Throwback Thursday – My Unceasing Thanksgiving

Throwback Thursday – My Unceasing Thanksgiving

As we draw ever closer to Thanksgiving, my thoughts go not only to where I am this year in terms of my own attitude and state of thankfulness, but also back over where I’ve come from. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays–I love that we have a day set aside to praise God for His faithfulness! So today and next week, on Thanksgiving itself, I’m going to revisit some of the reflections I’ve shared in Thanksgivings past. Why? Because they continue to linger in my heart and mind, and I revisit them myself regularly…so why not share?

I’m going to begin this week with last year’s reflection. This is one I think about regularly–not because of any insight of mine, but because of the insight of the author I’m quoting, which has lingered in my heart ever since I first read it. This in many ways sums up what I truly believe the purest form of thanksgiving is: quick obedience to our Lord.

My Unceasing Thanksgiving

first posted on November 25, 2021

“Why do I follow you? Because you are who you are, Lord, and because I rejoice in having been called by you. Let the swiftness of my feet in following you be my unceasing thanksgiving.”
~ Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word

When I read those words a few weeks ago, they resonated deep in my spirit. So often we view thanksgiving as something we have to pause to do, a state of mind that we have to work to get into. When Paul tells us to give thanks always, we think of it as something tending toward the impossible–at least if we’re not staying constantly conscious of it.

But I love this perspective, and it’s one I’m dwelling on this year as I celebrate our official Thanksgiving. That sometimes, the loudest praise is doing what God has called us to do. It’s abandoning our fishing nets and following after Him. It’s pouring our offering of perfume onto His feet. It’s rushing through the busy streets of life, just seeking the hem of His garment. It’s doing the work of the Kingdom. It isn’t a big meal or reflecting on all the “things” He’s given or even the people we love. Thanksgiving is about Him.

Obedience is thanksgiving. Honoring His call on our lives is thanksgiving. Rejoicing in the One whose path we follow is thanksgiving.

Lord, I thank you. I thank you with my lips. I thank you with my words. But I also thank you with my feet–may they be ever swift in chasing after you!

~*~

Come back next week, on Thanksgiving, for a full roundup of all my Thanksgiving posts over the years!

Dancing with God

Dancing with God

The other day, my husband and I were talking about the challenges of following God, of growing in Him, even of spiritual warfare.

“It’s hard.” That’s what so many people say. That’s what I’ve said many times. And it’s true, isn’t it?

Being a good Christian is hard. Choosing the right thing every . . . single . . . time is hard. Putting others above yourself is hard. Remembering in every moment to think of God’s will above your own is—you guessed it—hard.

But as we were talking, David had an observation that really resonated with me.

It’s hard because we make it hard, because we refuse to give up control. Because we think we have to be the one doing all the work. It’s hard because we want to hang on to our own will, not fully relinquish it to God.

It’s hard because we think we have to fight the battle under our own strength. Put on that Armor of God and charge into the fray, just hoping He’ll have our back.

David pointed out, though, that it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Certainly not all the time. He made this analogy, and it’s one I love.

All we really have to do is be a kid dancing with our daddy. We have to step up onto His feet. We have to put our hands in His, or even wrap them around His waist. And then we just have to let Him dance.

Isn’t that a powerful image? We don’t have to fight every minute of the day. We don’t have be weighed down and burdened by the challenges. True surrender to God’s will doesn’t mean punishment or drudgery or even a constant feeling of sacrifice (though of course, there is sacrifice in following Him above our own desires).

True surrender looks a lot like the trust of a child dancing with Daddy. True alignment of will looks like putting our feet on His, our hands in His. And then . . . then living this Christian life looks a lot like a dance. It feels a lot like laughter and joy and security and peace.

Because we know that He knows the steps. We know that He’ll move us exactly where we need to go. We know that when we’re so fully aligned with Him, He actually does the work—we just need to stay there, doing it with Him. We need to make sure we don’t stumble off onto our own path or take our fingers away from His.

And we need to keep looking up at His face. That’s the sweetest thing about being a child dancing with Daddy, right? The way they tilt their faces up to regard their loving Father. That’s how they keep from falling away.

That’s how we do the same.

Keep looking up into His precious face. Keep hanging on to His nail-pierced hands. Keep your feet firmly planted on his swift-moving ones. And feel the rhythm of the dance of grace.

A Challenge: No More Complaining, All Gratitude!

A Challenge: No More Complaining, All Gratitude!

It’s November. Every November, as I scroll through social media or blogs, I see people posting about what they’re grateful for. Thankful for. People taking the whole month to appreciate all they’ve been given from the Lord. Beautiful, obviously!

But you know…sometimes I see or hear those same people doing something we all fall into so easily, even during a month of gratitude: COMPLAINING.

I very nearly titled this post “Hey, you–yeah, YOU–stop complaining!” … but I wasn’t sure it would come through that I was talking to myself as much as you, LOL. But I totally am. Because here’s the thing, friends: complaining is addictive.

Seriously. It releases one of those chemicals into your brain, and it also elicits responses from people–either they jump on board with the complaining (bonding!) or they argue, but either way, it feeds our need to be seen and heard and to engage with others.

Complaining can sometimes help us articulate a problem and, hence, find a solution to it. Sometimes stating, “Man, I’m tired,” can mean, “I should probably stop working now and rest before I make a mistake,” or “Wow, I’ve put in a hard day’s work today!” Sometimes, when I say I’m sore, what I’m really saying is that I need to take a few minutes to stretch. There is simple observation…

But how often do we instead use our complaints as a constant lens through which we view the world? How often do we go looking for what we disapprove of in a situation, instead of focusing on the good?

Just think over your latest conversations. Food, politics, religion, your car, your work, your clothes, your family…how much of your focus on these topics was on the negative? Sure, we can be grateful we have all those things, but if we then turn around and pick it apart, are we really exhibiting the gratitude and thanksgiving that God calls us to offer up to Him?

In a book of efficiency called Effortless, the author had caught himself in a pattern of complaining so issued himself a simple challenge: every time he complained out loud, he had to put a dollar in a jar. Well, he soon curbed the spoken words, so then it was every time he thought about complaining, he put the money in. Pretty soon, he’d stopped even thinking complaints. Every time something came up that would usually have made him grumble, he consciously reframed it. Maybe into a mere observation: So maybe, “She is late AGAIN” turned into “Huh, that’s the third time this week she’s been late” and then–here’s the real trick–into a compassionate response like “I wonder why she’s late again? Are her days stressful? Is there anything I can do to help her with that?”

This month, I’m going to be issuing myself a challenge, and I’d love it if some of you would join me. Let’s turn our complaining into compassion and our grumbling into gratitude! Every time we think or speak a complaint, let’s pause and reframe it into something positive–something to be grateful for. Let’s stop being put out by people and start trying to help them.

My example: when walking along the beach with my best friend in September, I observed, “Man, it’s crowded out here! I hate crowded beaches.” We’d just been talking about complaining, so we laughed and immediately reframed it to: “Isn’t it great that so many people are out with their families enjoying God’s creation? It’s pretty awesome that I get to be here sharing that with them too.”

To help us all out with that, I’ve even created a little printable mini-journal. To help us develop the habit, let’s keep this with us and jot down our complaints–and more importantly, our reframing of them into a praise–throughout the month. I bet as the weeks wears on, we’ll find fewer and fewer occasions to use it…because we’ll stop complaining in general!

What things or topics tend to evoke the most complaints in your conversation? How can you check that impulse?

Festooning the Lord’s Prayer

Festooning the Lord’s Prayer

A month ago, I blogged on Colossians 3, inspired by the spiritual formation exercises that we’re doing in the Patrons & Peers group. This month, our lovely resident spiritual director, Laura Heagy, sent us a great exercise on “Festooning the Lord’s Prayer.” The phrase comes to us from C. S. Lewis–the practice is old and so amazing!

The idea is this: read through the Lord’s prayer slowly, phrase by phrase, and dwell on what each word and phrase really means. Rewrite it for yourself, adding to it to make it not only applicable to your life but to convey the breadth and depth and insight of these seemingly-simple words that Jesus chose to model for us.

I’ve done this before, but never so deliberately, and so frequently. I haven’t written down my thoughts on it every day, but enough that I can start to pick out the themes of what really strikes me. Some days, I choose to view it through the lens of Holy Communion and what Jesus truly gave for us on His cross. Some days, I focus on the fact that every single personal pronoun is plural–not about ME, but about US. Some days, I focus on how missional this prayer is.

To chat a moment about the practical, I set up a section in a notebook for doing this. At the top of each page, I wrote one phrase of the prayer–in color, centered. Then I have the page to write my musings and festoonings throughout the month, about each phrase. It’s been working well for me!

Here are a few of my thoughts from the last couple weeks–I’m sharing seven days’ reflections, simply because it’s a nice rainbow. 😉 Each color coordinates with the same color for each phrase. I invite you to break out a cute little notebook and take a few minutes to do some festooning of your own! If you feel so inclined, share in the comments!

Our Father, who art in Heaven

My beloved Papa, ruler of the universe who holds me in Your hand…
Daddy of us all, who is present by our sides…
My God and Father–the one who makes His home in heaven…
Our Father–not just of me but of all believers–who is all around us…
Dear Dad, I know you make Your home in a place of perfection, but still you fill this very room…
God who guides us with a loving hand–wherever we go, you are there…

Hallowed be Thy name

I will honor your very name and set it aside as holy, knowing the power that speaking it wields…
We sing your praises and worship your name…
Let us revere, honor, and glorify you, knowing you are the very definition of what is holy…
We praise your name together, because you are worthy…
It’s easy to speak of you in passing or for my own purposes, but that’s not right. I need to remember you–and even your name–are powerful and sacred…
We will lift up your name and recognize you as the one who defines holiness and righteousness and goodness…

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven

May we live in your kingdom, bring it here, by doing your will as fully and wholeheartedly as your angelic messengers…
Through Christ you established your kingdom–help us to do your will as joint heirs of that kingdom…
Help us to do your Kingdom work here on earth…
We want to work together as ambassadors of your Kingdom…
It’s so easy to seek MY will and assume it’s right…but no. I need to seek YOUR will and conform mine to it. Help me to do that, and to do it atively, purposefully…
Give us the eyes to see your will, the hearts and minds and hands to do your work here on earth, redeeming the world…

Give us this day our daily bread

Provide for us today exactly what we need in order to carry out your will…
Thank you for providing Christ daily for us, to sustain our souls…
Give us all we need today, Lord, so that there are no needs or lack to distract us from your work…
Today, provide us all with what we need–the food, the clothes, the place to live…the inspiration, the love, the strength…
Because you’re a loving Father who sees so much further than we can, you know our true needs. Thank you for meeting them day by day. Help me to trust you with that…
Give us all we need to do that work for your kingdom–food, clothing, shelter, transportation, money, vision…

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

Forgive us for every time we’ve taken a step off your path and gone where we shouldn’t have–and help me likewise to forgive every offense of others…
May His blood wash away our every sin and remind us to forgive others too…
Cancel out our debts against You and give us the grace to cancel the debts of those who owe us too…
We are a people who sin, against each other and against you–please help us to live and walk in grace, mercy, and forgiveness…
I’m going to do things wrong–we all are. Help me to forgive every hurt. Forgive every hurt I’ve given. Help me to accept and extend that healing grace…
Forgive us for the hurt we’ve caused others and give us the grace, love, and mercy to forgive those who have hurt us…

Lead us not into temptation

Please, as my feet are on that path of yours, may it guide me away from tests and trials…
May partaking of Him strengthen us each day to resist any temptation…
Let no trial or test come upon us that will lead us away from you–we know we’re weak!…
We are always poised to stray from your path, but please keep our aim true…
There are so many things to temps us, to test us, to try us! You can see those snares, Lord. Lead us away from them…
Protect us from the things that would reveal our human weakness…

But deliver us from evil

And deliver me from every bad thing that comes…
When bad things befall us, save us from them, Lord…
Save us, Lord, from the fiery darts of Satan and also from our own sinful natures…
When the powers of darkness close in, save your children, Father…
Away from the enemy, away even from consequences that would befall us if we continued on those dangerous, selfish paths. Keep hold of my hand, Lord! YOU are safety and joy!…
And from both active and passive forces of evil–the devil’s really out to get us as well as our own sin and folly…

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever

You rull the earth, you can do anything. You are filled with majesty and light and beauty forever…
Everything we may desire, you hold in your hand–you always have and you always will…
We know that all that is good, right, and mighty is in you…
For you, ruler of all, can do everything. Our hope rests in you, always. you ARE everything good and holy…
Everything I see, everything I could want, the power people fight and kill over–it’s yours. Fame and glory–yours, onlyr yours. Then, now, and forever…
You are the only one in the universe capable of all this!…

Amen.

I believe!
It’s true!
Yes, Lord!
This is what we believe!
Yes, Lord. This is true. I know it, I cling to it, and I hold out my hands to offer it all back to you.
I know it’s so!

A Walk Before Daybreak

A Walk Before Daybreak

We stepped outside, the warm light from the kitchen glowing behind us, nothing but darkness before us. The air carried an autumnal chill that stung our cheeks, filled our nose, and cut right through our exercise clothes. Silence permeated the landscape. I pulled out my phone, cued up the app that would play our morning prayers, and familiar, beautiful words spoke out into the darkness:

Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise.
Come, let us worship the Lord…

My husband and I have been taking morning walks each day for over a year. We’ve been listening to morning prayers together for a couple months. But as our schedules demanded we move things earlier to be able to get out of the house on time, we decided to combine the two…and to do them both at 6 a.m., despite the fact that this time of year, that meant before daybreak. “Do we really want to walk in the dark?” we’d asked. And we answered, “Why not? Let’s give it a try. We can always bring a flashlight.”

It isn’t as though I’ve never taken a walk in the dark before, even in those last minutes before dawn. But there’s something about walking with prayers singing out around me that made me view it all in a different way. Or maybe in a very old way–certainly, none of my thoughts were new, either to me or to other people who have observed light and darkness and how the very physical versions remind us of so many Truths on a spiritual, mental, and emotional level.

Not new, but worth dwelling on again nevertheless.

The first day, we went out without a flashlight. Just to see, we said. Just to see if we could walk without it. The first side of our driveway we walked down, overhung with trees, was so dark in those first moments that my instinct was to reach out and grab my husband’s arm. Even though it isn’t exactly conducive to the brisk pace we always set, I wanted to lean in. To feel his presence. To know that though I couldn’t see him even a foot away in that darkness, he was there.

And I thought, How beautiful, Lord, to know that even when I can’t see You through the darkness, I know You’re there. Right there.

As we reached the bottom of our driveway and prepared for our first turn, usually executed with quickness and precision and knowledge, we both hesitated. Where was the bush that marked where we turn? The slope of the hill, the feel of the place said we were close, but where was it? Finally we turned; at that same place on the next day, when we had a flashlight in hand, we made the initial turn without the hesitation–but then I came to a halt, waiting for that beam of light to swing around. Because without it, I had no idea where my feet should land. I had no idea, having simply turned 180-degrees, where I was now.

And I thought, How lost I am when I turn from Your path, Lord, even a little. Even when I think I should know what I’m doing. Without Your Light guiding me, I can’t see a thing.

We traveled up that arm of the driveway again, under the thickest covering of trees. The prayers still sang out around us, filling my soul with the beauty of the Psalms, but I could see less even than before. I nearly tripped–as I often do even in the daylight–over that uneven spot where the driveway passes over some sort of culvert or pipe or something. But then–just then, when I stumbled a bit–I looked up. There, the trees end. There, starlight pierced the black sky with  bejeweled points of light that literally took my breath away. This is what Bram stayed up all night to behold in Worthy of Legend. This was the beauty he waited for daily.

And I thought, You positioned each star just so in the universe, Lord. Suns in those far-off solar systems, worlds unto themselves. Yet here they are, visible in my sky, showing up in lines and shapes, shining their glory to remind me of Yours. You call each star by name. You see it from every position, as we never can. We see only how each one looks, studded against our darkness. But You know the true measure of their light. We see only the beauty or the usefulness, but You created them with far more grandeur than what we can perceive.

On that side of our looping driveway, the neighbor’s house shines its own porch light out into the darkness. It spills out onto the drive, illuminating the general slope of the land, but not quite strong enough to show every rock or dip that could trip us up. Still, it’s helpful. When that light is at our back, illuminating our path, we can walk with confidence.

When You, Lord, are illuminating our path, we can walk with confidence.

But then at the bottom of that end of the driveway, we turn again. That porch light–so helpful a second ago–is now blinding. If we look up, we can see nothing but that globe of light. It makes the darkness around it seem darker, the things we could see a minute ago invisible in contrast to it.

Like when we look toward Your face, Lord. Your glory blinds us to all else. Your Light makes what had seemed bright-enough in the world suddenly cast in shadow. Beside You, nothing is visible unless You choose to illuminate it.

Then we pass by the house with its light, and we have to blink a few times. The darkness that had seemed navigable before now seems so dark.

When we’re in the world, we think we can see. We think we can navigate it with success. But looking at Your Light shows us how dark it really was and is. It makes us not want to enter that darkness again–certainly not without a Light of our own, shining a path.

How blessed we are, that He has called us out of darkness. How blessed we are, that He has called us into His marvelous light. And it makes me marvel. It does. Something as simple as a walk before daybreak can make it so clear–we are nothing without Him. We fumble about, we think we know where we’re going, we may even convince ourselves that the world is just as we like it. That it isn’t that dark. But the moment His Light touches that darkness, we see the truth.

The fifteen minutes of our morning prayer ended long before our walk. We got to watch the darkness lessen, degree by degree, lumen by lumen. Then a new beauty began to creep into view–the sun, warming the sky there between the mountains in the east. It started as a low blush of orange. Then it spread its fingers out, up and up and up into the sky, turning it from black to blue, to purple, to red, to orange, to yellow.

Dawn had come. Day had broken. Darkness was banished for another twelve hours. Light had found the world.

Thank you, Lord, not just for the sun we see each day, but for the Son that lights our eternity.

We reached the end of our walk, turned back into our warm, glowing kitchen. Our cheeks were cool, pink from autumn’s air. Our bodies were warm, invigorated from the 45-minute walk. Our spirits were renewed from the Scripture we’d just heard. Our minds were set from the conversation that followed.

And our hearts…our hearts were attuned to the Light of His coming. Today, tomorrow, forever. Each day and night a reminder of the glory of the God who reigns over the heavens.

Thank you, Lord, for Your Light.

Belief and Truth

Belief and Truth

Back in the days when I spent an hour of every weekday reading aloud to my kids for school, it was no great surprise to me which books from our reading list my kids loved best: the novels. We always had a novel going, and they were usually classic (often Newbury Award winning) historical fiction selections that tied in with what we were studying in history. But it wasn’t long before Rowyn (as a primary schooler) would start asking the same question with every book.

Is this true?

At the time, I would explain historical fiction to him–that the characters themselves were from the author’s imagination, but that they were interacting with true events or showing us a true glimpse of the world in which they were set. And Rowyn would always make a face and say something along the lines of, “But I want it to be true.”

These old memories, now nearing a decade old, came back to me the other week as David and I were talking about theology on one of our morning walks. What, we were asking, does it really mean to believe in something? It’s an interesting question when you dig down below the face of it. We believe in God. We believe in Jesus. Using the word belief there tells us that the very word gets at something important, some need planted deep within the heart of humanity. 

But we use the same word for other things. We ask if children believe in Santa Claus. We talk about whether we believe in ghosts. And as a novelist, I hear all the time whether my plots or characters or twists are believable.

Combining that thought with Rowyn’s question brought me to a rather odd but inescapable quirk of the human mind and heart: Our belief does not hinge on whether something is true…but on whether we want it to be. We can be “willing to believe” something not because  the evidence is irrefutable or the facts beyond dispute, but simply because we find the story compelling or convincing.

Then there’s the flipside–we can choose not to believe something because we don’t like it. We once sat in a Bible study in which there was a questionable version read of a verse. We had the Greek in front of us, so we could say, “Actually, that’s not accurate. It reads like this.” And someone replied, “Well, I just don’t believe that.”

I recall just blinking at her. Here was a woman who professed to be a Christian and “believed the Bible to be true,” but who was unwilling to believe a particular statement irrefutably from the Bible and upheld in the majority of translations through time (if not that one particular one) because it didn’t align with her worldview. And it wasn’t even one of those verses that you can take out of context or which was poetic. It was a concept expounded on over and again in the Epistles (to put others above yourself). How, I wondered, can you just say you don’t believe it and expect that to be an argument against it?

And yet…how often do we all do that? Reject something because we don’t like it? How often do we cling to something untrue because we do like it? How often do we think that our very belief or unbelief is all that it should take to convince the world to think like we do?

It’s a concept that we’ve been talking over a lot as we think about miracles through the history of the Church, of healings associated with things like relics, of the mysteries of faith. When we’re looking on those things from the outside, our questions tend to be, “Did that really happen? I don’t know if I can believe it.” But the “truth” of it isn’t really what we’re objecting to. There are Eucharistic miracles, for instance (when communion wafers have been turned into flesh), that have been scientifically examined and confirmed. But people will still dismiss it. Not because it isn’t true according to the definitio of factual–but because they can’t believe it. Why can’t they believe it?

Because if they believe it, they have to admit to other things too. They have to accept the whole of faith. They have to accept as Truth other things they’ve denied. You can’t believe in a miracle without granting the validity of the God, the Church, and the people who performed it.

The real beauty is the reverse though. When we surrender our wills and our logic to God, suddenly we can believe in things that seemed impossible, because we hold Him as the ultimate Truth. We can believe in the Red Sea parted. We can believe in the dead rising. We can believe in Peter’s shadow healing people. We can believe in the blind receiving sight, in storms being calmed, in angels battling for us in the heavenly spheres. We believe it not because it’s believable, but because when we put our hand in God’s, He gives us the grace to accept as Truth what defies logic. He gives us the grace to want to believe, and so, to do so. The cry of that desperate father–Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!–suddenly comes into clarity.

We’re all capable of believing in what isn’t true…but the real triumph of faith is being able to believe in what is.