restoration

...Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.

Without God we perish
He brings the rain
He brings produces the harvest

He alone can draw life from bareness;
hardened hearts can yield repentance
barren wombs can yield kings
Death can yield Life...

Restore our lives, dry as they truly are, with streams of living water...

when judgement doesn't stick

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction 

that we are loved.

-- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

When my first daughter was less than one month old my wife gave me a sage piece of advice;
"Let her know that she is loved"

It became my quest. I told her daily, and often. The trick was to not allow the words to become hollow and meaningless. For me and for her>

I love you when you behave
I love you when you don't
I love you when I reprimand you
I love you when we snuggle
I love you because you were given to be by God.
I love you simply because I love you.

When a girl (or a woman) or a boy (or a man) is convicted in their heart of hearts that they are loved they are free.

Free from judgment
Free from anxitey
Free from a multitude of disorders
Free to become all that Christ died for them to be.

Max Lucado captures this perfectly in his children's book "You are Special"(buy the book now! Even if you don't have children!).

The jacket writes;
"Every day the small wooden people called Wemmicks do the same thing: stick either gold stars or grey dots on one another. The pretty ones -those with smooth wood and fine paint-they always get gold stars. The talented ones do too. Others, though, who can do little or who have chipped paint, get ugly gray dots. Like Punchinello.
     In this heart warming children's tale...Eli the woodcarver helps Punchinello understand how special he is-no matter what the other Wemmicks may think. It's a vital message for children everywhere; that no matter how the world evaluates them, God cherishes each of them, just as they are...

So one day Punchinello (who is covered with dots) meets a girl who has none! He learns that stickers don't stick to her because she listen's to Eli, the one who made her...he visits him too...and slowly, one by one, all his dots fall off.

My daughters have been told since they first came out of the womb that they are loved with a never-stopping-never-giving up-always and forever love- from God. I speak the truth into their lives that they are loved God, the One who carved their bodies and ordered their days.

I pray this has set my girls to be free...and to know real love...

Do you know this?



One day P

doubt is not failure

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt."
                                                         Fyodor Dostoevsky

Doubt is not failure.
Doubt is the absence of pride and self-reliance. It is the point were  we find ourselves at the end of our rope.

This is a good place to be.
The end of our rope is precisely where God's rope begins.

Jesus allowed Thomas to stare doubt square in the face.
The result?
The profession "my Lord, and my God"

We cannot shout praise to anything other than ourselves until we learn that there is One, Holy Other than ourselves who is deserving of our hour Hosanna. 

We cannot, however, stay in doubt.
We doubt when we listen to ourselves recount our failures
We trust when we talk to ourselves about God's victories. 

Our voices tell us it is impossible.
God's voice tell us differently.

Beloved. I pray you cry praise today...