When You Just Need Some Rest From This Chaotic, Collapsing World

Horizontal fingers have been flying all around, lately. Like a game of “Who dun it?” where we each become detectives. Each particpatants in some crazy mystery, trying to solve, discover, have opinions about why the world is collapsing.

Floridian children lie in body bags, and our finite minds want answers, understandably. Cancer spreads without asking questions, and we wonder why we aren’t lord, have no control even over our own destinies.

Once prayerful hands, linked within themselves or one another, are now unfolding; pointing, criticizing, blaming, wanting explanations for the clearly, unexplainable….

Justification, simple solutions to a world so entangeled with sin, nothing can unravel it, but love.

Christmas Eve

The light of the candles filled the sanctuary, and our one tradition lasts, going to the place where we are reminded that…

A baby in a manger appeared helpless…Yet, changed the world. Turned the world upside down. Made everything unholy, pure.

We are reminded of a stable, where the proud and inflated, grande and elevated failed to go, least suspecting, unkowing or understanding that the King of angels came down, and was now laying in the lowliest place of all…

He found His way into a world, drenched with a death wish out of love and obedience…a death that would one day bring life and redemption to us all.

Meanwhile, Herod ravished the earth to kill the one good thing, the savior of all mankind, the good and innocent, so sin could rule and reign.

But God’s plan was never horizontal, founded in carnal understanding. It’s in the light the eight of us held in the darkness of a room singing holy and bright, this past Christmas Eve.

And just when you think that glowing emblem of His grace and mercy has been snuffed out, we gather coats, and children, in quiet awe-struck wonder of a God who gave it all for each of us, throwing open glass doors with grace and humility…

When eyes once shut tightened in prayer, look up, vertical. Children lift their eyes, pointing to the sky, and cry out in wonder, “It’s snowing.”

That was the first of the wonders of Jesus, here in the Northwest. Snow equaling grace. White representing purity.

And I knew this picture of a family together, young and old, standing perfectly was and is His act of mercy. Truly a work of grace.

And I wonder, could eyes-lifted be the answer? When we are reeling, scrambling to make some sense of hate-filled acts, scouring the internet for answers…to the unjust evil running rampant, appearing without harness or restraint?

Is the One we need grace from, showering down upon us, unseen grace, daily? Continually, though we can’t see it?

And instead of thanking Him and standing in wonder and amazement, do we find the next bad thing to point to, seeking answers, laboring to make sense, justifying our own Herod-like crucifixtion of one another, laws, government, flag, schools, people around us….anything and everything to help us understand it all.

When did we become a nation of haters? Hating laws and rules, even so-called, “insensitive schools” that don’t catter to the broken…

Isn’t He still the Father who models the Shepherd, reflecting any true parent’s purpose, tucking His kids in tight, lighting a candle and holding it up, bright into the night?

When did we rid ourselves from the responsibiltiy of pointing our nation’s children to THE Way…the only way in a dark, bitter world?

When did we pull Him off His throne, thinking we could even guess why evil still rules this earth? Why would forceful opinions, dominion and favor over our thoughts and ideas, our so-called wisdom and education, opinions, and collective wills ever heal the whole entire world?

Where did we miss this mist of mercy, falling like snow, covering a land in darkness, without deserving or expectation.

He came. Lent reminds us there was a baby who grew up to be a man. A man of sacrifice and surrender, a friend who kneeled and ate with sinners?

Why didn’t He stand upon a podium and give political answers? Dictate with iron forcing? Come in pomp and prestige, demanding His own way or course, bashing a world with arrogant Lordship?

Instead…Gentle? Humble? Kind? Compassionate?

Healing? Tender? Relational? Loving?

February 14th.

A day where people hold hands, hearts fill the land, and the sun usually perks in preparation for spring time.

I place dozens of hearts on my children’s doors that morning. 4:30 a.m. and that’s when I see something beautiful sprinkling the earth…

White. Pure. Vertical….not horizontal.

Snow? Again? I can’t believe it.

I read from the hearts taped on my windows. “Love covers a multitude of sins”. Embrace the written as I scriibble even more hearts…

“Love never fails”, “Love one another”, “Jesus loves YOU!” And I have to question…What’s on His heart? Have we ever stopped and asked?

Because if my children look to the world for answers, they may never see real love. Body bags? Yes. School Shootings? Likely. Terrists attacks? Unquestionably….

But love, the vertical, pure, perfect, unfaiing love from heaven? May we mold them into perceiving, willing, desperately, wide-eyed open seekers…of His Word, His Truth, His ways.

May our children be of those who know true hope comes from heaven, never some article or the internet, never some ideation or other person.

I lavish in His beauty. The grace I see, the white filling the earth, like it did on Christmas Eve. The next day, it is gone. The sun comes out, the world goes on…

And only those with eyes wide-opened, eyes encountering the mud of His grace and sovereignty, actually ever see.

People willing to look up, instead of pointing fingers. Surrendered to Jesus, instead of blaming the entirety of every evil decision on another person God created…

And don’t we just keep diminishing His pure, perfect nature, when we tare down, yet another person? Blame? Point? Criticize in the name of understanding?

Do we climb higher from knowledge, use information as a stool to step on eachother, so that somehow we can see a few inches higher, deeper, at the sake of destroying our neighbors with hate?

And when do we ever get taller, crushing another with the weight of our own power and egos?

Have we sacrificed this land of Freedom, by criticizing and blaming a country our Great-Grandfather’s died on, battling bloodied bullet? Watched as yet another hand grenade shattered their best friend’s face?

Have we forgotten The Light of the World loves this nation, too many have grown to demise?

Has hating become some second rate sport, some popular event that selfishly gives us “likes” on Facebooks, promotes us, or makes us famous on Twitter?

When did hate become a sport we cling to? Have we forgotten to look vertical, in a world of detectives searching for answers we might never find in this lifetime?

Why look horizontal, when our hearts were made to see vertical?

It’s not yet 4:00 a.m. Baby cries. I open my eyes and tuck her in tight again. Like that baby in a manger, speechless, helpless, innocent…vulnerable…

Just then, the sky out our bedroom balcony draws me. White covers the sky. I look horizontal, unable to differentiate the space between heaven and earth…

The field and sky a blur. Dirt, grass, and land beneath our house can’t be seen in the darkness of night, where a world hungrily searches for answers.

I flick on the light, like the candle lit on Christmas Eve. I gasp at the thickness of grace covering our region.

February 18th.

Grace. Awww. Grace.

I try to clear my mind. “God, what are you saying?”

Then, I remember….

Today is the day a ring will be presented to my daughter. The boy who has wooed my daughter’s heart for the past two years will bow on one knee and ask for our daughter’s hand in marriage.

THE marriage. A ring. The celebration. A pre-wedding feast after the proposal has been accepted.

Do we accept what God is asking? Come away with Him? Come, sit, eat, where the Father is waiting to take our hand.

And I see a love so pure, so holy, perfect in His eyes. Not shallow or pety. Not vainfilled or greedy. Stemming straight from heaven, from the Holy of Holies.

Any real love affair after all, is always vertical first, then horizontal. Isn’t it?

And even now, as I type this, I look up, out the window, and the sky falls in the darkness with perfect white flakes from heaven.

I look down. Everything dirty? Covered. Then, I look around. A heart still taped to the window, “Love covers a multitide of sins.”

Another heart, left over from Valentine’s Day. I read it. “God showed His love for us by this…while still sinners, He died for us.”

And gratitude fills my heart amidst the snow, and wedding, surrounding a humble baby as the light flickers, threatening darkness, even as I write this.

Will purity win? Hearts allign with His holy and perfect message? Isn’t the innocence of a manger somehow more powerful that a ragging generation, waring with hate, demanding their own way or insisting on answers?

Isn’t His mercy, doesn’t His cross rising in authority have more dominion that a thousand body bags, staring at us on social media?

Didn’t He come to conquer death? Call us to a wedding feast? Doesn’t He ask us to look up, instead of getting stuck in blame, trying to project the reflections of our own hearts of shame…

“Family is love”. The last purple heart I see. Purple…Royalty. Priesthood. Diety. And yet, we can live like paupers, forgetting there is grace.

What if we looked vertical instead of horizontal? What if we stopped with the pointing fingers, bowed our heads, lit out candles, and began starting to cross our fingers together again?

• Might the world know a different narrative?
• Might our homes and children be stronger?
• Might our churches thrive, our schools have the covering of His Lordship?
• Might love reign and grace fall down covering each of us…

In our own darknened state, in a world where each of us are to blame…What we stopped rewarding and praising the pointing of horizontal fingers…

Never forgetting, He died to cover US, our pain, our hurt, our shame….With His love.

Perfect Love casting out all fear. His mercy pours down on us, like Christmas Ever, and Valentine’s Day…

And these next few hours, when the soon to be groom offers the bride his hand…

Isn’t we celebrate with a feast. We come as we are, looking up with humbled hearts and folded hands? Just listen as He calls us; the Perfect Husband, Gentle Lamb, the Mighty Counselor, Our Loving Father, the Great, “I Am”…

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavily burdened [by religious rituals that provide no peace], and I will give you rest [refreshing your souls with salvation]. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me[following Me as My disciple], for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest (renewal, blessed quiet) for your souls. For My yoke is easy [to bear] and My burden is light.” ~ Matt 11:28-30