come

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  2 Timothy 4:7

  

Our eyes are on athletes competing in the Olympics in one part of the world, and in our celebrating we have nearly forgotten that war rages in another. While communities look for answers and families grieve the loss of their high school children in Florida, whole countries continue to fight against drought, starvation and unspeakable poverty, and Billy Graham slips quietly from this world into eternity.  Perhaps more than ever before we need to remember the message he was compelled to share:  "Come to Jesus." Just this. For the weary, waiting, broken, alone, worn out and empty, "Come." 

Today, our news feed will fill with accolades about his faithful ministry.  And rightly so. In a world where the lives of religious leaders are often marked by scandal, his life remained untouched by it.  In a world where the prevailing message is ‘live for self’, he lived for others.  He gave.  He served.  He relentlessly pursued the purposes of God and proclaimed the good news of the gospel. 

He lived through a century characterized by more rapid social, technological and political change than at any other time in history, yet the message he shared was not altered by popular opinion, or changed with the times.

  

It was simply this:  You are loved - a message for every person, without exception. Sin separates us from a holy God, but there is good news.  Jesus came to show us a way back to the Father, to provide forgiveness and new life in Him.  He died so we never have to. 

Second, you just have now.  Time does run out.  None of us know how long we have to live. There is an urgency to the message of Christ.  It demands a response, and nothing less than our wholehearted surrender.

Billy Graham passed away today, and what a worship celebration he must be part of.  A dear friend of our family used to prepare us when he was living, that one day we would read about him in the obituaries.  All solemn and serious, he warned us that the newspaper column would say he had died.  Then, he would announce with all the intensity of feeling his gravelly voice could muster:  “Oh, but don’t you believe it!  I will be more alive than I have ever been!”

This is the heart of the gospel, the message of Easter.  Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, or to make good people better.  He came to make dead people alive.  Life to the full, here and now is available to us.  Life forevermore in the presence of God is offered through Jesus.  Death does not have the last word. 

“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.” John 5:24

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” Revelation 21:4

I have an arrow necklace that reminds me about the story of God.  At times I do need reminding.  I am especially prone to be distracted by busyness.  I can also find myself thinking that my life is somehow all about me.  The arrow reminds me that God has authored an eternal love story.  It shoots straight through the pages of scripture and calls out to me to live in response to what God has done through Christ, to bring Him glory by daring to find my purpose, by finding my place, on the arrow.  It is just not more complicated than that. 

“A line stretches out as far as the mind can imagine, with no end in sight.  This is the unending story of our God, who ran after us to make us his children.  Our pixel of a life, one dot of his eternal arrow.” Jennie Allen, Restless

I wonder who will carry the message of hope through Jesus, to this next generation.  Who will look deep into the eyes of the hurting and broken, and say with the love of Christ, ‘You are loved and you are worth Jesus to God’.  It is a message the world needs more than ever.  The time certainly is short.  What we do with our one life matters and only heaven can measure the impact of one life fully surrendered to Him.  So today, the only one I am sure to have, I choose to be surrendered to the purpose of God, to speak truth, to bring hope, to come.  Just as I am.

Goliath Must Fall, Louie Giglio

adventure

“Thou and thou only, first in my heart.” Eleanor Hull   


There is a moment in my childhood I remember in perfect clarity. 

Now it didn’t have all the ingredients of a grand, memory-making day but I sure did have lots of those.  

In fact, I had more than my fair share of idyllic childhood days.  Summers were spent in my Dad’s boat, or at our cabin on an island we had all to ourselves, making log rafts with my brothers and swimming in the lake.  Winters we skied, snowmobiled and were basically buried in snow.  This was life in Newfoundland, where almost everyone is a friend (the realest kind), life moves a lot slower, conversations take longer, and despite unpredictable weather, you basically live outside where the breathtakingly beautiful is your playground.  If it sounds maybe too good to be true, that’s just what my normal was.  I didn’t know then that little girls didn’t always live safe and carefree, or that they might not believe themselves to be unstoppable and special.  My Dad told me it was so, and I believed him.  He said every day was meant to be an adventure, and I believed that too. 

No, this day that I remember was one of the mundane.  There were a lot of those as well.  And that’s okay, after all. Even the most remarkable lives can be mostly about finding beauty and joy in the midst of the routine, having the grace and the grit to be present, grateful and hopeful in whatever a day brings.

I was in my elementary school and it was time for an assembly.  So we walked in line to the front of the school gym to take a spot on the floor.  I know I wasn’t quite grown up enough to require one of the metal folding chairs the more mature kids sat in behind me.  I remember my place in the gym, how the hard floor felt, and the way my white sneakers looked with one of them traced all around the edge with red pen.  The speaker that day spoke of Zaire in Africa (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and today I can still vividly remember the images on the slides he showed us.  Adventure indeed.

I was going to Africa just as soon as I was grown. I announced it to my family, affirmed it over the years and I’m pretty sure they believed me.  With grand adventures in my sights, surrender to God’s leading looked exhilarating and in my imaginings, looked like new places, new people and constant change.  Bring it on.

Looking back, life hasn’t been exactly like I imagined.  I don’t expect it is for anyone.  I have certainly been to some wonderful places, met people who humble me and who model the way of Christ, and it has surely been to this point, a grand adventure.  But, I have not yet been to Africa.  My “Anything” prayer has been less about the adventure I imagined was in store, and more about living out a faith-filled commitment moment by moment.  I am learning to let my stubborn heart trust God with it all.  And wouldn’t you know, that loving the people right in front of you, being faithful in the small and seemingly insignificant moments, is the hardest and holiest calling?  

It is not a small life, friends, nor a small adventure to do the same. 

In praying ‘Anything’, we give God everything.  We let go of our entitlement to a life the way we imagine it should be. It takes total surrender, a reckless faith that can trust God with the story of our life even on the very worst days, even with the dreams that lie unfulfilled and with a future that can feel uncertain.  It is only in laying our life down that we find it again.

“If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.”  Matt. 10:39

I may still get to Africa, live there even.  Or my next adventure may find me winding my way through cancer, or worse.  I only know, God is good and both my present and my future are in His hands.  There’s no safer place to be.  There’s no greater adventure either.

 “I am living for the moment when I will face you.  I want to get to heaven out of breath, having willingly done anything that You - God of the Universe -  ask….anything.”  Jennie Allen

 

my Dad's boat, in the backyard of my childhood home

the view from our deck

if you have never been here you should go.  seriously.