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Tuesday

January 27, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

I load dishes in the dishwasher, scramble together my current stack of books, bible, journal, computer, shoving them into my hastily emptied diaper bag. Tugging my pink beanie down over my ears, I head out into the cold + dark, smiling at the few scattered snowflakes still floating down.

It’s Tuesday. And I’m hurrying. I only have two hours.

Tuesdays are quickly becoming my favorite. This sweet guy has given me Tuesday evenings all to myself. We talked at the outset of the new year about some of our goals + hopes for this year and I asked him if it would be okay for me take one night a week to invest a bit more intentionally in writing. (Or to just lose myself for a bit in a book without the constant mommy-radar that I have up when I’m home, listening and responding to little cries. Or just to scroll mindlessly around the interweb. OR to take a nap in the car, I don’t know.)

I had said how I felt like I could never turn my brain off. There are certainly times during the day when the kids are sleeping and I have time to get a few things done or relax, but in the back of my mind is the constant awareness that I’m on-call to take care of them if they need me. It’s usually fine, but on occasion, it can wear an introvert right out.

It’s one of the most beautiful things about marriage lately, the way we can be a team. The longer we’ve been married, the more we’ve learned that we all function better as a family if each of us has the opporunity to recharge in the particular ways that we each need. It’s been fun to make a habit of asking each other what we can do to ensure the other spouse rests. Sometimes what gives the soul rest is a good hard run in the quiet wilderness where the only sound is your labored breathing and feet on soft ground. Sometimes for my husband, rest is having time to tinker around in the garage and work on his motorcycle or woodworking projects. It’s important for us to make time to connect with each other and go on dates. It’s important that we make time to be all together as a family. It’s important that we connect with the kids. In the midst of all of that, it’s easy to neglect our own souls. Lately we’ve been working on taking turns holding down the fort so the other person can do something that feeds their soul.

And don’t go thinking that we just have a good marriage. We have been married nine years this May. NINE. It’s no small miracle that we didn’t kill each other the first five, but here we are, not just surviving anymore, but (dare I say it?) thriving. The marriage we have now still needs a lot of work, of course, but it is one we have fought hard for. Any progress we have made has come with a lot of blood, sweat, tears + prayer.

This season with three little ones under 4 years old is a very busy season. In order for us to not burn out, we’re learning we have to be intentional about working hard when it’s time to work, and resting hard when it’s time to rest. Playing when it’s time to play.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” Eccl. 3:1

A time for decaf americanos and words in cozy coffee shops late at night. So, there it is. It’s Tuesday again, and I’m writing a little and just savoring this strange-vaguely-familiar-yet-sort-of-foreign sensation of remembering that I’m still an individual.

So.. here’s to husbands who hold the 2 month old while they give the four and two year old a bath. Here’s to husbands who do all the dishes (even though they hate it), who read scripture and sing bible songs over sleepy children as they tuck them in bed. Here’s to husbands who believe in their wives and speak words of courage over them when they think they have nothing to offer. Here’s to husbands who tell their wives to dream. Here’s to husbands who sacrifice.

I’m so thankful for mine.

A fireman’s birthday

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Back in December before Christmas my littlest man turned 2 years old and we had a little fireman birthday for him. He helped make pancakes in the morning with Daddy, his favorite breakfast lately.

After breakfast we headed off to a nearby fire station to see the real firemen + trucks. It was such a treat! Those guys are so helpful and so willing to teach, and they made our little guy’s birthday so special! Also, they responded to a call while we were there, so the kids got to see the firemen in action (thus the picture below where the firemen left their boots as they jumped into their suits and left).

Also, we’re at my husband’s parent’s house today and I saw this picture of my husband when he was a little dude, wearing a little fireman’s hat:

Pretty cute. Anyway, it was a sweet day with our favorite little boy. We sure do love you, little N!

Favorite Reads of 2014

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015 MarthaKimball4 Comments

Some of my favorite reads from this past year. This stack is missing a few that greatly impacted me this past year, such as Eric Metaxes’ “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prohpet, Spy,” and Jerry Bridges “Transforming Grace.”

I sheepishly admit that I have historically been careful not to venture too far in my book choices into places that would disagree with my firmly held convictions. I have begun to challenge myself to read some things that might intrigue, provoke, and even irritate me. To read some things that I think I will probably disagree with. I have been afraid to do this in the past, not trusting my mind + heart to weed out truth from lie. As my favorite professor from school once counseled me, we can engage in content that may make us squirm because we can trust that God will separate what is wheat from what is chaff.

The longer I walk with the Lord, the more I see that He continually leads us into more spacious places. He always leads us on to greater freedom (2 Cor. 3:17), and that He will increase our awareness of the great freedom already won for us in Christ Jesus.

Some books that made me squirm and were out of my comfort zone to read were Sarah Bessey’s “Jesus Feminist” and also Barbara Brown Taylor’s “An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith” (not pictured above). I have to tell you: I am SO GLAD I picked those two up. I’m not sure I can tell you that I agree with everything written therein, but I can tell you that I am better off for having read and engaged in those two books. Well worth the journey and the squirming. I think I’m finding that when I read things that are outside of my comfort zone, I am reminded of how much bigger God is than I can possibly wrap my arms (or mind) around. I am reminded that it is in the diversity of the body of Christ that His incredible, unfathomable largeness and otherness is expressed. No one denomination has a corner on all Truth, and we are wise to remember that. I am reminded that Christ’s final prayer with His disciples centered around pleading for them to be ONE (John 17).

I have a big stack already waiting for me to dig into in 2015:

And since I am now reviewing books for fun (pushes nerd glasses up bridge of nose) this stack will definitely grow over the year. Of course, I will share the best with you here, as I firmly believe in sharing good resources and in reading, reading, reading. Not just to stuff our heads with knowledge, but because we want to learn, to change, to have a conversation with the community of brothers and sisters of our faith both in the current day and in times past. What a beautiful privilege that is!

This season of being a mother to little ones has taught me that the best things in life must be fought for. The path of least resistance is not the way of Jesus. I have so little time as a momma for reading, and yet I’m passionate about squeezing it in. There is so much I want to learn and have yet to learn! This year I am convicted afresh that my focus needs to be on my marriage and my children. So I’m hoping to fill my shelves (figuratively speaking) with words that build up and strengthen my marriage and my calling as momma first and foremost.

Of course, I’m hoping to squeeze in some fiction as well. Sometimes a momma just needs to get lost in a good story.

What are you hoping to read this year? What books would you recommend?

Longing For More

January 22, 2015January 22, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

A brand new year unfolds before us. How many of us find ourselves restless, longing for more? The holidays are behind us now, and we are tired of all the activity, the rushing, the memory-making + merry-making, the feasting and the getting.

Now we start again, we re-set, we look into what is both ordinary and fresh at the same time. We’re back to our usual work. Laundry piles, dishes stack, children squabble, bills accrue again. How can we enter into the sameness and the ordinary and yet become different?

What are we so restless for?

Timothy Willard offers us companionship in our restlessness and offers a soul-remedy: God.

The month of January is a clean start, a time when many of us are thinking about change, the changes we want to make to become more of who we desire to be. We go into a new year and bring our old selves into it; but how can we be changed? How can we be transformed?

Scripture tells us we can be transformed by “renewing our minds” (Rom. 12:2). We renew our minds by immersing them in the Truth and abandoning the lies that have taken root there. Willard’s book is just one more weapon in our arsenal to immerse our minds in truth and meditate on it.

In his book, Willard offers us companionship throughout the year with daily readings organized into 52 weeks, each week offering 5 meditations on scripture and short prayers. The readings are fairly concise, leaving you often hungry for further exploration on your own into the scriptures. The weeks are arranged topically, giving you the option of either following allow chronologically or using the book topically as it suits you. The topics are things such as love, joy, confession, family, worship, beauty, forgiveness, faithfulness, etc. Willard arranged the book around the natural rhythms of life, understanding that we experience and relate to God in the ordinary and often mundane activities of our days.

Originally, the readings began as a series of emails written over the course of two years to fellows in an entrepreneurial incubator program for founders of social justice organizations called Praxis. Willard says, “I wrote weekly devotional emails crafted to inspire, challenge, and engender transparency among those in the program. I wanted the writing to reflect the rhythms of daily life but also point to the heavens, to God…Why God rhythms? Because life is anything but formulaic. Though I try to implement systems to help organize my time and relationships, these life buckets tend to mix and gel, clash and explode. I experience life like you do, in the whirlwind of reality’s rhythms. But I do not despise the whirlwind. Instead, I look to its creator, the author of life, the poet of the universe who holds the ebbing and flowing of life like a valley holds its rivers and streams and trees: in the beautiful cadence of balance. The storms interrupt, the rains nourish, the sunlight quickens, the fires purge, and the seasons create of cycle of anticipation. We are always looking to the daffodils, to the picnics, to the harvest parties, to the Christmas trees.”

Willard’s writes as a fellow-sojourner and the readings carry the sense of the dailyness of life, symbiotic with my own feeble heart each day. His writings stir up my affections for Jesus and always leave me longing to dig deeper into God’s Word and to linger in His presence.

Pick up your own copy HERE and visit Timothy Willard’s website HERE.

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review. As always, the opinions expressed are my own.

Hello, 2015!

January 1, 2015January 1, 2015 MarthaKimball3 Comments

Welcome to a new year, folks! How have you been spending New Years Day? After almost rushing to the ER this morning with a rambunctious boy that seemed to have a possible broken arm, it’s been an otherwise usual Thursday. No time off around here. I’ve been begrudgingly taking down Christmas from around the house, while listening to more Christmas music. That’s ok, right??

Meanwhile my little ones have been doing this sort of stuff:

It was a late and exhausting night for my husband and I both last night and there was No. WAY. we were staying up till midnight voluntarily. I mean, when you have a newborn… WHO DOES THAT?! Who volunteers for less sleep? Not us.

We tucked the kids in bed at usual bedtime, made chocolate chip cookies, snuggled by the fire and watched “Life Below Zero,” our latest hulu addiction. I awoke startled to a ruckus at 12:03 am, realized it was fireworks, rolled over and said “Happy New Year, babe” to Brandon, and back to sleep I went. So that was that.

I fully intend to spend a chunk of time, when I have one (a girl can dream, right?) journaling about this past year and looking forward to what I sense God is up to in 2015. Some goal setting will happen then. I have already had quite a few goals rumbling around in my heart but I need to sift through and see what is reasonable to pursue this year, and what is just going to make me feel like a big fat failure.

For the past number of years I have asked God to give me a word for the year, a focus for He and I. Last year (2014.. last year? that feels weird to say already) was the “feast of grace” year. I feel like for the past year or two God has been taking me back to the very basics of our faith.. the Gospel. Grace. And as I’ve been trying to listen to the Lord in the busy work of this season, bustling around, asking Him for a word for this year, all I can think is: JESUS. I just want Jesus. I want to know Him better. I want to adore Him more. I want to see His glory every day. I want Him in the worst way. Desperate for Him.

Motherhood has a way of paring you down, paring life down to the essentials. The basics. The absolute necessities.

Motherhood has a way of making you desperate for Jesus. Maybe I’m the only one.

I don’t know if that’s my “word” yet, I’m still sitting on it and laying it before the Lord. But I can tell you that I will be placing myself deeply in the Word with renewed efforts this year. The first number of weeks with a newborn interrupt our routines in the best of ways, but my soul has been starving for deep and prolonged time in God’s Word. I’ve been carving time out for that this past week and already the soul-numbness and apathy that creeps in when I neglect time in God’s Word is being replaced with sweet hunger.

A friend wrote me today asking about some ideas/ways to stay in God’s Word right now, and it made me think. I want to share these simple ideas + tools with any one else out there like me who is hungry for more of Jesus in 2015.

1. Timothy Willard recently published a book called Longing for More (which I am actually reviewing on the blog sometime this week hopefully).

This would be a wonderful tool, with daily readings for the entire year, organized around the seasons and rhythms of daily life. More on this book to come in the next few days, but for now, I recommend it to you as a devotional-type read with scriptures, prayers and meditations.

2. I’ve recently begun following along with the lovely “She Reads Truth” community during the Advent season. They are starting a study of the Gospel of John as of today and you can follow along for free on their blog here or through their app!

If you’re looking for an online community of women who want to be in the Word and are looking for kinship and accountability in it, this is a great resource! I plan to follow along as I can. If you want to dig deeper into John, they also offer an optional/additional study pack here.

3. The best years are the years when I’m committed to a year of Scripture memory. Anyone else? It’s hard to commit at the outset of the year, but those are the years when I have drawn the closest to the Lord and seen the greatest fruit. I’m nervous, as usual, to commit this year with all that I’m juggling, but if I don’t have time to meditate on God’s Word, some other things are going to have to be eliminated.

I have journeyed with Beth Moore’s blog community (called “Siesta Scripture Memory Team”) every year since she began it (she usually offers it every other year). It is a very doable amount of memorization, two verses a month, on the 1st and 15th of the month. Beth posts the verse she is memorizing on the 1st and 15th of each month, and you go and post your own or borrow hers if you need inspiration. She shares a whole lot more about it on her blog, and the very first post is up today!

Of course, there are a lot of lovely bible studies available out there as well!

What are you doing to keep in the Word this 2015? I’d love to hear what you’re studying or what resources you may have to share! Let’s encourage one another in this great and beautiful pursuit of Jesus.

Remember the War

December 31, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

One of the books that kept company with me during the Advent season was Piper’s “Good News of Great Joy.” It was a sweet guide prompting me to see and to savor Jesus’ glory specifically in His incarnation. Piper is clear that observing the Advent season + traditions is not a biblical mandate but is simply a tool for meditating on the wonders of the incarnation, God coming to earth in human form, and thereby increasing our worship and enjoyment of Jesus.

I loved how Piper argued for the benefit of observing Advent, even though it is not required, at the outset of his book, and finished it with an exhortation not to worship the tradition of Advent itself. He reminds that keeping a tradition such as Advent is a religious ritual that was meant to be a shadow pointing us to the substance. It serves a purpose but ultimately we must set our gaze not on the religious ritual itself, but on the person of Jesus. See, we are creatures who are bent toward worship, and easily we begin to worship the means of worship, the traditions themselves, instead of the Object.

I love the sharp, quiet, and simple exhortation at the end of Piper’s Advent readings:

“Religious ritual is like a shadow of a great and glorious Person. Let us turn from the shadow and look the Person in the face (2 Corinthians 4:6). My little children, keep yourselves from (religious) idols (1 John 5:21).”

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There is a war of feelings in me as we close the year, the end of a beautiful and hard year. As I look at Christmas decorations and begin to tuck them away; as we find our souls missing the habit of Advent readings and longings. As December closes, I find my soul weary from the constant beckoning of materialism and the endless marketing campaigns to “buy more” and “not to miss this sale.” My soul is weary from the shallow, empty promises this world gives to satisfy.

I love this quote a fellow blogger shared earlier this week:

“I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth ‘home.’ Before you know it, I am calling luxuries ‘needs’ and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don’t think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mindset that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mindset.”

{Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life}

As we turn toward January, toward a New Year, our hearts are full of resolutions and goals, hopes and dreams. Let us engage in the work of examination, looking for ways we have grown addicted to the world and to our own flesh, and for ways we can forsake these sins and grow in holiness as blood-bought children of God. Let’s remember the war we are in, and armor up for it once again.

Every Bitter Thing is Sweet

December 30, 2014January 2, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

The book drew me, beckoned to me, really, from the bookshelves at Barnes + Noble. I was looking for a gift for my sister, and it wasn’t what I was searching for. But something about it spoke to me. Maybe because the title and theme speaks to something I continue to struggle with and seem to learn over and over again with God: Every Bitter Thing is Sweet.

How can every bitter thing be sweet? Truly, can we say every bitter thing? Can we really taste the goodness of God in our darkest of days and trials? Will God hold up under the weight of that, under the weight of our darkest questions and scrutiny?

Sara Hagerty is familiar with bitter trial and circumstance. In this precious book, she explains some of her story, her struggles in early marriage, her struggles for many years with infertility. Her struggle with a God who spoke to her and gave her a vision of a child toddling across her bedspread, and then closed her womb to this possiblity. The struggles through multiple foreign adoptions and the seemingly endless setbacks and disappointments. And all the way, she traces the glory of God shining brilliant in these darkest moments.

In her book she reveals how God took her, a child who believed in a God whose love was best displayed in blessing, and transformed her into a desperately hungry soul. She writes her story of encountering a God who cares to carve out spaces in the soul, empty, hungering spaces that He can fill.

“A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb,
But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”
{Proverbs 27:7}

What if our places of discontent and brokenheartedness, what if we discovered that these places are the very holy + sacred ground of God’s deepest riches, the “treasure of darkness” that Isaiah 45:3 talks about?

Here’s a little excerpt from the first chapter:

“The Bible resting on my chair showed wear–how could it not? My friend, my best friend in this hour, was the Author. The book I’d once used to plan youth ministry talks, the book I’d once used to quote pithy sayings and to confirm opinions I’d already formed, that book had found its way into my deep.

The God behind it was proving Himself to be fundamentally different than what I’d supposed for at least a decade, maybe more. But I was finding Him. In the places I had feared most and spent a lifetime avoiding, He was meeting me. My worst, my very worst moments were getting rewritten without circumstances changing. I was getting acquainted with the kind of deep satisfaction that bad news can’t shake. He was showing me Himself as strong enough. He was letting me hide in Him, letting me find a safe place.

And so I cradled my midnight questions while mamas cradled their babies, and I let God’s psalms tell me He cradled the answer in Himself. I felt forgotten, but I heard God speak that He had not left me. I felt weak, but I heard Him promise an overshadowing. I felt anxious that my constant fumblings would annoy Him, but I heard Him say He delighted in me.

And I felt hungry.

I wasn’t this hungry when God was a distant coach, forcing me to perform.
I wasn’t this hungry when I had a life easily explained, easily predicted.
I wasn’t this hungry when everyone understood me.

Pain had created space. Space to want more. Space to taste a sense of being alive. An alive that would grow to be my favorite kind of alive: secret, hidden to all eyes but mine and those nearest to me.

This had to be the hope of a lifetime, Him and Him alone.”

If you’ve ever wondered about this God, this mysterious God who both gives and takes away, and how anyone can love a God who gives the strange gifts of hardship and hunger at times, you would be helped to read Sara’s story.

If you’ve ever battled fiercely with hard circumstances and painful seasons and have wondered how to make sense of it all, you would be helped to read Sara’s story.

Essentially, if you’ve ever lived the human experience, you would find sweet company in Sara’s poetic prose.

Triumphant, encouraging, beautifully crafted. Sara Hagerty not only shares with you her journey to a deeper hunger for God, she stirs up your own hunger, too. I highly recommend it!

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Book Look Bloggers sent me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am not required to give a favorable review and the opinions expressed are my own.

Look + Live

December 5, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

“The love of God and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity—and that so irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in the same bosom. We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from it, and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one.”

{Thomas Chalmers}

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This book is about glory. About the glory of God that we must fight daily to see, in order to live. We were made to behold His glory, to fix our eyes on His incomparable beauty, and a vision of anything less will rot our soul. Papa’s profound book has forever changed the word “glory” for me and it made my heart sing.

I was drawn to this book immediately simply based on the subtitle: Behold the Soul-thrilling, Sin-destroying Glory of Christ. Anyone who has struggled with “besetting sins” finds a breath of relief and hope in such words. I was not familiar with Matt Papa before reading this book, but immediately found kinship with him in the earliest pages of his book. In his acknowledgments, he gives credit to some of the great thinkers and communicators of our faith (Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, Tim Keller, J.D. Greear), claiming that his book owes its very existence to their teaching and influence. His book continues to quote heavily from great theologians and minds such as G. K. Chesterton, A. W. Tozer, C. S. Lewis, and Blaise Pascal. His writing is thus deeply rooted in solid biblical theology, and at the same time is delightful and fresh read.

In Look and Live, Papa, a worship leader + minister, calls us back to true worship. He reminds that we are all expert worshippers, created to worship and craving objects of worship. It is our sinful bent away from God that causes us to worship lesser things. This craving to worship combined with our fallen sinful nature leads us to addiction to these lesser gods. How do we then live? How do we then worship rightly?

Look and live, Papa says. He recalls the passage in Numbers 21 where God’s people, newly rescued from the bonds of slavery in Egypt and now wandering in the desert, became indignant against God, ungrateful for His provision of mere manna for their food. God disciplined them by sending poisonous snakes into the camp. The people immediately returned to God, pleading for relief and healing. God’s response was to instruct Moses to make a fiery serpent on a standard (a snake on a pole) and whoever was bitten by a snake must look at it, and he would live. Christ later offered the ultimate insight into this passage when He said,

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

As Matt Papa says:

“God, the Father and Master-Teacher, orchestrated that moment in history–a true historical parable–to show us what the cross is about and what faith is like.

Faith is a looking.

It is the serious looking of sin-stricken, snake-bitten people toward God’s peculiar and radical display of mercy…the crucified, bloody, exalted Son of God…

To live is to behold Him…

My call is not ‘Look and get a better life’ or ‘Look and get a warm fuzzy.’

From one who bears the fang-shaped scar, my call to you is: Behold the anti-venom of the soul: the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Look and live.” (p. 16-17)

Papa shows how God’s call to us in scripture is not primarily “Behave!” but “Behold!” As he says, “Christianity is the hard, joyful journey of beholding Jesus by faith until the day you behold Him by sight.” The rest of his book continues to unpack and reveal the centrality of 2 Corinthians 3:18:

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Papa goes on to prove that we can only burn as we behold Him, and that our “true worship begins with gospel and ends in the mission. It is a rhythm of revelation and response: beholding the wondrous mystery and declaring that mystery to others” (p.11). And so we see how truly gazing on the glory of God sets our souls ablaze, culminating in the proclamation of that glory to hungering souls.

Matt Papa’s way with words is that of an artist. Not only does he write sound biblical, depthy, soul-reviving words, but his construction and development often erupts into the lyrical. (He wrote an accompanying worship album also entitled “Look and Live.”) Prose breaks forth into praise, into pure poetry. Highly readable and enjoyable while being profound. I found myself underlining and exalting over every page. It will be a book I will return to again and again, basic and essential to the Christian faith. Real help and healing for the weary and sin-sick soul.

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Bethany House Publishers sent me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am not required to write a favorable review, and the opinions expressed are my own.

The Way to End Idolatry: Look Through

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

“This is how our souls climb out of their weariness toward You and cease to lean on those things which You have created. We pass through them to You, Lord God, who created them in a marvelous way.”

Augustine

“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.”

Jonathan Edwards

“Christianity is not religious escapism, nor is it overindulgent secularism. It is not escapism — we do not run from the world, for God has given us all things for our enjoyment (1 Tim. 4:4). The creation is ‘scattered beams’ — God’s artwork, full of glory and dignity.

But Christianity is also not secularism — we do not run to the world. We don’t feast upon the world for its own sake, because these are just ‘scattered beams.’ They are not the sun, and thereby are unable to bear the full weight of our worship and interest.

To be a Christian means we don’t look from the world, and we don’t look to the world. To be a Christian means we look through the world. Idolatry looks at the world in amazement. Worship, true worship, looks through it in amazement. To its source. To the One who is infinitely more amazing. More interesting. These things God has made — these shadows, these scattered beams, these shallow streams — are good. And God is better. This is what the universe is all about. This is the end of idolatry. This is the glory of God.”

Matt Papa, Look + Live

Happy 1st Birthday to the Blog!

November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 MarthaKimball1 Comment

Just a quiet little celebration over here to one year of blogging!

Thanks to all of you who read along and share in the journey with me of reveling in all the good gifts God gives!

xo
Martha

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