The Value of Encouragement
I’ve always been someone who is pretty confident and has a good self-esteem. You could probably say that I come by that honestly because of my Dad. But because of that I never really felt a need for encouragement. I always welcomed it and recognized how good it felt but I never really felt a need for it. After being at Freed for 3 years now I see just how valuable and important encouragement is.
Since I never really felt like encouragement was important for me I just never thought much about encouraging others (I can be pretty blind sometimes and not see other people’s perspectives).
Since being at Freed I’ve been in chorale and I have seen just how much it means to encourage others. I’ve seen it through some of the most beautiful and loving people I will ever know in this life. And I’ve seen it on all of the trips we’ve gone on in the past 3 years.
Last year on tour we went to a Church in Texas where a formal chorale member goes to Church. The morning we left he told us with tears in his eyes to remember that what we do is a mission and to never undervalue the importance of what we do. So often when I think of mission trips I think about souls added to the Kingdom of God and building new Churches or water wells or providing medical aid to people who don’t have it. But those aren’t the only kinds of missions we do as Christians.
I was talking to my friend Riley who is also in chorale with me this morning about what we do as a group. He said that as Christians we aren’t just about adding new souls but making sure that the souls we already have remain strong and encouraged.
As members of this group we do so much more than sing. We bring joy and encouragement to people who might be feeling alone or discouraged. We share a very special part of our lives with people we’ve never met before but who are still part of our family.
You can never encourage people enough. There is always something that you can do or say to make someone feel strong and loved and important. And the value of that cannot be measured.
A Holy Experience
This is from Ann Voskamp’s blog. Here’s the link for it:
http://www.aholyexperience.com/
You can also sign up to receive an email with her blog post everyday. Reading her poetic words has been such a blessing to me. So… here’s what she had to say today:
Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed.
But homes can only be made.
And only with bits of ourselves.
The kids and I sit together close in a house with dishes on the counter and read about painters and artists and look at a flock of ducks, preened and nestled, a painting, oil on canvas.
The children press in close for a better look at the open book, at Alexander Koester’s “Ducks“, and I read aloud the caption under the painting.
“Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.”
I look around at the house. I pause.
And the children gaze thoughtfully at a clutch of plump white, blizzard of feathers fallen down.
But it’s those words that mesmerize me: “Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests, to line their nests.”
I lay my hand on the page, on a duck breast puffed, mother plunging beak in deep, and I say it out loud: “How else did you think nests were lined?”
With leftovers.
That’s what I thought.
With feathers discarded, the molted, the not-so-necessary feathers.
I thought mother ducks picked feathers up from what was laying about, scraps, lining nests with what simply could be mustered after the fact.
But no. No, a mother duck plucks each feather out from the heart of her bosom.
She lines the nest with bits of herself — the best of herself.
A mother cups her brood not with leftovers — but with her own sacrifice.
The kids pull at the corner of the page, anxious to see the next painting.
Reluctantly, I turn the page. But for weeks, I’m the one turned.
For weeks, part of me lives among Koester’s ducks.
I scrub out the arches of muffin tins after breakfast on a misty morning, the clock ticking insufferably loud in my ears, time running down.
Children need books and learning, and I’m tuned for the expected chime of the doorbell, a service personnel’s scheduled visit.
And the words rise like this lava, “I don’t have time for this! No muffins tomorrow morning!”
Pluck.
It’s like I can feel it.
Like I can feel this tugging.
The service man meets me with muffin tins still in the sink. He meets happy kids. Could I meet needs with a bit more of me?
There are times, too many, when they call, “Read me a story?” “Wanna play a game with me?” “Can you come help me?”
And this mother refuses to pluck.
Something, some task, someone (me?), rates as more pressing, more important. I deem our nest acceptable just as it is. I don’t want to sacrifice more of me.
Then it comes: the pecking, the scratching, the squawking. When the feather lining of the nest wears thin, the nest chafes hard. We feel it. We hurt. Life gets hard.
Nests need feathers deep.
Someone must pluck.
When will I learn: The down we sacrifice from ourselves — this is what settles and soothes.
Scraps won’t suffice.
Not mere snippets of time, leftover me, a trinket, a diversion, tossed.
Mother ducks don’t line nests with feathers, dirty and trampled, the molted and unnecessary. Why would I? Nests need feathers fresh, warm with mother’s life.
The pain of the plucking can linger long.
The parts of oneself sacrificed, this can hurt.
But was it really sacrifice? Or was my skin just too tender? It’s done, it was necessary, and it was for something better.
Some nights, when all sleep, I feel along the hidden bald patches.
Come evening, I ask a boy to vacuum up popcorn and paper remnants and bits of the day.
Dinner needs making, laundry needs rescuing, math needs marking. My head aches. Popcorn crunches under the feet.
The boy hauls the vacuum cleaner out of the front closet. I should have noticed how his eyes had this glint. He plugs in the machine and it grumbles loud and he recalibrates that vacuum cleaner —- to fire socks.
He’s firing sock cannons across the kitchen.
His brothers dive in. Socks fly. Brothers howl and whip and it gets loud.
Caught in the cross-fire with a pot in hand – a mother can either erupt. Or Pluck.
This old mother, she tosses the pot and chases down future men, wrestles them down and pins them in tickles. It feels good, wild and alive.
We warm here in laughter.
Us close, one atop the other, nesting down into sacrifices, soft and small, a solace.
Night descends. Kids crawl into beds. I read stories, stroke hair, say prayers.
Prayers to Him who plucked hard from His own heart.
A sacrifice, staggering and true, for love of His very own.
We learn love from His laid down.
Tired heads nestle into pillows, into these pillows of down.
We rest on all these feathers plucked…
lblocke:
Lately I’ve been rather disenchanted with social media, and especially Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I use it just as much as anyone, but I’ve become sensitized to how often FHU students use social media as a platform from which to semi-anonymously unleash their passive-aggressive snarky-ness. Most…
Faith Like a Child
“Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.” - Matthew 18:3,4
Today main st. fuzion had their spring concert. At the door we took donations for a project that GO camp will be doing this summer to pack 100,000 meals for those who are malnourished and have no food.
Brad Montague, the director of GO camp was at the concert to say a few words about what exactly this mission is. What they’re doing is incredible and if you want to know more about it go here:
http://www.fundraising.fmsc.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1013368
But that’s not actually what I want to talk about exactly. Something Brad said though really stuck with me.
He said that a class of second graders heard about this project and when they heard about what was happening they were appalled. They could not believe that something like this could really be happening. These kids are now collecting change to raise money for this project. Just one quarter is more than enough for one meal.
Brad was right when he said that many adults when they hear stuff like that just say “oh how sad” and then sort of move on. But kids… When kids hear this stuff they flip out! They wonder how we could let something like this go on.
And hearing that true statement that I’d never really thought of before made me think that maybe this is what Jesus was talking about when he said that we should have faith like children. We should be shaken and moved, stirred and disturbed by the appalling things that happen. We should be humbled by atrocities and experience all of these emotions to the point of compelling action.
We have lost our innocence. It’s not exactly something you can change, everyone will lose that innocence you once possessed as a child. But to trying to regain it - to work to become innocent like a child to where we ache when others do - to have that faith…
Maybe that’s what Jesus was asking for.
Ann Voskamp
This is why Ann Voskamp is amazing:
Less goods can let there be more God.
Whenever you think you need more of this world, you lay out a welcome mat for the enemy.
When it comes to our legacy, to our lives, to our longings — less is always more.
It’s true, anyone in workboots or an apron can be a hymn.
Who can expect to make sense of a loud world when they haven’t made quiet space before God?
Life is only noise until you’ve been quiet before God.
When one consistently chooses cyberspace over holy space — life becomes a hollow place.
My name is Jessica Johnson and if you want to know anything about my blog, just read my first post. It's a good description of what I hope my blog to be. Anything else you need to know about me, you'll hopefully learn in time as I post my borrowed babblings
