God sized opportunities

We get our pizza and start to eat when I mention my Mom’s tooth problem which in turn leads her to saying she needs to get her front tooth redone before she starts looking like Nanny McPhee. I laugh and mention how crowded my bottom teeth are and that I think it may be pushing a crown out of whack.

She says, “Maybe they should just pull one and they would straighten out.” I say, “With my luck the gap wouldn’t close and I would be left with one tooth missing in front like Si from Duck Dynasty.” That mental image gets me laughing so hard I am afraid to take a drink. It’s the times we laugh like that over nothing that I see something like God-light in her eyes.

It’s a pure and holy laughter and it flows like living water when two people of like mind gather.

Sitting there at the Pizza place, I thought of how our lives intersected all those years ago and how it was all so arranged by God. We were to be rescuers to each other yet at the time we didn’t know it. We were too busy each carrying our separate loads of super-sized grief.

She had just courageously left behind the only life she had ever known. It was either that or die. She was searching for life, and hope. And I was busy trying to convince everyone and myself that I didn’t need anyone. The only friend I wanted was my husband and he had died.

At night I would sit alone and write letters to him that he would never see, except from Heaven.

One of the first things that struck me about her was her contagious laugh. And even though she was hurting she still tried to open the door to friendship.

And I did my level best to keep that door shut.

But there was something she saw in me that made her keep trying.

Somehow enough of Jesus shined through my dysfunction and sadness because she wondered where I got my peace.

And when I finally let down the wall and invited her in, it was almost like we were getting reaquainted after a long absence instead of starting a new friendship. And then she met Jesus and it only got better.

And 22 years later all I can see is the joy and laughter and wonder I would have missed out on had she not opened that door, had I not walked through it.

How many people have I dismissed that I should have embraced? How many sparks of life have I extinguished rather than rekindled? How many times have I refused the invitation to join God in his supernatural work? Margaret Feinberg

What draws us together is a mystery and a wonder. What makes total strangers click and feel they’ve known each other all their lives? It’s a connection that can’t be fully explained but that’s part of the beauty of it. What I do know is that it’s what God wants for us and what He made us for.

He calls us friends first and Disciples second, and I believe He sees not only the person we are, but the person we will become.

When we connect here in this place, I don’t see Bloggers, or Facebookers. I see friends. I see brothers and sisters. I see family.

And I am thankful for every one of you and what you bring to my life.

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

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.

Confessions of an addictive personality

The thought dropped neatly and quietly into my mind as I was taking my morning walk. It clicked in like the final answer to a question I already knew the answer to, but needed to hear again. What the addict really desires, what all of us really desire is more of God not more of anything else. More of His power, more of His prescence, more of His glory. Why do we want more of anything? It’s to fill an emptiness within us. Something we feel we are lacking. But God is the only one big enough to fill that space. What we don’t need is:

Another helping of comfort food

Another drink

Another hit

Another 10 miles of running

Another trip to the mall

Another look at that magazine, movie, book that we know we shouldn’t be looking at.

There are those of us with addictive personalities. I am one of them. I have been addicted to not eating, and after I got over that I became addicted to exercise. I would go to my morning class and then the evening class, and then after that I would follow the aeobics teacher to her final class in the neighboring town. I was one of the groupies. A little exercise was good, a lot was much better as far as I was concerned.

There was also a time in my life when it got very easy for me to put away three glasses of wine a night. Then one day I heard myself giving someone the pat answer for how often I drank. “Oh, I have a glass of wine with dinner every now and then.” HA. And this is the funny thing about God. When you get really serious with Him, He will ask you to be honest with Him and yourself. And He will ask you to make some changes.

Right after I said that, (in the deafening silence of my brain) the Holy Spirit said, “That is not true.” I had been lying to others, myself and God too. And it was time to get real. Then He asked me what I was going to do about it.

The truth is, there will always be another reason or excuse to eat too much or have another drink. The reason why will always be there, but thankfully, so will God.

That night on the way home from work, I didn’t buy any wine even though I knew I was out. I went home and sat down in the corner of the yard and prayed. The stray cat, “Tux” came and sat beside me. I prayed, “Okay God, you need to show up here and make yourself real tonight.” And as the cat and I sat side by side, we watched the sky fill up with one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen. He showed up big time.

I do believe God gives us certain days that are mile markers in life, and He makes sure we won’t forget them. That was around 8 years ago now and still vividly alive in my mind. It’s a reminder to me that anytime I think I need more of something else, it’s really more of Him I need.

He loves us so much friends. The God of the universe loves you right where you are right now today and He’s waiting with open arms to reveal Himself to you in a big way.

And you don’t even have to clean yourself up before you go, Jesus already did that.

Let yourself be loved. Just the fact that you are on this earth is proof that He loves you.

He is there for the quick fix as well as the long haul.

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Hebrews 13:5

The walks I never took

I have always been a girl who loves a walk. Often, while people are talking and socializing, I will be the one who slips out back. I want to know what’s in the back of the beyond. Even now, sitting at this computer, somewhere I hear the slam of a squeaky screen door and picture myself looking for that path that leads through the woods.

There are so many things you can do just besides the walking on a walk. There’s thinking, ruminating, wondering, discovering hidden treasures, finding God just to name a few.

Walking sets the mind free and takes it off its tether.

On this particular walk not long ago, I found myself wandering out the back door and being let further by a little dot of yellow in a sea of green. It beckoned me closer, and the breeze caused it to nod encouragment, as if I needed it.

Have you ever noticed that flowers and tree’s don’t need to talk? This one beckoned me without saying a word.

I found myself kneeling at the clover looking for the four-leaf……and for a moment I felt like the kid I used to be when I could hear the trees whispering and actually believe that leprechaun’s were hiding behind them.

I wonder, does imagination lose its power, or do we let it go?

And as I leaned in with my camera, she beckoned me closer still. I saw her intricate beauty and I wondered why she was there all alone.

God planted her just He has planted me.

She blooms for His glory all by herself, not even having to try. Maybe she knows something I don’t. Could it possibly be that easy?

I am intrigued with the idea of God walking. I am captivated by the thought that someday God will walk with me in the cool of the evening like He did His first kids.

God walks, imagine that.

And now I am thinking of another very important thought.

Of all the walks I have taken, I have only regretted the ones I didn’t take. It hurts me now to think of times when someone asked me to go and I thought I had better things to do.

I didn’t.

So today, if someone asks you to go or if your spirit tugs at you to step outside and walk down the road?

Whatever you do, don’t say no.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day……Genesis 3:8

Yes, He walks…..that proves it.

How I quit my Bible plan and started reading the Bible

Recently I started a Bible reading plane via the You Version app on my phone. At first I was doing great. I had the best of intentions. I wanted to read it cover to cover in a year and I chose the version I thought would give me a good balance, a section from the Old and a section from the New Testament each day.

I cruised through Genesis……then came Exodus. I started to lag behind with the book of Numbers. And I got really, really bored. Oh, the endless rules and regulations, the sacrifices. It was just too much.

I started to skip over whole sections. I thought….”I have read all this before.”

Then I got behind for days at a time.

I found the section called “Catch me up.” You task-oriented folks will know what I am talking about. I hated to have “unchecked boxes” and unfinished sections.

You all probably know where I am heading with this already.

Yup, I had succeeded in making my daily Bible routine into nothing more than a religious ritual.

I made it just another thing on the To Do list

I had succeeded in virtually squeezing the life right out of the Word. I had made it as dry as the toast of all the rules and laws that had bored me to tears in the Old Testament.

It started out as a Spiritual discipline and ended up being something that made me feel fatigued and like a failure.

So I quit my Bible plan, and now I am back to reading the life back into the Word. I feel the fresh stream flowing with life infused with the Holy Spirit again.

I think the reading plans are great, mind you, and I love the You Version on my phone. I just felt the Lord asking me why I was making it something He never meant it to be.

An obligation

So now I am back to reading for the right reasons, out of a sincere love for God and wanting Him to know how I value the words He penned just for me, for you, for all of us.

And I feel the difference.

Who but God goes up to heaven and comes back down?
Who holds the wind in his fists?
Who wraps up the oceans in his cloak?
Who has created the whole wide world?

What is his name—and his son’s name?
Tell me if you know! Every word of God proves true.
He is a shield to all who come to him for protection. Proverbs 30:4,5

How we can rise again and again

It was just a little wedding arbor up in front of the church, the plain wooden kind, unadorned, flowerless and simple. We wondered at its presence, but later on in the service we watched it take on significance as that humble little wooden arbor become a portal into another world.

We watched living souls walk through that little arbor clutching their signed death certificates, the ones that were on all of our seats, walk through that humble wooden portal from death to life in just a few steps all the way to Jesus. It was a victory walk they were doing, and we watched, witnesses to their commitment as we clutched our own certificates and renewed our own vows.

As the invitational song was sung, I had my eyes closed praying when Elaine elbowed me. I saw tears pooled in her eyes. She pointed left and then tears sprang to my own eyes as I saw a throng of people, as it turned out over 200 in our service alone. I expected several, but to be honest I was not prepared to see that many. I thought maybe there was a hidden door somewhere, because I didn’t know where all the people were coming from. The last one over the threshold was an old man, alone. Everyone clapped as he walked through.

My faith was in turn chastened, restored and staggered by seeing the redemptive power of the cross in action. And out of the land of shadows we all came, right along with them.

And then when Pastor Kevin said, “And if you want to get Baptized right after the service we have clothes you can change into, I will be there waiting.” That just set our hearts in motion even more. Watching people take that leap of faith in front of God and everyone never gets old.

After that we talked with our new neighbors and met their dogs, then later we took a short drive in the Motorhome which has been somewhat neglected due to so much time taken up with E’s care-taking duties. Soon after we got home there was a phone call from her Dad’s nursing home asking her whether to admit him to the hospital. He was thrashing around and crying out.

She left and walked into halls where death always seems to be waiting. Crouching on the sidelines.

Bus isn’t it always in this life? And Easter Day it seems, is no exception.

The day after Easter we are faced with the challenge of rising up right along with Him, of living out our faith story victoriously. We can only do that one way, and that’s by fixing our eyes and our faith on Jesus. Each and every day……we……must……choose……life.

Watching someone suffer and arrive ever closer to death who has not chosen the path of life is heartbreaking, and no one is more heartbroken than God Himself.

Who sees what could have been in each of us.

We are all waiting in the wings between life and death. But because of the cross and the empty tomb, we can rest there victorious, hopeful and fully alive. And if you love someone who is still living in the land of the shadows, never give up. Where there is breath, there is always room for hope.

The day we call Easter has come and gone, but the power of the resurrection raises us up again and again. Until that day when we see Him face to face.

And oh what a day that will be.

I brought my death certificate home and stuck it in my Bible to remind myself of what I decided long ago and where I am going after I leave this place. It rests there now.

Hope between the pages.

He was thinking of you……

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

He wants to take them up even now, He is waiting.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

He was willing to be a loser in the eyes of the world so that we might be winners.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He took the punishment and death meant for us willingly so that we wouldn’t have to since we were powerless to do so anyway.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

He took the mortal death blows so that we could all be reunited with God and live as one happy family in eternity.

His resurrection gives us peace in this life as we await the next.

He could have silenced them all with one glance, but He took our punishment like a man. He wasn’t afraid to be misunderstood and misrepresented.

He took a false charge because He was thinking of you and me and our future together.

Isaiah 53:4-7 Commentary in between verses are my own thoughts in prayer while reading through passages.

The Suffering Servant

Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;

He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Isaiah 53:1-3

700 years before Jesus walked the earth…..

Images: Google, me, and Laurence Olivier playing the role of Nicodemus in Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli circa 1977

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

Reflection