Five Minute Friday: Open

Another Friday, another time to sit down and kick back and write a few words into existence. Link on up to Gypsy Mama to join in!

Open
Other than Immanuel, I think open might be one of the best words out there. Open doors, open hearts, open eyes. It's fodder for worship and a new oppurtunity beckoning. It's the perfect word to start out this new year. Full of promise of new oppurtunity, new doors flung wide and new lessons learned and leaving the crap of the year 2011. Open is a word looking forwards to how God will shock us now.

I've found a love for Isaiah recently, especially
Isaiah 43:16-21

This is what the Lord says—

he who made a way through the sea,

a path through the mighty waters,

who drew out the chariots and horses,

the army and reinforcements together,

and they lay there, never to rise again,

extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

“Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland.

The wild animals honor me,

the jackals and the owls,

because I provide water in the desert

and streams in the wasteland,

to give drink to my people, my chosen,

the people I formed for myself

that they may proclaim my praise.

He's not done yet! Happy Friday everyone! I love this whole idea of Five Minute Friday and I want to close with a line from the Gypsy Mama herself that I think sums up our hope and our God's hope in this new year

May we dream new dreams.
May we ask and not be surprised when we receive.
May we dance with abandon before you and be willing to become much more foolish than we’re comfortable with.

Treasure trove

My grandma has recently taken it into her head to buy my sister and I each a subscription to one of those sappy magazines with names like Guide Posts and Angels. I was paging through the angels one this morning and came to one that stuck out among all of the soppy ones as real. One guy, called to war in Afghanistan had prepared a chest for his wife to open each day, with 365 slips of paper saying I love you in sundry fonts and handwritings. Every day she would open it to yet another reminder of her husband's love, even though they were oceans apart. As much as that appeals to me as a budding romantic, it also shows me that's how His love is. It's there every morning whether I'm aware of it or not. On my birthday I love you. One Christmas, I love you. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I love you, I love you, I love you. His love is written across my life, our lives, in permanent black Sharpie. His love is big enough to span two thousand years and counting, to hold the outcasts, the insecure, the hurting and those who just wake up in  a bad mood. And maybe, our heavenly Daddy intended Jesus to be those 365 slips of paper with I love you tattooed across every single day of our lives.

Five Minute Friday; Connected

Celebrating words and Fridays and honesty over at Gypsy Mama. Link on up.

Connected
 It never takes more than ten minutes in my high school to see all the flaws of humanity, and so I think all the people I would ever want or need to know. My high school is huge. I always joke that I'm going to walk across the stage at graduation and look at the person next to me and realize I have no idea who the heck he or she is. Sure enough, every new class I take brings new faces, new stories, new freshmen into my life and in twelve weeks the whole cycle repeats all over again but with more people I know. I don't think a time will ever come where I know every single person in the class on any given trimester. I'd love to, but I don't think that's how God intended my high school experience to work. I think he chose to put me here, among people whom I am learning to love, but at the same time drive me up a wall with their sheer wrongness. But at the same time, I guess I'm learning that they have different types of wisdom then I do. One girl I sit with at lunch knows what it's like to struggle with homosexual impulses and still claim her faith in Christ. Another is in a wheelchair full time, but is probably the most cheerful person I will ever meet. Yet another struggles with her relationship with her mom and her body image, but writes ingenious, elaborate stories that leave me breathless just hearing about them. Never mind that she also talks a mile a minute :) Maybe godliness shows up in those who don't actually know him in ways they never could have faked on their own. It could be that they just don't see God in themselves and thus don't believe he exists. It could be that Christianity is deeper and more involved than anything humans could dream up. God can be seen in people who don't even know him, shaping and sculpting their lives as well as our own. What if we're putting up barriers that aren't actually there? In saying that God created us in our inmost being and planned our salvation from day one, where do we leave people who don't currently and may never believe in him? God has a way of showing us up over and over again. Maybe this is just another one of those things we just will never understand. All I know is God, and I'm positive He loves the Hindu girl sitting next to me just as much as he loves me.

Five Minute Friday:Color

Celebrating words and language and honesty with everyone over at Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday. Link up :)

My family makes it a point whenever we can to drive by the Wow House, a house so splashed with lights in every nook and cranny that you can see it halfway down the street. Like anything else, it shines most brightly at night, when there's no other light then them and maybe, on nights like tonight, a full moon. Maybe that was the real meaning of being light in the darkness. To be a glimmer of hope and beauty and Jesus to a world that desperately needs to see it. Maybe it doesn't always come on during the day, during the ho hum of everyday life (where God is still working anyway0 but when we're about to lose it or have already lost it, that's when we shine. When we're transparent and real and aren't afraid to let people see us cry. No one sees a light that walls itself in for self preservation. That's what's so amazing about Him is that he can turn our crap into treasure. Even when things are bad and dark and scary, that's when he does his best work. I think it's amazing how painted this world is. Blood that is blue, but turns red when it hits the oxygen in the air, pinpricks of startrs in the sky and lights that turn up a few days after Thanksigiving. The vibrant colors of fall and the freshness of spring and summer. Even the snow, white as it is, covers the grouns with sparkles, lighting up every corner. Pretty amazing. I wonder when I see things things---really see them, not just see them amidst the cloud of a thousand other things going on--I wonder at how cool God really is. Just think of the inside of our body. Colors and shapes and details, that nobody else seems to know but those who look, languages and words and people all woven together by the forgotten Artist. That's what everything seems to come down to.Him whose names rarely if ever leak out of our mouths when surrounded by unbelievers. Him who we run from and hide behind out own ideas of who he is and what he can do.  Him who created this whole messy, beautful, colorful earth in the first place and brigs us back to himself every day, every hour, every minute. Him who keeps me sane, even when I'm insane and somehow brings my bad ideas around full circle and turns them into something beautiful.

Five Minute Friday: Tired?

For whatever reason, today's word surprised me a little.Is it really possible for His people to be tired and grouchy and just had enough? Is that OK? What happens when I get sick of God? Of the obligation tied to Christianity; reading his word and praying and not doing bad things and turning to him instead of worrying. Sometimes that can be nothing more than a major pain in the butt. Guilt and the feeling of should I have done something different or handled that differently and knowing that the past is over and there's nothing anyone can do to bring it back and redo it.

I guess I've been living with the mentality of not being able to be tired or cranky when I want to be. It could be a good thing, but not when I'm so focused on that that I forget about him. Sometimes I can relate more to the Pharisees than to the disciples, how they felt like they had to do something to really be a Christian. And I kinda realized this whole week, maybe longer, I was totally focused on me and how I was acting and how I thought people saw my actions. That's why I was tired.

 That's why I didn't feel like I had time to do the things I wanted to do, because I was so focusd on what I thought was important that I forgot him and who he knew me to be. In knitting my life together, he must have known that there would be days I just didn't feel like it. He, better then anyone, knows how after nine o'clock at night, all sense goes out of the window and I become a blubbering wreck at whatever I'm trying to do. The thing I'm slowly learning on this quiet Sunday afternoon is that he's totally OK with sharing my tiredness and crap from the week. Sometimes lying on the floor and staring at the Christmas lights is the best thing in the world for this soul, and he knows that. He knows what videos I'm going to watch, what blogs and books and magazines I read before I even try to crack my eyes open, and somehow he chooses to touch me through those. Even though they're brainsuckers and time wasters, they're how the Most High chooses to touch my heart on this blustery Sunday afternoon.And I think I'm OK with that.

Cast all of your anxiety (worry,self consciousness, PMS, sleeplessness, uncertainty) on him for he cares for you.

How crazy is that?