Love Rains

Sometimes in the most ordinary of reflective moments, divine understanding comes my way. Often it’s not a new idea but a new perspective that teaches me. Today I had a moment like that while talking about the word love.

We all give and receive love in different ways (i.e. Love Languages), but what about the part leading up to knowing you love someone? I think we are different there too.

Or maybe I’m just different. It wouldn’t be the first or last time that was said about me.

Let the rain fall…

For some, love comes like a spring rain: The sensation of drops landing on the skin, tingling and rejuvenating. It lands on the surface and is allowed to soak into the heart’s soil where it deepens and roots.

Hebrews 6:7 Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.

It’s not like that for me, even if I wish it was more like that.

Let the rain fill…

For others, we are like an underground spring: Nothing at the surface is apparent for quite some time but the water is still there. As the rains come, the level of the spring gets higher until it breaks through the surface.

Song of Solomon 4:12 You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.

Rained “on” or Rained “in”?

The most beautiful part of love is that is can be seen and experienced from so many angles and levels, each bringing something new to the image and experience, like the slightest twist of a kaleidoscope creates a new design.

“Hearts have colors
Don't we all know...
Inside is not a heart
But a kaleidoscope”
(Kaleidoscope Heart, Sara Barrielles)

God, who is Love and designer of our details, pours His love out equally on the rained “on” and the rained “in”.

Isaiah 58:11 The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

PTP Update

Paint Tia Pink Project Update

As of today with 45 days left the paint Tia project balance is $890.

This means...

I will be running in pink shoes

I will be wearing pink nailpolish

A few more dollars and I'll be getting a pink shirt

But...

You probably won't get to see me in a pink tutu with pink hair on Facebook...

... sorry mom

(is it too late to add a disclaimer that funds from JD and Debra don't count???)

Uncomfortable Faith

Can someone actually be “so heavenly bound they are no earthly good?” In this particular instance this phrase was used to insinuate that another was so focused on God that she isn't doing anything good. I believe in a God who is in control of everything. He uses those with big faith and those with no-faith to work out his plan for this earth.

The following was a reponse I wrote to address the faith I saw in the person who was basically insulted. I believe that God showed up with a powerful message while I was writing. It is a message for me as well as for the church.

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People who forsake all cultural practices and live a life of unbounded faith make other people uncomfortable. It is out of that sense of being off-center that they make statements like the one made to you. The reason they feel off center is because they are. The western church primarily has so watered down and squeezed the Word of God into our culture that when we see lives that are so counter-culture it appears alien to the God in a box we know. The bible is absolutely opposite to everything we are about here. But upon accepting Christ we have that same Spirit in us, but for most its tamped down into something palatable to our own personalities and desires. When the living, breathing Spirit in someone encounters the Spirit in another who is not allowing it to breathe as freely – the choking feeling rises to the surface. We know something is off but it’s easier to dismiss the other person as crazy and too radical, as we push the Spirit back into it’s safe little corner. We call those people radical and think they will push unbelievers away by such outlandish living. I believe that attitude is what prevents the church from being more effective – if my life in Christ isn’t radically different then what’s the point?

You come along with choices and beliefs and faith and some people will want to crush it in you. They will want you to put your God back into a corner just like they have because then they will feel okay. They don’t want to feel the conviction that maybe there is more and they definitely don’t want to have to change or make more sacrifices then they’ve decided it’s okay to make. Perhaps these are the people whom Jesus will say, “Depart from me, I knew you not.” I think too many Christians are so earthly bound they are little eternal good.

Sometimes, you come along with choices and beliefs and faith and someone will crave what you seem to have. They will want to watch what you do and say to see what makes you different. Some will feel the Spirit and know they’ve been choking it and begin living with more faith and being more God-focused. We are the weapons of God – being used to divide the true from the imitation.

Summer Scenes