Heart Strides
We had a wonderfully over-romanticized week last week. They let us pretend we were on staff and so we went to Bible studies, outreaches, meetings, and fell in love. Well, I did. I fell wildly for those students who beforehand I had only kind of liked. I saw what ministry, Spirit-filled, full-time, Gospel-soaked ministry looks like. I couldn't believe how these people who had been doing ministry for years, whose numbers this year are disappointingly low, who are short-staffed and exhausted, still have such heart and hope for this ministry and the campus as a whole. And more than ever, this is what I want to be part of. And so coming back to Omaha, with 40% to go, as we share space with another family, actually hurt my heart.
My thoughts are scattered amidst fond memories, optimistic and bold prayers, depressing realities, convictions, and thankfulness. I want to write more often but I feel constrained as I miss the times when I felt like answers were flooding. I'm learning that I'm not in an "answers" season, and to enjoy the thrill of the questions left hanging in the brisk sky recently adorned with snowflakes, my favorite.
These are harder to write in question seasons, where I just take a few daily steps, where my day-to-day world isn't full of the adventures I'd hoped for (and others probably assume of me) but rather the mundane steps, but each recently challenged with the question: will this step be walked in routine or in faith?
I'm seeing what faith steps are, how they are different from the mundane, routine steps that tend to stomp through this season. I've seen them a lot recently, in the bold prayers of people I will work with (and praising God that people like that will be my co-workers) whose 10,000th step in ministry could easily be clouded by boredom and cynicism; I see it in the convictions of friends who are taking a step back from typical American materialistic normalcy and taking steps forward to rid their hearts of greed and to strip her heart from a love of things to a love of the King.
And we are beginning to as well. As I see people's courage, their unwillingness to let discipline turn into routine, into mindless steps on a path paved in blood by our Savior. We wrote down goals and prayed through them. I dreamt of finances pouring in and of getting to campus fast. We are praying for impossible, almost silly things because why wouldn't we? I have become increasingly more aware of an atheist's line of thinking, and I'm more convinced that our faith cannot be hidden in our quiet times, caged on Sundays, with scared prayers that only ask for the possible.
Impossible is who He is, it is His crazy theme, how He imposes Himself upon the world. It's been His method since He made this mind-bogglingly complex and beautiful planet, and since then permeated deeper into the complexities of our hearts, with the holiness of His character, and His beauty that puts this galaxy to shame. The impossibilities of His presence, His distinct Will to flood this place with His presence: first with an ark, then a temple, then a Person, and now a Spirit (seriously, if you haven't delved into this theme in the Bible, please do and be floored). Our hearts are flooded, He waits for impossible-seekers who realize the impossibility of His presence in their hearts, and thus their hearts cry out for more astounding, imposing, undeniable impossibilities.
If He's out there (and I believe He is, much more fully now), His signature must be written in impossibilities infused into mundane. He is in more than just the pink sunsets and the twinkling snow and the tenderness of my sweet husband. He is in more than just the gifts we enjoy. I think His specialty is in the faith-filled steps, in the ones who pray boldly because they can, because they have acknowledged the impossibility of His presence in their unworthy heart and think, If He can do that, what else can He do?
I miss my younger, wildly-more-daydreaming self. The girl who romanticized every day in anticipation (granted mostly in pretend) and expectation of what the day would hold, how that day was the turning point in some large story running through my head. Most of those head stories wrote a love story into every day (I'm partially furious with the Church's glorification of marriage but for the sake of time let's not go there), which has turned off my anticipation ever since finding my loving husband. But I think I am finding it again, with a new focus of anticipation for strides made for His Kingdom. Whether in the scandal of a meek answer to a harsh question, or in the bold Gospel told to a sinner, I long to be one of the children who walks in faith, not in tip toes but in strides that further His Kingdom in every corner of the day, with a Gospel-soaked heart and an expectant eagerness for how victory is ours and how we will walk it out, with strides of faith and the expectation of impossible.
My thoughts are scattered amidst fond memories, optimistic and bold prayers, depressing realities, convictions, and thankfulness. I want to write more often but I feel constrained as I miss the times when I felt like answers were flooding. I'm learning that I'm not in an "answers" season, and to enjoy the thrill of the questions left hanging in the brisk sky recently adorned with snowflakes, my favorite.
These are harder to write in question seasons, where I just take a few daily steps, where my day-to-day world isn't full of the adventures I'd hoped for (and others probably assume of me) but rather the mundane steps, but each recently challenged with the question: will this step be walked in routine or in faith?
I'm seeing what faith steps are, how they are different from the mundane, routine steps that tend to stomp through this season. I've seen them a lot recently, in the bold prayers of people I will work with (and praising God that people like that will be my co-workers) whose 10,000th step in ministry could easily be clouded by boredom and cynicism; I see it in the convictions of friends who are taking a step back from typical American materialistic normalcy and taking steps forward to rid their hearts of greed and to strip her heart from a love of things to a love of the King.
And we are beginning to as well. As I see people's courage, their unwillingness to let discipline turn into routine, into mindless steps on a path paved in blood by our Savior. We wrote down goals and prayed through them. I dreamt of finances pouring in and of getting to campus fast. We are praying for impossible, almost silly things because why wouldn't we? I have become increasingly more aware of an atheist's line of thinking, and I'm more convinced that our faith cannot be hidden in our quiet times, caged on Sundays, with scared prayers that only ask for the possible.
Impossible is who He is, it is His crazy theme, how He imposes Himself upon the world. It's been His method since He made this mind-bogglingly complex and beautiful planet, and since then permeated deeper into the complexities of our hearts, with the holiness of His character, and His beauty that puts this galaxy to shame. The impossibilities of His presence, His distinct Will to flood this place with His presence: first with an ark, then a temple, then a Person, and now a Spirit (seriously, if you haven't delved into this theme in the Bible, please do and be floored). Our hearts are flooded, He waits for impossible-seekers who realize the impossibility of His presence in their hearts, and thus their hearts cry out for more astounding, imposing, undeniable impossibilities.
If He's out there (and I believe He is, much more fully now), His signature must be written in impossibilities infused into mundane. He is in more than just the pink sunsets and the twinkling snow and the tenderness of my sweet husband. He is in more than just the gifts we enjoy. I think His specialty is in the faith-filled steps, in the ones who pray boldly because they can, because they have acknowledged the impossibility of His presence in their unworthy heart and think, If He can do that, what else can He do?
I miss my younger, wildly-more-daydreaming self. The girl who romanticized every day in anticipation (granted mostly in pretend) and expectation of what the day would hold, how that day was the turning point in some large story running through my head. Most of those head stories wrote a love story into every day (I'm partially furious with the Church's glorification of marriage but for the sake of time let's not go there), which has turned off my anticipation ever since finding my loving husband. But I think I am finding it again, with a new focus of anticipation for strides made for His Kingdom. Whether in the scandal of a meek answer to a harsh question, or in the bold Gospel told to a sinner, I long to be one of the children who walks in faith, not in tip toes but in strides that further His Kingdom in every corner of the day, with a Gospel-soaked heart and an expectant eagerness for how victory is ours and how we will walk it out, with strides of faith and the expectation of impossible.
Comments
Post a Comment