Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.  Hebrews 12:28

A friend texted me this verse the other day… it stirs my insides…

Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don’t impose it on others. You’re fortunate if your behavior and your belief are coherent. Romans 14:22(The Message)

In today’s Slice, Jill Carattini brought something to my heart to ponder… she notes,

“[...]Yet if the universe has always been a disordered series of time plus matter plus chance, how do we account for the intricate orderedness to life, the uniformity of nature, or even the intricacy of the very mind that asks the question? [....]

Scribbled on a note card, a quote by Frederick Buechner marks the page of one of my favorite Scriptures: “We learn to praise God,” it reads, “not by paying compliments, but by paying attention.” In fact, much of Scripture is a call to remember and take notice, to bear in mind the stories of God in history and to fix one’s eyes on God’s presence in the world today.”

Jill concluded with describing,

“The verse I have marked with a reminder to pay attention was written by one who did just that: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? [...] Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3-9). David lived with an eye on the kingdom of God around him, and as such, throughout his days, he remembered there is a king. “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

 This stirs my heart… and serves as a reminder to stay present.

I don’t quite know how to fully articulate this, but there are some things floating around my head that I want to journal out.  This is not profound, nor is it complete, it is mearly a glimpse into a train of thought that is atop my mind.

Recently the kids and I saw Horton Hears a Who,  about an elephant in the jungle, named Horton, who heard voices coming from a speck as it floated by.  He caught the tiny speck on a fuzzy looking clover and he listened, heard, and believed that there indeed was life on this speck, populated by Whos.  Horton realized that the safety of the life on this speck rested solely on him, and he was determined to place it securely on the top of Mount Nool.  But during his trek and journey, he was faced with great odds and opponents.  In the jungle, a mother kangaroo character was set against Horton from the start.  She urged Horton that it was all in his mind, on the basis of this logic, “if you can’t see it, if you can’t hear it, or if you can’t feel it, then it’s not real.”  This kangaroo character goes so far as to get others to do her dirty work for her, finding a soulless old eagle to fit the bill and try to please her by managing get the fuzzy clover.  The eagle is partially successful, but Horton never gives up.  He tirelessly keeps his mission in mind, he stays focused on the task at hand, and he continues with his purpose of getting the Whos to safety.

The story concludes with Horton finding himself rejected by several of the animals in his community because he won’t denounce what he hears and give over the clover with the speck on it to be destroyed.  The community of the jungle gang up on him (minus a trusty believing few), and they outnumber him and literally force him into a cage where he is powerless.   At the last moment, the Whos make enough sound (and the Whos here… what’s happening in their world is a whole other storyline!) to be heard by someone else in the jungle… the kangaroo’s little boy who lives in her pouch.  He hears the Whos, and tells everyone to quiet down, and then everyone in the jungle group hears the Whos chanting in unison “We are here, we are here, we are here!”

You cannot believe how I watched this movie drama unfold from this special and sometimes fragile place in my heart, for Horton heard the Who, and despite the fact that he couldn’t see the people on the tiny speck, or feel the people on the tiny speck… he knew what he heard, and what he continued to hear, and he just believed.  He didn’t change his mind when things got difficult, he did not ask for the Whos to prove that they were real, he just believed what he heard.  I was filled with joy when Horton pursued what he set out to do… his mission, and in the end rescue these precious lives.

Today… there was an awesome Slice of Infinity (to follow below).  Very stirring picture she revealed… it certainly does turn my heart reflection in both directions, in and out.  Many times I have paused on Jesus’ disciple Thomas and identified with him… my faith (or lack of) in certain seasons has literally prompted me to ask Jesus for a tangible feel of His hands to see if I could indeed touch holes that are noted to be there.  I’ve spent many prayerful nights with the desire to be heeded and encouraged by Jesus to be faithless no longer, just as He shepherded Thomas.

03/20/08 – A Doubting Thomas
Alison Thomas

One night when I was in college, I went to what I thought was going to be an ordinary concert. After playing some music and singing a few songs, the Christian musicians passed out index cards to all of us young college students in the room. They said the cards were for us to anonymously write down any barriers to faith that we were struggling with. I filled up every inch of that little 3 x 5 card with tough objections to Christianity that I had heard from professors and classmates. I turned in my card and waited eagerly for them to provide detailed answers to each question. But that is not what happened. They invited us instead to close our eyes and begin a time of prayer about the things we wrote down. I must admit, I was a little disappointed. I wanted instant, verbal answers to my questions–not a moment of silence. Reluctantly, I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and started to think about some of the questions I wrote down. Just when I was starting to get into it, my prayer time was interrupted by a strange clanking sound that I found very distracting and untimely. I opened my eyes and looked up to see where the racket was coming from, and when I did, my heart sunk. Each index card full of tough questions and objections to faith was being nailed to a big, wooden cross. As I listened to the sad sounds of the hammer striking the nails, I heard a different kind of answer to my questions–one that was both heartbreaking and hopeful all at once. It was an answer that I wasn’t expecting, and sadly, one that I was usually all too quick to try and ignore.

As we journey to the Cross this Lenten season, we are reminded of the importance of looking inward and examining the state of our hearts before God. Spiritual introspection is a crucial part of growing in faith. But we cannot forget in the midst of all our self-reflection to look outward, to Jesus, just as doubting Thomas did. We read in John 20:25 that after Thomas was told the news of the resurrection, he said, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” In verse 27, Jesus replied, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” Jesus allowed Thomas the dignity of carrying his doubts to the very one who carried the Cross. He did not ask Thomas to bury his questions, but offered him the most convincing answer available–himself.

In our quest for absolute certainty, we long to find comprehensive answers to the mysteries of faith. Yet as Alister McGrath reminds us, “The things in life that really matter cannot be proven with certainty–whether they are ethical values (such as respect for human life), social attitudes (such as democracy) or religious beliefs (such as Christianity)…there will always be an element of doubt in any statement that goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions. Christianity is not unique in this respect; an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma. Anyone who wants to talk about the meaning of life has to make statements that rest on faith, not absolute certainty. Anyway, God isn’t a proposition–he’s a person!”

The same nail-scarred hands of the person that reached out to doubting Thomas reach out to us today with assurance and compassion. In his poem “The Ancient Sage,” nineteenth-century British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson writes:

For nothing worthy proving can be proven
Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!

This holy week, instead of clinging to truth in propositions alone, let us rest in the embrace of the person who embodies it.

Alison Thomas is itinerant apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

So… I’m stirred by the way that Horton heard the Who and believed in the Who, even though he could not see the Who, or touch them.  While I often find myself sitting on a fence of being like Thomas, of needing that extra touch or feel to believe, even though I’ve been given the Word, or I ask Jesus for more proof to just understand.  The point is, that I have heard!  Yet still, I need a little extra at times.  Why can’t just hearing it be enough, even during the times when I am facing opposition?  How easily I turn into the kangaroo instead of remaining a Horton. 

One thing that I really really love… is that Jesus wanted Thomas… Jesus knew Thomas’ heart, Jesus was the object of Thomas’ faith and Jesus also initiated Thomas’ heart to believe.  Jesus transcends our ability to believe in Him, and not only that, but He continues to reveal Himself upon our very expressed desires to understand more of Him, even tough he doesn’t have to.  He brings us closer to Him through our circumstances, which He uses as a vehicle to transport us into His very presence.  He enables us to come closer by putting within us His Spirit to dwell, prompt, and face together the unknowns and unanswered questions, with the hopes of finding truth.

The other thing that I really really love, is that Thomas is true to himself.  Despite not knowing internally the full identity of Jesus, he places trust in Jesus and follows him.  Even though Thomas does not fully comprehend the full depth and purpose of Jesus, he set out to follow and place faith, even if his faith wasn’t full bodied.  Thomas didn’t have all the answers in the beginning, he questioned openly where he had questions, and he remained true to the person that God created him to be.  I love that when Jesus comforts His disciples in John 14:1-7,

1“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”

 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

 6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Thomas questions Jesus openly, in front of the other disciples, trying to clear up what he didn’t quite get, “we don’t know where you’re going… how are we supposed to know the way?” and Jesus answered Thomas not with criticism or belittlement, but with the assurance of a promise “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Jesus allowed Thomas to grow, to assess, to question, to wonder, and later to feel, and then to believe.  Jesus knew Thomas’ heart, He knew it from the inside out.

I don’t quite know how this all comes together in my head and heart. 

The Horton, the Who,
or the angry Kangaroo,
or Thomas, or Jesus,
or the Cross I need to nail my own 3×5 card to… 

I see that Thomas was comfortable in who he was, comfortable enough to ask Jesus questions.  Jesus was of course accepting of who Thomas was, and as Alison beautifully stated, “Jesus allowed Thomas the dignity of carrying his doubts to the very one who carried the Cross. He did not ask Thomas to bury his questions, but offered him the most convincing answer available–himself.”

Horton didn’t give up on his mission, and he didn’t question if he should or if what he was doing was important, he just believed in what he heard and stayed focus on that truth.  While the kangaroo was afraid to admit to her questions to Horton of “how do you know that there is something on that speck?” or the kangaroo was too afraid of admitting the simple fact that she didn’t believe only because she couldn’t hear it.  Was she so fearful that she couldn’t entertain the possiblity?  Her defense was that she was protecting the animal children of the jungle from not believing something that was false, yet this reasoning itself blocked her ability to consider if it actually held truth.  The Bible says “perfect love casts out fear…” 1 John 4:18.

Questions can lead to truth, and “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17)  What stops us from asking sometimes?

The Christmas season is upon is… with it’s visit comes pressure. I feel the weight of so much right now…

Did Mary feel the heaviness too? The culmination of so many expecations and unknowns… just pressing in on her? I imagine her in the night when I wake up between little catnaps resulting from my unrest… I wonder if she awoke a lot during the night, reminded of the weight upon her with the Savior in her womb. She had a tangible weight… while mine is nearly invisable to the untrained eye.

It’s still there, regardless… and I can feel it.

My eyes are searching for joy…
busy searching and searching…
and finding bits of it hidden away here or there…

and yet many things threaten to rise up and gobble me whole.
WHOLE I tell you…
totally in one gulp, without chewing.

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”- Romans 12:12

I know there here somewhere in my heart… I’ve run my hands through them before, and even held one between my thumb and index finger and closely examined it… yet right now, I find that some of my fruit, namely peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control are hard to realize the presence of.

A single mustard seed grew into this

just amazing. About the only fruit I can touch today is love… I feel like it’s the only one I possess… as for the others, I feel quite poor in Spirit. Is it really true that when I am weak, then I am strong? I don’t feel strength, only an echo of where it and peace could be… in my heart right now I feel the bones in my knees against the floor as I seek out God in this.

I think I might go dive into the spice cabinet and dig out a mustard seed and carry it around in my pocket…

++God… I’m hoping you have something to share with me today… thank you for searching me, even though it seems to hurt… turn on your Light within me and reveal Your glory and will. I fear not bearing my weaknesses, for I know I can cling to You. Use my weakness and lack to bring forth that you are the I AM.++

I am reading a book called “God’s Timing for Your Life,” by Dutch Sheets and I’m finding that I’m rereading a lot to not only try to understand what it means, but to also evaluate what my thoughts have been. This is illuminating much about my walk with God, and His purposes for the way He unfolds things through time for me. One of the first things that I am trying to wrap my hand around is His desire for us to understand our newness in Him.

Sheets goes into detail about the language used in three verses in Isaiah about God’s timing and transition into new seasons.

Isaiah 48:6
“You have heard; look at all this.
And you, will you not declare it?
I proclaim to you new things from this time,
Even hidden things which you have not known.

Isaiah 43:19
“Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 42:9
“Behold, the former things have come to pass,
Now I declare new things;
Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.”

Sheets describes that the phrase “springs forth” in the last two verses is describing a shift in time. God is asking us “Will you not be aware of it?” How much is God revealing to us, that we are not aware of in the moments we recieve? Is it because our gaze is distracted and it causes us to not recognize, or is it that God reveals it to us when we are ready to understand?

After we see the springing forth, the author calls us to notice the word “new,” which also speaks of a coming shift. What was interesting was that in the New Testament, two Greek words are translated “new,” despite their different meanings. The explanation of the meanings opens up a lot for me.

“The word neos means numerically new but not different.” Sheets gives the example of a brand new car of a certain make and model, which although is a new car, it’s not unique, because there were thousands of the same year, make, and model of car that were produced. Then, “the other Greek word for “new” is kainos, which means not only numerically new but also qualitatively new.” So, what this means like comparing a new car made today to a Model T years and years ago. The new car is not only numerically new, but qualitatively new because it’s different.

When we look at the different definitions of these two words – neos and kainos is important to understanding Scripture. 2 Cor. 5:17 says that we are new (kainos) creations in Christ. Not duplications, or replicas of something else, which would be neos. We are new in a completely different way, like a Porshe to a Model T. Sheets says, “We are new creations- brand-new in kind and quality. God has put a different nature in us, transformed us and put the power of His Spirit in us. When we’re born again, we’re not just the same people with a few changes; we are kainos- brand-new on the inside.

In Matthew 9:17 we find that Jesus used both of the Greek words in one statement. “Neither do men pour new (neos) wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new (kainos) wineskins, and both are preserved.” This new wine of the Spirit is not different, but more of the same, because the Holy Spirit can’t change or improve qualitatively. The Spirit desires to put more of Himself into us- numerically new wine. The wine isn’t different, it is the wineskin that needs to change, to be kainos, qualitatively new, in order to get another dose of His Spirit poured into us. Sheets describes that, “we must be transformed and changed from one stage to another. If we don’t become different- qualitatively new- we won’t be able to hold the new wine He is pouring out. We will miss this new “time.” So… the crux is that, “in order for God to prepare us for the new season, He changes us.”

So, it’s like a lobster (even though I think he meant to say crab, or do lobsters really abandon their shells?), and how they have to leave their shells in order to grow. So it’s a quandry, they need the shells to protect them, but the need to leave their shells to find bigger ones so that they can continue to grow. The dangerous time for them is when they are between shells, where they are left vulnerable to the currents, predators, and environmental hazards. So we, like some lobsters (crabs?), need to change to grow, and shed our shells, structure, comfort zones, etc. that we’ve depended on, and leave them behind as we explore becoming new with Christ.

lots more to come… on the divine shift, renewal, and joining of the seasons.

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

In the midst of our tribulations, He is there to comfort us, to alleviate the pain and sense of grief that threatens to wash over us… He will never let it overtake us and sweep us away. Through His comfort of grace, we can have, if we can recieve it, peace and joy. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Rom. 5:1-5

Underneath all the confusion of the things surrounding us, I’m so suprised to know that He wants me to rejoice in my sufferings, because through them I will be given the insight and understanding of perseverance, character, and real hope. He’s covered it all. Because, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Phil. 1:6 In the very things that I am struggeling with, He is working, He is consoling, and He is encouraging me to know His hope and will.

Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18. I don’t know how many times I have found my heart going over this verse and coming to a continued deeper understanding, and sometimes confusion, of it’s meaning. Analyizing what I’m succeeding at and where I’m failing, I’m still encouraged to know He’s still improving me, bringing me to conform more to Christ’s very own heart. Some days I’m so challanged, while others I feel lifted by Him into victory.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12