The blossoms of my bouquet this day…
PS:Join us over at Angie’s place to read more Mother’s Day greetings. Click on button below.
Category Archives: friendship
Paying Attention
“While he [Peter] was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” (Matthew 17:4-6).
I didn’t want to go to sleep last night.
Not because I was scared of the dark but because in doing so … in succumbing to a night’s slumber … I was concerned about missing something. A Jesus kind of something. A something that sometimes comes to us in the deep of night when the rest of the world has kindly found its quiet so that we can find our God.
Last night I tossed and I turned and I thought about God. He was there, ever present before me and stirring my imagination in incomparable measure. I couldn’t shut him down. I didn’t want to, so I fought it. Vigorously. Painfully and willfully, until I could no longer force my flesh to the contrary.
My sleep was fitful; I had the “groggies” and the dark circles to prove it this morning as I rolled out of bed to prepare my heart for worship. But it was worth it. Who needs sleep when Jesus is on the brain? Who indeed?!
I’m not sure how I arrived at my late night wrestling, but I have a clue. Prior to going to bed, I spent some time perusing some of my favorite blogs. I came across this one. Its author always makes me pause. She’s eloquent in her delivery of her heart and never ceases to stop me in my tracks and make me think. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh, but most of the time, I simply read and absorb and speak my whispered “yes” to her pen and to my God.
It’s not that her life is overly fantastic. Like most of us, she’s a “day in, day out” kind of person. Her life doesn’t live on the stage nor does she wear a title of fame and fortune. She simply walks her days and writes her thoughts and allows her readers to join her on the road. Even though we’ve never met, I feel the tug of the thread that ties our hearts together despite the miles and choices that separate our journeys.
I thought a long time about my friend last night … about the connection that we share and why her words strike a chord within me. And in the midst of my pondering, just as clearly as I’ve ever sensed the voice of God speaking to me in my spirit, I heard him saying this…
Laura pays attention to life.
“What? Could you say that again, Father? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
Laura pays attention to life.
“What does that look like, Father?”
Like details. Like pausing long enough to consider the noises around her. Like being willing to bend to those noises and to pay homage to the moment. Like wrapping up all the truth of a single encounter and writing its worth with all the tenderness a heart can hold. Like finding me in the details. Like…
paying attention to life.
“Well then, Father, teach me to pay attention. Teach me what it means to bow to the moment and to live my life with a richer understanding that you can be found in each one of them.”
And with that, friends, my night’s contemplation began. A conversation with God. A face to face encounter with the only God who can be known and who longs for us to feel the rhythm of his heartbeat as we go and while on the road.
Paying attention to life. It starts for us even as it started for the Apostle Peter.
“Listen to him.”
When we do …
when we stop our mouths from running and our selfishness from needing,
when we refuse our agendas their consumption and our preferences their pleasure,
when we silence our minds from chaos and our determination from willful control,
then we, like the privileged three, will look up and see our exceptional and only Jesus in all of his glory, knowing that we have stood in the presence of sacred moment.
Paying attention to life. Stopping long enough to pay homage to a single moment. That is when we will see our Jesus unfolding his extraordinary kingdom into our ordinary everyday. And to hold that? To walk the soil of that kind of sacred sowing?
Well, for that, my fellow pilgrims, I will labor to fight sleep. I will entreat a night’s wrestling in hopes of receiving a Father’s beholding. I will toss and turn and struggle to override my flesh so that I can take hold of the face of God and carry his glory with me down the mountain into the valley below.
Oh, that we would fix our gaze in intentional pause before our God this day. How he longs to show himself faithful to each one of us when we do. Thus, I pray…
Father, help me to pay attention to life; stop me, pause me, push me and prod me to my knees and to my silence until I can no longer see me but only you in your extravagant splendor and holiness. Embed your glory within my frame. Splash the truth of your living witness all over me until I’m dripping wet with you, Jesus. Forgive me for thinking that my words, my agenda and my needs, are more important than your presence. Break through the clouds this day for my friends, and show them your glory. Penetrate the enemy’s schemes to steal, kill, and destroy, with the awe-inspiring and conquering witness of who you are. Surround our lives with your presence, and then move us forward in obedience to share your truth with a world that needs to stop talking and to start paying attention. You, alone, are worthy of our heart’s pause. Humbly, I concede mine to your revelation this day. Amen.
Copyright © May 2009 – Elaine Olsen
PS: In honor of my friend, Laura, I would like to honor her with one of the give-away books, “Finding an Unseen God” by Alicia Chole. The other two winners (randomly drawn by my youngins’) are Joanne at Blessed and Sharon at Sit With Me Awhile. Congratulations ladies. Please send me your snail mail via my email, and as soon as I receive the books from Alicia, I will send them to you.
By faith, elaine…
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:1-3).
By faith…
Faith Elaine that is.
Forty-three years ago today. Easter morning. Father standing behind a pulpit preaching about life issuing forth from the tomb. Mother lying in a delivery room earning bragging rights about life issuing forth from her womb. Both having something to say in the matter. Both cradling the blossoms of Spring—a Savior and a longed-for baby.
By faith, both blossoms were received into the lives of two parents who longed for their arrival. One into their hearts; the other into their arms. It was a good day for Chuck and Jane for so many reasons. It was a good beginning for Faith Elaine for so many more.
In both the literal and in the spiritual sense, the cross of Jesus Christ has shadowed my steps for the past forty-three years. Regardless of my wanderings to the contrary, the empty tomb has been my haunting—my known truth and my accepted understanding all the days of my life. There has never been a time when I believed otherwise. Jesus has always been real to me.
My journey with God is a “by faith” kind of thing. A deeply rooted belief in something grander, someone Greater who keeps the ebb and flow of my days in check. Who simply says and IS, and therefore, is worthy of my believing.
There have been moments of clarity along the way. The well-worn paths to the altar of my surrender are stained with tears of deeply rooted repentance and understanding. Times when I have strengthened my faith with a more intentional and willing trust in a God who longs to consecrate my life toward holiness. But from the very beginning, my life has been filled a knowing perception of God.
I’m thankful for that. It’s been a gift that has spared me untold heartaches … of that I am sure. And while I’ve had some questions along the way, never have the answers (some obvious, some still awaiting their voice) swayed me in my belief of an unseen, yet profoundly “felt” God.
God and me … well, we just go together.
And lest you think it is pride thing—that somehow I think I hold the market on what it means to walk a life in complete faith and holiness—then you don’t really know me at all. For if you did, you would understand that it is only by God’s grace, only by this “going together” seemingly from my beginnings, that I’ve made it to my 43rd birthday with any “absolutes” in my bag. If God hadn’t presented Himself to me early on in my life, I’m confident that I wouldn’t be presenting Him to you as the Savior and Keeper of my soul. Why?
Because I love this world too much. I am easily enticed by its trappings. It invites me, tangles me, and has the propensity to hold me to the contrary of everything sacred. I know that we are all prone to our struggles along these lines, but, perhaps, there are those of us who struggle with it more profoundly. I am one such struggler. Accordingly, I’ve needed the grounding of my Easter morning birth.
To walk my life in the shadows of a splintered cross and an empty tomb has been to walk in Truth. It is the way of sacred pilgrimage. It has been my way, much as it has been the way of the ancients of old. The “by faith’s” of Hebrews 11—the Hall of Faith as it pertains to biblical history.
We don’t see ourselves there. Instead, we focus our attention on the names and the corresponding “stories” that are attached to those names: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses’ parents, Moses, the Israelites, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets, the martyrs. Indeed, a list of worthy journeys … all marked by faith.
But if we stay mired in their stories, if for some reason we think that their journeys hold the market on faith and that ours could never follow suit, then we’ve missed an important part of Hebrews 11. Before any mention of the well-knowns from our spiritual history, we are there … listed as part of the faithful entourage.
“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:3).
Did you catch it?
“By faith WE… .”
You and me, listed amongst the heroes of our ancestral faith. Why? Because we believe that our world was created by an unseen God, and that his saying so—his speaking it all into being—is more than enough to solidify our limited understanding into a rock solid faith that is worthy of a mention alongside the ancients of yesterday.
I’ve spent most of my forty-three years living by my middle name… Elaine. I’m good with that, at least in the temporal. But in the spiritual … in the way that my Father sees me on a daily basis? Well, I want to be known by my first name. I want my life to be rooted in a by Faith kind of understanding.
By faith …
Elaine lived, Elaine died, and Elaine rose again to see the fruition of her first name made sight and the fullness of her hope made certain.
It won’t be long in coming, friends. Maybe in this new year of life that I’ve been given. If not, then in a season to come. It matters not to me the day nor the hour. What matters to me is my confidence in its arrival. And by faith, I am believing God to be the sure and final outcome of my intentional and current trust.
I began my earthly life within the confines of a resurrection remembrance—an Easter Sunday morning forty-three years ago this day. I will begin my heavenly life with the same. With a resurrection of a new body in a new place where everyday lives like Easter.
By Faith, Elaine is going to get there. By faith, I pray you’ll get there too.
I love you precious friends. Thank you for sharing this pilgrimage with me. Take some time this weekend to find your name written within God’s Hall of Faith. If you know Jesus as your Savior, then you are there, verse three (write it down). By faith,believe it and receive with all the certainty of an Easter morning’s resurrection. I love you each one. As always,
PS: Many thanks to my Tuesday night Bible study girls for remembering me! You women have been so faithful to study and to live your God. Keep to it! (note the inscription on the cake…aren’t they awesome?!)
One
“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20).
We share an unlikely friendship.
He is twenty plus years my junior, having grown and currently living in a world that stands in stark contrast to mine. We don’t look alike, talk alike, or share any commonalities beyond the one that we shared over eleven years ago.
A classroom.
I entered it as his teacher. He entered it as my student. And while the year would roll a little rough at times, what emerged from our nine months of “doing life” together, was a budding relationship that continues to this day. Today, it doesn’t look so much like it did back then.
Back then, he sat in the first row, front seat (a good place for a kid who is hard of hearing and even harder in taking instruction). Today he sits on the other side of a computer screen.
Back then, he could barely write cursive. Today, he’s mastered the keyboard.
Back then, he was mostly concerned with his being the class clown. Today, he’s mostly concerned about his being God’s man.
Back then, he was my third grade student. Today, he’s a college student.
Back then, he asked me about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Today, he asks me about more.
A bigger more. Issues that exceed the rudimentary. Things that surpass the boundaries of what’s “allowed” within the public school forum. Things about life and God and about how to write a mission statement for a ministry that he’s beginning with the focus of helping young boys in their becoming of Godly men. Things like that.
It is my privilege to enter into his need for my “more.” Not because I think that I am overly qualified to do so, but simply because I’m the one on the receiving end of his questions. To deny him my time, my attention, and my tutelage is to deny my responsibility in the carrying out the Great Commission—God’s mandate “to go and to make disciples of all nations.”
My young friend is but one life within that nation. One amidst many. I am called to that one. You are called to another one. Never is our “making” of disciples an en masse kind of production. Preaching en masse is appropriate. Teaching en masse all the more. But corporate discipling, I believe, misses the mark of God’s intention—God’s model for how this sacred shaping is to be done.
God’s theology of the one.
Hear now what the New Testament Lexical Aids have to say about the word “discipleship” (mathetheuo) as found in Matthew 28:19:
“The action of the verb describes much more than the mere academic impartation of information; one is doing more than simply instructing a pupil in a particular field of study or aiding a student in developing a certain vocational skill. Rather, the word suggests (in religious contexts) the deep shaping of character and the cultivation of a world-view through a close, personal relationship between the student and the teacher. The teacher is a mentor par excellence who seeks to stamp his image on his disciples and thereby enable them to participate in his life. For the goal of discipleship is not simply the attaining of information, but the experience and enjoyment of fellowship.”[i]
Jesus modeled this understanding of discipleship better than anyone. Yes, He would feed the crowds, teach the crowds, and even die before the crowds. But more than living his life out loud and in front of the crowds, Jesus’ life was lived within the context of the one-on-one relationships that were formed as he went and while on the go.
Those are the ones that we remember the most … the ones that stoke the fires of our sentiment and understanding. Why? Because when we see our Savior pause for the “one,” it emboldens our belief in his willingness to do the same for us … to come alongside and to disciple us accordingly. With his time and his attention, and with his tutelage about issues that extend beyond our rudimentary in order to root our lives in his sacred extraordinary.
To stay as we are … as we were at the moment of our salvation … is to miss out on the fullness of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Thus, through the power of his Holy Spirit, God comes alongside to mentor us. He places others in our paths to do the same. He then charges us with the gift and responsibility to seed the equivalent in others.
One life at a time. One phone call at a time. One e-mail, one letter, one conversation, one “interruption,” and one prayer at a time. It’s a one-on-one kind of mentoring that exceeds our sometimes, en masse, preferences. After all, en masse reaches more. En masse is the stuff of accolades and building resumes and of seemingly doing more for the kingdom. But what is the worth of an en masse kind of discipleship that walks away and isn’t available for a hug or a prayer or a further word on a further matter?
I’m not dogging en masse. I’m simply saying that en masse doesn’t cut it when discipleship is required. Yes, it seeds the soil for further work, but if we are truly to grasp our role in God’s Great Commission, then we must be willing to put aside our en masse in order to attend to the discipling of the one.
All of us should have some “ones.” We cannot be all things to all people, but we can be the shepherd to some “ones.” And if we think that our calling is all about the masses, then we think shallow. Many can preach the kingdom of God, but rare are those who are willing to disciple His kingdom living into the hearts of a few “ones.”
Pulpits come and go, friends. Stages tear down and move on to another city. But the classroom of discipleship is always in session. It has nothing to do with platforms and report cards and the counting of sheep, but has everything to do with our commitment to intimate and intentional relationship with a few.
God’s theology of the one.
May we never get too busy or too big for our britches so as to neglect the needs of the one. Whether that one is a child, an adult, a family member, a stranger, or a student from days gone by, all “ones” matter in the building up of God’s kingdom. May our hearts and hands and feet be found upon the path of such a sacred and faithful “going” this day. It’s what our Jesus came to do. He’s charged us with the same.
Thus, let’s keep to it, friends, for the kingdom of God is near … closer now than it has ever been. My “ones” coupled with your “ones” coupled with your neighbor’s “ones” are the makings of a good party. And I, for one, cannot wait to see what heaven will birth accordingly. There is coming such a day. Even so I say, come quickly Lord Jesus!
As always,
~elaine
[i] Entry for “mathetheuo” from The New Testament Lexical Aids, NIV Key Word Study Bible (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1996), 1647.
Copyright © March 2009 – Elaine Olsen
PS: The winner of the Starbuck’s gift card from my UBP post is #38, Stephanie from Truthsharer. Congrats, Stephanie! Please send me your snail mail via my email. For all of you, may the truth and hope of Easter be present in your Sabbath rest as we draw ever closer to the cross and our remembrance of Love’s redeeming work! Shalom.
Ultimate Blog Party 2009!
I heard there was a party going on in town.
Not wanting to miss out on the fun, consider this my official RSVP to the largest blogging party of the year. For those of you who are new to my blog, welcome to peace for the journey. For those of you who are regulars, consider yourself invited. Hop over to Five Minutes for Moms to offer your RSVP and join in on the fun.
The only thing that would make this party better would be to have you, my blogging friends, with me at the table, sharing a cup of mocha and surfing the blogosphere alongside one another. Alas, I think I am the lone blogger in my neck of the woods, so I’ll manage the party hat and coffee by myself … sort of.
Blogging for me has never been a solitary undertaking. Instead, it has been an open canvas upon which to paint the words of my heart. And just in case you haven’t heard, my heart belongs exclusively to Jesus. Yes, my heart is also crowded with love for my family and friends, but my God reigns supreme. He holds the title to my “now” and my “next.” Thus, when I take to the pen via a blank computer screen, I cannot help but bring his truth alongside. There is no other worthy boast of these lips than that of Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I could try and pretend otherwise; lighten things up a bit so as not to offend anyone who might be stopping by for a peek. But in doing so, I would denying the essence of peace for the journey. Peace is not a concept and cannot be accomplished via a prescribed measure of steps. No, peace is a person, and his name is Jesus Christ. He has radically and profoundly interrupted my life with his grace and has allowed me his leading companionship for the road ahead.
I am undone with the gift for I am unworthy of such a lavish expression of eternal love. Still and yet, I humbly and gratefully hold out my heart for the receiving. Time and again, because of God’s overflowing love for me and through the life changing work of his presence within me, I endeavor to pen my thanks and his truth via this blog. To hold it as private … to hoard God’s love and his truth in selfish reserve … is to walk in isolation from the gift’s intention—a ministry that was always meant to be shared.
A Gift that was meant to be given away, not hidden away.
Thus, the impetus behind peace for the journey. I give it to you, my readers, as the best offering that this heart will ever make. I don’t always get it right; I am fragile and yet young in my understanding of all things eternal. Still and yet, my heart is in the right place, and my deepest desire is for my words to bless and honor the one true Word—Jesus Christ.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. … The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14).
He’s the one Word who has made all the difference to me as I pilgrim this earthly sod. Because of Jesus and his sacrificial surrender on the cross over 2000 years ago, I understand that this journey—these days of weary walking and a sometimes difficult hard—is but a passing through to my forever. In a time when things around me seem uncertain, I cling to the certainty of my God.
He’s real. He’s alive, and his Peace is available for the journey. Yours and mine.
May you always find Him here … through my words and in my life. You are welcome at this table anytime, and I consider it a privilege to walk the road with you, my friend. As always,
~elaine
I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment to receive the chance of a $15 Starbuck’s gift card. My prize isn’t officially registered on the UBP 2009, so I will be doing my own drawing at the end of the week from the comments on this particular post. Make sure and check out all the fine prizes over at the UBP 2009! Shalom.
If I am chosen as a winner by the UBP, my top three choices are:
#19 — $50 Target gift card from Shoot Me Now; #21– $50 Target gift card from Agoosa; #22– $50 Target gift card from Beginner Baby Blog.
If not chosen for these, I would also like #68 ($30 gift card from CBD), #91 ($25 Target gift card), and #123 ($20 Kohl’s gift card).