five minute friday … learn

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To learn is to admit inadequacy. It’s to humble myself, to acknowledge that I am not enough on my own, with just what I have. Some people might look at that statement and cringe, because we’re supposed to be more confident and assured than that. We’re supposed to think we’re awesome and a gift to the world, to not let anyone diminish us or belittle us.

Yeah I don’t agree. I mean, I have talents and a few good qualities, sure. But I know I’m not all that. I’m not the answer to anything, I can’t save anyone, I can’t even really teach anyone. And it’s not my purpose. My purpose is to glorify God, to be enamored of Him and live a life in affection for Him. It’s to not think about me all that much.

If I think I’m something special, if I think I’m enough, I’ll stop listening to God. I’ll stop learning and hearing from Him. Learning needs an open heart just as much as an open mind.

And I want to learn. I want to grow, to become more like Christ. I want to learn other things too, like calligraphy and how to use power tools and how to be friends with someone from a different background. But even then, I have to say, “I don’t know” at some point. Really, learning is just admitting the truth: there’s so much more than me.

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Five-minute Friday is the work of Lisa-Jo Baker and now Kate Motaung. It has become a group of bloggers who write on a topic for only five minutes and then share! For more information, go here. 

of what to do before you leave

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I started this during the last days in San Francisco, now over six months ago. I was pondering so much, grateful and grieving. So glad for the experiences and the people and the beauty. Mourning the impending distance between those things and me. And the unexplored things, the things I neglected to investigate. And actually, satisfied with how I did a few things.

So as a reminder to myself and to you, dear reader, here’s what I think we should do, right where we are, every day.

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Soak up the time with your loves. You will never leave a place and think, I spent too much time with my dearest friends.

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Be proactive about exploring. Take it all in. You are unlikely to leave and think, I learned too much about my city and participated too much in my local community.

Pray for your city.

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Make memories in your home. Use it for so many good things.

Dig in, settle in. You might have a plan for how long you’ll be here, but you really have no idea. Why not make it home? Live in this present place and learn to love it. That is how to be a good steward.

For now, this is your place – what will you do before you leave?

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on affection and anticipation

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Today I found myself feeling so excited for the new earth that God will make. For the unfathomable wholeness I will enjoy, among others, in God’s presence.

Earlier in the day, I looked at my wedding band and for some reason thought back to the day hubs put it on my hand. I felt again in my stomach that fluttery anxiousness, that joy mixed with fear. For it was a solemn and very good thing. And I wanted it so much.

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It is profound, in our relative ignorance, to agree to a lifelong covenant. To pledge ourselves to not only the person before us, but to all the people they will become – with whom we have never been acquainted.

To me, this is the very best kind of promise. It does not rely on emotion or circumstances or the other party’s actions or ours. It relies on the deepest love, the one displayed in a God who desires our nearness to Himself, despite our wrongdoing toward Him. Despite our transgression, this God made and remains faithful to an eternal covenant.

I get to represent a miniature version of that with my husband in a broken way. But there is coming a time out of time when the creating, redeeming God will make everything new, and in those days, we will be with Him, and He will be everything to us.

And what depth of community and joy and peace will we experience. And what light, what glory. And what beauty and music and health and life.

The yearning to be one with another human, united in covenant, ought to pale in the face of our desire for the fullness of God to renew the earth. It must be but a reflection of our hunger for knowing God in this present moment. No human has the capacity to satisfy us so completely, to set us at rest and embrace us entirely and eternally.

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Come, Lord Jesus.

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