The Parable of the Sand Dollar

The other day I went for one of my regular work out in the ocean evenings with a friend.

On that day, my friend dive down and surfaced with the shell of a sand dollar. She checked first that it was indeed dead.

She then looked at me and said, “Let's play a game! One of us throws this and the other has to dive to find it. Then the one that finds it throws it for the first one to dive down and find it.”

The sand dollar was almost flat and very thin. Though it would not float, it would sink very slowly in a gentle motion.

Anyways, the point is, we were searching for something delicate and not easily seen. The sand dollar was similar in colour to that of the sand.

Now when my friend threw it, I quickly swam towards the direction of her throw to find it. We were in maybe 15 feet of water and I was not sure if I would be able to find it if it sank to the bottom. Truefully I am not the worlds'greatest swimmer and though I can free dive a little I had no desire to be scurrying around on the ocean floor looking for this thing, while my precious supply of oxygen disappeared from my lungs. After all if I use up all my oxygen down there, I won't have any left to come back up with. Not to mention the fact that my ears were giving a little trouble to be equalised.

So with all these things in mind, I dove furiously after this little sand dollar. Fortunately it was still drifting slowly down... in fact it was clearly visible once I had submerged and I reached frantically for it before it could get away from me. “I must get it before it is too late I thought. Get it I did. Unfortunately sand dollars are quite fragile. And as I grasped it with both hands, I felt it break. It broke into 3 pieces. I was quite upset, because I realised that I had destroyed something beautiful in my attempt to not let it get away. It was at this point that my friend found a small piece of dead coral to use for our game instead. I did try to keep the pieces of the sand dollar. They spent most of the rest of the beach visit relaxing on our boogie board. Unfortunately, as we walked out of the sea, a wave splashed over the boogie board and took one of the pieces away. My plan to save the broken sand dollar to glue it back together was dashed into pieces and eventually we threw the other two pieces away.

This is not the most fascinating story that has been ever told, but it does have great significance.

How many times in our lives, in mine and in yours, have we destroyed the very delicate thing of beauty that we were looking for? (SELAH)

Perhaps we were looking for someone's heart. A heart that meant a lot to us, but maybe, we were really playing a game, or too anxious, or really not too careful, we broke that heart and eventually lost the heart.

See, the trouble isn't that we humans do not appreciate beauty or worth. The trouble is that most times, we do not know how to handle it when we have found it.

Maybe the heart that we were searching for was that of a spouse, or a potential significant other, or perhaps a good friend, a parent or a child. Maybe it was the heart of a person we didn't realise was lifeless inside. Maybe it was our own heart. Maybe it was the heart of God.

You see if I had not been so anxious to get the sand dollar before it had sank too deep out of my reach, maybe I would have actually gotten it, and kept it intact. Maybe if I had taken a second to observe where it was going, and how quickly it was sinking, maybe I could have swam closer to it and scooped it up instead of snatching at it! Maybe!

Maybe if I had greater confidence in my own abilities, or even had more skill, I could have swam after it and scooped it up more carefully. Maybe!

Hearts are even more delicate than sand dollars, and can easily be bruised, or broken.

Rather than rushing to find a beautiful heart and to keep it for ourselves, maybe it is better to observe it and see where it is going so that we can encounter it on its journey.

Rather than stopping the heart from going to the depths where it is meant to go, we can improve ourselves and our own abilities so that we can go deep with it.

Rather than snatching at the heart, maybe we can cradle it and bring it to a place were we can coexist peacefully and in safety.

The next time that you encounter a heart, that you want to keep... remember the sand dollar, understand the lesson, and be wise.

Die to Live

Have you ever felt like the walking dead?
 I have... in fact I felt that way for a long time!

At the end of 2009 I celebrated my 33rd birthday. This meant that I was 33 for most of 2010.
Someone commented one day to a friend (who was also 33) and I that Jesus died when He was 33. We laughed when they said it. But the truth is... I died when I was 33. I cannot tell you exactly when it happened but it did. No I don't mean died as in stopped breathing and having a heartbeat. I meant the person that I was died!
Ok, clearly not a physical death as I mentioned earlier… but a different kind of death. What I mean is, I had been walking around carrying all sorts of death in my body.

What death was I carrying in my body?… fear, hate, malice, pain, shame, lies, lust, pride, lack of trust in God, anger towards God, selfishness, cowardice. (I will end this list here so that no one tries to have me committed to an asylum.)

In order that I might have true life, these things had to die. Death!

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body” 2 Corinthians 4:11

I am not really sure what Apostle Paul meant, but my interpretation, or what the verses speak to me is… that  in order to have true life, the life of Christ, I have to share in the death of Christ.

See we often get all excited about new life in Christ. We get baptized and take communion and all the good things to identify with Him. However, we forget that identifying with Him means that we also identify with Him in His death.

So this death that I am speaking about has nothing really to do with me being 33 at the time. It is indeed something that everyone who is a believer must go through… at some point. We symbolize this death with our baptism service. You know they say that we die and then rise to new life in Christ… symbolized by going backwards under the water then coming up… yes alive!

(Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.) 2 Corinthians 4:16

When you is going through one of these dead periods, you learn so much about yourself and about God, if you let Him. You see the real you... and you see the real Him.

The best thing about the year of death is… rising again. This hasn’t been a one day occurrence but it feels like full life is slowly but deliberately. The cool thing is that the things that had to die have been and are being replaced, with better things like boldness, love, joy, peace, patience, etc (see Galatians 5:22 to 26)

I feel like a different person.

Truth is... I am still the same person that I have always been. I still love eating chicken and playing the guitar.

I still dislike matches, and cabbage and still have pain in my joints.

But inside… inside something amazing has taken place. Real healing!!
No I am not perfect, a lot still has to happen in my heart… I suspect it will take a lifetime. 
Now I feel like God is saying to my soul… “Wake up, and see what  I have done, and am doing!”

The cry of my heart is, “Show me Your Glory! Let Your Will be done in me!”

I encourage you to die so that you might find true life.

“For You and You alone, awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
  For the world You love, Your will be done, let Your will be done in me”
Awakening, Chris Tomlin

I Cried on the Inside

One day, I walked into a room to see one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

A young woman, 23 years old, leaning back on her daddy while sitting on their couch, listening to his rumbling voice as he read a letter from family friends to her. It was christmas day 2009.

It was a simple thing... nothing unusual for that family. Normal.

For me it was unusual. I had seen many children with their parents, many girls with their daddies. However, I don't think that I had ever walked in onto such a simple yet intimate moment between father and daughter. It wasn't her graduation day. It wasn't her wedding day. It wasn't even the day that she had returned from a long trip away. They weren't even being snuggly because it was christmas day. It was really, just another day in their house. Normal.

Why is it such a sweet thing? Well, it is an awesome thing to see a daddy with his little girl, even if she isn't so little anymore.

Isn't such an awesome, beautiful image for God as our Father.

Many of us have not had righteous God fearing fathers. Many of us don't know what it is to have a father's love. Many of us do not know what it brings with it.

What do many people know of fathers? Criticism, indifference, dogmatism (there's a big word for you!), hatred, distance.

They (the mysterious they) say that children who have not had a godly human father struggle to understand how to relate to God the Father. They say, that these people project their image of their earthly fathers onto God and struggle to have a real relationship with God because of it.

They are right! How can a person know something other that what they do know? Seriously, how could a person who has one definition in their minds of what a father is, have a different definition of God the Father?

I have to say that over many years God has been changing my view of what Father means, of what a daddy does. He has used different people, my friend's fathers to show me what fathering looks like.

He used a few directly, one in particular, to show me what it means to be fathered in an everyday sense. (Thank you Poppa!)

There has been much healing in my heart concerning the lack of a human daddy in my life. There has been much forgiveness and peace concerning that whole thing.

However, I have to say that on that Christmas day, sitting, watching my friend and her daddy, I felt like I was intruding on something special... like I shouldn't be in their space. They weren't bothered of course and told me to feel free to come in and sit in the living room with them, which I did. I left after a little while because it was so uncomfortable to be there and intrude.

I confess that I cried on the inside... I cried because it was truly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I cried because more daughters should be held like that by their daddies. I cried because I knew that I would never, ever have that in this lifetime with a human father. I cried because deep in my heart I know that God the Father loves me more than my friend's dad loved her, or more than any father could love any daughter.

Today I cry, on the inside, because there are too many daughters and sons growing up not knowing the love of a good father. There are too many daughters and sons growing up with the wrong impression of God as a father because they have no frame of reference for good fathering. There are too many daughters and sons growing up rejecting God because, why would they want another father who will only regard them with indifference, or disgust. I cry on the inside because our world is quickly loosing the closest frame of reference to God on this earth...i.e. healthy, loving families.

If you have never known the love of a good father, or if your good father has failed you in too many painful ways... take heart! There is a father who knows what He is doing and He does it for His sake (Glory) yes, but also for your sake, because of how much He loves you! He gave His life so that you could have life, abundantly. There is no darkness, indifference, nor malice in Him towards you. Only love!

Perhaps it is time to stop we crying on the inside, and to cry out to Him... DADDY!

Love Is Still a Worthy Cause

I was listening to a song today called, “Does anybody Hear Her”.

Allow me to quote the chorus and bridge for you respectively. (Please see the link on my FB page for the full lyrics and video.)

“Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know she's going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope that's tucked away in you and me
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?”

“If judgment looms under every steeple
If lofty glances from lofty people
Can't see past her scarlet letter
And we've never even met her”

Ok... so if there is hope living in you and me... yes I mean you christian... why is the world so hopeless?

Why do we think that standing up for what we believe means looking down our noses at people that we perceive as sinners? Have we forgotten that 'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us?'

We forget that the reason for Christ doing this is that it was a demonstration of how much He loves us.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

Somehow... we seem to have forgotten love.

We focus so much on what we think is righteousness that we forget that Love was a greater, motivation on the part of God. Even in His righteousness and our depravity... He loved us so much... more than enough to cause Him to step down from the lofty place that He actually is in to love us.

Shouldn't we then step down from the high places that we think we are in and love others?

How do we love others? Good question.

I reckon that there is no easy answer to that one.

For a start, I think, chose not to judge people. Judge their actions sure. At some point no matter how liberal we are, we need to make decisions about right and wrong. However, because a person's actions offend me... should that person offend me? (Ok child molestation and rape is another category altogether but even then.)

When we learn to separate people from their actions maybe then we will be able to take the steps towards them to help them heal, change, grow.

Another way is to chose not to make assumptions about people. We are all guilty of this one... I do it all the time.

We decide that because of how they are dressed, where they are from, their speech, their B.O, their teeth, their car, the school that they attended or what their parents do for a living, that we know who they are. Shall we make efforts to get to know people for who they really are, so that we may love them?

Shall we choose to love people even with their... peculiarities.

Shall we decide not to attach scarlet letters (see the 'bridge' of the song and note at the end) to people in our minds?
Shall we decide to hold to our beliefs and morals in and with love?

The “Scarlet letter” is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In the book a young woman, named Hester Prynne falls pregnant while her husband is out of the country and refuses to reveal the identity of the baby’s father. For her, crime, she is forced to wear a scarlet coloured cloth in the shape of the letter ‘A’.

Relational Relitivity

Life is interesting isn't it?The way that people do things and think now is so... different from how things were done in the past.One huge example is in relation to jobs, employment. 
My mother's generation in this lovely island seems to be the generation where a huge section of society pulled themselves out of poverty.Many people in my mom's generation became teachers and nurses and civil servants etc. They were more educated than their parents and would eventually have better, higher paying jobs than their parents. My mom's generation tried their best to achieve some kind of educational qualification after secondary school so that they could have a profession. They would find a job in this profession and many stayed in that job until mandatory retirement. The thought of changing professions would not even occur to many of them. That was just how it was.
My generation is a bit different. My generation also tended to aim for some nice qualification to lead to a nice, hopefully nice paying job. However some of us have discovered after a few years that the job that we have wasn't... fulfilling, so some of us tried to find something more rewarding to do with our lives. I suspect that this happens alot in western countries.
 My generation is crying out for fulfillment in their employment. People long to find something that gives their lives meaning as well as brings home a paycheck. One of the growing trends is to discover who you are, especially among christians. It seems that as more believers find out that God has created them for a purpose, they want to figure out what that purpose is (in the specific sense. , lol)So we do the wonderful personality trait tests, and the how we learn tests, the love languages tests and the strengths test, and all sorts of other tests. We are pleasantly pleased to find out there are reasons why we think and do things the way that we do. (HURRAY) We find out that we really aren't that strange because there are others who think and act like we do, and so we set out on a quest to live the abundant life that Christ died for. (wonderful)
 Here is the thing... why do we only apply our individuality in who we are to what we do?What I mean is, we take what we have learnt in all these test and try to figure out what work we should do. Why don't we apply the test to our relationship with God.
 Confused?? Good. 
 We have ideas of what it looks like when a person is a good christian. Well dressed, tidy, prays for 15 minutes every morning and before each meal. They are excellent and instinctive at managing their money. Their children are the most intelligent and most talented 2.5 kids around. They have the coolest jobs and always seem to have life in control. They have no problems, quote scripture on a dime, and lead the most disciplined lives around. They have daily quiet times, and always seem to have a bible near to them. They tell everyone that they know that they are believers and run from the mere thought of every sin. Many of these people do exist and are wonderful people... but what about the rest of us who aren't like them.Seriously, I forget to read the Bible sometimes... often. No, developing a routine won't help. Yes, maybe I am indisciplined... but then maybe, I am just me. Perhaps I need time to process the things in the Bible that I have read for a while. Maybe I am the kind of person who is much better at open conversation with God than at praying for selected amounts of time in specific places. Maybe if we teach people in discipleship how to figure out THEIR relationship with God, it would be better than trying to teach people what A relationship with God looks like.Are we like the woman who thinks that her husband doesn't love her because he doesn't say it that often, even though he comes home to her every night and always helps her with chores and spends time with her? True that husband will need to learn to say the words to her, but she also needs to develop a relationship with him that is based on who the two of them are, not what Hollywood says they should be.

 
Yes we should read our bibles and pray regularly as well as doing other things. However, should we beat ourselves over the head because we aren't as excited about some things in our relationship as some people are.
 Maybe we need to develop our own relationship with God based on who we are, and who He is, not what someone else's relationship looks like.
 Just a thought....

N.B This was originally posted on my FB page as a note.