It is hard not to snicker a little, yet a little research shows that this was a man who once taught the Word well. But he lost something somewhere over the years. Believers weren’t raptured Saturday. Many people are disillusioned. Atheists had parties to mock the whole deal.
I like Greg Laurie’s response: http://blog.greglaurie.com/?p=4763
I love you – yes, I do! A bushel and peck and a hug around the neck. For almost your entire life, from such a young, young age, you’ve been a songstress, a singer, a psalmist. You were the choreographing, twirling, flowing-fabric, scarf-dancing music track of the family ~ just skipping down the happy hallways of life. Everything got a little more colorful and a little more ebullient when you came along.
Yes, I cropped Stormie (the other half of the trend-setting www.MayDae.com. It Is not her birthday! *smile
Heavy-with-flowers lilac bushes, your sister learning to wear “slip-slops” when she came to see you for the first time at the hospital, purple irises lining established streets in Kokomo, a little charcoal gray house and a month with which you’re joined by name. You were more than 5 weeks early and may have arrived because of a crazy carnival ride and took your first post-hospital nap atop an old pulpit in the corner of the fellowship hall while I taught a VBS class. You were like a china doll, I was afraid to make noise. We sewed and created and worked hard to prepare your space, we wanted everything to be just right – and in that tiny pink and lace bassinet, you looked like a miniature.
God heals. He is the Healer. That is the blazing-across-the-skymessage of your life, Steph. And the adversary gets no points in the battle for our baby girl. With God’s blessing-kiss on the love between your dad and me, with your big sister praying to have a little sister all her own – you were sent. But you know the enemy, he always tries to stop a miracle at its birth. You live in the ranks of Moses, Jesus, even, with spiritual war- decrees against their very lives: Stop the miracle before it can begin to change the course of everything…
But God, who is faithful, healed you wholly and fully. Breath. That is what He gave you. Unlike others who never had to struggle for air, you, like Adam, had to have a supernatural miracle of the very Ruach, the breath of God {the actual very Spirit of the Living God} breathed in to you.
And so, though I now see the miraculous in every day and can look back at the faithfulness of the One who created me and all the times He was saving me from myself and certain disaster, you were the very first miracle I ever really knew I needed. And in the quiet, dark night following your birth, when your life hung precariously in a balance I didn’t even comprehend, when they’d taken you to James Whitcomb Riley Hospital in Indianapolis and you were not in my arms – I cried out for your life, and the Faithful One heard me and graciously granted my petition.
And though so much could have gone wrong, there could have been so many problems, later, He, by the driving force of His very breath in you, instilled so much color, so much texture and pattern and creativity and gifting and vivaciousness and animation. His very Spirit filled your lungs and your heart and soul and personality and every rainbow has symbolized you since.
You are Rainbow Bear. Always have been. And it was confirmed by the laying on of hands more than once. There is so much there. May you always know in all things that you were created to declare in the heavenlies that God keeps His promise.
Happy Birthday, sweetie-pie. With love from your momma
Everything is soaking-wet-clean and all sparkly-shimmery this morning from an all-night rain with beautiful blue skies and bright sun overhead. The slightest breeze blows gentle droplets into the bright-light air like a natural misting tent. Happy birds vex Sandy-the-dog and the carnations, heavy with with moisture, are perfuming the sunny morning.
Today Guini has Kindergarten graduation. Can’t wait to surprise her with balloons and flowers. And? It’s a “cake day,” which means something different for me than other people. Today I will begin work on Gemma May’s 3-tier lemon-poppy-seed cake (to be filled with lemon-curd creme) for her 4th birthday. Though her actual birthday is Monday, we shall celebrate on Sunday at the park. Plus, tomorrow is Stephanie’s 29th birthday and also, according to Harold Camping, rapture and judgement day – which is really going to stink if I get good and going on this cake and then it goes to waste.
Had an amazing deluxe pedicure and session with a reflexologist last night with my 3rd Thursday buds, followed by the Steak-Gorgonzola-Alfredo at The Olive Garden last night. On the way home a radio station played 3 Beetles songs in a row and my feet still feel like dancing this morning at the thought of it.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
PSALM 19 NIV
Plus Dave said Averi called me last night just to talk while I was gone. That is a good message to get! Can’t wait to see my little Averi-kins and all the granbebes this weekend! I was born for this.
When I was a child, I thought Miracle Whip was the way to go. But now that I have become a woman, I know Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise is heaven on a sandwich. Especially a tomato sandwich, with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper. O yeah, baby.
I also saw things, when I was a child {situations, memories, people, past wounds and relationships}, without understanding and the wisdom of years. Some things now, I have to ask God to help me see as redeemed and as He saw it, from His vantage point. Like a grown-up. And because of love.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 1 Corinthians 13.11 NIV
I wasn’t a big tomato fan as a kid, either. See? Maturity does help.
“I live with nostalgic regrets about everything.” Sarah Ferguson to Dr. Phil about her self-image after the sting operation last year that brought her to her lowest low after years of making mistakes and messes of her life for the upcoming docu-series on OWN.
Should it define her – that one horrid moment, or even the series of them that brought her there? Did she do the best she could have with the resources she had at the time? Or what if she did the worst she could have, knowingly and rebelliously? Is there no redemption? Ever?
As moms, we often let the times we act like we wish we wouldn’t, define us.
I get a bit melancholy. I tend toward “nostalgic regret.” I guess I am thinking about what defines me these days, in my early 50s, getting older and trying not to let the enemy of my soul make the regrets bigger than God’s faithfulness has been; nor bigger than the times I have lived under His wing, in His plan, doing what He chose for me to do beforehand. God has been good to me, so good.
He has been good! His smile warms my life. In spite of my own self-sabotage at times, He has entrusted things to me, things that, had I been the distributor, I’d never have given. I wonder why. Other people do too, I am sure. And yet, He planned a life for me too good for words.
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2.10 NLT
The refrain of my life: He is faithful. He is so faithful. Has been in all things past, and is, right now.
Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit [this is GOOD NEWS, Sarah Ferguson!] and crowns you with love and compassion, [You can still be royalty-you can still have it all] who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
My sister-in-law, Robin, went to a small gathering with Beth Moore at Beth’s home church in Houston last year. Robin wrote about the things Beth taught at her blog, here. There is so much rich truth is Psalm 119. Besides being veeeeeeeery long (it is the longest chapter in the Bible), it is full of honest prayer and a Psalmists’s anguish. It is filled with commitment and meditations and wonder and inquiry.
Ps. 119:25-28: I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your word. I recounted my ways and you answered me; teach me your decrees. Let me understand the teaching of your precepts; then I will meditate on your wonders. My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word.
Beth talked about being “laid low,” like the Psalmist talked about, but that we were all layed low in the dust until God breathed life into us (all came from dust and to dust we will return, Ecc.3.20). I am laid low, preserve my life according to Your word.
There is nothing like a little case of bacterial pneumonia (which feels awfully too much like hippopotamus sitting on your chest) to make you feel laid low, like you are breathing dust. Lord, preserve me. I cannot stand not being able to breathe. I don’t want faulty lungs to be my end. My own body has caused me horrid claustrophobia. I need breath. I need air. Open the windows! Let me breathe!!
Robin heard Beth teach, too, on 2 Timothy 3.16. She began to quote it,
For all Scripture is God breathed and useful for…
But then she stopped and made this comment, “We need to inhale! If God is going to breathe, we need to INHALE!” Go, Beth.
Breathing in the Word of God as diligently as I have missed and sought good, clear, unobstructed breaths (sometimes long periods of intense coughing to be able to) these past couple of weeks reminds me of the extreme importance of it. I have to breathe it in, the very breathe of the Word, like my life depends on it, because for my spirit, it does.
In the re-reading, I could think of lots and lots more people from the Word of God that I love and admire for various reasons, but in the end? The five I listed out – yes. They are still the ones I wanna be like when finally I grow up.
I love Elijah for his holy boldness and trust in the power of God and because he also experienced fatigue and probably clinical depression and he let God bring him out. I can relate to Jeremiah who cannot stop speaking out the Word of the Lord (lest it become like fire shut up in his bones) but who doescomplain at the inconvenience and trouble it has brought at times. Tearing down and uprooting is not as fun as building up, but somebody’s gotta do it, right?
Isaiah saw the Lord and the things I want to see.
And am I not able to relate to Hagar and love her revelation of The God Who Sees? I so get her, this broken woman who was living to please and serve others, but found out that it was God alone on whom she could rely.
Mary, the inspiring mother of Jesus is to be remembered and honored. The sisters, Mary and Martha represent so well the struggle I have within: the desire to do nothing but sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from Him, but my seeming inability to escape the obvious work around me that must be done by some one.
There is the woman who poured lavish, gratitude-filled praise in the form of oil on Jesus in worship, washing His feet and drying them with her hair? That kind of worship amazes me. Haughtily dismissed by religious onlookers, she didn’t hesitate to pour out her everything for Him. Love that kind of unbridled passion…
There are so many, incredible people in the Bible. But over time, I have come to relate to and love learning more about this particular five, my heroes in the faith.
Of all he did and was, he sang the song of the Lord in a way that pleased the heart of God and committed his life and reign to establishing continuous, extravagant worship to God. I’d love at the end of my life to have said of me, as it was of David in Acts 13.36, that he had lived his life serving the purpose and will of God in his own generation. And I’d love to sing a song that would please God like David’s did.
He did not come to the church and the world of his day with persuasive words of man-made wisdom, but he came preaching his head off in the power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost! He told the truth with no apology, but he told the truth on himself, too. Even after he’d been a Christian for 30 years he admitted doing what he didn’t want to do and not doing what he wanted to do. I love how he considered all things dung compared to…well anything else, everything else. Dung happens. O yes it does. Paul got that, I just know it. But he also knew that Grace Happens, too. And he wrote it all down in letters, beautiful letters (I love letters) and messages making up 2/3 of the New Testament. And I love Paul.
She literally infused armies with the courage to go forth into battle because the Word of the Lord was in her mouth! She was a prophet, a wife, and judge. And guess what? After leading the winning battle, she led the nation in the SONG of the Lord (Judges 5)! A singing power-house, an insightful judge, a ruler and a woman, still.
He abolished idol worship and destroyed the symbols of false gods, smashing them and calling the nation to return to the One, true God. And God loved his wholeheartedness (his entire heart in one place doing the right thing). I love that Hezekiah, when it was time to die (the Lord told the prophet to tell him to get his house in order because it time for the end), just came before the Lord and wept bitterly and pled his case of his whole string of wholehearted living examples and God received it and gave him 15 more years. That is the way God and I relate, too. He lets me moan and groan and argue my case before Him. He and he has mercy on me, time and again.
Today was Gemma’s first day of pre-school with Nonna. She’ll be 4 soon. Big sister, Guini, got to come along to help Gemma learn. We made button necklaces.
Full of faith, he was selected to administrate the work and business of the ministry in the early church. He was full of grace and wisdom and the power of the Holy Spirit and though an “administrator, was performing signs and wonders all over the place. He did ministry among widows and then preached with such zeal the religious powers-that-be became murderous towards him. The boy could preach. And when he did, he didn’t defend himself, but he did respond to the accusations and charges against him. Though he knew his scriptures and he knew how to use them, he was also a man full of grace, motivated by love. When Paul held the coats of the angry religious men who stoned Stephen to death, Jesus Himself gave Stephen a standing-ovation – welcoming my administrative hero in the faith right into the Presence of God!
NOTE TO SELF: But like Jesus – more than anyone else…
“An inner vow, by definition, is a personal determination made as a reaction to an event; the reaction may or may not have ever been verbalized. The nature of the inner vow is such that it takes the form of ‘I will never…’ or ‘I will always….’ or some other statement of our will.” Notes from my time in intensive prayer counselling a few years ago.
I remember telling my counselor, “I really don’t think ‘inner vows’ applies to me. I cannot think of any that I have.
If she didn’t outwardly shriek at the preposterousness of my statement, I heard it in her reply as she began to rattle off a string of things that she knew I truly believed about life and it was like she was reading right off the pages of my soul {my mind, will and emotions}.
Inner vows = personal declarations designed to protect my own heart and make myself “better” than some person who has wronged me in the past. They are just sinful (usually quite judgemental) responses to life’s realities in all their glory. No bueno.
I can’t even tell you, now. Not without just really exposing myself. But I had a truckload of inner vows. I probably still do. But it takes time to break those agreements with the woundedness of your own (highly deceitful) heart. There were just so many. Hundreds, maybe. I won’t ever…I will always….so pride-rooted. I mean, I used to know EVERYTHING. Bad fruit ahead!
I read somewhere that in his lifetime, David, a man after God’s own heart, broke every one of the Ten Commandments. But I can’t judge him. I’ve broken my own share. I am not the perfect person I had planned to be. I thought, because of everything I had seen throughout my life, I’d be better, better at everything. I’d be a better employee or employer, a better parent and wife, a better church member and friend. And by sheer will I thought there were mistakes and foul-ups I’d never make. Not ever.
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do…” And ETCETERA! [Romans 7.15-16]
Thank-you, Paul, for writing that in Romans. Because, you know – you were like 30+ years in the faith when you wrote it and it soothes my mind to know you still struggled, too. I don’t want to be the only one. {and pride rears its ugly head again…}
If I kept track of the times I ended up doing all the things I said I’d never do, for the times I meant to do something righteous that I never got around to, the score would be about a million to a million.
A conglomeration of Ecc. 12 (yes, the WHOLE chapter) from about 4 different translations and paraphrases…
in the days of your youth,
before the days of evil and trouble come
and the years, the winter years that keep you close to a fire, approach, taking their toll [draw near] when you will say,
“I find no pleasure have no delight, no enjoyment in them”-
2 before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark [your sight is impaired] life gets blurry,
and the clouds [of depression] return after the rain [of tears];
3 when the keepers of the house [your arms and your hands] tremble,
and the strong men [the feet and the knees] stoop [bow themselves],
when the grinders [the molar teeth] cease because they are few,
and those [the eyes] looking through the windows grow dim;
In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.
Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.
4 when the doors [the lips] to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding [of the teeth] fades [is low];
when men rise up at the sound of birds and the crowing of a rooster,
but all [the daughters of the music – the voice and ear] their songs grow faint [low];
You are wakened now by bird-song.
Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.
5 when men [the old] are afraid of heights [danger from that which is high]
and of dangers in the streets [fears are in the way];
when the almond tree [their white hair] blossoms
and the grasshopper [a small thing] drags himself along [is a burden]
and desire no longer is stirred [even appetite fails].
Then man goes to his eternal, everlasting home
and mourners go about the streets [or marketplaces].
—before the silver cord [of life, the spinal cord] is severed [snapped apart],
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well [and the whole circulatory system of the blood ceases to function],
Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.
Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends.
7 and the dust [out of which God made man’s body] returns to the ground, the earth it came from, once again as it was
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
8 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” [Vapor of vapors and futility of futilities] says the Preacher/Teacher.
“Everything is meaningless! [Futile, empty, vainglory, vanity, false, transitory]”
9 [Furthermore] Not only was the Preacher/Teacher wise, but also he imparted [still taught] knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs.
10 The Preacher/Teacher, the Shepherd [sought acceptable words], actually searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true [his goal to write words of truth and correct sentiments].
Besides being wise himself, [he]…also taught others knowledge. He weighed, examined, and arranged many proverbs. [He] did his best to find the right words and write the plain truth.
11 The words of the wise are like (prodding) goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails [firmly fixed in the mind like nails]—given [proceeding] by [from] one Shepherd.
like nails hammered home, holding life together.
They are given by God, the one Shepherd.
12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them [never go further than the words given by the one Shepherd].
Of making many books there is no end [so don’t believe everything you read], and much study wearies the body [the flesh].
for this is the whole duty of [for every] man [the whole, full, original purpose of His creation, the object of God’s providence, the root of character, the foundation of happiness, the adjustment to all inharmonious circumstances and conditions under the sun].
The last and final word is this:
Fear God.
Do what he tells you.
14 For God will bring every deed [every work] into judgment,
including every hidden [secret] thing,
whether it is good or evil
My sister, Robin, has a quote at her FB info page attributed to Harriet Tubman: “Life is hard, then you die.” It is true. Life is hard, nearly unbearable at times, but it is also good beyond belief. It hurts and tears and wounds, then we are surprised by a joy so deep we know it is eternal. When we are young, we are usually too stupid to understad the power and privilege of it. When we are old, the most enduring thing we can do is take all of what we have learned on all these trips around-the-block and impart it to the young (see verses 9-11). If they have a heart after wisdom, they will hear you.
