lifefullyinhabited

2 Corinthians 1:3 New International Version (NIV)

Praise to the God of All Comfort

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

(A) the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort

This description of God:  The Father of Compassion has captured my imagination and curiosity.

Our deeply imbedded image of God the Father is that of the old man in flowy white robes, billowing white hair and beard

frowning upon humanity

brandishing a lightning bolt

ready to strike down the closest sinner.

Is it any wonder that we resist running into the arms of a God like that?

Yet here He is, shown in a new light.  The Father of Compassion and the God of all comfort. 

I want to get to know this Father of compassion.  I need the God of all comfort.

To be brazenly honest, I don’t think I turn to God for comfort as often as you think a believer should.

Maybe because deep down, I’m fearing the judgement, the frown.  Scorn. Shame.  I fear it all.  I fear being laughed at, belittled.

I don’t expect to recieve compassion and comfort.

The image of Father causes some other confusion.  Like most people, I have often confused God the Father with my earthly father.

My father was a lot of wonderful things, but he was not widely known as compassionate!  Or comforting.

I think he came from the school of “buck up and deal with it”.

He didn’t have much patience with tears, fears, and mini drama.

As most children do, I figured out a way to calm myself.  Food.

I run to food, my truest, oldest false friend.  A friend that has betrayed me time and time again.

I want to learn to run full steam ahead, no holds barred, arms flung wide open, tears streaming down my face, smack dab right into the arms

of the God who is called the Father of Compassion, the God of all comfort.

I am tired of the temporary false comfort that a hit of carbohydrates gives me.  I want a deeper change.

A complete change of direction.  For comfort and compassion when I feel beat up by life and people, I want to turn to

The Father of Compassion.

Not the box of cookies.

My working definition of expectations:  assuming people will behave in a certain way.

Wow.  What was I thinking?

These words are all disappointment bombs, dropping broken hearts all along the pathway to peace.

And yet it happens all the time.  I expect people to behave a certain way.  Other people expect me to behave a certain way.

I even expect myself to behave a certain way.

It’s a war zone of emotional catastrophes.

Is is so hard to just remember that people are only human?

Only God is perfect.

In our human typical way, we even assume God disappoints us sometimes.  Even He can’t behave the way WE want Him to.

Who do we think we are? 

We are just dust.  Infused with life, a gift from God. 

Gently, we have to learn to live with other humans.

Piles of dust, trying to do the best we can, breathing in and out every day.

Please, Lord, help me be gentle with the human dust I encounter every day.  The dust is blessed and sacred.  Because You deemed it so.

³⁵ But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” ³⁶ How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed,

perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸

But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. ³⁹ Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. ⁴⁰ There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. ⁴¹The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

⁴² So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. ⁴⁵ So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”^[f]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. ⁴⁶ The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. ⁴⁷ The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. ⁴⁸ As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. ⁴⁹ And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we^[g]bear the image of the heavenly man.

⁵⁰ I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

. ⁵³ For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”^[h]

⁵⁵ “Where, O death, is your victory?    Where, O death, is your sting?”^[i]

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸ Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (from 1 Corinthians 15)

I am struggling today to understand all this.  I dear friend of mine is facing eternity.  Her husband is going there soon.  This makes everyone they know face the reality, the inevitable.  We all struggle.

We all want to know:  Is it real?  Is there something out there for us after our physical bodies give up and give out?

Is there really a God who loves us and cares about us?  If He cares, why does this man have to die?

We all struggle with the big questions.  It takes some faith to bridge the gap of what we know and what we only hope for.  It takes a certain kind of faith to not believe.  It takes a certain kind of faith to believe.

We all struggle.  And we are all terminal.  No one leaves here alive.

I hope and pray that in your struggle today, you will not stop wrestling with it until the Lord blesses you with faith of the best kind.

“Some people are so poor, all they have is money”

I saw that quote somewhere recently. 

Thank the good Lord, that I’m not THAT poor!

I”ll never know what it means to be THAT poor.

I have so many riches and treasures and investments.  I’m set for life.

I’ve invested in people:  I have the love of family and friends.  I’ve invested in my children, so I’m set for the future.

I have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in.

I have hot water to shower with, I have ice cold beverages to cool me down.

 I have clean running water at my fingertips.

I have heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer.

I am surrounded my beauty every day.

I have technology that I kind of know how to use.

I can read.

In all these things, I am more blessed than most women in the world.

Thank God I will never be so poor as to only have money.

Some of you may think I’m crazy.  But there is comfort in the daily.

The round of dishes that need washing, rinsing, drying.

The baskets of  laundry that need washing, drying, folding, sorting.

The rumpled beds that need straightening, pillows that need fluffing.

The crumbs on the floor that need sweeping.

These are the tasks that a body can do while the mind is mulling.

The creative slow-cooker is the daily grid.

The plants get watered on Wednesdays.

Mondays is for money: paying bills, going to the bank.

There is comfort in the routine.  These tasks need to get done anyway, why not use them as a template for allowing the really

important stuff of life to bubble up.

The weeds need to be pulled out, and so does my negative thinking.  Two necessary duties  for the price of one.

The counters need to be wiped down and so does my self-righteousness. 

The bathtub needs scrubbing to get the soap scum off so the porcelain can shine.  My thoughts need scubbing, too.

Whatever is pure, lovely, truthful, noble, etc.  Think on these things.  Scripture admonishes.

There are no tasks too small, only spirits too small to see the divine, infinite possibilities.

Every dream seems possible at sunset

Note, I did not say “daily grind”.

A daily grid, is a set of good behaviors practiced daily.  A routine designed to provide order, calm, peace to your day.

I like symmetry and order in my environment.  It brings me visual calmness.  Clutter, visual clutter, makes me feel anxious, unsettled.

My day always starts with coffee.  A steaming mug of hot coffee and hot milk, mixed together.  Okay a few of these really gets my day rolling.  I start with milk, 1percent.  Fill mug halfway with the milk.  Microwave for 1.5 minutes.  Add hot brewed coffee.  Drink.  Sip.  Close eyes and say good morning to the world.  Drink and sip some more.  Add more coffee to keep it hot.  Eyes begin to blink themselves awake.  I really love coffee.  I used to be able to do this full throttle, caffeine all the way.  Now, my body, in its fifties, is more sensitive to caffeine.  I get too jittery.  I have switched to a homemade blend of regular and decaf.  I still get my coffee routine in the morning without the insanity the rest of the morning.

I sit in an old orange crushed velvet chair purchased at a yard sale for five dollars years ago.  (that price included a matching footstool, which now lives in my living room.)  I have dubbed this “my reading chair”. 

You might think the orange is really ugly, but surprisingly, in a room with mostly blue and aqua, it actually looks very regal. 

I write in a journal.  It is a very non-fancy 70 page spiral notebook, college-ruled pages.  I try to write three pages of long-hand stream of consciousness.  That means I just put words on the page.  They aren’t always spelled right.  They are not complete sentences.  It is just a brain dump.  Whatever comes to my mind first thing in the morning.

Worries, fears, anxieties, regrets, joys, victories, dreams, thoughts, lists of things to do.  I just get it all on the pages as fast as I can.

Here are some of my little beauties this weekend:

pansies survived the frost

Rodrigo y Gabriella concert with my daughter

fragrant blooming crabapples trees

tulips blooming

art class

movie night:  The Count of Monte Cristo