Chased by Grace

It is the GraceChase that proves God to be God above all others.

Have you any idea just what that means?

If you are a parent, and your sweet chubby toddler spills his milk and you are in a good mood, you smile and say, "That's okay, honey," as you grab your wet cloth.

God's mood remains the same: He is always ready to wipe up our spills with a wet cloth. No spill can spoil His mood for us. That's exactly it--He is always for us.

Isn't that astonishing? We search the world over--every dating site, every bar, every church, every moment--for the one who would have our best interest at heart. That's the one we want to be in love with.

If we let ourselves be caught by Grace, we find that who we are--at our best or most miserable moment--is exactly who God is in love with.

God is in love with you. A great starting point for every day in this sometimes harsh and bleak world.

Perhaps He would say to us:

I am not too good to be true.

I am simply...True.

Bring Me your whole broken self and allow Me to show you how True Love heals.

It is Who I AM.

Thank you, God, for chasing us with Grace. I give You my whole broken self.

Chased by the Melting of Our Hearts

I was a vendor at a national middle school conference in Portland, OR, selling my rewards-based discipline program I had designed as a principal.

An assistant principal from a tough CA school walked directly toward me and asked, "What do you do with outlaw children?"

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you."

Really?

Because I believe God hears and God can answer, I sat distracted at dinner, asking in my mind, "God, what do you do with outlaw children?"

Melt their hearts.

I gave the assistant principal that very answer the next day. I don't know if it changed the course of his work but it changed everything about mine:

We teachers once were children,

Only dreaming what we'd be;

Tending wounded sparrows,

Teaching dolls their ABC's.

Those dreams became a classroom

With wounded sparrows still;

Our orders now to teach these kids,

Some with broken wills.

Our lesson from the sparrow

In whose healing we took part?

To learn is flight preceded

By the melting of their hearts.*

God viewed freely as God chases us by melting our hearts with His compassion, His forgiveness, His constant motion of healing our broken, dusty selves.

Melted hearts turn to truth and productivity because they want to follow their Leader, the One Who trumps their case to the world (the psalmist to God in Psalm 139):

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

God's tender making of me--if I ponder it, believe it, wrestle with it--leads me right back to Him, desiring deeply what He has for me.

*Debi White, "The Melting of Their Hearts."

Chased by Rare Opportunity

An opportunity is something set before us that, if acted upon, generally leads us in a positive direction.

Rare? Well, that something (opportunity) is not often seen.

And so when I talk about God, I'm talking about the Jesus who invites us to embrace our weakness and doubt and anger and whatever other pain and helplessness we're carrying around, offering it up in all of its mystery, strangeness, pain, and unresolved tension to God, trusting that in the same way that Jesus's offering of his body and blood brings us new life, this present pain and brokenness can also be turned into something new.*

Is it possible that God can be trusted with my pain and brokenness, regardless of what picture I have had (past or present) of Him to the contrary?

Is it possible that the God of science and miracles and intervention in others' lives could be interested in me--me--with an intensity of which I've only dreamed?

A God who would care about the things I care about because He cares so much about me?

A God who would take my hand if I offered it and lead me into the very best version of myself and my life in this world?

A God who would see me through all of the tragedy and brokenness that my life might endure?

Sounds like an opportunity too good to be true, i.e., rare or even non-existent.

The Good News? That is the Opportunity found in the Bible, consistently moving us forward as we answer His invitation to do life with Him. What is rare is our willingness to embrace Opportunity as fully as It presents Itself.

Could your heart use a Rare Opportunity?

*Rob Bell, What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

Chased by Doubt

You and I are chased by Doubt.

Doubt is a detective par excellence. It constantly monitors the back alley of our fears, strategically moving one to the forefront when it will best ambush us.

I am about to keep my grandkids? Doubt inserts anxiety that something will happen on my watch into my consciousness.

The money will run out before the month does? Doubt casts shadows on God's ability to always make it somehow turn out.

Love (yesterday's post) and Doubt are opposite ends of the life spectrum, and we live in the tension in the middle. Every decision takes us in one direction or the other.

I picture it like a Great Tug-of-War. We are atop the rope, trying to balance as the earthly fight ensues between the call of the LoveChaser (God) and the temptation to Doubt (one of many faces of the Enemy of God).

When we are not anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present [our] requests to God, we step toward the LoveChaser (Philippians 4:6).

When we listen to Detective Doubt, we allow ourselves to be dragged toward fear and misery.

A step in either direction fuels momentum to go even further: doubt piles upon doubt, while the choice to trust God in a situation powers strength to continue movement toward our ever safe Harbor.

We can't lose the position of tension in this life. Doubt has permission to chase us.

But the Tug-of-War is ours to advance in the best direction, one decision-to-trust-God at a time.

Chased by Love

You and I are being chased by Love.

We are surrounded by voices that tell us that is too good to be true. Love couldn't possibly want us; we are either not enough good or too much bad.

We have been scarred by religious talk that tried to dismember our souls from the LoveChaser.

We are seduced by Busy and Easy.

But chased we are, by the One Who set us in motion.

The LoveChaser set us free to walk away, in hopes that we would recognize that He wants us to come back only if we want to, only if we choose to.

True Love is that generous. It will risk loss to give the object of Its love the freedom to choose.

If we are letting Love catch us, how do we share that hope with someone who still believes he or she is not enough because voices have painted an inerrant picture?

Shouldn't the conversation be about how much we are loved by the LoveChaser?

We all are desperate for True Love, extravagant intimacy, to be known and loved for exactly who we are--and are not.

That Love is chasing you at this very moment.

He is God. Would you consider asking to be caught?

The Power of Cheering On One Another

My sixty-something friend dragged my sixty-something self into CrossFit.

Of all the things our tiny town doesn't have (movie theater, EarthFare, Target--you get the picture), it, of course, has this most grueling workout community.

My proudest moments came when, in the beginning, I mentioned to my daughter and daughter-in-law what I was doing. They sounded astonished. So I thought I must be onto something.

What I was onto--now into--was an entry into pain I have never known. Only a nominal high school athlete and medium workout adult, I had stayed on the edge of fitness land, never pushing myself to any extreme.

Did I mention CrossFit is extreme?

Now several months in, it is my turn to be astonished:

Our bodies have a strength potential we rarely tap into, true at any age.

Initial, extreme soreness galvanizes into body parts coming to life.

My biggest spiritual lesson, however, is how much I depend on the encouragement and cheering of our leaders, Jama and Amy, and each other. It truly helps me push myself harder.

Is that what Hebrews 12:1-3 means?

[Discipline in a Long-Distance Race] Do you see what this means--all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running--and never quit. No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed--that exhilarating finish in and with God--he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

It is stunning to imagine those who have gone before us are, at this moment, cheering us on. It is possible that:

Our spiritual selves have a strength potential we rarely tap into, true at any age?

Initial, extreme resistance to this spiritual race galvanizes into soul parts coming to life?

Jesus was made fit for the cross by his endurance and wholesale surrender to God.

We are made fit for the accomplishment of the cross by our endurance and wholesale surrender to Jesus.

Thanks, pioneers, for cheering us on.

Thanks, Jama and Amy, for cheering me on.

Thanks, my sixty-something friend, for dragging me into learning how to be fit for the spiritual--and physical--long-distance race of life.