Wrecking Ball-Miley or God?

Unless you've been living with no interaction with the world it's pretty much impossible to not know about Miley Cyrus and her recent antics. This post isn't about how far she's come from her roots and what a horrible person she has become because there are posts from seemingly everybody about those aspects of her. Rather I want to write about how she is just like all of us and even has given all of us a great picture of God's love for us.

Hannah Montana came out right when I a preteen but I wasn't allowed to watch it which of course didn't stop me. I watched it with friends and knew all of the songs by heart right up to the end of the show. Miley was that perfect person who had everything including Jesus apparently. She made mistakes and chose a different direction in music than I wanted to listen to. I applauded her for getting engaged and staying with one man for a few years rather than bouncing from guy to guy and while I didn't approve of her lifestyle choice she was still a role model in some aspects. When We Can't Stop was released I chose not to listen to it due things I had heard about within the song. I was fortunate enough not to watch the VMA's but was still subjected to her antics from the news and facebook for days on end. But now I'm looking at her a bit differently.

After her engagement ended I decided that there was nothing good left in Miley Cyrus and wished I could block her out completely. Until I read about when she sang Wrecking Ball in a concert. To hear about her breaking down as she sang a song documenting the end of her relationship with Liam made me look at the song. I heard it on the radio and immediately I felt for Miley. I grieved for her and can't listen to the song without thinking of the feelings the song displays for us all to hear. And besides the thoughts that pop up with that song now I was shown that there is another way to look at it as well.

While the chorus is heartbreaking coming from Miley it's a huge message of love and redemption coming from God. It's the perfect picture of the human and God relationship here on earth. We sin and fall away from God and often blame it on Him while he constantly showers us with love we can't even begin to understand. Jami Nato, the instagrammer above and who inspired me to write this, attached to the photo Romans 8:38. "For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.". 

And this brings me to another instagrammer, Melissa Lyons who creates art and lives here in San Antonio, who has been writing mini blog posts with pictures about how people who aren't Christians write things that fit so well with God's message to us. She used Mumford and Sons for her example but Wrecking Ball is another example that I think sums up God's love in a way that is shocking coming from an unbeliever. I remember in Trusting God by Jerry Bridges it said that God uses sin to further His message. He hates that sin but He is able to use the sin to reach other people or to convict the sinner. 

This is something I've been mulling over recently and ended up getting the push I needed from different people to put it all together so it makes sense. 

Too much to truly handle

In the past year or so my eyes were opened to a lot that I didn't know were issues or things to be concerned about. I learned about handmade and small businesses, human traffiking, adoption in the US and outside of it, international and domestic politics, and other "grown up" things I didn't really understand, namely taxes and and how the government uses them. As each problem and issue was brought to light I felt like I needed to become its advocate right then and there which doesn't work very well with so many issues to be passionate about. I've become pretty  passionate about certain topics, abortion and modesty, in recent years but the others are new and exciting and give me lots to think about.

And that's the problem. These topics give me so much to think about that I get overwhelmed and can't handle the topics that I am passionate about. What's going to happen to me and my family with Obamacare? Will we get in a war with Russia and their buddies because of Syria? How am I supporting adoption and other organizations in Africa? What about blogging and small businesses? Buy handmade or buy local? These and so many other thoughts are what go through my head any time I have time to think for a minute.

So I've decided to focus on a few and leave the rest completely up to God. Me being passionate about politics is not necessarily going to change anything and worrying about the government and my taxes is a worry I don't need quite yet. But amid those concerns are some issues I do want to become an advocate for, things I consider important to me and to the general well being of more people.

I will always be passionate about abortion and modesty because those are issues that have become personal in different ways. However I've recently become a big supporter of small businesses, especially handmade businesses. I'll do a post on that at another time but in the meantime I've been spreading word about the small businesses I've found and that do excellent work and profit real people and not CEO's and China. I want to support adoption in Africa but actually adopting isn't an option so I've found other ways. I aim to support those who are adopting from Africa and need help fundraising to bring their little one home as well as supporting Amazima Ministries. I found them through Katie Davis' Kisses from Katie and can't wait to start supporting children's education in Africa. Because of that book I started supporting a little girl named Maria in Columbia who is just about to turn two years old. :)

I can't support everyone and their problems but a few I can advocate I will with all I've got. This life is too short to ignore every organization and problem because of being overwhelmed. I can't wait to see how the Lord is going to use these causes for Him and how He's going to use them to grow me.

Grieving and Solace in God's Word

My quiet times have been rocky since the beginning of summer when my schedule got all wonky because of work schedules and vacation. I'm determined to make being in the Bible my morning priority and to get it back into the morning routine before I do anything else. This is a post about what Jesus has been doing with my life since Sunday, August 25th.

Before I say anything else I need to recap something else. 3 weeks ago Kaden Isaiah Stone was born to Diana of Hormonal Imbalances blog and her husband, Sam. For an in depth look at who she is and her life you can read this but I'm going to recap her life in a couple sentences here. She was married young to a marine who was deployed for a crazy amount of time twice and who later struggled with PTSD and an alcohol addiction. They had a daughter, Bella, and then they got pregnant with identical twin boys who they lost at 20 weeks. They pursued adoption but it failed on them at the last minute so when she got pregnant and was due in August it was exactly what they needed to soothe them from their losses in the past 10 years. Kaden was born on August 5th and was put in the NICU for some really minor complications. The day before they were to leave the doctors found out that a virus which would normally cause us to get sick for a couple of days had attacked his heart causing his capillaries to fail completely, he couldn't pump any blood without a machine.

And this is where this week starts. On Sunday Diana was with Kaden and Sam was with Bella in El Paso when they were told that Kaden would die in the next day or so. I can't even compute the emotions they would feel because I can't handle my own, and I don't even know them. Hit with this they rallied themselves and others to pray to the Lord for a miracle. Diana writes for She Reads Truth and is a part of The Influence Network so a group of bloggers began spreading the word through instagram and facebook. And this brings it to Sunday.

Sunday Melody from Dance Parties in the Rain created a Google doc to organize a 24 hour prayer vigil for them, you can see it here. I signed up when it had been posted for about an hour and was still pretty empty. I checked it right before I went to bed and it was so full, every 10 minutes for nearly 30 hours. When I woke up I checked it again and was blown away by the sheer amount of names written down to pray for almost 2 days every 10 minutes. I spent time searching God's word for verses of God's power and his comfort and prayed for little Kaden for 20 minutes at a time in the morning I would normally be very, very asleep.

For me prayer has always been a rather formal affair following the ACTS concept I learned in 5th grade. Only in the last month or two had I really started branching out and pleading to God with what my heart was telling me to say rather than following a rigid plan. Monday morning I was crying out to God to save that little boy, the little boy who hadn't had the chance to truly live, the little boy who was a gift to his parents when they needed him most. Throughout the rest of the day I prayed and thought of that family awaiting God's plan in a NICU room in Dallas.

When I got home in the evening and checked instagram I found that God had called little Kaden home to Himself. I don't even know how to express the feelings of grief I felt and that I'm still feeling now, carefully masked so no one notices. This morning I didn't even know what to do except read my Bible and hope for comfort from it. I found Psalm 119:50 which says "This is my comfort in my affliction, That Your word has revived me." The perfect verse to cause me to stop and think of God's goodness and power and to see that God has a plan in this. God is completely sovereign nothing happens that He isn't in control of, even the unthinkable death of Kaden. This morning's devotion from She Reads Truth further preached God's sovereignty in a moment that I desperately needed it.

All of this brought back to mind my own brother's death and the grief I still bear from that and sometimes give in to. I remember my dad saying to me a year after or so that "Andrew was blessed because he got to know God and experience life. I feel worse for those babies that pass away before they can know life." While I consider that to be true there is also a great mercy in being taken away from this earth. She Reads Truth had a great post about how death only causes believers to be weaned of the world and eagerly look forward to the day when death is gone and God reigns over the earth.

This post ended up way more rambly than I was planning but I needed to get this out of my system, to publicly grieve for this family and to rest in God's promises of comfort and hope.