Finding time to do what you love

I am in the middle of thought provoking read called: 

The Fringe Hours, making time for you 

by Jessica N. Turner.

The author has challenged me to figure out how to find time for myself in my full life. Working full time, driving my youngest son everywhere for everything, cooking nutritious meals, pulling a few weeds out of my garden and staying on top of the laundry are just a few of the things that compete for my time.

As I think this through, I am struck by the "love" part. Finding time for what I love...that really is the heart of the matter (no clever pun is intended, but it did just turn up).

What do I love? 

Shopping

Cooking

Lunch with Friends

Shopping

Spa-ing (made that one up, but I do love it)

Talking

Eating Cake

Drinking Americanos

Writing

Reading

Not exercising

  

You get the idea...

None of the things on my list are fundamentally wrong, well, at least not for me. Shopping might be considered evil by some members of my family and yet it makes my list twice!

So the question is this:

Does what I love fall into sync with what God loves?

This question begs for my consideration daily because I don’t get this right most of the time.

Just today, as I struggled with some deep insecurities that surfaced, I was reminded in the Scripture that God loves me so much that He sent Jesus to pay the price for my sin, giving me the opportunity to really know how to love and what to love…

So finding time to do what I love is really finding time to pursue what God created me to do. Will I let God’s love direct my love?

http://www.ellengrafmartin.com/category/ellens-picks

What do I really want from God?

Do you ever pray with certainty for something small, like catching the 12:30pm ferry instead of needing to wait for the 3:00pm ferry? When you find yourself watching all the cars get on the 12:30 sailing except for you and the 8 woeful souls in front of you, do you stop and wonder where God was when you made the request?

If I am going to be completely honest with you, yah, I do wonder why, in all of His infinite power, He does not orchestrate one little convenience for me knowing how sick I feel and how desperately I want to get home. I know that the ferry schedule and world hunger do not share the same level of urgency BUT I would still argue that God says he is interested in every detail of my life, He, in fact, has a better handle on the number of hairs on my head than my stylist does.

The question that I ,and so many like me, ask on a regular basis is “Where is God when I need Him?”

This is a legitimate question.

Had I made it onto the 12:30pm ferry I would have praised God and tweeted out how He answers prayer. I would have extoled the virtue of taking everything to God in prayer and challenged everyone I know to just trust Him more.

BUT right now, I am sitting in the ferry terminal in my cold car , with a headache and a semi warm cup of coffee and I don’t have a quippie answer. ( quippie:  like hippie without the hipster)

When in doubt as to what God is doing or not doing I am compelled to step outside my pre-packaged world and have a good think.

First question I ask myself: what is it that I really want from God?

My three choices:

ONE:

A God who affirms my every demand?        

Maybe… That would be nice.

“God, I love love love those Prada boots, can you please make them go on sale or better yet, just have someone send them to me in the mail for free????

(My inner control freak is fascinated by this idea of God)

TWO:

A God who ignores me completely?

No…Not so much.

“God are you really there?  I need you.” Silence

(In my heart of hearts I KNOW He is there and the silence is usually caused by me…I go silent until I need something…this was my big self-awareness moment)

THREE:

A God who hears me and then orchestrates my life to fit into the Google earth cosmic reality of time and space and only allows things in my life that He knows I can handle.

Probably…. a better idea!

“God, if it is your will please get my little white car on the ferry and if it is not part of the cosmic plan help me to be at peace with what you have planned for me.”          

The pieces of the puzzle can be complicated because we don’t have the box that has the whole picture printed on it. We just have to get up everyday and TRUST God that the puzzle is being built as it should be and one day we will see it completely. It’s also commonly known as walking by faith.

Corinthians 13:12 says:

 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

My “Think” is over: I know the answer to my question.

I know my God has my best interests at heart and he knew I need time in my car to write this blog post because I am not the only one who struggles with this AND this is just the part of the story of my life that I know…there are other puzzle pieces being put in place that I don’t even know about.

I am so grateful that I cannot manipulate my God.

i 

Perseverance: We we carry on because....

Perseverance:

Psalm 66:10-12

For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.

You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs;

you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.

What it means to persevere.

Perseverance: Steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

Through this year the word “perseverance” has taken on a deeper meaning for me. It is not a word that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. As I faced a depletion of strength over the months leading up to Christmas there were many times that I just wanted to give up. I lamented to my husband that I truly wished that God had called me to eat chocolate and watch Downton Abbey on Netflix full time!

When we face emotional turmoil because of broken relationships, badly behaved parishioners, children who decide to take a break from God, physical challenges that bring on chronic pain, _____________________________ ( You fill in the blank), perseverance takes on a dark and sinister façade. When I say the word perseverance out loud I hear the root of the word, “severe”, meaning: intense, very harsh.

So why is it that God tells us to carry on? To keep going even when the load placed on our backs feels like it will crush us? These verses in Psalm 66 actually state that God brings us into a net, that God is testing us and trying us like silver in a purification process. My first and most honest reaction to this realization is “thanks, but no thanks, God, I am just fine and I take a pass”. I don’t like conflict and I don’t like discomfort. I am not on the lookout for hard challenges; I like happy events that end by eating cake! In fact, as I write this my daughter is spending two nights in the wilderness, sleeping in a hut made of snow and I cannot even wrap my head around why someone would do this on purpose! Give me a warm bed, cozy jammies, a cup of chamomile tea and the remote!

The reality is that life happens and it is hard, circumstances land in our lap that take our breath away and giving up is my default mode, but the problem with surrendering in defeat is that it does not bring about the abundance talked about in this passage. Sure, in the moment I might have lots of chocolates and two whole seasons of “Downton Abbey” to watch, but the blessing of God’s abundance would be lost.

When the writer talks about a place of abundance, the word in the Hebrew is revayah, which means saturation. In other words, a place where I will have so much that I won’t be able to absorb any more.

In the middle of my flood and fire, and the crushing burden that makes me feel like, in the words of William Wordsworth, “[1]the world is too much with us, late and soon” I hang on with hope that I will come to a place of a saturation for my soul by the One who Himself persevered through death to bring me to the place of abundance. I have discovered like the author of Psalm 66 that God’s very presence is that place.

This psalm ends with great hope for all of us.

 “Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”

---

[1] Wordsworth, William 1806 (Wordsworth 1806)

Christmas Oranges - Can't get enough of them!

We just brought home two more boxes of Christmas oranges yesterday. Two more, because we have already gone through one! They are a great treat. Growing up we called them Japanese Oranges …these oranges would find themselves in the little gift bags that we received on Christmas Eve at church, along with a candy cane and some foil covered chocolate balls. This little treat served to heighten the anticipation that gifts were waiting at home under the tree.

In later years I learned that just as we anticipate the Christmas Orange, so the people in Japan anticipate the crisp red apples from our orchards. Indeed, another picture of the grass seeming to be “greener” or “oranger” or “redder” on the other side of the fence! 

I am reminded that an age-old issue for all of us is finding satisfaction in the square inch in which we live. We seem to think that what we don’t have could possibly make us happier than we currently are!

Whether it’s oranges, shiny shoes, or a new car, we love to anticipate something better and then Jesus comes along and says that indeed He does make it better. Everyday, He desires to be our Bread of Life…

John 6:35

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

He desires to satisfy us. The Christmas oranges, the gifts under the tree, the cookies and the turkey…these are all great things, but the oranges rot, the sweater you “just had to have” pills after you wear it three times, the tree dries out, the cookies go stale and the turkey, well you can only eat so much turkey and then the gig is up!

Jesus on the other hand offers us a gift that never ceases to meet our need.

Deep and long and wide and high…His love fills up every corner of our hearts and satisfies our every soul-felt desire.

Ephesians 3:17-19

…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,  and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Does the Bible seem relevant to you?

Does the Bible seem relevant to you?

I have often encountered people who look at me blankly when I talk about the application of the bible to real life. I think that they liken the bible to a grade ten math textbook or an instruction manual for a Mikita table saw. I can see how that can be a reality. I think that we often forget that the characters in the narrative of the Bible were real people with real issues, so often we think they are extraordinary in every way and therefore not at all like us. That is a challenge for any of us. One of my great loves is teaching Sunday School. I always have thought that if you can teach a group of grade 4 boys a truth about God and they get it, you can teach anybody!

 Last year I was teaching large group, grades 1-4, at my church and as I unfolded the account of Noah and his obedience to God’s command that he build an Ark with no water in sight, I began to create a scene for the children in regard to what it must have been like on the ark with all those animals...in essence, I wanted my young audience to understand the real life, real time circumstances that Noah and his family were experiencing…I asked the obvious question, “what do you think the ark smelled like?” With no hesitation a little boy in the front row put up his hand and boldly proclaimed that it must have smelled like “100 poops”. I told him he was absolutely right and then I was able to make the application that sometimes in life God calls us to do things that smell like 100 poops but we obey, like Noah, because God has a bigger plan than we can see OR SMELL in the moment. That lesson was not lost on any of us, “old Sunday School teachers” in the room and I was again reminded of the timeless transcendent truth of the Scripture. Yes, it is relevant to us in 2013!