“We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, ‘a matter of choosing what is difficult all one’s days as if it were easy.” — Kathleen Norris
“I just wonder what it would do in your heart and your mind if you really believe that God delighted in you.” — Matt Chandler (via kvcshutterbug)
(Source: fivesolas, via h410berry)
Congratulations to Allison Boyd who will be receiving her very own copy of Love Does in the mail next week!
Feel free to leave an acceptance speech (or poem) below, Allison. :)
P.S. I heard Bob Goff speak today on the topic “Fear Not The Power of Whimsy.” I’m telling you folks, this is a good, good man living a good, good life for a good, good, very good God. Awesomeness…
No still life—
whole, green, waiting,
perfect, plump, unpierced—
this fruit leaks
on a dry, fake oak table,
skinned.
He bites.
I gnaw.
We chew until brown, sturdy stem
and core
rest between us.
(Another poem fragment. Bear with me…)
Last year I spent a lot of time working through what Peter meant when he wrote the words, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
I loved the truth that inner beauty mattered and outer beauty not so much, but I found myself kicking a little at his definition of inner beauty, mostly the words “gentle and quiet.”
Over the past few months I’ve been chewing those words like cud, pulling them back up every so often.
A few weeks ago my husband, girls and I hiked down to a little river that runs through the heart of Austin. London and Eve threw rocks. Justin tried not to get hit.
I waded into the middle and sat, hair pulled downstream. As I watched the water rush my way— not too-hurried, not too-bossy—I pulled my words back out for consideration. I thought, “This river is gentle and quiet.”
And suddenly, like never before, I wanted to be gentle and quiet. Because I wanted to be like the river: Determined. Driven. Sure. And yet… Peaceful. Tender. Submissive.
Leaning into my culture’s love of the antithetical, I sometimes think quiet and certain are enemies—that gentle and powerful share no common ground. When I think that, I am an idiot.
In my mind, beside the words “gentle and quiet” I now have a picture and the picture helps me make sense of the truth.
I want to be a river.
I’ve often heard people say we shouldn’t “put on a show” during our Sunday worship services, and I thought today maybe we could unpack that phrase.
What does it mean for worship to become a show?
Now, I know how this plays out on the individual level, with a person pretending to be someone he or she isn’t. I’m more interested in what it looks like on a corporate level.
What are the factors that differentiate a worship service from “a show”?
Is it the level of audience participation?
The depth of the experience? (And how might that be measured?)
I think we must agree that to some degree we’re “putting on a show” for God as we’re making an offering we want Him to observe, watch, and enjoy.
But I suppose we shouldn’t “put on a show” for the audience—if that means entertaining them only.
Still, I’m not convinced that a little entertainment is bad, as it’s bound to happen with almost all good preaching or singing (and it cannot be eliminated without forbidding quality).
Sooo…. Let’s discuss. When does a worship service step outside the realm of worship and enter into “show” territory?
If you only buy one book this year make it Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. Wait a minute, if you’re only going to read one book this year you should not be using precious reading energy on my post. Go buy the book already and maybe you’ll have enough PRC (personal reading capacity) to read something else, too. Like maybe some Ann Voskamp or Michael Chabon or C.S. Lewis. Away with you. To Amazon!
But if you’re planning on reading lots of stuff this year, probably another four blog posts before lunch, well then stay. And read this review so you’ll be absolutely sold on Love Does and buy three copies at once because you’ll probably want to send them to friends. Or leave one for the mailman. Or you could give it to the guy at Mighty Fine Burgers who will, as he did me, ask about that winningly-titled book with balloons on the cover in your hand.
Here’s what it’s about: living a good, God-led, love-spilling life. But it’s not a how-to or a devotional. It’s a story, the storyof one guy’s life—a guy who tried to live a really great life by doing stuff (really fun, really beautiful, really hard stuff) and along the way learned that love (the elixir of life) DOES. It moves. It acts. It sacrifices. It climbs. It jumps.
You should read this book because it’s like sitting around a fire at camp with this super-wise counselor who lives this awesome life and you really want to be just like him when you grow up so you ask him how he got to be so awesome and he actually tells you (without ever—not once—sounding even a smudge arrogant) and the answers aren’t so terribly intimidating and you think, “I could actually do that.”
That’s Love Does—stories around a campfire. Real, inspiring stories of love in action.
I want to do two things before I end this post. First I want to tell you how to win a FREE copy of Love Does and second I want to share a quote from the book:
1. In the comments, tell me about a time when someone loved you like the apostle John encouraged his readers to love: “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Just a sentence works. Or go on and on. I promise to read your comment-novel.
I’ll choose a comment at random and mail you the book. Please include your email address with your comment.
2. A quote! This quote follows a story about Bob’s first ex-girlfriend. She wrote a letter—the 1970s (80s?) form of dumped by text:
“I’ve received many letters since then that started ‘Dear Bob.’ Some were letters so thick they had to be folded several times to fit in the envelope. They left me feeling as folded when I read their words with shattering disappointment. Still, whatever follows my ‘Dear Bobs’ is often another reminder that God’s grace comes in all shapes, sizes, and circumstances as God continues to unfold something magnificent in me.
And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don’t think it looks like a series of folded over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we’ll conclude in the end that maybe we’re all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.”
Yum.
Alright already. Get to commenting.
Or buy your own.
Hurry…
I promised a review of Jen Hatmaker’s book 7 and here it is. Sort of.
What I really want to talk about isn’t so much the content or quality of the book (It’s a pretty well-executed treatise for living a simpler life in an excess culture) but rather the book’s hook.
It’s a stunt book.
Stunt books are driven by some sort of experiment. Maybe the author decides to “live Biblically” for a year or to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary or to only eat locally grown foods. Writers use these “stunts” as catalysts for writing, hoping an extreme behavioral change will jumpstart some sort of illumination.
A.J. Jacobs, author of 22 stunt books or articles the most famous being “A Year of Living Biblically,” recently defended the oft-criticized stunt genre in Wired magazine. He wrote, “Done right the literary stunt can still be entertaining, illuminating, even sublime.”
Hatmaker’s stunt was to pinpoint seven areas of excess in her life and spend seven months, one month for each area, engaging in a “radical” purge of some sort. For one month she gave away seven possessions every day. For another, she ate only seven foods (Those were two of the more extreme months).
I am currently very interested in the stunt genre as I’m being encouraged to write a stunt book. The advice I hear again and again is to use my clothes project as the core of a book about clothes and God. It’s a good hook: Four outfits. 365 days. That sells.
But here’s the thing… I don’t like stunt books.
Reading Hatmaker’s book reminded me of why. I have several reasons—and I’d LOVE it if we could discuss this genre at length in the comments—but here’s my biggest beef:
Jacobs says in the article I cited above, “A successful stunt requires a writer who is passionate and open to change. In fact, change is crucial, almost mandatory—without it you won’t have much of a story.”
Because change is essential to a good book, I don’t see how readers of a stunt book can buy change in the author as authentic and lasting. It seems, well, too convenient. Isn’t it wonderful that this project you created and plan to execute in a mere seven months just happened to prove your hypothesis and change your entire world view?
Did I mention I’m cynical?
Still. It’s one thing to undergo an experience and decide post-experience that perhaps it warrants a book. But to think up a project and secure a book deal before you’ve even begun—what are you going to do if nothing happens? What if eating seven foods doesn’t change you in any meaningful way? It seems to me like there’s no room for that outcome.
I think I’m exceptionally leery because four months after my own stunt, I’m feeling like some of the things I “learned” haven’t exactly stuck. I thought, surely I’ll be able to keep my wardrobe small, but in four months I’ve accumulated half again as many clothes as I’d hoped to own in total. I’m also finding myself drawn back into the cheap clothes world and compromising on my decisions to buy fair trade and organic whenever possible. I’m realizing a year of living a certain way doesn’t forever change a person. It’s choosing to live that way every day that makes a true and noticeable difference.
And that’s what I want to encourage in my book. I want people to commit to a different way of living, a way I’ve discovered (and am discovering) not in 365 days of experimentation but in 31 years of living.
God’s people (aside from a few OT prophets) aren’t called to be stunt men. They’re called to daily obedience, to gentle and quiet lives, to perseverance. That’s my audience and I want to give them something they can use.
Made Perfect Forever: Why God Doesn't Want You to Feel Guilty -
Check out the May issue of Virtuous Magazine. I wrote the article “Made Perfect Forever” to answer some questions I’d received about how to overcome guilt. Turns out, there’s not a lot of guilt in the Bible—not the kind we often feel, anyway.
London (my four year old) tells Justin he is “the best daddy in the world.” A lot. Like two or three or four times a day.
Adorable.
A few nights ago he asked her what she meant. He asked, “What does it take to be the best daddy in the world?” (He asks such good questions)
She didn’t think long before sharing the exact requirements. She said,
“You have to be silly.
You have to be courageous.
And you have to love God.”
And that’s it folks: all you need to be a great daddy—better than great—the best daddy in the world. :)
Yesterday, even though I really wanted a salad from Chipotle, I ate lunch at home because I had leftovers in the fridge. And then last night, while I really wanted butternut squash pasta, I ate a salad. Because the greens were on the verge of wilting and the chicken, from a grill-out over the weekend, wouldn’t make it another day.
I thought I would be bummed as I’m not fond of leftovers, but instead I felt excited, like I was changing the world.
Do you remember when you learned to divide in fourth grade? I do. Then (and now) I loved division, especially long division. My favorite kind of problem would look something like 596,464 divided by 4. I liked how many times you had to come back to that big number, taking it bite by bite until you’d solved it. Solved it—like it was a mystery.
I especially loved the problems, like the one above, with no remainders.
A remainder is a lonely, messy, leftover with no place and no beauty.
I have this cookie recipe that uses every piece of every ingredient so that I use the egg’s yolk for the batter and the white for the icing, the zest of an orange for the batter and the juice for the icing. It’s so rewarding to use every part, to look at your counter and see no remainders.
I feel like this is the kind of life to which God calls us, a no remainder life.
I finished Jen Hatmaker’s book 7 yesterday (I’ll talk about it more this week) and the biggest lesson I gleaned was this one—that waste has little place in the Christian life.
Look at the way God redeems suffering, refusing to allow it it to hang messy and alone at the end of the problem. He redeems it, makes good out it, uses the scraps of our pain to make something new and beautiful.
Look at the way God feeds the Israelites in the wilderness, the way each day brings just the right amount of food for that day and that day alone. Look at how God calls us pray even now, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Look at the resurrection. No remainder.
And of course, we can’t help but think of God’s commands about money, His distaste for ill-used wealth, all that extra lying around accumulating dust. I can’t shake that parable about the rich farmer who plans to build more barns and dies in his sleep. It makes me nervous about the stuff in my garage.
It seems God gives us what we need and asks us to use it. He gives us more than we need, turns our attention to his needy children, and asks us to use it, too.
When I looked at my refrigerator yesterday and saw all that food going to waste I felt like a greedy, greedy waster, a girl with sloppy remainders. But using that food, pulling together a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and feeding myself a delicious meal from the blessings I already had, that was beautiful and elegant and, I think, God-pleasing.
I think of Richard Holloway’s words:
“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation.”
Here’s a link to something I wrote recently, a meditation on the prompt, “What’s Your Cross?”
I skyped with my cousin Josh last night, me in little old Round Rock, Texas and Josh in Wuhan, China, a city of 10 million over 7,000 miles away.
I yawned, tired from a long day. He yawned, not yet fully awake for the long day ahead. Today is his birthday.
Every time I Skype with Josh I smile, smile like an idiot, a wide, goofy grin. Justin talks some. Josh talks a lot. Maybe he’s a little bit lonely.
Man, I love to hear Josh talk. He tells these beautiful, Spirit-soaked stories. He is a herald of light in a dark, shadowy place.
I doubt Josh knows how much his stories mean to me, how much it affects me to hear about a girl in China who prayed on her knees in a hospital, a girl ridiculed for her actions, praying for a bleeding man while others laughed. To hear that the bleeding man and his wife asked the praying girl about Jesus because Jesus spilled out onto them while she prayed.
Stories like that move me. They remind me that God’s people are fighting with light and that light is winning.
Sometimes I skip around the Internet and get the impression that no one, not one Christian person, is getting it right. People talk about why they’ve left the church or they rail against all the abuses in the church. I hear Bible class teachers sigh, saying “We have no idea what we’re doing.”
But you know what? I think lots of people are getting it right. Right enough. I hear Josh’s stories and I compare them to my own, the crazy things God’s doing right here in Texas, and I see dawn. I see light and love and victory creeping over the hill. I see broken people, cracked pots, leaking the glory of God all over the place.
Josh is a cracked vessel. I’m even more cracked than he is.
And yet.
God is spilling out. He is finding His people. He is winning glory. He is making His world new.
I’ve seen it. I’ve heard eye witness accounts. It’s happening. And I refuse to be so cynical as to miss it.
I’ve been reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts and I cannot tell you how much I’m loving her. I love her voice. And I love her tough farm girl attitude. But mostly I’m loving her practice of counting blessings, of writing down every good thing, of thanking God, and in thanking Him, seizing the gifts, slowing life, trusting.
My first night with Ann I read eighty pages, drove to Target and bought window markers. I walked straight to my kitchen upon arriving home and began a list of blessings on the french doors. I’ve been counting them ever since.
Ann’s list is lovely, ethereal, so… pastoral. She thanks God for colors on soap bubbles and grated cheese in perfect light. Mine is less idyllic.
Today I’ve thanked God for:
The elliptical machine at the Y (soooo much better than a treadmill)
Space, arm-stretching, deep-breath space made possible by mother’s day out
Sandella’s with the reasonable calorie counts beside every tasty menu item
Ice
and
Adele (you know God must love Him some Adele)
I love making these lists because (1) I love making lists, (2) I get to re-live the thing I enjoy as I write it down and (3) I remember that every good gift, even Adele, is from God.
London made a list today, too, including 18 things for which she’s thankful. She made the list in two minutes, shooting blessings at me machine-gun style. She included Rat Flower (her pet rat), her sister, “regular horses that are not pretend,” goats, and her jewelry. To close out the list she said, “I am thankful for my God.”
After we made her list I added something to mine: “Making blessing lists with London.”
Eve and I watched Beauty and the Beast at the discount movie theater tonight wearing uncomfortable black 3-D glasses. She giggled at mine from behind hers.
She said her favorite part was when Beauty danced with the beast and when the beast turned into a human, and I heartily agreed. Everybody loves a resurrection, I thought.
In the next few weeks, Justin will be preaching about resurrection, both the resurrection that takes place when a woman puts her faith in Christ and the subsequent resurrection from physical death. And I couldn’t help but think how well Beauty and the Beast explains what that might look like.
We get the backstory first: The Beast lived in a beautiful castle, became arrogant and made a very bad choice. The result was a fallen world, er, castle.
Everything goes from its perfect state to this weird utilitarian state in which a person stops being who he is and becomes what he does, so that Cogsworth becomes a clock (a partial, certainly incomplete expression of his identity).
The beast is turned over to the worst parts of himself, the inside being manifested in his outside.
Then the plot starts rolling forward and Belle comes and the beast changes. He realizes he’s been a terrible person/creature and begins behaving not like the beast but like the man into whom he’s growing. He eats with a spoon. He dances a waltz. He loves.
This, the moment when a smiling beast dances circles across a golden ballroom, is the first resurrection.
At the movie’s close the beast changes fully into a man so that his appearance matches the transformation that’s been happening in his heart. He looks like he did before the fall, back when things were perfect and not broken. And while he’s surely himself, he’s a better self. Belle knows this almost immediately.
That scene at the end of the movie, with the now-human beast and Belle dancing, is one of my favorites because it’s not a completely new scene; it’s a repetition of that first dancing scene. It’s as if that first dance was a precursor to this perfect one, this perfect dance enriched and deepened because it’s happened before. The movie closes with Belle in the same dress and the Beast in the very same suit, the same friends surrounding them as they dance, but this time the dance takes place in broad daylight and everyone is fully him or herself.