90 degrees with a slight chance of fighter planes

Yesterday I went on an adventure with the three cutest and sweetest boys I know: Nick (5), Benny (2), and Joey (2) to the park down the street. We hunted for treasures and spent at least an hour swinging on the "big boy" swing set. I was able to do a photo shoot of the boys for their elegant mother, Lisa, at the same time. We had so much fun. Here are a few of the shots:

Nick is going to be an author when he grows up.

Benny loves to hunt for treasures.

Joey heard an airplane in the sky and was trying to find it. He said it was his fighter plane.

I love these kids.

Grace and Faith

I love the rain. It’s refreshing and seems to cleanse the earth. I also like having good conversations with friends during rainstorms. Yesterday a dear friend and I were taking about life, and she responded to one of my stories with a statement I’ve heard many time before, but never really paid any attention to.

“The Christian life is hard. Wouldn’t it just be easier if God showed up, answered our prayers, and then we could honestly believe in Him knowing what the Bible claims is true? Why doesn’t God let us see, then let us believe?”

Yeah, this would be nice, but the more I thought about it, the more disgusted I became at my own desire for it to be true. You see, my relationship to God is the most important thing about me and it’s activated through faith, not laziness. Now Hebrews 11 tells us that faith is an assured hope for things that aren’t immediately tangible.

Paul had an encounter with God on the road to Damascus, so maybe God does answer our prayers and maybe He does let us see things before we truly believe Him as Savior; but I think when or if He does, a lot of the time we are too distracted and blinded by our sin to see them. But I digress.

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer begins by talking about costly grace; this is the grace of God accomplished through Christ-which alone is worth living and dying for. He illustrates this saying, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

I think costly grace relates to costly faith, because when we begin to understand grace, we begin to understand faith as well. Our response to Christ’s grace gives our faith its value. Grace begets faith. We know Gods generous gift of grace is a restored relationship with Him, and a true knowledge of this leads to trust in God. We may have faith in God and His work in the future because the costly cross provides ample evidence that what He has in His heart for us is our good.

Bonhoeffer writes, “Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal concession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. It is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it cost a man His life, and it’s grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.

Above all, it is costly because it cost the Son of God his life, ‘ye were bought with a price.’ Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his son too dear a price to pay for our own life, but delivered him up for us.

Costly grace is the incarnation of God.”

If Christianity wasn’t hard, and if it didn’t demand our lives, souls, and all, it wouldn’t be worth anything to us. The more we pay for something, the more value it holds. As a female, I resonate with the idea that I’ll not care about what happens to the $1 pair of flip-flops I buy in the bargain section at Target, but I will make sure my $200 Tory Burch flip flops stay in pristine condition. The same goes for your car,-unless your have a ridiculous sentimental attachment to your vehicle-who really cares about a ’91 Honda worth a couple hundred bucks when it’s compared with a sleek black 2010 BMW 650? Which item would most likely be more valuable to you? Why? Because you’ve paid a higher price.

Our spiritual lives aren’t in the same league as a pair of shoes or a car, but you get the picture. The same idea resonates with us in our relationship with Christ.

See, Christ understood this; so did Paul, Peter, John, and the other disciples. The Disciples and other believers knew that their response to the gospel demanded everything they were and everything they had, because it was more than worthy of the price. The grace Christ extends to us is given its value because of its infinite cost. Our faith is valuable, because it’s not easy and doesn’t come naturally.

Spring Cleaning

Boxes of books, old newspapers, a weight bench, Christmas ornaments, furniture, and endless odds and ends were strewn throughout my parent’s garage. Over the past twelve years, our two-car garage had accumulated so many things that a single car could not fit inside. It was a disaster. As I sifted through the chaos, I was brought down ‘memory lane’ glancing through stacks of old photographs, school books, and things I hadn’t seen in years (…”so that’s where my Walkman went!”). Cleaning out the clutter in the garage wasn’t all fun and games; it was nine hours of laborious work leaving my hands sweaty, arms shaking, and back sore from heavy lifting and organizing. Once everything had been thrown away, given to Goodwill, or found a home on a shelf, the garage could be used as its architect intended-as a place to store cars.

As I was cleaning, I began to think about my own life. I have let clutter take over my time throughout the years years. This clutter isn’t necessarily bad, sometimes it’s good, but it distracts me from whom I've been created to be.

As a Christian I understand that my purpose is to be in a relationship with God. I was formed to glorify and enjoy Him forever. I relate to God through Christ, He is my example and mediator. I must follow in His footsteps. The beginning of Hebrews chapter 12 states it best, “let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus…”

I had to ask myself, what is hindering my race towards Christ? I noticed how easily I let things-commitments to friends and family, activities, Facebook, even exercising-clutter my life, nudging Christ to the background. But I wasn’t created to place Christ on the back row. He is to always be in the front center.

The task remains. I must exert conscious effort to throw off these hindrances that clog my race towards a proper relationship to God and place Him rightfully at the epicenter of all. It’s time for spring cleaning.

Father, give me strength through Your Spirit to live as I have been created to live-running my race after you without any hindrance. Stand at the forefront of my life from this day, forever. Amen.

Bitterness is like self-inflicted paralysis. 

My life is gray cellophane.

My life is a dowdy charcoal overcoat, damp and mildewed. My life is a drab white ceiling.  My life is the silver mist on a foggy day, waiting for the to sun peak out and shine through the clouds. My life is a black TV.

And I just want to live. I want to live life and I want to live it loudly-in Technicolor.

I want to see every color in the universe and even colors I can’t begin to dream of. I want to become blinded by the brilliance of life.  I want to be consumed by the hue, shade, tint, tone, pigment, vividness of the splendor around me. 

And sometimes I close my eyes and just imagine my life, complete with epic soundtrack and I enjoy where I am, who I am, and especially the people I am with.  It’s a preview for the best film of the summer, but it only exists in my mind.  I can hear the grown-up gales of laughter, I can see my tear stained face, I can taste the energy of the moment for an unforgettable, emotional second. Then the preview ends and the lights fade and all of a sudden I am back in the dark, damp, mediocrity of the dusk to sit back and watch the rest of my life flash by my eyes. I smell the dank evening sun setting through the windows of my lonely tenth floor apartment. 

And I realize that the colors I see in my mind are people, people with faces, and personalities, and voices. And these people bring with them emotions and memories and situations and, and…life. They effect me and I them, and together we learn and live and move and breathe and be the body we were created to be. A body entwined one with all the rest, never intended to be apart. Never meant to be separated. For a body was not created to be alone.

My life is gray cellophane.

 

He who boasts...

Reflecting on the brevity of life leaves me with a single thought: all that will be left when I take my last breath is what God has done within me, in my own heart. This idea is elementary and cliché, but so often flees the forefront of my mind. The phrase ‘everything is futile’ is exhausted, but it speaks an inexhaustible truth-nothing we have here on earth will last.  Living in New York City, distractions easily remove my attention from this fact of life.  My affection is sought by advertisements and the desire to ‘fit’ in the culture and become a part of the elite society in the city. The vanity I seek is as useless as chasing fog, or wind, or pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.  In 2^nd Corinthians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul says that we are not adequate in ourselves, but are made adequate only by God.  It is strictly through the Holy Spirit that anything we are is made wholly satisfactory and acceptable unto Him.  Though I might seek to please myself, and somewhat seek to please God with the empire I create upon this earth, what ultimately pleases Him is not of my doing, but of His. I can be proud of the things I achieve on this earth, but anything I do myself pales in comparison to what God has done in and through me. Thus, all my boasting may only be of what the Lord has done in my life. This idea ties back to Jeremiah chapter 9, where the Lord speaks, saying that a wise man may not boast of his wisdom, nor the mighty man boast of his might, nor the rich man boast of his riches; but rather, let the man who boast, solely boast in the fact that he understands and knows the Lord God.  As followers of Christ, we must realize our real accomplishments are from God above. Because of this, let us seek to praise and boast of the spiritual restoration and miraculous works He has done in our lives.