I don't know about you, but often times, I receive the most spiritual encouragement from nature. I don't mean to say that I don't find Scriptures encouraging, or hanging out with other believers. I absolutely do. But Jesus must know about my inner nature-loving artistic hippy self, and so he sends good things to me thru nature. Seriously, how can enjoying God's creation do anything else but point to how majestic, creative, detail-oriented and constant God is?
Anyway, today as I walked in the already sweltering humidity (I don't love EVERY aspect of creation lol), I was hearing the early birds calling out to each other. I'm sure to the homeowners who live in that area, those birds must be very obnoxious. But there were two of them and they were singing in tandem. It reminded me of Bible verses that suggest that all nature is praising God every hour of every day. It might be "silent" to us, but every so often I get a glimpse of it. Today it was like I could understand those little birds, and it was something like this:
First bird: "Good morning! What a beautiful day! The Creator made another day for us to enjoy and praise His Name!"
Second bird: "Yes, good morning! I'm always scared that the night will last forever, but He always brings a new morning for us. How wonderful he is!"
Yes, I'm being a little silly, but you get my meaning (I hope). All Creation was subjected to the curse (read Genesis) and it longs to praise God fully, just like we do. That's just really cool and amazing to me.
So there I revealed a very hippy, kum-ba-ya, fantastical Madeleine. Hopefully it didn't put you off and it can encourage you a little.
This post has another purpose as well.
Last week, I was fortunate enough to get to go to the Echo Conference, a Christian organization that ministers to church artists, storytellers, and "geeks" as they called them (sound, lights, tech people). It was really an encouraging time of great advice for the job and also great spiritual advice to creative people. One of the break out sessions was about the lies we believe about ourselves, "I'm not good enough", "God can't really use me in ministry", "[this] aspect of my life makes me useless". They suggested that to refute those inner voices (because NO one's inner voice is positive, is it?), you should write down scripture to refute it.
Well, I've been believing some lies lately, particularly about my stuttering. Mainly, that "I am useless because of my stutter. I am ineffective, slow and ridiculous". It's easy to feel that way when practically all your experiences all day long point in that direction. Stuttering has been ... um.... honestly?.... driving me (pardon my french, but hopefully this word will accent just how bad it's been) ... bat shit crazy. I don't know who first put those words together to form a phrase, but bat shit crazy seems accurate. I don't know if it means I'm standing in bat shit and it's drove me crazy, or some insane bat just when haywire and shit relentlessly on my head. Regardless, that's how it's been. Now, hopefully you will get a chuckle out of that. But because of all this, I've decided I should write one positive thing about stuttering each day for... oh... maybe five days. Hopefully I can come up with new material. But if nothing else, it will help me focus on the good things that can come from being showered in bat shit.
Good Thing about Stuttering #1
I'm in good company. Here are some poeple who stuttered that you might not know of: James Earl Jones, Marilyn Monroe, Carly Simon, Emily Blunt, Mel Tilis, Bruce Willis, James Stewart, King George (if you want to see more, click here: http://www.stutteringhelp.org/famous-people-who-stutter).
Anyway, my favorite person who stuttered is Moses.
The guy is about as useless and fearful as can be. He killed a guy, ran away to a whole other country, spent the majority of his life hiding out in the desert watching sheep, and begged God not to send him to free the people of Israel. People give Moses a lot of flack, saying how terrible it is that he asked God so many times to "send someone else". Let me just say, that besides the being a murderer thing, I totally get the level of fear Moses has. He says, "Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and of tongue."
Man, I get it. I believe the same lies. Just because I'm not eloquent, this must mean God can't use me. Just because I'm freakishly awkward means that God can't use me to speak about His grace. Just because I am "slow of speech and tongue", this means I am not an effective sharer of the Gospel.
So what does God do in response to Moses' pleas? After getting a little frustrated with the guy, he says this: "Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you to speak and teach you what to say!"
Yup, that's right. God makes people deaf, mute, blind and stuttering. There's a purpose for it. And he promises to "help me to speak and teach me what to say".
Love it. Anyway, that's the good thing for today: that God promises to help me thru it. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
Love ya.
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