More than conquerers

  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,  that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate with the gratitude community than with this verse. There is so much to be thankful for when we reflect on everything  this verse really means. We are a people who have been brought from death to life! This is our eternal hope! I think sometimes we forget what we have been freed from. We tend to remember on Sundays in worship……when we see someone baptised into new life or celebrate communion, but our everyday reality is this: Every moment of our waking lives, we live with the reality of the resurrection. A living hope.
That changes our whole outlook on life. The law was given to show us how desperately we needed a Savior. God knew that it was a physical and spiritual impossibility for anyone to actually keep the Ten Commandments, but He had to show us the expectations. Of course, He never would have done that without giving us a solution to our desperate situation. The solution was and is and always will be Jesus!
He was the lamb without spot or wrinkle……our sacrifice. Being God, He was fully able to fulfill every commandment, not only that He was the Commandment.
I think, no I know, that sometimes God puts us in places that show us our complete and utter inadequacy in a situation without Him. He does it so that we will lean on Him and let His Holy Spirit do that work through us. I know that He has done that for me here lately.
And I am thankful for it. Sometimes we need to have things revealed in our character that need changing. Those things would never come out unless they were forced out. Being in a caretaker role I have learned some things about myself that I never knew. I am not nearly as nice as I thought I was. Can anyone identify with that?
The Holy Spirit can do a much better job than I could ever hope to do. Getting out of the way is the hard part. The letting go and letting God.
Each day is a chance to make room for Him, and in making room for Him, we realize there is a bigger space in our hearts for others. We learn to be easier on ourselves too. “No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.” Romans 8:37
Count thanks with me today……..Blessedly cooler weather……days off to enjoy them……a good dinner last night with good neighbors……friends who pray…….scones in the morning……..a walk around the park……my health……a good job…….A God who is not content to leave me as I am…….a good nights rest…….#725-#735
Sorry, I couldn’t get Ann’s button to show up today but you can get her here

He is more than enough

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
I got home the other night and she was outside on the patio. My best friend of the endless positive attitude…the natural born fixer, the supervisor and mediator of people and situations, cannot fix her Mom. There is no fix for Alzheimer’s…..yet. The look on her face said it all. She was done….spent. Finished. “She drove me nuts today,” she said. “I prayed all day and it didn’t work.” I said, “Yes it did, she is still alive and so are you.” Sometimes it is all you can do to get through the day with your mind and body intact.
Everything she tried to do for her Mom ended in complete and utter frustration.
A woman who used to scream at them for getting in the kitchen while she was cooking, now stands in the middle of the kitchen as her daughter cooks, staring a hole through her. It is disconcerting to say the least.
And then the endless pacing….up and down, back and forth. In her squeaky shoes. Suggestions are met with hostility and you never know when…..It is like walking in two worlds. The regular world and the Alzheimer’s world. Applying the normal rules doesn’t work in an abnormal world.
Harder still, is when you have no good memory bank to pull from because your Mom was never emotionally available to you or for you……never nurturing. What do you do when your own supply of love and devotion is not enough, and when you feel like the sun has gone down and taken every scrap of your strength with it?
When the last thing you want is another thing you have to do.
You rest in the knowledge that
you know…… that you know…… that you know
He is more than enough
His love takes over when ours runs out
He will never, ever ignore His child who prays
Know that the power that raised Him from the grave is enough to raise you…….“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20

Along came a spider

I was driving home a couple of weeks ago when it finally happened. The thing I always dreaded. The “what would I do if this happened scenario.” I was talking to my Dad on the commute home when I noticed something in my peripheral vision……a movement. Say it isn’t so. But there it was, skittering across the dash like it owned the place. A spider. Everyone who knows me knows how I feel about them.

I know they are God’s creatures. I know they are good to have around…..as long as they remember their place…..outside. I know they eat flies and other pests, and that their webs are works of art, especially when hit with morning dew. I really can see the beauty in that. But where there’s a web there’s an occupant. There it is, smack dab in the middle of that glorious creation…….along with all eight creepy legs that I imagine crawling across my face in the middle of the night.

That actually happened to me once and I never forgot it.

Surprisingly, Charlotte’s Web was my favorite book growing up, but no matter how my Dad tried to tell me to “let Charlotte live”  it didn’t matter. It only pulled on my heartstrings for a second…..right before I switched on the vacuum cleaner and sucked Charlotte right into her new forever home.

There it was, dangerously close, on my side of the dash. I held my breath and leaned over as far as I could toward the passenger side. Then it leisurely went across to the other side….I released my breath. It was tortuous. I thought it would help if I stayed on the phone and so I did, never letting the panic hit my voice. I was extremely proud of myself for exercising such supreme discipline and control.

That is, until it started to crawl, in that fast creepy way they have, right over to where I was sitting. Trapped. My hands gripped the wheel and did the only thing I could do.

I sped up.

Then the worst happened, it disappeared! I lost track of the sucker. Any minute I expected it to float down right in front of my face. The not knowing was worse than actually seeing it.

It appeared again by my left shoulder. That’s when all my self control and discipline went out the window. By the time I approached the Wal-Mart off-ramp I was approaching 80 MPH. I was in complete control of course, my hands never left the wheel except for once.

I barrelled around the corner and screeched to a stop in the garden center parking lot. By that time it had managed to make it all the way to the backseat floorboards. I should have let it go but I didn’t. I got a towel from the trunk and smashed it good.

I feel bad for killing one of God’s creatures….

If it just hadn’t been in my car.

Later I told my Dad about it. After the laughter subsided he told me he was impressed by my tremendous display of self discipline.

Rest……

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26 

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe. I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.” Psalm 61:1

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” Psalm 62:1-2

 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:28- 31

I am having a bit of rest today on this little bench…….come and join me. If you don’t see me, that means I am doing some blog-hopping today. Doing a little visiting, neighbor to neighbor, blog to blog.

Get the coffee ready, I like it strong!

The Song around the throne

Don’t you wonder where it comes from? That hymn that you almost forgot? It shows up when you are tired, or anxious, or fearful. Or maybe it’s a verse that comes just when you need it. They float in and out. Sometimes they are like a little whisper deep in your soul.

That’s the Holy Spirit. He can’t keep from singing….and in the quiet places in my soul, I join in. I may be anxious, or scared, or worried. But when I hear His song, my own spirit sings along. The arrow of truth sinks deep. It’s His way of reminding me.

Jesus is all I need. Jesus is all I need. That’s the one I kept hearing this morning. Yes, I know He is. My mind and all my past experiences and logic tell me so and I know it to be true. He is more than enough. It’s my heart that falters, slow to get the message.

I was worried about my Mom yesterday. They had to give her a new medication because her heart was beating too fast. The Doctor mentioned stroke. I realized again that someday, sooner than later, I will have to live without her, and I don’t want to.

Jesus is enough, yes. But I want her here too. I can’t think that she won’t be here as long as I will.

I was so distracted and worried that it took someone with Alzheimer’s in the passenger seat to tell me that I had the green arrow….that was right after I heard the loud honking behind me.

Then I got irritated at them because they were impatient and I honked back.

As my cousin would say, Onward Christian Soldiers.

Sometimes it does feel like a war.

Inside me He is singing and I am doing my best to sing along. There is an endless song around the throne of God that I like to imagine. And it never stops.

That’s the one the Holy Spirit sings….and its the one we will all sing one day, by and by.

When the Desert Loves

As a pilot calls on winds and a storm-tossed mariner looks
homeward, so the times call on you to win your way to God. As
God’s athlete, be sober; the stake is immortality and eternal
life. St. Ignatius the God-bearer
I have never read much of the desert fathers (and mothers) but I understand the appeal the desert held for them. The desert has a way of calling to you after awhile. I never would have believed this, having been raised with weekends on the Pacific coast and the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range. These call too, very loudly……..it is easy to see God there because the grandeur of that beauty speaks with a megaphone.
The desert is big sky………and filled with remote and lonely places that only the cry of the coyotes fill.
And the desert is fierce and moody and relentless. At once brutal, so hot you can feel it in your eyeballs, and powerful and violent as the thunder rolls, the lightening flashes against the backdrop of eerie sky sending both human and animal alike running for cover as the hardened ground fails to contain the water that pours out of the sky in sheets. The wind blows and the dust swallows everything in its path. I challenge anyone to doubt God in a desert thunderstorm.
You feel the fierceness of the relentless heat like the Old Testament’s descriptions of God’s wrath in the summer time. You think you will never get through its oppressive agony. It is merciless, the way it beats down on you, month after month.Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God……. Then just when you think you can’t stand one more minute…….that He may exalt you at the proper time…..1 Peter 5:6
And then…….miraculously.
It cools. You feel the release of its grip like the whisper of God’s mercy. You walk outside and you realize something monumental has happened, something wondrous. It is the desert waking up…..The hope of that awakening is something a non-desert dweller could never understand.
We rejoice because we have made it through to the other side. It’s a bit like rebirth……Doors and windows are once again thrown open, and new life begins once more.
Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. Song of Solomon 2:12 
I open the screen door for the first time today….Hallelujah!

When resentments cloud our prayers

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth cannot sustain itself forever, ultimately both parties end up blind and toothless.” Gandhi

Yesterday morning prayer time was wonderful……I went outside and instead of being greeted with stifling heat I was met with a blessedly cool 75 degrees, something that is a distant memory between the months of May through early September here. And something else I have longed for, prayers accompanied by a little sprinkling of raindrops on the roof.

Afterwards, I went to look for my patriotic flag to hang for September 11 and remembered that it was a bit weather worn and I had thrown it out. I decided I needed to fly a real flag, so off I went to Walmart at 6:30 in the morning. Not many people there then. I drove home with my precious commodity and proudly hung it out…..red white and blue……glory against the backdrop of Arizona sky.

Today’s prayer didn’t go quite so well. It was clouded by a resentful thought that I could not dislodge. It came about halfway through prayer and stuck there…..

Instead of praying about it, as I should have done, I decided to keep it for awhile…..mull it over. It started me asking questions. Those irritating whys…..Forgiveness is good and right and Godly……..yet so difficult when you have to live it out day in and day out.

How do you forgive someone when they have hurt someone you love?

When you are the caretaker for someone who has never cared for you, never treated you well, wounded you emotionally?

When you don’t have to live with them it’s easy. Out of sight, out of mind. But what if they are never out of sight? What then? It’s like reopening old wounds every day.

Living out the Christian faith is easy when it’s never tested. Our faith doesn’t grow if it’s not challenged. That’s when we grow closer to Him. When we’re tested. The challenge is proof that He loves us.

It’s our love for God that motivates us to leave behind those things in us that are not Godly. Those things in me He wants me to change. The Holy Spirit does not deserve to live in a body and mind steeped in resentment….fear….anger. It helps to remember the sacrifice.

The terrible price that was paid for us. The ultimate price.  “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” 1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20

As I sat in a beautiful church service yesterday, remembering the sacrifice of all those people running into those burning buildings, and saw all the names of those who died streaming down the wall…….my eyes streamed too. Four candles lit, one for each plane down.

They paid with their lives for the evil someone else did. He paid with His life, for what He didn’t do.

“For I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Could it be that sometimes God’s blessing comes from those who have been our biggest challenge in life? Could it be that He is heaping treasure in Heaven for us through this very person, these very circumstances that are the source of so much pain?

Is the very act of forgiveness the thing that will bring about the salvation for us all?

This one thing I know to be true…….God is building something eternal in us right here and now. It is something so big and so great we can scarcely imagine it. Everything we do with His help and by His power changes us forever.

Thankfulness wells up again, and again as I remember this…….

Remembering

September 11, 2001 was my first what I call, “Where were you moment” I thought it fitting to quote from a piece of Gordon MacDonald’s journal. He was a Pastor who volunteered as a chaplain for the Salvation Army as soon as the events unfolded that day. Here is what he wrote…..
“And more than once I asked myself–as everyone asks–is God here? And I decided that He is closer to this place than any other place I’ve ever visited. The strange irony is that, amidst this absolute catastrophe of unspeakable proportions, there is a beauty in the way human beings are acting that defies the imagination. Everyone–underscore, everyone–is every else’s brother or sister. There are no strangers among the thousands at the work site. Everyone talks; everyone cooperates; everyone does the next thing that has to be done. No job is too small, too humble, or, on the other hands, too large. Tears ran freely, affection was exchanged openly, exhaustion was defied. We all stopped caring about ourselves. The words “it’s not about me” were never more true.”
No church service, no sanctuary, no religiously inspiring service has spoken so deeply into my soul and witnessed to the presence of God as those hours last night at the crash site.
In all my years of Christian ministry, I never felt more alive that I felt last night. The only other time I can remember a similar feeling was the week that Gail and I (his wife) worked on a Habitat for Humanity project in Hungary. As much as I love preaching the Bible and all the other things that I have been privileged to do over the years, being on that street, giving cold water to workmen, praying and weeping with them, listening to their stories was the closest I have ever felt to God. Even though it sounds melodramatic; I kept finding myself saying, “This is the place where Jesus most wants to be.”
George MacDonald, volunteer Chaplain for the Salvation Army on 9/11/2001

A morning for tea……

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me. C.S. Lewis
I knew that if I “google searched” C.S. Lewis quotes that something having to do with tea would pop up…..lo and behold it did! This photo was taken by Elaine when she surprised me the other day by taking me to Ms. Thomas Tea House. It’s me doing my best to be ladylike without spilling tea all over. I only spilled a little.
It really was a sweet thing for her to do. She knows I like to get in touch with my English heritage once in a while….. My Dad’s side hails from Lincolnshire, near the Sherwood Forest in Nottingham. I love the little tea cups, the lace on the table, the little fancy sandwiches. However, I can be dignified and “pinkies up” only so long. I have a track record for dropping things and clanging the lid too loud, and laughing when I am not supposed to.
I have a feeling if I ever met the Royal Highness herself, something would set me off……it would probably be me tripping over the red carpet. I can see it now, me coming down with a hopeless case of the giggles in the assembly line, right before I was supposed to curtsy and shake her white gloved hand.
If you make the photo bigger you will notice that though my pinkie is up, it is a bit bent……that just about sums it up for me. A bit of serious and a bit of silly…..well, maybe a lot silly.
I have vague memories of singing a solo in first or second grade with Carlyn Willie. Now, she was a lot serious and never silly. I got a terrible case of the giggles. I think she thought she was trying out for the opera. It was bad, and to top it off, we were singing Silent Night. My Mom was there, and she wasn’t too happy.
Just goes to show, you shouldn’t ask a kid to do such solemn things.
If sidelong looks and elbow jabs could have killed, I never would have made it out alive that day…..
To celebrate……We had a bit of rain in the desert last night and when I walked out to get in the car it was a glorious 75 degrees! That was enough to put me in a good mood for the rest of the day….
God is good, cooler temperatures are coming….I have faith!

Book of Kindness

It’s time for counting kindness……

An interesting thing happened when I started to count the gifts of gratitude one by one……that counting the good things became even more a part of who I am.
They slipped in quietly, but they surprised me by their insistence, even when I was worried, or stressed, or angry, or scared…..they came alongside and made their presence known, and didn’t back down.
And now I find myself wanting to count other things. That is what started my book of kindnesses…..
It is for keeping track of the things my friends and family have done for me or others……all those little things it’s so easy to lose track of. It’s so important to know that there is still much kindness left in the world.
My Mom in her childhood watches…..I think she likes the idea

And hopefully, this counting will inspire me to practice kindness on myself and others, because I know there is much room for me to grow. These I don’t count, for God Himself keeps track of each one done

In Jesus name…….“And (A)whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these [a]little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.” Matthew 10:42
First entry: Diane (who bought me this little book) goes with my Mom to the Doctor during a scary checkup
Second entry: Just about every time Elaine makes an ice-cream cone for our household, she makes three extra and takes them next door to Bob, Eileen and Estelle
Third entry: Bob and Eileen take Elaine to get her car from the shop
I often like to imagine all the many things that Jesus must have done that we have never heard about…..
“And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.” John 21:25
I have a feeling they ended up in the Father’s own book of kindness