Everything is a bright miracle


The footprints of God are everywhere about us. And while we can’t see Him, we can see His luminous trail like a bird that sings while hidden in a tree. As Middleton said, “The bird sings darkling.” We can’t see the bird, but we can hear her sing. God sings among His branches and sings in His universe. You and I cannot gaze upon Him, for no man can see God and  live. But we can hear Him sing His song of redemption. And we can feel the pressure of His breath upon us as we move through the world. We’ll never see things rightly till we see them as the garments of God. A.W. Tozer

Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen. Psalm 72:19

Photo credits: Google images

Final thoughts on "Radical"

You and I stand on the porch of eternity. Both of us will soon stand before God to give an account for our stewardship of the time, the resources, the gifts, and ultimately the gospel he has entrusted to us. When that day comes, I am convinced we will not wish we had given more of ourselves to living the American dream. We will not wish we had made more money, acquired more stuff, lived more comfortably taken more vacations, watched more television, pursued greater retirement, or been more successful in the eyes of the world.  David Platt, “Radical”

I am very glad I read this book, I think. I say I think because I found certain parts about it unsettling. I was confronted with some things about myself that made me uncomfortable and that is not a bad thing. Any time you read a book and find yourself wanting to dive into Scripture and re-read verses you have read almost all your life I think it’s good. David Platt puts a spotlight behind the words of Jesus in such a way that we can no longer brush them off or explain them away and skip merrily on to the next verse. You know, the warm fuzzy verses that tell you how much God loves you. He does love us, and if we know Him, then He already has us. But there is a vast and lonely world out there that does not know Him, has never heard the Gospel, who are hungry and thirsty and sick, and may not make it through the day. God is asking…….what are you, my church, going to do about it?

God has entrusted the church with the awesome responsibility of taking His good news to everyone else on the planet, with getting it to them before they die. It is a life and death message, and its an urgent one. It won’t happen by any kind of magic osmosis. It won’t necessarily happen fast, and it may take some time. By investing in relationships long term.

I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of just how much God really does love the world. He would do anything to save it, but would we? Would we be willing to sacrifice our lives to save them? Does God expect this of us? Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. Luke 9:23, 24

What are we clinging to so tightly that we wouldn’t give up for Him? There are testimonies in this book that tell of people, despite great fear and trepidation, trading in their old lives of stress and endless accumulation, only to find that He was right there waiting to bless them with something far better than anything they ever had before! The inexpressible and glorious joy that God meant for us to have all along.

I found myself questioning my giving. Do I give sacrificially or out of my excess? Do I give away what I don’t want anyway, and write a check to a charity so I can sleep better at night?  How much does God expect? I always felt so bad for the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and left with such sadness, but for the first time I was confronted by the fact that there is a bit of the rich young ruler in myself. Maybe much more than I care to admit.

What happens when the church starts to look so much like the world you can no longer tell the two apart? Does the world dislike us? Why should it when there is little or no distinction between us, when the church is seeking and striving after all the same things the world does?

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:19

Why would God send His people to a place where sharing the gospel means certain death or imprisonment? Doesn’t He want us safe? What about people who have never heard the gospel? If they have never heard it then won’t they get a “go directly to Heaven pass?” But as I read, I kept thinking of Jesus words…..”I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24  I don’t think He was just talking about Himself.

These are some of the questions addressed in the book and I think they are valid questions. The fact that this book was on the New York times bestseller list makes me believe that many in the American church believe that something does needs to change. I have heard and read many testimonies of people who have not been afraid to look into their hearts and ask themselves the hard questions. People who felt the Spirit lay a burden on their heart to make a drastic change, to sacrifice for the good of others. I think of successful author Lisa Samson. After a missions trip, she and her husband sold their luxurious home in the suburbs and moved to the inner city to minister to the poor. She now feels blessed beyond measure.

Having said that, this is not a book meant to indict the rich, but to encourage those who have much to turn around and bless others to the glory of God. It is also not a book that says that you have to sell all you have in order to be saved.

The conclusion of the book left me with a choice and a challenge. I thought about pretending I had never read it because now I feel a response is necessary. I am grateful for it, because there are some things I needed to question. Despite how sobering I sometimes found the book, at the end I experienced something that was totally unexpected, a kind of wild exultant joy. I couldn’t help but be captivated by thinking how it would be to enter into that life of radical faith and see what God could do through little scaredy-cat me.

I leave this book with my faith strengthened and I find comfort in the words of Peter after some of the disciples took off and Jesus asked if he wanted to leave too “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter knew that whatever he had to go through, living without Christ was unthinkable. I am going forward with an open and prayerful heart and I am thankful that David Platt had the courage to write it.

If any of you have read the book I would be interested to see what you thought about it!

Slowing things down……

Our lives are frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify…..Henry David Thoreau

Where did October go? One of my favorite months of the year and it was gone before I could turn around. They have started the warmup and it is working it’s way to a fever pitch……It starts earlier and earlier each year. The advertisements pitching their stuff. Better stuff than last year, faster stuff, smarter stuff, more clever stuff, but stuff all the same. I have nothing against stuff, but it is the way they assault us with it that bothers me, and the fact that they use Christmas to do it. It makes me want to say……STOP! Even before it starts.

I am putting the breaks on right now. I will think, dream and pray about Advent and what it means. I will pretend I am in a cabin in the woods, alongside my stack of books and journal, watching multicolored leaves twirling outside the window. And hoping against hope for snow. Mentally I can do this. I will also not berate myself for being behind on Christmas baking. I will conciously make a decision to take pressure off, not put it on. I will look forward to the turkey and not get distracted by what comes after.

I will do some things for others…..Most of all I will enjoy these fleeting months, because they will never come again just this way. I will praise the Lord for all He has gotten us through this year, and know He will still be there at the beginning of the next.

I saw two shooting stars yesterday, ever seen two in one day?

I should finish “Radical” today so tomorrow or the next day I will post some concluding thoughts…..

Further thoughts on "Radical"

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Luke 13:24

Some statements Jesus made trouble me. I always find myself asking, “Am I one of those people He was talking about?”  I think it is healthy to evaluate our Christian walk, in fact the Bible says that we are to watch our life and doctrine closely. It is easy to get off track, to believe something you have heard all your life from the pulpit, especially when it makes you rest a little easier in the pew, so to speak. Now that I am halfway through David Platt’s book Radical, I can say that this book has challenged me in a very personal way. I have found myself sitting in silence at odd moments more than a few times ever since I started it.

Beyond just taking an uncompromising look at some areas where the American church has fallen short, he gently points the way back to his own shortcomings as a Pastor and church leader. Ultimately, and more importantly, he invites us to take another look at the words of Jesus. It is not a book that has made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and yet it has made me feel, in a deeper way, just how radically God loves the world and to what length He is willing to go to reach it. Not only that, He wants every follower of Christ to have that same love and be willing to take some personal risks in reaching that world, whether it be across the street or across the globe.

I have questioned anew some things that I have heard in church that don’t match up with Jesus last command just before He ascended back to Heaven…….”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19,20

We can say that we are not called to do this thing or that thing, but isn’t that really our way of saying we don’t feel comfortable doing it? These are the questions I have been asking myself. I believe there are people anointed to teach and preach and who are gifted in certain areas as the Bible says, but not one of the disciples was exempt from spreading the Gospel and making more disciples. In Jesus great commission to us all, He doesn’t say “If you are called you are to do these things, if we belong to Him, then we have already been called.

That challenge still stands, and in this book David Platt echoes it as he invites himself and his church as well as you and I to go forth in a new adventure with God, no holds barred. I am looking forward to what the next half brings…..

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33
Consider the cost when Christians ignore Jesus’ commands to sell their possessions and give to the poor and instead choose to spend their resources on better comforts, larger homes, nicer cars, and more stuff. Consider the cost when these Christians gather in churches and choose to spend millions of dollars on nice buildings to drive up to, cushioned chairs to sit in, and endless programs to enjoy for themselves. Consider the cost for the starving multitudes who sit outside the gates of contemporary Christian affluence.
David Platt, “Radical” Taking back your faith from the American Dream
I started reading this book last night, and all other books immediately went on hold. In the first Chapter we get an eye-opening glimpse into the underground church in Asia, where believers are indeed losing all for the sake of following Christ. In this book, David Platt raises a challenge to the American church today. He asks: “Do you and I believe Him enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture–and maybe in our churches–turn the other way?”
This book has already driven me back, with a prayerful heart, to the words of Jesus, and what it really means to “pick up my cross” and follow Him. I have a feeling this will be an interesting journey and maybe a troubling one as well…..

The Wildness of God

“There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” John 1:6-9
There is an unsolicitious and ungenteel quality about the desert Christians that makes them especially attractive in our current climate of sentimentalized, “feel good” spirituality…….The desert, as a place where one expects nothing, becomes the source of the hauntingly unexpected: this unpredictability formed the robust spirituality of the desert monks.
Not surprisingly, their God was no different from their place. Theirs was not, as John Crowe Ransom once described, a “God without thunder,” having been thoroughly housebroken and made presentable to the cultural elite of the day. Their God remained mystery–feared certainly, and much loved, but never understood.  Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

Nature is wild and untamed……it mirrors something of God because we can’t control it. I think that is why we are so attracted to it. We must also realize that we need to have a bit of healthy respect for it as well. The desert I live in has been tamed, groomed to be fit for humans. We have lawns, watering systems, good roads, every convenience we could ever want. It resembles little of the barren and empty place it started out. And yet, just on the edge of where I live is a vast and lonely place where coyotes cry and desert critters thrive and survive….God has taught them how. He will speak to us in this place if we are quiet and still enough to listen. I have heard, when I get away from the freeway, the traffic, the noise that people make, when I close my eyes I can hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness carried across the desert winds…..

“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough places smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.” Luke Chapter 3: 4-6

Continuing to count blessings today and show gratitude for all the ones who went before to show me God’s ways……Sunday school teachers who volunteered their time. People who took an interest and answered questions I had. Parents who showed me God through nature and through their lives, and through the Word. Friends who have prayed with me through the years. Countless Pastors, Pastor’s wives who have faithfully preached in season and out of season. Bible study leaders who open their homes and their hearts. The Holy Spirit, teacher of all truth. Bloggers who write what God has layed on their hearts to share. #517-526


“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world.” John Muir

holy experience

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning…….

Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Luke 15: 1,2

Jesus knew that they were muttering, and He knew just what they were muttering about……then knowing full well they were hanging on His every word (they couldn’t help themselves) He zings them with the parable about the lost sheep. Luke 15: 3-7

I wish I could have seen their reactions……I was reflecting on how He must think of how we sometimes “do church.” Let me rephrase that, how I do church. I imagine Him answering the question much like this.

“If it doesn’t change your life, make you go out into my world and seek my lost sheep, do the work I sent you to do, then what good is it? I have plenty of people and angels to praise Me right here in Heaven. There is a whole world out there that needs saving, that is broken, hungry, cold, needs shelter, needs to see my Light in you…….Love them as I have loved you.”

I am thinking of happy memories today, grateful for a Baptist mother who wasn’t afraid to let us enjoy the fun parts of Halloween. My Dad came to the Lord later in life and after he did we still enjoyed dressing up and setting up the “spook” in the hall every Halloween. I can never pass a Halloween day without thinking of all of his grand costume ideas, and us carving pumpkins together on a crisp fall day. I just called him to reminisce and laugh about our memories and he told me that there was what was supposed to be a small event for Halloween that quickly turned into 400 people parading through the streets dressed in all manner of evil costumes. It is sad that something so innocent has turned into what it is now for some…..Lady Gaga dressed as meat. What next?

Celebrating the ways we are the same…..

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it.No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. 1 Corinthians 11:17-19

There was division in the early church, just as today. We are still getting caught up in our differences centuries later. When Yeshua walked this earth He saw a people scattered and broken, sheep without a shepherd He called them. With one act at the end of His earthly life, He made a way for us to be perfectly unified. The cross permanently bridged the gap for all time.


Today it is all about “celebrating our differences.” Has it helped us? It is certainly good to acknowledge our differences, but I think if we do nothing but highlight them, it only acts to draw us further apart. To me it is healthier to celebrate the ways we are the same, and that goes for the church as well. So many denominations, so many walls that separate….and yet, these are familiar words to everyone in the Christian church, whatever the denomination.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,


the Maker of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into hell. [See Calvin]
The third day He arose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead……..

In many ways, we humans like to junk things up with religiosity and intellect. We have been doing it forever, and certainly when Jesus walked the earth we were. That is the one thing He so laboriously fought against. It is not about what we do or how we do it, it is what He did for us. When He said, it is finished, He meant it!
In Heaven there will be no segregation…..

And every time I am worshipping in a church service, grabbing hands across the aisles, seeing black, white, brown, crying the same tears, praying for each others needs, loving each other, I know…..

The Kingdom of Heaven is in deed, at hand!  

Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not take pride in one man over against another. 1 Corinthians 4:6
Photo from Brooklyn Tabernacle website

Meeting God in the Stall

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.  ~Etty Hillesum

Sometimes you just need to get away, immediately…….I had one such moment this morning. I call it a time-out in the stall. It happens every now and then at work. I’ll be cruising along multitasking and answering phones and I feel pressure under the surface, but nothing insurmountable. Then one seemingly small insignificant thing happens and I become overwhelmed by an avalanche of emotion. It’s as if emotions I had been stuffing down for the past week or two, rise to the surface and I realize that I simply cannot answer one more phone call or take one more request at that moment. The small thing that happens usually doesn’t have anything at all to do with what I’m feeling, but it’s enough to make me realize that something is wrong and I need to……STOP immediately……and PRAY.

You Moms (or Dads) raising young kids or teenagers can probably relate to this at home all day. You dream of escape, for just one moment of silence, peace. Of experiencing the unbelievable luxury of being able to lock yourself in without someone banging on the door.

Long ago when I used to go to my Aunt and Uncle’s to stay, my cousins would invariably play one of their favorite tricks on my Aunt. One of them was rigging up her cigarettes with explosives. Awful kids that we were, we would wait until she took her morning break in the bathroom, and then wait by the closed door until we heard the hiss of the match on those Lucky Strikes she always smoked….then, BAM! We would laugh uproariously and wait for the the expletive that usually came after. She never did kill us for that, though she always threatened to. She was truly a saint…..She had five kids, lived with an alcoholic husband for many years, and was always upbeat and good for a laugh, even if it was at her expense.  She needed alone time in the bathroom more than anyone.

Sometimes we all do……

This morning, He met me in the stall once again. I ran in, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and prayed. I felt better…….I’m glad there is no place where He is unwilling to answer when I call.

Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. Isaiah 65:24

What do you do to give yourself a timeout during the day, anyone?

Jehovah Rapha Our Healer

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5

I have had the flu for a couple days. You know the feeling, like life is going on all around you and you have stopped moving. But I knew that I would be better, at least I thought I would be better. But what about if I knew that chances were slim to none, barring a miracle, that I would get better at all….that changes things. Everytime I get sick I think of my sister in law who fought so courageously for so long…..so many days waking, working, feeling sick, and then when she could no longer work, endless rounds of chemo. She was always hopeful, always thinking of others, even to the end. She lost her battle with ovarian cancer about 12 years ago now.

Well, she lost the battle but she won the war, for she died at peace with a smile on her face. Everyone who was in the room can attest to that. She died in the arms of our Jehovah Rapha, our healer. Shortly before she passed from this life to the next, she was asking my brother about our Grandfather, who died of cancer when he was in his sixties. She had heard about him, how he loved roses, and being close to the earth, making things grow, and camping.

She asked my brother what color his roses were and he listed them all……she listened thoughfully and then  said, “He told me he liked white roses.” Well, I have no Scriptural basis for this belief, but I happen to believe that there will be someone to greet us when we get to Heaven, and I think that he was probably one of the first to welcome her…..with one of Heaven’s own white roses.

by the wounds of Our Great Healer, we are healed………

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Photo by Kathy Roncarati

Recommended reading: (90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper)