Greeting 2020

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Laura Lindblom under hiking, Photography, Writing

We (Mom, Sarah, and I) welcomed the new year and the new decade from Harney Peak, the highest point east of the Rockies! It was a beautiful, crisp morning, the stars were glorious at 6am, the snow crunched pleasantly underfoot, and the wind was gentle enough for us to actually de-layer shortly into the hike.

There wasn’t even a hint of dawn when we started up, and we trudged along in the dark, our headlamps casting pleasant shadows in the snowy woods. There were a few other cars at the trailhead, and evidence along the way of other first-day hikers, including this snowy tribute to the new year:

And then the first day of the year dawned: gloriously, slowly, from diamond-studded black, to silver and blue skies, then lavender, then pink and orange and scarlet, with the tips of granite spires just kissed with the first light. We reached the tower in the glow of the first sunrise, and watched the light spread over the Hills.

The wind was fierce at the Tower (it always is), and with a bitter edge, so we took shelter in the basement, warming ourselves with hot, black coffee and a snack before heading back into the wind.

The hike down was even more beautiful than the hike up, now that we could see the sculpted snowdrifts, the sun sparkling through the trees, and the sky and its blueness overhead.

What a wonderful way to bring in this new year and new decade, with two of my favorite people, doing one of my favorite things, on one of my favorite trails, in my (current) favorite place in the world, on the tip top of our highest peak, reveling in and wandering around and gazing at God’s beautiful handiwork.

I love experiencing the firsts of the new year.

The first morning.
The first drive.
The first hike.
The first time up Harney Peak.
The first picture taken.
The first cup of coffee.
The first sweet family time.
The first prayer.

The new year comes, fresh, unstained, and (from our perspective) unwritten. We do a pretty good job of staining it as soon as we open our eyes or our mouth on New Year’s morning, but the freshness and excitement and sense of newness remain, the gladness of a fresh start. There are things I’m anticipating, things I’m excited about, things I’m not looking forward to. But I’m glad to know I serve a sovereign LORD who isn’t just writing my story, as if He is still in the process of figuring it out. He has written it, already.

I wonder what He will choose to bring to this new year? I wonder what growing, what joy, what delight, what blessings and struggles and trials and pain? What adventures? What changes are coming that I haven’t even thought of yet? What triumphs? What failures? What of Christ will I see or learn that I haven’t yet known? How will He refine me?

2020 is open like a brand new book. I’m excited to read the story.

Happy New Year!

Let It Ring in Your Hearts

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Laura Lindblom under Writing

Today is New Year’s Eve. Christmas was 6 days ago. Every year, Christmas approaches with much anticipation. And every year it leaves with a sigh, ho-hum, and back we go to finish out the year. In truth, we’re probably glad when Christmas is over and done with. Sure, it was fun, we have some sweet family memories, less money in our checking account, a gift or two we were probably excited to receive, and it is just time to get on with what remains of the year.

What a loss. What a loss that we don’t carry with us for the rest of the year, or the whole year, the joy and excitement and awe of the Christmas season. Or is it because we fail to see and experience the joy and excitement and awe that Christmas should bring?

I’m not sure how to properly express the magnitude of all the Christmas means. I suppose I can’t express all, but when I think about our simplistic ways of talking about Christmas, it strikes me how far we miss the mark in understanding, or at least expressing understanding of, any of what Christmas means. Now, I’m not saying we don’t truly understand the implications, if we sit down and think about it, as much as our human minds can understand something so vast, but I wonder if our cute and heartwarming expressions of Christmas, and all the fun we try to cram into the season, affect our reverence and awe. I say “I wonder” more as a way to be tactful. Because in all honesty, I know it does. I know that the cuteness and sweetness and heart-warming-ness can leave our thoughts regarding Christmas devoid of holy reverence, devoid of a true appreciation for what it meant for the God of the Universe to enter into time and space as a man, with the end goal of being the Lamb of Sacrifice to pardon His people for all eternity, with the end end goal of coming back in glory at an unknown-to-us date and time, when He will once again enter into time and space to catch up His people to Himself, perfectly restored spiritually and physically, wiping out sin and evil altogether, and to finally – finally! – bring about a new Kingdom on earth where human beings enjoy perfect fellowship with God and each other. Wow.

We talk about Christmas as a celebration of “Jesus’s birthday,” as if it is simply some heavenly party. Such an understatement. This isn’t just a celestial birthday party. This is a miracle so vast even the angels were awed by it. A Heavenly army joined together to announce the birth of Christ to the frightened shepherds – what glory!
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:13-14)

How much more glorious is the Child they announced! For the whole host of Heaven to come together, it took more than cuteness and sweetness and warm feelings. This story of Salvation, according to Peter, was something “into which the angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:12) Think about that. Angels – beings who spend their existence in the presence of God Almighty, in the presence of the Godhead, of the entire Trinity together, who witnessed all of the Old Testament and everything leading up to and anticipating God’s descension to us – they were in awe and celebrated. This was a Story they watched unfold with great eagerness. That should be instructive to us.

I think about all the sweet Christmas songs and Christmas characters we want to relate to. Then I think of the innkeeper, a person not even mentioned, but who must have existed. Someone had to show the expectant mother the less than ideal place she was to give birth. Someone had to say, “There isn’t room.” Someone whose only role in the Christmas story is to turn away the earthly parents of the Living God, a man who was so close to the miracle of the Birth of Christ and apparently missed it altogether. We are so close to the Christmas story at Christmas time. And yet we can let the day go by and miss the true Story, or forget about it as soon as December 26th rolls around.

Heaven forbid that characterize us, especially at this time of the year.

Christmas marks a new era of human history, something the secular textbooks acknowledge, even though they’ve changed B.C. and A.D. to other words excluding Christ. They can’t get away from that turning point in history. The centuries and millennia leading up to Christ’s birth were centuries and millennia of distance from God, in a sense. God in His holiness spoke through prophets, and the Holy of Holies in His temple could only be entered by one priest, the High Priest, on one appointed day per year, to offer atonement for his own sins and the sins of the whole nation of Israel. There was a barrier of sacrifices and requirements and holiness and laws, past which there was no hope of approaching God perfectly whole. The Law was meant to bring light to sin, to demonstrate God’s standard and how unreachable it is for fallen mankind. God in His holiness was showing His holiness to a people who, though saved by faith, were bound by an unkeepable Law.

But our celebration of Christmas remembers the dawning of a new era in human history. Christ’s birth marks the era of God’s nearness to humanity. Immanuel. God with us. Christ came, not as a spirit, but as a human person, tangible, visible. He came as the fulfillment of all the prophesies concerning Him, and He came as a prophet, but a prophet the likes of which this world had never seen. He came as the Greater David, a Shepherd-King of the lineage of David, the shepherd-king of Israel, but far surpassing David. He came as the Greater Moses, a Leader who would lead His People out of darkness into the light of God’s eternal kingdom, far surpassing Moses’s temporary deliverance of the Israelites from their Egyptian slavemasters. Jesus came as the Second Adam, the Father of a new family of Heavenly proportions and Heavenly lineage, to restore that fellowship with God that Adam through his sin had lost. Jesus came as the Greater Aaron, a High Priest able to approach God freely, not only once a year, but at all times, to make intersession on our behalf. Jesus came as the Greatest Sacrifice, fulfilling all the centuries of sacrificed lambs and bulls and doves, satisfying with a single act the needed sacrifice to atone for our Cosmic Treason, our innate rebellion against the God and Creator of the Universe.

The Christmas story isn’t just a story of God’s love and redemptive plan to save His people, or a story of His mercy and compassion. The Christmas story – the plan of redemption – is necessary because of mankind’s radical sin, because of our rebellion against our Creator.

The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one. (Psalm 14:2-3)

The story of the birth in a stable is one piece of the story of judgement, and how God must act to satisfy justice, because He is righteous and good. But because He is loving, He came as a willing substitution to pay the price for our fallenness, our sin, our Cosmic Treason. The birth in the stable isn’t just the mercy part of the story. This is about a fallenness of humanity so profound that it required a miracle as crazy and appalling as a good, righteous, perfect, glorious God to step into our broken world and save us by His own initiative, His own perfect sacrifice. Because it should be appalling. Our need for God should break us, humble us, cause us to love Him even more for the love and patience He has shown to us. This is God willingly coming to willingly die to satisfy the need for payment for sin, thirty-three years after the miraculous birth in Bethlehem, and to satisfy our greatest need, which is to be reconciled to our Heavenly Father.

Why all of this? Because He loves us. “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16) Demonstrating His love to us so radically is so immensely glorifying to Him, we can’t even come close to comprehending it. So yes, this is a story of love. But this isn’t a heartwarming story of love. This is a soul-shaking, earth-shattering, sin-destroying, history-making, life-giving love. And to limit the story in our hearts and minds to being another quip on a greeting card does a severe injustice to the Story of all stories, and robs us of the joy of awe.

How appropriate that we celebrate Christmas in the darkest, coldest time of the year, right before the New Year. How poignant. Don’t let the New Year come and go without wrestling with the magnitude of the Christmas season. The joy of this season should be ours the entire year, if we are in Christ and a member of His family, forgiven and regenerated. The joy of this season should strike us to the heart. Our sweet manger scenes and cute decorations of little feathered-winged baby angels and heartwarming Christmas flicks don’t even come close to communicating the magnitude of the earthquake that shook the world when God entered into time and space in the form of a tiny, vulnerable, helpless infant, a story that climaxed in a bloody Man hanging on a Cross, an instrument of torture, bearing the sins of the world on His shoulders, God the Son separated from fellowship with God the Father. This isn’t a story meant to make us feel warm and pleasant and comfortable. This is a story meant to shake us to the core by this radical demonstration of God’s mercy in response to required justice. This is a story meant to change us.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Revelation 21. It always brings a lump to my throat.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ²And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4)
He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20)

The former things. Sin and death and rebellion, sorrow, pain, loss, worry, fear. All of that, conquered and defeated. God Himself wiping our tears from our eyes. What an image. How about that as the Glory we see in the Manger at Christmastime! Let that ring in your hearts as you ring in the New Year!

Wolf Moon

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Writing

A gorgeous supermoon has graced our first night of the New Year. And God blessed us with clear skies to be able to marvel at it, hauntingly beautiful, as it rose up like an angel over the snow covered hills, casting long, blue shadows, lighting the landscape silver. The sky, velvety dark, sparkled with the light of what few stars could be seen through the veil of moonlight. Orion leaned into the moon’s glow, and the Great Bear climbed the steep-tilted northern sky. The moon was blinding. The snow-covered trees, the snowpacked road, the rolling white hills, the mysterious shadows – they somehow softened the sub-zero chill. The half-mile walk down from Grandma’s in the moonlight was enchanting.And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:14-18)

All that God created was good. So good. And on the night of this beautiful Wolf Moon, the nearest supermoon of 2018, marking the beginning of this fresh New Year, I catch a glimpse of what that original goodness must have been like.

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2016 | In Hindsight

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Writing

Once again, a new year rolls in, the old year suddenly gone and a memory before it seems to even have begun. The new year is always a good time to reflect on God’s faithfulness, which really is the only faithfulness worth reflecting on. I reviewed my New Year’s goals for 2016, and it was a good reminder both of God’s faithfulness in loving me in spite of my failures, as well as of how God grows and refines his children in subtle ways.Unlike the year 2015, which was a year of huge changes and (consequently) very visible growth and maturing, this year has been a slower year. But if I am to be faithful, I need to remind myself that God doesn’t always work in huge, unmistakable ways, but oftentimes (perhaps, most of the time?) works in the subtle shaping of the heart and the inner person. God’s work in big ways is his grace and mercy and lavishness in allowing us to get a glimpse of how he works – God is not obligated to allow us to see his process, but sometimes he does. Much of the time, though, the work is smaller and quieter, harder to see, but that does not mean it is any less real or valuable. Last year around this time, I did my review of 2015 and stated that making lists of the events of a year can be an encouraging reminder of God’s faithfulness. I would say “yes and amen” to that! Re-reading that article from a year ago was an encouraging reminder of God’s goodness, even after what has been something of a dry year this past year.
This was a year of quiet joys and celebrations – The Biblical Counseling Conference in Lafayette, IN, in February, a sister married in April (that was exciting!), family visiting on and off throughout the summer and fall, including my cousin William from Ohio and my Sacramento uncle in the summer, my sister and her husband in early November, and my Alaska cousins just a few weeks ago. There was the rip-roaring fun of summer rodeos and the blessing of church get-togethers.There was the constant reminder of the presence of God in the beauty of his creation, which we enjoyed on numerous hikes and adventures, including our little road trip up to Medora, ND, a couple of afternoon drives through the Badlands, and a day trip to Devil’s Tower. We explored some new trails, including Hell Canyon, the Ingersoll Mine, and the back way in to Big Falls. There was the sweet delight of finding my first pasque flowers. There was the fun of getting Trixie, a little litter of kittens, and then another puppy two weeks ago. God’s creatures are such a gift! There was the work and fun of canning and processing, particularly of the harvesting fruit and processing jellies in the late summer.There was the beginning of expanding my photography business, shooting a wedding in June, doing a number of family portrait sessions, buying my first professional lens, winning best of show at the Custer County Fair again, and seeing my work in a local gallery. I was blessed with six piano students from my church, and am looking forward to taking on another in the next week or so.
The joy of reading continued to be a blessing, as always, with a wonderful biography on Spurgeon, the British theologian and pastor from the 19th century, as well as using his devotionals Morning by Morning and Evening by Evening. I read and re-read a short western novel, Man from Yuma, and have come to the conclusion that it is one of the best westerns I have ever read. I highly recommend it. Recently, I also enjoyed the first volume of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Small pleasures. But the joy of life is largely composed of small pleasures.Even as I write this little list and muse over the last year, I feel sheepish. God is so good! How dare I look back on any year and feel that it was “dry” or “uneventful!” It contained no more or less than God had sovereignly ordained. Once again, I look forward with eagerness and hope (and some trepidation) to this next year. It is going to be busy, with some exciting projects and prospects, and I trust that God will be growing me and changing me, to his glory. So I usher in the New Year, glad of God’s goodness, eager to see what unfolds in 2017.