Ragamuffin Gospel

Sad News

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I got the worst possible news that you can get if you have a beloved pet that’s near and dear to your heart.

I found out from the vet today that my cat Lucy has severe jaundice and might have a few days or a few weeks left to live. In other words, her days are numbered.

I feel like a cloud of grief and sadness has been hanging over my head ever since. I get emotional and I feel somewhat stupid for getting so emotional over a cat when people around me are losing husbands, wives, parents, and children.

Still, pets can feel like family and losing one is never easy, no matter how old and sick they get.

I get sad when I think about what my life will be like without Lucy in it. I can’t imagine how I will get through something like that.

Then I remember something. God doesn’t give me strength for what’s yet to come or what might be or what might have been. He gives me strength for what I need for today.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly powerless and weak, He becomes my strength and carries me though what I never would have thought I could endure.

I’m also reminded that all our days are numbered. We might have more than a few days or a few weeks, but none of us live forever on this side of heaven. No one gets out alive.

Maybe that’s a reminder to us all to embrace this one and only life we’re given and to cherish all our loved ones, both the two-legged and four-legged kind.

Let’s none of us take for granted any good things in this life but be perpetually grateful and thankful for even the smallest gifts, mindful of where they came from and Who gave them to us.

 

Let’s Just Pause Right There

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“Father, free my foolish heart from believing I need the approval of people when you, the thrice holy God of eternity, greatly delights in me” (Scotty Smith).

Let’s just pause right there. Give yourself enough time to let these words soak into your skin and penetrate the very marrow of your bones.

Sometimes you crave the approval of others and chase people’s affections, making a fool of yourself in the process. You spend so much time morphing into what you think everyone else wants you to be that you forget how to be you.

Maybe right now the person whose approval you need most is you.

You’ve been your own harshest critic. Nothing is ever good enough. Even the best moments are rife with mistakes and flaws.

At the end of the day, you can escape from all the others, but you can never run away from you. All those self-deprecating thoughts follow you wherever you go.

Maybe right at this very moment all you need is to remember that your Abba Father delights in you. Not tolerates. Not likes. Not mildly approves. Delights.

If you could combine every romance in history, every tender affection of parent and child, brother and sister, every love between friends, all the love the world has ever known, it would still fall far short of the love that God has for you.

God loves you that much. He delights in you. Even on days when you felt you did absolutely nothing right and royally pissed everyone off and made a jackass of yourself, God still loves you as much as on those rare magical perfect days.

Just pause right there and let everything else go for a little while. It’ll all still be there in a few moments. And so will your Abba Father.

 

 

What It Means to Care

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“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life).

Perhaps if we had this spirit of caring, we would not be so quick to celebrate at another’s downfall or to assign evil motives to another’s actions. We would not be so smug and self-righteous when judging those we deem our enemies.

Jesus told us to love our enemies precisely because we are no different than them in that we have the same sin nature dwelling in each of us and are just as capable of any heinous act apart from the saving grace of God.

Once again, show grace instead of judgment and love instead of hate. The caring way is always the best way to go.

Even Mondays Can be Good Again

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“… so if we’re being honest here, we’re tempted to look at everything we’re facing, throw up our arms up & say, ‘I don’t see how?’
And You open Your arms wide & say: ‘Come see Me.’

We sit down & say, ‘This all feels too heavy to carry.’
And You sit closer & say, ‘My shoulders can carry any weight you feel.’

We look around & say, ‘But how in the world will we get through what’s ahead?’
And You look gently at us & say,
‘Just take all your world & lay it on My heart —
*and I’ll work the best through everything.*’

And You hold us close enough so we feel it:
Sometimes we don’t have to know the way through…
We just have to lean on the One who says He’s The Way” (Ann Voskamp). #HonestPrayers #RealPeople

I posted this two years ago and it still rings as true now as it did then. When the week hasn’t even started and you already feel beat up and worn out and run down, this word is for you.

God’s got this. You don’t have to be strong enough, smart enough, sly enough, or strategic enough. You just have to be surrendered enough. You just have to trust the God who’s already been there and made a way through.

Nothing that happens to you this week will catch God off guard or take Him by surprise. Even if that unlikely worst case scenario happens, you’re still safe in the arms of the One who still works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Go in the grace and mercy of God and make Monday a good one.

 

Trust Yourself in God’s Hands

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“Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says–‘I cannot stand anymore.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands” (Oswald Chambers).

This came up in my Timehop from something I posted a few years ago. I’d say it’s still just as true and relevant now as it was back then.

Take heart and know that waiting on God is always worth the wait, no matter how long it takes.

 

Just About a Perfect Night

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Tonight was darn close to perfect.

I got to see my old college roommate and friend from Union University way back in the day with his new wife this evening. I didn’t know very many people there (actually only two total), but I enjoyed the unseasonably cool weather and being a part of some great conversations (though my ambivert self did more listening than talking).

It was an older house with a fantastic backyard that made for a good place to hang out. They even had chickens in the back of the yard. If I lived there, I’d string up a hammock and sleep in the backyard every night. Or at least when the weather was decent.

Nights like these are God-winks in the middle of a long week where it always seems that it should be a day later than it is. I felt all day long that today really should have been Thursday, but my calendar said otherwise.

I hope the fall-like weather continues, but I also know this is Tennessee, land of the perpetually changing temperatures. We just might get all four seasons in this week.

In the mean time, I’ll keep choosing gratitude for every day I’m given and looking for all the God-winks and small blessings I can find wherever I can find them. Oh, and tomorrow’s Thursday for real.

 

 

To All My Single Friends

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I don’t usually give advice when it comes to relationships, given my less than stellar record in that department, but tonight’s sermon from Kairos inspired me to pass along some hopefully helpful tidbits.

Well, actually one  tidbit. Don’t settle. Ever.

Don’t ever settle for someone who abuses you physically, mentally, emotionally, or in any other way. In fact, if you’re with someone who does that, leave. Immediately. Don’t wait around and hope it will change or that the other person will change. Just go.

Don’t ever settle for someone who treats you like you’re less. As in less than the amazing image bearer of God that you are. As in less than the son or daughter of the King that you are.

Don’t ever settle for someone who takes you for granted.

Don’t ever settle for someone who still thinks and acts like a child and wants freedom without responsibility.

Don’t ever settle for someone who is complacent about who they are and where they’re going in life, someone who isn’t willing to make the effort to change.

Don’t ever settle for someone who doesn’t bring out your best self and inspire you to be all that God created you to be.

Don’t ever settle for someone to not be alone. Some of the loneliest people are the ones who settled for people they weren’t meant to be with and who made them feel inferior and alone.

Don’t ever settle because of the lie that you are somehow less than complete or less of a person without someone in your life. Only Jesus completes you. If you’re not already whole, no one can make you whole.

Don’t be afraid to be alone. There’s a vast difference between alone and lonely. You can be alone with God and be more fulfilled than in any relationship. In fact, it’s good for everyone at some point to be alone so that you become comfortable with who you are.

Learn to love God and yourself. Learn to embrace the season of life you’re in and be fully to where you are, wherever you are. You can only be a better person for it.

Go Preds: Why I Love the Underdogs

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I think I’d root for the Nashville Predators right now even if I weren’t living in Nashville. There’s just something about the underdog that makes me want to pull for them, even if the odds against them seem insurmountable.

I believe that God has a special place in His heart for underdogs. You really see it when you look at the birth narrative. The ones chosen to be first to witness the incarnate God in the flesh, Jesus, weren’t the high-ranking religious leaders or the well-to-do in-crowd-ers.

It was some smelly shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the dead of night whom God appointed to be the first witnesses of Immanuel. They were the first evangelists who immediately took the news of Jesus and speed it everywhere they went.

I’d love to see the Preds win the Stanley Cup. Regardless of what happens from here, I think they’ve served the city of Nashville and their fans proud by the way they’ve persevered and overcome so much already.

I’m thankful that God still loves the outcasts and unwanted and underdogs of the world. There’s no one that God cannot love, that God cannot rescue, that God cannot save to the uttermost. I know because I was one of them. Maybe you were, too.

So I say, “Go Preds!” and “Go God!”

 

 

Empty Bucket Lists

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“The best lives don’t have Bucket Lists as much as they have Empty Bucket lists.

Because the thing is when I kick the bucket, I don’t want there to be anything left in my bucket. When I kick the bucket, I want the bucket right empty.

I don’t want my life to be how I took experiences — but that I gave exceedingly.

That I gave every last drop, that I poured it all out, that I held nothing back. Because the way to really live is not to try to fill your life up — but to spill your life out” (Ann Voskamp).

Very rarely anymore do I read words that completely blow up my world as these did.

I was all about my bucket list. I may not have written it all down, but I had it all up in my noggin and just waiting for the right opportunities.

I keep thinking about the acronym for GIFT– Give it Forward Today. That’s the best way to a fulfilled life. Pour yourself out for the sake of others and ultimately for the sake of Christ.

I’m all about experiencing life and trying new things. I’m all for not sitting on your couch in front of Netflix, waiting to die but confronting your fears and living each day to the fullest. But it’s not about hoarding life as much as it is giving it away every single day.

I do think though that life isn’t about filling up your bucket but about emptying it out so that at the end, there’s nothing left. I hope that at the end when I take my last breath, I will have been all used up for God with nothing left to spare.

PS I still recommend the book The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp if you haven’t already read it. I put the link to buy it off amazon.com on my last blog post.

 

 

I Just Want Enough Time

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“I speak to God: I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done — yesterday.

In a world with cows to buy and fields to see and work to do, in the beep and blink of the twenty-first century, with its ‘live in the moment’ buzz phrase that none of the whirl-weary seem to know how to do, who actually knows how to take time and live with soul and body and God all in sync? To have the time to grab the jacket off the hook and time to go out to all air and sky and green and time to wonder at all of them in all the light, this time refracting in prism. I just want to do my one life well” (Ann Voskamp).

I’m gonna leave that right there. No need to add anything or elaborate further because this says it all perfectly.

I might add that Ann Voskamp has a new book called The Broken Way that I’m really loving. Here’s the link if you want to go buy something awesome:

Good night, friends. Be sure and cherish all the moments you’re given for as long as you’re given them.