weekend reading.

a few blog posts/articles caught my attention recently and i can't seem to stop thinking about them, so i wanted to share them on here so you could think about them, too.

grab another cup of coffee and enjoy.

rain down revival
beth moore

"I'm tired of giving God an inch and expecting a mile. I want to go with Him wherever He's going."

when you're done with pundits, soul wrestling & looking at the sky: {25 things i learned from staying with katie davis}
ann voskamp

"Our actual theology is best expressed in our actual hospitality. // And I don't mean that hospitality is one quaint ministry for those good in the kitchen and keeping their house picked up. Hospitality isn't for the good housekeepers -- it's the grid of life for anyone keeping company with Christ. Hospitality is meant to shape our churches and politics, our work and our schools, our home and our faith and our schedules and our meals and our lives."

get ready for all those babies
and the follow-up, revisiting "all those babies"
marv knox, editor, the baptist standard

"If Texas' conservative moral values prompt our state to implement one of the nation's most stringent abortion codes, then we should accept the responsibility for all those babies we will bring into the world. We need to do right by them."

and because all of those are quite heavy, here's something to make you laugh...

happy weekend!

thankful thursday: celebrate.

if you know me at all, you know i love any reason to celebrate anything. lucky for me, the last week or so has provided multiple opportunities to celebrate, and for that i am thankful.

1. july 4th.
in the 24 hours surrounding the 4th of july, the husband and i went to three different cookouts, complete with pool parties, cookie cake, blue bell, and fireworks. that, my friends, is a successful independence day.

i've always wanted to take one of these pictures. thank you, nicole, for finally making that dream a reality. 

2. twister relief concert.
on july 6th, moore's own toby keith hosted a massive, all-day concert to raise money for tornado relief efforts throughout oklahoma. somehow (God's favor, i'm convinced), our friend, amy, scored tickets on the THIRD ROW. it was so hot, and so long, but it didn't matter, because GARTH BROOKS. garth freaking brooks, y'all. also, WILLIE. and ronnie, and trisha, and carrie, and toby. and to top it all off, the night ended with fireworks -- all around the stadium. it was magical. this day for sure goes down as my favorite day in oklahoma so far. so thankful to spend it with fun friends, too!

3. ice cream.
yesterday i discovered july is national ice cream month. thank you, ronald reagan, and thank you, blue bell, braum's, chickfila milkshakes, and my new favorite, talenti gelato, for giving me so many ways to enjoy my beloved frozen treat. i plan to celebrate every single day, especially sunday, july 21st, which i now know is national ice cream day. mark your calendars, people.

4. emails.
when i checked my email first thing this morning, i had emails from both my mom and my mother-in-law waiting for me. i wish i could somehow let you read both of them in their entirety. they both gave me reason to celebrate! mom's was a rundown of a normal day in her summer work life at buckner -- ESL classes, nutrition classes, summer feeding programs, job trainings... you know, just changing people's lives. no big deal. my mother-in-law's was full of stories from the apartment ministry she leads with her church. she's so faithful every week -- even when it's a hot summer in texas. it's been kinda slow recently, but she said last night she had kids piling into her suburban wanting to go to church with her. so fun! i'm so proud of and constantly inspired by my mom and mother-in-law. i'm so thankful to have such incredible examples of godly women in my life!

5. 7-11 day.
today is july 11th, or 7-11, which means you can get a free slurpee at participating 7-eleven stores! and by participating i mean, every 7-eleven store except the ones in oklahoma. after work today, i called my friend, shanae, and convinced her (it wasn't hard) we needed to introduce her 3-year-old, davis, to slurpees (right before dinner... oops). we raced to the nearest 7-eleven, mouths watering, only to discover 7-elevens in oklahoma "are under different ownership and don't participate." whatever that means. so maybe we had to pay for our slurpees, but we still got to celebrate 7-11 day!

what have you been thankful for this week?

a morning invitation.

"I get the invitation every morning when I wake up to actually live a life of complete engagement, a life of whimsy, a life where love does. It doesn't come in an envelope. It's ushered in by a sunrise, the sound of a bird, or the smell of coffee drifting lazily from the kitchen. It's the invitation to actually live, to fully participate in this amazing life for one more day. Nobody turns down an invitation to the White House, but I've seen plenty of people turn down an invitation to fully live.

Turning down this invitation comes in lots of flavors. It looks like numbing yourself or distracting yourself or seeing something really beautiful as just normal. It can also look like refusing to forgive or not being grateful or getting wrapped around the axle with fear or envy. I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-faked into thinking we haven't really been invited. But you see, we have been invited -- every day, all over again."

-- Bob Goff, Love Does

reminder in the sky.

after a weekend in arkansas, we were welcomed home last night in typical oklahoma fashion... with severe thunderstorms. hooray! thankfully, we were able to take alternate routes on our drive so that we missed the worst parts of the storms. we finally pulled up to our apartment and were doing the "we made it" full body stretch that just instinctively happens after you've been in the car forever, when we looked up and saw a stellar rainbow peeking through the clouds.

maybe God knew i needed a little reminder of his faithfulness yesterday. it was my seventh father's day without dad, which is almost impossible to believe. it was easier than most since i was just on the road all day with my best friend, but it's just not a fun day -- and on those not fun days, it's easy to confuse emotions with truth, for "the heart is deceitful above all things" (jeremiah 17.9). so again, i was extra thankful last night for that little miracle in the sky reminding me that God keeps his promises and does not forget his people. he loves us and is with us.

he is faithful, he is glorious and
he is jesus and all my hope is in him.
he is freedom, he is healing right now,
he is hope and joy and love and peace and life.
-- bryan & katie torwalt

niagara falls in a teacup.

"Do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you? I believe that this question is at the core of our ability to mature and grow spiritually. If in our hearts we really don't believe that God loves us as we are, if we are still tainted by the lie that we can do something to make God love us more, we are rejecting the message of the cross. ...

When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God."

-- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

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