Look-alike Love

"So God breathed life into Adam and Eve. When they opened their eyes, the first thing they ever saw was God's face. And when God saw them he was like a new dad. "You look like me," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever made!"

God loved them with all of his heart. And they were lovely because He loved them. And Adam and Eve joined in the song of the stars and the streams and the wind in the trees, the wonderful song of love to the one who made them. Their hearts were filled with happiness. And nothing ever made them sad or lonely or sick or afraid.

God looked at everything he had made. "Perfect!" he said. And it was.

But all the stars and the mountains and the oceans and galaxies and everything were nothing compared to how much God loved his children. He would move heaven and earth to be near them. Always. Whatever happened, whatever it cost him, he would always love them.

And so it was that the wonderful love story began."

From The Jesus Storybook Bible

A few years ago, Kim Lorentzen's children received a book about how we came to be. It is quoted above from a shared email.

I was revisiting it tonight as I thought about Jesus, the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. I thought about His resolve to live a sinless life and die a sacrificial death in our place so that we might be restored to our first beauty. Our original sin traded for original grace. So the Father could fasten His Holy gaze upon us and say, "You look like me."

As we move through these Lenten days, consider the One who conspired with the Father and the Holy Spirit to bring their beauty, their relationship into our lives. To make us the most beautiful things they have ever made. To make us look like Them.

Jesus opened Himself up to us and stretched out His mighty love palm to scarred palm high above our estrangement, settling our debt forever and forever changing how Heaven beholds us.

And so it was that the wonderful love story began...again.


What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we're called children of God! That's who we really are...that's exactly who we are: children of God. And that's only the beginning. Who knows how we'll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we'll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus' life as a model for our own. 1 John 3:1-3

(Special thanks to Amy and Cheree for illustrating God's look-alike love in such a lovely way.)

Bottomless Gratitude

"Mom, before I tell you something I want you to know that this is not something that caught God off guard."

My son who had done two tours in Iraq, who was still plagued with bad dreams and back pain, and who had been kept on active duty almost a year longer than his enlistment prior to transitioning from active duty to ready reserve; had come to tell me that he was being recalled to Iraq. He had a new career path and a new baby and now he had orders.

I think I held my breath for a long time then the habit of thankfulness, cultivated over four years of repeated deliverance, seized my unquiet thoughts and made peace. God had been God for me. Thankfulness had become a way of living.

There had not been one single day during John David's service and since his homecoming, that I had not remembered to lavish thanks upon the One who was savior, protector, deliverer, friend. Now in that moment of stunned silence God told me to hold on to my thankful heart. A heart that would thank Him and leave the outcome, come what may, to Him.

Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Luke 17:17

Thankfulness, appreciation, those things satisfy God's heart. I don't ever want Him to find me among the nine.

My son's orders to return to active duty and a third tour were eventually cancelled and he received his honorable discharge at the end of his eight year obligation. This many years later I have yet to reach the absolute depth of my gratitude. It remains my daily companion.

Tonight I read Ann Voskamp's amazing and insightful blog posting about thankfulness. Without reservation, it is one of the finest offerings on that subject I have seen. Please, do not pass this by. Take a moment, it is not long, and drink in the absolute truth of her words.

Live in thankfulness. Eat it as bread. Wear it as a garment. Wave it as a banner. Sharpen it as a sword. Lay it down at His feet as an offering and keep laying it down.

Deeply grateful,
-Kat

A Holy Experience
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/02/when-you-want-to-turn-your-life-around/

A Light Life-Ask The Animals Sundays

So if the Son sets you free, you will be absolutely free. John 8:36

Out in the open sea, sleek body slicing through wave and spray, she flies on foam; her silver-blue form bow-hugging a ship sitting high in the water, matching its speed. The water carries her song out and back again. Sun shreds golden ribbons upon the ocean surface. Life itself is golden and good. She lives free in Creation. Her natural state is to be unbound in the immensity of the life given to her.


She is no sheep in a pen nor ox in a stall. She paints an elegant line in the water. She is a brush in the hand of the Almighty artist who loves both color and freedom. The same artist in whose hands our own lives and giftings lay like light.*

It tempts us this light-life. Less sighted eyes may condemn our joy-exploding-temptation to be electrified by golden moments upon spiritual water, rising and falling back again to the rhythm of His heart. Harmonizing with sea and stars and syncronized to Heaven's pulse. We are free. We are light. We burn upon mountain and water. God-life blossoming in us, we live worshiping.

We glow with His hand upon us. Not only in the rare magic of Sunday's stone-walled jubilation but in the rising of our many mornings when bare feet touch bare life and sparks fly. Dawn calls to us to live-light. To live as light.

We think, mistakenly, that a life lived pleasing God is the hard road, a meal of dry crusts. It is, in fact, that our life lived for the pleasure of anyone other than God is what drains the pool, douses the candles and plucks the stars from our sky.

The wise words of Paul came to me in the mouth of Chuck Swindoll preaching grace and freedom:

"...through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from
which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses (Acts
13:38-39).

(Paul's) message included large doses of grace for the saved. Just
as the lost don't understand the Gospel, the saved rarely understand
grace. There are few activities more exhausting and less rewarding
than Christians attempting to please the people around them by maintaining impossible legalistic demands. What a tragic trap, and thousands are caught in it. When will we ever learn? Grace has set us free! That message streamed often through the sermons and personal testimonies of the apostle Paul."

Will we know it and fast our half-lives? Will we unbind our feet and curl toes into truth's damp grass? Will we live for Him and not for a building, a membership, someone else's praise or extra-biblical impositions? Ahhhh...I hear the intake of breath in some, nails dug into closed fisted palms, lips tight white lines of temperance.

Spare me the arguments. The ocean swells, the sun is full hot upon the water and the song of free Creation, full of grace, pings off my thirsty soul. I lay like light upon His outstretched arms. Grace is my baptismal water. I am undone and dead to all but Christ's full life.

"God fills my being to the brim
with floods of His immensity.
I drown within a drop of Him
whose sea-bed is infinity."
Sr. Jessica Powers


-Kat


Ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;
let the birds tell you what's going on.
Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.
Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.
Isn't it clear that they all know and agree
that God is sovereign? That He holds all things in His hand—
Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature.
Job 12:7-10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WK5NmnCiA&feature=related

(Special thanks to Christian Jeter, age 7, for using her giftings for God-things. She will join me to produce Ask The Animals Sundays, 2/19/12 through Palm Sunday.)

* "Lay like light" suggested from a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Presence of Love

The Extravagance Of His Work In Us

A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Ephesians 6:10


Yesterday my friend Jan and I were talking. That can be a dangerous prospect. We are both spiritually "excitable." We were bemoaning a common woe that as Christians, as the Bride, we are often living below the the Power Line.

This morning I was in Ephesians and turned to Paul's encouragement to splice in to that line. I saw that the Greek term for our being strong is ἐνδυναμοῦσθε, pronounced (en-doo-nam-o'-o). I am no scholar of Greek but I can read Strong's and it says this strengthening we experience comes not from the exercise of our own ability or natural strength but it is God's sharing His mighty ability with us.

It is God saying, "I fill with power, strengthen, make strong."

HELPS Word-studies 1743 endynamóō (from 1722 /en "in," which intensifies 1412 /dynamóō, "sharing power-ability") – properly, to impart ability (make able); empowered.

To impart ability. To give it to us. Strength flowing along the line of least resistance. God's own power-ability in our hands. His ability to work His will in our hands. The strength of pure, purposeful love at our fingertips. David understood this. I am praying it does not continue to elude us. To elude me.

Hear Paul speak in Ephesians 1:19-23 (Message)

15-19That's why, when I heard of the solid trust you have in the Master Jesus and your outpouring of love to all the followers of Jesus, I couldn't stop thanking God for you—every time I prayed, I'd think of you and give thanks. But I do more than thank. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!

20-23All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.

This is what my prayer is for as I contemplate what Christ's Presence has brought to my life: oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!

Jan, are you dancing yet? Me too!

-Kat


Share a walk out on to the field with David as he takes the full measure of his God:

http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2010/02/emek-haelah-valley-of-oak.html

The Hiding Place

My frame was not hidden from you Psalm 139:11


You have to love the way children hide their eyes and believe it cloaks them with invisibility. Even better, our dog- Sasha seemed to be under the impression that if she couldn't see the poop on the carpet it wasn't there. Confession time: I often wish it was that simple.

There are moments I have desperately needed to disappear. Those foot-in-mouth situations that happen when I have more words than wisdom. As for the poop part, yes, well, that too. Sometimes I am the only one in the room working hard to believe my sin does not stink. (Sorry. Lent is making me thoughtful.)

Francis Frangipane makes a point that the unchanging, unconditional love of Christ is the perfect shelter that allows us to unpack our dirty laundry and get cleaned up without the shame of it destroying us.

Bad habits, bad judgement, thoughtlessness, sin that makes the dog poop look good, none of it makes Jesus look the other way. He isn't hiding His eyes and He loves us too much to let us pretend it isn't the rebellion it is.

Only three days into Lent and I am getting brave. I have help. I am letting the Holy Ghost go after the wild, untended tracts of land that have not fully surrendered. Those parts of me that have become less hospitable the longer the 'No Trespassing' sign has been allowed to remained posted.

Christ sees me and loves me and has a plan for all that unused land. The plan is for a glorious fruitfulness. My surrender hurts me in the moment. This too He understands. That land cost Him dearly. I love Him too much for His capture of my heart to have been incomplete. When I behold His outstretched hands nailed east and west over my life, my heart cries, "Take it all!"

The only place to hide is in Christ. Invisible to sin's penalty. Cloaked in victory. Bold and beloved. Eyes uncovered. He took me by the mile. I now surrender the inches.

For you are my hiding place...You surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7

-Kat

Thanks to Brenda Johnson for the suggestion of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVjuBgWNaWY


(John Sebastian hiding in the bushes thinking himself invisible.)

Day of Ashes

...the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell...
From Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

There is much beauty in the world. Eden echos. Drops an iridescent feather. Weaves a hummingbird nest by the bathroom window. The Garden calls. Love elevates things of low consequence. A dandelion in the palm of a child becomes the rarest orchid.

Stiff hearts miss this.

Rebels take no notice.

Lent begins today. The antidote for stiff hearts, blind eyes and souls who have lost the smell of the sea, lives where God has become diminished, lost His distinct ring tone.

The Catholics cremate last year's leftover Palm Sunday fronds and mark themselves with the ashes. When I was young I was so enamored of the ashen cross on my forehead that when it wore off I renewed it courtesy of my father's ashtray and the remnants of Camels unfiltered. Lent is us in ashes, unfiltered, our guard down, excuses incinerated, bending the knee.

Those penitent ashes call to me in this season. Lent is spring cleaning time for our souls. Lent is an opportunity to ask for help with our less flattering habits in a way that makes Christ the focus. Time to burn last year's mistakes with sorrow. Time to also walk away from last year's hallelujahs. Let God remember our lifted hands. Praise lives in the immaculate air of Heaven forever but here, in our imperfect world, our once green palms age and crack with time. We have to cut fresh boughs to lay in the way He will come.

Ash Wednesday (dies cinerum or day of ashes) makes room for penance and for praise, like the ashes of incense left when the smoke ascends. It is day one in a period of self denial and God-thoughtfulness that remembers Christ's forty days in the wilderness separated unto God and sustained by His fellowship. It is living the story of the Cross. It is a sorrow for the sin that required such sacrificial love to roll the stones from our tombs.

It is the remembrance of that gargantuan trade Isaiah prophesied over us: To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He might be glorified. Isaiah 61

We bow our heads, offer Him room and branches leaf out fresh and green. Repentant fruits bloom. Our lost lilacs breathe out perfume.


These next forty days and during the Holy Week to follow, you might build an altar and meet with the Lord for whatever time you are able to devote to that purpose.

I keep a devotional and a box of colored pencils in my car. I draw and put my thoughts right in that book. You might buy a beautiful candle and light it in the evening as a special offering. Listen to music that you can share with Him. Find a movie that makes you focus on Him. Journal Lent. Find a jar and begin to set aside an Easter offering.

Practice a day of silence each week or during part of your day. Fast a meal and spend the time discovering Him in His own words. My personal favorites, Praying the Hours (God talks to me at 3AM) and daily Communion.

The Holy Ghost will draw you to the right spiritual practice.

Whatever you do- Embrace the Journey to Jerusalem.

Jesus will meet you on the road.

There will be bread.

-Kat

The Upper Room has a daily devotion available.

My favorite is Contemplating the Cross, just made available again on line.

There are some wonderful movies we have enjoyed in this season. Some of you may want to share, by way of a comment, ones you or your family have enjoyed.

The Hiding Place
Flywheel
The Edges of the Lord
Luther
Saving Grace with Tom Conti

Hummingbirds Nesting By Our Window, offered by Cheryl and Damion Haley, Arizona

The Hidden-Ask the Animals Sundays

I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11 ESV

Look into the Creation and find its Creator. His fingerprints are on anteater and atom. The natural world whispers of its supernatural sister. Reveals secrets. Shares truths. This world bears His colors and His character. His strength and His tenderness. His economy and His generosity.

A young artist friend has been uncovering God every time she opens her pastel box. She has generously offered to share some of her treasure with us.


Sister squirrel came to visit. She savors the bounty the Earth has provided. Nuts, seeds, acorns, corn, mushrooms, wildflowers and fruit tempt and delight. She always looks ahead and so prepares a feast for the future when trees and fields rest.

She gathers acorns, about 900 per year, and buries them close to her drey (treetop dwelling of two rooms and a nursery). They will be life to her in winter's long months when hunger digs itself a much needed meal. She has hidden her own future and preserved her own life.

So it is with us. Those scriptural acorns underlined and memorized, written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, saved in precious cards from friends, hidden in our hearts, they feeds us in the lean times.

When trials come they are unearthed. When a son goes to war, when a lump is discovered, when a loved one dies, when a job is lost, when a new career path is steep, when we feel unloved, when we are tempted, when life is unyielding...winter snows are brushed aside and desire and memory grab a shovel. If the crisis is hard and desperate enough bare nails will suffice to unearth hope. In the most trying of times what has been hidden may be our only salvation.

I have esteemed (treasured) the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. Job 23:12 KJV.

The Hebrew for the storing up of God's word in our opening verse is from the same root word as to esteem or treasure the words of God's mouth in Job 23. It means to reserve or hoard. To pack away as much as we can carry to avoid sin and starvation and promote life and a future.

As Lent begins, let's take a lesson from Christian's squirrel. Let's esteem God's word above the food that lacks nourishment and bury a few acorns. NCIS and CSI and American Idol may entertain but they will not sustain. Take time with the Word.

Two years ago John and I fasted our cable for Lent. We drew sunflowers with scripture verses and sent them to friends. We read Contemplating the Cross and baked bread and had communion at our supper table. Some of that bread is still feeding us. The 50.00 acorns we saved each month were planted in the mission field and are still being planted to this day. We don't miss the commercials.

Let God lead you as you store up His abundant goodness in these next six weeks. You will find the method that is right for you.

Talk to the animals. They have a wisdom we need.

-Kat


Ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;
let the birds tell you what's going on.
Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.
Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.
Isn't it clear that they all know and agree
that God is sovereign? That He holds all things in His hand—
Every living soul, yes, every breathing creature.
Job 12:7-10


God takes care of Creation. All things really do work together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUyLzRAFWPg&feature=related

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/11/981126102802.htm

(Special thanks to Christian Jeter, age 7, for using her giftings for God-things. She will join me to produce Ask the Animals for the remaining Sundays through Palm Sunday.)