The light pools on the ground beneath the pine trees.
Fog moves quickly, sudden.
I can feel its depths, wonder where the bottom is. The top?
It is easy to get lost in.
I reach my fingers up into the sky, there is no end in sight.
The air is thick, dense. I wonder if one can actually breathe this…my chest starts to ache.
The snow is falling so gentle from the dark sky, we can’t even feel it on our faces.
We capture crystals on our fingers, try to count the prism facets before it melts over us.
Beauty can be hard to hold.
We visited a friend yesterday and as we walked down her driveway we watched a garage collapse. The tiny bits of snow building into something too heavy to be held up by flimsy structures.
And I wonder, how many miniscule pieces of beauty does it take for us to crush something?
When you lose the vision of what you are here for, your life becomes small, depleted, maybe even incestuous. You hang out with the same people all the time. You start looking for ways to make your own life easier. You watch out for number one. You get petty. You become the king of first world problems.
Guess what? The satisfaction in your life actually diminishes. If I can promise you nothing else, I can promise you this. You will be bored. You will be boring. I’ve watched it over and over.
The sermon on the mount,where I’ve been camped a lot these last few months, doesn’t tell us to hang out with the cool kids (even though sometimes it is more fun and often is easier). The bible tells us the opposite. Get in there. Get your hands dirty. Love on the least.
Find out how to bring peace. Find out what justice means. Bring it.
Somehow all the complicating factors in life fall away when we are living for the right things.
Watching porn? Try and watch it again after you learn about human trafficiking…how your sisters ended up in that film…what brought her there? It becomes a different experience.
Feeling like you can’t keep up with the Joneses? Go to Haiti. Find out the Joneses are idiots for hoarding whilst people just a few hours away struggle to survive.
Feeling like you got your crap together? Go to Africa. See how together they have it and how yet, still, the seams are not meeting up.
Trying to answer all the biggest questions? Stop it. Love your neighbor. Suddenly peace descends and you don’t have time for the trivial things that actually don’t matter. There are answers you will perhaps never make peace with. I don’t know why people suffer like they do, but I for one want to make it better.
Will you join me? Pursuit Justice is coming. We are going to read books that matter. We are going to decide how 5% of the Pursuit Live tithe is spent. We are going to serve our community. We aren’t going to be critics that drive our brothers insane. We are going to be the people of God who seek the good, the best, in every corner of this whole earth. We are going to bless the givers. Give our strength to the weak.
I don’t know what it will look like a year from now. But I hope you will be sitting with me when I find out.
(Our first Pursuit Justice will happen November 5 at 5:30 in the Hope Centre. Join us? I will write it out here too so you can join in the conversation ‘virtually’ as well)
It is all ache and yearning. It is the thing that will let brain settle on nothing else. It is craving and emptiness and desire. It borders on obsession. You can think of little else.
Its like longing and lust and its nearly impossible to ignore.
Hunger. Thirst.
And those red letters in my bible tell me if I hunger and thirst it is good, that I will be satisfied. And that is backwards in the flesh, but His kingdom is often upside down, bowing lower to raise higher.
As I hunger I will be satisfied… Not with the things that flesh tries to fill itself with, but instead with the things that satisfy soul; peace, purity, mercy.
And thirst doesn’t go away, not really. It goes under ground sometimes but it always comes back.
And I want that kind of ache for righteousness. The kind that on some level I can’t quench, that always tells me there is room for more, because in this world? There will always be need for more…
Blessed are those who HUNGER AND THIRST for they are satisfied.
I want to hunger. I want to be famished for the right things.
A FEW NOTES? GIVING CIRCLE is starting up again. Feeling so excited! Kelowna ladies will you join us? February 28,7pm. Location TBA. Interested in joining us ‘virtually’? Send me your email and I will send you the links to the issue we are studying that month!
Memorizing the Sermon on the Mount in 2012. Once a week I will wax poetic on something I am learning about it. This post is partially inspired by a great sermon by John Piper here.
it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
– Desmond Tutu
There is a girl who lives at my house now. She isn’t a baby anymore and she is all girl and she sparks to see the reflection in her daddy’s eyes. She is passion and joy this one and strong like an oak tree. I wish I could create a bubble that she can live in so that it would all stay in her heart and not drift off into a world that will break it.
I can’t though. She is here now and she is on this same earth that does bad things to little girls. Even this country, very likely the best to be girl, is selling our daughters to very low bidders. (the following doc is 45 minutes but should you have the time…it might rock your world)
And I am only this woman with big dreams and the woman who can’t pass by a broken down car without stopping and if I do I feel guilty. Boundaries are not my strong suit and if there is opportunity to get my life all mixed up with yours I will try to do it. I carry burdens heavy some days and the only thing that helps is to take my heart in my hands and to do small things. Bake you a cake. Buy you coffee. Marinate you a steak. Clasp hands together in prayer…
And some days it feels like mistake to read the things I do, to watch the things I do. I wish I wasn’t the Captain of the Worst Case Scenario Ship and wish I didn’t always seem to have ‘just heard about that shockingly ugly thing’. But I can’t seem to close my eyes especially not while this little girl who trails behind me has to live around here. I will keep doing small things, keeping my hands busy and my heart soft because this is the way that we find our way to real life. This is the only way I know to try to build a bubble…because the only way to protect her heart is to change the world it lives in.
Giving Circle is heating up around here friends. Join us if you are near. Email if you are far and I will set you up with all the resources to gather women in your home to put hands out to others near and far that are looking for partners in justice. Partners in turning this world upside down. Partners in bringing the ever upside down kingdom closer to home.
(The links section of Giving Circle has been updated if you need to get inspired)
Linking with some bubble builders and story tellers at:
one thing blog 