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Please, NOT more of myself!

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An hour after I posted last Friday’s blog entry about wanting “more,” I got more.

More of myself!

My brain ran a Negative Thought Matinee all throughout Friday afternoon. “Frustrations, you’re up first. Then we’ll have the Comparisons. And rounding out the program are the Complaints. We have a full show here today, ladies and gentlemen. A full show with not a single positive thought to spoil it!”

“This is more?” I wondered. “When all I see are my faults driving me to find faults in others? I am on self overload! Didn’t I just write and pray that I ‘want to walk like a redeemed person, made new and whole’? What happened to that? Ugh!”

Well, really, what did I expect? That “more” comes easy? That simply wanting it is enough? That a desire for more of Christ wouldn’t bring some spiritual opposition?

But, boy, did I feel like I was resisting the very “more” I wanted! It was yet another illustration of what Paul said in Romans 7: “I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong” (NLT).

Very true. So I struggled, yet again, with my own flesh and its selfish desires.

But in the middle of my battle, God reminded me that last week I had prayed for desperation. After writing about it, I’d asked, “Lord, how do I stay desperate for You when things are going okay–when nothing really big is driving me to my knees?”

Aha! Suddenly I realized that my Negative Thought Matinee was actually an answer to my prayer!

I had forgotten how helpless I really am and needed reminding that even in the “good” times, I am completely inadequate for the tasks set before me. My wily, sinful nature cannot accomplish anything truly good.

And with that understanding I was able to stop battling my negative thoughts and simply cry out “I need you!”

And there it was—the desperation I’d asked for!

God delights in revealing my weakness to me.

This would seem cruel, except that there is MORE. He does NOT do this to make me feel horrible. NO! His purpose is to get me to the place where I cry out for Him. THEN He reminds me that His power is made perfect in my weakness, that when I acknowledge my inability, the power of Christ rests on me.

In Ezekiel 36: 9, God says, “I am concerned for you and will look on you with favor; you will be plowed and sown, and I will cause many people to live on you—yes, all of Israel.” Another version translates the first phrase as “I am for you.”

Please understand I’m taking liberty with the textual application here. God is speaking to the land of Israel itself, but since Christ compared receptive hearts to fruitful soil, I think I can apply it to my own heart. In Ezekiel 36:9, God is essentially saying to me, “I am for you, and I WILL make you fruitful, so I will prepare you to bear fruit. I will plow you and till you and dig deep in you to plant seed. I will cause you discomfort so that you will bear fruit for others.”

If I want and ask for MORE, then I have to understand that I will be plowed. Sometimes that plowing takes the form of outward hardships; sometimes it is simply being forced to face my deep, tangled roots of sin so I will cry out for help.

So, eyes a little wider this time, I say it again: I want MORE!

More of Jesus,

Less of me.

Less of me,

More, more, more of Jesus.

Not-random-at-all acts of Gospel

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Dave and the boys with Papa, Dave's dad. What a cute bunch of guys!

Dave and the boys with Papa, Dave’s dad. What a cute bunch of guys!

When we were together with my husband’s side of the family over Christmas, my father-in-law made an announcement: “For my birthday this year I don’t want you to buy me presents. Instead, I want you to do random acts of kindness during the week leading up to my birthday.”

His birthday is February 1, so last Monday we received our instruction letter, which included suggestions and the number of RAKs (Random Acts of Kindness) for each of us. Each adult was asked to do six RAKs and each child/teen three. The total added up to his age (which I’m not revealing).

I left my house most mornings last week thinking about those RAKs. I prayed about them. I created extra time in my morning routines so that I wouldn’t feel rushed, so I could see opportunities and then engage in them. At night our kids shared their ideas for RAKs with each other and us. They were excited about telling them to Papa at the end of the week. There was something a little different about how we approached each day.

We had a shared mission for the week, and it drove us.

Why is it so hard for us to remember that we are “on mission” as followers of Christ? And not just any mission; we are on the greatest mission of ALL.

When I was a kid, I loved watching shows like Charlie’s Angels, The A-Team, and—my favorite—Scarecrow and Mrs. King. The common element of these was a sense of mission. The heroes in each show were given jobs by a wise boss who knew more than they did, and they pursued them with purpose and a trust in the one who planned them.

We have been told that “good works have been planned in advance for us to do” by the wisest “boss” of all, and these good works are not simply “random” or merely “kind.” They are part of an intricate, grand plan that incorporates even the ones we see as “small” done by the “smallest” of us. They are all part of God’s Gospel plan.

We can begin each day knowing we are agents of God and our days are not random at all. This requires LISTENING. We have a huge advantage over Charlie’s Angels and the Scarecrow. They lived back in the days of landlines and snail mail. Spiritually we are equipped with Bluetooth headgear so advanced it is invisible. We have the Holy Spirit within us. If we LISTEN to Him, we can hear the promptings to draw near (to God and others), to speak (Scripture says we’ll even be given the words to say), to befriend, to let go our agenda for the moment or day, to listen to others, to act, and even (perhaps the hardest work of all) to see mundane tasks as Gospel work.

Not-random-at-all acts of Gospel—all throughout our days.

For further study: Psalm 73:28 (one of OUR good works can be simply telling of the works of God), Matthew 5:16, John 10:32 (Jesus talks of his good works as being “from the Father”), Acts 9:36, Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:13, I Timothy 5:25, 6:18, Titus 2:7, 2:14, 3:14, Hebrews 10:24, James 2:14 and 3:13.

This picture actually relates to a piece I posted last week: Crimson Berries, White Snow. A couple days after I wrote that post, we had a fresh snowfall, and I noticed the white snow covering the crimson berries. I couldn't resist--such a beautiful picture of Christ covering us with His righteousness!

This picture actually relates to a piece I posted last week: Crimson Berries, White Snow . A couple days after I wrote that post, we had a fresh snowfall, and I noticed the white snow covering the crimson berries. I couldn’t resist–such a beautiful picture of Christ covering us with His righteousness!

 

 

Suggestions, please

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I am working on another book proposal for the story of Patrick’s adoption. For this latest version, I need a 75-word summary. What I have written below (in italics) is not really a summary, but the guidelines said to think of this as what might go on the back cover of the book, so I am assuming it needs to actually grab attention. If you have a few minutes to read it and then have a suggestion for me, please message me or leave a comment. Thanks so much. Jen

Patrick playing in the snow this past winter. What a dude!

Amazing to think he was once that sick!

A mother dies of AIDS in Uganda, and her 9-pound, 16-month-old son is taken to an orphanage. A teenage girl from Chicago arrives there only days later, takes him in, and nurses him to health. A friend from the States visits and falls in love with the baby, and the friend’s husband, back at home with their three kids, begins praying about adopting this little boy he’s never met. 

The journey to adopt Patrick begins.

Crimson berries, white snow

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

I took this last fall. (It’s the same picture, just uncropped, that I used as my new header)

On the tree in the front yard hang the leftover berries from last fall. They were bright before frost, but now they look almost black against the snow. It brings to mind Isaiah 1:18. God says to the Israelites, “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”

I think of scarlet and crimson as beautiful colors—like the berries before the frost—but God spends 16 verses describing the crimson and scarlet of the His peoples’ sins, and it’s ugly! “You’re rebellious,” He tells them. “I’ve loved you and cared for you, but you have rejected and ignored Me. All your ‘churchiness’ is nothing but show. You’re hypocrites, following an outward religion that has no goodness to it. In fact, you offer sacrifices to Me and then go out and live without love for others, abusing and neglecting the helpless” (my paraphrased summary)

“Do you think that’s what I, the GOOD GOD, want?”

The scarlet and crimson of verse 18, then, are NOT beautiful. These people are as far from the purity of white as they could be. The crimson and scarlet have set into the fabric of their souls, and they are irreparably stained.

We must remind ourselves that we are no different. OUR sins–collectively and individually–are scarlet and crimson. We, too, are irreparably stained.

This takes on deeper meaning when we see the terms “white as snow” and “white as wool” applied to Christ: Daniel 7:9 says, “…the Ancient One sat down to judge. His clothing was as white as snow, his hair like purest wool.” Revelation 1:14 describes Christ’s head and hair as “white like wool, as white as snow.”

Our crimson stains and Christ’s white purity are as unalike as possible. We drip with sin, as if we have been dipped in a vat of it, formed in it (Ps. 51:5). Now let’s look at what is in the vat. It is not simply liquid color—a straightforward red dye. No! To understand how God sees this crimson sin, we must go to another verse in Isaiah: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). The polluted garment is–to be as graphic as Scripture is–like the underclothes a woman would wear during her menstrual cycle. They would be permeated with a bodily fluid that stunk and stained.

THAT is the crimson, the scarlet.

God the Pure One cannot condone and “coexist” with our stench. He would cease to be perfect, sinless God if He said that our disregard for Him and our injustice toward our fellow man was “okay.” Though He longs to hold us in His arms, that is not possible as long as we are stained and dripping with this crimson.

We have tried, over and over through the centuries, to fix this problem ourselves. All religions are simply our efforts to make ourselves fit for communion with God, worthy of his approval. But we cannot do this, though we claim to. But any “god” we can reach through our own efforts must be a god of our own making–and therefore not truly Divine.

So we must be changed, somehow made pure. Some outside agent must be applied to go over our stain. That’s exactly what God did in Christ. Christ, unstained and pure, took on our human flesh, a body that was stained with the effects of sin, that would suffer and age, that had the same bodily functions ours do, with emotions and frailties. He was “in all points like we are…”

“Yet without sin.” That needs an exclamation mark! He had no inner stain and He kept Himself unstained!!! THAT enabled Him to do an amazing thing for us. His death allowed us to be covered with new garments–HIS complete, utter goodness, white as snow.

“Though your sins are like scarlet”–permeating to our very core, as much a part of us as dye becomes part of a garment when the garment is dipped in it–“I will make them as white as snow.”

With the covering of Christ’s purity, our stains—past, present and future (God is not bound by time)—are overwhelmed, and God the Good can draw us near to Himself. His Spirit enters our hearts like a bleaching agent, and begins transforming us from the inside out, a process that will end (oh, Heaven!) with us being LIKE Christ. Selfishness and pride will never again seep from our hearts. We will be pure not only in standing (with Christ’s covering) but in practical actuality.

I am thankful I opened my curtains yesterday and noticed the shriveled, darkened berries and the gleam of snow behind them. I am thankful for this reminder because my gratitude is in direct proportion to my realization of my need for Christ.

Same berries after the frost

Same bush after the frost

“For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).

Try out “The Well”

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Hi Readers,

I just received word that one of my pieces (it’s an old blog post that I adapted) has just been published at “The Well,” which is Intervarsity’s Web site for women in graduate school. Here’s the link: http://thewell.intervarsity.org/blog/value-hank.

A friend of mine told me about “The Well” and suggested I submit some work to it. I checked it out and found it to be a very encouraging Web site for me. I did submit a piece (obviously), but I’ve continued to regularly visit the site because it has so many good, thoughtful articles, devotionals, and interviews. You might want to check it out for yourself.

One last thing: my apologies for not updating in so long. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and the flu thing I got (that half of Chicago got, it seems) has hung on for a very long time.

Thanks for reading,

Jen

Bonhoeffer’s words on tragedy born of evil

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I, like most of the nation, have been following the terrible news of the deaths of the children and adults this past Friday. A few minutes ago Dave said, “Listen to this. It’s very fitting for us right now.” He then read to me from a small booklet by Dietrich Bonhoeffer titled “Who Stands Fast?”, an essay written only two years before his death. Bonhoeffer wrote it for his comrades, who stood with him against the Nazi regime. The following quote is under Bonhoeffer’s subtitle: “A Few Articles of Faith on the Sovereignty of God in History.”

“I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs men who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us to resist in all times of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone. A faith such as this should allay all our fears for the future.”

We have witnessed great evil. I think that requires us to be thoughtful, to be much in prayer, and to be sympathetic and empathetic to those hurting. Perhaps, in these kinds of actions, we will be “mak(ing) the best use” of an act which had no good in it and become part of God’s transformative power.

“Done good to” so we can “do good”

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Do Good!

Let the good that’s been done to you overflow in kind looks, generosity, gestures of love—acknowledgement that all humanity was made in God’s image and has equal value to yourself.

Do Good!

God can and will use this testament to His goodness lavished on us. When people ask Why?, we have a wonderful answer: Because God has been so good—through easy times and oh, so hard times—to me.

We’ve been “done good to!”

So we can Do Good!

DSC_0381

 

Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Galatians 6:9-10 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Ephesians 2:8-10 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

II Thessalonians 3:13 And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.

I Timothy 6:18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

Hebrews 13:20-21 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

don’t do this (a “just for fun” post)

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We get conflicting messages about food this time of year. Yummy-looking recipes pop up on one side of my computer screen, and on the other I see dieting tips for “getting through the holidays without gaining a pound.” I don’t really have any advice of my own to add other than this: no matter HOW you choose to approach eating this holiday season, don’t force your approach on someone else.

A long time ago, when I was teaching at a public middle school in a middle-sized town in Indiana, one of my fellow teachers came up with the great idea of having a holiday lunch potluck. We were a somewhat divided set of teachers, with a few very quirky ones in the bunch, and others who were just downright disgruntled much of the time. We didn’t do much all together, except share a lot of gossip in the workroom and fuss about problem students. The teacher with the potluck idea was one of the few cheerful ones, and surprisingly, everyone got on board. (It probably helped that she planned the potluck for a day when we would teach in the morning, send the kids home, and then have an afternoon of on-site meetings. Most probably thought that the potluck would spill over into the meeting time, cutting it short.)

That morning we carried our crockpots and goodies into the library, placing them on a large table where the librarian (they were still called that back then–no “media specialists” yet) had set up a complicated system of heavy -duty extension cords so we could plug all the crockpots in. We perused the table of goodies and looked forward to a delicious lunch.

Surprisingly our local health nut had offered to set up more tables and spread out the offerings just before lunchtime. We thought it was just because she had her last period free.

Um, no.

When we walked in the library at lunchtime, drawing in deep appreciative breaths of the rich smells, we discovered placards in front of each dish. At the top of each placard was the name of the dish–helpful–and at the bottom were listed the calories, fat grams, and serving size of it.

That part was not so great.

Some dishes even had little notes: “Watch out–high calories.” “You’ll want to go lightly with this one.”

This wasn’t New York City. Gourmet cooking had not made many inroads into our town. The tables weren’t covered in salads (unless it was three-bean or potato) but in comfort food.

GOOD comfort food.

Needless to say, this dampened the mood, and our health nut received a lot of dark looks.

SO, over-indulge or hold back this holiday season, that’s YOUR decision.

Just don’t make someone else feel guilty for doing either.

 

Love language: gift giving!

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Here are two of my crazy gifts! Maddie and PJ playing in a mud puddle!

Gift giving is NOT my love language, but one of my friends sure has it. When she gives me a present, her eyes sparkle. I know she received enjoyment in every step of the picking out/wrapping/presenting process, and it culminates when I open it and recognize that it was specifically planned for me.

God is like my friend. He LOVES to give us gifts. He intricately designed our bodies—that was a gift. So was the beautiful world we inhabit. These “common” graces we enjoy every day (not so common, really) are ongoing presents.

Then there is the carefully planned, sacrificial gift of His Son! That’s a gift that boggles our puny minds. That was a gift given through tears, God holding out to us His very soul, though His heart throbbed with pain.

He gave THAT gift so He could continually give. Jesus told His disciples when He left Earth that He was leaving them a present. The Comforter (boy, do we need a Comforter!) would provide the constant, never-failing Presence of God in our very hearts!

WOW! Cool gift! But somehow I forget about this Comforter, this Holy Spirit that stirs inside me.

So God gives me “little” gifts each and every day to remind me that I have HIM.

This day will be crazy busy. I knew that from the moment I woke up. But it has already been chock-full of gifts. I got to wake two of my children up, kissing soft lips still full with sleep. On the drive to school a hawk swooped above the car, close enough we saw individual feathers on its taut wings. We drove our favorite route, and the cattails shone against the grey sky and the beech leaves fluttered silver in the soft breeze.

These were not accidental gifts. God holds time and space. He’s better than the director of The Truman Show who could say, “Okay, Truman is about to cross the street. Cue ray of sunshine, bird song, and brightly colored leaves falling to earth right..NOW.”

God literally plans these kinds of gifts for me every day. That hawk was a present, timed perfectly so that I saw it. He LOVES to give me these gifts. He is like my gift-giving friend, taking joy when I take joy in what He gives.

And each “small” gift is a reminder that He has much, much bigger ones available for me. He’s knocking on the door of my heart. “Let me come in and BE with you.” He doesn’t duck out when I encounter something hard or frustrating. He doesn’t say, “You’ve blown it, so no more gift of My Presence.”

His gifts to us are all pictures of the greatest gift of Himself: the same yesterday, today, and forever, YET new and fresh in beauty and depth.

God, the Gift Giver!

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.