Return

Two weeks ago a young man came to church with his friend. He sat alone in a back pew, and I considered it a challenge to get this Will Smith look alike to smile. The next week he said he would come, but at the last minute left to do some "work."

Yesterday he was back. Still not smiling much, but seeming a little more engaged. Stay tuned for the next development in what God is doing in his life.

Orders Our Steps

Roger attended a conference in January hosted by the fund raising company that helps City Gospel. All the attendees are director and marketing folks from gospel missions in the US and Canada that use this company. Hundreds of people.

I flew out to CA with him so I could see my brother, his wife and my two adorable nephews. So I joined him to return home.

The morning before we left I had breakfast with everyone at the conference. We sat down at a table with the massage therapist that works for the company. Two women joined us and the one next to me engaged me in conversation.

I learned Sharon lives in Toronto, and I mentioned I have a pastor friend there, Howard Olver. Turns out she attends Howard's church.

I was at this event for ONE meal. I sat next to Roger and ONE other person. That one person knew someone I know, in a huge metropolis in another country. How crazy is that? Not crazy in God's amazing way of ordering our steps.

God's Timing

Tuesday Roger needed some prescriptions picked up from our neighborhood grocery. I rushed over during the UK_Florida game, intent on being as quick as possible.

While I hurried through the crowded store, someone grabbed by arm. I turned to see a woman who had been missing from church, and I thought had moved. I was able to get her new phone number so I could keep in touch when she does move. God's perfect timing!

Side benefit: I missed the terrible crash of Nerlens Noel, so I don't have to replay the gruesome season ending injury in my mind.

God is good.

A Valentine Salute

We celebrate this holiday named after a martyr, for which someone created a hilarious cartoon, showing a man holding his decapitated head at the romantic dinner table of a couple celebrating in his name.

St. Valentine suffered arrest and martyrdom for continuing to marry couples despite the government edict to desist. Then he wrote letters to the jailer's daughter, (not romantic ones) so now we have this flurry of Valentine mail in that tradition.

On this second day of celebrating God's miracles in my daily experience, today I celebrate the daily miracle that is my marriage. After 30 years, four children born, raised and moved on, his para-church ministry that grows exponentially, my church plant now church that grows in ways mostly unseen, I appreciate my husband who stands by me through it all.

Last night before our Ash Wednesday Service he had to carry my guitar and microphones over, return to the house for the ashes I forgot, come back and hang the banner, then run the computer and sound. Then he washed up the extra dishes before bed. That's just a typical evening.

Tonight we get to celebrate with dinner out, then he's going along to my monthly Emmaus Gathering, a romantic touch to the evening.

Some of my friends have lost their husbands to death, for which I am saddened, others to divorce, another way of heartbreak. I am grateful Roger still stands strongly in my corner, cheering me on, keeping me encouraged, helping me in so many small and large ways.

Today I celebrate the miracle of marriage, for any, and for us.

Set the Captives Free

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke? Isaiah 58:6

Lent begins today, a time of fasting. I appreciate this yearly call to regroup and discipline myself. What's missing sugar compared to what Jesus did for us? And every time I'm tempted to whine, which is often, I try to remember that. Easter dawns with great joy after a season of deprivation, and hopefully my spirit soars with more than just Easter candy.

This year besides the deprivations I will impose on myself, I hope to write a daily blog, even if brief, documenting God's work. I'm calling it 40 Days of Wonder.

God has no trouble supplying me with material, I already have enough for days. On this day of Ash Wednesday, with verses like the above in mind, I met with someone who had been captive to a lie of the enemy most of her life. Jesus with his still small voice spoke truth to her and set her free. 

I told her to give up depression for Lent. That's a worthwhile choice to make. In fact, give up depression, negativity, criticism, pride, judgement, inertia, self-centeredness.  Imagine what would happen if we gave up things that bind us.

God is waiting to free us, so let that be the kind of fasting we participate in, fasting that sets the oppressed free. Welcome Lent!

Ruby Sparks

In the movie Ruby Sparks, a writer named Calvin writes a woman into existence. He falls in love with her, and after proving to his brother that what ever he writes about her happens, like making her speak French, Calvin puts away his writing and lets Ruby just live her life. He enjoys their relationship until Ruby begins to show some independence. Dismayed at her response to him, instead of letting that happen, he pulls out the paper and typewriter and writes her back into his presence. He continues to manipulate her by writing about her, until a crisis of proving his power over her then releasing her to herself. She leaves, he is heartbroken and writes a book about it. Then one day he happens on her again. She has no cognition of who he is to her, and he begins to woo her again as any man woos a woman.

When his brother first finds out the startling truth, he says he would love to be able to write his wife's annoyances away. Imagine if we could change those we love...which we often try to do, manipulating others to fit our own needs. Perhaps the very annoyance we would love to eliminate has some greater purpose.

Truthfully the only one who should be re-writing our character is God, who must shape us into the image of Christ. Yet because God gave us free will, we must submit to that change.

In fact, God did not make Calvin's mistake. God after creating us could have made us dependent on his every expression of who we are, but God knew that love forced is not love at all. So God allowed us to be ourselves from the moment God created us. Thank the Lord we are not subject to the capricious whims of a writer, or the selfish conceits of a lover, but instead have been empowered by a loving God to walk our own path, yet offered the option of obedience.

We do well to allow the Supreme Author to write our story. Then we know we can live happily ever after.

The Why of Grief

Recently I've written about grief. I mentioned that when my mom died, I felt quite unraveled. While missing her terribly, I could acknowledge the reality that her entrance to heaven represented a wonderful upgrade from her earthly life. True for anyone, but my mother had suffered much in this world and mentioned before her death a need for a vacation. She sure got one.

Currently I am dealing with a dear friend in a coma. Unlike my mother, this woman faces life with gusto. She serves God at our church with youth. She has young adult children she anchors and mentors. A granddaughter she has helped to raise. She is the most optimistic person I know. Laughs at everything. Tells me every time we talk, "love you much," and means it.

Heaven is an upgrade for anyone, but it's harder with someone like this to discern why she needs to depart so soon.

We always want to know why. We detest randomness. We know God is a God of order, so life cannot be random. When situations make little sense, we protest. Or at least I know I do.

If we can find a logical answer, we can avoid that circumstance. If we can blame something concrete, we know how to stay safe.

But that doesn't work, not for the children at Sandy Hook, or my friend, or many others who suddenly face death without a logical reason.

I don't understand why. And that ranckles me.

But I am comforted by the reminder that as much as death seems the enemy, death is really the door to eternity, and although we don't want to pass that way in haste, it is actually a door to freedom and glory. These words comfort me:

The righteous perish,
    and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
    and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
    to be spared from evil.
² Those who walk uprightly
    enter into peace;
    they find rest as they lie in death. Isaiah 57:1-2

I have no specific answer why my friends is being taken away while so young, so useful, so loved, so needed. But I do rejoice that she will find rest in death. She does deserve that.