I delight in your deliverance

"If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods... and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you..." -1 Samuel 7:3

Each evening, when we lay our heads down and reflect on our day, our mistakes, our successes, may we return to the Lord. May we confess that yes, today, I have failed you. He's never surprised by that. Nor disgusted. His heart swells because we are dragging our feet into his bedroom, our heads hanging low, and telling him, I am guilty, and I am sorry.

We drag our feet because it is hard. Nobody likes to feel like a disappointment, especially not to the perfect Creator of the universe. But, the good news is that we are not disappointments, but made in his image. We are fallen, but with him, when we pursue him with all our hearts, with our whole hearts, we can rise.

So we commit to this relationship, a relationship of messy "I'm sorry's" and constant failings, but a relationship that shatters the earthly picture we have of love into a thousand pieces. When we choose to commit to this relationship, we deny committing ourselves to perfection, to what the world has to offer, we commit to falling in love with God instead of falling in love with the world. What a better alternative!

The cost of falling in love with the world is the peace of knowing that our identity is wrapped up in a perfect, holy God. It will cause us to become like the broken-hearted Hannah at the beginning of 1 Samuel, who wraps up her identity in her performance and actions. (Sort of like how we wrap up our identity in our appearance, our successes, our things). It isn't until Hannah falls on her knees and wholeheartedly commits herself to the Lord, saying "Oh Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life" (1 Samuel 1:11).

She falls on her knees and claims that it is not of her capability that she could bear a son. It is not about her. And that is what we must realize when we embark on this beautiful relationship. That it is not of our capability to be worthy, but yet he calls us worthy. That it is not about me. It is not about you. It is and always has been solely about God. And we should delight in that!

After Hannah was blessed with Samuel, she prayed to the Lord and she exclaimed, "My heart rejoices in the Lord... for I delight in your deliverance" (1 Samuel 2:1).

I look at this picture, this picture of a woman wrapped up in trying to be successful, who simply wants to have a son. Something that she is supposed to be able to do, but cannot. I look at Samuel leading the Israelites against the Philistines, and how he beckons them to return to the Lord and lay aside their idols and foreign gods, and my heart is moved. I hear the call in my own life, I hear the Lord's sweet voice beckoning me to come back to him. Every morning, to come back to him and only him.

I so easily become entangled in the fairytale of this world, this idea of the future, perfecting the imaginings of a life to come- a life revolving around my own desires. And I realize that when I'm chasing after this ideal world, this fairytale the world has to offer, there will always be a hole in my heart, an ache in my soul, saying that there must be something more. No matter how pinterest-perfect my world is, no matter how thin, how fit I am, there will always be a desiring not filled in my heart because the Lord made us that way. He made us in his image; we are supposed to desire what he does! That is the only way we will ever be fully satisfied.

So, I picture myself as a young child approaching a patient Father, laying down my most treasured items at his feet (my successes, my idea of a perfect body, my idea of a perfect future- the things that I think will make me most happy) and reaching for his hand so that he can lead me in the direction of his guidance.

I want to delight in his deliverance, to chase after him with my whole heart, I want to fall so deeply in love with our perfect Father, because this world simply will not do. It leaves me aching, beaten down, defeated, just as the Israelites were when they praised their foreign gods, just as Hannah was when she realized her incapability. The true story of success is following God even when he guides us into defeat, through heartache, because we will eventually be led to triumph!

So, let's return to God with our messy past, with our heartache, our failures, and let's commit ourselves to him every day. Let's delight in his deliverance, in who he is. When we delight in him, our hearts change from desiring our will to desiring his will over our lives. And his will be done, not ours... every time.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." -Psalm 37:4

ours is the God

It's impossible to deny it, the lights all aglow, the Christmas lists dragging on and on... and in the hustle and bustle of getting everything done, if you listen carefully, there's a calm whisper all around you- in the lights of the tree, the glow of the fire, it is everywhere, but you must notice it, "All is grace." All is grace, and we can slow down this Christmas and we can see it all around us, the story of Christmas, stitched into every moment of every chapter.

For a while, I used to get this notion that it was possible to be "too dirty" for God, that after a certain point I was unbearable, I was too complicated, too much of a disappointment to take on. And after a semester of learning about a vast number of different religions in one of my classes, I am reminded, again, of the beauty of our God. You see, in all of humanity's religions, man reaches after God. But in all His relationships, God reaches for man. 

Ann Voskamp says it beautifully, "[God] reaches for you who have fallen and scraped your heart raw, for you who feel the shame of words that have snaked off your tongue and poisoned corners of your life, for you who keep trying to cover up pain with perfectionism" (The Greatest Gift). God reaches for us, through the densest thicket of failure, amidst the storm of self loathing. 

He calls out to us, "Where are you?" and we tremble in our shame and our guilt, just like Adam and Eve hid after biting into the apple that had tempted them. "Where are you?" he beckons, he reaches.

Sometimes, when we hear him calling, our shame becomes too much, and instead of falling into his arms, we attempt to run from his presence. (Run from his presence? As if that is even a possibility...) But still, we run, full-fledged into a sprint the opposite way, delving further and further into our sins. We tell ourselves we are much too far now. We cannot come back from this. And our hearts become calloused, and we ache. And we tune out the whispering that all is grace. And we forget grace altogether. 

But despite our running, the Lord, our loving Father grabs us, pulls us in, begs of us to let him love us, to love our wounds, our hurt, our shame. He washes us of our shame and our guilt every day. And while he cradles us in his arms, he reminds us that he has made us new, hallelujah, and that our past will never scare him out of loving us.

"Where is he?" The wise men asked, the first question of the New Testament. And we hardly ever wondered why they were called wise men... "Where is he?" They came searching.

"We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves... when we find Him."

The wise seek the presence of Christ in a thousand places, because they know that you only come to yourself when you come to Him. So when we run, when we sprint away from the question of where we are, when we sprint in the attempt to escape our shame in the presence of God, we are being the farthest thing from wise.

Why would we run from a God who skipped telling us the steps to take to him and took the step down to us? Why would we run from the God who carries us, the ones who are bone weary of all the trying and the striving? Because we forget grace. We forget to listen for the whisper.

"He comes to us not in spite of our failings- but precisely because of them. Ours is the God who is drawn to those who feel down. Ours is the God who is attracted to those who feel abandoned. Ours is the God who is bound to those who feel broken."

This is grace. This is reason to slow. This is not to be missed. If we simply linger in the doorway, stare at the tree, watch the glow of the fire, it's strange, but you can see it. That Jesus came down, he is our ladder, he is love. Grace is what carries us all the way home, but we must see it. We must hear it in the midst of our failures, in the midst of our trying and our hiding. We cannot hide from this grace, it is much too miraculous, it is much too loving. He seeks us out, he calls out to us "where are you?" and he wraps us in the clothes of his grace. He covers our nakedness with his grace, he covers our shame with his grace. We must not miss this!

There are ten days until Christmas. Ten days until our Savior is born. Can you feel it, the coming? We should slow, we should praise. We should wake, and our hearts should pour out, and we should ask, "where is he?" We should find him on our knees, we should delve further into his grace, snuggle up into his arms, and we should wait. Wait for the coming, for the wonder, that while God looks at us in our lowest, he loves us all the way up to the sky. He sent his son. Ours is the God who is grace, who is love, who cannot be avoided, who should not be missed.

Trusting in the midst of uncertainty

Her auburn hair dances around her face,
Tickling her cheeks, itching her nose.
The wind weaves through the tangles of her salty hair,
And the sun's warmth wraps around her,
A blanket keeping her warm.

Tossing her head back,
Her shoulders shake up and down,
A smile permanently painted across her face.
His hand folds directly into hers,
As he takes in the beauty added to the world when she laughs.

Their toes stretch towards the deep blue water beneath them;
It dances without pause to the silent rhythms of the wind.
The sunlight cracks through the surface,
Creating a collage of all different shades of blue.
It masks what lies below; the ocean of the unknown.

Their eyes connect for a long moment,
Then at once they both move down- they watch the dancing waters below.
Suddenly, she stands, looks to the collage of blues below.
"I don't like not knowing," her voice carries in the wind.
His eyebrows push together, the confusion in his eyes.

"I don't like not knowing what lies below the surface."
She holds her gaze on the water, sloshing against the pier.
"It's beautiful and surely looks pleasant," she continues,
"But it could be shallow water and highly dangerous from here..."
She purses her lips and continues to think it through.

Standing up, he gently holds her arms, "It is deep enough."
She shakes her head, demanding a "how do you know."
He breathes in the salty air, "I don't."
Her face turns red with frustration and insatisfaction.
"We won't know for sure until we're down there..." He nods towards the dancing water.

"I want to know here." She crosses her arms.
The wind tosses her hair behind her shoulders.
He holds his hand out to her, and their eyes meet again, "Let's see if it is."
Slowly, her shaky hand moves towards his, falters, and then grabs it.
Her eyes are wide with fear and uncertainty.

"You can either stay here and never know the beauty of the experience,
Or you can jump, without hesitation, and fall full-force into the unknown."
A silent moment passes by, the waves of the water below rising then crashing,
Beckoning them, showing off it's beauty for the two guests.
Then, quietly, almost sounded out by the wind, she whispers, "Let's see."

Then, they jump.
The air tosses around them as they slice through the wind,
Their hearts stop-for a mere second- everything about them is still.
And after their fall, they break the surface.
First, their feet. Their knees. And finally, their chests and their heads.

They rise up, gasping for precious air that never runs out.
Breathing heavily, they make eye contact and smile with incredible joy;
They had crashed into waters far more than deep enough to safely receive them,
Waters that hugged every inch of their body, that refreshed and cleansed them.
They splash in the water, celebrate in the water, and let the water carry them for a while.

"It is fun to not know at the top, and to crash into the realization that it is vastly beyond our expectations." She smiles, laying back in the comfort of the water.
He absorbs what she said and agrees out loud,
"You just have to trust that the fall is going to bring you into something good. And then jump."
"Jumping isn't easy." She says, hesitantly, "But I am glad I jumped."