Calling the Common

Yesterday we went to Bible Study. A very ordinary thing to do on a Sunday, especially at Grandma's house. We sat on chairs around long plastic tables in a big open room surrounded by baked goods, conversations about holiday travels and coffee. It was common, really. But a great comfort came in knowing these people and sharing life with them. A lady stood to speak on the lesson for that day, Luke 2:1-20, the Christmas story. 

What inspires this post isn't the story, but rather the author. 

Luke is not a run of the mill author for the Bible. He was a Gentile (non-Jew) and a physician (not a rabbi or priest). So why did he pen an account of Christ's life that would come to be known as one of  the four gospels, the books opening and proclaiming the New Testament?

He wasn't well versed in the scriptures (he knew medicine and research in detail, not Jewish customs or the Laws of Moses). He was rather common. He had a job, maybe a family. He had a community and people who looked up to him. In some ways he could have been the savior for his town with his knowledge of healing. 

But he surrendered. He left his job, his knowledge, his comfort in the common to learn and embrace the new being taught. He researched the customs and laws. He followed Christ until his death. He used his background in research and passion to learn to penned one of the most accurate, logical and structured accounts of Christ's life and later the books of Acts, the foundation for the modern day church. God used him. He used his skills, his talents and his life to make an impact.

God used him. He was used by God even though minister wasn't in his title. Christ walked 3 years along side him and God let him experience and write on the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't know why God chose such a man, but I am grateful He did. Luke is filled with inspirational accounts. I have learned truly praising God through Mary's song (Luke 1:46-55) and the beauty of the Laws of Moses (Luke 2:22-23). I feel I have walked along side the healings (Luke 5:17-26, 7:11-17, 7:26, and 8:40-56) and the sacrifice when the jar was broken to anoint Christ's feet (Luke 7:36-50). I am inspired and indebted to Luke all at once. And now learning that it was an act of surrender to allow God to use the common parts of his life only brings more encouragement to me that I can be used for the kingdom. That God can teach, mold, make and grow me where I am. Luke shows me that God can use the common. He can use me. 

And God can use you too. More importantly, he wants to use you. And not in a cookie-cutter fashion. But he wants to use you in your job. As insurance agents. Therapists. Teachers. Full time moms. Writers. Doctors. Pastors. Baristas. Cashiers. Engineers. Musicians. He wants to use us where we are. 

The common man has a place in the kingdom. Not just a place or a role, but a uniquely designed space that only can be filled by them. By Luke. By me. By you. 

There wasn't an application to belong to God. There wasn't a quota to fill. It never became full. And the same is true today. 

This year I have been introduced to the beauty in the common life and grown to trust that God can use me wherever I am and whatever I do. It truly has been the greatest gift to receive the truth that God can use me for his kingdom, regardless of job titles. I encourage you during this Christmas season, give one gift to yourself. Embrace God and ask Him to reveal to you how He wants to use you right where you are. I am praying for you, even though I might not know who you are. I am praying that God reveals Himself to you and that you embrace your unique spot in the kingdom. Because God wants to use us, commonness and all. 

Clean Up

God and I have been walking life together for nearly fourteen years and among our many chats I have only recently begun to listen to the words about cleaning things up.

My mom always had one rule about the playroom in our house, it could stay are messy as we wanted, but there had to be a path from the door to the window. My friends and I would finish playing with Barbies or video games or books or movies, run to the door and, shuffling our feet across the room, we would make a path to the window. Each day we did this. It worked for a while, then it got old not finding toys, playing in a small space with Bratz dolls, Star Wars Legos and N64 controllers all around. It didn’t really create the forever love atmosphere I was trying to build for Barbie and Ken. So I cleaned. And my friends cleaned. We picked up, cleaned up and worked through piles of nonsense together because when we did we had room. When we did we could dance around the room singing to the Backstreet Boys or make sheet forts that hung from the ceiling. We could do more and create more and play more.

I wonder how many times on the path with God I have just cleared a path, pushing aside my selfishness, pride, bitterness, anger, envy, sadness and guilt just to make a narrow path so we can keep moving. But that’s not living. That’s shuffling, just how my friends and I shuffled across the room. God wants to clean and work through our mess even when we hand our mess to Him when we have no clue where it goes or what it is even suppose to be. He takes it, gets rid of it, works though it with us or maybe even something else that I have never experienced before. 

But the point is He does stuff with it.

And when He does, it’s not this narrow path where I am scared to put one foot out of line because I’ll step on a doll's shoe or wrinkle paper. We move and create and explore things I never knew existed. That’s what He wants. He doesn’t want a path from one side of life to the other, but room in between to explore, dance or sit with the ones you love. Because life isn’t about pushing things aside or clearing a path to forge ahead or getting from one point to the next. It's embracing every detail of the how in your journey from the tear cry when a loved one died to the still peace that floods when holding a long awaited newborn. The path matters. 

Sidewalks

Four years ago an earthquake hit this country leaving them with virtually nothing. You may Remember this day back in January 2010, photos of collapsed buildings, death tolls in the thousands and every humanitarian organization asking for money to help send relief. Pretty much world wide news for a few weeks and then we went back to our routine. We followed our people and went about our lives.

But what happens when a country is hit so tragically? Who do you follow to lead yourselves through such a time? 

April 2010, I came down to Haiti to do relief work with Restore Haiti. We landed and all can recall from our flight in is the chaos of Port Au Prince. Trash piles as tall as a person, buildings collapsed into the roads, cars going in all directions and the smell of death are images I cannot release from my mind. And the people roamed. In the streets. In the towns. Everywhere they just roamed. But wouldn't you too if you lost everything? How do we begin to pick up the pieces?

Flash forward 4 years to yesterday, August 9, 2014. I landed in Port Au Prince with a team of ten others and as we drove through Port Au Prince I noticed something that hadn't been there back in 2010: sidewalks. Sidewalks to walk along the road, not in it, to guide directions to ensure one gets where they need to go in the safest means possible. A path to follow. Throughout the whole drive this thought stuck with me: they have something to follow.

Remember that question I asked earlier of who do you follow….what if we followed each other? What if together we worked through things to believe in hope for a future? 

My heart during the rest of the drive began to fill with such hope because they are following each other. There is hope here to restore what has been devastated and bring forth change. We have been called to share of the One who binds up the broken hearted and restore the broken places (Isaiah 61) and to be the body of Christ (1 Corinthians). It's one thing to know that, it's such another to see people live it out…..and these people are living it out! 

So this week’s focus is on stories of restoration from here in Haiti. Let me put a huge disclaimer that this IS NOT praising what we as workers have done because the changes that have been made can only come from the HEARTS of the Haitians believing in this hope and USING it. It truly is be their strength and faith in God that this country has changed! 

So if you HATE plot twists, hopeful truths, community across cultures or families that go behind blood then please DON’T read on because this week will be one story of living hope you won't enjoy. But if you have the slightest interest in anything I just described then please, take a risk and read on. You just might actually find hope…

Goodbyes

I thought of you again today. It’s the funniest of things when I turn my head and there you are. I sit in the dark lit comfort of this shop writing at a table for two with smells of a drink that would never be yours fill the room. I am taken aback to a shop very similar, where we sat by a fireplace, talking about nothing and everything all at once. Passing time just so we could see and feel it move. Even if it was just an illusion, we controlled it. 

There life is not that scary. Its not that hard. And its truly not bad. Life is too short to live in perpetual loom and doom or always carry gloom in your spirit. I imagine the corner mouth smirk you would give at reading such an alliteration.  

You taught growth, travel, exploration, adventure, failure, friendship, God and hope as we lived together. And for some reason, you chose to spend all that time with me. I will never place logic into this mess made because feelings never came through. 

Thank you friend. Thank you for your time and life spent with me. I love and cherish every moment that was spent and use it to grow. I find you in life and feel inspired to grow, always pursuing.

 I pray for you. For happiness. Peace. Love. Life. True life as we imagined that day in the coffee shop. I thought we would see each other more, more than we would see anyone else. But now I am realizing that your finger prints helped mold my life. How can I not see you? 

So thank you friend, for all the lessons you meant to teach and the ones you did not. 

Love,

Your once dear friend

Still, but not Stagnant

It was an early summer's day and I just said goodbye to my two best friends at the airport. As I watched them walk away my heart sank with uncertainty with what I would do in this new place that didn't have a mall, had a cow pasture next to the high school and didn't have my two best friends within a five minute driving distance. You could say my small teenage world crumbled, but that would be melodramatic and a horribly negative end to the story.

When you are an active person who hates being bored, you will find something to do. And I did. I explored! I ate at country grocery stores, listened to Indie music and met creative, country and earth changing people who were very different than me. And surprisingly, I loved it! The thrill of finding a new coffee shop down the road with the best chai tea latte you've ever had or meeting a person who will sit and have deep meaningful life chats fueled my past seven years of movement and growth.

But today looks different. I entered a season of change but I didn't move. My town, home, church and school stayed the same, but everything feels different. The challenge is I can't recognize the change as easily as when I move to a new apartment or have to learn new roads or have to find new ways to make friends. It's requiring going deeper to see the change beyond the discovery of a new hang spot or finding 'your people'. 

I am learning change is less about moving around and more about moving down. Down into the depths of who I am, what my community means, who is around me and how I am impacting those around me. It's a change of perspective rather than a change of scenary. Still moving and changing during this season, just in a new way. 

So once again, I am back in that place like I was nearly 7 years ago when I waved goodbye to my two best friends. And I am starting to get that feeling again. Not uncertainty. 

An Attitude of Gratitude

It has been a busy day. Actually it has been a busy week. The end had come as I took my last final, my family rolled into town and my friends and I walked across a stage to state to the world we did it. We had spent four years studying, building relationships, leaving relationships, becoming members of clubs ranging from swing dance to honors ambassadors and asking ourselves “What the heck am I doing with my life?” randomly along the way. We worked hard and played hard and constantly found ourselves growing more into who we desired to be. Or in some cases, like mine, leaving behind lies of who we thought we needed to be. The end of something is typically followed by the beginning of a new something. When you finish a gallon of milk, you open another. When mascara dries out, you start another tube. This is true in life too.

Undergraduate had just finished and in less than a week my friends and I would start the next season, graduate school. If I wasn’t careful, I would exchange the celebration of this season for the drudging responsibility of preparation, list making, syllabi reading or cleaning out my closet again. So, I left town and headed to grandmother’s house because where else in the world can you get home cooked food, conversations dripping with honesty and wisdom and the beach? I drove away from rural cow pastures and university life to head to the coast for a week.

After an evening of celebrating with family and a morning filled with shopping and filling my head with apartment decorating ideas, Gran B. and I needed rest. So I went outside strung up my hammock, jumped/flipped myself into my hammock and began reading. There is something so rich about the simplicity of reading. Getting lost in a story, going on an adventure. I think deeper thoughts when I read and this book had me saying, “That’s me” and nodding in agreement to myself the entire time. The particular book I was reading today is Packing Light by Allison Vesterfelt. The chapters feel like personal conversations between us in the warmth and security of a coffee shop. I imagine her and I sitting in a big leather armchairs across from each other with toes curled under the arm rest just where it meets the seat cushion in the corner sipping hot black coffee in oversized mugs as she tells of her adventurous road trip and when she stops to sip her coffee I ask “And then what happened?”

As I continued our conversation, I saw the pages in my left hand grow thicker than those in my right signaling the end of a story. I wasn’t ready for it to end, so I clothes-pinned the last two chapters for another day and lounged back. The wind caught on to my relaxed state and gently swayed me back and forth. The sun peeked its way thorough the overgrown oaks creating a golden shade that warmed my skin.

In that moment, I realized the richness of what had occurred. I had said goodbye to a season of life filled with adventure, exploration, learning, tears, bitterness, friendship, love and loss. And yet, here was a new season ahead, of deepening relationships, reconnecting, loosening expectations, and developing into a professional and walking even closer to the One who made me. As the wind rocked me back and forth, I felt like I was swaying between those seasons. I wanted to be filled with sadness at undergrads end and excitement at the beginning of graduate school.

All I felt though was richness. Both seasons were rich, like baked Brie or sitting on the couch reconnecting with old friends. Both seasons are uniquely rich and filled me with what I needed. Maybe this is gratitude. Gratitude for what has come and what will come. What I have learned and what will be learned. Who I have loved and whom I will love. Where I have gone and where I will go. Friendships I have that will be deepened and friendships that haven’t even experienced that fateful first cup of coffee. Perhaps this is what Paul meant when he wrote “in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1Thessalonians 5:18).

Gratitude isn’t only celebrated on a day when we stuff our faces with lush amounts of our favorite homemade recipes that only our family makes right or even a prayer we utter before each meal or when we see a homeless man at the corner with a sign saying “Lost everything, take anything.” Gratitude is in how we live. It shows that Christ really is in us, changing us as we move from season to season. Maybe that’s a part of seasonal living, living in gratitude.