Life

Sometimes late at night, when things are going poorly in my life and I'm all alone crying out to God, I wonder, "What do people who don't know God do at a time like this? Who do they cry to? What do they ask for?"

Even in the hardest of circumstances, I believe wholly and fully in the Giver of Life. Even the most beautiful and perfect moments in my life, apart from Him, mean nothing. What is love if it doesn't last for eternity? What is hope if it is not given by the One who keeps me in His hand?

Jesus tells us that we are His lambs, and that He picks us up and carries us against His chest, close to His heart. When it is dark and I am lonely, if I listen carefully I can hear the thump-thump of His kindness and gentleness.

There is so much comfort knowing the Creator of life promises to sustain us long past this time on earth. Death is so hard because frankly it is unnatural. It doesn't compute with how we're made. You would think that after all these thousands of years of death, we'd all resign ourselves to the fact that it happens and will happen to us. But don't we fight it? Aren't we shocked when a loved one is ripped from us? It never feels right. It's because we were meant for life, not death.

Through what Jesus did on the cross, we can have life and have it abundantly. And forever. Death has lost its sting!

King

I'm glad we have England and some other nations who still have kings, because that's about the only way we can experience it in the here and now. Can we say Will and Kate? Man, what majesty! What ceremony! I loved every minute of it.

Every time I watch something like that, I can't help but think of my own King, Jesus. We think Will and Kate had ceremony and such? Jesus is Lord of all and King of all kings. I don't think we can truly imagine what it is going to be like to be in the presence of this king until we get there. The glory we are going to behold will send us to our knees, worshiping, singing, praising!

I think of the throne, the crown, the angels. The celebrations that will go on and on for eternity. My heart soars with hope and love for Him.

Here on earth, though we can't see it now, we must remember it is there and declare our complete loyalty and all our efforts to the king. We were made to bend our knee and worship someone. The devil offers many choices, but there is only One who is worthy of our complete loyalty and affection. He is trustworthy, true, kind, full of justice and peace. The list goes on. The point is that He is the only perfect king.

Like the magi, let's bring our gifts and give our lives to Him.

Peace

There are two times in my life where I have felt the peace that passes all understanding. Neither time was any of it my doing. I hadn't prayed or showed any extraordinary kind of faith. All of the sudden, in very dire circumstances, a peace so tangible I could've sworn it was touchable, swept over me. For just a few minutes, I experienced perfect peace. It was a calm that was other-worldly. It made me realize how at war my soul is most of the time. It was like the stillest, most glass-like water you've ever seen. It was like a breeze-less day in need of no breeze.

I can still remember the times very vividly and I often refer back to them, hoping to get that peace again sometime in my life. I don't know if will ever arrive again in this life, but it sure gave me a glimpse of the next life to come. If that's how it feels to be in heaven, I'm ready to go!

But the truth is that even when my soul feels distracted and discombobulated, I still experience the peace that comes from knowing Jesus. It may not always be tangible like what I expressed, but it is there nevertheless. It is most especially there when my faith connects with His heart.

Even, though, when my faith falters, Jesus is still Peace. He is the Prince of Peace, and this kind of peace is offered to all the world. It encompasses so much and promises more than we could ask for. It secures my eternal future. It shelters me from the fiery darts. It calms me in stormy seas. It never lets go. It holds me upright when I want to faint. With this peace comes so many promises from God. Jesus's peace is truly the peace that passes all understanding. If we look around at our world, it seems that we should not have peace. It seems impossible. So the fact that we do is testimony to all that Jesus offers through His Word.

Often, glimpses of His peace come in the darkest part of the night. When our life is bright with sunshiny prosperity, we rarely stop to feel the peace. We are at peace with the world and all is well. But the world always fails us, in one way or the other, and then we find ourselves in the dark, curled in a ball, praying for relief.

Jesus stands in the dark with us and He holds out His hand. The moment our fingers connect, peace fills our hearts, because suddenly we know whatever happens here is not the end. He is in fact the end. And the beginning. We can place everything in His hands and know that it is all safely kept with the God of the universe.

Now that is peace.

Author

Being an author myself, recognizing Jesus as the author of all is supremely cool. It kind of bends my mind to realize He didn't write the word...He is the Word. He was and is and always will be the spoken Word. All was created for Him and through Him and in Him.

John chapter 1 is my favorite passage in the Bible. (OK, I have a lot but this one is definitely top 3). It stirs such awe in my heart to picture Jesus as the author of the universe and all that it contains...that He created my soul and all that makes me fearfully and wonderfully made. And that the author chose to enter the story. There are some of my stories I would NOT want to enter!

As an author, I know what it takes to form and mold and create. And I'm just working on one little book. God's majesty and power come into clear focus when I realize the amazing capacity for which He has to create. If I only look at the human body and all that it does, I'm astounded. When I look up at the stars and the sky, I'm astounded. When I watch a tree grow, a baby cry, a cloud float by, the waves crash...the list is endless. And it is all created by His hand.

His story is the greatest that ever was and ever will be, and it has infinite meaning and eternal consequence. I'm glad to be a part of His story. I'm glad for everything that He authored. And I'm thankful that He graciously passed on creativity to His people.

Righteousness

The "good news" of the New Testament often gets passed right over. In all that faith encompasses, we Christians often forget the good news is that it's not our "goodness" that gets us to heaven. I see this so often missed in our modern culture. People spew hateful words at those they consider "sinners" while forgetting very quickly that they're one of those "sinners". We all are.

It is by the grace of God that truth found its way into my heart and that I believe in Jesus.

There is no other way around it. We can't point our fingers and scream "sinner" at somebody. We must pat our heart, declare that we are "sinners", but we've been saved by grace. That grace is extended to everyone in the world.

The good news is that I am pure not by my own accomplishments, but by the grace of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is righteousness. My very best is but filthy rags. And most days, let's face it, I'm not at my very best. Those rags shouldn't see the light of day!

When snow falls during this Christmas season, don't we all just peer out our windows, marveling at how pure and white it is, how right when it falls, before a footprint touches it, it is flawless? It is gleaming with goodness, isn't it? I don't think it's any mistake that this modern society celebrates Christmas in the dead of winter. There is so much symbolism around us...fire, snow, cold, warmth...it all points to Jesus. Weren't we like those dead old trees, dormant and lifeless? But then the pure snow falls, saturates, disappears...and then the Sun comes in the Spring and we are raised in the newness of life!

It is no doubt hard to watch sin--in our lives and others'. Mostly I think it is because we know how damaging it is, how much death it brings. But God made a way. My filthy rags are as clean and white and bright as snow.

Thank You, Jesus, for making me white as snow.

Purpose

The cool thing about Jesus is that He gives purpose and He is purpose. What I mean by that is that we were first and foremost created to worship Him. We are His beloved, and we honor and respect Him by giving Him our affections. In that way, He alone is our purpose.

By making Him our purpose, and recognizing what we were born for, we are then transformed in order to have purpose. As we worship Him, we feel His heart. And when we feel His heart, we begin to understand what He wants us to do on earth. We don't find purpose in order to win points in heaven. There is nothing we can do that will pay for our sins. That is done through Jesus Christ. But we find purpose by understanding love and compassion and mercy, and giving in that way, the same way God has given to us.

Therefore, Christian purpose isn't born out of piety, but rather out of gratitude. We give to the poor at Christmas not because it's the thing to do, but because we understand how much God cares for the poor and how rich love and generosity are through Jesus.

Purposefully engaging in what matters to God is in itself worship. Allow this season to be purposed in Jesus and see what opens up in front of you and what God's heart reveals.

Compassion

If Jesus coming to earth and dying on the cross for our sins taught us anything at all, it was that God has immense compassion for His creation. Since we, as humans, have had a hard time throughout history understanding this, He sent His Son to earth so that we, in no way, can say, "God just doesn't understand." He indeed understands hunger, anger, betrayal, disappointment...the list goes on.

If there has been anything God has taught me in the last decade, it has been compassion. Boy, we are are non-compassionate people, aren't we? If we do not understand it, we make no attempt to. If we haven't walked in their shoes, we just assume they've brought their suffering upon themselves.

I was that person for many years, the one who thought everyone should just suck it up and get tough. I figured if bad things were happening to a person, they probably brought it upon themselves. Coming from an athletic background, there was no room for excuses...or sympathy...or compassion. I had a short list of what reasonably constituted the need for compassion. Everybody else needed to get it together.

I think one of the biggest questions Christians and non-Christians ask of God is, "Why all the suffering?" We look around and see so many bad things happen and wonder why God allows it.

I don't know the full answer to that question, but I think God has taught me a piece of it over the last decade. If we don't suffer, we as human beings do not understand how to help others or have sympathy for them. If we go through an ugly divorce, we then suddenly understand that marriages are often complicated, and we begin to see others' situations in a different light. If we go bankrupt and lose our house, we begin to understand what it's like to have no one to turn to for financial help. If we become chronically ill, we understand why it's hard to get out of bed. If we suffer from depression, we begin to see similar faces, like our own, in a crowd at the mall or at church.

Everything that we suffer on earth, God promises to use for good. I believe it is for our good and for others' too. We simply, in our own power, do not have the capacity to be fully compassionate. If we did, then we wouldn't have starving children and hate crimes and bullying. Since we cannot do it in our own power, God shows us a different path, a path that leads straight into our heart and opens it up so that we might leave a footprint of compassion on the world.

We know what it feels like to receive compassion. When have you messed up, forgotten an important appointment or a birthday, burned an expensive meal, lost a valuable item, only for someone to say, "It's okay. No worries. I promise." Doesn't that just melt your heart?

God says it everyday to us through Jesus. He has compassion upon us and our very weak, often terribly brutal, nature. With compassion in place, self-righteousness has nowhere to go but away. You can't be compassionate and self-righteous at the same time, because self-righteousness by its very nature lacks compassion.

Jesus is Compassion. He is the very picture of what God's heart is. He stoops down and holds the hand of the person everyone else hates in the world. He hugs the person who is the dirtiest and smells the worst. He feeds and shelters and carries and touches those that the world casts a scornful eye to. Are you that scornful eye or the hand that reaches out?

Remember the compassion that was given to you by God through Jesus Christ. Understanding that you have received it in its most sacrificial form allows you to give it every single day.