And the Future Starts Now

Never, in my whole entire life, have I worn a new dress on Easter.  Today I am.  I didn't buy it for Easter, but today is the first time to wear it. I'm wearing it as a symbol of being wrapped in the newness, freshness, and "all things new-ness" (I made that  phrase up) of this day.

I love Easter!  Easter speaks of new beginnings.

Joelle created these colored eggs

New life

Second chances

Of being rescued

Restoration of that which was dead, lost, broken

Hope

Growing up, I was always taught that Easter is a celebration of Jesus dying for our sins and then coming back to life again so that we could live forever.  While that's all true, I've come to see that there is so much more.  I think the Message version of 1 Peter 1 verse 3 says it well:

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven.-- AND THE FUTURE STARTS NOW! (emphasis added)

Every day, every moment, is the promise of a fresh start, of a new beginning, of our lives becoming all we were meant to be... Here. Now.  Not just in some distant future.  Easter is the promise of "all things new". And its in Jesus that we find the fulfillment of that hope.

May we each reach out today for the New Life that is offered to us each day, each moment, from now to eternity.

Are you doing anything in particular to symbolize the meaning of this day?  I would love to hear about it!

Glimpses of Dawn

I remember the first time that I ever saw a sunrise.  The memory of that moment is etched clearly in my mind.  My brother and I had stayed at my Grandma's house for a few days while my parents went on a little mini-vacation together.  One morning, very early, I heard someone stirring around.  Knowing it was my Grandma, who I adored, I decided to get up early with her and see what she was up to.  I found her in the kitchen dressed in her robe, with the lights still off, just as the dawn of a new day was beginning to peek above the horizon.  She asked me if I had ever seen the sun come up, which I had to admit that I had not.  We lived in town and the Eastern horizon was mostly obliterated by the houses next to us. She told me she often got up to stand in front of the kitchen sink, which was under a row of windows that spanned the Eastern skies, to watch the sun come up.  Nothing stood between those windows and the horizon but a wide open field dotted with a few sparse trees and a distant country church.  I thought, "That's just like Grandma to do something unexpected."  That was one of the reasons I loved her so much; life with her always seemed like an adventure waiting to happen.

A glimpse of the sunrise through the houses across the street

Together, we stood in front of that long row of windows and watched the light of the new day begin to dawn.  I felt as though I was in a holy space, experiencing a very sacred moment.  I began to see a little sliver of burnished orange appear just above  ground level.  She said to me, "That is the sun beginning to come up.  Just watch.  It will get bigger."  Of course. But I had never seen that happen and I stood there in utter amazement while that little sliver took on the shape of a fiery, lustrous orange ball in the Eastern sky.  Even as the light of the dawn began to emerge, a new awareness began to come alive in me.  For the first time I realized that I was witnessing an event that had been happening for thousands and thousands of years, an event that literally spanned the globe, and yet I had been largely unaware of it all of this time, and my little world began to open up and expand in a new way.  I remember feeling as though I had been missing out on one of the most amazing things happening every day.  I felt a bit cheated, a bit robbed.... how could I have not known about this?  I recall feeling so grateful to my Grandma for introducing me to this phenomenal masterpiece, and inviting me into this transcendent experience.

The sunrise today was just as spectacular as I remember it being on that morning with my Grandma.  Sunrises like the one today always take me back to that morning with my Grandma.  This many years later, I am still in awe over the wonder of creation and the masterpiece that awaits us every day.  Somehow these are the moments that invite us to experience life beyond the here and now, to taste of eternity.

"The grand show is eternal.  It's always sunrise somewhere."  John Muir

Message in a Bottle

The messages that we long to hear are all around us, more often than we are aware.Often our gaze goes no further than the ground 16 inches in front of our own feet.  Nor do we hear beyond the sound of our own voice talking in our heads. But if we can see farther and listen beyond, there is a whole world to be discovered!   What is it you desire to hear? Is there a question that you are asking?  Is there a message you hope to receive?

Life is Good

I've always liked this saying

No matter what, life is good.  Good because we know that all things work together for good.  Good because we have a God who takes the brokenness, pain and hurt of our lives and turns it into something beautiful in time.  Good because we can choose, and we can choose  to be happy.  Life is good because there's always second chances... and third and fourth and fiftieth.... Life is good.

Life is good because there is beauty everywhere if we choose to see it.  Good because we are loved.  Even if no one on earth loves us, which is highly unlikely, we have a Creator whose love for us knows no limits.  Life is good because until we take our last breath, we can learn.  And because we can learn there really are no failures, only successes as we learn from our mistakes.

Life is good.  Whether laughter, tears, joy, or sorrow.. life is good.

Thoughts On a Tragedy

This past week a colleague on the campus I teach at was brutally attacked and murdered at his own home.  His wife was seriously injured in the attack as well.  My colleague leaves 3 children, 2 that are still in High School.

Not only has the campus been shaken to the core over this, but the entire community.  These things don't happen where I live. The night we first learned of this tragedy, my daughter wanted to sleep on the floor in our room.  I get that.  Of course you can sleep on our floor.  I want us all to be together, too.

My colleague was killed early Sunday morning.  Monday was an extremely difficult day on campus.  It's as though we all were numb.  It was noticeably quieter on campus.  Less laughter.  Students and faculty spoke to one another in hushed tones.  People walked with eyes to the ground.  Occasionally I would see spontaneous hugs as tears would suddenly begin to flow once again.  At 10 we had a campus wide gathering in the chapel to pray and come together in our confusion and bewilderment.  We remembered God's love, his goodness and faithfulness even in these times.  Especially in these times.  There was time given for sharing memories about our colleague and professor which included not only tears, but laughter as stories were recounted of his funny and quirky ways.  Clearly this man... father, teacher, friend, son, brother, colleague....was well loved. Because he loved well.

Tragedies like this have a way of eliciting deeper reflection, of giving us a window to see truth in a way that we don't usually see in the normal course of life.  Times like this cause one to see the things that are most important in life... like loving each other, valuing each other, sacrificing for each other, putting other's interests above my own, because its those around us that make life truly meaningful. And we just never know how much time we will have.  I see more clearly how less important "my rights" are, how "my interests" aren't as big of a deal as I tend to think.  This event has caused me to want to hug more freely, encourage others profusely, tell those around me more frequently how much I love them, bless others with kindness, and so much more. I know others are also sensing similar things. So while I am deeply grieved by what has happened this week and the unspeakable pain and suffering this has caused, I am amazed at the ways that I have seen Love springing up.

Karl Shelly an adjunct professor on campus said this: “Two things I know to be true: this world is filled with remarkable beauty and love. And this world is filled with unspeakable violence and pain. We live in between both; with glimpses of heaven and of hell; of darkness and of light. As one who seeks to transform conflict and violence, I will live by the proposition, and walk in the hope, that violence and pain never have the final word ...”

Beauty in the world

There's alot about this world that is hard, ugly, painful and broken.  Just watch the news or read headlines and that becomes immediately clear.  Or have a heart to heart talk with someone and it won't be long before once again you are reminded of the pain and brokenness of the world as that conversation goes beneath the surface to the tender and vulnerable places of people's lives.  Or simply think about our own personal stories.  Failures, missed opportunities, hurts either imposed by others or that we imposed, and so on.  It can be downright discouraging.

A shift that I have sensed occurring in my own life over the last several years is to be able to see beyond the brokenness of the world in a whole new way.  Increasingly, as I view the world I see Beauty. There really is Beauty in the world.  It was there all along, I'm sure, and I just wasn't able to see it as clearly as I do now. Maybe its a result of getting older, or maybe its an answer to prayers I've prayed over the years to be able to view the world around me through the eyes of the Creator. I don't really know, I just know I find myself amazed throughout the day.  It matters because I see people, life and situations in a different light. Small things seem so amazingly beautiful.  Here are some examples from just the past few days:

• Laying next to my daughter at bedtime and listening to old Christmas classics together on the iPad before she goes to sleep
• Watching one of my students interact with a very sick elderly lady in such a caring and compassionate manner
• Seeing the love on the husband's wrinkled face for this same elderly lady
• The way the sun comes streaming in through a window to shine light on the bed of a sick person
• Sitting and drinking coffee in the quiet of the early morning hours before everyone is up
• Bringing eggrolls home, thanks to my mom, from the Relief Sale for my son and seeing how happy he is (he LOVES eggrolls)
• Gazing out the window and being drawn in by the various shades of color and textures of living things
• Looking up into the vast blue sky and noticing the shapes and contours of the clouds above the busyness below
• Watching things move in the wind
• Seeing people able to laugh and smile through their own personal pain.

Maybe, too, why this might matter is that part of how God makes all things new is simply by helping us to see things in a new way.  At any rate, may we each be able to see the incredible beauty in this world.

Finally, I leave you with one of my all time favorite songs....Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

Out of the Ashes

I've been writing  lately about the more positive side of having hopes and dreams.  You know, like we all have dreams, dreams do come true, go after your dreams, your dreams matter.  While all that is true, there is another side to dreams; the all too real and too frequent side of dreams that we each experience at some point in our lives.  The fact is,  probably for every dream that is realized, its likely that there are even more that die.  

We've all experienced the death of a dream(s) in one way or the other.  Hopes we had for accomplishing something, seeing something come to be, or becoming something ourselves. Maybe its a marriage that didn't work out, a business that failed, a vision that was never fulfilled, children that were never born to us or a child that was taken from the earth before our hopes and dreams for that child were realized.  This is the hard, cold reality of the world  we find ourselves in.

I would guess that Jesus's disciples felt as though all of their hopes and dreams were slipping through their fingers as they watched Jesus slowly dying on the cross.  Everything that they had thought was going to happen through Jesus's life was suddenly being lost before their eyes through his death.  It had to be the ultimate let down.  I'm sure the hours following Jesus's death had to be some of the darkest hours in the life of Jesus's friends and followers. Everything that they cared about, this person they trusted, the dream they had for living the Jesus way, was gone.  Or so it seemed. You probably know the rest of the story.

But what I love about the rest of the story is that it speaks to a profound truth.  It's often out of those times when we experience deep, personal loss- when all hope seems gone- that renewal can take place.  The story of Jesus is a story of bringing life to what was dead, hope out of despair, and even beauty out of the ashes of our lives.  Isaiah (61) speaks of what Jesus would one day do and be about.  Its there that the promise is given that the ashes of our lives would one day be replaced with beauty.

I guess I'm thinking about all of this because I recently learned of a deep, personal loss a friend is going through; the loss of dreams on multiple levels. While right now all seems to be lost....ahead, I believe, there is Beauty.

Making Something Special, part 2

"Art is the act of making something special"

I was thinking more about this quote (see yesterday's post) and considered that there are 2 ways that one could interpret that statement.

First, the act of making something special could simply be the act of actually creating- making something- with your own energy, mind and hands.  I think of things like creating a painting, a song, sculpture, a special dish, etc.  The second interpretation, which I believe to be within the reach of  all of us, is that of helping to realize the full potential or capacity of something.  We might say, "She has the makings of an entrepreneur" or "He made the team".  Both of those statements suggest a certain potential.  So to say that art is the act of making something special, its to see the potential in every situation and help actualize that however possible.

I think about the things that I will do in the course of a day, and what it might look like to turn those ordinary acts into something special:

• A conversation with a good friend becomes  art when I take the time to ask thoughtful questions of the heart, truly seeking to listen and to understand.
• The last day of school for the kids becomes more than just the last day when I thoughtfully consider and execute a way of honoring all of their efforts, hard work and achievement in successfully getting through another year
• Concluding an e-mail to a work colleague with a simple note of encouragement or appreciation
• Getting gas and paying the clerk isn't just an exchange of money and goods, but one that leaves the person knowing that he or she was recognized as a living, breathing human being

Some people seem to just live this way naturally.  I have to think about it and be intentional about it.  I can get very task oriented and simply focus on "gittin' 'er done" and miss the opportunity to turn an everyday experience into art by making it something special.

I hope today that I will grow in awareness of the opportunities to make something special.

Making Something Special

Before "Making Something Special"

"Art is the act of making something special."

This quote comes from Ron Martoia, one of the more creative people I have had the privilege of interacting with.  He's one of those kind of people who doesn't do ordinary... seems like everything he is about is somehow turned into an art. Cooking, exercising, writing, speaking, vocation... you name it. He seems to know just how to put that extra spin on something, take it beyond what you'd expect and turn it into something special.  I'm always inspired by people like that.

Making something special means taking the ordinary to the next level, beyond ordinary. For me, it makes the difference between a day being filled with a series of mundane tasks, and one that has moments of art. I believe that we all have the capacity to make things special because we have the fingerprint of our Creator all over us.

Alot of my creative energy, or "making things special" went into ministry in the past.  So now I find myself turning my attention towards our home in this season of our lives.  Our floors have ugly green carpeting that was laid when the house was built, nearly 20 years ago.  Yes, you can imagine (see picture above).  So, this week I am tearing it out in one of our underutilized rooms, repainting the walls (also the same color since we moved in) and making this space into something special.  Yes, to me this is art and I can't wait to get going on the project!

May we all find ways today to turn something ordinary into art by making it something special.

Resisting Entropy, part 2

Yesterday's post was about the importance of intentionality in parenting.  The  principle that I referred to- that most things, if left to their own, will move towards disorder and chaos and away from beauty and order-  applies to just about anything in life that truly matters. You name it:  marriage, friendship, business, creativity, physical fitness, spiritual life, etc.  I can't think of a single thing that has any significance at all that can grow towards its full potential without a whole lot of nurturing, care, and intentionality.

I've been re-evaluating all of the parts of my life that are important to me.  What am I doing to care for, nurture and help grow those areas so that the full potential is realized? Part of the evaluation process for me is to also look at areas that I SAY are important, and yet I am not really doing much if at all to truly nurture those areas.  I'm only being dishonest with myself if I say that my marriage matters and yet I don't put forth the effort it takes to grow it, nurture and care for it. What I say and do need to be in alignment with one another, otherwise there is dissonance and incongruity.

Here are some of the things that matters most to me (not necessarily in order):
Relationship with God through Jesus Christ
My marriage to Charles
My kids and family
Fulfilling my call,  living out my destiny, and bringing my gifts to bear on the world around me.
Community, although that has been in a season of morphing and changing and I'm still figuring some things out
Creative pursuits like writing and design
More lately, pushing out new business ventures
Being exposed to the world through travel and reading
Physical fitness

Because I do have a high value on intentionality, it is an empowering process to evaluate what I say is important and take an honest look at whether my words and actions line up.