Happy Easter!

Living He loved me

Dying He saved me

Buried He carried my sins far away

Rising He justified

Freed me forever

One day He's coming

O glorious day!

Thoughts on Transparency...

We had unbelievable sunsets last week. The colors changed minute by minute, causing the clouds to take on an increasingly deeper shades of pink, then purple, and eventually a deep black tinged with gold.

I felt so small in comparison to the wide-openness the sky. In that moment, when the last beams of light were fighting their way through the clouds, I realized that my desire is not only to let God’s light shine in me, but to have His light shine through me.

I want to be transparent.

Not in an “I don’t matter so therefore I don’t want to be seen” way, but in an “I want to be so close to God that you can see who He is because of who I am” way. I want you to know that I am hiding nothing; that what you see is what you get.

I want to be transparent.

I don’t want to hold onto secrets. I don’t want you to think that I have any ulterior motives. I want you to know me, inside and out, as a child of God, living my life for Him.

I want to be transparent.

I want you to know that, good or bad, all that I am belongs to Him, and that He is still working on me, turning me into the person He has created me to be.

I want to be transparent.

I want to love without reservation. I want to see you for who He has created you to be. I want to be merciful, not judgemental. I want to be grateful for the life I have been given and not the life I think I should have. I want to sing with joy. I want to rejoice in the opportunity to change and grow.

I want to be transparent.

I want to throw open my arms, turn my face towards the sky and say without hesitation, “With all of my heart, my mind, my soul and my strength, I am Yours. Use me. Teach me. Love me.”

I want to be transparent.

(This post originally appeared on Beautifully Broken Me on 3/10/09)

Thoughts on Faith...

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about faith. With all that is going on in the world today, faith seems to be the first casualty in our collective efforts to “turn the tide”, so to speak. We want to take charge of our future and storm ahead, making things better and overcoming the insurmountable problems of this world. We have been told “Just do it!”, and we believe we can do it on our own, with a little elbow grease and a lot of willpower – strength in numbers and all that…

On the surface, this sounds just great. We just need to buckle down, work together and weather this bumpy ride, and all will be better in the long run – you’ll see! There is hope: a light at the end of the tunnel. I know it is really dark right now, but if we work hard enough and long enough we’ll make it. Prepare for the worst – hope for the best. Isn’t that how it goes?

Well, maybe not…

We have heard that word “hope” used a lot in the past few years. Entire campaigns were constructed around that one, very powerful word. Hope is a great thing to have, but where is our hope coming from?

In my last post, I wrote about hope. In it I defined hope like this:

“Hope itself is the sure belief that something better is coming. As simple as that definition sounds, it implies that to have hope, there must be suffering or despair to overcome. It requires the one who is suffering to make a choice between despairing in today’s pain and grief and hoping for the better day that is coming.”

I still believe that this definition is true. The question that arises, then, is this: “What is this ‘something better’ and where is it coming from?” Good question.

This is where faith comes in. Faith is commonly defined as our belief system – our “religion”. While this may be one definition, the one I prefer is from the book of Hebrews. Paul writes:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

Another translation says it this way:

"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)

In other words: believing in something that we cannot see for ourselves.

That’s a tough one for most of us. We as humans are wired in such a way that we only believe that which we can see, hear, touch and experience for ourselves. Faith, then, goes against every logical bone in our bodies. How are we supposed to have faith in anything but that which we can do for ourselves? It doesn’t make any sense!

So here’s the rub: in order to have faith, we must overcome the innate desire to see, hear, and touch, and make the leap to belief in that which is unseen.

The very essence of faith - the foundation of hope, therefore - is believing in someone or something acting on our behalf even though we don’t know in advance what they are doing or how they are doing it.

OK…so back to the question of where does our hope comes from? The answer is: it all depends on where we place our faith. Not so simple, is it?

So...where do you place your faith?

For me, the answer is simple: “Have faith in God," Jesus answered. Mark 11:22

(This post originally appeared on Beautifully Broken Me on 12/16/08)