Weaving

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     When I sit down to blog usually it comes fairly easy but this time I have started over many time. Tonight, I am still sitting here staring at these pictures.  I feel like I am meant to share these pictures and the story that is unfolding.  It isn't anything that I expected and yet it is consuming me because I see what it is doing for the people that have been entrusted into my care and I want to do my part in fulfilling all that God is unfolding.

    To be honest I wanted to do something for Lent that I had already done before.  I felt like it would give be the ability to be with my people during this season of Lent. I also wanted an opportunity to 'get ahead', so I turned to something that I had enjoyed preaching and teaching before.  This time I wanted to come at it from a different angel.

    As I prepared to preach on the Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus knew by James Bryan Smith the imagine that kept coming to me was a sense of


weaving God's character into our character. The entire book is based around falling in love with a God is broader than we could ever imagine. It is about shattering the images of God that hinder us from coming to him or from falling totally in love with all that He offers.  In the midst of the preparation the word and imagine of weaving just kept coming.

    The reality is that every single one of us has something that we would love to change...something that we don't like about ourselves.  It can be as simple as the way we look or as important as the way we respond to others.  It can be something that keeps us from experiencing or accepting others for who they are and trusting that they really care for us.  I could go on and on but the reality is that we all have that something....that something that we want to change.

     As we began our sermon series this past Sunday,  the scripture that came to me was from Matthew 11:28-30.  Jesus calls all those who are weary to come to him and he would give them rest.  I heard something that I had never heard before.  If I am to know the God that Jesus knew then God is inviting me to find rest in the stories that I keep hidden inside my head and my heart.  The stories that keep me from being fully transformed into who God has created me to be. They are stories that have been with me for years and that live within me brain telling me why I cannot fully change...telling me why I cannot be all that I am called to be.  The God that Jesus knew invites me (and all of us) to take a rest from those stories and hear a new story.

 God is inviting me to rest and step away from the stones that have been thrown and take up His story  
 of Protection.

God is inviting me to rest and put down the stories of failure and take up His story of conquering the
Greatest Giant.

God is inviting me to rest and step out of the furnace that feels like it is going to consume me and take up His story of Covering.

God is inviting me to rest  and to take His story of redemption and make it my story of redemption.

God is inviting me to rest  and weave His story into my story.

We as a people of God are not giving up anything this season of Lent, we are taking a rest from the stories that harm us... the stories that keep us from accepting who we are and what we have been created to do...the stories that tell us we are not good enough....

We invite you to come along with us in weaving your story into a new story.  We invite you to come along to weave God's story into your story and to take God's character so that you might weave His character into the world around you.




Comments

  1. Cheryl StoneFebruary 18, 2013 at 8:12 PM

    Interesting in that just today I was wondering what is the story that keeps me from feeling like I am good enough? And when I identified what that was, I went to "that story, THAT is the story that tells me I need to eat, because I am not good enough to be thinner anyway, so why NOT eat?" I had an intentional moment when I realized that that story did NOT have to be my story any more - that I could, I MUST replace it with ANOTHER STORY - a story of worthiness, love, and success. A story that turns me into a woman who was worth dying - and rising - for. A story that meant I WAS good enough, and I don't have to eat to punish myself anymore. So, without even realizing it, I was weaving along with you.

    Now, how to weave that into the world around me?

    ReplyDelete

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