Here's to Hindsight

I just finished reading this book and enjoyed it. I found it very relatable in many ways as Tara shared her life’s journey thus far. I liked the raw stories of everyday struggles and how similar her over-analytical thoughts are to my own. With her love of New York her words were like finding my own thoughts written on pages.

In the close of the book she writes a letter to her former self. There’s a challenge in it that she would charge herself with if she could have only seen how the pieces would fall together, and the challenge is just as important to the current and future self. “Learn to enjoy changing and being corrected, because those are good things, and they will serve to shape you into the person you are going to be for the rest of your life…be careful of your actions today, because they are slowly writing the story of your tomorrows.”

I was also inspired by her lyrics,
And all today’s uncertainties, and all of my impatience
Will just be flecks of color
In the picture that He’s painting

Thought

Just a thought from a greatly researched book:

“We must stop presenting ourselves as the message and begin presenting Jesus as the message.” –David Kinnaman

The Cross of Christ

I just started reading a new book and have already been challenged by the first chapter. I am trying to expand my reading library to include a wider range of authors and eras. Limiting resources only shelters our point of view and hinders thinking for ourselves. I don’t want to become comfortable and mindless in my reading. I want and need to be continuously growing, all the while holding on to the absolute timeless truth of God. In this effort my new venture is a book by Charles R. Swindoll, Strengthening Your Grip. I came across a poem that I wanted to share:

I simply argue that the cross he raised again
at the center of the market place
as well as on the steeple of the church,

I am recovering the claim that
Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral
between two candles:

But on a cross between two thieves;
on a town garbage heap;
At a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan
that they had to write His title
in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek…

And at the kind of place where cynics talk smut,
and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.

Because that is where he died,
and that is what he died about.
and that is where Christ’s men ought to be,
and what church people ought to be about.

-George MacLeod

Beautiful Release

The concept really makes sense. It’s not easy, but it makes sense. My personal struggle of letting go is evident in the majority of my posts as I battle with the concept. A couple days ago the realization began to free my overbearing analytical thoughts. How do we expect to hold His full power when our hands are so full with our own securities? We grasp so tightly while we call to God for His hand. We stumble like a child refusing to release a single treasured toy to take our Father’s outstretched hand. God reiterated this lesson to me this last week. I’ve been reading through I Samuel and as I read through the story of David and Goliath again I made special note of David turning down Saul’s battle gear. Great equipment, but it would have only weighed him down. What “security” is weighing us down? I read about the incident again in a book I just completed. So here I am with the lessons God is presenting me and realizing that the beauty of the moment can only be fully captured in if I pry my fingers from my own securities. We can only experience the day as God made it when we lay down everything we are carrying. This is the moment I’m given and it won’t return.

Just a few other challenging thoughts I crossed in my last reading (Life Wide Open, by David Jeremiah):

“From God’s point of view, the greatest waste in life is the gap between what you are and what you could be.”

“God has given us two promises: His presence and His power.”

“God is pleased to work not through ability but through availability.”

“Failure is one of life’s greatest teachers – or it certainly can be if we choose to learn from it rather than let it crush us.”

“Perfection is the goal, but it’s not the journey.”