I am a singer, songwriter, wife, mother, Jesus follower. I send out a 2-minute read every Tuesday about Jesus and life in God.
Dreamer
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Hi Friends, Last week we talked about my kids and their insatiable search for adventure. With childlike eyes, they found it everywhere. Time has a way of growing us up and growing us out of our eager expectation for adventure. Memories of childhood take on a magical aura as we step into the cold, hard reality of adulthood. I mean, filing your taxes will do that to you. But it’s more than just the process of growing up. We tend to begin believing wrong things about God, and in turn we believe wrong things about ourselves. We find ourselves like the one-talent servant from Matthew 25, burying our dreams, aspirations and gifts. Fear dictates that we take no risks, and we are deceived into thinking of God as a hard taskmaster. That sense of adventure? Gone. Better to play it safe. Take what He put in us and bury it until we can one day hand it back unscathed. But our God has a heart that is anything but hard and unfeeling. The Son who risked it all, heart wide open and on the line, is not leading us into a life self-preservation or feeling stuck. He is not looking for an army of dream-hiders who will dust off what He’s given and hand it back at His appearing. There are no automatons in His kingdom. No seat warmers. Our Shepherd is a dreamer. Yes, our God is a God of excesses. He filled the heavens and the earth with color and brilliancy where black and white would have sufficed. Sunsets and tides and forests expose His unnecessary extravagance. He created innumerable galaxies, the existence of which we’re only just becoming aware of. We’ll never see them all. He made them anyway. He’s certainly not a God who confines His creation within the bounds of utility or uniformity. There are no cogs in the wheels of His Kingdom. He’s far too adventurous for that. Perhaps it’s time to lift our eyes to the mountains and see Him, wild-eyed, joy unrestrained as He calls us to come. Come! Leap upon the mountains (SOS 2). Come alive! It’s unsettling at first. Do we follow? Dare we? Is it safe? We confront our discomfort even as we begin to dig, our fingers in the messy soil, unearthing what we’ve buried long ago. Sometimes the first step is just remembering what’s hidden there. Aspirations. A unique piece of ourselves. An idea. A hope for the future. We tuck that abandoned, dirt covered dream under our arm and head for the mountains. We follow His voice; we head to Him. Our Shepherd is a dreamer. –Anna |
Anna Blanc
I am a singer, songwriter, wife, mother, Jesus follower. I send out a 2-minute read every Tuesday about Jesus and life in God.
Dear Friends, When my oldest son was two years old, he used to do this thing. Oftentimes he did this when he was tired, or frustrated, or lonely. He would pull on me and say, “Sing about me?” And so, I’d lift him onto my lap, hold him close, and sing. We sang about the oatmeal he had for breakfast, how he had blueberries and said no to the cream. We sang about the consequence he got an hour ago for refusing to obey. We sang about how he played with the excavator he got for his birthday, and...
Hi Friends, I am an all-or-nothing gardener. And by that I mean that I do absolutely nothing until the task can’t possibly wait another day, and I have to do all of it at once. Weeding, planting, preparation… these don’t have to be stressful things. You can plan ahead, do a bit each day. You know, wisdom and all that. But I’ve been all-or-nothing gardening for so long, I’ve come to accept it as a weakness I’ll likely have lifelong. Resignation and green-thumb mediocrity. That’s where I’ve...
Hi Friends, Happy Mother’s Day week! I once saw a video where a woman shared “one simple tip to keeping your home spotless”. In the next scene, she ushers her children and husband out the front door, and closes it behind them. Brilliant! We chuckle at memes like this because of the seed of truth underneath them. There is so much pressure on mothers, self-imposed and otherwise, to do it all—keep a perfect home, advance her career, remember all the milestones, volunteer at all the things. We...