Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Angels from the Realms of Glory

 Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o’er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation’s story
Now proclaim Messiah’s birth.


Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.


Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains.


The angels feature prominently in the Christmas story. The Angel of the Lord delivers news to Zacharias about John the Baptist's coming birth. Next we find him in Mary's bedroom proclaiming news that she is with child, which is followed quickly on the heels by a visit to Joseph. The visits from the Angel are terrifying; scripture describes some of the angels as having six wings and speaking with voices that boom like thunder. Each time the Angel of the Lord appears, he begins his monologue with "Do not be afraid." I think that might be the equivalent of Hagrid showing the students of Hogwarts his pet spider Aragog and suggesting that they not fear. Some beings are just terrifying in nature. Such is the Angel of the Lord.

But these angelic beings strike fear and wonder, for each time they come proclaiming great news. Those who couldn't conceive are with child; Mary has found favor with the Lord and He has chosen her to be the mother of the living God; God has seen Joseph's love for Mary and charges him with being faithful to her and with raising His Son. All good, but terrifyingly miraculous news. I can just imagine the incredulous laughter, that laughter the builds out of fear and nervousness and just pure awe, falling out of the mouths of each recipient. Can the things this angel is saying be true? They must be! He has come directly from the presence of God to deliver this information. It must be true. It must be true.

As Angels from the Realms of Glory reminds us, these angels were there at the dawn of creation. Being created before men, before our heavens and earth, these angels watched as Jesus spoke our universe into being. They proclaimed the majesty and glory of each new creation; they resounded in heavenly oohs and aahs as God spoke each new wonder to life. There was a chorus of praise resounding after each, "It is good" that God spoke. These same angels that watched the beginning of it all--the splendor of man created in God's own image, and the heartbreaking agony of Adam and Eve turning from their Maker--are now here to magnify God in the beauty of His rescue plan!

They've been waiting, wondering just what God had in mind. They heard His promise to Adam and Eve in the garden that one day He would crush the serpent. One of their own stood guard at Eden so that man and woman could not return, but Eden had not been destroyed. God had a plan to restore His children to the shalom they knew in the Garden. And now finally, finally, the angel Gabriel had been sent to deliver good news of the Savior. The angels got a glimpse of what was coming! Could it be? Is it true that the Son would come? Here, this very night of Jesus' birth, they see the fullness of the rescue plan! They see that God became a man to dwell among the broken and rebellious. They see the fulfillment of all of the promises and prophesies. Their God, their Creator, has left the glories of heaven, to be with the lowly He loved. He left the throne, the comforts, the presence of His beloved Father, to pursue the ones that had betrayed Him.

And the angels sing out! They can't help it! "Glory to God in the highest!" Come and worship, come and worship Christ the newborn King! They get it! They see how all of God's story, all of man's broken, wandering story, has led to this moment. They sit in the heavens amazed at how God has confounded what man would predict the King to be like, and marvel at how the King of the universe has come as a tender child. He is meek, He is helpless, and the angels know, they are certain, that He will reconcile man back to God.

These angels who've dwelt in glory with Jesus now rejoice that He has left them to be with His children. He is gone, but they sing out. He has come to bring the mercy that this people need. They proclaim that sinners, wrung with true repentance...mercy calls you, break your chains! Break your chains! Be free of the sin that has weighed you down since the dawn of creation! The horror of breaking relationship with God, the anguish of being enslaved to our own desires, ends here, with a sweet Child King. The angels can't help but rejoice! God is so good to His people, and they have watched Him be faithful year after year. Here, in this moment, is the ultimate act of faithfulness and selflessness--the Christ is born today in Bethlehem.

They, like us, cannot help but to come and worship.

Monday, December 5, 2016

The Gift Goes On

When I was a child we always listened to Christmas music on the car ride home from our California Thanksgiving holiday. We each had our favorite tapes (yes, tapes!), but I'm quite certain my first request was always Sandi Patty, The Gift Goes On. It's probably not a Christmas song many are familiar with, and listening to it now as a grown up, the song has a certain retro quality to it that maybe doesn't transcend generations, but I still love the lyrics:

The Gift Goes On
Chorus: 
The Father gave the Son
The Son gave the Spirit
The Spirit gives us life
So we can give the Gift of love
And the Gift goes on
And the Gift goes on
And the Gift goes on
And the Gift goes on

Don't you love to get a present wrapped up in a Christmas bow
God gave each of us a present on that night so long ago
It's a Gift that keeps on giving if our spirits can receive
It's the secret joy of living if our hearts can just believe


(Chorus)

When your life is full of Christmas then your life is full of love
You can give away the present that began with God above
Just like ripples in the water the circles of our love extend
What was started with the Father is a Gift that has no end


I love the image in the first verse, that picture of a child with a perfectly-wrapped present sitting in her lap, delight spread across her face. We know this picture, this vision of hope and anticipation oozing out of every pore of a child's being. Christmas is so magical through the eyes of a child--they still are full of wonder, full of awe. Without the to-do list or Christmas rush, they truly delight in each new moment the season brings--brilliant lights, colorful decorations, a gift beneath the tree just for them.

As we grow, we lose some of that wonder and replace it with weary worry. We see the pine needles scattered across the floor to be swept up day after day We see the budget and wonder how we will purchase something for every person on our list. We see the extra work of tearing down the decorations that have so bedazzled the season until now. We lose eyes for the wonder and only see the work.

Which is why we need to look back on the child; we need the picture of that little one full of longing and joy. Because Christmas is about the greatest gift ever given. Christmas is about the gift that outdoes all gifts. Christmas is about the trampoline you asked Santa for, that your parents would never previously let you have, arriving in your backyard Christmas morning! It's that but bigger! It is walking out of your car into a brilliant night full of stars when you've lived in the city your whole life! It's that but bigger! It's the debtor begging for just one more month to get the money together, and the lender forgives every penny of it! It's that but even bigger!

This gift of the Son is greater than our souls can even describe. It is the gift of freedom, it is being clothed in beauty, it is being raised to a glorious position, it is being loved intimately, it is being rescued from death, only to know the richness of the purest life. These words of mine can't do it justice, but I will spend eternity trying to articulate this Gift.

This is the gift the God gave us on that night so long ago. And it's the Gift that keeps on giving if our spirits can receive. The dual purpose of this line always captures my heart--this gift gives to me over and over and over again. Each new day the gift of the Christ Child transforms my life, delivers me from darkness to light. But it's also a gift that I then get to give. It is a gift I can keep on giving, over and over again.  

Just like ripples in the water the circles of our love extend. What has started with the Father is a Gift that has no end. We have been given this incredible Gift by the Giver of all good things and He knows, He knows, that greater than the joy of receiving the greatest gift is the joy of then giving the greatest gift. The having is good, it is oh-so-good, but it isn't enough. We must share this gift, not out of compulsion, not because we have to, but because we want every single person we know to know our joy. Our joy is not complete until we have shared it.

Don't you feel this deep in your soul? Isn't this why Facebook and Instagram are so successful? When we experience something wonderful, we want to share it! We don't want to live it alone, we want others to know it's goodness as well. We are bursting to share the things and people who have given us great joy with as many will listen.

And so it is our joy to share the gift of Jesus with the world. We don't have to, we aren't being manipulated into it, we want to, we are dying to! We have known the greatest gift! Here, here it is! Have it! It's yours! I want you to have it! I want you to know the joy I've known! This is for you!

And the Gift goes on.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Joy to the World--Prepare Him Room

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.


I don't know about you, but some days I just don't want to play pretend with my kids. And some days I don't want to put down my phone and talk to my husband at the end of the long day. And some days (okay, most days) I do not want to get out of bed to exercise. It's so easy to get caught up in the don't wannas and to give up on these really important moments of our day.

For me, half of the battle is preparing for these things. I chop the veggies ahead of time, so when we get home from school I have a few minutes to color with Izzy. As I'm reading stories with my kids at bedtime, I remind myself of how much I enjoy conversations with Herb when we have them. Thus when the kids are in bed, I'm mentally ready to enter into hearing the heart of my husband. When I go to bed at night I have my work out clothes set out with a bottle of water, so that I'm mostly ready to get my sweat on. Being prepared allows me to do, and usually enjoy, these every day things.

So as I sat in church this morning and the Pastor Scott asked, "Are you making space in your day for awe and wonder?" I was convicted. Who has time for awe and wonder? Who has time on a walk with your kids to stop and savor the sunset? (I mean, what if they are careening right off the sidewalk and into the street!?!) Who has time to read words in a book and actually think about them? (I'm reading to know something, not to savor!) Who has time to enjoy the laughter of their child? (I have to capture that adorable giggle on camera!) These things that have been created to evoke wonder and awe, these things that should cause us to pause and delight, these things that are to turn our eyes back toward heaven, are now glossed over in favor of rushing, documenting or amusing ourselves. We don't allow ourselves time to savor, to reflect, to enjoy.

But how are we to truly understand the power and depth and meaning of this powerful season if we do not pause to see the magnificence of this one event in history? How can we see the Hope, the Joy, the Peace that arrived on the scene that glorious night, if we are hustling and bustling about in the Christmas rush? We are going to miss it if we do not prepare Him room.

And just like chopping veggies ahead of time, I need to make a plan to prepare Him room. Space, quiet, time are not going to happen accidentally. The don't wannas are going to creep in quickly, and we are going to forget how much we need the time to marvel. We are in desperate need to see, to truly see, that what God has done is unimaginable. This gift, this precious baby boy, changed the world's trajectory completely. We were charting a course of sin and destruction; no matter how many times we tried to alter course we could not realign our hearts with God's vision. And so Jesus came. He took the helm. In the midst of a tumultuous storm, our bearings completely lost, He righted the ship and turned us back toward home.

Do we get it? Do we understand just how broken we were? How broken we are? Do we even take time to realize the evil and selfishness in our hearts? Do we see how desperate we are to be enough and how terribly short we fall of that standard every single time? If we don't have time to look at our hearts, to evaluate our need for a Savior, we will miss the joy of knowing that the Savior has come. We cannot sing Joy to the World unless we know the joy of being free from our crippling need.

Once we have prepared Him room, once we have paused our crazy existences to gaze upon our fragile and shattered hearts and upon the potter who re-molds the clay into something beautiful, then we are ready to receive our King. If we prepare Him room, if we de-clutter our sitting rooms and open our doors, we will have space to allow the King to come and dwell with us. But we must take action, our hearts must prepare.

So chop those veggies ahead of time (or even make a box of Mac and Cheese!), remember how much you enjoyed being in His presence when last you came, and set out your Bible in a quiet, inviting space, and prepare Him room. It's that important! And you will find that your heart joins with the chorus of Heaven and nature. When you sit at the feet of Jesus, your heart will not be able to help but sing, sing, sing, and repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat the sounding joy! Come and prepare your heart for the Savior, stand in awe of your coming King. He will reveal Himself in total splendor. He will come.


Saturday, December 3, 2016

Emmanuel

O come, O come Immanuel and ransom captive Israel
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Wonderful counselor

Lord of life, Lord of all
He is the Prince of Peace

Mighty God, Holy One
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
God incarnate, here to dwell
Emmanuel, Emmanuel
Praise His name Emmanuel

Immanuel--God with us. God, with us.

Over the last few months, Izzy and I have been memorizing different passages of scripture. We started with Zephaniah 3:17: "The Lord your God is living among you, He is a mighty Savior. He will delight in you with gladness, with His love He will calm your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful singing." As I tucked her in tonight, I read her this verse, and I was struck by Immanuel. This sweet, reassuring passage of scripture starts with Immanuel.

At first I read it quickly, rushing through what I have memorized--The Lord your God is living among you. But then I took pause, The Lord your God is living among you. He is my God, He has created me, formed me from the start, fashioned me in His image. But He is also Lord of life, Lord of all--my God who spoke the heavens into being, who imagined the tiles on the wing of a butterfly, who sculpted mountain ranges and tiny pebbles. And He is living among me. He is here in my laughter, He sees my tears, He knows my temptation, He hears my lies and cruelty, He sees the oppression and the hurt and the anger. He is here.

The immensity of this idea, of God, the author and creator of the whole of His-story, stepping down into the chaos of our world can sometimes crush me. Why do that? Why leave Your throne? Why abandon the comfort of Heaven for the pallor of earth? Why leave a mansion to live in a hovel? It makes no sense to our human, me-centered logic.

But then I think about my child who is sitting in the mud with a skinned knee crying ugly sobs. I don't want to stand and lecture them, I don't want to sit there and watch them suffer alone. I want to run and kneel in the mud and hold my child. All that is within me wants to run. I don't hesitate about the mud, I'm not worried about my clothes, I want to hold my hurting child. Nothing would stop me. 
 
The way to real love is not to watch from afar. The way to real love is not a band-aid or callous pat on the back. Real love enters in. Real love sits in the muck, looks in the eyes, cries beside the wounded, holds the broken, and listens intently. Real love comes to be present, to sit with us in our suffering. Real love comes to dwell.

And it is only once these things are done that real love offers a hand and pulls us back up. In order for the rescue to truly work, the hurting must know that they are not in the muck alone. And not just for a moment, not an awkward crouch down so as not to get the pants dirty. God comes and sits, fully, in the mud. He is here to dwell. He is living among us. And He is a mighty Savior. First He lives among us, and then, and then He saves us.
 
It's a powerful thing when the mighty humble themselves. Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, like the first time we see our father cry. We aren't sure what to do with the vulnerability that is there when we are so accustomed to seeing strength. But there is also something so incredibly moving to see someone abandon their strength, their power, their might, and watch as they move in compassion towards the one who hurts. It's a soldier laying down a gun and picking up a wounded child,  it's a President stepping out of the motorcade to shake the hand of a hungry veteran, it's the King who leaves His throne to search for His son who has gone missing in battle. It is love that moves these men to humility, and it is love that moves Jesus to come to us in a lowly stable.
 
Immanuel, God with us, because He delights in us with gladness. Immanuel, God with us, so that He can calm our fears. Immanuel, God with us, so that He can rejoice over us. He is mighty, but He loves us, and so He is here to dwell. Praise be to God!


Friday, December 2, 2016

O Holy Night, Part 1

O Holy Night. It's my mother's favorite Christmas song. I've listened to it sung by Nat King Cole and Andy Williams, Josh Groban and Carrie Underwood, but the most favorite version in our family is N'SYNC. What can I say? The heart loves what the heart loves. And I do love this song.

While this song is iconic for the beautiful voices who have carried these notes through concert halls, across albums and into our hearts, it is the powerful words that strike the listener to the core:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and sorrow pining,
‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn...


Can you feel it? Can you feel the sorrow? The heavy weight of this broken world on your soul? Can you close your eyes and see the hurt on the faces of the hungry you've driven past today? Can you call to mind the tears that streaked down your child's face as they were ridiculed, teased and rejected? Can you remember the ache of a body broken by sickness? Does your soul groan over the loss of someone you love so deeply?

That is where God finds us. In the mess, in the anguish, in the longing for things to be different. He finds the Israelites amidst great oppression. He finds His chosen people displaced from their homeland. He finds women without position or voice. He finds brutal Roman leadership. He finds a weary world. And that's His cue to enter in.

He doesn't look from afar. He doesn't send money, or a delegate, or a rescue spaceship. He comes. The King comes Himself, into a broken, humble, lowly world. He sees our pain and He enters in.

I love the language of this stanza. It is the perfect tension of light and dark, of defeat and victory, of sorrow and healing, of despair and hope. The night Jesus comes to this earth, the dark no longer stands alone. The despair no longer holds court. The sorrow has a challenger. The oppressed have a champion. The light of the world has come, a new morning is breaking. Our souls can feel it break as the music crescendos to this glorious moment.

And we fall on our knees. It's amazing because our pain has brought us to our knees before. We've fallen to our knees and begged for mercy. But now, now, we fall on our knees in awe of the mercy that has come. We can't help but be amazed at how God has seen our need and come, in person, to dwell with us. To dwell with us in our pain, in our fear, in our loneliness. The God of the universe has come to comfort His people, and He's come in person. We fall on our knees and thank God that He has arrived just in time.

The power of this song is that there is a thrill of hope within this weary world; this song captures both the longing of our hearts for the complete healing that Jesus will bring someday and the complete relief we feel that He has not left us to dwell in the anguish alone. He has come. We, the weary, are rejoicing! How miraculous is that?!

I want to stand in the light of the dawn breaking. I want to feel the first rays of sunlight on my face. Yonder it breaks. The fulfillment of hope is coming. The anguish will end. And while I stand and wait, I will take the nail-pierced hand of my Savior, and watch the glorious morn break with Him by my side. He has brought hope, He has cued the dawn. The soul has felt it's worth. The night which was once so bleak is now holy and glorious. Praise be to God that the night breaks way to dawn!


Thursday, December 1, 2016

Who Would Imagine a King

Happy Advent! As the Advent season is about drawing near to our sweet Savior, savoring the moments of anticipation as we wait on this unexpected, unimaginable gift, I have decided to intentionally give time each day to drawing near. This season I want to draw near through my two favorite mediums, music and writing. So each day I'm planning to pick the lyrics from one of my favorite, some common, some lesser-known, Christmas songs and write about Jesus through that lens. If you want to peek into my humble journey through the Greatest Story, I'd love your company. I hope you discover a few songs you never knew you needed to love, and also, perhaps, God and Holy Spirit willing, see new glimpses of our Savior. That's my prayer for myself--I want to experience Jesus and this precious time of year through fresh eyes. I know God will honor that desire; He's all about drawing near!

When I first thought of this project, I thought I would start with "O Come All Ye Faithful" or "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus", but today I found myself in search of a song that captured the shock, the awe, the unimaginable way that Jesus arrived. Izzy and I started the day with Ann Voskamp's Advent book, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift. Lingering in Voskamp's beautiful language (thank goodness God gave me a daughter who loves words!) I found this beautiful image:

Their family tree was a fallen tree.
When their family tree crashed to the ground, it crushed all of their hearts.
The stump--and all of their days--felt utterly hopeless. Like their hearts had been cut right out of them.
But it happened: the wondrous impossible. It came right out of that chopped down stump--the miracle no one ever dreamed of. Except for God. God never stopped dreaming of the miracle, the one He'd dreamed right from the very beginning, because love never stops dreaming of a way to draw close again.


I just love that idea--love constantly dreaming up a way to draw close again. Isn't that the truth? Think about how often our broken hearts have longed for mending, how we imagine reuniting with long lost loved ones. In fact, every romantic comedy I can think of consists of a conflict that draws lovers apart and leaves viewers longing, in fact dreaming, of how to get those two love birds together again. These pieces of our heart are merely glimpses of God's heart; we were made in His image and as image bearers, albeit broken, we are looking for ways to draw close again.

We are indeed broken, and God knew we would be, and He had already orchestrated a grand plan to win us back, long before we ever fell away! He "dreamed right from the very beginning" a way to reconnect the relationship we had torn asunder.

He talked of this plan in Genesis 3, right at the very beginning, immediately after the Fall. He then spent the whole of the Old Testament, making covenant after covenant, sending prophet after prophet, using story after story, to hint at His great rescue.

The wisest, most faithful men, read these stories, interpreted these prophecies, held tightly to these covenants, and yet they had no idea what God had in store for them. They imagined a triumphant military leader, a stately King, a powerful Messiah. But no one, not a one, saw a baby born in a stable.

And perhaps this is why I have always loved this song. The Preacher's Wife is one of my favorite Christmas movies, and this song pierced me to the heart when I first saw the movie. I'm certain my 6th grade self didn't truly understand the power of this question: "Who would imagine a King?" I didn't know the history, I didn't know that the Pharisees were imagining a King of quite a different sort. What I did think of often was Mary, her innocent, school-girl dreams of what her family might be like. As she played house with her siblings and cousins, I imagined her assigning her children names, giving them qualities, envisioning who they would be when they grew up. Surely a fisherman or a carpenter or a teacher, these everyday professions that would be taken from the world she knew. Perhaps, if she were like Izzy, she might dream of a daughter who became a princess, like Esther. But would she ever imagine assigning her fictional child the role of King?

Yet here was the angel, and he was announcing just that--an infant King. Mary's ponderings in this song are so beautiful, so innocent:

Mommies and daddies always believe
That their little angels are special indeed
And you could grow up to be anything
But who would imagine a king?

A shepherd or teacher is what you could be
Or maybe a fisherman out on the sea
Or maybe a carpenter building things
But who would imagine a king?

It was so clear when the wise men arrived
And the angels were singing Your name
That the world would be different 'cause You were alive
That's why heaven stood still to proclaim

One day an angel said quietly
That soon he would bring something special to me
And of all of the wonderful gifts he could bring

Who would imagine?
Who could imagine?
Who would imagine a king?


Mary treasured up all of these things in her heart; all the what ifs, all the playing pretends, and also the angels proclaiming the birth of her Son, the Glory to Gods, the Shepherds kneeling at a trough, and the Magi bearing priceless gifts. "Who could imagine that I would give birth to a King?"

The answer, Mary, is the God you hold in your arms. He dreamed this up with the Father from the very beginning. This was His plan. This was His grand gesture of love. You and I could not have imagined it. It seemed impossible that love would come in the form of a baby. It seemed incredible that this baby would grow to be a man who loved fiercely, spoke truthfully, and moved in great power. It seemed unthinkable that He would then willingly walk the hill to be crucified on a cross. And it seemed unimaginable that He would rise again the King over death.

He worked beyond all we could imagine so that He could draw close to us in love. Praise be to God for doing exceedingly and abundantly more than all we ask or imagine!

Thursday, September 22, 2016

The Unplanned Moments of Parenting

It's been a rough parenting week...again. Maybe I should start thinking of this as the status quo? I've found myself reflecting on how much I focus on the hard. I'm so quick to list the faults of my offspring, to talk about the ways in which they have pushed my buttons or gone one step too far. I, ashamedly, have twice in the last weeks downloaded on a complete stranger about my frustrations with my child. My heart hurts knowing that I've done this; I've repented, I've sought to be more gentle with the way I speak. I'm such a truthful speaker at times that there's no hiding my heart. And therein lies the problem, my heart.

My heart toward my difficult children is one of hardened selfishness. I'm frustrated and angry at their choices because they make life hard for ME. There is a self-serving agenda here in which I want easy children who make good choices so that my life can be more comfortable. If my daughter would just pull her emotions together and stop melting down in the car, I could listen in peace to that podcast I wanted to check out. If my son would calmly ask for help when the physics of trains not fitting into a small tunnel frustrate him, I could quickly rebuild the track and get back to surfing Facebook (or even cleaning toilets!) If my kids could just accept the transition of leaving one place to go to another more easily, I would be spared the embarrassment of offering consequences that have no effect, bargaining that accomplishes nothing, and ultimately the carrying of a screaming child to a car with a look of frustrated apology to the parents around me. Do you see the focus of my frustrations?

ME. The problem is ME. Parenting is inconvenient. Parenting happens while the water is boiling on the stove and the sauteed garlic and onions are burning so that you can stop and get on eye level with an upset child. Parenting happens when you just want to be in the bathroom by yourself for 5 minutes and you waddle out to the living room with your pants still down to break up the fight that has escalated to screaming. Parenting is putting down the toilet brush, holding your dirty hands together so you don't get bacteria everywhere, and reminding your kid to take another deep breath before speaking unkindly to you. Parenting is dying to self, over and over and over again.

How refining the work of parenting is! We must daily, hourly, momentarily, let go of what we want and do what is best for our children. We must recognize that we don't want them to be perfect, well-behaved children on the outside because then we miss the opportunities to talk about the broken, messed up thoughts brewing on the inside. We must choose their character and their hearts over convenience. We must be twenty minutes late somewhere because we need to make sure everyone was calm enough to continue on to our destination. Parenting is not what we want, at all; it's what they need.

It's what we need too. Jesus instructed that, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23) In John 3, Jesus reminds us that, "He must increase, and I must decrease." We need these little people of ours to show us just how selfish our hearts are. We might think we are dying to ourselves, we might think we are doing a pretty good job of being selfless (I mean, being a parent at all and just taking care of the immediate needs of children requires us to die to ourselves--hello, sleepless nights for crying babies, puking toddlers, and nightmares of elementary school!) We are selfless, as far as we are willing to let ourselves be selfless. We've made up our minds just how selfless we are going to be and then we draw a line. "I'll give up reading this book to make lunches, I won't watch TV so I can sew this Halloween costume, I won't talk on the phone in the car so I can hear about her day, but I WILL shower by myself! That's where I draw the line!" I do this all the time! I list in my head the millions of ways I've been selfless today and I use those to justify just a few more minutes on Facebook before I go in and read with my child.

When I think about my own heart, I realize just how selfish I am. Because if I've made up my mind about when and how I will be selfless, is that even selfless at all? If I've scheduled it in and made room for it, then how much has it really cost me? I think the truth is that the really selfless acts come in the unplanned moments, the moments where I have to stop what I'm doing, change my agenda, and place my eyes on the child in front of me. Some days this feels like the most impossible task I will ever face, especially when I'm changing my agenda for what seems like the 100th time that day!

This is where I found myself praising God this morning in the car! "God I'm so awful at this! God I'm so selfish, but You are not. You give freely, always, whenever I ask. Whenever I demand Your attention because I've faltered again and need more correction and instruction, You stop, You listen and You give. You give freely, selflessly. That is what the cross is all about. That is the God I serve. Thank You for being the perfect parent even when I'm not. Give me a fuller measure of You this day as I parent in the unplanned moments. Help me to see what is most important. Help me to see my child's heart, and give me the willingness to turn towards it, and the words to speak into it. I cannot parent without You. Thank You that I don't have to! Amen."

What freedom we have to know that the perfect parent is parenting us all! I was delighting in creation this morning, delighting in the blue skies and the puffy white clouds, and it hit me--Izzy and Josh are God's creation too! They were created for me to delight, just as much as the clouds and the sky were created for me to enjoy! God created them for me to search them, discover all of the nuggets of beauty hidden within them, and to delight! Praise be to God that I have a lifetime, however long that is, to learn about and delight in my children! Jesus, please don't let me miss the opportunities to stop and delight in the unplanned moments either!

God let the unplanned moments of parenting be a source of joy to me. Teach me to relish them. Teach me to praise You for them. Help me parent my beautiful children as You would. Amen.