When we have real communion

As I sit here the birds are in chorus across the street and the suns rays are glorious across my back. I can barely see the screen in the light, but I have to be out here. I don’t want to ignore God’s beautiful morning.

In prayer just an hour ago, my insides felt as flat as a gray stone. I whispered, “How is it that I can sit here, knowing the God of the Universe is here listening to my prayer and I can feel so emotionally flat? How is that possible?”

I don’t let it out, I don’t talk to Him because it sounds too much like whining. It’s better to keep it stuffed behind the barrier. But then I do start sharing it all, and as it spills out something wonderful happens. Distant, Holy, Immovable, Omnipotent God becomes my Abba Father again. And it’s warmer than the sun on my back how He loves me. And once again it surprises me how He really does want to hear it all.

The wine becomes the blood, and the wafer becomes the body and it’s something real, something we can see, hear taste and touch in Him and each other. And it’s bigger than anything else in this life. And when our tears become like the wine and we pour out our hearts to each other? This is the gift exchange God really wants. Freely we have received, freely we give.

This kind of Holy transubstantiation is what He gives us first so that in turn, we can give it to others.

Inside me the rock cracks open and tears come when I realize that what has just happened is something Holy, something of a miracle.

The doves coo and the birds continue their serenade and Elaine honks as she goes by in her school bus. She sees that the umbrella is up and I am out here. The kids will be glad to have her back today. I don’t think the substitute driver sings with them or compliments them on their outfits, or loves them enough to not let them get away with everything. She never looks through them, she always sees them and they know it. And since Jesus is in her, He is on that bus too.

And I know He is smiling while she is doing His work with those kids.

The sun beats down, warmer now, and I revel in its glow.

Because I never have to play that daisy game with God, because I know it’s always the same answer, “He loves me.”

When God stops teaching you, you better worry

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–Ephesians 2:8

This is a repost from February of 2012 but the lesson hasn’t changed. The man I spoke of here is now with Jesus, he passed from death to life on Easter weekend of this year and no telling just how many he talked to are there in Heaven with him now too……

Driving home from work last night I breathed a prayer…….”thank you Lord for getting me through the day.” And then another thought, right on the heels of that. Is getting through enough? Is it not diminishing the capacity of wonder in a day to pray that kind of prayer? I do understand it……I fully understand that sometimes it is a real accomplishment to do just that, but too often I don’t set my sights high enough. I catch myself settling for less, when God wants to give me more.

I had to apologize. Then I started to count the beauty moments, the grace moments in the day. I remembered a conversation I had with a brother believer, and in those moments that we sat and shared at the cafe, a window of Heaven was opened. He reminded me that everything we do, everywhere we are can be a ministry. A moment of opportunity. You see, each month he flies to Houston for his cancer treatments, and though he wouldn’t have chosen his present circumstances, he shared how so many times God has placed someone in the seat beside him that needed to hear about what God is doing in his life.

Eternity moments. Reflected in each of our days, each one precious, a gift.

How can I pray to just get through the day when I know that almost certainly, the sky wasn’t just this color yesterday? How can I pray to just get through the day when there is someone waiting to hear what God is doing in my life, what He could do in theirs?

Every conversation has the possibility in it of changing someone’s life, someone’s eternity. Of opening a window of Heaven and letting the light spill out. I do believe that when you are suffering, getting through the day in one piece is quite an accomplishment, but that wasn’t the case with me yesterday.

Thank you God, for reminding me of this. For loving me enough to teach me yet another lesson. Thank you for the grace that I walk in each and every day.

Random Saturday Thoughts

I like the church i go to now but I am wondering why I don’t cry there. I cried at my old church all the time.

My Grandma used to call my Dad a Yankee like it was a bad thing. I wonder how she even knew what a Yankee was, her family immigrated from Russia and she lived in California?

If you have never heard of a guy named Lewis Grizzard, go google some of his quotes. One of my favorites is “Elvis is dead and I don’t feel so good myself.”

I just found out today that Internet sensation Grumpy cat lives about 50 miles from me. It actually brightened my day that it might be possible to meet she and her owners. She really isn’t grumpy either, her owner says she is a very happy cat.

Another funny thing about my Grandmother is that she had probably the first ever vibrating chair. It weighed two tons and shook the whole house. That was back in the late sixties/early seventies. She was also the only person I know who wore out the plastic rotary dial on her phone. She would have been great at texting.

I don’t know why but it always makes me feel better when I feed the birds.

God is totally in control even when events and circumstances lead you to believe otherwise. It’s only a test.

I know that I know that I know that prayer works and love never ever fails.

That’s about all I have today, it’s been a crazy day.

At close of day

There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans

forgets his plans, and acts 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 who prays goes to pray

as if it were the first time in his life

he had ever prayed,

when the man of resolutions puts his

resolutions aside

as if they had all been 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

Heaven and Earth were finished, down to the last detail. By the seventh day God had finished his work. On the seventh day he rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day because on that day he rested from his work, all the creating God had done. This is the story of how it all started, of Heaven and Earth when they were created. Genesis 2:2-4

Bringing eternity into the here and now

Join Shelly Miller and Duane Scott today for the Wonderstruck Book Club!

There are times when you need to get away and you need it as bad as you need air.

When E’s Mom was living at the house, I took mini-Sabbaths often at Wal-Mart amidst the patio furniture. It’s a far cry from a pine forest or waves lapping against your feet, but hey, sometimes you have to take what’s readily available. At work I go outside just to hear the birds and maybe throw them some bread from my sandwich. Or I take a short walk and gaze up at the clouds to remind myself that it’s all still there. I find those times are crucial for my emotional and mental well-being.

I have always been attracted to the idea of praying the hours, the idea of taking a set time each day for prayer. To me, the morning and the evening are Holy and I feel I have missed something if I don’t get to see the sunrise or see His grand artwork in the sky at the close of day. When I first started having a regular prayer time, it usually went pretty much the same. I would start with praise, thanking Him for anything and everything that came to mind, then I would pray for specific needs of people for myself or others.

Now, I try to follow His leading more. Sometimes I ramble on and sometimes I sit in silence. Sometimes I just breathe and meditate on God’s goodness, and that is a prayer too. Sometimes I use my prayer language and sometimes, like Margaret, I use just a few words…..peace, or hope or sometimes just help! (I use that one a lot)

When I willingly get off the merry-go-round even for a moment, and get in tune with God’s rhythm I have found that something within me expands…….the world gets smaller and He gets bigger.

If I can, I extend my prayer time by a morning walk. I have always been a nature girl with my ear to the ground waiting to learn the secrets God reveals through what He has made. The desert captures you slowly. You resist at first seeing only the thorny plants, the relentless heat, but then the desert blooms and the lightning strikes and wonder abounds.

It speaks to those who listen. All of nature does. It holds mysteries that only God knows the answers to. How the Cactus wren can land and live in the giant Saguaros without getting impaled is beyond me. Each time I see them land, I almost want to close my eyes. But God has shown them just how to do it.

These quail babies at 4 days old are totally out of the nest and on their feet following Mama……I have seen as many as eight!

And this mourning dove I saw when I took my walk early one morning, safely nesting between the barbs of this cactus, God knows she will be safe there from predators. She looked out at me calmly serene in her surroundings, at peace as I strolled on by.

Observing the wonder of God’s creation is one way we can honor Him and in order to properly do that, we need to slow down long enough to see it. I love how Margaret Feinberg puts it:

Making time to pause isn’t just a holy opportunity but a divine command. Pg. 67

And when we follow God’s leading by making one day different from all the rest, we enter into His rest and then we see why it’s so important. We no longer think of the things we can’t do but the things we gain by taking a Sabbath. God wants it for us because it’s for our good. I am so grateful for Wonderstruck, because it has reminded me that living a life of wonder is really the only way to live.

Wonder is a way we can bring eternity right into the here and now.

Sometimes you have to slow to a stop and reset before you can experience divine presence, my hunger to know God increased as I learned how to develop a healthy rhythm in life and rediscovered the wonder of rest. Margaret Feinberg

Am I welcome here?

Yesterday in church, Pastor Kevin related a story. A woman came to him asking questions about our church, she was confused. She had been visiting a few different churches in the area. On Easter, she had been one of the 967 people to walk “through the arch” and give her life to Christ. She wanted to get baptised but she had some questions. She related an experience she recently had at another church she was thinking of attending. She saw that they needed help in the Children’s ministry so she went to volunteer. She was told that she would have to change her attire, “If you come back in a skirt,” they said.

Kevin described her clothing as “urban.” In her own words she says: “I dress like I am from the hood.” That included a few tattoos and piercings. She asked, “Would I have to change my clothes to get baptized?”

Am I welcome here just the way I am?

She also asked that same church for help moving but once they found out she was living with her boyfriend they said, “As long as you are living with him, we can’t help you.”

The door slammed the second time and the message was clear; make yourself and your life presentable first, then we can help.

She was justified in having some concerns and questions and I am very happy to say that Pastor Kevin assured her that she was indeed welcome just the way she was. That’s why I attend the church I do. But clearly, it seems some churches are handing out a different message that the one Jesus handed out. What they are asking for, God doesn’t even ask. Jesus asks us to simply come.

His grace extends to everyone but without Him it is impossible to change.

There is no effective or lasting change without Jesus coming first. It is not even possible to be sanctified without the work of the Holy Spirit, but it seems some churches are asking for the impossible. In effect, they are saying that anyone is welcome, but only as long as they clean up at the door. Until churches change that type of thinking, lives will remain untouched, unchanged. We will still have dead congregations that are still thinking they can make themselves acceptable without Jesus.

God wants to reach everyone. It doesn’t matter what we have or what we don’t have, what our background is, or what may be buried in our past. I like how Pastor Kevin said it. Instead of thinking, “What’s in it for me, we need to be asking how can I be more like God in this situation?”

Not what can I get out of today, but how can I show His love today?

Linking up with Michelle today at the Hear it on Sunday Community.

The Woodpile

It was just a little place to store wood.

It looked harmless enough, and yet when I saw it things tumbled out of my heart that I didn’t know were there.

There was the promise of the first snap of fall and the times when the leaves start floating down,

back down to rejoin the earth.

There were long nights by the fire, and conversations by the glow of embers burning low.

It was celebrations toasted and ending and new beginnings.

And all in that little stack of wood.

I saw snow falling, heard rain pelt on the window and moaning winds and creaking branches scraping on windows.

Times when it’s so cold that only your nose is peaking out of the covers.

It is camping and sadness and times that will never come again. It was remembering the time my Dad and I stacked wood and what a good time working together we had.

And how long ago that was now.

It was prying a lid of emotions that I try to keep neat and stacked just like that wood.

Somehow that little woodpile makes me wonder just how much the human heart can hold without spilling over.

A Champion for Ragamuffins

He was a champion for Ragamuffins everywhere. When I heard he died yesterday I was saddened because of the words of grace he will no longer write, but I was happy knowing he was with Jesus. Brennan Manning’s book Ragamuffin Gospel went through my parents house and then mine and then everyone we knew, we bought extra copies and passed them like batons at relay races.

Brennan Manning was like a quiet megaphone that spoke softly and yet loudly into our hearts something that we tend to forget. That we are dearly loved by God, and there is nothing we have to do to earn it. Like Sally Field’s memorable Oscar speech of 1985 in which she emphatically claimed, “You really, really like me,” Brennan Manning had a mission, and that was to spread the word that not only does God like us, He really really loves us.

He opened us up to the possibility that there was nothing we had to do to earn God’s love. That’s what spoke to my heart.

He hung out with dignitaries as well as twelve-steppers, and his book made me cry more than once.

And he also challenged me in my walk:

In the final analysis, the real challenge of Christian growth is the challenge of personal responsibility. The Spirit of Jesus call out a second time: Are you going to take charge of your life today? Are you going to be responsible for what you do? Are you going to believe?

His words were a balm for my soul and I won’t forget him.

Even today, I grabbed my copy of Ragamuffin Gospel and threw it in my bag. I may never get the time to open it, but I know it’s there and it makes me feel good.

Enjoy the first day of the rest of your life, Brennan Manning, and we will join you after a time.

Then we will all be Ragamuffins Redeemed, sitting at the feet of Jesus with you. Until then, we will re-read your books and strive to live and walk in the footsteps of Jesus until such time as we begin our own forever with Him.

Diary of a mad shift worker

Glad god can’t sleep and that’s good because that makes it really handy for when I need Him (which is pretty much all the time.)

Awake at three I stare at the dark ceiling and wonder what I should do with a full hour. An hour of precious sleep makes my mind rebel against doing anything else but. I could pray but……

Can I pray with one half of my mind when the other half is sleep obsessed?

I could get up and read the Psalms or Wonderstruck but I lie awake and see if I get drowsy.

Now that I am awake the cats walk in circles like hawks around me.

I decide god can hear the praying half. With that one half I pray for the Jumping Tandem retreat, and for Elaine, Diane, my family, Dawn’s Uncle. Pat.

I thank Him for yesterday today and forever.

I don’t pray because I am a good person, I pray because I need Him and so does everyone else. And because hard things are going on down here.

But thankfully, a lot of good is happening too. Now is always a good time to Praise.

I could get up and eat green jello.

I think for the hundredth time that unless there is a conversion experience, people pretty much die how they have lived. Either peacefully or kicking and screaming and making it inconvenient and difficult for everyone right up to the end,

Or with a measure of peace and grace knowing they have done the best they good with God’s help and joy knowing they are going home.

And for one last request, for my prayer request to happen soon. You know what it is, God.

Because you are up all night and nothing gets past You. And I am so glad.

Indeed, he who watches over Israel (and me) will neither slumber nor sleep. Psalm 121:4

photo credit: Google images

Wonder in the Middle

Wonderstruck book club series: Chapters 002,003

It was a question that knocked me off kilter.”Why is God doing this to me?” her eyes were imploring and pain-filled and my words felt puny and unconvincing. “God is not doing anything to you,” I insisted, “He doesn’t work like that.” But my answer felt ineffectual and echoed back hollow.

Sometimes it seems as soon as you are just starting to get relief in one area, something else happens and you’re right back where you started.

The truth is, when you are in pain, it does feel like God’s punishing you. Even if you know deep down He’s really not.

Just about everyone in my circle is rolling in the tide of suffering from one thing or another right now and I feel helpless.

And yesterday, the weather mirrored how I felt, it was stormy and windy all day. The sky was thick with dust and outside was no place you wanted to be. I felt fatigued, restless and burdened. Flagpoles bending, windchimes clanging, rugs blown across driveways, everything askew.

There was a sliver of grace in the day. In one of our favorite spots E and I settled for some breakfast and tea. I told her I felt useless for not being able to answer her question the night before. “Oh,” she said, waving her hand across her face. “I didn’t expect you to really have an answer, I just needed to vent.” So we talked and laughed and sighed and watched people and drank 3 glasses of tea. But I know her, I can see the pain below the surface.

On and on, the wind howled. Dirt and dust collected and banked in the corners of the house like brown snow, and leaves and debris were everywhere, but there were clouds coming in. Back inside, I walked from window to window. I tried to read but nothing held my interest.

I dozed off thinking about wonder, and how to find it in a day like today. Sandwiched in between so much other stuff.

As afternoon turned into dusk, I heard the unmistakable ping of rain on the roof. I turned off all the lights and sat in my chair by the open window. I heard more drops. I went outside and stood in it…..It was grace, this rain. His grace, I knew it. It really started to come down and I felt myself smiling.

I went back to the chair as the healing drops fell, more and more they came like mercy from the sky. Sydney jumped up on my lap and together in the dark, we watched and listened and felt the wonder spilling down from the sky, and my tears fell along with it.

And I thought, that is just like God, showering wonder in the middle of the dirt and dust and chaos of life

And that is how it happens, in the midst of an ordinary day. When we live in realm and possibility of wonder, we recognize it when it shows up even in the midst of heartache. Maybe especially in the midst of heartache.

We sat and sat. I prayed, “More, God, More, God, I want more.” He answered me with a distant rumble of thunder.

Does it surprise you that He would answer that way? We are talking about a God who loves us so much that there is nothing He wouldn’t do for us, so I don’t think a little rumble of thunder is too big of a stretch.

I said, “thank you thank you thank you.”

And here is another wonder, I had just been thinking of a certain Bible verse:

“And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire, a still small voice.” 1 Kings 19:11-12

I was thinking of my own version, except adding dust to the mix and then ending with rain. I walked out to the kitchen and looked at the verse on the calendar, which I hadn’t turned over yet…..you guessed it, it was the verse from 1 Kings.

I looked at my phone and there was a text from my dear friend in Seattle and it said: “Hey, the sky finally came out and it made me think of you, love you, goodnight xoxox.”

I sent one back that said, ‘That is so funny, Sydney and I were just sitting in the dark listening to the healing rain and I thought of you, I love you.”

He send us His wonder in the midst of an ordinary day, sometimes He disguises Himself in people.

Sometimes He shows up Himself.

Sometimes He sends rain.

But He still comes, and there is wonder in that.

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

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