Cornerstone

Psalm 127

• The Lord builds the house.
• The Lord watches the city.
• The Lord gives to His beloved sheep.
• Children are a heritage from the Lord.

Young and raising 5 children, I felt as though this home we were making, this work we were doing, these children we were raising were ours, somehow. 
The future brings "a knowing" that I hadn't yet experienced.

It is the Lord who builds.

With love He gives us our children.  They are the slightest ripple of ourselves moving that much further out into life on the same trajectory and path our parents sent us.

Our children speak and act what they "know" and what they have learned, which is the path we've been Given, ultimately by Him, for Him and to Him. 

We are His house.(Heb 3:6)

Psalm 127 says children are like arrows. They go further and experience a wider view than we...

with eyes we've opened to newness and our falterings 

with hearts we've loved and sometimes failed 

with hands we've held and ultimately released 

they view with their own Faith, for which we've lived and died.

Daring to trust the Unseen, 

we forget our falterings and failures. 

When the ripple we ride subsides and melds into the vast Plan He has accomplished we are all His glory.  

"He is not put to shame when He speaks with His enemy at the gate". 

I thank you that you have answered me
    and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing;
    it is marvelous in our eyes. (Ps 118:21-23)

In this truth we rest,
because of Jesus, the Cornerstone.

God is so big

Our church has become Redeemer Church Cedar Falls.

I appreciate the heart of my old (younger than me) pastor here.

• Brooks shared, and I too can see, that when it is SO different and difficult, these changes are evidence that this is God building HIS church not us.  
• We are growing, and that is to God's glory because of His Son.  
• Sacrificially at times, I need to Give myself over to this exciting, scary adventure unfolding before us.
• I need to pray. Pray. Pray...through the new and when I miss the old.
  
   
As one of our men said this last Sunday, about Kaio, and also about who we have become in Redeemer---"We are a church that begins and ends with Jesus."(by His Grace and with His strength) I am so thankful. May we never be a church built on any other name.

Follow up...

So yeah, I've been mostly free of "me" but yesterday I caught myself beginning to whine for attention.

surprises

This is undoubtedly God's blessing and His work, not necessarily identified by the difficulties and the way it isn't exactly "easy" but instead, by my giggle ---basically I smile like a fool in the midst of hardship, because of His presence.

I watch myself trusting His plan because I have learned intimately how my plans brought death and despair. 

There is joy where I now experience lack, because I remember how the bounty nearly broke me.

His ways are not my ways. Why am I always so surprised?

where next?

"And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,  that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us..."

As we wonder about our next dwelling, I love the way He shows me Himself.