Day 17 of Lent, and Evil Hormones and Five Leaf Clovers and The God Who Goes To Work As We Go To Sleep
On my better days, I know that when I align my actions with my inward consciousness of the fellowship of God, what I do (and especially the art I create) becomes a form of prayer.
Today might not have been one of those days.
It didn’t begin well. That’s usually how an off day starts. I blame The Evil Hormones, and this thing of spending all night throwing the covers off and on and off and on. I exaggerate not: I woke up this morning feeling like my arms had done a mild workout. But it was just the “wax on/wax off” motion of cover-tossing for hours at a time.
But enough about me, what do you think about my hair?
As much as I hate to admit it, today has been one of those days that I just get through. If I were to add up all the times I’ve spent in my life “getting through”, it might be half my life. And you know what? A good life coach would tell me that that is perfectly fine.
She wouldn’t tell me that the “getting through” part is fine - because I should be able to manage my thoughts better than merely “getting through” a day. No, she would tell me that half of my life being slightly unremarkable is okay! In fact, that is normal and to be expected. Life is 50/50, hard/good, boring/riveting - and don’t we all have to learn to manage our mind, will, and emotions in the 50% that is….meh.
Thank God that His day begins as mine ends. In Hebraic tradition, the day begins at sundown. So as I am washing and derma-planing my face (!!), He is setting about the task of restoring my soul as I slip into sleep. The Preacher and I pray each and every night that we would meet with the risen Christ in our dreams, in whatever form He chooses to reveal Himself.
May it be so.
Tomorrow, I wake up to brand new mercies, made fresh for me. All I did was sleep off the previous day.
The real trick of the poets, prophets and artists? The real trick is to learn how not to carry yesterday’s battles and yesterday’s stuff into tomorrow. Tomorrow, we begin fresh. We develop deliberate amnesia as an act of holy worship. Then, we work with eyes wide open, and without malice aforethought towards all the people in our lives who took The Road Less Than Smart the day before.
We get a fresh slate. And because we get one, we get to give one.
Tomorrow, may even your most complex tasks be done with a sense of spaciousness and joy. May you wake up and make your steel cut oatmeal for the sake of the blueberries and the generous glug of cream. May you lift hands and heart to heaven and clap and laugh together with the Living God (because He thinks you are funny!). And may He send you a sign and a wonder, and I hope He gives you a beautiful child to administer it, for the family.
Exhibit A:
Our beautiful grand-girl found a (…are you ready for this…?….)…
FIVE-LEAF-CLOVER.
There is no doubt in my mind that it was given as a kiss from heaven to my daughter Sarah, artist son-in-love Jonathan Howe, and their girls…and then, almost by default, the rest of us here in the cul-de-sac got to soak up the glory just a little bit, too.
Five leaf clovers. In our cul-de-sac!
Tomorrow is gonna be a five-leaf-clover-kind-of-day.
Day 13 of Lent: "At The Same Time" {...divine tensions DO exist...}
Because I wrote, and I wholeheartedly live by, the words I wrote day before yesterday, I might be one of the more qualified persons you know, one of the safest people you know, to say this today:
Second to Christ Himself, membership in, participation with, God’s family is one of life’s top priorities.
(…prints available from a sold original titled “Hon Fleur”)
Yes, there exists a wonderfully beautiful theological truth behind the Hebraic Old Testament mandate of “a lamb for a household”.
AND it is equally true that God’s church is God’s idea, and it cannot be diminished, set aside, or even customized to fit our busy modern lives.
This is a “Both/And”. A divine tension.
“I” by myself do not constitute the bride of Christ. You, on your own, do not “the family of God” make. Your family does not “the family of God” make.
There’s a wily deception afoot in the culture that tries to make us believe that “time together as a family - just us” - must be guarded at all costs, and that “sowing into our marriage” is a large part of our Christian obligation. We are inclined to invest “on the home front” at the expense of our service to the community of saints…which has been, is, and always will be the family of God.
Some time ago, someone left a church ( I choose to refer to this like Paul did of one of his personal experiences, “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know”…”whether our church or another church, I shall not say”…) with no clear church home to which they would go. Now, they made this decision because of a perfect storm of other influences, but they weakly cited the call of Abraham (when he was Abram) to “leave his family, not knowing where he was going”.
There’s a couple of glaring issues with this line of thinking - both issues reveal a touch of understandable immaturity, but also a willful lack of Biblical, contextual understanding:
Abram was the prototype for the whole entity of the people of God in all of human history and eternity! (psssst: you and I are not. We’re just not as important. Much like we are also not Job, who was also a prototype, and aren’t you glad?)
God thought nothing of removing Abram from his family of origin, to establish the more important thing: the family of faith. It was one of God’s most foundational, and one of His earliest acts in His own plan of salvation.
So, their whole reason for leaving should have actually been their biggest, most Biblical reason to stick and stay: God is calling each of us into a far greater reality - and that reality is our participation in God’s household. My autonomous inclinations are to be set aside in favor of the overwhelming value of being a member of God’s family.
I am not saying that your family should not be a top priority.
I am saying that your family should make a local church family a top priority.
See the sweet difference? It’s in the outworking of it, fighting through the tension of it into greater freedom to pursue the heart of God together as a family, that actually makes for strong families. To be on journey to the Celestial City together, together seeking that city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God, it is that kind of togetherness which “tends towards” abundant life, in both marriage and family.