Little Successes

Today, I gave a book to a student who will likely be transferred to the alternative school. I can count the number of times this students has voluntarily done work in my class on one hand, but he was reading a book of mine in class and expressed disappointment that he wouldn't be able to come back and keep reading it if he got transferred. I told him he could keep it. He carried around with him all day. He came to school with no bookbag, no books, no pencil, but he carried around a copy of Monster by Walter Dean Myers to each of his classes and to a pep rally and to the bus.

So far, this is one of my greatest successes as a teacher.

Rebellion and Anticipation (Or, I'm a Narnia Obsessor)

Eventually I may professional enough to fill this blog with organized and edited personal essays, but until that point, I will continue to indulge myself by contemplating one of my favorite non-allegories in the majority of the entries that I post.

C.S. Lewis always said he wasn't writing an allegory. As quoted in Of Other Worlds,

Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.

So, I don't knock on the back of my closet (just in case) because of potential allegories to deconstruct, even though I certainly have this tendency as a recently-graduated English major; instead, I love to imagine Narnia as a place, a parallel universe just as Lewis did. He wrote it as an imaginative work, not as a tract-children's book cross breed. And my inner child loves to imagine a world with fauns and  lyres and children that can save the world. I'm a teacher; of course I think children can save worlds.

The most fascinating part about Narnia is the idea that God, as Aslan, walked physically among the Narnians and the Pevensies. How I long for that! And I believe in a God that, if God were magnificent lion, would let you ride on his back as he ran, roaring into the fray, or who would romp around with you like a giant kitten after tasting life again.

Also, you'll find that my favorite of the Pevensie children is not Peter, the noble, nor Edmund the clever and courageous, nor Lucy, the ever faithful. Instead, my favorite is Susan, the lost Queen, the one that never made it to the New Narnia. Instead, she survived. You'll find I write about her often.

As far as the title of this post is concerned, I'm convinced the latter choice was more appropriate. (See above.) However, to address the former: the rebellion here is simple: I bought a book called A Year with Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia. The book has an excerpt for each day of the year taken from one of the 7 books followed by simple reflecting questions. I love reflecting; English majors and teachers are pretty much full-time mirrors, we love it so much. The rebellion lies in the fact that instead of starting to read it on January 1st, as one might do, I'm going to start today, November 1st.

As far as anticipation goes, I am highly anticipating a) my day off tomorrow. and b) the release of the newest Narnia film, Voyage of the Dawn Treader in December!

The first excerpt comes from The Last Battle, the toughest book for a Susan devotee to read. This excerpt however, is a poignant retelling (as I see it) of Christ's words when He separated the goats from the sheep. However, I have pontificated enough for tonight; the question and my answer are fairly simple.

Question: What makes the creatures react to Aslan either with fear and hatred or with love?  Why were they divided not by how Aslan treated them, but by how they reacted to Aslan?

Answer: The loveliest and harshest part of our humanity is the gift of choice; we choose whom to serve and when to rise. The creatures were divided by their reaction to Aslan because their reaction reflected their lives. Those that reacted with fear and hatred fear and hated the Lion they had not chosen to serve. Those that loved Aslan could still fear him and would be wise to do so (He is a Lion, after all), but their love overpowered their fear, as it always should.

There is beauty in Narnia, beauty and potential and truth and imagination. These, in the right quantity, keep me reading and keep me tapping on the back of my closet (just in case).

Here I am

I first heard this hymn at Camp Longridge, Student Classic Week 2010. As it was sung, middle and high school students and college-aged staffers knelt at the altar, brought to their knees by a burden they felt to serve God and God's children.

I was sitting in the sound booth, advancing the lyric slides while this song played. The words blurred until I blinked away my tears. The keyboard was my altar, and I rested my head on my clasped hands, acknowledging the weight of my own burden. In that moment, the call was not a whisper, or even a strand of lyrical notes from the band, but a shout, a call to action.

I am not content to remain where I am. I am not content to live comfortably and easily, to live the life prescribed for me my social expectations and family wishes, not while I can do more. I want to learn, to be challenged, to be broken to the point of inescapable inspiration. I want to write down what I see and hear around the world so that others will break until inescapably inspired. 

God led me where I am today; I followed. When I am done here, God will lead me away, and I will follow.

-H

Here I am, Lord

words and music by Daniel L. Shutte

________________________



I, the Lord of sea and sky
,I have heard my people cry.
All who dwell in dark and sin,
My hand will save.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

I, who made the stars of night,
I will make their darkness bright.
Who will bear my light to them?
Whom shall I send?

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

I, the Lord of snow and rain,
I have borne my people’s pain.
I have wept for love of them.
They turn away.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

I will break their hearts of stone,
Give them hearts for love alone.
I will speak my words to them.
Whom shall I send?

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

I, the Lord of wind and flame,
I will send the poor and lame.
I will set a feast for them.
My hand will save.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

Finest bread I will provide,
'Til their hearts be satisfied.
I will give my life to them.
Whom shall I send?

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.

promised land

Let me describe my Promised land,
if I can
because milk and honey sounds like school lunch.

Take a look with me, see
what I see
and then, you'll understand the rush.

Let's start at the bottom and work
our way up--
First, no fire ants, 'cause I've had enough.

Next on my list, get a Satellite dish
so I can
pick up the station with the "good" news.

Let's nix American Idol, no Simon Cowell-- sure,
he's usually right,
but that doesn't make it right--instead, let's all sing without fear.

Sing loud, sister; sing proud, my brother--
in this land,
it's your heart that we'll hear.

Speaking of siblings, let's talk about family
in my Canaan,
it's breath in each lung.

Blood is thicker than water, sure,
but that living water
is the blood in the tie that binds.

Blood's tricky--it's sticky
and to be honest,
it covers our hands, but in my promised land,

we'll be over the thrill of the kill.
Let's ban crime,
and for real this time, let's put slavery to an end.

In this vision I see, we've put the "isms"
to sleep and
bid them our final farewell

So long, sexism; be gone, racism.
We're over it.
I hope no pessimism; we've ruled out legalism,

and I'm pleased that hedonism's no more.
Dare I say
we'll be past conservatism as well? It will be well.

Most of all, let's conquer this fatalism,
because it's the worst of all.
There is power in us, to make beauty of rust

and to make this idealist's dreams
into truth.
But before we're through, let's keep a few

of the isms that aren't all bad.
I think optimism
is cool, so let's teach that in school and be done

basking in the anxiety of life.
There's one more ism
we'll keep, and that's baptism, a deep

immersion in
grace--
LOVE--
truth.

Let me catch my breath, friends,
we're near to the end.
I can see the wheels in your mind turning fast.

You might say, "H, that's a lot!"
But really, it's not.
No, we're on the brink! We can swim or we sink!

Or even walk--Red Seas have been parted before.
It's all in your mind,
how high you can climb. The ropes course will

seem like a breeze. You might say,
"H, that's cool,
but what about you?

Where do you fit in this vision you see?"
That's easy.
I'm just one small part,

one beat of the heart, one step
on the way
to the promised land.

Enough of fear, I want to hear
what the rest
of you have to say.

God's running beside us, always ready to guide us.
Take that first step, friends,
and take me to your promised land!

blessed and ashamed

Sometimes I read a novel, a fictional creative work, that rattles me more than reality, and that makes me feel ashamed. Why must I follow eight fictional characters long enough to care for them, to know them, and be concerned for them before I can wake up and be terrified, outraged, heartbroken for living people truly caught in that world that seemed so surreal?

Today, I lounged in my cool house, whined about pollen,  played with my dogs, goofed around with my brother, and read a book. In the book, teen missionaries—each caught in their own disillusionment—barely survive a riot in an Indonesian village only to struggle through the wilderness to eventual safety. The disconnect still shakes me; how I can sit on a comfortable bed in my suburban home and type on a laptop I didn’t need about violence that is not stuck in fiction.

How easy it is to forget. I’m sure I will do it well, probably before this day ends. My life has been privileged. Any hardship I might have imagined into my life is laughable, a blessing in itself when I consider how so much of the rest of the world, within the borders of this country and beyond it, live each day of their lives. Sometimes I feel ashamed rather than grateful. Ashamed to have been born white, American, middle class, to loving parents with a genuine faith. Ashamed rather than blessed that I am free to leave my house with my hair and face uncovered, that I am free to learn and read, free to worship without fear, free to step from my house into a peaceful spring breeze. Instead of feeling blessed, I feel ashamed that I was not on one of those planes on September 11th or humming along to elevator music in the North Tower. Ashamed that I have unwittingly avoided the earthquake in Haiti, the violence in the Middle East, the massacre surrounding Uganda.

Certainly feeling guilt or shame is not a rational or even productive emotion. However, I think it’s closer to the mark than feeling “blessed.” If I can look upon the great tragedies in the world and feel only gratitude than I am spared, how motivated will I be to act, to abandon the refuge for which I am so thankful? No, no. Feeling blessed and thankful, though good, is not enough, is not much at all. Grateful is a start, and only a start.

If my only reaction to Good Friday is to feel “blessed that it wasn’t me” or “thankful for such a gift,” I have taken only the smallest step in the right direction. Certainly nothing I do, even with the most righteous of intentions, can allow me to “deserve” this gift. But that fact alone shouldn’t be enough to let me be content to live out my blessed life without concern for anyone else. Gratitude is a step, a spark that should spread into a consuming fire.

It is unmistakably easy to be moved to tears and trembling when one considers reality outside our American, or even Western, white picket fence. Or even consider the ugly truth of tragedy within it. It is much more difficult to swallow the lump in your throat, straighten your back, set your jaw, and do something.

I don’t know what I can do, or for whom, or even where to start. But I won’t let myself be content to feel blessed with my pleasant life when so many are denied it, and nor will I get stuck in the mire of shame and guilt of those blessings. Instead, I hope to walk the line between them, thankful for my blessings but ashamed to do nothing for those without them.

celebrate

When you get off the Interstate, turn on to the frontage road and pull into the church. It won’t look like a church; it’s just a warehouse, renovated into a small gathering place. The room will be dark; candles light the nondescript stage. The pastor will whisper, will pray with his eyes open. He won’t smile. The band will play; they’re wearing black shirts with their jeans. Not many people will sing along. It doesn’t feel like a day to sing.

Amongst the gathered, you can find her. She won’t stand out. She’s not overly pretty or thin. She dresses down. She’ll sit with her mother, and she’ll sing even though she doesn’t like the songs, even though she would rather cry than sing.

You won’t be able to sit next to her; her mother sits on one side, her former youth minister on the other.  She sits in the middle of people with as many problems and concerns as she. They’ll sing at first, but then they will stop. It seems too dark in the room, but they know the words anyway.

Slide into the seat behind her; you can watch her hold her head high when the pastor leads in prayer. Lean around and you could see her eyes are open. From behind, you can see her shoulders lift as she takes breaths between measures. You can see her shoulders tremble only slightly as she controls her emotion. Today is Friday. Sunday is Easter.

She won’t cry during the service; she’ll be too distracted by her worries to be much moved by the songs or by the solemn taking of bread and cup. Instead, you may notice that her tears are nearly drawn out by the friendly pats on her arm, supportive hugs about her shoulders, and knowing gazes that meet her eyes. She manages to hold them in as she is known to do. She will shake hands with the pastor, bid her fond farewells, and even when she is alone in her car with dusk closing in, she will only allow a few tears and no audible cries for the confusion, the fear, the anger, the worry. She will ride the whole way home in silence; her silent prayers fill the car like smoke, filling every crevice.

You will see right away that her life, like the earth after six days, is good. Not without strife and the occasional tragedy, but good nonetheless. You will wonder what has upset her; you are unsure if she would answer if you asked.

You will wonder what to do for her, this girl. Does she need you to listen to her? Certainly not. She will tell you what she will when she decides to. Does she need your sympathy or worry? No, no; she dreads that and has little need of it anyway. She is resilient; those over whom she broods are less so.

You will be curious. Morbidly fascinated. You will want to ask her first, what it is, and second, what you can do. What you should know before you do that is that this girl is not just a girl with stress in her life, with fear and addiction to the future, with unexpected problems. This girl is not just a girl. She is everyone. She is one teary set of eyes among a million others. She is everyone. She is you.

She wants what everyone wants. She wants what you want.

Her eyes are brown. You noticed. You remember. Good.

The Call (Or, Vague and Ineffective Spiritual Slang)

As a child, I grew up entrenched in the moderate side of the conservative Baptist spectrum. I went to GA’s every Wednesday until I was twelve, and at that point, I traded GA’s for youth group. I went to Sunday School nearly every Sunday until I graduated high school, and when I did, I plugged in immediately to the local Baptist Collegiate Ministry and started attending a Baptist megachurch in the area.

At every one of these institutions, the idea of the (capital C) Call was emphasized ad naseam. It became a holy game of Where’s Waldo?, searching for, and sometimes manually inserting, God’s Call into my life, though, no one really ever elaborated on a) What exactly they meant when they say The Call, or b) the means by which one discerned it.

The Call. (thuh * kawl) n. 1. The politically correct name used for one’s career aspiration when speaking in a church setting. 2. The name used for vocational Christian ministry, especially during an especially emotional invitation after a provocative sermon, sometimes as a means of subtle coercion. 3. The indistinct draw or pull toward a certain place, person, group, goal, or occupation. (taken from Beasley’s Un-Standard and Clearly Satirical Dictionary of Spiritual Slang, © 2010.)

In my own experience, I have felt “Called” to several things over the course of my life. As a little girl in GA’s (Girls in Action), I felt “Called” to be a missionary every week when we celebrated their birthdays and prayed for their ministries and families. As a teenager, enveloped by a mostly loving and occasionally challenging youth group, I felt “Called” to be a youth worker. As a student in high school—whose confidence was repaired and nourished by an excellent educator—I felt “Called” to be a teacher.

As a camper, I felt “Called” to be a camp counselor, and as a summer camp counselor, I felt “Called” to be a camp staffer (that is, to throw myself joyfully into more than just the summer “counselor” duties). When I was a student, I felt “Called” to be a teacher, and now that I’m on my way to being a teacher, I feel “Called” to be a seminary student.

Point being, the Call I’ve heard for my life has changed as I live.

So now, since I’ve defined “The Call” above, I will now dismantle each of my definitions for it.

Objection to Definition 1.

 Definition 1 defines the Call as “The politically correct name used for one’s career aspiration when speaking in a church setting.” This, in my opinion, is how most people tend to use the term. They take Colossians 3:17 and use it to justify how they spend their time.

Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.”

Plenty of people say their job or occupation is their Calling but do little or nothing with the intention or even awareness that they do so as Christ’s representative.

Objection to Definition 2.

Definition 2 is “The name used for vocational Christian ministry, especially during an especially emotional invitation after a provocative sermon, sometimes as a means of subtle coercion.” This is the invitation-time use of the term, and there are problems here, too. Not everyone is called to quit their jobs and rush to seminary in order to fulfill their Calling. And furthermore, whose to say that vocational Christian ministry requires quitting your job and going to seminary in the first place? Third of all, it’s problematic to bombard people with feelings of guilt and obligation to serve the church in a moment of intense emotional and spiritual turmoil that some feel during an invitation, whether we choose to analyze those feelings or not.

Objection to Definition 3.

Definition 3 defines The Call as “the indistinct draw or pull toward a certain place, person, group, goal, or occupation.” Maybe this is the definition closest to the truth, but I don’t think we’re there quite yet. I used this definition for most of my life, especially when I considered the feelings I had about being a youth worker or missionary or camp staffer. I felt a draw towards those goals or activities, so I assumed it was God calling me to them. But because the “Calls” I have felt in my life have consistently changed over time, I don’t think this definition is quite right either.

So, I propose a fourth definition.

The Call. (thuh * kawl) n. 4. The holy and ineffable magnetism of God.

I think that each of the callings I felt growing up and feel now are one and the same, each valid in its own right. Each time I felt drawn to a particular career goal, or to a certain school, or to a mission opportunity was part of one great Calling, the siren song of relational love.

I say The Call is the same for everyone, though manifesting in different and deeply beautiful ways for each, and, if you’ll excuse the play on words, here it is:

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” –Jesus, John 15:15

Again: The Call = The holy and ineffable magnetism of the Spirit, pulling us closer to God through loving, relational friendship with Jesus.

________

I’ve said all that to say this: let’s get rid of spiritual slang, purge it from our lexicon. It’s limiting and exclusive, and doesn’t make much sense anyway.

-H

Book of Eli?

I don’t generally use my blog for movie or book reviews, but after watching Book of Eli last weekend, I knew I would revisit it here. The film stuck with me long after the credits rolled, and as much as I enjoyed it, there are inherent points of contention there as well. Beware, this post will contain spoilers, so move on if you still haven’t seen it!

You can watch the trailer below.

Right away, you can see the draw and the problems here. The draw, obviously, is that in a world after a nuclear war where every Bible has been destroyed, where there is no hope, no color, no joy in being alive, both good and evil see the ultimate value in the Word of God. Denzel Washington, or Eli, is a man fighting to protect the only Bible left in the world. After the nuclear holocaust, a frenzy erupted and every Bible was burned because people blamed God for the war. However, God spoke to Eli (much like God spoke to Samuel, Eli’s charge in the Old Testament) and led him to the last Bible in the world and told him to take it West (to eventually be reprinted again).

Gary Oldman plays a villain who has been searching for a Bible for years, knowing he can use it to manipulate people. Eli kills again and again to keep the Bible out of his hands.

As an allegory of spiritual warfare, perhaps this film could work. Of course protecting the Word is a metaphorical battle. Forces of evil attack it consistently, and the protection of the truth is a daily, eternal war with many casualties.

However, to take life in order to protect a physical copy of the Bible is like spitting on the words within it. Though this is addressed briefly in the film when Eli gives up the Bible to save his friend’s life, the overwhelming violence seems to cancel out Eli’s confession that by “killing so many to protect the book, I forgot what it taught me.”

Eli’s murders are justified by the film; it suggests that in order to protect the Bible and to eventually reprint it so it can help bring the world back to hope and order that sacrifices had to be made. However, I can’t abide this notion. Where do we draw the line? It’s okay to kill the human scum of the earth in order to save the people who are truly searching? The ones on Oldman’s side were searching for truth, too; every life is precious.

Though I loved that the value of the Bible was emphasized in this film as the way to bring hope to a desolate, chaotic world after a devastating war, I can’t help be see the danger in it as well. As followers of Jesus, we can’t afford to abandon our morals in order to spread the Good News. If we do, we become conquistadors, not Christ-followers.

Jesus rebuked Peter for cutting off a man’s ear in attempt to protect His life; in the same way, I believe He would rebuke Eli for murdering to protect a copy of the Bible, and us, for consistently abandoning his commands to spread His name. No one can be led to truth that way; only through love can we bring hope to this world.

Crossing Lines

Come down from the stars, and be close to me.
Let me feel you next to me on the cold driveway;
show me your pleasure at shooting stars.

Keep your blessings, your guidance, your plans.
I can't understand glory.
Sit with me and laugh so I can hear.

Don't build a hedge of protection; take a knife
to the brush. Don't bless my food;
share in the feast. Sit next to me.

Listen to me talk about my day as if
you didn't know it every step, and when I stop
for breath, ask another question, start me again.

Listen to my questions, even if I can't understand the answer.
Embrace me when I accuse, when I shout, when I doubt.
And when I cry into my pillow, be the hand on my back;

the tears falling into my hair are yours. I can't understand
glory, so keep on painting those sunsets and chiseling icicles.
I see most days; point it out to me like you think it's beautiful too.

The planets will keep spinning just as they always have, ever since
you told them too. Leave them be. And my cells will keep on
transcripting and dividing, just as you said.

I can't see a cell, or reach a planet. I can see flecks of gold in
wide eyes, and I can feel calloused hands, rough with
sawdust. Come sit with me on a park bench,

and let's feed the birds.

-Hillary Beasley

One Foot, then the Other

If there’s one thing I’ve lacked consistently in my short twenty-two years of life, it’s grace. At least, grace as in the ability to navigate across even smooth surfaces without stumbling. Despite two mother-mandated years in ballet and three more in tap or jazz dance classes, my feet have an uncanny ability to find even the smallest flaw in a surface to trip over. This tendency of mine enhances my generally accident-prone existence.

Most of these scraped knees could be avoided if I would only examine the ground I’m walking on. But unless I’m walking on ice or through mud, I generally pay more attention to what’s in front of my face than what is beneath my feet. All the teen magazines and job interview tips say this is a good thing, that it gives off an air of confidence. However, the many scars on my knees say otherwise. I think I would fall much less if I simply watched where I put my feet on the path.

English major that I am, I can’t resist the metaphor inherent here. Walking through downtown Charleston with my eyes forward is very much how I’ve walked figuratively through life. Always looking ahead, always watching people and places to come, not watching where I stand in the present, where I place my feet as I take tiny steps.

I’ve been forced to give up that tendency of mine temporarily. At this point, about to graduate from College, very little is certain about the future. I don’t know if or where I’ll be teaching next year. I don’t know if I’ll be living with family or on my own. Even the ins-and-outs of my teaching internship are uncertain, generally planned only a few days in advance at the most.

People ask about what I’ll do after graduation, and I stare blankly, as if the answer will write itself in the clouds. All I know for sure is that I’ll work at camp this summer, that I’ll try to find a job teaching. If I don’t get hired, I’ll start seminary…somewhere.

This day-by-day, one foot in front of the other kind of living is new to me. Slightly nerve-wracking, but overall, refreshing. Perhaps I will fall less when I watch where I’m going. Time will tell!

God-Centered

I came to the Passion Conference with a sizeable amount of skepticism; events like this sometimes seem so focused on human talent and Christian super-stars, singers and speakers and writers, and on glorifying one self while degrading the mass. I saw some of the worship songs I knew would be sung as somewhat corny, one-dimensional expressions of praise. But the best part of being skeptical is that God reveals the most to those who expect the least.

For months, I have thrown myself into ministry through camp, in addition to school and work. Though I find so much joy in my work at CLR, I ended 2009 feeling spiritually-drained, like I had nothing left to give despite my desire for the contrary. In fact, one of the main reasons I signed up for this event at all, one of the draws Passion 2010 had for me in the first place, was that I could be on the other side. I could listen instead of speak, watch instead of work, sing rather than supervise. How inexcusably selfish of me.

My awakening was not an explosion. No, my awakening was a match dropped in a forest. One lyric in a song sparked in that dry, flammable surface of my Saharan heart, fueled by another word, another prayer, and when John Piper spoke tonight, my awakening had grown into a wildfire. I feel uncontainable, alive.

God, let me not be addicted to emotion but let my worship be action. My voice is hoarse, my mind spinning, and my smile wide, God, but let me love You, not the fleeting moment of understanding, of wet eyes and fluttering heart. God, move me not to tears but to steps. Let my worship be action, and take all glory as your own. Your servant burns; light me again when I smolder, when exhaustion rains.

John Piper addressed the uncomfortable feeling that many Christ-followers secretly have (and many unbelieving people openly express) when reading verses that describe God as “jealous” and verses where God demands glory, demands that his name be praised. Piper quoted one writer as calling Jesus an “egomaniac” for such verses in Scripture. I myself wondered (and promptly apologized to God for my traitorous thoughts, which I believed them to be at the time) why God would demand worship. But in words I can’t hope to repeat coherently, God used John Piper to reveal another aspect of himself to me and 21,000 other believers.

As concisely as I can manage: God is God-Centered. Above anything, God desires glory, for His name to be honored and praised and exalted above all else.

God is jealous, demanding our worship. Christ said that anyone who loves father or mother, son or daughter, or self more than Me does not deserve Me. God is God-Centered, not man-centered.

God is not an egomaniac. God. Is. Love. God is God-Centered, and therefore Love-Centered. God desires us to love Him above anything else in this world because there is nothing else in this world that will not fail. Money fills no longing, material possessions pass away. Education or fame dissolves.  Even the strongest of human relationships will disappoint. But God. Is. Love. And love never fails.

God demands are worship because above all else, he desires our joy. When we worship in truth, we experience joy. When we worship in action and in justice, others experience joy. God is love, and can be nothing BUT God-centered.

Anyone who tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. – Jesus

My joy can never be complete without Christ. My joy can never be complete if I put anything higher than God. God is most glorified when we are satisfied in Him.

On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Prayer. Reminder.

Jesus, my grasp is weak. My mind is feeble, my eyes are dim, and my reach is always too short. But I thank you, over and over, I thank you that you chose to call us not servants, but friends, that you choose to reveal to us your will, involve us in your plan.

God, we can’t thank you enough to ever mean it truly for the cross of Christ. We cannot forget the cross, that expression of your ultimate and perfect and unfathomable love.

God, I am so grateful that you are God-centered, not Hillary-centered. I am just Hillary; of sinners, I am the worst. I am nothing without You. You, God, are perfect love. And you will bring your name to the highest glory, you will demand that we love you more than anything because you are the only constant, the only thing we could love that will never fail. Only by loving you above all else can we experience ultimate joy. You are a God-centered God because you are Love, Love-Centered God. Thank you.

I pray in absolute confidence that this world will never be the same for what has happened today, that you will have your name glorified above all until every knee bows and every tongue confesses, and God I am so grateful that my weak eyes will one day see it.