I’ll leave you with something I heard at lunch today: “Life is basically about these two questions: What will you celebrate? What will you grieve?
Perhaps you can relate to feeling in the middle, to having questions in the air. I don’t know about you, but I hope to live a good story. To see things invisible and watch them come to life. The critics will probably always be there calling us fools or crooks, but we should just keep going. They can’t see what we see and the are not the thing that drives us.
Death will come for all of us but let us fight to live.
We have to fight to not get lost in our own pain. We have to fight to remember the good, the thing we love around us, the things that we are thankful for. Don’t buy the lie that your story is just a tragedy. And don’t buy the lie that you are the only character in your story.
I’ve become embarrassed by most things called “Christian”, but I still believe in a God who loves people.
Maybe relationships are like that. We have to choose these things. We have to say they’re real and possible and important.
It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade life for death.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. i might be simple, but more and more, i believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love.
Guilt and regret, those are awful places. You know that. So don’t live there. Do not despair. Do not be afraid. Grace is the interesting thing. Hope. And God must be a pretty big fan of today, because you keep waking up to it.
He told me once that he believed friendship might be life’s greatest gift. What an amazing thing to feel known and loved, to feel understood, to walk through life with another person.
Maybe we begin to hel pour friends become unhaunted when we let them know we’re not afraid of their pain. When we ask to really know them. When we ask to see inside. When we do our part to go beyond the distance and the smile, deeper, to “Who are you?” and “How are you?” and “Are you okay?
Fall suggests it’s possible to change, that things can still be new, alive, and bright again, alive and bright like Brooklyn.
You are still alive, and today is the most interesting day. Today is the best place to live.
With no fear, he charges his heart at the pointed world as a measure of sacrifice.
And are there broken things you were made to fight to fix?
But i believe in a God who maybe doesn’t scream at people the first time he meets them.
A shouted ‘You’re going to Hell’ is an awful introduction to a God who desires to love and know His children.
The thing about the idea that you’re not alone is that it doesn’t do us much good if it’s just an idea. We have to do something with it.
It used to bother me a lot, used to steal my sleep, when people would say meant things or things that weren’t true. I didn’t understand it, and it hurt my feelings. But I’ve learned to focus on the work and the heart of the matter – the people in the balance.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.
Celebration days... have a way of reminding us of what’s missing.