Invictus

Amazed.  That's the only word I can come up with to describe my reaction to grace.  And words are not sufficient.  How can words describe the impact that the Grace of Jesus Christ has on my life?  It's heavy, weighty, overwhelming to think that God would love me like that.  And when I'm broken, that's when He does His real heart-work.  In my brokenness, the unbreakable God of the universe performs another miracle on my obliterated-sinful heart.  He makes all things new.  He sustains me.  His mercies are new every morning and His grace always rains down and reigns in my life.

Amazed.  Why would God choose to do His kingdom work through people?  But I'm honored, and motivated to give Him my heart, and to let Him make it clean daily; to give Him my faith and let Him mend it daily; to give Him my life to live for Him daily.  Our God is invincible.  Our God is unconquerable.  Our God is Amazing...just like His grace.

I heard this song this morning (Invictus by Brave Saint Saturn)  and I will conclude this post with a few lyrics from it, that sum up how I'm feeling today:

You part the shadows,
Light of the World.
Destroy the blindness
Peace Eternal.

Take this broken heart,
if it brings You praise,
Take this beaten soul,
shivering hands I will raise.

Hope Unstoppable,
Sing the morning sun,
Wake up oh sleeper,
the Daylight has come.

Read more: Brave Saint Saturn - Invictus Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Aching for Heaven

The idea of turning 30 later this year is starting to sink in as reality. Thirty is not old, but it has caused me to look down the barrel of my own mortality. And the longer I live, the longer I see pain and the more loved ones I see pass away....some tragic, some a relief because of chronic pain through the years. What I have gained through witnessing first hand the fragility if life, is an aching and a longing for heaven.

"To live is Christ and to die is gain ," the apostle Paul once penned.  The gain of eternity with Jesus...where there is no more pain, no more dying, no more tears...will be an amazing happy ever after. Life on earth is a reminder that the best is yet to come and that their will be a wonderful reunion in heaven with those who we lost here on earth.

So the meantime; I will love intentionally and will love with reckless abandon. I will play on the carpet with my kids more, complain less and go out if my way to serve the least I these. Jesus will call me home when it is time, but until then, I will bring more of my heavenly home to earth by loving like Christ first loved me.

The Balloon That Got Away

My sweet 3-year old daughter Chloe has forever linked losing people and loved ones to losing a balloon.  In fact she mourns the loss of a balloon far greater than the loss of a loved one.  In the last year, the poor girl has seen mommy and daddy crying quite often.  It was a tough year losing two grandparents and Rachel's father.  I've learned a lot about loss and how to mourn over the last 10 months or so, but Chloe has taught me even more.

Tonight her Valentine balloon got away, but to fully understand what happen next, I have to explain her relationship with balloons.  She loves them; nothing else comes close.  When she sees a new balloon floating at the end of a long elegant string, her heart is elated.  She loves that balloon even when it quits floating and is restricted to an existence of crawling along the ground.  Long passed the normal life span of a balloon, Chloe still treasures it...if we would let her, she would add it to a backpack and never let it get thrown away.

If a balloon pops, or heaven forbid, floats away...her little heart is overwhelmed with grief.  She weeps over her lost balloon.  It's sweet, but heartbreaking.

Chloe got a Valentine's Day Balloon from my dad and she treasured it.  It came with us in the car everywhere we went.  It went on our errands today and it went to my parents house tonight when we went over.  But unfortunately, as we were putting her in the car to go home, something severed the string as we were putting it in the car, and the red heart balloon with flowers on it floated away.  It started low and rose steadily until the heart shaped balloon disappeared against the black backdrop.  Chloe looked up just in time to see it disappear.  She was crush.  She wailed and cried all the way home.  And when she got home she retold the tale to Rachel's mom, weeping with fresh tears as she relayed the tragedy.

Of course we will get her a new balloon, of course we will make it right, but for Chloe a balloon is a very special thing.  It represents life, whimsy, joy, and love: the things of God that are instilled in us as His image-bearers.  And when a balloon bursts....that joy is gone just as quickly as it arrived on this planet.  When a balloon floats away, it leaves, long before we were ready for it to depart, but much the it existed...it departs....whimsically, beautifully with an ebb and flow as it drifts into the sky and to the heavens.

Life is fragile like a balloon.  We never know when it might burst or float away, but like Chloe has taught me with balloons, life is meant to be enjoyed.  It is meant to be lived to the full.  Jesus came that we may have life, and have it to the full; rich, abundant life.  And the enjoyment that comes from living a purpose-filled life in awe of the Grace of our Awesome God, is whimsical, joyful, loving.  It's a gift:  to be enjoyed and cherished while it is here. 

My little girl has taught me to be more intentional with this one life I have:  to love more, to pause and take it all in more often, to be intentional with conversations and moments.  Full life can only be lived if you fully live...so I plan to do that for my God and Savior.

Silence Speaks Volumes

Sometimes our silence says more than out words ever could. In fact, sometimes there are no words at all, and only silence is truly reverent.  Zechariah is a forgotten figure in the landscape of the coming Messiah; but somehow relate to him best of all.

Gabriel appeared to Zechariah.  But Zechariah responded to the news from God with fear and with doubt. And though his words to the angel really seemed to mirror the response Mary had to the same angel, his tone was way different. Why else would he have been left without words until the day his wife would give birth to their long anticipated son.  Zechariah's silence may have appeared to be a curse, or at least a chastisement...and it really was. But as is true with how God deals with many of us, this development had both blessings and punishments woven into it.

He left the temple speechless. He had no one to which he could share his joy. And when his wife Elizabeth learned of her pregnancy, he couldn't express how exited he was....how happy he was for her, for them; that the veil of childlessness was lifted from their line. He couldn't express the gambit of emotions he would have been feeling....but he was silent. And when you are silent, sometimes you listen. And when you listen, you hear words explicitly spoken and words implied.  And often it's when we refrain from speaking, that our Hod speaks to is and fills is with his wonders which are truly indescribable. Maybe we all can benefit from being at a loss for words.

Eventually Zechariah spoke again and had these words to reflect to God on his son who would play a valuable role in Jesus' life as his cousin and baptizer.

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.  And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

The Moment That Changes Everything

I'm reminded of our fragility as people.  Here one day, gone the next.  Which makes each moment....each second of this life full of significance.  We truly don't know which moment will be our last, so we must live each moment on purpose.  Are you floating through life or living on purpose?  I think the Shepherds were floating.  Day in and day out, they took their flocks to their fields and watched- not anticipating anything in particular, just watching.  Watching sheep sounds about as monotonous as it gets.  Sure there are moments when you are forced to leap into action and protect the sheep, but those moments are few and in the mean time silence and boredom to fill the nights. 

In that one moment, everything changed.  The angels entered the horizon quicker than a heartbeat and proclaimed a life changing reality not just for the Shepherds but for all of mankind that moment forward.  LIFE.  SALVATION.  PEACE.  JOY.  LOVE. The answer to all of life's questions had just been born, in a manner so humble that barely anyone noticed.  But heaven met earth...in that moment.  And everything would be different forever.

Do you think the Shepherds ever took their jobs for granted again?  Do you think Joseph ever looked at Mary the same again?  Yet we get stuck in monotony, we get stuck living our lives and floating through; engaging our brains with the temporary in order to avoid the eternal.  I invite you this Christmas season, to be rocked by the news again- perhaps for the first time.  "For a child has been born- for us!  The gift of a son- for us!  His names will be:  Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness.  His ruling Authority will grow and there will be no limits to the wholeness He brings." (Isaiah 9:6 THE MESSAGE)

Because I cannot do it by myself, I need the AMAZING COUNSELOR.  Because i am weak, I need the STRONG GOD.  Because I am an earthly son, I need the ETERNAL FATHER, and because of my short-comings, I need the PRINCE OF WHOLENESS.  And He is here, He was born at Christmas.  So now I must live for Him, every moment on purpose for Him.

Thoughts on losing my other dad

I wanted to attempt to put words together to help me heal; to help my brain and heart intersect at this tragedy that unfortunately is reality.

Jack Fabris is the father of my wife. When I met him six and a half years ago he immediately went into my phone under the contact 'Papa Jack.' We played golf every Friday, I expected that to be awkward, but it wasn't.  He would tell our various golfing companions that I was dating his daughter, later he would tell them that I married his daughter, later still he would tell them that I was the father of his grandchildren.  Eight months ago black mold displaced us from our home and my wife Rachel's health was in bad shape. The cluster if symptoms kept changing and sending her health into a downward spiral and till we discovered the mold. Jack had us move in that very night, an we are still here.

He watched the girls the day my grandfather died, the girls were there for him eleven days later when his dad died.  I joked that I was, "living the dream- every guy secretly wanted to live with his in laws."  But somehow it worked.  Jack did things his way, the way he had always done them, and once I swallowed my pride, I started to learn his ways, his systems of how to do things.  And they worked. His marriage worked: Thirty years plus, he was happy, and he loved those closes to him with no holding back.

He reminded Chloe and Kaydee daily that they were "his girls." He watched them or co-watched them at least for part of the day, every day since we moved in. He would check on Chloe on his way to bed every night and Chloe would always ask for us to "send Pa Pa up" when we tucked her in.  The day before he died, he took Chloe on a date to McDonald's for ice cream, and Fry's for more Christmas lights. 

Earlier that fateful day, we cleaned his pool filters together and straightened up the Livingroom.  Two women and their daughters knocked on the door while I was vacuuming and Jack answered the door. They asked him if he wanted a Bible reading and a tract, he answered, "my son-in-law here is a minister so we're good, we've got it covered." It's unbelievable how much that conversation at the front door has helped me heal. We left for the Tempe Lights parade at 4, around 5 he passed away as a result to head trauma in an accident involving his motorcycle.

I'm often the one on the other side of grief, the one like you, wishing you had the magic words to make the person hurting feel better. I always hated it because I never really knew how it felt, I had never lost anyone tragically, or at all as a matter of fact before these last few years.  And now it has happened.  

And I asked God why?!  Why now, why him? Why does my three year old have to know so well what it means when someone dies. Why does my wife have to be without her daddy?

But quickly, I can't forget to thank God: thank you for his life, thank you for how he loved us, thank you for the memories, thank you that we were able to live our relationships with Christ in front of him day in and day out.

I still don't know why God allows things like this to happen, but I understand one thing a lot better now: peace.  I feel overwhelmed by peace- knowing that it was his time to go home, peace that God still has a plan in all of this, peace that this isn't the end, peace that doesn't make sense, and peace that I can't get away from even when I want to. It really does transcend all understanding. And when the waves of grief and sadness flood over, the peace pushes it away and we remain standing. 

God, I praise you in this storm, and I won't even try to steer through this one. Guide us through to the other side. 

I lost my other dad this week. He loved me like a son, and I him like a father.

Jack Fabris

June 30, 1951- November 24, 2012

Jesus = Life

Read 1 John 5:1-12

The truth is:  no one likes a hypocrite.  No one likes it when somebody says one thing and they do a different thing that contradicts the thing that they initially are saying in the first place!?  Confused, let me explain:

Following Jesus, at least on paper, is quite simple:  If you love Him - you should do what He says.  If you want to overcome the world (and all the junk and terrible things in it), you should trust Him with everything that you've got.  Jesus = victory over death, Jesus = life, Jesus = love, Jesus = the Way.

So why do we make it all about us?  Why do we complicate things with our agendas, our selfish desires, our 15 seconds of fame at the expense of others?  We are sinful.  We are flawed.  But we are not stuck if we simply follow Him.  He is the way.  He is the Truth.  He is the light.  He is the Light.  He is love.

My hope and prayer is that the simplicity of the Gospel will shatter my complicated will and world.  I pray to be overwhelmed by the simple yet overwhelming truth of Grace and Love.  God has rescued me from myself, and I keep crawling back.  I want to live simply, surrounded by the Truth of His overwhelming simple but amazing Love.