2020 - what has been, what will be.

I have seen people leaving the fields, and the ones that remain plant wiser.

Workers thin out, the few that remain plant. There is an easiness that is known. There is a readiness that comes.  With one heart and one mind there is no fighting, no questioning a shared depth of understanding.  Unified, they go out. Day after day focused hands to the ground, eyes fixed on the prize.

If the workers are few and the harvest great – the great few will endure.

The ones that have left stand at the edge – scoffing, questioning. The few that remain draw closer - compelled by a force stronger than their own. A quiet confidence rises in the mornings like a mist over fresh waters – each day as they plant, new hope, joy, peace is found, and shared.

It belongs to the land of the living. The people of the life – life eternal, life received and given. This field and this work has been set apart. The ground where you stand is holy – radiating with anticipation of what will be. Placed here in the beginning – and included your feet, your hands, your being. He saw you in this at the beginning.

Do not fear as the floods rise and the lands reap a harvest of war – He will remain. You were put here in His minds eye at the beginning – for such a time as this. Though they point and laugh and can have no hope to understand you will stand strong – like a tree planted by streams of fresh water you will not be moved. For the roots of the vine run deep and His branches produce the richest fruit of the land – sacred, holy.

Ask the hard questions. You cannot change the outside if you are not first willing to look in. Change is hard, honest, disassembling work. Take apart all that you know to be filled with what you will need for this next part of the journey. Do not fear – and do not forget what has been told of you. You will do greater things – things greater. Do not focus on the dirt before you, but raise your eyes to the place you found your first love; love first with a love not your own. “Remain in my love.”

2020 has been the year of change. The year of unrest – the year that has seen more pain and discomfort than one year should. Why are we uncomfortable in change, why does our heart crave peace? We were not made for this world - this is not our home. In the perfection and complete love that is, and one day will be – our being was made for more. The greatest history lesson ever told must be unearthed, and His created reminded of who they are – a resurrection of the chosen – an awakening of the few.

Isolation is a lie. It is a choice, the beginning of personal punishment, the mouth of a cave filled with torment and fear... waiting to swallow you whole, with no intention of release.

The lie isolates. It whispers that we are alone in our sin, alone in our torment and do not deserve to have others enter with us into our dark places; it speaks words of damnation to keep us ruined at the bottom of a pit where he hurls our worst belief systems at us.

If isolation is a choice. What is the alternative?

My default is isolation. If you looked closely at your own life, you might unearth the same dark truth. Is this true because it is easier? Because we fear being known? Because we are unaware that others might want to know our stuff, share in our stuff, and want to share theirs? Might it be part of this sin stuff that covers us here on earth?

Isolation does not trust, it fears, it hides, it destroys.

On the side that brings hope, gives light, extends grace, and covers a multitude of sins is Love. In all that isolation kills, Love breaths back to life. In all that isolation steals, Love willingly surrenders back. In all that isolation puts down, Love builds up. Isolation demands, Love invites. Isolation pushes, Love holds hands and walks beside.  Insert Jesus where love is.... and carry on.

How can Love become our default? In failure, in sin, in hidden places... to allow oneself to be loved, and not to isolate.

Trust. Whom? Ask. Why? Because the alternative is death. Spiritual, emotional, and eventually physical death. Many of you have walked that path already, as have I.

You will always be given the opportunity to isolate. Right now, a few minutes from now, tonight, tomorrow, next year...

Dare you choose to be loved? and love?

COVID-19 confession

I mocked, I pointed and I made fun. With the worlds toilette paper population depleting, and the death toll rising - I stood back, stood up like I understood the big messy picture and made my judgement. World leaders, the famous and the homeless - I made my call. I arrived at a place that made me feel big, made me feel secure in the knowing - and made others feel small.

Existing in the tension - existing or trusting? Planning for the future - planning or hoping? Avoiding the anxiety - avoiding and distracting. Arrival in the tension - because in the tention God is sovereign.

My world view was formed through the eyes of parents that viewed the world in an opposite kinds of way. Value was given to everyone that was different - not just in theory, but lived out in "having strangers with intellectual disabilities to the dinner table at Christmas" kind of lived out; if you were different, you were welcome - and this formed an anti - institution world view that allowed me to exist within the security of organized religion, but outside of the law that deprived my freedom.

When the world goes one way, my perceived value is always held in doing the opposite. But when doing the opposite is actually doing what is not loving, kind, best for the majority - I must re-evaluate. My value cannot be secure in being anti establishment, but rather exists in whose image I am made - and being remade moment by moment. It is about being - not about doing. Not about thinking, about making - creating or acting, but about being. The very DNA that has formed every part of me does not allow the luxury of being made in my own image. For I am not my own.

And in this life of not being my own - seeing myself for what I am - living in the tension of journey and not arrival - I am humbled.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, 
or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hill sin a balance? 

I wonder, I ask questions and I make peace. With the worlds population searching, and the death toll rising - I stood back, stood down to pray about the big messy picture and cry out to my God. World leaders, the famous and the homeless - I go to God. I journey through a place that reminds me that I am small, reminds me to feel secure in not knowing, but trusting - and inviting others to join.

Of Pain and Questions

I am tired. Tired of the questions, tired of not having the answers. I am tired of being looked to as someone that should know - Because I don't. The questions being asked cannot be answered by human words, or understood by a mind held together by bones, kept beating by a heart moving blood.

The questions asked cannot be held by hands, conceived by minds or known by the heart. The questions asked are ones of a world not seen or understood by human design. Questions of value, questions not bound by time or space. Questions that exist in sacred space, created by one whose masterpiece has no confines, no limits or single dwelling place.

How could one be expected to know such answers?

I am warn. Warn of sitting in pain, beside it, around it, and dancing with those that know no other place. An endless depth that welcomes no relief. Pain that rips and tears the most beautiful of things and perverts all that was once intended to be whole. Pain that leaves holes - breathes whole. Pain that exists beyond thought, or words - blinding, invading the most intimate abyss with no foundation of return. Do you know that depth of pain? Could there be any reason for that depth of pain?

What if there was a place of purpose for your pain? What if there was relief - in this place within space and time. A place where your pain and questions gave way to contemplation? A place where resting in pain became a place of solace - a place of communion? What if I told you this place need not be avoided, but grasped and clung to for something much greater? If you saw anothers heart also engaged in this pain - and the pain was really the answer to something much deeper - a need not known unless hands outstretched gave way to community.

What if the questions and the pain were all a design of hope to draw a much bigger, grander desire of need for and from others? What if there were people that had the same questions and the same pain? What if they carried this pain together - not in a forced furry of confusion, but in a fully known, fully loved place where time existed outside of itself. Suspended space between heaven and earth where zero gravity begins, and oxygen births life.

Can you exist in a world that is counter intuitive, but when put on is perfection?

Today, in my questions and pain I did something different.