Look Up, Child!

You know how it is when you've kept that new favorite song on repeat for months, until you've started to wear out its appeal and have to take a break?

That's what happened to me with Lauren Daigle's new album, Look Up Child. The title track was one of my top listens, but it's been on hiatus for a month or so.  Inexplicably, on this day, I decided to play it on the drive to a favorite hiking spot.

About half an hour down the trail, I had an encounter.

Hiking into the lake valley at a brisk pace, I'm aware of the beautiful surroundings but not fully engaged. I'm lost in the recesses of my mind, daydreaming familiar, addictive thought patterns that have no business being cherished there. Head down, eyes focused mostly on the ground in front of me, so that icy snow and gravity will not get the upper hand. The sun has been drifting in and out of clouds; the forest growing gradually brighter.

The moment was so sudden, it was almost like a reflexive reaction. I thought I saw a shadow soaring on the snow, flickering through tree shadows. Instantly remembering that I was in eagle territory and had not been watching the sky, my eyes went up. In the space of that second, I heard it in my spirit: "Look up, Child!"

And there, soaring high over my head against a sky now astoundingly blue, was an eagle.

For so many years, I longed to catch sight of these majestic raptors in the wild, but I've never been a serious birder who studies habits and habitats and seeks out the best places to watch. Yet in the last year, my Father has surprised me with several sightings! It's become for me one of those special love touches from God. He knows exactly what will delight each one of His children.

Where I had stopped, there was a perfect sun-dappled spot with a fallen limb to sit on, so I took the invitation and lingered there for awhile, drinking in the sun and the sky and watching for another glimpse of the eagle. And the train of my thoughts began to shift, as I pondered the meaning of this divine interjection.

I believe it was a call of mercy from my Father, as if He were saying, "Daughter, look up from the endless circles of your limited thinking, your anemic desires, and your shallow dreams. Look up; I'm here, and I'm waiting for you! I love you, and I freely give you Myself!"

Later, sitting by the water and enjoying serious communion with Father, I asked Him if I could see the eagle again. Some time after, as I was following the lakeside trail, the snow crunching emphatically under my feet, a huge bird suddenly winged from a treetop a short distance ahead. My breath caught; I strained to see what it was as it fled so quickly from my view, but I thought I saw the white head. When it circled back and returned to perch near the spot it had just left, I saw that it was definitely an eagle! Slowly I resumed walking, hoping to get closer. He took off again, but remained nearby, riding slow circles on the currents, and then gliding off towards the far side of the lake. I watched him still, a large speck, as he circled lower and lower, finally settling on the ice near that side. Regretfully, I never think about binoculars until I'm in these situations where I want them! I stopped there and trained my eyes on that distant bird, just enjoying the love gift from my Father, whispering my love back to Him. I stayed there for several minutes, until the eagle flew off once more and was lost among the trees.

Our heavenly Father never stops coming after us, even when our thoughts are far from Him. We can only love Him at all because He loved us first by making the way for us to come Home through the body and blood of His Son. He loves you completely as you are, but He's not willing to leave you unchanged. He already sees who you WILL be, and He is going to make you everything He intends.

Wherever you are, look up. Your Father has the words of eternal life. He is where the joy is found. He delights in declaring His love to His precious child.

Look up. He's waiting. 

Resolute Non-resolutions (Journal reflections from the dawn of a new year)

New years are for new beginnings.

Today, I make no resolutions. They are born of flesh and human resource and pride. They are short-lived and cannot change my heart.

Today, as I welcome the new year, I'm thinking of a new way of seeing. A new way of being in this world. I'm thinking about a way of living in alignment with who I already am in Christ--a practice of walking in agreement with His identity. This means I will practice putting off any and all identities I have tried to fashion for myself.

I am not my costume of flesh, nor am I any of the roles my costume plays. Daughter, sister, aunt, friend, introvert, hiker, kayaker, adventure-lover, cook, musician, singer. Fill in your own blanks.

I am not who I think I ought to be, or who I think others expect me to be, or who I wish I could be in my deepest heart. I am not some idealistic fantasy alter-ego, created in the playground of my mind.

Above all, I am not the author of my own story. I am not in control of my own life. I do not exist for my own pleasure and glory.

I am not God.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am...
and by the grace of God, I will be what I will be in this coming year, and in whatever days He gives me.

By the grace of God, I will be what He makes of me.

Father spoke this to my heart during the New Years' Eve prayer service with my church:

"Stop identifying with yourself. Stop identifying with your blindness. Identify yourself only with Me."

It's true. I have perpetually identified myself with everything I am not, everything I lack, and all the ways in which I fail. Do you hear the theme? I have made myself the focus of my attention, and I've hated what I see.

If you can even call it seeing.

Rather, I've been blinded by all the judgment and offense I hold against myself, my circumstances, and my life for not being...More. Better. Worthy. Desirable. Whatever I think they ought to be.

Jesus said that our eyes are the lamp of our bodies. If the eye (perspective) is healthy, the whole body is full of light, but if the eye (perspective) is bad, the whole body is full of darkness (blinded). And if the light in me (what I think I can see) is darkness, how great indeed is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23)

The only way to see out of this darkness is to repent (turn) from my self-identification and choose to identify myself with the Light.

Jesus, the Light, is everything that I am not. He came to be everything that I can never be.  He didn't come to make me a better me. He came to take me, hopelessly sick with sin, to death on the cross with Him. He came to make me an entirely new creation, buried into His death, and raised to a new, utterly different, life with Him!

And this new life, this "new Kari" as it were, is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

Why, then, would I ever identify myself with the old, dead, sin-sick Kari?! This is madness. What should be light inside me turns to darkness, and the new eyes are blinded by an ancient, deadly condemnation of self and the world...a venom that would, if possible, condemn even God as a liar!

"God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." (1 John 1:5-7)

So today I repent. Today I turn from the darkness of self-identification, and I turn to the light of identifying with Jesus Christ.

I will walk in the light as He is in the light, for,
"when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:2)
and,
"as He is, so also are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)

"And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself, as He is pure." (1 John 3:3)

This is my hope and prayer in all the days to come:

I would know Christ, and Him crucified, and my life hidden with Christ in God. I would know (experience) His love and abide intimately in the reality of that love. I would walk in the Light, being as he is in this world.

I would live in Christ.



(Credits to my kindred-spirit-favorite-author Ted Dekker for some of the inspiration behind these reflections. Specifically The Way of Love, The 49th Mystic, and Rise of the Mystics by Ted Dekker)