Happy New Year!
How will you be travelling this year? There are four modes of moving along:
a/ well-planned to the hilt
you already have your goals and plans, a list of things to do by the end of January. Some more seasoned travelers by this mode would even have included safety precautions and back-up plans.
b/ tumbling or drifting
you basically dislike to plan. after all, things don't necessarily go your way (before or ever); so going with the flow is just easier: no fuss, no fight, no fire (to put out).
c/ pushed onward
there are strong forces within you that propel you or there are expectations you know you need to live up to.
d/ hanging on to a string of reactions
you may have goals and aspirations; but in reality, your travel style is to wait-and-see how things turn. You can get red-hot mad or walk away, depending on how you feel you are being treated.
Most of us will be using some combination of these four. But there is a fifth way. It is the way of God's Grace. This way sits at the bottom of all other ways, it also holds and weaves through the other modes of travel. For most of us, most of the time though, we are only vaguely aware of this ever-present Grace.
Why not live aware and upon this Grace so that each time we sing 'Amazing Grace', it is a distinct sense of awe with specific recollections and not vague ideas about how Amazing Grace truly is!
The way of God's Grace is to live tethered to God and His homeward call to us. It is living with a sense of homesickness.
I am rather a person on the move, relishing new experiences and challenges. But whether I am out for the day or away for weeks, a special feeling surges up in my soul as i turn homeward. It feels like a homesickness. I have missed home and hearth. I have missed the safe, familiar, comfortable, 'my place' sense.
It is the well-rooted tree that can spread its branches wide out and continue to bear fruit without over-stretching or toppling over.
Where is home for you? A small spot of ground or a huge house isn't what matters. It is where your heart rests that is home.
God is our home - for those of us who are His children because we believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins and want to live for Him. We go home to God often and dare not run wild and distracted that we cannot find our way home to rest and be restored.
Kingdom is our home - for those of us who are God's new people, called to build a different way of living; we find home when we are among those who share this same dream of a peaceable Kingdom in our broken-up world.
I get homesick a lot like when -
I've been waddling in shallows making waves when I can say 'see ya later' to everything and everyone and go out to the deep and float free.
I am fussing over the stuff that doesn't really count or last and then a ray of Kingdom light and eternity shines across my shoulder and I need to turn my eyes to see.
I am busy counting my small pile of gold coins of 'have', 'need', 'want more of', and forget that's just pavement where I am headed - it's the wrong currency to trade in
I see a picture of grim need, an old wrinkled face, a broken-hearted parent whose child was here a moment before that shrapnel came whizzing past
I need to feel this homesickness. You do too. For in the end, we are pilgrims, travelers, aliens, a-passing-through. And it is this homesickness - our desperate need for God, our deep convictions of a different world, that will help us travel by the mode of Grace.
As we beat our own path to God-home and soak in Grace, our hearts and minds expanding with Him.
As we work out our salvation by living as saved ones, building a different world, and know it will never happen apart from Grace-miracles where our pockets, priorities and perspectives shifting from sand to rock.
So yes, Home-sickness is a good place to begin your 2014.
Happy NEW year friends!
a/ well-planned to the hilt
you already have your goals and plans, a list of things to do by the end of January. Some more seasoned travelers by this mode would even have included safety precautions and back-up plans.
b/ tumbling or drifting
you basically dislike to plan. after all, things don't necessarily go your way (before or ever); so going with the flow is just easier: no fuss, no fight, no fire (to put out).
c/ pushed onward
there are strong forces within you that propel you or there are expectations you know you need to live up to.
d/ hanging on to a string of reactions
you may have goals and aspirations; but in reality, your travel style is to wait-and-see how things turn. You can get red-hot mad or walk away, depending on how you feel you are being treated.
Most of us will be using some combination of these four. But there is a fifth way. It is the way of God's Grace. This way sits at the bottom of all other ways, it also holds and weaves through the other modes of travel. For most of us, most of the time though, we are only vaguely aware of this ever-present Grace.
Why not live aware and upon this Grace so that each time we sing 'Amazing Grace', it is a distinct sense of awe with specific recollections and not vague ideas about how Amazing Grace truly is!
The way of God's Grace is to live tethered to God and His homeward call to us. It is living with a sense of homesickness.
I am rather a person on the move, relishing new experiences and challenges. But whether I am out for the day or away for weeks, a special feeling surges up in my soul as i turn homeward. It feels like a homesickness. I have missed home and hearth. I have missed the safe, familiar, comfortable, 'my place' sense.
It is the well-rooted tree that can spread its branches wide out and continue to bear fruit without over-stretching or toppling over.
Where is home for you? A small spot of ground or a huge house isn't what matters. It is where your heart rests that is home.
God is our home - for those of us who are His children because we believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins and want to live for Him. We go home to God often and dare not run wild and distracted that we cannot find our way home to rest and be restored.
Kingdom is our home - for those of us who are God's new people, called to build a different way of living; we find home when we are among those who share this same dream of a peaceable Kingdom in our broken-up world.
I get homesick a lot like when -
I've been waddling in shallows making waves when I can say 'see ya later' to everything and everyone and go out to the deep and float free.
I am fussing over the stuff that doesn't really count or last and then a ray of Kingdom light and eternity shines across my shoulder and I need to turn my eyes to see.
I am busy counting my small pile of gold coins of 'have', 'need', 'want more of', and forget that's just pavement where I am headed - it's the wrong currency to trade in
I see a picture of grim need, an old wrinkled face, a broken-hearted parent whose child was here a moment before that shrapnel came whizzing past
I need to feel this homesickness. You do too. For in the end, we are pilgrims, travelers, aliens, a-passing-through. And it is this homesickness - our desperate need for God, our deep convictions of a different world, that will help us travel by the mode of Grace.
As we beat our own path to God-home and soak in Grace, our hearts and minds expanding with Him.
As we work out our salvation by living as saved ones, building a different world, and know it will never happen apart from Grace-miracles where our pockets, priorities and perspectives shifting from sand to rock.
So yes, Home-sickness is a good place to begin your 2014.
Happy NEW year friends!
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