life like the sky.

Tonight as I was driving home, I couldn't stop looking in wonder at the sky.
If I had to describe it in one word, it would be....

WILD.

The weather today has been absolutely bizarre.  There was a beautiful sunrise this morning, but soon after, it got really cloudy.  Mid-afternoon, I looked out the window, and snow was pouring down!  Since it's been in the 50's and 60's for a couple of weeks now, snow was a complete shocker.  Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, snow and sunshine competed:  one minute it was bright and sunny; the next, snow was blowing sideways in violent wind gusts.

So when I drove home tonight at sunset, the snow had stopped, but clouds still covered the sky.  In my rearview mirror, the sun glowed bright orange, shooting out brilliant rays as it started to dip below the horizon.  The sky in front of and around me seemed to be almost constantly changing.  Big, billowy clouds in blue, gray, purple, and pink shifted and changed shape, exposing little patches of blue sky here and there, while the sun cast a slightly orange glow across everything.  The whole thing was awe-inspiring.  Beautiful.  And yes...wild.

I wonder sometimes if my life kinda looks like that.  To be honest, I WANT my life to look like that :  Ever-changing as I grow and follow God.  Inspiring.  Confusing.  Prompting others to praise the Creator.  Colorful.  Wildly beautiful.

Put Good In, Get Good Out

I thought of that creative title for this post, and then I thought, "Hmm that sounds familiar. Isn't that a slogan on a commercial?"  Turns out, it's the catchphrase for Minute Maid orange juice.

Image source - facebook.com/minutemaid

Oh well.  I just thought I was being creative.  Apparently mass advertising worked its little brain-tricks on me!  Anyway, on to the post....

Today is my day off, so I woke up around 9:30 and habitually grabbed my iPod Touch from my nightstand to check for any emails or messages.  As usual, Bible Gateway had emailed me the "verse of the day," which I opened and read.  Good start to the morning, right?  

That was the only email I had, so I switched over to Facebook.  After checking messages and notifications, I began lazily scrolling through the news feed.  For the next ten minutes or so, I read all the pointless statuses and sarcastic comments, looked at random pictures friends had posted, took the "who's your celebrity boyfriend" quiz and shared the results, and learned what everyone I knew had been doing for the past 10 hours while I'd been asleep.  

As I switched off the iPod and got out of bed, it hit me -- I had just started off my day by filling my mind with useless junk.  

Waking up and reading the verse of the day was good.  Even reading an email from a friend or a fun comment on something I'd shared on Facebook wasn't a bad thing.  But suddenly I regretted spending that chunk of time pouring all that uselessness and even negativity into my mind, letting that be the starting point of my day.  It was something I couldn't get back or do over.  

Ironically, my Bible reading just yesterday included Colossians 3:2 -- "Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth."  How important it is to intentionally fix our thoughts "above" the things of the world, rather than on all the crap that surrounds us!  So why, I asked myself this morning, is it so much easier to let the junk into our minds than it is to let the good in?  

The answer?  It's in the word "let."  The negative, pointless, discouraging, time-wasting things of this world are all around us, and we can simply let it in.  No effort required.  Taking good, uplifting, God-honoring things into our minds requires more effort.  Often it's more than just letting it in.  Often we have to seek it, pursue it, and intentionally take it in.  Practically speaking, it requires a lot more focus and intentionality for me to start my morning by reading a Bible verse and praying than to mindlessly scroll through Facebook.  

And it isn't only about the morning.  In multiple situations and conversations throughout every day, we will face the choice to "let junk in" or to "put good in" our minds.  Will we choose the easy route, or the one that may be a little harder?  

That may depend on what kind of fruit we want to bear.  As Minute Maid has so aptly declared, "Put good in, get good out."  It's a simple concept.  Good oranges make good orange juice.  Or as Jesus said, "The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good...for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart" (Luke 6:45).  

Pasta Salad

When I lived alone for a year and a half, I had to learn to cook for one person -- quite the adjustment when you come from a family of six!  One day I decided I wanted to make pasta salad, which I honestly had never made before, because the rest of my family doesn't like it.  So while searching the internet for a pasta salad recipe, I ended up choosing bits and pieces from several recipes, combining them, and scaling it down to make just a couple of servings.

I'm actually making this tonight, to take to work for my lunch tomorrow.  While I'm at it, I thought I'd share the recipe.  It's super easy!  This makes about two servings, so you'll have to do some multiplication if you're feeding more mouths!  

PASTA SALAD

1 cup pasta of your choice

Handful of small broccoli florets

¼ cup mayonnaise

A little squirt of mustard

1/8 - 1/4 tsp salt

1/8 - 1/4 tsp sugar 

Boil pasta to desired texture -- I boil mine for about 15 minutes.  Drain and rinse with cold water to cool.  Mix mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and sugar together to form dressing.  Stir together all ingredients until well-coated, and chill in refrigerator.  NOTE:  I sometimes add some chunks of chicken to make it a meal!  

We're all consumers here.

If working retail has taught me one thing, it has taught me that we are, without a doubt, hardcore consumers.  The most common phrases I hear, at both jobs:

Give me
Can I have
Can I get
I'm looking for
I need
I want

Plus, of course, all the complaints, the "no I don't like this, give me something different," and the relentless asking for discounts.  Being a retail employee is all about catering to the customer's every need and desire -- feeding their consumerism?! -- while at the same time meeting the employer's high demands for excellency and lots of sales.

Maybe it's my personality, my desire to work hard and give it all I've got, but for me, it's super easy to get sucked down into this endless whirlwind of people-pleasing.  Please the bosses.  Please the customers.  Give them what they want.  Keep that happy face on.  Sell sell sell.  It gets exhausting, and then suddenly I find myself in that I-hate-people-and-don't-want-to-talk-to-any-of-them-for-a-long-time mindset.  Oops.  Not a good mindset for a Christian to have, I guess.  Good thing I have tomorrow off to "renew my mind" (Romans 12:2), right?!

Anyway, this got me thinking a little this afternoon about consumerism and the self-centered nature of humanity.  Really, it's draining.  It's all about I want this and I need that, and we're all prone to it.  This fall I read Jen Hatmaker's book Seven: an experimental mutiny against excess, and it pretty much blew my mind.  It's all about how we can strive to be less consumers of and more contributors to the world we live in.  Jen put this into practice by committing to spend money at only seven different stores for a month, to give away seven things every day for a month, etc.  It's about intentional practices like this, but it's also about an attitude.  Jen writes:

“As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live--we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love. The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self.” 

That last line gets me every time.  I don't want that to happen in my life.  May my selfish consumerism -- the natural side of me and of all of us -- never squelch the potential of the gospel in any way!  I want to consider, and maybe you will, too... how can I practice being a selfless contributor this week?  How can I let the gospel shine through not only my interactions with people, but through the way I partake of the world around me? 

Not my enemy

My Bible reading this morning was in Ephesians 6 -- you know, the passage on spiritual warfare and the armor of God.  I jotted down a few notes in my journal about boldness, standing firm, that kind of thing.  Then a note I had written in the margin of my Bible several years ago caught my eye:  "We are not enemies to each other!"

I remember hearing this tidbit in a small group Bible study a long time ago and thinking, wow, that's a great concept from this verse!  Our battle is not against flesh and blood, the Scripture says.  That means we shouldn't fight each other, but the devil.  I think, however, at that point in my life, there was no one I was really tempted to "fight" against.  I was young, primarily surrounded by church friends, and had no human enemies to speak of.

As we all grow into adults, though, those people come into our lives, and this concept gains more meaning.  Certainly it's more challenging to me now than it was back in those days.  Most of us have people -- even fellow Christians -- who we don't like.  Who have hurt us.  Betrayed us.  Scarred us.  People we wish had never shown up in our lives.  It's sad, but it's true.

"For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."  (Ephesians 6:12)  Today when I read this verse, I had a mental image of warriors fighting side-by-side.  I saw myself, shoulder-to-shoulder with other Christians, including those who have hurt me and who I might prefer to avoid or to accuse.  And I was reminded that no person is my enemy.  No one who belongs to Christ is an enemy, but rather a teammate, a fellow warrior in God's army, someone to fight alongside, not against.  We are not enemies to each other, but we have the same powerful enemy of our souls.  If we're fighting each other, we can't effectively fight him.  And that's not a battle we can afford to lose.

No matter what the offense is or how much it hurts, as Christians we have something greater in common -- the blood and the love of Jesus Christ.  He covers all and makes redemption possible.  We'll be better off if we forgive, stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and fight together for His Kingdom.

little sisters

Well, it's countdown time again -- 46 days until I leave Tennessee, Alaska-bound.  I'm excited.  To be honest, I started counting down long before today, and in fact, have been wishing I was going sooner.  But a funny thing is, the closer it gets, the more real it becomes that I'm leaving my family and friends for six months, and the more I want to hang on to every one of the 46 days I have left here.  

Just now, my 12-year-old sister was sitting in my room with me, and made a comment about me being gone for six months last year and not talking to her while I was gone.  I responded that I had answered some of her emails.  She came back with, "Yeah, SOME of them. Like two!  But you answered Mama's emails!"  I made some excuse about being busy..... and then, convicted, chose to stop defending myself and said to her, "I will do better about writing to you this summer."  She just giggled and said, "You better."  And now she's sitting on the bed next to me, trying to teach herself to play my guitar.  

As much as I love Alaska and Echo Ranch, and know I'm called to be there, this is the main thing that makes it harder to go -- knowing that I'm missing six months of these girls' lives and growing up.  I just hope that as I'm following the Lord in this missionary journey, I'm somehow setting a good example for them.  And hope they know how much I love them.