Tim and Olive's Blog

there are two reasons why i love the new Chris Tomlin CD. the first, is that it’s a great CD both musically and lyrically. the second is because it carries much meaning in my life at this point. allow me to explain…

last year, my time overseas was THE hardest year i’ve experienced so far in this short quarter-century of life. ministry was slow, my health wasn’t the greatest and emotionally, it was a dark dark time. God was using that year to refine me and uproot some deep things in my life – a process that was very painful.

then i came back to Toronto.

and the blessings started to pour.

not only was ministry going well, progress was happening (slowly) on the health front and God was giving me opportunities to witness to several of my friends. as if that wasn’t enough, God moved a dear friend and godly man to pursue me. See The Morning was a gift from Tim to me a few days before he took the plunge and invited me into the adventure of courtship(!) [i said yes, btw :) read here for Tim’s exciting re-telling of the story]

there are many remarkable things about what’s happening in my life right now. but most of all, i’m amazed and comforted by the truth that our God is just as loving, faithful and worthy of praise in the dark nights as He is when the morning dawns.

My heart was pounding as I waited for her response…
Read More

F I Z Z L E . . .

so i woke up this morning with a huge headache and a dull aching pain throughout my body. this is what happens when i push myself too hard. God, in His loving grace inflicts me with something that keeps me home, makes me cancel all appointments and causes me to sleep and sleep and sleep.

a wise friend exhorted me to read Hebrews 4 today – a chapter on entering God’s place of rest. oh so convicting. i feel like He’s put me back in the right place by His word. i don’t want to be like the Israelites who refused to live by faith and thus forfeited the rest that He offered. i want to take hold of God’s invitation to rest Today! and i’m so thankful for Jesus, my High Priest, who knew what it was to face the temptation to rely on his own strength rather than live in surrender to the Father.

i know that what i really need to do is allow God to expose the cause of my drivenness. why is it that i feel like i have to run myself dry all the time? who am i trying to please? whose standards am i trying to live up to? what lies am i believing about myself? about God? oh Lord, please set me free.

i also realize how reluctant i am to face my limitations – not only to face them, but to embrace them. God has not wired me to meet people 6 days a week and still thrive. i need to hermit a lot more than i want to accept about myself. and so i ask God to show me how He’d have me serve His people. and i ask Him to show me how to love myself as He does.

i want to have a heart at rest. a heart of faith.

CONNECT-THE-DOTS

in my mind, i’m standing on a page. surrounding me are lots of dots. my goal is to connect them all somehow. i draw a straight line from the dot i’m standing at to the nearest one on my right. so far so good. i draw another line. but as i’m drawing, anxiety rises in my heart – how exactly is everything going to link together? where does that dot fit in? what about this one??? what if my lines end up crossing and i end up in a mess????

this, i realize, is what i’m trying to do with the various elements of my life. i’m trying to logically make sense of things that don’t seem to fit together at the moment. and i’m trying to figure it all out on my own.

God is bigger than this page of dots i’m standing on though. He is poised and ready to connect my dots. it may not be with straight lines. He may ignore some of the dots and draw some new ones. but He sees the picture He wants to create.

the question is, am i willing to let Him hold the pen?

DEPTHS

this morning, i was reflecting on a very familiar psalm when some new insight broke through. (don’t you love it when that happens? it’s like you’re reading something you’ve read a thousand times and even memorized when you suddenly see a phrase in a new light and it reveals a new dimension you’ve never thought of before.)

i used to think that the author was trying to hide in the darkness – to run away from God. and that God cannot be hidden from as much as we try.

what i realized this morning was that it could be out of despair that the psalmist writes. he feels engulfed in darkness and uncertainty and thinks that surely God will not know where to rescue him from. but the hope and the truth is that God cannot be stumped by darkness. He still sees clearly through our uncertainties.

yay for a God who has perfect perspective!

EMBRACING THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF GOD

a friend and I were musing over dim sum yesterday about faith and art and missions in Asia when out of the blue, she said something like, “until you embrace the ridiculousness of God, you don’t experience the fullness of all He wants to bless you with.” that’s probably one of the best descriptions of how our relationship with God works. not only is salvation – the idea that God would become a man to die in our place – ridiculous, but many things God calls us to do, many steps of faith seem ridiculous. i feel like this morning i potentially wrecked something that was going well. in this case, God’s holiness seems ridiculous, especially when compared to the world’s standard of what’s acceptable. embracing God’s ridiculousness is to trust that He knows what He’s asking for – and that it’s for our good.

so even though all i see right now is the ridiculous, i trust that somewhere down the line, i’ll see the blessing.

THE TESTIMONY OF LEAVES
An Exerpt on God’s Faithfulness from “The Holy Wild” by Mark Buchannan

A leaf. Behold a single leaf. So fragile, it tears like paper, crushes in your hand to a moist stain, sharply fragrant. Dry, it burns swift and crackling as newsprint, pungent as gunpowder. Yet a leaf may withstand hurricanes, stubbornly clinging to its limb.

Hold it open in your palm. It is perfect as a newborn’s smile. Pinch its stem between thumb and forefinger and hold it to the light. Eden bleeds through. Its veins are like bone work in silhouette. This single leaf, joined to the tree, drinks poison from the air, drinks it serenely as Socrates downing his cup of hemlock, and refuses to return in kind, instead spilling out life-giving oxygen. This leaf tilts to catch the sun, its warmnth and radiance, to distill the heat and light down to the shadows, down to the roots, back up to limbs. To shade the earth. To feed you and me.

A leaf. God makes these season after season, one after the other, billions upon bilions, from the Garden to the New Jerusalem, most for no eye but His own. He does it faithfully, or else I would not live to tell about it, or you to hear.

Perhaps of all my many sins against heaven, this ranks with the worst: Until this moment, I have never thanked God for a single leaf.

I read this a while back but seeing the flaming reds and brilliant hues of orange and yellow around here, I can’t help but marvel at the miracle of a single leaf – and the mystery of the big-ness of God.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, We will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, We only recommend products or services We use personally and believe will add value to our readers.

ADAM’S JOB

it seems that lately, i’m on a Genesis kick. :)

i was talking to a friend one night about how God made Adam wait for Eve and gave him the job of naming the animals when the full weight of the responsibility hit me. as an artist, i usually name my works. and it bugs me when people get the name wrong. what baffles me is that God would make all these fantastic creatures and then let Adam name them! like, what if Adam called it a giraffe when God himself would have named it a dimiatee? the fact that God let Adam name his animals speaks volumes about the amount of trust that God has in us. this is how much God values his people!

similarly, i wonder God has His own set of names for us people? like Jacob, God renamed Israel. i wonder if God privately thinks of us in terms of names other than the ones our parents named us?

i guess i’ll have to wait till heaven to find that one out. :p

THE COTTAGE

i’ve discovered that i’m a very angry person. surprised? yeah, so am i.

i finished reading Delighting God by Victoria Brooks last night. in it, she tells the story of Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan during the initial stages of their relationship. knowing that Helen’s well-meaning parents would interfere with her teaching, Anne Sullivan takes Helen to a cottage for two weeks, during which she patiently and strong mindedly re-trains young Helen. after these two weeks, Helen has learned how to be a civilized member of society. however, her teacher wanted more from her. Anne Sullivan wanted nothing less than Helen Keller’s freedom. the cottage experience was just the beginning.

the author goes on to say that similarly, in our lives, God takes us to the Cottage so that He can take our bad habits away from us and make us into acceptable Kingdom subjects. and likewise, His aim is not merely for our civilization. God wants our freedom.

honestly speaking, i think i’m in the Cottage right now. i can’t understand why God has to make me face so many things, why He has to challenge me so much. why He can’t just leave me alone to rest! i’m thrashing about, throwing tantrums everywhere and as much as i want to run away, everywhere i turn, He’s there. my perspective of Him at the moment is that He is a demanding teacher, stripping me of everything i’ve grown accustomed to. oh, i know He loves me and that’s why He does this. but my finite mind just seems a little too small (or perhaps i’m too immature) to grasp His GOODNESS in all this. or maybe His goodness is being clouded over by my discomfort.

i switched over from soft contact lenses to hard ones yesterday. it sucks. i was amply warned beforehand that my eyes would itch, that it would be uncomfortable and that i’d want to give up. it still sucks. and it’s hard to be patient when i can’t see properly and all i’m waiting for is for my body to get used to it. i’m so completely helpless. i can’t change a thing. i guess that’s what this boils down to: i feel trapped.

so here i am stuck in the Cottage. full of anger. and desperately, desperately needing God.

Jesus loves me, this I know
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, We will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, We only recommend products or services We use personally and believe will add value to our readers.

MORE ON ADAM AND EVE

so recently i finished reading Donald Miller’s “Searching for God Knows What” (which i found to be a refreshing look at the meaning and relevance of the gospel story and highly recommend it to anyone). in it, he writes an account of his imagined story of the time between Adam’s creation and Eve’s creation. he reasons that it probably took Adam a hundred (lonely) years of naming animals before God put him to sleep and made Eve. so Adam waited a very long time before Eve showed up.

reading on in Genesis, the same pattern is found. Isaac waits for Rebekah. Jacob waits for Rachel. the list goes on.

so ever since the very beginning, men have waited for women.

just an observation. :)

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, We will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, We only recommend products or services We use personally and believe will add value to our readers.