Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

{20} James 2:5

James 2:5

James 2:5

Before I had ever met my husband, he was enlisted in the Air Force.  His duties took him all over Europe, including Italy.  While he was there, he visited Vatican City, where he purchased this cross made of olive wood.

I used it in this picture alongside the words of James, the brother of Jesus, because the gospel is so simple, most people miss it.  Thousands flood to Vatican City every day, hoping to inch closer to Christ by some action on their part, when all along, Jesus did it all.  He did not just choose us, He redeemed us, and He rewards our simple, incomplete love with an inheritance among the saints.

And we didn’t do a single thing to deserve it.

That is the gospel.  Simple.  Profound.  Altogether incomprehensible. 

As we continue with the story, From Enemy to Heir, I hope you will remember that it is a story about The Story, The Story James encapsulates in a single verse.  It is the story of the ravenous love of God toward an undeserving bride.

You are that bride. 

Take some time today to be awed by The Story only our Savior could write.

31 days

Day 20 of 31 days.  Join us tomorrow for Day 21!

Let it Be

Let it Be

It was a little too dangerous to be out on the roads that had just claimed the life of a young father.  Great, treacherous flakes floated down from the clouds that hid the heavens.  But that didn’t stop them from coming.

Beautiful saints, every one, they came to give a soft place for the tears to fall, to embrace the broken, and to mourn with those who mourned the most.

Bonnie, who had been widowed younger than my mother—was my mother a widow?—was one of the first to come.  She came in, soggy from the snow, and grabbed my mother’s hands without stopping to take off her coat.  Her tear-stained eyes searched my mother’s face for the pain she knew was there and the pain she knew was coming.

They sat together in the steel light of the feather-frosted window, and Bonnie sobbed.  She sobbed for her dead young husband and she sobbed for my tall, handsome father, and she sobbed for my mother because Bonnie knew.

She sobbed because there was nothing else she could do.

There was nothing else anyone could do, and so, like Bonnie, they came in, silent as snow.  Dear friends from church, relatives, even neighbors–everyone came.  Some came for a minute, heaving a potted plant into my arms or pressing a fold of money into my hand for my mother before they flurried away so as not to be a bother.

Others stayed until the shadows grew and melted into the freshly-fallen snow.  They did not know how to leave a woman who had just been left all alone in the world with three young children and a house that needed fixing.  So they lingered.

They lingered until the little green house in the middle of the forest was filled up with the scent of the saints.  Even with the drafty windows and a wood stove that wasn’t quite up to the task, there was a warmth in that place unlike anything I had known before.  It was warm enough to calm the shivers that convulsed through my body, warm enough to stop my teeth from chattering, warm enough to help me believe that somehow, it would be okay.

I watched from the corner of the couch, from my little refuge behind the tall-backed adults and the nodding heads and the sad voices, and I saw Him.  Jesus.  Jesus in real hands and real feet and real tears crying over our Lazarus- grave when it was too late and there was nothing else that could be done.

How beautiful He is.

I rested my head on a couch cushion.  It smelled like my Sunday school teacher, who didn’t have any children but who loved children more than most women who did.  She had been there with me, and her fragrance lingered and filled up my space like a slow, parting embrace.

The entire house smelled like Jesus, in the remarkable way that Jesus smells like Dial soap and Old Spice and a kitchen full of casseroles.

Had He been there that day?    

In my mind, I went over all the faces.  Some old, some young, some full of their own agonies and some who were just learning how hope could be shattered.  Each with a story, but each willing to step in to the day when my story fell apart.  Just like Jesus.

It left me breathless.

Somehow, Jesus had come to my living room garden, and He had whispered to me, “Child, child.  Why do you weep?”

He said it in words that came through other lips, chosen messengers, but it was there all the same.  I clung to them as the bitter sleep drifted in and I thought to myself, if this is what it takes to see Jesus, then let it be.

I think of it, all these years later because we are in a hard bit of the road, right here.  I have told you about it, dear saints, and you have come in with arms that ache to hold me up and tell me it will be okay.  Some of you have cried with me because you know.  You have called and you have written and you have prayed for me even when you do not know me, not really.

You have been Jesus to me.

And I weep because it is so beautiful, I do not know that I could ever trade these moments even for all the answers I ever wanted that did not come.  I am surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and it is you, dear friends, who cheer me on.  It is you, dear ones, who minister Christ to me in real hands and real feet and real tears that cry over my Lazarus-grave.

You have shown me Jesus.  I cannot wish for any other.

I am left with nothing more to say in my prayers but this: If this is what it takes to see Jesus, then let it be.

Beautiful Bones: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherood {22}

Chicken stock

The makings of something beautiful

Mrs. Smith has sent another chicken carcass over to my house.  It is meaty because Mrs. Smith isn’t  interested in the economics of meat the way I am.  She doesn’t mind doing a half-hearted job on a four-pound fryer, especially since she knows my children love the way she roasts chicken.  Something about the way she uses a half-stick of butter to baste it makes it taste better, they tell me.

Mrs. Smith saves her chicken bones for me because of Jonathan.  Once, when he was helping Mrs. Smith with some chores around her house, she asked him to throw away some chicken bones for her.

Jonathan was a little perplexed.  Those bones were a good two meals away from the trash can, and Jonathan thought he must have heard her wrong.  “Don’t you want to make soup out of it first?” he asked, agonizing over the benevolent bones.

Mrs. Smith was surprised.  “Oh, I can’t be bothered with that anymore,” she said.  Although, Jonathan knew Mrs. Smith could make a fine stock, back in the day when she used to sell lasagnas to her bosses for fifty dollars a pop.  “I used three different kinds of cheeses,” she explained, as if to justify their extravagant purchase.

Jonathan listened and considered what to do.  It was a very meaty chicken carcass.  There’s never that much meat left on a chicken that’s been served at our table.  Mrs. Smith hadn’t even touched one whole wing, and bits of white meat mocked him from the bones.

“Can I…can I bring this to my mom?”  he asked.

It had not even occurred to Mrs. Smith to save us her chicken bones.

Now, whenever Mrs. Smith roasts a chicken, which seems to be more often now that my husband is out of work, Mrs. Smith packs the leftovers in a casserole dish nestled inside of two grocery bags, paper on the inside, plastic on the outside, and calls Jonathan to come and get it.

Sometimes, she’s only taken a little bite out of one half and says she can’t eat any more, and we all marvel because it is completely ridiculous for a single woman to roast a whole chicken for herself.

But Mrs. Smith is not roasting it for herself.  She’s roasting it for us.

And Mrs. Smith tells Mrs. Greenlee that I make chicken stock out of the bones, and Mrs. Greenlee tells Mrs. Smith that I bake my own bread, and they both smile and nod and steel up their resolve to feed my children more cookies because they both know.

They know what it’s like to feed a family out of the scraps and the leftovers and the would-be discarded things.  They’ve both done it.  Nearly every mother from their generation did, not because it was fashionable but because it was necessary.

And while it might not be the most glorious thing, to pick through bones and skin, scavenging for some redeeming bit, they both know there’s a tremendous joy in that, in gathering up the parts that might have gone to waste and making something of it.

I feel that joy myself because I love redemption in any form.  I love it in a stock pot full of bones and discarded vegetable trimmings that could’ve been thrown to the compost pile but instead have been saved in the freezer for such a time as this.  I love it in the hands of Christ, breaking bread and serving not-enough fish to a crowd that ended up with plenty.  I love it in the call to sinners so broken, they can’t possibly be worth a thing.  Yet theirs is the Kingdom of God.

It is the leftover things, the scraps, the nothings that make up the beautiful story of the cross. It is the leftovers, the scraps, the nothings that allow me to nourish my children richly and deeply.  It is the leftovers, the scraps, the nothings that make up such a beautiful part of my day.

So on this beautiful day, as the rich stock simmers on my stove and the smell of garlic and onions makes me happy to be inside, I am thankful that nothing is lost.  Nothing is discarded.  Everything can be redeemed.

Today, I get to do a little redemptive work myself, transforming the broken bones into something good.  It is a small thing, but it is a godly thing.  And on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am happy for the small and godly things that speak of the truest parts of heaven.  Broken.  Cast off.

Redeemed.