I watched my husband and our daughter paddle out into the surf in a kayak. They moved through the water to look at the array of fish under them. At times they stopped paddling, but they did not stop moving. Sometimes they drifted further away from where they wanted to go. It required intentional effort to move in the right direction. To go where they wanted to go, they had to pursue it. Just drifting was not going to be enough.
Doesn’t everyone have it all together? My house is clean. I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish at work. My attitude with my husband has been perfect. I have excelled in parenting and disciplining my children.
While driving out of my neighborhood recently, a fire truck passed me in emergency mode--sirens and lights pulsing. I quickly realized a three alarm fire was occurring when two more trucks zoomed by me.
How unattainable this verse seems now as we have walked through the first month of a new decade. We have already watched unkindness and uncertainty continue to flourish in the political situation in our country. Homeland disasters occur so often that it doesn’t phase us as much when our flags are flown at half-staff. Cultural demise continues to grow while people are grasping for avenues of inner peace from a variety of sources.
Just when I needed it most, I read this verse today in my Bible with markings from years past. So many ups and downs in life make us strong and sometimes war-torn, but God just does not tell us what comes next. We might be wiser by living through the experience, but the valuable truth is that through his grace and mercy, our Lord God has equipped us with an instruction book—or an athlete might better describe it as a “playbook.”
At the moment of realization that I had left my wallet in a busy interstate highway gas station two hours earlier, my heart began racing while my brain began rehearsing the rapid steps of what to do next. Call the bank card company. Call the credit card company. Call the station where I left it. Tomorrow, go to the driver’s license office to reorder my license.
Life’s difficult circumstances sometimes turns peace to panic. Our survival may depend on living through complicated medical treatments, making difficult decisions about our children, struggling with financial hardships, caregiving, coping with unhealthy habits... and on and on. But seemingly hopeless situations are the perfect ground for God to show us his glory, as he did continually to Moses and the Israelites.
In the beginning, in Eden, the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden (was) the tree of life (Genesis 2:9). At the end of time the fruit of the same tree of life will be ripe for the picking by God’s redeemed (Revelation 22:14), Edenic life theirs—the curse of sin over and done with, for all nations.
When we moved to Texas from southern Ontario some 40 odd years ago, I was so excited about the prospect of planting a vegetable garden, nurturing gorgeous roses, and harvesting pecans from the tree in my spacious back yard. In Ontario I had managed a small plot of veggies and babied along some hybrid teas, considering the short growing season. Why, you couldn’t plant beans until the 9th of June! Sad to say though, in Tyler my efforts were in vain—the pecans were wormy and tough to crack, black spot got the best of the roses, rhubarb couldn’t stand the heat, the carrots were woody. But oh my, how the weeds did flourish. Since I had assigned weed control to my seven-and-eight-year-olds, they hated that garden. After one season of crop failure, we all quit.
As tragic as the loss of the perfection of Eden was, as redeeming as Gethsemane and Golgotha were, as eternal as the garden party in heaven will be, today we live in the garden we are planted in ladies. How best to bloom where God planted me, I ask.
As you well know ladies, the enticing bouquet of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was too much for the happy pair in Eden, once that crafty snake got his way. So God drove the two out, placing a guard on the gate to keep them from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24). Purity had lost to desire.
I love spending time in nature because I can see God’s creations so much clearer.
When my ninth grader asked for help on his essay, I got more than I bargained.
His book: Ecclesiastes.
His thesis: everything is meaningless.
Job suffered more than anyone I know. I know he gets everything back in the end, but he walked a long, hard road. And his friends became part of the problem. I don’t want to be a friend like that.
As I read Job’s story, I discovered some ways to be a better friend — especially to someone suffering.
Have you ever had a long wait? Maybe like the one I had today.
What I thought would be a quick, 15-minute appointment turned into three hours with one roadblock after another.
Kids ask good questions.
My husband gave me and our two teen boys a chronological Bible for Christmas. As we plod through Exodus, my 13-year-old asks, “What does all this have to with my life today?”
It’s a key word in parenting. I even used it when reviewing a list of do’s and don’ts to teenage drivers—don’t speed, watch out for the other driver and, finally, be home on time!
Paul wrote of God’s incomparably great power for us who believe. He also knew how to consistently draw upon it. One of those occasions occurred in the metropolitan city of Ephesus, a city famous for housing the popular goddess, Artemis. Cultic followers spent large amounts of money on images of Artemis. As Paul taught of the one true God, people began to follow God, and the idol craftsmen began to feel the financial pinch.
I remember receiving chain letters as a young girl. The letter instructed me to mail additional copies to ten friends and add my own name to the bottom of the list—or something like that. The goal was to eventually receive letters from people all over the country. I always complied but, to my knowledge, never received any letters in return. Today news, prayer requests and other helpful information arrive via email, texts or other forms of social media. I often forward, cut-and-paste or even screen capture specific information to pass onward.
