gomer

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how desperately we need His grace. He loves us when we think we are god. He loves us when we spit in his face and don't even know it because we're busy polishing our own images for a perverted sense of gratification. He loves us when we unceremoniously chuck him onto the rusty back burner - what injustice, what shortsightedness, what vileness, what wretchedness! this is a God who told hosea to love gomer. he told hosea to choose gomer everyday and to consciously and wholeheartedly make gomer the object of his desire. this is the God who loves us and we are so, so in need of His grace

sidenotes;

like sweet rain on my heart
also welcome week i'm so tired are you done yet

ten ways to love:
"speak without accusing james 1:19
pray without ceasing colossians 1:9
promise without forgetting proverbs 13:12
give without sparing proverbs 21:26
answer without arguing proverbs 17:1
trust without wavering corinthians 13:7
share without pretending eph 4:15
enjoy without complaint philippians 2:14
forgive without punishing colossians 3:13
listen without interrupting proverbs 18"

pursuing justice

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"We sometimes see the gospel and justice as separate, like two sides of a teeter-totter. We think talking about the requirements of justice or the material aspects of life, raising that side of the teeter-totter, will diminish the gospel and our focus on the spiritual aspects of life. The assumption is that if one is highlighted, the other is diminished. This kind of either/or thinking, or dualism, is actually a heresy historically referred to as Gnosticism.

This is not how the Hebrews understood God, however. To them, the spiritual and material sides of life were united and integrated. When we think about the gospel this way, our picture changes. Rather than being in competition, as with the teeter-totter analogy, the spiritual and material aspects of life can be pictured as the two sides of a train track--meant to be inextricably connected in one purpose." (39)

"God absolutely uses short-term mission trips, and many of the career missionaries and international relief and development professionals I know were first given a 'taste' of their calling on a short-term missions trip when they were in high school or college. This illustrates exactly why I believe we need to continue to fund and send folks on short-term trips, while at the same time redefining our expectations for what they will accomplish and what they mean.

I believe we need to call these trips by what they really are: Learning trips. Exposure trips. Relationship trips. Engagement trips...Redefining short-term missions trips is about ridding ourselves of the illusion that we can change the world, and instead admitting that the world might need to change us." (151-152)

"Today, however, there is a growing desire among Christians of all sorts to discern and differentiate the social awareness of the historical social gospel movement from the specific theology that under-girded much of the movement. there is a desire to mend the artificial divide--the false dichotomy--between material and spiritual and return to a robust gospel message that includes the proclamation of Jesus and the embodying, person-transforming, society-changing love of Jesus." (209)

"'That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.' [Ralph Waldo Emerson]" (224)

"We forget the sustaining power of grace that was given to energize and motivate us to change the world. Covering grace without sustaining grace can make us consumers of grace. As if grace were a product, we keep it for ourselves." (255)

"To discern the path God would have you walk, begin with repentance. Lament the problem of pain and the ache of injustice in the world. Ask God to lead you, and listen long and intently for His answer. Be willing to obey unreservedly, no matter how big or small, no matter how heroic or mundane the task God sets before you or the path God calls you to walk." (289)

-Pursuing Justice, Ken Wytsma

sidenotes;

be [present] where you are [and love where you are by actively seeking peace of the city]. be where you are.

dysfunction

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it's not just generation gap, culture clash, dysfunction, unpredictability, and a shrill voice. it's also stewing and explosion, brooding and freezing. it's love language of polar opposites, trigger differences, anger expression differences, processing differences, conflict resolution differences, too many differences. reaction differences, interpretation differences. just differences

sidenotes;

this is really uber hard

baby deer and ghost again

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presently//
feeling like a baby deer in angry headlights

i got the crazies out of my system the last time but even so, navigating this new map feels strange and rusty like i had amnesia. like the vaccination shot's disorienting effects are only now receding, deaf to my silent screams of "i've had enough!" and it has left my bones weary, my heart wary, my hands shaking. but i'm trusting my gut & pressing in with prayer in this time of all things new and good. actively internalizing that i don't automatically default into the problem if i am not part of the solution, and that jesus and his grace is once again entirely sufficient. thank you, jesus, for your blood paid freedom.

edit// wow, rereading this makes me realize again just how deep his actions dug into me like shrapnel and tore apart things inside, like my perception of myself in relation to people i care about. actions which translated into "you are my problem. you are my temptation. you are all things bad therefore i cut you out like an abscess, or an addiction." never again

in the past//
but ghost, you are a stranger to me! i am feeling dismay while looking at this messy speed bump in my life. when people underestimate the scope of it all it is belittling to the awful extent of denying my reality, so i suppose on the same token i must doggedly resist the temptation to altogether cast away the need to dwell and process and walk through the aftermath. ghost, in your lingering, look: i am healthy, i am healing. i have friends who step into the dark places and face demons with me. ghost, i'm not running and i'm not scared. the longer you loiter the more things i will encounter and the more i will change. my King sings victory over me.

in the future//
we have the riches of God's love at our immediate and unreserved disposal, in all its heaviness and lightness and vibrancy and extravagance and liberating, cleansing power. there are things he hides from us only to peel away the scales of our eyes in due time. the more i receive of his love for me and for his children, the more i see how little i am, & the more i see how there is a spectrum of growth that he takes us on in all his gentleness and loveliness. what grace, what mercy! Jesus is King here & now, & he is restoring the world - he is more than enough cause for daily, effusive celebration! open the floodgates. Jesus is King.

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom

or the strong man boast of his strength

or the rich man boast of his riches,

but let him who boasts boast about this: 

that he understands and knows me,

that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,

for in these I delight," declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 9:23-24

sidenotes;
mraaaaaw
war of my life, john mayer
scribbled paper, little dragon
i have no idea what i'm getting myself into lol but Jesus is King and he is so good to me!

also, i hate skin problems with a passion ugh can you just pls stop, pls, you are the worst thing that ever happened to me this summer. i loathe you more than my eczema ugh

summed up

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this morning i woke up and rolled like a dying zombie onto my side, surveying the events of my life (because i often do this because i donno) in a groggy attempt to stay awake. and after a shower and some breakfast i came to realize that God's work in my life thus far can be summed up in the following statement:

struggles and heartbreaks are the avenues through which God makes my heart more tender and enlarges its capacity to readily step into the pain of others: starting with pain that i understand and expanding to pain i don't necessarily understand. & He does this because Jesus, as a man of sorrow, saw me in my wretchedness and determined to make me lovely, and so he stepped into my wretchedness and became my wretchedness. he gently and radically embraces me in a love that i in turn dwell in - i wash myself in it, i clothe myself in it, i inhale it. & as i exhale, it is His sustaining love coursing through my veins that blesses others with its rich fragrance as it has blessed and protected and saved me. He is my perfume, my sustenance. God is so good to me.

sidenotes;
< 3 my heart
also, painting with my silly sister is therapeutic
my silly brother is great because he takes pictures with me
& my "when helping hurts" & "life together" arrived YESSSs

edit// 9.10.13 bought a new outfit, & found awesome social justice books at the library
today was a good day (:

suspended limbo

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the weeks preceding the new school year always feels like suspended limbo to me. like a huge pause button that makes my mind foggy and lazy, a time during which i look back to a surrealistically distant past and look forward to see just as surrealistic a future. it's a rhythm of life that i am ill-adapted to; i find myself consciously associating God's work with a faster rhythm of life: when i'm in school, with things to do and places to go and people to meet. why is it that home is my driest and heavy spirited battlefield? although i suppose i know the answer to that question and it comes in the form of generation gap, culture clash, dysfunction, unpredictability, and a shrill voice. i am dragged back to my high school mentality when i come home, but that just means it never left the dark rooms in my chest. the monsters like to come out when i come home. how shameless they are

nevertheless, i also often entertain melodramatic writing (perhaps because my inner world is a melodrama? a tranche de vie melodrama for the purposes of amusement? haha) and my words tend to throw things into stark, vivid relief. things are not nearly as awful as the picture my words paint.

today the shock is mellowing out into shy-faced disbelief because i am amazed by how intimately God knows my heart. today there is anticipation in my palms and anticipation in my stomach because i taste sweetness on the horizon

"Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body. 

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.” -Anais Nin

sidenotes;
currently:
elodie rama, strange island
emily king, georgia

on another note, i've always been number 11 on your list from the start, but that's okay because Jesus says i'm his number one and Jesus says he redeems you and me and i believe him

enemy in the homefront

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Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Peter 1:13

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.1 Peter 4:7

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. 1 Peter 5:8-9

these verses are always so pertinent when i'm at home, because that's when i let my guard down

sidenotes;
today life is sweet