The Jackson Family Online

Happy Sunday. We’re having a nice relaxing afternoon at home. The girls are putting together an imaginary volleyball camp in the backyard as I type, matching outfits and all:). It’s been a great weekend for us to have time with Martha. And doubly good as we’re all taking tomorrow off:). This coming week will be a busy one with music contest coming up next Saturday…but for now I’m just putting that out of my mind.

This morning we talked about the Golden Calf and the Israelites during Sunday School class. I think as a child I was always kind of harsh or quick to make a judgement on the Israelites I mean after they saw God and all He had done why couldn’t they wait for Moses to come back down, why did they have to get desperate and make a gold calf to meet their deepest needs. As I’ve gotten older…I feel a whole lot less judgmental about the whole thing. I’m grateful that for the times I’ve “built” things to meet my deepest needs God hasn’t put a gold calf in my front yard to be on display for the whole world to see. The truth is…they didn’t have the Holy Spirit living inside of them…sure they saw a cloud, fire, parting of the Red Sea, the manna and we would like to think that should’ve been enough. But I have the living God inside of me each and every moment of the day…I have food on my table, a roof over my head, I’ve experienced a few miracles from time to time and yet how easily do I weary of waiting on the Lord to give me joy…to give me peace…to take care of my deepest needs. How often do I trade in instead for instant gratification…that’s what the whole gold calf thing was about…they wanted their needs met and wanted them met now…that sounds way to familiar for me to be judgemental. But for the grace of God…there go I.

We spent time talking about worship…and how true worship is much more than Sunday morning, much more than church. Again people used terminology like putting “God first”…I know it’s probably just semantics…but it’s revolutionary to me to live my life in a way where God is not just on the top of my list…but is in the middle, the end and everywhere in between. It’s so easy for people…(at least for me) to want to compartmentalize everything…my time, my life, my schedule, my to do list, my family, my friends, my work, etc. But God flows through everything…when God becomes the very air you breathe…I don’t think you talk about Him in terms of being #1…do we really think He cares if we declare Him as number one in our life? Sometimes I think some of life is just so beyond us…that we try to put these kind of things into words and really words don’t cover it. Everytime I hear that sermon or conversation or comment though…I just have to bite my tongue to not say something…I know what is being said is trying to say “I love you God”…but it so falls short. i would’ve never walked around telling Mark…Mark…you’re #2 to me…and expect that would’ve made him feel special. How does that communicate anything? What does that mean anyway? Instead…we held each other…we lived life in an intertwined way…we completed each other…the older we got, the longer we were together we could’ve probably told you what the other person was thinking or what they would say…we could’ve ordered for each other at a restaurant…I can still remember the way he felt when he laid behind me in bed…that’s how we slept for years. So for me say…Mark was #2 in my life does him no justice at all…For me to say…that we were one…well that pretty much sums it up. I believe that’s the same way God wants to live in us…where we get to know each other so deeply that I can feel His presence and it’s familiar and a comfort to me, where I can have an idea of what He thinks even before I hear His voice, where our lives are so intertwined that the thought of not considering Him would seem foreign to me. I want God to be my everything…I want to be one with Him. Maybe this is what some mean when they talk about God being #1…I’m not sure…but it just sounds so awkward to me and doesn’t express the way I feel at all. I rank my tasks in order of priority…I don’t rank what matters to me most in the same way.

Anyway…tonight we’re headed back to church for Vespers…which is pretty much one of my favorite hours of my week…I never know what I’ll hear or feel which is kind of nice.

Yesterday I was thinking about my grace talk for Thursday being on my computer and not being able to access it conveniently at the moment. And God started to speak to me about the whole virus thing…i was bumping along just fine when the whole virus pop up came up. I wasn’t doing anything wrong…nothing unusual…and frankly it was completely out of my control. When it came up I felt stress, I felt panicked…wasn’t sure who to call or how to get help…Didn’t want to bother anybody, felt stupid that I didn’t know what to do, etc. I ended up giving out personal information in a situation where I shouldn’t have and was taken advantage of by someone who didn’t know me or care, I didn’t have peace about it…it ruined my communication, my normal day to day routine, I paid the consequence of having to close my debit card and have to get a new one. And now I’m paying the consequence of 200-300 dollars to get it taken care of. It could’ve happened to anybody in fact it seems to be happening to a lot of people. There is a chance that had I been better covered by antivirus stuff on my computer it wouldn’t have happened but even then it might possibly have still occurred. Thankfully…I think I won’t lose much on my computer if all goes well. It just got me to thinking about my life…and about grace. most of us throughout our lives bump along just fine…we go about our daily business, do our thing…and sin just has a way of popping up on the screen of life. we live in a sinful world…it’s going to happen. Many times we feel just about absolutely powerless to do anything about the sin, even if we know we don’t want it. We get stressed, panick, don’t know who to call to get help, we’re embarrassed, feel stupid, end up giving pieces of ourselves away without wanting to and don’t have peace about it. We pay consequences…If we are prepared ahead of time with antivirus stuff…or in real life prepared through regular time with God and a growing relationship with God than we might be able to keep the sin at bay more than if we aren’t…but even then sin is always waiting for an opportunity to raise it’s ugly head. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to know that my computer problem could be taken care of yesterday and I was relieved to know that I’m not a failure…this happens to people all the time…makes me think of the verse…”For all have fallen short of the glory of God…” No person is strong enough on the face of the earth to combat sin on their own…no person is wise enough to take care of it. Sin will pop up in our life…even when we belong to God. we never really arrive on this earth…there will always be the chance of sin rearing it’s head. I hope spiritually that as I mature and grow I’m becoming more and more able to guard against sin…but I’m so grateful for the grace that God gives…the fact that He can give us a clean slate…the fact that He knows how hopeless our situation is and how powerless we are to master it on our own. Yesterday I felt relief that this whole ugly thing is coming to a stop and hopefully I’ll get my normal computer life back again…but even more so I felt relief again at the grace of God.

I do truly believe that God makes everything turn out for our Good and I’m grateful.
Love,
Ruth