Small fruit

Slow progress. I feel like that's what I'm making, up out of the deep dark pit that swallowed me whole in April. I see others making slow progress, too, and it hits me kind of like the sun on a 70 degree day. Slowly, the warmth builds and spreads, and yes, you will sweat just as hard as a hot day if you stay long enough. 

We planted a few tomato plants in a long-abandoned deck garden at the beginning of summer. They've been blasted with sun, never have seen a watering can, and are at the whim of every passing downpour or hailstorm. Yet there is some fruit growing on these vines. While we might have hoped for a huge crop - 20 tomatoes or so - we have seven. And we are thrilled with the seven who have survived the craziness of a in and out again hospital summer.

I know believers like these. Lots of them. They never will give a 20 tomato crop, but they are slowly moving toward the seven. It takes a lifetime for the fruit to be revealed. I've heard many Christians dismiss these believers, saying fruit would be more visible in their lives if they were truly converted. And then they refuse to stay around for the lifetime to see the drunkard, the gambler, the smoker, the adulterer slowly bear small fruit.

I spoke to my uncle the other day, and he talked about supporting his sons as they start their careers. He laments being able to be a help to his mother, now gone. He talks about continuing to pay down his debt of child support even though his sons are long grown. He has made many bad choices, and is plagued by their consequences, but He vehemently professes Christ and quotes the Gospel to you if asked.

Can a Christian be alcoholic their whole life and still make it to heaven? I think of the thief on the cross, the one to whom Christ said, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43) WHAT? Someone entering paradise with NO fruit? Then again I think of James 1:27, which says that religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. An alcoholic might never be unstained by the world, but he can watch out for widows and orphans. (or divorced wives and lost sons)

What do you think? Can you judge salvation based on works? How long would you wait before condemning the person who doesn't give up their bad habits or start going to church?

The horrible, terrible...laundry.

I have been known to tell my children that, if we lived in almost any 3rd world country, they would have 1, maybe 2 outfits. They would wear them all week and then I would scrub them down in a washtub, and leave them playing naked in the house while I scrubbed 6-12 outfits in the tub outdoors in the baking sun. And, if we were middle class, I would also have a maid.

Pile #1 of clean laundry

That's not how middle class works here. My kids have scads of clothes and I seem to be forever buried in laundry. I remember being a country kid with a healthy covering of dirt most of the time, wearing outfits 2 or 3 days at a time. Our social standard now is sparkling clean kids in perfectly matched outfits. I had someone offer me information about the food stamp program while in line at the grocery store once with my kids. Just because their clothes didn't match. And likely at least one of them had traces of breakfast on their face. Or hands. But still - you're kidding me! How presumptive.

Clean and somewhat folded

Trust me, lady in the grocery check-out line, I have lots of clean laundry. If you would care to come fold and put away my laundry, perhaps you would no longer be offering me other special services. You would just pray for me.

The dirty laundry is everywhere

It's as ubiquitous as say, floorboards. Dirty laundry has five places in my home but my children still lack the memory to put it there. A walk-through of the main floor sometimes yields 6-7 pieces of laundry of unknown cleanliness.

But God washes the picture fresh, shines His sun right through the linen hamper, glowing beauty up from the ashes of my messy home.

A little boy waits in the hall for his shots

God is teaching me to be patient.

One of His main tools is my laundry.

Both the clean and the dirty.

Just like the power of rain washing endlessly on our homes, our streets, all of our man-made structure, God's healing spirit slowly strips us of our "Good Christian" paint and we see the ugly gray concrete underneath. But that's not what we should see. Because now we are wearing the glowing white perfect robe of Christ's grace. Whatever chips of "self" remain are just clinging to the ugly texture of our gray concrete souls, unwilling to give those last pieces up, thinking that somehow they cover us. No, they just make us look silly, or strong, or "spiritual" or lost. Depends on the kind of paint you're wearing. I don't want paint anymore, I want the billowing white of Christ to cover my dirty curbs.

Cashier who reminded me of my Grandma

Once you understand that we can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:3-8 NLT)

That is seeing the world upside down. That is seeing beauty where the world sees ugliness. That is rejoicing as you fold each piece, attacking the endless mountainous work of mothering.

Now, where is my maid???

Overflowing grace

I just found a plank in my eye. (I'm sure it won't be the last.) At this moment in my journey with both my faith and severe depression, I have more trust in the clearly definable, like a palette of acrylics. Colors, amounts, which way the peaks pointed...I am having a hard time trusting the indefinable, the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God (I Tim. 1:17).

Don't let panic get you down,

How could we forget God's amazing love

Hear my tears

this is where

you'll shake the nightmares free

~Jon Foreman~

I've lived a long time believing that there would be some account or consequence for how well you lived Christ - bad decisions, bad consequences; good decisions, good consequences. The problem is that Jesus turned that whole paradigm upside down with His saving blood. In Romans 2, Paul writes that God shows no partiality based on race. Just a page later, in Romans 3, he again states that there is no difference between Christians when heaven come.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

Okay. Wait just a minute. I've known for a long time my good works did not earn me salvation (Ephesians 2:8-10). But I was pretty sure there were good Christians and bad ones. And equally as certain into which category I would fall when I reach heaven's gates. When God talks about my sin, I get two messages loud and clear. Confess and turn from the sin. And now it is "erased", "disappeared", "remembered no more". But that was just intellectual knowledge.

What I've never considered as that the richness of Christ's over abundant love for every person on all the earth may be so overflowing that it fills each of us right up to the top. No matter whether it filled in a small dip where a few sins are have been subtracted from a righteous Christian, nor if it filled in almost the whole cup for the believer who is missing God's will or deliberately disobeying it - the cups were filled!

I see Paul and Silas in the prison yard

I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

Lord it's all that I can't carry and cannot leave behind

So I think of those before me who lived a faithful life

And when I'm weary and overwrought

with so many battles left unfought

I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharohs court

I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad

I see Harriet awakening to the value of her soul

I see the young missionary and the angry spear

I see his family returning with no trace of fear

I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights

I see the sister standing by the dying man's side

I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor

I see the man with a passion come and kicking down the door

I see the man of sorrows and his long troubled road

I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

And when the Saints go marching in

I want to be one of them

~When the Saints, Sara Groves~

I turn today on the quotation of a prophecy fulfilled found in Romans 3: Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Today, a day in which I will surely sin, I am blessed because God isn't counting. He's not keeping track. There will be no favorites of Jesus in heaven. No "it" crowd. No cliques. I'm not going to be stuck in the corner barely dressed, flaws flaunted, while the faithful and righteous sneer at our shame while they walk by in spotless white robes.

In heaven, only one thing will matter - being in love with Creator of the universe. He will love us each equally and our focus will finally forever be on Him instead of His other followers. Let's turn this world upside down and quit counting the damage.

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Gratitude Journal, #602-648
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609. Wearing my own clothes
612. Emerging from the cloud enough to MISS MY KIDS!
629. Yellow theme to my mother's day gifts.
633. Stress makes me feel so alive
637. Facing Sunday and Monday, winning
640. Recognizing the difference between cultural lies and reality-based expectations
644. Brand new sand buckets and shovels = a day happily filled with kids digging