Hope

A Rational Response

Faith is a rational response to the evidence of God’s self revelation in nature, human history, the Scriptures, and His resurrected Son. W. Bingham Hunter, “The God Who Hears.”

In my reading of Scripture today about Jesus resurrection I was thinking about how people want proof that God is real, proof that the Bible is real, proof that Jesus really was raised from the dead. If they only had “proof” they say, then they would believe. Yet there was proof. Is proof:

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:19,20

All the evidence is in…….Jesus was seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses after the resurrection. Nobody ever denied that the tomb was empty, but instead they offered up different theories as to why it was empty….by His very resurrection from the dead, He proved that everything He said was true. Mary was the first to see the empty tomb, then she ran to tell the disciples. Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb and saw it empty…….”Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.” John 20:8-10 

But Mary stayed behind at the tomb and Jesus appeared to her……… John 20:11-16

He is a rewarder of all who seek Him.

“A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.” Ravi Zacharias

Continuing my gratitude count today, gratitude that God has left so much evidence around us…..He wants so very much for us to find Him, to know Him……Thankful today for the endless traces of His presence…..Just enough oxygen for us to breathe, just enough warmth from the sun, just enough heartbeats to keep us going, just the right amount of blood that pumps through, carrying life……shelter from the elements…..laughter to give us hope, just enough gravity to keep our feet on the ground and keep us from spinning off the planet, enough wind to make us wonder…..enough faith and joy to keep us from giving up, and more than enough love to save us, even when we don’t deserve it…..#538-548

holy experience

New every morning……

The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have learned to ask…….Nancy Newhall

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:21-26

On my way to work I asked the Lord what message He would have me bring today……I have had a few thoughts the last few days, things I wanted to blog about, but work has been very busy and I haven’t been able to get the time. As I was praying, I felt the Spirit place this thought on my heart and then push it to the front as I was driving.  It stayed there and didn’t leave, and I knew it was what the Lord gave me for this day. He kept saying to me……..”New every morning.”

In spite of every circumstance we go through on a day to day basis…….He always refreshes us with little joys each morning. Somehow we get strength to start all over again. The Christian life is filled with newness….because it is filled with Christ and He never gets old!  Everything in the world gets old, jobs, drinking, money, stuff, partying, drugs, even traveling gets old after awhile and you just want to stay home! Everything in this world gets old, except for Christ. He brings us that new life that He described as living water…..

I felt it this morning and it surprised me again! I put the praise songs on and started singing a bit and before I knew it, I felt that sweet refresing that only comes from the Holy Spirit. I don’t know why it catches me by surprise but it always does and it shouldn’t by now. I think that God likes to give us those gifts when we are least expecting them sometimes. Just like you love to surprise your kids with little gifts…..

There are things we can do to keep that grace water flowing, I find…… Listening to good praise music, staying in the Word, fellowshiping with other believers, all these things keep that wellspring of water flowing freely. And of course, sometimes God just comes in quietly and fills us with grace and peace when we least expect it too.

It is interesting when you read the verses in Lamentations all around the above verses. They are pretty bleak! But then this verse comes in……exactly what I was feeling this morning.

There are times when we feel as dry as the desert, but God has promised we will not stay that way……
that is a great hope for me today…..I praise His name!

Watching the Sky

By Maxfield Parrish

“Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:” Amos 5:8

Last night I stepped outside and was greeted with a “Maxfield Parrish” sky. Ever since I saw some of his art long ago, I think of him when the sky is that certain shade of inky blue…..that not quite dark cobalt, still lit from underneath by the sun’s last trace of light. I took a deep breath, thanking God for the night sky, His sky…..for the stars, the moon and placing me here at just this moment in time.

I always make it a point to go out at dusk and look for the moonrise. God’s mysterious night light. I love that particular time of the evening. There is a resigned peacefulness in the twilight when the evening sounds start to rise and everything calms down. Once again, stars appear just like they did the night before, there is security in that.The evening bird closes out the day and ushers in the night with one last song…….This one day has closed out….. and we did the best we could with it, and it is enough.

The other night it was a harvest moon. As I saw the glow of it rising over the Superstition mountain ridge, it almost took my breath away…it was huge and otherworldly, like it was too big for the horizon. I was in the car and I wanted to pull over so I could watch the whole performance, but I had to be content with watching it the best I could while driving down the freeway.

In ancient Israel it was common for people to sleep on the rooftops. Maybe because it was cooler outside, and probably there was more room. They spent a lot of time watching the sky……watching, and waiting too. For a Messiah that would be preceded by a strange star…..If there was some new star there they would have known it immediately.

They read the book of Numbers, they had read the Prophecy
“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel…….Numbers 24:17
 
I don’t know who taught me to be a sky watcher and I’m not sure when it started…..



When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! Psalm 8:3-5

Now my brother is teaching my Niece to watch the sky too, I think it’s great. Every evening they are together they go out and look for the moon……and everytime the moon is a very small crescent, my Mom thinks of me from California.


Windows of hope

Mount Angel Abbey, St. Benedict Oregon
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is
to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone
with the heavens, nature and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and
that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple
beauty of nature. I firmly believe that nature brings solace
in all troubles.  Anne Frank
When I read this my heart aches for little Anne, how much strength and wisdom she had. I wish I she could have lived to walk out of her attic and sit at peace under her beloved chestnut tree. Not too long ago the 180 year old tree that Anne gazed at from her window fell over in a storm. I believe she clung to that tree because it represented life. To me it says a lot about her character, that she could hope in anything at all in her situation.
“Our chestnut tree is in full blossom,” Anne wrote in her diary in May 1944. “It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”
I think we are creatures of hope by nature. It’s grafted into us by God as part of our blueprint. It is the only thing that explains why people don’t give up, why we continually strive for survival, for life, to persevere in even the most dire circumstances.
There was a time in my life where I was swimming in grief…….I would drive around aimlessly at night, not knowing where to go because everywhere I went my sorrow went with me. My family was dealing with their own sadness so I didn’t want to heap anymore on them. There were friends that welcomed me into their homes and I never forgot them for it.
On one particularly foggy night around Christmastime I was out for one of my drives that went nowhere when I rounded the corner and saw a little house that I had always admired because the people who owned it loved it and decorated it for every holiday. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t modern or luxurious, it was an older home on a corner lot, just a little cottage duplex…….but that night as I rounded the corner, it was resplendant, a jeweled princess ready for the ball!
It sparkled with white twinkling lights all around, and each window lit from within by the glow of a candle. At that moment it was my little port in the storm, my own personal lighthouse of hope. A small candle was lit in my heart that night, God whispered:  “I am with you and I have given you this little gift to let you know that sorrow doesn’t last forever; on the other side of it is joy“…….I clung to that hope like Anne to her chestnut tree.
Since that time many years ago, I have kept candles in the window of just about every home I have had…..to remember. 
” May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.” Psalm 33:22

Thank the hero in your life today…..

We all know them, they live in our neighborhoods, we see them in our children’s schools, we have known them throughout our lives, people who sacrificially go above and beyond the call. We marvel at how they can do the things they do, how they can sacrifice so much. We think of them as everyday heroes. Maybe you are one of them……The thing about these people that defines them so wonderfully is that they don’t think of themselves as heroes at all. They see a need, sometimes a big one, and they step in to fill it. They don’t sit and think about how it might affect them, how much they might have to sacrifice. They don’t ponder, procrastinate, wonder if God wants them to do it, they just do it.
What got me started about all this is that I was thinking of my folks neighbors. They learned that their boss was going to institutionalize their severely handicapped son and they did the unthinkable and volunteered to take him into their home……as their own son. When I am home visiting I see the bus pull up with him in it, a full grown man now. They must care for his every need. This means diapers, feeding, lifting. And yet they do it joyfully.
You never know what someone is going through at any given moment, what burdens they carry. Still they keep on. Maybe they have three jobs but they still go out of their way to help others. I bet we can count off ten people we know right now that do amazing things on a day to day basis. I know two people who take service animals to rest homes and hospitals. Imagine the smiles they are greeted with, shaking hands that reach out, remembering better days.
Let the everyday heroes in your life know that you have noticed! Smile at the woman emptying the trash cans at work, the man trimming the trees, your waitress who looks burdened. Everyday there are people rising out of bed early and instead of spending their golden years at leisure, devoting the rest of their days in service to others, standing in the gap for someone. Doing the work of God.
Maybe they don’t even know God, but they are doing His work just the same.
And think about this. Think about all the many issues that divide churches today, divide the world really. This is one thing we can all agree on. Helping one another, serving the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphans among us is right and everyone knows it.
If we could all unite on this one point, forget about the other stuff that doesn’t really matter, just do this one thing, think how the world could change. “But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.” Titus 3:9

Lord, today I pray for all these heroes today, and especially on my heart are our soldiers coming home, many of them with life-changing injuries having to go through many months and years of therapy. May there be loving hands to help them, support them, love them, and visit them in their times of loneliness. May they find peace and comfort in Your Spirit, Amen.
“This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.” Titus 3:8

God speaks…..


Continuing along the lines of yesterday……

The clouds and thunderstorms have been so magnificent lately I seemed to be stuck on the theme of nature and finding God’s power in it. In reading parts of Job this morning, I was struck again by the immense and beauty and perfection of God and His creation.

Elihu speaks to Job:

“He loads the clouds with moisture; He scatters His lightning through them. At His direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever He commands them. He brings the clouds to punish men, or to water the earth with His love….Listen to this Job; stop and consider God’s wonders.” Job 37:11-14

Imagine Job, who had suffered more than any man on earth. His losses were incomprehensible. Then he had to sit and listen to his friend rattle on about God’s mighty attributes, as he was scraping his terrible sores with pottery shards. Job could have given Elihu the speech himself, being the righteous man that he was. Job was a man that had a great relationship with God, although he had to wonder where God was at that point….but then God shocks them both with showing up!

God talks, Job listens:

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm, He said: Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earths foundation? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!” Job 38:1-5

God is not beyond using a little sarcasm to prove His point here, can you hear it behind the words?

Nearly every argument on the problem of pain appears somewhere in the book of Job, but the arguing never seems to help poor Job. He is suffering a crisis of relationship more than a crisis of intellectual doubt. Through it all, Job steadfastly refuses to turn his back on God. He has only one request: to hear from God in person. He wants an explanation right from the source.

At last Job gets his wish. God answers Job with a speech often quoted for its majesty and beauty. In a touch of sweet irony, God makes His entrance just as Elihu is explaining why Job cannot expect a direct answer from God. Job has saved a long list of questions, but it is God who asks the questions, not Job…..brushing aside 35 Chapters worth of debates on the problem of pain, God plunges instead into a dazzling poem on the wonders of the natural world.

Astonishingly, the question of suffering itself does not even come up in God’s speech. Yet somehow Job seems satisfied–humiliated actually.
(Taken from Student Bible Commentary notes, by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford)

“I know that You can do all things; no plan of Yours can be thwarted…..Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” And then I love how this ends, “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and and gave him twice as much as he had before.” Job 42:2,3,10

God is not immune to our suffering. He is there in the midst of it, even when it seems He is nowhere to be found.

Finding grace along the path


On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”

From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Book of John

I think this is the wisest thing Peter ever said. I have wondered about this passage many times. I wonder how these disciples could have been with Jesus, witnessed miracles, and still turned away? To me it is one of the saddest passages in Scripture. Sadder still because I think of my own times of turning away. Moments, years, where I went my own way, did my own thing. Keeping Jesus in the background was my own form of turning away.

But God in His great mercy, pulled me back in, as He did Peter….”But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:32

The more I experience His grace, the less I look back. Like Peter, I can echo, “Where would I go Lord?” There is nothing in the world that I would trade for my relationship with the Lord. Each day that goes by gives me another opportunity and reason to say, “Yes, Lord, I am staying on Your path because it is the only one worth walking down, even when the way is rocky and I can’t see my way around the next bend in the road, because You are on it with me.”

With His Grace, we get the strength to keep walking!

Morning Prayer

Sea of Galilee, Google Images

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Mark 1:35

There must be some time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?

There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life that he had ever prayed, when teh man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all benn broken, and he learns a different wisdom:

Distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from dry land, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill. Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

Thank you Lord for the quiet hours of dawn, when the world is just beginning to stir and wake. There is nothing quite like the early morning prayer. I feel a closeness with You, knowing You felt the need too, to rise early and meet Your Father. Before the day begins, we come in faith and hope, not knowing for sure what the day will bring, but knowing that You will be in it and through it. And in my mind I see others too, bringing their own offering. I feel a kinship with them, Lord, in these quiet moments, as I add my prayers to other voices, as You set the earth, the planets, this place of beauty in motion once again…..

Need a touch today?


“A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”

If I just touch His clothes….
Jesus knew that someone had touched Him specifically for healing. This wasn’t just someone in the crowd jostling against Him. This was someone who had touched Him in faith. Someone who took a risk, someone who had tried everything, and now was ready to try Jesus.

Ever feel like that? I think about this woman and know that she was shunned from her community. If she was bleeding she was ceremonially unclean and therefore could not join in to any aspect of life in her community. I imagine her hiding in the crowd, pushing her way through, and finally getting a glimpse of the back of his hem dragging the ground. Almost there….

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

She probably just wanted to disappear from the crowd but Jesus wanted to make sure that she was recognized. He wanted to make contact with her, see her face, let her know that He appreciated her act of faith…

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

She didn’t seek Jesus out because he was a good teacher, a good role model, a person with high moral standards, or a charismatic preacher, she sought Him out because she believed that He was the one person who could do what nobody else had been able to do for her. Heal her. What she found was the One who could not only heal her body, but her soul as well.

What we believe about Jesus can make all the difference in life here and now and for all eternity…….

Scripture selections taken from Mark 5