Practice. All day long we practice. From turning out the lights when we leave a room, to giving napkins their place in our laps and shoes their home in the shoe-basket, to speaking about the beauty of a sibling instead of their faults — we practice. We are forever forming habits, the children and I, together. Having a litter of only those formerly-adopted, we share something in common: we’re all re-learning life.
While they re-learn how to hold a fork and address an adult, I am re-learning how to position my heart.
Mondays are my designated day to invite you to join me, publicly. This blog is my canvas, and perhaps now yours too. I want to write word-phrases that move the heart of God. I want to practice a praise with ancient words spoken out and into my very-now existence. I want my heart to be changed. I want Jesus to be more real to me today than He was yesterday and less so than I expect He will be next week.
So I adore.
Each Monday, the column of adoration to the right-side of my blog will move front-and-center, here, and I’ll invite others who are doing the same — stretching their heart to lift God’s Word up and back to Him, despite every obstacle the day presents — to add their link below under “Choosing Adoration”. If you don’t have a blog but are, yourself, a lover of words and of God and of God’s word, feel free to add an adoration of your own in the comment section. Whether there is one of us or one hundred, we will give Him the praise He’s due.
My prayer is that we move the heart of God.
And I suspect that, in doing so, our hearts will get changed.
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I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing to You among the nations. For Your mercy reaches unto the heavens, and Your truth unto the clouds. Psalm 57:9-10**
Though the first few minutes of my day already present a dozen obstacles, I will praise You, because You are worthy of all of my worship.
I declare to You and back to my unbelieving self that You are Lord. You are the God of my miniscule heart movements and Lord of the mountain in front of me in my daughter’s heart. So big, reaching, covering the vast expanse of a world full of lives yet so tender, personal and intimate with me. Not a pin drop is missed, Your eye is on the sparrow.
How can I not sing in the face of You, Daddy-God.
I come ready to be strong-armed, a litany of sins and failures hanging dense over my head, and You show Yourself merciful. One dose of Your mercy is enough to leave me leveled — do I even know this God? — and then you peel back the ceiling and reveal a mercy whose height is endless. You are never-ending mercy. I barely know You yet I can’t help but praise You to the world because of what I’ve just seen, because of who You make me to be when I stand before You. I come sinner and You show me beauty.
The beauty of Your mercy, oh God, is that isn’t light, empty. Your mercy is launched from the place of Truth. Now that is a mercy I’ve never known. You embody both, oh God of healing. You hold me to truth and cover me with mercy, never compromising one or the other. When I get one look at this, my vision is changed.
I can’t go back to seeing me as I was or seeing You as I did. One glimpse into this beautiful concoction and I want to make a life out of declaring You. To You. To them. And back to me.
Endless God I praise You for Your complexity, whose entry point is simplicity. I wrap myself around Your leg like a child making a home in any part of Daddy and You wrap around me with mercy and truth. You take me in and You clothe me with You.
And this is just the beginning.
How can I not worship You, oh God who is so other than my false perceptions of You?
**For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).
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