i want to see

I live in a garden. This garden, while beautiful, is ravaged by the Fall. The thunder outside reminds me that danger is imminent. I am not safe. Children in this garden get brain cancer and die. Adolescents are plagued by eating disorders. Some take their own lives. Mamas get breast cancer. Daddies drink themselves into an early grave. Danger is everywhere. The effects of the Fall, of the day when the Woman took the apple because she did not trust her God, are evident every moment in this garden.

I live in a garden. This garden holds the possibility of rebirth. Every spring astounding beauty is birthed. Blooms like banners of a million colors crawl out of green balls. New life is everywhere. The rain feeds these buds. The green in the grass sings to my eyes of a Creator. I connect to a Mama in trouble. I offer her my hand because she has offered me hers a few years ago. I offer her companionship on this treacherous and breath-taking path called life. My heart swells when my love picks up his son and dwarfs him in big arms cradling him in LOVE. Smiles the sizes of watermelons speak to me of wonder and mystery. Laughter fills my halls and I know that LIFE is more powerful than destruction. Hope lives in this garden.

I live in a garden. We groan for new life. The flowers and the rocks and me and the Mamas in trouble, we ache and we groan. We beg God to have mercy. We beseech Him for new LIFE, for grace, for help. We ask for eyes to see His Presence in this garden.

I live in a garden: in the now and the not yet. He is RISEN. Victory is mine, ours. Yet I struggle, fumble and fall. One day pain will end. One day death will be defeated. One day sin will not afflict my body. But that day has not yet come. Yet it has. The knowledge that Jesus won by losing fills my bones and my lungs with a scent of the promise. 

He has paid the ransom. I am free. I can live free. Laughter is the music of hope. Hope is more abundant than despair in this garden. 

Today I can choose to see Him. If I need to, I can ask a friend to help me see Him. I want to see HOPE. 

life in the blood

I am no Hot Yoga expert. I’ve been to class about six or seven times. The philosophy, as I understand it, is to compress areas of the body to deprive them of oxygen. Then as you re-open those areas, oxygen-rich blood flows to them and with it healing. 

Healing is in the blood.

Yesterday in my spiritual direction group, we talked about an image I had drawn in my journal on April 14. I am aware that God is drawing me closer and asking me to trust more in Him. To trust the ways He has carried me. To trust His provision. To trust His plan. 

I drew this “trust cup” weeping out the trust I continue to deposit in it. I put some trust in, but it just leaks out. To be sure, the cup has less holes today than it did six months ago and a lot less than it did ten years ago!

My spiritual director said, “Just sit with Jesus and ask Him about the cup.”

I love it when she says that.

This morning I flipped through a book I am reading about Lent called Bread and Wine. An excerpt called “Life in the Blood” caught my eye. It was written in 1935 by Toyohiko Kagawa. I read the following:

It is like saying that because God is love, when you put water into a bag with a hole in it, the hole in the bag won’t matter! You must close up the hole!

You can’t reveal the glory of God if you have a hole in your heart, no matter how much of God’s glory you receive. It is Christ who fills up that egregious hole. 

I felt like Jesus sat down at the table to have a cup of coffee with me.

I read on...

Blood circulation has the power to heal wounds.

Love creates the same pattern anew. It redeems the place that was lost. To the measure of its depths, the love of God can perfectly heal the holes of the past, and all its sins. It does not merely repair the damages of sin, but even transforms that which has been broken into perfect health, perfect working capacity.

Really? Transforms the broken parts? Perfect working capacity?

Love is endowed with the power to redeem and heal throughout the past, present and future, every part of the whole The supreme manifestation of that love is the blood which Christ shed on the cross. This love enables us to believe in the forgiveness of past sins and the healing of past offenses. 

I think the holes represent my unbelief. Maybe my job is to name the unbelief. Jesus repairs the holes. I wonder if perhaps He repairs them from the bottom up. As I name them, bring them to Him, He repairs. With each patch, trust grows deeper.

And so goes the Good Friday - Easter rhythm. The stretch and expend energy, then rest rhythm. The desolation where-is-God, then oh-there-You-are rhythm. Today on Good Friday, I name the holes of my unbelief. 

Can I trust a Man who gave His very Life for me? 

watch and pray

Today we enter Holy Week. In Honduras, no greater holiday exists. La Semana Santa far outshines Christmas. Stores shut down. Most people, even the poorer families, find their way to the beach. 

In downtown Tegucigalpa, artists craft carpets of painted sawdust covering the narrow streets. Curators walk the streets with spray bottles sprinkling water so that the sawdust won’t blow away in the dry wind. On Holy Sunday, a priest and some men in white robes will walk the carpet and stop at each station of the cross. A mass is held at the end of that procession in a small cathedral nearby.

I am pondering the moment when Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane and asks his disciples to watch and pray. He says he is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. His disciples snoozed. 

When he returns, he says: “Stay alert; be in prayer so you don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there's another part that's as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire."

This lenten season has been long. Amen, anybody? While I wait for spring, I am craning my neck to see the Resurrection just around the corner. It’s hard for us Protestants to stay in this death watch. Historically, I have paid little attention to this week. Living in Honduras changed me in a number of ways.

This week, I heed the words of Jesus: WATCH AND PRAY. The Spirit is willing but the body is weak. 

I want to learn to pray the words Jesus prayed. And mean it.

"My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way."

carry me

This morning Sam woke up barking like a seal. He had swim lessons yesterday and I think the pool chlorine irritated his airways. His asthma makes him more sensitive like that. He asked me, like he usually does first thing, “Mom, do I have school today?” 

When I responded “yes,” he began to cry. Little whimpering cries required some effort on his part to maintain. I knew time would heal his airways and he would clear the drainage. And he did. 

But when he began to cry, I picked him up and just held him. His head nestled into my neck and rested on my shoulder. He is still small enough to cuddle and I can hold him and walk. We made our way to the chair where we sit in the mornings. Skip rested on the edge. My Bible was already open. The chair is large and holds Joshua as well when he pads in later in the mornings. 

I wrote in my journal... Lord I am fretful.

See I have a big meeting today with some people who have a little earthly power bequeathed to them by a title. Really, I have nothing to lose in this meeting. The only “bad” thing that could happen is they may choose not to believe me. It’s as if the Lord is saying to me... “Gigi, who will you choose to believe? Me or them? Will you believe what I say about you is true? Will you fret over what these people MAY think about you?”

Later today after I fed Joshua a hardy breakfast so he is ready for his tests, and after I dropped Sam at pre-school; I called a dear friend. I told her of my angst. She lead me to a verse in Deuteronomy.

The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.'

I thought of how I carried Sam this morning in his momentary distress. And so now, I lift my arms up to my Abba. And I say, “Carry me.”

Update on 04.16.2011 by gigi

Thank you to everyone who prayed for my meeting. God's Presence was very real to me during it. I am grateful that I went and for all that He is teaching me through it.

Wait

Wait is a four letter word. Our culture has taught us to abhor waiting. My flesh wants what it wants NOW!

This morning I drove to work in a van that smells like vomit. It smells like vomit because two weeks ago my son puked in it. Then my husband “cleaned” it up. So it still smells like vomit. I am WAITING for the smell to go away. As I wait, I am reminded of the stench of sin. Ever since the fall, the stench of sin has flooded the earth and tainted our experience as humans. Every day, every moment, we deal with the consequences of our choices to look to other gods and NOT the True God. 

We deal with Adam and Eve’s choices. We deal with our father’s, our mother’s choices. We deal with a virus that causes a child to vomit and then produces the vile odor that leads to a woman being very angry at a man for not cleaning a van well enough. We deal with the stench of sin.

Since the beginning of time, humans have waited on God. We either choose to wait on God or we make our own way. I am faced with the choice every moment to wait on God to save me or to make my own life work apart from Him. 

Today as I suffered in the stench of puke, I used a tiny dropper and spread a little fragrant peppercorn oil over the air vents. For a few moments, the van smelled of Christmas. Eventually, the puke overwhelmed the peppercorns and I sat again in the funk. 

I cannot sweeten the stench of sin.

To wait requires that I remain in the present - open and empty handed. To wait demands that I trust, that I hope in the only One who can save. But in fear; I numb, escape, deodorize and deaden parts of my soul to make waiting more palatable. These fixes are but temporary. 

Sometimes in the waiting, God unravels us. He unstacks the layers of bricks we have deposited to cope with life by hiding. The purpose of unraveling is always freedom. He desires to unbind us from these idols, addictions and so-called coping mechanisms.

The Hebrew word for “to wait” - qavah -  literally means to bind together like a cord. It implies twisting strings and weaving them together to form a rope - the more strands, the greater the strength. As I am unbound from my idols, He weaves me back together when I wait on Him.

In many languages and in Hebrew, the verb “to wait” is the same as “to hope.” The way to hope is to simplify: to believe that actually only ONE thing will save me and that is my HOPE in Jesus Christ. When I live for ONE man, my noisy heart and nervous spirit settle. Jesus paid a one-time sacrifice. He set me right before God for all eternity. I still wait on Him to come again and set things right on earth and in Heaven. Until then, I sit in the stench and wait. I struggle with sin and hope.

I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, 

And in His word do I hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
More than the watchmen for the morning ;
Indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the LORD ;
For with the LORD there is lovingkindness,
And with Him is abundant redemption.

Psalm 130:5-7