Paradox`s story

Once upon a time . . . . there was a story.

And the world is filled with stories: some true, some tale. And the stories we embrace indent our soul and mould our destiny. 

 

Because the stories we hear, and the stories we tell, live bigger than us; and whether we know it or not, our belief ushers us into the story we accept. 

And in the utter end, there are only two stories we will tell, and we will live. One story says the world is chaos, and we alone must muddle and reign and suffer and rule; that we are all there is, whether our best or worst, and our only hope is ourselves. 

The other story says the world is chaos, but the One Who made the world enters the chaos, and redefines it with His reality; and we are not left alone to our own devices, because someone from beyond us transcends our noise and makes sense of our senseless pain. 

And our lives echo the stories we believe. That’s why we have to know what story we trust, and what story we live. Because to settle into an alone story is tragic, and to live as though there is no story is to not live at all.

We were made to live in a together story . . . and that’s the only reason we can believe it. 

Close your eyes, and see it. Quiet your heart, and hear it. Still the clamour, and enter in . . .

This is the mystery, the paradox of grace. This is our story.  

With help from Google images

Gentle Me

Gentle me, by Ted Loder

Gentle me, Holy One, into an unclenched moment. 

A deep breath, 

A letting go of heavy experiences, 

Of shriveling anxieties, 

Of dead certainties, 

That, 

Softened by the silence, 

Surrounded by the Light, 

And open to the Mystery, 

I may be found by Wholeness, 

Upheld by the Unfathomable, 

 

Entranced by the simple, 

And filled with the Joy that is You.

Does God Inhale?

Does God Inhale?

The screaming child upstairs: gasping air into her lungs then propelling it out in heavy bellows of anger. The gusting wind beyond the pane of glass: deporting rubbish from other neighbourhoods into the bushes and drifts along my house.
The words she and I speak, long and thoughtful, in the space of Saturday indoors.

Both we and nature exhale, breathing out as a result of life and heat energizing us, stirring the systems around and within us to fulfill their purpose, however warped our misuse of the resource.

But the Maker of screaming children, billowing Chinooks, and dreaming women, He is different. He too breathes out: but He has the breath of life, making a living soul. He exhales, and ice is given. Stormy wind fulfills His word. He thunders from heaven. Sea’s channels, earth’s foundations are laid bare and exposed at the blast of the breath of His nostrils.

His quietest commands outstrip our loudest hollering, revealing His omnipotence and our frailty in one fell swoop. His exhales leave us bare and exposed.

But the source of our exhalations carves the ultimate chasm between human and divine. We breathe in because He breathes life into us. But He does not need to breathe in. He does not need inspiration. He is life. Because of Him, we exist, but He is His own first cause.

So, melt in wonder, my soul, at the thought of a God-breathed, God-spoken story given me to believe and to tell others. Marvel to consider this all-powerful, self-sustaining, all-encompassing breath of God sighing out long and labourious through the chasm between us. He speaks the Incarnation—word made flesh—revealing the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person as God-Man. Immanuel, God with us. Logos, the cause of all physical and ethical life, spoken in Christ.

To cry as an infant, Christ breathed my air. To buy me back from hellish slavery, He exchanged lives, and deaths, with me. He exhaled His last breath in triumphant purity. To fill me with His life, He overpowered death, and breathed again. To seal His possession, He breathed heaven on me, into me, by the Holy Spirit.

He breathes life into me so that I might breathe His life.

Worship breathes His breath back to Him.