Month: November 2013

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

“I pray for you, that all your misgivings will be melted to thanksgivings. ~Jim Elliot

Today, we offer fresh-brewed gratitude.

We won’t serve God the sentimental leftovers of olden days, when life saluted us with cheerful favor, when headlines were benign, when custom-order blessings appeared daily at our doors.

Gratitude is not reserved for moments when the sun beams on our dreams.

Especially when bad news blurs and ill-winds batter, we turn from lament for this one day. We deliberately savor the warmth of a sturdy love, of mercies delivered new every morning, even when we forget to notice.

God deserves and delights in our gratitude, for our sake, not for his.

For he knows we weary our souls with relentless complaint. He hears our self-pitiful moaning, for our state, so alone and unloved. He watches as dank dungeons of bitterness become our second home. Deaf to his whispers of hope and redemption, we sink beneath our worry, so he throws us a life-saving line, In everything give thanks, for this is my will for you.*

So, today, untether your expectations, and let God be the only definition of good.

In the end, we will realize even desperate moments were soaked with grace. The people who annoyed and distressed us will turn out to have been our best tutors. The hostile divisions, the what-ifs we dreaded, the ideas that outraged us, will scatter in the face of incomparable Love.

In one great “Aha!” we will be made new.

Someday. But today, if we are grateful, we rehearse who we will someday be.

On this day, pour some fresh-brewed gratitude, and offer it to God.

Fresh-Brewed Gratitude

Thanks for prayers that you have answered,

Thanks for what you have denied.

Thanks for storms that I have weathered,

Thanks for all you have supplied.

Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,

Thanks for comfort in despair.

Thanks for grace that none can measure,

Thanks for love beyond compare.

(Adapted from the hymn, Thanks To God For My Redeemer, by August L. Storm)

*1 Thessalonians 5:18

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

Tags gratitude

Faith Life

I Is For Idols: Learning To Live For An Audience Of One

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date November 21, 2013
4 Comments on I Is For Idols: Learning To Live For An Audience Of One

The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne, and worship only thee. ~William Cowper

You will sing your song to an audience of one, or to an auditorium packed with idols.

Every day we choose between them.

Idols (your insatiable demanding self, or the slippery approval of the crowd) never pay at the door. They slip in the side door, impressively dressed, secretly impotent. They promise the world and give nothing.

Look around. Everywhere you turn heads are tilted to hear their suggestive hiss:

Unless you are (attractive, accomplished, applauded, approved of, well-off, well-married), you will not (be safe, be important, be special, be loved, be happy).

People who don’t (look like you, agree with you, vote like you, seem likable to you) aren’t worthy of (a dance, a friendship, a place in your oh-so-busy life).

Count on God to show up (for religious gatherings, major tragedies, a momentary spiritual high) but most things you will need to figure out for yourself.

It’s too easy to nod in agreement, to bow to what seems inevitable. But we can be free of those voices, to perform instead for an audience of one.

Idols Smashing: The Ten Plagues

In Exodus, chapters 7 through 15, we read the curious story of God delivering his people out of slavery. The Pharaoh is reluctantly convinced after ten plagues are unleashed by Moses’ command. Blood, frogs, lice, insects, pestilence, boils, hail, locust, darkness, death—why use up so many small disasters instead of performing one dramatic act?

I wonder if God was addressing Egyptian idols in the audience.

Osiris was worshipped as the important, life-sustaining god of the Nile. In the first plague the river water is rendered useless.
Heqt, the frog goddess, assisted women in childbirth, mandated by the Pharaoh to end in death for Hebrew sons. After the second plague the air reeks with the stench of dying frogs.
Amon-Re, the sun-god was praised as the source of warmth and light. In the ninth plague all light is snuffed out, the darkness so dense no one can move.

More is at stake than a mere battle of wills between Moses and Pharaoh. A cosmic question is being settled over the pyramids, “Who is worthy of being God?”

Idols Annihilating: The Golden Calf

A few chapters later, rescued from Pharaoh’s control, Israel still turns to any idol at hand. We humans like our homemade gods–they are tangible, understandable, and comfortably like us. We prefer a God contained, a golden calf we help shape.

Idols Impotence

To say God is angry understates his reaction. Why is a piece of gilded pottery such a threat to God’s plan? Because the almost is a smoke screen for the most, for what we truly need. Those seductive whispers I’ve listed above do point to the truth: You were wired to feel safe, wanted, special, loved, happy, protected and potent. But idols are pretenders to a throne only one King deserves.

Your best weapon against the empty seduction of idolatry is to laugh at the presumption, to throw all promises of glory, glamour and glittering refuge high, like confetti into the air.

And then sing your song with all your heart to an audience of one.

Which idols whisper loudest in your ear?

Exodus 12:12 Exodus 32:1

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: J is for ~~Happiness~~ Joy.

Photograph by Melanie Hunt

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Faith Life

You Are More Special Than You Know: H Is For Holy

Post author By Janet Hanson
Post date November 14, 2013
10 Comments on You Are More Special Than You Know: H Is For Holy

All things as they move toward God are beautiful, and they are ugly as they move away from Him. ~ A.W. Tozer

Few of us long to be holy, to be an ever-burning bush in desert places.

Special, yes, noticed, yes—we feel the pressure to be remarkable and amazing, but amazing is elusive.

And the competition is fierce. When every child on the team gets a trophy it doesn’t create confidence, but a deep-rooted angst. If I am one of a kind, why am I treated like one of many? If I’m special, why should I have to suffer this indignity or discomfort?

The unintended consequence of the self-esteem movement is a petulant population, chronically offended.

We feel like failures when our abilities are average.
We grind our teeth when others cut in line.
We despair when ignored, overlooked, or unappreciated.

In moments of clarity, we suspect we are not special, which makes us, in the language of religion, “profane.” To be “holy” is not possible—we are common, ordinary, and every-day. Only the oblivious—the holier-than-thou, the self-righteous, the kind of people best avoided—would claim to be saints.

The Bible presents a different view, with the repeated command, “Be holy because I am holy.”

Be holy because I am.

Holy Moses

Moses was a privileged child, a slave adopted into palatial splendor. But forty years spent in the wild, huddled with dull-witted sheep, cured Moses of all self-importance. One day a burning bush detoured him from his duties, and the voice of God resounded with the promise, not “you’re extraordinary,” but “take off your shoes, you’re in the presence of someone who is.”

Later, the sea miraculously parted, Egyptian power thwarted, Moses led his people in a hymn to God, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11)

At the foot of a mountain, the former slaves washed their clothes, bracing themselves for a fire-earthquake-lightening-thunder encounter with holiness. They changed their diet and daily habits, reordered their relationships and reoriented their priorities, built a tabernacle and a new kind of nation all because they had been embraced by, you could say, infected by, a holiness not of their own.

There is no one on earth or in heaven like God. He is “holy.” But we learn from the Bible the unexpected truth:

A holy God is not repulsed by our failure; he invites us to be healed.
A holy God does not reject, he delivers us from our darkness.
A holy God is not indifferent, but he desires only our best.

According to Lev. 19:18, the holiness God demands of us is, in its essence, love. And love will make us holy where it matters. In Luke 6:36, Jesus changes the adjective. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

Holy, merciful, love is what others will find in us when we hold tight to our holy God. We will flame, a brightly burning detour, for lonely desert wanderers.

Do you know you are special because God is?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: I is for Idols.

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Faith Life

G Is For Grit And Glory

Redemption makes beauty out of baseness, a brilliant God at work where we least expect him to be.

The grit and the glory come wrapped in the same story.

The grit-level view is familiar—we walk it every day.

Random conversations, petty hurts and catastrophic headlines all jumble together like puzzle pieces still in the box. We are used to it. The aches and pains of aimless effort seem normal. It is what it is, our motto.

What is there to do except stack our pieces higher or collect the prettiest ones in a pile?

Does life come to us by chance, or by grace, or by divine intention? When we turn the box cover over we understand. The tired, dusty grit of life is being fashioned into glory.

From Grit To Glory

The second half of Genesis reads like a soap opera, with Jacob and Joseph its dubious heroes. Chapter after chapter reek of revenge, rivalry, deception, manipulation, betrayal, desperation–a dysfunctional family tale. Brother tricked, brother sold, brothers afraid, brothers saved. From of the muck of sibling rivalry, God forges a nation of tribes and saves his people from famine.

But, more important, God fulfills his promise to Abraham. A shrewd and savvy puzzle master, he moves among unwilling pieces—not wasting, but waiting. Divine redemption transforms us, one stubborn heart at a time. At the close of Genesis, Joseph catches a glimpse of the puzzle box cover and sings, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good….” (Genesis 50:20).

Can you take a moment to sing along? To all that hurts or annoys me, or threatens to destroy me–you mean it to harm me but God will use it for good (repeat).

A Daily Prayer For Glory

I give you the pieces of my life, the wretched, the mundane, and the lovely.

Take my mistakes, my triumphs, and my sin.

Take the resentments I’ve hoarded, the cruelty I’ve endured, and the hurt I’ve inflicted.

Take my boredom, my worry, my contentment, my smothering, any kindness you find or gratitude uncovered, any joy or pleasure I hold to my heart.

Save what you can, deliver me where needed. Use everything to fulfill your sharp-eyed vision, squeeze every drop of meaning to reclaim me as your own.

Use it all for your glory. Use it all to bless the world. May my life look more like the puzzle box cover because I let you have your way with the pieces.

Amen. Let it be so.

Where do you long to see God bringing glory out of the grit of your world?

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail above so you won’t miss a letter. Next: H is for Holy.

Tags glory, redemption