Worship

The calm continuous rhythm plays from the stage as the light streams in just soft enough to see that it is day and just dim enough to close my eyes without reproach.What a beautiful sound that now resonates in my ears as my eyes close to the world and open to Gods profound presence.

All around me are Gods precious children, but with my eyes closed and my heart lifted by the notes from others lifting their praise to our father in heaven, I'm the only one He sees. There, in the midst of all the others, He sees me. The warmth and the gentle rush of his presence settles in as I sit in reverence of his glory, and there, on that small white chair, He speaks His love for me. Heavenly white noise streams softly now in the background and still, I hear only Him as He speaks to me soft and clear.

So much courage he gives me, as I ask Him who I am, and he speaks to me of how he made me. There, in the midst of everything around me, He speaks to my heart of the overabundant love he has for my soul.

Am I doing all right? Am I enough?, I ask as I sit in awe of His kindness to me.

His sweet answers fill my heart and make me light as if I’m floating just above the surface of the ground below. “Yes”, He says, “your doing just fine”, with a smile that stretches across his face so large it can’t be measured by any earthly rule. Knowing His promise to his beloved are gifts beyond what money can buy, I ask what gift I’m meant to receive. “Wisdom” he whispers, “the gift I wish to give you if your willing”.

Tears begin to run as the honor of his gift sinks deep within my heart, and with the confidence He gives me through His trust in me, I’m drawn to my feet, unworried and unaware of the ones around me. I feel a courage now that can only be from God and a strength so strong that I stand to honor His glory, when once upon a time the weight of shame may have kept me in my chair, unable to fully express my true gratitude.

So light hearted and so in love, I lift my hand as if to say this is the highest I can reach, but I will always reach for you. So empowered by His spirit and truth, I lift up my voice and begin to sing the praise of his holly name in sync with the ones around me.

So in love, I wish my voice could be sweeter, that my hands could lift higher or my heart could be bigger, yet He sweetly wipers I’m enough. His smile is so bright now as He looks upon His children gathered together to give Him thanks for the life He gave us. As the music ceases I am changed just slightly, as I always am in the presence of His sweet love. I am changed by the heaviness He lifts from my heart. I am changed by the courage He gives me by placing his armor upon my body and changed by the purpose he speaks of my life.

He is God and this is worship.

He is Love and He is holly, and this is why we lift our hands in praise to honor our creator.

It is to honor the one who is endlessly good, the one who knew us before we were even formed and the one who loves so passionately and sweet. It is not singing in unison for the sake of singing, not setting the mood, not entertaining the masses, but true reverence for our creator. This is worship. This is why we sing and lift our hands. This is why we praise His name through song. It is our beautiful expression of our true love and devotion to the one who always loves us no matter where we are. He is the beginning and the end. He is the creator of the universe and of our beating heart. He is our true love, my friend, and I will stand and sing for Him all the days of my life.

God Bless,

Lauren Rae Vopatek

Intelligence in the Eyes of The Maker

As I sit with my thought, and take a closer look at the unique qualities of each and every person that I call my friends and family, I always delight in their unique and amazing qualities. Each person in my life has a different and unique talent or ability that makes them so special and meaningful in my life. Each one has an intelligence that sets them apart from each other, and yet each one, on some occasion or another, has believed themselves to be unintelligent.

What is intelligence really though? The dictionary says its the ability to easily comprehend. It says that an intelligent person has the capacity for thought and reason especially in a high degree. The capacity for thought and reason it says. Does it say for what though? Does it say that someone is intelligent if they have the capacity for thought and reason about a specific thing or subject, and that only then can they be considered intelligent? No. It doesn't. Why, then, does our society make us to believe that some are intelligent and others aren't, depending on the things they can think and reason about? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can ramble off spelling words in a spelling bee? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can multiply and divide faster than you can say your name? Who knows?

Why then does the world have an obsession with trying to classify our intelligence, forcing us into little boxes that ultimately are supposed to classify our future and our worth? Do you think when God designed us he said I am going to make this person way more intelligent because I wanted him to be way more successful at life. No. He created everyone uniquely to edify the body of christ. (Romans 12)

With out the fingers the hand suffers and cannot do the work its meant to do. Without feet the legs cannot balance. With out the body the head can’t move and without the head the body is lost. So, which part is more important? Is it the head, the foot, or the finger? We can ask this same question with ourselves. Are we more important if our degree that we hold is in finance or in art? Which person is more intelligent. Is it the one that has the capacity to produce organization out of a chaotic mess of numbers? Or, is it the person that can create beauty out of something that we never even knew had the capacity to be beautiful. Is it the person that can recite history and facts easier than you can tie your shoes or is it the person that can organize a home in a split second of a thought? Is it the person who thinks of new and innovative ideas to change the world, or is it the person who helps them to organize their thoughts and make them into a realistic view?

Can you pick? Can you really classify these people into little boxes and rate them on a scale? Then why do we try? The outcome can only be production of people who strive to find worth in a classification that cannot even be defined. The evils of our world have created a mess of intertwined systems to inherently make people feel unworthy and not good enough, when in reality we were created by God with a purpose far greater than what our systems can define. We are all intelligent. We were all made special and unique by God himself to edify his body. We were not a mistake. (Psalm 139 15-16)

I realized this just recently when I thought of how many times I or my friends and family have felt unintelligent by the classifications of this world. The world says to me on occasion, “you are a hairstylist so you must be too unintelligent for college or a real Job, when in reality that is far more false than one can even begin to know. Hairstylists are uniquely gifted with an ability misunderstood by many. We have been entrusted with the intelligence to make people feel on the outside how they know or hope they feel on the inside. We have the unique gift of intelligence in the field of design, shaping millions of tiny strands of hair into structures others marvel at and structures that in turn make people feel beautiful. I can't tell you the amount of times I have heard lawyers, doctors and politicians say, “wow, what you do is amazing and I would never be able to create that”, and yet I also could not tell you how many time I have seen the pretentious stairs of judgement when my profession is brought down to the level of dirt. How then, can we feel justified in classifying people by their Jobs status, degrees or intelligence?

Our society insists through these classifications that some people are dumb, some people’s professions are not worthy, and the things they are good at is some how not good enough.

I almost ager at times when I realize what destruction these systems of colleges and rankings in degrees cause to the human heart and sole. Not to say that college is wrong, obtaining a degree is pointless and having a good job doesn't matter, but to say that these things should not classify our worth as individuals. I love learning, college is fantastic and being able to work in a field your passionate about through consistent education and training is amazing, but to make it a goal to prove your worth will be a means with no end.

How sad that the world has succumb to making each other feel unworthy of our own unique gifts, by means of flimsy pieces of paper with black ink that says degree and an underlying message that whispers failure to all that do not possess it. How sad that we wander thru life trying to receive our worth from a piece of paper and prove our worth by our title, but how joyful that there is another way.

God says we don't have too. He says we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:15-16). He says “for you are my treasured possession ( Exodus 19:5). We were created in his image (Genesis 1:27), and so we are loved for who we are by our creator. We are wonderfully made and in all our glory we are loved and unique despite what our world tells us and despite what the evils of this life try so hard to make us believe. In His eyes, our intelligence is beyond what even we can comprehend, and only through relationship with Him can we truly know the full extent of the amazing potential we possess.

The Romance of God

Lost in a sea of sadness on Valentines, I found myself broken hearted. I found myself upset, overreact-full, and melancholy beyond what I had even imagined I would be. Not only was I feeling the bitter sting of insignificance, but the strong resentment of past love and a past life. I found myself at the core of my being believing how insignificant the devil of this world so desperately wants me to feel.

It began with a small attack on my personal space as I arrived at work only to find my locker ajar, my things carelessly moved about as if to say you are nothing, your space here doesn't matter and your insignificance hear is uncanny. Insignificance is my struggle and realizing it right away, that my overreaction came from a vulnerable spot in my heart, I put it away to revisit it later when my work day was done.

Guests came in and out. Stylists busily did their jobs of taking good care of the patrons in the salon, leading them around and seating them in their designated spot, pouring champagne, spoiling them for valentines, providing an act of service to make them feel beautiful and taken care of. As I graciously blow dried my guests hair into polished perfection to make her feel beautiful, I realized not only was I serving her but I was giving her my quality time. Genuinely excited for her wedding plans coming along nicely and exotic weekend trips I realized how loved and taken care of each women in that salon must have felt when leaving, haven been listened to and made to feel beautiful. It was at that very moment though, that I also realized how unloved I was feeling and how insignificant I truly felt.

Lunch time came before I knew it, and the planning for the evening began. The offer to be taken out for Valentines was on the table and for some reason I still felt dismissed. I had for some reason no desire to go out to eat on Valentines day. My suggestion to cook was shot down in a tizzy of no one in the mood for dinner at home on Valentines, and out of some dark place in my heart, anxieties and emotions began to rise. I began to remember a time when my heart of hearts was destroyed. It was stolen once for years and held captive never giving it a chance to beet or even feel the warmth of love. I saw my past, my youth, stolen by those who continuously reminded me that what I thought was insignificant, that what I wanted didn't matter and that love was not something I would ever be allowed to experience.

My flash back was to a time when I was never loved in a way I so desperately needed to be loved, to a time when I was so charmingly brainwashed into thinking no one would ever love me as much as I was already loved. These exact words, which so apparently meant from the circumstances in which I was treated, that no one would ever love me at all.

Devastated and heartbroken by the thoughts of the day, I began to drive home. Memories flashed like a movie through my head; memories of dinners being offered in a gesture of love but in essence forced into paying for them by manipulation. Forced into overwhelming debt to restaurants and clubs by a partner in life never allowing me to contribute my innate sense of financial wisdom, a partner that convinced me that the only way that I was ever going to be loved was if I used borrowed money to pay for non existent quality time. A partner who would take me to dinner on my line of credit proceeding to ignore me as he talked business on the phone. I ate silently for years in cold, loud and dark restaurants in which I had no opinion in picking and no choice in going. I ate anxiously for years in restaurants not of my choice and exorbitantly out of our combined parameters of wealth, wanting desperately to allow this man in my life to lead me and love me. Yet, as the meal was done, the only place I had been lead too was down a silent weary path of misery, debt and destruction.

I realized, that a genuine offer of love by my friends, who I hold with high esteem and love, to take me to dinner on this very Valentines day was destroyed because a place in my past had so intrusively surfaced out of the depths of my heart where I didn't even know it still existed. My past was haunting my present and blocking me from receiving genuine love that I knew God so desperately wanted me to see.

Not only did I feel the sadness from the lack of love I once experience but feelings of anger were evoked in my heart. Anger that I not only never had someone love me in a way I needed to be loved but that I somehow now was being blocked from accepting love that was being given to me.

As I drove in my furry, tears streaming from my soIe, I cried out to God and asked Him why. I asked him,” Why cant I just feel loved? Why cant I allow myself to forget the past and will I ever trust again? I asked in desperation, “God, am I too scarred, too ruined or too insignificant to feel loved?”

In that moment, driving over the bridge that stretches over the bay separating the island I work on from the beach that I reside in, He spoke to me. He said, “ I made something for you, look.” And I looked up out of my terry eyes and saw the soft pink sky. I saw the shadows of the palms stretching across the horizon and the snow capped mountains in the distance. My eye caught the glimmer of the slightly fading sun as it glimmered on the water in the bay beneath my vehicle. It was magnificent. Boats stretching as far as my eyes could see on water so blue you could only describe it as heavenly. “Look”, He said again, “I made this for you. I took the time to make something I knew you would love, and then give it to you in a way in which you would see it and enjoy it every day. I made a living portrait for you that changes day to day as you drive back and forth to work.” He said. “I knew how much you love to gaze into the sky and how much you love the water and the palms and the mountains and the sunsets, so I took the time to make this for you. I took the time to work it out so that you would see this divine creation every time you drive to work.

I starred and listened in aw. Is God really talking to me right now. I thought? Is this for real; am I making this up? His voice again clear and calm, “turn off and follow me to the Jetty and watch the sunset I have made for you,” and so I did. Parking on the side of the street, I walked down to the small hill to the beach that rests just a few blocks west of my house. I watched as the glorious sun met the water just past the island of Catalina and just next to the skyline of shadowed buildings and twinkling lights. I watched the sun romance the water with colors beyond describing as if it were painted with the most supernatural of mediums. Its as if the glorious sun gently kissed the calm blue water with such a passion that the suns beaming Joy was naturally absorbed and reflected by the waters soft and gentle waves. As the sky darkened, it was if the sun whispered to the waves, “come and be alone with me in the darkness and the still of the night.” I heard Him again say “this is how I love you, just as you desire to be loved, with a genuine act of service to you and a genuine gift of my time. Let me be the one to love you and you will never know hurt like you felt in this world. Trust in me and I will love you how I know you want and need to be loved, because I designed you. I know every hair on your precious head and I created you with a plan in mind and knew you even in the womb.

Walking back to my car In my flurry of thoughts I pondered this magnificent yet hard to believe vision in my head. Could I truly be loved so wonderfully and unconditionally? I started my car and my heart began to feel light and a tear began to role down my face. I was morning. I was in morning of a life I once lead. I was gently being delivered from a cavern in my heart I had never thought to ever revisit. It had been pulled up and out of my heart like a full screen movie in all of its entirety. It was a movie that to re-watch took courage and to forget took God. As I watched the last seen of Gods love for me ending in such a dramatic loving romance, I knew it was over, and I morned the memory with tears of lament, morning what had been done to my precious heart but also delighting in the true healing I had to look forward to from my one true love, the all mighty creator of earth itself, God, the designer of the universe and maker of my sole.

P.S Thank you for a wonderful dinner.

Stormy Days

As the rain continues, it’s hard to believe that it will ever cease. The continuous downpour of water has a tendency to start to make ones spirit slightly melancholy as the sun is covered with grey murky fog shadowing everything on land. The fact that it just hasn’t stopped since it started weeks ago makes it seem like the end is not ever to come. I want to believe that there will be some crack in the sky or some glimmer of sun that shines thru those dark murky clouds, but my hope seems faint like the whisper of a mouse. I try to reminisce on the days when dry land and sun was an overabundant commonality, but as the rain pours down it seems to blur my memory of what once was good and what will be good again.

With memories blurred and hope faint I know I must press on. I know that if I give up life is lost. I know that if I give in to the downpour of life than I will have nothing left, so I will press on. I will take up my armor (Ephesians 6:13) and I will put on my rain coat. I will be thankful for my rain boots and the dry roof over my head. I will be thankful for my friends who are in it along with me. I will be thankful because I know I’m not the only one with wet shoes and cold feet and my soaking wet friends understand me even without me saying a word.

So, I will stand in the rain with my raincoat, and I will let it pore down. I will endure because I know I am protected. I will endure because I know others are enduring and have endured the same. I will endure because I know one day the sun will shine and all will be well and I will look back at the days of the storm and be strengthened in spirit at the fact that I was able to endure when I never knew I could.

Lauren Vopatek

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie (Wikipedia).

I don’t think that anyone particularly likes a hypocrite, although I think at some point in our lives we have all succumb to the temptation to indulge in judging another for something that you yourself are guilty of. At some point I think we have all paraded ourselves around like we have done no wrong when clearly we all have done wrong at some point in our lives. Why then, do we say one thing and do another? Why do we lie and then shame our friends and neighbors for it? Why do we eat and drink and then judge another in their indulgent behaviors? What is wrong with us? We lie, cheat, steel, gossip and then look to another with our nose in the air; we murder hate and covet in our hearts, but our mouths place blame and ridicule on others.

It is almost as if it is a sickness, a disease, or an active virus living inside that twist our thoughts to attack someone else’s character. It’s like a sickness that starts in one and is passed to another, attacking you from the inside out and progressively getting worse until the illness takes over leaving nothing left or true of the human character.

Are we all just sick then, and are we slowly drowning in our impending doom? Is that why we feel such an urge to drag others down, because this spreading virus within is gripping at our feet? Could it be that the only thing we can think of to keep us afloat is to grab hold of someone else that seems to be staying afloat despite this crushing disease epidemic? A raft we think. Something to save us from our misery , not a human being but a raft that we would do anything to get so we can somehow, for just a moment, be pulled from our own misery and float on someone else’s feelings.

The thing is, though, we are all drowning in this world of the sick and trying to float on another who is drowning just like you, is never going to keep your head above water. So then what do we do when the urge to criticize creeps in even though we know the consequences of our judgements sink us so low we feel as if we would never get out?

Grab on to Jesus. He says grab on, take my coat tails, my feet and my hands and I will pull you up. I will not let you drowned because I came with my life vest and I am here to save (Acts 5:30-32). He says follow me to the path that leads to everything good. He says I am your life raft, take hold because there's room for everyone. Take hold, because the wages of sin is death but through Jesus there is forgiveness and life. (Romans 6:23) Take hold because the love he has for your life is more that you can even imagine (Romans 5:8). Take hold he says, and don’t forget your neighbor sinking along side, pull him with you on the raft of life, because the path to healing is not made for one but for all. The path for life and truth is open to all who desire it. So grab on he says, follow me, I will show you the way and you will be saved.

Lauren Vopatek

Idle Hands

Why do we become so lazy sometimes? Why is it that some days, some weeks, and some months the things we have to do become like mountains that are waiting to be climbed? Where do those certain days or even years of completely avoiding all that you know you should do come from?

I think back sometimes to a time when I was a teenager and all I wanted to do was what I wanted to do, even if it meant grounding or even jail. As a teenager we seem to almost ignore the consequences of our actions. We drank underage and bought cigarettes with fake IDS. We saw rated R movies behind our parents back and snuck out past curfew. We bought the music they said was not appropriate, we went to places that were forbidden and even wore the things they thought we’d never even dream of wearing. We rebelled. We did it because we wanted to test the waters, see what we could get away with, and find out how many bad choices we could choose without fully reaping the consequences.

In our adult lives are we still rebelling? Is our avoidance of our bills and work and exercise a rebellion, still testing the waters to see how many bad choices we can make before we drowned?
Why do we naturally want to test the waters and do our own thing? Why do we have such a hard time just turning off that tv show to go for a walk. Why do we have such a hard time picking up our stuff when it would be so easy to put it away as soon as you were done. Why do we eat chips and a soda for dinner when making dinner would be so much healthier for our bodies?

Our natural disobedience is naturally causing our own demise. Our inclination to disobey is making it harder on ourselves when we choose the things in which we know will ultimately be bad for us. If we choose TV over walking, how much harder is it to walk when your hart doesn’t know how to pump fast anymore? When our bills and papers and cloths are piling high how much harder is that project to tackle when you finally do? When we eat chips for dinner and never learn the simplicity of cooking thru continual practice, how much harder is it to learn later on when the pounds of laziness sneak up on your once small frame.

We rebel because it’s human nature to want to do our own thing. God gave us the free will to choose our destiny but sometimes we choose poorly. We prize our time as a precious commodity and rather not fill it with things that were told to do. In the end, our disobedience is the thing that robs us most of our time because what once was a small pile of bills is now a mountain too daunting to climb. What was once a few cloths to launder is now a sea that were slowly sickening to the bottom of, and that clean and pure heart that once ran so well is now clogged and slowing needing to be fully detailed jumpstarted flushed and rebooted.

So is there hope for the mess we have created and the mountains we have put in our path? I think so. Jesus says “because of laziness the building decays and through idleness of hands the house leaks” (Ecclesiastes 10:18) Everything crumbles when laziness creeps in but he gives us a promise of hope. He says , “And you He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, In which you once walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and or the mind and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others, but God who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together in Christ ( by grace you have been saved) and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:1

So, if we ignore our pride (proverbs 11:2), be obedient to the words of wisdom and just do the things we continually put off, only good can come. And, if you have already created a mountain don’t worry God Forgives you and says he’s there to help if you trust that he will.

Lauren Vopatek

Thank you, Alex and Abby for your amazing contributions. Ps I wish Rice Crispys would pick up themselves.

The Path of Life

On the path of life, the search for the right road is always a struggle, but when that right road is finally discovered it brings about a new set of challenges. This road of truth and life is sometimes slightly bumpy. There are potholes and snares haphazardly placed like a devised plot to make us stumble. There are sharp thorns strewn about carelessly that pierce our skin and make us bleed, sometimes draining every last bit of life out of out frail bodies. There are narrow straights that seem almost impossible to squeeze through and wide open spaces that make following the right road a hard one to choose. And, with all of these things, there can even come a time where the bridge to where you know you need to be is temporarily out of service and the only way across is with a helping hand.

Our road, when traveled alone, can be a daunting task with all of these traps and distractions, but with community there is hope. Without road mates, who would be there to warn you when a pothole is about to make you stumble or release you when you fall into a perfectly set trap? Who would be there to pull out your thorn when it’s pierced you so deeply that the internal wound just continues to bleed? Who would be there when the only way down the road is to lean on someone’s shoulder until your wound has fully healed?

This is why we have community. The people who we invest in and live life closely with are the ones who get us to the finish line. They are the ones who push us when we think the road just seems too hard to walk and the ones that keep us on track when our path becomes wide open with endless distractions. With community, those small narrow parts of the road seem to widen, and the choices of which direction to take become clear. As we walk this life with others the stronger we become. Our wounds heal faster, our discernment gets sharper and our survival rate is dramatically increased. With many we are strong, but with one we are week. It is written in the Holy handbook for life that, “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” Romans 12:4-5

In the end our path we choose may be the upright and righteous one, but alone we are not strong enough to walk it. Without the whole fully functioning body working together for the ultimate good of each other we will never reach our goal on the one true path of life.

Lauren Rae Vopatek