When you need strength

When you are stressed…….

“But now, this is what the Lord says…he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel; Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior….Since you are precious and honored in my sight and because I love you.” Isaiah 43:1-4

Now repeat the above verses with your own name in place of “O Jacob” and “O Israel”

When we are suffering and our hearts feel overwhelmed by the pain of our circumstance, even though we know these words to be true in our minds, they don’t always find their way into our hearts, where they are needed the most. What about when someone we love is suffering? We want so to comfort them, to say and do the right thing, to take the pain away, or at least help them make some sense out of it. In our haste sometimes we say the wrong things, or say nothing at all because we really and truly have not been in their shoes. We don’t want to speak of something we have never experienced for fear of sounding critical or presumptious like Job’s friends. Their kind of help could be included under the subtitle: “What Not to Say to a Hurting Person.”

Yet in the beginning they did the best thing they could do, they surrounded Job with comfort. They wept with him…..”Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” Job 2:13

Sometimes the best thing to do is to sit beside them in silence. Grasp their hand, put your arms around them. Pray with them. Pray for wisdom to give Godly advice, and wait……If you are the one hurting, know that God has not left you……How could He ever leave the one He created? Who called you by name?

God is not like your earthly father. Difficult circumstances do not mean He has failed or abandoned you. He has not left you at the school gate. God does not forget the child He made. He has not put you to one side while He is busy with other people. He is not bored with you, and He did not leave you midproject. He adores you. In fact, He promises (and God is incapable of breaking a promise) in Joshua 1:5, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Beth Redman, “God knows my Name”

I dedicate the above selection to my best friend Elaine today, who is going through a very difficult time with her Dad right now.

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!

In the trenches of life

Tlaquepaque Chapel, Sedona Arizona
“But let all who take refuge in You be glad; let them ever sing for joy. Spread Your protection over them, that those who love your name my rejoice in You.” Psalm 5:11
This morning wasn’t a calm prayer time for me……I was restless, I was worried. I was wondering why circumstances seem so hard for people who are just trying to do the right things. Why does it seem that certain people sail through life with little difficulty? If they need something done they just pay to have someone do it, with money no object they are unscathed by the things that bog the rest of us down. They don’t have to mess with details, they don’t lose sleep over what is not getting done because someone else is doing it…..or not. Either way, they live above the fray unaffected.  
So this prayer is for the rest of us here in the trenches of life. The ones who look around and realize they are standing alone, with no backup in sight. The ones who get robbed themselves because they are caring for others. The ones with anxious prayers like David, who was not a stranger to adversity.
He lost sleep, he was anxious, fearful, distressed and tired. But He also knew his God. He knew that his God was big enough to handle anything. He also knew that God was a refuge where he could always find shelter.
As I was reading, but mostly worrying this morning. I read these lines…..the ones that God highlighted for me, the ones where my finger stopped moving across the page.
“In the morning O Lord you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before You and wait in expectation.”
I pray, but so many times I don’t wait in expectation, I try to figure things out my own way. I don’t wait in expectation to see what God will do, I don’t even give Him the chance. I believe that is what He wanted me to see this morning. I marvel at the faith of David, a man after God’s own heart. He knew how to wait the right way. 
I love how David poured out his heart to the Lord. I can always find comfort in the Psalms because I know that I can find everything there that mirrors exactly what I am feeling at any given moment!
“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Mark 9:24
Jesus with children, Sedona Art Studio


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

God wants to hear from you….

“God is not really silent, we are deaf.” St Theresa of Avila

“The whole of our faith is the belief that God loves us; I mean there isn’t anything else. Anything else we say we believe is just a way of saying that God loves us. Any proposition, any article of faith, is only an expression of faith if it is a way of saying that God loves us….Herbert McCabe, British Theologian

We need only look to the cross to see proof of that love……

We have knowledge of that love because of what He has already demonstrated. Since He loves us, we must assume that He wants to hear from us! There is one requirement that will ensure that God will always answer our prayers and Jesus demonstrated it perfectly.
That we bring our desires in line with our Father’s will. This kind of prayer can seem more like wrestling sometimes.  
More than anything, God desires an open and honest heart. I like the fact that He encourages simple prayers…..I have great comfort in the fact that I can tell Him absolutely everything, and he loves it when I use my own words…… 
“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Matthew 6:7

I love that God honored the humble prayer of the tax collector…..
“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ Luke 18:13

I also love that God hears my silent prayers in those times when words fail. I just let Him read my heart with His Spirit in the quiet moments found here and there.

My favorite Bible

I have several Bibles, but there is one that is my favorite. I call it “Big Red.” I purchased it as a special edition they had available at church after I attended a “Walk thru the Prophets” seminar back in 1980. When I first got it, I had just re-committed my life to Christ and so I clung to it as a life preserver, devouring its pages. I thought it was the most beautiful Bible I had ever seen. The gilding on the side had a magical sheen to it and I loved the way it looked as the lamplight hit it. I drank it in like the bread of life that it is.
It has many pages of notes taken from many different sermons, Bible studies, and thoughts of my own thrown in. I can page through them and see a bit of my personal history, and it warms me to see all that God has done through the years. I see the year our choir performed Handel’s Messiah and my brother gave his life to the Lord, gallantly striding up the aisle in his white shirt, a grown man looking purposeful and humble all at the same time.  Thoughts I wrote that same morning sitting out in my parent’s yard on Easter, just before the sun came up. I can still feel the peaceful beauty of that morning like a cloak wrapped around me.  
I see a bit of my church history also, which is rather colorful. There are notes from churches I attended in my hometown of Lodi California, Sacramento, Woodbridge, and Chandler and Mesa, Arizona.
It started out Burgundy red leather, and rather stiff, but now it is faded and supple. I had to glue the spine back together  awhile back, and time has dulled the luster of gold from the edges. The words within, however, burn brighter than ever. They have not faded, but only become more brilliant with time. 
There were also seasons in my life when it collected dust, I thought my own wisdom was better.  
There are yellow highlights all the way through it, although much more in some places than others, and there are places where tears of both sorrow and joy have spilled onto the pages. Everyone who touches it touches a part of me. The words in it have comforted me more times than I can count and it comes along to my “closet” when I pray. It is my faithful companion.
Bibles have always played a special part in many family histories. My Mom has my Grandfather’s German Bible, and I have my Mom’s special one, which used to be mine. Remember “The Way” version that came out in the seventies? My best friend has her Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s and I also have my late husband’s Bible that he got from an old girlfriend!
My Grandmother thought that all Bibles had to be black (or white for Baptism) and she only recognized the King James version.
How about you? Do you have a favorite? What has it meant to you? I would love to hear about it!
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” Psalm 119:105

Starting the Day Right


PSALM 143:8-10

Let the morning bring me Word
of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead me on levelground.

I started the day the only safe way to start it….By rolling out of bed, placing my forehead to the carpet and uttering a prayer….first for strength, then a thank you for another day on the earth….for my health, for the miracle of being able to start again. All over the world, others are waking too. Some with prayers, some with curses, some with a combination of both.

Really, I start the day with an advantage. An advantage of weakness. A knowledge that I can’t do this on my own. When I am off work, I don’t start off nearly this needy. But I should, since I have no guarantee of what may happen on any given day only that You walk beside me.

So I gave my day over, and whatever happens. God is in it. And it will be good because He is with me.

The most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in it’s innocence asks permission to “be” once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was. Thomas Merton

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!

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