Category Archives: Jesus

Because You Probably Need to Hear it.

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An open letter to someone specific….that could end up being more than one person specific….God works like that you know…….makes the same word just for you.

God adores you, is over the moon about you. If He slept, He would fall asleep wishing you were next to Him and wake up with your name on His lips. He would stay up all night just to watch you breathe.

He thinks of you as His bride. Every romantic thing you have ever seen done at a wedding in person, or on TV, or in the movies, or in your imagination, God wants to do all of those things for you. He wants to surprise you with His love like that. God wants to make you feel that special. He looks at you like the moment a groom lays eyes on his bride for the first time u. Because He is desperately in love with you and wants everyone to know. Everyone.

Like God wants to not just profess His love to you on the jumbo tron at the game, but at the Super Bowl, at every major league sporting event that will be played for the rest of time, and the minor league ones too. He thinks you are just that incredible. And He wants everyone to know that He thinks you are the most amazing person on earth.

If God were a thirteen year old boy He would make bargains with Himself about, “if you would just let me sit next to her in first period.” He would sit in His room and wonder what it was like to just hold your hand. God thinks holding your hand would be incredible.

If God were a thirteen year old girl He would secretly write your name all over the inside cover of His notebook; He would add hearts. He would have a code name for you and rearrange the way He got to class so He could pass your locker multiple times a day.

If you were in a long distance relationship, He would eat ramen noodles for weeks on end just to afford a plane ticket to see you. He would call you at midnight so He could hear you breathing on the other end of the phone when you both fell asleep. He would tell you His astronomical cell phone bill was totally worth it.He would mean that.

God is totally crazy about you. Not the corporal you. YOU, the one who is reading this. He will never get over how much He loves you, loves a million things about you, loves your strengths, and your quirks and the way you…..If God had poker buddies they would stop inviting Him to play because all He does all day is talk about how great you are.

God adores you. He thinks you are incredible, He feels lucky to be with you. God loves you.

I’m back! and talking about love?

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Sorry for the unannounced hiatus. Apparently between the summer school, the just over one year old, and the growing a baby, I needed a break. So, I took one. Next time I hope to at least actively decide instead of spending a month promising myself I will write tomorrow.

 
Something this week really caught my eye. Don Miller, a Christian writer and blogger, wrote a 2 part series about how to write your love story. I wasn’t a fan. Rachel Held Evans, a Christian writer and blogger disagreed with him, in a post I loved. Since then Don Miller has taken down his posts and issued an apology. I have always had a lot of respect for him as a writer, but never more than I do know. He really and truly exudes grace and truth….even when he gets it wrong. Rachel Held Evans is quickly becoming “my girl”. Everything she writes I love and I can’t wait till her new book is out!
 
Anyway, this whole dust up was about the incredibly controversial subject of….love stories. Right, not something I think of as controversial either. But it did get me thinking about love stories, how God writes them, why does he write them, who is the star etc. I was a teenager when the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” came out. And suddenly, every youth group was doing a series on courting vs. dating, love, purity. And every Christian author had something to say about Godly love stories and also how to not have sex outside of marriage. In fact, one summer we talked so much about what the Bible has to say about sex I remember telling my youth group leader if we continued to talk about NOT having sex and NOT thinking about sex I would start having it because all this talk about not having it made me think about it a whole lot more than I normally did. I don’t know how well that went over, but really how much can possibly be said about how to keep your pants on?

But love, and love stories….I think there may be more to say on that. I have read more than one book on Christian dating that basically says the man needs to make all the moves, and the woman needs to wait…and wait… and don’t say anything and wait. It is the man’s adventure and he invites the woman to join him.

Surprise, surprise I never really followed those rules. I don’t know….I guess it was just the whole waiting thing. I wasn’t great at. Also, the not saying anything. I am terrible at that. Though I didn’t ascribe to this whole thing, I had an opportunity to watch this play out a lot in college. I was involved in a major campus ministry that supported this model. Plus, I had an absolutely adorable roommate who fit more easily into this romantic mold than I did. And quite a few boys wanted to date her. So….every once in a while (but DEFINITELY more than once a semester, usually more than twice) a boy would show up to our room and I would make myself scarce because the boy would want to DEFINE THE RELATIONSHIP, or DTR. One of two things would happen. Either my roommate would be totally taken off guard and have to let this poor boy down gently, or she would ask for the opportunity to get to know the boy better and his feeling would be all hurt because he had really wanted to date my roommate and she just didn’t know him well enough to say “Yes! I want to be your girlfriend.” The other thing it did was encourage girls to pine away for whichever random boy caught her eye. She would build this boy up in her head as her perfect guy and maybe just maybe he would show up at the door one day and “define the relationship.” On the occasion that the boy DID show up….the relationship was a disappointment because the girl was into the boy in her head and not the boy that actually existed.

It just all seemed so…confusing…cloak and dagger in a way. It also leaves the poor girl with no agency while the poor boy has to figure out if this could potentially be marriage material when he didn’t even know if he liked eating pizza with her. It seemed to confusing to me. Not that this method hasn’t worked for thousands of couples. I am just not a big fan.

Instead I have started to think that there is one great love story. The love story between God and man, creator and creation, Redeemer and me. A person who needed (and needs) desperately to be redeemed. And yes, God made the first move, but I responded. And love stories between two people are as unique as the love stories people have about how they met Jesus. Sometimes God shows up and says “I love you, love me” and you do. Sometimes God has been in your life forever, always being there for you until one day you wake up and realize He is who you have been looking for all along. Most times God shows up right when you are ready to be with Him.

However it starts, and at whatever pace. True Christian romances are all uniquely the same: God grows two people in a way that suits both the person and the partner. If you let Him, Christ uses all those imperfections you once thought of as impossible to get around to serve another person, sometimes it makes you uniquely qualified to love each other. God is a romantic and a pursuer of the church. And our love stories point to that.

Today is Red and White day

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Every Thursday is Red and White day, all summer at Camp Ray Bird henceforth: CRB (except for discipleship week ….we’ll get to that.) The day where the campers learn that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for the forgiveness of their sins. They learned about sin on dark day, Wednesday. Gold day is Tuesday, when they learn of the goodness of God, and Green day is Friday, when the campers learn how to grow in the Lord. (If you read your Bible and pray every day then you’ll grow, grow, grow.)

Christian and I worked at Camp Ray Bird the summer before we moved to Atlanta (Summer 2006). We had some friends on the speech team who encouraged us to get summer jobs there, so we thought “what the heck.” I spent the summer answering phones and messing up registration (seriously….talk about learning about God’s grace…) while Christian led activities that the counselors took their campers to. A job you don’t normally need a masters degree for (you don’t usually need to be old enough to vote….but Christian managed to fit right in.) What goes on is so much more than the sum of the stuff that everyone does there.

The basics are this. Around a thousand kids come through CRB every summer. Almost every single kid qualifies for a reduced fee. $30 for the week. The whole week, overnight, 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, and a t-shirt if they memorize all of their Bible verses. Not to mention swimming everyday, daily activities, crafts, the whole summer camp experience. From where I sit that is less than VBS at some churches, and all the kids eat there is a themed snack.

But the biggest piece is this. The kids are loved at CRB. The counselors, the kitchen staff, the lifeguards, the 16 year olds whose job it is to put the worm on the hook for the 7 year old girls, every single person is there to love campers, even if that means discreetly picking up wet sleeping bags and having them laundered before “horizontal hour.” Every worker believes it is their job to love the kids in whatever way they can.Even if it means cleaning toilets or roping off the field for games later that night.

And the kids, even the little ones, can’t leave without understanding who Jesus is and exactly how much God loves them. I’m not saying it fixes all their problems or anything, poverty is a beast for sure. But for a week, one week, kids who otherwise wouldn’t get the opportunity, get to do summer. Not sit in front of the TV all day because it is too hot or not safe enough in their neighborhood to go outside.There is no public pool in South Bend, so for most of the campers their week at camp is the only week they swim.

Christian and I feel so, so blessed to have been witness to what goes on there, to be able to participate in the ministry. This is the first year we won’t be able to visit, even for a weekend. The timing of it all just didn’t pan out. I’m praying for the ministry this summer. And praying that the staff can see beyond the grueling hours and incessant needs of the campers to the investment they are making in the name of the Lord. It gets hard sometimes.

And if you feel so called…even if it is just a couple bucks, feel free to click the pay pal button on the Camp Ray Bird website. I worked in the office, and can honestly tell you that NO ONE can stretch a dollar like the CRB staff. I’ve got details if you want them. Seriously, even 5 bucks will pay for bait for fishing for a week. And by all means put them on your prayer list!