Happy Easter!
Bookmark To:
{ 4 comments }
From the category archives:
Christianity
I really enjoyed the Stepping Out into Ministry Conference tonight from A Woman Inspired. And you know what? I didn’t even have to leave my house!
AWI offers online Christian conferences for women. No travel, you can attend in your pjs and it’s affordable. I’d encourage you to check it out, and take a look at the conferences they have coming up. This is a really neat concept, and a great ministry.
Bookmark To:
{ 0 comments }
Seriously, what is it about going to church on Sunday morning that causes us to act so ungodly?
I mean how many marriages have nearly ended because, “We should have left 10 minutes ago! It’s your fault if we don’t have time to stop by the coffee bar in the foyer now!”
“Just a minute I have to change my t-shirt! (Yep. T-shirt. Perfectly acceptable Sunday morning attire these days. There was a time that would have sent you directly to you know where, do not pass the offering plate on your way down.) I got toothpaste on it. And as I recall it was your fault last week that we were late because you couldn’t remember where you left your Bible. Maybe if you read it more often you’d know where it was!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe I would read it more often if you didn’t take up all my free time with your list of chores.”
“Someone needs to go to the Dealing with Anger class today.”
“Someone needs to read Ephesians Chapter 5.”
Hang that blasted church coffee bar. Many a time we’ve missed the Call to Worship because we were standing in line waiting for our cafe mochas. I mean, come on, it’s for a good cause. The funds go to the youth mission team for building houses in Guatemala. (Have you seen those kids? They’re nice enough, but I don’t know if I trust them with nail guns and concrete forms.)
And surely the Lord understands the need for caffeine to keep our eyes open during the 25 minutes of announcements that follow the Call to Worship.
Ah, worship time. We like worship time as long as we don’t have to sing more than three songs and the choir number doesn’t go too long. Hopefully the special music will be entertaining, something from this century. Oh, no! Not a hymn.
The sermon, well that’s just sort of a necessary evil. Maybe the pastor will crack a few jokes. He’s usually good for a chuckle. It’s Communion Sunday? Man, that always drags it out!
By the time the pastor finally gets to the the closing prayer — don’t call him Reverend. Too Stuffy– we’re packing up our Styrofoam cups and study Bibles so we can make a B-line for the children’s wing to gather our young, carefully avoiding the door where people who apparently had time to eat breakfast before church and aren’t famished are fellowshipping.
There’s no time for chit-chat.
After all, we have to get in line at Applebees before the Methodists across the street get there.
Bookmark To:
{ 8 comments }
I got upset about something yesterday, and then I let myself to wallow in my frustration. I knew it wasn’t right, but in a strange way it felt good to sit there and stew.
Do you know what I mean?
You just want to slink away and throw yourself your own private little pity party, alone with your misery. Maybe decorate with some black streamers and balloons.
Of course the reason it feels so good is because it’s so completely self-centered.
I went to bed still fretting. It woke me up at 2:30 in the morning, and I laid awake and fretted some more for three hours.
The sad thing is, it’s not really a big deal. I shouldn’t have been so upset by it. In a week it won’t even have mattered.
But I let a bad attitude get the best of me, and now I’m paying for it with exhaustion.
Finally, at 5:30 in the morning I gave in and prayed about it. I should have done it sooner. I thought about doing it sooner. But I was just having to much fun at my rockin’ pity party.
I asked to Lord to adjust my attitude and asked for forgiveness. I left the matter that was bothering me in his hands, and asked him to solve it. Then I asked him why I let myself get so worked up when I know it isn’t right? He brought these familiar verses to my mind.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6
See, I start feeling sorry for myself and worrying about things when I’m not trusting in the Lord. When I see things only from my limited human perspective. Once I went to the Lord, he straightened out my attitude.
I’ve got a pretty bad hangover this morning from yesterday’s pity party. I wasted a lot of mental and emotional energy on it, and I’m tired from laying awake for three hours last night. In fact, it’s almost enough to start up the party again.
But I’m trusting the Lord this time.
This party is over.
Bookmark To:
{ 5 comments }
I can hardly stand to watch the news anymore.
Every time I turn it on all I hear is…
The economy is tanking, and everyone is loosing their job, and everyone is loosing their house, and no one has health insurance, and this company and that is closing it’s doors, and my generation will be the first to do worse than our parents, and will the war ever be over, and there are bad people who don’t like us and want to hurt us, and climate change is going to kill us all, and the world is coming to an end and the sky is falling, and, AND, AND!!!
After 10 minutes of news I can feel the fear and panic and doubt rising inside of me. I just want to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and wait for the inevitable end to come.
It is bad.
Especially if your are one of those people who lost their job or their home.
But all this 24/7 pessimism being spewed across the spectrum of news casts makes it even worse. According the pundits, the rest of us who still have jobs and homes are just barely hanging on to the edge of the cliff .
Who will fall next?
You?
Me?
It’s just a matter of time they say.
But what about hope?
It can get better.
It will get better.
It has to get better.
When the anxiety starts to set in, I remind myself that in the midst of all the wreckage from the walls that seem to be crumbling around me there is hope.
My God is bigger than our government, he is bigger than our economy, he is bigger than any problem I could ever have.
He is bigger than all of this.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Oh, how I cling to that promise these days!
I trust the Lord to care for my family. He will not leave us alone to cower in the dark under the covers. He will provide and keep us from harm.
And I know no matter how bleak it may seem down here, my eternal hope and future is secure with him.
When the bad news is starts gettting to me I stop looking at the television, and start looking up.
Bookmark To:
{ 5 comments }
There’s that cliche’, “When God closes a door, he opens a window.”
While I do ascribe to God, I don’t normally to trite sayings like that. If I’m having a rough go of it, something like that is the last thing I want to hear.
But yesterday, I got a real life object lesson that could not have demonstrated that old adage any more clearly.
The weather has been gorgeous for mid-winter around here. After weeks and weeks of temperatures near zero and inches and feet of snow, the sun finally came out. It was a bright 42 degrees on Sunday. That may not sound warm to you, but believe me, it’s all relative.
I took David outside to ride his bike in the driveway where the snow had completely disappeared. For Christmas he received a horn to put on his bike, and hadn’t had chance to try it out yet. I brought the bike up from the basement where it stayed since since my husband installed the horn on the handle bars.
My hands were full of bicycle when we went out the side door, and I forgot to make sure the button on the knob was turned up. As I reached the bottom of the porch steps, I heard David slam the door behind him. Any other day I have to remind him to close the door. He doesn’t even remember to shut the refrigerator door most of the time.
I put the bike down, and ran up the steps hoping somehow the door was unlocked.
But the knob didn’t budge.
I tried the other two doors even though I knew it was pointless. We are careful to make sure all the doors and windows are always locked.
I didn’t have any keys. I didn’t have a cell phone. I looked around, and saw that the neighbors weren’t home.
My husband was away Sunday performing with his quartet. He was at least an hour from home, and even if I could have called him, his concert was due to start in about an hour. I knew my in-laws who live near by were also out of town that day.
I squinted into the west where the sun was just beginning to descend. It would be dark in 90 minutes. It would be cold again, and my husband wouldn’t be home for another four or five hours.
Then I remembered how all day that very same sun shone directly into the living room windows as it moved from the east. And after such cold and ice, the hot rays made it feel warm and stuffy in the house. I’d opened one small window just a crack to let in some fresh air!
I used a tool in my gardening cabinet to pry the screen off. Then found a patio chair to place under the sill. There was no way at almost five months pregnant I going through that window. I helped David up on the chair, and through the window. He went around and opened up the door.
It’s just a little thing, but I do believe God was looking out for us yesterday.
We could have walked farther down the road to another house. We live in the country. Being so spread out, we don’t really know the people who live there. Hopefully they would have been kind, let us use the phone, and wait there until someone came to let us in.
While it is trite from over use, and not a passage that you’ll find in the Bible, the Door/Window adage does often prove true when it comes to God working in our lives.
But yesterday’s experience made me see it in another way. Sometimes instead of Him closing doors, we fail to unlock the door, choosing a more difficult path. Yet there it always is in the end, an open window waiting to lead us back to the door, giving us another chance to unlock it.
Yesterday the door closed. A window opened. Then the door opened again.
He is a God of second, third and fourth chances. Infinitely forgiving. Full of grace and mercy.
Even when it may seen we’ve welded the door shut and sat outside in the dark, bitter cold too long, he can open it again.
I am so glad it was too hot in the house yesterday, and I left the window open.
But I’m even more thankful for all the times, whether it was Him closing the door or me slamming it in his face, that God gave me a boost through an open window.
“How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me!” Ps 139:17
Bookmark To:
{ 4 comments }
What’s on your prayer request list?
I’m willing to bet there’s a few big ticket items.
My biggies?
A dream job for my husband that he loves and provides life long financial security for us.
That my son grows up to be a great man who’s successful and contributes to making the world a better place.
That I’m the perfect mother who never looses her temper and always does the right thing.
Sure those things are all possible. God could snap his fingers and grant my every wish. It’s certainly within his power to do so. And often he does perform a miracle or do the seemingly impossible.
But even more often it’s all the little things that he attends to that really seem to make the difference.
Sometimes a request seems so small and insignificant that I feel silly praying about it. I wonder if it’s even important enough to bother God with, or I don’t even think to ask in the first place.
But nothing is insignificant to God. And all our cares and concerns, no matter how inconsequential they may seem to us, do matter to him.
I can think of several little things in the last few weeks that, though they didn’t seem that important in the grand scheme of things, I prayed about. And I got an answer.
Sometimes it’s not about being Mother of the Year. It’s just about God granting me enough patience to get through that one particularly hard day.
Sometimes it’s not about life long financial security, it’s just about having enough cash in the bank to pay that huge car repair bill.
Sometimes it’s not about my kid growing up to be a Supreme Court Justice, it’s just about him learning his ABC’s.
It’s these little blessings that get me through the day-to-day. To me all the aswers to my “little things” add up to a lot. Maybe even more than all the big things.
Bookmark To:
{ 2 comments }
