Casandra Martin

They are all over the floor. I have been picking up little slips of paper for a week now. Every time I turn around, I see another one floating to the ground. They are folded up in my socks, falling out of my books, and hiding in my shoes. I even found one attached to my computer mouse! Even though I have been picking them up for days, each one still surprises me. Little notes tucked in my world, each one written to remind me that I am loved.

My husband, Ken, is the mastermind behind the avalanche of paper hearts. They aren’t really heart-shaped, but that is what I see. His heart on little slips of paper. He learned to do that by watching God.

God sends me paper hearts every day. Sometimes they come wrapped in the hug of a friend, or on the melody of a song. One day it is a flower in full bloom. Another in the answer to a prayer. Little reminders of His love are tucked in the folds of my day. Each one provides a word of encouragement, a reminder of whose I am, a special moment of joy, or a call to be still and seek His face. Even though I have been picking them up for a long time, they still surprise me. I never know when I am going to find a reminder that He is thinking about me.

My Jesus Resolution today is to tell someone about my paper hearts. Show them the way God reveals His love for me. Talk about how each one helps me anticipate seeing His face. Maybe point out the paper hearts scattered around their floor. Look for a paper heart today. Let me know what you find.

Valentine’s Day may be over, but the romance is still going strong. God doesn’t limit the expressions of His love to just one day a year. He romances our souls every day. He whispers to our hearts, tries to catch our eye, and fills our days with promises of walking in relationship with Him.

God is crazy about you. His love for you stretches deeper than the ocean, higher than the stars, wider than the horizon, and is stronger than you can imagine. He leaves love notes everywhere, just hoping you will notice His loving kindness. He sings to you on the breeze, fills the world with flowers, lights up the moon, and creates perfect sunsets just so you can spend time together.

The record of His romance with your heart covers the pages of your Bible –

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” – Hosea 2:14

“He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”   – Zephaniah 3:17

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.”  – Jeremiah 31:3

“I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.” – Hosea 2:19

“…as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.” 

– Isaiah 62:5b

“Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy;…” 

– Isaiah 60:5a

My Jesus Resolution today is to let myself be romanced. I want to be swept away by His love. I want to be overwhelmed by the delight He has in me. I want to make space in my heart for the relationship He wants to share with me. Every day is an “I love you” day with God.

It is almost Valentine’s Day. Flowers are everywhere. Hearts are around every corner. Pink and red dominate certain aisles in the stores. It is a day invented to celebrate love. While we can argue about over-commercialization and unrealistic expectations, the idea of being purposeful about sharing our love is a good one. How many times do we let the moment pass? How often do we fail to express our appreciation to someone for being a part of our lives? Take some time today to think about love. Make a list of the people who have touched your life for good. The people who bring a smile to your face. The people who are there for you when things are hard. The people whom you love that make life lovely. Then say it out loud. Write it in an email. Cut out little construction paper hearts. Bake a cookie. It isn’t the form of the expression that matters. What matters is that you tell them what a difference they make in your life.

God does it every day. The sun that is shining this morning – that is God. The flowers that are starting to bloom – that is God. The warm hug, the answered prayer, the clothes we wear – all love notes from God. He never misses an opportunity to paint His love across our lives. He loves to tell you how important you are to Him. He delights in you being in the center of His heart. Every day is filled with love notes from God. Each one is a valentine that says Be Mine.

My Jesus Resolution today will be to celebrate the love God pours into my life. Valentine’s Day may only come once a year, but God proclaims His love to me every day.

Love is blind. That’s what they say. Supposedly when you are in love, you are blind to all of the faults and failings of your beloved. You only see the good, positive, and lovely.

The problem with the “love is blind” definition of love is that one day you wake up. One morning, the honeymoon is over and real life (whatever that is) begins. You are now stuck with both the ugly and the beautiful, and it usually turns out to be more ugly than you realized.

This is how the world works. The world sees our shortcomings, flaws, and uneven places, and that is where it stops looking. It refuses to look beyond our reality to see our potential. Its love is blind.

God calls us to a deeper kind of love. He challenges us to understand that Love Sees. True love, His kind of love, isn’t blind to the struggles, stumbles, and scars in others. We see them, and choose to love through them. We see not only the broken places, but also the possibilities, dreams, and potential that often lay just below the surface.

This is how God loves us. He isn’t blind to our sin and struggles. Instead He loves us through them. He sees past the mess that our failings have made, seeing what we can be when we are immersed in Him.

My Jesus Resolution today is to see through the eyes of love. I want to see the possibilities in my children, the dreams of my spouse, and the potential in my friends. I also want to see those things in the people I meet at the store, in the neighborhood, and at work. I don’t want to love blindly. I want to have the heart of God, celebrating in them the unique possibilities that only love sees.

Today I am taking my inspiration from my eight-year old nephew. Every morning, he gets up announcing what he is celebrating about the day. Yesterday, for example, was Happy Cousins Day! because he so loves to be with his family. Another day might be Happy Swimming Day! or Happy Pizza Day! I love the fact that he can find something to celebrate every day. No matter what is on the agenda, what has happened the day before, how he feels, or what the weather is like, he wakes up anticipating joy. As he said, “I am good at joy.”

In that statement, I hear the whisper of God. “I am good at joy,” He says. And it is a joy He wants to share with us. His desire is to listen to our hearts awaken each morning anticipating the joy that He will pour into the day. He longs for us to search the horizon of every moment, finding reasons to celebrate. Celebrate His presence. Celebrate His love. Celebrate His grace. Celebrate His goodness. Celebrate joy.

Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The fact that God made this day, filled it with possibilities to meet Him, hear His voice, experience His mercy, and be enfolded in His love are reasons to celebrate. He tells us that we can rejoice. Not everything in our day will be good, but we can celebrate the truth that in everything God is good.

My Jesus Resolution for today is to be good at joy. I am going to search for something to celebrate and rejoice in the possibilities God has planted in my day. Happy God Day! What are you celebrating today?

I make lunches. It is on my “mom list” of things to do every day. Kids going off to school need energy for all that learning I am sure they are diligently doing, so every evening I grab the paper sacks and fill them up.

There is a paper sack story in the Bible. We never meet the mom who packs the lunch, but I’m sure she wanted all the same things I want for my children. She sends her son off to listen to a great teacher, providing him with five loaves and two fish to get him through the day.

As the sun moves across the sky, people in the crowd get hungry. Stomachs begin to rumble and patience starts wearing a little thin. Jesus notices. He asks the disciples to feed the crowd. They pull out their pockets and shrug their shoulders.

In comes our little boy. He has a lunch. Not much, a snack really. But he gives it to Jesus. It is a simple thing. Yet in its simplicity, there is tremendous faith, trust, and surrender. The boy has no way of knowing what Jesus has in mind. He just gives Him his lunch. It’s not a lot, but he is willing to go hungry. Willing to give all he has.

The rest of the story paints itself on the canvas of miracles. Five thousand men fed, plus women and children. Twelve baskets of leftovers picked up. Talk of crowning a new king. But don’t take your eyes off the little boy’s face. He gave his lunch to Jesus. Jesus took his sacrifice and has used to feed people, physically and spiritually, for two thousand years.

We look at the things in our hands and measure them by the size of the need. That is what the disciples did. The little boy looked at his lunch and measured it by the size of God’s heart. He put it in Jesus’ hands, and let God take his gift and use it for His glory. Can you imagine the story he went home and told his mom?

My Jesus Resolution today is to give my lunch to Jesus. God has the power to transform us even through paper sacks. It doesn’t matter how big or small, my challenge is to put my lunch in Jesus’ hands. He’ll take care of the rest. Can you imagine the stories we might hear in heaven of how God used a few paper sacks to touch the world?

It is just a little thing, really. A post-it note stuck to the mirror. I left the note as a reminder for my husband of a chore that needed to be handled. When I came back through, it had been moved to my side of the mirror. Drawn on top of the words was a small heart. Just a note back telling me that it was taken care of. But it was more. It told me that I was taken care of. That I was loved. That I was important and special. He could have left a check mark or just completed the task and moved on. I would have been fine. Instead, he filled the moment with more.

God is like that. How many times a day does God not only answer our prayers, but infuse the moment with His love? How often does He leave little reminders that He cares around for us to find? He doesn’t have to. We would be fine. But He wants us to know the depth of His love, to be enfolded in the breadth of His passion, to experience the intensity of His notice. We have to learn to see the notes. We often pass by and fail to see His fingerprints on our day. Love notes go unread. Reminders that we are cherished go unnoticed.

My Jesus Resolution today is to look around for my love letter. It is there. God always leaves His heart for us to find. It may be in an unusual place. It might be attached to something so ordinary that we have to really look to see it. Keep your eyes and your heart open today. And don’t be surprised if you find little reminders of God’s love stamped everywhere you look.

I love you. Three simple words. Three profound words. Three misunderstood words. Three amazing words. These three words define the heart of God. I love you is His most constant message. It is the theme of the Bible, the foundation of His covenant, and the proclamation of the cross.

We sometimes don’t know what to make of God’s love. It is an illogical, radical, eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping, stand-back-and-shake-your-head kind of love. He doesn’t love us because we are pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, or good enough to impress Him. He loves us because He is Love.

Understanding that His presence is everywhere helps us glimpse the truth that His love constantly surrounds us. It permeates the air we breathe. It shows up in the colors of the dawn, the sparkle of the raindrops, and the twinkle of the stars. It is more of a constant in our universe than gravity or the tides. Those things will cease someday. But not God’s love for us. From eternity to eternity, He loves you.

My Jesus Resolution today is simple. I will live loved. Today I will soak in the love God has for me. I will notice it. Pay attention to the details of it. Respond to it. Proclaim it. Celebrate it.

Will you dare to live loved today?

My son is in the orchestra. He plays the double bass (the big instrument in the back). He loves it, and it has been a lot of fun to watch (hear) him grow over the years. His very first orchestra teacher gave him a great rule of thumb – only practice on the days you eat. She knew that consistent, regular practice was essential to becoming a great string player.

Everything we want to do well takes practice. There is a little book that was written over three hundred years ago by a man named Brother Lawrence – The Practice of the Presence of God. In this collection of letters and conversations, Brother Lawrence tells of a choice he made when he was assigned to work in the kitchen. He decided that he would devote his days to being with God, no matter his task. He peeled potatoes with God. He washed dishes with God. He learned to spend His days with God.

I like the title of his book. It highlights the truth that fully experiencing the presence of God requires a learning process. It is a journey. It isn’t a switch you turn off or on. It is a determination to seek out His presence more today than I did yesterday. It takes practice. Practice means that there will be A+ days and days that don’t go so well. Days in which I dive into the process with anticipation and days in which I have to push myself to participate. Practice trains my eyes, my heart, my ears. and my soul to gradually be a little more sensitive, a little more ready, and a little more alert to His presence.

So here is My Jesus Resolution. I will practice the presence of God. I will practice seeing Him in the kitchen, in the laundry, in the people around me, and in the places I go today. I will do my homework, knowing that the lessons will help me see His face. I am only going to practice on the days I eat. Will you practice with me?

Some days it is just hard to see God. There are days when His presence just explodes across my day. It seems I couldn’t miss Him if I tried. And then there are days like today. Not a terrible day, just one filled with distractions. Deadlines loom, the phone rings, laundry piles up, and the dishes threaten to topple out of the sink. Worry, stress, and frustration make the evidence of His presence hard to find.

One sure-fire way to refocus my heart is to spend ten minutes counting my blessings. Like the song says, “Name them one by one.” Our blessings are the clearest evidence of God’s movement in our lives. It doesn’t take long into my list before my vision clears. The longer the list grows, the lighter my heart feels. My blessings are tangible reminders that God is here. He loves me. He cares about the details of my day. Blessings are God’s arms wrapped around me. The more I count, the tighter the hug.

An awareness of God’s presence is essential, and nothing is better at connecting the dots between His hand and my heart than counting my blessings. The Jesus Resolution challenges you to keep a running list today of all of the ways God touches your day. Count your blessings. Name them one by one. When His fingerprints are hard to find, counting your blessings helps highlight where His hand has touched your day. Ready?  1…2…3…