pregnant soul

Bowing low before the Lord the other day I had an experience that grew my understanding of His love. As an expectant mother, I was praying for the little one. I love him/her already, this tiny baby growing inside of me. And I look forward to the love that will expand when he/she is in my arms, showing me a personality uniquely and beautifully belonging to him/her. It was in that moment of prayer that I realized more deeply and more fully than I ever had before the profundity of our Creator’s love for us. Just as I look forward to loving more fully the baby I already love, God, like a pregnant mother, looks forward to the love that He will share with each person who walks this earth.

From the beginning of time, God knew the people who would inhabit His world. He knew the cultures that would bring variations of music and food and language and clothing and art and architecture to the canvas of His world’s surface. He knew the religions that would form out of our search for Him. Just as in my pregnancy I know that my child will color my world with laughter and stories and precious touches that are not yet, He is and has been pregnant with a whole world’s history’s population of personalities that would communicate to Him, through Him, in Him the joy of living the Life He has given. Perhaps they will be people who turn their love toward Him; perhaps not. Yet they are the creation born of a loving God who gives life because it is intrinsic to His nature. I pray to be a mother who nurtures that way.

All of this makes me anticipate motherhood in a more acute way. I do not merely look forward to having a baby, but I see ahead to the reach such a relationship will bring to my soul as I experience in the life of my child more of what God experiences in His anticipation and enjoyment of the lives He created us to live. I am but one mother in a world of mothers, but to me, this life I’m to steward is extraordinary, if by nothing else than to open up a deeper region of my soul.

window

My window’s not big enough
it has a top and a bottom,
there are sides that keep me in.
There is too much life to see
than my window open wide.

My soul’s not big enough
to hold the love of the universe,
I’m held in by flesh and blood
captive to this body.

But Life flows in and out
capturing pieces of eternality
being breathed and seen,
held and evaporated,
Life outside the window,
and in.

Messiah come

Christ come,
Messiah come.
Holy!
Waiting.
He came through a mess.
Mary was so courageous.
Wait.  Courage.  Wait.
The Holy One was birthed through
blood and pain into a
dirty world.
Waiting.
He grew.
Waiting.
Jesus.
Salvation.
Holy!
He walked and taught.
He trained disciples.
Waiting.
Messiah come!
He had come.
Messiah come!
Holy!
Betrayal sold Him.
Dirty world.
Waiting.
Praying.
He gave:
He gave Himself.
He died.  Sin died.
Salvation.
Holy!
Redemption.
Holy!
Waiting.
Those who loved Him were
three days waiting.
Pain.
Waiting.
He came.
Messiah came.
Resurrection!
Life brought power over death.
Messiah!
Waiting.
Messiah, come.

Immanuel

I’ve been contemplating this glorious message of Christmas, how Jesus is Immanuel, God with us.  GOD WITH US.  Why do we celebrate Christmas?  Not because of family or gifts or giving.  Not because of traditions or music or stories.  These are all ways to celebrate, but they aren’t the reason (although looking around, you’d think that the means of celebrating was the reason).

Christmas is a time of remembering Jesus come to earth to live a life of flesh and bone, heartache and sorrow, relationships and joy.  I’ve been sick this week, my body racked by painful coughing (I’m getting better)…and in the course of being sick, I’ve thought of my Lord, who left eternal health for a moment in time to take on sickness; I imagine he had a few flus, stomach trouble, scratchy sore throats, maybe even a painful cough; perhaps He had a broken arm or an ingrown toenail (after all, these are the things of bodies).  So in my moments of sickness I can think of the God of the universe being sick and understanding the discomfort.  If we are to believe that He truly was Immanuel, God with us, then we accept that the incarnation (God taking on flesh) means he took on the very same flesh that interrupts health.

Jesus, the God I serve, lived like me.  Yet, He didn’t.  Jesus was able to defeat sin for us all because He did not sin.  His ministry in life, His teaching and healing and serving, His sacrifice on the cross, His defeat of death in the resurrection which welcomed into the world Life eternal…these all were possible because He lived the holy life He calls us to.  Jesus lived in the flesh to show us what living perfectly is like, so that when He called us to reflect His holiness, we would see in His life an example to follow.

But He didn’t even leave us there.  None of us, ever, could live holy lives just by an example.  There is nothing in us strong enough to defeat sin simply because we want to.  When Jesus left the earth He left us something incredible.  Jesus left His Spirit…the Holy Spirit, which lives in the spirits of those who tell Jesus they accept Him, they believe in Him, that they’ll follow Him.  Step one.  The Holy Spirit comes in us then and empowers us with the power of God to live those lives of holiness that exemplify who God is.  (Some call this “godliness”; either way, it is reflecting the character of Christ.)  We become Christ’s incarnation in this world…letting Him live through us.

The Gospel message, simply put, is that Jesus came to break the barrier that sin puts between us and God; when He returned to the Father, He left His Spirit, which guides us to live lives that show the character of God.  No law can complete us, although law serves as a guide.  Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, came to earth 2000 years ago to begin an age of people knowing God personally, intimately, beautifully, eternally.

Thank you, Jesus, for doing the unimaginable and leaving perfection on our behalf, taking on the load of sin and shame and guilt that we all deserve to bear, defeating death so that those who follow you might know what true Life without death is intended to be, and leaving Your Spirit so that Your work on earth may be fulfilled through the lives of Your saints.  Oh Jesus, may I look like Christ to someone today?  Will You live through me so that someone might know You better?  Oh Christ, thank you for coming.  Thank you for being Immanuel, God with us.

(Dec 18, 2005)

hand of God

The other night, while running west along a dirt trail, the sun setting looked like the hand of God reaching out to bless the world.  The palm rested on the horizon as the fuscia, orange, and purple fingers reached across the sky.  It was just what I needed after a heavy spirit of late.  Since then, the hand of God has settled onto my heart, and I am at peace.

my hope: I vote but HOPE in the LORD

I just read a great little article in a campus magazine at Fuller.  In it, the writer reminds us of what I’ve been feeling heavily on my heart lately: that the next president is not the hope of the world; Jesus is the hope of the world.  Governments are manmade institutions; the Kingdom of God is His own, and He is the One Ruler of it for all time.

I’m concerned about the election tomorrow.  Not because my hope is in the next president, but because this election feels like a popularity race.  It feels like I’m in high school again and everyone is voting for the suave guy, instead of the guy who’s actually going to do things that help our class.  Sigh.  Really, I don’t love either candidate; supporters of both sides claim that “their” candidate stands for the oppressed.  So then it comes down to who we define as oppressed.  Is it those who are below the poverty line, those who have experienced some sort of discrimination, the unborn…?

So, even though I want McCain to win, my hope is not in him.

My heart is heavy for the morality reflected (or not) in the way we will voite.  I think that the propositions are the greatest tell-tale of where we are morally.  In California, we’re voting on the definition of marriage.  I keep hearing arguments like, “We can’t deny people their rights.”  Our nation is more concerned about rights that it is about what is right. You can’t blame them…they’ve been taught by television.   But Christians who support gay marriage you can blame, because they know which Compass they should be guided by, and they fly in the face of that Compass.  It might sound nice to let gay people marry (and I’m not saying they shouldn’t have rights), but to redefine the biblical covenant of marriage because it’s “what sounds nice,” or even, “what I want,” is not living life according to anything buf self-directed morality.  And self-directed morality is wrong.  If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you don’t follow His Word, then you are saying you don’t trust His Word, which ultimately would prove you don’t really believe His Word, which would lead me to say something so bold as, are you really a follower of Jesus?

Driving on the freeway north toward Los Angeles today I saw written in the back window of a car, “Don’t hate.  No on 8.”  That shows that those who are against proposition 8 don’t understand those who are behind it.  Ultimately, those for a Yes vote on Prop 8 are for healthy families, those which will give children the proven best situation in which to grow up: with a mother and a father.  Those for Prop 8 are actually acting out of love.  That’s not to say that some people have not turned it into an opportunity to express hate in revolting and unloving ways.  Those are not the ones who stand behind the proposition, although they are the ones who get the most attention.  Ultimately, those who support a biblical definition of marriage act in love because we know, according to God’s Word, homosexuality to be a sin.  To support a sinful lifestyle is to neglect the responsibility we have as followers of Christ to spread His love through His Word; and obeying His Word is not always easy.  Deuteronomy 30:19-20 says, “…choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him…”  Loving, obeying, and holding fast to God are not always easy, but they are what He requires.

And then there’s Proposition 4.  The people of this country are so concerned about what we want that we forget, just like with the definition of marriage issue, that choices in life aren’t always easy, and making the right choice is often the hardest choice to make.  Nevertheless, if we are people who stand for the oppressed, then we ought to be people who stand for the unborn.  We should also be people who are willing enough to do the dirty work of ministering to and caring for women with unplanned pregnancies.  No, their lives are not easy, but until you’ve ministered to women who have aborted children and live with the regret, don’t tell me about the right to choose the life or death of a baby. (And DON’T get me started on the fact that MY tax dollars go to support Planned Parenthood.  It makes me physically ill.)

There’s an African proverb that says, “Have your baby, for you never know whose womb holds the chief.”  How many “chiefs” has our country aborted?  Proposition 4 makes it mandatory that an adult family member of a minor is informed when she is going to have an abortion.  Some say this may cause risk to the girl.  What about the risk of her being manipulated or molested and forced to have an abortion without anyone to stand for her, or the risk of her future emotional and spiritual bankruptcy as she deals with the emotional, psychological, and spiritual effects of what she has done (or been done to her)?  The Proposition is not about denying girls their rights, it is about protecting them from making choices alone that they are perhaps not mature enough to make.  To put it in perspective, “In California, a girl under age 18 can’t get a tan at a tanning salon, a cavity filled, or an aspirin dispensed by the school nurse without a parent knowing. But a doctor can perform a surgical or chemical abortion on a young girl without informing a parent” (http://www.yeson4.net/).

My heart is weeping today, not because I put hope in government, but because I see the moral decay and ruin of the people around me.  My heart weeps today because I long for people to make choices based in a saving knowledge of the loving grace of their Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ, who died for their sins even while they sinned (Romans 5:8), so that they might, upon believing in Him and calling Him Lord (Rom 10:9), walk with Him for abundant life on earth (John 10:10) and eternal bliss for eternity (John 3:16).  My heart weeps because I see the world in which my children will live.  My heart weeps because I know the heart of Jesus weeps as we watches the people He made choose anything but True Life, anything but wisdom as it is described and taught in the Bible.  My heart weeps because I see the disdain people have for my Savior, Jesus Christ, the One in whom I place my hope.

bouncing

I was cleaning up my apartment last night and it hit me, this is the longest I’ve lived in any one place since 1999.  Which leads me to think about all the constant transitioning that has been my life for almost ten years.  While during a few of those years I was just moving from dorm to dorm, it was still a different set of walls each year, which I count as moving.

This incessant moving has contributed to a character flaw which is the byproduct of dealing with constant change: I’ve become hardened to friendship.  I love friends.  There is perhaps no greater joy for me than to be silly and vulnerable with my girlfriends.  And through all my previous moves I have never had a problem making and keeping close friends.  It was something I learned how to do during all the moves of my childhood (which could be a whole other blog altogether; the longest we ever stayed in a place during my childhood was five years…still my record).  So why, now, with a community of attractive (in a friendship way) young women, do I have such trouble opening up and feeling at home?

The question remains.  I don’t really have an answer, except to land it in the anticipation of our next move.  I am yet again in the state of flux that comes with every pending move: depending on the speed of support raising, Edwin and I will be picking up stakes in less than a year in order to make it to the Philippines.  Spiritually, I’ve begun to view myself as a transient.  I’m a bedouin for Jesus.  He leads, I follow, and where He leads is often not here, wherever “here” may be at the moment.  Apparently, He’s been training me to keep earthly ties loose so that I might more readily GO.

Which, when I think about the life I have prayed to live for Him, is an answer to prayer.  I have promised Him, “Wherever, Lord, I’ll go.”  I even kept that promise to the point of staying in Mississippi when all I wanted to do was to go to the mission field.  And over time, His time, He has prepared me for that mission field, the one I had no clue I’d be going to: the Philippine Islands (with a filipino husband, no less!  Never saw that coming!).

And I return to contentment.  I am but a sojourner passing through.  I don’t doubt the future existence of deep friendships.  I trust God’s timing and the work He’s been doing on me; there is undoubtedly a reason He has kept me “single” this past year.  In one sense, I’ve been single in friendships so that I might be wholeheartedly married.  And beyond and deeper than that, my roots are pushing past the rough soil that had stunted their growth and they are once again reaching deep into the “soil of God’s marvelous love” (Eph 3:17).

Where I’ve lived since 1999:
99-00: Bacot dorm floor 2, Millsaps College
00-01: Bacot dorm floor 3, Millsaps College
01-02: New South dorm, hall, Millsaps College
02-03: New South dorm, atrium, Millsaps College
03-04: with the parents, Natchez, MS
04-June 05: with roommate in Pearl, MS
June-Dec 05: Wesley Biblical Seminary dorm, Jackson, MS
Jan-Oct 06: New Song Women’s Discipleship house, Oceanside, CA
Oct 06-Oct 07: apartment on my own!  Vista, CA
Oct 07-present: apartment with my husband (He moved in after the wedding!), Vista, CA

planned: present-May 09: our apartment
May-Aug 09: missionary training in North Carolina
Aug 09-?: ???
early 2010-???: Philippines

Double giving this Christmas

Let’s do something to turn around the materialistic/consumeristic worldiness of the holidays, and give in ways that will CHANGE LIVES! Christmas is now 56 days away, so here are some ideas that will give you a chance to stay in the giving spirit while helping out people in great need.  What if, when you give a gift this Christmas, you can say, “In giving this, I’ve helped one person, or a family, or a whole community”? That’s what’s b

This week, I’d like to invite you to check out Trade as One, an organization whose banner says, “Change lives with everything you buy.”  There is a variety of things you can buy, from items related to sports, bodycare, jewelry, purses, food, stationery, and more.  So, check it out!  http://tradeasone.com/

Ideas from past weeks:

Week One: www.heavenlytreasures.org
Week Two: www.nightlightbangkok.com

Week Three: www.worldvision.org

Please pass this on!

Grace and peace,

~amy

captive to joy

I’m working on a writing project.  For it, I’m looking back at journal and xanga entries from the past few years.  I am reminded just how UTTERLY blessed I am.  My life has been generously kissed with joy after joy, love upon love, tears that are sown for harvest.

When Edwin and I were dating, we declared Psalm 126 “our psalm.”  It begins with, “When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream…the LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.”  We testified to the joy that God had brought into our lives through each other, despite the tears that we shed through divorce and broken engagement.  Our wedding bands are inscribed with the words, “We are like those who dream.”

The second half of that psalm talks of seeing the same restoration brought again.  The psalm splits from looking at things God has done to things hoped for.  In that section of hope, there is a twofold promise: we will have tears again, but also will we have “shouts of joy.”  The joy is conditional, though: the tears must be sown, worked, given to God for a harvest.

Up until recently, I didn’t concentrate much on the second part of the psalm.  Understandably, so: often when we’re in joy, we don’t want to think of the tears to come.  Yet now, I see our story, mine and Edwin’s, even more deeply written into Psalm 126.  When we were married we were not yet living verses 4-6.  We were testifying to the place and places from which God had brought us.  At the point of our marriage, we were still to experience pain together.  But now, after a rejoiced and mourned over pregnancy, we have been in the time to sow our tears.  And God-helping, we are sowing those tears and experiencing the joy in them.

My joy will not wait for a viable and healthy pregnancy, but it has already begun, as I’ve given my tears to my Lord.  And I’ve even now begun to see a harvest in my own soul.  I needed to be rescued once again from the captivity of bitterness and doubt.  And He has, once again, brought back this captive one of Zion, and I am ever still a dreamer.

When the LORD brought back the
captive ones
of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with joyful shouting.
Then they said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.

Restore our captivity, O LORD,
as the streams in the south.
The one who sows in tears will reap with joyful shouting.
He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,
will indeed come again with shout of joy, carrying his sheaves with him.
-Psalm 126

abolitionist

a few months ago a curtain was pulled back
to reveal to me a sinister world of black
souls selling bodies not belonging to them
stealing lives for perverted lies and deeper sin.

in me an alarm is ringing and won’t stop singing,
the silent voices of stolen people bringing
me face to face with the thing i must do,
to move and fight and commit my life to.

i am ashamed of my ignorance
but won’t miss this chance to make a difference
in this now that was tomorrow
as a girl still waits in fear and sorrow

i am an abolitionist.
i stand with indignant fist.
i battle the evil ones that freedom steal
and ask that they would salvation feel

the healing hand of One who is strong
Who knows each touch in a pressing throng
Whose love is high and deep and wide and long
Whose grace will cover the darkest wrong

my God, You hear the whimpers and cries
you are the One Who gives the breath to sigh
set them free by your mercy, power, and might
give us strength to rescue them from their plight.

i am an abolitionist.
i stand with indignant fist.
i battle the evil ones that freedom steal
and ask that they would salvation feel

the healing hand of One who is strong
Who knows each touch in a pressing throng
Whose love is high and deep and wide and long
Whose grace will cover the darkest wrong

in this now that was tomorrow
as a girl still waits in fear and sorrow

~