Category Archives: kingdom

Welcomed

 

“Well hello, Asa. Nice to meet you. Welcome to my home.”

Her voice radiated joy from the front porch where she welcomed her guests. It spilled over onto the street where I was walking. Joy does that. When a heart is filled to overflow, it spills over into the lives of those close enough to catch it, even the unintended. I wasn’t on her guest list that afternoon; still and yet, I felt her warm embrace as she hugged young Asa, wrapping him up in loving arms and holding him close to her bosom. I smiled, looked in her direction, and caught her eye. For a moment, I thought I might make the guest list; she seemed the type of person to take a risk on loving a total stranger. Instead, we exchanged waves, and I felt richly blessed for having been privy to this front-porch welcome.

It’s good to be welcomed, to be celebrated on the front porch of a heart and invited in for a look around. It’s a gift we give to one another, a grace we live with one another. Life is sweetest when life is shared. Those who give it best—those who throw doors and hearts wide-open to welcome new guests—are those who’ve known it the most, a long history of being welcomed by others.

I’ve spent a lifetime on the move. Really. Spaces and places too numerous to count. Settings and groups and small collections of strangers and friends that, on paper, don’t mesh with any regularity. I’ve stood on a lot of front porches, knocked on a lot of front doors, and had (for the most part) the rich privilege of stepping into a lot of different living rooms . . . a great many hearts. Certainly, I’ve had the door slammed in my face on a few occasions. Front porches aren’t always welcoming places. But regardless of the doors that remain shut to me, I’ll keep knocking, keep hoping for an invitation. Why?

Because when it happens—when another soul swings wide-open and allows me a chair around the table—I feel the welcome of heaven. I hear the whispers of home. I touch the heart of my Father. His welcome gets personal when he welcomes through his children.

A front porch welcome. This is love concrete. This is love tangible. This is love actual.

It’s a way we can love today, a way to bring a little heaven down to earth, bridging the gap between what is not yet seen and what is seen every day. People, strangers and friends, waiting … longing for the welcome of heaven. Why would we neglect to give it to them? Why would we keep such treasure to ourselves? Why not, instead, fling the doors wide-open, step across the threshold of our hearts, and shout to those walking by,

“Hello! Nice to meet you. Welcome to my home.”

Oh to live like this! To give like this! To love like this!

To welcome and to be welcomed. This is our kingdom work. This is our kingdom to come.

Keep to it, sojourners in grace. My door is open, and my love for you is certain. Welcome to my home. Won’t you come in and sit with me a while? As always . . .

Peace for the journey,

 

a table for grace . . .

It’s not much. Just an old table with two even older chairs. I spied them alongside Hwy. 70 while winding my way home from my annual run to the eye doctor. My U-turn came as no surprise to my eldest son who made the trek with me; after twenty-four years of being my child, he’s grown accustomed to my motherly whims. After all, he needed this collection of not much.

A table for grace. A table for my boys.

“Think of the meals once shared there, Nick. The stories told there. The tears cried there. The prayers uttered there. Think of them, son, when you and your brother find your places around this table in coming days.”

And there it lingered between us – our thoughts about coming days and about how a table for grace might just be the thing to keep our family together, even though our paths are diverging.

Grace tables are keeping tables because grace tables are framed upon firm foundations. What is built there (through meals, stories, tears, and prayers) is enough to write a history and fortify its remembrance. Hearts are shaped, beliefs are forged, memories are collected, and sins are forgiven at a table for grace. It’s where we do some of our best work as human beings. Why?

Because when we sit down at the table with others, we lean our hearts, minds, and souls toward understanding. We extend reciprocity. We offer respect. We lend grace. Tables cry out for such generosity. To deny them this possibility is to live underprivileged. Who wants to live like that? I certainly don’t, and as the mother of two cherished and adored, grown sons, I must extend this privilege due them.

And so, I made a U-turn on Hwy. 70, did some negotiating, and came home with two chairs and a table for grace. I know something of its value, even though my boys have yet to bow their heads in thanks around it. That will come for them and for the four of us they leave behind; of this I am certain.

As a family, we love the table for grace. We didn’t just discover it. As far as we know, it’s always been . . . long before any of us made entrance into this world. A keeping table built on a firm foundation that will outlast our earthly occupancy and that will carry us forward into our eternal one.

Think of the meals shared there, friends. The stories told there. The tears cried there. The prayers uttered there. Think of it all – God’s all – when you find your place around a table for grace in coming days. God’s children (the ones who await our arrival at the heavenly banqueting table) understand the value of such meals. They no longer live under their privilege. Instead, they live inside of it, surrounded by grace and keeping company with the King.

A table for grace. A worthy U-turn. An everlasting history.

Would you take time to live your privilege this week? Find a table and find a loved one. Share a meal and write rich history together. Grace is waiting to meet you as you arrive. As always . . .

Peace for the journey,

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the kingdom classroom

I don’t know why God trusts me with so much . . . why he would allow me the privilege of sacred participation, this giving and extending of his kingdom to others. So very often, I feel ill-equipped and under- qualified—rough around the edges, frayed ends, frazzled thoughts. This is who I am most days, a tangled mess but for the beautiful grace of Jesus who lovingly and willingly applies himself to my untangling until the knots are free.

God doesn’t walk away mid-process. He’s a finisher. He keeps stretching me, moving me, challenging me, and changing me from the inside out. I offer him my consent, because I know there’s work to be done and because, without the Lord’s prod, there’s no soul gain; just stagnation, just plowing up that same old piece of ground and patch of soil that’s been tread upon again and again by my stubborn inability to fix myself.

Will we ever get to the end of this, Lord, this hard work of grace?

I can no longer pretend that it’s not hard. Grace is free and comes swiftly to our aid, but grace is also a meddler. Grace won’t leave us alone; it requires a response—a holy, sacred “Yes” to previously spoken “Nos”.

Full grace equals full change; full conversion; fully and willingly broken open and spilled out so that God has the opportunity to pour into our earthen vessels his holiness, his revisions, and his version of who we are. We are kingdom carriers and kingdom dispensers. To carry less and to give less is to betray our King.

Oh to wake up to our privilege and to our responsibility therein!

The hard work of grace. The good work of grace. My allegiance is fixed to the cross, and my heart is pledged to the kingdom road. Accordingly, I’ll keep moving forward, tethered to the expectation that what I currently cannot see growing in me has already been seen by God.

Indeed, I don’t know why God trusts me with so much; I only believe this to be true . . . that he does, in fact, trust me with the story of grace. And even when his “much” has seemed too much for me, his grace has always been sufficient to move me beyond my limitations in order to allow me a moment or two of kingdom influence. I don’t need to know the results of those moments; I just need to stay obedient to his call.

May the God who created the kingdom, the Christ who brought the kingdom to earth, and the Holy Spirit who sustains the kingdom in each one of us, strengthen you, straighten you, and empower you to spend your kingdom inheritance on those who’ve yet to take hold of their royal privilege. Amen.

 

when candy isn’t enough . . .

People.

It all comes back around to people, at least it should. When we speak of ministry outreach and harvesting the fields, we’re talking about people—men, women, and children created in the image of God and deserving of the good news of the kingdom. When we put our focus elsewhere . . . on growing our numbers, our influence, and our bank accounts, then we’ve missed the mark.

Yes, we need the bean counters and the fiscally gifted to take us forward in our efforts to fulfill our responsibilities to the kingdom of God, but without a vision to anchor our well-intentioned purposes, people perish. They die never knowing that they could have had a share in the kingdom inheritance . . . that eternal peace, certain hope, good grace, and unconditional love were meant for them.

We are the bringers of God’s eternity to this world, the carriers of an extraordinary kingdom. Because of Jesus Christ, we are his righteous reconcilers, the blood-bought bounty of Calvary. Accordingly, we cannot allow the vision to perish. We must press on and push forward with the message of priceless redemption. Without the message, then all of our efforts at reaching the lost vanish; they remain hidden and buried beneath the left-over scraps of a really good program or a well-planned event.

I don’t want God’s message to be lost on the people who gather around me; I want the message to be evident within me. I don’t want to get so tangled up in the planning and the particulars of ministry that I miss the pulse of Jesus pounding loudly through his people. If I cannot see him there, in their faces and through their eyes, then I’ve missed an eternal opportunity. I leave the fields empty-handed with nothing more to show for a day’s hard laboring than a pocket full of lint and a head full of confusion.

How could it have been more? Why doesn’t good programming always result in great ministry? How do we bridge the gap, sew it altogether so that one leads to the other . . . so that both—good programming and great ministry—are the norm, not the exception?

This is where I am today after a wonderfully, successful, on-paper ministry event that took place at our church this past weekend. By all accounts, it was a win. Everyone had fun, and everyone went home with enough candy to last until Valentine’s Day. And while there is some satisfaction in my spirit for a job well-done, there is also an ache that cannot be tempered by chocolate or left-over cupcakes.

There is pain inside of me that wells over into tears. They drop into my lap, because I don’t know if it was enough, this sharing of candy and cupcakes. Yes, I am certain that seeds were planted and that I’m not always given the benefit of holding fruitfulness first-hand; time will bear out the witness of this ministry event, and I am certain there is more to the story than meets the eye.

But in this moment, I feel the heaviness of the greater good and of wanting to do more for Jesus. I want to love more and extend the reach of eternity to the hearts of the people I meet. No more games; no more fluff; no more pretending it’s all enough. My all will never be enough if it stops short of realizing that people are not the means to an end but, rather, that they are the end. People are the final product and sum total of God’s creative genius, and he never intended for them to miss out on his eternity.

Today, I pray that God will awaken all of us from our spiritual slumber, burn his message of redemption into our awareness, and enflame our spirits for the greater, most excellent work of kingdom building. It begins and ends with people. They are his agenda for us.

Look around you, friends. Who’s near? Who’s close? Who’s waiting for the reach of grace? Reach forward, reach further, reach always in the mighty name and love of Jesus Christ. It’s the best you can do. As always . . .

Peace for the journey,

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