Bone After Bone

I wanted to share a quote from this blog written by Sarah Bessey:
“It was practicing the radical spiritual discipline of staying put…It was showing up at a local church to belong somewhere and volunteering in the nursery and making meals for others. It was reading good books and going for walks and planting gardens. It was giving away our money and opening up our home and listening carefully to make sure anything we now did was actually born of following God and not out of our weird need to be a hero or to be different or to be radical for its own sake. We learned to be suspicious of our own motives, to question our own selves, and to cease striving…We would have missed it. If we had tried to run away from the discomfort of not-being-radical, we would have missed the gift of ordinary, the gift of our own lives and the people around us…We would not have been present to the people right here around us and the ministry that happens in kitchens and church aisles and backyards. We would have missed the beauty of daily following Jesus into a whole life redemption.”
-Sarah Bessey

This doesn’t relate to the entirety of my poem below, but it relates to the theme of many of my poems – the idea that we are where we are for a reason, and we need to invest in our people and let them invest in us. The Lord has really shown me the beauty of “striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil 1:27) with the people He gives us, and if you read my poems, you know it’s my muse. Hunter and I are staying put. We are living in the area where we both grew up and plan to stay in this area as long as the Lord wills. Not because it’s easy, not because we’re afraid to take risks, but because this is where He has us. People may think we chose to live in a “bubble” of familiarity, but our Father is revealing Himself to us in new and beautiful ways each day here. He is asking us to be all in, to pour our hearts into this place and these people. He’s asking us to open our minds and hearts and receive everything He wants to teach us about the places and people we thought we already knew, as well many new people He is weaving into our story. He doesn’t want us to get too comfortable, but He wants us to stay put for now. And we are so down.

Wherever it wishes, the wind will blow
We cannot see where it comes from, or where it will go
These things are not for us to know
But a way for us to be brought low
Low enough to fall on our knees
The road to righteousness isn’t paved with ease

In adverse winds
Can you depend on your friends?
As the help that He lends
And the mercy He sends?
He deliberately designed us to need one another
And derive much comfort from the love of a brother

He will exalt the humble
But the proud will stumble
As their castles crumble
And attainments tumble
For many strive for material wealth
At the expense of spiritual health

On the ground, He wants us to abound
But abounding is a life that’s found
In His grace and mercy that surrounds
His beloved, His chosen, His Bride, His crowned
We cannot stay the course alone
So He gives us each other, His body, bone after bone

John 3:8, Isaiah 5:15, Matthew 7:14, Ecclesiastes 4:9, Philemon 1:7,
Matthew 23:12, James 1:11, Psalm 52:7, Matthew 19:23-24, Matthew 19:30,
John 10:10, Luke 12:15, 1 Corinthians 12:27, Romans 12:5