Storms of Perfection

I decided to switch Reflections of a Ragamuffin from Blogspot to WordPress this morning…mainly because I wanted the flexibility of having multiple pages on my blog. (If you notice up top, I have include a tab called “My Story” and have written and uploaded Act 1 thus far.)

The transition was fairly simple, although I am still learning the WordPress interface. Since my header image on Blogspot did not fit the new WordPress theme that I chose, I had to spend some time rethinking what I wanted that image to look like. I started thinking about visuals  and imagery that could represent the journey that Melody and I have been on for the last 10 years. Our journey has been painful and has taken turns that we never imagined. Through it all, however, there was a thread of hope…a ray of sunshine.

With that thought on my mind, I did a search for “storms and sun” to see what kind of images would pop up that contained those contradictory elements. The image that I used in the masthead was one of those images, and here are a few more. Let me know if you like some of these better than the one I chose.

Each of these images really struck me, but the one below haunted me. I found myself staring at the photo for at least 7 or 8 minutes, thinking about our story and how this image symbolizes so much of what we have been through. I used it for one of the headers above, but, because of the height limitations, it really didn’t do the image justice.

Here is the full image.

The raw power of the tornado is captured incredibly in this image and provides quite a contrast to the rays of sunshine exploding through the storm clouds. As our relationship was torn asunder by my addiction and infidelity, through it all I can look back and honestly say God provided rays of hope on even the darkest of days.

Which masthead do you prefer? What do you think about this image?

Trusting My GPS

Driving home from my conference in Orange Beach, Alabama this past Thursday, I found myself winding through small Florida towns…faithfully following the turn-by-turn instructions of my Garmin GPS navigation system. When I realized that I was in Florida, it dawned on me that maybe…just maybe…my Garmin might be taking me the wrong way, or, at least the long way home.

You have to know that my driving has become so much more stress free since I gave myself the Garmin for Christmas in 2007. It is so nice to be able to hit the road at 6 or so in the morning headed to a meeting somewhere in Mississippi and not only get turn-by-turn directions for how to get to my destination, but also get an estimated time of arrival. This is huge because so much of my stress pre-Garmin was related to not knowing exactly how long it was going to take me to get to a destination that I had never been to before. The thought of a crowded room of school administrators waiting for the “PLATO guy” was none too pleasing and has virtually become a thing of the past since getting the Garmin.

So there I was in the panhandle of Florida, having left a town in Alabama trying to get to my home in Alabama, suddenly second-guessing my trusty Garmin that was taking me through Florida. In that moment I realized just how much faith and trust I put into my dashboard device. I reflected on that as I made another turn and twittered,

“I wish I followed God as faithfully as I follow my Garmin’s turn-by-turn directions.”

I was exposed. Why was it that I was only second-guessing the Garmin because it had unexpectedly taken me into another state to get me home, yet I second-guess God so often for so much less? I thought about how many previous trips I confidently made the turns I was told to make…even the trip that took me on 3 different dirt roads! I flippantly thought “O well this is different” and kept driving with confidence and made it to my destination just fine.

Yet I so quickly second-guess my Heavenly Father when life presents an unexpected turn in the road and my orphan thinking immediately wants to take over. I think the key word there is “unexpected” and gets to the heart of the matter. I am fine as long as long as things are unfolding as I expect them to unfold and get upset when I start heading in a direction I was not anticipating. I exhibit more faith and trust in my Global Positioning System than I do in my Abba Father who created the universe and everything in it and yet still knows how many hairs I have on my head. (A few less than yesterday, I might add.)

Preaching the Gospel to myself each and every day involves reminding myself that God loves me and that His heart and plans for me are good…even if my circumstances in the moment seem to tell a different story. I am learning to die to my expectations and to live each day as a wild-hearted adventure with my wild-hearted Abba Father who loves me with an intense, consuming love. He is my Gospel Positioning System and He has never left me or forsaken me.

God is in the Struggle

Reading this morning in Francois de Salignac de La Mothe Fenelon’s classic book, The Seeking Heart. I was arrested by this statement and wanted to pass it along…

“Do not seek God as if He were far off in an ivory castle. He is found in the middle of the events of your everyday life. Look past the obstacles and find Him.”

Fenelon

I am not sure about you, but this was a very timely and fresh reminder for me this morning. It is so easy to be so focused on the obstacles that we fail to see what God is doing in us by using those obstacles.

Single’s Life Group

(Just a little thing, but I have noticed how many of my recent posts have started with some variation of “Melody and I…”. Today’s post is no exception! I would apologize and try to be a bit more creative with how I begin a post, but, frankly, I am so blessed to once again be able to say “Melody and I” or “Melody and me” after years of longing for that but NEVER thinking it would actually become a reality that I think you can allow me a bit of redundancy here. Maybe when you see “Melody and I” or “Melody and me” simply insert “God’s grace”.)

Melody and I will be sharing our story tonight. Melody will be in one house with the single women and I will be in another house with single guys. We woke up this morning talking through the details of our journey together (and apart) and honestly, it was again a painful experience. Through tears, we talked about how we worked so hard for years to force our life to fit into this clean and neat little box that we could show to the world and other believers as a type of formula for how to live the victorious Christian life. As hard as we tried to pretend that life was predictable and tidy, the more messy it became and the more our delusion was exposed.

This we know to be true…LIFE IS MESSY! Over the years we spent so much time and energy denying this simple truth rather than embracing the messiness and asking God to show up in the middle of it. Real life has a way of drop-kicking trite Christian cliches that we so desperately want to cling to. Through much pain and much chaos, God showed Melody and me that we could run to Him when life made no sense and seemed to be careening out of control. He showed up in the middle of our pain time and time again.

Please pray for us tonight as we share our story. Pray that we would avoid the temptation to gloss over the messiness and only focus on the getting back together. God continues to teach us so much about the process we went through to get to where we are today and we want to be able to effectively communicate that process to the Singles tonight.

This Would be MUCH Easier with Dynamite.

Last week I ran across an obscure passage from 1 Kings…

“When the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.” 1 Kings 6:7 ESV

Ok so this passage is about Solomon building the temple…something his father David was not allowed to do. It would seem that hammers and axes and “tools of iron” would come in handy when building any building…especially God’s temple. This struck me as a bit odd so I dug deeper. Turns out that God is indeed a God of details and He had already had something to say about stones and tools used in building His house…

“If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it.” Exodus 20:25 ESV

“And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. You shall wield no iron tool on them; you shall build an altar to the Lord your God of…” Deuteronomy 27:5-6 ESV

So it is around 966 BC and God has given Solomon the task of building His house. This would be a huge architectural undertaking using today’s tools…cranes, earth-movers, jackhammers, dynamite, diamond-tipped saw blades…but with tools available in 966 BC? Come on! I did a quick google search and was reminded that iron dates back to about 1370 BC…about 400 years before Solomon. I can hear Solomon having a pow-wow with Jehovah that went something like this…

God: “Build my house 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.”

Solomon: “60 x 20 x 30…got it.”

God: “The windows should have recessed frames.”

Solomon: “Nice touch.”

God: “Line all of the walls with Lebanon cedar from floor to ceiling.”

Solomon: “Nothing but the best for you, eh?”

God: “And remember not to use any tools.”

Solomon: “You’re joking, right?”

God: “No joke…no tools on the job site.”

Solomon: “A hammer sure would make it easier.”

God: “No tools, Solomon.”

Solomon: “And how in the world am I going to recruit anyone to help build your house when I tell them they have to work with stone with no tools?”

God: “Solomon…no tools.”

Solomon: “That iron stuff that came along a few hundred years ago…you know that really hard stuff? That sure would come in handy on this project. Are you sure?”

God: “I’m sure…no tools.”

So Solomon built God’s house with no tools on the job site. That means that each stone was fabricated miles and miles away from the construction site and each stone fit into place. PERFECTLY! Wow! That would be a difficult engineering feat for 2009, much less 966 BC! But that is exactly what happened.

And how quickly I forget how detail-oriented our God is…not just about building His temple…but with the many details surrounding my life as well. How often do I try to take matters into my own hands and want to force-fit circumstances so that they match my agenda and all the while God is saying “No tools.” I so often slip into unbelief…thinking God is busy in Iraq or someplace else more important and feel the need to take matters into my own hands and start whittling away…chipping off a corner there and a corner here in order to make my circumstances fit my plan.

Lord, forgive my unbelief and help me to live in the “No Tool” zone today.