Life may feel like a mixture of madness and mayhem at the moment.
Yeah, who wouldn’t say that 2020 hasn’t been one insane, unthinkable ride?
Waves of the pandemic are crashing not only the shore of our economic front, but rippling into every layer of our community, changing the landscape of our humanity.
Share grace anyway, not grief.
We’ve all been told — the pandemic isn’t a blip that’ll soon pass away — and in the maddening avalanche of reported new infections, there is a bombardment of daily avalanche of informations. No one’s to blame if we’re all victims of this universal confusion, discouragement, hopelessness.
Spread faith anyhow, not fear.
But how to embrace life when life isn’t exactly what you’ve signed up for?https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pw7TjmvI3lE?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
Let go of expectations…
When you’re that bone-weary crazy-idealist who once assumed that you’d always have the ruse of control when it comes to life — now slow — slow down long enough so you can still your life of all expectations, and hear Him speak.
And in the words of Parker J. Palmer embrace this truth:
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” Parker. J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)Tweet
Maybe sometimes not being able to tell your life where it should go allows your life to direct you where you ought to go?
When the pandemic or prognosis days hit your home a little harder than the usual, ask yourself:
How then do we want to live for legacy?
Who then do we still want to love well in the short time that we have?
“Mama, this hospital is like a holiday home to me!” the youngest darling of my heart remarked the moment she found out she was to be readmitted to the hospital the third time round.
I swept her hair to her side, stroke her long the way she submitted to the circumstance. Her attitude has a way of bringing hope into me.
Maybe drastic changes carve a place for your call right in the midst of your most unique challenges.
The nurses named her the happiest patient on the ward. She has learned to embrace days away from home and from school with the attitude of joy, and she reminds me —
Life in all its beauty and brokenness is a constant reminder of the things pleading for us to still own our life.
And then, to still rise to the occasion whatever that may be, and to acknowledge that nothing need to stand between our call and our Caller.
Perhaps we’re all called not to run from our challenge, but to rise to our present calling.
That this life is actually meant to be exactly what it is — broken, beautiful, beloved — and this is quite alright.
“For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults , hardships, persecutions, and calamities, for when I am weak, I am strong.”
2 Corinthians 12:10
This is what I keep failing in —
Experiencing that divine sufficiency that arises only when you feel like you’re without strength, and knowing that you can be dynamite when you feel the weakest?
David was a shepherd boy with a huge call to kingship. But upon his appointment, the Lord asked Samuel the prophet one question I ask myself too:
“How long will you grieve? It’s time to move on and go… fill your horn with oil.” (1 Samuel 16:1)
And He’s asking us the same —
“How long are you going to grieve? I want to anoint you today.”
The Spirit of God who hand-picked David is the same Spirit who looks us right in the eye and into our future. He knows what we are capable of becoming, in Him.
God sees David through the hardships that came with his call and equipped him right from his humble beginning, through to his battlefields, right into his royal throne.
He is the writer of your life and in those tender wake of the night He’ll cup your face and let you know:
He’s pleased with who you are.
He who knows you intimately, is able to transform you powerfully.
So we too can rest in our inadequacies, in our fears and doubts, and even in a world gone crazy — because out of who He is, we’ll become all we can be in Him.
The Bible says that the Holy Spirit rushed upon David from that day forward.
David’s first anointing wasn’t actually to be a king — but a shepherd.
His first mighty empowerment was to be faithful in looking after his lambs, because that was where he learned to worship out of his being, to grow his God-sized heart.
Who are the lambs in your life?
Because your lamb is more often than not, is an indication of what your calling is today.
And wherever you’re placed, whoever you’re called to serve, just know, Friends — you’re empowered, you’re anointed.