Wait

I love, love, love that moment when I hear a song and there is something about it that triggers instantaneous worship in my heart. One minute I’m listening to the radio nonchalantly, and the next thing I know I’m in full worship mode: hands raised, eyes closed, spirit soaking in the message.

I have been a fan of Mumford & Sons since I first heard one of their singles a few years ago, and when they released their newest song off of their upcoming album recently, worship mode was exactly where I found myself. Their newest song, I Will Wait, is one full of thoughtful poetic verses and a chorus that sweeps you up in it's heartfelt simplicity. When I read through the lyrics, I see the narrator coming to God in exhaustion, and then waiting in His presence to see what He will do next. My favorite part is the bridge, almost to the end, that says:

Raise my hands / Paint my spirit gold / And bow my head / Keep my heart slow 

'Cause I will wait / I will wait for you

Sometimes we get too eager for God to work in our lives, and start doing things in our own time, without properly waiting for His plan to come to fruition. Isaiah prays in chapter 64 verse 4, "For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!" Sometimes God needs you to be patient and wait for His works and blessings to come forth. 

It's a wonderful song - listen to the full thing below.

Olympic-Sized Faith

Unlike the majority of the world, I’m not a huge fan of watching sports. I watch the Superbowl for the commercials and the half-time show, not for football. The only exception to that is when A) one of my nieces/nephews are playing a sport, and B) it’s Olympic season. I love the Olympics – the torch-bearing, the national pride felt worldwide, the world records, and especially the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. During the years the Olympics take place I find myself watching sports I normally wouldn’t pay any attention to, like fencing, bobsled racing, curling (my all-time favorite Olympic sport!), and during the summer games, gymnastics. During the off-years, gymnastics isn’t a heavily followed sport – but when young American women are competing for the gold, we can’t keep our eyes off of the competition. Names like Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug have become some of the most memorable U.S. athletes of the modern games. And undoubtedly, this year’s gymnastic celebrity, Gabby Douglas, will be added to that list.

Sixteen-year-old Gabby recently won two gold medals, including one for the prestigious All-Around gymnastics competition. When she was interviewed afterward, the emotional young girl was quoted with saying:

"It is everything I thought it would be; being the Olympic champion, it definitely is an amazing feeling. And I give all the glory to God. It’s kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.”

When I win awards or am complimented, I have a tendency to let myself be proud of what I accomplished. I did that. I’m great at what I do. I’m talented. Me, me, me. What I should be doing – what Gabby did, and I, ashamedly, often forget to do – is immediately praise God for the victory and give Him the glory. I couldn’t have won that award or compliment or what have you without the gifts and talents that He bestowed upon me. And thought it sounds somewhat selfish on the surface, Gabby is right about it being a win-win situation. When we praise God, He blesses us. When we do the things God asks of us, he graciously gives us more than we could ever imagine or deserve.

We can take a lot of encouragement from the faith of this young woman. This verse, that she recently tweeted, sums up her actions perfectly: “Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me (Psalm 103:2 ESV).”

When you feel that swell of pride well up in your heart, remember to praise the Lord and give Him the glory for the victory of that moment. He is the one who gave you the ability and opportunity to do great things. 

Heaven's Furniture

I was leafing through a book of poetry by Emily Dickinson recently when I stumbled across this lovely little verse:

Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

It’s a simple little poem, only four lines, but packed with meaning. Dickinson seems to be saying that the way to enjoy the realm of heaven later is to notice the heaven that is all around us, in the world we currently live in. She goes on to point out that God is not hidden away from us or on a distant throne like Zeus, but lives among us an next to us, and his home is filled with love.

There is another line of Dickinson’s that comes to mind, where she says “They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.” It’s true – we talk about seeking God, finding God, waiting for God, when in reality, He is always among us. If only we would take a moment to notice.

Take a minute today to stop and take notice of the wonderful, heavenly things going on around you, thanking God for being ever-present.

Impossibilites

"A-dressing the White Queen" by John Tenniel,
for the 1865 edition of Through the Looking Glass

In the stories of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, we meet a young girl who goes down a rabbit hole and finds herself among hookah-smoking caterpillars, playing card characters come to life, and cats who can make themselves invisible. Alice is constantly coming across fantastical things – a Mock Turtle, unanswerable riddles, even pink flamingoes used exclusively for croquet mallets. When she meets the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, the queen tells her that she is “just one hundred and one, five months and a day.” Alice exclaims that she can’t believe it, and the queen instructs her to take a deep breath, close her eyes and try again:

`There's not use trying,' she said: `one can't believe impossible things.'

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

We are a lot like Alice. Despite all the miraculous things happening around us, when confronted with something impossible, we claim defeat and don’t even bother trying to understand it. We look at the  sun providing us with warmth and light without so much as a second thought as to how it came to be, and yet when we can’t figure out how to pay our bills we decide that it’s impossible. We have no problem believing the fact that giant metal boxes filled with people can fly miles above the earth, but when a loved one gets cancer, we think their healing is impossible.

God is more like the White Queen. Jesus says “But with God everything is possible (Matt 19:26 NLT)” – in other words, for God, nothing is impossible. God can pay your bills, heal cancer, throw mountains into the ocean, create a dry pathway in the middle of the sea, bring men back from the dead. You have to believe that he can – faith, after all, is believing in what you cannot see. If you believe in God but can’t bring yourself to believe in impossible things, then in the words of the queen, you haven’t had much practice. 

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and try again.

Closing Time

 Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

I’m a sucker for 90s music, and this particular Semisonic track has been in my head a lot lately. I keep hearing it on the radio and my Pandora stations and each time this line sticks out to me. It’s a simple line, sung in a nonchalant way, but carries such meaning. Wherever there is a fresh, new start, there is also a death and an end.

Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that lives, but Christ in me” (NLT). In order to live in the fullness of Christ, he had to let his former self be crucified and stripped away. He couldn’t be Saul any longer, he was now Paul. When Jacob wrestled with God, he was forever changed and from then on went by the name Israel. Before Jesus could bless us with his salvation, He had to be dead for three days. In each case, they had to stop  going in the direction they had been and start over - a new beginning, from some other beginning’s end.

Dear Jesus, help us to remember that in order for a new beginning to take hold, we must let things come to an end.

Choke

There are some authors who write because they know everyone will love their work, and then there are authors who write because they love it and everyone knows it. Chuck Palahnuik definitely falls into the latter category. Most widely known for his novel Fight Club, Palahnuik has penned over a dozen novels, each more dark, harrowing, and controversial than the last. I’ve read a few of his books, and can attest to the fact that underneath the coarse and bizarre surface there is always some modicum of universal truth. Take this passage from the novel Choke:

“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”

Our past doesn’t define us. People can look at what has happened in our lives and judge us for it, but that’s not who we are. That’s who we were. That’s why it’s called our history, not our currently.

When God looks at us, He sees us for what we are and will be like, not what we were like in the past. When the prodigal son came back, his father didn’t scold him for all the bad decisions he had made – he imagined what it would be like with his son back and threw a party in celebration. The son could have looked back on his time spent living among swine and thought, “I’ll never be any better than this. I might as well stay here and eat leftover slop for the rest of my life.” But rather than letting his days in the pigpen define him, he decided to go home, believing that he could do something better with his future. And his father rejoiced.

Don’t let the things you’ve done in the past keep you from what you are meant to do in the future.

Everlasting Light

I know that there are some Christians who only listen to Christian music, and while I respect their choice or conviction, I find too much inspiration in "secular" music to turn my back on rock, indie, pop, and all the other genres out there. I doubt that some of the songs I am encouraged by where written with that intention, but as Jesus says, "Anyone who is not against us is for us (Mark 9:40, NLT)" - so I take inspiration wherever I can find it. 


I'm a fan of the band The Black Keys (as an Ohioan, it's practically required) and a song with lyrics I particularly love is Everlasting Light. The first verse goes like this: 

Let me be your everlasting light
The sun when there is none
I'm a shepherd for you
And I'll guide you through
Let me be your everlasting light

I'm sure it was written as a love song between a man and a woman, but with lyrics like that, I can't help but imagine Jesus saying them to one of His children. The second verse continues:

Let me be your everlasting light
Your home when there is cold
In me you can confide
When no one's by your side
Let me be your everlasting light

When everything else is cold and dark, Jesus is there to guide us and be our confidant. Let Jesus be your home, your shepherd, your guide, your sun - because what he really wants is to be your everlasting light.

Stubborn Captain America

Action movies are some of my favorites, and action movies with superheroes are even better. I actually saw The Avengers in theaters twice, which is saying a lot, since I barely go to the movies as it is. One of my favorite lines from the film (besides Tony Stark asking Thor “Does mother know thou weareth her drapes?” Ha!) comes from Captain America, in the aircraft after Thor comes in and kidnaps Loki. The Black Widow tells him that the brothers are basically gods, and he replies,

There’s only one God ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.

It’s classic Steve Rogers - he’s the most moral of all the Avengers, staying true to his old-fashioned 1940s ideals. Of course as soon as the film came out there have been cast photos and internet memes left and right, but this is the one that caught my eye:

 It’s called “Stubborn Captain America” - there are a lot of different “stubborn guy” memes out there - and sums up his character really well. Even though people keep telling Steve that Thor and Loki are gods, and everyone else accepts it without even batting an eye, he knows what he’s always known: that no matter how much the world has changed, there is still only one God. He doesn’t care that people have actually been to the realm where the so-called ‘gods’ come from, that changes nothing when it comes to his beliefs.

Faith is about believing, no matter what everyone else tells you or what everyone else believes. Do you have the faith of an Avenger?