Day 2: Genesis 18-19

Sodom and Gommorah

First, a quick observation of the fact that Sarah DID laugh when she heard that she would be having a child. Good to know I would be in good company.

Back to S & G...to me, a story of God's incredible power to inflict his wrath. Fire and brimstone thrown down from his hands to destroy an entire city who was so overcome by sin. The idea seemed a little extreme and for a split second evoked an emotion that questioned this so-called "loving" God, but he saved those that were his followers (Lot and his family). Possibly a nod to the end of times portrayed in Revelations? Also made me think about how incredibly thankful I am for what happened on the cross, if it weren't for that one act, I'm fairly sure we would have seen this happen time and time again.I like that Abraham was brave enough to question God, not just once but 6 times. I don't like (nor do I understand) what compelled Lot's daughters to coerce him into conceiving with them -- I'm unsure of the relevance that has to the rest of the story, but maybe it goes into more detail in the next chapter...one can only hope for an explanation.Did I miss any important details within this story? Reading at 6am is a little difficult.

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Day 3: Yesterday I read Genesis 20-21 and really didn't get anything from it. But today I read 22-24 part of which was the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son.

I've heard this story a thousand times and it will never cease to amaze me that Abraham never once questions God. Isaac's birth was nothing short of a miracle, a gift from God, and now he wants Abraham to kill him? If it were me, I'd have a whole lot of questions, but I guess that just goes to show the strength of Abraham's obedient faith.

It makes me wonder what our lives would look like if we each took on the call of living a life completely surrendered to God. Speaking for myself, I have cried out to God hundreds of times that I completely surrender everything to him, but apart from those mountain-top moments, my life doesn't speak to that promise. We can blame it on our culture, our generation, the fast-paced world we live in, but when it comes down to it, we always have a choice. And more often than not, we choose to live within our own comforts than to live a life of reckless abandon.

If we are honest with ourselves, there is at least one thing, but likely many more, that we have been holding onto for fear of the unknown. Unfortunately for me, I tend to hold onto to my dreams and the future that I envision for myself. Letting go of that would mean being able to see what God envisions and the possibility that it might not look the way I hoped it would. What I am quick to forget is that God is the one who is put the dreams in my head, that they may not be exact replicas when they come to fruition, but will be close to the idea that was originally planted.

God asked Abraham to give up his son, what is God asking of you? Are you willing to sacrifice that?

30 Day Scripture Challenge

Well, it's official, I'm a slacker and apparently blogs are hard to keep up with. Nevertheless, my small group is starting a 30 day scripture challenge and emailing our thoughts on whatever we read that day to each other. It's only been one day and it.is.awesome. I love hearing what my friends are reading and the lessons that they're learning from it. In the spirit of sharing and accountability, I thought it might be good to post what I write to them on the blog, it's sad and needs some love.

Day 1:

This morning I read Genesis 13 - 17, part of Abraham and Sarah's story. I'll be honest, I'm confused a lot when I read the Bible only because there are a ridiculous amount of names I will never be able to pronounce and a majority of the time I feel like they're talking in circles and giving me unnecessary information. Nevertheless, underneath it all is a great story, it just takes me a while to process.

There were a few things that struck me while I processed this story.

1.) I can't believe a 90 year old woman is going to bear a child and a 100 year old man is going to circumcise himself.

2.) the amount of faith both of them must have had to be able to hear those words from God and not go running to the hills. I wish I could have been there to see the look on their faces upon hearing that news. I probably would have had trouble not laughing.

Somewhere in there is a story of hope. Whatever their lives were like before this, they could have never dreamed of what was to come. Putting myself in Sarah's shoes, I can't imagine not being able to have a child. God created women to be able to recreate, and while I know that there are women who don't necessarily have that desire, those of us who do would be devastated to find out we couldn't. She wanted to give Abraham a son so badly that she told him to conceive with her maid...I can't imagine this decision came lightly, void of prayer and calling out to God, so I can only assume that she was feeling a lot of doubt and confusion. But God's covenant to Abraham tells me that he hears our cries, knows our desires, and will do the impossible to make our wildest dreams come true. They're not always what we thought they would be, they're better.

I have an extremely hard time remembering this on a daily basis. I also have a hard time remembering that God is the ultimate comforter and knows when we need to be reminded of his love, and that's what this story was for me this morning. Yesterday was a really difficult day...what's funny is that work was relatively drama-free (with the exception of a few people getting on my nerves and my coworker having a personal crisis) but by about 3pm, I was ready to walk out the door and not come back. I was sitting at my desk, not do anything (because there's only so many times you can re-organize, clean and pretend to be busy), when I just had this overwhelming feeling of "WHAT AM I DOING HERE?" There are so many contributing factors to my general disdain for this job, but overall, I come into work and think about how much I don't want to be there. It's not a great feeling. ANYways, I'll stop complaining and get to the point...I know God hears me, I know that he loves me, I know that he has something better for my life, but I just might need to wait 90 years to get it. In the meantime, I need to be obedient and faithful to where he's called me to be at the moment.

"Hope is not a granted wish or a favor performed; no, it is far greater than that. It is a zany, unpredictable dependence on a God who loves to surprise us out of our socks and be there in the flesh to see our reaction." - Max Lucado

Getting Crafty

In case you were unaware, I am your typical domestic housewife...minus the husband. HGTV is my constant companion, my idea of a good read is the Pottery Barn Fall Catalog, and baking is more often than not therapeutic and rewarding. More recently, I've had the opportunity to get crafty and work on a few projects that had been pushed aside due to lack of time and making the move to Brentwood in May. Since I've been failing at keeping up with this blog, I figured sharing some of my projects would be a good way to ease back into it. Enjoy!



Really excited about this one. I have all these earrings that aren't doing any good sitting in my drawer, so I found this old frame in my parents basement and decided to make my jewelry a work of art. It was beyond easy: simply use a staple gun to hold the 3/4" jewelry wire in place on the back of the frame and VOILA! A handmade jewelry tree that also functions quite nicely as a piece of art!



Next up, another steal from the parents basement of treasures! An antique over-sized seat that was in desperate need of some new fabric. After ripping of layers of tattered and worn fabrics that should never be a part of your decor, I added new batting and recovered the seat with a simple cotton fabric. To match all my other furniture, I painted the frame black. The final product:




Now onto food! I have a slight obsession with cupcakes and cheesecakes, both of which I believe are to be enjoyed on a regular basis. Luckily, I HAD to make both desserts in one week making THIS girl pretty stinkin' happy! The first were cupcakes made for my co-worker's birthday who happens to love peacock feathers. The cupcakes were from a box, dark chocolate Betty Crocker cake mix with homemade frosting using Magnolia Bakery's fabulous vanilla frosting recipe, which I found here. Not only were they delicious, but fun and beautiful as well!


Later that week, one of my roommate's needed a special dessert, which is obviously code for cheesecake! The plan was a pumpkin cheesecake, however, not one single grocery store in the greater Nashville area carries canned pumpkin pie filling in July. Who knew? Our misfortune turned into a deliciously rich, extremely fattening, yet artfully beautiful success!
This Rasberry Cheesecake and all of its 2 1/2 pounds of cream cheese comes highly recommended!
And last but not least, a few cards that just happen to be some favorites. I've never gotten to make cards celebrating births and it seems I'll be making a lot more in the near future! The baby card is for my friend Sara in England who should be having the baby any day now and I couldn't be more excited for her and husband Adam!



There ya go! An update on my craft-centered life...and maybe a little inspiration for you to get in touch with your inner Martha Stewart.

Redirected Hope

I can feel my heart sitting at the bottom of my chest and it's been there all week. I'm quite sure that it's physically impossible for this life-sustaining organ to fall victim to sadness in this way, but if ever there were a time for it to start doing so, it would be now. Most of you have experienced this weight of deep emotion at some point in your life, probably in moments of significant personal loss. Thankfully, I haven't lost a thing, but unfortunately I can't say the same for thousands of others in and around Nashville, my home.

It's day 5 of what has become known as the 1,000 Year Flood, a natural disaster so unlikely that it only "comes around" every 1,000 years or so. Saturday morning, we awoke to severe thunderstorms, torrential rains and winds so strong they were producing tornadoes in some areas. Typically, it passes through and we're no worse off than the day before, but this storm was different. My roommate and I sat in our apartment, stranded, glued to Channel 4 news for two days watching as storm cells lined up one after the other ready to take a ride through Tennessee. Within 48 hours, half of Nashville was under anywhere from a foot to 8+ feet of water and it had claimed the lives of 29 people between Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky.

I've never experienced devastation like this before, but I've also never had the opportunity to be a part of a community that rallies around one another in love when the rest of the world is slow to catch on. Monday morning, I joined my CrossPoint church family to be sent out to homes in the area that had been less fortunate than I had. It's hard to explain the overwhelming emotions that poured into my heart that day, all I can offer are verbal representations of the snapshots in my mind. The roads that had turned into rivers, cars submerged to the roof, soccer fields that looked like lakes were all shocking. However, the moments that have been replaying in my head like a broken record are those of husbands holding their weeping wives, rescue workers helping families out of the boat that just saved them from their drowning homes, and sifting through the water-logged, mud-caked memories of people's past. Front yards have turned into open dumpsters full of furniture, dry wall and trash bags of ruined clothes. Police officers are stationed at every corner with yellow crime scene tape strewn from trees and stop signs, making the quaint southern neighborhoods look like war zones. You'd think after the third day of volunteering, these sights would be easier to swallow, but I have yet to stop the tears.

In times like these, it's near impossible to see the silver lining amidst the questions, fears and hopelessness overtaking a city caught off guard. Frustration can be intoxicating and often fuels the fire of bitterness and self-pity. In the words of singer/songwriter, Phil Wickham, "all you're left with is a tired and broken heart." Monday morning, as the waters slowly began to recede, I imagine these were the sentiments of many families and individuals standing outside their destroyed homes wondering, "What now?"

There's no simple, straight-forward answer as to why God allows these things to happen and I'm afraid we'll never understand how he works. But what if we needed to be stripped of everything in order to re-focus on one thing? What if through crisis, God was building our character? The past few weeks at CrossPoint, Pastor Pete has been leading us through a series called Shattered Dreams, which oddly enough resonates so deeply with our situation and honestly reassures my trust in God's perfect timing. Two weeks ago, we read the story of the death of Lazarus in John 11. Lazarus is deathly ill, so Mary and Martha call on the Lord to heal him because they know of his power. Yet,

"When he heard this, Jesus said, 'This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it.' Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days."

Lazarus dies while they were waiting on the Lord and everyone is left wondering why, if he loves us, would he allow this to happen? The story goes on and tells us of Martha's doubt, not in his power but in his timing. She knew that if Jesus had been there, he could have saved her brother. Yet, after all of this, in what would have been her time of mourning, she was able to say, "But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." She still had faith, she still trusted, she remained hopeful. Because of this, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. This is the state of mind that the people of Nashville are in today. We still have faith, we are still trusting, we are still hopeful, because we believe in a God who has promised to lift us up in our times of need and hold onto us through the storm. Though my time here has been short in comparison to most, I know without a shadow of a doubt that this community will rise above any expectations and come out stronger for it.

"God will allow suffering, pain, and crisis in order to detach HOPE from other things and attach it to himself." -Pete Wilson

Over the past few days, thousands of people have dropped everything and put their unaffected lives on hold to pick up the leftover pieces of our loved ones, neighbors, and strangers who were victims of the flood. Despite the fact that we've had a severe lack of national media coverage, our city has been able to come together in a powerful way to instill a small reminder that God is not absent from this disaster. Though he is in the suffering, the pain and loss, he is also our source of hope and recovery. It's hard to say how long it will take or if things will get back to normal, but maybe that was the plan all along.



***Nashville is in need of your donations. CrossPoint Church has set up a flood relief fund, go to www.crosspoint.tv to help today!

Broken Promises

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to be at CultivateHer, a women's group focused on developing leaders, not necessarily in business or the Church, but in life. We discuss things like discovering our dreams, pursuing them, and this week...finding confidence in ourselves and our passions. While I will admit to lacking confidence in, often times, a debilitating way, the words I desperately needed to here came from the 24 year old girl who was living out the dreams of my past.

I can remember the moment I realized that I wanted to work in the music industry. It was the end of my freshman year of college and I had just changed my social work major to undecided. My friend and I were at a concert, watching the stage hands run around preparing for the next artist when it occurred to me that these things don't just happen. A lot of work goes into the planning and production of each show, which is almost always a part of a larger tour with calendars full of performances. It was then that I thought, how amazing would it be to plan a nationwide tour and be an integral part of each show. For me, concerts aren't just the chance to see your favorite artist in person. Everything about the experience stirs my insides; from the kick of the bass that becomes your heartbeat to the melodies that you run through your mind for days after. How incredible would it be to feel that every night? From that point on, I was determined to make this dream a reality, and tried everything in my power to achieve it. It's hard to say whether God had put this on my heart or if I had to convince myself that He had, and to be honest I'm still not sure. Regardless, I packed up my car...a U-Haul and minivan with the help of my family...and headed to Nashville, to what was suppose to be my answer to prayer.

Although I didn't hear the story that lead Sarah, the 24 yr old from CultivateHer, to a career in the music industry, I listened as she explained her spontaneous move from the familiarity of home to her dream job in Nashville. Despite the fact that we had just spent a few moments talking about jealousy being one of the enemies of our confidence, I couldn't help but feel my heart sink deep down into my chest and wonder why God had fulfilled this for her, but not me. She actually described Nashville as the City of Broken Promises, which is so fitting for a place filled with artists, songwriters, and music business hopefuls who spend their days serving coffee and nights watching the ones who got it right, up on stage.

As I sat there, wallowing in self-pity, it occurred to me that God never promised me I would land my "dream" job if I moved to Nashville. He never promised a nice little salary, more friends than I could handle or a diamond ring on my finger. What He did promise was that He would never leave my side, His dreams for my life would be fulfilled, and His perfect love would carry me through anything. My life verse, one that has been a daily necessity lately, comes from Isaiah 43:1-5:

"Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba for your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, I will give men in exchange for you and people in exchange for your life. Do not be afraid for I am with you."

So easily I forget those words that are written on my heart. In the wake of these shattered dreams lies the reality that they are being broken by the One who we were so confident gave them to us. Peace and the ability to move forward come when we are open to the new opportunities God has in store for us, which I am certain are more than my imagination can handle. My dream to work in the music industry still haunts me on occasion, in fact going on tour is on my vision board! Thankfully, God has been faithful to open other doors and has led me to new dreams to pursue. Maybe someday they'll cross paths, or just fade into the background, but until that day I'll hold onto the promises that can never be broken.

-L

The Bystander Effect

Every morning at 7:05 my t.v. turns on automatically, I use it as a back-up alarm for my dysfunctional cell phone. Today was no exception. However, upon coming out of my sweet slumber I began to hear the words of the news reporter and was immediately struck with a broken heart, which isn't the best way to start your day.

In New York City, a woman was being mugged and a good Samaritan stepped into help, only to be stabbed while the thief ran off. Making only a few steps before collapsing to the ground, the wounded man lay on the ground for hours as more than 25 people passed him by, some even stopping to take pictures. Not one person stopped to help him or call emergency services and the man died before anyone could save him. All of this was caught on security cameras and now broadcast for the world to see.

(you can watch it here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/36776405#36776405)

The reporters described it as the Bystander Effect, a "social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present." To me, it was a modern day story of the parable of the Good Samaritan in the gospel of Luke:

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him." Luke 10:30-34

As I sat there, watching this story and recaps of other similar situations that have been caught on tape, I was overcome with sadness as the tears flowed down my face. If you know me, this isn't exactly hard to believe...I'm extremely emotional and sometimes cry during a good commercial. I couldn't help but wonder how many times we pass by people in need everyday without a second thought. I personally have never, to my knowledge, encountered this type of situation, but I have ignored the cries of the homeless and hungry more times than I can count. Are they no different than the man that has been stabbed? Jesus says in Matthew 25:37-40:

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

So often, we ask that our hearts will break for what breaks the heart of our Father, but I think we forget that He's listening to our requests and will follow through. Conviction is a hard thing to swallow, but I'm thankful for the opportunity to rest in His grace and the chance to take action, not ignoring the silent whispers of my Savior through the lips of those who need our love. Join me, will you?


No longer a bystander,

L

Just this one thing...

...Found this draft of a blog, just waiting to be posted. Thought you might like to read it.


For the past few weeks, our church has been going through a series called "Shattered Dreams", which happens to be coming at the perfect time for what seems like quite a few people. The first week we looked into the idea of control and how we cling onto it as if our lives depend on it, so easily forgetting that our dreams are not our own. This week, however, was beyond an explanation, the kind of message that makes it seem like God called you to his office just to meet with you and no one else, although I'm positive I was not alone in this.

I've shared with you a little of my own personal "shattered dream"; of the desire to work in the music industry and the illusion that because I was trusting and taking that leap of faith, God would hand me my dream job on a silver platter at a circus-like welcoming party upon my arrival to Nashville. After just 3 months of resumes and cover letters, I found refuge in the idea of throwing in the towel and moving home. Three months. That's all it took to feel as if I had been abandoned and cast off by the One who had instilled this desire to be here in the first place.

"And yet the truth is that God is most powerfully PRESENT even when he seems most apparently ABSENT." -Pete Wilson (my pastor)

It's so simple, God has promised that he will never for one second abandon us under any circumstance, yet we are so quick to assume he has when things aren't going the way that we had imagined they would. His PRESENCE should be felt in a powerful way in these moments of uncertainty. More often than not, I think we get lost while we're waiting on God's timing and fall back into our natural instinct to control and manipulate our circumstances to suit our needs. The tragedy is that while "we're focused on where we're going, we miss who we are becoming." -P.W. We continually ask God for just this one thing, convinced that it will make our lives more significant, whether it be a job, relationship, healing, etc. What we're missing is the person that He is creating us to be while we wait.

There have been many times in my life where I've truly felt abandoned because the dreams I had for my life were not panning out as I thought they should be. Peace and understanding is found when we realize that we can't always see the web that He is weaving. Uncertainty is no longer a word to be feared, but embraced. I've come to find that the moments I feel surrounded by chaos are the times when He is doing his best work.


"All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You.
You make me new, You are making me new."
--Gungor, "Beautiful Things"