By Mary
My baby is so confident, unpretentious. She doesn't worry what everybody thinks about her. She doesn't worry about doing everything the right way, always. She just tries. And tries again. She's persistent.
She doesn't question my love for her the moment I'm impatient with her. She doesn't avoid me or deny me her affection because I lost my temper.
She smiles at the world and loves everybody. She's a little bit of
sunshine to anybody who gives her a smile or a minute of their time.
She doesn't worry if I have everything under control or try to make her own plan B in case I don't come through for her. She trusts me, depends on me. For everything. When she's unsure of something, she turn first to me to see what I think and determine her actions from that.
The more I try to teach my baby...the more I learn from her.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
who God made me to be
I'm reading through the Bible with my husband this year, following a little plan that goes all the way through with Psalms and the New Testament in there twice. It's interesting to read from four different books at once and it's opened my eyes several times to things I've never noticed in any other read through the Bible.
I never realized how often every other part of the Bible echoes God's earliest deeds for His people. It's in the Psalms and the Prophets and the New Testament...and it shows me how important it is to remember, to remember God's redemptive work, His faithfulness. He's still the same as He was then and He still works miracles and plans great things I can't understand or see coming.
I like reading something in the Old Testament and read Jesus quoting it a few days later. I like the perspective I get on Psalms when I'm reading about David's life at the same time.
Reading about David this time around makes me wonder more and more what it means to be a man after God's own heart. Did he have a heart so very in tune with God's? Was he really closer to desiring God's desires and living God's way? Was he pursuing the heart of God like a man chases his lover's heart, anxious to know it, win it, please it?
I don't really know. But it seems like David made even more mistakes than Saul--and Saul had a kingdom torn from him while David was promised one forever.
I don't see the heart the way God does and I'm not capable of judging sin and righteousness like He is...but when I read the stories of these two men, I see confidence of one in who God made him to be. And the other seems always trying so hard to be someone that, deep in his heart, he believes he is not, shouldn't be, can't be. In the past I've viewed Saul as proud, too proud to do things God's way, too grasping to let go when God says he's through. But now he seems so insecure to me.
Saul never seemed able to accept that his worthiness to be a king was based in the fact that God made him one. He spent so much time people pleasing and caving in when he needed to be strong and trying so hard to be what he already was because of God.
I see this play out in my life in struggles to feel worthy or beautiful or significant. I look to people for their approval, only to find that even getting that doesn't really matter in the end if my heart doesn't simply rest in the fact that I belong to God. Beautiful or not, a failure, a success, knowledgeable, ignorant--these things can't be the definition of myself. It's not even about fighting the negative thoughts that can crowd into my head because ultimately there's just one truth that matters: I am redeemed by God to know Him and worship Him and love Him and serve Him.
Holding on to that truth is when I have the strength to face the bad things about me and not just the good and have eyes to see what really matters.
I never realized how often every other part of the Bible echoes God's earliest deeds for His people. It's in the Psalms and the Prophets and the New Testament...and it shows me how important it is to remember, to remember God's redemptive work, His faithfulness. He's still the same as He was then and He still works miracles and plans great things I can't understand or see coming.
I like reading something in the Old Testament and read Jesus quoting it a few days later. I like the perspective I get on Psalms when I'm reading about David's life at the same time.
Reading about David this time around makes me wonder more and more what it means to be a man after God's own heart. Did he have a heart so very in tune with God's? Was he really closer to desiring God's desires and living God's way? Was he pursuing the heart of God like a man chases his lover's heart, anxious to know it, win it, please it?
I don't really know. But it seems like David made even more mistakes than Saul--and Saul had a kingdom torn from him while David was promised one forever.
I don't see the heart the way God does and I'm not capable of judging sin and righteousness like He is...but when I read the stories of these two men, I see confidence of one in who God made him to be. And the other seems always trying so hard to be someone that, deep in his heart, he believes he is not, shouldn't be, can't be. In the past I've viewed Saul as proud, too proud to do things God's way, too grasping to let go when God says he's through. But now he seems so insecure to me.
Saul never seemed able to accept that his worthiness to be a king was based in the fact that God made him one. He spent so much time people pleasing and caving in when he needed to be strong and trying so hard to be what he already was because of God.
I see this play out in my life in struggles to feel worthy or beautiful or significant. I look to people for their approval, only to find that even getting that doesn't really matter in the end if my heart doesn't simply rest in the fact that I belong to God. Beautiful or not, a failure, a success, knowledgeable, ignorant--these things can't be the definition of myself. It's not even about fighting the negative thoughts that can crowd into my head because ultimately there's just one truth that matters: I am redeemed by God to know Him and worship Him and love Him and serve Him.
Holding on to that truth is when I have the strength to face the bad things about me and not just the good and have eyes to see what really matters.
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