Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.
In this day, this season, miracles will grow within, unfurl, bear fruit. And the heart that makes time and space for Him to come will be a glorious place. A place of sheer, radiant defiance in the face of a world careening mad and stressed. Because each day of Advent, we will actively wait. We will wait knowing that the remaking of everything has already begun.
The art of deep seeing makes gratitude possible.
You are, at your very essence, not what you think, but what you love.
The only way to the abundant life is to love the right things in the right ways.
No matter what the outcome looks like, if your love has poured out, your life will be success-full.
I know it well after a day smattered with rowdiness and worn a bit ragged with bickering, that I may feel disappointment and the despair may flood high, but to give thanks is an action and rejoice is a verb and these are not mere pulsing emotions. While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.
But the Lord draws near to Samuel: “The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.
And the saddest of all may be when we give away our lives to insignificant things, things we didn’t realize we subconsciously loved. Turns out – we give our lives to things we never would if we got honest and thought about them for one single moment. It’s happening every moment – our unintentional, accidental lives betray our true loves and what we subconsciously believe.
True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God. Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn’t negate all other emotions – joy transcends all other emotions.
So slow down to feel the wind. Listen to the carols just a little bit longer. Linger in the quiet and taste the grace of now, and know that He is good and He is God. Name them in this moment – gift upon gift upon gift – and listen for the echo in everything: I will bless you.
The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women – women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go – women who had thought.
Our broken hearts always break His. It’s the quantum physics of God: Your one broken heart always splits God’s heart in two. You never cry alone.
Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice?
Slay the idol of the seen, break the idols of performance, and believe the state of my house doesn’t reflect the state of my soul... it’s the priorities unseen – the prayers, the relationships, the love while doing the work – that hold the meaning, the merit.
At the grave’s precipice, our feet scuff dirt, and chunks of the firmament fall away.
The self is ultimately never really sacrificed in giving, but our real self is ultimately found. In the sacrificial giving of ourselves, we give ourselves back to our real selves, the self we were made to be – blessed to bless, given to givenness, loved to love.
The greatest gift we can give our great God is to let His love make us glad.
Simplicity is not a matter of circumstance; it is a matter of focus.
The miracle of eucharisteo, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. The whole of the life – even the hard – is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.