Hello lovelies,
Welcome to February! It's a confusing time of year, weather-wise, here in New Mexico. We can see warm and beautifully sunny days alongside 3-4 inches of snow in one day, all in the same week. There's no doubt: I'm longing for Spring. I'm dreaming of buds on branches, asparagus coming into season, and opening the windows at our new house wide open...perhaps for the first time since the move.
To be honest...I'm pining for the next season, perhaps even metaphorically, as I'm weary of the current one that is full of not yet unpacked boxes, growing pains with the business, and deep stretch marks as our family learns the ebb and flow of the many wonderful, yet challenging things we believe we're called to. So many things have felt so impossible for so long.
The more I long for something easier, different, more settled, less work, not so challenging...the more I marvel that the latest pieces I've created for the shoppe reflect the very remedy for my present state of mind:
“Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. ”
More than a positive outlook, more than a claimed promise...Paul's words here tell us that we can equally rejoice in suffering as we do in ease. Through Christ, we are able to do whatever he calls us to endure...
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“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.”
Isn't it funny to think how often these two passages are used as warm and uplifting sentiments, when both were written from a life that learned these truths through impossible circumstances. They were penned by a man who experienced an impossible conversion. For the Apostle Paul, these were the most NON-platitudinous words he could have written; they were the lifelines that pointed to this truth:
Without Christ, we can do nothing. We would not know joy in the midst of difficult circumstances, we would not have contentment with "less," our words and efforts would be in vain, we could not bear all things, and we certainly could not love like our Savior. In Christ, where I end, is where true LOVE (the mercy and grace of God through redemption in Christ) begins.
Are you enduring the "all things" that are present in both of these scripture passages? Take heart, my friend...it's all impossible apart from the amazingly impossible transformation of the gospel.
So, I pray these new offerings in the shoppe stand to encourage and bless you...not to be trite or stale, but to hopefully revive and refine...I pray we would remember that all things (all acts of true love) are possible through HIm because he made abiding in him a reality.
Grace to you, friend...at the start of this month, and the onset of a new week. He is faithful...
"God's callings are his enablings." (Spurgeon)
Because of grace,
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