That Thing I Do Now - Vol 93

Hey y'all! Happy Weekend!

I pray that Springtime is unfolding in all kinds of Glory for you, and is being a bit flirty... as is his way!  Even "Wish Flowers" as my girlie used to call them, beckon us to dream a bit in the Spring!

Here we are again, gathered together so I can share some of my favorite finds from around the interwebs!  Featured today are posts by Donald Miller, Lisa-Jo Baker, Emily Wierenka, Tresta Paynes, Shauna Niequist, Christine Duncan, Lisha Epperson,  Glennon Doyle, a post from right here... and - of course - a video to wrap it all up! 

Happy Reading! (Ya'll know to click on the authors' names below to read the entire post, yes?)

* This post by Donald Miller over at Storyline with A Little Motivation to Get Our Work Done...

"We must shut off our e-mail and web browser, open the document and commit to a couple hours of frustrating work. Normally, within half an hour or so, we have a bit of a breakthrough and are surprised to get quite a bit of work done.

The sooner we stop fooling around with distractions, the sooner that project will be done.

Imagine how quickly you’d get the work done if you didn’t waste those hours distracting yourself?"

* This one by Lisa-Jo Baker with She’s Got Her Life More Together than You Do. Really?
"It constantly surprises me how grown up I don’t feel.

I have three kids and still most days feel like I’m playing house. I look around me and am surprised to find myself in this minivan with these children who think I have answers to all the questions in the entire history of the world.

I’m even more surprised when other women seem to think I have it all together. I immediately want to invite them into my laundry room. Actually, it’s more like a laundry dungeon because it’s in the unfinished basement and there are piles and piles of it and some days I am genuinely tempted to make my kids choose 5 T-Shirts and pretty much 5 of everything else and then give, throw, donate, barter all the rest away.

We are so quick to despair over our own dirty laundry – especially the grown up kind – and then assume so easily and quickly that those other moms at the playground has her life and her laundry together.

We believe somewhere deep down in our sleep-deprived minds that there are perfect moms out there. With perfect homes and minivans and meal planning systems.

Perfect moms with perfect kids who do all the things we can’t seem to manage without breaking a sweat.

We judge ourselves by the perfect standards we think that everyone except ourselves manages to live up to." 



* This post from Emily Wierenga with Our Tragic Misunderstanding of God’s Love... 
"There is so much love in the world it makes my heart ache, and I know it’s God I’m seeing, and feeling, and missing. God is love and Satan is everything else. And cancer is something else but I won’t give it the time of day. I won’t waste my breath hating cancer because then I’d be neglecting love. No, I will remind my mother every day that she is a fighter and the bravest woman I know and even if cancer gets the best of her in this life, it will never win, because she has hope. And hope rose from the grave on the third day.

“I just feel so silly,” Mum says to us on Google hangout, about the falls she’s had that day, or the things she’s no longer able to do.

She looks so well, her cheeks flush, her eyes bright but she falls asleep in the middle of a sentence. But Dad has noticed something: when he turns on music, she doesn’t fade as quickly. She is more alert, and more aware, and it’s because music is the breath of heaven. It’s the sound of angels. It’s the presence of something other-worldly.

And this is where we misunderstand love.

Because love, or God, is not of this world. It’s not pretty or nice or happy-ending. No, love is triumphant, but it is eternal, and this means it fights within another dimension–it fights for all the souls in this life to live forever in the next. Death will come to each of us, but love lives for the next breath–the one that happens after death, the one that wakes us up in God’s presence.”



* This post by Tresta Paynes over at SharpPaynes with My statement of faith on homosexuality... 
"I want it to be always beautiful but sometimes truth smacks us hard, like clean and clear glass.

It’s also logical – that as male and female we are both in His image yet created for specifics, and when Paul says in Romans 1 that they left the natural use for what is against nature, it speaks of shame and penalty.

I want love and rejoicing and sometimes truth is at odds with the table I want to set for all. How do I love everyone? How do I live a welcoming life? How do I stand for truth and sit at a table with those opposed to the truth?

That’s how I feel about it, but you may argue with Scripture and authority and culture and the times we live in. I want to welcome everyone, but Truth must be seated with Love. The two will simultaneously occupy the fellowship hall and I’ll figure out seating arrangements as we go, I guess." 


* This post from Shauna Niequist over at Relevant Magazine on Expanding the Ways We Experience God...
"Essentially, each Christian needs many tools in the toolbox. The toolbox is not a poetic image, I know. I tried to find a better one. Lots of colors in your palette? Lots of spices in your spice rack? Terrible, I know. This is why I keep coming back to the toolbox.

Because for a while the tools that worked for me were youth group, morning quiet times, singing worship songs. Then for a while the tools that worked for me were poetry, silence, sitting by the ocean. Then writing, then singing again. In this season, centering prayer, truth-telling with my closest friends, meditating on sections of scripture.

So many people I talk to are trying to find language for what’s happening inside them, and often the closest they can get is that their faith has stopped working. For many of them, I think possibly what they mean is that the tools they’ve been using to experience a life of faith have stopped working."


*This post from Christine Duncan over at Precepts & Life Preservers with Words on The Wind...
"An April wind has been with us, restless and relentless.

It is very much mimicking my soul  and even my faith some days.

Blustery and tossed about on the inside. This push and pull in the heart. Sometimes hungry, sometimes so sure, sometimes only guessing what God has next, what the next season might bring.

I stood outside for a bit in the powerful winds yesterday. Watching everything bend to its strength. Everything shimmy in its wake. Everything shift.

Yep, Lord, that’s my faith out there being wind-tossed and unsure.

And it’s not that I suddenly find myself in complete unbelief, or it’s not that I feel unable to go on.

It’s this wobbly, depleted kind of faith some days that could be knocked over by the slightest breeze. And heaven help when the winds shift and stir and build up momentum.

What then?"


* This post from Lisha Epperson over at outside the city gate on A Faith Mosaic...
"Today, my quest for Christ includes attendance at a weekly silent meditation service in an Episcopal church and gatherings, with a church plant in Harlem – the one I walk to.  The last 3 Easters we’ve attended Hillsong Church NYC.

And I’ve never been happier, more content with this hodge-podged walk, this sewn together faith.
  
It’s a puzzle. My piece-mealed faith is a patchwork of thoughts and ideas that make up the church I need right now. It’s a holy conglomeration of spirit and song, chapter and verse – the word, fed through various sources. I want a church that satisfies my midlife craving for cool marble under my feet, the scent of frankincense wafting through the air. I want to sit in a pew and close my eyes with a hymnal at my side. I long for quiet, for contemplation, for poetry and literature. And then I want to clap my hands and dance to contemporary Christian music. I want to speak in tongues and shout Amen when I feel the spirit.

I can’t find all that in one place.


I want it close, I want the ritual, I want an actively engaged experience for my children. I want a faith that thinks, a faith that moves, a faith that works.  I’m experiencing a gorgeous, perfectly timed crisis.  It’s birthed an insatiable desire for engagement that’s quenched only by the God-breathed word I receive from a complex collection of speakers and teachers.  The people who make up the church. I find this…Him, in gothic churches and school auditoriums…in refurbished movie theaters and seminary hallways. God is so big in my life I can’t fit Him in one building or one congregation. I see and feel him everywhere. I can’t get enough."


* This post from Glennon Doyle over at Momastery with HERE IS THE KEY TO UNLOCKING YOUR CHILD’S HEART
"Smart parents give their children a million answers. Wise parents ask their children a million questions. And so smart parents might know, but wise parents understand.

I love it when someone asks me a thoughtful question for three reasons. First, it shows that the other person cares enough to try to get to know me. Second, it shows curiosity – which is one of my favorite traits. Third, a thoughtful question offers me the opportunity to unlock rooms inside myself I’ve never explored before.

Getting to know ourselves and others is the greatest adventure. We are explorers of ourselves and the people we love. Love is the ongoing process of unlocking each other and keeping safe whatever we find. Thoughtful questions are the keys we use to do the unlocking and safekeeping."


* This one from right HERE with How Small Wonders Add Up to Something Big...
"Remember how my #OneWord365 is Wonder, and how my Honey's word is Change? 

...how he wanted to be less predictable and more spontaneous?

Yeah. That.
Well then, we are on the right path!

I wrote about it on Friday and I'm pretty sure this will not become the church plant blog, but you guys... we are gloriously in over our heads! For real.  But we also know that our team is His team and He is leading us.

Here's the deal though:
He, who is never in a hurry, is moving FAST, y'all! 
It feels rushed and too quick and maybe even a little reckless. 

...Or maybe it just feels like there is no comfort zone.
Yes. Maybe that's it.

Maybe it feels like risky faith and jumping blind and leaning in to a freefall. "

Lastly, we close This Thing up with a video each week, and sometimes it may be a worship song, or a funny, (or Jimmy Fallon! What?) but we like to end our time together here with a little something uplifting... or at least fun! Enjoy!

                                        

Have a great weekend, friends!