grace | Elaine Olsen

Living Stones from Brokenness…

March 2, 2009

“But as you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God, and precious to him—you, also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God acceptable to him through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5).

Last night, I had the consecrated privilege of being with the women of Kenansville Baptist Church and of bringing them the night’s “entertainment” for their annual ladies’ banquet. I had no idea what was “on” the menu, and I’m certain that they could have said the same regarding my contribution to the evening.

Each year, they gather in rich fellowship to enjoy a delicious meal served to them by the men of their church—men donned in their crisp white linen and bow ties and with the gentility to rival any star five maitre’d. The tables were themed and decorated according to individual liking—an unspoken contest of sorts. Some with the rich decadence of roses and gold and textured linen. Some with the more casual of camping and family memories and snowmen. All tables were immaculately laid with the finest love and care of heaven.

Kenansville, NC. Perhaps not the place that the casual passerby would peg for fine dining; still and yet, the place of its happening last night, and I felt so honored to simply be the recipient of such a lavish consideration.

During the savoring of delectable cheesecakes and while the coffee was sipping hot, I was asked to share the “word” that God had laid upon my heart. It was a hard fought word for me … one that had been working its way in and out of me for the better part of three months as I prepared for our evening together.

It is a word that has confronted me, challenged me, and forced me to a deeper point of understanding as it pertains to my place within the grand scheme of God’s breathing and extraordinary kingdom.

Becoming a “living stone from brokenness.”

To articulate the depth of what that “phrase” has meant to me over the past several years would take too long. Still and yet, I tried, at least for the better part of forty-five minutes. I imagine its truth to be a “word” that will continue its shaping over me in the days and seasons to come.

Why?

Because I, like you, live in a broken world where pain and grief and all manner of sufferings will occasionally be our portion. If not in our own flesh, then most certainly in the lives of those who share our tables and our pews. And while I’ve not had a bad life, I’ve had a broken one at times; I bet that you could voice the same.

The true measure of a difficult season’s worth doesn’t always shine forth in the immediate. That’s the way of brokenness. It buries. It works us and sometimes wearies us to the point of no longer believing that our lives were meant for anything more than simply “holding on” and “getting through.” I know. I’ve lived it, and I’m not so far along in my life with Jesus to occasionally revisit that view and hold it as my own. But here’s the truth of the matter—God’s truth, not the truth according to me and my weary worn flesh.

Living stones are the way and life of a resurrected heart. To be the contrast—to walk and ruminate in the death and dying of a rubbled estate—is not to take Jesus and his suffering for what it was … for what it continues to be.

Our ticket to freedom.

Not freedom from the carrying of our own cross. The cross is the way of the crucified life. But the freedom in knowing that it can be done, through us and most days, in spite of us because within us is the pulsing and breathing witness of the One who enables us to rise and live above the truth of our broken estate.

No one has ever known and will ever know the full measure of the brokenness that our Savior willingly took upon himself on our behalf. If anyone had a reason to balk at the weight and the carry of some heavy stones, it was our Lord. But he didn’t, and he doesn’t, and for us to think that Calvary didn’t matter—that it was all for nothing because somehow we’re still considerably burdened and wearied by the load that we shoulder—well, that is to miss the mystery and the truth of a living stone’s surrender.

When we bring them all—the broken and the battered stones of our past … of our now—when we surrender them to the foot of the cross and release them to the hands of the One who earned the privilege of holding them as his own, then we, like the living Stone, become the makings of an eternal kingdom that is meant to last.

Your broken … my broken, cemented and rooted within the brokenness of the cross, stands as a living witness and monument to the truth of God’s magnificent grace.

It doesn’t make sense, but it sure paints lovely. More than the eyes can see, more than the ears can hear, and more than the mind can imagine. An incomparable glory that shines with the fingerprints of God as he works our broken into his portrait called forever.

Living stones from brokenness. Our gift to God’s “kingdom come.” Our surrender to God’s “kingdom now.”

What a honor to offer Him my everything. What a humbling to be allowed to write it and to join alongside Him in nights like last night, when I am given the platform to speak it. May I never get over and beyond my awe of such moments. Thus, I pray…

Thank you, Father, for the gift of brokenness. For the truth of what it means to you as you work it into your kingdom plans and your living witness. I don’t have much to offer you beyond what I have lived, and what I have lived has not always been my best; still and yet, you ask for it, and your asking is enough to warrant my surrender in the matter. Make me a living stone, Lord; one like You that breathes with the story of Calvary’s grace and that sings with the melody of heaven’s love. Humbly I bow before your throne and thank you for the consecrated privilege of sacred participation in your kingdom. Amen.

~elaine

Running Above Our Average

February 19, 2009

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24).

I didn’t mean to find them.

They were hidden there amidst the accolades of my former season: diplomas, caps and gowns, tassels and cords, a Master’s Thesis, my first diary, my first attempts at creative writing neatly organized in a bright yellow folder. A banker’s box worth of yesterdays was crammed at the back of my attic and the purposeful intention behind my husband’s search a few nights ago.

I was looking for a high school photograph of myself. What I found, instead, was a treasure trove of memories. All of them precious. All except one.

I don’t know why I saved it. Of all the many gracious and tender mementos that I had packed away for future viewing, I’m at a loss as to why I kept this one.

A battered blue pocket folder filled with eleven papers that I had written for my Advanced Composition Class during my freshman year at college. All typed on onion skin paper. All amply marked with “red,” and all of them, every last one of them, crowned with the academic genius of a “C.”

Average papers, friends. The problem? I wasn’t an average student. “C’s” were not my portion. At least not in the academic realm. Life, perhaps a different matter, but when it came to grades, I made the grade. Needless to say, when I pulled out that memory, my heart skipped a beat as I recalled the disappointment that I had felt when receiving those grades over twenty years ago. And while my husband and senior son provided their good humored ribbing alongside their accompanying shock, I quietly nursed some old wounds that reared their ugly in vivid detail.

It’s been happening to me a lot lately … this retrieval of old and sometimes painful memories. I’m not sure as to the exact reason why, but I think that it has something to do with an upcoming talk that I will be presenting about becoming “a living stone from brokenness”—my life of almost forty-three years presented in a forty-five minute nutshell. And friends, that’s a whole lot of broken crammed into a very small window of opportunity.

I have my outline and pages of corresponding back-up material ready to go. There is even a scripturally based “formula” prepared for taking my listeners, even as I have taken myself, from a state of brokenness toward a state of repair. But for all of the words that I have planned in advance, for all of the preparations that I have put into this one event, none have touched me so deeply as the ones that have presented themselves to me in vivid and living color over the past few weeks.

Real people. Real situations. Real memories. Real brokenness.

And here’s what I think, especially as it pertains to those of us who are endeavoring to humbly walk our accompanying talk.

Whatever God is “working on” in us, whatever he is refining and tweaking in us toward his good purposes and our perfected end, this is the very thing that he allows to confront us in raw and unedited ways. At unsuspecting times and, yet, in perfectly determined measure.

I’ve come to expect God’s unexpected; thus, when it arrives, I have a choice to make. I can bury it, or I can run with it to see where Father God will lead. And since burying usually leaves me as I am, I am prone to choosing the latter because I’ve finally come to the conclusion that running with God is his intended adventure for this heart of mine.

Accordingly, I ran with my battered blue folder all the way to my computer on a prompt from my son.

“Let’s Google this guy and see if we can find him, mom.”

Within seconds, I had access to this professor who was responsible for the blight on my academic record and for my former status as “average.” On a whim, I emailed him, reminding him of my presence in his classroom and about the amount of red ink that he so willingly expended on my behalf. Our families were acquainted with one another. Growing up in a small town and attending the corresponding college dictates a familiarity between the “locals” that is rarely gleaned in a larger arena.

Consequently, I was fairly confident that he would make the connection. He did, and the next morning a beautiful and humble response was waiting for me in my “inbox.” He acknowledged his “fussiness” over his grading in the past and went on to thank me for introducing him to the second half of my life. He’s added “peace for the journey” to his favorites list and also shared with me about some of the personal pain that he is currently experiencing in his own life.

In return, I thanked him for his gracious reply and for the privilege of praying on behalf of his family. I did pray, and I will continue to do so. Why?

Because God intends for me to run with him wherever the wind blows. And just this week, it blew me backward and then forward again to land me in a better place of understanding—a holier place of perception that breathes with the living pulse of an eternal Father who promises to work all of my “things” … all of your things … toward his good and perfect end.

And that end, dear ones, is anything but average. It rates much higher than a “C”, and for the record, it carries the red marks of a Savior’s love who isn’t content to leave us as we are, but who bled all over the pages of our manuscripts so that we could carry him as the most treasured memory of our always.

Unexpected moments—the real and raw and perfectly timed occasions of doing life with Jesus. I’m ready to run. I hope that your heart cries out for the same. Thus I pray…

Keep us to our run, Father, and to our willingness to embrace your wind beneath our feet as it blows. Let not the brokenness from our yesterdays prevent us from our healing in our today. Instead, use them as your building blocks for our tomorrows—for the seasons that are waiting to breathe in fullness because we’ve entrusted our past into your faithful and tender care. Take it all, Lord, and use it for your glory—my history and my now. Humbly I offer them both for your gracious and completed end. Amen.

Copyright © February 2009 – Elaine Olsen

~elaine

PS: Just in case you’re wondering, Mr. Professor’s red ink was warranted. After reading some of those papers…

Have mercy! Shalom.

The Illusion of a Night’s Slumber … The Truth of a Day’s Awakening

February 14, 2009

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose…. The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’” (Acts 16:25-26, 29-30).

I was trapped in the dark of a school hallway. Lights were flickering, people were scurrying, and the trees were bending their surrender to the ferocious mandate of the wind. I could hear the rain pounding its cadence upon the metal roof above me. I could hear the cries of children as they tried to make sense of the surrounding chaos.

Imprisoned by the bedlam and instructed that my remaining as such would be the best option for my personal safety, I decided to wait it out even though a huge part of me cried out for my release to the wild and treacherous of the outdoors.

I didn’t wait long.

Instead, I walked the darkened hallway toward the entrance of the school and turned the final corner on my fear. When I did, my eyes opened, and I was greeted by the brilliant sun beaming its illumination through my bedroom mini-blinds and welcoming me to a new day of living.

Ah … the illusion of a night’s slumber.

What I thought to be real only moments earlier was but a dream working its way out of me in order to teach me a lesson about darkness and light. About perceived captivity and about the choice I have to walk free from its chains into the marvelous light and life that is mine as a child belonging to the Light.

Sometimes my freedom is as simple as a rolling over from my right side to my left. Sometimes, a bit more involved. But all the time, freedom is available. Never am I stuck in my chains. Even when I’m shackled by situations that require my surrender to an iron’s holding, walking in the freedom of God’s light is always my option.

Paul and Silas understood that option. They chose it, and in doing so, a great and mighty midnight happened upon a Roman prison cell. Doors were opened, and chains were loosened. And while some would have justified this mighty act of God as their permission to escape, Paul and Silas chose to remain.

Not because they didn’t long to be free, but rather because they knew that they already were.

Long before an earthquake released them in the physical, Jesus Christ had released them in the spiritual. No amount of dark and dank and torture of a prison cell could keep them from knowing what they already knew to be true in their own hearts—that the cross of Jesus Christ brings freedom to all who choose to shackle their hearts to its pulse.

And while the enemy is ever content and vigilant about stoking the fires of our perceived captivity, God is holy and perfectly content to stir us in another direction.

Not with the illusion of a night’s slumber, but rather with the truth of a day’s awakening.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1).

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Where the Spirit of the Lord was then … where he continues to be now … is with those who have chosen his Light over darkness. His truth over the illusion of a night’s dreaming.

God is not a figment of our wild imaginings. We don’t wake up in the morning and discover that he’s not real; rather, we wake up to the contrary—to the exponential manifestations of his presence in our day to day. Some have unsuccessfully tried to confine the person of Jesus Christ to the contextual isolation of a historical manuscript. But God’s Word cannot be chained (2 Timothy 2:9). He cannot be managed and manipulated so as to fit into man’s need to have everything make sense.

Rarely does the grace of Jesus Christ ever make sense. Instead, Christ came to shatter our “1+1=2’s” with his “One + our 1 = infinitely more than we can possibly ask for or imagine.” Indeed, this truth runs contrary to common sense, yet it is exactly the one truth that kept Paul and Silas remaining in their prison cell, even though an earthquake had released them from their chains.

They were waiting for the outcome of God’s equation, not theirs, and in the end, his answer came in manifold measure—

The salvation and corresponding freedom of a jailer and his entire household.

That, my friends, is the truth of a day’s awakening—the real and realized embrace of a Son’s illumination in our hearts and through our lives. We hold the freedom to carry that light into the illusion of this world’s nightly slumber. It is our high and holy privilege to do so. Thus, I echo the plea of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the believers at Ephesus,

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light … for it is the light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said, ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” (Ephesians 5:8, 14).

Wake up you weary and well-worn pilgrims. Arise and shine, for your Light is come. Today is the day of salvation. Turn and receive the truth of your glorious awakening!

As always,

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PS: I’ve posted this song before and am doing so again because it so aptly fits the truth of what I’m trying to say. Have a blessed rest this weekend. Be safe. Be God’s. And if you are confused about what that means … to be God’s … please e-mail me, and I will happy to pray things through with you. I love you all! I mean it.

A Worthy Knowing

February 2, 2009

*Please note update below post…

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

For all of the ways that we could spend our words this week, what is more worthy than spending them on the truth of Jesus Christ? For all of the things that we could share with the world, whether at home, at work, at play, or on the cyber canvas that you call your own, what is more important than the boast of Jesus Christ?

We will think of them … ways to spend our words and our time accordingly. Some necessary. Some less than. But when this time next week rolls around, we will have recorded a solid seven days’ worth of lip service to our life’s walk. And for all of the ways that our lives will require the investment of our words over the next week, none is more important than the ones that we will invest on behalf of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

None.

Yes, there will be those necessary occasions that ask for less—occasions that don’t call for the Jesus talk. But all of them, every last one of them, require the heart of a Jesus walk. When our “necessary” doesn’t require our words, we still write a story. Their witness speaks even when our words remain silent.

The Apostle Paul resolved to know nothing except the message of Jesus Christ. He was a learned man, schooled and versed in the pharisaical way of doing life. Still and yet, no amount of book learning could prepare him for the task that he was ordained to do. It would take something far greater, far grander and more spectacular to shape his heart for the kingdom mantle he would be asked to wear.

It would take an illumination from the heavenlies—a moment of brilliant awakening where the shattering truth of the “Word made flesh” would shatter the lie believed to the contrary.

Paul received his moment of brilliance, leaving him blinded by the revelation of just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular to forever alter his destiny. No longer would he rely on his formal training or his former understanding for doing life. Instead, his formal and his former would concede their pride to the new and humbled way of a crucified life.

The lifestyle that once earned Paul’s persecution and ardent disdain would now become the life that he would embody. And while we may not fully grasp the revelatory depth of Paul’s brilliant moment in the sun with the Son, if we know Jesus Christ as Lord, then we, too, have been called to a new and humbled way of living.

It’s a living that shifts our focus from me to Thee. At least it should. And if it hasn’t, if for some reason you’re still thinking that your me is bigger than your Thee, then may I suggest to you that a humbled walk under the brilliant light of God’s Son might serve you well this week? Not so that you can feel more guilty and more discouraged about your life as a Christian, but rather because it is time for the truth of Jesus Christ to take its rightful place in your heart and, consequently, in the way that you do life.

The way that you walk life. The way that you speak life and move through the paces of your day so that when you come to a week’s end, you do so being spent on behalf of something that matters rather than something that doesn’t.

Jesus Christ is that something. Everything else is just extra. Not necessarily bad, just extra. I don’t know about you, but I want my extra to be built upon something solid and real and lasting. Otherwise, when the extra fades, there’s nothing but empty. And friends, I’ve spent a whole lot of my life doing empty—investing my many words and my many doings in a way that literally says a whole lot more about me than him.

Time to grow up and to put the language of my childish ways behind me. Time to realize that my words are not my own. They were bought with a price, and therefore should be spoken according to the blood that was exacted for the freedom of their saying.

Thus, like the Apostle Paul, I resolve to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is the knowing that has shattered my world with just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular so as to forever alter my destiny. He is the foundation that I want beneath my extra so that when the world comes knocking this week my responses are anchored in the truth of who he is rather than in the lie of thinking that I am anything apart from him.

Without Jesus, my words ring hollow. My life lives empty. My light burns dim. My time spends wasted. My story reads vacant. With him?

Words come to life. Lives live full and lights burn with the intensity of heaven’s illumination. Time spends wells and our stories become the stuff of lasting and kingdom significance. And that, my friends, is the worthy ending of a well lived week. May we each one, walk toward such a sacred conclusion with every step that we take and with every moment that is ours to write. Thus, I pray…

Help me keep focus, Lord, on the stuff that matters. Fill my heart and my mind with the foundational truth of your gospel, and keep me humbled with the witness of your crucified life. Forgive me for thinking that I am more, thus assigning you your less. I must become less, and you must become more. Be the anchor that holds my extra. Be the fire that burns my pride to ashes, and be the Spirit that blows them accordingly … in line with your will and for your fame alone. You are worthy of my words, Lord. Sanctify them toward your mighty and perfect end. Amen.

Copyright © February 2009 – Elaine Olsen

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Friends, please be sure and join me all week! There will be some give aways incorporated into daily posts beginning tomorrow. Shalom.

A Spring’s Visit to a Winter’s Prison

January 26, 2009

“Then she called, ‘Samson, the Philistines are upon you!’ He awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free. But he did not know that the LORD had left him. Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” (Judges 16:20-22).

There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. Its buds and blossoms come regardless of the bleak season preceding its entrance.

Resurrection is the hallowed crescendo after the harrowing silence of a winter’s death—a season’s stripping that reduces branches to the bare and wide-opened embrace of colder winds.

It’s hard to think Spring when Winter continues its insistent knock. It’s hard to think grace when the consequences of sin leave a soul chained and blinded with remembrance.

Samson knew something of winter’s bite.

His life began well. He ended on the upswing, but the living in between reads more like a tragedy rather than the famed position given him in the Hebrews “Hall of Faith” (chapter 11).

God wanted more for him. His parents planned for more. But for “more” to be his portion, Samson would have to walk the plans of his God, and subsequently, of his parents’. And for all of the ways that he might have been faithful to those plans and to his covenantal vow as a Nazarite, we are privy to a majority of his “less” than moments. Moments that included:

- Chasing after all manner of foreign women.

- Gleaning honey from the carcass of a dead lion and feeding it to his parents.

- Exacting revenge via foxtails and torches, the jawbone of a donkey, and the sword of his own hands.

Playing games with God’s truth rather than honoring God’s truth with sacred and in reverent fear.

Indeed, some would argue that Samson had earned his chains, his blindness, and his mockery by men. Open rebellion to God’s ways always yields a well-deserved humbling at some point. I know. I’ve hosted my fair share of showcase moments along the way.

But to remain stuck in our chains … to assign ourselves a place of permanent shame and penance within the cold and barren of Winter … is to delay or to altogether miss the promise of Spring.

And to miss the grace of Spring is to miss everything.

Samson’s Spring came near his end. If you are one prone to spectacular endings—to the grandeur and polish of an epic finish—you’ll miss it. Samson’s resurrection didn’t begin between two pillars (Judges 16:29); it began in the dark and in the depths of a lonely prison cell.

“Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison. But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.” (Judges 16:22).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

The hair on his head began to grow again.

Grow. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[i]

No matter Samson’s sin and no matter his rebellion, God’s promise of Spring came to him in his darkest night, the seeds of which would grow and would ultimately result in his finest hour. God visited the cell of a sinner and planted his grace accordingly and in a very literal way.

I don’t know if Samson thought a lot about his hair in those days, but I imagine that he did. When a soul is stripped, both in the spiritual and in the physical, one cannot help but look for any sign of covering … of hope and rebirth … of new growth and of springing forth. With every passing day and with every difficult grinding, whenever Samson ran his fingers through the sparse seedlings of a new and growing strength, he was reminded of just how far he had fallen and of the grace afforded him for its gradual return.

It did return, at least in part. That’s the way of God’s grace. Despite our willful choices and hardened rebellion to God’s plan for our lives, his mercy is ready and available for its return. He planned for grace’s arrival, long before our sin mandated its need.

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: “The LORD Our Righteousness.”’” (Jeremiah 33:14-16).

Just in case you missed it, let me type it again.

In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line.

Sprout. The verb tsamach in the Hebrew language meaning, “to grow, to spring forth, to sprout.”[ii]

God’s grace. Shooting forth and bursting onto the scenes of our lives. Sometimes through the simple of a hair’s sprouting. All the time through the profound of a Son’s coming. A Son’s dying. A Son’s springing forth on a Spring morning, announcing once and for all that resurrection is here to stay.

That resurrection is the gift of Spring; it follows the stripping and cold of a Winter season. A season when remembering God’s promises is critical to survival. There is…

no prison so dank,
no shackle so confining,
no disobedience so egregious,
no blindness so dark,
no winter so long,

so as to keep Spring from making its arrival. None. And that, my friends, gets a hallelujah from my spirit and a prayer of thanks from my knees as they hit the bedroom floor, once again, in absolute wonder and awe of the gracious grace that has been seeded on my behalf and that is growing in strength with every passing day and with every intentional glimpse I make into the treasures of God’s Word. He is the worthy pause of my heart this week. Yours too, thus, I pray…

Grow us, Father, into a deeper understanding of all things eternal. Let us not settle for our prisons; instead, renew our hearts toward a healthier life—one that is free of the chains and of the condemnation that seeks to keep us captive in sin’s remembrance. Spring us forth from our cells and grow us in the light and truth of Spring’s renewal—the resurrected life of Easter’s Gift. In the name of the Father who knows us, and the Son who loves us, and the Holy Spirit who so willing tends to us, Amen and Amen.

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