Tag Archives: featured

Living the Life

“What difference does it make… right here, right now?”

5 Comments

The leader of the missions team I went on as a teenager loved to shove a microphone into our hands and say, “Ellie, tell us what difference it makes to you to know Jesus, right here… right now.”

It’s a great question, if a little difficult to answer as a snappy soundbite in front of a crowd of young people!

What difference does Jesus make?

The next few postcards are going to be trying to answer that question, there are going to be many answers, but the first is that, for me, Jesus is like a cup of really great Latte.

One of the things I love about living in Cyprus is the café culture, especially the part where I get to meet up with good friends and drink (skinny decaff caramel) latte on a big sofa while we talk about all the things that are going on in our lives.

For me, this postcard -a massive cup of latte- represents three things about Jesus that I now know I couldn’t do without:

The first is friendship.  The kind where you can pour out your heart without fear of being judged or rejected.  The kind that doesn’t mind if you’re twenty minutes late and that you’ve got wet hair, or a bit of the kids’ breakfast has welded itself to your jeans.  And the kind that has time to listen to all the tiny things that matter to you without yawning or checking its watch.

Jesus weeps with me when I cry, he laughs with me over the crazy things that happen in my life, he shows me things I would never have noticed, speaks perfect wisdom and pours it all out with unending, grace filled love.  Best of all, he invites me into deeper and deeper friendship with him.  He asks me to join him for coffee.

The second thing is comfort.  This warm, sweet, milky drink is very like the ‘mellow birds’ my Mum used to make for me when I was a little girl.  It fills me up, the warmth seeping into my bones, helping me to relax down into the comfy armchairs.

Jesus’ love for me feels just like that.  It’s like being filled up with something warm and nourishing on a cold day.  Sweet, comforting, and I’m sure much more nutritious than a caffe latte, his presence warms and transforms me from the inside out.

Thirdly, Jesus’ love for me (and you) is vast.  Until last week I’d never seen a cup of coffee so huge it needed two handles to help you lift it but my lovely friend Jo ordered a grandissimo and this is what she got.  We both laughed at how enormous it was and wondered if she’d be able to lift it –  a massive, comedy-scale, giant’s kitchen of a mug containing a pint and a half of cappucino.  More coffee, as it turns out, than she was able to drink.

And I drew that particular mug (but filled it with latte, because that’s my favourite) because I am absolutely confident that I will never get to the bottom of the cup that is Jesus’ love for me.  It is bigger than I can imagine.  And, not because of who I am, but entirely because of who he is,  his cup contains much, much more than I can drink.

massimolatte

Living the Life

Meandering

9 Comments

There are times when life feels like floating along a great big meandering river: it takes an enormous amount of time to negotiate a long curve and then, after what seems like an age, you find yourself back in almost exactly the same place that you were before.

Arriving back in a place that you thought you’d left far behind you can be deeply disappointing and frustrating.  Becoming ill again after a time of feeling better, revisiting a family or relationship issue, facing the same old temptation or just realising that once again you can hear God saying the same thing to you that he’s  said over and over again in the past; all these can leave you ready to give up or to yell at the Lord “but we’ve been here before!”

“All that effort and I’ve travelled no distance at all”.

It amused me this morning to read that in rivers, meanders are a feature of maturity.  Young rivers cut in a straight line to begin with,  and only as they get more mature (and more powerful) do they start to wander about revisiting old ground and seem to make only very slow progress forwards.

I wonder if life-meanders are more likely to be a feature for us too as we become more mature in faith? When I first became a Christian, so much seemed to be easy and obvious,  life and discipleship was much more of a straight line.  It felt as though I was quick to learn things and deal with things. As time as gone on I’ve realised that there are deeper things, ground-in patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that seem to need a different treatment.  Revisiting the same issues and challenges, each time armed with a little more experience and grace seems to be a part of that process.

If you understand this experience of having travelled the long bend of the river and found yourself, unexpectedly, back where you started, this is God’s word for you today:

It’s not about the distance travelled, it’s about who you’ve become while we travelled it together.

Because even if today you’re arriving back in the same old place, you are not the same old you.

On the journey to get here you will have changed, grown and learned. You don’t actually have to respond in the same way you did before.  You probably won’t.

And while you are back in almost the same place, this time you’re approaching it from a different direction and with grace and experience in your backpack.

So don’t get frustrated and lose heart my friends, when you find yourself back in old places, don’t believe the lie that you’ve travelled nowhere. Instead, remember that journey, and all the things that God taught you while you were travelling and then look down at the new you that Jesus has helped you to become on the way.

meandersreflect greens

Living the Life

a burst of yellow flowers

8 Comments

It’s as if a painter has accidentally knocked over a huge tin of bright yellow paint, and puddles and splashes of it have ended up over the whole city…

Lizzie, Katie and I went for a walk along the trail beside our ‘river’ on Sunday afternoon.  For most of the year there is no water at all visible in the little creek that runs through the middle of the city.  The river bed, and the fields around it are dry and bare with only the dull green of eucalyptus and occasional olive trees to break up the grey of rocks and dust.

But this winter, rain has fallen. Days and days of it.  And melting snow from the mountains has swelled the dried-up river from a tiny trickle to a babbling brook.

The biggest change though, happens just as the rain has slowed and the sun has reappeared –  a burst of yellow wildflowers.

If you look closely it seems there is more than one kind of flower in the sea of yellow that has flooded the river banks and fields all over the city, but there they are, all gathered together, dancing in the spring breeze and refusing to be ignored.

It reminds me very much of this from the Song of Solomon:

My beloved spoke and said to me,
    “Arise, my darling,
    my beautiful one, come with me

 See! The winter is past;
    the rains are over and gone.
 Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.
 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
    the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
    my beautiful one, come with me.”  

Songs 2:11-13 NIV

Spring is coming, winter is past, but never forget that the flowers are there because of the rain.

I love the beauty of the yellow flowers at this time of year.  I love that they spring up in unexpected places, nodding gently in the gaps in the garage forecourt, partying wildly in newly-green fields,  rioting across patches of wasteland and defiantly leaning out from behind dustbins and lamp posts.

But those flowers that make my heart sing come as a direct result of something I don’t like nearly so much – the continuous rain and cloud of winter.

I’m fairly sure that I’m walking into a springtime kind of a season just now…

For those of you who don’t see the flowers yet, for those of you who are still living in a season of cloudy skies, rain or storms, hear this:

The flowers are coming.

The seeds are deep in the ground but soaking up the rain and the day is coming when the warmth of the presence of God will call them to burst out in your life.

My great friend Ute, is forever singing this line of a song at me… ‘what if your blessings come through raindrops?’

I don’t always have the courage to look at the raindrops in my life and hunt for the blessing,  I don’t always have the ability to see it coming…  But I do know that eventually the day comes when Jesus calls out to me and to you:

  “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past;  the rains are over and gone.… Flowers appear on the earth”

yellow flowers

Living the Life

On being open

2 Comments

This picture takes me right back to the first year of high school, sitting at a long bench on the top floor of the science block in a lab coat and goggles and nervously lighting a bunsen burner for the first time.

In case you’ve never used one, a bunsen burner is a very simple and common piece of laboratory equipment used for heating or burning things. It runs on gas and has an open flame which can be controlled by moving a collar at the bottom so that a little hole opens and closes letting in more or less air.

We soon got over our ten-year old nervousness and used them to burn all sorts of things we shouldn’t have.. but that’s another story. That evening’s assignment (my first ever science homework) was to draw two pictures of a bunsen burner: one with the collar closed, preventing air from mixing with the gas and producing a yellow flame; the other like this one, with the hole completely open, letting in lots of air and turning the flame blue.

The science is along the lines of the flame needing oxygen to make it burn more efficiently.  The hole-fully-open blue flame is much much hotter. If the gas is mixed with pure oxygen as in an oxy-acetylene torch the blue flame it produces can cut through metal!

The bunsen burner in today’s picture is burning much hotter because it is open to the air.

It’s made me think about my openness to the Holy Spirit and the work he wants to do in me and through me. I so much want to be open so that God can breathe into me and my flame burn hotter!

What I notice is that it’s really easy to let that collar slip round and become slightly (or very) closed to the Holy Spirit’s breath on me.

For me the killer is busyness: not taking the time to turn my face towards God and let him breathe, not taking the time to sit in the sunshine of his presence and be warmed.  But there are other airhole-closers…

Sometimes fear, fear of being hurt, fear that God’s power might overwhelm you, fear that you might look silly, fear of what he might ask you to do, even fear that he might reject you if you are that vulnerable to him, will drive you to close your heart off a little… or a lot.

For some people anger over what has happened (or not happened) in the past will lead them to punish God by turning their faces away. Just as we can punish other people by not talking to them, or not being open to them, it’s easy to fall into doing the same to God when we feel like he has let us down.

And lastly of course sin, whatever shape or form it takes can cut us off from the oxygen of the breath of God until we repent of it and receive his forgiveness.

For me, this picture is a call to be open, to be vulnerable to, the Holy Spirit and his work, so that the flame of our passion and ministry can burn hotter.

Today I’m going to ask God to show me how open I am to him and the breath of his Spirit, to show me how far the collar is twisted around on the bunsen burner that is my life and to show me what I can do to be more open to him. This week why don’t you find some time, make some time to be open to God and ask him to breathe on you again? Bring him your fear, your forgiveness, your pain, your sin and your hope, and in return ask for his life-bringing oxygen-carrying Holy Spirit.  It sounds like a good swap to me.

Burn hotter my friends, and who knows what you will be able to cut through…

Identity, Living the Life

Time to put the kettle on?

4 Comments

When I hear the word ‘kettle’ my first thought is of the cordless, white plastic jug-style one that sits on my counter and which I boil to make tea at least seven times a day.  But this week God has been speaking to me about a different kind:   A huge copper kettle sitting on the edge of lamp-black coal-fired range, straight from a Victorian kitchen.

This kind of kettle had an enormous capacity and was kept filled and warm on the edge of the range at all times so that it could be boiled and poured out at a moments notice.  It served the needs of the whole household, providing not only tea (vital for life in Britain you know) but also hot water for cleaning, washing up and for bathing.

These days you’re more likely to find one in an antiques shop, or polished up and on display somewhere.  And it is lovely to look at, mostly because of what it’s made of, but there’s no mistaking that it was made for a purpose -to serve the needs of the family.

Big family range-top kettles used to be made out of a variety of different metals, but in the poshest houses they were made of copper like this one. Copper was used not because of its beauty, but because it has an amazing ability to conduct heat.  Not only that, but also it doesn’t corrode (rust) and has a very high melting point.  The perfect metal for the job.

My plastic kettle has an element inside it that heats the water, but this kettle has no capacity to heat the water by itself. Instead it relies entirely on being in close contact with the heat of the range.

But we are each like this big, copper kettle.

We are designed to serve the family, the body, of Christ each in our own way.  Being shined-up and visible on the shelf of the household is much less important than doing the job I was made for.  This is not necessarily something I find easy, but it’s true.

We are like this kettle.

We need to remember, to keep remembering, that we don’t have the capacity to power ourselves.  I am entirely dependent on him for the power I need to do the job I was made for.  And in order to receive that energy I need to be close to him.  The only way for this kettle to come to the boil is to rest on the hotplate.  Every single time it needs to come to the boil it has no choice but to come back into that place of rest.  To be always ‘ready’, so that it stays warm all the time and can be brought to the boil quickly, it must keep coming back to resting on the hotplate regularly, and never venture very far away from it.

I am like this kettle.

The way I behave, the choices I make, matter.  Character matters because it matters what you’re made of.  Someone chose to make this kettle from copper because it was strong, able to take the weight of the water, wouldn’t corrode and fall apart, wouldn’t melt onto the stove and also because it is fantastic at conducting heat.  I need to be good, not only at resting in God and absorbing ‘heat’ from him, but also at passing that heat on to others.  I need to have a character that will not corrode over time, or lose strength and melt.  It matters what I’m made of.

We are all like this copper kettle.

We each have the capacity to serve others in a myraid of different ways.  We are each important to the household in hospitality, in comfort, in keeping clean, and in sustaining.

But we can do none of those things unless we stay close to the source of the heat.

reflect white

kettle2

Living the Life

Down the back of the sofa

7 Comments

This is just a theory, and as yet not scientifically tested, but I think our sofa (couch/settee/whatever) might actually suck loose change out of my pockets when I sit down. It’s probably a swedish furniture company conspiracy.

A brief investigation this morning revealed not only a pile of coins, but also an array of pencils, hair bands, guitar picks, earrings, polly pockets, barbie shoes, teaspoons, socks and the TV remote (which was what I was actually looking for!) And it got me thinking about how in the middle of everyday life stuff gets lost down the back of the sofa, and we don’t even miss it.

This picture makes me smile because I once received (rather publicly) a slightly unflattering prophetic word that I was like a spaniel tearing a sofa apart to find a bone that he could smell there.  I’ve often wondered what on earth it meant… but today’s postcard is casting a little bit of light on it for me.  Because God is talking to me about things that get lost down the back of the sofa, and which are actually pretty easy to find again, if you take the time to go looking.

I read this recently from Romans 4  (v 18-21)

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”  Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,  being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

It made me think about how Abraham had held on to that promise that he had heard from God, not letting go of it even in the face of strong evidence that it wasn’t even possible. He kept hold of it through years and years of waiting and held on to it even when it became clear that he had seriously messed up.  He held onto that promise, and kept giving glory to God for what he was going to do.

Abraham didn’t let the promise of God go slipping quietly out of his pocket and into the forgotten realms of the back of the sofa.

I on the other hand, do.  When people share a prophetic word or scripture with me I often write them down and then pray about them for a month or two.  Then somehow they slip away quietly into some dark part of my memory, not completely lost, but dusty and out of sight.

But, it’s very easy to find things that have slipped down between the cushions… you just have to look.

Today my friends, is a great day for searching again for the things God has said to you, for the promises he’s spoken.  It’s a day for holding those promises up to the light and blowing the dust off of them.  It’s a day for choosing to give glory to God for what he has promised and for being ‘fully persuaded that God has the power to do what he [has] promised’.  I’m not saying that today is necessarily the day that you step into the fulfillment of all those promises. Faith shows up in the waiting. And although Abraham, man of faith, waited a long, long time, he did so with the promise of God in his hand.

sofa

reflect blue

Identity

Tangerine lanterns

5 Comments

Have you ever made one of these? It’s actually terribly easy to cut around a tangerine or clementine, pull out the fruit and pop in a candle. As you can see, it makes a beautiful little lantern, with the added bonus of a sweet orangey aroma.

As I made the lantern with my sweet girl I learned a few things, and today I’m hearing the Spirit speaking through them…

One is that putting a light inside a tangerine peel makes it very, very beautiful. Something which I would ordinarily throw away, consider worthless, has its deep beauty revealed by the light that shines out from within it.

The second was that if you fit the two halves together and attempt to seal the light in, it is very quickly starved of oxygen and the flames go out. I needed to cut a hole in the top to make it able to keep burning. The hole iets some of the light and heat that the flame generates out without spoiling the gorgeous effect of the light breaking through the thin places (and the scars), and the flame stays alight.

We also realized, after we’d made our lantern, that to really appreciate it in all its glory we needed to carry it outside into the darkness and watch it glowing beautifully there.

You can probably already see how the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me through this picture.

It totally fills up my heart to think that God can use me to bring light and joy to others even (or perhaps especially) when I feel ready for the compost heap; it delights me to think that even those places where I’ve been deeply wounded can become beautiful as his light shines through them; and it’s good to be reminded that although without God I am not much to speak of, his light inside me can bring out deep beauty that might otherwise never be seen.

I’ll be thinking about those other things too..  About how it’s really not possible to have a hidden, private faith, concealed completely from the world because that hidden-ness would stifle the flame and perhaps even put it out. And also that places that are already full of light don’t always need a lantern or appreciate its beauty, and that there’s a good reason we are called to take that light out into dark places, however challenging that might be.

Whatever else, when I look at this picture, I am amazed at the transformation that takes place when the candle is lit, and I want to cry out to God to shine brighter inside of me, and to tell myself again never to be quietly conned into thinking I can do without him,  not even for a moment.

I don’t have anything to ask you to pray about this week, but I do have a challenge for you…

If you are in a part of the world where it’s possible to get hold of a tangerine, a box of matches and a tealight candle – make yourself one of these.  My painting really doesn’t do it justice, and seeing and smelling it will speak to your heart.  Then take it and sit with it in a dark place for a while and see how God speaks to you through it.  I guarantee it will be ten or twenty minutes well spent, and I would love to hear what he has said to you.

Be blessed.

tangerine lantern

Surviving Tough Times

On faith, hope and being sure

10 Comments

Are you sure?

On the one hand there are some things that I am, absolutely, sure about… I’m absolutely sure that I belong to God and that I can call him ‘Abba’.  I’m sure that he is bigger, more powerful, more beautiful, more just, more gracious and more loving than I or anyone else can imagine.  I’m sure that I although I am one of the millions that he loves fiercely, that his love is in no way diluted, and that I am precious to him.  I’m so sure of his forgiveness and grace that I know I can lean back into them and believe that I am accepted in spite of my past, present and future mess-ups.

I’m sure.

And yet.

It doesn’t take much to leave me feeling like this daisy, adrift on the ocean.  A few mistakes, someone angry, a stinking cold, a friend leaving the country.  All that ‘sure-ness’ can melt into weariness, shaken-up-ness and not-sure-I-can -hear-God-ness in a matter of days.

So when I came to God on tuesday morning to ask him for a picture to put in a postcard for today, all I could see was this daisy, floating on the ocean.

Two things are true about it:

One- the daisy is tossed about, but not sinking.  It’s not sinking because its petals are wide open, and its petals are open because it’s facing into the light and the warmth of the sun.

Two – even though it’s affected, pulled up and down and this way and that by the movement around it, this tiny daisy is anchored, deep, deep down below the waves, into something solid.  The rope that ties it is slack so that there is length to cope with the rise and fall of the waves and tides, but it’s strong.

It was only after I’d painted this anchored daisy that I read the verse from Hebrews:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure, It enters the inner sanctuary, behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus has entered on our behalf.

Hebrews 6:19-20

It’s not the only place I’ve heard about hope recently.  On yesterday’s news the newly-elected prime minster of Greece claimed that this week’s election outcome was a ‘victory for hope’.  Many, many people there are hoping for an easier future.  
Hope is extraordinarily powerful thing, and when that hope is shown to be false it can be utterly crushing.  Unfortunately, when you’re being tossed about by the waves having your hope-rope anchored to anything that is in this world is just like being anchored to another set of waves, there’s no guarantee of stability coming.

The hope that the Bible holds out to us is in a different league altogether. As Hebrews tells us, it is anchored not in this world, but on the other side of the curtain, in the place where Jesus has gone ahead of us, in the presence of God.

It’s a mystery, but it’s a bit like my anchored daisy.  Deep, deep, down and beyond it is fixed irrevocably to something other than the ocean. Something solid and unmoveable, something which contains the ocean itself.

Here and there, in places, a gift of faith solidifies that hope into sureness.  And as I’ve painted and pondered  I’ve realised that this shaken-ness, the tiredness from the wind and the waves doesn’t make me ‘not sure’.  It just reminds me that sure-ness is not a surface feeling. It goes much, much deeper than that: Sure-ness is hope soaked in faith, over and over until that hope has become somehow more real than the ‘reality’ of the waves, and is anchoring my heart way beyond this particular storm, and into God himself.

However you are currently being shaken, whatever storm you are living through, or watching people close to you live through, try keep your face turned towards Jesus. Then your petals will stay warm and open and you you will be able to rest on the surface of the waves. Remind yourself often of the hope that you have as a child of God, and then ask him for the gift of faith, so that your hope become strong and solid, and then whatever happens, you will still be able to say, ‘I am sure’.

Identity, Living the Life

A silver locket for my love

Leave a comment

I have a silver locket just like this one that I have had since I was a teenager.  They’re supposed to have a memento in them so special that you want to have it near to your heart at all times.

I used to wear this little heart-shaped locket a lot, and I can remember as a teenager ‘updating’ the photographs fairly frequently as I changed my mind about who was most important to me! So when God reminded me of it this morning and went hunting for it I confess that I had completely forgotten whose photograph was inside.

I found it eventually in the necklace-tangle at the bottom of my jewellery box, badly tarnished and stuck shut. It seems I haven’t worn it for a while.   Having finally managed to prise it open with a hair clip, I was quite surprised to find tiny photographs of myself and my husband, taken before we were even engaged to be married and looking improbably young!

There are two simple truths in this picture of a locket for me.

One is that God wears me (and you!) close to his heart.  Every single one of us that call him Father are so precious to him that he holds us like this, near to him at all times.  Even if we in our own hearts have wandered away through pain, confusion, doubt, anger or just our own ridiculous busyness and forgetfulness, he holds us near.   It’s a mystery, but it’s true.

The second was something God whispered quietly when I found my locket forgotten and abandoned in the box.

‘Don’t forget your first love’.

God is jealous for your love. For me that’s an invitation to invest in my relationship with Jesus, my first love.  For while I know my position next to his heart is fixed, I’m also aware that my focus and my own heart do tend to get distracted!

Maybe you’ve read the article that’s been doing the internet rounds this week on what it takes to fall in love.  Apparently it can all be achieved in a matter of hours by going through and honestly answering a list of searching questions together and then staring into one another’s eyes for four minutes.   Interesting. (although you must be predisposed to fall for someone if you’re prepared to do all that in the first place!)

What it tells me is that perhaps what it really takes to fall in love is to take the time to understand yourself and to share that openly and honestly with someone, and to take the time to really listen to them in return. And then to look at them, for a long time, without hiding.

The same must apply in my relationship to God. ( I am a human even if he isn’t).  His love for me never wavers for an instant, but mine for him can be decidedly wobbly.  Time, honesty, vulnerability, trust, listening and an intention to become closer to the other person.  I wonder if these aren’t exactly the same things we need to continually invest in our relationship with God?

 

Whichever one of these things speak to you; the truth that with all your failings and imperfections, you are still his beloved, or the call to come once again to the fountain of life, to look into his eyes, to spill out your heart and to allow  his truth to flow over you; whichever one it is,  or both, you can choose to receive it today. That’s the point of this picture,  it’s a gift, for you.

 

 

Identity

Less than or equal to

8 Comments

I went to a bible study this week that was all about grace, about how wonderful and life changing it is when others love us in spite of our failings and unlovableness.  When they choose not to punish us for our mistakes, and instead continue to love us and be good to us, just as God has done.

And it was funny because I was sitting there in a beautiful room surrounded by beautifully turned out, slim women who had managed to remember to put their make up on and were wearing co-ordinating clothes, none of which bore evidence of breakfast.  Our lovely hostess had baked something delicious and the only signs of her four children were in artistically framed photos on the wall.  Everyone was friendly and relaxed and I really should have been feeling loved and welcomed and comfortable, but  mostly, I was feeling ‘less than’.

I am so glad that we were discussing the extraordinary power of grace, because right in the middle of that bible study God graciously whispered in my ear that I was being ridiculous, and showed me this picture of a pocket sized set of rulers which have the maths symbols for ‘less than’, equal to’ and ‘greater than’ printed on the side.

He showed me that these rulers are the ways I measure (judge) the value of those around me and myself.  I’m fairly sure that everyone has a set somewhere.  We use them to make comparisons:

By this standard, am I less than, equal to, or greater in value than this other person?  

Each ruler represents a standard that we use to measure value- beauty, education, money, intelligence, job importance, talent, youth, home, grades, fame, accent, nationality, body shape, hairstyle, grammar, ministry, ability to spell, popularity,  organisation,  sporting prowess and a billion other things..  And there’s not just one ruler in my pocket, there’s a collection! We all  pick (or have been handed) a unique set, the things that we use to measure value – our own and other people’s.

Heartbreakingly, We use these rulers even though we know they are all lies.

We all know that being prettier, or tidier, or better at art, or football, or slimmer, or richer, or better dressed doesn’t actually make you more valuable…  and yet, when the ruler tells me I am ‘less than’.  It doesn’t feel good.  If it tells me I am ‘more than’ it makes me feel quietly a little better.

So, somewhere in the middle of this bible study, God and I had a little chuckle together.  Because there I was, talking about grace and what it means, and at the same time, in the background I was struggling with my rulers.

And while he was smiling, God said to me, “Put them down”.

Grace is choosing to live with no value-rulers. None for measuring yourself, none for measuring other people.

Grace is not measuring.

Grace is accepting that value comes from nowhere else than that we are made in the image of God, and loved by him.

I know that that sounds outrageous and difficult and wonderful and maybe impossible, but hey, that’s grace for you…

It’s actually a big deal that God is calling me to here – giving up comparison, giving up the need to calculate, “less than, equal to or greater than”.  I hope that some of you will look at this picture and feel him calling you to it too.

Put down the rulers.  Choose to live without them.

Comparison is toxic.  Grace is beautiful.  Let’s do it.