Exposed

The climax occurred yesterday while I felt like shit. Literally. I frequently experience funks, and am learning how to deal with them, but this one destroyed me. What made me so miserable? A tiny instance I blew WAY out of proportion, but it caused me to seek out the real issue beneath the circumstance. I found what I "grasp."
Let's back up. Philippians 2 has always been one of my favorite passages of the Bible, (is it okay to have favorites in God's Word?) but reading it a few weeks ago slammed me with a deeper revelation.

Philippians
2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [1] 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, [2] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

You can glean so much from this passage, but what struck me this time was the word grasped. Jesus did not count equality with God as something to be grasped. I had always thought "grasp" in this context meant "reach for," that Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to reach for, because it cannot be obtained, and he was already "in the form of God" and so was already equal with God, so he didn't have to prove his equality by grasping it.
Although this is true, a word study revealed the word "grasp" in this context actually means "hold on." Jesus did not consider equality with God as something to hold on to. He let it go. Not meaning he lost his equality with God, but he forsook the rights of equality, something he already firmly held, for no other reason than to obey the Father and to save our souls.
For me, that's a world of difference. Jesus let go. Jesus let go. What was rightfully his, he let go... wow. How humbling. Hallelujah.
Then I asked myself, what am I grasping? If Jesus let go of what was rightfully his, who am I to hold on to anything? Especially considering I deserve nothing?
We come back to my feeling like shit yesterday. While tormenting myself over the tiny circumstance, I asked myself a question a dear friend often asks: can't you just let it go? It clicked. I wasn't letting this thing go, which means I was holding on to it, I was grasping it.
At the root of the tiny circumstance was this: I have set what those I love think of me as the bottom of my joy. I obsess with being in good standing with my friends and family. Is it good to have healthy relationships? Yes! To have them as the ultimate value in my life? No! It's lead me to care more about my appearance rather than my integrity.
And integrity is vital. Something else God is teaching me.

1 John 1
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Light is truth (Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." -John 3:20-21), and so walking in the light is walking in the truth. Honest living, something I don't do. Walking in honesty means being vulnerable (a word my flesh detests most of all!), confessing our sin. Being vulnerable with people gains their trust and brings us into deeper fellowship with them. Not that we should tell each other every sin we've ever committed, but we should be characterized by honesty. Being honest about our sin also allows the blood of Jesus to cleanse our sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This call to walk in the light does not mean to walk in perfection. For us, perfection is impossible; we can only pretend, and if we do that, then we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
This was HUGE for me. Walk in honesty, humility, vulnerability, and HE will make me clean by His abundant grace. I am not called to walk in righteousness on my own, then I only become a liar!

Please pray God continues to work this out in me. I want to walk exposed to the light, but I've still got a long way to get to freedom in this. Pray especially for me while I'm in Ukraine; I will not be a good leader if I can't serve others rather than use them to wrongly meet my needs, and I will never gain their trust unless I am vulnerable (and if you know me at all, vulnerable and I can only mix by a miracle of God!).

Necklaces for Ukraine!

I'm making crochet necklaces to raise support for my internship in Ukraine this summer. Check them out!

Either copy and paste the link below or click on the title of this post.

http://abicrochets.blogspot.com/

Tension

I'm sitting with classmates and our prof around the oak Round Table, waiting for a prompt. "Sum up your life in one word, the first that comes to your mind." First there's the panic of being put on the spot, then a word comes. "What word did you write?" the prof asks.
"Freedom."
"Love."
"Happiness."
"Improvement."
"Unique."
"Love."
"Adventure."
Then my turn; "tension." What? Why tension? It didn't make much sense at the time, so I dismissed it as a stupid attempt at being different. But now I think I was on to something.

A few days ago, the Witty Rat and I were having one of those random conversations of brilliance that thrill me to no end. (I gotta say, my buddy Jack nailed it: "Those are the golden sessions... when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk.") We talked about the tensions in our lives, and in our relationship with Jesus. As humans, we tend to sway from one extreme to another, but so often the Word calls us to a balance: God's sovereignty AND our responsibility, truth AND love, justice AND mercy, for example. Balance requires incredible energy (trust us, we're dancers); its not simply staying still. You have to fight hard to hold position in the middle ground.

(It's not that these things actually oppose each other; if one truly embraces justice, he or she will also have to embrace mercy. In our limited understandings however, these things often just look like opposing forces.)

But why the tension?(Now I'm not talking about the tension between good and evil or right and wrong, that's a whole different discussion; I'm talking about the balance between two truths.) Why can't we just pick one and be done? Well, I think it's because God has set eternity in our hearts. He created us for eternal relationship with Him, wouldn't it only make sense that we can't ever be done with what is meant to last forever? We can never learn enough about Him. The depth of our relationship with Him is bottomless. We can't become good enough or content with Him enough.

So let's not become lazy. Tension forces us into constant action, and that's how our relationship with Christ should be, active.

I hope this makes sense, I had a hard time trying to express it.

Inlustrat

"On the glorious splendor of Your majesty,
and on Your wonderous works, I will meditate.
They shall speak of the might of Your awesome deeds,
and I will declare Your greatness.
They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness
and shall sing aloud of Your righteousness." ~Psalm 145:5-7

"The steadfast love of The Lord never ceases;
His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.
'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul,
'therefore I will hope in Him.'
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of The Lord." ~ Lamentations 3:22-26

"If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there Your hand shall lead me,
and Your right hand shall hold me." ~ Psalm 139:9-10

The Starling

I wrote this poem years ago, and my buddy Aaron turned it into a stunning song- check it out! He's sick-nasty talented.

http://www.myspace.com/eloffox/music/songs/the-starling-mp3-80423095

The Starling (Original poem)

A starling, in my heart confined,
Escaped upon a sudden sigh
That I relinquished recklessly.

It battered through my chest, the sky
It sought, it fought, it longed to find.
It turned my inner set awry.

From out my hollow throat coldly
Blew fresh, free air the bird did spy
And burst towards where that bright blue shined.

I swallowed hard, I held my breath
‘Til starling was as still as death
Locked carefully back inside my breast.

"To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak."

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls."
-Merce Cunningham

I miss dance. Today in Jazz my professor, during a turn exercise, tried to explain that moment when a dancer nails it- A quad pirouette, a switch leap, a arabesque en pointe. That moment after practice after practice after practice when the stars align and you execute perfection. "And it's always effortless," the last word as a sigh: EF-fort-leSS. In that last word she nailed it. I know that moment. Now I won't lie to myself, I've never danced better than mediocre; EF-fort-leSS for me was landing a double or grande jete. But I know the feeling. It's literally an AWEsome moment.

That's something I loved about dance. Those moments were rare and so made dancing a risk. You don't know if you're going to nail it. Even after practicing a hundred times, each new time is a new risk.

Risk and defiance. Defiance of gravity, defiance of momentum, defiance of limitations, defiance of the body... but with grace, so naturally performed.

Once a dance instructor told me, "a dancer rages with ferocity within, but with such control so as outwardly she is the queen of serenity." I love that. I miss that. The control and the awareness. Knowing your muscles, the blood flow, the pressure of breath within your lungs.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength. ~Martha Graham

And I miss the rawness. Though I admit to bias, I truly believe dance is the purest art form; there exists no medium between you and your art. You are your art.

Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. ~Ted Shawn

A Clean Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Must the vision cost so much? Isn’t the heart pure enough that has no more than the usual measure of slyness, conscious covetousness or prurience? Wasn’t it sufficient that I honestly desired to love God and do what He wanted?

I have never forgotten the morning when the dean of students, Dr. Charles Brookes, closed his chapel message with the words of an old gospel song. I can still see his humble demeanor, hear his quiet voice:

One thing I of the Lord desire, for all my life hath miry been—
Be it by water or by fire, Oh, make me clean, Oh, make me clean!
So wash me now, without, within, or purge with fire, if that must be,
No matter how, of only sin die out in me, die out in me.


~Excerpt from Elizabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity