Tightly Tucked

I wish there were someone to tuck me in at night. Do you remember the warm safety of having your blankets tucked tightly around you each night? You didn't want to move for fear that they would come untucked. 

I'm laying here on my way to sleep, thinking about how different physical rest is from all the other types of rest.
When I am tucked in in life, I find it feels the opposite of safe and lovely. I find myself kicking at the sheets, trying to gain my "freedom" from it's tight security. 

How little I know of trust.
How little of surrender.   

Responsibility

For the last week I have been on the fast track to buying my own house in the 80205 zip code (the place in downtown Denver to which my heart has strongly been tied). This has been an incredible journey for me already.

Day 1: Talk to a Mortgage consultant and get pre-approval on a massive loan
Day 2: Convince yourself that financial you just aren't ready
Day 3: Sit down with the numbers to prove that you aren't ready and walk away with the reality that you very well CAN afford it
Day 4: Arrange to go see houses with Realtor
Day 5: Try not to think about it. Stress is building
Day 6: On the way to go see houses, extenuating circumstances cause you to cancel the appointment
Day 7: Wake up thinking you've made up your mind
unsettled=bad so that's it. Try not to give it another thought
Day 7 1/2: Start thinking about the ministry with your (at this point) imaginary neighbors and decide that you should indeed give it another thought

Which brings us to today.
Day 8: I'm thinking wait.



I wrote this in an email to my sister today.

"I don't know if I want to continue with the search right now.
I don't know if I'm ready to be so responsible.

I'm learning that the adverbial form of the word responsible must exist in relation to my choices before the adjectival form can be used to describe me...I feel like the responsible choice would be to wait- to save for another year and take out a car loan during that time to build on my debt history (of which I currently have none- which is a silly thing to be punished for). The other side of the argument says, "what better way to be responsible than to make a large purchase for which you ARE responsible?"

Following?
I have grammatical arguments like this all the time in my head. Confusing. I know."

But the grammatical argument holds no weight in the decision that faces me still.

“The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps” -Proverbs 16:9

Day 8 1/2: I'm thinking I want to buy a house...

Overlap: temporal meets eternal

It still amazes me how much influence my worldview has on my thinking (yes I understand that this is innate to a worldview). Information goes in one ear, through the lens of my worldview, and then on to my brain where it is processed and filed accordingly (I have a very detailed mental filing system). :o)

Today I was in a community collaboration meeting and someone said something that I found to be so spiritually simple and yet profound.

"It's not about doing more activities but changing minds."

Now of course, she wasn't speaking in ANY way about spiritual things- in fact, while I believe strongly in the pursuit of community involvement, I know that is temporal work. She was simply pointing out that action (including talking and planning) is worthless if it stands alone- apart from a change in the belief that has for so long, driven the wrong kind of action.

This looks to me like a similar (almost mirrored image) of what Scripture says about faith and works in James 2

"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." (14-17)

The world gets it too. They know that actions apart from the driving belief is worthless. So also, Christians, your faith - the belief that drives you- is worthless apart from action. So go act on your faith remembering all the while that it is the Lord who counts your actions as righteousness. It's His work not yours that matters. Read the rest of James 2 and you'll see it. "You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;"