Author: jdunderwood

Great numbers of the least

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Joseph Stalin reportedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,” and there’s a lot of truth to that statement. In the last week I’ve been reminded of a lot of numbers. I’m going to spout a few of them at you in the next couple of paragraphs but please know that the numbers are not the focus.

On Saturday I attended a training seminar at our local World Relief center (http://worldrelief.org/). Did you know there are 43.7 MILLION refugees in the world? Eighty percent of them are women and children.

On the radio last week I listened to an interview with Kathi Macias, an author who has written a fiction series on sex slave trafficking around the globe. More than 27 million slaves live in our world now. Two million of them are children exploited in the sex slave trade. This trade touches nearly every single country in the world and has a very real presence in the United States—not just in cities but in small towns as well (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/corban-addison/modern-slavery_b_1214371.html) (http://kathimacias.com/kathis-books/).

On Saturday night—and again on Sunday—I spent time with Wilfred Rugumba, who is very special to our family. Wilfred is the director of the orphanage where Patrick, our youngest, lived before becoming an Underwood (http://www.mercychildcare.org/). Wilfred reminded me that there are between 143 and 210 million orphans in the world. The number of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa is greater than the total number of children in Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Canada, and Sweden.

Those are overwhelming statistics! Obviously they overlap—a lot. Many of those refugees are also orphans. Many orphans are the ones abducted into the slave trade. But regardless of how you slice and dice it, it adds up to a lot of people. A lot of hurting people.

Sometimes I can forget these numbers. I can go for a few days, a week, maybe two without actively remembering that every minute people are being abused, sold, orphaned, displaced, and widowed. There have been other times in my life, though, when I have felt paralyzed by the thought of the vicious evil being done in any given moment.

It is in those moments when I have been reminded that God NEVER forgets. I CAN forget. I can get wrapped up in my days that are filled with activity. But God never forgets. If He knows the number of hairs on my head, He certainly knows the numbers of those being abused and exploited. He knows exactly how many stomachs are hungry. He knows how many children are wailing or dazed with grief over dead parents. And they are not just numbers to Him. They are faces, hearts, and souls to Him! And He is present in their pain. He is there when the young girl or boy is sold for sex. He is there when the widow watches her child grow listless and blank-eyed because hunger has dulled everything. He sees every village that is marauded for political or ethnic reasons.

He was there during the Armenian massacres, and there during the Holocaust and there during the Rwandan and Cambodian and Bosnian genocides and others we don’t even know about. He is in Darfur today.

And He is not untouched.

My God, what a heart You must have! We cannot blame you for these atrocities—though we try. These are crimes we commit against each other, crimes we allow because we are too concerned with our own safety and status quo to be bothered. But You are bothered. I know that with our present-day, developed-world mentality, we tend to ask questions like, “How could a loving God judge our world? How could a loving God hold us to account when we cannot see Him?” But even if God did not hold us guilty for how we have forgotten and disrespected HIM, we would stand condemned for how we have disrespected and abused and ignored His image that is seen so clearly in the children of the world. In fact, some moments, when I read about atrocities done to children and defenseless women and oppressed people groups, I think, “How do you hold back, God? How do you keep from not just wiping us completely off the face of the earth?” Even with the Western, rights-focused bent that I must fight for the rest of my life, I am more amazed by His mercy in those moments than offended by His judgment.

Yet He has not wiped out. He has given grace. He continues to love His Western, privileged church even when we fail miserably at being His hands and feet to the oppressed. He allows me to approach Him daily, hourly with my comparatively small frustrations and complaints.

I am amazed by this God. I am humbled by this God.

And I pray that these two attitudes—amazement and humility—will lead my heart and my hands and my feet into becoming more and more like His.

Chester and the Galaxies

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The tree that dropped these leaves was so beautiful I had to stop the car to take pictures of it. Then I noticed the carpet of leaves on the sidewalk.

About an hour ago I took a break from the article I was writing and went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. Scurrying across the linoleum was a bug. Thinking it was a box elder beetle (Jake did a recent science project on these; they’re funny looking bugs), I got down for a closer look. It was a tiny cricket, smaller than Chester in Cricket in Time’s Square (I read this as a kid and then again to my kids last year–great book) but delicate, just as Chester looks in those beautiful drawings by Garth Williams (who also illustrated Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little).

I pushed a crumb on the floor closer to the cricket, but it jumped. Up, up, up, a good six times higher than its own height, then landing on its feet. Amazing! I did it again. Then I just watched, as the cricket put out its incredibly thin, sensitive feelers to test before it took each step. Somehow its long, folded jumping legs moved in stride with its much shorter front legs, and a few seconds later, it had made its way under the stove and was out of sight. Smart cricket! I don’t remember the last time I swept under there!

“Chester” made me think of a conversation I had on Wednesday with one of the international students I tutor. “What do you want to work on today?” I asked her at the beginning of the session.

Her reply was immediate: “Bible.”

“Hard stuff again?” This would not be the first time we’ve discussed a Bible lesson. She is newer to the English language than many of the other international students in the class, so the discussions move too quickly for her, and on top of that she has no background in Christianity or the Bible.

“I don’t understand what we are talking about, and I have a test tomorrow.”

What they have been talking about is internal and external evidences, the canon, and plenary-verbal inspiration. Many of our non-Christian students WANT this. With educations steeped in the scientific, they want to sift through evidence; they want “proof” outside of experience.

But this student, though raised in the same kind of setting, is asking different questions. “How do YOU know?” she asked me a few weeks back. “What was a time God showed He was real to YOU?”

I’ve shared Patrick’s story; I’ve talked about moving to Japan and moving back. I’ve talked about comfort even in times that started out difficult and stayed difficult.

So this day I skipped the canon and started with general revelation.

And I got a little excited.

“When I took a walk yesterday,” I told her, “I noticed all the colors in the trees. Beautiful. And then I noticed these little plants—someone told me they are called ‘Chinese Lanterns.’ They’re amazing. And when I think that each winter these plants and trees cease operations, huddle into themselves during the cold months, and then are brought to life again in the spring, I am in awe!”

She was nodding, so I went on. I talked about the wonders of the human foot, that so small a base (and only two of them) could hold up a person as tall as the head of our international student program. She grinned.

“When I look at all of that, I think, ‘There must be a designer. This could not have come about by accident, by an explosion.” She’s shaking her head now, though I know she has learned nothing but evolution in her schooling. “I think that this must have come out of the mind of a Being far greater than I, Someone who was able to think of each tiny, tiny detail—down to the atoms and molecules—as well as the hugeness of planets and galaxies and how it all works together.”

I was breathless by now, and her eyes were shining. But I’m not finishing this post by saying that she made a decision that afternoon, though we moved from general revelation to special, from the stars to the Bright and Morning Star who came down for us to view him up close and personal and then died so we could really know Him (not that I used those words! J). No, this very special student is on her own journey, and I want the Holy Spirit of God to move her heart in that personal, beautiful way He has until it is her own decision and not one unduly influenced by me or anyone else.

But I finish this post with amazement at the general revelation He has given—from “Chester” currently hiding out under my stove to the galaxies and planets revealed to our weak eyes through the Hubble and Kepler telescopes. I finish with a sorrow-mixed awe at the power of storms like Sandy and what they tell us about our own incapacity and the mighty strength of the God who created wind patterns and waves that groan and heave with the weight of the Fall.

Take a walk today. Crouch low and notice the details. Look up high and watch the wind bend branches and trees as thick as our bodies. Google images of stars and planets (here’s a Web site I found today: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/).

Get a bigger picture.

And let’s be amazed, awed, wowed together.

Here are some of those Chinese Lanterns–now I finally know what the red version in my yard is. They’re beautiful.

Two ears, one mouth, and no highlighter

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“We have two ears and one mouth, which ought to remind us to listen more than we speak. Too many times we argue with God’s Word, if not audibly, at least in our hearts and minds.”

The above quote is from Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the book of James (Be Mature: Growing Up in Christ).

The quote reminded me of a call-in guest I’d heard not too long before on a radio program. He identified himself as a Christian who was a formerly practicing homosexual and then said, “I had to get to the point at which I read God’s Word and said, ‘I agree with that. I may not like it, but that doesn’t change its rightness and trueness.’”

That’s an amazing statement, I thought, and went on, but God kept bringin

From our yard–beautiful!

g it back to mind. The issue, I realized, is that it is easy to tell someone struggling with an “obvious” sin that he/she needs to agree with God’s Word, but it is even easier to ignore the fact that I need to do the same. I once listened to Shane Claiborne, author of several books, including Irresistible Revolution, talk about the fear with which he approaches the Bible. He said something like this: If I truly believe the Bible is God speaking to me, then I can’t just ignore what He says. Every time I open the Bible, I find that I am called to do something that disrupts my comfort.

It is easy for me to point the finger at those who have beliefs or lifestyles that noticeably contradict Scripture and say they need to accept God’s Word. But what about my “acceptable” beliefs or actions that are pointed out when I allow Scripture to pierce me, when I read them and say, “Yes, I agree that this is TRUE and right, even though I don’t necessarily like what it is saying about me”?

Shane Claiborne, focusing specifically on the Church’s attitudes and actions toward the poor, and how we place more emphasis on some commands/theology than others, wrote, “But I guess that’s why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest.”

Mark Twain wrote, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” I am most definitely mis-interpreting Twain’s original intent (considering that you generally find this quote and many others of his on atheist Web sites), but I can apply it to my life. The meaning is clear when the Scriptures call my heart “deceitful” and “desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:7-9) and my tongue a “raging fire,” “set on fire by hell” itself (James 3:6), but I don’t like those pointed statements, and I haven’t “highlighted” those verses in my Bible.

But Scripture calls itself a dividing sword. Sometimes it’s like an axe (like when the prophet Nathan confronted David about his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, Uriah: “You are the man!” [2 Samuel 12]). Other times it’s as fine-tuned as a laser: Psalm 19:12 asks God to reveal “hidden faults,” because “who can discern their own errors?”

I encountered the Warren Wiersbe quote about arguing with God because I’m in a Bible study on the book of James right now that is using his commentary, and I’m discovering lots of verses in James I’d like to ignore. But instead I’m called to read verses like James 1:20: “…be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” and AGREE with it. I have to say, “You’re right! My anger—no matter how provoked—is not working Your righteousness. I HAVE to let go of my anger no matter how justified it seems or how good it makes me feel in the moment.”

Wiersbe also writes this in his James commentary: “Too many Christians mark their Bibles, but their Bibles never mark them.” And pastor/speaker/author Stuart Briscoe says, “As we look into Scriptures, we (must) let the Scriptures look into us.”

I agree with that. Now it is time to DO it.

One Cry

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Here is a Web site to check out on the topic of big, bold prayer: http://www.onecry.com.

The OneCry Web site says this about itself: “OneCry is a movement of believers who are urgently crying out to God to revive the church and transform the culture. It isn’t an organization, program, or event. It’s a movement of like-minded people, churches, and organizations who agree that our nation needs a dramatic turnaround—but not the kind that comes from different politics, more education, or a better economy. Instead, it’s a cry to God for spiritual transformation of our hearts, homes, and communities. We believe that extraordinary things will happen as we turn from sin and seek God together!”

Tomorrow night (October 30) from 8-10 EST there is a OneCry radio prayer summit being aired by more than 300 stations. If you want more information on it, visit the OneCry Web site and scroll down to the bottom. You can view all the radio stations airing the summit or listen to it through the Web site itself.

“Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”
Oswald Chanbers

 

Krishnan and Hurnard on prayer

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A friend who lives in Indonesia sent me a link after my last blog post: http://vimeo.com/8467883. It’s a video of Sunder Krishnan, pastor of Rexdale Alliance Church in Toronto, Ontario, speaking on prayer at the Urbana Conference in 2009. It’s titled “Pray Big and Pray Bold,” it’s about praying for our everyday requests in the same power that was exercised by the early church in Acts 4, and it is AWESOME! I listened to it today as I ate my lunch. It would not load the last four minutes of the video, and I’m hoping that’s not a permanent problem as I’m planning to watch it again later (maybe while I fold laundry 🙂  ). Here’s the link to the Youtube posting just in case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRT5q1DuMg.

I also have a quote to share from one of my favorite authors, Hannah Hurnard. If you have not read Hind’s Feet on High Places, I recommend it. That’s her best-known book, though she has also written other excellent ones. As I read and re-read Hinds’ Feet, I find myself thinking–and sometimes saying aloud–“Yes! That’s exactly how it is. That’s what my soul WANTS to say–without knowing how to say it.”

Anyway, here’s the quote by Hurnard that I wanted to share: “It is not that prayer changes God, or awakens in Him purposes of love and compassion that He has not already felt. No, it changes us, and therein lies its glory and its purpose.”

In our lives, Lord, be glorified

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Last week I posted about prayer, about praying BIG, or at least praying for God’s BIG. That doesn’t come naturally for me. My “self” generally takes over and my focus is on the here, the now, the pressing. If I could see, as Elisha’s servant was enabled to, the great spiritual forces and battles taking place, I know my prayers would be different (2 Kings 6). So I pray for increased sight, for enabled vision, but in the meantime of this life’s limitations, I practice praying BIG solely on faith. I pray in the  belief that the glory of God is the best thing for all of us, and when His glory is accomplished, then ALL will be right and well.

The other morning, as I was busy with the “small” of picking out clothes and putting on makeup, I began singing an old praise chorus. “In my life, Lord, be glorified, be glorified. In my life, Lord, be glorified, today.” (Here’s a link to a performance of it on Youtube if you’re not familiar with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gquuJRoYI). I sang the verses, which substitute the words “my home” and then “Your church” for “my life,” but then I got specific, putting in my husband’s name, my children’s names, Water’s Edge church, Wheaton Academy, then specific countries: the U.S., China, Japan, Africa, starting with the ones with which I’ve had personal connection. It was such a small exercise, but it focused my prayer time and as I sang I imagined what it might look like for God to be glorified in Dave’s life that day, through Wheaton Academy that day, through the house church movement in China that day. Specific AND Big.

I continued the verses in open moments, chopping veggies for the crockpot, driving home from carpooling, folding laundry. At some point it turned to a different song:“ We exalt thee.” I sang this years and years ago in Argentina, as I washed dishes in some incredibly hot water with the Argentine woman who cooked dinners for the church family. I taught her the English words to the song; she taught me the Spanish, and we sang together while we scrubbed chicken bits off plates and scoured out the giant pots she had used for soup that night. At some point in our singing the image of humanity gathered around the throne of God, singing all together, came to my mind and it became more real to me than it ever had before. And somehow, after a day of singing now, off and on, for God to be glorified through as many people and groups as I could think of, I was pulled back to the that image and to that song. I got a glimpse of my–of our–biggest purpose.

In our lives, Lord, be glorified.

Pessimistic praying

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I grew up spiritually fatalistic, in a family and in churches that firmly believed we were in the end times, and things were only going to get worse in our world until Christ’s return.

I still believe that Scripture bears witness to this, but lately the Holy Spirit has been convicting me about the pessimism that I’ve carried along with this belief. It is true that as a world, we are marching steadily further and further away from God, but I can’t find any place in Scripture that tells me to give up hope for God’s work in the middle of this.

I’ve begun to see that my “pessimism” has led me to pray limited prayers. I haven’t really prayed for great revival—in our nation or our world. I don’t remember ever asking for a widespread heart transformation of our political leaders—at least not with any real passion.

And this pessimism hasn’t just affected my “big” prayers. When I pray for someone seriously sick or injured in an accident, I hold back from boldly asking for healing. Instead I say, “if it be Your will, Lord” or I ask Him to “work things out for good.” Even when the longing in my heart is so great it throbs, I often hold back from praying in hope.

I think I began praying those words because Jesus prayed for the Father’s will to be done. It seemed right to follow His example, and I still think that is a valid way to pray. But I’ve been realizing that, though my WORDS may be the same as Christ’s, my attitude is entirely different. When I pray those words, they come out of doubt and not hope. When I pray them, I’m tamping down hope. I’m subconsciously thinking, “Well, if I don’t let my hopes get too high, then it won’t hurt when God doesn’t answer this prayer the way I want Him to.” This attitude seems pretty contrary to Scripture. In the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is incredibly hopeful! It’s asking for earth to be more like heaven, where a loving God—rather than a cruel Satan—reigns. When Christ prayed “Your will be done,” He did so KNOWING that His Father’s will was and is completely good. He KNEW that on the other side of suffering was unspeakable joy for him. I imagine there was great freedom when He cried that. I imagine He was thinking, I WILL triumph over the pain and loneliness. I WILL cling to the joy that is ahead.

I don’t pray for the Lord’s will in that way. My sight is incredibly limited, so there is no triumph, there is no ability to see what is on the other side. So when I pretend with my words to be able to do that, am I lying? What’s more important: the words that come out of my mouth or the stifled hope that is in my heart? If I think my words are going to hide a very different heart attitude from an all-knowing God, then I’m mistaken.

How silly to try to hide my longings from God. How silly to pretend to have the same wisdom and knowledge as Jesus. I am human, not divine. I can follow Paul’s very human example when he cried out for his “thorn in the flesh” to be removed. Again and again he “begged” for this. He didn’t try to pretend that it was okay. He didn’t try to be “spiritual” from the beginning. He didn’t act like he had God’s purpose in that thorn all figured out. No. He cried out. He let God know how he felt. He “begged”! His words honestly portrayed what was in his heart. THEN God began teaching him that “(His) grace is enough.” Paul, being human, didn’t start with that. He shared what was in his heart and then let God transform him.

Lately, God has given our family a rare rest time: No one is sick; all six kids are doing well at school and with each other; Dave’s enjoying his work; I’m not so incredibly busy that I’m barely clinging to sanity.

This is good, yes, but it’s also dangerous because it’s during these kinds of times that my prayer life often suffers. I don’t actively depend on God in rest times the ways I do when things are hard. I don’t pray with the same intensity. But God’s been reminding me that things are hard in others’ lives and—on a bigger scope—in the world and in the church. I can use this space of personal rest to pray with passion—and with HOPE!—for others.

I know that authentic prayer for others hurts. When I pray specifically for the persecuted church, my heart will have to stretch to care more about those brothers and sisters. When I pray for women and girls and boys who are being abused through sex trafficking, my sleep will at times be interrupted with urgings to pray in the middle of the night. When I pray for this nation’s political leaders, I will have to pay greater attention to what is going on in the government. When I pray for the members of our church, I will have to invest more of my time in their lives.

But HOPE requires that I pray. And faith requires that I pray in HOPE.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!

Amen.” Galatians 3:14-21

I took this shot in Montana this summer and am posting it today because I find a lot of amazing lessons in the metamorphosis of butterflies and in their fragile, short lives following their transformation. I see them as very hopeful creatures.

Thank you, Horatius Bonar

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Horatius Bonar! That’s a name you won’t forget! Mr. Bonar was a Scottish churchman and poet in the 1800s (1808-1889). He was one of eleven children (two of his brothers were John James and Andrew; who knows why Horatius got the far more interesting handle!). He was a supporter of the Scottish revival and wrote biographical sketches of many of the revivalists. He was also a pastor, an author of several books, a hymnwriter (he wrote hundreds of them!), a poet, and an evangelist. He was almost 80 when he preached for the last time in his church.

BIG things, a great resume, but what brought Mr. Bonar to my attention was a hymn that he wrote about small things, about praise filling “every part,” even the “common things” of life, so that fellowship with Christ makes all “duties and deeds” sacred and turns each “fear, fret, and care” into a song.

I like to be able to sing my hymns, and the original tune for this, though very pretty, is not well known. However, it can also be sung to the tune of Isaac Watts’ “I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” with two stanzas of the hymn below combined for each verse. Hope you enjoy.

Fill thou my life, O Lord my God,
in every part with praise,
that my whole being may proclaim
thy being and thy ways.

Not for the lip of praise alone,
nor e’en the praising heart
I ask, but for a life made up
of praise in every part!

Praise in the common things of life,
its goings out and in;
praise in each duty and deed,
however small and mean.

Fill every part of me with praise;
let all my being speak
of thee and of thy love, O Lord,
poor though I be, and weak.

So shalt thou, Lord, from me, e’en me,
receive the glory due;
and so shall I begin on earth
the song forever new.

So shall each fear, each fret, each care
be turned into a song,
and every winding of the way
the echo shall prolong;

So shall no part of day or night
from sacredness be free;
but all my life, in every step
be fellowship with thee.

Thank you, Horatius Bonar, for using your God-given talents to bless me with these words.

Note: If you would like to read more about Mr. Bonar, a Google search reveals several sites about him and lists his other hymns as well as his books. His personal life was just as busy as his “professional” life of pastoring and writing. He and his wife, Jane, also a hymnwriter, had nine children, but five of them died very young. Later one of their daughters was widowed, and she returned, with her five children, to live with her parents. Jane died when Horatius was in his early 60s, and he suffered with illness for the last couple years of his life.

Oddly enough, though he wrote more than 600 hymns, his church did not sing hymns during the worship service! Late in his life, he began to sing one of his hymns in a worship service, and two of the elders walked out.

From grouchy to glorifying

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I took this today in our front yard. What an amazing blue sky!

Yesterday’s getting-ready-to-go-to-school was grouchy. Nothing major, just a lot of little things that resulted in rubbed tempers that we carried all the way to the car and on the drive to school. We lacked harmony.

As I drove, Maddie recited her memory verses, Psalms 86:10-13. She had a Bible in her lap, but she wasn’t really looking at it, just reciting, and I was sure she had one of the phrases wrong.

“Look at it, Maddie,” I told her. She repeated the same phrase.

“Are you looking at it?” I asked her.

“I’m saying it, Mom.”

“I know, but is that what it says? You’re still saying the same phrase.”

Repeat above conversation—maybe a couple times.

Then Em jumped in. “Mom, she’s reading it.”

“No, she’s looking at me in the rearview mirror.”

Repeat THAT conversation.

Finally Maddie looked, saw the correct phrase, changed it, and went right on with the rest of the passage.

Being who I am (a little stuck on being RIGHT), I felt I had review what had happened. “Mads, do you see what I meant now? I just wanted you to LOOK at it. It’s not a big deal, but I didn’t want you to memorize it the wrong way.”

She said, “yeah, I do,” and conversation went on in the car, but it all felt “off” to me—the entire morning.

So after I dropped the kids off, I started examining both the morning and my heart. Why didn’t it feel right to me? What, exactly, was wrong? What should I have done differently? I couldn’t even seem to talk to God about it: my prayers felt distant and stiff. What was going on?

As I wrestled, a little chorus in my head got louder and louder until I finally paid attention to it.

It was a phrase from the verses Maddie had been reciting.

“Teach me Your way, Lord, that I may rely on Your faithfulness.” (11a)

Little aha! moment then: His faithfulness, not MINE. Part of my being unsettled was due to my feeling that I didn’t handle the morning well. I’d been relying not on God’s faithfulness but on MINE—yikes!

More revelation: His faithfulness, not my CHILDREN’s. Oh, a very real moment of clarity. Whenever I rely on other people—that they should do the things I think they should do, that my well-being and my state of mind is based on how they act or react to me—my reliance is on THEM and not on Christ. I had not been relying on God’s faithfulness—a solid rock—but on the shifting sand of people’s faithfulness.

Then real prayer came. “Oh, Lord, You alone are faithful. Forgive me for relying on anything or anybody other than You. Forgive me for wanting a smooth morning more than intimacy with You.”

The end of the passage came flooding to mind then. Verse 13: “Great is Your love for me; you have delivered me from the depths.” Yes, once again He had rescued me from my pit of self-sufficiency and self-focus—and He did this because HE LOVES ME! Because He wants fellowship with me! Because He is not willing for me to live a fake, less-than-real life but wants me to have abundant life with HIM!

I was now full circle around to the first verse of the passage. In just a few minutes God had brought supernatural change to my heart—and heart transformation is no small thing! Psalm 86:10 says, “For You are great and do marvelous deeds; You alone are God.”

Yes! Only God can change a heart.

At this point I was able to recite the entire passage—and mean it.

“For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.

Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness;

Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.

For great is Your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.”

Amen.

Wisdom

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“Homecoming is special because we’re all home-going—and this allows us to check in along the way.”

We just finished homecoming week at Wheaton Academy, and that quote (said by Greg Cox) summed this one up for me. For the first time I experienced the Academy’s homecoming as a writer rather than as a teacher. I still chaperoned at the square dance/hoedown Saturday night (fun), but I also interviewed a 1947 grad who spoke on bioet

Photo by Judy Wen

hics in the advanced biology class; I talked for more than an hour with the two alumni of the year; and I met, face-to-face, all the former teachers I interviewed this summer while preparing for a different article. I also had the privilege of going to the alumni worship service Sunday morning. While some of the alum there were around my age, most graduated in the 40s and 50s. I could have listened to them talk all day long.

One former teacher (I actually taught with her) told me about her struggles following retirement. “I felt like I’d lost purpose. I asked myself, ‘What am I doing?’ Then I learned this truth: I still have the same job, to serve Jesus. That didn’t change. The only thing that changed was how I did it.”

I met a woman who cares for a very ill husband. Her days are spent dispensing medicines and aiding him in getting around. But she had a smile on her face. The hardest thing, she says, “is watching him suffer,” but she’s seeing how God is being glorified through it, and that helps.

Another former teacher (I taught with her as well) just had to place her husband in assisted living. But rather than talk about that, she wanted to spend our time together encouraging me.

They’re going home. They’re not there yet—this is not it. That recognition changes everything. It gives them purpose. These are forward-gazing people. They have looked back and seen the hand of God in their lives. Through heart attacks and strokes, through lost loved ones and errant children, through financial highs and very low lows, they have learned that God is a constant companion. He never fails, He never forsakes. He always keeps His promises.

And when they “check in” with each other on their home-going way, these are the things they remind each other of. These are the things they reminded ME of. “Hang on. He’s faithful. Call out to Him. He’s there. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it.”

“Even to your old age I am He, and even to hair white with age will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; yes, I will carry and will save you.” Isaiah 46:4 (Amplified)

Soli deo Gloria!