Tag: mountains

uncommon grace

MarthaKimball1 Comment

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Sometimes we grow restless and we chaff and squirm against what has grown common to us.  Sometimes we rebel against our boundaries and we ache for other borders.  We beg for a change of scenery, for fresh springs.  This wasn’t the land of our choosing, or so we thought.  Sometimes in our leaving and ultimately in our returning we find again why we loved these mountains in the first place.  Maybe one of our greatest sins is that we grow accustomed to glory and call it common.

And then we find our way back, our way home again and we remember: these mountains hold all our stories.

Look, over there!  That was the place where we first met.  There was the river where we had that boating trip.    Over there is where you proposed to me.  That valley is where we fell in love.  We hiked that ridge on our first 21-day course together.  I grew up picnicking over that hill.

These mountains hold our stories, memories, like markers.  Reminding us, rooting us back in the greater story, God’s story, the over-arching story of His kindness to us, His faithfulness to us, His sovereignty over us.  These mountains that we buck against like enemies are strong friends rising up all around proclaiming, “He is good!  He is loving!  He was enough!  He will be enough again.”

We can go on striving and tearing up the soil looking for something to grow, or we can surrender to what the Lord has done and is doing, looking instead for what is here, finding what is praiseworthy, finding all the gifts already around us.  We can go on striving, or we can be satisfied now because He is with us in this land that sometimes feel small and cramped.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
    you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Psalm 16:5-6

 

(Planning to have a longer post up tomorrow with more about last weekend’s backpacking trip!  Stay tuned!)

for your Tuesday

MarthaKimballLeave a comment

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“The discovery of God lies in the daily + the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic.  If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find him at all.  Ours is to be a symphonic piety in which all the activities of work and play and family and worship and sex and sleep are the holy habitats of the eternal.”
Richard Foster, Prayer

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“Small things don’t always turn into big things.  But all things begin small, especially in the kingdom of God.  Acorns become oak tress.  Embryos become President.  Life starts with a breath.  Love starts with hello.

Tuesday reminds me to accept the beauty of smallness, hiddenness, and the secret work of Christ in the deepest part of who I am.  I want to let him come out of me in any way he wants, no matter how it may seem to me–whether that be in one big way or in a million little ways.

While I stay small in the presence of Christ, I’m aware of his invitation to me, to stand on tiptoe and see, as my dad often says, beyond what is to what could be.  And this doesn’t mean I am to dream big and amazing things for God.  Rather, it means I am to believe in a big and amazing God, period.  I can trust him to be himself even as I dare to be myself.

And maybe as I do that, I’ll realize that starting small isn’ t a means to a bigger end, rather I start small because it’s what I am.  And this is good and right and holy.  Who would despise the day of small things?

As citizens of an invisible kingdom, we refuse to take our living cues from a world that say to build, grow, measure, and rush to keep up.  Instead we take our cues from the new hope alive within us, from the life of Christ who has made our hearts his home.  We’ll stop trying to keep up with the fast-moving world and, instead, we’ll settle down and keep company with the small moments of our lives.

We’ll pay attention to them, listen to what they have to teach us, not rush by them as if they are unimportant.  We know better than that by now.  We know the way these small moments link arms with one another to form the timelines of our lives.  Moments: the keys to the kingdom.  We know how we approach, consider, react, and exist within these small moments are indicators of how we approach, react, and exist in our whole lives.  We can’t afford to miss them.”

Emily Freeman, Simply Tuesday

Counting His graces

MarthaKimball1 Comment

“The initial step for a soul to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.”
{Irenaeus}

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“Some people, in order to discover God, read books.  But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things.  Look above you!  Look below you!  Read it.  God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink.  Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made.  Can you ask for a louder voice than that?”
{St. Augustine}

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“Christ wears ‘two shoes’ in the world: Scripture and nature.  Both are necessary to understand the Lord, and at no stage can creation be seen as a separation of things from God.”
{John Scottus Eriugena}

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“Nature is schoolmistress, the soul the pupil; and whatever one has taught or the other has learned has come from God–the Teacher of the teacher.”
{Tertullian}

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“The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God.”
{St. John of Damascus}

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“I see You in the field of stars
I see You in the yield of the land
In every breath and sound, a blade of grass, a simple flower,
An echo of Your holy Name.”
{Abraham Ibn Ezra}

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“See that I am God.  See that I am in everything.  See that I do everything.
See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally.
See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began,
by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it.
How can anything be amiss?”
{Julian of Norwich}

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“I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that wherever you go, the least plant may bring you the clear remembrance of the Creator.”
{Basil the Great}

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“Everywhere windows and gates, and I did not know it.  No.
I have known it and I have forgotten it and I remember it again.”
{Ann Voskamp}

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Sometimes a hard week calls for the rest of soul that comes from escaping into the wild for a bit.  Going where only the sound of wind, and birds, buzzing bees, and hushed voices live.

Leaving behind the busy world and going where your soul can grow a size or two,
expanding and remembering that we live to collect moments, not things.

And in these moments, ordinary, simple, we find we are counting His gifts.

“Counting His graces makes all moments into one holy kiss of communion
and communion comes in the common.
He will break bread and I will take and the world is His feast!”
{Ann Voskamp}

Going where the voice of man is quieted, absent almost.  And the voice of God is amplified.
Looking into what He has made and seeing how His invisible qualities are written over each one {Rom.1:20}, how the expanse of sky is declaring His glory {Ps. 19:1}.

This is what brings rest to our souls on the Sabbath: the coupling of the Word of God spoken over us, the quiet expanse of the Creation singing over us.