I can guess what you're thinking...

It was delightfully (and surprisingly) cool a week or so ago, and though my time was generally consumed with events surrounding my daughter's college graduation, I basked in as much of the turn-off-the-air-conditioning, open-the-windows, and linger-on-my-backyard-swing moments I could capture. 

And I can already guess what you're thinking.

After weeks, if not months, of finding little more than a photo here and there on the pages of Pollywog Creek, you'd think I'd have something more interesting than the weather to write about.

It's not that I'm not writing.

Late last year I resigned from the magazine writing I'd been working on for several years. My lifestyle no longer reflected the target audiences my articles were reaching, and I'd exhausted all I knew to say. When I received an offer to write for an upstart magazine that would both tap into my knowledge base and challenge my comfort zones by pushing me out of those areas of experience, I knew it was time to make a change, and I love it.

I treasure the online communities I'm part of and the relationships that have developed as a result, but my new assignments have taken me away from the computer and face-to-face with remarkable women whose stories I get to uncover in conversations over coffee or brunch. I get to be amazed as their stories unfold -- stories I'm trusted to retell in just so many words that never seem like enough. 

I'm also working (albeit slowly) on a series of children's books based on my archived and no longer available "Letters from Mimi's Backyard."

And I'm writing in places unfit for public consumption. I can't remember a time when I didn't process life in writing, and I have baskets of journals as evidence. The thought sometimes occurs to me -- usually at night when I'm trying to go to sleep -- that I probably should cull my journals and destroy those I'd rather no one ever discovers, because I can't reconcile scripture and the doctrine of Imago Dei with the popular sentiment that it's alright to tell your stories even if it hurts those who "behave badly."*

Since the beginning of her last semester in college, my daughter and I have been slowly making our way through Beth Moore's study on James, Mercy Triumphs. In her teaching on James 4.9-11, Beth addresses the proliferation of cynicism in our religious pop-culture that is expressed in how believers are so willing to publicly ridicule other believers -- especially in what we say and write online -- and it should turn our joy to gloom (vs 9).

There's a way to tell our stories without shaming others or being cynical, I believe -- a way that leaves wide spaces for grace and mercy to work in those who have hurt us and whose misbehavior has left scars on our souls. I can only imagine how I would feel if places I have failed to "behave better" (of which there are many) were written about on the pages of public journals, blogs, and social media platforms. 

So sometimes when weeks pass without anything more than a "Still Saturday" or "I Love Sunday" post, it's because I'm processing life more privately. 

*I edited this paragraph from when it was first posted after I realized I'd ventured too close to doing exactly what I was trying to avoid. Oh, the irony of it all. What does Proverbs say? When words are many, transgression is not lacking.

I {LOVE} Sunday::to receive grace upon grace...

 

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 1:14-17

With the Sunday Community at Lisha's #GiveMeGrace

Still Saturday::from an infinite, bottomless fountain...

 

If all the world (if I may so say) set themselves to drink free grace, mercy, and pardon, drawing water continually from the wells of salvation; if they should set themselves to draw from one single promise, an angel standing by and crying, “Drink, O my friends, yea, drink abundantly, take so much grace and pardon as shall be abundantly sufficient for the world of sin which is in every one of you;”—They would not be able to sink the grace of the promise one hair’s breadth. There is enough for millions of worlds, if they were; because it flows into it from an infinite, bottomless fountain.

John Owen (HT)

Thanksliving::Day 18:when grace rebounds...

When the grace of Jesus penetrates the human heart, it rebounds back to God as gratitude. Christian gratitude is grace reflected back to God in the happiness we feel toward Jesus.

John Piper, Grace, Gratitude, and the Glory of God

30 Days of Thanksliving - Day 18

Thanksliving::Day 17:to know what gratitude is...

The Nature of Gratitude

Almost all English translations miss a beautiful opportunity to preserve in English a play on words that occurs in Paul's Greek*. Paul says, "It is all for your sake, so that as charis extends to more and more people it may increase eucharistian to the glory of God." The Greek word for thanks is built on the word for grace: charis becomes eucharistian. This could have been preserved in English by the use of 'grace' and 'gratitude' which show the same original root. So I would translate: "It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase gratitude to the glory of God." The reason this is important is because when we try to define thanks or gratitude, what we find is that it has a very close relationship to grace. Unless we see this relationship, we really don't know what gratitude is.

John Piper, Grace, Gratitude, and the Glory of God

*2 Corinthians 4.15

30 Days of Thanksliving - Day 17

You know that stuff's not good for you...

Is this for you? The clerk asked, lifting the twelve-pack of sugar-free soda out of the grocery cart and placing it in the back of my Toyota 4-Runner. You know that stuff's not good for you, don't you? She continued as she finished loading my groceries into the car. Studies have shown that diet drinks actually make you gain weight, she added, reaching up to close the hatch door.

Stunned by her audacity, but not gifted with an ability to construct a witty or sarcastic response, I simply thanked her for her help, got in the car and began backing out of the parking space. Did that really happen? I thought. 

I'm sure it's true – the sodas aren't good for me – but we aren't friends or even acquaintances. Why would she think it's okay to share that piece of information with me or that I would be receptive to hearing it?

I watched in the rear-view mirror as she returned the empty grocery cart to the store – the one that sold me that pack of not-good-for-me sodas, and I wondered if I'd just been captured on Candid Camera.  

I may have been taken aback, but the conversation was so surreal that it made me laugh. And truthfully? I was grateful for the help. It had been a long day, and I was only two days past my last Rituxan infusion (to treat my rheumatoid disease). I didn’t feel well and I was exhausted. I don’t normally ask for help with my groceries, but she had noticed my weariness and walked across the parking lot to help me. When I wrote in my gratitude journal that evening, I counted her help as a gift.

But it also made me wonder, have I ever been that bold? 

Scripture tells me that when I speak into the lives of others it should be, only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4.29), and in a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1). And I have to admit – my words are sometimes neither gentle nor do they offer grace.

I need to remember: Is what I want to say appropriate? Have I earned the right to be heard?  Do I have a relationship with this person that is loving and nurturing? Am I being sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s promptings or am I just wanting to share my opinion? And if I'm speaking truth for all the right reasons, am I doing so with gentleness, and will my words build up and give grace? 

Still Saturday::still in need...

Jesus did not call us because of our righteousness or gifting. He called us when we were dead in our sins (Eph. 2.1) and blinded by the god of this world (2 Cor. 4.4). He called us when all we had was need.

And now that we are his disciples, all we redeemed sinners still really have is our need of his him. He is the Vine, and we are the branches; apart from him we can do nothing (John 15.5). He supplies us with the Spirit (Gal. 3.5)so that we serve in only the strength and grace that he supplies (I Peter 4.11).

Jon Bloom, Not By Sight, p.196

No good thing {Psalm 84.11 memory verse}...

Here's the problem with holding onto that verse: I don't always know what's good {for me}, and I'm completely incapable of walking uprightly on my own.

God doesn't make it difficult for me to know how to walk uprightly - in obedience to His commands and within the boundaries He has established in His Word and written on my heart - but it's a walk I'm powerless to make outside the blood-bought shield of grace and the mercies of each new day. 

...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Romans 3:23-25

Because He is good {and Psalm 84.4 memory verse}...

I stepped far out of my comfort zone when I accepted the invitation to speak. Sure, I was a competent and confident administrator and head nurse, but I was an inexperienced public speaker who'd momentarily forgotten that she was also terrified of the spotlight.

The day long seminar on renal failure was designed for university students and professional nurses, and included speakers from various health care disciplines. Each of us was assigned approximately one hour to cover our area of expertise and answer questions from the audience.

At first, I was honored to have been asked to speak. Having trained small groups of nurses and technicians, I was comfortable with the material and didn’t think teaching a larger audience would be too challenging, but as the seminar date approached I began to panic. Frantically, I offered up a series of “Lord, save me from this and I’ll do anything for you forever” pleas for mercy, and secretly hoped for a case of laryngitis or the flu – anything that would excuse me from the commitment.

New in my walk with Christ, I had yet to learn the discipline of acknowledging the Lord “in all my ways.” I’d been “wise in (my) own eyes” and accepted the invitation to speak without seeking God's wisdom. Meeting me where I was in those early baby-step days, the Lord lovingly graced me in abundance. “I’ll give you every penny of the honorarium, Lord, if you’ll just get me through this,” was my final plea, and that’s exactly how it happened. My knees may have knocked as I stood behind the podium, but I was relaxed and self-assured in my presentation that day. Sunday, and the opportunity to place my speaker's fee in the offering plate, couldn't come fast enough.

Over thirty years later, the Lord rightfully expects more from me. He’s more inclined to let me fall on my face when I step out in my own foolish wisdom and feeble strength and make plans and commitments outside His counsel – not because He’s less kind or loving, but because He is good. I’d never know the peace and joy of trusting Him if He always rescued me from myself. And that is abundant grace, too.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.

Proverbs 3:5-7a ESV

{Slightly edited from the archives.}

I {LOVE} Sunday::to receive the gift...

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 {ESV}

{Deidra's Sunday Community is taking an October break.}

I {LOVE} Sunday::to rejoice and be humbled by the gift of grace...

To leave a space for ponderings...

I can't get over God's sovereignty in all my affairs - how he arranges and weaves and ordains my comings and goings, and the immeasurable grace he saturates - over, around and through - this undeserving and broken vessel of mercy called me. 

My new Starbucks friend tells me she studies new words - and rightfully so, she's delighted with the meaning of grace. The undeserved favor of God, she tells me, but when she reads the tagline on my business card: Cultivating an eye for life's mercies..., she's puzzled and asks, What exactly is mercy?

I give her the answer that's been given to me. It's like this, I tell her. Grace is the gift of God's favor through Christ - favor we don't deserve, because there's nothing we can do to earn it. But mercy is the measure of God's compassion for us in that along with giving us what we don't deserve, he doesn't give us what we do.

She focuses on the wall over my shoulder and I see how she silently flips the words over and over in her thoughts - grace and mercy, grace and mercy. The same but different. Two sides of the same coin - the redemption for a wretch like me.   

I feel God's favor in this conversation across the top of our laptop screens - two women once strangers, venti cups of lattes on the table next to our iPhones and lifestyle worlds apart. I later wonder about the young man sitting to my right who's trying to work, his laptop open, but held captive by two women whose animated conversation has invaded his space as though he didn't exist.

An agent tells me - a year ago - she doesn't like my tagline. It's not clear, she says, this cultivating an eye for life's mercies, and I wrestle with changing it; but sometimes there needs to be space for questions, for curiosity and holy ponderings.

And when you know that you know that something fits, that it's right for you, you hold on and own it - trusting there's a reason. Maybe it's this table in Starbucks. Maybe there's more. I go where God leads me or I dare not go at all. 

That we have received anything good – any forgiveness, any acceptance with God, any glimpse of his glory, any hope of everlasting joy – this is all mercy. John Piper

Agent or not - it's all mercy. It's all grace. And it's all good.

To be useful in affliction...

The chronic pain of RAD, with it's unpredictable tidal waves of intensity, has opened my eyes to the deceptive power of addiction - and for that I am grateful. It's all too easy to condemn what I do not understand or cannot see.

God has graced me with a cheerful disposition; I was shocked when my doctor once asked if I was depressed. Chronic pain does that to you, you know, she added, and I had to admit that she was right. Not that I was clinically or chronically depressed, but that there have been moments when unrelenting pain wears down my resolve and dark clouds circle overhead. I begin adding up the lifestyle changes I've been forced to accept, the ways my disability has affected my relationships with those I love, and a way out begins to look attractive. Consequences are overshadowed by the promise of relief. Only  the sovereign grace of God, the will to persevere, to lean into Christ and push through pain, keeps me from falling into a trap where the grasp of addiction would be beyond my physical or emotional strength to escape.

So I throw no stones. No. Stones. I understand your pain. Take my hand and we'll hold onto Christ, for though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

I was grieved for my friend, a young mother and sister in Christ, when she messaged me last week to say she's been diagnosed with RAD, but she was relieved to know that someone understands what she is going through and encouraged that I will walk through this with her. To know that my suffering is useful - that though I'm not able to do what I've done in the past - there is a purpose that brings me joy.

I thought of this yesterday as I read Piper's No Blessing Like Health — With the Exception of Sickness. Piper identifies suffering as something that in God's sovereignty pastors must endure to be useful to their people, but I believe it's true for each of us - and to be useful in my affliction is grace. It brings joy and cheerfulness that strengthens my resolve and keeps those dark clouds away.  

{Photos: this week from my swing under the sweetgum trees in my Pollywog Creek backyard}

When with Christ we stand in glory...

I'm never more aware of Grace than in this week of intense remembering, for it was Easter that was a tether in my wandering years, pulling me back with a longing I could not explain. With senses at the edge of spilling over, my voice trembles even at the reading of Leviticus, I'm acutely aware of the sun's warmth in this unseasonable burst of winter here on Pollywog Creek, and I see the enemy roaming about looking for cracks in our veneer.

As I grieve for the wandering church, I throw no stones, but repent of my own lack of love and pray that you and I will lay aside our personal agendas, leave our ghettos, and fully embrace the pull that tethers us to this irresistible Grace and binds our hearts together in the love of Christ - that we will be conduits of the Grace that heals every wound, repairs every brokenness, redeems lost souls and restores what the enemy has plundered.

We know the outcome is secure
And Christ will have the prize for which He died
An inheritance of nations
O Church Arise