Expectations and broken people ::: We are so broken. Viewing each other through this lens shouldn’t give us a feeling of superiority but of humbleness, knowing that God reached out to us when I did not deserve it or earn it.
Yours, Without Wax ::: When we are sincere we have nothing to hide. We face the world head on, without wax or masks that seek to cover up who we really are.
The blog me… the real me ::: love me in real life, or love me here, it's all me. But I think the blog me, the thoughtful me that pauses and considers and remembers, is what God intended for me to be. (I'm always amazed when I find my own feelings so perfectly expressed by someone else's words!)
****UPDATE**** I meant to include this link earlier, from one of my favorite bloggers who is in the middle of the devastation in Alabama. A look at what's going on there and ways to help.
How long we are in grasping that we are His workmanship… that it is exactly as impossible by our own striving to develop the Christ-life in our hearts as to form the seed in the pod!
We have not to produce out of our higher nature a lowliness and a patience and a purity of our own, but simply to let the pure, patient, lowly life of Jesus have its way in us by yieldingness to it and faith in its indwelling might.
"All that God wants from man is opportunity." The whole of our relationship to His power, whether for sanctification or for service, is summed up in those words.
I shared this link recently. Because I thought it was impacting and full of much needed truth.
We need to know the truth that the emptiness, hollowness in our lives can glorify our God just as much, sometimes even more than, fullness.
When we are full, it is hard for Him to pour into us. But when we are emptied of ourselves, that is when He can overflow us with Himself. And we can see Him glorified in ways we can't imagine.
So the words of that post have lingered in my mind the last couple of weeks. The words of the song echo in my head at random times.
This morning I sat in church. Resurrection Sunday. Listening to a recounting of the events of that morning long ago.
Our pastor's emphasis landed somewhere I hadn't anticipated.
The empty tomb. The beauty of the emptiness of the tomb. How amazing that image should be to us. The powerful significance of the tomb being empty.
And I heard the echo in my mind….
We know the beauty of the empty tomb, because we know the whole story.
But those women that morning….in that small moment after they realized the tomb was empty and before they had been comforted with the reality that their Lord had conquered death…. that empty tomb must have been despair. Sorrow upon sorrow.
Often the emptiness in our lives can be the same. We are in the place where all we can see is the empty. We don't know why we are staring at emptiness, and we feel defeated by it.
BUT, our Lord has conquered death. And just like we can look with hindsight on that empty tomb and see something beautiful, we have to know that every empty space in our own lives will be just as amazing when we can one day see the whole story.
Our pastor's words… how amazing is the image of emptiness in the life of the believer.
I want to come to all of the empty places in my own life and be reminded of those women at the tomb. And how the despair was only for a moment before God's glory blazed from that empty tomb.
"Glory to God! Glory to God!
This is how emptiness sings"
