windows and doors.

I’m in a dimly lit room.  No windows.  No doors. 

Sitting on the ground, I am content playing with my blocks. 

A few moments pass and I hear something, a slight draft hits me and I look up.  A man is there and a sliver of blue as tall as the room is revealed.

I’m slightly intrigued, but putting my head down I go on playing with my blocks.

As time goes by, the blue lightens and turns to pink, then a glowing orange.

I see the man now.

He is big.  Gentle and strong; he smiles at me. 

The sliver of orange gets larger as he opens the door. 

My eyes follow him as he moves past the doorway to a window and begins to open the curtain.  I am drawn to the beauty beyond.  I drop my blocks and scoot towards the window.  Outside I see a sight I have only before dreamed. 

The man invites me to stand.  I look into his eyes, and he directs my gaze to the room I am in.  I notice for the first time its depth. 

What I thought a cramped, dimly lit room has revealed to be a gorgeous library full of history, adventure, romance, and pain.  The smell is so rich, so familiar.  I am thrust into memories of long ago, and I begin to drown in the familiarity of it all.

The man calls me back towards himself.  I join him at the window.  Looking out the brightness is almost too much for me, but the beauty is so inviting. 

I hoist myself onto the sill, ready to jump through to the land beyond.  The man touches my arm.  His smile is comfortable and I realize that I want him.  I forget the room; I forget the unknown beauty of this world beyond.  The man has captivated me.

As I study him, he holds my gaze. 

We cross the room and I discover new things, at the same time remembering the old.  I realize that this room is my home.  When we reach the door I look out again.  Its beauty is as strong as the first time I saw it, but I look and see nothing I know. 

I begin to panic. 

I want so much to experience this beautiful world beyond. 

I see that the man has purposefully revealed it to me, but I don’t want to leave. 

I want to stay in this room forever.

He is here, the familiar is here.

I look up at the man with tears in my eyes.  Grateful of the land he has shown me, yet terrified at the thought of stepping into it.

He sees my tears and smirks, wiping them from my eyes. I understand that I am where I need to be; I am in this room, I am in his arms.

In revealing to me this new land I am seeing beauty.  The brightness has shown me that there is more to this room than what was being experienced.

 However, the door remains open, the window as well; their beauty a strong invite. But I am to stay with the man.  I want to stay with the man.

He tells me that he is not ready to leave the room yet.  There are more doors to open, more windows to reveal.  He invites me to get comfortable, to enjoy every bit of the room.

We will leave, but not yet; and definitely not separate.

When he is ready, he will take my hand and together we will venture into the lands beyond.  But until then I can explore the room in all its depth, looking out periodically to acquaint myself with the beauty that will someday be ours.

"There are basically two approaches to life: playing to win and playing not to lose."

IN A PIT WITH A LION ON A SNOWY DAY
Mark Batterson
Page 118

month one, book one.

Author: Mark Batterson

Chapters Read Thus Far: One

My Thoughts: This Is Gonna Be A Good Book

Page Number Quote Is Found On: Fifteen

Recommended By: Daniel Cox

Title: In a Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day

Quote -- I think the church has fixated on sins of commission for far too long.  We have a long list of don'ts.  Think of it as holiness by subtraction.  We think holiness is the byproduct of subtracting something from our lives that shouldn’t be there.  And holiness certainly involves subtraction.  But I think God is more concerned about sins of omission – those things we could have and should have done.  It’s holiness by multiplication.  Goodness is not the absence of badness.  You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right.  Those who simply run away from sin are half-Christians.  Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what’s wrong.  We’re called to chase lions.

Okay so here’s the “break it down into real life so that I can understand it” parallel:

So you may or may not know.. but I am not a health nut by any means!  When given the choice I will gladly eat white bread over wheat bread.  I snub my nose at whole grain pasta.  And will not for the life of me eat bran anything. 

I have tried every so often to eat healthier.. but always to my disappointment, a bucket of fruit didn’t give me the great happiness a whole box of chocolate cake could! 

So I’d eat a box of cake, and feel like a sloth for the next 14 days.

And so the cycle continued, try fruit.. get bored, eat cake.  Fruit, boredom, cake.. blah blagh blob.

I wanted to get in shape, but I couldn’t get the right foods in me to get moving.

So I sat there, unchanging and discouraged.

Likewise, I’m sure we all have sin in our lives we are failing to blow off.  We take those sins and hold tight to them, because they are too difficult to release.  But as we choose to hold tight to those sins, we may also choose to feel guilty about them.  So we try to release our grip on them, and like fly paper they just keep sticking to our greedy palms.  We see nothing but our sins and decided that since we are covered in fly glue, we won’t do anything.  We’ll likely sticky up anything we touch.

Well, Batterson invites us to look beyond the sticky mess, beyond the sins, beyond the blobs we feel we are.  He invites us instead to look at what we aren’t doing that God is also displeased with. 

Recently, a friend invited me to run a half marathon with her.  As she stood there with her invitation, I wondered if she could see that I was nothing more than a puddle of a person, eyeballs staring out from the box of cake holding me together. 

I figured she was blind and accepted anyways. 

I ate my captain crunch and met up with her. 

As we would wake up early mornings to train, I began to desire the healthier foods I had once snubbed my nose at.  As I consumed these foods, my performance improved.  My endurance improved and I began to crave the runs.  However, not once since I began training have I been burdened with the choice of choosing the “right food”.  The “right food” has just made sense.  It fuels me, I feel better, and that allows me to enjoy the run even more! 

I think the idea I am attempting to parallel is this: Setting your sights on the bigger run is not overambitious; it’s smart.  It forces the hand to feed you food instead of play with fly paper.  So stop trying to stop.  Just go.

books books books.

Dear Anybody Who Reads This,
So I have had a number of books on my shelves for who knows how long. Some of them half read.. some are untouched.. all have been raved about by at least one friend. Well, I have decided to change this!! Here is a list of 11 books that I will read by the end of the year.. well actually I only listed 9 .. if you could help recommend something new by the end of the year that would be swell!! Hopefully this will keep me stuck to my goal.

February ------- When Pigs Move In
March ---------- Velvet Elvis
April ---------- Sex God
May ------------ One In A Million
June ----------- The Screwtape Letters
July ----------- The Shack
August --------- God On Campus
September ------ Soul Cravings
October -------- Mere Christianity
November ------- I'll take a recommendation here
December ------- another recommendation

Love,
Bree :)

Colanders

Quick confession, this has been sitting as a draft for a while; but I think it is time.. if you read this I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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Ok. So pretend that we are all colanders.

God can be... sand.. or water.
The holes in the colanders are all the places/ways in life that God is using us to bring his glory on earth.

So the water is poured into the colander. But it is then immediately poured out through the little holes. It is not always at the same rate that the water is put in, yet none-the-less; it pours out. As we let God pour into us, we are capable of pouring him straight back out. It is a steady flow; in comes God and out he goes. He can come into us anyway that he chooses, and he may choose to flow out through service, investing in people, or any other way. It's a healthy balance.

However, I think that maybe in life we get distracted by how many holes that God has put in our colander. And as the distractions take over, we freak out and ask him to take away the holes; or maybe we just try to plug up the holes ourselves. The only problem is that we can't actually plug the holes, or get rid of them. Even if you pour the water in only until it is full, the water will eventually flow right on through the colander; it’s inevitable. You can try to plug up the holes, and you can put other things in the colander to slow the flow… so that you can keep the water in; but the colander was made to flow, one way or the other it will let the water out.

The colander was made with the sole purpose of
allowing whatever was poured into it to flow out.

Instead of worrying about how to make holes, plug holes, or fill holes; focus on how to fill yourself with God. The holes are there.. invite the flow!

a new word.

This compelled me to look up the definition of a word that is new to me.

I really like that word!! It seems to be that balance I’ve been looking for. That balance between bluntness, & nice (you know, the nicey-nice kind of nice that makes you wanna grab a persons shoulders and shake them?!)

And I like the idea of candor because when seen in a person; there is truth.

I think sincerity is the key. It keeps people in check.