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Hannah Morrell
Priceless Treasure

One of the most often repeated lies people share with me in terms of what they think about themselves is that they are worthless. This has been communicated by various people in their lives, or by their own definition time and time again. Sometimes they feel they should be at a different place in their lives and that would give worth. Sometimes they believe if they had worked hard enough to make people like them that this would give them worth. Sometimes they have been told that their only worth lies in their being used for whatever purpose the user desires, and that they will lose worth if they stop allowing someone to use them.

Worth is not transactional. It is not given when we earn it. A person doesn’t gain worth the more they achieve, relate to others, or give. Some people try to convince themselves they have worth, but it is usually based in something they have to believe about themselves. When someone communicates they are not worth their time, the façade is gone and we struggle to believe we have worth apart from what others communicate.

When we experience rejection while trying to find someone to communicate worth, any sense of having worth is obliterated as we have placed the definition on a person or place in this world. It is gut-wrenching, and feels like death.

Priceless Treasure
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Hannah Morrell
God of the Storm

We had a crazy windstorm last week with almost 24 hours of intense wind gusts and the resulting damages—trees falling, fences knocked down, various lawn chairs and trampolines blown away. I’ve never been through a hurricane on the coast, and I realized what people talk about with the sheer noise wind can create. My husband had to wear earplugs to sleep, and the howling and crashing went on all night.

At some point during the night, I woke up and listened to the wind for a bit while lying in bed. It dawned on me that this was what the disciples felt when they were out in the boat with Jesus, except they were on a boat tossed by the waves rather than a warm bed in a safe house. I imagined the fear and panic that would govern in a situation like that. They were pretty sure they were going to die out there in that storm.

Jesus had been teaching about faith prior to this story told in Mark 4. When the storm comes up, he is SLEEPING. This makes no sense to us when we don’t realize that God is enough in a storm, but Jesus knew His Father was watching out for Him and didn’t need to worry or stress about anything.

God of the Storm
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Hannah Morrell
God's Love

God loves you. That phrase has gotten trite and feels shallow sometimes. And yet, it is anything but trite and shallow. While we hated, mocked, spat on Him, God loves us. While we ran from Him and fought any call of His to come to Him, God loves us. While we rebelled and invited more and more darkness into ourselves, God loves us. While the selfishness took over to distort us into maniacal narcissists, God loves us. While we postured in false humility and rode ego trips for our “good” deeds, God loves us.

God reached through the darkness with which we had surrounded ourselves, calling our names and extending His hand to pull us out of the pit. We didn’t know Him, but He knew us. He knew every bit of us and still chose to love us. He loved us to death, and to resurrection in power. Jesus walked the road of ultimate sacrifice, knowing what was in each of us and how we chose our own way. He looked past it and loved anyway. He never stops loving. We simply need to accept the love.

God's Love
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Being a Snail

I have been thinking about how cool it is that we take a safe place with us no matter where we go. We are similar to snails—they carry their home on their backs, ready to pull into a shell whenever things get scary. The difference is that our safe place is within, and we can access it any time without physically moving. God no longer dwells in a temple made with hands, but in His people. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) He has given us His Spirit, and His very Life within.  

We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. We contain the wrap-around presence of God within us all the time. It’s kind of a cool picture, isn’t it? We carry Him, and He wraps around us and shelters us as well. So many things with God’s kingdom are both/and. His Life is in us, and we are in Him.

Being a Snail
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Hannah Morrell
Breathe & Rest

You don’t have to keep running.
You don’t have to keep fighting.
You don’t have to keep searching for the “cure.”
You don’t have to keep trying.

I know you are tired,
And ache for something more.
I know you just want to sit down,
Letting the weight you’re carrying fall.

The idea that you will get a place
Where it makes sense to rest
Is a fallacy and will continue to drive you
Crazy and exhausted and weary.

Breathe & Rest

salvation

God's Love

God's Love

God loves you. That phrase has gotten trite and feels shallow sometimes. And yet, it is anything but trite and shallow. While we hated, mocked, spat on Him, God loves us. While we ran from Him and fought any call of His to come to Him, God loves us. While we rebelled and invited more and more darkness into ourselves, God loves us. While the selfishness took over to distort us into maniacal narcissists, God loves us. While we postured in false humility and rode ego trips for our “good” deeds, God loves us.

God reached through the darkness with which we had surrounded ourselves, calling our names and extending His hand to pull us out of the pit. We didn’t know Him, but He knew us. He knew every bit of us and still chose to love us. He loved us to death, and to resurrection in power. Jesus walked the road of ultimate sacrifice, knowing what was in each of us and how we chose our own way. He looked past it and loved anyway. He never stops loving. We simply need to accept the love.

The Good News

The Good News

Perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of the Gospel or good news of Jesus is that God didn’t choose to rescue us by ridding the world of evil, but rather ridding us of evil. We would like the suffering, the struggle, the darkness to go away and leave us in peace. Peace is defined by the absence of chaos, rather than trying to define peace in the middle of the mess. We also decide that God is acting only when the situation turns out as we wanted it to, with the least discomfort.

The truth, though, is that God ached for relationship with us, relationship that we had rejected in Adam and Eve way back in the garden. We want to blame Eve quite often, and think we would have made a different decision. But at the heart of every person is the desire to be their own god, controlling their own destiny and being powerful in their own right. They rejected relationship with God. I want to think that I would have chosen walking with God in the garden over the fruit that would make me like God, but in reality, God knew I wouldn’t have. None of us would have.

So, He sent a part of Himself in Jesus to make a way, and to make a different decision. He chose to humble Himself. He was God, but chose to empty Himself of that power, and become a human—the opposite direction of the humans trying to be god unto themselves. Everything that Jesus did on earth was because of His connection to the Father and the Spirit—the union of the Godhead was perfectly demonstrating the union He wants with us. He wants to participate in each part of our lives, empowering us through dependence and connection to Him, rather than us empowering ourselves through intelligence or independence. It feels all backwards for the American culture of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. But it’s a relationship that God desires—not a dictatorship or slavery.

Fairy Godmothers and Being a New Creation

Fairy Godmothers and Being a New Creation

As a little girl, I dreamed of the princess transformation like Cinderella’s done by her fairy godmother. I think even as adults, women (secretly) would love to have a magic wand waved over them to change their hair, their dress, their shoes and then whisk them off in a carriage to a ball with a handsome prince. And little boys (and sometimes girls too) dream of being the best baseball player and winning the championship, or being the strong knight in shining armor who heroically rescues the damsel in distress.

Walking with the broken to find hope in Jesus