I See You

Sometimes, I think we just want to be seen. So, I don't have a lot to say in my blog this week (and honestly, my creative energy is much lower in the winter so I haven't had much to say these past couple of weeks). But I want to share these affirmations with you based on what I know my heart and spirit need to hear. Maybe they will wrap you up in the verbal hug, too.

You're amazing. Even when you don't feel amazing, you're amazing. Fearfully and wonderfully, God made you amazing.

When you don't do amazing things, God still loves you. When you don't feel amazing about yourself or the world around you, God still loves you. 

When people around you don't do amazing things, God still loves them, too. That's the thing about God. God doesn't show partiality. God loves unconditionally which is annoying (because it means we have to love as unconditionally as possible, too). 

When someone does something amazing, you can rejoice with them. Someone else's light doesn't make your light shine any less brightly. Comparison is the thief of joy (says Mark Twain) and the thief of imagination (says me). When we compare ourselves to someone else, we hinder our ability to imagine what we ourselves will do next.

God is more amazing than us. This is true now. It was true yesterday and it will be true tomorrow. God is always more amazing than us and the only reason we can use amazing to describe one another is because we can see our amazing God in one another. 

Remember it's February, and that means the days are getting longer and the nights are getting shorter. Cold weather reminds us to love warmly. Early nights remind us to rest. Fewer activities are a chance to recharge. Productivity isn't a good goal if it puts shadows on your heart. If you feel like your motivation is hibernating, give yourself grace. Seasons remind us that change is inevitable. Change is annoying. Change is good.

Sometimes, the "best you can" is all the world needs from you. Breathe deeply and remember you are loved.

24 The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not My Favorite Bible Story

I just finished a sermon series on the psalms. One of the passages was Psalm 69, which is a lament psalm that cries out to God for help (“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.” -Psalm 69:1). It was a tough passage and I told the congregation from the sermon that it’s okay to admit you’re not okay. And sometimes these hard passages in the bible remind us that it’s okay to not be okay.             And then there are passages that just…don’t seem okay. Those passages that you read and think, “Thank God THAT story never comes up in the lectionary!” In an article from 2006, Barbara Brown Taylor calls these the “terror stories.” In her article, called “Preaching the Terrors: When Your Text Is Bad News,” Taylor wrote that the Bible is “a book about a sovereign God’s covenant with a chosen people, as full of holy terrors as it is of holy wonders, none of which we may avoid without avoiding part of the truth.”             That hit me in a raw way because I had just
Read more

The Great Social Media Detox of 2018

Image
My iPhone does this new thing where it sends me a message once a week to tell me how much time I spent on the screen in the past week. It even breaks it down for me: how much time do I spend reading, or on social media, or playing games. I’m glad that most of the time seems to be spent reading and not playing, but still. Last week I had a screen time total of 28 hours and 36 minutes. Holy. Cats. I saw a picture that said, “Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to connect.” It was the illustration for an article on why taking a break from screens can be a good thing. The article got into different ways to take a break from screens, including a social media detox. Since I do read a lot on my phone’s Kindle app and use the map app quite a bit, it’s unrealistic to go cold turkey no-screens ever. But a social media detox? Now that sounded like a good thing. I decided I would take a seven-day social media detox: no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram for seven days. Monday I put
Read more

Prayers in Church: Just Some Thoughts from a Pastor's Perspective

            Every Sunday, we have a time in the worship service where we lift up prayers of joy and concern. It’s usually after the sermon. In our tradition, we lift up the requests and then I (the pastor) lead the whole congregation in a time of prayer that ends with the Lord’s Prayer (we say “debts and debtors.” I sometimes tell people to pray the Lord’s Prayer in whatever tradition they know and we debtors will wait for the sinners and trespassers to keep up!). It’s a unique space in the service that calls for audience participation. Some Sundays, we have only  a handful of requests. Other Sundays, we have a lot of requests. Sometimes people give very few details or just ask for specific names. Other times, we learn more about someone’s issues in two minutes than that person would probably appreciate us knowing. Because we are also a hybrid church right now, I try to repeat the highlights of the request so people in the back (and on the screen) can hear the request.              Aft
Read more