As Seasons Change

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart;

yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

I pray that whatever season of the heart you are in, that your eyes would be opened to the fingerprints of our eternal and loving Creator. May He reveal beauty to you in new and exciting ways, and where there is ugly, may you have eternal sight to see the unfathomable ways God is moving and molding.

~Happy, Wonderful, Blessed Fall to Beautiful You~

What Hate Can Do

It saddens me that there are people in this world that are so corrupted by darkness and hate that they make us forget our humanity. 

Their hate and evilness clings to us and burrows through our flesh and into our hearts, until we, in turn, begin to hate them. And we hate them so much  that as they die we beat them and spit in their face. While being dragged through the streets covered with blood, dead or soon to be, we celebrate.

I wonder how long it will take us to realize that we have become like them.

Expose the Ugly

Many of us have learned by now that there is a lot of ugly in this world. Recently I learned about one of these very ugly situations happening in Haiti, at the Son of God orphanage.

Children are dying of abuse and neglect. Their flesh is being devoured by parasitic disease;  hearts are being crushed by hate.

Bodies of children are being sold for sex and organs. 

And you, my friends, can help stop this madness.

Sign this petition to help bring EXPOSURE to the atrocities going on in this orphanage, and then spread the word.

Be the light that scatters the darkness.

Too.Stinkin.Hot.

Dear Fall,

This morning I woke up in my summer pjs sweating to death. I walked to the mailbox in flip-flops and a tank-top and nearly melted.

It is 11am and I hear the air-conditioner running and the icecream truck circling the neighborhood.

There is a rumor going around that you began back in September, but here it is October 15th, and it is 90 degrees.

If I did something to tick you off, I am truly sorry. Please come quickly. You are my favorite, but you are starting to irritate me.

What the heck?

A Little Faith

Today I encourage you to check out the post Sun Stand Still by my dear friend JD at Compassion Can. Because I don't have anything good to say, but she does.

And if you need the back story of her mission to Ghana, you can read that here.

I hope that you'll take the time to click over and soak in these stories, and that they will encourage you in your faith as they have me.

P.S. God is awesome.

Overwhelmed

The last couple days I have been so blessed to spend time in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

It is a place that was one of my many homes growing up. I lived there during a time when there was an undeniable crazy battle going on for my soul.

God brought me to work and retreat at this place when I was broken and needed healing the most.

But looking back on those years I want to kick my teenage self in the head. Yeah, I had fun, and there was a lot of adventure; Yet I was hardened and bitter and resistant to what the Holy Spirit was trying to reveal to me.

God sent amazing people in my life, and placed me in among his most glorious handiwork, and I took it all for granted.

I broke bread with Francis Chan and changed his babies diapers, yet his words and godly wisdom wouldn't break through the hardened layers of my heart until years later. They somehow reached me through words on a page, when they had been given to me years earlier through friendly conversation. And there were so many others like him. God used their children in the nursery where I worked to connect me with people who would speak overflowing words of wisdom into my life, and I let them fall carelessly to the floor.

Thinking back on moments like this, I wish I could go back and drink them all in. I wish I could write down those words and savor them completely. Yet I know it was a season, and that season has passed.

But today I am reminded of the fact that this season, the one I am in now, it is not over. It is not too late to appreciate today. So I sit and reflect on the place God has me in now, the people He has sent to speak truth into my life today, and the ways the Holy Spirit is fighting for me and revealing himself to me in this season.

And today I am also reminded of where I was then, and where He has brought me. Healing has taken place, my hardened heart has been cracked open enough to let a little light through, and I am changed. My Savior has won the battle, and there is freedom.

Hume, California. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

I will leave you with words from one of my favorite worship songs. One of the writers of this song is one of those very people God sent to speak wisdom to me, and the words to this song were completed at the very place God fought so hard for my heart. And today, as I walk away from this place, I am nothing less than overwhelmed.

I am nothing, yet you bid me

Come to You, O Lord Almighty

As I come I'm overwhelmed with You.

Humbly now I break the silence

As I'm weeping in your presence

I'm so wretched, overwhelmed with You.

Your blood of redemption is covering my shame

Your voice that shakes the heavens

Is whispering my name

As you catch my tears

With your nail-scarred hand

I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed with You.

I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed with You.

I am nothing, yet you bid me

Come to You, O Lord Almighty.  

Written by Tom Dickson and Joel Weldon