Beauty in Sacrifice

Here is Frank Laubach's journal entry on December 6, 1930:

"Sometimes one feels that there is a discord between the cross and beauty. But there really cannot be, for God is found best through those two doorways. This grey-blue rolling water tinged with whitecaps, hemmed with distant green hills and crowned with colored clouds and baby-blue sky reveals God's love of beauty--and God is so lavish with his paintbrush in the tropics. He is lavish everywhere if one only has eyes to see Him at work.

But when one comes to personality, one demands more than a pretty face or even a soul that sings for joy. There is in the universe a higher kind of beauty. It is the beauty of sacrifice, of giving up for others, of suffering for others. A woman has not reached her highest beauty until she lays down her ease and chooses pain for bearing and nursing her child. A man has not found his highest beauty until his brow is tinged with care for some cause he loves more than himself. The beauty of sacrifice is the final word in beauty."

I am amazed at how transformed his eyes are. Frank sees God everywhere he looks. How can you be beautiful today in sacrifice?

Assisted Living Singing

Tonight our SHARE group went to the Town Creek Facility to sing songs. We put our kids out there to sing various children's songs. The B-I-B-L-E, Jesus Loves Me (the clapping version), I'm All Wrapped Up, Blue Skies and Rainbows, and a few more. The kids had also colored some pictures to give to the people watching us from their wheel chairs. After putting our kids on display we felt compelled to sing a few classic hymns that opened a few eyes and perked up our audience. I saw one lady just close her eyes and mouth the words with a huge smile on her face.

This small (and for some awkward) offering had Jesus written all over it. Our little 30 minutes of time meant the world to these people whose routine consists of mainly hanging out in a common area waiting for someone to come talk to them.

I had a thought as I was wheeling one lady (ninety something years old...she couldn't remember) back to the common area. If the Lord blesses me with as many years, I pray that people come to see me to sing praises to God. What a blessing it was tonight.

Fruit of the Spirit Suggestions

If you are going to produce a crop of apples, you don’t just go out and make them appear out of nowhere. No…you go and work the ground (till it up)…get the ground ready to receive the seeds…then you plant the seeds (which BTW look nothing like what comes out…i.e. you don’t plant an apple to get apples…you plant an apple seed)…then you water and give it appropriate sunlight…and God amazingly produces the fruit…in time…not immediately.

To produce the heart-level fruit of the Spirit, you will find a similar process with your heart. You work the ground, get it ready to receive the seeds, and you plant seeds that don’t look like what you will end up with (i.e. if you want patience you don’t plant patience...you plant something else). Then you cultivate the environment of your heart.

Constant cultivation of what is planted needs to happen…beware of the hard ground, the rocks, and the weeds that can creep in if we fail to pay attention. Are you cultivating your heart now so that God can produce in you the fruit that he desires of this world? Here are a few suggestions for cultivating the heart for later fruit of the spirit:

To cultivate joy,

• Ask God to show you how good he is
• Meditate on how beautiful his creation is
• Smell the flowers and thank God for them.
• Have a personal worship retreat.
• Sing songs of praise and thanksgiving.
• Pray the scripture, pausing to meditate when the Spirit leads

To cultivate faithfulness and peace in your marriage

• Pray together
  
• Thank each other regularly (write it down every day: record of rights)
  
• Hold each other closely without selfish agendas…just for the sake of affirming the other
  
• Don’t take things so personally (most of the time its not a big deal)
  
• Offer forgiveness
• Ask for forgiveness. Admit when you are wrong quickly.
  
• Smile and laugh at each other.
• Don’t get historical. Remember the time you chose to forget how you've been wronged.
  
• Watch the sun go down together. Just enjoy the beauty of God.
• Tell others that you won't (not "can't") do something because you want to spend good time with your spouse.

To cultivate kindness and goodness at work,

• Ask them what you can pray for (actually pray for them there)
  
• Ask God to show you their strengths
  
• Begin thanking them for things they’ve done (“I overheard your conversation with so-and-so and that really encouraged me”)
  
• Free attention give-away: seriously listen attentively; don’t talk about you
  
• Spend 30 full minutes imagining yourself as another person with whom it is difficult to be kind or good (God will hopefully open your heart toward her or him)

To cultivate gentleness and patience,

• Indirection – stand in longest line at the grocery store
  
• Indirection – go the speed limit (tell yourself…I’m cultivating my heart)
  
• Work with children
  
• Initiate a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak English well
  
• Put yourself in situations where you can cultivate a selfless heart (trust that in time, God will produce his fruit in you)
  
• Confess regularly your own faults (who of us is perfect?)

To cultivate self-control,

• Ask God to teach you to say no to yourself in small things
  
• Indirection – practice fasting (learn to say no to your own body in eating [a basic need], and you will begin to see self-control in other temptations)
  
• Inconvenience yourself regularly, and take it not as an inconvenience but an wonderful opportunity to learn self-control that you weren’t expecting (act of service)
  
• When someone does something horrible to you, don’t tell anyone about it…ever!!
• When you do something good, don’t tell anyone about it…ever!!
• Limit your speaking for a day...see what you learn about others and yourself
• Don't eat your normal snack or dessert or whatever for a day

To cultivate love,

• Spend time with God just listening…ask him to show you his love
  
• Spend personal time worshipping God in song.
• Read about how God loves horrible people
  
• His love is something hard to understand
  
• No conditions…on his love?
  
• Begin to experiment with how you can practice this love too
  
• Do all these things
  

Remember that all these suggestions are only ways to cultivate your heart. And this is not even close to an exhaustive list. Please feel free to add your own in a comment to this post.

Word of Caution: You could easily turn these suggestions into rules and regulations to be performed, but that again doesn’t work on the heart. You would be doing the very thing that you are trying to avoid. Richard Foster: “The Disciplines of the spiritual life are a means not an end. The end is ‘to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.’ The end is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17).” (Foster, Streams of Living Water, 55)

Frank Laubach

I am trying a new experiment that I borrowed from Frank Laubach. He worked among the Moros on one of the Philippine islands. He journals about his experiment. On January 20, 1930 he said, "Two years ago a profound dissatisfaction led me to begin trying to line up my actions with the will of God about every fifteen minutes or every half hour." He talks about seeking to respond to God as a violin responds to the bow of the master.

I must admit my intrigue. His conversation with God and desire to respond to God's will is impressive. It reminds me of Christ's passion. As I read through his journey, I am overcome with his honesty in his failure and his humility in his success.

As a part of this experiment, Frank commits himself to intercessory prayer for the Moros. He notices through this intense focus on others that people seem to treat him differently. This sentence is just as interesting to me: "I feel, I feel like one who has had his violin out of tune with the orchestra and at last is in harmony with the music of the universe." Wow!

I could go on and on (perhaps I will later), but I have begun this little experiment of Frank Laubach's. I'm not exactly sure yet what it looks like to align my will with God's, but I do know that my thoughts are more filled with God than normal. This scares me, but I also feel Satan waiting patiently to test this experiment with all his might! My prayer is that I walk through this instead of run with a full head of steam. May God be praised and may his strength work mightily!!