clarification

So, I guess I have ruffled some feathers...

I think we attempt sometimes, at least I do, to look "normal", to agree with other points of view, to get along, and to not look judgmental.  Because "we" are supposed to be kind, nice, good, non-judgmental people, right?  I mean if someone knows very little about the Bible or Christianity, I could almost bet that they would know that the Bible says "whoever doesn't have any sin cast the first stone" and "be kind to one anther" and "treat others the way you would like to be treated".  Don't be judgmental, don't be mean, always be kind and nice, etc... And yes, these are all Biblical and scriptural.  But it doesn't mean "we" don't speak truth.  

Believe me, I am not judging anyone except myself in these posts.  If you happen to feel like I'm directing my comments at you, I'm not.  Seriously, I have enough work to do on myself, I don't have time to pick and pry at anyone else.  But, I post because it seems to me if I'm learning something or struggling with something, there might be somebody else who's going through the same thing or hung up in the same area.  And perhaps if you're feeling like I'm directing my post at you, you and I are sitting in the same spot of "stuckness".

As to being kind, I think it is extremely unkind, in light of what I believe to be true about eternity, to not speak (or write) truth...Biblical truth.  It may not always seem nice or warm & fuzzy, but I attempt to look at each post biblically.  Sometimes the truth hurts.  Sometimes when I see that my life isn't lined up with the Word of God, it doesn't seem "good" to know that.  Oh, but it is.

Please take what I have to type and look it up for Biblical accuracy.  If you don't believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, then you will disagree with nearly all I have to say...that's ok.  I'm not an expert in defending the Bible's accuracy and legitimacy.  There are others that do that much better than I.  Check them out if you like.  

I encourage you though, if you are a follower of Christ to research & examine & determine for yourself what is the truth, what does the Bible say.  And apply what you learn from your time in the scripture and in prayer to your own life.  If you find that I am posting nonsense that is contradictory to the Word of God, please let me know so I can research and examine it further and make appropriate changes in my thinking and way of life accordingly.  Isn't that how the body of Christ should be operating?  

My posts will not all be warm & fuzzy, like Oprah.  I don't think Jesus was warm & fuzzy, I don't see that the Bible is warm & fuzzy and I don't think truth is always warm & fuzzy.  Sometimes it points out something we would rather not know and stings our ego, our pride, our life.  

diversified?

Are you diversified? In my previous life, you know the one before children, I was an accountant.  I could always be certain I was providing excellent financial advise if I advised my client to be diversified.  Put some money in low risk options to ensure safety of principal balances and put some money in higher risk options to maximize returns.  But make sure you don't put all your money in one place, 'cause if that one thing goes down, all your investment bucks go right with it.  And then, well, you're left with nothing.  I would say that diversity is still great advise in today's economy.

Financially.

But what about spiritually?  Should we be diversified spiritually?  Should we put a bit of our service/loyalty/worship/trust (whatever you'd like to call it) into more than one place?  Our finances perform great when they're spread out amongst different buckets, what about our souls?

As hard as I know I've tried to spread myself out among many different (and very "good ") "buckets", this in neither biblically sound or eternally wise.  It is, however, great for not ruffling feathers and being friends with everyone.  I mean who can be angry with someone who agrees with just about everything (as long as you're not hurting anyone else, of course)?  And it makes you look really "kind" and "friendly" and "nice" too.  (added bonus)    I've tried to put a bit of what I have into the "money/possessions" bucket, some to the "tolerance/politically correct" bucket, some into the "as long as it works for you and you don't hurt anyone" bucket, and, of course, some into the "Jesus" bucket.  

Too bad this isn't Biblical, because getting along with everyone & not looking too "radical" is nice and easy.  But I think, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are asked to put all our "eggs in one basket" (so to speak).

"I am the Way and the truth and the life."

"No one can serve two masters."

"Worship the Lord your God and serve him only."

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength"

These don't leave too much wiggle room for diversification.

 

photo from: www.compareshares.com.au/. ../eggs_basket.jpg

until that day

But I hold on to this hope and the promise that He brings...

There will be a place with no more suffering...

There will be a day with 

no more tears,

no more pain,

no more fears,

when the burdens of this place will be no more

we'll see Jesus face to face...

but until that day,

we'll hold on to You always.

words by Jeremy Camp

and yet...

This morning is one of those amazingly bright and beautiful mornings here in Geneva.  The sky is endless blue.  Not a speck of a cloud in sight.  The air is crisp and fresh and clean, with the slightest scent of dew and lilacs.  The distant mountains are bright and bold, stretching their tops towards the heavens.  It could quite possibly be the most perfect morning.

And yet...

my heart is sore, aching, crying.  

My dear, dear friends living on the other side of the Atlantic are in the midst of a devastating tragedy.  And with each new morning, there is new pain, new questions, new hurt in their lives.  And my heart is broken to pieces for them.  Broken and hurting for them knowing they are broken and hurting.  I cannot understand.  I cannot reason. 

And yet...

I am certain that God is holding them, cradling them, weeping with them.  I am certain He is in control, even though this tragedy appears completely out-of-control.  I know very little, but I know I serve a God of compassion and abounding love.  And, as Stacy says, I can pray that beauty is made from these ashes.

I love you, friends and prayers are lifted for you on this beautiful morning from Geneva.  I pray for extraordinary peace and comfort for you today and in the days to follow.

God is...

Tragedy - an event causing great suffering.

My heart is aching for a dear friend who is in the middle of a tragedy today.  An event which seems to be without reason, no way to understand, no answer.  Just pain.  Just hurt.  Just tears.

Over the last couple of days, prior to the tragedy, I have been searching the character of God.  I simply did a word search at biblegateway.com of "God is".  Here is some of what I found:

GOD IS:

• Greatness
  
• Strong
  
• Giving
  
• Compassionate
  
• Unfailing
  
• A God of Kept Promises
  
• Mighty
• Awesome
• With us
• A God who Fights for Us
• Love

I know these are God's character.  He is these things.  And although I cannot understand the tragedy...I know I serve a God who is Perfect.  Unfortunately, this world is not.  And there is hurt and there is pain and there is heartache.  But a know, that one day...there will be perfection and glory.

death is not dying

I just watched the most amazing video.  Here's the link to the site & the video.  

*tears, tears, tears* You'll understand after you watch.  It's long, yes, but worth every second.

"We're all dying," she said.  "I'm dying and you're dying."  

We are, you know.  We are.  We are all terminal.  I am and you are.  We just haven't gotten an estimate of how much time we have before we die.  

What am I doing with my time?  This precious time I have left.  It might 60 years or it might be 60 minutes.  Only God knows that date and hour.  What am I spending those limited minutes doing?  Am I glorifying the Lord, am I serving the one who so unimaginably served me?  Who have I told, with whom have I shared this amazing hope?  Do I live in light of eternity.  Eternity!  Do I seek truth whole-heartedly? Do I yearn to know Jesus? Do I give him the first, the best I have to offer?  Oh, the eternal perspective...  that I could live with that view of eternity every moment of every day.  

saying sorry or repenting?

The other day I found myself in the parking lot of the grocery store with all three of my children in tow.  Although I know there are those of you reading, you brave souls you, who see absolutely nothing wrong with this picture, I can think of about a million things I would rather do with all three of my children at one time than go to the grocery store.  But, for whatever reason, clearly a lack of planning on my part, there we were.  

I clearly went over all grocery store rules with them, reminding them to keep our voices quiet , don't wander off , watch out for other shoppers , and , most of all, keep our hands to ourselves.  They all nodded in agreement with the aforementioned rules.  Big sigh and off we go - completely against my better judgment.  Desperate, I was!

(Now, please don't start judging my parenting.  I am certain there are ways to encourage stellar behavior whilst grocery shopping, making it a fun and enjoyable family activity that everyone loves to do together. I have decided that I will not EVER think that grocery shopping is a family activity and have thus resolved to survive those occasions when I do find myself there, alone with 3 little people in tow.  Judge if you must, talk about me if you need…)

Anyway, can you guess what happens nearly the moment we walk in the door?  Yep, boys tugging at each other.  "Sorry, mom."  Voices WAY TOO loud.  "Sorry, mom."  Complaining about the pudding selection.  "Sorry, mom."  Running into other people's cart.   "Sorry, mom."  More loud voices.  "Sorry, mom."

"Stop telling me you're sorry!  Change your behavior!"

hmmmmmmmmm

His Grace

I love, love, love junior high aged girls.  I think they are amazing.  Their minds are a bit adult-like, in the sense that they are able to reason, be logical, debate, yet they are still childlike enough to ask really interesting questions that in a few years they would never dare ask for fear of it being "stupid".  I just love them (wouldn't want to be in Jr. High again myself, but I love them!).

I was talking to a group of them not too long ago about who-knows-what originally.  I'm sure we had spaghetti'ed off topic several times.  But we landed on the question of "being good".  Specifically is being good, good enough.  I posed the direct question to the group, "why do we try to be 'good'?"  One girl answered very quickly, without hesitation, "to go to Heaven, of course."

So I asked, "is that how we get into Heaven?  By being 'good'?  We earn our way in?"

She responded, "well, yeah."  (meaning - duh, lady, are you stupid?) "you do more good stuff than bad stuff."

*heart hurting, aching*

Why the cross then, why the cross?  If we can get 'in' all by ourselves, just suck it up and get 'er done, then why the cross?

My heart hurts that this girl, a girl who has grown up in Christian churches in Switzerland and the United States and in a Christian family doesn't know about grace.  amazing grace.  Has no one told her about the grace of Jesus, the purpose of the cross? How many more are there who don't know about grace?  Who are trying to do this on their own, to 'earn' their way in by being 'good'.  

I think this verse says it best...  

⁸For it is by free grace (God's unmerited favor) that you are saved (^[a]delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ's salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God...Ephesians 2:8 (The Amplified Bible)

could it be?

I overheard a couple of women talking at the playground a few weeks back.  It went something like this:

"We have some new folks moving to Geneva in a few weeks."

"Really?"

"Yes.  They're wondering if there are any english-speaking Christian churches in town.  Mary* goes to one I think.  She's a Christian, right?  I could ask her."

"Mary's a Christian?  I never would have guessed that."

*heart sinking into the pit of my stomach*  Although they were not talking about me, I felt this rush over my heart.  Could someone say that about me?  Could someone not know?  Could someone "never guess" that I am a follower of Jesus?

 Matthew 3:8 (NLT) says "prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins & turned to God."  

By the way you live - the way I do life.  The way I handle it when people cut in front of me in line, the way I react when traffic is ridiculous, how I behave around my friends, my enemies.  What do I choose to do when tragedy strikes?  Do I forgive other, do I give cheerfully, do I practice hospitality??  These are the ways I live.  Good deeds and service and prayer and time spent in ministry, those are parts of life, but certainly not all of the way I live.  In the harder, tougher moments, with the rougher, more tolerant crowd, in those times, in those moments, does my life prove whom I follow?

*the name has been changed

58°?

I grew up in the Tri-Cities in Washington State.  Situated close to Oregon and Idaho in the far south-east corner of the state, it was (and still is) a desert.  Every summer the hydro-planes would come to town to race on the mighty Columbia River.  Boat-race weekend was HOT.  Easily reaching over 100°, there was no mistaking that it was hot.

After graduating college (go Cougs!), my new husband and I moved to Minnesota.  Just west of the Twin Cities, we settled in a tiny little farm-town.  That winter it got COLD!  Enormous sized lakes froze solid and people drove their cars on them pulling little shacks, drilled holes in the frozen water and fished through the feet of solid ice.  Ridiculous?  perhaps.  It could easily not get above 0° (& that's Fahrenheit!) for several days in a row.  One step outside and there was no mistaking that it was cold.

Warm, on the other hand, is, well, not hot and not cold.  Sitting out on a boat in the middle of the Columbia in July, I'd tell you 58° is cold.  But sitting out in the middle of Lake Minnetonka in January in an ice-fishing hut (as if I have ever done that), I'd tell you 58° sounded like a heat wave.  Warm is not so obvious.  It has a bit of cold and a bit of hot, but it's hard to decided which it is really.

*****

I set out to learn-and-apply this year.  I have a really nasty habit of learning what I need to and locking it away never to actually be used in my "real" life.  Sort-of like learning just for the test, which I am brilliant at, by the way!  (& which explains why my French is so bad!)  This year, I wanted to learn something about the way God asks His followers to live and then, brace yourself, actually put what I learned into practice in my life.  Make changes, do things differently, think differently, respond differently.  And not "just for the test", but for my life.  Make changes that would change me forever.  Forever.  

The task seemed overwhelming at first.  Where to begin?  What to read?  What to listen to?  So many choices!  But one thing kept repeating over & over & over again.  lukewarm.  lukewarm.  lukewarm.  Everything I read, everything I listened to, everywhere was this message of being warm, not hot, not cold.  I decided this sounded like a great place to begin my quest and so I started here, in Revelation 3:14-22.

it all began…

It all began late in 2008.  I had always pretty much assumed that I "knew" the Bible.  I mean, I can't really quote you too many verses or give you too many references from my memory, but I have the general idea of most of the stories and themes of the Bible.  I attended Sunday School growing up & watched all those stories play out on felt-boards (remember those?  love them!)  And I went to youth camps & listened closely to the "deeper" subjects they taught us up-and-coming adults (that is when I wasn't trying to land a boyfriend!)  But I figured my overall knowledge of scripture & Biblical "stuff" was, well, better than average.  "Yes, please.  I would love some humble pie today!"

While I was running one day, listening to my favorite podcast I was challenged.  It was a list of 5 questions under the heading Year-End Survey.  And they are:

• How much time did I spend in Scripture last week?
• When was the last time I memorized a verse?
• When was the last time I taught someone a verse from the Bible?
• What do I know about God's Word that I didn't know a year ago?  How is it affecting how I live today?
• What could I eliminate in the next 45 days & insert time in God's Word?

This was a challenging list of questions.  Although, I figured my grade would not be an "F", I knew it was far from an "A".  Especially question #4.  What did I know today that I didn't know last year?  I figured there was plenty.  But part 2 of that question asks how my life has changed in light of what I had learned...I was drawing a blank.  My life looked pretty much the same on December 31, 2008 as it did on January 1, 2008 (expect for another candle on the b-day cake!)  My journals revealed that the same ole' things that were tripping me up the previous year, (the list is long & and for now I'll spare you the details) were still doing so.  No change here.  (reminds me of something James said - not James my husband, but New Testament James.)

I knew I needed to get in the Word and learn truth for myself.  I could not go on assuming that I "knew" what I needed to know.  How many things do I sort-of know, but I don't know-know.  You know?  And I remember a story (beautifully displayed on a felt-board) about a woman in a garden who thought she knew what God had said, was challenged, kind-of figured maybe what the other guy was saying sounding about right and "fell".  

I was convinced that I needed to know-know.  I needed to understand for myself.  I mean, if I'm placing my soul, my eternity on something, shouldn't I know-know-know it? 

And thus, this adventure begins.

Welcome!

Welcome to 58°. 

It's a nice, cozy temperature right now.  Definitely not balmy, definitely not frigid.  Just, well, comfortable.  Comfortable. 

Being that this is my first post here, let me introduce myself.  I am a woman, a wife, a mom from small-town America, but currently I am living in Europe.   I spend my days at the market, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning (not as much as I probably should) and taxiing around my adorable little ones.   I am certainly not a great & knowledgeable Biblical scholar.  Nor am I a wise theologian.  I'm pretty much just a regular ole' gal.  But over the past 4 months, I've been on the most incredible journey.  The things that  have already been taught to me and the things I'm pretty sure will be taught to me soon, have been so life-changing, that I feel compelled to share them.  

Even though I have a cute little blog (if I do say so myself) over here, I wanted to keep that blog more family-adventure-like.  Thus the "new" cute little blog here.

Again, welcome!  Again, I am so not a Biblical scholar.  If you're expecting grand theologically deep insights, well, I might not be the right blog.  I'm definitely not here to judge anybody.  I'm not here to throw any big rocks at anybody (other than perhaps myself).  I'm just here to record what I'm being taught because someone might be interested to learn it also.

Again welcome to 58°!