You become what you behold

"What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want much more-something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and mythologies know all about it. We do not merely want to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to recieve it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."
C.S. Lewis


Theres a few things I've been doing/ reading that have been feeding my thoughts and stretching my heart lately which I haven't touched on here. One is a bible study by Beth More, Breaking Free, that I have been going through with a group of friends. The other is the book A Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. The book itself was kinda a gift from God by way of the "other books you may be interested in" little blurb that reads your mind and then pops up on Amazon when you're searching. The subheading for this one was "How to live fully right where you are" and i mean, you don't have to know me very well to know that that is exactly my little quest at the moment haha. Big and little decisions can be paralyzing for me but I'm fully confident that when God has a little gift that he doesn't want me to miss out on he makes sure I have no trouble acting on it. So I ordered the book. Needless to say, its great and, like I've been noticing about all the little gifts He gives me, it comes in a way I can truly relate to and understand. 
Anyway, the book is awesome, its basically this moms revelation over time about how to just live normal everyday life full of grace, joy, and the presence of God through simply giving thanks to Him for all things. Crazy simple, incredibly beautiful. She has a whole chapter about a night she had with the moon and wow just describes exactly how I feel when I'm looking at the moon but don't know how to put into words the awe it gives me for my creator. 
This C.S. Lewis quote was stuck in there somewhere around that chapter and it is VERY much the way I've been feeling this whole spring, or maybe my whole life and I'm just now becoming conscious of it.
The other day I was at my parents once again enjoying a beautiful day just laying in the grass taking it all in and trying to describe everything around me...

Beauty all around me, just me alone surrounded

A blue haron stops me in my tracks, he lifts up off the creek 

and skims the water, landing somewhere downstream

the cherry blossom willow blows its soft white pink gently in the wind

sweet grass smell fills my nose and tickles my bare feet

bright red, bold tulips stand out against the fresh new green

passover lambs graze (fate tied) in the meadow

birds sing and chirp playfully above me

a light breeze brushes my face and the sun warms my skin.

All my senses come alive just by stopping for an hour on an otherwise normal afternoon and beholding this beauty. I am so aware it is His beauty that I see. Ive run to this beauty because in it, surrounded by it I can't doubt, I don't fear, I know and believe Him, I see Him.  Yesterday after our family Easter gathering I took a walk through town and it was windy and looking like it might storm later, it was warm but had an exciting edge to it with the wind and clouds and spring flowers and trees here and there. I just know its Him. 

There are afternoons like that and then there's other times, hours spent making something creative with fun colors and designs. And then to finish and see the completed creation and find His beauty is all over it. Even just putting together a pretty outfit; I just got a shirt with a butterfly on it today at target and it just says to me "God is beautiful". It happens when I hang out with my nieces and nephews. They are stinkin cute thats for sure but theres something else in their innocent unique little faces, expressions and little exclamations, its His creativity and beauty.
Don't even get me started on the moon.

Even in writing, sometimes I finish a blog or something like this and I read over it and it surprises me because it seems to reflect His beauty. Music is like that, the perfect song, its just beautiful but not of our own beauty, its something else, something otherly. It can only be attributed to him. 

I see it ALL over., and therefore I see Him all over. But, back to the quote...

"...We want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to recieve it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."

I hear two things very clearly from the Lord these days. One is "Come away with me!" Just come and enjoy my face, by beauty, away from anyone and anything that could take my place in your heart, come away with me! And then, "Live fully right where you are, be where you are." To me these seem to contradict themselves. In my heart there is always this longing to just go away by myself into creation. I've done it all my life, finish supper quick to run outside to the magnolia tree, get through the school day to come home and take a nap or read a book on a blanket outside, slip out of room one at the base and meet God behind the comedor, just me and him. No confusing fears about what other people think of me or having to be a certain way for myself or anyone when its just me surrounded by His beauty outside. In the same way, I love to be surrounded by his people, my face in his word, humming his tunes. I love my church, Ive always half lived there. I love bible studies with Britt and Steve, I love worship with brenden, and small group with our girls, breaking free, prayer meeting, the core. I love to be in His environment. I think He loves this about me, I know he made me like this. But right now I feel a little unrest about it, and there is this other word...

"BE where you are, live fully anywhere and everywhere." Live here at home in Lancaster, don't try to run back to the base. Live here at work, don't try to run away to your journal or even bible, worship me in serving them. Be with me here in your house, you don't have to always run to the grass and trees, Know me here in the dark, when there is no other light. Know me when your hanging out with some of these friends where its not so easy, not as comfortable.  What if you were in a cold dark place with no one around who knows you, would you know me? would you love me? would you BELIEVE me? 

Because the thing is, its one thing to see the beauty, one thing to see Him, on sunny warm spring afternoon, in spirit filling services, in solid edifying two way conversations; one thing to follow him when everyone else is, one thing to talk about him when He is the topic of conversation, when he is the most valued by all. But its not enough. Not enough just to see him, even the devil believes him. Not enough to write about him, I want to live this.  Although I can hardly put it into words, I long to pass into it, long to receive him to myself, long to become part of him. 

Because then He is in me. He is in me here or there, with him or her, upstairs or downstairs, across town, when its cold and I'm frozen or when its warm and I feel free to move about, in season or out of season, when i get it and when i don't, when I'm walking or running or standing still.  Whether I stay or go, pay or save, give or spend, when I lay down and when I get up. 

Or when I'm trusting but someone else I love isn't, He is even there, still true, still faithful. Or when I hear something and I'm the ONLY one thinking this way, He is still true, still worthy of my obedience. Or when he says I am His and I belong when I feel lonely and misplaced. He is still the true one. 

Maybe his word is not "come away from where you are to be with me" maybe it's while you are there or anywhere, come away from the fear or failing, come away from the lie that I am not there with you, come away from the unbelief that says I'm not worthy or trustworthy, come away from that slavery, that death, and be with me there. Believe me there, love me there, please me there. Lets integrate this whole thing, I kinda want ALL of you.

"The secret to joy is to keep seeking God where you doubt He is."

So once again, how? I know its true, that by "asking Jesus into my heart" by taking on this life for him the reality is that he does live inside me. This is the reality of life with him, its not just with but IN, together as ONE. Every movement, every decision, every thought. But still I see this thing happening in my life, this separation of God and some parts of life, if you will. And I question, how do I see you where I don't see you? How do I do things that don't seem to pertain to you for you, how to enter into this oneness? where everything in me is yours, everything I do is for you? I try in funny little weak attempts to paste you onto things, to put your name somewhere or something.

I can almost hear Yarley saying "playing worship music while washing the dishes doesn't make it pleasing to God. Were not trying to "christianize" the work place or bring church into school, were talking about a heart that does everything as worship to God." A heart that sees God everywhere, a heart that believes and trust him always. A heart.

"Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be 

their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart." (jeremiah 24:7)  

Only a whole heart lives all of life One with the father.

Jesus himself, "Most assuredly (I'm very sure of this), I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He sees the Father do,  for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He himself does, and He will show him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will."

This is the way of full life, living and giving life abundantly. 

I lean back again and look up, breathe deep, and see a hawk really far away in the sky. He is flying soo high looking for prey across the stream. And then a second one joins him and they fly closer, right above me. Two more join. I can see where the light comes through their feathers, showing off some details in their wings and where they are darker with body mass. So intricately designed, created to fly so crazy high, so smooth, just floating up there. And the crazy thing is they can SEE from up there! they might even see me. They probably see the life in the sheep and the warmth of blood running through my body. But their prey is even smaller, still they sense the living being far far below them- somehow see it, maybe not like I see the fly in front of me full detail, but they see the heat and movement of life and can identify where it is. They target it from great heights and distance.

God and I have a thing about birds of prey, he knows I love seeing them up close, or anytime I get to see them close enough to recognize what they are. I think they are really beautiful. I love little birds but these birds are just crazy beautiful to me. So I know its a gift.

Its a stretch but I feel like I relate- I can see this way the birds do,  I see this life beating far far from me. And my creator has made me to run, to set my heart violently, intensely on finding this life he has for me. On holiness and oneness with him, on being united with this beauty that is him, on believing its in me because he is in me.

Just like he has created each animal with instincts and these birds with every skill they need to nourish their lives with food, he has designed me in my body, heart, mind and soul, to seek and find his life. It's intentional, the little bunnies don't just end up in their talons by chance. But its natural, its they way they were made. This life doesn't just end up in my grasp somehow without me ever engaging, but its natural, I don't have to get all bent out of shape to make it happen. Just keep seeking God where you don't see him, just keep believing him where you don't feel him, keep asking him where you don't know, keep knocking where you can't go.

"The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the One seeing God without. God is both the object of my seeing and the subject who does the act of all real seeing, the Word lens the inner eye wears. To sit in the theater of God and see His glory crack the dark, to open the eyes of my heart to see the fountains of His grace-thousands of gifts- I have to split heart open to more and more of Jesus. Who can split open the eyelids but Jesus? He tears the veil to the Holy of Holies, gives me the only seeing I have." 

Be thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

2 Corinthians 3:18

You become what you behold.


I love the moon because its huge and mysterious and beautiful for no other reason except that God, its creator, is huge, beautiful, and mysterious. I mean, who decided that a huge glowing circle in the sky should be so AWESOME! there's no reason for it to be attractive and inspiring to us besides the fact that it, whether you know it or not, may as well be yelling from deep inside its glowing mass, "There is a GOOD, WISE, HUGE, AWESOME, incredibly beyond what you have seen or could imagine BEAUTIFUL God who made you! Praise him! GLORY and HONOR, and MAJESTY to the King of Kings! HOLY HOLY HOLY!" 
 Really, listen in sometime you'll hear more than that. 
Whoever you are, whether you know God or not, you look at the moon and at least for a second it is real (absolutely true), and its a pretty cool thing right? Well sit on that thought for a little longer, behold it for a few more seconds and please please know that
"since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are CLEARLY seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead..." please know, that you are without excuse because if you've seen the moon than you've seen something of the invisible real God who made it. You've seen that He is beautiful.
That was a tangent, what I really want to say is the moon is the number one thing that provokes this "i want to pass into it" feeling in me. Because its very function is to reflect the sun. As in it has no light of its own. It is just a mass of reflecty stuff. No light. It catches my eye and I can NOT look away (joe has to remind me that the road is pretty cool too haha) but none of that super bright light is the moons! Its ALL the sun! And sometimes it reflects all of the sun, sometimes only half or a sliver. But its cool when its just a little bit and you can still see the outline of the rest of the moon, all that space that will be used to reflect more in due time. Oh man i could really go on this but were getting too long again...
The other day I made a comment about how bright the moon was tonight and my sister told me that Elijah, my little nephew said something about it earlier, something like, "Its so bright! Its the SUN!!" hahah i love it. But it also made me think..exactly! Isn't that what I want so badly, not to be God but to so reflect him that others see him in me the way I see him in the moon. 
So I sing along with Phil Whikham,


If You are the sun, I want to BE the moon.