“How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn’t I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn’t I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us.” -Annie Dillard
I read this post today, and a resounding YES in my soul. I pray it will never cease to amaze me, that God, the Creator of this world, the sustainer of it even in its fallen state, works WITHIN it, not apart from it. He deems it suitable to use the elements we call “ordinary,” which really are all supernaturally derived, to convey Himself to us. To give Himself to us. Flesh and blood. Bread and wine. His immense constraint in demonstrating the divine to us in cooperation always with man. Man, his partner. What an incredible, profound, eternal mystery.
And then, these words from that precious old hymn:
“This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father’s world: why should my heart by sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad.”
last night we cut into the cake and discovered that this baby growing in mommy’s tummy is a girl! you screamed and bounced in your chair, so excited. from the very beginning you said you wanted a sister. then lately you’ve been wanting another brother. and late last night, after all the excitement had settled and we were tucking your sleepy head into your bed, your little precious face clouded over, your big solemn eyes became troubled.
“Mommy, can I get back in your tummy,” you asked.
“Will the ‘new girl’ sit in the front seat?” (your special favorite treat lately is when mommy lets you sit next to me in the car when we drive our back road home.)
and oh, my heart squeezed for you. do you know how special you are to me? no one and nothing ever can replace you, my girl. your quirky, silly, wild, hilarious, exuberant, scrawny, gorgeous little self is entirely unique. you’ll always be my very favorite firstborn ever.
having a sister can be hard sometimes but there is no other relationship like it on this earth! I think you’re going to love it.
Last week after our stop at Flying Cloud Farm we drove down the road to Hickory Nut Gap Farm, one of very favorite places to go in the summer and fall. My husband and I harbor dreams of having our own little homestead/farm one day and are so drawn to farm life. Any time we get to visit one we are inspired and reinvigorated! We love Hickory Nut Gap especially in the Fall, when they have rides and tons of animals around, fresh apples and pumpkins. But summers are fun for berry picking, swimming, and 50 cent apple cider pops. Last week was my first time taking the kids berry picking there and we had so much fun. Phoebe would make a great farm-hand! She got right to work picking, insisted on carrying the bucket the whole time {which she did so carefully} and would have worked all morning had I let her. Noah on the other hand seemed to prefer the stroller. 🙂
And then there was this one, for some reason not feeling the berry-picking adventure:
Moving on to pick black raspberries…
(His perch)
Then after a picnic lunch in the sweaty humid heat, the kids basked in the creek. Such a fun way to wind down!
If you’re local, you should go for a visit! Check out their website for updates on what’s in season. Thanks Hickory Nut Gap for a super fun environment for kids to explore and learn about animals and plants, as well as providing lovely organic local food!
Every so often, I get an itch to take the kids out to Fairview, NC, one of my favorite areas around Asheville. There are some wonderful farms out that way, and it makes for a fun day trip. We went last week to enjoy a couple of our favorite farms and go berry picking. We first stopped at Flying Cloud Farm to explore their fields of wildflowers and their self-serve road stand.
We love their little road stand. For all organic farm-fresh produce, the prices are excellent and the quality is great!
Those flowers truly took my breath away and so, of course, I had to bring some home with me. A little taste of summer’s glory! More farm pics to come soon. Happy Summer-ing!
So last weekend was the big 3-0 for me. Kind of crazy, kind of ordinary. It definitely feels like the end of a season, a long, tumultuous season of being in my twenties. But with that end also comes a fresh beginning. I am excited about being thirty, even though the usual things kind of freak me out too (ie: aging, wrinkles, aging). I’ve never felt more secure in who I am and settled in that, as opposed to the grasping and groping and uncertainty of my twenties. Of course, I am FAR from being done in that arena, but it’s the most free I’ve ever been in Christ and in understanding who He made me to be. And that is certainly cause for rejoicing!
We had a simple day of enjoying family (my mom and I share the same birthday), and my one request was an early morning breakfast date with my very favorites to an awesome breakfast spot in Biltmore Village, the Corner Kitchen. I had been salivating for their Hickory Nut Gap Chorizo + Eggs for a solid week. I like going out for dinner as much as any girl, but I think breakfast dates are still my very favorite. There’s just something magical about being starving and rested and getting hot, fresh coffee, eggs + bacon. It was perfect.
I didn’t get enough pictures from the day *at all* but here are a few:
This man and these two precious kiddos (plus #3 on the way) are the very best and sweetest treasures! I love our little family so much and am so very thankful for them.
The flickering silent dance of a hundred fireflies over the dusky field. It drew me from the porch out into the night. Away from the constant hum of fans and air conditioning inside our home. The drum of the dryer, the occasional babble of the baby who is still not asleep.
Just to be quiet here for a moment. Just to be. To listen, to participate by bringing full awareness to the night song that goes on every night, that is missed and droned out by loud flashy tv shows and chatter. Just to be fully awake to this moment.
To hear the playful trickling of water, my husband silently watering the garden behind me after weeding it for the past hour, stealing the very last of daylight.
The far-off cry of the whippoorwill that sings to us every summer.
The cadence of the frogs in the new pond dug into the valley below our house.
And the dance of the fireflies, like sparks flying upward from the earth.
Nothing else can fill this place in my soul. No amount of human interaction, social media, mindless entertainment–all the things I turn to in loneliness. Only this: me alone before God. Waking up to Him here, in this place, the always-with-me Presence. Simply savoring and enjoying Him.
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said—
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
“Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand.
“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
“When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not harm thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
“The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”
{John Keith, 1787}
“The daily practice of incarnation–of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of the flesh–is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels. Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching His disciples to wash feet and share supper? With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do–specific ways of being together in their bodies–that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself.
After he was gone, they would still have God’s Word, but that Word was going to need some new flesh. The disciples were going to need something warm and near that they could bump into on a regular basis, something so real that they would not be able to intellectualize it and so essentially untidy that there was no way they could ever gain control over it. So Jesus gave them things they could get their hands on, things that would require them to get close enough to touch one another. In the case of the meal, he gave them things they could smell and taste and swallow. In the case of the feet, he gave them things to wash that were attached to real human beings, so that they could not bend over them without being drawn into one another’s lives.
Wow. How did you get that scar? Does it hurt when I touch it? No, really, they’re not ugly. You should see mine. Yours just have a few more miles on them. Do you ever feel like you can’t go any further? Like you just want to stop right here and let this be it? I know, I can’t stop either. It’s weird, isn’t it? You follow him and you follow him, thinking that any minute now the sky is going to crack open, and you’re going to see the face of God. Then he hands you his basin and his towel, and it turns out that it’s all about feet, you know? Yours, mine, his. Feet, for God’s sake.
I am making this up, of course. Read the Bible commentaries and they will tell you that the foot washing in John’s gospel is an eschatological sign of Jesus’ descent into flesh before his exaltation to God’s right hand, or a symbolic representation of first-century baptismal theology. But I will tell you this. After years of watching bodies being dug out of craters in Manhattan and caves in Afghanistan, after the body counts coming from Southeast Asia, Gaza, and Iraq, most of us could use a reminder that God does not come to us beyond the flesh but in the flesh, at the hands of a teacher who will not be spiritualized but who goes on trusting the embodied sacraments of bread, wine, water, and feet.
‘Do this,’ he said–not believe this, but do this–‘in remembrance of me.'”
It was some time ago that I heard an interview with Ann Voskamp in which she talked about how she usually reads a few books at a time, and lets the books “have a conversation with each other.”
I know exactly what she means. How God, sovereign over the most minute details of our lives, can weave together concepts in the books we’re reading, sermons we’re listening to, conversations we are having, our daily experiences, and so forth. I know many of you also know what I’m talking about here. When it happens, our hearts skip a beat. These sorts of things cannot be coincidences.
Lately I’ve been struggling with a particular battle with sin. I’ve been crying out for the Lord’s grace, His strength and help. I’ve been trying so hard to change, yet knowing if He does not change me, it is impossible.
Ever been there? Ever been so fed up with something, with yourself, and seeing no progress, despite doing what you only know best to do: crying out to the Lord, finding and clinging to promises in His word, accountability, prayer, trusting?
Yep. That’s where I’ve been for quite some time.
What’s become hardest about it has been “doing all the right things” within my power to do, yet not seeing victory. Knowing and believing with all my heart that God wants my victory too, that God hates my sin too, that God is able to do what is impossible for frail flesh, and yet not experiencing that “sufficient grace” in my weakness that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12:9.
This is what has been most painful. Where are You, God, in this? Why does it feel like You not helping me? Am I not Yours?
Those questions were largely met with silence for some time. And I agonized. Sleepless, restless nights were had. Hot, ugly cries to my husband were had. More prayer, more scripture. More silence.
THEN.
These words from Jerry Bridges in his incredible book, Transforming Grace:
“Often God’s word is not made effective immediately. In fact, there are many times when I struggle over an issue for a period of days, mulling over several pertinent passages of Scripture and crying out for grace, before the Holy Spirit finally makes them effective and gives His grace, helping in time of need. The Spirit of God is sovereign in His working, and we cannot squeeze Him into the mold of our spiritual formulas–for example, pray for grace, quote some verses, and receive a guaranteed answer.
God not only has His own ways of working, but also His own timetable. Sometime He grants grace to help almost immediately as He did in my most recent experience [shared in the book] with 1 Peter 5:7. At other times, He allows us to struggle for days, perhaps even weeks or months, before we receive the grace to help. But regardless of the delays He may impose on us, we must continue to come to the throne of grace believing His promise to grant grace to help, and we must continue to resort to appropriate Scripture until He makes it effective in our hearts. It is our responsibility to take up the sword of the Spirit; it is His prerogative to make it effective.”
Those words were balm to my soul. It felt like the first hint of an answer in a very very long, silent, lonely struggle.
Encouragement. Comfort. Companionship of others who have gone before.
But still this niggling question: why would God do this? Yes, to teach me to wait on Him. To persevere in the asking. To test my trust when my feelings and experience don’t match up with His Word. But it didn’t seem to get to the root of it. I know He is good and “in Him is no darkness whatsoever” but still, why leave me hanging in sin for so long? When He could immediately deliver?
{Sidenote: Keep in mind that I am currently studying Exodus and the wilderness wanderings of God’s people after His deliverance from Egypt in my time in the Word.}
I have finished Bridges book and now am reading “Extravagant Grace” by Barbara Duguid. {Whoever you are: you. MUST. read.} The concept of her book, which is basically a summary of the teachings of John Newton, is that God has great purpose in allowing us to continue to battle and struggle sin and our sin-nature as Christians. He is able to set us free from sin totally and perfect us completely at the point of salvation, and yet He doesn’t. Her book is a study of how God is more glorified in our continual battle with sin than He would be were He to perfect us on earth. Mind-blowing and ground-shaking.
Anyway, (I hope you are still following me here! Bear with me!) tonight I read these words from Duguid’s book:
“When a Christian struggles with a besetting sin in the form of an addiction…God may change their will long before He actually gives them the spiritual fruit of self-control in that area, and Newton tells us that God has as a profound purpose in this. When God changes the will and gives someone a great desire for obedience but not the strength to withstand temptation, He is putting His child in a painful and difficult position. Yet He does this in love and not with judgment or punishment in mind. He is humbling this child in a powerful way and crushing the child’s self-reliance. This can feel like a curse, when it is actually a great gift.”
My heart nearly stopped. Yes. That’s it.
Self-reliance.
And immediately the Spirit reminded me of a passage back in Bridges book about the wilderness and self-reliance. Since I’m an outdoor enthusiast and studied Outdoor Education in college, it leapt off the page to me when I read it previously:
“The wilderness makes or breaks a man; it provides strength of will and character. The strength provided by the wilderness, however, was not the strength of self-sufficiency, but the strength that comes from a knowledge of the living God.”
See, I know a lot of outdoor enthusiasts. People who live to test themselves against the elements of the wild, to prove their self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, more often than not, the wilderness wins even over those most experienced and prepared.
When God drives us into the wilderness where we are tempted and accosted by our sin nature, we are never more aware of our desperate need for Him, for the Gospel, for the grace found in Jesus. Similarly when you are in a physical wilderness, you are quickly reminded of how small you are when one simple thing goes wrong. When God drove the Israelites into the wilderness after their (read: His) tremendous victory in Egypt, He knew there was a faster/easier route to the Promised Land. But He also knew their hearts were not ready. They needed to know just how dependent they actually were on Him. For everything. And so He led them into the wilderness.
As an act of mercy, He led them to a place where the failure, rebellion, grumbling that had always lived in their hearts would be exposed. He knew their hearts, He would never be surprised by their behavior. But they needed to see their hearts. And they needed to see Him stay with them, abide with them, even at their very worst and least deserving.
This is the gift God gives us when we cannot seem to experience victory over sin.
And this grace-starved girl has never loved Him more than when He abides ever with me, even when I make my bed in hell. He is not surprised by my continual failure, like I am. He sees me in Christ: Perfect. Clean. Righteous. Redeemed.
Unfathomable grace.
If to heavens heights I fly, You are still beside me Or in death’s dark shadows lie, You will stay close by me If I flee on morning wings far across the gray sea: Even there Your hand will lead Your right hand will guide me.
(see Psa. 139:7-12)
This year, the year of 2014, I have been calling the “feast of grace” year. For a number of years now I spend New Years reflecting over the past year and looking prayerfully toward the year ahead, asking the Lord what He wants to be teaching me or working on in me. So clearly, so profoundly He spoke “Gospel” and “Grace” over the year 2014.
I haven’t written at all about this on the blog yet {yes, and it is now June!} because honestly what He has been speaking and doing in my heart is so immense and overwhelming {and so deeply personal!} I don’t even know where to begin.
I am a legalist by nature, a performance-addict. Even though I first experienced God’s grace for myself as a young child when I received Christ, it is still utter mystery to me. And in His glorious grace, I am still experiencing His grace afresh day by day all these years later.
What kind of God is this, who gives grace upon grace to the likes of us who cannot ever comprehend or fully appreciate the fullness of His grace to us in Jesus Christ?!
What kind of God is this who gives the fullness of His grace to a child who has no idea the riches she has in Christ Jesus, nor the immensity that it cost Him to grace her so richly?
God has me, a grace-spurning, Gospel-underfoot-trampling legalist, feasting on the riches of His grace found in the Gospel all year long. In the profound beauty and richness of His grace, He always aims to set us free. His kindness leads to repentance.
I just finished Jerry Bridges book “Transforming Grace,” what I would call the Christian’s Primer on grace. I cannot express adequately how helpful it has been to me, nor how often it has kept me up at night because my mind and heart could nearly burst from what God has as been teaching me through it. It is a grace feast that I will be rereading all throughout this year. Years of legalistic, merit-based thinking are not helped by a cursory reading. A thorough mind-washing in the Truth is what’s in order!
This sweet poem has become a treasure to me in the hard and ordinary trenches of parenting, which daily, {no, momentarily!} drives me to the throne of grace:
“He Giveth More Grace”
He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater; He sendeth more grace when the labours increase; To added afflictions He addeth His mercy To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere the day is half done; When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limits, His grace has no measure, His power has no boundary known unto men; For out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.” – Annie Johnson Flint
Oh, to be this kind of parent to my own children! The only way possible is for me to believe and experience such radical grace, grace in the face of my continued daily battle with sin. Only those who have received such grace know how to give it.
“For from His fulness we have all received, grace upon grace.” {John 1:16}
everything He gives 