This idea of being an inconvenience is the tone I hear in the leper in Mark chapter one. According to Mark, it’s early in Christ’s ministry. Jesus seems to be trying to keep a relatively low profile as He begins preaching and teaching in the synagogues. Before even the first chapter of the gospel is over, a man with leprosy has somehow seen Jesus’ capabilities, found him, recognizes His power and authority and declares the Truth that, if Jesus is willing, Jesus has the power to cleanse Him. There’s something about the way the leper asks the question that resonates with me. It’s like, “If you can spare one moment of your attention for me, that’s all it would take. I know I’m the least of your concerns and that this is a big ask. But if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

It’s Labor Day and hopefully this finds you resting. Isn’t it funny that we celebrate work by resting? In fact, I think that’s exactly what the Sabbath was intended to be: a weekly celebration and enjoyment of all the things we accomplished in our labors throughout the week. This particular Labor Day is just plain bizarre. It’s the beginning of a season of a hundred decisions a day, from the schedule we keep at home or work, to how we’re going to school our children. Also, it’s an election year, and the Labor Day of election years always marks the beginning of the final campaign sprint to Election Day on November 4th. The insanity surrounding all of it simply goes without saying. It’s nuts; nothing feels normal. It feels like everything and everyone is reactionary and nothing can be planned. And yet our God loves loves loves to give His people rest. There are hundreds of verses related to His desire for our rest, but I’ll lay out two to help us decide today to rest rather than react.

He erupted into the world—encapsulated Himself in flesh and blood, subjected Himself to time in order to live the perfect life for us, so that… He could obliterate the bounds of time and flesh and meet us Spirit to spirit, dwell in and among each of us forever and always. Paul’s explanation of what the Holy Spirit means for us overwhelms me when I hold it up against the feelings of inadequacy I have as a mother to be everything to my children.

God often reminds me that He is God and I am not. He does it in many ways; through His Word, through circumstances, through discipline. Sometimes it’s a hard-learned lesson, but He is always kind to show us Who He is, and who we are in relation to Him. I think one of the kindest ways He does this is through creation. 

Over the years, I’ve come to recognize that for me, often, simply being reminded that He’s the Creator of it all is what causes me to trust Him most—especially with the things I just can’t comprehend. When I’m confronted with things about His character or in Scripture that are “too wondrous for me to know” (Job 42:3), it’s the fact of creation that brings me back to trust.

His love is not a modest love, its a fierce love that obliterated the boundary of His holiness to draw us into Him in Christ. To let Him see us in our imperfect states, to hear our voices and their imperfect thoughts, to share our feelings in their imperfect forms is the only appropriate response to this kind of love pursuit. It’s surrender. 

We surrender so that He can lavish us with His love, remind us we are forgiven, wash us white as snow. 

It was this realization that God wants to be with me in all of it, that simply letting Him have access to all of the depths of me somehow results in fully falling into Him limp but full of life, and suddenly my lungs open and the universe reveals wide open spaces to breathe.

I learned what the Bible means in 1 Corinthians 13 when it says, “love protects.” The Greek word for love in this case is agape—the kind of love only God can give. And the Greek word for protects is stego and means “to cover over in silence.” As soon as I heard this definition, my mind immediately flashed to this story of Noah and his sons.

Did you know, we have an enemy who literally stands before God accusing us day and night, pointing out our shame? (Rev 12:10) Like Ham, he laughs about us: “Look, God…look what your ‘little righteous one’ did! Come check it out. Do you see her shame?” If you try to imagine what you’re being accused of as Satan stands before God, it probably wouldn’t take long to come up with some ideas. Maybe the way you yelled at your kids before school this morning? Maybe the way you treated your husband in a moment of hurry? Maybe the entire cookie sleeve you ate from the pantry five minutes ago? Maybe you feel it’s so much worse than any of those examples and it’s not even in the same universe…abuse? Adultery? Slander? It doesn’t matter. My point is, the voice you have in your head accusing you and insisting you should feel ashamed is real. But our agape loving God already responded to every. single. accusation—both big and small.

When Naomi loses everyone and everything important to her, what she wants more than anything is to go back to her people—more importantly, her God. She returns, not because she thinks her life will get better; she goes back fully believing she will be desolate until the end of her days. But she goes back because she knows that ultimately in her emptiness, God will be enough. She is so certain that she’s willing to bear a treacherous journey back to Israel on her own. She has nothing left to lose; all she wants is God. 

When Jesus comes this time, He is going to come with final and complete authority. He is coming as King of kings and Lord of lords, not as a baby in a manger as He did the first time. He’s not going to gradually grow a following. This time He’s coming on clouds of glory and we will all recognize Him as King. The entire world will see Him and know exactly who He is—God—both Love and Justice in the flesh. But here’s the amazing part…

Paul’s entire mission in writing the letter to the Galatians was to plead with them to understand that for those of us who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are as Christian as we will ever get. Redeemed. Paid for by the blood of the Son of the Living God. Period. We can’t do anything to be more righteous. There are no customs we can follow, no actions we can take to make us more qualified to come before God. Jesus Christ alone qualifies us for everything.

It seems the world is burning. God silenced the world through Covid-19. He insisted we all take a break for a bit. And then the ground began to shake. Locust swarms and dust clouds from Africa, famines, racial tensions peaking and spreading across the globe, and it feels like our nation is irreparably fractured and our world collapsing. 

For me, whenever major life events take place, I can always trace a supernatural draw to Scripture occurring for a long season before the crises; so I know it’s no mistake that I am immersed in the Word of God more than I’ve ever been before. In fact, I have found it to be consistent with God’s rhythm in my life. 

So this one is for you—the young moms who are managing limited play dates in the midst of quarantine and have become the primary care giver and imagination-mate to your children. To you who are feeling guilty for not having one more moment of make believe in your tired souls. For those of you who are sure that your sanity got flushed down the pooper with the last failed attempt at potty training this week. And dare I say, this is for you, the mother of little ones who hasn’t a moment for a quiet time or devotion and if you did, you’d rather shut your eyelids for those brief moments or talk to your mom or best friend on the phone than open your Bible.

Evidence surfaces as I observe the discourse surrounding monuments coming down and flags being changed. Four years ago, the arguments I made, the feelings I had were so different, so predictable. But my feelings and thoughts are changing quickly and drastically; it’s all been strangely unsettling. But…

I’ve been more immersed in Scripture than ever and I’m being changed by words—His Word—the way only a book that is alive can do. Almost every line on every page has been filled with reassurances that He’s doing a work in me. He’s re-centering me and my identity.

These final lines in Paul’s letter to his beloved believers have been resonating in me since our Dive group met last week. His words call to those of us in the midst of the cultural and political turmoil, because it’s an offering of peace.

We wrap up our first Dive Studies tomorrow and I’ll be completely honest, it was far more wonderful than I could have ever hoped or imagined.

To learn beside so many incredible people, to be challenged to see the words in a different way, to see lightbulbs go off and eyes light up as the Holy Spirit blew His breath and ignited new flames holds meaning and joy which words will forever fail to convey. I sit at my kitchen table replaying some of my favorite memories and one stands out because it occurred on the very first day as we opened our Bibles and began chapter one.

Not long into our first meeting, shortly after reading through chapter one aloud, one of our members, Michelle, said, “Just taking a step back and looking at the big picture of this chapter, I can easily see why you chose this book to start studying as Dive Collective.” And she was right. We chose Galatians with great purpose. God showed her from the beginning of the book that the most important message, the undergirding of every reading we will ever do and the lens through which we will read the entire text is the grace of the Gospel.

I can’t help but shake my head and laugh at myself as I declare that God is so gracious, merciful, and faithful even in these seemingly insignificant things. It just seems so silly to use all of those words for Him in the context of something like coffee. But it wasn’t really about coffee at all. There was a deeper lesson to be learned about the character of God.

In light of what’s been happening around our country in the past days and weeks, we felt the need to spend time in prayer and ask God to work in specific ways. As a Collective, we focused each day last week praying for our hearts and for people. We wanted to compile these passages and prayers into one space and invite you to continue with us in prayer—God’s Word is packed full of both examples of how to pray and testimonies of God’s faithfulness to answer the requests of His people, over and over again. And so, we’re choosing to end this series focused on that faithfulness:

“For the word of the Lord is right, and all His work is trustworthy. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the Lord’s unfailing love. We wait for the Lord; He is our help and shield. For our hearts rejoice in Him because we trust in His holy name. May Your faithful love rest on us, Lord, for we put our hope in You.” Psalms 33:4-5, 20-22

Father, we rest in You. We praise You for Your unfailing love. Thank you that You are trustworthy. Our hearts rejoice in You; our hope is in You and only You.

What is a story? We’re all capable of defining story, but just so we’re all on the same page here, a story, specifically a narrative, is a spoken or written account of connected events. We’ve all heard stories—in books, in movies, or told to us at the end of a school day in excessive, overlapping detail by nine-year-old little girls. But what defines a good story—what elements are necessary to make it interesting, readable, relatable? Well, it needs to consist of a few things: good characters—strong protagonists, complex antagonists, major characters, minor characters. They need to be connected to one another, or at least the story, in some way. There needs to be an overarching theme, a goal, a message that’s being conveyed. And absolutely, there must be a good Storyteller.

There is one Story that outshines all others. It’s actually the Story in which every other story finds its base, its root. It is the Story that defines all stories, because it’s written by the Creator of the universe, and all the other stories are able to be because of this one Story. This Story is made up of more characters than we could count, connected over thousands of years. It contains main plots and subplots. It includes histories of nations, one nation in particular. It’s full of heroic adventures and legendary figures. This Story, an Epic, starts out, “In the beginning, God created…”

I’ll never forget the morning I first discovered them. I was looking down, concentrating on a project I was working on. When I looked up and saw the spectacle, I wondered how on earth I hadn’t seen them before. I looked back and there wasn’t a single glowing flower to be found. I turned ahead again and saw them everywhere. I inspected the flowers closely and realized that the mountain behind me was covered in the same exact flowers, but I was standing between them and the light. Suddenly a Scripture I had been pondering came together like magnetized puzzle pieces and I understood:

Peter, the first to declare Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, begins to see Jesus draw crowds by the thousands. At some point in the three years of following Jesus, Peter becomes aware that he is one of the twelve closest friends of the King of the Jews, the Man who has come to set all things straight, the One who will not just set up a kingdom here on earth, but will bring peace to all nations and will rule the entire world in peace and righteousness. Peter lives and works alongside Jesus for three years. He doesn’t just have a good thing going—it seems he has reached the pinnacle of his ministry. Imagine Peter’s horror watching Jesus hang on a cross and breathe his last breath.

What if it's our failures and our sinking in the midst of the miracle that provides the greatest opportunity for Jesus' deity to shine? What if, when our circumstances get super dark and terrifying, we ask Jesus to identify Himself by calling us out into it. Then, at his beckoning, we run to Him, out onto the raging waters so that He can bring us back to safety. Sure, we may end up wet, and cold, and even a little silly looking; but we’d also end up surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, worshiping the God Man who saved us and lifted us out of the water, shouting "Hosanna in the Highest”—I think it would all be worth it.

One of my favorite moments in Peter’s story occurs right after Peter and his eleven friends hand out food to five thousand of their closest friends because Jesus took what they had and blessed it. After doing this tremendous miracle, Jesus tells the disciples to go on without Him while He stays back and spends time with His Father in prayer. Peter and the others are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a great storm arises. It’s early in the morning and still dark; the waves begin pushing them back so that they’re not going anywhere. The more they push forward, the more they stay put. I imagine them working so hard to paddle, getting soaking wet and more anxious as the waves continue to crash around them. Then suddenly in the darkness, a man strolls toward them on the beating, crashing, treacherous waves. They’re terrified and cry out, “Ghost!” Immediately after they cry out, Jesus responds, “Take courage, it is I. Don’t be afraid.” This is the moment in the story I want to freeze and study.