There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth tremble before Him.

Tucson is in its greatest glory after a rain. And creosote embraces me as I step out the door into the bright, bright night sky. And up overhead is Orion and his belt, my favorite constellation, because it’s the one easiest to find.

Next week my ninth graders are going to start the Odyssey and I am laying awake at night trying to think of how to sweep them into the grand journey there and back again of a hero, of all those men and women who looked up into the sky at those three bright stars in a tidy row and felt place. And the heavens stretch up into eternity and holy beauty.

But there is another kind of beauty, d’un beau affreux, ugly-beautiful. Because God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo.  The hard discipline to number the griefs as grace because as the surgeon would cut open to heal, so God chooses to cut into my ungrateful heart to make me whole again. -Voskamp

And this is the true hero. The disinterested one who can see grace, give thanks, find joy in this sin-stinking place.

Because this one can see Jesus in the pain in the angry faces in the broken world because his or her eyes are fixed on Him. No matter the circumstances under the starlit sky.

What compels me to name these moments upheavals and annoyances instead of grace and gift? Why deprive myself of joy’s oxygen? The swiftness and starkness of the answer startle. Because you believe in the power of the pit.

Really?

Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan’s way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my daily walk than Jesus’ way? Isn’t it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? Then I choose–and it is a choice–to crush joy with bitterness, am I purposefully choosing to take the way of the Price of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective–more expedient–than giving thanks?

Blasphemer.

I am Hagar lost and afraid, and I want to step back, flee. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. Hagar and her son were dying of thirst with a well less than a bowshot away.

Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control’s muscle. Ah–power–like Satan. Do I think Jesus-grace too impotent to give me the full life? If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment–am I not ultimately rejecting God. Whenever I am blind to joy’s well, isn’t it because I don’t believe in God’s care? –Voskamp

Do you trust Me?

So I didn’t sleep so well last night on my hard little bed, mulling over how I can walk my students through this truth. How to listen to God’s whisper as we journey, to hear His voice, to see His face, and to see His face in each face not only around us, in the sweaty dingy-walled classroom, but out there as well, let the whole earth tremble before Him.

Well, that and trying to figure out my tangled Spanish class as well. Stumbling forward somehow.

To see His face in each one of these faces with darting, restless eyes, young bodies rocking back and forth in their chairs, furtively eyeing their iPhone flipped over in the center of the table, wondering what’s next, well, actually wondering when they will be able to make a dash to the vending machine for another bag of hot Cheetos.

My heart says to You, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

And this morning the round moon was in the West, sailing on an ocean of rain

Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good; sing praises to His Name, for it is lovely. Psalm 135:1

Focusing Prayer: God who knows me better than I know myself and who loves me better than I love myself and who guides me better than I can guide myself…in You alone I trust.

So I carried the question of trust to my ladies last night. The ladies who are faithful and honest and wise and have lots of their own stuff to mess with, but who are giving me every Wednesday night for as long as it takes. 

Because every which way possible God had been saying, “Trust Me.” And really, that has been the Big Question of all of this pain and upheaval and long weary nights and long weary days. 

Do you trust Me?

And I can look back over the journals from the Camino:

Whether I am curving up or down the road, the one clear thing is that I have absolutely no idea what lies ahead, except for His presence, and

But it doesn't matter, really, because He is faithful through the winds and the flames. And I have committed to follow Him. No matter what the cost. Which is a scary thing to say, as I have lived and learned in the past and

But then Jesus came, speaking of a peace that took root inside a person. This peace was impervious to any form of opposition. You can do away with the body, Jesus said, but never the soul. His was a radical idea: that all things start in a person's heart.

And the thing about these ladies is that they pause and listen well. And then they speak of one accord. And what they said last night was that trusting God might look different than I imagined.

And after I came home after some quesadillas and salad sorts of things, I picked up Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell.  And he too spoke of one accord, He and the Spirit, from his spot in the closet on a chair, just like my little closet here.

And Jesus is not about some golden gates and paved streets in the future, but right now. Salvation is now. Jesus wants to heal my soul–now. And as long as I am going and going and going I don’t have to stop and face the pain. Stopping is just so difficult.

Usually we can just go on. We put on the mask, suck it up (or in the Coverdale verbiage: pull up my britches) and keep going. We only change when we hit the abyss.

And last night the moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas. A huge perfectly round globe, preparing for an eclipse somewhere in the world.

And Voscamp has a thing about full moons, as being part of the joy of the LORD. Joy that fills her under the full moon is the joy that always fills God. This is His endless experience because this is who He is, beauty overflowing. Her moon wonder is but a glimpse, foretaste, of what God always sees, experiences.

He is not bound by space or time.

The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God. –Irenaueus

And this is what the ladies had to say last night, in perfect agreement with Bell and Voscamp and the LORD God Almighty: One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD, and to seek Him in His temple.

One thing.

And of course, my friend C. S. Lewis: We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

Yes, and God has beauty for me, me, created for His purposes, for His honor and glory forever.

Heavenly purity!

Blessed Emptying

Unreserved submission!

Through these, God is welcomed into the very center of the heart.

Everything is Yours,

Everything is from You and for You.

I no longer have anything to be concerned about,

I have no hand in the arrangement of one single moment of my life.

It is for you, LORD, to regulate everything,

Directions, humiliations, means of making us holy,

Perfection, salvation–all are Your business, LORD

Mine is to be satisfied with Your work,

And not to demand the choice of action or condition,

But to leave everything to Your good pleasure. –Jean-Pierre de Caussade

And my chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

And It might just look a little different than the long and winding road I have trod so long.

Amen.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

Fix my eyes on You.

Let us give thanks to the LORD for His mercy and the wonders He does for His children.

For He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:8-9

It is not easy. But it is grace to be able to pause in this silent wilderness to reflect. I pray LORD that I might receive Your purposes for this season, to be open to You Who Know My Innermost Thoughts. Let me give thanks.

I have been hungry and thirsty for so long. And here you are spreading the table before me. Take, eat, that I may understand. What are the consequences of my sinful decisions to the hurts of life? Let me give thanks.

What murky almost-dried-up cisterns have I been drinking from? What dwarfish blindness has turned Your feasts into mere stable scraps? How have my desires been damaged? Let me give thanks.

You are asking me this one question: Do you trust My love for you? In the depths of my being, stripping away all of the theological claptrap can I answer Yes? I know that even yesterday my heart raged as I felt like someone was patting my hand with platitudes. Let me give thanks.

Just one coin in my pocket

One coin to my name

Going to drop it in the offering box

Going to lay it on the throne of grace.

To sit at Your feet

And feel Your love for me

To listen to You speak

To know Your will for me.

I wanna stare into Your eyes

And see the love You have for me.

Your eyes that notice even a sparrow’s fall, are fixed on me.

Fix my eyes on You.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.