grace in the small things

Always grace for regrets

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Last week I overheard a conversation. The guy said, “A few years back, I rode the train every day to the job I was working then. That time became my listening time, my prayer time. I often prayed for other people in my train compartment, and for those coming and going.

“One day I felt led to pray for a woman sitting across from me. By all appearances, she looked homeless. The urge grew stronger. I wasn’t simply supposed to pray for her. I was supposed to approach her and ask if I could pray with her.

But my stop was coming up, and if I missed it, I would be late to work.”

He paused and looked directly into the eyes of the other person, owning the moment and his own admission. “I didn’t pray with her. I got off the train.

“And I’ve never forgotten that.”

I have regrets, too. Sometimes they are like that man’s, disregarded urges to reach out to a stranger. More often, mine are with people who are part of my family. I have mornings when I drop the kids off at school with a crummy feeling in the pit of my stomach. In the quietness of the post-drop-off, I examine why and realize it’s because of missed opportunities. I fussed instead of listening; I rushed instead of taking a moment to be still and assess; I lost it instead of laughing over something small.

We will always have regrets like these. It’s part of being human, being stuck in time, in moment-by-moment living.

The awful thing about “little” regrets like these is that the choices don’t seem nearly so difficult when we have the privilege of retrospection. In hindsight, I’m sure the teacher would have chosen to be late to work just that one day. I can almost always look back and see the humor in a mess or situation that at the time caused me frustration.

Yet the solution is not simple. It has no formulaic answer. I know that prayer—lots and lots of cries for help—is required. Slowing down helps. “Living at the pace of faith.” (Gotta admit—I stole that one from a church billboard, which has been making me think every time I pass it.)

But when we forget to pray, when slowing down doesn’t seem to be an option, when we’ve been chewed up and spit out by the pace of life, there is the constant of all constants: grace. We need blessed, real grace to actually remember to pray and slow down and live in faith. We also need it because the regrets will continue. We set ourselves up for guilt and shame if we think we can live without regrets, without missing the mark again and again and again.

This is messy sanctification, but it’s real, and it takes us, bit by bit, into a deep assurance that His grace is always greater than our regrets.

Always.

A purpose in being overwhelmed

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I write so often about feeling overwhelmed, I wonder if people think it’s my constant condition.

Well, it’s not 24/7, at least not most days.

But daily, at some point, by one thing or another?

Yes.

Last Monday I was overwhelmed by my schedule, by the keeping up with this and that. As I drove the kids to school that morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about the teetering tower of papers on the corner of my desk at home. These were “school papers”–all the ones my kids kept bringing home from school and others I’d been handed during back-to-school night two weeks before. I’d put off dealing with “the tower” because I knew I would discover several forms I needed to fill out, many new dates to put in my calendar, and–at this point–a couple of deadlines I’d already missed.

Though “the tower” was on my mind, I couldn’t do anything about it right then, because from 10:30-12:30 on Mondays, I help out in an ESL class run by World Relief (worldrelief.org). I started doing this last year, but I was in the “bridge” class then, which “bridged the gap” for refugees whose English was almost proficient enough for them to take college courses. This year I’m pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum, helping with the lower section of the “Job Class.” Students in this class are the primary breadwinners for their families. They need jobs quickly, and this class is a crash course in conversational English and American work culture. Last week we worked on giving/receiving firm handshakes and pronouncing numbers, particularly dollar amounts. After a student completes 60 hours of training, a World Relief job counselor begins working with him/her to find a job.

I often ask these students, “When did you come to the U.S.?” and the answers range from “last week” to “six weeks ago.” After only 60 hours of class, they will enter a work environment with bosses and coworkers who speak a language they are not proficient in, in a culture very, very different from their own.

I panic for them just thinking about all that.

So back to last Monday morning. Since the World Relief class is closer to my kids’ school than it is my house, I go to a Dunkin Donuts after I drop them off and write from there until it’s time for me to go to World Relief. So there I sat, feeling overwhelmed with my own life and wondering how on earth I was going to be of any use in the job class when I was such a wreck myself. I opened BibleGateway.com to look at the “verse of the day,” trying to change my focus.

It was James 3:13 in the New Living Translation, and the second part jumped out at me: “…doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Now, I don’t claim to have wisdom (being regularly overwhelmed quickly cures me of feeling I do), but this morning I was certainly feeling humble. I was amazed by the refugees’ pluck and determination.

Suddenly my overwhelmed-ness didn’t seem so negative. God had put me in exactly the right frame of mind to honor the people I would work with that morning. My humility sure didn’t come from my own wisdom but from God’s. He had put a task in front of me and then equipped me to do it in the way He wanted me to.

I stopped thinking of the leaning Tower of Papers on my desk and settled into work, and then I went off to class where I shook the hands of men who have never encountered a female boss before and need to be prepared to do just that. I helped a woman say the breathy form of “th” and we laughed and laughed together at all my antics (because it can be really funny when you stick the tip of your tongue between your teeth and hold a piece of paper in front of your mouth so it moves when you say “think” and “three.”) I listened to a man practice the difference between $3,146 and $31.46.

Maybe being overwhelmed isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it simply makes us aware we’re human.

Just like everybody else.

Everyday Gospel, continued (part 2 of conversation with Jake)

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Game pieces? I think so. Why? Not sure. Because he's a nine-year-old boy? Good answer.

Game pieces? I think so. Why? Not sure.                       Because he’s a nine-year-old boy? Yep, that’s probably it.

Sunday night Dave took the crew out for ice cream. Jake decided to stay behind. As soon as everyone left, I found out why.

“Mom, I need to talk to you about something.”

He’d been waiting for just such a quiet moment.

“What’s up, bud?”

“I think I have an idol.”

It took me a moment to process that one. It’s not a phrase a 9-year-old boy often uses.

“Where did you hear…? Never mind. How ‘bout we sit down together.”

After we were snugged into the chair-and-a-half, with Jake’s hand rubbing the back of my hair, I asked, “What do you think your idol is?”

“Legos.”

“Why do you think Legos are an idol?”

“Because I think about them so much. I would rather play with them than read my Bible. I know that reading my Bible is good, and Legos are keeping me from doing as much of it as I should. I think they’re an idol.”

Ah! A repeat of our conversation the week before.

I held my hands up as if they were scales and launched into an explanation of how we can never do enough “good” to earn God’s acceptance. It’s impossible, which is why He made another Way.

But the anguish in Jake’s face stopped me.

I thought of what I’ve learned through spending time with believers from other cultures—how our Western view of salvation as a transaction is not the only way God presents the Gospel in Scripture. It is justification, yes, but it’s also reconciliation and restoration. It’s relationship, made possible through Christ.

“J-man, what do you think your dad would say if you told him, ‘Dad, I know you’re a runner, so I’m gonna’ start running four miles a day to make you love me more’?”

Jake’s face screwed up as if I’d bought him a hot pink shirt. “Mom, Dad already loves me. That’s not gonna’ make him love me more!”

I grinned.

He was quiet, his brain connecting the dots, seeing in them a picture, a constellation of beauty.

We talked more, about how we know someone loves us, then specifically about how we know God loves us. We talked about God’s joy in Jake’s enjoyment of Legos, how Jake’s creativity, imagination, and collaboration please God; they are gifts from God. We talked about how good things CAN turn into idols (and I thought, “Even Bible reading, clearly!”) and what we do about that.

At one point Jake said something truly beautiful. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like this: “So God wants me to read my Bible so I can know better that He loves me! It’s NOT so He will love me more! That’s not it at all.”

I laughed aloud in delight.

But part of my heart grieved.

Not at his words, but at this truth: my son, like I, will forget, time and time again, that God loves us simply because HE IS LOVE. Jake, too, will wrestle with guilt over “not doing enough.” He will lose the joy of being loved freely by God. He will equate “doing” with relationship, and he will wonder what he has done–or not done–to feel so far from God. He will assume God has withdrawn in anger and fail to realize that his own efforts and guilt have actually pulled him away from God rather than to Him.

I am grateful, not only for strange but wonderful conversations with Jake but also that God is revealing my own tendencies through my son.

But I still don’t want him to wrestle with my struggles. I want him to feel as sure of God’s love for him as he is of his dad’s (and, boy, am I grateful for that!). I want him to draw near to God with full confidence in His grace and mercy.

I want him to fiercely love God—because he knows God first fiercely loved him. I want him to know that God never, ever stops loving him.

I want for him what I want for myself.

And I can be confident that God, Who is a far better parent than I, wants the same for both of us.

The gentle power of God’s pursuit

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God’s pursuit of a human is a wonder.

Yesterday, God pursued me.

He had to.

I’d woken for several mornings with a numb heart. I didn’t want to feel too much, to have my heart stretched by His great Presence. Nothing was “wrong.” I simply wanted to stay cocooned in a tight chrysalis of control and predictability. I didn’t want my days rocked by eternity. I didn’t want to see myself as part of something bigger. I wanted my cocoon to be IT, cozy and snug. Nothing else fit—and I didn’t want it to.

But here’s the rub—the truth. If I want my tight little cocoon, I have to let go of ALL the things that don’t fit, like fullness and joy and inexplicable peace. Like amazement and wonder. I can’t have “control” AND fullness of life. My chrysalis tightens, and my focus narrows, my heart squeezes, and my vision tunnels. MY to-do list magnifies and lengthens.

After only a few days of a numbed heart, I sensed this narrowing, but rather than open myself to God’s gentle knockings, I avoided. I read a book; I checked e-mails—again; I worked—past quitting time. All fine things, except when they’re used as a substitute, as anesthetic to numb myself to God’s touch.

But yesterday God used “little” things to break through my shell. Son Jake had a dentist appointment in the morning, so I had to delay emails and writing assignments. We went to the dental office and learned our appointment was delayed, so we had some extra time together—REAL time, not like the working-on-homework-together time we’ve had so much of recently.

Of course, Jake, being Jake, asked questions I couldn’t answer out of myself. I had to silently cry out for help.

Then I had an interaction with an employee at a store—a good interaction, though nothing “big”—and in it was this reminder: if I want to spread Christ’s love to others, I have to be open to it myself. I have to be a receiver FIRST and ALWAYS.

My chrysalis was cracking; bits were flaking off.

I dropped Jake off at school, and there was silence. My phone was quiet. The radio was off.

I reached to turn the radio on—and stopped. Into the stillness came this thought: If I didn’t allow God to break my cocoon, it would only get smaller, and what could fill it then? It wouldn’t have room for Him. It could only be filled with ME, with a me that would have to shrink to fit, a me that would become smaller and more self-focused by the day.

Ugh.

The last remnants of chrysalis shattered.

And my heart took a deep, deep breath.

 

Oh, Lord, help us to open our hearts to You. We know this is not a painless process. Your presence draws up deep hurts done to us and reveals our own hurtful ways. Your presence expands our hearts so we can sympathize with others. That, too, is painful. Yet with Your presence there is fullness of joy! There is LIFE. (Psalm 16:11)

I need the Gospel–everyday

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Yesterday afternoon nine-year-old Jake told me he needed to talk to me “in private.”

“Mom, lately I’ve been struggling with the idea that God is mad with me.”

“Why, sweetheart?”

“Because I haven’t been reading my Bible as much lately, but when I am reading it, I’m doing it so He WON’T be angry with me, so I know my reasons are bad, so I think He’s angry with me.”

Oh, we don’t need a DNA test or even pictures of childbirth (thankfully there are none!) to have proof that this child is MINE!

“Do you think Jesus is mad at you?”

“No.”

“Well, who is Jesus?”

“He’s God.”

We talked about how Colossians tells us that Christ is the exact likeness of God. He is the visible representation of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:16, AMP version). Christ is not different from the Father God. Rather, He reveals Him as He is to us weak, frightened, rebellious (which only makes us more frightened) children. Through Jesus–and because of what Jesus did for us–we can know God and His love for us.

“But what about my reasons for reading the Bible? How can I read it if my reasons aren’t good? How do I make them good?”

Simply more proof that Jake is my son!

Another conversation—about how we can’t make them good, only God can, and He knows full well that we aren’t capable of purely pure motives in the here and now anyway. “We just tell God,” I said. “We tell Him we know that our hearts aren’t right, that we can’t make them right, and we ask Him to help us. Then we do what we know is good and right to do—even with our impure motives—because we trust that God can work good and right out of them.”

It was a joy to have this “private talk” with Jake.

It was also necessary.

Not just for him, but for me.

I needed to be reminded of the Gospel, of Grace.

In preaching the Gospel of God’s marvelous Grace to Jake, I was preaching it to myself.

And I need that—every day.

Living in GRACE

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We leave for a trip to Africa on July 7. Dave and I will go with 12 girls from his soccer team, our oldest child (Emily), one of his assistant coaches, and two soccer moms to Kenya and Uganda.

Dave gave each girl going on the trip a copy of Kisses from Katie, and he asked me to write devotions for each day of the trip using Scripture and sections from the book.

“I would love to,” I told him.

Well, I still “will love to,” and I probably will post many of them here on the blog, but I have to admit that the book sent me into a spiritual funk for about a week—sorry for the silence.

Kisses from Katie is the story of a young suburban-raised girl who decided to visit Uganda during Christmas break of her senior year in high school. Then she just had to go back after graduation for a gap year before college. (I know, this sounds eerily like the story of Jody—who rescued our PJ). Katie’s “job” for the year was to teach kindergarten, but she soon felt led by God to rent a house, and abandoned children began showing up on her doorstep. She is now in the process of adopting 13 Ugandan girls and lives full-time in Uganda, coming back to the States only for visits and fundraising purposes. Her life is filled with sharing Christ—through words and actions—with the poorest of the poor.

I’m not doing enough. I’m not doing enough. This nasty chorus ran rampant through my mind as I read the book—though I knew that was not Katie’s reason for writing it and I also knew it wasn’t good theology.

What dug my spiritual funk deeper was the fact that I had bought a rug for the living room the day before beginning the book. Like we needed a rug, I thought as I read about Katie raising money to pay school fees for the children in her village. I should have sent the money to World Vision!

(BTW, I felt quite a bit better about the new rug when we spread the old rug out on our grass for the yard sale we had last weekend. Sunlight exposed a LOT more than my living room lamps did. The all-ivory rug may have worked for the empty-nesters we bought the house from, but with our six kids, their friends, our dog—yeesh!)

As I read further, I defaulted to guilt wallowing, and God felt very, very far away.

I know now—and knew then—this kind of guilt is not from God, but I was stuck and digging in deeper. Saturday morning, I woke tired, glum, discouraged already. But this was yard-sale-for-Africa day, filled with opportunities to meet neighbors, make new friends, share life.

Oh God, I prayed, I don’t have the strength for this, and I am so spiritually bankrupt right now. I can’t do this. But rather than drawing me closer to God, my prayer made me more convinced of my failure.

But a beautiful thing happened as the day went on. One of the soccer moms came and helped, and we had genuine fellowship. I met a lovely little woman from Syria who asked me to pray for persecuted believers in her native country. Before she left, she pronounced Christ’s blessings on us and our trip. I met another neighbor, large with her third child, who had moved in just that day down the street. I liked her; Dave hit it off with her husband; Em was ready to babysit. Dave had fun conversation with our next-door neighbor when he asked, “So why are you going to Africa?”

As soon as the yard sale was over, though, the cloud descended again.

All week Dave gave me funny looks when I answered, “Fine,” in response to his, “How are you?” Finally, on our early Sunday morning run (yes, we’re running again, and, oh, I am so sore!), he didn’t let my “Fine” slide by. “No, you’re not,” he pressed. “What’s up?”

“I’m missing God,” I cried. “I just feel like I’m not pleasing Him, that I’m so filled up with self I’m missing Him. I’m trying and trying, but all I can think of is what I’m NOT doing, and then I feel guilty and farther away than ever.”

Dave didn’t let that answer slide by, either. He pushed quite a bit on my faulty theology—and I said, “I know, I know! My head sees it, but what do I do with my heart?”

What ultimately led to a breakthrough was this question he asked: “If you’re so far away from God, then what was going on yesterday at the yard sale?”

That stopped me. I’d gone into the yard sale with dread, with a lack of strength and purpose—with guilt at my attitude.

But somewhere during the day, I’d forgotten ME. I’d forgotten to try so, so hard. I’d let go of guilt and let others minister to me (oh, how Christ works through His body!), and in the process I was able to share myself with them and others. I’d felt joy and peace—and I know where those come from. (Galatians 5:22)

Later on Sunday morning, when I had a few quiet minutes to be still, I wrote in my journal: “If MY doing never truly accomplishes anything—for myself or anyone else, then why do I try so hard? If I really believe that my ‘righteousness is as filthy rags,’ then doing more in my own strength, out of my own guilt, accomplishes no good.”

Not long ago, I listened to a sermon by Rick McKinley, pastor of Imago Dei Church in Portland, about the importance of the Gospel in our lives AFTER salvation. He said something like this: We Christians have little problem seeing our need for complete grace for salvation, but then we act as if we have to accomplish the Christian life on our own. We need the Gospel just as much after salvation as we did before.

In Acts 13, Paul and Barnabus are speaking to people who have just trusted Christ. The two missionaries “urged them to continue to rely on the grace of God.” (emphasis mine)

It’s so, so easy to abandon grace in our daily lives. My tendency is to forget that I have no ability to please God on my own; I feel I must do more, do more, do more to make Him like me. What heresy! And it has such terrible results: guilt, broken sleep, fatigue, a broken spirit.

I wasn’t relying on God to work in me and through me last week. I put far more responsibility on myself than He ever wants me to have. HE guides; HE convicts; HE leads and directs.

I must live in the Gospel:

I need rescuing, every day, often from myself.

And my God is a God who saves.

Morning Glory

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Friday morning, before the getting-ready-for-the-last-day-of-school rush, I biked, Chai dog by my side, to the dog park, where I tromped around, fast, trying to avoid the mosquitos. I reviewed the Scripture passage I’m memorizing, but not a whole lot of thinking was going on. As I swung back on my bike, ready to pedal home, I thought, “Oh, I should pray.”

That’s not a bad thing. But there was a hint to it of “I have to do the right thing. I have to go about this the right way. This is what will please the Lord.”

My mind immediately went to confession and prayer for others—because that’s more “godly prayer,” right? That’s what pleases God most—my attempts at being humble and others-centered.

Right?

God was having none of it.

But rather than a thunderbolt from the sky, He got my attention with JOY.

The trees waved their branches at me—hey,

Em likes to make--and then photograph--food creations! Yummy smoothie.

Em likes to make–and then photograph–food creations! Yummy smoothie.

look over here!—and the wind flowed over my collarbone like it was trying to tickle my neck. Happy dog on a leash at my side, green grass on left and right, hum of bike tires, and when I pulled up to my house, two ducks—a mama and a daddy!—perched on our chimney!

The bubble of joy burst and showered me with droplets, and I shut down confession/supplication and let myself BE in God.

Gratitude welled up to meet the joy raining down, and an old hymn rose.

Morning has broken, like the first morning.

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

Praise for the springing fresh from the Word.

Yes! Be in God. Let Him guide heart prayer into His glad fullness, His sheer joyful goodness, His eagerness to share Himself with me.

Romp in the revelation of right righteousness revealed. (Couldn’t resist the alliteration!)

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning,

Born of the one light Eden saw play.

Praise with elation, praise every morning;

God’s recreation of the new day.

 

“Morning Has Broken,” words by Eleanor Farjeon, 1931

 

suburban gratitude

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Dave bought me this sign for Christmas and I hung it in our family room. I think (I hope) it describes us well.

Dave bought me this sign for Christmas and I hung it in our family room. I think (I hope) it describes us well.

I’m working on chapters three and four of our adoption story, so I spent a couple hours this morning sorting through emails I sent out during 2008 and 2009. Some of those were specifically about adoption matters: court dates and home studies and official documents, but many others were simply newsletters about our family.

Em was seven and Jake and Maddie about three and a half in the earliest updates (January 2008); the last one I read was written six months after Patrick and I came home from Uganda (September 2009). I wrote about funny things they said (like when Maddie was pretending to be Jake’s mommy until Jake, fed up with bottles and blankets, ran away from her, crying, “I all growed up now, Maddie. I not a baby any more”). I wrote about daily routines that I’d forgotten, like Patrick coming home on the preschool bus in Kansas. He would bring his backpack inside, tell me to “Close eyes, Mommy,” and then show me each paper he’d worked on that morning, one by one. Then we read his new library book—they went every day—TWICE. And all this before lunchtime. I wrote about life lessons they were learning, like when Em got the teacher she did NOT want and her words three weeks into the school year: “Mom and Dad, you were right. I think God did want me to have Mrs. Farney. I really like her.”
The emails made me a little sad. Those times are gone, and life with my kids isn’t so simple anymore. It’s not full of long Saturdays spent at home or morning playtimes at the park. They’re growing up and away—just as they should be—but I was suddenly a little nostalgic.
And I was also grateful—for something I don’t think I’ve ever before been grateful for. I was thankful for all the driving, the times in the car, the back and forth to this activity and that practice that consumes so much of my life these days.
Usually this is one of the things I hate most about life in suburbia. Twenty-minute drive here, thirty there, another fifteen…
But my kids are captive in the car—right there with me, right there with each other. And we talk about our days and we listen to good books (yay for audio books), and we sing, and we spend time together, and they can’t escape, and I can’t get all busy with housework or writing projects. And when it’s me and just one of the kids, we get quiet, let’s-really-find-out-what’s-going-on time.
Hmm. Maybe there are other things on my “hate” list that I can learn to be thankful for.

Longing

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I took this last year right about the same time as now--Spring will come, an idea that parallels this post.

I took this last year right about the same time as now–Spring will come, an idea that parallels this post.

Friday morning, as we drove the long curve of the school driveway, we passed a father running on the sidewalk with his young daughter. They held hands, and her pink backpack—nearly as big as she—bounced lightly on her back. They had plenty of time before the late bell, so their running wasn’t forced.

It was joyful.

And it made me smile.

Emily, in the front seat next to me, made it better when she said, softly, “That’s Mr. G——–, Mom—who is now cancer free!”

Tears almost came then. Em and I had prayed several times for this family. In the late fall, requests for prayer were updated almost weekly: his treatments were difficult; his children were shell-shocked; his prognosis wasn’t good. Then there was a period of silence, and I, at least, assumed the worst.

Two hours after I dropped the kids off at school, the image of the father and daughter running together was still hovering in my mind—a spot of bright pink joy.

But underneath it was something else, something less joyful. And I couldn’t figure out what that was, until I heard an interview with Kay Warren on the radio about her book, Choose Joy, released last year. She described our present lives as train tracks of sorrow and joy. Here on earth we travel both—like a railroad car, a wheel on each track. Even in great sorrows, there are flickers of joy and good, but the opposite is also true: even in times of peace and joy, there is sorrow (in some part of our lives and certainly in the world at large).

Then I understood what was haunting my joy.

It was the knowledge that sorrow still exists and can strike at any moment—has already struck so, so many.

“Man is born to trouble,” said Eliphaz to Job, “as surely as the sparks fly upward.” There’ s much that Eliphaz says that is not necessarily correct, but this statement—it’s true!

But we still feel joy when we see/hear things like I did that morning. All moments and stories of restoration bring joy—because when we see them, we hope that maybe, someday, things will be good and right forever. We hope that these snapshot moments of joy will somehow become eternal.

We long for a day when our longing is completely fulfilled.

This is such a strange idea. It’s a mystery, really. We long for what we have never known. In all of human history, there has never been a time of complete, worldwide peace. There has never been a marriage or a family without some kind of dysfunction. Jesus said, “The poor and vulnerable people are always with you”—and it’s true: we still have them. Injustice and abuse: they’ve always been around, along with fatigue, depression, tragedy…

So why do we have a longing for what we have never, ever seen anyone experience? Why do we have a longing that we know will not be fulfilled?

This kind of deferred/unfulfilled longing can make a person sick (Proverbs 13:12).

Who did this to us?

God steps up and says that He did. He put an eternity-sized hole in our hearts that can only be fulfilled with Himself (Eccl. 3:11, Amplified version), and He watches us stuff it with things that simply cannot fill it.

This would be cruel, except that God has made a way to fill this hole.

Christ! He is called “the Hope of Glory!” (Colossians 1:27) the HOPE that all will be glorified, that one day suffering will be NO MORE!

Kay Warren reminded her listeners that if they look down parallel train tracks, they join together in the distance.

Sorrow will be swallowed up in joy.

I don’t have that reality or even that perspective yet, but Christ continually renews my hope that it WILL BE. He has promised that my longing for a never-ending good that I can see and touch WILL be fulfilled.

And in the parallel-track meantime, He opens my eyes to the joy He provides every day, even in the midst of sorrow.

In Isaiah 49, God tells the Israelites that One Day, their longing will be fulfilled. “Then you will know that I am the Lord,” He tells them—because THAT is the answer.

And then He gives them a promise to carry them to the final answer:

“Those who hope in me will not be disappointed.” (emphasis mine)

*I mentioned Kay Warren in this post. A day after I listened to her interview—and wrote the rough draft of this post—her 27-year-old son died. I cannot imagine her pain. Please be praying for hope and joy in the midst of her family’s incredible sorrow in losing their son.

*Following is a C.S. Lewis quote that I’ve been thinking of as I’ve written this.

From “The Weight of Glory” Chapter 1, Paragraph 1:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Great Eternal Father

/ jdunderwood / 1 Comment
Sometimes my praying is scattered. Some days my thoughts seem to jump and prayer gets lost. Not long ago I had one of those times. I was even using a verse to pray, thinking that would help, but I couldn’t get past the first line: “Great and eternal Father.”
I was about to go down my familiar road of beating myself up for being unable to focus on more, when I understood that “great and eternal Father” was more than enough. Those words—standing for the God they symbolize—gave me all I needed, both that day and forever. So I stuck with them and pinpointed my focus on my GREAT ETERNAL FATHER.
He is GREAT—all-powerful and all-good. My doubts don’t change God’s greatness. I can get hung up on questions or balk sometimes at “hard” passages of Scripture or cry, “Why? I don’t understand!” about injustices and pain, but all these problems—as I will see very, very clearly when my sight is enlightened by Glory—are with my perspective, not with God’s actions or character. Bottom line, He is great and good. No exceptions.
He is eternal. E-TER-NAL. I am fickle. My moods are upset by a headache; my values changed by circumstances; my commitments by my feelings.
He never changes.
He never will.
He is the same yesterday, today and forever. ETERNAL!
FATHER! How amazing that the GREAT, ETERNAL GOD has taken on the role of Father. He calls Himself “father to the fatherless.” He uses the picture of a mother hen who gathers her chicks under her wings to give us insight into Himself. He tells us He sings over us and holds us by the hand. He is immeasurably better than the best earthly father and so different from the worst that the word “father” is a travesty when applied to the human version. He even adds “Abba” (“Daddy”) to his title and gives us the incredible, unbelievable privilege of approaching him as a small child does a good father. In Christ He made the ultimate sacrifice so we could come to Him in this way.
GREAT and ETERNAL FATHER—that is a bedrock for my wavering soul.
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Happy birthday, twins! I can't believe they are 9! As they reminded me, this is their last year in the single digits. NOOOO!

Happy birthday, Jake and Maddie! I can’t believe they are 9! As they reminded me, this is their last year in the single digits. NOOOO!