Morning Meditation, September 21, 2015
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23
I turn a year older this week. What is it about birthdays, especially the adulthood ones that make you reflect on God’s faithfulness? Cherish it, actually. Realize you wouldn’t be here without it. Last night I sat on a friend’s porch over dinner with two of my closest, longest-time friends. We were working on putting the final pieces together for Justice and Mercy International’s Benefit Gala (an organization I partner with in the Amazon), and it suddenly hit me—that we’re the adults in the room. We plan stuff. People occasionally want our opinion. I don’t know exactly how or when I got old enough for this to happen.
The marker of another year causes me to look back on the path from whence I’ve come, aware that all my choices for obedience don’t add up to having gotten me to where God has brought me. In other words, grace fueled any obedience I can claim and made up for everything else. All of us have glimpsed around the room of our lives—be it a job we never dreamed would be ours, a child so unique we couldn’t have imagined him or her up, the ministry calling so beyond us—and realized we just couldn’t haven woven all this together, not to mention redeeming the bad stuff for good. When it comes down to it, there’s really just one word to describe God’s hand on our lives: Faithfulness.
The prophet Jeremiah points to three facets of God’s faithfulness:
We Are Not Consumed
We have not been snuffed out by our guilt and shame and selfishness. I admit the idea of, awesome, I haven’t been consumed today is not the first grace I think of when I consider God’s love. Still, Jeremiah’s words are both sobering and relieving. My sin could have taken me out a few different times—or as my friend likes to say in Old Testament terms, I could have gotten smote. So just the reality that I am writing these words, and you dear sister are reading them, says we do this because we have not been consumed. Because we are alive. Because of His great love for us.
His Compassions Never Fail
There’s just no telling who or where I’d be right now, or what my community would look like, if the Lord’s compassions were to have failed me at any point. They would have had only fail for a moment, at the wrong time, for things to look so very different. You may feel the same. I think in my younger years I presumed upon the Lord’s compassions, as if they were there for me like oxygen—paradoxically too plentiful to be seen as a treasure. But now I realize God’s never failing compassions are why I have anything at all. As I become more aware of the fragility of life, I am keener to the reality of His mercies. The fact that Almighty God bows His head toward us with compassions is deeply meaningful, but the fact that these compassions never fail is what keeps us alive.
His Mercies Are New Every Morning
It’s the daily dose of His morning mercies piled up from thousands of daily servings that have, one by one, carried me to today. Carried us all here. If the Lord had dolled out His mercies in one lump sum I may have used them all up, clean gone. If there were a limit to His tenderness, I may have outrun it. But every morning brings a fresh batch out of the oven. They are new. They are here today. They will rise on the wings of the dawn tomorrow.
So this week I will turn another year older. I’m looking forward to being with family and friends and perhaps strawberry cake. And I will breathe deeply these surroundings because I have not been consumed, because God’s compassions are present and they do not fail, and because His mercies will be new that morning, and every morning for as many days as God gives me.
Great is His faithfulness.
Abundance Events
I just returned from the first ever Abundance Event in Houston, TX. Next stop: Minneapolis, MN on April 27-28. I’m taking a moment to write about it because it was that awesome. Because I’m hoping you’ll be able to gather with us for one of the remaining three Abundance Events of the year (Event Info and Video Here). First off, it was amazing to be out on a “work” weekend with friends: Angie Smith, Lisa Harper, Tammie Head, Jen Hatmaker, Angela Thomas, Travis Cottrell, Jennifer Rothschild, Keely Scott (Compassion), Melanie Shankle (BigMama Blog), you get the idea. It was like summer camp without the smores, although we did sneak Tex-Mex in there.
What I loved most was that the event provided an amazing blend of highlighting the abundance God came to give with the call to give our abundance away. There was opportunity to give in big and small ways, especially since many local ministries unique to Houston were represented. Since Christ called us to be co-laborers with Him and not just spectators, Abundance offered a tangible way for us to be involved with international and local ministries. Oh, and if you came on dead-empty, there was no pressure to do anything but simply receive the abundance of Christ’s love. Brilliant.
My Mom In The Jungle And Other Ramblings
“And you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.” Never do these words of Jesus mean more to me than when I’m in the jungles of Brazil. I’m not sure what constitutes the ends of the earth, but if ever a region deserved this title, the jungle would have as good a shot as any for ends-of-the-earthness. I just returned from my fifth trip there in connection with a ministry called Ray of Hope. They’re a local, on the ground mission in Manaus that exists to serve the people who live along the vast and glorious river we call the Amazon.
My experiences there have forced me to rethink the various elements of my life, thus my Christianity as a whole. So here I am, attempting to blog about this latest trip while it’s fresh on my mind, while I can still smell the scents of the Amazon and my spirit’s still buzzing with the excitement of meeting people who are living the Christian life in ways I’ve scarcely encountered. More than anything, I want to write about the unrivaled joy of serving with my family, my mom in particular this time.
Yes, my mom came with us for her first time, the trip’s first miracle. How shall I put this? My mom doesn’t do bugs. She doesn’t do camping, roughing it, excessive heat. She really doesn’t do roaches the size of rodents, leaping tarantulas, or scorpions that lurk in people’s shoes (people meaning us). And when smartypants people say, “Well, most tarantulas aren’t dangerous”, I want to respond with, “Does this matter when the spider is the size of your face?” The whole Amazon caboodle is not really my mom’s cup of tea. Actually, tea is her cup of tea, as in Earl Grey in an English cup that’s perched on a coffee table inside someone’s home that has central heating and air. Going to the Amazon was a tremendous act of obedience on her part, one I don’t take lightly.
Nehemiah and Jungle Pastors
On Feb 1st, my 3rd bible study releases, Nehemiah: A Heart That Can Break. On Feb 3rd, I leave for the Amazon jungles of Brazil for the 2nd Annual Jungle Pastor’s Conference that several of us started with Ray of Hope last year. Without being overly dramatic I feel attached to Joshua’s words to the Israelites before they were to cross the Jordan, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.” This is a sacred time as I look back over a year of studying and writing about Nehemiah with two trips to the Amazon thrown in. It is not lost on me that 2 days after this study releases I will have the privilege of meeting up with 65 modern-day Nehemiahs, 40 of them pastors and 25 of them pastor’s wives. We will gather together for the 2nd time in jungle history to study, worship, fellowship, catch piranha and eat a lot of tapioca. (I am personally packing Kind Bars this year.)
Stuff I’m Writing And Reading
As some of you know I spent all of last year studying and writing about the book of Nehemiah. Well, I did other things like eat and sleep and complain about how “hard” this all was. I traveled some and cooked as many meals as time would allow. I spoke a lot and met a lot of people which was fun, but I discovered after all these years that I might be a bit of an introvert. I realized, while sitting in the midst of my bible, commentaries, laptop, and utter silence, that this space made me very happy. More than all these little joys however, steeping myself in Nehemiah has changed me, and I hope it will do the same for you. The study and videos release on Feb 1st, but more about all this in the next few days…
Happy New Year
I’m about to pluck the ornaments from the Christmas tree and wrap the lights into a quasi-organized ball of tangles. The mantle will be cleared, and my Vietri Santa sugar and creamer that my Mom graciously splurged on for me will be put away until next November or so. The shimmering green, silver, and red wrapped Hershey’s Kisses will remain on my dining room table until they’ve been eaten, because I think you can get away with those well into January. It’s when you’re offering them to guests in August that they become a problem.