Take What You Need

Years ago, I spent some time in Romania. I was part of a small group of people who wanted to touch the lives of children there – both on the streets and in a large regional children’s hospital. There were many moments during those years that have stuck with me, but one I often think of took place in the children’s hospital. We spent time whenever we could on a floor where children were basically residents. Perhaps their parents had been given no hope for their child’s recovery. Some were abandoned. The ratio of children to workers was impossible, so we went just to hold little ones, talk to them, look them in the eye, play with the ones who could interact.

During one visit, a young woman from our group was holding a child in her arms. I don’t know how old the child was. It was often hard to tell because of “failure-to-thrive” or other factors. I don’t even remember if it was a boy or a girl. But I remember the child in Deborah’s arms, head on her shoulder, and Deborah saying quietly, “Take what you need.”

Take what you need.

It’s what Jesus said when he said, “This is my body, which is given for you…this is my blood, which is poured out for you…” (Luke 22)

Take what you need.

It’s what Jesus said to the woman who had suffered sickness and loss for 12 years and risked whatever she had left when she dared to touch his hem with her hope. (Luke 8)

Take what you need.

It’s what Jesus said when he declared, “It is finished,” and died for you. (John 19)

Take what you need.
Just take it.
Get close to Him and soak it up.
He already offered it all to you and it’s there for the taking, everything you need.
Take what you need.


Ambushed by God in a memory,
Kimberly


For Deborah, who embraced a stranger’s child and whispered, “Take what you need.”
For Cheryl, who sits with the dying and the family in loss and says, “Take what you need.”
For John, who gives his days to the prisoner and the homeless and says, “Take what you need.”
For so many others who rescue babies, embrace mothers, attend to the sick, befriend the lonely, and day after day, reveal Jesus saying, “Take what you need.”

And for someone who hasn't yet reached out to take it.
Take what you need.

 

 

The Mess

If you’ve ever browsed the greeting card aisle in a typical American store, you’re familiar with the sentiment, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.”

We like it on cardstock with a watercolor flower printed behind it. But when it comes to life-actually-lived, I tend to go for, “Are we there yet?!” I don’t think I’m alone in that.

My boys were painting the other day and the three-year-old had his paints squirted out into little blobs on the paper-plate-palette, just the way he’d directed me to do it. Fifteen seconds later, he’d made this beautiful mess:

 

I looked down at that and thought, “This time, it’s definitely about the journey!” The process was so pretty, I had to take a picture. But by the time that paint was on the canvas, it was all one shade of greenish-grey and the lovely, swirly rainbow-wheel was gone.

And half an hour later when I came around the corner from having left them alone with paint for only a moment and with explicit instructions to “not move from this spot!,” I found this not-so-lovely mess:

 

There was a trail of paint through the house, on walls, floors, armchairs, doorjambs, and wall-to-wall in the bathroom. (It was my acrylic paint, not the washable kid stuff.) The process was not so pretty now. It was a hot mess.

I was looking at a picture today of Jupiter’s storm. It’s violent. It’s a hurricane twice the size of Earth. It’s also gorgeous. Well, from a distance, anyway. If I was in the middle of it, I’m sure I’d see it as a scary mess. And it’s been going on for as long as we’ve been able to see Jupiter through a telescope. A perpetual, scary mess.

But set aside for a moment the conversations about where storms (the kinds in our lives) come from, and what God’s purposes are or aren’t in those hard, messy seasons. The real wonder is that He is in the storm. Period. He doesn’t have to be – no more than I have to be in the eye of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. But He enters into my messy journey and yours, step-for-step, and He isn’t afraid of the messes. At all. Ever. He already did "whatever it takes" to clear up the mess between us and Him. It doesn't get any messier than that.

The journey’s not always pretty, but it’s where life happens. Somebody probably already wrote that on a greeting card somewhere.


It’s the word of faith that welcomes God to go to work and set things right for us. This is the core of our preaching. Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”

(from the beginning of Romans 10, The Message; emphasis mine)


Ambushed by God, even in the messes,
Kimberly

 

Jesus and the Blue-Ribbon Cow

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was (and still is) a very special place called Camp Agaiutim Nune (Camp A.N. for short). “Agaiutim Nune” means “the place of God” in the Native Alaskan Yupik dialect. Every summer, scores of Yupik children pile into boats and travel up and down the tributaries of the Yukon River Delta to come to Camp A.N. and hear about a God that loves them, and doesn’t want them to be afraid, and wants them to live free lives and not be slaves to fear, abuse, alcoholism, depression or any other slave-owner.

Now, these kids spend a week at a time at Camp A.N. and they need to eat. They are meat-eaters. Their people have eaten what they can pull from the river and hunt on the land at least since their ancestors crossed the land-bridge from Asia. The source for the camp’s groceries for the past many years recently became unavailable. So the camp director sat down and asked God – that same God who loves these kids so much He wants to set them free – to give them some meat. About an hour later, the phone rang. A man wanted to give the camp several hundred pounds of beef from his prize-winning, grand champion cow.

I just heard this story recently and I love it. That camp director is my dad. That God who loves those village kids so much that He gave them the blue-ribbon cow is my God. Those kids are the children of the kids I grew up with in the villages of Western Alaska. I love this story for more reasons than you could shake a stick at. But most and best, I love that mine is a God who draws us with His goodness and His kindness. He isn’t trying to scare and control. The Bible says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! (Psalm 34:8)”.

God isn’t one to skimp and He isn’t stingy. He always goes above-and-beyond. There is another "taste-and-see" story, found in John’s Gospel (the beginning of chapter two). It’s the famous story of the time Jesus turned the huge jug of hand-washing water into the shockingly-fine wine and saved the happy couple and their families from the embarrassment of running out of wine before the celebration was over. It wasn’t a “make-do” miracle. Jesus was extravagant. His gift to the bride and groom was the finest quality. That is just the kind of God He is: generous, extravagant, outrageously good.

He is the best, and He gives the best.
Wedding guests get the good grapes.
Village kids get the blue-ribbon beef.
Mankind gets a do-over and whoever embraces Jesus gets to stand in the presence of the God-Who-Made-Everything forever and ever and tremble at His beauty, His goodness and His holiness, but never in guilt and terror.

Taste, see, take refuge, be blessed.

Ambushed by God and filling up on His goodness,
Kimberly

Yes, they're tomatoes, and tomatoes really have nothing to do with this story, but they're such pretty tomatoes! And if you could taste them, you would see that God is good! Haha!

 

The Best-Sweetest-Greatest-Most-Wonderful-Most-Amazing-Ever

I fall in love every year at this time and it’s always the best-sweetest-greatest-most-wonderful-most amazing day ever. It’s true and I am not exaggerating.

This is Passion Week. Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday – my most favorite day of the year.
The best day in all of history…
The sweetest expression of love mankind ever witnessed…
The greatest thing anyone ever did or ever will do…

…that’s what Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah, the Christ did. The culmination of His Passion is us – the life He bought for us. It stirs my heart all over again every spring. He’s the Most, the Greatest, the Sweetest, the Best.

If this isn’t the Jesus you know, then I’m guessing you haven’t met the real Jesus.

He has inspired love songs in maybe every language on the planet.
Men and women around the world have faced torture because of their love for Him.
Lives have been changed, dead live again. It is Jesus. What He did inspires love. Who He is inspires passion, devotion, hope.





If you don’t know Him, you’ll want to meet Him. More than anyone who ever walked the earth, you’ll want to meet this man. This weekend is the perfect time to do just that.









“No Sweeter Name"
by Kari Jobe

No sweeter name than the name of Jesus
No sweeter name have I ever known
No sweeter name than the name of Jesus

You are the life to my heart and my soul
You are the light to the darkness around me
You are the hope to the hopeless and broken
You are the only truth and the way

Jesus, Jesus…


Ambushed by God in a love song on Good Friday,
Kimberly

It's Just a Flesh Wound

A couple years ago, we had two growing boys, a 100-pound dog, and a 3,000 mile road trip ahead of us. My little Subaru just wasn’t going to fit the bill – we needed a bigger vehicle. It turned out to be MUCH bigger, and one day not long after we got it, I misjudged its size while backing out between two trees (around a curve and downhill...in my own defense...haha...) and caught the very seam-edge of the front end on a tree. It peeled like a banana. The whole front end. I was stunned. I’ll never forget my husband’s response when he saw the mess:

“Ahhhh, it’s just a flesh wound.”
(That man is a prize. I see Jesus in him.)

Why does that kind of slow-to-anger, slow-to-blame, quick-to-forgive behavior surprise people? Because it’s not the norm. For the most part, we don't really expect that kind of kindness. But somehow everyone knows they’re supposed to be able to expect it from the people who call themselves “Christian” (which literally means “follower of Christ”). It was what people quickly came to expect from Jesus (the Christ) when he was walking the earth.

In the opening of the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, you'll find a short story of a woman shamed and blamed - but not by Jesus. The religious scholars and leaders put her on public display at the temple and pointed out to Jesus that according to the law, she should be stoned for adultery. They wanted to know what Jesus had to say about it. I'm assuming they didn’t like to watch him heal the blind one moment and eat dinner with prostitutes and cheats the next. If he was really the Messiah, they wanted to see him punish somebody for making a mess of life. Instead, he called for whoever was perfect to go ahead and throw the first stone. They all walked out and left the rocks in the dust. Only Jesus, the Perfect One, was left. He turned to the woman and asked if any there was anyone left who accused her.

“No one, Master.”

“Neither do I,” said Jesus. “Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.” (from John 8, quoted from The Message)


Mercy. Grace. Love-without-a-hook. It’s not exactly what all of Jesus' followers are known for - at least, not in the part of the world where I currently live. But it’s what Jesus was known for. It’s exactly how God wants to be known. At the end of 1 John, chapter 4, there is this astounding explanation of who God is, and how we are expected to represent it Him:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.
(quoted from the NIV)

And that’s all there is to it. We love because he first loved us.
Unlovely us.
Messy, blame-able, skinned-up-and-worse us.
Filthy, blood-on-our-hands, rocks-for-hearts, vicious, just plain ugly…we deserved to be punished.
Instead, Jesus took the punishment and we got the capital-L-Love.

When we blow it, it doesn’t have to be a mortal wound. Jesus took the mortal wound and we get a clean slate.

I had conversations with two different friends recently about people who had been trapped by habits of the sort that destroy families and lives. We talked about how people trip up on something that shouldn’t be fatal, but because they are ashamed and afraid to let anyone know, that scratch becomes a mortal wound. It’s not God’s fault that people are afraid to say they blew it or need help. Jesus didn't do that to them. We did it to each other.

In this world, I want to be like Jesus.
I want to say, Ahh, it’s just a flesh wound.
Get up again. I’ll help you brush off the dust.
Here’s a band-aid.
Let’s keep going. I’ll walk with you.

Ambushed by the God-Who-Loved-First,
Kimberly

The Supernova That Is Calvary

Once upon a time, there was an explosion. Instead of destruction, it brought life. In fact, it gave birth to a whole new form of life…

Calvary...the cross...Jesus – there is this explosive moment in time that changed all of time, past, present and future – for all of eternity.

We were goners.
Then there was Jesus, splitting open the grave and tearing open the curtain and blowing up the divide between us and God. 
And now we’re alive and more-than-alive: we’re “a new creation”.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life – no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.  -Romans 6:6-11 (MSG)

About a year ago, I came across this video online. I thought immediately of  what-Jesus-did when I watched it (although that is not what the author intended to call to my mind):

This Is Our Universe, Can You Comprehend It?



I listened and thought, He has it almost right…

Not
“ ...I thought I could never touch it, and yet something of it crosses the void and touches me..."

but
...we knew we could never touch Him, and yet something of Him - His Son - crosses the void and touches us...

and not
“ ...stars have died so that I can live...”

but
...the Root of David and bright Morning Star died so that I can live...


I step out of the supernova that is Calvary ... and so do you…
That’s what Jesus did.

Ambushed by God on the cross, in the skies, and on the internet,

Kimberly

 

 

 

My God Is a Storm

My husband was reading to our oldest son last week, and I was doing this-and-that nearby, eavesdropping. The book was about a young boy and the ewe he hand-raised from its birth. The chapter I listened in on the other day tells the story of the day the ewe (“Biddy”) walked into the house while the family was at the table. She came in bleeding and bitten, to let them know that wolves were after the flock:

They never found how Biddy got through or over or around the miles of fencing that were meant to keep the pastures safe, but they found why. In a ravine, a clustered frightened group of sheep were gathered, still trembling as they had when they had raced for their lives across the open land. Their wild eyes could not see the three [shepherds] approaching them as friends but as something more to fear. At sight of Benj and Andrew and Peter an anguished sound came from the flock - high and plaintive from the mothers, sharp and questioning from the lambs...

With long strides Benj moved in among the flock, talking to them, reaching out his hands on either side to comfort and allay. Biddy had joined the flock, her dark brown fleece instantly discernible among the tawny coats. Somewhere she had found her lamb and was whickering over it, proud and happy. Her quietness and Benj's slow tones spread assurance to the flock and gradually they became calm.
 
Peter stayed with the sheep while Andrew and Benj went off across the pastureland and over the rounded nobs of hills searching for traces of the invader…
 
When dusk began to settle down, Andrew and Peter started home. Benj was left sitting on a stone, the gun across his knees, Biddy and her lamb beside him so the flock would not stray. Peter remembered him sitting there - as silent as a tree, as grim as a storm-laden east wind.  (excerpted from Mountain Born, by Elizabeth Yates)




I listened to my husband reading and I could see God. I could see God's heart that caused Him to leap to our rescue.


I could hear God’s voice that calms the frightened mothers and babies (and everyone else).
I could look back in my life and see God’s form moving in our midst, bringing us comfort and peace. And I saw that God sits, a storm-front of strength and protection over His loved ones.  




 

 

 

 

 

God is a storm to our enemy - a grim, storm-laden east wind to the enemy that would devour our lives. Do you feel surrounded, chased down or backed into a corner?

There is a God who will - and already has - moved heaven and earth* to come to your rescue.



My God is a storm to my enemy and a peace to me. I love Him for it. 



Ambushed at story time with gratitude to the God-Who-Storms-On-My-Behalf,

Kimberly



   

    

 

I love You fervently anddevotedly, O Lord, my Strength.

The Lord is my Rock, my Fortress, and my Deliverer; my God, my keen and firm Strength in Whom I will trust and take refuge, my Shield, and the Horn of my salvation, my High Tower.

I will call upon the Lord, Who is to be praised; so shall I be saved from my enemies.

The cords or bands of death surrounded me, and the streams of ungodliness and the torrents of ruin terrified me.

The cords of Sheol (the place of the dead) surrounded me; the snares of death confronted and came upon me.

In my distress [when seemingly closed in] I called upon the Lord and cried to my God; He heard my voice out of His temple (heavenly dwelling place), and my cry came before Him, into His [very] ears.

Then the earth quaked and rocked, the foundations also of the mountains trembled; they moved and were shaken because He was indignant and angry.

There went up smoke from His nostrils; and lightning out of His mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it.

*He bowed the heavens also and came down; and thick darkness was under His feet.

And He rode upon a cherub [a storm] and flew [swiftly]; yes, He sped on with the wings of the wind.

He made darkness His secret hiding place; as His pavilion (His canopy) round about Him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.

Out of the brightness before Him there broke forth through His thick clouds hailstones and coals of fire.

The Lord also thundered from the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice, amid hailstones and coals of fire.

And He sent out His arrows and scattered them; and He flashed forth lightnings and put them to rout.

Then the beds of the sea appeared and the foundations of the world were laid bare at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.

He reached from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.

He delivered me from my strong enemy and from those who hated andabhorred me, for they were too strong for me.

They confronted and came upon me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay and support.

He brought me forth also into a large place; He was delivering me because He was pleased with me and delighted in me.

 

Psalm 18:1-19, Amplified Bible (AMP)