The Stories We Tell Each Other

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Elea Lee

I am up too late looking for Jesus.

A friend of mine has lost someone she loves and I write about this kind of loss, knowing I tread on hallowed ground because I have walked there before, myself.

Took my shoes off and wept there. In the valley of the shadow of death.

I look at words, priceless words, captured in time by social media and I think of Malachi 3:16–one of my favorite verses and the verse that defines my faith in the power of us, telling our stories.

Malachi 3:1,7-8,10,16-17 (NIV)
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty. [7] Ever since the time of your forefathers you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. “But you ask, `How are we to return?’ [8] “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, `How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings. [10] Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. [16] Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. [17] “They will be mine, ” says the Lord Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him.

I find and grab more than I was looking for.

Sure, I need sleep. But I need Jesus more. We all do.

The 10,000 Hour Rule

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Elea Lee

flowers in their hair

I am sitting on the dock at the cable lake discussing my middle-aged woman philosophy of wakeboarding with the cable operator, an erudite young fella.

I told him that I figured whatever my limitations (prodigious), I had to commit to practicing.

He told me about the 10,000 hour rule.

K. Anders Ericsson and then Malcolm Gladwell (in his wake) have put forth the notion that if you spend 10 thousand hours doing something you will master it.

I don’t think I will ever master wakeboarding, but I figure I will be better after 10,000 hours!

10,000 hours is about 3 hours a day for a year or an hour a day for three years.

What we do with our time matters.

What beautiful things would you like to master? Don’t wait. Start today.

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For the Pagans

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Elea Lee

Been working on the Sermon on the Mount. Tonight it was:

Matthew 6:32-33 (NIV)
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. [33] But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

I look for signs of God in the world. I look for signs of love. But I also carry with me the people I love.

Some of them are pagans.

So now I have my touchstone verse–for the pagans.

If you read the whole passage it is hard to ignore.

All our pagan hearts.

When God Moves Away

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Elea Lee

Matthew 4:12-17 (NIV)
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. [13] Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— [14] to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: [15] “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— [16] the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” [17] From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

The Character of God

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Elea Lee

Have you ever had a friend who you trusted completely? For reasons of time and circumstance you thought–this person has my back.

Or something…

Most of us would like it if God were a glorified Santa Claus, providing winning lottery tickets and easy answers.

He is not. He is “not a tame lion.”. And this is a dark world.

But if you get to know Him well, you learn something–God is completely trustworthy.

Lucky for us His love never fails.

The Day After Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Elea Lee

The first question this morning: when will it be Christmas again?

365 days can seem like forever. A long time to wait for Christmas.

It has been about 736,570 days since the first Christmas. And it was about 1.46 million days of recorded history before the first Christmas.

Suddenly a single year doesn’t seem so long. To wait for a Savior? To wait for hope?

The good news of Christmas is the gift of a child–precious, poor, unlikely, who shed his light over us.

Every day Christmas when Jesus is with us.

How will you celebrate salvation?

The Story of an “Unplanned” Pregnancy

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Elea Lee

I was in a barn the other day, marveling at the smell. I have given birth to all my babies in temperature and germ-controlled hospitals.

I am not going to lie, I would not want to have a baby in a barn then put him in a feeding trough to sleep.

I love animals, but the whole thing seems so desperate and impoverished.

Surely the Lord of the universe could have given the kid a motel room?!

The birth of Jesus was deeply inconvenient, fraught with the appearance of impropriety, and a life-long exile from paradise for the Baby in the manger.

To many people his life would look like a mistake, but they would be wrong. The birth of this child in the barn was the most important in history.

An event I take quite personally. My life and hope returned, my spiritual debt paid. My life sentence taken by Another.

What would I do without you, Jesus?

Stay close to Jesus

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Elea Lee

It is the Sunday before Christmas and I am not in a church.

I am in a messy house watching over sleeping children.

But I know I have to stick close to Jesus.

I know because I am broken
The world is broken
And he is the only one who can fix it
Did fix it.

A while back I was talking to my daughter about Jesus’ pronouncement at the point of his own death–

It is finished.

She shook her head in surprise.

By the time she was five she had seen her world crumble. She has walked through incredible suffering, loss, and loneliness.

Nothing seems finished.

But it is.

When Jesus dies for us he pays a complete price for us. We have been given back our wasted lives.

If we wanted them.

Many of us don’t. We willingly hand our lives over to selfishness, pride, immorality, anger, fear….other gods.

Gods who in fact will happily consume our wasted eternities.

But not Jesus.

Jesus stripped himself down to a naked convict and took every ounce of the pain and wrath of this broken world.

He was and is and will be the Finisher, the hope and Judge of this broken world.

Don’t be fooled by substitutes. Seek Jesus. Don’t rest until you find him.

He is worth the search. He is our only hope.

Is. 53
Is. 11

Happy singing in the fields!

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Elea Lee

When I was in the fourth grade I had an Alabama history textbook that would have been a real hoot if I didn’t have to actually slog through the antiquated images and commentary about happy slaves singing in the fields.

I mention this because I am fascinated and repelled by revisionist history and our fear of real free speech.

In the 1970s Jimmy Carter was mocked for comments about lust published in Playboy.

Right. Because the faithful readers of that mag are really interested in fidelity.

So now Phil Robertson has mouthed off in GQ–another bastion of women’s rights and conservative photo shoots–and he has gotten his burly, duck-tricking wrist slapped.

For the wrong thing! If the offensive, airbrushed, hypersexualized images of women in magazines like Playboy and GQ are considered free speech, then why not Carter’s and Robertson’s clumsy moralizing within the same publications?

Go nuts boys, but don’t expect me to respect you for your poor choice of words or venue.

But that stuff Robertson says about only experiencing happy, singing field-hands in the glory days of the 60s in Louisiana?!

Ridiculous. Ridiculous and offensive. Life in the south for African Americans is still no picnic, but back in the day you could get lynched for being black and poor in Louisiana

Offensive.

Not just that he said it, but that no one seems to be listening to what really matters and truly should offend.

I don’t really believe in the “real” in reality tv. But I know the answer isn’t to suspend Robertson.

How about adding some new characters to the show?

The gay, lesbian, African American, and other minority neighbors of Mr. Robertson he needs to get to know better.

No One Is that White

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Elea Lee

I have clung to this verse rather feverishly through the last 4 years:

Isaiah 53:12 (NIV)
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Because I am a transgressor
And he was numbered with me

It really does not feel good being a transgressor. First there is the spiritual malaise of sin. Then there is the divide it creates between me and God. Next there is this fun fact: while all regular humans are sinners, we pretend we are not.

Jesus was no regular human.

He was poor, dark, and hated. His nickname was “bastard.”

He bore our shame.
He bore my shame.

Isaiah 53 is a chapter as hard as obsidian, so painful, so crucial. And it was written by a guy who walked around naked for 3 years just because God told him to do it.

I figure the naked walking was God’s writing seminar. Not fun or pretty, but soaring, redemptive, essential.

Do you know Jesus?

If you do, you know the only color that matters when describing him is blood red. Blood shed for me, one miserable transgressor.

And if you don’t? Walk that road, that narrow road he lights for us, to the Cross that sets us free.

Isaiah 1:18

Carrying Light

Words for light