walking newly.

Friends, it has been a week.

Here's a segment of a post from Sunday night that I didn't put up:

Maybe it's time to give all of this up. To accept it as a wonderful experience. A chance to empathize with a culture and a people I didn't understand, and couldn't love. An opportunity to be loved in an incredible way. To learn to accept grace. And to try to give it.

The questions about evolution always do me in. At first, when Lindell answered in a simplistic "yes", a "no", and another "yes" to a three-part question about evolution during the church-wide Q&A, I literally thought he was kidding. I was waiting for the punchline. My shock was the punchline, apparently. No joke.


I slept on the anxiety, and awoke Monday with oddly-little regard for the issue. It'll come back up. I'll have to do the praying, do the reading. Figure things out. Now's not the time.

Here's a clip from an unpublished post on Tuesday, pertaining to Monday's post about the delivering dealer:

In the re-reading, I see judgment. The danger of walking newly in this Grace is seeking His face through legalism. Having gotten a taste of God, I want more, and more, and more, and it would be easy to imagine that not only do the actions matter, they make the moment. To imagine that I can wrap this all up in rules, and bring Him closer on command. But love. Love is magnificent. It's love that saved me--the love of James River people that brought me in, and His love on the cross that forgave me. Love her.

Over and under and in-between, there has been much conversation, and confusion. Some pain, and fear. A lot of running from God. And maybe just as much earnest seeking. There has been hope.

I'm not as unsteady as I once was, and I feel that now. I felt it on Sunday, as I realized that I trust and respect Lindell enough to consider his position on evolution. I felt it as I wrote about my friend from Chicago, knowing that I had turned a corner in my personal desire to put to the side everything that had once distracted me from Him. I feel it as I read this book by Brian Houston on vision and cause, and think to myself that my vision is not as important as Christ's cause.

There is much unsteadiness still. Many places in me that need to be built, and strengthened.

But what a beautiful process that will be. Oh, oh, oh, what an amazing, awe-inspiring, tremendous and great transformation we all have in Christ. To take part each day in such a thing is...it's immeasurable. Its only response is worship. And the worship itself becomes yet another thing for which we are grateful, in an unending cycle of joy in Christ.

This is good. God is good.