Holy Paper Towels and Soapy Water!

My life is so full of ordinary.  I am a mother and a wife and I work as a pre-school teacher and no one would ever guess by looking that during college God called me to ministry, or that I answered that call and am answering it still.  God led me here.  To this time and place, this season of life where I am more likely to be covered with sweaty hugs from my three sons or the remnants of pre-schooler lunches that I helped open than the formal stole and robe that I wear as an ordained minister. Yet in the middle of my ordinary, the Holy Spirit reminded me that ordinary is often the deepest well one encounters.

It's so easy to slip into assumptions that only the big things count in life, those things that leave us wonder struck, amazed, and impressed.  Ever notice how difficult  it is these days to leave an impression?  We are so hungry for gargantuan achievement that anything less is rendered obsolete, as if it is not worthy of notice. 

But God notices everything.

It happened so quickly that if I had not had that grace-filled moment of clarity I would have missed it.   I was getting ready to paint handprints for our sweet 4 year olds to take home to their mommies.  I had carried an old tub to the bathroom to fill with soapy water so that our children could easily clean their hands.  I guess it was the way that I tossed the collection of unrolled paper towels over my shoulder that did it.  Another scene flashed in my mind's eye.  It was if I was witness to that upper room that Jesus filled with His Presence on the night that he was betrayed, claiming a few precious moments with His disciples before He was taken away.  I could see Him swinging a towel over His shoulder just before picking up a basin.  He was preparing to wash the grimy feet of His dearest friends.  I was preparing a place for my little students to wash away the paint from their little hands.

That picture of Jesus is so precious to me.   I am a Deacon in the United Methodist Church.  The towel and basin are the symbol of the servant ministry Deacons are called to.  While we don't often serve the Church in the traditional sense, we have the special task of connecting the world to the Church, and the Church to the world in roles that serve others.  But Deacons are not alone in that Call.  Anyone who follows Jesus is Called.   And although it can be shaped in so many different ways, at the heart of our Calling, we are still continuing that intimate ministry of service, demonstrated by the Savior who takes a special moment with each disciple simply to wash dirty feet.

It's ordinary.

It ain't glamorous.

But Jesus honors it as ministry close to His heart.  So everytime one of us as His disciples serves someone He loves, He honors it.  And He multiplies it. 

I think the message in the moment is that everytime we pick up the towel to serve, He is there.  In our love poured out, in the face of the ones we are waiting upon.

The work of mommies and daddies counts.  All those tasks that seem so insignificant in the grand scheme of things (getting little teeth brushed, dressing wiggly bodies, washing sweaty heads, fixing fast dinners, getting those wide-eyed wonders in bed)  is love being poured out on another life He loves.  The work of loving a husband or wife counts. All those small encouragements are not insignificant, given to this one who walks each day beside us, prayers prayed in hard circumstances, the unseen ways we prop that precious one up when gravity keeps pulling them down. The work of teaching counts.  All those passing minutes that require delicate patience and creative communication so that little ones learn to love learning are not wasted.   The work of plumbing, , and banking, and principal-ing, and writing, and computer science-ing, and farming, and . . . and . . . and . . . it goes on and on into every nook and cranny of ordinary we occupy.  Each day that we go into the unglamorous world of making a living, yet do it with hearts willing to serve, not for the recognition but because others need it, we are Counted by the One who was initially dis-counted and hung on a cross.  Hanging out on the low end of the totem pole counts, because that is where Jesus counts Himself, and that is where we have opportunity to serve Him the most.  When no one is looking.  When the world would not count it as impressive at all.

Jesus counts it as Holy.

Life Wide Open

We are transitioning from the laziness of summer to the hustle and bustle of a new school year.  I always look forward to settling into a routine, but that settling part can sometimes get hairy.  I've been thinking recently of the beauty of a regularity.  I love the bones of a schedule that gives structure to my days, allowing me to hang my creativity in the most advantageous minutes of my day.  This free spirit self that I am needs the order.  It helps me enjoy every moment without guilt:  "oh yes, this is the time given to quiet contemplation; I can be present in this moment because the need to attend to the details of our lives can be attended to in that moment there."

When I taught University Experience (a freshman seminar class designed to help first year college students adjust to college life) I always had my students complete a time chart first thing.  It was a simple gragh with days of the week across the top and twenty four hours down the side.  I encouraged them to color blocks of time according to their various activities.  They were to include communiting time, class time, study time, family time, and yes, party time.  Then they had to reflect on what they learned from the experience.  And every year I also completed one too.

I always learned something.

You would think that year after year, there would be no new insights.  But there were.  As I completed my own time chart I could see how my stated priorities often differed from the way I spent my time.  Actually coloring my time as I committed my schedule to paper created a simple accountability that helped me see more clearly, helped me answer the question, "Is this how I really want to be spending my time?"

I have the need to get the crayons out again.

Somehow it helps me to see my life colored in--the sections of responsibility dancing with the passions and simple pleasures of my "mommified" life.  And to know that rest always comes.  At the close of each day, rest is there waiting for me.

What do you think?  Want to try it?

I know it doesn't seem to be a deeply spiritual exercise.  But I tend to differ.  I think it is significant in the most important way.  It gives us the chance to live deliberately.  Because we can color in our lives as they are.  Or we can consciously choose to color them the way we truly want them to be.  First on paper, then in real time.

As Tim & I were waiting in Walmart with the boys today, an older woman sitting by the door began a conversation with me.  Jeremiah was pulling on me, tugging, running back and forth in front of the doors, and oh my goodness I must fetch him!  She said I had such wonderful boys.  She said they were blessings.  I agreed of course.  And then she told me of her own children, how they loved each other so as children.  She told me that everyday she told them, "You have to be good to each other, because we are not promised tomorrow."  She told me that although they would have their moments, they were best friends.  Then she told me her daughter had died.  She still had her son and his children, but her daughter was gone.  She explained how her son was so mad at God for taking his sister away.  A year passed, and then he came to her one day and said, "This is that tomorrow you were talking about isn't it."  She said it took him a year to realize it, but he finally did.  As we parted, we blessed each other.  Literally the words were coming out of our mouths at the same time:  "God bless you." 

And we are so blessed.

And that is why mapping my time is deeply spiritual for me.  I don't want to waste a moment.  I don't want to wake up one day and think, "Oh God! I wish I had spent my time doing---loving---helping---holding---hoping---being!!!!"  I want to think now.  I want to wake up now, before the time is past, while I still have the power to change the way I spend my day.

I want to live my life with eyes wide open and arms wide open and heart stretched wide open.

Oh sweet LORD I do want to take it all in--

New Beginnings

Food is at the heart of our celebrations.  It's how we mark the significant events in our lives:  We eat!  And we eat the kind of things that leave an impression.  Unfortunately, not only on our tongues, but also our waistlines.  Thank goodness significant events don't happen everyday. 

Take for instance when we discovered Tim had landed a school administration job:

And then to celebrate Isaiah's entry into Kindergarten:



How cool is it that our summer has been bookended by doughnuts and ice-cream?  But between all that sugar, there have been some uncertain moments not nearly as sweet.  I am incredibly thankful to be settled, still trusting, but at complete peace about stepping out in faith on a new path.

Thinking fondly of my sweet Isaiah boy.  Today he began a new path of his own.  Today he donned the traditional orange vest to join the ranks of kindergardeners all over our city.  He wore it proudly, and totally without fear:

All of these things, from special meals, to special vests, to special backpacks have the power of ritual, the tangible representing the intangible reality; something significant has changed. 

When our children are young, we are careful to mark milestones.  We take extra care to make sure they know they have stepped across a threshhold, and that it is a big deal.  I wonder if we fail to change as much as we age because we fail to mark our own milestones, our own intangible realities that may not be noticeable on the outside but have deep significance on the inside?

Or--

I wonder if we fail to make progress in our own transformation because we fail to marry intention with tangible, touchable expressions that keep our new trajectory constantly before us?  Sometimes it is the simple reminder that makes all the difference.

I've made my own kind of marker.  It's not much.  But I see it everyday, and it holds me accountable to the Holy Nudge to start moving in a new direction.  No one else can provide the momentum this Holy Nudge demands but me.  I know that if I don't keep intentionally choosing to move, the Nudge, and the Dream it represents, will dissipate.

Disappear.

I'm too chicken to wear my own orange vest.  Something obvious to everyone.  A bright sign post pointing to a new goal.  I'm too chicken to held accountable in such a public way, where everyone can ask--Have you done it yet?  How far along are you?  How is it coming?

In case my own resolve melts, I don't want to be caught in a gaping hole of obvious, having to not only stare down my own disappointment, but everyone esle's too.

So it's enough for me to tape my Nudges to the bathroom mirror, and each day ask myself how I will step out in faith.

I believe this is the stuff new beginnings are made of.

Perfection

I'm a recovering perfectionist.  A friend of mine would call it approval addiction.  I know its roots, where the hunger originates. The greatest symtom of this dis-ease is an obsession with trying to be perfect, obsessing over doing perfect, preoccupation with producing perfect .  There is no room in this "ism" for growing in grace.  There is just a ravenous need to get everything right.

God has a serious sense of humor.  Because His antidote to the inordinate quest for perfection is failure.  How deeply I've had to learn these lessons.  The gift in every failure I've opened is that I learn once again God loves me.  Not my credentials, not my finesse, not my accomplishments, just me.  His kid.  Among so many other beloved brothers and sisters.  I remember a sweet sentiment I heard years ago:  our picture would be on His fridgerator.


I'm pondering this.  Seriously.  I feel a tug in my soul to walk an unfamiliar path.  I feel like God is asking me to travel a new road, with new challenges, and new tests; I feel so unprepared.  Golly Gee!  The perfectionist in me is rising up, straining against the recognition that I'm His kid, that He loves me, that He doesn't expect me to know everything, that He just wants me to give myself to the new adventure.  And the old fears keep me paralyzed, holstered, immobilized.  The temptation is to not even start because I cannot start as an expert.  I must begin as a novice, an amatuer, one who pursues something because of love.  All I have to bring to the table is love.  There is no expertise.  There isn't really even a clue as to how to begin.

But God keeps calling. 

Keeps reaffirming the call.

Keeps confirming the new path.

What am I to do with my unkempt self in the face of Divine Longing that Yearns for me to move forward?  I have to take a step.  Unsure.  Wobbly.  Uncertain.

I've just recently finished Beth Moore's study of James.  It's been life changing for me.  And I love in particular the Divine picture of perfection James paints.  Here is what he has to say about the whole thing:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4, NASB)

The scripture uses the image of perfection, but it is not unblemished.  In fact, it is the blemishes, the scars of trying and failing and getting back up again, that manifests this perfection.  The Greek term is teleios, meaning mature (consummated) from going through the necessary stages to reach the end-goal, i.e. developed into a consummating completion by fulfilling the necessary process (see http://concordances.org/greek/5046.htm).  So James urges us on in our journey, calling us to be joyful in the trials and testing.  Because the thing God is really asking of us and seeking from us is endurance.  We just have to keep showing up everyday and trying the new thing.  And failing.  And falling.  And getting up again.  And getting up again.  And getting up . . . .

And it is this constant oneing of ourselves to the path that produces the thing we yearn for the most--perfection.  Completion.  A maturation that is lacking in nothing.  We can trust the journey to give us everything we need to be everything we long for.  There is no magic pill.  There is no spiritual ab sculpter.  There are no shortcuts.  There is just the path ahead, a Savior who beckons, and the daily determination to get up again and get going.  And truly that is ALL we need.  Anything else is just a lie of the devil who is just so jealous of us he'll do anything to keep us from putting one foot in front of the other, including trying to convince us we don't have what it takes. 

The truth we have to hold onto is that we have everything we need.  Because we are His kids.  And in His eyes, we are already perfect for the path He's called us to.

Footprints

I've come to the crazy conclusion that indeed I must lean into God's calling in my life.  After much prayer, many tears, heart to hearts with the man love, I'm there.  I've realized that I haven't given God the opportunity to show me what He can do.  I've been too afraid to try.  Too afraid to fail.  To afraid to be disappointed. 

As I sit on the edge of this crazy conclusion, I've been remembering His words spoken to my heart hours before this new life began.  March 23, 2011.  I had just sent out my weekly e-letter to my students, part of "Sami's Ramblings About Jesus".  This is how it all started:

Earlier in the semester my oldest son Noah and I had a little butting of the heads. He had been invited to a birthday party by one of his friends who wanted everyone to wear their favorite basketball jersey. Noah wanted to wear his upward uniform. Because his upward game was going to be that following Saturday morning, I told him he could wear the jersey, but the t-shirt and shorts he would have to save. Noah was crushed. He was so upset because the jersey was incomplete without the right shorts or shirt under it. He worked himself into such a fit I could barely talk to him. Finally I went to his bedroom and began pulling out other shorts he could wear under it. After a while, Noah began to realize that the clothes I was choosing for him worked just as well as what he wanted, and he would still be able to wear a fresh uniform the following day. He found an outfit he could be happy with and quickly regained his composure. After a little while had passed I knelt down to talk to him. As I pulled him close he began to go through an apology, because he thought he was getting scolded. Instead I said, “You don’t have to apologize. I just want you to know that you can trust me, that I love you, and that I am working things out for you in a way that will be good for you.”

Even as I was saying those words I knew they were Holy Spirit inspired God words. I believe these are the words that God speaks to every person He loves. Yep that would be everyone. Sometimes it is so hard in the middle of disappointment and heartache to hear them, just like it was hard for Noah to see that my plan for him was good, even if it looked different from his.

I went on to describe the hope Jesus brings, His resurrection always coming after the cross, always coming after our crosses.  Before the night was over I received an email from my District Superintendent congratulating me on the great post and asking me to meet with him the following day.  I knew then that my time as a campus minister had come to an end.

I did not have the courage on that day to accept Words of Life spoken to me.  It was always easier to speak them to someone else.  Mostly because I didn't want to accept that some form of dying was headed my way.  And truthfully, once the recognition had come that my work with campus ministry was over, I could not hear anything then or the many months following for the heart-sobs echoing through me.  Loss and grief filled me up, even as I knew God's hand was in the middle of rearranging everything.

I've been drawn to that post, to those words, this week.    And my guess is that God meant them not for that immediate wreckage, but to tuck away for this day, when I need to know that after the grief has subsided He still has Words to speak in me and through me, that He still has good plans for my future, ministry yet to be realized: 

The one thing I have learned about God more than any other is that He is really into redemption. What that means is that He chooses the broken and desperate (even dead) places of our lives to be the birthplaces for His new life revealed in us. It is the message of the cross that He reinvents over and over again through our ordinary lives. He loves to see His resurrection power displayed in the exact spot of our hopeless despair and grim resignation. Often times we are too hurt to see past our own pain to understand the beautiful new thing He is bringing forth. That’s okay. He gets that about us. I believe it is why He gives us to one another. While you are in your grief and can’t see out of it, I can hold your hand and see God’s grace and mercy for you. When my head and heart are weighed down with burdens I can’t carry, you believe in God’s goodness and strength for me.

Oh silly me.  I had no idea I was once again about to be broken.  But I do love the last paragragh:

I share these things as an encouragement, especially during this season of Lent. While you may be in a season of looking toward the cross, the one that Jesus died on as well as the cross of disappointment and heartache in your own life, remember that the end of the story has nothing to do with death and everything to do with resurrection. Jesus didn’t just tell His disciples beforehand that He would be delivered into the hands of His enemies and killed, but He also said that on the third day He would rise again. I am as confident that this as is true for Jesus showing up in your life story as it is for the one He lived here on earth. You are His. He loves you. He delights in You. And He is waiting for that day when He can resurrect the broken places of your life and show forth His power and glory through you to all the earth. Hear His sweet words spoken to your waiting heart: “I just want you to know that you can trust Me, that I love you, and that I am working things out for you in a way that will be good for you.”

Did you see that?  Those words?  Those were the Words the Holy Spirit was speaking to me and I was to hard-headed to realize that I was included in the message:  "You can trust Me, I love you, I am working things out for you in a way that will be good for you."   Really Lord?  In this life?  When I am so full of doubt?  When I'm tempted to think my best moments are behind me?  When this season is so full of the needs of others who depend on me?  You still have plans for this life I'm living?  The faith part of me is saying yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YESSSSSSS!

The pain of leaving behind a ministry so close to my heart has faded.  Though there are moments when memories cause tears, I am looking up again, looking out for new ministry to be revealed.  No longer looking back to what was, but looking forward to what yet may be.   And I've learned there is power in being humbled, so that I can accept the Word God wants to plant in me.  Somehow it makes it more believable for others, I think.  Because we are all really on this road together aren't we? 

P.S.  To see the original post just go back through the archives to 3/23/2011, "Uncrushable Hope."  Thank you for walking this journey with me--

The Open Road

I don't want to
walk a path
of varnished wisdom--
pretty to look at
at first glance--
but no real character.

I don't want to
offer a perspective
that diminishes problems by
providing easy answers
that cost me nothing--

I want my life to offer
Something Real
tangible
graceful
grateful
insights from answers
that cost me everything--
that still leave gaping holes
ready for redemption

Tell me the answers
you live when
what you bring to the table
is not nearly enough
but Grace reveals itself
in the living

Oh I see now how

Living in the
unresolved tension,
faith building muscle
on the daily treadmill
of trying to see a purpose
in things so hard
is actually valuable

This road teaches humlity

And resourcefulness--

Because there is a daily saving grace--
the small kindness of
a life unfolding with invitations
to JOY
written all over--
still the mess, yes
yet joyful
none-the-less

Oh I want to
open wide my arms
to the all of it

And safeguard my heart
against narrowness,
a life meanly lived
empty of compassion
for lack of vulnerability

On this road
I allow my heart
to feel the fulness
to walk in paths
I would not readily choose

So that compassion becomes
the tread of my shoes

Chocolate Breakfast

I love how my little one sneaks chocolate for breakfast. 

I first noticed it last week.  Tim had alreadly left for work; Jeremiah was the only one awake besides me.  I left him to watch cartoons in the living room while I went to get showered after a morning run.  Soon I was putting the final touches on my outfit when Isaiah comes in and announces Jeremiah's plundering of the pantry.  Sure enough, when I arrive on scene there are chocolate streaks across his little mouth and a nice pile of aluminum on the ottoman.

On the outside I show proper parental disapproval.  On the inside I'm taking notes.  Life is too short and too full of hard things to not have moments of ridiculous joy on purpose.

How do we do that?  How do we enter into ridiculous joy on a regular basis?  Can I just be really confessional and say that it's hard for me at times.  Sometimes I am so preoccupied with all the stuff that's wrong that I forget to focus on all the stuff that's right.  And there are some really right things in my life.  All kinds of invitations to be overflowingly grateful and joyous.

Like being able to take my boys downtown to the fountain to let them play.  On the way home Isaiah says, "Noah, I had so much fun with you."  My heart does a flip-flop of love at the sound of those words.

And then there was our sleepover in the living room floor.  We pulled out an old movie, popped some popcorn, and nestled in together for a mid-summer adventure.  And when the movie was over we all settled in for the night sleeping on the living room floor.

This morning I had a powerful reminder of the life I once lived, full of making a difference in the lives of young adults.  It was sweet.  And hard.  I asked God why I wasn't making that kind of difference anymore. 

And then He reminded me that He is giving me the opportunity to make a difference in my own home.  And chocolate breakfasts, fountain play dates, and living room sleepovers are important business in the life of my kids.  Someday they will remember these times and tell their own children about the "good old days."  And my presence will be right in the middle of each memory they share.

I only get to be Mommy to my own little boys for just a swift moment. 

I want to get it right.  And the only way to do that is to be right here.  Right now.  Ridiculously right.

Is This the Right Door?

Apparently while you are training to be a minister it is actually important to practice being a minister.  While I was in seminary each student was expected to complete several semesters of field education.  I remember at the time what a quandry it was.  I had to find something.  It was a requirement of the journey I was on. 

The seminary was situated across the street from the University of Kentucky.  I remember trudging my way across the campus to find UK's Wesley Foundation, the United Methodist Campus Ministry.  I was making a cold call, so to speak.  Because I had such a great experience at my own Wesley Foundation when I was in college, I thought maybe I could volunteer at this one.  Perfect plan, right?  Who would refuse free labor?  And sure enough, when I met with the campus minister, explaining my need for a field education experience as well as my hopes to fulfill it by becoming a part of ministry there, he was very supportive.  I left that office feeling like I checked an important box off my "do this to graduate" list.  My summer was flooded with relief.

Until the fall semester began.

When I showed up for the first meeting, it was obvious that no one had remembered I was supposed to be there.  The only explanation that made sense was that I wasn't. 

What I did not realize at the time was that God was getting ready to open a door for me Himself.  The church where Tim's dad pastored needed a youth pastor.  The position paid $100 a week, as well as milage.  And each weekend that Tim and I traveled to Leitchfield for me to work with the youth, we returned to Lexington with a trunk full of food Tim's mom cooked so that we could eat.  We were so poor those first two years of marriage as I finished seminary.  I am convinced that Nanny and Pop's generous hospitality are what made the difference for us.

I return to that memory often. 

I consider how things might have been, if my own plans had been manifest.  We would have missed out on God's desperately needed provision.  And the ministry lessons I learned while there are priceless.  I just had no way of knowing that God was getting ready to work in my behalf.  I believe the same truth permeates our lives today.  For me it means doing the best I can with the information available.  I believe God honors that.  That He sees us trying to do our best, trying to follow Him the best we can.  I believe that He allows us to do our best and then He shows us HIS best so that we can see the difference.  So I live my life trusting that God's best is able to break into my reality at any moment.  My step of faith is to then relinquish my own ideas and plans to yield to His.  I have to trust that God's mercy is bigger than my attempts to make everything fall into place.  When things get jumbled and bumbled because my best cannot pull us through, I have to trust that God not only can, but will, straighten things out so that His Glory shines through.  And when my heart is mangled and tangled, I have to trust that He can unravel what I've done with good intentions and set things right.

In this uncertain journey called life, the best we can do is to step out in faith, doing what we genuinely believe is the next right thing.  When we do it prayerfully, asking for guidance and provision, we simply have to go with what we got, and then trust God to rearrange when necessary.  I'm trusting Him to do this.  In mercy and love.  Closing doors that need closing, and opening just the right one.

Goin on a God Hunt. Scared?

The other day in Bible study one of our participants was speaking of the fear of God in her life.  She spoke of the holy reverence that she feels.  I have been sitting with my own thoughts and feelings about such a phrase--fear of God.

In my life's journey, fear has been a dominant player, from early on.  The fear of loss a constant in my growing up years, wondering who would leave next.  In my early faith life my fear was always about trying to keep God from leaving.  If I could just be good enough, maybe the thing I feared most wouldn't happen.

I don't fear God in that way anymore, as One who watches everything I do, watching for that moment I will mess up, ready to head for the door.  I remember the day my whole perspective changed.  I was sitting in church, racked with guilt for something I had done or had left undone.  In my heart I was pleading with God to forgive me, begging Him for mercy.  And I felt these words pass across my heart, an aching Question:  "What kind of monster do you think I Am?"

I am no longer afraid of God. 

God is my hiding place, my refuge.  My only fear of Him is that He is really into character development.  He is relentless in His pursuit of Godly Holiness in our lives.  And no matter how gentle and loving He is, He never relents from ushering us into those places of growth and refinement, and oh how the Fire that Refines hurts.  That's what I fear:  that the God of the universe is so interested in my character that He never backs down from taking me places I would rather not go when that is exactly what His Holiness in my life demands.

But my "fear" of Him is exactly why I am not afraid of Him.

It is this Psalm that explains what I feel most deeply:

As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.  For he knows how we are made; he remembers that we are dust  (Psalm 103:13-14).

He is more acquainted with my dustiness than I am.  When I cry out to Him in painful circumstances--He gets it.  When I look at the mess of  my life and cannot for the life of me figure out how to solve it--He gets it.  He gets my inadequacies and my heartaches and my fear of failing and my insecurities and my wondering how in the world this will ever get better.  He gets it.  He gets that I want to give up and give in because I feel so small in the face of the needs that surround me.  He gets it.

And He has compassion.  Even as He leads me on a path through the mess, the unresolved tension, the circumstances that demand answers I don't have and cannot give, He has compassion.  Can't go around it.  Can't go under it.  Have to go through it.  And even in the pain of walking this path that Oh God this is so hard and lonely and impossible!!!!! He has such sweet and deep compassion.  Even as He insists I keep going.

Zapped!

It's that time again!  VBS--yeah!  If you are not familiar with those initials, it is Vacation Bible School.  It's one of those things that is so big, so involved, that I dread it until it gets here; and then once I'm in the middle of it, steeped in the middle of the energy of it, I'm like YEAH! VBS ROCKS!!!  I can't lie.  I do love it.

I love the singing.  I love the dancing.  I love the silliness.  I love how God comes alive in the imagination of a sea of children who experience His BIGNESS in the middle of a whole bunch of fun.  I think this is what church should be like all the time.  But the thing that gets me is how God always times it with a message that goes straight to my heart.

Take for instance this year's theme:  Zapped.  It's all about how "God wants to do something with me that's bigger than just me." 

It's crazy to me how the circumstances of my life intersect with a children's VBS message that nails my great need on the head.  I'm at a crossroads.  I need to know that my life still has significance.  I need to know that God still has plans for me.  And then I show up for VBS.

It's not really crazy at all; it's the Holy Spirit. 

I am always amazed at how God aligns everything with such timing, to get all the people who need the Word in the right place at the right time for the right thing.  And we scratch our heads and wonder who's been peaking into our private thoughts--that the answer to our delimnas are plastered in the song that our kids are jumping and dancing and singing out loud with all their might?  Who can do that but God?

The thing that stuns me even more than this, is that when God sends forth His Word it is not just a singular word, even though it feels deeply personal.  There are many who hear it at the same time and know it was Spoken just for them.  Only God can do this.  I've heard it said that in God's economy nothing is wasted.  But it's also true that in God's economy everything is SUPER-SIZED!

And so I am spending my week getting Zapped!  Yay!

I praise God for Zapped--
I praise God for the opportunity to laugh and sing and dance and be crazy for His Glory--
I praise God that I get to be steeped in His Presence in the middle of a whole bunch of kids--
I praise God that I get to see my own children experience His Grace and share His Love with their friends--
I praise God that we are never too old to hear the old, old Story in new and wonderful ways!
I PRAISE GOD!  WOO HOO!

Tomorrow night is pajama night!  Oh Yeah!