To the dads

Today is Father's Day and I'm thinking about the dads in my life this morning:  my own dad, Bryan Russell, my husband who is a wonderful dad to our kids, my father-in-law, Phillip Sheppard, and my grandfather, Bud Arnold.  

I knew my Dad loved me from the time I was born.  I've always known it and never doubted it.  But now that I have my own kids, I realize even more how amazingly natural and easy it is for Dads to love their own kids and how one word seems to encapsulate what it is to be a loving Father:  SACRIFICE.  Dads who love their kids willingly SACRIFICE their own selves for their kids' sakes. This doesn't mean that the sacrifices dads make are easy, but that they will sacrifice for their kids when they would never make the same sacrifice for anyone else. This also doesn't mean that all dads naturally and easily and sacrificially love their children, but that this is how it should be and how it is when things are "right."

For some people, it may be more difficult to really know and feel this concept, those who are not blessed to have an earthly father who has willingly sacrificed and shown love even when it was, perhaps, a strain: it may be more difficult for some to actively believe and accept that this is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God (1 John 3:1). In fact, it may be a stretch to grasp that this is how we KNOW that we are His children, that He already proved His own love for us by sending His only Son.

The hope I have today and forever comes from a Father who is not strained or burdened or annoyed or bothered or required to show me lavish love but, rather, he delights to pour His love out on me!

It is a WILLING love.
"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10 ESV)

It is a GENEROUS love.
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32 ESV)

It is a NON-RELUCTANT love.
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31 ESV)

So we know that God sending His own Son is how we FEEL loved by God. When we believe this and let this understanding penetrate to the depths of our hearts, leaking into every nook and crevice, this love totally transforms us leading to a joyful, child-like acceptance(faith) of this most precious gift we could ever receive(grace).

This is why I am most grateful for the Dads in my life today. I am thankful that they are image-bearers of the only perfect Father, passing on His love from one generation to the next. I am thankful that they have pointed me and my kids, both through their strength and weaknesses, to the True Source of fatherly love. I am thankful that they know Him and are looking to Him for guidance.

Thank you, Dads. The most precious gift you could ever give me has been received joyfully in my heart...there are two more at my house who need you, though:) Keep on keeping on, we are counting on you and are here to support and encourage you along the way!

I take myself with a grain of salt

I think back to who I was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 1 year ago, 1 month ago...and I think how grateful I am that God did what it took to change me from the self-absorbed, egotistical, legalistic, cold-hearted person I once was! But then, wait a minute...10 years from now, I'll be thinking how grateful I am that He changed me from who I am TODAY into who I will be THEN.

And so I remember again: I will never "arrive."

I will, at some point and by God's grace, be embarrassed of how selfish and wordly and utterly unChristlike I am today, thought I know in my heart I'm worlds away from where I once was. It occurs to me that today, though I feel more "holy" than I ever have in my life, I still have sin in me, apart from the sins that I know of, that I can't even understand or even contemplate now; but since one day, I will look back and be able to see my own lack of maturity at this current point in time, I trust that a lack of maturity is here in me now, abiding deep in my heart, mind, and soul, seemingly hidden and waiting for the fullness of time til the Holy Spirit will penetrate, uproot, and replant His beauty within.

I take myself with a grain of salt.

I may feel spiritually mature but my perspective is limited to my own existence. I felt mature 10 years ago and now I realize I was so far from it that it is laughable. I may be further along than I've ever been before but I'm a very weak and ineffective standard to be measuring myself against.

Perhaps a sign of true maturity in Christ is knowing that I, by myself, lack what is needed for life and godliness on my own--no matter how much knowledge, no matter the amount of volunteer hours logged, no matter how many Bible study books are lining the shelf--but that it is His divine power that grants me everything (1 Peter 1:3). I was incapable as an 18 year old to see the immaturity in myself and will myself to change on my own. I might have seen some "big" issues, but I had no idea of the depths to which God would change my heart and mind! I was blind. And it is impossible for a blind man to heal himself: he must have someone open his eyes. I think that is what maturity in Christ means: God opening your eyes to more fully see Him so that, in turn, you may more fully see yourself in Him. Praise Him that the scales continue to be, sometimes rather painfully, ripped from these feeble eyes!

I think of Eustace in "Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader." He was turned into a hideous dragon because of the arrogance of his heart. The only way to be turned into a boy again was to have his scaled scraped off by Aslan's claws. And when he was changed back into a boy, he was not the same boy he once was! He was a new creation, someone altogether different than he was before his painful, scale-ripping experience.

I pray that the people I knew 10 years ago give me grace now to believe I really have been changed. I'm not the same as I was 10 years ago, 1 year ago, 1 month ago, 1 day ago. I pray I give other people grace to believe people really can be changed; to not judge someone based on who they used to be, but by who they prove to be and, perhaps even more fully, by who God will one day make them to be.

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whome we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."
--C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.

Give me Jesus

As far as I know, my 5 year old daughter, Elli, has never been taught about the second coming of Jesus. But last night in her bedtime prayers, she prayed, "And Jesus, please come down so we can meet you."

Her sweet, childlike, pure faith brought me to tears. She longs to see Jesus in the flesh and knows in her heart instinctively that something isn't all the way perfect yet. There is a lacking and her heart wants the fulfillment. Even without having studied the doctrine of the second coming, she yearns for it!

God, grant me an expectant heart, eyes that are always watching for you, feet ready to go at a moment's notice. Help me to be tethered to heaven and not this soil.

"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:1-4 NIV)