We All Worship

It has been said that we all worship.  In fact, it is not that we can worship–we will worship.  The question is, who or what do we worship?  People are already worshipers.  In the garden of Eden man and woman were created to worship God.  After mankind chose to sin, his desire for worship became perverted, misguided apart from the truth of the Gospel.  Worship never ended, however.

We live in a culture that is aggressively guiding our attention to worship.  Go in the grocery store, and magazine covers with “beautiful” people say worship me…  We go into a store, and things practically leap off the shelf saying worship me…  We work hard on a project, and the end result asks worship me… We get our pay check, we look in the mirror, we take a vacation, we watch a talk show…and they all subtly or clearly say worship me, love me, desire me, fixate on me…

Sin usually starts out subtle.  We are never passive when we choose to sin, but we can deceive ourselves.  We can slowly give our affections away to inferior things, piece by piece, thinking our attention toward them is very small.  But even a little piece of our affections that exults something over God in our hearts is idolatry.

It will be so freeing to one day be in God’s presence, no longer fighting against things that vie for our worship.  But God has not left us hopeless or defenseless until that day.  Because of the grace of Jesus Christ for repentant sinners, we are not slaves to sin.  We are not slaves to ourselves.  And we are not slaves to the world or our enemy.  We are not constrained to worship the magazine cover (we know we’re worshiping when we wish we looked like the air-brushed pop-star on the cover!)

The problem is, we usually try to turn away from worshiping other things by our own strength.  We resolve to be good.  We try REALLY hard, straining our spiritual muscles.  And then we grow tired, because we are still sinners.  We are frail and weak.  When we try to do it on our own, we’re just worshiping ourselves.  That is one of the sneakiest tactics the devil uses.  Getting our attention on ourselves, trying to be good and spiritual, is actually saying we do not need God.

So worship starts with telling God that without Him, we can do nothing.  We are nothing.  When we see how great our God is, and how small and lowly we are, nothing else compares.  Our hearts will see the things of the world (and the worship of ourselves) as dust that will blow away one day.  We will laugh at the absurdity we often live in.  And we will rejoice at how free we really become.

When Night Falls

I’ve been absent from Eve longer than I actually intended.  I really had not the heart to write on Eve these past few weeks.  One of the most difficult aspects of young adulthood is the uncertainty that lies ahead.  It seems like life is always fluctuating- or not fluctuating, to your disappointment.  One minute you’re afraid that your life will always remain the same (yikes…) and the next minute you wonder when things will settle down.  It’s like being on a tiny ship in the middle of the sea– when it is night.

My life took an unexpected turn a couple of weeks ago.  All my well-laid plans crumbled before me.  At first I was excited about what God was apparently doing.  After a few days, my excitement turned into anxiety.  I had deadlines that appeared as though they would not be met.  It was like a domino effect- one deadline missed resulted in another missed for me or for someone else.  I was afraid that my life was going to remain in the darkness of uncertainty indefinitely.  Reason told me that was a stupid thought, but sometimes our feelings tell us different things.

As with a lot of things that have happened over the past year, I would never have chosen any of them.  I’m glad God does not ask us before He does things.  I would always say no when it involves pain or fear.  But that is because I do not see what He sees.  In difficult times I only see confusion; He sees things clearly, for our good and His glory, from the beginning to the end of it. 

All though the darkness has lifted, much to my relief, life consists of dark and light times.  We do not get to ask for when they happen.  We usually do not understand in the night time.  We feel around us to make sense of things, but usually things make little sense in the dark.  So we have to wait.  And trust.  Even when it is frightening and difficult.

While I was sitting in the dark last week, wondering what was going on, I did begin to sort through some of the lessons God has been teaching me.  And I was amazed.  I wonder if I would have slowed down to really examine them if it was always light.  One of the lessons I learned was that I always assume I know what is best for me.  It is good for us to plan–nothing wrong with that.  But when our plans fall apart before us and we are left with the little shreds, piecing them back together to present to God again may not be what He intends for us.  He may have something altogether different in mind.  He knows what is best for us.  We are all like my niece, going on three years old, who often thinks she knows what she needs and wants, but her father knows better.  He knows what she really needs.  She cannot really understand.  But one day she will.  As she grows, she just has to trust that her father is wiser than she is, and that he is good toward her and loves her.

It is the same for me.

Tis the Season…

…for sunshine, lemonade, SPF 15, and a good book!

But sometimes it can be pretty depressing to look for a swimsuit that does not look like it’s sized for your 10 year old sister.  So here are some websites that may give a shimmer of hope–enjoy!

The above swimsuit photo is Rey Swimwear

Layers Clothing

Lime Ricki

Shade Clothing

Lands’ End

L.L. Bean

dELiAs

The British Way

I have returned from my travels on the other side of the world.  I must confess, ideas I had about Europe were actualized quite differently while really there!  Things looked different than I expected.  People acted differently.  Things usually aren’t what we imagine, really.

But it was a great trip.  We hopped around to four different countries.  One of the many things I learned while overseas was that people are pretty much all the same, even if we speak different languages.  We laugh at the same things.  We’re amazed by the same things.  We find many of the same things beautiful. 

I did intend to post a fashion blog this week.  I’m still working on figuring things out with the 1,000 pictures I took while over there…but as soon as I do, I thought it might be fun to look at fashion in a few spots around the world.  I enjoyed seeing it while there, and thought you might, too.

Because summer is pretty much here, fashion season has shifted.  We’re pulling out the short sleeved shirts and summery dresses.  Summer billboards were abundant over in Europe, just like they are over here.  Many think we have too much advertising over here, which is true in my opinion.  But Europe is much the same.  Paris has the billboards of half dressed (sometimes less- pornography is more out in the open over there) models, over done makeup, excessively expensive clothing.  London did, too.  But London really intrigued me.

The metro in London had plenty of those ads on the walls, but once I was out in the big city, I began to realize that many women ignored the billboards.  London women have a very distinct style.  Generally, I stuck out like a sore thumb because of my brighter colored clothing.  They like nuetrals and blacks.  They wear tall boots that look like they are going horseback riding, sometimes with jeans, sometimes with skirts.  They were not excessively tanned.  Their faces were not overdone with makeup like the ads, nor were their teeth unusually white.  They just seemed to be.  They weren’t any less happy than American women.  In fact, they may have been more happy. 

Of course, this was all from observation.  England, like America, is far from perfect.  But I was charmed by their love of simplicity, their disinterest in striving to be the most beautiful, the most skinny, the most…[fill in the blank].  They were fashionable and lovely, but not competitive.  They were intelligent, not yelling or trying to draw attention. 

It was refreshing.  Inspiring, really.

 

(Picture above is in Stratford, England)

A Little Rest and Relaxation!

Eve is on holiday for the month of May!  I am going to be doing a bit of traveling, so I will be taking a break from Eve.  I’ll be back in June!  Please come back and check in then!

A Year Behind Me

Thursday was the last day of school for my students.  Short year, I know.  Since the school runs on a college model, my students finish around the time colleges wind down.  The last month of classes went by rapidly, and then suddenly the year was over.  I have been thinking about the things I have learned this year, my first year away from school books myself.

One thing I did learn is that teachers are perennial students.  There is always something new to learn, something else academic that can be added to the info “bank” of your mind if you’re a teacher.  Sometimes it is overwhelming.  There were times when I was asked a question that I really had no idea what the answer was.  But if I stayed ahead of the game, I could anticipate such questions.  I learned that about halfway through the school year.  When I was making lesson plans I would sit in front of my computer and think to myself, “What is the kind of question so-and-so is probably going to ask me?”  It often worked.  But I had to put study time in to gather more info on the subjects I teach.  Most of us think college is supposed to do that completely for us, but it is pretty amazing how much is forgotten a few months after graduation.

I also learned to say no.  My personality is pretty much the opposite of “no.”  I can be easily persuaded.  High-schoolers sniff that out the moment they meet a teacher.  So I had to learn to be firm this year and sometimes painfully honest with a student when they were not doing what they were told.  I had to learn to confront, which goes under the category of saying “no.”  I started out the year by sending my woes to the office, but I ended it by learning to take care of it myself.  I learned that there will be students who just do not like me very much.  And that’s okay.  It’s okay for them to think I’m too strict.  Usually they think I’m too nice.  I learned that I’m not doing them any favors by favoring them when they do wrong.  The same with parents of students.

I think one of the biggest lessons I learned this year while teaching is that teaching is not just about a subject like history.  Some of the lessons students will remember the most might just be that F on a paper for plagairism (I had to force my right hand to write F on a few papers because I’m too much of a softy…)  It might be learning how to give when they get nothing in return…or learning how to confront those who cheat them…or being thankful for their parents…or…

And I have been reminded again and again that God does give grace, and He uses us even when we cannot see it, even when we feel like maybe our efforts are in vain.  I have to learn that instead of thinking about whether I was just wasting my breath, to simply serve God and let that be enough.  He does the rest.

I’m starting to wonder why I did not learn some of these things back when I was in kindergarten.  I was taught them, but there is a big difference between being taught something, and actually learning it.  Some lessons we learn the first time- but we have to learn them at a whole new level again and again.  Next year there will be new lessons, but I have that, no doubt, everything I have written above will be learned all over again in a new, deeper way.

Letting Go

“There is no grace for our imaginations.”  Elisabeth Elliot

Most of the fear we have, we have because we are assuming the future.  Instead of letting God do what He pleases and simply following, we want to wrestle for a life map that does not materially exist.  We want all of the details before we will venture out with God into the unknown.  But we are hushed when we reflect upon Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God…”

Be still.  All striving ceases in the realization that God is who He says He is.  He created the cosmos.  He knows the cure for cancer- He has known it before there was cancer.  (And let’s not forget the Swine Flu that has many of us worriers panicking.)  He sees the joy and the suffering every day- every day that has been and ever will be, before those days were.  He is greater than all suffering, and the source of all joy.  He is greater than death.  It flees away in the shadow of the cross.  He is greater than our life, which is just a fleeting moment.  He gives grace when we need it.  He can handle tomorrow for us.  You see, it is not whether He can handle it…it is whether we can let go of clenching our hands.

Risking It

When I was a child, one of my favorite fictional characters was Tom Sawyer.  I even had a wooden sling shot from Hannibal, Missouri.  I shot a hole in the garage window with it one time.  It was an accident, of course.  Some time after I got it, I lost it.  It became this great mystery to me where it walked off to.  A few years later I was playing under giant pine trees and saw it lodged in between the tree trunk and a branch.  I had left it there, and it had blended in and became one with the tree.  I remember examining it and being disappointed that the rubber band was dried and cracked from the climate.  Of course, I was older than when I first bought it, and I probably would not have done much with it, anyhow.  Certainly not accidentally shoot a hole in the window.

Over the years, my Tom Sawyer exploits became less and less common.  I grew to be a bookworm.  I became engrossed in school work.  And somewhere, over time, I lost that adventurous spirit.  I have realized over the past few years that I have grown too comfortable.  I am like the slingshot that has not been used- instead of being preserved as hoped, it just aged and became lethargic.

When I say adventurous spirit, I do not mean to do stupid, risky things (like walk on an iced-over creek to see if it would crack…)  I do not want that back.  I mean living fearlessly.  For a child, living fearlessly comes from naivete, usually.  Children usually have little to no concept of death.  And perhaps, that is part of our problem as we grow old.  Death becomes so overwhelming to us that we always want to keep it away.  We want to keep ourselves locked up safely.

Some fear is good- as in, being afraid of getting plowed if crossing a busy highway keeps you from attempting it (and prematurely dying).  Fear keeps us from doing foolish things that would make us a bad steward of our body.  Fear is not always a bad thing.  But what about when fear keeps us from serving God or serving others?  Then we can know it has become our master.  When we look at it in that light- that it becomes our master and we are it’s slaves to obey it’s whim- it does not seem so harmless after all.  It can take the place of God’s reign in our hearts–by us allowing it to.  It can keep us from serving God to the fullest extent that He desires to use us.

Often we shrug off certain services to God as though they just don’t “fit” us, but perhaps it is really that we are afraid of them.  We are afraid to reach out to that person.  We are afraid to share the Gospel.  We are afraid to travel here to serve Christ…the list could go on.  We have an excuse for each one, but God knows our real hearts.  He sees the cowardly Gideon in each of us.

So we have to really reckon with ourselves- is it wisdom and prayer that influence our decisions, or simply just fear?  The two are a far cry apart, but the latter can mascaraed itself as the first.  We have to be honest before God, asking Him to help us to differentiate the two so we can love and live for the Gospel more fully.  Christ is our strength.  We need not be afraid of anything when we have such a Savior!

Dangerous

“We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are “harmless,” and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are “sideliners” — coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!”

Jim Elliot

We avoid danger.  Not just simply steep ledges and jagged cliffs, but dangers that compromise our Christian “culture” comfort.  Oh, that God would make us dangerous!  What makes a saint dangerous?  Paul the Apostle’s life answers this question…loving and living for the Gospel.

Oh that God would make us dangerous!

A Gift that Helps

Sometimes it is difficult to shop for a birthday for someone.  You want the present to actually mean something, and not just be another set of earrings in the jewelry box.

Well, I stumbled across a wonderful organization called Jubilee Campaign.  They are, “A nonprofit organization seeking to help the persecuted church and children at risk around the world.”  I had not really checked out the website until recently, when I remembered that I had bookmarked their page around Christmas time because of beautiful bracelets they were offering.  When I returned to look more into the jewelry, I read, “Jubilee Campaign partners with Bombay Teen Challenge in Mumbai, India, to remove children from the cycles of the sex trade and provide shelter for street kids who are infected or orphaned by HIV. This jewelry and leather goods are made by the mothers of these children. They, too, have been freed from their lives in the brothels of Mumbai. Now rescued, these ladies design jewelry, a work enhancing their God-given dignity instead of degrading it. Rescued young people have gainful employment and are pointed to Jesus Christ’s love for them.”

So if you are looking for an unusual, meaningful present to give to a friend or family member, consider the Jubilee Campaign out of Fairfax, Va.  The page said the Jewelry were a Christmas offer, but I emailed and was told that they were still being offered!  Check out the beautiful work, here.

(P.s. if you order a $5 leather bracelet, and want it to look like the picture above, ask if they have all ribbon on the front.  Some are all leather and are quite trendy, but they do not all look like the picture on the webpage, so it is important to be specific.)