Happy in Jesus
Yesterday, my brother-in-law sent this photo in our family’s group chat with the accompanying text: this boy kept pointing! I squinted, noticing my 15-month-old nephew’s chub of a finger poking at a photo album of his parents’ wedding day. Closer, closer, I zoomed in. Then I squealed. Tedders was pointing at meeeeeeeee 🥰
current reads
a memoir—it should be no surprise with how much I liked Jon & Suleika’s documentary last week that I immediately borrowed her memoir, Between Two Worlds: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, detailing her journey through leukemia (the first time around) at the age of 22. I prefer listening to memoirs. There is something even more intimate about hearing the story-owner’s voice tell the story. I’m half-way through the 13-hour book. It is painful, Suleika spares no details of what cancer did to her. Yet it is beautiful to see how one can choose love, tenderness, and art in the midst of that pain.
a lamentation—I’m into my second read-through of Soong-Chan Rah’s Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times that walks through the four chapters of the short Old Testament book:
“Lamentations reminds us that the proper response to tragedy and suffering is lament.”
“The funeral dirge opening of Lamentations and the first three verses of Lamentations 1 reminds us that grief that emerges from a very real and painful history must be acknowledged.”
the engine of the church—I like Paul E. Miller. (I read his previous book, J-Curve: Dying and Rising with Jesus in Everyday Life that is not only one of my top reads of 2021, but one I recall frequently. It has helped shape the way I understand suffering and the power of our risen Savior.) Now I’m reading his latest A Praying Church: Becoming a People of Hope in a Discouraging World. I’m only 82 pages in and have so many thoughts swirling. For now, enjoy some of my favorite snippets (hard to choose since I’ve underlined / starred / dog-eared much of the book already):
Who killed the prayer meeting? Then it dawned on him: I killed the prayer meeting by talking too much. So Dad stopped talking at prayer meeting and started praying.
Praying together is not a luxury, nor is something just for “spiritual” Christians; it’s the very breath of the church.
I do these morning prayer times not from discipline but from learned desperation. I am constant in corporate prayer because the Jesus communities I’m in are constant in need. I have no interest in doing anything that hasn’t been prayed for and prayed over. What I pray over lasts, and what I don’t pray over doesn’t last. But there’s more: A Jesus community is characterized by wonder, and the conduit to that is prayer. I’ve seen what happens when the Spirit of Jesus inhabits a community—everything starts to sparkle.
Watching for [the saints’] stories, and enjoying them unfold in community, in turn, fuels powerful praying.
When we grasp the simplicity of prayer -> Spirit -> Jesus -> wonder, then praying together won’t be just another burden; it will be the activity that transforms all your burdens.
a sequel—How am I enjoying the next installment of that Chronicles of Prydain series I was raving about two weeks ago, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you, friends. I don’t know because there is still an EIGHTEEN WEEK wait to borrow the second book!!! Please faster read, fellow library patrons. Honk honk.
happy in Jesus
This phrase, happy in Jesus, is one that God gave me last September, when I turned 33 (my Jesus year, but more importantly, my Hobbit coming-of-age.) One layer to that theme is child-like delight. The Spirit has been working on this in me for years, and yet somehow it only really clicked a few years ago when I had the epiphany (after 16 sessions with a biblical counsellor heh): woah, God delights in me! He not only loves me, but likes me! But I’ll save that story for another time.
The newer layer that I’ve been noticing is: joy in obedience. This is significant for me because younger reb was more into fear obedience or a begrudging fine-i'll-do-it obedience, or the most flattering kind: kicking-and-screaming-as-Jesus-dragged-reb-along obedience. I was always the kid who asked why? (My poor parents.) Yet I'm learning that, with following God, the better question really is: why not?
The picture God gave me a few years ago: a parent in a pool, with arms wide-stretched, beaming and beckoning their child to jump in. Why else, if not for the child's own good and out of sheer delight, would the parent ask the child to jump? I no longer want to be that kid who 1. misses out on so much joy by skulking at the edge of the pool, 2. defaults to distrust and fear that the parent won't catch her, or 3. has to be pushed in.
I want to just jump and have a blast with my Father.
popcorn for dinner
I like cooking and eating nutritious meals. But sometimes one really just needs popcorn for dins. With lots of butter. Enjoy the 59-second ASMR:
Thank you for reading, friends! Eat your veggies!
love,
reb
Popcorn is a veggie.