Treasure

Santa Barbara Morning Run

As I was running this morning I began thinking about this treasure I have inside of me. 

I am learning to not keep it hidden as much these days. 

This treasure should be like when a mother and father first find out they are having a baby or when two people fall in love and start making plans for the future. They want they world to know. With much excitement the announcement stage comes. Everyone starts to hear the news. Even strangers.

It cannot be contained. 

It burns with joy, excitement, and anticipation.

I began relating to this idea in light of the treasure inside of me. 

And as I began relating and not relating to this parallel in my life I started to have fresh eyes to see what could be. What was waiting for others to experience. And the platform in which I desired to launch my life. Out of this place of joy, excitement, and anticipation for what this treasure meant for the world. 

Because Jesus did not only come to save us from death. (Romans 5:9)

But also to crown us into a life of royalty, righteousness, and relationship. (Romans 5:11,17)

On Saturday while down on State Street in Santa Barbara for a Bachelorette party I stepped into this thin place (between heaven and earth).

To meet a man named Nick. 

In the midst of Latte's, shopping bags, and small talk I could not help but be broken over this mans appearance. He was bent over 90 degrees clinging to a walker, shuffling gait, stopping every few feet to regain his balance. 

We continued to walk in the opposite direction. I looked back and he was still in view. 

Almost always when Father God is tugging on my heart to GO and extend the treasure, 

I hesitate.  I come up with reasons why I shouldn't go and then I make a choice. 

Either me or Father God. 

I grabbed my girlfriend and we started retracing our steps back to this stranger into the thin place where the divine nature of man and God collide. 

Nick was there. 

If you know State street, especially on a Saturday there are hundreds of people out. One of the reasons I tried to rationalize not going to speak to Nick. 

When we asked him his name, he could not speak. Signaling for a pen and paper he wrote, 

My name is Nick. I have brain damage. I was in an accident 4 years ago. 

We shared with him the gift of healing, restoration, and life Jesus Christ was offering him and asked if we could pray. Putting his hands to his lips in adoration, we began. 

Calling down heaven to realign His brain, spinal cord, hips, legs, and feet with the Kingdom of God we continued to press into the cross because Nicks healing had already been purchased 2000 years ago. We asked if he felt anything in his body. If he could stand up straight without his walker. 

Nothing had changed. 

Again, we continued to pray. We asked Nick if he believed Jesus could heal him. He wrote, Yes. Pray I would have a new brain. 

Words cannot describe what happened when he looked into our eyes. It was as if the whole world had stopped around us. I couldn't see or hear anyone else but Nick. 

Looking into his soul I knew Jesus was touching him. And even though he was not healed of his conditions on State Street that afternoon, Jesus came. 

Saying goodbye we hugged him and prayed a blessing over him. 

All I could see walking away was his eyes that burned with such purity and hope. 

Then the tears started to come.

Flashes of strangers passing by continued to look upon my brokenness. I didn't care who saw me crying all I wanted was Nick to be healed and no longer to live in such immense physical suffering.

I was disappointed. I wanted it to be that day. 

But as I was praying again this evening for Nick, faith began to rise in me.

I knew the battle wasn't over yet. 

I knew it was just the beginning or continuing of what Father God is already doing in his life. And that more healing even full healing could come. 

 So, I am reminded by this encounter in the thin place with Nick, we must STOP. 

We must learn to cultivate a life sharing the treasure that lives within. 

And we must believe, all things are possible with God. 

Please contend with me for this mans healing and for the power of Gods goodness, love, and grace to overwhelm every facet of his life. 

Spring

  

As I sit tucked in a rattan chair with a computer in my lap, the gentle touch of spring billows around me. I count the days until Sunday. 4. Joanie’s due date, March 25^th.

 I fight back the tears pressing into this new reality. The winter chill has melted. The blossoms are beginning to bud. The maple leaves adorn the once barren branches of Chantry Flats. 

I begin to dream a new dream. Where she and I grow wildly more beautiful and free into our identity as daughters of the King. Where she and I embrace all we have been made for, distance galaxies apart.

I cry out of this joyous motherly home where all I can do is see her smiling with her Father God. She is so happy. And this is all I see and all I know of her, joy.

Yesterday we descended down into the forest floor of Chantry Flats anticipating the maple and oak tree planted in winter for Joanie. Our lungs filling up with the new smells and sights of spring. Indian paintbrush. Baby blue-eyes. Rock rose. Rays of sunlight shimmering off infant maple leaves. Ferns cascading into the meandering creek. Tiny blossoms wrapped in time. Anticipating the warmth of spring.

It was as though this world I had walked through 3 months ago, had opened up before me into a new undiscovered place. The forest floor had been transformed by the gentle touch of spring.

Smiling from cheek to cheek this changing season giving way to new beauty, paralleling the new song in my heart. The words of the prophet Isaiah continued to sing over me. Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth do you not perceive it? I will make a may in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:11).

What was lying dormant from winter was now bursting with spring. It was springing forth something new. And Father God had made a way for me. He had straightened the path before me and girded my feet to walk. No longer was I bound by fear, sorrow, and disappointment. I had been set free.

All I knew in those 3 hours of revisiting the place of broken dreams, bleeding hearts, and empty hands was how God makes all things new.

As we began to scale the cliff to search for the oak tree, we did not know what to expect. Would the harshness of winter and the eroded mountainside leave the ground barren like my womb? Or would we discover a deep rooting and more growth since winter?

Nothing had encroached upon the tree, not even the sea of

weeds aggressively taking over the mountainside. It was as though it had been protected and raised up from all the rest. I knew the Lord was protecting us and protecting her. And not only did we have His blessing of protection, but He had raised us up like a child whose parent places them on their shoulders to get the best view.  

The Lord had raised me above my circumstances to see beyond the pain and suffering into His heart of love, adoration, and good plans for my life. I knew Joanie had this type of seat in heaven. Direct access to the Fathers heart.

Michael rested the wildflowers upon the soil. Covering its roots where Joanie’s ashes once laid, pink, orange, blue, and red petals. Telling of a greater story then the one Satan had intended. For we are, crowned with beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3).

Spring would begin this new song of our hearts as we joined Joanie in this dance where redemption meets royalty.

As I began crying new tears of joy and no longer sorrow, a yellow butterfly soared directly in eyes view, over our heads, above Joanie’s oak tree and into the forest. The moment was so fragile it would have escaped us if we had not been positioned right.

But this butterfly meant so much more to me that day than the countless childhood memories of chasing butterflies in the garden.

Today it was a confirmation and testimony of Father God’s goodness. Less then a week ago a young man from Belgium I had never met shared an image God had given him. He saw a butterfly full of beauty and freedom.

I was this butterfly.

And so was Joanie.

Psalm 104

24. How many are your works, O Lord! 

In wisdom you made them all; 

the earth is full of your creatures. 

(Limekiln, Big Sur California)

27. These all look to you

to give them their food at the proper time. 

28. When you give it to them, 

they gather it up;

when you open your hand,

they are satisfied with good things. 

(Farm in Albuquerque New Mexico) 

29. When you hide your face,

they are terrified; 

when you take away their breath,

they die and return to the dust.

30. When you send your spirit,

they are created,

and you renew the face of the earth. 

(Cotton Lake, High Sierra Mountains)  

31. May the glory of the Lord endure forever;

may the Lord rejoice in his works-

32. he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,

who touches the mountains, and they smoke. 

(Guerneville, Sonoma County) 

33. I will sing to the Lord all my life; 

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

34. May my meditation be pleasing to him,

as I rejoice in the Lord.

(Joshua Tree National Park, Twentynine Palms)

35. Praise the Lord, O my Soul 

(Yosemite National Forest) 

Praise the Lord. 

17 Pairs of Shoes

Zaca-left, Edmund-top right, Emerson-bottom right

El Salvador, Boy's Home, 2007.

Do you ever just want God to tell you what to do with your life? So often we pray and sit around asking God for the manual on how to live as Christians. As if we want him to spell everything out for us from whom, where, when, what, how. An exact blue-print of sorts. 

He has. 

Its called the Holy Bible. 

But it is a radical call. 

A call that insults my self-preserving, comfortable, controlled existence. A call that is far from grey. A call that exploits the true intentions of choice as selfish. 

You see I have this really intimate love hate relationship with choice. 

I like that I can choose from 5 grocery stores in a 10 mile radius from my home. I like that I can choose which brand of jeans I wear. I like that I can go to Target and walk out with tools, furniture, paper, shampoo, and bananas. This is choice. I have never lived in a culture where I did not have choices. 

All I have known is plenty. 

But plenty often leaves me empty. 

And empty keeps me coming back for more. And as I keep myself distracted by this imposter of freedom called choice it makes me believe I can treat Christianity the same way. Don't get me wrong I serve an extravagant God whose heart is generous and loving. 

I mean, He released us for the sake of choice. For the sake of love.  

But I think somewhere between the average American woman owning 17 pairs of shoes and spending 399 hours a year shopping, we have replaced the Radical Call with Choice.  

Whenever I need to be reminded of what to do with my life. I turn to Jesus' words to his disciples about The Final Judgement. 

Its pretty simple. This thing called Christianity. 

I guess its just a choice. 

There's plenty of people in the world who don't live in a culture of choice. 

I am reminded of the orphans (above) in El Salvador. They are beautiful, huh? 

I think it requires a couple things.  

Open Arms.

A lot of Love. 

 Time. 

Matthew 25:31-40.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying ‘Lord ,when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’"