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All The Way Home

Safe, innocent, and happy. Have you ever felt that? When was the last time? How long did it last?

A few of us grew up in an environment that allowed us to feel safe, that protected innocence, and with people among whom we felt happy. Many of us didn’t. A real memory or an imagined hope, that feeling is what we’re all looking for. Peace. Harmony. Celebration.

Friends and Family around the food table Pictures, Images and PhotosWe try to capture those feelings, in our American foodie culture, by celebrating  with “good friends, good music, and good food.” I love a good party with interesting conversation and good food. And yet, those gatherings are only foretaste of the wedding supper of the Lamb, hosted by the Lord of Hosts.

We may find pockets and places where we feel safe and peaceful in this life. At parties. In intimate relationships. In worship. At prayer. And yet our great hope lies in God’s promise to bring us all the way home. Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 5:8, that he “would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

At home with Jesus. That’s where we will finally, truly, and forever, feel safe, innocent, and happy.

Jesus, we believe you are bringing us home. And yet, it’s hard to keep focused on those eternal realities. Open our eyes!

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Kingdom Ready

The older I get the more I long for the end of the story, for the Kingdom fully come. Part of me is tired. That old part. And I’m not even 60.

Like Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, however, I’m tired of the rebellion. (2Peter 2:7) The conflict between God’s order and human disorder lies like an anchor in my soul. Chained to this disorder, I yearn for the weightlessness of the Kingdom. I long to live among people who’ve claimed their place in Papa-God’s family. Women and men who recognize the image of God in each other. Among those whose hearts belong completely to Jesus.

But it’s not what our good father has ordained. What we walk in now, like the spider web attached to the rusty chain, is both/and. We live among the contradictions.

I do thank him it’s not only the oxidized iron. I thank him that the spider’s silky food net, caught here in the early morning dew, is beautiful to us.

In spite of the constant conflict, I thank him for the wisdom of the plan. I thank him for the sure and certain end of the story. I thank him for stories that remind us of life lived happily ever after. I thank him that, one day, only the beauty will remain.

Even our old bodies will be renewed and restored, changed in the twinkling of an eye. I’m ready.

Lord Jesus, we may be ready, but we want you to come only when you are ready. In the fullness of your time. Give us, please, your rest while we wait.

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The Light Difference

This is a reasonably well-composed photo. The horizon is off center, the human figures give perspective, and there’s a sense of depth. What makes it one of my favorite photos is the time of day. A few years ago, just before sunset, I’d stepped onto the beach at Seaside, Florida.   Seaside beach, sunset

The light grabbed me. Sometimes that golden hour just before sunset or just after sunrise throws a yellow light, but here, the light was pink and blue. I often keep that photo on my computer desktop in the middle of the Midwestern winter.

I walked this morning in the early light. The brick courthouse glowed and the leafless trees sparkled. The warm light touched even piles of rubbish with beauty.

“I am the light of the world,” Jesus says. (John 8:12) Some of us think we live a good life. Others feel like a pile of rubbish. In either case, it’s Jesus’ light that makes a good life great or an ugly life beautiful. He makes the difference. 

Jesus, let your light shine, on all of us.

  • Coming:  Elisabeth Corcoran, author of He Is Just That into You (Winepress, 2009), will join us here on her blog tour with a guest post on December 4.

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Resist Distraction

"My dad always taught me to stay focused," the twenty-something contestant on Fox’s "Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader," said, as she stopped the play. "$25,000 is enough for me."

We’ve driven up Boulder Canyon road into the Colorado mountains and seen mountain climbers hanging from the rock face above us.

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Jesus "set his face like flint" towards Jerusalem. (Luke 9:51) What’s the commonality? Focus. The woman, the mountain climber, and the Son of God understood how to resist distraction. 

The contestant’s father’s words flashed brighter than the glaring game board. The climbers move with careful attention to each toehold, toward the pinnacle. The man of sorrows kept walking toward the place of deepest sorrow–and greatest victory. 

What helps you stay focused? These examples help me.  Money is not the ultimate good, goals are worth striving for, and sometimes we choose to walk into deep pain in order to gain substantial victory.

Father, we need grace today, in the midst of myriad distractions, to stay focused on your path for our life.

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Hold Tight the Kingdom

There are many unseen but real threats, but there are also unseen but real promises, and he who makes them says, “Behold, I am coming soon”
(Revelation 22:12).
Stuart McAllister  August 6, 2009 Slice of Infinity devotional from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

What kinds of threats are unseen? Unseen in the sense that they are insidious, infiltrating our thinking without our conscious awareness? I think about American entitlement–the sense that we deserve the high standard of living we've enjoyed for the past fifty years. In one sense, we do, because we, as a culture, have worked hard and been full of energy and invention and productivity.

In another sense, though, there is the unfairness of hogging the resources of the world. That some of us cook on stoves while others cook on a ground fire is wrong. It is the way the world has been since the Fall, so it seems normal to us. Yes, the issues are enormous and political and complex, but it's still wrong. Entitlement threatens justice.

What real promises are we ignoring as we attempt to hold on to our materialism? I want to hold things lightly. I certainly enjoy cooking on my Kenmore stove rather than a wood fire in my backyard. And yet, why do I have that privilege while so many work much harder to prepare food for their children?

The lighter my grasp on this world's privileges, the tighter my grasp on what's coming. Recently, as Jerry and I admired Lake Michigan waterfront mansions, I said to him,

"If I did not believe in the Kingdom, I'd be jealous. I'd want to work for a cottage by the sea."

It is getting more and more real to me that the Kingdom both has come and is coming to this earth. That what God has in mind, that which is beyond our imagination, is this life, made new. (Isaiah 65:17) This life, where we all live in mansions by the sea. This life, fully submitted to our good and faithful Father. For his glory and our joy.

Maranatha, Jesus. Come. In your time, in your way, in accord with your purposes. Amen.


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Through Whose Eyes?

"…call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me. I went away full but the Lord has brought me home empty." (NLT) In the first chapter of Ruth, Naomi speaks to her friends upon her return to Bethlehem from Moab, where her husband and two sons have died.

Ruth, her Moabite daughter-in-law, has relocated with Naomi, vowing to make "your people, my people; your God my God." Naomi seemed glad to have her company and yet quite unaware of Ruth's value to her or to God's plan. Ruth was young and strong, able to glean food for them both. And Ruth, in God's timing and God's way, became the grandmother of David, from whom Messiah was descended.

And yet, in the middle of the journey, Naomi, in the manner of us all, could only see through her own eyes. In her eyes, the basket she carried was empty. In God's vision, the basket was ready to be filled. 

How often we walk in short-sightedness, aware only of the empty basket we carry. We see the fruit all around us that we think we need to fill our emptiness. How do we learn to see what God sees? How do we believe God is even now, picking the fruit to fill our baskets?

How do we believe, in the midst of teenage angst, that God means to give us meaning and purpose? How do we grasp the goodness He means to pour out on us in the midst of the divorce? What helps us hold on to Papa-God's hand when the doctor says, "I'm sorry."

We can gather hope from these characters in God's story who speak without knowledge, just before God fills their empty baskets with his purpose. We are all in the middle of our stories. And we are in the middle of God's great story of creation, redemption, and glory.

Papa, give us eyes to see and hearts to behold the goodness you mean to pour out on us.

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Dead End?

Jerry and I love to roam back roads, looking for herons and other wildlife, enjoying God's creation. Sometimes, though, we'd get to the end of a little gravel road, at a creek or the end of a county. Even though there'd been no sign to warn us, we'd run right into a dead end. When DeLorme began publishing their series of backroads maps for each state, we delightedly snapped up Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, even Texas, when we vacationed there. Technology moved on and now we enjoy Microsoft's Streets and Trips with GPS on our laptop. We haven't run into any dead ends in years.

Not so, however, in life. So many times, we find ourselves moving right along, no sign to warn us, and we suddenly find ourselves in a spot that looks like the end of the road. Maybe you know the feeling. You've done everything you can for the teenager who insists on violating curfew to hang with friends who look like they're going nowhere. We feel trapped in a job and think we shouldn't feel that way. We ought to just be grateful to have work. Perhaps we and our spouse sleep in separate bedrooms, not just in order to sleep, but because the spark has died.

When Jerry and I encountered dead ends in the country, we backed up, turned around and tried a different road. We knew what the end of the road looked like. In life, sometimes, it's not so easy to tell. Is this situation really a dead end? Is there anything else I can do? And, most importantly, what does God have to say?

And, are there really any dead ends if Jesus is involved? Are we seeking hard after him for his solutions? Maybe there's a little path through that underbrush in front of us that we haven't seen yet. Maybe what looks like an end will, by grace, turn out to be a new beginning.

Sweet Jesus. Oh, to see our lives as you see them. Give us your eyes, your truth, your pathways.

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The Canopy Awaits

As the funeral procession
turned the corner, across the early spring field, I saw the blue canopy.
Drawing nearer the little cemetery among the farms, I though about my own
journey to that waiting canopy. When God calls me home, will I have done all
his will? I particularly thought about how I’d feel if I had not written a
memoir. Whatever happens, whether the book succeeds or fails in the
marketplace, I’m grateful for grace to be faithful to that sense of calling. At
least I won’t have that regret on my deathbed.

It’s Good Friday. Jesus
had fulfilled the purpose for which the Father had sent him. He’d lived life in
constant, immediate dependence on the Holy Spirit. He’d demonstrated the
passion and compassion of his father. "My food," said Jesus, in John 3:34,
"is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”  Jesus was not weighed down on the cross with
regrets. He was fully present to the last will of the Father.

This moment, I’m feeling
stressed. I regret I’m not fully present to God’s work in the world. When we
stress about finances, or computer problems, or publicity snafus, we forget to
be grateful, humble, trusting. At least I do. I’m going to get off the computer
and mindful of the blue canopy awaiting me, go practice those virtues. Care to
join me?

Jesus, you are our
enabling and our peace. Come, by your Spirit, and bring that peace.

 

   

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Sometimes Satan Wins

Sometimes Satan wins. When Adam and Eve chose the apple, Satan won the right to fight. But his victories are small, his triumph is temporary and in the midst of the battles, we are borne up on the love of Papa-God. In eternal perspective, his wins are small and transient, though they may last a lifetime.

When we battle chronic illness or chronic unemployment or a house lost, nothing feels small about his hand against us. Even the everyday battles of car breakdowns, work miscommunications, or our American discomfort with a new frugality may feel overwhelming.

And yet, with Job, (13:15) who suffered as much as any of us, we can affirm:  "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him"  We can grieve all we need to, but we can also imitate Job's testimony from 1:22.  "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing." In spite of Satan's temporary victories in this fallen world of which he is the god, we can rest in the eternal perspective of the Father.

The Father sees. Papa-God knows our situations. He knows and he cares. And he is bringing a kingdom that, he says, will be worth what it costs in the suffering of this present evil age, where, sometimes, Satan wins. For a time.

Father, May your kingdom come. We long for your will to be done, everywhere on the earth. We long for you.

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Delightful Differences

" You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13

I remember the day I learned how differently others thought about what "seeking God with our whole hearts" meant. In a summer small group of women, each of us had a different idea. Someone said it meant "inviting God into every event in our lives." Another said it meant spending time in prayer and bible study every morning. Others had other ideas. I can't recall now what I thought. What I remember is how surprised I was at our different understandings. Now, I'm surprised that I was surprised.

We all have such different life experiences, different teaching, and such a variety of personalities, of course we understand spiritual practices differently. Even if the outward form of our practices look similar, the details differ. If I and my friend both spend fifteen minutes praying every morning, we will pray in different ways. One of us might kneel, while the other stands. One might walk, the other might sit in a chair. One may journal, the other speak out loud, as if Jesus is sitting in the opposite chair or walking along with her. Those are surface details–the heart details differ even more. How intense are we? How honest are we? What are we asking for?

What is so wonderful about our dear Papa-God, is his delight in our differences. While we might be surprised (and faintly disapproving) at how someone else approaches Jesus and his father, he delights in our open hearts. He longs for us to find him.

Dear Father, may we long to find you as much as you long to be found.

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Beginning to Believe

I’m
fifty-eight. I’m beginning to believe in myself.

One of
the results of childhood abuse has been a difficulty with believing in my own
judgment. My childish belief, “I should have known not to go with my father
that terrible day,” has warped my self-image.

The
length of time this healing has taken is a measure of the depth of the
infirmity. God has taught me, with patient and persistent repetition, to
recognize my decision-making abilities.  (I
just edited the second sentence, from “one of the results is” to “one of the results has
been.” That says it all.)

How hard
it is to see oneself with God’s objectivity. The sin against us, especially
against our vulnerable child selves, leaves subtle and lasting marks. Those
who’ve been neglected often feel worth less than their parent’s time:  worthless. Those who’ve been bullied by
classmates struggle with powerlessness. In this fallen world, we struggle with the
many consequences of others’ sin.

And yet,
God. God, who is making us into the image of Jesus. God, for whom nothing is
too difficult. God, who promises never to leave or forsake you. God, who
believes in you. That God is healing us, making us fit for his kingdom.

Father, show
us today how to cooperate in the healing you are working into our hearts.

 

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A Quilting Lesson

On Tuesday, my daughter Jenn and I spent the morning sewing.
She had fabric left over from a previous quilt that I pulled out while she cut
strips for her next one. She has a sharp eye for color, so her leftovers went together
easily. I sketched a simple box on box pattern. After choosing a background
piece, I randomly started cutting squares—two inch, one and a half inch, one
inch, and half an inch. I eyeballed them into a symmetrical pattern. When Jenn
looked at my design, she shifted a few pieces here and there into a less
predictable style that I liked better.

 

At the sewing machine, I stitched the stacks of fabric
squares. Again, I just estimated the line placement. By the time I finished them,
two out of the nine crossings on top of the half inch squares crossed closely.
The other seven caught the little square in the middle, but imprecisely.

 

Precision, in quilting, is not essential. Yes, the best quilters
are precise. But no quilt is perfect. That’s what the people in Paducah, Kentucky told us once when we visited the Museum of the American Quilter's Society. Quilts are celebrations of color and shape. The colors of my little nine by nine and a quarter piece please me. (I planned a
nine by nine, but miscalculated when I pieced the back.) The shapes draw my eye
in a pleasant arc. I don’t notice the irregular stitching. Quilting is a
forgiving art. I will enjoy this little colorful refreshment hanging on the
wall next to my computer.

 

God quilts together the pieces of our lives. He arranges the
colors and shapes into a pattern than pleases him. He rejoices in the process,
forgiving our imprecision and imperfection. When we’re done, he will gather us
all into his great museum of glory. What a refreshment of joy that will be!

 

Father, help us forgive ourselves our own imperfections and
imprecision. At this beginning of another earth cycle around the sun, let us
know your forgiveness in a fresh way.  

 

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The Word, Made Flesh

          And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth.                John 1:14, KJV

Father, may we behold the glory of your son this week. Give us fresh eyes, please, so we can see the light of your love lying in that dim manger. And make us hungry for your goodness, manifest in and through us. May your kingdom come in our hearts, may your will be done in our lives–to glorify Jesus. Amen.

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