Heaven Is For Real

If you haven't heard of this book or read it, you must!  I think I read it in 3 days... I could hardly put it down!  It's the story of a preschooler named Colton, who seems to have an experience of heaven during an emergency appendectomy surgery.  In so many ways, it reminded me of my own surgery and my own hospital stay last year and my own hopes of heaven.  The title of the book is perfect: this child's explanation of heaven brings it close... It's not so far off as we think. Heaven is for real.

And so is Jesus... This was my favorite part of the book.  I was reading it while on the elliptical at my new apartment complex and it took my breath away.  A mundane, regular, every day thing instantly became holy.  Jesus is in heaven, and Jesus is in me, and Jesus is real.  Crazy.

“What did Jesus look like?” I said (Colton's dad).
Abruptly, Colton put down his toys and looked up at me. “Jesus has markers.”

“What?”

“Markers, Daddy… Jesus has markers. And he has brown hair and he has hair on his face,” he said, running his tiny palm around on his chin. I guess that he didn’t yet know the word beard. “And his eyes… oh, Dad, his eyes are so pretty!”

As he said this, Colton’s face grew dreamy and far away, as if enjoying a particularly sweet memory.

“What about his clothes?”

Colton snapped back into the room and smiled at me. “He had purpule on.” As he said this, Colton put his hand on his left shoulder, moved it across his body down to his right hip then repeated the motion. “His clothes were white, and it was purple from here to here.”

Another word he didn’t know: sash.

“Jesus was the only one in heaven who had purple on, Dad. Did you know that?”

In Scripture, purple is the color of kings. A verse from the gospel of Mark flashed through my mind: “His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.”

“And he had this gold thing on his head…” Colton chirped on enthusiastically. He put both hands on top of his head in the shape of a circle.

“Like a crown?”

“Yeah, a crown, and it had this… this diamond thing in the middle of it and it was pink. And he has markers, Dad.”

What are markers to a little kid?

Suddenly, I had it. “Colton, you said Jesus had markers. You mean like markers that you color with?”

Colton nodded. “Yeah, like colors. He had colors on him.”

“Like when you color a page?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what color are Jesus’ markers?”

“Red, Daddy. Jesus has red markers on him.”

At that moment, my throat nearly closed with tears as I suddenly understood what Colton was trying to say. Quietly, carefully, I said, “Colton, where are Jesus’ markers?”

Without hesitation, he stood to his feet. He held out his right hand, palm up and pointed to the center of it with his left. Then he held out his left palm and pointed with his right hand. Finally, Colton bent over and pointed to the tops of both his feet..

“That’s where Jesus’ markers are, Daddy,” he said.

A Feast For All Peoples: China

All of the girls in my house, plus one other, meet in a discipleship group once a week. Since we all live together, we have it at our house. This semester our meeting time is right around dinner time, so I decided to get a meal together for them every week. It's turned out to be a great time for us to hang out and connect (which doesn't happen as often as you think with all our different schedules). I think this is quickly becoming one of my favorite times of the week. Particularly because of the recent spin we've added on our house dinner. Each week we're going to feature a different country with a meal to reflect the culture and a time to pray for that specific country (we're using Operation World to help us).

Tonight we started with China... I made Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry (ok, I know this is probably not authentic, but we're going for the spirit of it all - not accuracy...). As we read through the section on China, I realized how little I know about what is going on in other parts of the world. I was personally struck by the brokenness that the government restrictions have caused: high abortion rates, low value of women, highest suicide rates, poverty, low view of and care for the elderly, disease, natural disasters, etc. Around 50% of the country is atheist with only recent progress in allowing religious worship. Bibles are hard to come by, missionaries aren't welcome, and the church is threatened by the government. Oh, for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

I'm looking forward to growing a burden for the world together with my roomies!

The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined, aged wine.  And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations.  He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken.  And it will be said in that day, "Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."  -Isaiah 25:6-9

Cultivating Faithfulness

"Trust in the Lord and do good; Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness." -Psalm 37:3

This verse has kept coming back to me over the past few weeks, and I am starting to take a hint that the Lord wants me to learn what it means to cultivate faithfulness.  Other translations say: befriend faithfulness, feed on faithfulness, find safe pasture, feed securely.  And I wonder what in the world these things have to do with each other!  I have found myself turning these phrase over and over again in my head trying to grasp their fullness and depth.  Though I never seem to get there, I think I'm learning! 

It starts to make more sense to me when I look at the Hebrew (a language, by the way, that I know nothing about... but thanks to blueletterbible.org and my Key Word Study Bible I can get away with pretending like I do).  To cultivate here means to shepherd, tend to, pasture, graze, feed, to guard, to care for.  The word for faithfulness has to do with steadiness, firmness, security, certainty.  It only takes me an instant to notice that I am none of these things!  Ugh...  rather I am unsteady, unstable, and uncertain.  And overwhelmingly so these days.  But not long after that I realize that God is ALL of these things.  And my first thought when I make that statement about God is... "Amen!"  And it is a beautiful thing that I am prompted to say that word, because that is the very word that faithfulness in this verse is derived from.  When I say, "Amen!"  I am saying I confirm that, it is solid, it is steady, it is a trustworthy statement.

I remember the first day after my surgery and the nurse told me it was time to get up and take a walk down the hall.  I was shocked.  In my mind that was impossible.  My core muscles (aka: my abs), which provide the stability for every thing else, had been sliced open not 12 hours earlier.  YOU MUST BE CRAZY!  And yet they got me out of the bed and I walked with my mom on one side and my friend Ginnie on the other.  By all means I felt unsteady, unstable, and uncertain in my ability to walk.  But with the security of my mom and my friend on either side I did it.  And I felt safe.  In that moment my trust was in their ability and not in my own.

So here I am now in my spiritual life and my daily life attempting to cultivate - tend to, care for, give attention to, feed on - such dependence on God.  "The Lord's lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning;  Great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him.'  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.  It is good that He waits silently for the salvation of the Lord."  -Lamentations 3: 22-26

Here are some things that I hope will help me along with these things this year:
- One Year Bible Reading Plan:  I have attempted this multiple times (usually every January) and never get through it!  I hope this year will be the year!  A woman from my church told me about an app available for my iPhone that reads it aloud to me.
- Memory Moleskin:  I tried to memorize the book of Philippians last year and only got through the first chapter.  I'm trying again this year with the help of this system.  I made mine with a bigger notebook than the one this guy uses.
- Systematic Theology:  Oh yes, I am trying to tackle this book this year!  My thoughts so far?  It is way more accessible and relevant than I expected a book like this to be.  It's been awesome.

My God is True

Ginnie got me this book and I have been reading through it lately. Thanks Ginnie!

"God healed me of my cancer. But he gave no promise to heal me. The promises he has made point me beyond my fortunes in this life and direct my attention to the life to come. This is why I have always tried to speak about my experience in language that avoids the suggestion that God's faithfulness to me was evidenced in the fact that he healed me. The language of 'faithfulness' implies promises kept. Yes, he was faithful to me. And yes, he healed me. But those two realities did not go hand in hand. Let me put it plainly: had I died of cancer at the age of twenty-eight, leaving Christy a widow on her first wedding anniversary, God would still have been what he was, and is, and will always be: the Ever Faithful One. My healing was not a promise kept; it was simply a gift God was pleased to give - though a gift he is not please to give in every single case."
- Paul Wolfe

It's Not About the Bike

Ok, but it kind of is. In case you have never heard of this book or this man (which seems crazy to me, but my dad is a fan of road racing so I probably know more than the average person)... Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer at age 25, and his cancer had spread to his lungs and his brain. He went on to win something like 7 Tour de France's after it was all said and done.

I had remembered my dad reading the book a while back and I thought I'd read it in light of my current situation. I really couldn't put the book down. Reading his story is so familiar, and I think a great book to understand what cancer is like - the discovery, the treatment, and the surviving. It brought up something I hadn't thought much about, which was the surviving part. Well, on one hand I've thought about it because I plan on surviving. But he almost describes life after cancer as the hardest part of it all. It helped me have some idea of what the days ahead will be like.

He says, "When you think about it, what other choice is there but to hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up or fight like hell." Now, what Lance Armstrong puts his hope in and what I put my hope in a very different things, but I love this quote. Maybe because I'm beginning to learn something of the emotional fight involved with cancer. The physical side seems obvious. But the emotional side might be harder.

So the book is mostly about his battle with cancer, but it's also about battling back to being one of the best cyclists ever. It seems that he learned the mental toughness necessary to endure and win such a race as the Tour from his treatment for cancer. It changed him. And I'm glad he wrote about it for me to read.