The other day I decided to write some more letters to random strangers. I found myself scrawling little hearts on the pages.
After I realized what I was doing, I thought..."this is so juvenille. A 35 year old woman scrawling hearts on letters to random strangers."
I started to think it silly...
The beauty of faith is that it brings the return of a childlike innocence.
As I was perched over parchment I couldn't help but remember the verses that tell us that we should become as little children if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Trusting. Innocent.
Suddenly, those little hearts didn't seem so silly anymore.
I remember a time in the not too distant past when I craved anything other than the life I had.
I pined away in self pity, guilt, and regret. I ate the bitter fruit of condemnation daily. Bitterness seeped out of my core.
Life had killed my inner child.
Being hurt too many times by too many people.
Lies. Lies. More vicious lies.
I had seen too many things. The child was dead.
Life had killed my inner child.
Being hurt too many times by too many people.
Lies. Lies. More vicious lies.
I had seen too many things. The child was dead.
I walked in anger. I was anything but childlike. Two years ago the scrawling or scribbling of a heart would have been unheard of....and I was too lost in my own despair to even think of writing a letter to a random stranger.
I remember, about a year ago, I was at work. I was watching the sun go down while sitting near a railcar. All of sudden, it came back. It was like a flood of awareness returned. I was just sitting there and this immense joy breathed life back in me...and I knew what it was it be a child again.
This happened during a time of prayer and truly leaning on the Creator. He gave it back.In an instant, the chid returned.
He wants us all to have the freedom of childhood again.
He wants us to play in the sand and laugh.
He wants us to find wonder in the mundane. Blowing bubbles. Eating ice cream. Getting our toes wet.
Playing in the rain.
He wants us to live as little children. Trusting. Innocent.
Seeing life's cup as always full, even when you are staring into the glass bottom.
Tonight my heart is breaking.
I read a story about a little baby boy named Tripp.
He was diagnosed with a rare skin disease. His mom wrote tonight on her blog that he died in her arms last night. I can't imagine her anguish. I can't imagine caring and investing in a tiny life with every ounce of love you have only to come up empty. I can't imagine a life of dreams, shattered.
Childlike. Childlike is trusting God that His word is true and believing that this woman will see her son again someday. Childlike is believing in something even though you cannot see it...
Childlike is denying every evil so the spirt has room to see and grow.
Childlike is having no expectations of love other than to freely give it...
and when it is returned..sitting in wonderous awe at the vastness of it all...
What are we doing with our lives?
Every day I read the news, I see evil swells into something huge. I see evil looming into lives. I hear the same complaints day in and day out.
No one dares to do anything different. We give little to God. We expect little.
Many of us have forgetten what it means to be childlike.
We have forgotten that God has created the entire universe and He can surely take our cares and turn them into naught. He can roll them down the hill of questioning if we would only embrace the childlike faith that we are called to have.
The other night I was driving in my car and I felt myself wanting to reach out to touch the hem of His garmet. Do you remember the story in the Bible about the woman with the chronic blood disease?
She suffered for over a decade. Jesus came into her town and she ran to Him and touched the hem of His garmet. She fought her way to see Him. She fought the massive crowds. she pushed in, she reached forward. She had the pure, innocent belief that she would be healed. And she was.
I wonder if she woke up that morning and thought..."Why would God heal me?"
I wonder if she woke up and listen to the lies that said a decade of disease can't be healed.
She was childlike.
She believed.
"Go woman, your faith has made you well"
Do you know why the enemy fights so hard?
Do you know why when you truly start moving somewhere, everything seems to go wrong, fall apart?
I know why.
God showed me.
To truly know God, To truly truly know Him....is to know love.
To know and understand the depth of the truest and purest form of love.
God changes us into love.
He changes us.
The potter. The clay.
The transforming.
And when we are changed, we move, through His Spirit, To change others.
Order amongst chaos.
The enemy is afraid of our love. He is afraid of the healing, loving Hand of God.
We become the healing, loving Hands of God when we allow Him to work through us...
This past year I have been fought tooth and nail.
I have experienced evil in unimaginable ways, but I have experienced God in even greater ways.
I see God.
This week I have been fought.
This week, I pulled into the yard of an Asian family. I got out of my car to be greeted by a total stranger.
I gave her a gift card to buy steaks for her family. I told her how much God loves her family, her children. I wrote a note telling her that she is not defined how others have made her feel. She is beautiful. She is loved. God's thoughts toward her as countless as sands.
I saw her smiling. A huge smile. Broad beamed, radiating smile and I thought, "ONLY GOD CAN DO THAT!" ....bring smiles to random strangers on days that are should be ordinary but because of LOVE, they are anything but.
I drove away and I thought, "LOVE"
LOVE...
GOD is LOVE.
The power of God's love threads together when the enemy seeks to pull apart.
That is why we are fought.
Love, God is the force that heals.
God is Love.
Love is humble. Love was born in a manger. Love is lowly because it has learned to place others first.
Humility is the very nature of love.
This week I delivered teddy bears to abused and neglected children at Harbor House. The teddy bear has a personalized t-shirt.
"It only takes one spark to light one thousand lives"
That is something else God showed me.
Childlike.
We can carry the flame of God if we humble ourselves and be childlike.
Stoop low and become love.
Galatians 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Freedom. Love. Childlike.
Children are free. Become like little children.
Be free.
It's no wonder we are fought. The enemy wants us tethered.
To our problems. To our daily struggles. To despair. To hopelessness.
But God.
God wants us to trust. He wants us to be free.
To trust. To be like little children with childlike faith,
that even thought the storm rages, there is still something left fighting for.
There is still LOVE.
He wants us to soar on the very wings of Love...
and He breathes it into our breath and renews our strength
and we are eagles with eyes that see things for what they are, not how we percieve them to be...
He gives us eyes to see the love.
My marital situation has been a living hell. It has been a nightmare of gut wrenching hurt, bitter disappointment, and blantant injustice...
But one day God allowed me to see my husband as He sees him.
I was looking at my husband and God showed me in my spirit.
God showed me a vision of what he would look like in Heaven, if he surrendered his life and embraced the childlike...
He was laughing. I never see my husband laugh. Not from the heart. Not the pure laugh.
He was laughing.
And I knew that God's love is endless.
God loves the man who ripped my heart open every day and served it back to me on a platter as cake.
And God gave me a love for him too.
Yes, He showed me that while I don't have to put up with the nonsense, I can still love.
Love hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things...
and even though my marriage has been ripped open by lies and infidelity.
Even though the guts are exposed..
I still believe and I still hope that I see him laughing someday.
Laughing. Childlike.
Heaven is filled with childlike laughter.
God is Love.
When I was about fifteen years old I had a dream.
I woke up and I knew the dream was from God.
It was so detailed and amazing. Though the details are gone, I still remember the message.
The first part is very hazy..all I remember is a very small room in the middle of the desert...
But the part that I remember most is the part about the ants.
Yes, ants.
Ants are very structred creatures. They follow the leader. They are organized.
They epitomize routine. They are group-think creatures.
In the dream, I was trapped in a huge auditorium with hundreds of people.
We couldn't escape. We were confined for days.
In the midst of the turmoil, many of the people became like ants.
As a group, they began doing things that went against the very nature of God.
Everyone conformed...
A few of us,
very few, decided to go against the group. We refused to take part in the things they were doing.
At the end of the dream, I remember standing on a huge cliff overlooking a vast expanse.
I was staring into the face of beauty. Everything around me was so beautiful.
We were there. The few of us who went against the grain and refused to do what the others were doing.
I remember being so happy, staring into the face of beauty and vastness that went on forever...
happy that I chose to do right when succumbing to temptation would have been the easy path. Resisting the ways that feel right but lead to death...
and the reward was worth it...
beauty and peace were the reward.
Immense beauty and the childlike quality of being able to see it and appreciate it for what it is and what it represents..
God is the Creator. He is the source of all that is beautiful.
He is the one who gives life to the rose that grows in the desert.
That single solitary flower that stands as a spark, daring to love childlike,
carrying the light and fire of a Living God, believing ,childlike, that love conquers all. Love hopes all things.
And daring to take the light to thousands, even daring, with childlike faith, to go against the grain.
To be childlike.
In this life where we read about mothers killing thier children..where we read about hatred and violence, In this world where babies dies in the arms of moms, we need to be childlike.
It is the only way to survive.
Love is the only way.
God is the only way.
To be childlike.
May we each come to a place where scrawling hearts to random strangers doesn't seem so silly.
May we come to a place where tiny hearts comprised of ink make sense.
1 Corinthians 13
The Greatest Gift
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.
For we know in part and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
~"You can be childlike without
being childish."- Christopher Meloni
being childish."- Christopher Meloni
~"An honest man is always a child."- Socrates~
~"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a
sphere of activity in which we are
permitted to remain children
all our lives."- Albert Einstein
Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
Mark 10:15 I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."
Today, my prayer is for you...
That God would scrawl His love ink on your heart. And you will recognize the words.
Childlike.
Beautiful
ReplyDeletethank you :)
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