Dear Kate, hello to you on this blog we never use but should! i like the idea if it being a scrapbook of thoughts and ideas and words/quotes for our little mission. and i can't wait for your visit next week!

 

Found this on a Piper blogpost last night, with the title 'Letter to an Incomplete and Insecure Teenager' and thought you might like it as much as me, and thought of Discovergood :)

 

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Four years ago a teenager in our church wrote to me for advice about life in general, and identity in particular. Here is what I wrote, with a big dose of autobiography for illustration.

 

Dear ________,

My experience of coming out of an introverted, insecure, guilty, lustful, self-absorbed adolescent life was more like the emergence of a frog from a tadpole than a butterfly from a larva.

 

Larvae disappear into their cocoons and privately experience some inexplicable transformation with no one watching (it is probably quite messy in there) and then the cocoon comes off and everyone says oooo, ahhh, beautiful. It did not happen like that for me.

 

Frogs are born teeny-weeny, fish-like, slimy, back-water-dwellers. They are not on display at Sea World. They might be in some ritzy hotel's swimming pool if the place has been abandoned for 20 years and there's only a foot of green water in the deep end.

 

But little by little, because they are holy frogs by predestination and by spiritual DNA (new birth), they swim around in the green water and start to look more and more like frogs.

First, little feet come out on their side. Weird. At this stage nobody asks them to give a testimony at an Athletes in Action banquet.

 

Then a couple more legs. Then a humped back. The fish in the pond have already pulled back: "Hmmm," they say, "this does not look like one of us any more." A half-developed frog fits nowhere.

 

But God is good. He has his plan and it is not to make this metamorphosis easy. Just certain. There are a thousand lessons to be learned in the process. Nothing is wasted. Life is not on hold waiting for the great coming-out. That's what larvae do in the cocoon. But frogs are public all the way though the foolishness of change.

 

I think the key for me was finding help in the Apostle Paul and C. S. Lewis and my father, all of whom seemed incredibly healthy, precisely because they were so absolutely amazed at everything but themselves.

 

They showed me that the highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself. They were the type of people who were so amazed that people had noses—not strange noses, just noses—that walking down any busy street was like a trip to the zoo. O yes, they themselves had noses, but they couldn’t see their own. And why would they want to? Look at all these noses they are free to look at! Amazing.

 

The capacity of these men for amazement was huge. I marveled and I prayed that I would stop wasting so much time and

so much emotional energy thinking about myself. Yuk, I thought. What am I doing? Why should I care what people think about me. I am loved by God Almighty and he is making a bona fide high-hopping frog out of me.

The most important text on my emergent frogishness became 2 Corinthians 3:18 —

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered: Beholding is becoming.

 

Introspection must give way to amazement at glory. When it does, becoming happens. If there is any key to maturity it is that. Behold your God in Jesus Christ. Then you will make progress from tadpole to frog. That was a great discovery.

Granted, (so I thought) I will never be able to speak in front of a group, since I am so nervous. And I may never be married, because I have too many pimples. Wheaton girls scare the bejeebies out of me. But God has me in his hand (Philippians 3:12) and he has a plan and it is good and there is a world, seen and unseen, out there to be known and to be amazed at—why would I ruin my life by thinking about myself so much?

 

Thank God for Paul and Lewis and my dad! It’s all so obvious now. Self is simply too small to satisfy the exploding longings of my heart. I wanted to taste and see something great and wonderful and beautiful and eternal.

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. It started in literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. It started with walks through the grass and woods and lagoons, and ended in walks through the high plains of theology. Not that nature and literature and grass and woods and lagoons disappeared, but they became more obviously copies and pointers.

 

The heavens are telling the glory of God. When you move from heavens to the glory of God, the heavens don’t cease to be glorious. But they are un-deified, when you discover what they are saying. They are pointing. “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8).

 

What are the sunrise and sunset shouting about so happily? Their Maker! They are beckoning us to join them. But if I am grunting about the zit on my nose, I won’t even look out the window.

 

So my advice is: be patient with the way God has planned for you to become a very happy, belly-bumping frog. Don’t settle for being a tadpole or a weird half-frog. But don’t be surprised at the weirdness and slowness of the process either.

How did I become a preacher? How did I get married? God only knows. Incredible. So too will your emergence into what you will be at 34 be incredible. Just stay the course and look. Look, look. There is so much to see. The Bible is inexhaustible. Mainly look there. The other book of God, the unauthoritative one—nature—is also inexhaustible. Look. Look. Look. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being changed.

 

I love you and believe God has great froggy things for you. Don’t worry about being only a high-hopping Christlike frog. Your joy comes from what you see.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

There is another metamorphosis awaiting. It just gets better and better. God is infinite. So there will always be more of his glory for a finite mind to see. There will be no boredom in eternity.

Affectionately,

Pastor John

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discovering. thank you!

Dear Liz,
I cannot imagine a better new year's gift than this blog. A loving space to visit, to rest in, to take nourishment in. To take heart in. I think I shall be here often this year. To sit with you a moment, and to be very consciously thankful. This is a lovely room. Thank you for the keys to it, and for wanting to be in it. !
I'm so glad you liked the oatmeal jar. :) Thank you for photographing it right in its new perfect home.

Forgive me for taking this long to appear here; I have been purposely avoiding the computer, just being here with the family. Tomorrow, I go back to New York... a perfect time to receive the comfort of your gift.

I like the color-explosion cover of the Matt Redman album. And am listening to the song right now. Thank you. What a glorious new years song. 10,000 reasons. ...

To think of you on your couch -- with the best reason in the WORLD to be on a couch. This is a glory. How are you feeling? Have you told family yet? I am eager to hear how you are, wonder if you could talk soon...

I have been reading Ezekiel, finding much rich meat in there every time. And pondering aspects of the story of Christ's coming. Mary's song. Simeon's words. I've been writing some simple songs of those pieces of the story, to process.

I've been thinking about what a wretched, dead-in-sin person I was -- looking at old belongings, old writings, at my parents' house brings back memories of my heart, of its sinfulness.
There are 10,000 reasons for me to praise Him for calling me out, for calling me His, and for promising that I'm forgiven, clean, redeemed, repurposed. His.

I need a lot of help to be 'happy.' To call my deepest heart's attention to the secure hope we hold, or rather that holds us. To call my attention to who Christ is and what that means. To rip me up out of despair and self-focus. To silence the voice of the accuser and replace it with songs of GLORY. So here we are, to help each other. To say that it isn't about what we do, what list we check off or what justification we can make for our own existence. Life is a thank you, a walk of obedience and worship. I'm so glad we are in it together, Liz!!

One of the 10,000 reasons I should be praising God for the past few weeks. : is Wynnie. New life. Sweet simplicity. Tremendous complexity.

I am praying for you as you think about these things, and wait. ... your Father cares for you as the tenderest father of a baby ever could.

Love you, Liz! Happy new year. So glad we are here. your kate.

Thanks for the oatmeal, Kate!!!

Today, a beautiful giftbag was placed in my hand from a friend who lives around the corner, in the name of a not-as-far-away-as-she-used-to-be friend,you :) May I tell you how happy it made me?  It is so sweet and perfect Kate, I just love it!

Oh Kate, I've been so quick to be discouraged lately. Have to spend most of my days on the couch, and dishes pile-ing up a mile high all week!. Soon it won't be a secret what is going on inside our home(inside of me!), and there will be more people to remind me how worth-it the pain is, horray!

But this week, guess what, God has really been pouring His kindness on me! Remembered this preciously helpful makes-sense-to-my-brain-and-my-heart reading, from Morning & Evening,

"Even the trees...must drink of the rain of heaven and suck from the hidden treasure of the soil. The cedars of Lebanon, which God has planted, only live because day by day they are full of sap fresh drawn from the earth. Neither can man’s life be sustained without renewal from God. As it is necessary to repair the waste of the body by the frequent meal, so we must repair the waste of the soul by feeding  upon the Book of God,...

How depressed are our graces when means are neglected! What poor starvelings some saints are who live without the diligent use of the Word of God and secret prayer! If our piety can live without God it is not of divine creating; it is but a dream; for if God had begotten it, it would wait upon Him as the flowers wait upon the dew. "

-Charles Spurgeon

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Do you know that feeling Kate?, that poor starveling, sighing and wondering pitifully why life is so hard and why it seems no one could ever understand! I forget the truth so quickly. I forget that I'm His child and I need Him and I can run to Him and He'll be happy to meet me. And I forget that my life just "cannot be sustained" "without constant renewal" from my Father in Heaven!

He is so kind. He doesn't leave us to ourselves, or allow us to enjoy life that way whenever we try. He has, again, helped me come to the realization that it will always be this way- that daily life just freaks me out when I have not opened up His Holy Word-that tells me who I am,and tells me what's good about life here on earth- and helps me :see: good, and want good, and hope for the day when I'll see His face.

So this week, laying on the couch like a slug, I realized that reading my Bible is something I can do as I lay down. And what a good habit to get into as life goes on. No matter how things look and feel, His Word is living. And active. Our roots can drink from the treasure of the hidden soil.  He speaks hope there into all the little details of life. He helps us want to be there, to love it there, and to see all the blessings (and wait for them.)

Big blessings, like joy in His word. Little blessings on the couch, like re-teaching myself to read music, and re-learning how to crochet on youtube :)

Let's help eachother wait on Him like flowers who wait on the dew. And to not live in the dream-world of believing life can have joy and bear fruit apart from Him.

have you heard this song yet?