I am reading a book called The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp and am on chapters five and six. I have been blogging as I have been slowly making my way through this book. It has a lot of richness to it hence the slow reading pace. I am usually a quick intense reader. I speed read and don't pick up all the details. Not this time...this book could be read over and over and new truths picked out every time. So here are some things that I underlined as I read:
'Smiling at anyone is to awe at the face of God. And "the beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter."'
She writes about it being her birthday and she and her family go out into their town and spend a day doing many random acts of kindness. She talks about how it fills up her empty aching soul the giving does.
She writes....'I can feel it like the slightest sense of a suturing along raw and ragged scar lines. Maybe our suffering and brokenness begin a kind of healing when we enter into the suffering and brokenness of the world, right through the brokenness and givenness of Christ. And these acts of kindness, gifts of grace, they start a cascade of grace to fill a multitude of canyons in a hurting world. Maybe there is no such thing as a small act of giving. Every small gift of grace creates a love quake that has no logical end.'
'Hand over your whole self. Your whole broken self. Givenness. Because this is far easier than pretending to be whole and not broken. There is a strange sense of surrender happening, a surrender in all things. The heart has to be broken and plowed and resown if it's going to yield. The change must go deeper than the surface. This is only the beginning.
' Why do you people always say it's about having a strong belief in God? Who sits with the knowing that God's belief in you is even stronger than yours in Him?
'The moment God stops believing in me, He'd have to stop believing He is enough. How do we believe in Jesus in a way that Jesus believes in us?'
'God believes in us through our brokenness. '
The way I grew up felt broken in many ways. I entered adulthood feeling shakey at best. I was not sure who I wanted to be, who I was, but I wanted to do what was right. I have always tried to follow God, believe in His goodness, and figure out what I needed to to continue on that path. I have been broken so many times over. Not often comfortable or at ease. I have felt like the brokenness and the suffering were cruel and that any tiny little bit of anything that I had was being taken away more and more. I still often feel that way. However in feeling that now there is not an anger just a acceptance. I want my heart to yield something beautiful. I want to make a difference for my children's future in what I can teach them and be for them now, because they are the first branches of my husband and my family tree. We are the roots and trunk of the tree and we have been accosted by many storms. We have almost fallen, broken, been uprooted. However we started our marriage by making a covenant before God. There is a lot of sacred power in that. He believes in us, He brought us together. He has brought us down this broken way day by day, step by step, and the more we have been broken the brighter His light has shone into our hearts. Illumination.
Have a lovely day ~
Love Tansy
No comments:
Post a Comment