"How much Greater is the God we have than the one we think we have." --Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart
Do you limit God?
I never thought much about it until a Bible study lesson a few years ago with a group of high school students. We were talking about God as our Abba Father, where we seek an intimate relationship with Him instead of just regarding Him as one in a position of authority over us. Those students in the room that had good relationships with their parents had no trouble with this view of God. But those that had experienced a degree of familial strain could not make the connection between the God of authority and the God of love. I had never considered how much impact the role of a father figure might have on someone's relationship with God, the Ultimate Father Figure. I wondered, what else do we do to limit who God is, either in our own perspectives or for others because of our actions?
I suppose it's hard for us as the very human beings that we are. We approach the Gospel with a black and white outline of who God is and what He does and use our life experiences to fill it in with color, add detail subject to our own perspective. But surely God is not confined to the outline on the page.
Our church's confirmation class a few years back attended mass at a nearby Catholic church. During a meeting with the priest ahead of time, one student asked about who would go to heaven and who would go to hell. Father Lockey's reply.....To judge a person in any capacity is to presume that we can understand the depth of God's mercy and we simply can not.
Yes, I think God's outline is far, far beyond the page indeed.
It's easy to try to limit God. We do it without even thinking we're doing it. But, oh how much greater, deeper and wider is His love for us. We can get there. We can serve instead of judge, worship instead of complain. We can forget the lines all together and instead be open to what He reveals to us, when we're not so busy trying to figure out what it's going to look like.
"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your innermost being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted in faith and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure with the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19
May God be limitless to you today, friends. Limitless.
XOXO....Kelly
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Saturday, May 9, 2015
"There isn't a thing you don't have to teach them."
"There isn't anything you don't have to teach them," says my friend, Cathy, of raising boys. And this is good advice. Like, why do I have to tell them they can't pee in the trash can? Or make a zip line out of bungee chords in the back yard. Or lick things. When you become a mother you are well aware of all the big things ahead of you--potty training, reading, driving, tying shoes. It's all the little things that you don't see coming.
My mom taught me how to sing. Not the do's and the re's and the mi's or how to stand up and breathe from your diaphragm. But how to pick a song you love and work on it and sing it for someone. How to make the words sound like real words and the notes sound like your own. I got to sing alongside her for many years in our church choir, not to mention my aunt and my sisters, until she and Dad moved to Pittsburgh four years ago. Singing a duet with my mom is still one of my greatest joys, her the alto, me the soprano. It's as if God knew exactly what He was doing when He placed me in her womb. :)
When Kevin and I joined a new church a couple of years ago, I was hesitant to join the choir. Despite all that music has meant to me for so long, I couldn't imagine singing without my mom next to me. It had always been such a family thing. But it would have been a disservice to all that has taught me not to try, so I showed up one Wednesday night to give it a shot. In a room full of strangers, I was placed next to a lady that reminds me so much of my aunt it's spooky sometimes (a little nod from God that I am not alone, I like to think) and I began to sing. And before long, I realized that all my mother had taught me about singing during all those duets wasn't so much about the two of us, her and me, but the One above.
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb...your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139:13, 16
This is what God does through a mother. He sees the plans laid out for us and carefully places in just the right hands. The hands that know the lessons we need to learn. Did my mom know all that she was teaching me as she was doing it? I don't know. But God did.
This Mother's Day I get to sing a little song with Michael in church. I will sing and he'll play the piano along with me. I hope he has a good time doing it. I hope he's not too nervous and has a great experience. I hope he likes it so much he'll want to do it again. And I hope, twenty years later, he'll look up and have learned something from it, not just because we did it together, but because it brought him closer to the One above.
Happy Mother's Day.
XOXO....Kelly
My mom taught me how to sing. Not the do's and the re's and the mi's or how to stand up and breathe from your diaphragm. But how to pick a song you love and work on it and sing it for someone. How to make the words sound like real words and the notes sound like your own. I got to sing alongside her for many years in our church choir, not to mention my aunt and my sisters, until she and Dad moved to Pittsburgh four years ago. Singing a duet with my mom is still one of my greatest joys, her the alto, me the soprano. It's as if God knew exactly what He was doing when He placed me in her womb. :)
When Kevin and I joined a new church a couple of years ago, I was hesitant to join the choir. Despite all that music has meant to me for so long, I couldn't imagine singing without my mom next to me. It had always been such a family thing. But it would have been a disservice to all that has taught me not to try, so I showed up one Wednesday night to give it a shot. In a room full of strangers, I was placed next to a lady that reminds me so much of my aunt it's spooky sometimes (a little nod from God that I am not alone, I like to think) and I began to sing. And before long, I realized that all my mother had taught me about singing during all those duets wasn't so much about the two of us, her and me, but the One above.
"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb...your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139:13, 16
This is what God does through a mother. He sees the plans laid out for us and carefully places in just the right hands. The hands that know the lessons we need to learn. Did my mom know all that she was teaching me as she was doing it? I don't know. But God did.
This Mother's Day I get to sing a little song with Michael in church. I will sing and he'll play the piano along with me. I hope he has a good time doing it. I hope he's not too nervous and has a great experience. I hope he likes it so much he'll want to do it again. And I hope, twenty years later, he'll look up and have learned something from it, not just because we did it together, but because it brought him closer to the One above.
Happy Mother's Day.
XOXO....Kelly
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)