Goodbyes

I barely remember a time that was lived out anywhere other than here.  This place that has seen five years of family days and this place that housed our seemingly exponential growth.  This place and these people who have watched and prayed as our families' growing pangs made us cry out in anguish, how do you say goodbye?

And a house does not make a home but these walls have welcomed not a few precious many and as this place filled with Divine Presence this house certainly became home and entirely Holy.  Hallow ground where Father made sons and daughters from broken orphans and when I count broken orphans treading hallow ground to eternal adoption I count not five but certainly eleven.  How do you say goodbye to holy home?

I know as surely as God filled this space and house became home and home became holy and holy home housed hurting orphans, He will fill the space in our new place.  We journey to a holy home and I do not know and cannot understand but He foretold of our journey to be.  And He has gone before and prepared the way.  But, how to say goodbye to holy home that housed their homecoming?

And who could have foretold God in this place and who could have seen God's grace in this space.  If one had dared to tell how our lovelies of four would multiply to nine I surely would have scoffed for how could I know of God in this place. For five years ago it was just another Navy move and we packed bags and said our goodbyes and sojourned to this sleepy seaside town and knew nothing of our waiting five.  Five years for five children.  And we have certainly learned how to live for another in this holy place.  How do you say goodbye to five years lived for five children?

To our family back on eastern shore ~ our family grew and we cracked under the strain and yet you believed.  We stumbled and fell time and time again yet your faith in faithful God became solid ground to place our shaky, quaky feet upon.  Our family multiplied and we broke and you prayed and we cried and you fasted and we ran dry on love and you loved us still and you loved us through.  Loved us through the hard and loved us through the ugly.  You prayed.  You fasted.  You believed.  You loved on and on and on.

We appeared at church with missing shoes and mismatch socks, hair afright and surely a rag tag sight but you smiled all the same and told us we were beautiful.  Beautiful.  When in reality beautiful is a body of believers who loves a family through the hard, through the ugly.  You were beautiful.  You are beautiful.  Christ's bride ~ a thing of true beauty.

~

Family along the easternly shore you will be so proud to hear that we arrived at new place of worship with eleven pairs of feet donned in eleven pairs of shoes and hair tamed to only a slight roar and we were not mismatch in the slightest!  This new place has no idea what you endured with us ~ they see the polished version but you, you loved the dull and dirty version.  Beautiful.

How do you say goodbye to a people who loved you through the dull, loved through the dirty?

I have no answers, except to trust the One who brought us to His beautiful bride on those easternly shores.  Our only Answer is to trust that our sojourn is sovereign and that our path is placed before us for a purpose, His purpose.

And in truth we never really say goodbye for Spirit transcends space and our earthly place and He is not trapped by time.  Those of us who call Him home reside in a place that defies this temporal space.  We live and move and have our being in Him ~ our beings are eternally united in Jesus Christ so no goodbye will ever be necessary.

And now I do not know what to say or how to close, save to say we thank you and we love you ~ entirely, eternally, and in absolute totality ~ we love you.


                                                                                                        ~  The Ruppels

Marked By God

"It is better to be marked by God than marketed by man,"  I heard Christine Caine say.  Marked by God.

Jesus did not self-promote.

Isaiah 42:2 ~ "He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street."

He did not need to, He was decidedly marked by God ~ Isaiah 42:1 ~ "Behold, My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect one in whom My soul delights!  I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles."

He was a quiet sort but when He spoke it was of His Father's business.  Always about His Father's business.  What am I about?

He was a quiet sort and yet, His comparatively few words revolutionized our entire world.

We ramble and we babble and accomplish precious little; words, words, words, so many empty, futile words.

But, His words are such a stark contrast to our words.  Why?  Because, Jesus did not self promote and He always spoke His Father's business.

Jesus did not come to sell  the world on His story or convince us of His glory.  Jesus is God.  He does not need our approval, He is not concerned with how He stands in the polls, and He will not engage in some cosmic popularity contest.  He is God and we are man.  He did not "cry aloud in the streets" because He is Creator and we are creation.

His Words were not weapons wielded to amass fame, fortune or fans.  His Words were weapons wielded to glorify His Father and bring life to a dying world.

My arsenal of weaponry words, how is it wielded and what is yielded?  Glory to Father, giving life or glory to self, amassing death?

I have waged war with many weapons of words intent on the wrong victor ~ the words have been wielded for me.

Repentance is needed for words of self.

Matthew 12:34 ~ " ... For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
 ~this heart surely has an abundance of self and I have a litany to show for it.

Brood of vipers.  Much repentance is needed.

And His Words were about His Father's business, always.

Matthew 12:36 ~ "But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give an account of it in the judgment day."

Selah.

And I open my mouth to speak and again I am stunned into silence by the gravity of "every idle word.'

Why an account for idle words?  Some cruel celestial game of punishment aimed at our tiny, trivial minds?  No, an account because time is short, a harvest is coming, and our Master was always about His Father's business because He loved the world that much to waste no words on idle chatter.

Do we love this dying, spinning globe with its fallen humanity to stop all the idle chatter and be about the fields of white?

The harvest is coming and the workers are few, for idle chatter and words of self flow rapidly from far too many of His people.  And the few who surrender words and die to idle chatter and words of self are so harshly judged and tossed aside.  For they stand as silent words spoken in testimony of our words of self.

But, "every idle word" we will answer for.

Selah.