Content with the Divorce?

I'm still reading selections from The Valley of Vision for my personal devotions during Advent. The prayer titled "Contrition" reminds me that I am "in the embryo state of my endless being."  Much food for thought in that small phrase, isn't there? How easy it is for me to live like my time here on earth is all there is! My heart and soul knows better but what a hard-headed fool I am. I simply forget the only things that are eternal down here: God's Word and other people (myself included!)
I think of the NLT version of Ecclesiastes 7:4:

A wise person thinks a lot about death, 

while a fool thinks only about having a good time. (In place of "having a good time" I could insert material stuff, house, work, school, etc. Oh, to be a wise person and not a fool! )

Also, from Calvin Miller's The Path of Celtic Prayer which I've just started reading -

"Our failure to perceive Christ's imminent return as our "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13) has contributed to our feelings of separateness from God. The problem is not so much that we seldom think about his coming but that we are no longer excited by the prospect. Paul says there is a crown laid up for all those who love his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8). But do we love and anticipate his appearing? What of our blase contentment with things as they are, Christless and self-managed? Many of us are secular captives, separated from God and content with the divorce."

Do I love and anticipate his appearing? Or am I content with the divorce? How about you, bloggy friend?

Finally, from this morning's prayer (Shortcomings) -

I am sometimes discouraged by the way,

but though winding and trying it is safe and short;

Death dismays me, but my great high priest stands in its waters,

and will open me a passage,

and beyond is a better country.

May we remember today (and be encouraged!) that this life may be winding and trying yet it is (with Christ) safe and short and our Savior stands waiting for us, ready to open a passage to the Better Country.

(You can find all of the Valley of Vision prayers online here.)

CONTINUE READING...

Chapped Ground

Still away on vaca..... and lovely it is! But busy and very much on the move, so I am a tired B, friends.

I've managed to read  my three prayers for Advent this morning before hitting the road. The one I'd like to share with you today is titled The Divine Will and is from Section I: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Valley of Vision.

The next to last stanza is worth committing to memory, I think:

"Teach me to believe that all degrees of mercy arise
from several degrees of prayer,
that when faith is begun it is imperfect and must grow,
as chapped ground opens wider and wider until rain comes."

As the prayer says, I'm asking the Lord to help me

• to honor Him by believing before I feel, for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith
• and to strengthen me to pray with the conviction that whatever I receive is His gift

Oh, how I do sometimes often depend on my sin-filled "feelings" to determine whether I should believe in the Lord rather than on the truth of His Word!

And doubt what I receive from His Hand to be a gift? Every day.... every day, I do. You would think as I get older and look back at the "hard" things He has placed in my life and then see the blessings that come from it that I would be quicker to understand that all He gives me is a gift. And trust that this next new "hard" thing will carry blessings with it as I am obedient to whatever it brings.

Maybe I am learning just a bit, but my first instinct is still to doubt.  

May your imperfect faith grow and your chapped ground be filled with His living water, bloggy friends.

CONTINUE READING...

Valley of Vision - Advent Readings

A friend and I are going to read prayers from the Valley of Vision this Advent Season. We started yesterday and are using this schedule (see link at bottom of article). While neither of us think we'll be able to stop and read the prayers at the times specified each day, we plan to read all three assigned prayers daily. For me, with my current schedule and life, that means figuring out the best time of day. We are traveling this week (more on that later!) so there's an even bigger challenge with starting something like this while on the road. 

The very first prayer (Self-Knowledge from Section III: Penitence and Deprecation) gave me much to chew on - nothing less than my sinful self! From the prayer, here is a list of my "needs" - 

My lack of:

1. Scriptural knowledge to know God's will 
2. Wisdom to guide others
3. Spirit of prayer (i.e. words without love - ouch!)
4. Daily repentance (without which I keep God at bay)
5. Joy in God and His will 
6. Zeal for God's glory (seeking my own instead!)
7. Love to others

Pretty complete list, I think. And as the prayer says - I'm asking God to give me the grace to recall my needs....

"And let me not lay my pipe too short of the fountain,

never touching the eternal spring,

never drawing down water from above."

CONTINUE READING...

Doing and Trusting

I woke early this morning – so early I think it would be classified as still night. After an hour or so of tossing and turning and generally disrupting the sleep of my poor husband, I finally gave myself over to the fact that I was – indeed -  awake for the day. 

During that hour, a verse hovered in my mind, watching as I tried to dive back into warm, silky dreamy depths, calling me back to wakefulness and saying, “Pay attention to me. I have something to show you!”

So here I am, nibbling around the edges of this verse, tasting its Good Words, feeding my soul on the only Food that fills.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” ~Matthew 11:29

From the NET Bible I am reminded that “yoke” means:

…a wooden bar or frame that joins two animals like oxen or horses so that they can pull a wagon, plow, etc. together.

And I am further reminded of studying this verse some time ago and realizing that to follow Jesus is to be “yoked” to someone…. to not be alone… to be joined with Christ through the Holy Spirit living in me, walking alongside me.

But I had forgotten the “and learn from me” part of this verse. This took me back to the study I’m working through with our women’s ministry at church on the book of James. Last week, our attention was brought to the fact that you often see God “teaching” instead of just “telling.”  See the case of Moses, as he argues with God that he cannot possibly be the man that God wants him to be. God answers him:

“Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”~Exodus 4:12

In my mind I can imagine God saying, “So get going now, Moses, and trust that I will teach you along the way.”

I see doing tied to trusting.

And, wouldn’t you know it, as I took a look at the word “yoke”, searching for all the places it is used in the Bible, I found it smack in the middle of a key verse of this book I’m studying – James!

“You see that his faith was working together with his works and his faith was perfected by works.” James 2:22

The “his” here refers to Abraham who is one of James’ prime examples that true faith, really-living-it-out faith, is “yoked” with works.

And again I see the doing of a thing tied to the trusting of the God who commands it.

Doing and trusting. Works and faith.

Me taking up a yoke and then learning what God has to teach me.

May you find rest for your souls today, bloggy friends.

CONTINUE READING...

Cardboard Fortresses

This drawing is from Mary. She drew her little friend one day while listening to Latin class online. Yes, she is her mother’s daughter! I focus better with pen in hand and doodle paper at the ready. So – I can’t really fuss with her for drawing while listening to class. I loved this little fellow and scanned him in so we could make him just the perfect size to frame and put out on our porch.

I’m reading a book about the Jesus Prayer which is mainly encountered in the Eastern Church. I came across it a long time ago in some writing (can’t recall exactly where) but often have prayed it when awake in the middle of the night and no other words will come to soothe my soul. The verdict is still out on the book, so I’ll have to let you know. But here’s a passage in the first chapter that has got me thinking:

“So we ask for mercy because we are sick with sin, and will go on sinning. Even though we are confident as beloved children in our Father’s compassion, we grieve because we contribute more to the planet’s suffering every day……. 

God doesn’t need us to remind him to be merciful; he is merciful all the time, even when we don’t ask. But unless we make a habit of asking for mercy, we forget that we need it. Ego builds a cardboard fortress that humility must, every day, tear down….. 

The process of healing takes a long time. Even as we see reasons for hope, we simultaneously gain better understanding of how far down the roots of sin can go. It would be devastating to see the whole truth about ourselves all at once. Our compassionate Lord brings us along gently, allowing some blissful ignorance. Each layer of the onion is shed at the right time; we encounter the next truth about ourselves when and how we can bear it, as our loving Lord knows best.” (From The Jesus Prayer”)

I loved this image of our ego building a cardboard fortress. We live life and go along and nothing really bad is happening and we think, “Oh, I’ve got this life thing handled. Look at me, World, if you want to see how it’s done!” We so quickly forget we need mercy, or help, every moment of every day. And so we need that dose of humility to tear our flimsy fortress down.

The healing dose may come in that hurt look you get from a friend after a harsh word, from the bumbled-up conversation you tried to have with your child to correct their path but in which you only beat them down and made things worse, or from the realization of how easily that little white lie rolled off your tongue and now you find yourself building yet another lie to keep the first one protected.

And that’s just a few humility-builders I thought of in the seconds it took to type that paragraph. There are so many, many more. Thank God He is gracious and does indeed bring us along slowly, showing us our sinfulness layer by layer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Amen and Amen.

CONTINUE READING...

Small Creatures

Early this morning I sat on the porch and read from Exodus and Job and Luke and I Corinthians. I read about Pharaoh's hard heart, Job lamenting how his steps were once "washed with butter", Jesus coming for sinners and not the righteous, and how Paul told the Corinthians to "act like men."  (I'm going through this devotion book and Bible reading plan.)  The sky was just beginning to fade, shedding its blackness, thinning from that thick color of night to the lighter gray-blue of morning. In a moment of stillness, it struck me how all the little bugs were singing away, chirping and trilling with what seemed like joy to me.

Writing in my prayer journal I asked God to help me put aside the busyness of the coming day and all the things banging around in my head that I wanted to ask His help with....  good things, serious things... things I wanted to put at His feet as I know I should.... But, instead I asked Him to give me the spirit and heart to just praise Him as the crickets and myriad of other small creatures do at the start of a fresh day. I asked that He show me the miracle of His hand turning the Earth one more time to receive the light and warmth of the sun, one more day for me to walk on this patch of dirt with the people I love.

And, so, in gratitude and quietness, I stopped, leaned my head back, closed my eyes and put my hands in my lap. I focused on the creatures singing to their Creator and tried to be like them, simply praising the Lord....

Praise the LORD from the earth,

you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,

lightning and hail, snow and clouds,

stormy winds that do his bidding,

you mountains and all hills,

fruit trees and all cedars,

wild animals and all cattle,

small creatures and flying birds....

(from Psalm 148)

It's so hard these days for me to be still without feeling like I "have" to do something from the list of things to be done - surely not all of these things are chores or work-related.... many are things I want to do for my own pleasure.... Still - I am always doing or going and very rarely just being. Perhaps the thing is I don't need to "just be"..... Maybe I need to "just be praising"?

CONTINUE READING...

Expect -

“Expect” is an interesting word I’ve been thinking about lately. When we expect something to happen what we are really saying is that we believe we have a right to think a certain way. We think it’s reasonable. It’s logical. It’s fair. It’s more than that we just hope for it. Hoping is just wishful thinking, right? But to expect, well – there’s evidence and data to back us up.

The English word expect takes its origin from the Latin expectare meaning “await, look out for, desire.” The first bit, ex-, means “thoroughly” and the last piece, spectare, means “to look”. Put the two parts together and we get that when we thoroughly look at a situation, we come away with a logical, reasonable expectation of what is to happen.

Makes sense, right?

Here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about -what have we expected when it comes to God? Let’s look thoroughly at the situation: we obey. We’ve been good wives, good mothers, good daughters, good friends. Not perfect by any means, but we’ve tried and then repented where we’ve failed, right? We’ve read the Bible, we’ve tried to teach our children to love God, and as much as possible we’ve pointed others to Christ and not ourselves. We have sought to be humble. We’ve believe ourselves to be faithful. We’ve attended church. We’ve served others. We’ve worked in the church nursery, for Pete’s sake! We’ve even submitted to our husbands. Check, check and double-check.

So, we thoroughly looked at our lives and expect all to be well, right? We expect our marriages to be strong, our children to follow God, our friendships to be deep and satisfying. We even expect God to bless our families financially and give us comfortable homes (modestly so, of course, not extravagant but nice) which we can share with others to bring Him glory. Think of all the Life Groups and Bible studies we’ve hosted through the years!

And so, we expect God to deliver.

Go read Genesis 28. No, really. I’ll wait right here. I’ve got a load of laundry to get out of the dryer so I’ll be right here folding towels while you read.

Done? Ok, so here’s a man, Jacob, who clearly expected things from God. And a man who had the audacity to actually lay it out to Him point-by-point: “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the LORD will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.” Vs. 20-22

Jacob says “if” God does x, y, and z, “then” he will let God be his God. Amazing, isn’t it? The nerve, the daring? Jacob clearly has expectations for God to deliver. “Oh,” we think, “God’s gonna show him a thing or two!” But keep reading in Genesis and you’ll see that God actually does meet Jacob’s expectations! Wow. Maybe not completely the way Jacob thought it would happen (see Genesis 29). Maybe not without struggle and some lasting wounds that left Jacob with a permanent limp. Maybe not without changing Jacob so much in the process that he needs a new name (see Genesis 32). But God blesses Jacob.

Here’s a quick snippet from D.A. Carson on Genesis 28 from his devotional book For the Love of God:

”And God does not strike him down! The story moves on: God does all he promised, and more. All of Jacob’s conditions are met. One of the great themes of Scripture is how God meets us where we are: in our insecurities, in our conditional obedience, in our mixture of faith and doubt, in our fusion of awe and self-interest, in our understanding and foolishness. God does not disclose himself only to the greatest and most stalwart, but to us, at our Bethel, the house of God.”

Jacob’s story encourages me. If I’m honest, I know that I am just as audacious, just as nervy, when it comes to my “If-Thens” with God. I can imagine God just shaking His head over me sometimes and thinking, “Girl, you are something else!” But yet, I’ve seen God meet me over and over again right where I am - in my weakness, in my unbelief, in my disobedience, in my foolishness. He comes to me and wrestles with me and changes me. He reveals Himself to me through His Word. He redeems me. He saves me. He gives me the righteousness of His perfect Son.

And then He blesses me even more. Maybe not always in my timing or in the way I “expected” things to happen. Maybe not without struggle and change. But He blesses me with His love and faithfulness every day.

Happy Sabbath, Bloggy friends!

CONTINUE READING...

Ponderings and Broodings….

Last week I decided to try to memorize a new passage of Scripture each week and what better place to start than with my favorite passage in the Bible – the place I find myself going to for comfort and encouragement. You would think it would be in the Psalms or Romans, maybe. Nope – I love Acts 17:24-27 because it reminds me God is in control of my life and that He has given me one great purpose – to seek Him. So here are some “ponderings and broodings” I scratched out last week while memorizing this passage. I hope in some way they bless you, bloggy friends!

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

Most of us at some point in our lives ponder where all that we see came from including ourselves. Often, it makes our heads hurt and our stomachs a little queasy and we let it go, the thought of going back and back and back to some specific beginning too big to wrap our minds around. Eventually we end up letting our high school Biology and Physic teachers’ explanations of evolution and cosmology fill the void. Besides, there is so much more to put our minds and energies to – love and romance, college and career, marriage and family. So we don’t let our minds go back to that nibbling little question we wanted to raise our hand and ask – “So, where did those initial little particles come from that bumped together for the big bang?” Our teachers can only bring us back so far until our finite minds (and theirs!) bump up against the infinite Uncaused Cause. But, having been too shy or not eloquent enough to phrase the question or too preoccupied with our latest love interest sitting three desks up from us, we leave our hand tucked quietly in our lap and head off to the next class on our schedule and life happens.

But every once in a while we look up and wonder, “Where did all this come from?” and “Why am I – why are any of us – here?” Usually, it’s at times of breathtaking beauty like when we stand on a mountaintop or on the edge of the ocean. Or perhaps it’s at the birth of our first child and we realize what a miracle she is. So, Who did this?

Paul tells the Athenians in Acts chapter 17, after walking through their city and looking hard at their temples and altars (for they were worship-seekers just as we are today), that this “Unknown God” that they had built an altar to, that they at least acknowledged must be out there somewhere, this Supreme Being who created the world and everything in it, is not only the Creator but also the Lord – the Master, the Sovereign, the Prince – of the Milky Way and all the galaxies beyond and all that they contain, including this little speck of a spot called Earth. This Creator-God is also the Lord-God, kyrios, He Who has the power of deciding over all of us and over all of everything.

And, although the Athenians thought gods were beings who would come down from heaven and dwell in man-built temples and that they demanded human serving and coddling, Paul told them this Creator-Lord-God was nothing of the sort. And lest we scoff at their silliness of building temples and bringing food for their gods to eat, even we moderns still think our American-god resides in our church buildings, that this is where holiness is found, that what happens on Sunday in our local cross-topped sanctuaries does not leave and inhabit our everyday lives. Or at least that is how so many of us live. And we, too, think our American-god can be appeased with our services, that he actually needs our money and our good works. Paul tells the Athenians (and us, too, today if we will hear) that the Creator-Lord-God needs nothing from us, least of all a place to dwell. It is indeed Him that gives us everything we have from the soil beneath our feet, to the beating pulse of our hearts, to the very breath we draw into our Creator-Lord-God-designed bodies. Everything, simply everything, came and continues to come from Him.

From Adam down to Noah and his three sons and then on from there, this God has made all the nations and peoples of the earth – the Egyptians and Africans and Eskimos. The Russians, the Indians, the Greeks and yes, the Americans. He has made us all in order that we might fill this world with our presence and that we might in turn recognize that there is also another Presence residing with us here. For each one He has marked out times and places to live so that we might seek His Face, might recognize that there is more than tiny particles bumping into each other and exploding and growing into a universe, that there is a Creator-Lord-God Who is weaving a Master Story of which we each play a part.

And our part is that of seeker and reacher  and finder. This Creator-Lord-God has orchestrated our individual stories so that we might find Him and know Him. That we might love Him and worship Him, the True God of all gods. He is here, close to each one of us.

CONTINUE READING...

Balancing




Left: Photograph by Maisie Broadhead; Right: Woman Holding a Balance by Vermeer

 

Whew! A day of running a low-grade fever knocked me down pretty hard. Thankfully, it seemed to only be a  one-day virus with no sore throat or congestion following..... just fever and a bit of nausea. An interesting way to start Lent.

And speaking of Lent, I wanted to meditate my way through Psalm 51 this season. I'm only on the first part of the first verse:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.... (NIV)

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.... (ESV)

Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness.... (NASB)

The Hebrew word for mercy is chanan and means "to be favorably inclined, to favor someone, to be gracious to, to pity."

The word translated as "unfailing love", "steadfast love", and "lovingkindness" is the Hebrew word checed. Baker's Evangelical Dictionary tells us this word speaks of God's coventant love....

"....the quality in God that directs him to forge a relationship with people who absolutely do not deserve to be in relationship with him."

I'm listening to a 1993 sermon series by Tim Keller. One sermon I've listened to was titled "People of the Lie." The Scripture reference is Genesis 3:1-9 and the sermon focuses in on vs 5:

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  (NIV)

This is the serpent talking to Eve telling her the "real" reason God doesn't want her and Adam to eat from tree in the middle of the garden. Simply, it's because God is not good and He is withholding something that would be good for them, so she just needs to take it for herself anyway. Bottom line - God is not good, He is not for our good, and therefore, He doesn't love us.

The lie, then, that has been etched into our very DNA is that God does not love us.

And in thinking on all this, I'm beginning to pray this verse from Psalm 51 like so:

O Lord my God,
have pity on this sinner


who so often believes
the serpent's great lie,


who doubts Your goodness
and Your neverending love.


Incline Your merciful heart toward me,
though I deserve it not one whit.


Teach me to live only beneath the shadow

of Your steadfast and unfailing love.

Now, for the artwork above.... I came across photographer Maisie Maud Broadhead's work and fell in love. Especially with her modern day representations of historical paintings. Vermeer's Woman Holding a Balance is one of my favorite paintings. I saw it in person a few years ago in DC at the Nattional Gallery of Art. I love Broadmead's interpretation. Here's a short video explaining a little of her creative process:

Vermeer's painting makes me think of how I need to place God's truth and Satan's lies against each other in the scales of my heart. If I would but look closely, I will see God's truth is always the weightier, the more solid, the one with real substance.

CONTINUE READING...

Ashes & Soot

Self-Portrait, Steven Spazuk soot-artist

  

Lord of the winds, I cry to thee.

I that am dust,
And blown about by every gust
I fly to thee.

Lord of the waters, unto thee I call.
I that am weed upon the waters borne,
And by the waters torn,
Tossed by the waters, at thy feet I fall.
~Mary Coleridge

Have mercy on me, O God...
~Psalm 51:1a

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday and we had a pancake dinner complete with a (rather pitiful) King Cake. King Cakes are not so very plentiful around North Carolina, so we had to suffice with small vanilla cake decorated with green, purple, and yellow icing. For the baby, we used a quarter. Ah, well. Maybe next year I'll have the time to make a King Cake myself!

Tonight some friends and I went to the Ash Wednesday service at a local Episcopal church. I suppose I've been going to this service for the past five years or so. As always, it was very meaningful..... a great way to move myself into Lent. 

Here's a video of an artist I came across a week or so ago - Steven Spazuk, a soot-artist. I thought highlighting his work would be quite appropriate on Ash Wednesday. :-) Two of his pieces are shown above. His portraits are amazing.

Finally, during the communion portion of tonight's service, this "acclamation" caught my attention and is worthy of meditating on today:

Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again. 
Simple. True.

I'll close with this from the book of Sirach:

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin. (7:36)

Ash Wednesday is the day for being reminded of and contemplating our mortality.

CONTINUE READING...

Handbreadth

I came across this free printable at Beautifully Rooted, a website I plan to take some time with and wander about a bit. It led me this morning to read all of Psalm 39. Verses 4 and 5 especially resonated with me...

Show me, LORD, my life’s end 
   and the number of my days; 
   let me know how fleeting my life is. 
You have made my days a mere handbreadth; 
   the span of my years is as nothing before you. 
Everyone is but a breath, 
   even those who seem secure.

Look at your hand, palm up, and stretch out your fingers. A handbreadth is about 3 inches, the distance across your palm from your index finger to your pinky. 3 inches, maybe 4. Not very impressive, huh? That's all our days are - a handbreadth. 

With David I prayed today that the Lord would show me the number of my days, that I would know how fleeting they are. We all (or at least most of us) live as if we are never going to die, as if our days will go on forever. But the truth is that not one of us will escape the inevitable - the end of our days here on this earth, the time when we will stoop closer and closer to the dust from which we came. And where does that lead us? To despair? Fear? Depression? 

Perhaps. Verse 6:

Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;
in vain they rush about,
 heaping up wealth
without knowing whose it will finally be.  

In vain I rush about.... Can't say I'm heaping up much wealth, but I am surely gathering up a lot of "stuff" around me. And whose will it be one day? My children's? My grandchildren? My friends? Maybe some, but how much of it will just end up on a trash pile? My books, my clothes, my paintings, my furniture....? So what does it all matter, really? Verse 7:

But now, Lord, what do I look for? 
My hope is in you. 

So now what do I look for? Where do I find hope?

Only in the Lord Jesus Christ.

May this be branded boldly on my heart and deeply into my mind. May this be the thought I come back to again and again this Lenten season - 

that my one and only hope,

my one and only future,

my one and only wealth,

my one and only life

is in the Lord God Almighty.

Amen and good night, bloggy friends. 

CONTINUE READING...

Beckoning

Credit: Yulia Brodskaya

Happy Sabbath Day! I can't say my soul is resting easy today.... I'm a little discombobulated as I like to sometimes say. And I find myself missing a wise friend who often helped me put things into perspective. But I know this too shall pass and ultimately, friends, all is well with my soul. 

Did you know this Tuesday is Mardi Gras? A.K.A. Fat Tuesday? We will be eating pancakes for supper here and hopefully enjoying a homemade King Cake. 

That means the next day is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. In preparation, I've started rereading Robert Webber's book  Ancient Future Time. Or rather, I'm rereading the section on Lent. Here's the introductory paragraph:

Unfortunately some Christians live as though the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ never happened. Our lives become absorbed in the day-to-day experiences of life. We focus on name-brand clothing, the color of our houses, the size of our bank account, the year and make of our automobile, the prestige in which others hold us, and the symbols of our own power. We too easily forget our Maker and Redeemer, replacing God with things and ambition. Lent is the season that does something about this situation. It calls us back to God, back to basics, back to the spiritual realities of life. It calls us to put to death the sin and indifference we have in our hearts toward God and our fellow persons. And it beckons us to enter once again into the joy of the Lord - the joy of a new life born out of a death to the old life. (page 99)

Hit me in the face, it did, when I read it. 

May this Lenten season beckon both you and I to enter once again into the joy of the Lord, bloggy friend. 

Amen. And Amen. 

(To enjoy more art from Yulia Brodskaya, click here.)

CONTINUE READING...

Red Pepper Flakes & Soul-Soreness

Fall has finally stopped peeking its nose around the corner and made a full entrance into our little patch of earth in North Carolina. Actually, this morning felt more like winter than fall - the sky, a cold sheet of flat gray metal, made it seem like morning had dressed up as late afternoon, an early Halloween costume to trick us.

The leaves are tricksters, too, having all at once changed colors it seems – a beautiful contrast against the faithful green belonging to the multitude of pine trees our towns here are named after (Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Pinebluff, Whispering Pines, etc.) There are mostly shades of deep gold and brilliant yellow, but there’s orange, too. I’ve noticed the dogwoods tend to turn a lime green before morphing to yellow. And here and there is a spot of blazing red, like some great Soup-Maker is meticulously sprinkling red pepper flakes into His boiling pot of stew, being careful not to overdo it.

It really is a lovely time of year. I am thankful to be living it here.

And speaking of overdoing, this week has rubbed a little raw and left my soul sore. Take regular monthly hormones and tack on a pretty sick girl. Then throw in normal wife + mom + employee stress and a dash (albeit small) of ministry work. Ta-da! Perfect breeding ground for raw edges and soul soreness.

Since I’ve been (slowly!) reading one thousand gifts by Ann Voskamp, I’ve started visiting her blog. Wednesday morning, after a particularly hard evening the day before (due to no one’s but my own making), her words on being a Velveteen Mother truly spoke to me. She reminded me of this passage from The Velveteen Rabbit:

---

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

---

It’s the part I’ve bolded that has wound its way around my heart this week… to be real happens to people who don’t break easily, don’t have sharp edges, and don’t have to be carefully kept. Count them off on your fingers… one, two, three…

Sigh.

Sometimes I am pretty fragile. Often my sharp edges bump into others and I give them nasty purple bruises. And many days, I feel if I am to make it through, I have to be pretty carefully kept, I need to be coddled. So I protect myself. 

I suppose the soul-soreness I’m carrying tonight might just be evidence of those sharp edges being worn away a bit? I hope so. And maybe the Lord is toughening me in some small way so that I can be less fragile and more sturdy? Maybe my shield of self-protection is slipping down a tiny inch or two? I pray so.

I’ll close with a verse I plan to tuck deep inside me for a good long while:

Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. ~Psalm 100:3

This sheep is going to bed. ‘Night and blessings to you, bloggy friends~

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Hurry Up and….

I’ve been thinking a bit about hurrying the last few days. Things have seemed so busy, the days so full. And I am far from alone… seems like everyone I talk to feels as if they are rushing from one thing to the next.

I came across a blog entry that referenced a Time Magazine article from 1989 titled “How America Has Run Out of Time”. Here’s a snippet:

“So how did America become so timeless? Those who can remember washing diapers or dialing phones may recall the silvery vision of a postindustrial age. Computers, satellites, robotics and other wizardries promised to make the American worker so much more efficient that income and GNP would rise while the workweek shrank. In 1967 testimony before a Senate subcommittee indicated that by 1985 people could be working just 22 hours a week or 27 weeks a year or could retire at 38. That would leave only the great challenge of finding a way to enjoy all that leisure.” 

Wow…. 22 hour work-week, 27 weeks a year, and retiring at 38… How far off could they possibly have been? (Makes you wonder what ideas we have about the future that are going to be totally wrong, too!) What happened??

Here are some quotes for you to ponder along with me tonight about time and hurriedness:

“All my possessions for a moment of time.” -- Queen Elizabeth I, with her dying breath, 1603

"Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil." -- Carl Jung

"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that." --  The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland

Hurry Sickness is… “above all, a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time, frequently in the face of opposition, real or imagined, from other persons.” --  Dr. Meyer Friedman, Cardiologist

“The clock ticks slow. I hear it for what it is: good and holy. Time, what God first deemed holy above all else (Genesis 2:3).” – Ann Voskamp in One Thousand Gifts

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” – Jesus Christ, Son of God

“Be still, and know that I am God.” --  Jehovah Jireh, Creator of the Universe

May you have a syrupy slow evening that saunters sweetly under a magnificently spacious star-studded night sky ~ 

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Thrum Thursday

Thrum – the end of warp which is not woven but remains on the loom when the woven fabric has been cut free.

While we were at the beach I started reading Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. For some reason, I read the first few chapters and then put it down. It was a really good read, though, and I plan to finish it. Not sure why I stopped.

In chapter three, “Lanterns at Sea”, there was a lot of information about whaling in the 1800’s. Two sentences planted themselves firmly in my head and and I haven’t been able to get them out since. That’s what Thrum Thursday is all about…. taking those little loose bits of thread left on the loom and seeing what you can make of them….

So, here are those two sentences:

”Whales have always inexplicably beached themselves, and once out of their element, they can’t survive for long. Exposed fully to the sun, their skin burns, and they are crushed by their own weight.” (pg. 38)

It was the thought of the whales being “crushed by their own weight” that captured me. In the water, everything is fine. The water buoys up their bulk and blankets their skin from the scorching sun. But “once out of their element” the whale’s body betrays her and she dies – suffocating under her own weight while being slowly roasted to death by the sun.

And this is where my mind has been lingering…. Like water is to the whale, what is my “element” without which I cannot live? Why do I sometimes “inexplicably” remove myself from where I can thrive and be well? And then go to a place where there is the potential for self-destruction?

There are many things I consider “my element”:

Being vulnerable and real with my husband and children. 
Being in relationship with other people.
Being able to give myself space to create in one way or another.

But mainly, after living some 42 odd years, I’ve found for certain that my most basic, most needful “element” is God. I have been made, I have been created, to commune with Him, to worship Him, to live in right relationship to Him as the created adoring the Creator.

And when I’m not? When I start hauling myself out of the safety and comfort of His waters? I find the very weight of myself too heavy to bear. Without seeking God everyday, without reading His Word, being with His people, worshipping at the foot of His Cross, I am unprotected from the scorching rays of this dry world, and I begin to shrivel and melt within myself.

But when – as always because He will never, ever leave me or forsake me – I turn back to Him and sink into that wonderful, mysterious, unfathomable depth that is God, then all the other things (love, relationship, and creativity) click back into place.

My “element” is simply Christ. Without Him I cannot survive.    

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
(~Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing)

He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (~the Apostle Paul to the saints in Colosse)

Blessings, bloggy friends.

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Sunday Susurrus–Shame

susurrus \su-SUHR-uhs\, noun: A whispering or rustling sound; a murmur 


There are winds of change blowing around here, bloggy friends. No deaths, divorces, or grave illnesses. No loss of employment. No tragedies.

But change, never-the-less.

Today we said good-bye to a young family, the dad of which we’ve known for years. An orphan, we tried to care for him as best as we could. He lived with us here and there, sleeping on the floor or couch when our house was too full to give him a bed, sharing meals and washing laundry. Matt and The Boy were both groomsmen in his wedding and I was honored to sit in his mother’s place on the front pew. Now he and his wife and young son are heading across country so he can work on his masters at seminary. Then, he hopes, on to another masters and a doctorate perhaps. Maybe those will bring him back to North Carolina. But I don’t know. He will be a spectacular professor one day.

Friday was good-bye to a friend I’ve had for 12+ years. A friend who was pregnant with a daughter at the same time I was with Mary. Our girls were born just two weeks apart. She took care of Mary with her daughter when I had to go back to work. They shared birthdays together. We walked through some very sad times on both parts together. Now she’s taken her four kids and left for a new future in Texas. It is right for her, I know. But still there is an empty spot left where she should be. I thought she would always be just down the road.

And then there’s E… she’s off to college in just two short weeks! It’s hard to imagine her not being here, popping in and out from work, school, and friends…. Going for impromptu lunches and having afternoon talks…. It is good and right and a blessing that she has this opportunity. But it is hard. So very hard.

I’ve been working on a project of mine and Mary’s for the whole summer…. I’ll share more of that with you soon….(The photo contains a tiny glimpse) Part of the project has required that I weed through and sort all of the books in our house – no small task! Yesterday I came across Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, his autobiography that I read years ago. While flipping through the pages, I found this passage highlighted and asterisked in orange:

“The anguish of this self-knowledge is inescapable even on earth, as long as there is any self-love left in us: because it is pride that feels the burning of that shame. Only when all pride, all self-love has been consumed in our souls by the love of God, are we delivered from the thing which is the subject of those torments. It is only when we have lost all love of our selves for our own sakes that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish of shame.

For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present cause of joy and serves to glorify God.” (pg. 322-323)

Telling these dear ones good-bye this weekend brought up regrets – regret and shame that we weren’t I wasn’t there more for this young man that so needed a mom….. that I wasn’t more compassionate, more present to the sufferings of this dear friend…. that I wasn’t a better mother, that I didn’t more wisely use this very short time we had with our girl living under our very roof.

And is there sin in these regrets? Yes, I think, probably. Sins of omission maybe, but sins even so. I didn’t love my neighbor (whether friend or family member) as myself.

But these words of Merton’s – oh, yes! It is still my pride that causes me to have this regret, this shame. Pride, the root of all evil. It is only when we have lost all love of ourselves for our own sakes that our past sins cease to give us any cause for suffering or for the anguish of shame….For the saints… do not remember the sins but the mercy of God…

And, my! Hasn’t the mercy of God been great?!

May all pride and self-love be consumed in my soul and I only see my past failings and sins as reason to give God more praise for His unmerited and unfailing mercy and love.

Amen and amen.

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Liquid Diamonds

I’m listening to a book on the drive back and forth to work called The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. It’s a great book if you’re at all interested in chemicals and chemistry. The author mentions that some scientists are holding out for the possibility that Jupiter’s core might be liquid diamond with some Cadillac-sized solid chunks of diamonds floating around in it. Can you imagine?? And can you imagine what that would do to our diamond market if we could one day mine Jupiter’s core? Hundreds of years from now our great-great-great-great  grandchildren might look back and laugh at old photos of us wearing diamonds in our ears and around our necks like we would today if we saw someone wearing a necklace and earrings scrunched together out of aluminum foil!

We love diamonds and pay high prices for tiny pieces of them because they are considered precious. If you look up the definition of “precious” you get words like “valuable”, “costly”, “esteemed”, “dear”, and “beloved.” All this brought me down the path of thinking about what I hold as most precious. The Sunday-school answer, of course, is “Jesus.” But do I really hold Him as the most highly esteemed and valuable thing in my life? Well, yes, I think I really do believe that in my heart and mind…. but I don’t always act like it, I’m afraid. I don’t act like it a lot, actually.

I’ve seen worship defined as a private act with two parts – 1)seeing what God is worth and 2)giving Him what He’s worth (i.e. our praise, honor, attention, etc.)

I understand the worth of diamonds, even though I own very few of them myself. The few that I have were given to me and those people (my husband, my Dad)  were willing to pay for that worth.  I’m convicted today that I don’t always truly worship our Lord reflecting what I know to be His true worth…

So many other things get my praise.

So  many other things receive my honor.

So many other things capture my attention.

Today I’m praying for the ability to not only see the “worth” of Jesus as the most precious thing in my life, but to also honestly give Him the praise and honor and glory that He deserves in response.

Thanking God today for the fact that His “preciousness” and “worth” will never change, no matter what scientists one day discover on Jupiter!

From Revelation chapter 4:

⁹ Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, ¹⁰ the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

¹¹ “You are worthy, our Lord and God,
   to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
   and by your will they were created
   and have their being.”

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Come-Back-Forgiveness

Greetings from sunny Florida! I flew down to Tampa yesterday for a work meeting and will be here until Friday. It’s been good to see glimpses of the Gulf and palm trees, to ride over the Sky Bridge and see people fishing off its side piers, and to watch ospreys gliding over the water. I don’t think I’ll have much time to explore, but it seems like a nice place to visit.

We flew Southwest Airlines which has always been a good experience for me. But yesterday in Raleigh our flight was delayed two hours because bad weather in another part of the country slowed down Southwest’s whole system. As we were approaching Tampa, the pilot came over the PA system and asked us to forgive Southwest for the delays we experienced and please come back to fly with them again.

I thought the pilot’s use of the word ‘forgive’ in this context interesting and it made me consider forgiveness in general as we began our rather bumpy descent. I suppose when we forgive anybody – an airline, a co-worker, a friend, a spouse – there is often a sort of coming back to them involved. I guess it doesn’t have to be this way to forgive, but the best act of forgiving has this component to it.

When I forgive a friend for whatever wrong she has done to me, really forgive, I come back to her with my heart, prepared to lay it on the line again, prepared to be vulnerable and open and ready to trust her. (Now, I know sometimes it’s reasonable to truly forgive someone and not come back. There are times when you can forgive the wrong, but it’s just not possible, or always even healthy, to allow the person the same kind of access to your heart again.  I think of the adult child who wants to forgive the parent who was abusive to them or the woman who needs to forgive the man who molested her. Forgiveness is important, critical to the both the child’s and woman’s mental and emotional health, but complete restoration of the relationships are probably not going to happen this side of Heaven.)

I think “Come-Back-Forgiveness” is what the Jesus is talking to Peter about in Matthew 18 when He says don’t just forgive someone seven times then cut them out of  your life. Forgive them seventy times seven! Basically, forgive them over and over again. Give them Come-Back-Forgiveness.

This is the kind of forgiveness God gives us. We sin against Him myriad times a day and yet He doesn’t leave us. He’s patient and gentle, pouring out new mercies each morning, giving us balm for our souls when we deserve so much less. Over and over again, He forgives not just when we don’t obey His commands, but also when we ignore Him and choose more “hip” friends, when we fail to speak up for Him when we hear others putting Him down, and when we get too busy to spend time with Him really talking and listening to what He has to say. But He’s always there, offering forgiveness and putting His heart out to us again and again.

Paul told the Ephesians “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32) God models this amazing, and expensive, type of forgiveness for us every day. There’s always a price to be paid for forgiveness. Not by the person who is being forgiven, but by the person who is doing the forgiving. And it’s never cheap. When we forgive, we absorb the pain caused by the sin against us into ourselves. It doesn’t just disappear. When God forgave us, He did the same thing. He absorbed the pain of our sins by sending His Son to die on the Cross.

I’m praying today to be able to show others in my life Come-Back-Forgiveness. But more importantly, I’m praying to be able to more clearly understand how God has forgiven me, how He continues to forgive me, and how He will keep on forgiving me everyday I have left here on this earth. 

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Talking to Snakes

When I read the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, there’s always been something that strikes me as a little odd about Eve and her initial response to the serpent. When he sidled up to her and began to talk, Moses seems to report that Eve’s answer was calm and gracious (albeit ultimately flawed.) There was no surprise or fear on her part that a snake was talking to her! She just calmly began engaging the old Devil in conversation and, of course as we all know, things went downhill from there.

But why wasn’t Eve shocked that an ANIMAL was TALKING to her? Apparently, this wasn’t a big deal to her.

I like to toy with the idea that maybe it wasn’t a surprise to her because talking snakes were normal in the Garden. Maybe pre-Fall snakes could talk?! Maybe all animals could talk? Maybe this is part of what we lost when Eve and Adam sinned, an ability to commune more deeply with the other creatures God had made.

Last week during the Bible study I’m leading, we were talking about Genesis and specifically the story of the Fall when I mentioned my thoughts on this. The lady sitting next to me – a lovely elderly lady – looked at me and said very quietly, “Well, she was innocent. She had nothing to be afraid of yet.”

Wow.

What a great insight. This has set me going down a whole different line of thought.

Eve, sans sin, had nothing to be afraid of because she knew and trusted her good and loving Creator-God. She knew He only had good in store for her. Everything she discovered must have been delightful. Any change to her “status-quo” in the Garden was only seen as the next blessing from her Father’s hands to hers.

That’s not usually my experience when new things come into my life, how about you? Even changes that are “good”, I generally have trouble handling. Like The Boy and The Girl getting married last year. I couldn’t have asked for anything better – right timing, wonderful girl, and terrific family. But still – the change was difficult for me.

Now E will be leaving soon for college – a school she really, really, wanted to attend that God has miraculously provided finances for, a school close enough for us to visit but far enough away for her to begin to learn how to be on her own.

Yet.

My heart is fearful as I think of scary situations and negative outcomes for her. My mind races forward, wondering how we will ever be able to continue to pay for her tuition after this first year. God has provided a way this year, but what about the next? And the next?

And there’s more. Job changes and opportunities, changes that come from aging (Yes, friends, your female body really does begin to drastically change at 40!), new seasons of married life, my baby growing into a teenager, friends moving away, new friends finding their way to us. It’s all good, but yet there’s a little tinge of fear in my heart these days that colors the edges of my vision, wanting things to stay the same, being comfortable in the known world around me and just a bit scared of what is to come.

In the Fall, it wasn’t God who changed, it was Man. God is still the good and loving Creator-God that He was in the Garden. It is my sinfulness, my natural enmity toward Him, (thank-you, Eve) that separates me from Him even as I strive to draw near, even as I know in all my striving and all my failings, that He is with me regardless. It is my close-fisted hands that fail to receive with joy and trust the blessings He offers.

So my prayer today is to be like Eve talking to a snake. To not be afraid of new things He brings into my life, to have open hands to receive change. And not just open hands, but hands cupped and ready to receive from Him his plan for my life to its fullest, brim-full hands, not losing one little drop.

Now, knowing what actually came out of Eve talking to the serpent in the Garden, this post may seem a little weird – a prayer to not be afraid of talking snakes! – but so goes the wanderings of my crooked little mind. Forgive the failings in theology or doctrine...

Blessings, bloggy friends!

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What is the Bible?

Hope you've had a wonderful Sabbath day, friends! If you're here in the Sandhills of North Carolina, we had an absolutely spectacular day, didn't we? I was happy to spend a few hours outdoors at a local park, walking four miles with a friend, and then having a yummy lunch with our Life Group.

I've spent most of the afternoon working on the first week of a six week study I'm leading beginning this Tuesday. It's called "Unwrapping God's Gift: Understanding the Bible". I'm pretty excited about it. As always, I struggle with how to shrink down and clarify all the goodies I have swimming around in this fishbowl head of mine. Pray for me!

Each week's topic will be a question. This week's is What is the Bible? It's a question that is foundational to the rest of the study.  Putting it a little differently:

• Is the Bible a record of man reaching out to God?
• Or is the Bible a record of God reaching down to man?

Simply, is it man's word or is it God's? The answer is not only crucial to the gals' understanding of the material we'll be covering the remaining weeks, but it's critical to their understanding of themselves, God, and Jesus. 

Since I'm a member of a church belonging to the EFCA, I decided to take their Statement of Faith on the Bible and break it apart:

We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. Therefore, it is to be believed in all that it teaches, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.

I'll leave you with a few facts that I'll be sharing as we get kicked off:

• The Bible contains 66 "books" divided up into two "Testaments", the Old and New.
• It was written by 40 different authors over a span of 1500 years.
• It was written on three different continents - Africa, Asia, and Europe.
• It was written in three different languages - Hebrew (OT), Greek (NT) and Aramaic (NT)
• Amazingly, all the books share a common storyline - the creation, fall, and redemption of God's people. 

I'll be blogging more about our lesson this week! Blessings!

Oh! Part of our homework will be to memorize the first ten books of the Bible. Want to join us?

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel

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