july, a list

 

eating:
too much pasta. it’s the answer to everything when you’re home alone and don’t want to cook.

loving:
 summertime… darker skin, lighter hair, fresh berries and green beans every day.

reading:
well, I was reading The Man of Lawlessness by David Reagan. but I finished it (one of like two books I’ve read all the way to the end this year). so now I’m just reading my Bible… 1 Peter 1 & 2 particularly lately.

listening to:
 so much Twenty One Pilots music. new and old. my current favorite is Forest.

watching:
Gran Hotel on Netflix. it’s all in Spanish and I love it.

exercising:
to my own weightlifting workouts, my daily pushup goal, and workouts that Sam learns at the fire station and teaches me. and of course I do occasionally break out the Jillian DVDs.

making:
 blackberry jam. well, I haven’t started yet, but that’s what I’ll be making this week and next.

waiting:
not really for anything. there are things I’m excited about, like my little sister visiting this weekend and going to Montana in August, but honestly I find no point in wishing time away by waiting for the next big thing. life is now. and it’s going fast enough without my help.

missing:
my family. it was awesome to spend the last weekend with them all.

working on:
my book. still.

thankful:
for the riches of the Word of God.

praying:
for contentment and surrender in all things.

save

Perhaps my favorite song of all time, made even more powerful by the work of this animation artist. Listen, watch, and stand in awe that the Savior of the world came to save... you.

the mountain with the cloud at the top

 

“God is a mountain with a cloud at the top. You can see the foot of the mountain—what He does—but you cannot see the top of the mountain—what He looks like.”     - Jewish description of God

My contemporary Western mind wants to know God by seeing Him. I want to know what He looks like, to be able to touch Him and feel Him near me. By default, that is my vision of walking in intimacy with Him.

But God does not reveal His appearance to me, and it’s frustrating; it feels like He doesn’t even really want me to know Him. He is described only loosely in the Bible, in terms like “feet of burnished bronze” which really doesn’t resonate with my imagination. His face is shrouded in a cloud of unknowns. I don’t even know what the human Jesus looked like when He walked on earth, let alone what He looks like in glory! Why does He have to make it so complicated?

But He doesn’t. There is a reason that my favorite passage in the whole Bible is the following:

Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.     - Jeremiah 9:23-24

I am a Westerner, and I have been taught that my individuality is a measure of my worth. I am a Westerner, and I have been convinced that my appearance is everything: Heaven forbid that I’m too fat or too thin, wear too much makeup or too little, or have to wear the same outfit to church twice in a row. I am a Westerner, and my first impression of you will be based on what you look like, because I have been culturally shaped to believe that the face is an honest indicator of which kind of people are “likable.”

I am a Westerner, and the health of my relationships is heavily based on the physical presence and the emotional quality of the time I spend with others—not so much the record of the nice things they’ve done for me.

But God wrote the Scriptures to an Eastern people . . . a people that did not need to see Him as long as they could see Him work. He did not need to come wearing robes of purple and scarlet to make the statement, “I am the LORD” to the nation of Israel; He needed only to point to His track record: “I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth.” He did not need to show Israel His faithfulness by giving her His physical presence—what He has done for her throughout history is adequate: “‘Therefore behold, the days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when they will no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them’” (Jeremiah 23:7-8).

God is a mountain with a cloud at the top. He doesn’t show me what He looks like, because I don’t need to see His face in order to see His hand faithfully at work, or in order to walk assured in His love for me. He is, after all, the LORD, who called me to be a disciple at a very young age. He is the LORD, who paid my debt of sin. He is the LORD, who brought me through the many hardships and fears that came with going to Bible school far away from home. He is the LORD, who has asked me to do seemingly scary things only to show me that they were so very worth the risk.

And with this I can paint a picture, not of what He looks like, but of who He is. That, I think, is far more important, for as He said: “Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD.”

it’s july

But first, a recap from my very absent June… in pictures of course.



I was supposed to be blogging at least twice a week, but that kind of died when my Windows Live Writer software decided to stop letting me login to my Blogger account (miraculously cured today, not sure how) and when I spent five weekends in a row roadtripping all over kingdom come (Ellensburg for my brother’s wedding, three trips to Goldendale for various events, and down to Corvallis to visit my other brother). And now, just like that, it’s July, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

I have been photographing a lot, drinking in mountain sunsets, and rediscovering the joys of riding my horse bareback. I’ve been trying not to roast in this outrageous heat and eating a diet heavy in raspberries from our backyard and of course snuggling Thor and Loki as much as time permits. I have been writing a very little, just enough to keep inspiration burning; everything else has been nitty-gritty business work that I feel pretty incompetent at, but that must be done.



I come into July with a craving for community. The busyness of the last few weeks has had me pouring into my relationships with my family, which I love, but has removed me from the scene of my actual church life—which, fragile and young as it is, always seems difficult to wade back into after time away.

I come into July with an even greater craving for communion with Jesus. I have been sorely convicted of my discontentment with His simple call to “abide in Me” recently. But as the world appears to crumble around me, I am beginning to see again that there is no hope in anything but my abiding relationship with Him. My achievements reached in selfish ambition will never prevail, but my surrender at His feet will transcend ages and realms and eternities.

Maybe that will look like blogging more… or less. Maybe it will look like investing more into the lives of the believers around me. I’m guessing it will mean more writing and studying this concept of abiding in Jesus, and I know for certain that it will mean a better prioritization of the role He has given me as a wife to my husband. It will mean laying down the petty comparison game and the “need” to have as much worldly accomplishment to show for my life as those around me, the shifting from a temporal perspective to an eternal one… seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness.