Winter Survival Tips

It's snowing a lot, everyone.

And it's cold.

For some reason, even though they're covered in fur, cats seem to crave warmth even more than humans. Which is why I decided to observe my cat, Penelope (aka Penny Lopes aka Penny aka Muffin Top), to find out the best ways to keep warm this winter. And because I know you, World, need to stay warm, too, I've decided to share with you what I've observed.

Eh-heh-heh-hem.

The Top 10 Best Ways to Keep Warm This Winter (from Penelope):

1. Become one with fire. In cat world, giving someone your belly means giving him your trust. Here Penelope demonstrates relinquishing herself to the flame in hopes that fire will be her best ally this winter. She's a brave and crafty politician.

2. Use electric blankets. Leave just enough space for your nose holes to take in oxygen, but otherwise cover every possible exposed surface.

3. Cats like a little more booty to hold at night. What's warmer than another living creature? If you don't have a spouse to cuddle with, try a sibling or a household pet (but not a goldfish). Penelope often chooses my bum (as pictured here).

4. Use warm liquids. Here Penny has snuggled into the sink after I'd been running warm water. I usually choose to drink hot tea or coffee instead, but if you can fit into the sink and you find that that works for you, I will not judge you. Winter makes us do crazy things.

5. Work. Movement helps elevate your body temperature. Or, if you have a desk job, like Penelope does I guess, try usurping the heat from your computer by napping on its keyboard.

6. Use heating pads. Heating pads work best when you can snag one that somebody else was using but left behind to go to the bathroom. Here Penelope capitalized on her cute-and-fluffiness to retain what she'd stolen. (SHE'S SO FLUFFY.)

7. Treat every blanket like it's your blanket. If you pass up an opportunity to lie on a blanket, you might never see another blanket. Take every chance you get. That blanket is there for you.

8. Gift yo'self. If the cold becomes too unbearable, you can try giftbasketting yourself to someone in the south. Here Penelope lacked the proper postage to make it to Florida, so she took a nap.

9. Read a good book. Something about adventure or romance or comedy or mystery takes the edge off of winter and makes you feel all toasty inside. Penelope prefers to read the Bible, but sometimes she gets a little too toasty and takes a nap.

10. Enjoy the beauty. Yes, it's cold, but it is also lovely. Enjoy it from the warmth of your own kitchen basket if you can't work up the courage to go outside.

Happy winter, everyone!

Magnificat

My little niece Annabelle and I sat in her living room, playing with her new Legos. They were zoo Legos, with a monkey and a bird and a lion. I kept building flowers and putting them in different places in the zoo and she kept taking them apart and telling me that that's not where they go.

Well, at least she has vision.

After a few minutes of playing, Annabelle grabbed the empty Lego box and set it in front of her, sighing over the pictures of all the other Lego sets she didn't have. 

"I wish I had these," she said, resting her little chin on her little hand and scanning all the pictures with her big blue eyes.

"But you have these," I countered, building another illegal flower and sneaking it behind one of the zoo trees.

"I know," she said, still scanning jealously, "but I don't have these."

"Well some little girls don't have any of them--"

She looked up at me with wide eyes. 

"--so maybe we could be grateful for what we do have?"

She spotted my flower and plucked it from its spot (I thought I had hidden it so well!) and told me that she was trying to be nice and didn't want to hurt my feelings, but that's not where the flowers go.

I sat back as she reorganized her zoo and wondered why we all can't just be thankful for what we have.

When I think about being thankful, my mind automatically meanders through all of the ways I've been told to cultivate thankfulness throughout the years. Like taking 15-minute prayer walks every day to tell God what you're thankful for, or making lists every day of the things you're thankful for, or reading that book 1,000 Gifts where the author sounds very poetic but in the end I don't really understand half the stuff she's talking about.

Recently I have been thinking that thankfulness must be more than just an ability to see how much you have. Because what if you lose it all? Or what if you really don't have that much? Or what if you know how much you have, but you still feel discontented?

Thankfulness must mean something more than that. Thankfulness must be something deeper. Soul-deep.

"I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the LORD." - Psalm 116:17

Here is this verse that I have been growing to love, because in this verse, David gets it. He gets that we are all greedy little discontented beings, the whole lot of us, and because it is our human nature to always want more, to be thankful is a sacrifice.

A sacrifice is usually something that doesn't come easily to us; something that costs us something. We sacrifice our time through volunteering or helping our neighbors move or babysitting for free. We sacrifice our money by donating or tithing or picking up the tab at lunch. Sacrifice usually means doing something when we would rather do something else.

In Luke 1, Mary is told that she will give birth to the Messiah.

Hello.

If there is anything that will pile heaps and heaps of life-long responsibility onto your shoulders and require an entire mindset shift and break your heart with the agony that is to come, it's being the mother of the Lamb who will be slaughtered and save the world through the shedding of His blood.

But here is Mary's response:

"And Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.'" - Luke 1:46-47

Mary offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving. And her thanksgiving is not a list of what she has, but a list of who God is.

She delights in God Himself.

This is what I have been missing.

I try to counter my list of the things that are going wrong with a list of the things that are going right, but the reassurance that that offers will never last me very long. What I need is God Himself.

"When you come to any promise or any other part of Scripture, look at it and through it to God Himself who makes the promise, before it applies to you. And let yourself see Him, dwell on Him, the God behind these promises. Let yourself linger with this God." - John Piper

I do think it's important to be aware of how much you have been given. The blessings of health or warmth or safety or family or income or a new car or your favorite food or a good job or good friends. It's important to see what good things we have in our lives and not take them for granted.

However, I think the sacrifice of thanksgiving becomes joy to us when we delight more in who God is than in what He gives. Because thanksgiving is what brings us into the presence of God (Psalm 95:2), and in God's presence there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11).

And I want to get much better at that type of thanksgiving.

the Bible is not an option

Our server at Olive Garden had a pretty elaborate tattoo on his arm as he grated the cheese over our salad. Jesus on a cross with a lot of scripture from Philippians. It took up his entire right forearm.

Let's call him Jay. He was nice, so my friend Lauren and I had no problem becoming friends with him. By the end of the night he had given us pretty much an entire bag of Andes mints.

As the restaurant began to empty, Jay swept the floors beside our table and asked us what we did for a living. Lauren answered first about her job at the chiropractor's office. Then when he looked at me, I told him with a partial-smile that I was basically in the process of figuring all of that out.

Funny how being openly confused about your life opens up opportunity for other people to feel safe in being openly confused about their lives, too.

Jay shared about how he grew up Catholic but got saved at a Southern Baptist church with his wife. After their divorce, however, he sank into a life of drugs and alcohol and ended up in prison.

He knelt beside our table and lowered his voice. "When you spend months in solitary confinement," he said, "you have a lot of time to get bitter. But you have a lot of time to do some searching, too. And when all you have is the Bible, you figure some things out."

I wanted to scoot over in my booth and ask him to sit down and tell us more about what he was figuring out. But his boss was peering through some fake plants around the corner, so Jay apologized for taking up our time and scurried off to sweep some more floors.

I've been thinking about the church a lot recently. The church in all its variations across America and the world. And then I think about Jay in solitary confinement with his Bible, and how now he's involved in AA and working two jobs and going to school and seeking the Lord.

I once heard a pastor ask the question from the pulpit, "Is there any more important time during your week than the 70 minutes you spend in church?"

I had shifted uncomfortably in my seat, wanting to raise my hand and say, "Yes, yes there is," but I didn't.

Oh, my friends, we are missing it.

I love the church: big church, small church, house church, mega church, church plants, missional communities. So many good things are done through so many different avenues and the name of Jesus is being preached.

I would love for Jay to get plugged in to a church, to be discipled, to find community, to grow with others and be encouraged and challenged by a body of believers. But his transformation began in solitary confinement with nothing but a Bible and the Holy Spirit. 

Transformation comes through opening the Word of God and letting the Holy Spirit speak through it to change your heart. It is feeding your mind with His words. Every day. Over and over. Again and again and again. Repeat.

You do not become more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled simply by walking in and out of the church building every weekend. You don't go in dirty and come out clean. It is not a carwash.

"We should be able to say every year, 'I am more loving, peaceful, joyful, patient, kind, and gentle than I was last year.' If we can't honestly say that, then we are not growing." - Neil T. Anderson

How many of us are missing this. How many of us are sitting passively by, letting preachers preach at us, watching worship leaders entertain us, drinking coffee in our seats for 70 minutes every weekend and feeling like we are better people because of it. Like we got what we came for and we're good to go for the rest of the week until next time.

I am often guilty of this.

My friend Lauren and I stood out in Olive Garden's dark parking lot for a couple of hours talking about these things, so I have lots of words I could very passionately write here, but I won't. Maybe later I will. Maybe I won't. I don't know; there's a lot.

But here's what I will say, here is what I am learning, here is what I am challenging you and me with: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Put yourself in solitary confinement on purpose. Memorize the Word of God. Tuck His words into your heart and repeat them to yourself and to others. Cling to His promises. Know God's truth and use God's truth as a weapon against the ways Satan will try to trick you.

You will not be transformed by watching others. You will not be transformed by observing. You will not be transformed by shaking the preacher's hand and saying, "Good sermon today, Pastor."

Pick up your Bible. Open it. Read it. Digest it. And be transformed.

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. - Jesus (John 17:17) 

And Psalty the Singing Songbook is here to help, too:

 

lo, the storms of life are breaking

How many times have those of us who've grown up in the church heard and read this passage, at Good Friday and Easter and probably even Christmas. But could you take a moment to read it again? Slowly? Maybe even out loud? To your dog or your fish or just to the air?

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. - Isaiah 53:10-11

I was sitting on the deck watching planes fly overhead and thinking about these words. Crush. Grief. Anguish of soul. I have felt these words in my heart. Really, really felt them. Have you?

These words here are talking about Jesus, the Son of God. He felt these words in His heart. I suddenly felt closer to Him, like I perhaps understood just a tiny bit more of His heart, and that He understood the whole of mine.

But then here's where our two hearts feeling the same feelings collided to make me sit up and stop watching planes.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.

Ah, how differently my mind winds around the concept of grief when I view it as something that has come from the hand of the Lord Himself. How much more intimate grief feels, how much more intentional, like an artist meticulously renovating the inside of a cathedral rather than an invading army attacking from the outside.

Perhaps affliction is not just a "detour" in which God chooses to bring good out of unintended bad. Perhaps, instead, affliction is the most meaning-filled, purpose-filled, significant road God has designed for us to travel to bring us to Him, a road already well-traveled by the Son of God.

Because God's call to holiness is a journey, and it is over difficult terrain, and it is full of sacrifice.

Yes.

But God's call to holiness is a journey to be closer to Him, a call to rid yourself of that which keeps you from Him, and a promise that He is already in the place He is calling you to, He is familiar with the road He is asking you to travel, and He is traveling it right beside you.

Therefore, as Alistair Begg told me over the radio in my car this afternoon, when we ask in affliction, "What are you doing, God?" we can know that the answer is, "I'm going to make you like Jesus."

My child, I'm going to make you like Jesus, my very own Son, whom I crushed and put to grief so that YOU and all who trust Him would be accounted righteous.

The result of Jesus' affliction was the salvation of our souls.

What then shall be the result of our affliction?

That is my prayer, to have that perspective always, to trust in His sovereignty, and I ask for grace to pray it more honestly. 

Father, refine me in the fire of affliction so that I may look more like Jesus. May I not beg for it to stop, the pounding in my ears from being hammered into Your likeness, but instead cling to the sound of Your assurance that You are answering me, saving me, fighting for me, that You will not abandon my soul, and that You have been here before me and will see me through it.

These sermons have just been so good and I recommend them:
Called to Suffer and Rejoice by John Piper
A Purpose and a Promise by Andy Stanley
My Times Are in Your Hands by Alistair Begg