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Tag: devotional

An Unfading Beauty

Ladies, this one’s for you. (To any knights or squires who may be reading: no need to click away just yet. This describes the sort of lady worth pursuing. So read on.)


You should clothe yourself instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. (1 Peter 3:4)

This verse used to bother me. A gentle and quiet spirit? Oh dear. I am sometimes harsh and judgmental, abrasive rather than gentle. I am sometimes loud, more often in my thoughts than verbally, but still not exactly quiet all the time. Nor do I always want to be gentle and quiet. Such a woman sounds meek in the negative sense of the word. She sounds like a doormat. A woman of pastel watercolors and soft speech. A woman who bows her head and silently allows others to direct and correct and stomp all over her. (Please keep in mind that some of the aforementioned qualities, in proper quantities, are positive. Accepting direction is a good thing!)

But you understand what I mean, right? This verse seems to set an impossible standard. Even the most introverted among us would struggle with it.

Then I discovered the real meaning behind it.

A woman with a gentle and quiet spirit is strong. She is confident. She is secure in her identity, in a Love eternal that defines her value. It is this peaceful strength glowing in the heart of a woman of God that overflows in gentleness. This woman radiates beauty.

She does not have to brashly force her way into the limelight. She does not have to spurn men to feel valued as a woman. She does not have to use hurtful sarcasm to feel important or accepted. She is not searching desperately for love. She already has it. She is secure and steadfast. She knows exactly who she is.

She is precious to the Lord.

A woman who knows that, truly knows in her heart–a woman who lays every insecurity down at the foot of the throne–has so much more room to extend that love toward others. She is gentle with them. She extends grace for their failings because she has accepted grace for hers.

And that part about being quiet? All you bubbly, talkative personalities can breathe easy. A quiet spirit is simply one at peace with herself and with God, not tormented by worry or fear or self-condemnation. Picture it like a glassy sea undisturbed by wind. Nothing fazes this spirit; it is one that laughs without fear of the future.

This peaceful confidence, this strength, is so incredibly beautiful. And I can’t say I’m there yet. But I am on the journey. Will you join me?

To close, I’m taking a brief detour into country music, which my workplace subjects me to on a daily basis. (Somebody save me!) One of the few songs I actually like has some lyrics that fit today.

So your confidence is quiet
To them quiet looks like weakness
But you don’t have to fight it
‘Cause you’re strong enough to win without a war
-Hunter Hayes, Invisible
There will be times when your gentle and quiet spirit may be perceived negatively. When you refuse to engage in an acidic conversation, or don’t get riled up over an issue like everyone else is doing, they may think you don’t care. They may think you are weak. But time will reveal the truth. Besides, what they think doesn’t matter. Only what God thinks.
He says you are beloved.
And you are beautiful.

Sandpaper Days

source

The days when you are not where you want to be.

The days of monotony, of the same routine over and over and over again.

The days of chaos, where nothing is tied down and everything whips in a whirlwind around you.

The long days full of long hours, but never enough time.

The days of hard work, of aching muscles and aching mind and aching heart.

The days of bleary eyes blinking at too many pages, of weary hands wiping down too many tables, of crammed brains stuffing too many things inside.

The days that grate, rubbing you all the wrong ways until your fur stands on end and you know that one more scrape will set you off hissing at the world. Slowly wound tighter and tighter, the pressure builds by slight degrees and if today could be that exhale you’re desperate for, it would be just in time.

These are the sandpaper days.

They are hard. Not in a fiery trial kind of way, when the world crashes down around your ears and you scream for help. No. These days, if doled out one at a time, would be quite bearable. But there are just so many of them, and in numbers they are strong. They stretch and pull and drain, and if you would be honest with yourself, you might admit to being weary in well doing.

I’m here to tell you “press on.” I’m here to say that these days are shaping you, refining you, smoothing your rough grain. And they do not last forever. This is a season, and as all seasons do, it will pass.

I’m here to challenge you to embrace it. It may feel like hugging a cactus, but these days are meant to be utilized. If you give in to the weariness, you only lengthen the season. Decide. Decide you are going to learn what you can here, do the best that you can, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. If you don’t, you may walk around and around this mountain countless times throughout your life and never get over it.

I know. Oh, I know you want nothing more than to collapse and not move for a week, but press on, dear heart.

When your strength fails, there is a Strong One from which to draw. A Steady One on which to lean. He is with you in the midst of your sandpaper days.

“Thank God for Something”

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians! We have so much to be thankful for on this journey: big, life-encompassing things along with the little daily shards of glory we encounter.
Some of the big things I’m thankful for . . .
  • My amazing Savior, whose depth I couldn’t plumb even in a thousand lifetimes. For Him I am grateful.
  • My family. They are Home and Love and a Safe Place to Be. I am grateful for them.
  • My friends. People who ‘get’ me, on whichever level our friendship is–they know me. I know them. I am grateful.
  • Health. I’m grateful.
  • A nation in which I can worship God freely, contribute to how the country is run, and live in relative safety. I’m grateful.
  • Every single church service, message, book, devotional, or Bible study that has given me something to chew on. I’m grateful.
And there are hundreds of little things that bring a smile of thanks to my face. If I tried to list them all, we’d be here for days and I still wouldn’t be done. Lately I’ve been thankful for . . .
  • The sound of a friend’s voice over the phone.
  • Hugs.
  • Yellow leaves whirling down to rest on the front lawn.
  • A bicycle ride.
  • A shared joke.
  • Soft carpet beneath my bare toes.
  • The smell of coffee grounds.
  • Songs that perfectly express how I feel.
  • Blank notebook pages waiting to be written in.
  • Flowers still blooming in mid-October.
  • Happy customers at work.
  • Buttered fresh bread.
  • A favorite scarf.
  • Compliments given and received.
  • The beautiful browns and burgundies and golds and reds of autumn.
  • Sleeping in and lingering over breakfast with my family.
  • A stack of books.
  • Barbecues.
  • My sisters’ giggling across the house.
  • Conversations with my brother.
  • The voice of a cello filling the vehicle as I drive home from work.
  • A movie that instantly becomes one of those happy places, a comfort film you know you’ll watch again whenever you need a pick-me-up.
  • A stunning sunrise.
  • And all of you readers and commenters–I’m thankful for you!
It’s been said that if you wake up in the morning complaining, you’ll have little time to be thankful. But if you wake up and choose to be thankful, you’ll find you have little time for complaining. It’s all about your outlook. You may not be able to change your circumstances or the people around you, but you can control how you see them.
“In everything, give thanks . . .” Not for everything (we aren’t thankful for catastrophe or illness or strife), but in everything. In the midst of the struggle or heartache, we can find something worth being thankful for. And when we do, we’ll find the hard times much easier to bear.
What big or small things are you grateful for today?
 

Grace

Grace.

We say it before meals. A ballerina has it. A girl is named it. It’s a noun. It’s a verbthe king will grace us with his presence. And it’s a word sprinkled throughout the New Testament.

What is it really?

The best definition I’ve found for grace is unmerited favor.

Unmerited: unearned, not worked for, not deserved in any way.

Favor: excessive kindness or unfair partiality; preferential treatment.

This is what God extends toward us. And so many of us, having sung songs like Amazing Grace hundreds of times and having heard dozens of sermons on the topic, are desensitized to just how utterly, amazingly, mind-boggling this is. We’ve heard this all our lives. So we tune out. We disregard the subject as being basic. Let’s get to the more challenging stuff, right?

Truth is, we’ve barely grasped the fringe of it. Oftentimes the basics are the deepest, most profound parts of our faithelements that take a lifetime and more to truly dig into.

Graceunmerited favoris what grew inside a teenaged girl’s womb.

Grace is what walked the planet, confining God to the limits of human skin.

Grace is what touched untouchable lepers.

Grace is what fed thousands of people who, not long after, would desert the One who fed them.

Grace is what turned itself over to be crucified on a Roman cross.

Grace is what looks at you, in all the dirt of your failings and the scars of your wrongs, and smiles and says, “You are flawless.”

We have watered down this concept of grace. It’s too good to be true, so we add our own “truth” to it. We say there’s grace for the sinner, and after that? Well, you’d better work for it. God gives you a slice of grace when you choose to follow Him, and then you must tread carefully, so as not to use it all up. Because there’s only so and so much of it. If you go too far (and we all draw different lines of what that is), if you make too many mistakes, or too large of a mistake . . . You’d best hope there’s enough mercy left for you.

It sounds ludicrous to say it so bluntly. But many of us, without realizing, think this way. And in so doing, we scoff at a grace so dearly bought, and say, “It’s not enough.”

“It’s not enough. Jesus’ work on the cross is not really a finished work; surely I must add something to it. Surely there’s an if or a when attached.”

But grace is not a well, able to dry up after so much use. Grace is a waterfall, an unending supply of lavish kindness that is completely undeserved.

Expecting parents couldn’t be more excited for their coming child. They prepare a nursery, buy clothes and toys and blankets, read books on how to care for it. And when the baby arrives, oh, the joy! This baby keeps them up at night, soils its diapers, spits up on things, wails to high heaven, and generally does nothing at all to deserve any love. And yet those parents would give their very lives for their child.

That’s the kind of love, the kind of grace, God has toward you and me. We’ve done absolutely nothing to earn it. How could we? Even if we lived to the very best of our ability, put in our highest effort, how could any of it even tip the scales toward an even balance? How could it even begin to match the weight of grace? To even try is to negate its very meaning.

And that baby? When it starts learning to walk, only to fall down again and again? Mom and Dad don’t scold it. They don’t smack it upside the head and say, “Why can’t you learn to walk straight without tripping? Get it together!” No, they cheer their child on. “You can do it! Come on, that’s it. Look at youyou’re doing so well!”

When we fall, our Father picks us up and cheers us on. In fact, it’s that grace that enables and empowers us to learn to walk.

Let’s rediscover the meaning of grace, my friends.