My Portion

On days when I am very conscious of eating and living health-ily, my portion is deliberate and I am focussed on what my body needs, not what my taste buds want.  I eat things that are good for me, giving me the energy and strength I need to be active and alert.

Some days I feel down and tired and my food intake reflects that.  I might need a pick-me-up part way through the day that I wouldn't even think of on other days.  An ice-cold Pepsi, some chips and salsa, or a chocolate chip cookie might be the only thing that hits the spot.  And while my physical body might not need it, per se, my emotional hunger is equally important at times.  

Other days for other reasons, the food I eat is part of a social situation.  Out with friends or at a special event, my portion may be vastly larger and more frivolous than average.  It reflects the atmosphere of fun and frivolity in which it is being consumed.  It is almost symbolic of the relaxing and enjoying that is going on around it.

My portion.  My portion is what I have allotted to eat.  What I have eaten.  What I have needed to eat.  What fills my physical need or emotional need.  

Need.  Whether it is big or small, my portion is reflective of the circumstances and needs around it.  

Psalm 119:57

You are my portion, Lord.

Some days you provide my strength and energy.  You are good for me and almost functional in a way.  Other days you fill an emotional need that is deep.  You pour into a crevice that needs healing.  Still other days the portion you provide is in excess - symbolic of your lavish and overflowing love for me.  

Regardless of how or why or when or how much I need you on any given day at any given moment, you are my portion.  You are all I need.  All I need.  My needs change hour by hour, but you are all I need.

Thank you, Jesus, for being my praiseworthy portion.

No One Ever Spoke

Your voice
Your words
Your guts
Your compassion
Your glory
Your power
Your courage
Your charisma
Your sermons
Your lead-by-example
Your meekness
Your grace
Your obedience
Your gentleness
Your comfort
Your silence
No one ever spoke the way this man does.  John 7:46
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  John 1:14
Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.  Hebrews 3:7

Rapt with Anticipation

Dipping my paddle in for the first stroke and pushing off shore, I am rapt with anticipation.  The details of what lies ahead are unknown; our route is charted yet the many variables mean things could veer substantially off of our loosely laid plans.  I don't have a clue what the weather or terrain will bring, both of which will greatly affect our excursion.  Adventures are bound to be had, some of which will be funny and some of which will require gritting my teeth and hoping that they will one day make entertaining stories.  There is bound to be much joy and wonder.  There is also bound to be pain and difficulty.  It all comes with the canoe trip territory.

And I am rapt with anticipation.

How is it that I can voluntarily venture into completely unknown paths with the confidence that rain or shine, windy or calm, easy or difficult I want to be here and experience it all?  Because I know that the experience in all its forms and facets is powerful and somehow leaves me wanting more.

Are there other arenas of my life I could approach the same way?  

Today, God, I am choosing to adore that you are the God who leads me on paths I have not known.  You are the God of adventure.  You are the God who goes before me into unknown and uncharted territory.  Paths I have never seen to lookouts I did not know existed.  It is very possible that there is nothing safe about following you there, yet perhaps I can approach these feats of mystery knowing that whether they are easy or difficult, whether I feel equipped or not, whether they are familiar or not, whether they are full of joy or pain, I can be rapt with anticipation.  Anticipation that you are leading and you can do so much good.  God, You are awesome and if You are the one guiding me along unfamiliar paths, then You can teach me abundantly along the way.

Creator of the New Me

God you are the Creator of me
and the Creator of the new me
the one I don't always recognize
but really quite like
The new me created with new capacities
for righteousness
for holiness
for godliness
not because I'm trying harder
but because you made it that way
Thank you for making me who I am in the first place
and thank you for the soul-overhaul that screams of you
That gives fire to my passions
success to my abilities
direction to my desires
meaning to my moments
Your love
in all its height and width and depth
breathed creative life into me
on the day of my salvation
And on every day of insight
my faith grows higher and wider and deeper
All praise and glory and honour and thanks
To you
the Creator of this new me

Looking-Glass

This looking-glass warps time as I see the future and the past at once.  In your checkered shorts and polo shirt, you're all ready for this morning's photo shoot.  You were surprised by your own handsomeness as you looked in the mirror while getting ready and I nearly died of cuteness while attempting not to giggle.  Trying hard to do everything the photographer asked, you were so grown up, taking this so seriously and wanting to do your best.  With your arms folded across your chest, it was like junior high was around the corner.  Yet laying on your back and looking into the camera, your face shone just like it did when she took the same photo of you at age one.  She made you say the kind of silly boy things that I can picture making you laugh until you are 15 - or maybe 50.  But the laugh they elicit shows those dimples and you are just a chubby-faced toddler again.  Your eyes sparkle as though you both know this is just a game to make you smile and still you can't help losing yourself in the goofiness of it.  Your shaggy hair is adorably tousled from the front and a testament to your big-kid-grow-it-out plans in the back.

All alone with you, I have the luxury of remembering so many of your firsts (because they were my firsts too) and imagining where your character will take you as it evolves with age.  You and I, right now, we are living in a little muddled puddle where past and future amalgamate in cloudy confusion and neither of us quite knows whether you are big or little.  It's a messy, mesmerizing mesh of worlds.

As You have Loved Me

As I have loved you, so you must love others.

As You have loved me.  Just like You have loved me.  In the same way that You have loved me.

God who models love, no wonder there is such a desire in me to love well.  It only makes sense that You who love with every breath, would place that urge in my heart.  I am, after all, made in your image and you model love in ways my heart longs for.

Lavishly.  There is such extravagance about you.  All loving things done in excess; undeserved grace given in abundance.  Without thought of it being wasted, you rain down your blessings on me.  Nothing I have ever done or ever will do could bring out this extraordinary love.  It is just who you are.

Unconditionally.  We toss this word around without considering its weight.  When I think of what it means for you to love me unconditionally...I am stupefied.  To love me unconditionally means you must love every single hidden dark ugly corner of my soul.  You love me when I am right there next to you keeping in step with your movements in my life and world.  You love me when I am far from you, indifferent to your thoughts and will.  You love me entirely independent of what I do or where I am or whether I am choosing to be in relationship with you.  Which means that I hurt you - a lot.  And you love me in the middle of that.

Fiercely.  With all-consuming passion, you love me.  With tears of ecstasy and joy, you created me just so.  With tears of pain and agony, you died for me.  You are emotionally invested in me.

Thank You for loving me lavishly, unconditionally, and fiercely.  Thank You for modelling love that I can strive for.  Thank You for loving me as a Father, Husband, Friend, Saviour, Brother, Creator, Redeemer, and King.  I would never be anything without Your love.  Thank You for putting Your love inside me.  Thank You for teaching and enabling me to love by loving me first.

Strong-Maker

He screams when his clothes get even the teeniest bit wet and we've been through this a thousand times before and he can recite the solutions and he knows it's trivial and temporary and he is fully aware that we hate his response and that most kids don't react that way and that it's actually kind of irrational to freak out about it and yet he screams when his clothes get wet and I cannot.

He hits his brother on the head and it's not fair because he is way bigger and stronger and he knows he shouldn't be doing it and he could solve the problem with words and he could just walk away and he could avoid time-outs and punishments and anger and fights and disappointment and he could choose to let it go and still he doesn't hardly ever and it happens twelve times a day and I cannot.

That's the thing, is that it happens so often.  If my kid was a monster the odd time, I think I'd be okay.  But he whines a lot.  And he overreacts more than he reacts.  And he instigates fights.  And can be aggresive.  And wild.  And obnoxious.  And deliberately disobedient.  And in so many moments, he is none of the things I am teaching and guiding and striving and hoping and praying and working and speaking and modelling.  Sometimes I am desperately wondering what to do next.  Most times I am just wondering what I have done wrong.

Because I cannot.

I cannot even imagine how to turn this behaviour around.  I have tried so many things.  When I sit back and look at the situation, I am rational enough to see that I am doing things right.  And yet, I cannot see the way through.  Nothing I do matters.  Nothing I do is enough.  I am so helpless.  So hopeless.  So insignificant.  So weak.  So incompetent.  So exhausted.  So ashamed.

But He speaks.

That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in tantrums, in exhaustion, in meltdowns, in helplessness.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.

And I must speak back, whether I believe it yet or not is irrelevant.

Jesus, you are the strong-maker.  But you don't just make me strong by using my areas of gifting, ability, and confidence.  You make strength from utter weakness.  From this exact arena in which I feel nothing but incompetence as I watch day after day of failure.  That is where you make strength flourish.

Power, energy, spirit, fortitude, resilience, power, influence, supremacy.  All those things?  In my weakness?  Because of you and only you.   It doesn't make sense by my logic, but you are in the business of turning things upside-down.  If anyone can make me strong where I am weak, it is you.

God who makes me strong.  God, you make me strong.  The 'evidence' of feelings and of results aside, I choose to believe that here in my day-to-day struggles with Niko's behaviour, you make me strong.  In my moments of helpless, hopeless weakness, you make me strong with the strength that can only come from above.

One day, maybe I will understand why the weakness was necessary.  But in the meantime I will cling to your truth and declare it back to you.

You turn my utter-weakness into strength.