Truth.



 

Want some truth?  Life is fleeting.

 

Some more truth?  This life will end.  We don't know if it's 60 years from now, 30 years from now, five years from now, or tomorrow.  Or tonight.  But it will end one of these days.  It's the universal truth all of us instinctively know, yet try to ignore. 

 

Life here on earth, well, it's temporary.

 

And yet faced with this undeniable truth we are still tempted to live self-focused lives.  Lives full (bursting at the seams) of things that will not matter. 

 

Things that won't matter in three years from now, let alone 3 million years from now when eternity is before us and behind us and all surrounding us.  

 

What kind of house we lived in, what car we drove, what clothes we wore, what hair we had, whether we kept up with the latest fad,  what color we painted the kitchen, what style of shelf we bought, who had the funkiest Pinterest board, who won America's Got Talent, who won which sports game or which cup or whatever they call it in Hockey- won't matter, won't matter, won't matter.

 

And yet, so often, we fill our days with these temporal, limited, earthly things.  Why do we do this?

 

Truth waits, knocking, whispering open the door... 

  

 

 

Open the door to the fullest life, child.  To the life bursting with things eternal.  A simple, yet unbelievably wild life of faith.  Real faith - the kind where we walk on the edge for a God who says He'll catch us if we fall.  I don't know the full extent of that life yet, but I'm pushing hard into it, friends.  

 

I want to run crazy toward a God who is all-powerful, all-mighty, Alpha-Omega.  The Creator, Yahweh.  Friend.  Father.  He is the Everlasting, yet He calls me child.  It's wild alright, mind-boggling.

 

Even more mind boggling - faced with this truth that Christ Himself wants me - I still choose the trite.  I mean, the God of the Universe beckons me to come, sit with Him, and follow Him to the ends of the earth, and yet, I shrug.  Don't we all? 

 

We choose to Tweet instead of falling at the feet of our eternal Savior.  We choose to go shopping instead of seeking the truth of why we hoard treasures.  We choose to stress over the trivial instead of offering all things to Him in endless prayer.

 

Forgive me, Lord.  Because if I call myself a disciple of Christ, I have to believe that Christ is to live and all else is filler.

 

His creation beckons us to taste and see -

 

He is God and He is good.  And He is enough.

And He is Truth.

And the Truth is there for easy grasping.  Die to self, truly live.  Right there, plain as day.  Simple, but never easy.  But always the choice leading to the depth of joy and peace like a blanket of gold.

Reach down this weekend.  Way down deep.  Open up His word and seek the Truth waiting to be found.  Hold tight to the eternal and let the earthly pile up in the corner.  Swoop babies up in bundles of kisses, walk in endless leaves, love a lonely soul.  Repair that broken bond.

Crouch low and find Him there - the God of Truth.  He's there - in the humble, the small, the mind-boggling beautiful.

Written for Five Minute Friday with the prompt, "Truth".

Enslaved (to technology) or Free?

It's a rainy Friday evening but inside it's warm and the atmosphere is alive with excitement.

I'm blessed to be selling Ugandan jewelry at an African celebration.  Drums beat in a next door room, people in breath-taking, colorful clothing are everywhere.  I'm like a little white nut in a sea of beautiful dark chocolate.  A sweet man makes me tea and brings it to my table.  I smile wide and clutch the little Styrofoam cup close.

"Thank you, it smells amazing..."

"Oh, yes.  I put spices from East Africa in it.  So, let me know how you like it."

I almost tear up.  I long to feel the Ugandan sun on my face.  To sit knee to knee with those I love.  Thank you, Jesus - for tea that reminds me of where I may some day go.  But tonight?  I have tea, and I'm happy.

I ask him about his family.  He's got two children, a three year old and one brand new baby.  He and his wife - they're new to Canada, like so many Africans there that night.  He leans in and we talk of Western culture.  The busy, distracted lifestyle.  Yes, he's noticed.

He immediately speaks of the media.

He whispers it:  "My daughter doesn't watch television."

I nod and smile.  I can feel the laugh lines in the corner of my eyes.  He speaks wisely of preserving her imagination, her innocence.  He says he wants a different life for his girls.  I don't talk.  I just listen.

"My brothers - they're young.  Teenagers.  Twins.  They're obsessed with technology.  They've got to have it all."  He talks about how their faces are always in their phones and they're always wanting more - the next best phone, the next better screen.  I see the pain in his expressions.

I scrunch up my nose trying to think of the right words.  He pauses and looks me straight in the eyes.

"You know - my people - we all came to this country to be free.  But now, we are enslaved instead to technology."

I swallow hard.  His words rip right through me.  It's as if the room dims around us.  He's just spoken profound truth but he doesn't realize how powerful it is.  He is still talking, but I'm not hearing him.  My mind is stuck on this:

We are enslaved to technology.

Long after we part and the tables are packed up, I still can't get the thought out of my head.  People plagued by oppression and poverty come to our beautiful country to be free, yet we offer a new form of enslavement.  Yes, a new type of poverty that can leave the soul starved.  The distraction and emptiness of a life swallowed by screens is just another form of poverty.  A spiritual poverty.

 

It shakes me up.

 

I breaks me.  I cry on the drive home.

 

Because this sweet African man is completely right. 

 

Our culture is suffering from a different kind of poor.  We are desperately poor and yet, we think we're rich.  We think we're free and yet, we are slaves.  So many people are living a life enslaved to screen upon screen.  The dings and beeps rule the days.  The TV programs, the movies, the celebrities, the lust for more and more and more entertainment and more and more stuff.

 

You see, because when we are enslaved, it means some form of freedom has been robbed from us.

 

What has been taken?

 

We have millions of Western kids (and adults) who are obese, unhealthy, addicted to video games and television.  We have teens who are killing themselves because their peers are bullying them on Facebook and through text messages.

We have families who no longer eat together or speak to one another.

We have (on average) children spending 4-6 hours DAILY attached to at least one screen (sometimes 3 or 4 at once).

 

We have a generation growing up in a way we've never grown up before.  They spend more time sitting in front of screens than they do outdoors.  If they spend time outdoors at all.

 

Parents, our children are the guinea pigs.  In all of history, we've never functioned this way - enslaved to technology, obedient to the screens.  This is new.  And it isn't normal.

 

I know young 20-somethings who live in their basements, with seven screens as their only friends. They are miserable, depressed, angry, and only half-alive.  There are countless people like this all over our continent.  What would people of other cultures think if they looked in on us?

 

I drive through neighborhoods in the dim evening and all I see is an creepy greenish-blue glow coming from all the living room windows.  We are all staring into our screen gods.  And we think we have no false gods in our culture?

 

Someone asks if you're on Facebook and it's as if you'd be disconnected from all society if you weren't.  This is all very recent, friends.  Like, in the past five years.  Suddenly, I feel very trapped.  It's a slow suffocation.

 

Children are being raised to depend upon screen-based entertainment to fill their days.  And that's how they'll continue to live.  And one day we'll all blink and realize that none of us are actually living.  We're virtual creatures who no longer know how to engage with each other, with nature, and most of all - with our Creator.

 

Distraction is a kind of enslavement.  The freedom we lose is the freedom to really live.  To live alive and awake and intentionally.

 

We have to choose freedom.

We have to choose the unplug.

We have to pull the reigns in.

Life is far too short to CHOOSE to put ourselves in a media jail cell.  To be so distracted we can't connect with the people around us.  We need to limit the time and trust in the truth of God's word.  We have to dare to be radically different in a culture that jeers, 'Aw, come on, it's not that big of a deal...'.

 

It IS a big deal.  People who were enslaved and oppressed in their home country come here and call us slaves.  They see it clearly - the screens have control.  The people here are enslaved to technology.

 

We need to wake up.  The time is now.  Our culture and our children are in major danger of growing up numb to real life.  Numb to purpose.  Numb to real relationships.  Numb to God. 

 

It should shake us to action.  To intense passion to protect and preserve our souls for higher purposes.  For something culturally bizarre.  To actually choose to turn off the screens and break those chains.

 

It is a choice. 

 

If you're a regular reader of this blog, thank you.  (hug)  I know many of my posts lately have reflected this heart of 'unplugging'.  I'm not stuck on repeat, I promise.  This is the work God is doing in my heart right now and I'm sharing my honest, open reflections.  I'm a work in progress too... and unplugging for the purpose of seeking God and seeking relationship needs to be deliberate.  I pray you will be inspired to do the same and see how God moves in your heart and in your life.

 

Let's cling to the King who is ruler over all and yet calls us His own.  Let's live enslaved only to the gospel... because this is where we find true freedom.  It's life's great and most amazing upside-down truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Secrets and Grace.

They call them 'secrets'.

The little spaces where piled rocks leave spaces for water to flow through.  That space is where the secrets await to be discovered.  The kids lean low and whisper to each other, searching, digging, moving the small pebble and the jagged boulder.  Making room for more water to flow, uncovering more secrets.  As they scoop with chilled hands, water unexpectedly dips deep and rushes fast below, dashing back and forth and dumping into a water hole.

Yes, the one we swam in last Summer.

The waterfall cascades behind us, glowing in the late afternoon sun.  I crouch low on a slippery rock and snap photos of my world.  Autumn leaves spatter the flowing crystal waters.  Old Oaks tower above us and ancient plateaus of boulders surround on every side, bright green with moss.  This is my world?  I almost tear up at the thought of the grace overflowing this place.

 

 

 

Secrets.  Yes, the whole world is full of God's massive and minute secrets.  All of them holy and all of them miraculous and all of them here by the hand of God the Creator.  And above all and over all flows His grace.  The grace that finds us in the empty places.  The spaces in between.  The dark, hidden places we all have - just waiting to be washed clean by the Everlasting Water, Christ Jesus.

The secret places.

I look on in awe as the kids remove pebbles and rocks and watch the water flow freely where it once was all stopped up. They sure do have a system to this.  Scout out the most beautiful, yet plugged up place.  Figure out where the water might flow through, if it could.  Start digging.  Burst out in joy when the rocks are finally removed and the flow increases to a full-out roar.

They could do this for hours.  I smile, pensive.

Isn't this just like God's grace? 

It blasts forth with mighty power, always flowing, always ready to cover the whole wide world.  Just like that cascading waterfall we hear in the distance, He is mighty and awesome and always ready to pour and fill.

But there are rocks and pebbles and muck and dirt and leaves and all things both beautiful and filthy that seem to stop up the flow.  Sometimes it seems life itself stops it, sometimes it seems other people stop it, sometimes we seem to stop it with our very hands.

Yes, we pile all kinds of 'stuff' around ourselves, so thick, so deep - there just isn't any time for God.  No time for prayer, for reflection.  No time to bow low, to embrace His creation.  To find secrets by the foot of a waterfall.

Never mind embracing His grace, who has time to pause and think on such things?

And then we wonder why we can't figure out our emptiness.  We wonder what has clogged joy.  One day, it seems it just got tapped out.  We got tapped out.

But friends - God's grace never stops flowing.

His abundant joy is always within reach.  We can pile up possessions and distractions and idols and expectations and disappointments and all kinds of junk - but guess what?  His grace and love still flows living water right on though.  Even when we don't see it or feel it or acknowledge it - still, it is there.

 

 

Alex, in all his five-year-old cuteness whispers to me, "SECRETS!  Mama!  Secrets."

He's digging faster now, trying with all his might to pull a large rock out of a rut.  A sister joins to help.  The rock wiggles and gurgles as they finally pluck it right out.  Cool water is sucked downward and spirals toward a leaf-littered flow.  Children beam, in wide-eyed in wonder.

Secrets.

Grace finds us in here. 

Right when we think the flow has stopped, there is still a way through, a secret place where Christ finds us.  He is always with us, always begging us with gentle whispers to find Him right where we are.  But do we respond?

Can we remove the distractions, the idols, the rocks of life?  Can we actually make room for Him and feel the full impact of His flow of grace?  The free gift of God's favor - undeserved, completely impossible to earn, but still - ours if we want it.

It's up to us to get on our knees and seek Him.  To dig out those distractions.  Those things that are stopping up the flow of joy in our lives.  The places where we are saying a stubborn no to God's grace.  Where we are choosing to be ungrateful instead of being bent in thanksgiving.

I mean, here we are - grace laden and surrounded by His majesty, safe in His arms.  Every moment and every breath, a gift.  Grace is life and life is, well, grace.

I pick up a fire red leaf from the river and gaze at its beauty.  Here in my hand is the secret - finding that grace in every sweet, sacred moment.  We clear the clutter and open our eyes and even a leaf becomes a reason to look up and let tears fall.  The world is full of God's breath-taking glory and overflowing with His amazing grace.

Live with hands and hearts wide open this weekend, friends.  Take time to breathe, bow low, and reach out to the one who gives every breath.

Written for Five Minute Friday with the prompt, "Grace".