The Christian believer has a new identity as a Christ follower. Their life is now connected with the Christ life. This series on spiritual transformation guides us through that process of ‘becoming’ like Christ. In many ways it is similar to a metamorphosis where lasting change becomes a form of new beginnings.
Post 1: Spiritual Transformation, Part 1 of 5
Post 2: Spiritual Transformation, Part 2 of 5
Post 3: Spiritual Transformation, Part 3 of 5
Pain goes deep. We all have a story. Be they complicated or simple, our stories are teachers. Jane aka Nightbirde, singer-songwriter, lives with tremendous suffering. The following quote is an excerpt from a blog post.
I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty…I am God’s downstairs neighbor. I show up at His door every day. . . But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: ‘I’m sad too.'”
Nightbirde
*Read the full post here: God is on the Bathroom Floor.
I don’t know most of your stories, but we can identify with the rawness of life in what she’s written. Most of us have been traumatized by the pandemic, what’s going on in America, and the changing of life as we knew it.
Has good come from the bad?
I was impacted by sheltering in place. I was home alone for months. I lost my confidence. I retreated from people—out of necessity, but it left me feeling unsettled. My brain got foggy. I didn’t feel or act like myself.
What good has come from the months of sheltering in place?
-I started praying in earnest from America and the world—every Wednesday for an hour. I invited a friend and others to join me. We’re still praying.
-I took a risk. I wrote three articles for the local paper, and two of them were published. I’d been too intimidated to do that before the pandemic.
-God kept me, and He kept my friend, M. J. We talked on the phone every Friday for two to three hours. We both needed it.
Nothing is wasted in God’s economy. God doesn’t waste any experience in our lives. When we lose our way, there is always a way back. What is true for all of us, post pandemic, is we are more grateful. The ordinary is no longer as ordinary. We are happy to see each other. We are enlivened by simply going to the store. God has sustained us and is still sustaining us.
Nightbirde performed for America’s Got Talent in June, 2021. She shines with an extraordinary glow. Every time I watch this video it impresses me with its beauty. Let her words bless you as she sings, “It’s Ok.”
I end with this.
God has a way of shining His light in the darkness and sometimes that light is brilliant. Nightbirde is living a raw journey where God is her central reality, and it shows.
God can and will do the same for each of us.
Father God,
Thank you that You never give up on anybody. Thank you that Christ is the answer to our heart need. Thank you for Your loving-kindness and tenderness to us. We love You.
In Christ’s name,
Amen
_____
Quotes from Nightbirde
“It’s all right to be lost sometimes.”
“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”
“It’s important that everyone knows I am so much more than the bad things that happen to me.”
“Teach my heart to hope—expecting good things to happen, instead of fearing the future by expecting bad things to happen.
Something beautiful, something good.
All my confusion, He understood.
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife.
But He made something, beautiful out of my life.
Bill Gaither
HOME PAGE: SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION
Photo by Suhail Kapoor, Unsplash
