A New Harvest Member

Tim and I, holding baby "Grace-Grace"

Harvest Church's newest member, Hannah Grace Bailey, baby daughter of our youth pastor and wife, Matt and Kelly Bailey.

::happy sigh::

The name Hannah means "grace". (Ask me how I know...) Her middle name Grace means...."grace". I don't need to tell you what the spiritual heritage is going to be for a little girl, whom God has named, "Grace, Grace!" She will be a mountain-mover; one who begins and completes great things for her God.

Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.

Words Fitly Spoken

If you can, it is always best to read poetry out loud. Whisper, if you must, but hear these words audibly...they are musical, full of cadence and rich layers of meaning. And by the way...the word "reck" in line four, means "reckon"...think about...consider the authority and greatness of God.

Gerard Manley Hopkins has always been one of my favorite poets (if not THE favorite...but oh, there are so many good poets!) and this particular piece represents his best work, and whenever I read it, it gives me that totally happy, satisfied-filled feeling, right in the center of my belly...

The Grandeur of God

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)

Golden and God-Kissed

A gift of a golden, God-kissed day

That began by finding it hard to say, "I'm unavailable for now"

And we laughed until it hurt.

A gift on a golden, God-kissed day

Of purple geode, pottery, poodle candle, probably a Shetland pony

Had I wanted one. But I'm too busy.


A gift through a golden, God-kissed day

Zipping horizontally, soaring, hilarious, precarious

Dead-serious about living while we're alive.

A gift by the means of a golden, God-kissed day
Of Mexican in the afternoon, ribeye at night
And disposable cups toasting prosperity of relationship.


A gift up a golden, God-kissed day
Sitting in suspended animation, holding his hand, sliding vertically,
Peering intently at Mt. LeConte, visualizing the Next Adventure.

A gift. One golden, God-kissed day.
Darts, fizz, sorry for those who are so religious they intimidate the Anti-Christ
Reveling in being together, nothing more.

If this was just one golden, God-kissed day
Just one pearl on a strand of many, what will a lifetime of days be?
The Lord says, "Very good."

A Word Fitly Spoken...

I am one who feels she has experienced the goodness of God in her life, more than His discipline. I'm a trophy of grace. Goodness and mercy follow me, by design. The Lord does so many things "just for me" - things that typically stay "our secret" for many months or even years, before I share the stories. I am His Achsah (Joshua 15: 16-19) ...a daughter who boldly asks for, and receives, unheard of double-favor - as much, if not more, than any son. But I have not altogether been without long seasons (so long!) of being disciplined by Abba...otherwise, I would be an illegitimate daughter, and not an heir. The rod of discipline eventually becomes the "rod...that comforts me." I see a propensity in God, by His use of the rod in my life, to drive me through rough and frightening places, on into green pastures beside still waters, so that ultimately I can experience true joy.

Towards that end, I share this quote:

"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers." ~ M. Scott Peck

Sarah...

This is my other first-born daughter, Sarah. (Her identical twin is Hannah...) She's the one who went to Cambodia recently...and the picture you see above, perfectly captures her spirit ~ "I Love Fun!" and "Have Backpack, Will Travel."



This girl of mine lives for adventure. She is known in these parts for outworking the men on many-a-job-site. Currently, she is learning the ropes of the home construction industry, with hopes to one day have the skills to build (or oversee the building of) homes and churches and simple structures, in any nation on this spinning earth.



But she's all girl, too. She can't stand to wear her hair too short, and if you open her closet, the shoes...pairs upon pairs upon pairs....come tumbling out in colors and styles galore. Yet, day after day, she leaves the house in old tennis shoes, and all that hair slapped up into the cutest messy bun you ever saw. You see...for all the shoes, our Sarah isn't overly fashion forward, a trait her family takes great delight in teasing her about - which brings me to another of her defining characteristics: her thick skin.



Sarah can take a joke, a correction, and even a personal afront with a greater amount of calm and class than most young women I know. She simply will not get her knickers in a knot over small stuff, and to Sarah, it is almost all small stuff. She's courageous, that girl is. Strong. Tough. She can travel to the other side of the world, eat what is set before her there, ride elephants and motorcycles, and scrub nasty toilets in foreign lands without batting an eye. High maintenence, she definitely is not....well, when she doesn't want to be.



She has a laugh that can charm the meanest snake, and a smile that makes her eyes disappear, the corners of them crinkling in contagious delight.



She's recently begun classes at Trinity's College of Ministry (http://www.trinitycollegeofministry.org/ ) with an eye towards completing the missions track....these days you often see her with a book or her laptop, puzzling over Old Testament geography, or the meaning of grace. This, I love. As I watch God form her (often in the fire) into who He has planned for her to be, my heart cannot help but swell with Motherly Pride.



I know she'll be leaving us one day - either for Timbuktoo or a man. Or both. But "won't you smile awhile for me, Sarah?" Being your mom has been pure joy....

More Grace, Whenever You Need It...

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:16)

(me...utterly enjoying more grace....)

I remember, in my twenties, becoming paralyzed by the teaching of a man I deeply respected. (A man no longer in my circle of associations...I do not know what has become of him.) He preached, passionately, that we've been given all we need in Christ. He very convincingly presented a gospel that declares a work having already been exceedingly and abundantly and completely done at the cross.

While every word of that is true, I then somehow came away with the wrong idea. I don't know if what I "got" from his radical sermons was what he meant for me to get - but what I heard was that the call of Christ was the call to come and die daily, the cross was all there was currently available to me, and thus I am to deny any personal desire to experience the love of God in fresh ways. The love of God was proven at the cross...what more did I need?

I've been years getting those concepts out of my spirit. In times of distress, depression, or even simple "stress", I have always tried to pull myself up by the bootstraps, and look at the cross alone. Right there, at Calvary, is my solution, cut and dried. I was taught by this great teacher that any ongoing revelation or experience of grace beyond looking to that cross, is entirely superfluous, and charismatic nonsense.

Well, now I know that we truly prophesy "in part". That was (and is) only a partial truth. It is truth, and it will need to be applied to our lives from time to time, and in certain situations. "Look to the cross, alone. It is enough". I have no doubt of it!

But the other part of the gospel is this stunning and ongoing involvement of the Father, in giving us "more grace". James 4:6 says "He gives us more grace." This verse is in context of our human propensity to sin. This verse is in the context of humility - God gives "more grace" to the humble.

More! Not some pre-determined, measured-at-the-cross, theologically correct amount of salvation. I can wallow in sheer over-abundance of moment-to-moment mercy, with more on the way in the morning. Not only that, but to she who possesses any God-gift, to her more shall be given.

Own the grace of God. Claim it with all the confidence in the Son's sacrifice. If you do that, more will be given. Utilize grace for every time of need. This is part of the humility that attracts "more grace" into our lives!

Humility comes entirely from an urgent awareness of our neediness. When I am most needy, most undone, altogether unable to help myself, God gives me "more grace".

"More" grace is Biblical! This continues to bring great freedom to my bound-up theology. God gives grace to help in time of need. This covers yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and it covers absolutely all reasons for my neediness. There is no qualification as to what sort of need qualifies for urgent grace. "Let us therefore come"....these words echo down through the corridors of history and time, and touch my spirit even tonight.

Let us come...today, tomorrow, and when we are much older. Let us come moment by moment, if we must. The more we come, the more we get. The only prerequisite is a knowlege of our need. Never...never analyze whether your need is theologically correct. Needy qualifies. Period. Thank God that He is delivering me from the paralysis of analysis, brought on by a zealous Bible teacher, more than twenty years ago.

Yes, the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Christ is more than enough. Forever. But you can experience something dynamic and fresh, in addition to all that unquestionable sufficiency. If your "time of need" is now, more grace is waiting. Go get it!

Liberating, no?

Dare to Fail More Often!

If we are truly people of faith, we must be willing to fail more often. If we fail infrequently, it means we are not acting boldly enough or lovingly enough, enough of the time. It means we are hiding behind walls of past successes and shrinking from present-day risks which will determine what is possible. Unless we fail on a regular basis, God will have insufficient raw material with which to work. It is from our haphazard efforts that the Holy One can sculpt works of art. So be unafraid. Dare to fail more often!
— Hope Douglas J. Harle-Mould