Sarah Parham

Oh dear friends, a few bits of news from around these parts.  First, I had an article published over at Mentoring Moments for Christian Women this past Monday.  It was called My Right Now Dream.  Check it out if you’d like.

And for the second bit of news, in complete contrast to everything I wrote about in that post, I am resuming my seminary classes in about two and a half weeks!  I just got a phone call that I’ve received a full scholarship to get me to the end of my degree, which I started 8 years and 3 kids ago!  I am approaching a time where I need to complete the degree or my credits will expire.  So, two weeks before classes begin, I have been awarded a full-scholarship and am enrolling in classes.  This is one of those things that doesn’t make sense even to me, but seeing God’s hand in it, I am moving (completely terrified, like shaking in my boots…umm, houseshoes…) forward.  But hey, the good news, I will finish my degree in my p.j.s (online).

I want to share with you my heart for a minute.  When I stopped taking classes five years ago, with the birth of my first born impending, I imagined it to be a break, not a break-up with education. Three years after I made that decision, I further stepped back from myself for the sake of my children by giving up my dream job in ministry to be with my children more.  And when my third born took us all unaware, I was sure that I’d never be able to go back to who I once was.  I won’t say that I have regretted those decisions, but I have questioned them often.  I can easily see all that I have gained for my family, my children especially.  But I feared the cost.

Being perfectly honest, I’ve had to fight the enemy in my mind hard core.  He has been telling me that I am no longer a minister, and no longer fit for ministry.  He has used scripture against me: “Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” ”  Luke 9:62.  And I know none of this is true.  I know that titles don’t make me a minister, and now I can see that God has only been further training me for ministry in my time at home.  But you can see how Satan could easily use this scripture to put me on my head.

At the beginning of 2014, I sensed God giving me a scripture to go along with my word: fun.  The scripture was from Psalm 126.

Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.

Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

And today, I get to share with you the fulfillment of this promise.  In many ways, you reading this blog is the fulfillment of the promise.  Writing has been a shaky dream of mine as a means of fulfilling my call to ministry.  It has been such a fragile dream, I’ve been unwilling to try and see it get dashed.  But in 2014, I decided to sow my tears, and now I am reaping joy!  Joy unspeakable!  (And complete terror if I’m being really honest. haha).

And with an abrupt change in subject, on to the things I had already written to share with you today.

And can I say, these words sound so very different to me now than they did just a few hours ago when I wrote them.  God knew how He would reveal Himself, the true prize, to me today. Thank you Jesus.
And love to you, my readers.

 

Ok, so we’ve agreed that life is a marathon, not a sprint.  And to review:

How do you finish a marathon?
Crowd cheer:  “Endurance!”

Now, what comes at the end of a race?
Crowd cheer:  “A prize!”
My husband:  “A beer!”

Hebrews promises:

A harvest of righteousness and peace
to those who are trained by it.

“It” being the discipline of the Lord; this marathon we often find ourselves in.  God promises us a harvest.  Not just a meal, a harvest!  Enough to get us through whatever winter may come.

Why righteousness and peace?  Because that is what you get when you are fully submitted to God.  You get right-relatedness to Him, and from that you get a peace that passes all understanding.  It is not a peace that comes from knowing the outcome.  It is a peace that comes from knowing God has never left you.  It’s way better than the candy I use to bribe my children to be good at the grocery!

A harvest of peace!  Who isn’t looking for that right now?  Endure to the end my friend.  Allow God to use your circumstances to train you.  The promise isn’t a good outcome in the eyes of the world.  It is so much better.  It is a closeness to God that assures you do not have to worry.  Ever.  Again.

That has been my prayer for this past year.  That I would be trained by this season of hardship.  I want the prize, that harvest of righteousness and peace.  And can I say, I see it springing from the ground already!  Praise the Lord!

I work for a college ministry, so silly icebreaker questions are still a regular part of my life.  One that regularly comes up is “If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?”  And my answer is always the same.  Aside from Jesus Christ, it would easily be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, if I could have dinner with him, I would have but two things to say.  First, thank you.  Thank you for standing for the right thing, at a time when it was hard.  Thank you for showing us a better way.  And secondly, I’m sorry.  We’re sorry.  We seem to have lost the way.
Again.

I watched his speech on YouTube this morning.

Many of us know some of the more famous lines, but how many have watched it?  I have to admit, it has been years since I’ve sat and watched it the whole way through.  It brings me to tears each time.

The line that stood out to me this time was the line about young black and white children playing hand in hand.  I was teary eyed realizing that we really have come a long way.  That dream is a reality for my daughter.  It was for me thirty years ago!  I have been so blessed by the work of Dr. King.  My life has been richer.  My children’s lives are richer!

I try to teach my daughter about the work of Dr. King each year.  She’s five now.  Last year, she would help people at school, and come home and tell me that she was just like Dr. King.  It was too precious.  But as kids do, she forgot.  So this year, she is learning it again like it is brand new.  I have yet to be completely honest with her though.  I have taught her that Dr. King stood up for people when others were not treating them fairly.  I teach her that he did all of this without fighting.  But I just can’t bring myself to tell her that the whole reason some people were being mean to others was the color of their skin.  I just can’t say that out loud to her.  She has no concept for that in her mind.  She has friends of a variety of races, both in our church and in her school (and I’m so glad!).  But she never really describes anyone by that.  She doesn’t ask why people are different colors.  It’s just a reality she accepts.  By telling her the true story of King’s struggle, I will jade her world a little.  And I’m not ready for that.

We really have come a long way.  But I think the events of this past year prove, we have yet a ways to go.  I wonder if we have forgotten the true goal: equality.  Equality, not power.  Will a day come when no questions will be raised as to motive concerning color?  I sure hope it does.  Before Jesus returns.  Just the same as we have forgotten the dream, we have forgotten the way.  The way of peace.  And for this, I believe Dr. King would be especially sad.

There is another King, the Great Physician, who is also sad about these events.  About the state of our souls.  He is The King who offers us freedom and deep true healing from the inside out.  This King also wept because His people didn’t understand His way of peace.

Perhaps today, we could heed some other words from Dr. King.  In his Challenge to the Churches and Synagouges, given almost exactly 52 years ago, he gives a warning to the church.  It is a prophecy I fear is coming true.  In it he states:

“When the Church or Synagogue becomes a vocal or silent partner of the status quo, it loses both its power and its soul….If the Church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become little more than an irrelevant social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.  It the Church does not participate actively in the struggle for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause men everywhere to say it has atrophied its will.  In short, the Church must decide whether it will assume the role of leadership, or the role of pious irrelevancy.  The Church must decide whether it will aaggressively lead men along the path of brotherhood or whether it will remain more cautious than courageous and more prone to follow the expedient than the ethical way.”

Church, I fear we are becoming irrelevant.  Not because we don’t have the answers to the world’s problems.  Indeed, we do!  But because we aren’t willing to do the hard work of standing up for what is right. For this reason, Dr. King is one of my heros.  And for this reason I am afraid Our. King. weeps.

 

Sources:

http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/challenge-churches-and-synagogues

 

While I don’t necessarily want to belabor the point of my previous post, I do want to point out one beautiful metaphor from Psalm 1:

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
    nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

Do you see what the Lord compares the righteous to?  A tree, planted by water.  Notice the contrast, how He describes the wicked: chaff, which the wind blows away.  Do you know how long it takes to grow a tree?  I’ve only recently appreciated the forethought it takes to plant a tree.  My absolute favorite memory of my childhood was playing in a tree in my front yard.  It really was the most awesome climbing tree.  I spent at least thirty percent of my waking hours in that tree.  And never once broke a bone falling out of it, might I add.  (And neither did my brother…which is somewhat miraculous.  He broke many bones along the way…)  Now that I have little ones, I wish I had a good climbing tree for them to grow up in.  But, I didn’t have the forethought to plant one when my first was born.  It’s not like I can plant one this spring or fall and have it ready by next summer.  No!  A good climbing tree takes years!

YEARS!

Do you understand?  That’s how long it takes God to mold us!  Years!  It is not just one planting season, one hard, hot growing season, and then *poof* we’re ready!  Full grown, mature plants.   No, it takes many springs, many hot, sticky, fun summers.  It takes many seasons of fall, where loss is all we can see.  It takes many winters, many seasons where it feels and looks like we. are. done.  But, after winter, spring always comes.  And for the believer, this cycle continues, season after season.  As the Lord grows us into maturity.

Not so, the wicked.

Chaff, it’s easy to grow.  Just one year.  But, it is also gone, *poof* just like that.

 

But that’s not what God is making out of you.  God is pouring out His legacy into you.  God is making you into

…Oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.

He doesn’t mess around with His splendor.  He is making out of you, a place for His glory.  It will take many springs, many summers, many falls, and many winters. Wherever you are in life now, please know it is just a season.
If you feel like everything around you is falling apart,
it’s just a season.
Do you feel like you have nothing left to give?  Barely living?
It’s just a season.
Is it spring in your life?  Are you enjoying the fruitfulness?  Are you enjoying the fun times of summer?  Please, don’t be alarmed when fall comes.  It will come, it must come.
Because God is not done with you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree;
in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be,
unrevealed until it’s season, something God alone can see.

There’s a song in every silence, seeking word and melody;
there’s a dawn in every darkness, bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future; what it holds a mystery,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Hymn of Promise   – Natalie Sleeth, 1986

I hate running.  I think at times in my life I’ve pretended I liked it, but in the past few years, I’ve just decided to own it.  I hate running.  But, last month, I had an itch in my bones to go for a run.  I needed to work off some stress and running was more accessible than a punching bag.  So, I took off for a run.  And I ran farther than I’ve ever run before.  It was because of one realization I had while running.

It’s supposed to hurt.Continue reading →

January seems like an appropriate time to talk about discipline.  That dirty little D-word.  None of us like it.  It sounds so harsh.  But, since we’re all making New Year’s resolutions, we’re all going to need some of it.

Let me start by sharing that I’ve been through a season of discipline by the Lord lately.  I can hear the sharp breath intake, “Oooohhh, what did Sarah dooooo???”  (That little 5th grader still lives in all of us!)  And honestly, when the Lord revealed to me that discipline was indeed what I was experiencing, that was my first response too!  Lord, what have I done!?! Continue reading →

New Years Day is quickly becoming one of the most formative days in my spiritual life.  It’s a day of new beginnings.  It’s a day of starting over.  Although it is in the dead of winter, it brings about this feeling of newness, anything could happen, it’s a new year!  I know nothing magical happens at 11:59 pm December 31, wiping all our slates clean.  But just something about changing that calendar.  It’s good for the soul.   I have no idea in what year our Lord will return, but each January, I can’t help but think we are another year closer.  It’s like my father-in-law used to say to his kids when asked a thousand times on car trips “Are we there yet?”, his answer was always the same, “We’re closer than we have been.”  It feels good to know we are closer than we have been.

In my last post, I shared one of my New Year’s traditions of choosing a word for the year, and reflecting on the year past.  Another has sprung up in my life over the past few years.  It has come on somewhat gradually, but I’m embracing it for all that it could be for me in Christ.  The new “tradition” is that of choosing a spiritual discipline focus for the year.  It started a few years ago when I really wanted to read through the Bible in a year.  I’d tried many many many times before, but always failed.  I was determined this year, I believe it was 2013.  (Ok, so that was just last year.)  My church was corporately trying to do this, so it gave me the extra push I needed and accountability.  I also found a reading plan on my Bible app for my smart phone.  It let me check off each chapter as I read it.  And we all know how good it feels to check something off a list!!  I did it!  That year I read through the Bible in a year.  It was great.  But with my limited time for reading, I spent all my reading time just getting my checklist completed.  If something struck me as good, I didn’t really allow myself to dive in.  I ended the year really wanting to dive deeper into a smaller portion of scripture.

Enter 2014’s discipline: scripture memory!  Which, let me tell you, I didn’t really work on until, umm, December 2014!  Eek!  But I did dive into a smaller portion of scripture.  Namely Hebrews 12.  Seriously, I think I read that portion of scripture at least 300 times this year (I’m sure I missed a few days this year!).  So, naturally, when December hit and I realized I hadn’t memorized any scripture, I knew exactly which passage to go for.  I had also gotten some advice and inspiration from my women’s Bible study I go to on Thursday mornings.

It was the last week, we were having a brunch and a few of the ladies were talking about scripture memory.  One lady who inspires me often, had already shared her strategy to memorize: you say the verse with the Bible open 10 times out loud, then you close the Bible and you say it 10 more times.  Each day you add a new verse, but repeat all of the scripture in the same way.  Simple enough.  Some of the women were talking about how they couldn’t memorize anything anymore. Age, etc.  I feel the same way.  I often can’t remember if I’ve brushed my teeth.  But I sure enough have Goodnight Moon memorized!!  Why?  Because I’ve said it out loud 10,000 times!  It was then that it hit me, maybe my friend Tracy knew what she was talking about!  Then the nail was put in the coffin by Kathy, who just said simply “It just takes work.”

So, that’s what I’ve done.  I’ve worked, I’ve sounded like a madwoman mumbling the same thing over and over before bed.  My husband laughs at me.  But it’s worked!  I have in a pretty short time memorized Hebrews 12:1-11.  If you see me you can test me!

In 2015 I will be putting my energies into prayer.  I feel like this is the word He has given me for the year, so it makes sense to focus on it as a discipline as well.

This whole taking a discipline a year thing has been really good for me.  In the past when confronted with the notion of spiritual disciplines, I have been overwhelmed by the thought of getting enough bible reading, scripture memorization, prayer, corporate worship, meditation, solitude….all in one day!  Sheesh!
But being able to really focus on one a year, not to the complete neglect of the others, but really focusing.  It has helped me tremendously towards a more healthy approach towards my own spiritual formation.  There are seasons.  For right now, solitude is not a discipline I can focus on!  Neither is corporate worship for that matter.  If a baby is sick, no church for mama.  But prayer, that is one I need so desperately.  And it keeps my heart in tune with God.  And it keeps me intentional about my spiritual life.  That’s the point of the disciplines anyways right!

Consider choosing one for 2015.  Drop me a comment and let me know what you choose.  Let’s encourage one another in 2015.

New Year’s Day has always been something of a personal spiritual holiday for me.  I say always, and that’s obviously not true, but it has been such a day for me ever since my college years, which are farther away now than I care to admit.  It has been a day of serious reflection, prayer and journaling.  I love to think back on all that God has done in, through and for me in the past calendar year.  I also love to look forward to all God can do in the year coming.  It has been a real spiritual exercise for me each year.  I like to think of it as one of the Old Testament rituals of placing stones as reminders of all God has done.  My Ebenezers.

So, my pastor challenges each person in our church to ask God for a word each year.  The word is meant to be a lens through which to see God in that year.  It’s not a magical thing, and not really even a prophetic thing.  Really it’s just a lens.  I’ve heard this challenge for the past eight years I’ve spent learning under this pastor.  I never really heard a word from the Lord for myself prior to the year beginning until the past three or four.  I feel like I never heard it before because God knew how much I would anticipate and look for in a word.  And that’s not the point.  It’s not something that guides or directs us, but rather a lens that helps us see God.  Once I got that, I think I was able to handle having a word.

In 2013, the word God gave me for the year was “winter”.  I was pretty thrilled with the word at the beginning.  I thought, “Oh good, nothing happens in winter”.  I was longing for a quiet uneventful year after our year of “loss” in 2012.  Then in March of 2013, all my hopes of a calm year melted away as quick as a snowman on a beach with one (unexpected) positive pregnancy test.  I learned that year a lot about “winter”.  I learned that things are happening in the winter, it’s just not the things you can see on the outside.  You can see some more of my musings on winter here.

My word for 2014 has been “fun”.  Again, something of a joke.  Looking forward to this year last December/January I knew it was going to be a hard year.  I was trying hard to work through some postpartum depression issues.  We had many dark clouds hanging over our heads.  The word “fun” seemed more like a command than a promise.  And perhaps it was.  But it was also a promise, because God had given me a verse to go along with my word: Psalm 126:5-6

Those who sow with tears
    will reap with songs of joy.
 Those who go out weeping,
    carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
    carrying sheaves with them.

Perhaps there were two words, fun and joy. A command and a promise.  A lesson in the contrasting of the two.  It was a super hard year.  I tried to make it fun.  I prayed every night that we could learn about fun from my sweet fun loving middle child.  I made us go to a new park each week in the summer.  I learned a bit about God from a verse from the sermon on the mount:

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

Yes!  And God cares about those things as well.  He cares about our fun!  This may not seem super spiritual to you, but it was revolutionary for me.  God gave me creative ideas for fun in our hardest financial year.  A year in which I was worried about food and clothes.  And in my soul I knew YES, life is more than this!!  And God speaks to the more.  He isn’t here to provide for our needs while we take care of all the extras.  He wants all of us!  He wants to provide for the life giving fun that is so important in our lives as well.  This is just something of what I have learned about God through the lens of “fun”.

The word that keeps coming to my heart for 2015 is “prayer”.  I already sense this overwhelming burden to pray.  I can feel the lack of concentrated prayer in my life lately.

So, this is me, saying Happy New Year to you.  I pray that you will have a time during this holiday to reflect on all God has done for you.  Consider setting up some stones in your life to remind you.  Something you can go back to and remember:

Thus far, the Lord has helped us.

I can assure you, He won’t stop now.

The past week or two have been quite a mess for me.  I have been making silly mistakes everywhere.  2+2=3 mistakes.  Only my mistakes have been bigger, affecting those around me.  And they haven’t been private ones either.  They are the kind I must fess up to to fix.  Ugh.  Humility.  In the humiliating sense of the word, which then leads to the virtue of humility, humbleness.

Earlier this week my little girl wanted to write a letter to her Nana.  She had messed up on one page and discarded it.  I sat by her and took her discarded page and began to write my own thoughts down.  Trying to get them out of my head.  Terrible, berating thoughts.  My sweet 5 year old first born asked me if I was writing a letter too.  No, I told her, I was just writing my thoughts.  Kind of like a journal.  She said “Oh, you’re writing your thoughts….So you’re writing about God.”

I was crushed.  If only I had been writing about God.  But no, I was only writing of my own failures.  I was forgetting God’s grace.  And my sweet five year old reminded me.  She reminded me just in her assumption that my thoughts must be about God.  What grace of God!  That on days when I feel like I have failed at just about everything I put my hands to, He shows me that my daughter believes that all of my thoughts are about God.  What else matters in the face of that?

“Prone to wander Lord I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.”

Lord remind me.  Help me, even in my failures, to keep my thoughts on you.  And thank you for your grace.  Grace that shows me that all is not lost.

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Teach them to your children,talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates,  so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.  Deuteronomy 11:18-21

So, you know how when you read the same story over and over, new things stick out to you each time.  Each Easter and Christmas we hear the same stories.  Each year though, it seems that something new sticks out to me in these familiar stories.  It’s beautiful to know that there is so much richness and depth in God’s word I’ll never reach the bottom.  So, this year in the Christmas story, Luke 1:35 is the verse that is jumping out at me and screaming a lesson, which was always there, but I’ve never seen.  Mary has asked the angel the obvious question when a virgin is told she’ll be pregnant…How?

“The angel answered “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”

It hit me like a ton of bricks, this verse is so familiar.  It hearkens back to another time when the Spirit of God came over something and brought life.  Life from nothing.  Ex nihilo.  It screams of creation – a new creation!  In Genesis the Spirit of God is described as hovering over the waters.  In Luke, He comes upon Mary and overshadows her.  Hovering and overshadowing, the images drawn up in my mind of these two pictures are so similar.  Those two words can have such negative connotations in our society, but the images they evoke for me are far from negative.  It’s more like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night.  Or better yet, an artist carefully inspecting his painting, working on the fine details.  Or a potter, hunched over his wheel, tenderly, carefully shaping and molding.  Protecting his precious work, knowing one unthoughtful touch could destroy it.  (Or at this moment, a mother hovering over her laptop keyboard hoping her one year old won’t erase every word she’s tried to write over the past 4 days!)

In Hebrew culture, large bodies of water were terrifying things.  It was the kind of fear that comes from knowing something is so much bigger than you, and you can’t control it.  The better English translation for seas would be “chaotic deep”.   Imagine a world with no meteorologists.  Storms come from over the seas.  Unpredictable.  Dangerous.  A beautiful morning fishing trip can quickly become fatal.  The ocean’s waves were and still are untamable.  Floods – the overflow of danger.   We often forget the dangers in our modern, scientific world because we have so many tools to predict and manage the risk.  But we still haven’t been able to control the waves.  The Hebrew people also lacked our scientific tools for measuring the depth of the waters.  They only knew they couldn’t reach the bottom.  It was a mysterious place.  Full of wonder and uncontrollable power.  The oceans have not lost their mystery, despite our modern technology.  People flock from all over to sit on a beach and just listen to the power of the ocean’s roar.  To see the waves come in and out, in and out.  You could watch it forever.  It’s at once soothing and overwhelming.

To say that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters gave God the power to control, to contain this chaotic deep.  Something so overwhelming to humans bows to the command of an Almighty God.  It is the place God begins to do His creative work.  From this untamable force (which God first made), He brings forth order, and life.  Just as He does with Mary.

And just as He does with us.  When I hear the phrase “chaotic deep”, I instantly think of my soul.  Yes, isn’t that the best description.  An untamable force from my perspective.   The soul has depths that no human can reach.  We know these depths by the evidence we see of its existence.  The longings and aches words can’t describe.  The joy that feels like our bodies can’t contain.  My soul, so chaotic.  The storms, unpredictable.  My desires, dangerous.  And yet, it is still the canvas God uses to create new life.  Just as the Spirit of God hovered over the waters at creation, and just as He came over Mary to bring forth Jesus, the Spirit of the living God gently covers me and brings forth order and new life.  From my chaotic deep.  How fearfully and wonderfully made indeed.

It’s quite incredible really.  It’s the only place that we naturally die to ourselves without even thinking about it.  Without a choice in the matter really.   Pregnancy.  From the moment of conception, you, mom, are second.  When you don’t drink all 1,500 glasses of water you are supposed to, not to worry my friend, your baby is well hydrated.  You, however, will be severely dehydrated.  Your body somehow knows to give the first fruits to that fragile life growing inside you.  Not just water, but those oh so important prenatal vitamins.  Your baby gets first pick!  If you forget for one day.  Don’t panic!  Your baby will get his or her vitamins.  You will be missing out though.  It’s really amazing.  It’s the only place in life where we naturally die to ourselves.

Motherhood has changed the way I see dying to yourself.  Let me tell you a story.  Just the other day, as I was driving to work, someone pulled out in front of me at a busy intersection causing me to nearly collide with them.  I was furious.  It was a close call.  I don’t honk at people often, but I laid on my horn at this person.  For the next couple hundred yards I was just thinking of all that I would tell them when we got to the next red light and I got out of my car and stormed up to their window.  But all that I could manage to come up with to say was “Are you crazy?  I have children!!”  I have children!  That thought circled a hundred times.  My life matters!  I was actually nervous to drive for the first few months after having my first baby.  My life suddenly had so much more importance.  Someone was depending on me for life.

Do I die to myself for my children?  Yes, you better believe I die to myself.  But even more than that, I live for them.  My life now has so much more meaning, more purpose.  I don’t get what I want.  I have to die to my desires nearly daily (at 5:30 am to be precise, when my sweet early risers rise and all I want is to sleep a little bit more).  But my life has a purpose.

So often when we think of the Christian life, and we hear, “die to yourself”, we hear, “you don’t matter”.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  As we begin to give up living for ourselves, and begin to live for Christ, we become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.  What greater purpose or meaning could a life have?!  As a pregnant woman, you live for this little one growing inside you.  Yes, you could refuse to take those vitamins, you could rob your body of water.  But eventually, you will die.  And what then of that precious life inside.  It too will die.  As a mother, we don’t die to ourselves, we live for another.  And in that living our lives actually matter more.  Same is true of the Chrsitain life.  As we die to ourselves, and live for Christ, another life takes up residence in our bodies, that of the Holy Spirit.  Now, because the holy lives in us, rather than having lost everything, our lives actually have more meaning.

Imagine with me for a minute that the manger where Jesus lay were archaeologically found.  The finder puts it on e-bay.  How much do  it you think it would go for?  Now really, that manger would never make it to e-bay.  The Catholic Church would purchase it before the public even knew it existed for an unreal amount of money.  In the millions at least!  Prior to the knowledge that baby Jesus slept there (and pooped there), that manger would have just been a nasty animal slobberly mess.  No one would have bid on a used cattle trough.  But knowing that the holy has been there gives it value.  Just like Taylor Swift’s jacket, with her sweat on it, would sell for an ungodly amount, while the same exact jacket would be found on the rack for a couple hundred bucks.  You, having given your life to Christ, died to yourself, now have the essence of the Holy in you.  You are now worth more than any holy shroud kept in any cathedral.  You have God living in you!