What the Father Must Feel

So, we had our two-year-old in the Emergency Room this past weekend. She had fallen on our porch steps and gotten a pretty serious cut on her forehead. After several shots and five stitches, she was good to go. Honestly, she did better with it than we did. She even went to a gymnastics birthday party two hours later!

Anyway, several truths about the Father shone through as I reflected on the whole experience:

1) The emotions I felt as she was in pain and bleeding - is that how God feels when we hurt ourselves through the ways we act and the choices we make? My tears for her as she was hurting - does God weep over us in the same way when we're suffering from our self-inflicted wounds?

2) Sometimes it takes a little more pain for the wounds we have to be healed. The shots, the stitches - they hurt for a moment, but they keep the wound from becoming infected and leaving a scar that lasts a life-time. Sometimes the wound even has to be reopened for the infection to be let out so healing can occur.

3) God cares enough to answer prayer to the smallest detail. One of our friends prayed that the ER staff would say that our little one had done better than anyone her age in this situation. The staff said exactly the words... If God cares about influencing even the tiniest details as we pray, He cares about the big-picture in all of our lives.

Hurry sickness

So, it's difficult to keep priorities straight when the crunch comes. I absolutely love people, but when there's a last minute task, why is the tendency to focus on the task instead of the extremely valuable people in front of me? Note to self: Slow down daily and refocus; talk through priorities out-loud. It's interesting that when something is spoken it has more clarity. It stops bouncing around in the cerebral sphere and moves into perspective. In the rush, in the hurry, Lord, please help me to keep my eyes on people - they truly matter more than anything else.

Speaking without words...

I'm noticing that our love languages (acts of service, receiving of gifts, words of affirmation, physical touch, and quality time) have the potential to be a huge indicator in our relationships. When my love language is spoken by someone who has wrong motives or does not show love very consistently, I well up with anger and offense. But when it is spoken by someone who loves well, who essentially lays down their life for mine, I am filled up, refreshed, renewed. I find it interesting that I can measure the state of my relationship with another by the way I involuntarily react when they unintentionally speak my love language.

New perspectives...

These are some thoughts that are coagulating after reading Donald Miller's new book"Searching for God Knows What":

If you were in a lifeboat and had to throw one person out so everyone could survive, how would you determine who it would be?

What if this lifeboat question is behind all of the relational strife in our world, all the way down to my one-on-one struggles with people?

What if all the rules we've established for maintaining our "worthy" position in the lifeboat were simply wrong - what if the lifeboat did not really exist?

In the same way, what if God is not interested in us discovering formulas, rules, and checklists in the bible?

What if the good news about Jesus is not about checking off a list at all, but all about truly entering into relationship with God through Christ?

Morning

Vision is liquid
as thoughts seek
to burst in
upon the sights before me

It is dizziness,
drunkenness
with splendor
too overwhelming for my mortal sight

Free and greedy

I've been listening to the U2 collection from 1990-2000 and this lyric grabbed me this morning:

"What you thought was freedom is just greed."

Makes me wonder about what I do with the freedom that I have, not only as an American but as a Christ-follower. Do I use freedom as a license to collect more and more? Do I grab the grace of God so that I can be happy today? How can the freedom I have be used to set others free?

Even as I write I receive a phone-call from a "special needs" friend of mine. I am challenged, my own inability exposed. How can I fully pursue the desire in me to love well? Lord help us all.

I'm gonna die.

Rarely will I do something just because everyone else is doing it, but a few days ago I was sucked into the fun. I joined a bunch of God-fearing, Christ-loving co-laborers of mine in a crazy feat - swimming across the lake at the retreat center we were visiting. We had done it last year and it was no big deal. But this year the weather is still cold. One friend commented that there was still ice in the shade on the banks of the lake...

Here's the "stream of consciousness" replay:

This will be hilariously crazy. Man, do I dread the thought of climbing out of that lake in to the 50 degree cold. Shed the shoes and sweatshirt and get a life jacket. Hey, guys, wait up! Run for the edge of the water. Lord, don't let them scream about how cold it is when they jump in or I don't think I can do it. They didn't scream. Cool. Hold onto your glasses while you jump in or they're gone. Leaping, falling, my entire body is buried in ice. Get to the surface, have to get to the air and the light. The life-jacket does it's work. I know now why they didn't scream. I can't breathe. I can't take in a breath! Swim hard or you'll freeze to death. Move and just maybe you won't die. Kick, swim hard. Will I pass out if I don't take a breath? I'm slowly respiring again. Now it's the same distance to go forward or backward, and I can't keep going. Stop. Rest. Kick. Breathe. Better get going. Keep going. Swim faster. There it is. The end of suffering. The dock. Snakes at the dock? I don't care. One arm thrown over the dock and I don't have the strength to pull myself up... I'm lifted out by a friend. I'm dripping wet. And I'm so stinking hot that I am astounded. The 50 degree air is so much warmer than the water that I feel like it's 90 degrees out. I can't believe we did that.

Slick Stones

I took a walk in one of my favorite places yesterday. It's always refreshing for me to visit Cove Spring. The waterfalls were gushing due to the heavy rainfall in the past few days. There's nothing like roar of water on rock. It was reminiscent of the roar of the sea hitting the shore, without the rhythmic intervals of silence. Standing directly between the two falls was like hearing the melody and harmony of an amazing song.

This hit me as I stood at the crossing of a stream on the path high on the cliff-face:

The rocks
Where the path
Crosses the stream
Moss-covered
And slick
Footing precarious and choice
but with help from above
not a foot here will slip

The trickle
To cascade
And thunder below
Skips over these stones
To then join the flow
That will bury the ones
That lie in it's course
As many make one