www.IlluminateTheTruth.com

I finally got the permission I was yearning for without me knowing I was yearning for it.  All I know is that one day I was staring out a window and suddenly it was there—not just gestating academically in my head like it had doing been for the last decade.  No, suddenly it was brought to life in me—and made into something that empowers and frees me, instead of something that I merely weigh or that weighs on me.

Over the last thirty years or so, our somewhat isolated, Western microclimate has weathered shifting seasons of thinking.  Included in this category is the once-popular “No Tolerance” line of thought, which has given way to the more recent “Anti-No Tolerance” norm.  In hopes of nullifying the off-putting effects of opposition, we now oppose opposition.  “A-conviction” is the new “conviction”.  (Which is still a conviction).

This makes perfect sense according to the saying “We become the mirror image of that which we oppose” (Richard Rohr).  The reality of opposition perpetuates itself.

Especially we Christians don’t do so well with opposition.  Whatever our convictions are, the threat of differences has caused and still causes gut-wrenching, cringe-worthy destructive reactions.  We were given our tools, but we weren’t mature enough to use them without inflicting unnecessary pain.  But God is so patient.

Perhaps a Time Out is an order.  Maybe it’s a good thing that for now, we’ve (or at least I have) stalled out in this purgatory of not wanting to take sides.  Maybe it’s a healthy exercise to drop the rope on convictions for a second and let the dust settle until I can see Christ in all this before I grab my torch and pitchfork.

For a long time, I have agonized and contemplated, not so much where I stand on things, but whether or not it is helpful at all to take a stand on things.  My transformation is still very much in-process: I started as a black and white thinker. Then certain life events helped transition me into someone who suddenly could neither claim any stand nor support any boundary.  “What is right?  All is grey!”

This nebulous place is appropriately paralyzing.  Better to wait to act until I’ve matured.  It was/is an appropriate part of my process, but paralysis is not my ultimate destination.  But there I sat: hesitant, unknowing, and uncomfortable amidst the other evolving frozen chosen—all the while, wishing for a righteous, hard line to cling too.  “Boundlessness” can be a hard concept to live with.  I was part put-off, and part envious of anyone who could voice a conviction at all.

Then I began to take a deeper look into why I was so paralyzed.  Why can’t I embrace a certain conviction?  For me, this was the reason:  I didn’t want to imply hatred toward someone  by saying that I disagreed with them.  I didn’t want to be the self-righteous jerk that Jesus rebuked over again in the Bible, and I didn’t want to be the jerk that the “anti-haters” have understandably risen up against.  I didn’t want to make people feel the way I feel when someone says to me: “Women should not be given a position of authority in church.”

Many of us haven’t really learned how do detach hatred from disagreement.  In turn, disagreeing has become synonymous with hating, and so (perhaps rightly?) society has removed the privilege of being able disagree.

But one day, as I was staring out the window, I saw some of what God disagreed with about me, and at that same moment I also saw that He loved me.  God agreeing with me was never a condition for His love for me.  In the same way, I don’t agree with everything my girls do, but it has no bearing on whether I love them or not.  Suddenly, I understood without a doubt that in Christ, it is possible to disagree and love.

The funny thing is, I knew this—I knew this!  Dallas Willard said it a long time ago.  But this knowledge possessed no power and no meaning for this area of my life, until that day.

Anyway, in that sudden ah-ha moment, I was given permission to re-embrace my convictions as I am in Christ.  I was graciously given a place to unapologetically and lovingly stand.  Even more, I was given the grace to permit others to have their place, too.

It’s a step beyond “agreeing to disagree”—like un-invested co-habitants who just ignore the elephant in the room; like couples who must refrain from a topic, lest a nuclear war ensue.  “First, do no harm”—it’s a right mantra, but it doesn’t end there.  There’s a next step.  Here’s the vision for it: After waiting patiently for God to give us a place to stand, and allowing Him to transform us into loving, Christ-centered people who can stand there, we unique people progress into unique people who deeply love and respect one another—people who are somehow unoffending and unoffended—despite standing alongside people of known and fundamental differences.  We suddenly possess a love that is uniting instead of fracturing.  And we don’t love each other because we agree on major issues; we love each other because that’s what people in Christ do.  Period.

I am coming out of neutral.  I am being put into gear, with permission to proceed with conviction.  Not that I plan on shouting my particular stance from the mountaintop, nor shall my stance be the basis for my ministry.  It’s just that I get to have it again.

See for yourself, as you enthrone Christ over your convictions—from that position of being in and under Christ—we are the same as everyone else.  We are all people who are deeply loved despite our differences.

I don’t mean to insult the enormity of our differences by writing out some smug, cut-and-dried perspective of it all.  I certainly don’t claim to have it all figured out.  But I think I’ve gotten a taste of the next step in my salvation that God is working out within me.

Pray for our deliverance into whatever next, more loving, less threatening place God has for us.  He is the only one that can do it.  Come Lord Jesus, hurry.  And let’s get ready—being in Christ can do mysterious and unexpected things to a person.

The beloved human has been maturing for millennia.

Interestingly, the growth pattern of the individual psyche and even our spiritual evolution somewhat resembles the course of the still-developing human race.  Not so surprising then, is the idea that history indicates a moment of sweet naivety, an age of barbarianism, a time of domination-by-rules, a period of quietness or darkness, followed by a ripeness for knowledge, leading into rebellions and revolutions and emancipation and deeper learning, a surge in industrial able-ness hemmed in by the maddening reality of limitation, a broadening into holistic seeing, an assertion toward human decency…

Or something like that.

Life’s composition de facto—its progression, and the fact of its organized procession—did/do we achieve it in a sort of pre-meditated way?  Or does it just…  happen.  Often haphazard messy-like, yet naturally suited for the purpose of maturing.  Its template, seemingly too monumental and mysterious to have been pre-planned, is also too consistent, and intricately apropos to have been an accident.

This is a truth: To be alive is to be ushered through a process of maturing, and it does more harm than good to rush it or deny it.  A certain framework for development exists, and whether we acknowledge it or not, or whether we respect it or not, or are aligned with it or not, it is proved—you might even say “glorified”.  It prevails even if we don’t believe in it.

Here’s an example of me proving the growth cycle as I go against it: In my quest to earn the parent’s “Best Cultivator of Thinking Children” award, I played around with the idea of skipping some steps of the growth process with my girls.  I tried to bypass the barbarian age by appealing to their logic and reason.  Except that they didn’t have anything for me to work with at ages two, or three or four.  I thought if I did a fabulous job explaining why people shouldn’t run into the street, that my toddlers would simply not do it.  But no, there isn’t a way around the age—barbarians need rules which are regularly enforced, not the thirty minute-long lectures which I am so good at.  History buffs would back me up on this: Enlightenment is born after navigating a dark and barbaric terrain.  Infertile as that ground may seem.  God have mercy.

Here is another example of the growth process prevailing as I go along with or against it depending on the day: I am anxious to get to the “assertion toward human decency” and even the “peace and harmony” end of the spectrum within my household.  As a result, I am in a constant state of temptation to simply give my kids what they want so that they’ll be happy, in hopes that therefore, we can all be in peaceful relationship with one another—as if getting what one wants and removing all resistance is the secret shortcut to a peaceful existence.  But I’ve witnessed the absurdity of this idea.  I have seen with my own eyes that peace and happiness do not occur without first having cultivated in them respect and unselfishness, obedience and self-control.  I must do my time in these trenches, teaching and modeling and encouraging these things first, before I can hope for any lasting payoff of steadfast peace.  God help me.  There is a process.

Each season of life is necessary.  Have you ever known an adolescent who was never bound to a set of rules in their elementary years?  Have you met an elementary-aged boy or girl whose early childhood innocence was taken?  How about an adult was never given any freedom, or room for rebellion when in their late teens?  A mid-lifer who has never experienced their own limitation?  Or an elderly person who never learned to see beyond him/herself?  There becomes something unpleasant, and ‘isms which can be worked through, but are in themselves, unhelpful or destructive—often to no fault of that individual—when steps are skipped, or robbed, or avoided.  All ages are important—one best gets “there” by first being “here”.

Each season is necessary, and also each season must come to an end so that the next one can begin.  Ever tried to re-create that favorite age and relive it again?  I was not popular in high school, so there was never any danger of me regressing and trying to relive those inglorious days.  But I did love college.  I thrived there.  And, for a long time afterward, I found myself trying to arrange my post-college environment to resemble an exciting, free, driven, purposed, inspired, wisdom-seeking place with many like-minded peers.  The result of that?  Something palpably unnatural.  Inauthentic.  Unrewarding.  Downright icky.  Like, Pet Cemetery-(the movie)-weird.  Note to self: only God resurrects.

As some of us are inclined to cling to the past, many others of us would rather hop on the express lane to the next thing—to somewhere beyond wherever we’re currently at on the spectrum, believing that all promise is confined to the future.  For example, my young married friends want a gratifying, non-challenging relationship with their spouse; and my eight year old wants an apartment.  But even if we could take a quantum leap into the future, would we have the maturity to live in it or the means to sustain it?  No, the place of promise is every bit as much about us being transformed into people who can live there as it is about the actual place.  For that matter, if this place is correlated with our reciprocal ability to live in it, then perhaps this place is actually already here, and we just haven’t evolved enough to see it?

The enticement within the dangling carrot of “the next thing” is the promise of some kind of unthreatened contentment.  Whether she could articulate it or not, that’s what my eight year-old is seeking in the next mountain range over.  As intangible and lack-luster as that sounds, isn’t that the ultimate state of being?  Marketing and advertising companies make trillions by promising this.  Satisfaction without threat?  Yes, please—I’d like me some of that.

Perhaps in my barbaric age, I would have asked as my six year old does whenever we’re going somewhere: “When will we get there?”  If we’ve got a homing device within us that is set on contentment (read: perfectly and completely evolved beings—matured to a place above all threat), and if we’re hardwired to believe that such a thing is possible, then the next logical question is: “When or how do I get to this place of satisfaction?”

This is a necessary question.  It is a question that is intended to be asked—so no offense implied by the word “barbaric”.  One gets best to whatever is next by knowing some of the answer to this question; and likely, anyone reading a Christian blog already knows the answer, which includes the idea that we are made fully perfect and suitable for eternity by way of a seeming devolution.

Equally as interesting (to me, anyway) is asking this question on behalf of the whole human civilization.  We can be sure that God is continually working on this angle.  When/how will the whole human get to a state of perfect wholeness which prospers in contentment?  Perhaps the answer is the same as the individual’s life cycle.  By taking cues again from the natural order of the individual life, maybe the human’s whole and ultimate deliverance into salvation… reflects the same downward movement.  Maybe the beloved human doesn’t finally figure out its way into salvation, or climb its way into heaven; rather, maybe the world crumbles and falls into the hands of the Resurrecting God.  It’s not as if the Bible doesn’t hint at this.

Despite the disturbing sound of that, based on the evidence at hand, is there any reason to think that we would eventually create a utopian, eternal life for ourselves?  Or do we just finally, sort of, roll over into it?  When do we get there?  How do we get there?  This is the Way that was revealed to us: to be about the Father’s tasks before us to the best of our ability (whatever that means), and to wait and pray for our deliverance into something greater.  May God deliver us sooner rather than later.

I find all of that fascinating to think about, and asking when or how we get there is essential, that we may know it and practice it.  But recently, I was inspired to contemplate this next question:

“Do we need to worry about getting there?”

In light of life’s purposeful procession reflected in life throughout the universe, a person could wonder: do we mature ourselves, or does the process of life mature us?  I’m initially inclined to think I play a large role in completing and perfecting myself—it certainly requires trust and humility to think otherwise—but if history can offer any insight as to how we got from there to here, it would seem that the human has little more responsibility than to simply be about the tasks put before him to the best of his ability (whatever that means), and to wait and hope for something greater.

Have I made my role more complicated than that?  Don’t I have more control than that?  Doesn’t God want more for us, or from us, than that?

Consider this illustration of a symphony:  When regarding a singular bar or measure in a piece, there is no clear melody, the crescendo leads to nowhere and the movements seem to collide without any real rhyme or reason.  Only when hearing the whole piece does each stanza have full value.  Even more, we know that the purpose of playing music is not to simply race to the end of it—rather, it was written to be enjoyed, and so that all would play to each one’s best ability, while watching the conductor.  The truth is, the orchestral-like flow of life is designed and conducted by an intentional and involved Creator for the ultimate good of all things.  We certainly have our part to play, but ultimately it is the responsibility of the living, breathing, knowing conductor to bring a performance to its completion.

It opens the pressure valve a bit when I look at life from this angle.  It releases me from the impossible task of perfecting myself on my own, or knowing things beyond what I can know, or doing things that I cannot do with resources that I do not have.  When I trust that the process of life is adequately purposed for the perfect completion of all things including me, my hope finds a home in something much bigger than just perfecting my own part in everything.  I’m suddenly less fearful of what the moment takes away, and instead, I’m more hopeful in what the fullness of time will create.  I am less anxious about getting to my “there”, and am suddenly more patient with my “here”.  And I am less paranoid about what I (or anyone else) am doing wrong, and more encouraged to simply participate.

So, as far as wanting to know when we will get there, all that we can be certain of is that God is never rushed.  He owns time.  And He has complete faith in His ability to create and direct a beloved creation into its intended, beautiful wholeness in His own time. How will we get there?  It’s a lot less convoluted than I make it out to be.  The answer is: here.  I get there by way of doing the tasks put before me to the best of my ability while I wait and pray for my deliverance.

Do we have to worry about getting there?  As believers in Christ, we can trust the process of life to bring us to perfect completion—to bring about a good work—enduring every season, because our process is being conducted by a loving, all-powerful Creator who is fully invested in the age we are in right now, whether it looks like He is or not.  My perfection never hinged on my achievement of it.  Neither is that the case for our whole human self.  But God’s will for the perfect completion of the whole human will come to pass.  If I want to get to a content and unthreatened place in the pre-ordained trajectory of humanity, I’d do best to simply believe this.  May God’s will be done.

Our promised land has not passed us by.  Neither is the land of contentment a certain place on the continuum as much as it is the whole continuum.  Therefore, our calling is simply to be on it.  We may feel as if we have moved either toward or away from some of the values that make us promising candidates for eternal satisfaction, but we are certainly not far away from God’s ability to restore the beloved human to its full and whole state.  Depending on your perspective, the human race may be in a crescendo or a decrescendo, but either way, the current dynamic was scored and perfected long ago.  For that matter it is probably unhelpful to idolize previous generations, and it is equally unhelpful to doom or blame this next one, regardless of what our surroundings may look like.  We generations have much less control than we think in the ultimate outcome.  Fortunately, God is still in control.  Even now, He is guiding, directing and knowing; providing us daily with the means to become and possess satisfaction without threat.

Seeing the human from an more evolved perspective is to know that the biggest factor for a person’s maturation is not so much one person’s perfect choices, or the other person’s perfect reactions, but mostly time—the process of life, my earnest participation, and a patient acceptance of that.  Unthreatened contentment is the result of embracing the whole thing.  I am a kinder parent when I believe this.

In every age, God is God.  God is in control.  Believing that is the way to contentment.

One last illustration:

I watched an adventure documentary about a Dutch girl named Laura Dekker who became the youngest person to sail around the world alone.  It took her two years—she was fourteen when she started her journey and sixteen when she finished.  At the end of the documentary, the spirit of her exit interview went something like this:

“When I first started sailing, all I wanted to do was beat the storms and avoid the doldrums.  But now I know how to be OK with all of those things.  Yes, I plot my course, but I have learned how to be a part of good and bad weather in order to get where I’m going.  I have grown into someone who is content with the whole experience, and that changed everything for me.”

I saw something in a church the other day.  Something I hated.  I saw a formal ceremony occurring—one in which the peoples involved proclaim their surrender to Christ.  Only, I suspected an insincere heart inside those standing in their faithful proclamation.

They had no idea what they were doing.

It was a formality.  A positioning strategy, but not, as I saw it, a move where anyone was self-positioning under anything.

The church was asked to stand in support.

“Wrongness!”, I thought to myself over and over.  I wanted to rise up and confront this display of delusion and sickness.  How could I feign even toleration?

The church was then asked to sit back down.

And the second I touched my seat I heard: “By hook or by crook.”

And in the depth of that short phrase, I understood, through the beaming face and the smiling lips of salvation, “Whatever sick, twisted, self-concocted reason anyone takes one step toward me, I will run to them.  For whatever shred of a reason—true or not—anyone turns to me for hope, I will have them and work miracles with that tiny, tiny seed.  You too, are a beneficiary of this kind of love.  There is wrongness everywhere, but have compassion on what you see.”

I suppose there is a time to rise up, and a time to be still.  But clearly, that day, my marching order was one of peace.

So here I sit, quite happily, in the wake of God’s rebuke.  Happily, you say?  Yes, because it is far less miserable to love than to hate.

That’s how old you are, Ava

My tether to heaven

I dance around your day as if there is still something to dread

But God’s grace fills in shortcomings

He makes things whole

Maybe the grace in you can help me today?

The very sheer and delicate fabric you were made of left much room for salvation to strengthen

How strong you must be now

Consider this statement: I am reconciled to everything underneath my sight-level. Everything else is a threat.

For example, if my eyes are set on a cause or denomination or tangible goal, I am likely united with a behavior or a group that affirms the world as I see it; and I am potentially in discord with anything beyond the umbrella of my belief.

If my sight is set on Christ, then I am reconciled to Him and to all things, because all things are under Him. All threats, overcome.

The ministry of reconciliation is sometimes carried out as a ministry of demanding sameness.

If reconciliation of any kind hasn’t been modeled well, or has been continually resisted soon after the beginning stages, then the mere idea of being reconciled takes on a distorted meaning that wreaks havoc on the newlywed, the church, and the potentially “found”.

God has staked out a vast Kingdom—one that has plenty of room for His intended, and all of the intricate, unique facets His intended consists of. We may have an idea of what a reconciled life ought to look like, and how we ought to be encouraging others toward it. And perhaps we’ve cast too small a vision.

Christian reconciliation means to be restored to unity with Christ. And by that eventuality, I am restored to all things, because Christ is in all things. If I am one of Christ’s own, I am therefore of His same mind to restore all things to peaceful unity in Christ. The Gospel narrates reconciliation to be the purpose and the life of Christ.

Since my ministry to others is really, simply reflection of who I understand Christ to be to me, it is good for me to remember that I was reconciled because of God’s love, not because of an expectation of specific behavior. And before I indulge my temporal inclination to delineate within the ministry of reconciliation to Christ, it is good for me to remember that I am reconciled to a Kingdom of infinite-ness, mystery and mercy, which is held together by a perfect marriage of paradox.

The places within me which have too small a grasp of the bigness of God are the places where differences tend to polarize. In these shallow or disconnected places, the mere idea itself—uniting with differences—is frightening, and can evoke a cagey, closed-off existence. Just the thought of reconciliation can make me want to point out every reason why I think I shouldn’t have to.

As within a healthy marriage, reconciled differences serve to edify and increase the union, but there is a fear lurking just before the point of further unity which says “you will limit or lose yourself in the act of reconciling”. And this is consistent with the plight of humanity’s battle of the flesh and the spirit. Reconciliation will always initially read as defeat or condescension, but its expression leads to ultimate victory.

This is quite a thought for me to think, and quite another excruciating charge for me to align with. I expect my first opportunity to “die” will come the instant I put this computer down.

As the mind matures, and as the idea of reconciliation to God’s gracious bigness becomes less dreadful, and instead, more of an attractive answer to all problems, there is space to wonder what a Kingdom of perfect union with all things might look like:

I imagine that the abstract and the foundational will have figured out how to work seamlessly together.

Maybe in that place, reckless generosity and responsible stewardship are nearly the same thing.

Perhaps beauty and modesty will be intertwined.

Tradition and creativity will embrace, as will practicality with idealism.

Settlers and pioneers will be eternally grateful for one another.

Science and religion will finally bend toward one another until they are fused beautifully.

The warrior and peacemaker will be each other’s strongest ally.

Heaven and Earth will inspire one another.

Humility and triumph will bow to one another.

Need and generosity will complete one another.

Whatever my vision of reconciliation is (a vision that, no doubt, I subsequently project onto others), pray it would be propped up by the frame of eternity to include all things, as Christ is in all things. And pray that I would first be fully reconciled to Christ, that all things would follow.

But He is not fully in me yet. I do not yet possess a grace big enough to absorb or reconcile all things. Or, as other people say it better, He (and grace) is fully present, but I am not fully awake to it. So the parts of me that are still sleeping—in denial—are the parts that are resistant to unity in Christ, and are also resistant to differences in general. Is there a greater difference than the human and the divine? And yet if these can be reconciled, perhaps everything can.

As an aside, what of these “sleeping cells” of mine? Will they be cast off? Awakened? I suppose whoever knows the answer to that might know the mysteries of God’s select verses universality, and free-will verses predestination. Will all things really be reconciled or will they be “left behind” or perhaps instead be transformed and given new life?

I yi yi, it is too wonderful for me to know.

But insofar as I contemplate lateral differences reuniting with the Firstborn of all things, there are horizontal differences to be addressed, too. The reconciliation of sin to salvation is really the thing to talk about. Reconciliation to all things is a byproduct and a calling, but (in my life, anyway) has only begun to be possible as I am first restored to an eternal life in Christ.

If one lives openly enough, one will become aware of one’s own sin, and will also befriend those who are victims of sin. I happen to have dear friends who have suffered sexual abuse, physical abuse, substance abuse, child abuse and psychological abuse. I cannot write a piece on reconciliation without their stories bubbling to the forefront of my mind.

We Christians tend to urge people to reconciliation without really knowing what we’re talking about. And I, with no credentials whatsoever, except that I have begun to know who God really is, can only say that as God sought union with me, he didn’t coddle or enthrone my sin. Nor was He unaware of it. But He pursued the eternal me, and the hope of the eternal me, and when I chose to come into alignment with this hope, I became transformed into the eternal me who God sought.

In this fashion, how can I unite with all things (if in fact that is the manifestation of eternal life), when qualities like abuse and hate and self-centeredness have as much a chance in heaven as darkness around the sun, and are certainly not a part of eternity.

In God’s kingdom where “the wolf may live with the lamb and the child will put his hand into the viper’s nest and neither will harm nor destroy…” (Isaiah 11), somehow the destructive part of the relationship between predator and prey has been absolved. In a Kingdom where all things are reconciled, carnal thirst is invited to sip from living water and begin a life of being forever changed.

When things are reconciled in Christ, they lose their death-properties. And also their fear of being put to death. Wound will meet healing, and becomes joy.  Despair unites with compassion, oppressed atrocities dissolve in forgiveness, and fear is reconciled into ultimate power.  And these old marks will be a banner of completion and a cause for celebration.

My failures will be reconciled into God’s triumphant kingdom. Hunger, resolved by God’s abundance. Sadness and doubt are pursued by kindness and restoration until they actually become those things themselves.

Full reconciliation to Christ would actually edify our unique and eternal fingerprints instead of erase them. Emersion into the Kingdom of God edifies that in us which will live forever—things that enable unity—and nullifies or leaves behind that which is not. In this Kingdom it makes perfect sense to pray for the also-reconciliation of those who persecute us. In this Kingdom, modes of ministry magnify the bigness of God instead of our one-dimensionality. In this Kingdom, the laws of mutual attraction work to make us more like Love, and not to demand instead that Love becomes like us.

Oh, if this is even the beginning of what reconciliation to Christ is like, let it happen now and to all of creation! And let the fullness of it come already! I’m tired of being irritated with the ism’s that emit from incompleteness, and I’m done with the anxieties that stem from the threats to my dormant flesh.

Colossians 1: 15-20. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Philippians 3:21 … by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, (He) will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Hi Friends,

I’m excited to announce the completion of a decade-long endeavor.  I’ve got a book for sale called Ruins: The Perfect Place to Build Indestructible Life.

It’s for sale in print on Amazon and is also available as an ebook on Kindle.  It can be found under the full title, or simply type in “Ruins Natalie Pagel”.

Here’s the description (you can find this, and also take a peek at many more pages in the book, on Amazon and Kindle):

“All around us are illustrations of life coming from death. Narratives of resurrection, restoration, rebirth, and transformation are everywhere. Even the vast universe came from dark ‘nothing’. Should it be any surprise that this same mystery exists inside our souls? Should it be so unbelievable that something valuable and un-killable might be offered to us, and can only take root once we have been reduced to nothing; or at least, have taken a step out of the way? Despite our avoiding or denying them, life comes with many invitations to take that step out of the way, and to let go of our self-centric understanding and our questing merely for things of temporary value. Shrouded typically in suffering, these invitations come as we finally acknowledge our shortfalls, loss, failure, and disappointment which magnify a need in us, and bring us to a position where we are compelled to choose: shall I build my life upon the things of this world, or might there be something else? Ruins is a story about discovering the ‘something else’ who chose me long before I chose Him—the Creator God—and long before I understood the depths of my need for Him. Best of all, I came to experience that God is good. This truth was made emphatically clear to me though I set out to prove Him as otherwise. This book is a collection of letters and journal entries which narrate a road from scripted religious declarations, to an embedded knowledge of divine Truth. It starts at the point of my ruination, and ends at the inception of the new creation within me which is still taking shape. As accurately as the mind can perceive and record reality, this is mine; though some names and dates have been disguised out of grace toward the ignorance that is in all of us.”

A special thanks to my witty, artsy and wise friend Barbara, over at solongsuburbia.com, for her editing and suggestions which made the book so much better.  Who couldn’t love this woman who coined the phrase “Normal: it’s not a thing.”

Anyway, if you read it, thanks for reading!

“Does anyone dare despise the day of small beginnings?” declares the angel to Zechariah, the prophet. The angel was speaking about the temple of Jerusalem being rebuilt.

Small beginnings—did the people think the new temple would be too small? Was their faith too small? Maybe their labor force, or their resources were too small.  Or perhaps, in light of the grand scheme of things, a simple turn toward home seemed… anticlimactic.

“They’ll change their tune”, the angel says again to Zechariah, “when they see Zerubbabel setting the last stone in place.”

Zerubbabel, meaning “born in captivity”, would be the catalyst of this first movement toward the temple’s restoration.

It’s a theme that rings familiar to those who know the Bible stories of Moses, King David, and the hope and purpose of the coming of Jesus.

Restoration starts as something small, right where we’re at. It starts the size of a cornerstone, or a piece of communion bread, or a mustard seed. It begins as a word that becomes a single light in the darkness.

And then (… and THEN!) it is everything all around us.

We are being rebuilt. We are becoming complete. We are not done yet—it gets better! It will happen and it is happening. All threats have already been overcome.

But the hope of restoration for all of creation appears fragile and meek.  It starts out looking unlikely or unpopular.

It starts small—like with a person, like you and me. It begins with a humble confession or the simple act of believing.

It starts tiny. Like with a baby.

(Zechariah 4:10)