My favorite piece of camera equipment is my Canon 18-200mm lens, because I love to zoom in. The closer the better. I want to cut out extraneous things and just focus on my subject.
I’m finding this to be true in my on-going quest to abide as well. The more I focus on God, the more He fills my lens, other things are just pushed out. They become less important to me. I care less about my goals unless they are what God is calling me to do. I care less about being seen or known because I am focused on the one who sees and knows me most. I find myself comparing to others less because I simply don’t see them in my view anymore. It’s all Him.
Our pastor touched on this during the sermon this morning when he said, “When Jesus is bigger, when He is our focus, He is enough.” Amen.
It’s true. This week, through a variety of ways, I’ve spent more time thinking about God (preparing a talk for the middle schoolers, listening to podcasts during my drive times, reading 2 Corinthians which is hands down my favorite book of the Bible) and I feel like God’s been bigger to me. I’ve zoomed in. Oh to always have this view.
Our family has been reading through the Bible in a year, and we’re nearing the finish line! I can’t say I’ve spent extensive time in the minor prophets, which is where we are now. It’s fairly gloomy. But yesterday I read something that seemed quite timely, from Micah 5:2, 4:
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel,
whose origins are from of old,
from ancient times.”
He will stand and shepherd his flock
in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they will live securely, for then his greatness
will reach to the ends of the earth.
What amazes me is that this was written more than 400 years before Jesus was born. And it hit me – God’s timing is definitely different than ours. It says in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is not slow in keeping His promises, as some understand slowness. I must understand slowness not like God then because 400 years is not my idea of a quick answer to prayer. Really, it was even longer than that for the Israelites who were waiting for a Savior.
But I believe He came at just the right time. I guess that gives me hope, today, when I think about the things I wait for. I haven’t had to wait anywhere close to a long time for an answer to prayer, relative to the Israelites, but it can be difficult just the same. We pray, we hope, we wait, we are tempted to despair. But God’s timing is good. Keep waiting. Salvation is coming.
In Asia, it was hard to get into the Christmas spirit. There was no gently falling snow on the ground. No stores piped in Jingle Bells or Santa’s Coming to Town. A bank near us put out a sad, fake, sparkly tree one year. (They left it up all year, so then it just became a tree).
In later years, we did see more evidence of the holiday – cheap decorations sold in stalls at the market, salespeople wearing Santa hats in stores, Christmas sales. But altogether, it was easy to miss Christmas if you weren’t looking for it.
Here, you’d have to be living under a rock not to know that Christmas is on its way.
Our decoration-loving neighbors had their lawn decked out a month ago. (it honestly did not occur to us that we could decorate our lawn the first year back in the U.S. We’ve never had lawn). We have 6 Christmas parties this week alone. On the TV, in stores, in conversations – you know it’s Christmas. The sheer number of opportunities to celebrate overwhelms me like the toothpaste aisle used to when we’d come back to visit from Asia (seriously, how many kinds do we need?). You could be doing something Christmasy every minute.
But you could still miss Christmas.
Presents, Christmas cards, decorating the house (and apparently the yard), stocking stuffers, parties, and in the midst of it creating meaningful and lasting memories with the kids – all on the agenda. I could busy, distract, snack, and bake my way all the way through this holiday without settling into the reason we celebrate it.
Let’s walk through this season with awe and wonder at the love that was shown to us through God sending Jesus to live among us.
As we wait, let’s linger with Him.
Ponder the hope, peace, joy, and love this season brings.
When we look up at the stars, imagine following one of them with hope overflowing in us.
Breathe peace in the midst of chaos.
May each card and greeting remind us of the joy of all God gives us.
Let’s feel our worth, and our belovedness proven by Christ’s coming.
I recently had the joy of seeing a dear old friend (and by old I mean we’ve known each other a long time. We are not old. There really should be a separate word for this in English) and her family realize their dream of bringing two new daughters home through adoption. They’ve waited so long and their hearts have gone through unspeakable ache to come to this point. It’s awesome to see.
People often talk about adoption in how it reflects God’s adoption of us, but I think this time for me it has become clearer than ever. By that I mean I am more acutely aware of what it means for me, for us, to be adopted into His family.
My friend has written on her blog about the reality for her girls – how as much as they are happy to be adopted, it will take time for them to fully trust this new love, this new family. They have left all they know and come to a strange country and culture. I want to say to them, “You got great parents! You are so loved!” What they may understand at a head level may take time to sink deep into their hearts. I hope it happens quickly.
Aren’t we the same? When we enter a relationship with God, we are brought into a new kingdom, foreign to us. It doesn’t operate the way the world did. We come because we trust, at some level, the kindness of this King. We have no idea how long and how hard He has longed for us, to shower His love on us. Over time, hopefully, we will come to understand the depth of that love and come to define ourselves as His children.
In the meantime, we may have times when we doubt this new love. We may want to look back to things that used to comfort us. We may look at other people, other things, wondering if they will love us more. They won’t. They can’t. I hope that, especially as we look ahead to celebrating the birth of Christ, we can fully trust in this amazing love we have in our Father. He went through everything to get us, and He will not let us go. He longs for us to rest completely in our identity as His beloved children.
“If thou could’st empty all thyself of self
like to a shell dishabited
then might he find thee on the ocean shelf
and say, ‘This is no dead’
and fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou
and hast such shrewd activity
that when He comes, He says, ‘This is
enow unto itself, ’twere better let it be.
It is so small and full, there is no room
for Me.'”
-Sir Thomas Browne
This poem has been on my mind lately, as busyness and a general “I’ve got this” feeling have kept me from spending a lot of time with God. I’m thankful for a week where things have gone well, but I’ve noticed how easy it is in those times to let self fill in the spaces in my heart, rather than to leave that space for Him to speak.
So my prayer is that God would help me to “empty all myself of self” so He can fill me instead.
Go to the well, or in this case, go to my friend Judy Douglass’s website to read my guest post entitled Go to the Well. I’ve posted on Judy’s blog before and I hope if you’ve read them you have stuck around there to read more of her writing. If not, do it this time! 🙂
Years ago, I was introduced to the idea that from the beginning of life, we build a house for ourselves. This house is constructed of the strategies we use to make life work apart from God. It’s how we find our place, protect ourselves from pain, feel loved and needed. Our houses all look different but in many ways they are the same. They serve us well. They help us. They make us feel secure.
Along the way, if we meet God, He will offer us another house. It’s a far superior house, as all God’s resources are superior. It has a better foundation, one grounded in His truth about us. It’s not affected by wind or rain. Really, it’s a better place to live.
So sometimes we live there. But often, we’re not even aware of it, or if we are, we don’t feel a need for it. The house we’ve built seems quite sufficient.
The problem is, though, it’s not really a house. It’s a prison.
When I learned about these houses, I began to see how well my prison held me. My well-constructed strategies of staying put together and performing well keep me from being free, from being vulnerable. They kept me from the very solid existence in truth that I thought they gave me.
God’s house looked appealing. The problem was, I didn’t know how to live there. It felt too open, exposed, unknown. I looked back at my own house and thought, “Well, I can’t live there, but I don’t know how to live here.” I felt emotionally homeless.
Over the years, I have slowly been learning what it looks like to live more consistently in the house God has for me. It’s a house where life and love come not from something I do or what the world provides, but from His deep and unchanging love for me, and who He says I am.
I hoped at some point that I would be able to burn the old house down so that it was no longer an option. This seems reasonable to me – why would God want me to live somewhere else? At times I have asked Him to put me in His house, to lock the doors and board up the windows, so that I can never leave. I know that every time I try to use my own strategies to make life work, I dishonor Him. I deny His love for me. I reject the life He offers. I put myself back in prison. I want Him to keep me from doing that.
But He won’t. The choice is there every day for me. Will I choose to rely on my own ways? Or will I leave behind what feels like life and trust in that which truly is? It means living by faith, having the courage to be open, to keep my heart awake, to not retreat to safety but hold tight to Him.
That was a relief to me because faith is not my strong suit. It’s not my faith or lack of it that carries me, it’s His faithfulness. When I think about the transitions we’ve gone through as a family, I can see how true this is.
God’s Faithfulness through Transition
When we moved overseas, God showed us His sovereignty and goodness, when we questioned whether having a baby, leading a team, and learning new language and culture all at the same time was really the best idea. It was, for His purposes.
In becoming a mom, He showed me that He is El Roi – the God who sees us, even when the world might not.
When we moved to Singapore, and He knew how hard it was for us to leave, He showed us His tenderness and compassion through working out all the details in perfect timing.
When we moved back into East Asia 5 years later, things didn’t go quite so smoothly. I remember saying to God, “But last time you worked all these things out so well! Why not now?” And He said, “Because that’s not what you need now.” What we needed was to be refreshed and renewed, and He showed His delight in doing that for us.
When we moved back to the U.S., I wondered, “How will God reveal Himself to us this time?”
God’s Recent Faithfulness
There were huge decisions to make. We had to buy a house – here we were at 40 years old but we’d never bought a house before! We had to decide what part of Orlando to live in, and we discovered that our friends could be very evangelistic about what part of Orlando is best. It was confusing; They all sounded good! We had to decide where to send our kids to school – we’d not had a lot of options before. It was overwhelming, and the best pro/con list in the world wasn’t going to help us. The house we bought had the most pros, but it also had the most cons, by far.
What we needed was His wisdom. If you ask me today why we chose this area, this house, this school, I will say that it was simply because God told us to. With each decision there came a day when He clearly said, “This one. This place.” He has been our wisdom and our guide.
Recently I pulled out all the journals I could find that I’ve written as an adult. (Yes, I still write on paper. Someday, when computers take over the world, they will have to pry the last piece of paper from my cold, dead hands).
But I digress. I am trying to gather my thoughts from our time in Asia and assemble them into a book for people to read. I went searching through my journals for evidence of how God was working in my heart through all that time. I discovered lots of great quotes from conferences and books, evidence that I have always been addicted to chocolate, and the knowledge that on January 31, 2004, our son tried to heal a cut on his foot by stepping on a piece of processed cheese. Genius.
And I found God. God meeting me over and over again in places just like this one. I was reminded of His tenderness as we moved from China to Singapore, when all the details worked out so smoothly it was uncanny, and it was like He said, “I know this is hard for you. Let me make it just a little easier.” I saw His joy in refreshing me through the first summer back in China, after two tough years in Singapore. I felt Him as El Roi – the God who sees, in those times when I had lost my bearings and felt invisible. I was reminded of the pure realness of His existence as I pondered Him meeting me on the other side of the globe. I experienced His answers to prayer over and over. I saw Him as my Shepherd, directing my path in new and unfamiliar places. His mercy, grace, compassion – it was all there.
His faithfulness is unspeakable. I’m so thankful to have this written evidence that serves as a reminder to me that the One who was with me consistently there is the same One who is with me now.
The last two years we lived in Singapore were, in a word, hard.
The summer prior we’d said goodbye to several families and had to move 2 miles from where we’d been living a glorious communal existence with them.
Within months of living in our new apartment, my allergies kicked in like they’d been making up for lost time. I burned through every over the counter allergy drug Mustafa Centre had to offer within about 2 months.
When I finally broke down and saw an allergist, he put me on an experimental drug that was supposed to eradicate ALL my allergies. Most people saw dramatic results within 4-6 months. I quit after nine because I’d seen no change. He was baffled.
I was just plain tired of it.
In the meantime, he’d put me on a prescription allergy drug as well, which I had to take immediately upon waking.
If I didn’t, forget about it. By 10 am I’d be scratching my face off and unable to see straight through a fog of sneezing. I’d pop some Benadryl, point the kids toward the TV, request that they not kill each other before daddy came home, and let the Benadryl slam me into symptomless sleep.
Homeschool? Barely. Getting out of the house to do fun stuff with the kids? Not much. Meals? Housework? Nope.
On top of that, Erik’s job had become more demanding, and the kids were lonely without the constant presence of friends which had been their previous existence. Yep, it was just. plain. hard.
So often during that time I would cry out to God and ask Him to change it.
I raged. Questioned God. Doubted His love. I pleaded with Him to just make it easier. One day, He responded by gently pointing out that what I was really asking was not to have to need Him quite so much.
We Just Want It to Be Easier
Nobody signs up for “hard.”
It’s not a popular class. We treat it like an elective, but it’s a core course. It’s where we learn to come to the end of ourselves and to trust in His abundant resources.
We say we want to grow in Christlikeness, in character, in faith, but when it comes to the reality of what it takes to get there? I know I for one am often inclined to say, “Um . . . no thanks.”
When trials come, I’m always tempted to say, “God, just make it easier.” I want to jump to the end where I’ve learned the lessons and grown and are all mature and glowing. (that’s what happens, right? Tell me that’s what happens)
But I think back on those two years in Singapore. Yes, they were hard. But were they worth it? You bet.
I can’t tell you how much God met us, and how He used that situation for good (not the least of which was to take us back to China, which was our dream), how He shaped me in that brokenness.
So I have hope. God meets us in the hard, not to make it easier, but to show us that He is strong enough for it if we will just own our deep need for Him and trust Him.
