Tag: Amazing Grace

Art Bus Project {Roll With It Baby}

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

What will it look like to look out from the inside, out past the self, into the eyes of the others, and open the heart to love with Jesus’ love through art?

And creativity. And joy. And with new paradigms for spreading the gospel?

Or newer for this writer. But isn’t He a God of new each time.  Doesn’t he create, and re-create, and make all things. new.

The tools are willing hearts, a big bus, a little bus, bubbles, a grill, and art supplies.  I imagine. I don’t  know all the details. There are ways in which the trip, which starts  (or continues) for me tomorrow, is still evolving. But I need only know He loves and lovingly provides. Resting in His provision with each turn of a plane wheel, or bus tire, its all we really need.

The adventure is in the stepping out, and into, and onto, and with, and beside. It’s following. With the spirit  leading the way. Trust bending the head in gentle agreement, yes we are on board. Yes, we hear this call.  Yes, we know He has a plan. And it is good.  It always is.  It always was.  

It’s  in imagining how The Creator will and does lovingly use creativity to reach and speak and draw in with love. Everytime there is love.

So here for the next six days I will share everything I can about this studio with a mission.

This art bus. The one that we are rolling with.

The one we are riding on. Weaving our way from Brooklyn to Charleston.

We know a little, we don’t know a lot.

But we know and love the One that does know. Oh, He knows the plans, His plans for a colorful, joyful, creative ministry. And when we step out and trust and watch as He reveals, we will be blessed observers and participants in His kindgom plans for a string of souls, the ones that He will love and who will love us along the way.

Isn’t the story still being written.  Mine is.

Doesn’t He ask us to be willing vessels. We know that no one will be more blessed than those going to serve.  Those intending to be used by God to bless, will in fact receive the blessings. With humility. Honored to have any role at all.  That he would trust and entrust with anything of even small importance to Him.  Loving and reaching His children.

We hope not to waste any chance along the way, on the ride. To stay alert and awake and sensitive to His whispers of how and when and where to go. When to speak and when to listen.

If you are following here for the next six days, thank you for your interest and your prayers. And if you have friends who want to ride along on these pages here, invite.(And follow along here too.)

And we will watch with expectant hearts to see colorful joy spread in a stroke of His love down the eastern seaboard.

Oh the privilege of being a part. Oh the joy in being in a community on a bus with a mission, along for the ride, as The Creator creates a story of art displayed in love for Him.

May all the Glory and Honor be His.

Counting Gifts with Ann, at A Holy Experience.

*Attending my niece’s graduation with my daughter…. oh the family time. Oh the bread , doesn’t it always accompany a celebration.  The joy surrounding this milestone was oozing out for days.  So grateful to be a part and to have a wellspring of memories of laughing and remembering.

*A long, very long visit with a childhood friend whom I hadn’t seen, really seen and talked with at length, for over 24 years. For laughter in the restaurant that drew stares and remarks. The remarks of one bystander caused me to realize anew how valuable and even priceless this friendship is.

*Sitting with wisdom and hearing new insight into a parent struggle. Regaining and reclaiming hope to shift somethings. Replenished reserves of hope leading to optimism and new beginnings for leading and encouraging differently.

*Time with my daughter on a recent trip, the getting reaquainted time after a very long school year which kept her so busy.

*Getting on a plane tomorrow with her to walk out in Faith this art bus project

*Going to Brooklyn with her to shop, have lunch, explore before we begin the true ministry portion of the trip.

*Plans for lots of time as a family in our beloved moutains at the old family home.  Memories to be made and savored and secured under the roof with three generations.  A huge gift.

Linking up with these fine ladies today, Michelle, Ann, and Laura

Eyes To See Like He Sees

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 10 Comments

{Today I am linking up over at Lisa Jo’s for some fun on Friday. Today we are writing for five minutes on the word prompt see. No editing, no over thinking, just writing for five minutes. Come see what the fun is all about at The Gypsy Mama’s blog. Ready, go, write}

I see him there.  Yes right there working through this preparation to go off to camp, no its not off to war.  We had dinner with a friend this week, he’d just gotten that call.  You know the dreaded one, his nephew had just been shot in Afghanistan.  No its not that.

The eyes of my head see the mess, the struggle, the confusion, the ADHD still there tangling up the processes of life.

Messy messes and turmoil.  No organization.  Upheaval.  The eyes of my heart know that it is this.

I have seen this for years now, how it challenges and entangles and strangles.

Today he leaves for camp and I will see through blurry eyes a child soon to be a man, in months now, walking out the door to be a counselor, to help others.

And I know that when he walks back in the door I will see transformation and change. I will see maturity and new talents and experiences that have jumped on his back for the trip back home.

But more than anything while he is gone, I want to learn to see him through the eyes of God.  To see past and through and deeply down into his inner places of hurt and pain, the way God sees.

Kingdom eyes please give me the eyes to see like You.

STOP

The Waiting Rock

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

I am a child.  It is one of my first memories.  I sit on a rock, the one I have named, the waiting rock.

Out in the country at my grandparents home, I am four waiting for my parents to pick me up after a visit.  It is fuzzy, but clear.  It is vague, but sharp.  It is a place I return to when I go back as far as I can. I am calm, expectant, a waiting child, knowing on this rock that my father will come.

A child like name, a simple place. A rock.

I am  on this massive stone which serves as a holding station for my expectant heart.  And I am collecting acorns which I will sell to my father when he arrives to pick me up.

I have busied my heart and my hands.  And dreamed up in my four year old mind, this acorn-selling venture.

A little distraction to ease the wait.

And now past the mid-century mark in years I struggle with waiting.  Sitting in a place of uncertainty, waiting for understanding.  Murky confusion settles in like dense fog on the mountain side where yellow blinking caution lights signal be alert.

I have been here many times before. It is familiar in its pain.  In my spirit I feel I should have earned knowledge, this waiting shouldn’t seem so challenging. I studied  like a student, text book in hand.  My teacher is Unknowing.  My lessons are tough but served in love.  Wait and see.  Be still and know.  Rest in confidence.  I should be further along when the waiting comes and lays heavy, rolls all cement mixer over my Hope and my dreamy childish plans.

I start over and over in a numbing place of pain, needing to re-learn and remediate the lesson, a big one to trust what will come.  To know it will be good.  To rest in the long corridors where the painful echo reverberates…..wait, child.  Wait. And wait some more.

These seasons marked with uncertainty about time-frames, periods of wonder  and questionning bear down hard on the heart.  This is a familiar place.  A seemingly endless black tunnel of dark wait during times of infertility when my lesson plan was Trust.  I learned. I saw the wait produces good. Shaping and molding and softening happen in these periods of unknowing.  A yellow light, not go green or stop red, but yellow signals me to calm down and behold the uncertainy.

The rock is not the waiting rock of my childhood.  It is not benign, offering a soft seat for a child.  The rock is hard and it hurts.  The waiting rock of today is a seat of confusion.

And the child, the one of God must lean on the Rock.  Must cry out to the Rock under which there is protection in the funnel cloud storm of wait.  The touchdown destructive storm of uncertainty that the flesh feels fiercy in the turmoil.  The rock of today is the Rock of Ages.

It is the one so sturdy and strong that nothing can tear it down and under which everyone can find protection.

But the heart and the hands look for acorns to gather. And a loving father to bend down and buy the trinkets that the child lays out in a row to offer.

He does this.  He offers to gather up the crumbs. He is willing  and even longing to wipe the tear. He seeks to  gather up the child in love and bring her to Himself. He gathers up the hurting waiting. He casts a shadow of protection and Security in the hurricane force winds of hurt.

Shelters in His embrace.  Extends a rock of certainty, his  very Love .Offers Hope even now, even here in unknowing.

His Love in the waiting is all that is needed. The weak, the meek and the broken find shelter in the storm of the wait.

And can stay hidden in His love until it passes, when it passes and after it passes.

The lessons of waiting.  They are hard.  I am weak.  But he is strong.

I am a child. Sitting on His lap. He is my waiting rock.  He is The Waiting Rock.

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A Bubble Bursts In Brooklyn

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

I think there is a child in Brooklyn that is waiting to teach me how to blow bubbles and to make it art and to point others to Jesus through art, bubbles and a giant yellow school bus.  Did I mention that I do not like big yellow school buses.  Kinda like I do not like green eggs and ham.  Not at all.  Not any way.  Not here or there or anywhere.  But the Great Art Bus Adventure goes on.  I know a tree grows in Brooklyn but so does a boy who blows bubbles reallly really well and needs Jesus. wishing grace…..wynnegraceappears for Brooklyn and soon in Brooklyn from Brooklyn.