I recently read a blurb from the book, Every Job a Parable by John Van Sloten and I want to share it. It is a pretty timely piece.

We need to be shaken out of our “center of the universe” perspective. We need to be unsettled and have our perceptions challenged. We need to realize that we are not the beholders—we are the beheld. God is not made visible by our light; we are made visible by his.

What we so naturally consider the right and only perspective may, in fact, be the opposite of God’s perspective. John Calvin asserted that we can only see God in the world as we wear the spectacles of Scripture, but if we’re the ones wearing the glasses, then it’s still all about our point of view. Perhaps we need reverse our perspective and see the Bible and creation as windows through which God looks at us.

REVERSE PERSPECTIVE

So what would it mean to look at your life, your job, in reverse perspective? The question is already problematic because we can’t do it. In fact, we need to move out of the center. We need to become infinitely smaller, like a vanishing point.

God is the one who sees, who is at the center of everything, whose perception and viewpoint define reality. God doesn’t fit into your life; you fit into his. You are part of his story. This way of engaging reality is very much the opposite of all that comes naturally to us and all that society teaches. We live in a world where we are the authors of our destinies. Everything is as we perceive it and make it to be.

In order to be freed from this very limiting perspective, we need to let go of our need for control. There is much more going on than meets our eye, than what our mere rational minds and mortal senses can perceive. Up may be down, and what appears small may loom large from God’s perspective. Perhaps this is why Jesus taught that we need to be like a child. Only a child is naive enough to imagine and make room for something this new.

Can you imagine doing your job as though it all depends on you, while at the same time being part of this amazing, eternal, Kingdom of Heaven story that God is narrating? Imagine how new it would feel to jump between reality-as-you-see-it, into reality-as-God sees-it, and then back.

Through reverse perspective you are able to see reality from God’s point of view. When you give up your perspective, you get perspective. When you lay it down you find it. When you start to see yourself as the one being seen, God is closer and larger, more present and real.

When God is that close, everything changes. Even our perspective on the nature of revelation changes.

This is kind of unsettling. For most of my life I’ve thought that God reveals so that I (and others) can hear. But even that seems a little self-centered, doesn’t it? What if revelation has an even higher purpose? What if what we think we’re hearing, we’re really just overhearing?

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

There exists within the Godhead a self-giving, ever-flowing, other-centric love. The Father loves the Son, the Son humbly defers to the Father, the Spirit serves Father and Son and is loved by both with an everlasting love. The triune God is the embodiment of communal fullness—peace, delight, and relational joy. God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a community of eternal mutual adoration and selfless service—a community that communicates. Jesus didn’t do a thing apart from the will of his Father in heaven. The Spirit works in accordance with the will of Jesus and the Father. Each part of the Trinity listens. And we are invited to be a part of that community.

This is the God who is moving in the world and at your work. When we talk about knowing God at work, it is this triune, ever communing and communicating, ever serving and loving God whom we are talking about.

What implications does this have for engaging your job iconically?

One implication is that much of what we will know and experience of God may not be directly aimed toward us. Perhaps knowing and experiencing God at work is more about getting caught up in the love that is being extended from Father to Son, overhearing words of wisdom being whispered by Jesus to the Spirit, or catching a glimpse of the eternal joy expressed by Father and Son as the Spirit mysteriously brings more and more of heaven to earth. This way of seeing reality takes us out of the center of the universe. The act of compassionately listening to a fellow worker may be the Holy Spirit’s way of bringing glory to Jesus—the one through whom that fellow worker was made. Your God-imaging ability to read a person like a book—so that you can make a good judgment—may actually be Jesus’ built-in way to glorify the Father, who left it to Jesus to shape and make you the way he did. Could it be that every good relational act that you undertake is actually a manifestation of the triune communal love of God?

If the nature of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is always about the other, then it seems that who we are in our jobs should ultimately reflect this nature. Everything we do at work should be for the person next to us: our coworker, customer, or competitor. As we image God in this selfless way, we will become more like him and discover that the more we give to that other person, the more we receive. We will image the God who is fully himself as he gives more and more of himself away. And we will be drawn into ever-deeper communion with God.

Duke University’s Dr. Norman Wirzba wrote that “mutual indwelling, the other-in-me and myself-in-another, is at the heart of true reality.”  We image God best when we reflect his all loving communal nature—both in serving the other and in receiving from them. “True life is lived through the gifts of others,” wrote Wirzba.  “This means that relation rather than substance is constitutive of a thing’s being.”

This is a very important truth to consider. You are not primarily what you accomplish at work, nor is your value based on the sum of your aptitudes and skills. Who you are is defined by how you selflessly and humbly relate—how you give and how you receive, how you image the giving and receiving God. Talk about a reversal of perspective!

This is the kind of God who is looking at you and writing the story of your life. He doesn’t want you to see and experience him from afar. He invites you right into the highly relational center of who he is—his eternal triune love.

And the truth is, God doesn’t want his communal love reflected just in you. He wants entire companies, cities, countries, and all that fills this cosmos to be likewise transformed. It is to this end that God is moving. This is the story he is writing.

A triune from the God of the Trinity.

Easter is my favorite time for reflecting on my faith, how I am a part of God's story and how I'm doing. Moving into the season of refreshing growth. The words this author shares has me thinking. So much so, I bought the book. Do we think about our work and how we reflect his image?

Fresh Find: Every Job a Parable.

I have read several articles regarding Good Friday. The question I saw most asked was, How can this be good?  There are several thoughts about why Good Friday is called Good Friday. It might refer to a day or season observed as holy by the church, the same as the greeting "good tidings" at Christmas. There is Guode Friday which declares it is good because Christ showed his great love for man and through his death and resurrection purchased our pardon.  Some believe Good Friday came from the mispronunciation of God's Friday or Gottes Freitag...or Gute Freitag. Long Friday is thought to be the correct term for the Friday before Easter because it was a long and dark day by the Anglo-Saxons. In Greek liturgy, it is described as the Holy and Great Friday. In Romance languages, it is referred to as Holy Friday and in German as Karfreitag or Sorrowful Friday.

In Romans 5:6-10 

• You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 
• Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 
• But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 
• Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 
• For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

So, you see, to me, as horrific as the day unfolds and ends, it is good. Everything that is God is good. The evil in the world does not win. We win, we that are found in Christ. 

This Easter has found me humbled before God. He is so gracious to me. I owe him all and all to Him, I surrender. All to Him, I freely give.

A few years ago, I was led to create an art piece with felt pieces. Having no idea what the outcome would be. It is a favorite of mine.

Every color God did create. A place for each of us, His promise great. He sacrificed himself, God's plan revealed. He arose on Easter, God's plan fulfilled. Accept His love, the grace gift from above. Every one of us he calls, he calls, he calls us all. The Holy Spirit, he sends to abide within. The Trinity overcomes our sin. Every color God did create.

“He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” Matthew 28:6

Fresh Find: Trinity cross.

These three gals and a gent make up one of my favorite pictures. My brother John Dayton, my mom, Lorena Etter Dayton, my great-grandmother Hopkins and my grandmother Lucy May Hopkins Etter. Such a fun family picture. I only remember being around Zoe Price Hopkins a few times. She mostly stayed in her room on oxygen. She wasn't fond of us loud younger kids, but she did not feel good, so I understood. I wish I had known her better. She died in 1970. Robert, her husband, died before I was born, so I never knew him.

My brother, like my dad, did not smile for pictures. This one is so awesome of him. It is actually how I remember him most...this age, this smile. Well, except when he was a bratty brother!!!

My mom is beautiful. I wish I had her beauty and her skin. Our daughter does though, beautiful skin...and the dance moves!

I've always wished I had done more to create an easier life for my grandmother. She taught me so much. Sweet memories!

Fresh Find: Not many have door knockers these days with doorbells, but I sure like this one!

Having a recipe box was a generational tradition until this generation. There is no need for a recipe box or for that matter, recipe books. Technology has compiled a rather exhaustive list of any recipe we could dream of creating.

Three generations of recipe boxes that I love looking through and blessed to have!

This one is my Grandmother's. It is the one on the bottom pictured above.

My Mother's is the middle box pictured above. She typically typed or printed her recipes on the cards so that they were more readable for others. She had a cursive scroll handwriting style. Date Roll Candy was what my brother John always wanted her to make at holiday times. She did, just for him.

I received these recipe cards from a friend many years ago. There are only a few in my recipe box, pictured on top of the stack above. (Note: I did put together a recipe box for our daughter so there are four generations of boxes, but I don't know that she has ever looked through it because she has always had the Internet to search!

Fresh Find: A great recipe box.

Our Miss J came out winning tonight at her 4-H competition. I was very impressed with the girls of all ages who created and modeled their fashions.

Fresh Find: What a nice 13 hole Ocarina!

I never played sports in school. I did win a medal in archery in P.E. I bowl now in a ladies league and sometimes have a pretty good series. There is that feeling when the ball is in the pocket and the pins all fall that's like sinking a three-point shot, making a layup, throwing a strike, hitting a home run, jumping that last hurdle, or a ball in the glove for the out.

Claudia Lusk got this picture in front of the High Plains Concrete sign at a recent Wayland baseball game. She went in for the shot and captured it perfectly! In the glove for the out!

Fresh Find: Fun earrings!

I try hard not to bore people with much talk about how I'm wired with a different operating system. I get that many don't see how I could have Aspergers/autism. I get that. I really do. I think the first thing that I would say is that there are very few people who know me well enough to know me. I don't let people get too close. It is a way I protect myself, and it is a way that I protect others. 

God allows me to do whatever he calls me to do and I'm open to that. Everything else is up for discussion within the operating system called Aspergers. My life is a scale of weighing what I can do within each day. To balance my life is a full-time job. Don't get me wrong. I love who I am and am very thankful for God's selection of me to use in his ministry through his created exceptionality in me. 

Speaking of ministry, which is relational, and the key difference in my operating system and yours is my social awkwardness and the difficulty to continually nurture deep relationships. I love in a deeply spiritual way, so loving is not impossible. It takes an extreme amount of my core being. It is by the grace of God that I am called, and I am called with purpose, to love because he loves. It is difficult but not impossible.

I could easily let my life get me down, just like you could from whatever your life journey has been or is, but in Philippians 4:6-7, we are reminded...

Don’t worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks for what you have. And because you belong to Christ Jesus, God’s peace will stand guard over all your thoughts and feelings. His peace can do this far better than our human minds.

When our minds are in a meltdown, we must remember that God's peace stands guard. When we remember that he is in it with us, we can rest assured that peace will come when we let him give us rest; his strength, his lead.

We are all different in one way or another. I believe that my uniqueness has provided me growth in the understanding of human suffering. I can see deeply into others. Each one of us is beautifully handcrafted in the heart of a loving Father. We each have a little sparkle to share, a different mixture of amazing colors, and a different shape and size. All broken but put together beautifully for his divine purpose.

God calls us by name. We are loved, we are blessed.

Fresh Find: Cute heart shaped pencil. Show someone some love!

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Psalm 8:3-4

Fresh Find: I think anyone could create a picnic table with this kit!

There is a book, The Parable of the Hand and Glove. This is the forward to the book. The Parable of the Hand and the Glove: A Spiritual Awakening is the story of a beautiful, peaceful, forgiving, divine hand that had deep gratitude, love, and compassion for everyone. The hand was happy with others and circumstances just as they were. It had great energy, which it used to bless everyone while interacting enthusiastically with other hands without negative judgment. The hand's communications were always uplifting. Then the hand noticed that the other hands had gloves on all of the time. When the hand was wearing a glove, no one ever saw what was happening inside the glove. It became increasingly difficult to distinguish between the hand and the glove. Soon, the hand forgot that all the gloves had hands inside, and it began thinking it was a glove. This hand could instantly put on a glove for just about any situation. The glove loved being right even more than it liked being at peace! It would do anything to get nicer possessions, greater security, higher status, and more attention. Like a glove, the hand was certain that happiness was just around the next corner. But the glow from the attention and the new acquisition didn't last long at all, and that was where the trouble began. 

I know that everyone hides things within them that others cannot see. We can try to hide within the glove but God sees, and God knows. He is waiting, and he is there to love us to freedom. With him, we can take off the glove where we hide and leave it, never looking back.

Psalm

It was a superior day. The sun showed solid in its light and warmth. The sky was a splendid hue of blues. The white clouds surpassing each other in float-ability were totally smashing into each other and out. The bird's tweets were sensational and book worthy conversations. The blooms on the trees are spectacular. The breeze was soothing and left me shiverless. Overall, the day was superior to all the ones we have had lately. It was a most beautiful day!

I have had fun creating and arranging things for our little backyard!!! When it is all done & flowers planted, I'll share. Until then, enjoy the birds & such!!!

Fresh Find: Cutest Shirts for our local Crisis Center of the Plains Walk a Mile awareness event in April. Shirts are 15.00. Call 806-293-9772 to order.