I'm so excited!!! Look what happened at our house yesterday!!! A random dude showed up on a tractor and tiled my garden. OK, not really, this is Charlie and his tractor. I covent his tractor. I can't even put into words how excited I am about this! The smell of dirt, the seeds that need to be planted, the pure enjoyment of breaking ground it just sends me into fits of hap-hap happiness!
This area of ground will end up being a place I spend quality time in. It will be a place of work and rest. A place to get frustrations out on and from. I will be on my knees, bending my back, lifting and toting and enjoying every minute of it.
I am glad that the season is changing and we are waking up from our longer than normal winter's nap! No, I don't know where my summer clothes are but at this point I'll work in my winter stuff.
This is also how God is working in my life. I have closed down and sealed up all of who I am. I have placed a protective barrier over the ground of my heart and have let the leaves of a past life pile up and cover what use to be there. But God is getting on his tractor and he's firing that engine up. I see him coming down the road towards my closed down, sealed up soul and I can't do anything but stand there and watch.
As he lowers that tiller down, it sits on top of my ground, and he looks over at me with a twinkle in his eye.
You ready for this?
Surly we can do this another way!
He gives the machine a little punch of gas, looks at the sky and says
It's perfect weather for breaking open some ground.
It's never easy, but it's always doable. Yea, it's going to require. . . me.
I'm excited and scared and right where God needs me to be.
I am enough, I am enough, just as I am, I am enough!
We had a rather quiet weekend. Well, it was longer than a weekend, more like Wednesday to Sunday kind of quiet. My favorite little people went to surprise their Grammie for her birthday and she lives in one of those states up in yankee land that begins with an "I". They drove up there, had a blast, and drove home. You know how that is, feels like you spend more time on the road than with the folks you go to see?
The bus came by and got Chloe, which is my clue to get out the door, get my charges so we can head off to school. I stepped out the front door, and there was Lily and Ryan walking after Scout the kitten, who had gone across the street. I stood there watching them, so very glad to have them within ear shot again. With hands on hips, Ryan turned and saw me. I held my arms out wide and he started running to me, so I naturally started running to him. Lily saw what was happening and she began to run too.
I'm the kind of person that doesn't get all crazy about kids, really! They are small annoying people that make messes and cry a lot. But…
These kids give hugs straight from heaven! God knew I needed those hugs so he sent these kids to me this morning! These kids are not like any other kids, they are my friends.
Thank you God for bring them all home safely so it can get back to normal around here with the yelling and screaming and crying.
I must be getting soft.
Faith of the head or faith of the heart? Which one do you foster in your life? I think for me, it started with faith of the head. I don't know when it really happen, that I had the Nicene Creed memorized, but over years of saying it every Sunday, it got into my head and I knew what I believed even if I didn't know why. This is faith as belief. My head knows what it believes, it knows what is true.
This has sorta messed with me as of late. Is it important to God what I believe in my head? As if 'believing the right things' is what God is most looking for, as if having the correct belief will save us. Believing the right things doesn't do a whole lot to bring about a changed live now does it? Look at it this way, you can believe the right thing and still be in bondage to sin, still be miserable, still be relatively unchanged, with very little transforming power.
What does faith of the heart look like? Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity, describes three qualities of faith that are rooted in the heart instead of the head.
Faith that comes from the heart is characterized by trust. To have implies a radical trust in God, a willingness to rely on God as "our support, our foundation and ground, as our safe place.
It's also characterized by fidelity or faithfulness. It's like the the faith we have with our spouse's; we believe that person will be faithful in their relationship to us. This kind of faith means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of one's self at the deepest level.
Faith that is rooted in the heart is characterized by a positive vision of the world. We tend to see reality as life-giving and nourishing. To live in faith requires a radical centering of our lives in God which leads to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see and live our lives.
Think on that for a little bit. I'll try to remember to talk about what I think faith rooted in heart looks like tomorrow. I'll give you a hint; it looks like action in service.
