showers and dusty roads that remind me where I came from but it is beautiful and new and it feels right.

   Standing before those students today, the ones that so intimidated me only a week ago, I feel His Pleasure. It is coursing through me and I feel 'light as a butterfly' and I know His Joy must be shining because I can hardly keep it in. I feel like bursting.

And it is in these moments that I am thankful for the trials that have taught me to speak through against the lies. To catch the lies at their early stages and see their destructive end. I don't catch them all and I, again, am still on this journey, but it is a bit of beauty I am finding in the broken places. It is restoration and redemption for the lies that have rocked our little boat. So we are learning and I am thankful. For in those moments, when Truth has scattered lies and I am lifted up to see His great tapestry of love and I catch just a glimpse of the beauty that he is weaving, I am transfixed. Transformed. Renewed. And then I am back to where I can only see the knotted underside of that tapestry but it is enough. Enough to press on, with tired feet, and to remember that these feet are beautiful. That me with my lack of grammar skills, can teach English and bond with students and proclaim His Love. It is more than Enough.

Little Dreams Big

I used to want to be an actor. When I was nine. And I was so angry when my parents encouraged me to maybe find something a little less outlandish. So I decided to be a missionary. Or more- God gave me a deep-rooted desire sown in my heart under a starry sky in Mexico. And oh how that desire guided me for so long. It even became my identity.

In America we ask people what they do. It is one of the first questions of small talk and it creates a suddle pressure to have a good answer. What do you do? Oh I am just finding the cure for cancer while volunteering at the local food bank and teaching Sunday school and raising the next Bill Gates.

I was always so proud of my answer. It became a large part of my identity. So much so that I contemplated very seriously breaking up with Hank due to his 'lack of a calling.' It sounds horrible and it is, but my passion for missions had consumed me to an unhealthy degree. I didn't know who I was without it.

Last year I lived my dream. It was amazing. I got to teach ESL, live in a foreign country with some of the most beautiful people I have ever met and share the Love of the Lord with some of the coolest students-become-friends ever. And yet, part of my pined away for my sweetheart. I thought life would be perfect if we could one day get married and then live the dream overseas.

It is still a deep desire and I still think it would be pretty awesome.

But why is it that I am never quite content where I am? Why is it that I always want the next stage to come on and get here?

I have a job and a husband and a house and a garden. But I hate the job most days and neglect to clean the house or water the garden. I praise God for both in the morning light but when they start to need some TLC, I offer it only begrudgingly. Sometimes I do the same with my husband. He gets the dregs left over from a day of helping people who rarely say thanks.

And i think that maybe if we could just live overseas, I would find more fulfilment in my work and have energy to clean and love and more of a burn to worship and grow.

My goodness I must have a short memory. Because I never felt like cleaning last year and would regularly procrastinate on lesson plans and when there were over 200 students to love, I often felt discouraged and empty and frustrated. I often bemoaned all the aspects of the culture I didn't agree with or couldn't even begin to understand.

No, there is no perfect place. There is no perfect phase of life.

But there are gifts for the taking today. There was a beautiful woodpecker to watch at the park and several hours just to sip too-sweet coffee and work on lesson plans at the coffee shop. There were resources to use to teach refugees the alphabet and there was rest and energy. There was a long overdue visit with my best friend and her adorable family and hours to just talk and explore other-worldly parks lit with fireflies and legends.

There were conversations with beautiful grandmothers and a beautiful mom and there was time to burrow deep into the Word for rest and healing and hope. And there is God's never-failing and never-changing character and the compassion, mercy, love, and kindness he shows me daily.

And I am going to keep dreaming big but perhaps I will keep my small dreams bigger. I will rejoice over clean laundry and the tasks that get checked on the daily list. And I will rejoice over what I can't see yet and the promise that the future will be good, hard but good, and that I do not go alone.

Talking Rocks

I am not a big fan of being alone at home for long periods of time. I used to love it when my family would leave for the day and I could just read and read and read. I could usually go to sleep without too much trouble. But NOW that I am married, I hear every noise, every shifting of the house. I've been reading a Frank Peretti book off and on all day and my eyes are about to fall out of my skull.

     Today I felt the need to read something else. That familiar tug that drew me back to the Words that will endure forever, that will never lose relevance.

Randomly I started reading towards the end of Joshua, where God is parcelling out the land that he has given Israel. The details are so beautiful.

Joshua begins by setting up cities of refuge- where people who committed accidental murders could run and not be killed by the deceased person's family. It struck me how simple and yet beautiful God's plans are. He created peace by giving a sanctuary to those who had made such an aggegious mistake. He stopped the chain of events that would certainly be fueled by hate and grief and brought peace to the situation.

Then I kept reading. In Joshua 23, Joshua speaks his final words to Israel. He has come to the end of his life and he knows it. So he does what a father would do, what a leader would do, what any man who had shepherded a whole people group and followed in the footsteps of Moses would do...

He gives them their commission. Just as Moses gave him a great commission, he commissions the entire tribe.

"Soon I will die, going the way of all the earth. Deep in your hearts you know that every promise of the Lord your God has come true. Not a single one has failed! But as surely as the Lord your God has given you the good things he promised, he will also bring disaster on you if you disobey him. He will completely wipe you out from this good land he has given you. If you break the covenant of the Lord your Godby worshipping and serving other gods, his anger will burn against you, and you will quickly be wiped out from the good land he has given you." Josh 23: 14-16

First of all, how incredible is it that God brought every promise to fruition in the lives of his people? Wow. He kept his word completely in faithfulness. Second of all, Joshua is pretty blunt eh? No nonsense where disobedience is concerned!

After reminding the people of the faithfulness of God and the necessity to keep his covenant, he reviews the vast and complex history that brought them to where they are at that moment.
   He has labored and saved a complaining, moaning and rebellious people. God has extended grace upon grace.

"It was not your swords or bows that brought you victory. I gave you cities you did not build- the cities in which you are now living. I gave you vineyards and olive groves for food, though you did not plant them."
   Oh Lord, isn't that my prayer? That you would give me an inheritance in this place? That you would allow me to build upon the legacy others have left? That you would show me spiritual vineyards and olive groves ready for the picking?

Then Joshua gives the people a choice. God has been faithful to them despite everything. Everything.
Now the people have a choice. They can make a covenant with the Holy, Jealous God of the universe or they can turn to false gods. There really isn't a choice because God will destroy them if they take the latter and they will inevitably fail with the first option. But I can imagine that Joshua asked so that they were personally responsible for their commitment to God. It wasn't going to be their leader's faith or the Levites faith, they needed to own it if they were going to remain faithful once Joshua was gone.

The people chose to follow God(Smart choice) and Joshua made a covenant with the people "committing them to a permanent and binding contract between themselves and the Lord." (23:25b)

But Joshua was a smart leader. He knew how quickly people forget their commitments after an emotional experience. Perhaps he had struggled to stay faithful himself.
 
   So Joshua took a rock.

I have no idea why he took a rock but that is what he did.

He took a big ol' rock and rolled it under the oak tree, right where everyone would see it on the way to the tabernacle. There was no going to the meeting place of the Most High without remembering the commitment they had made.

This is the part I love.

"This stone has heard everything the Lord said to us. It will be a witness to testify against you if you go back on your word to God. "

Part of me thinks this is pretty funny. Common Josh, a stone?! Everyone knows rocks can't talk.... Isn't that where we get the expression, "dumb as a rock." But then I remember this. I remember that Jesus said if we are silent and don't proclaim is name, even the rocks will cry out! Maybe they aren't as dumb as we think.

Sometimes I forget to see the stone. Sometimes I forget that the very walls of this house hear and see my daily communion with God. These walls bear witness to the time I have spent just wasting time. They bear witness to my good intentions that never happen. They see my worship and my prayers but they don't see or hear those enough.

If these walls could talk I am not sure I would want to know what they have to say.

Have I forgotten the commitment, the covenant I made with the Jealous fierce warrior-King that loves me deeper and more fully than I can imagine?

It isn't the rock that is important but the remembering. It is grace that gives a reminder in the first place. Because He knew/knows that we would/will forget and so he surrounds us with reminders simple, clear and beautiful.

Let the walls of my house be rocks of remembrance. May the scriptures I put up be coordinates to guide my daily living.