Jesus loves me, this I know. This category is about Jesus, the Living Word, my prayers to Him, my worship of Him, His relentless pursuit of my heart and His invitation to me to come to Him in Sabbath, my Savior, my Rest.
Threatened by a forecast of freezing rain turning to snow, we are actually hosting a magnificent and sunny day fully lighting the multi-faceted palette and texture of fall. Fluttering madly in the autumn breeze and dancing to the tune of the wind chime, the once-emerald leaves of the Aspen clump are becoming more golden by the hour. The burning bushes are flaming as scarlet as they can be and potted flower heads are bowing in reverance to the power of the season as it blows by, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes as a roar.
Psalm 65.9 The Message
O, visit the earth – ask her to join the dance!
…fill the God-river with living water. Paint the wheatfields golden.
Creation was made for this!
Drench the plowed fields, soak the dirt clods with rainfall…
Set the hills to dancing! dress the canyon walls with live sheep,
a drape of flax across the valleys!
Let them shout and shout and shout! Oh, let them sing and sing!
I am singing my head off to You, O Lord, and trying to sing as loud as the trees which are clapping their hands and the bushes which are dancing (the twist) for your pleasure. You have made all of creation so holy, so set apart for Your glory. Can I live my life as free, as abandoned?
I am called in Christ (Romans 1.6).
I was redeemed in Christ (Romans 3.24).
I reign in life by Christ (Romans 5.17).
I have eternal life through Christ (Romans 6.23).
I am a joint heir with Christ (Romans 8.17).
I have victory through Christ (1 Corinthians 15.57).
I am a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5.17).
I have liberty in Christ (Galatians 2.4).
I am crucified with Christ ( Galatians 2.20).
I have put on Christ (Galatians 3.27).
I have been blessed with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1.3).
I have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that I should be holy and without blame before Him (Ephesians 1.4).
I have been created in Christ for good works (Ephesians 2.6).
I rejoice in Christ (Philippians 3.3).
I press toward the mark of the high calling of God on my life in Christ (Philippians3.14).
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength (Philippians 4.13).
God supplies all my needs through Christ (Philippians 4.19).
I am complete in Christ (Colossians 2.10).
I am dead with Christ (Colossians 2.20).
I am risen with Christ (Colossians 3.1).
My life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3.3).
Christ is my life (Colossians 3.4).
I have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2.16).
I have the attitude of Christ, choosing humility (Philippians 2.5-7).
I am preserved in Christ (Jude 1.1).*
Jesus: Who do you say that I am?
Peter: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God…
Jesus: Who do YOU say that I am?
In Christ Alone…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: That I may know Him…Know Him, press in to knowing Him…song: “becoming like Him in His death, so that in me there’s resurrection life…”
*adapted from the book by John Eckhardt, Prayers that Rout Demons
Just got back from 3 days in the mountains (beautiful!!!) where we kicked off Leaving a Legacy (an arm of Get the Word Out! Intensives).
The teaching team was Mary Jean Powers (my co-mother-in-law-co-Nonnas-we-share-Hunter), Joy McGinnis of Seattle, our daughter Tredessa, Dave & Tara, our daughter and son-in-law and Dave and I.
It was wonderful and difficult. I exposed myself and got honest. Dave and I both told on ourselves, about the places we have failed in raising children who have come to know and seek after God for themselves.
I told them that:
It is never too late to become the family you might have been. Don’t give up. Get the Word into your home and family and serve God fearfully with all your might.
I am still learning to parent in this new season. I still have to apologize for things as the Holy Spirit reminds me – from both years ago and a few days ago.
Raising kids who’ll love the Lord? It’s gonna take at least Forty-Thousand Days of Purpose! Sorry, Rick Warren.
And-we have all have dirt under our fingernails. We’re sowing something into our children’s lives. We may as well be sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God to get the spiritual harvest that God’s Word promises in Gal. 6. Is your family at a crossroads or troubling time? Stand on the promises: read ’em, speak ’em, believe ’em, bury them deep in the soil of your heart in faith. Then? Eat the fruit! The harvest WILL come!
Dave taught on journaling as a way to leave your written legacy and not only taught about the blessing (learning to verbally speak blessing over your children), but prayed a bessing over the fathers and fatherless young men who were there.
I wondered aloud, at one point, if there was anyone who could possibly have messed up parenting more than I had.? Even though Mary Jean and Joy claimed they could have (and maybe we all had that potential), I am so grateful to be living to see the faithful hand of God in our lives, as a family. We’re still living it and tripping along the way sometimes, but I am so glad for the opportunity to encourage other families that God is faithful. He promises – and He will keep those promises! I was honored to get to pass that message along!
Blessed to be a blessing…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Keep living the legacy. You have to live it before you can give it away.
pictured: the view just outside our cabin door – if you look very closely, you can see some snow on the rocks from a few days before…we had 70+degrees; my husband praying for our son-in-law Dave just before he (s-i-l) reciprocated.
Shepherd boy, anointed and chosen, leader, giant-slayer, fugitive, covenant friend, musician-Psalmist, worshipper, lust-driven, adulterer, murderer, father, lover, warrior, king. A man after God’s own heart.
So good. So terrible. So high, so low. So called, so errant. And yet, God didn’t leave him. God doesn’t leave us.
I think we had an actual, true frost today. I know it was 58 degrees inmykitchen when I started up the coffee pot. And no, I will not turn on the heat, yet. I am a die-hard. Can I make it to November? This is the question.
Most of the plants seem to be perking back up, even though I have done nothing to save them. Even the zucchini, whose leaves froze and look soggy, dark and droopy, are boasting some bright new flowers in response to the returning sunlight – after 3 very overcast days.
I am studying and preparing for the Leaving a Legacy Intensive kick-off this weekend, but keep getting distracted by 3, small adorable orange moths of some sort. Though they are probably depositing some evil larvae all over the garden as we speak, I think I will call them butterflies because they are delightful as they frolic, alternately swooping and circling and tag-playing, with sunning themselves on the patio and garden rocks Try as I might, and though I swear I have seen them all in the view-finder at once repeatedly, I cannot seem to get the camera to click quickly enough to capture all three, though they are dancing and prancing about just inches from me here near the glass doors.
Yes, the garden is slowly, but surely shutting down for the year, but it makes each plant that is still showing all the more ravishing, makes me more grateful. Why, the petunias are practically haughty today, all purple and abundant, flowering with gusto, unaffected by the cold – perhaps even encouraged by it?
Today I am praising God for: the return of the sun…hot coffee (and decaf for when I have reached my limit)…the 3 fanciful orange “butterflies” performing gleefully outside my window…the grape tomatoes, packed with flavor, my morning snack…the love of a good man: my husband, my friend, my lover-the one who talks me off the ledges…my family, both the one I came from and the one I am getting to create, still…e-mails in “secret code” from grandkids…people who know how to pray…the sweet Presence of God, who joins me on the first sound of a song……First frost-warm home…the wisdom of the Word (I am in Proverbs today!). And the temp in my kitchen has reached 63 degrees. I am thankful!
Blessings in all things to you and yours!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: So glad I didn’t get in a hurry to uproot the sagging sunflowers (see photo here). Yesterday they were the host to a couple of amazingly beautiful bluejays and I got to watch! What would I have missed by stripping them away before their whole work was through? Get back to Legacy notes…
Pictured, top, left to right: the orange “butterflies” sunning themselves on rock and concrete. Bottom, left to right: the first two were taken through the window on the Dahlia plant that is apparently enthralling the little “flutterbies.” Finally, the mum, quiet the summer through, has now exploded into this happy hello in its off-the-beaten-path locale. I snapped it chasing butterflies.
UPDATE 10.14.08 – I have been informed that my 3 little orange “moths” were actually baby Monarch Butterflies. I didn’t know Monarchs were ever this small? I hope they keep visiting!
Even if you live a long time, don’t take a single day for granted.
Take delight in each light-filled hour,
Remembering that there will also be many dark days
And that most of what comes your way is smoke.
Live footloose and fancy free-
You won’t be young forever…”
Ecclesiastes 11.7-8, 10 The Message
Some days you open your Bible and just realize how much better it is than a thousand fortune cookies! Truth! Life! My delight! Sweeter than honey to my lips. His words are like bread – and I eat them! They cause me to break into a prayer of love to the Letter Writer~
Oh, how I love Your law, O Lord. Your promise preserves my life. Your words are the lyrics and melody of my song wherever I live – wherever I find myself. I think about Your Word day and night. Your decrees light the path I am on and help me find my way back when I am lost. I have spent my life testing Your promises and I have found them to be true. I love Your Word, O Lord. (shamelessly ripping off David in Psalm 119)
I love how the scriptures set us free from self-imposed religious activity and living! Footloose and fancy free…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: This must truly be a mandate for the coming year.
pictured: a “sample picture” that came with the computer – in case I didn’t know what a picture was
October is pumpkins and spice, rustling leaves, brilliant carrots and abundant gourds and squash. It is wool socks, leather shoes and a new pair of dark blue Levi’s. October is tricks and treats, turtlenecks, Sunday suppers and chimnea fires. It’s roasted seeds and amber and gold with browns and greens. It’s spicy, cool mornings and indigo-dark skies. It’s cinnamon rolls and fresh spicy pies. It’s blazing color and fried green tomatoes, and caramel and taffy and apples, too. But mostly, October is orange.
1 Kings 8.65 The Message: …”This is how Solomon kept the great autumn feast…Two solid weeks of celebration!…”
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds (modified from a recipe by Alison Aves)
In a 10″ x 15″ baking pan,
mix 2 cups unwashed* pumpkin seeds,
1 1/2 tablespoons melted butter,
1 1/4 teaspoons salt (use a seasoning salt, if desired) and
1 teaspoon (or more to taste…for me? always more) Worcestershire.
Spread seeds out in pan.
Bake in a 250-degree oven, stirring occasionally,
until browned and crisp (about 2 hours).
Serve warm or cool.
Thoroughly cooled seeds can be stored in an
airtight container for up to a week.
So-I am a summer-lover, but fall feels really romantic and lovely to me, too…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: October is also when I have been called for Jury Duty, too. Poo. Jury duty is NOT orange.
*Don’t worry – the orange slime from the pumkin that is still on the seeds will form a deliciously salty, crunchy coating on the seeds.
pictured: a deliciously orange google image-collage
On going into the very Promised Land of God, Moses said to the Lord:
“If Your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here…How will anyone know that You are pleased with me and Your people unless You go with us? What else will distinguish me and Your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” Ex. 33.15-16
So, I pray:
Distinguish me, Lord – not by making me better at something than some one else or giving me wealth or fame or position or title or things. Sanctify me and set me apart for Your holy will, for Your Name and Your fame, Lord, for Your acclaim on the earth. Distinguish me by Your Presence – that You will be seen wherever I go, a forgiven woman, set free and living in grace.
“Grace. The empowering Presence of God, enabling me to be what He called me to be and to do what He called me to do.” – James Ryle
Today Tristan, my first son-in-law ever, turns 28!
Happy Birthday, Tristan, superb son-in-law and waaaaay above average husband to my daughter, Stephanie. Happy Birthday to you as we celebrate your life represented by faithfulness and trustworthiness in all you do. Happy Day to a Hoosier who chose rightly to live in Colorado, for it set up a chain of events that made you one of us, a blessing we regularly praise God for! Blessed and glorious Day of Remembrance for us all as we stop to honor you and the life you lead!
Tristan is a rare find. Unassuming and humble, you might not notice genius in the room or divine the depth of talent and creativity, nor the well of of knowledge and intelligence if you were passing through a space with him in it. You could be near and yet miss the wry twinkle of a quiet, but wicked sense of humor, or fail to see the deep thoughtfulness about the powerful issues of the day in politics, religion, worldview.
No. One might pass Tristan and see a kind person, a quiet man gently playing with his 3 children or engaged in a conversation with family or friends. A person might say, “Doesn’t he play the drums?” And not even realize that he is truly one of the best around, sought after by the best musicians, not only at drums, but at all instruments. You might just see the best of him: an incredible and loving husband and devoted father, and still not get to see the rest of him.
But we, his family, are blessed. We are blessed to see the giant of a man he is. Tris is the big-brother of the fam, now. He is some one we all trust and our go-to guy about anything and everything that ails us. He knows our secrets, our faults and our failures, and yet, can be trusted with that information. You cannot buy that kind of character or love. He is a gift. We are blessed.
So, today, Tristan, I bless you and I thank God for you. These are the gifts I want you to open today and throughout this next year:
Grace to you, Tristan, and peace. Be blessed with provision through your giftings and abilities, both the technological and the artistic-musician sides. I pray that resources make themselves available and that your resourcefulness will become an even greater and valued comodity!
May you be preserved in blamelessness your whole life long. May your beautiful wife bring you joy and your children, great delight. May God hear all your prayers and your secret heart’s desires and answer you in times of trouble.
I pray that, while should it ever fall my lot – I would defend you to the death, may the Lord be your defender and protector and may He keep you safe on every side.
I pray that you, planted firmly by living waters, will begin to see the fruitfulness of your faithfulness before God and that this next year will bring blessing on every side, provision, new opportunities and new open spaces. I pray that we’ll see the explosion of the color of you all around, for this new time and place and new year for you and you family.
I am so pleased with you as my daughter’s husband and as the father of my 3 beautiful grandchildren. They are the proof of the man you are. I am so pleased to call you son, and thankful to your parents for sharing. I am so blessed you were born to be a part of us. I love you wholeheartedly, Tristan!
Happy Birthday, cherished one…Your very own (and hopefully not dreaded) m-i-l :)
NOTE TO SELF: Make Tris a drum cake next year.
pictured: Tristan in the Hershey store in Times Square on a recent family vacation; Guini helping Tris open his presents yesterday; Tris and my other amazing son-in-law!
These are the observations both deep and lighthearted from The Sacred Romance – Drawing Closer to the Heart of God (by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge) among a few friends. We are drawing to a close here as we begin to think towards heaven – a very important part of the story God is writing for us. We hope you’ll let us know what you are thinking, too…
Posts by the other book-bloggers to follow.
Chapter Twelve: Coming Home
Jeanie on Chapter 12: Besides the Epilogue, this is it-the final chapter in this now-classic book by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis. I was sort of resisting this chapter for two reasons. One, the book has been so impactful that I don’t want it to end, and two, I knew we were going to focus on heaven.
Page 179: “If…we believe that this life is our best shot at happiness, if this is as good as it gets, we will live as desperate, demanding and eventually despairing men and women. We will place on this world a burden it was never intended to bear…”
You may be wondering, What? A Christian who doesn’t want to talk about heaven? Well, kind of. It isn’t that I don’t want to or that I don’t hope to go there someday. But I grew up in Christianity that seemed very focused on escape – let’s get out of here and get to heaven as quickly as we can, seemed the metality. People would gut-sing songs with lyrics like “This old life is filled trouble…trials and sorrow fill the ‘morrow, but someday soon, I’ll take my flight…some morning I will leave it all behind.” They would belt out these words as if they were hoping God would just transport them right to heaven if they sang loud enough. Yes, I grew up among Chrsitians who lived their lives in a beam-me-up-God, PLEASE! metality.
So, I have swung the direction of figuring out how to live in the here and now as a Christian. I think there is a good scriptural basis for this, “On earth, as it is in heaven.” The Word of God as a whole is filled with wisdom to get us through this life.
But I also know I have discounted, at times, the beauty of what awaits. I have wondered about heaven. Fully aware that it is not going to be a bunch of little cherubs on clouds with harps popping grapes into their mouths, I still have wondered: what will it be? And it has been hard to fathom, for I am very practical and boxed in and linear at times. I admit I have read John’s Revelation of Jesus Christ (The Book of the Revelation) and quickly glossed over his attempts to describe the indescribable. In so doing, I know I have missed what may be.
Quoting C.S. Lewis on page 180, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Though it is full of theological inconsistencies and truly ‘just a story,’ the movie “What Dreams May Come” was one person’s attempt to comprehend what might be. The tag “After life there is more. The end is just the beginning” certainly capsulizes what most of us believe. In the movie, the man dies and finds out there is a heaven that was more than he could have imagined. Surprisingly, for a movie, it was beautiful and fantastical and colorful. How do you communicate that?
Eugene Peterson, the interpreter of The Message, piqued my interest in introducing Revelation:
“The Bible ends with a flourish: vision and song, doom and deliverance, terror and triumph. the rush of color and sound, image and energy leaves us reeling…we find ourselves in the multidimensional act of Christian worship…John’s Revelation is not easy reading, Besides being a pastor, John is a poet, fond of metaphor and symbol, image and allusion, passionate in his desire to bring us into the presence of Jesus believing and adoring…the demands he makes on our intelligence and imagination are well-rewarded…for our worship of God {when we receive the Revelation] will almost certainly deepen in in urgency and joy.”
So, in The Sacred Romance, we arrive at the topic of heaven and though I’ve sometimes neglected it, I am open. Let’s talk heaven.
Quoting Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft from Everything You Wanted to Know about Heaven (pages 180-181): “Our pictures of heaven simply do not move us; they are not moving pictures…Our pictures of Heaven are dull, platitudinous and syrupy; therefore, so is our faith, our hope, and our love of Heaven…Dullness, not doubt, is the strongest enemy of of faith…”
The author, in reflecting on 1 Cor. 2.9 (“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him”) reminds us “we cannot outdream God.”
He goes on to quote theologians and philosophers trying to make sense of what we cannot fully understand, like John the revelator, who tried to explain in words what we don’t yet have words for, “…it was like jasper…the streets were like…glass like crystal…” etc.
Reading these things, I could see how lifeless my imagination of a future with God, and seeing Him and being like Him will be. I have read of the worship of heaven and, with my great love of worship have just envisioned myself some where in the crowd, far away from Him, unnoticed. I have secretly wondered how that could be heaven.
But as I pondered the possibilities, after reading this chapter, it seemed God gave me a glimpse: me, as a 10-year old girl on a tire swing, just having moved “far away” from family and friends and church and all I had ever known, but in those lonely times, with lush, green Iowa grass beneath my feet and a corn field and streams round about, I would sing the songs of heaven – sing to Father. The melodies came easily and His Presence soothed my fears and lonliness and it was just Him and me. God reminded me that He has already been giving me glimpses to keep me on the path. I am pretty sure in heaven, I will have my own tire swing on grassy meadows and there’ll be no crowds between us….
What can you tell me about heaven? I want to know more…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Today I am closer than yesterday to where “real life begins.”
