Be love

To all of us choosing to be light...

Be love to everybody.

So, without further ado...go! Be light.  (and listen to this song if you'd like.  Matisyahu "I Will be Light")

Too little to give

No offering is too small.

What?  Yep.  This post is too all of those who need to look the lies in their life dead in the eyes today and say I do matter, I was created with a purpose, and my love, my life, my resources are not too small to make a difference. That is, if it is an offering out of obedience...if it is a self-righteous feel good pick-me up...then it might be too small.

How often have our fears, our insecurities, and our feelings of inadequacy worked together to quickly build a wall blocking us from serving, from investing?  How often have you not given at all because you felt like your offering was too small?  What can my $5 possibly do?  How is my volunteering going to transform my community?

Quite honestly, not a whole lot.  That is, if it's just you.  But, if it is all of us, and it's in God's kingdom ....well, walls are going to fall.  I challenge you in the moments you're facing your wall of lies saying you have nothing to give...to stand your ground, take a step forward and knock down that wall of lies by investing what you have anyways.  God has given you everything you need to be obedient today.

I've discovered, in the kingdom of God's goodness, we are asked to invest.  We are allowed the privilege of partnering in an amazing movement!  We are asked to invest our hearts, our prayers, our time, our ideas, our energy, our resources, our love.  So, how tragic is it when we allow our feelings to hinder us from investing?  We miss out on being floored as we see God's glory revealed.  Do we really believe God that He is big enough to do something with our mustard seed of faith?

When we underestimate the gifts that God has given us...which can be ANYTHING from a heart full of love to an extra room in our house, we become a hinderance to the movement of God.  It's in the moments that we allow fear to keep us from offering someone a ride(what's the big deal anyways?), walking over to our neighbors and introducing ourselves, smiling at a stranger, starting a conversation with that person next to you, giving your server that extra 2 dollars you want to hold on to...that we say with our actions we believe what we do doesn't really matter.  When we don't believe we matter, we act like what we do doesn't matter, and we lose.  We lose out on our heart being transformed, we lose out on our love for others growing, we lose out on a lesson in faith, we lose out on a blessing.  

So when you "know" you're not powerful...invest.  When you only have $3 to give...invest.  When you feel helping someone with their groceries can't possibly change the world...invest.

When you invest even when we don't necessarily "feel called to"  we create a movement.  As we empower others to believe that the way they invest their words, time, and love matter, we become a movement.  As everyone invests what they think is too insignificant to matter, we become the body of Christ, living and active.  If each person gives what they have...well, you do the math...

If you don't have a passion...if you don't know where to start...invest in what is around you..."for where your heart, invest your life"(thanks Mumford & Sons)

So, without further ado....invest.  Your offering is only too small if you don't give it.

Thanksgiving is Our Dialect

We're called to be beings of thanksgiving.
                                                                        ....wow.

Usually statements like that are followed by us all going around in a circle and listing things we're thankful for.  Any takers? Ok...I'll start....I'm really thankful for colors, good conversations, family, friends, this circle, oh yea...Jesus, a house,  good bread(not the bread you buy thats soft and white and squishy bread).....and...

You get the point.(hopefully you sense my satirical vibe here)
But, while we're talking about bread...

Random tidbit: for all you bread makers out there....tip of the day...don't make your water too warm when you add it to the yeast.  If it's in the high 70s range...then your bread rises slower and the flavors have a longer time to absorb.

Ok...back to forced thankful circles that usually only happen in youth group around Thanksgiving time...to be quite honest, I hate these circles.  It feels forced, awkward, and half the time the things we're saying we're so thankful for are the "correct" answers...OR worse yet are said in a voice that  leaves me quite unconvinced that we're even interested in the thing we're so grateful for...

So those things I listed...they are GREAT things that we truly should be thankful for...but what does it look like to speak a dialect of thanksgiving?

I was reading in Ephesians(it always gets to me).  I like to read it in the message version in the mornings...perhaps that isn't a valid version to some, but to me...it wakes me up like a cool splash of water to my face.  It hits me with the reality of this life we've been awakened to.

Chapters 4 and 5 are peppered with talk of speaking and how we should talk and embrace one another with that talk.

   "Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that.  Don't talk dirty or silly.  That kind of talk doesn't fit our style.  Thanksgiving is our dialect."  Eph. 5:4

The beauty...is that this kind of talk and careful use of our words with one another can only flow from a heart already brimming with extravagant love...which we can only get from God...God pretty much owns extravagant love.  Out of the overflow of the heart...the mouth speaks, right?

So...what if....we talked to each other (and about each other) ONLY from a spirit of thanksgiving?  What if...when Amelia(fake name) does something that hurts me...I go to her and talk to her about it from a spirit of thankfulness that she even exists?  I know...this is crazy right?

I never thought about it like this until just this morning.  But...it seems to me...that if we dare to embrace one another with extravagant love(not skinny love like Bon Iver's song...) knowing that we have enough to go around and a spirit of thanksgiving....things would change.  More importantly, we would change.  We wouldn't have different churches at war with one another in their hearts and gossiping about only the negative things...instead we would have a group of people bonded to one another because we see the value in one another and we're thankful for their existence.

Words can kill a person faster than anything else it seems.  They can destroy children's dreams and make them feel worthless...they can destroy another's excitement so easily....Use your words in a way that brings life and love to someone today.  Think about the way you feel inside when someone genuinely values you with their words and looks you in the eye  when you're talking versus when you present something close to your heart and they barely give you the time of day and throw some careless words at you...you don't feel  appreciated because you're not being appreciated in that moment...they're not speaking from a place of thankfulness for you...for your presence...for what you value.

So without further ado....what do you think...did I fall and hit my head too hard when I stumbled out of bed this morning...or can we "Say only what helps, each word a gift." Eph. 4:29 ?

Nothing to Prove

And so it begins...
That seems like an appropriately epic enough beginning, don't you think? To all those dear folk who may just stumble upon(isn't that a really cool website thing now?) this blog, good luck!  Here you'll find my unmasked honesty as I share learned truths and struggle to find the truth in a world that has so much muddled up mess that sometimes you have to dig pretty deep to find the truth.   I'll share the wisdom that I have gained at my ripe ole age of 25(....to anyone who's angry with me for that statement...joking!..sorta) as well as the stupidity I'm trying to shake off me.

I make no promises to be politically correct or a people pleaser.  I'm happy to say that I have broken free of that prison.  Although it's never my intent to hurt anyone's feelings...don't we live in a world that has become so cowardly and wimpy in a fear of "hurting someone's feelings" that you're ready to gag?  I am...(and I'm constantly told by my family I'm too sensitive).  To a world that is too scared to give definite answers in fear of being sued, disliked, or persecuted, look out because there is a tired generation from 97 year olds all the way down...who is ready to stand up for something.  I am one of them.

So whose words are you reading?  The words of someone who does believe in absolute truth, and believes lies like to masquerade as watered down truth.  This someone believes that there's a difference and that not everything leads to truth as we are being forced to believe.  This someone has heard some really great sounding ideas that looked like light and felt fun...but in the end it just led to death.  This someone doesn't want to encourage death and darkness because she's too scared to confront a lie that might hurt someone's feelings.  That's not love...that is fear and I'm done being a coward.

What truth do I stand on, then?  The only truth...the truth that there is this amazing, wonderful, kind, loving, just, beyond your imagination, not limited by my human speculation...GOD who created each and every one of us with love and a purpose.  A Majestic power who tells His story of creation to redemption to restoration from Genesis to Revelations.  A Marvelous artist whose creativity is copied every day in attempts to make beautiful things.  A Father who has made us like him, to take care of his earth(which we've done a pretty shitty job at), love with everything we've got, make things like He did, and enjoy life!  If you're wondering where I'm getting THIS info from...read the Bible in a new light and see His heart.  If you're offended that I said shitty(I almost deleted it so that I wouldn't offend anyone...then I got a grip) and have decided I can't possibly be a true lover of Jesus...I think it's time to call things for what they are...don't you? 

So, without further ado...let's buck up, figure out what our ground is, and take a fearless, love grounded stand on it.