2014 Re-Newed

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8

“The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.”Lamentations 3:22-23

Here are two Scriptural passages that are in no way contradictory, but they give my heart flight when I think about them together. Hebrews says that the Lord is always reliable in how we can expect to meet Him; Lamentations shows us that part of His sameness is that He brings us newness every morning. His character is such that if we watch and listen, pray and ponder, study and meditate, that He never wants us to be without the delight of His Presence, but wants us to know every day how He would thrill us with His freshness and divine ingenuity.

The beauty of this truth came to me when I heard that January 17th is National Ditch Your New Year’s Resolutions Day (an estimated one-third of New Year’s resolutions are cast off as early as the middle of January). I realized how sad our own resolutions can be when they are abandoned so quickly, and how little they bring to a renewed life when compared to the Lord’s new presentations to us each morning. His newness strengthens me to grow in ways that my own resolutions never could.

Since I was a child part of my journal entries have been to write about what new thing I found out each day. I still do it, because it is such an encouragement to His goodness in my life. His new things build-up and exhort me in my life. My supposed new determinations can be such a great disappointment. My striving in my own willfulness with a new goal leaves me alone with another reason to reproach myself internally as I leave it collapsed for the next “new” thing on a long list of goals. A new message of His mercies, on dawn’s winds, expands my heart to move into wider circles of love and service in a way that expands each goal into a divine partnership holding it together with the King of the universe.

This new every morning wake-up-call led me to list below some of the love-letters that have called me forth already in this short new year. They expand the boundaries of my hope for all that I am called to, and if I keep them on my heart throughout the day a resolution or a list of goals becomes a prayer. I decided to put a Bible verse with each new loving-kindness--as a Holy Spirit seal—adding to the amazing surprise that comes with opening His early morning perfumed notes:

The confident and ingenious way that a rose bud is packaged--full of His ready unfurling for the grand opening.(Song of Solomon 5:5)

How the reach of a garden does not observe a fence.(I Chronicles 4:10)

A walk with friends in which our gait is like the loveliest choreographed dance.(Psalm 149:3)

Reflections and how they give us back everything with a startling new glimpse. (Deuteronomy 11:11-12)

The sun when it rests on a tree bough reminding me to wrap well the powerful and beaming gift of encouragement.(Philippians 1:14)

The sunset etchings of a tree against the sky—a heaven-spaced calligraphy of singularly felt affection.(Philippians 1:8)

A magnolia bloom against the rolling clouds that looks like it wants to go along for the celestial ride.(Psalm 29:2)

The Angel’s Trump flower bush in which the bloom grows upside down--ringing perfume throughout the neighborhood like a steeple bell.(Song of Solomon 4:16)

The strong turning in the crown of a mature tree, and the nearly imponderable thought of it as a spindly sapling.(Hebrews 6:1)

Wedding gowns and how they spiral and sway, surround and anoint, like some great Lily ready to burst forth.(Hosea 2:16)

Children and daises and their wonderful affinity for creating miraculous bouquets for those whom they love.(Luke 10:21)

Catkins upon a bare branched tree and the spinning surprise of their maiden flight.(Isaiah 55:10)

A horse’s unbridled trot upon being released from a stall—the backward kicking of a rollicking nature.(Isaiah 61:1)

A perfectly shaped yellow squash lost in the harvest under huge fan-shaped leaves--as though hidden out of jealousy for its beauty.(2 Corinthians 11:2)

Laundry hanging in the breeze and the way that all the little outfits hold the promise of future gleeful adventures.(Mark 10:14-15)

The insistence of a bud in a tree to make a place just tailored to its bloom.(Luke 1:17)

The landing of a small orange butterfly on a zinnia, its big brown eyes imploring to be the central character in a children’s book.(Matthew 13:3)

A rose at full maturity and how there is no dressmaker who can equal the curve of such an elegant ruffle.(Matthew 6:28-29)

Unknown berries tucked in the foliage of a tree--their outcome and meaning mysterious.(Colossians 2:2-3)

The stage presented to the chair on a front porch—a kaleidoscope of wonder presented each day to one who is willing to rest and receive.(Exodus 15:11)

How certain cloud formations can look like a majestic opening into a passageway to heaven.(Ezekiel 1:1)

Corsages handed down from a low-hanging branch that invites a guest to an arbor-ball.(Isaiah 55:12)

Fog and its suggestion of the richness yet to be found looming in the rainbowed mists.(Genesis 9:12-17)

Desert plants and their ingenious design for life on the edge of resources in a place without the comfort of shade.(Deuteronomy 32:10)

The music of the trees at dusk, as the birds ready themselves for sleep, giving the great treetops an evening anthem.(Isaiah 30:29)

Stacks of books with the ideas and hearts of their authors--not containable.(Job 19:23)

The artistry of a bicycle’s design--in the eyes of both a toddler and a racer.(Proverbs 20:12)

Chalk drawings with hopscotch next to a really big note: Daddy loves Angie!(James 1:17)

The elegance of the curve of a long wave to explain mathematics in one great roll.(Isaiah 40:12)

The tenacity of a root system to support great towering giants with unseen labor.(Philippians 1:27)

Holding hands--a gift with a lovely knotted bow tied directly to hearts.(Proverbs 17:17)

My husband’s smile that spells, in its curve, how he believes in me in Christ.(1 Corinthians 13:7-8)

The power of the Cross incorporated into the structure of a building--ever present as a glimpse of mercy.(Galatians 6:14)

The face of Christ on a stranger that leaves none of us strange.(Matthew 25:45)

The image included with this post so delighted me by the Lord hanging a beautiful mobile of light in the sky around His sun. Each rainbow starlet of light reminded me of His new mercies for that day, and it is my joy to let them turn before your eyes as you see the light make its brilliant new spectrums just for you.

Find yourself encouraged, as you head out each morning, to see His mercies new. It doesn’t take the gift of a wildly active imagination. It only requires a heart open to the find Jesus—always there—and every morning new in His mercies, which He loves to reveal to His own.

His beautiful countenance will be there for the seeking in the most mundane places of your work, in the places of pounding stress, and upon every high mountain with a vista of untold glory. And at every place in between you will find that He wants to be with you to show you His newness glistening precisely for you. He will hang a necklace of light around your day, and your night, out of the dancing joy that he takes over your precious bright life in Him.

Wonder Stitches

I have a story to elaborate upon in this post that has to do with how we really get to know the authentic movements of the hearts of our loved-ones, and how this embrace encircles our hearts together in a love that can be wordless at its depths. It is also about how to serve the Lord with a guileless and a worshipful heart.

It is the story from Acts 9:36-42 about a woman named Tabitha, or Dorcas, in the Greek (which means gazelle). She was compassionately raised from the dead through Peter, because of the desperate need that he saw in her community to have her back with them. What made the tears of her friends so telling? Was Dorcas a great orator? Was she a widely traveled woman who had carried the Word abroad? Would we call her a world-mover, or a super-hero, or even a great motivator of people to her cause? Most likely, none of these would fit--not by her seemingly simple acts--which we will see.  Every day she pulled a needle and thread through fabric.  She made tunics for the poor widows who had captured her sweet disciple’s passions by their impoverished distress. Here is her story from the Scripture:

“At Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did.  But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. And since Lydda was near Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them. Then Peter arose and went with them. When he had come they brought him to the upper room. And all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments which Dorcas had made while she was with them. But Peter put them all out, and knelt down and prayed. And turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. Then he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and the widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed on the Lord.”

Every time I envision those friends uncontrollably weeping, not able to speak, but only able to point to the wonders that her hands had produced, my heart leaps over the ways that we are given to cherish each other. I included a picture today of how I think those widow’s tunics must have felt to the recipients as they held them up for Peter to see. They must have been like wrappings of wonder around their Children-of-God bodies. Her love for them, as she wove and pieced together the material, dressed them up in a wonder of grace that they may have never known in any other way.

Dorcas didn’t amass a great industry in Joppa to sew with her; She didn’t put posters around the city about the widow’s plight; She didn’t feel that she had the only way to help the poor. It would seem that each day she was simply seen untiringly at her post, with tenderlovingkindness, bent over the next wonder-embrace that she would give to the next dear soul who needed the warmth she could supply.

What is so compelling about Dorcas is that by her simple, but monumental, love we are told that this disciple’s life brought many to belief in the Lord. Her name meaning the gazelle tells me that she was so light and lovely, so bounding and quick, that she knew, without any reserve, what the call upon her life was and she leapt to it instantly, never calculating its reach--only seeing the one in need before her. The Holy Spirit power that raised her by Peter’s prayer and his gentlemanly offering of his hand to help her up tells me to stop any rehearsals about how my ministry should progress, and to call it all worship, just like Dorcas did as she stitched wonder into her tunics--never counting the number. A tunic, made in love, is as big as a dedicated ministry that touches thousands. Heaven’s mathematics finds its proof in the authenticity of the heart.

Wonder-stitches! Dorcas and her precious story makes me want to leap to those things that He has gifted me with that would help to hold together those around me with the sweet and immeasurably grand love of Jesus. How the community must have wept again, now with joy, when Peter returned her to them alive and ready to make another tunic--full of wonder!

Children's Praise in the Key of Wonder

This morning I heard the same blessed children's songs that I expect upon the breeze--better than birdsong! They always strike me as the background music for a day's beginning that brings me back to the core of joy. Like rarefied praise music, the songs are a testing of the range of a delightful squeal, the giggles that accompany finding ones own gait, the rhythms to fit a bounce-ball game, shouts that come from the unexpected, and a bawl bringing adults at their swiftest pace.

But this morning, some aberrant wind brought the anthem to my heart with an unusual sadness. Was it last night's news? Could it be that I wanted to freeze time for them--wrong-headed woman that I can be? Somehow the sorrow was tied-up in their natural wonderment, the genius of their little hearts to choose play first, the beginnings of their language that had so few of the awful words of hatred yet, the heights of the sounds they could make because each one had an opera of joy in their chests.

I rested in what I knew to be true; It was something that Jesus said, resonating for the generations: "...Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter at all." (Mark 10:14-15)

It consoled me to the depths. Jesus said that we could always come to Him if we just kept upon our hearts the lessons of childwonder! To wake up with a certainty of discovery, to keep a skipping gratitude in our hearts, to find the lyricism of meeting our mates, to be astounded over newness, to voice our speech and thoughts as uplifting, and to run for sure refuge to the swiftest of Parents when a holler is the sound of our cry--these were the ways to grow-up.

The next passage in Mark--10:16 says: "And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them." I was at such a place as I saw Him enkindle each little-one whom I love from my neighborhood with His touch of blessing.