Possibility Rooted in Deep
If you ask Callianne what she thinks of Fall, she’ll tell you…very five year old animated with added twirls. She likes that it rains crunchy leaves and she can pick them up and throw them wreckless into the air and dance underneath until the last one hits the ground. She loves Halloween and Thanksgiving. She likes the start of hot cocoa nights and wearing pink fleece pajamas. You would think Fall was her favorite. But ask her about winter…Chicago winter…and she will moon over the snow drifts and huge puffy snow flake days. She’d glory in Christmas cookies and trees and lights and Advent. She would go get her favorite blanket and start singing Away in A Manger with interpretive hand motions. She would talk about her cozy mittens and handmade snowmen in the yard after sledding. Ask her what she thinks of spring. She’ll tell you in the same animated twirling Callianne way of her love of rain jackets and rain that makes puddles just for her. She likes crocus sprouts whose blooms lay low to the ground at first and dandelions…she thinks dandelions are the best thing God has made…ever. She likes sunny mornings and longer days. She likes Easter and you would think an egg hunt in a yard with little to hide eggs under was the best. Ask her about summer and it’s all gleeful pink watermelons, water features being turned on at her favorite park, sundresses and butterflies. Warm sun filled days at the lake. She seems to love every season she gets to be in. Now, as her mom, I could talk about the fear of bees and how the 90+ degree heat doubles with a five year old climbing you like a tree to avoid them. Or the sunscream application, which is aptly named. Or the chapped cheeks and freezer burned hands after the snow adventures. Maybe I would recall the countless skinned knees or fights over the soccer ball or the howls of lament when park time is over. Perspective can spin so easily. When someone asks you how church planting is going, or how it is in ministry….what is your first thought? I remember at one conference I was at a table with no one I knew and the lady to my left asked what we were doing and when I answered she said, “Do you still love Jesus? Your husband? Kids? If you do then you’re doing great!” I laughed so hard because it was so true…but it also wasn’t. I’ve repeated what she said in passing to others. Then it kinda became what I said only with more sarcasm and bite. My season wasn’t all that fun. It wasn’t feeling good or even purposeful often. People can be so very hurtful. My response slowly eased over from the joys to the difficult parts until it was mostly just the bee stings and the skinned knees and sunscream parts. Don’t catch this as if it’s not hard. It’s extremely difficult to reach around the people near you and love them and be church. People are slam messes….me included. And mess can be painful. I can’t deny that. But it’s not everything. It’s not the total….and honestly if we look at Jesus…it’s a smaller thing that grows more and more diminished as our gaze gets trained to him. I guess I want my perspective to be is one not so heavily vested in “Its hard.” But steady on rooted into “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” It’s not hard for God. Sustaining you…your sanity…your joy…your hope is not hard for God. But for you it is impossible. Building his church is not hard for God. But for you and me and our church….impossible. Changing hearts of stone into hearts of flesh isn’t hard for God. For us absolutely impossible. Giving purpose to our difficult days and cold, hard, desperate days isn’t hard for God. For you completely impossible. He is everything and it is by him everything is possible. Keep your eyes on him. Our only hope. Our only bread. We offer boasting in nothing but Christ crucified. Nothing. Spin it back. Take hold of that thought, that perspective on what God is allowing into your life and shift the view to Jesus, the giver of all life and breath and of all that you find in your hands right now. Narrow that gap of impossibility you have that presses despair into your bones and let’s open our souls up to the possibility in Christ. It’s not a pep talk…it’s the truth of who he is. His truth brightens the dark, hard, stressful places. Let him.