God

Breath of Heaven

Another of God’s little miracles

Morning Visitors

I welcome the cool breezes

thinking you do too….


I remember Arizona, walking outside on the first day after a long relentless summer and being surprised by relief. No one knows that except someone that has been through as least one year in the desert. We’ve had a short heat wave here but nothing like those days. To us it’s nothing, for we have the hope of the delta breezes and relief at night. You wouldn’t think I would miss it, and I don’t miss that parts of it. The magic of the desert did a number on my heart and soul that stays with me. It was so easy to see God in the sky, in the storms, in the backdrop of the Superstition Mountains as I came home after a long 12-hour shift.

I got to visit a really unique property yesterday, acres of wide-open spaces and views galore. I miss seeing the sky. I remember my Dad commenting on how much sky you can see in the desert when he came to visit. I didn’t think too much about it until we moved back to tree land. “Dirty nasty trees” is what Elaine calls them. (Using her best Gollum voice) Hence the sap that has settled on my car due to parking downtown last night. Oh well, everywhere has its drawbacks. I did enjoy seeing the bees on our crepe myrtle this morning. Something about watching them go from bloom to bloom reinforces the fact that all is not lost. There are still bees left.

Sometimes I get so sick of all the endless garbage strewn across the interweb. So much of it is brain-rot but then you run across something truly refreshing. Here it is….https://annekennedy.substack.com/p/jen-hatmaker-and-jesus

I remember when all the women (and some men) bloggers were jumping on Jen Hatmaker’s bandwagon. I never understood it, and I was skeptical. I won’t say anything about it since Anne says it so much better than I could but give it a read. And enjoy your Sunday. Go to church, and if you don’t have one find one. And don’t try to find a perfect one so don’t try. I have found that I ruin every perfect church I find. The most important thing is that you hear about God there and that they preach out of His book.

In the meantime, I will try to find another chair, Atticus claimed mine when I got up.

Be Still and Know

This morning, I awoke kind of unsettled. I wandered around in the dim early morning light and gave the cats a snack. Then I poured coffee and settled in my chair with shades drawn. It wasn’t time for light. Yet. I felt “Meh” and I didn’t feel like praying. I just sat. Sometimes just the act of being still is exactly what God wants us to do in that moment. So, I just sat. Just so happened that my dial landed on Ecclesiastes today for my reading plan. Perfect. God has a sense of humor, I knew that but sometimes you need to be reminded.

“Cease striving…….”

And don’t we continue to strive even when we are sitting still? Our minds are almost never inactive. As I settled into the quiet, (in my funk) I sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I remembered another morning. He reminded me of when I was so irritated at the traffic noise, and He prompted me to transform my irritation into an offering of prayer. And so, I did. I prayed for every car I heard and the person behind the wheel. I started to feel a love for all those people hurrying wherever they were going, and all the problems and heartaches (and joys) behind each life. Then I heard the train come through and I prayed for everyone on it. I was transformed.

Even now, when I hear the traffic, I hear something different because when you allow God to work, He can change our normal everyday irritations into something much different. And I could ache like I do, for the pines or the ocean and go to go that quiet place, even my closet, and find that I have come out refreshed as if I had just spent time watching the waves crash upon the shore or hearing the wind making the pines sigh.

God uses what we have. And sometimes what we have is not much, but God is God so He can make our nothing into something if we invite Him with only a whisper of a prayer or an almost thought we don’t even remember thinking.

Then, one more thing happened as I sat down to write this blog. I heard David Nevue play “The Lion and the Lamb” and that song always wiggles me because it takes me back to when blogging was new and we were all like neighbors visiting at the back fence or on the porch conversing over a steaming mug of coffee. Those times were so sweet that it almost hurts to remember. But not in a bad way.

Friends, I hope you can glimpse a bit of eternity today. Pause and remember how it must have been when it was all so new. And how it can be right now as you invite God into your everyday normal and precious life.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:2

The World is Changing

In the beginning of the Lord of the Rings movie, the narrator Galadriel says:

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it…..”

The men and women of the WWII era are dying. The Greatest Generation, they are called. And truly they were. When I think of the 18-year-old boys I see just about everywhere I think of them on the beach at Normandy. These kids have no clue about sacrifice. They think sacrifice is not having the latest version of iPhone. It’s not really their fault. They just don’t know any better. And I hate to generalize, there are still many wonderful kids out there, they just are being raised in a different world than I was.

The world is changing for sure. Things we hear in the headlines are things that if our Grandparents heard about it, they would think we were dreaming up the worst kind of hell. Child porn for example. Who in the world would ever have thought of those two words together. We have graduated into new heights of evil and it’s not good news. Morally we are in a deep decline and there is only one way out. But to believe that you have to believe in some standard of morality and therein lies the rub. Most college kids today have been taught for many years that there is no moral standard. That whatever you think in your mind and heart is what you should do. The Bible says the opposite. From the book of Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I daresay, what we see in the world today is the result.

So, what is the truth? When Jesus was standing before Pilate, condemned for a death that even Pilate didn’t agree with, Pilate was perplexed. He was trying to paint Jesus into a corner, figure it all out.

Pilate: “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Then Pilate asked the age-old universal question What is truth? It seems everyone is still asking it. But here is the truth and we can know it. The truth is embodied in Jesus Christ alone. Not only is Jesus the embodiment of truth, but He is also the embodiment of God Himself. Most people if asked, would probably say that they are okay just the way they are, pretty good moral individuals. But as humanity we are as broken as we ever were. We only need to look at the headlines again.

There is a song that goes like this:

“Jesus is the answer, for the world today….”

Because God is the embodiment of Love, but also the embodiment of Holiness, He did what only He could do to fix us. He sent the second person of the trinity down to this earth as a Jewish man. He fulfilled the whole letter of the law perfectly, without flaw. He lived the sinless life we could never live and laid down His life willingly for us. (No one took it from Him)

All that remains is that we accept the priceless Gift. But we do have to decide. No decision is a decision against Him. While there is breath there is hope. Jesus told the man next to Him, “Today, you will be with Me in paradise.” Obviously that man didn’t have time to do all the things we normally equate with measuring up. All the Churchy things. The stakes are high. They’ve never been higher, time is short. Here is a message I found by Alistair Begg that illustrates it perfectly.

As usual, my prayers and peace are with all you new or faithful who are still reading my words.

In Jesus love, Lori

New Every Morning

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. Lamentations 3:22

”It’s been a too long time, with no peace of mind and I’m waiting for the times to get better…….” Songwriter: Allen Reynolds

I was meditating on the Lamentations verse this morning and once again filled with thanksgiving that we have this living hope we can stand on. It’s a promise God offers us every single day. What a wonder, in this troubled world we live in. Where are the ready smiles on the street? It seems to me that people are burdened. Then, while watching the Olympics last night there was the commercial with that old Crystal Gayle song. Elaine said, “I Do Not Like that commercial, it’s so sad.” Yes it is, but it seems like an honest depiction of a lot of people’s lives right now. Nothing is getting cheaper, crime is everywhere. We have to really look to find the good. We open our phones in the morning and are assaulted with an endless barrage of whatever the media thinks we need to know.

When I get weary of it all, I usually go to YouTube funny animal videos to cleanse my mental palette.

This morning I prayed for the first time in the new shop. It was a short session but it was a breath of fresh air. I haven’t had a place of prayer in years. I know, we can pray anywhere and I do. Arrow prayers all day. But having a quiet place to go to without interruption is different. My prayer was one of gratitude that even though the world seems to be in chaos all around us. God’s mercies are new every morning. What a gift. I pray that it’s a reality in all our lives.

We thought we would never live here. In this park, I mean. We had another “senior” park all picked out but it just didn’t gel. And we got tired of waiting. When we moved in, our neighbor had quite a few negative things to say about the park and management in general. We thought at the time that he was being nit picky and ridiculous. Now he is gone (the park bought him out). By no means am I bragging when I say we have made this place gorgeous. And management has taken issue with some of our positive changes, while other resident’s places are falling down around them. Mind you, neither one of us has problems with rules, in fact that is part of why we moved here. But when the rules don’t apply equally across the board it doesn’t sit well.

But………we love our home, and we have no intentions of moving. Not to say it hasn’t been a bit discouraging. Oh well, we are living in a strange and broken world. So much is upside down. This is no surprise. The fact is, God knows it too. From the dawn of creation He knew everything that would happen. But He counted the cost and figured it was worth it. He saw that everything he made was good. Perfect in every way. But it was also no surprise to Him when we went after the one thing He told us not to. The lie just sounded so good.

One time long ago, Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Pilate didn’t even know truth when He was looking right at him. Do we? Anyway, the good news is still the good news. We can have that happy ending since Jesus didn’t back down from restoring all things, and us as well. The redemption that is restoring all things is alive. Because of Jesus, we can wake with hope every single day.

I remember that old hymn we used to sing long ago. “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.” We never should have stopped singing those songs.

Until next time, be blessed and keep looking up.

What’s in your cup?

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Dad called, “We just have too much,” he said, “We cleared out the shelf where we keep the coffee cups, and there’s only two of us here now…..” When I got there they were all over the table, stacked two deep. He wanted to throw them all away. There was a sense of urgency about it, like so many things he is wanting to clear out lately. I said, “Well, let’s just sort through them and see which ones you still use. We agreed that they had to keep the ones from the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. And the one to Grandpa and Grandpa from Lauryn. We narrowed it down to 5 or 6 out of 20. 

Clearing out things can be a lot like clearing out a life. An acknowledgment that an excess is no longer needed. It can be liberating but also diffused with a sense of finality. Memories are attached to things and that’s where it gets tricky. There are hoarders who have a mental condition that prevents them from throwing anything away. I guess they find a kind of comfort in all those piles of stuff. And then there is the opposite, throwing away everything and then wishing you hadn’t because you realize there is still life to be lived.

When life spirals out of control I guess you feel you must do something about the things you can control. Little things become paramount. You can’t control getting older, or change, or a ravaging disease, but you can control the things you see in the immediate space around you, so there’s a sense of haste.

I kept the best ones and took them to a local cafe where they accept everyone’s used cups. It’s a cool thing I think, like drinking out of someone’s history. I find comfort in knowing some of their coffee mugs will live on in our community. I like to think the many prayers and all the laughter shared while using those cups and the hands that held them over the years will somehow pass a little peace and grace on to the next user.

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For so many years, their home was where everyone came. There was always a knock or a hello through the screen door and the phone was always ringing. “I’ll just put on a fresh pot of coffee,” my Mom would say. Even now, I can see shining eyes, and ringing laughter over those cups. The walls hold the memories even in the silence. The winding down of life.

The Bible speaks about our bodies being living vessels. Far too many years I tried to fill it with things it was never meant to hold. The Christian life is a series of emptying and filling. Sometimes this life just empties you out. People and circumstances can leave you feeling that way. Maybe that is Jesus’ way of getting us out of the way so that He can fill us with Himself.

Jesus once had to drink from the worse cup ever. But drink He did, to the bitter dregs. He did this so that we wouldn’t  have to. Has your coffee gone cold? Are there only the bitter grounds of yesterday? Pitch it into the bushes and refill from a fresh cup of Grace today. Jesus stands ready. The campfire is warm and the coffee is hot. 

“You prepare a table before me in the Presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Psalm 23:5

cups

I Choose Happy

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That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: A farmer went out to sow his seed……” Matt. 13: 1-3

There is a little kitchen towel I have. It used to be very bright orange and sunny yellow. Because of my old bug yellow will always be a happy color for me. On it are printed the words, “Choose Happy.” Lately there have been things pressing in on me. School starting again, the future, the transitory nature of where we are living, Mom’s illness.

And currently we are facing a homeless/drug element in our town. Transients are camping by the river and there are pictures of feces and you name it on the shore. They clean it up periodically and then they all come back. That has made me extremely upset and restricted my activities on the river this summer. I’ve been wondering why the environmentalists so prevalent in our state are not coming out of the woodwork on this issue. I feel robbed. Cheated.

The thief (Satan) comes only in order to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they (we) may have life and have it in abundance. John 10:10

Everything in this world was set in motion and created by God. Perfectly in balance. The effects of sin have tarnished it. The evidence is all around us. Jesus came to counteract the eternal result of that destruction.  He also makes it possible to supersede all the negativity around us and still embrace life, and beauty, and hope and joy. We don’t have to let the world steal it. It is a choice we have.

It was with that attitude I awoke yesterday morning with a defiant stubbornness to  “Choose Happy.” I shook out the towel from the cabinet, hung it up and claimed Jesus promise. I took it into my heart and prayed it as a mantra all day. And you know what? My attitude changed.

This morning I walked down to the river and saw the magnificent beauty that was there all along. A gift of joy returned. I choose life. I choose gratitude for where we are now. I choose thankfulness for the beautiful message my Mom left me on the phone. That she loves me and glad that I am her daughter.

You see, when I read the parable of the sower and the soil today I realized that while the seed started out good, it was the conditions of the ground it fell into that varied. Each day we are given a choice and each day we live for Christ the choice can only be life. Because He died and rose again to give it to us.

It’s an old old story, but one I never get tired of telling.

Be at peace with your life my friends. He’s got this. He’s got you.

Of Dads and Grandpas

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“What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it–we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who He is or what He is up to.” 1 John 3:1 MSG

God loves families. That’s why He found it necessary and important to start one. He certainly didn’t need us. It’s hard for us to imagine what it must have been like before the creation, but we know it was a perfect union. Father, Son and Holy Spirit…..They could have gone on that way forever.

But because God is such a creator and a giver, He decided to spin out galaxies, and planets and stars and angels in the blackness of eternal space. And then, out of His vast storehouse of love He created all the animals and this home of ours, and us. I wonder…….I’ve always wondered, how much time passed in that perfect fellowship.

How many walks and talks were taken in the cool of the evening before it all went south? Before we decided to listen to the cleverly woven lies that turned God-perfection on its ear. I wonder.

Families are messy and God knew that. Even the angels argued amongst themselves about who was greatest. He created us at great risk, but He felt the risk was worth it. We were worth it. And we fell, as He knew we would in time. Since that time we have never stopped falling. Thankfully, He has never stopped trying to get us back.

When my Dad was a kid, my Grandpa left the family. After my Grandma passed away he remarried. My Dad and Grandpa did some bridge building through the years. As a result I have good memories of him. I passed the house on my walk just the other day. I remembered Christmas at the Elks Lodge and going through his box of rocks and staring at his geodes in the lit up cabinet. And ice-cream socials at the Methodist Church and picnics at the lake. 

I never knew my Grandpa on my Mom’s side but I hope he is one of the first people I meet in Heaven. We lost him to cancer when I was only two. I have a dim memory of him holding me up to his grapevines. He loved roses, and he had a cat named Fritz and he called me his “blond-haired angel” in German. I always wonder if when he held me he was thinking of Annie, his 4 year old daughter who was accidentally shot and killed by a neighbor boy. My Grandma never built that bridge of forgiveness back to him for leaving the gun out. My Mom heard him say quietly one day, “She has never forgiven me.”

I like to think of the three of them together in Heaven, all forgiven, all forgotten.

Sometimes the most important thing in life and also the hardest is to build a bridge back to someone who has hurt us. It’s a huge risk, and it’s scary and most times we don’t know what the outcome will be. It’s exactly what God did with Jesus. It cost Him everything, but to get us back he felt it was worth it.

It’s what good Dads do. 

The Shroud of Grace

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Yesterday I awoke to a gloriously foggy morning. I am one of those that can’t resist bundling up and chasing it as it shrouds and swallows up everything and fills the air with silence. I joyfully walked down to the river to find 3 misty ghost like figures floating on top of the water; their fishing poles angled hopefully. Every now and again I would hear the plop as they recasted their lines, their hushed voices echoing across the water,

Further down I saw 2 ducks making a v-line barely visible through the misty air. I only heard a flock of Canadian geese honking above. I shot a few pictures with my camera and then decided to venture on down to the lake. My Sunday peace was only disturbed when my camera wouldn’t focus on a particular shot and I had to ask forgiveness for my foul words.

I wasn’t enjoying communion with fellow believers and yet I was at church. I have always found God in the fog, for two very emotional moments of my life happened in the fog long ago. The first was when I was driving around grief-stricken, my eyes blurred with tears after the loss of my husband.  I turned a corner and through the fog, I saw hopeful little candles in each window of a charming little cottage. Something about it gripped me and at once my spirit was calmed and brightened. It was God’s  way of letting me know I was going to make it.

The other time, I was alone in my room. Everyone had left and “Oh Holy Night” was playing on my record player (yes, it was that long ago) All I can say is that the Holy Spirit came to me in that room and I can remember every detail. In that room God came to me and revealed the awful, beautiful truth of what Jesus did to save me, us.

Wherever you find yourself this Christmas let me tell you that there is hope. I can say this with perfect confidence and clarity because there is simply nothing you or I are going through that is bigger than God. I know this. Jesus came so that we could always have real hope to fall back on in the darkest times of our lives.

Allow me to close with a quote from a wonderful book I read by Beldan C. Lane as he went through his own journey through the valley of the Shadow of Alzheimer’s in the nursing home with his Mom:

I met a woman by the elevator each day whose mouth was always open wide, as if uttering a silent scream. In a bed down the hall lay a scarcely recognizable body, twisted by crippling arthritis–a man or woman I’d never met. Another woman cried out every few moments, desperately calling for help in an “emergency” that never ebbed. Who were these people?

They represented the God from whom I repeatedly flee. Hidden in the grave-clothes of death, this God remains unavailable to me in my anxious denial of aging and pain. He is good news only to those who are broken. But to them he’s the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, lurking in the shadows beyond the nurses desk, promising life in the presence of death. The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Beldan C. Lane

This is the paradox of the message of Christmas. Innocent life with a bitter twist at the end but that ultimately gives us Glorious freedom from that same death. Sometimes I think this is why we rush to buy and give during this season. We know there is something about Christmas that is joy but we can’t quite place our finger on it. We do our hopeful best to be cheerful and join in only to find ourselves worn out from the effort.

That’s because the Gift He gives us is so much bigger than everything else in this world. It’s Himself. We are free, all of us this Christmas. We have to only reach out and accept the gracious offer He gives.

Merry Christmas from my Prayer Closet. May His peace find you today, and every day.

The “Luxury” of Letting Go

 

I felt the river calling on this particular day. It was hot and I was stressed and mentally wrestling with many things. I needed to float…….I tethered myself to the tree in case I drifted off and ended up at the Lake about 5 miles away (Like that would be a terrible thing.

I closed my eyes and let the sounds fill my ears. I heard voices every now and again, kayakers paddling by. The sound of the wind in the trees wooed me and made me think of how I used to miss that sound in the desert. Water bugs chased each other and alighted on my legs. I remembered a song by John Denver called “Cool and Green and Shady.”

He was so intuned to nature and the depth of our need of it. I miss the wisdom of his words. Here is just how I felt:

                                        “Find yourself a piece of grassy ground,
Lay down close your eyes…….find yourself
and maybe lose yourself while your free spirit flies.
August skies, and lullabies, promises to keep
Dan-de-lions and twisting vines clover at your feet.
Mem-o-ries of Aspen leaves, tremblin’ on the wind.
Honey bees and fantasies, where to start again,
Someplace cool an’ green an’ shady……”

Amidst the birds and the lapping of waves against the cement the sound of a harmonica drifted across the water. A lone kayaker in a hat was serenading the turtles sunning themselves on a nearby log. It sounded a little bit like magic. It brought me back to my childhood when my Uncle Bruce would play “Red River Valley” around the campfire.

Then I thought, amidst everything that I think is so difficult in this season of my life, there is this. This bit of paradise I can latch onto. What a luxury. I think of so many living in places torn by poverty and war and noting but fleeing from one place to another. Never having peace.

Where is their escape? Whatever I think is so difficult would be a joke in someone else’s life and perspective. This causes me to sigh and pray and thank God.

I stare up lazily at the trees and they wave lazily back. I take some of my burdens with me when I go but enough are left behind.

Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from Him. Truly He is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken……Psalm 62: 1,2