A Shameless Plug

So, I use Sonlight curriculum to homeschool my kids.
For the most part, we love it.
It's been a good fit for our family.
We've used it since 2007, I think.

I was kind of excited this year
to get an email from them
inviting me to register to win a year of free curriculum.
The thing is, I am only eligible to win
if friends also go and register through my link.
I do not mind sharing my love for Sonlight with my friends,
since I have a genuine appreciation for their products.
This one is exciting, because it's free curriculum!
Whoever wins, will win a year for the first mom and the referred friend.
If you are even slightly interested in that,
would you go sign up through this link?
I think after you do, they'll give you a link you can share, too.

http://25.sonlight.com/wp-login.php?action=register&v=4&ref=10327#sthash.jfWWp4zj.dpuf

Sonlight's Mom to Mom Curriculum Giveaway

http://25.sonlight.com/wp-login.php?action=register&v=4&ref=10327#sthash.jfWWp4zj.dpuf

http://25.sonlight.com/wp-login.php?action=register&v=4&ref=10327#sthash.jfWWp4zj.dpuf

To Be Their Mom

I scroll down through my Facebook feed, and I see so many mothers.
Sporty mothers cheering on young athletes.
Baking mothers who make my mouth water.
The ones who stay home
long after other mothers have taken up the soccer and ballet rounds
because they have one with special needs.
Moms with the beginning of a clan,
and some with just one little chick.
I see moms
who traveled to China and Guatemala and Ethiopia
to gather up their babies.
I know two who had children they weren't looking for handed to them.
I see my friends with empty arms, whose babies are not with them.
They had to lay them down to rest long before they wanted to.

There are busy ones, who race from one activity to the next.
Bookworm moms, who inhabit the couches with their kids and a good book.
Tatooed and pierced,
in overalls,
or dressed like tea party ladies,
we all have this in common:
We've opened our lives to our children.

Becoming a mother is to become vulnerable.
We don't know what we will end up with.
Whether it's carrying a burden for many long years,
as we work to lift children who can't carry themselves;
or bearing the grief of a loss too strong for words.
Will it be joy?
Yes, it will. Some joy.
Will it be struggle?
Yes, it will. And with the same child who brought the joy.
There will be years of chaos,
even if it's only Cheerios scattered over the entire house.
There will be messy faces and messy bodies.
There will be tears, and not just from the children.
Their pain is going to hurt you.

The kids are going to fail.
And you are going to fail your kids.
And if you do it right, there will be apologies and forgivenesses.
And they'll learn that love means hope for future good.
That love covers a multitude of sin,
and grace allows us to begin again.

And you don't have to be a cookie-cutter mom to be their Mom.
Each one of us is uniquely made,
and uniquely challenged with this sanctified relationship.
Our children don't match.
Our lives don't match.
But we are one in Christ,
and the goal is to hear, "Well, done, you good and faithful servant."
I can't help but think about Jesus's conversation with Peter
where Peter asked about John, "What about him?"
And Jesus replied to him, "What is it to you...? You follow Me."

Never mind the other mamas.
Each of us has our own race to run.
But follow Him where He leads you.
It's your own Master you have to answer to.
And He is able to make you stand.

Suffer Little Children

Maybe you have heard that prayer:
'Lord, I give You my life.
You have my permission to interrupt it any way You please.'

And the interruption comes,
and it really throws a monkey wrench into your plans,
and other people's plans for you are messed up, too.
Because it's a crying interruption, with a runny nose,
and it needs a nap every day at consistent times to be happy and functional.
And it reminds you that God's priorities aren't the same as everyone else's.

And those interrupting children are God's children.
And sending them away so Jesus can do His important work in adults
is something He'd rebuke you for.
They are the kingdom.
Really?
Jesus the King of Little Children?
Squirmy children with sticky hands?
Hungry children with their hands out?
Tantrumy children who get underfoot?

"At the same time came the disciples to Jesus, saying, 
Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 
And Jesus called a little child to Him, and set him in the midst of them, 
And said, Verily I say to you, 
Except ye be converted, and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
Whoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, 
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoever shall receive one such little child in My name, receiveth Me." 
~Matthew 18:1-5

The disciples obviously blew off His answer to their question,
because in the very next chapter it says,
"Then were brought to Him little children, 
that He should put his hands on them, and pray: 
and the disciples rebuked them. 
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, 
and forbid them not to come to Me: 
for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
And He laid His hands on them..."
Matthew 19:13-15

Who is the greatest?
He called a child.
And that kid came when He called him.
He didn't say, "I'll have to get back to you on that, Jesus,
after I've checked my schedule."
With no pride and no agenda,
he came over and stood there as an object lesson.
And the disciples looked on and dismissed his importance.
Jesus was doing His divine work in the proximity of children.
Close enough to call them over.
They were familiar enough with Him that they came if He called.

In Mark, when this story is told,
it says Jesus was very displeased
when He saw the disciples rebuking them.
Indignant.
He was grieved, and He ached.
He wanted them near Him.
Receiving a child in His name is receiving Him.
They are something to 'suffer' at times.
Immature.
Unreasonable.
Demanding and exhausting.

We have limited resources of time and energy,
and they suck up more of it than we have.
We'd rather put the time into things that show.
Yesterday, I vacuumed the whole downstairs of my house.
By evening, the floor was scattered with Cheerios
that Lydia had dropped in every room,
some of them after chewing a little first.
I folded napkins that she threw on the floor,
and then 'helped' me pick up again.
It's a perpetual cycle of unending work.
Jesus said to suffer them.

And so, we prepare to welcome another.
Yes, Lord, You can interrupt our lives.
Change our world.
Slow our steps.

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Because it's a crying interruption, with a runny nose,

Even Our Confusion

I love to hear stories of God's faithfulness to help an asker.
My husband visited with an older couple recently
and brought me home some stories.
These people were home because of some adversity,
but what they wanted to talk about
was how God had answered their prayers.
Such a refreshing difference from negative reports and complaints.

Years before, the wife was in need of employment.
She saw a 'help wanted' ad in the paper,
and got the confused notion that the business
was right across the street from her house.
So she dressed up, put her resume together,
and walked over to apply for the job.
She gave her resume to the front desk person,
who told her they would keep it on file.
Of course they would, she thought -- they had advertised for help.
And she went home.

She and her husband got down on their knees
and asked the Lord to give her the job she had applied for.
And before they were finished praying, the phone rang.
"We've been looking for someone with your qualifications,"
the woman told her.
And so the Lord gave her a job that hadn't been advertised.

I love how the Lord can use even our confusion and misunderstanding
to direct us into His will.

That Had Seen The First House

I read this morning from Ezra 3 with my children.

And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, 
they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, 
and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, 
to praise the LORD, after the ordinance of David king of Israel.  
And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks to the LORD; 
because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever towards Israel. 
And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, 
because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 

But many of the priests and Levites 
and chief of the fathers, old men, that had seen the first house, 
when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, 
wept with a loud voice; 
and many shouted aloud for joy: 
So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of the joy 
from the noise of the weeping of the people: 
for the people shouted with a loud shout, 
and the noise was heard afar off.
~Ezra 3:10-13

It's a curious thing, the human heart.
In Ezra 1:1, I learn that this endeavor was prophesied by Jeremiah,
stirred up by the Lord's work in a heathen king's heart,
entirely directed by and according to the will of God;
blessed and commissioned --
and yet grieved over by some of God's people.

It looked like nothing to them,
because they had hearts wedded to loss, captured by the past.
To many, God's work was a joyful affirmation of His help.
They looked forward with praise and thanksgiving.
But to some, this new thing was just a record of their losses.
They howled in misery.

It strikes me how differently the two groups respond
to the very same work of God.
It's easy to do, when you suffer a loss,
to treat every new gift like a curse.
To reject it all as worthless because it isn't what it was.
Or it isn't what you had wished.
But that doesn't mean it isn't God's will.
And it doesn't mean He won't bless it, or fellowship with You through it.

And it reminds me that if I want to grow,
if I want to be mature,
I'm going to have to forget the things that are behind,
and press on, reaching forward to the things that are ahead,
reaching for the goal of God's upward call in Christ Jesus.

Someone Else's Baby

The dream was disturbing.
There I was, in beautiful fellowship with my husband,
enjoying God's creation by the sea.
Something separated us.
Wolves came in, and tore my baby out of my arms,
biting into her, and flinging her off the pier I was on
to the rocks and water below.
The wolves chased me, trying to bite me, too.
I couldn't get to my baby.
They were stronger than me, faster than me,
and used the very beauty of the place I was in
to the destruction of my child.
My husband returned, the wolves fled, and he held the baby in his arms.
I woke up to the sound of her screaming.

Today I read, "Beware of dogs.
Beware of evil workers. Beware of the mutilation."
And I remember Paul's warning to the Ephesian elders
about the wolves who would come,
the false prophets who would come out of their own midst,
not sparing the flock, and drawing away disciples with perverse teachings.
Then he commended them to the word of His grace,
which is able to build them up
and give them an inheritance among the sanctified.

And I thought about Jesus' words in Matthew 7,
about the hypocrisy of trying to judge and cleanse a brother
while in a state of crippling blindness and under judgment.
And the application of the law has never removed a plank from my eye,
nor can it remove the speck from my brother's.

And all they did couldn't bring them into the kingdom.
Not prophecy.
Not exorcisms.
Not mighty works.
Jesus said you would know the tree by its fruit,
and all the fruit of human effort is rotten.
But the fruit that comes of connection with Him is holy.
"I never knew you," was the judgment.
The fruit was illegitimate.
Someone else's baby.
Because the law cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit.
And what is holy is not for the dogs.

The holy fruit, the precious treasure, is for the askers.
It isn't the work of the doers.
It isn't for the dogs, but for the sons.
Not for proximity to holiness, but relation to it.
A good gift from a good Father.
Sustenance offered to a child.
Not an attainment of the flesh.

There is a big wide gate that lots of people walk through,
and it leads to a road of human achievement.
And it is the way of destruction.
But Life is down the narrow road. 
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
No man comes to the Father but by Me."
"I never knew you," was the judgment.
He called them workers of iniquity.

Paul traded his vast resume for one thing and one thing only:
the blood of Christ.
The connection.
The relation that bears fruit.
He traded his circumcision, his law-abiding status,
his zealous pursuit of Biblical theology,
his heritage, his family tree,
his prestigious education,
his religious superiority --
all of it --
for the knowledge of Him.
Because the one left him working iniquity.
All the works of righteousness achieved through the law
are a damning record of the unrighteousness of the doer.
They are hypocritical.
They are clean words from unclean lips.
They are coming to the marriage bed pregnant with someone else's child.

And the teaching of the works of the law as the means to grace
is the perversion of the gospel.
There's no inheritance there.
It's unclean. It is destructive, evil work. And it mutilates our souls.
It does not spare the flock of God.
It tears it up.
It is the result of separation from Christ.
It casts the fruit of union with Him on the rocks.
And it chases down the Bride to destroy her, too.

And it is the word of His grace that is able to build us up,
and give us an inheritance with the sanctified.
Are you worried about sanctification?
It is ours through His grace.
The inheritance of the holy is only born of His holiness.
And all our efforts are wood, hay and stubble apart from union with Him.

Stars and Sand and Every Hair

Grains of sand and all our hairs.

A friend posted a link to a photograph NASA released
that focused in on one quarter of the Andromeda Galaxy,
which is a very small section of the visible universe to us, here on earth.
It is 2.5 million light years away, and the sharpest photo NASA has.
100 million stars individually recognizable in it.
My son and I watched the video that spanned the photograph.
It took a video to look over the image, because it is a huge image.
Part of the galaxy was so densely starred
that it appeared more light than dark.
"It looks like sand!" my son exclaimed.

"That's an interesting comment," I said,
"because stars and sand
are what God promised Abraham's descendants would be like."

The stars.
Whenever I felt troubled as a teenager,
I would go out in the dark and look up.
So vast.
Innumerable.
It reminded me of how vast God's knowledge and His power are.
How the choreography of the heavens is His handiwork.
How His mind comprehends all these things I cannot fathom.
The heavens declare the glory of God.
He sees the big picture.
Bigger than we have yet comprehended.

Ah, but the sand...
From the vastness of the heavens to the grains of the earth.
Details I'm too big and important to take notice of.
I walk on it.
But I don't get close enough to count it.
The sand touches me, but I don't know it.
Not like that.
I've seen so little of it.
Those things that are so out of my reach,
and the ones that are so easily touchable,
are both unknowable to me,
and intimately known to Him.

Surely if human beings can zoom in
on a galaxy 2.5 million light years away
and recognize individual stars clustered like sand,
He can see me.
I'm a lot bigger than a grain of sand, and He has counted them.

"You comprehend my path and my lying down, 
and are acquainted with all my ways."
I am not even acquainted with all my ways.
I have talked in my sleep and not known it, but according to Psalm 139,
"There is not a word on my tongue, 
but behold, O Lord, You know it altogether."
The sum of His thoughts toward me is more in number than the sand.

"The hairs of your head are all numbered," Jesus said.
"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul."
Do you need that reminder?
I often do.
Why not fear death?
Because He is Life.
Because He was raised from the dead.
Because connection with Him will raise us, too.
And those who serve and worship darkness and death
cannot snuff out Light and Life,
no matter how many they put to sleep for a little while.

Flipping the Pancakes

I made potato pancakes for lunch.
They are basically two ingredients: mashed potatoes and eggs.
Garlic, salt and pepper to taste.
I've struggled with making them right.
My dad always made them for me, and I loved them.
The first time I tried to do it on my own, as a married woman,
I added milk.
Wondered why they were wrong.

I did okay today.
They're funny things, though.
When you first mix them up, they're so sloppy.
I slap a spoonful onto the frying pan in butter, and then wait and watch.
I always try to flip it before it's ready.
It falls apart.
Half flips, half doesn't.
I use the pancake turner to pat the entire thing back into a circle
and wait longer.

More heat, more pressure, and it becomes one.
I slide the turner underneath, and it holds together.
Moves as one.
Less breaks off to do its own thing.

As I cooked them today, I thought about marriage.
These two ingredients forming one thing.
The heat and the pressure and the time
changing us from an incoherent mass that falls apart
when we try to work together
into something that moves as one,
each part a complement to the other.

Perhaps it occurred to me because of a line from our wedding vows:
we promised to adhere to one another.
Our pastor thought that a funny phrase,
and made a joke about our first kiss.
But I think it's a beautiful turn of words.

And I hope my soul is melding just as surely to the Lord's.
Growing more and more able to move when He moves.
To hold fast and remain.
To be mixed together with Him in such a way
that I am His, and He is mine, and we are one.

It Wasn't You

"So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: 
and He hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, 
and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt."
Genesis 45:8

We forget that God can and will use the sinful actions and animosity of rivals
to further His plan in our lives.
That the angry brother, driven by jealousy,
can still be subject to God's control.
It doesn't excuse the sin to acknowledge the sovereignty.
God moves even through conflict and unhappiness and dysfunctional families.
In every one of the families of the patriarchs, there are issues.
The extra women. Hagar. Zilpah. Bilhah.
There are brothers at war.
Ishmael against Isaac. Esau against Jacob.
The sons of the handmaids against Joseph.

There are favorites played, between wives and between sons.
Marital strife -- even between Isaac and Rebekah,
who had no extras in their marriage.
But the children caused conflict between them.
Years of unsettled wandering and infertility.

And a Promise that did not fail.
A future and a hope that is still working in their children.
Being named the friend of God.  
Governed by God.  
Laughter.  
The father of faith.
The one the nation is named for.

"It was not you who sent me here," Abraham's great-grandson said.
"It was God."

Perhaps he had taken to heart
how God had moved and worked in his great-grandfather's family.
His grandfather's family.
His father's family.
He had moved them through conflict and animosity --
sometimes earned, and sometimes unmerited.
But always directed.

The conniving father-in-law.
The disdainful household help.
The jealous step-brother.
The fighting wives.
The cheating employer.
The murderous brothers.
All of them had been ultimately fitted into the intended will of God
and the Promise He kept promising them.

"And we know that to them that love God 
all things work together for good, 
even to them that are called according to his purpose."
Romans 8:28

Musings on the Social Network

I am thinking about what edifies others,
instead of draining them of their energy and motivation
with complaints and problems.
Giving thanks.
When my eyes are scanning for what to thank Him for,
instead of what bothers me, what I don't like,
how I've been wronged today, how things aren't meeting my expectations and desires,
it sends out ripples of good through my own heart and mind, and into the community.

But the opposite is also true.
Scanning for negatives to complain about, for faults in others,
for what to be unhappy about,
creates unhappiness first in me, and spreads to others.
I have a child prone to "I don't like..."
For some time, my response to these comments has been,
"What DO you like?"
It's funny how it changes things to look for the good instead of the bad.

So, I ask you today: what do you like?
What can you thank God for?
What is praiseworthy today?

I love quiet mornings with my coffee and my Bible and my husband by the fire.
My sons came down this morning
and told me they had picked up their room without being asked.
And although there is much busyness getting ready for Christmas just now,
I get to spend time doing some shopping with a friend, instead of facing the madness alone.

Ah, and friends. Don't they make you smile just by existing?
What a gift that God gives them to us, that He sets the lonely in families,
and makes us into one in Christ.
And now it's YOUR turn.

Second and First

I took my son to his second piano lesson today.
Second is a key word to what follows.
His teacher seemed quite pleased with his ability to hear the music.
I do not play the piano, although a number of people in my family do.
I brought a book along, intending to read.
But I kept being distracted by overheard reminders
to sit with a strong back,
and to keep his hand positioned in a hill, and not a valley.
In spite of the repetition of these reminders,
it was obvious she was pleased with his musical inclination.

His teacher taught him a new warm up.
He played it, and then asked her
if he could show her something it reminded him of.
"Yes, of course."
He haltingly worked out a tune, faltering a little at first,
and then plainly resolving into It Is Well With My Soul.

Scenes from my uncle's house, while he lay very sick
with his parents and siblings around him singing this came to mind.
Laughter through tears, and joy in sorrow.
A few months later, they were singing my Grandma home,
with the same uncle brought in through video phone calls.
So many songs of faith and hope in pain and death.
When I recognized the music, I cried.

I do not know
what parents usually experience with their children's piano lessons.
This is my first time.
But my son stuns me.
As we got into the car to leave, I said,
"I've never heard you play that one before."
"Well, that's the first time I ever played it, Mom. That's why it wasn't right."
Ah.
The first time you ever played it, it was nearly in a flash of inspiration
from hearing a short warm-up exercise?
Of course.
"Hey, next time pick something I can hear without crying."

Burning Down The Forest

My husband and I were out on a date once, holding hands in a Chipotle line
when I spotted someone we knew but hadn't seen in awhile
who was looking at me with horror on his face.
Honestly, he looked like he wanted to burn me up.
I urged my husband to go over and say 'hi' while I kept our place in line.
It turns out the man hadn't recognized my husband,
whose hair was significantly changed from our last meeting,
and was sure I was an adulteress.
I wonder what he would have told people about me
if he hadn't been set straight with a tiny bit more information.

Paul said not to accept an accusation against an elder
except on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Something about that instruction makes it apparent
that the accusations are more numerous than the realities.
And testimony is not repetition.
It doesn't mean if more than one person is gossiping about it, it's valid.
It's two or more sources of eyewitness accounts.

We often hear one person's story, and get angry.
But if we wait for the next side, things become a lot clearer,
and the anger is misplaced.
I've done that myself.
They say with age comes wisdom. (We can always hope so, anyway.)
I've begun stalling judgment when I hear something outrageous.
Often enough, a little more information clears it up.
Sometimes the rumor really does have something to it.
But often, someone 'saw' something that they were completely mistaken in.
Or they heard someone else's report that was mistaken.
Best not to pass that lie on, even if you think it's true.

If you don't have something nice to say,
say it softly in a back room?
Or bite your tongue until it bleeds.
Avoid lighting a fire that burns down a forest if it serves no good purpose.

Did someone tell you something mean about someone else?
Help it die, instead of breathing life into it.

Where Did You Come From?

I knew this day was coming, and it still sideswiped me.
My firstborn is a teenager today.
He's still shorter than me,
but I expect next year that won't be the case.
We are giving him piano lessons as his birthday gift.

I remember how his dad looked out at a baseball field
on our drive home from the hospital with him.
His dad loves baseball.
But this son is not the baseball type.
His mind is not his dad's, and it isn't mine.
His dad made the phone call to arrange the lessons,
because he loves who this particular man/child is.

He picks up instruments and works things out on them.
He draws with an eye that sees things three-dimensionally,
and can spin them in his mind.
He delights in geeky books about relativity and chemicals.
He sat in public crocheting an angel a few weeks ago.
I do not crochet, but this boy,
when he was shown how to make a simple crocheted chain
at the age of six or seven,
hid under his covers with a flashlight and crocheted a functional mitten.
The other day, we were discussing lie detectors, and he casually said,
"I made one from my snap circuits a few years ago."
From what he said, it worked in some form or another.

Sometimes I look at my children, and think,  
"Where did you come from?" 
Because they came from us, but they are not us.
They are eternal beings,
but they have not always existed.
God still speaks life into existence,
and sends it into the world through the doorway of other lives.
It stuns me to have been the doorway to these living beings.

Happy Birthday, son.

Do The Opposite

Philippians 1:28 tells us not to be 'in any way terrified by our adversaries'.
I read this in a commentary by A.T. Robertson:
"The word 'terrified' means 'startled like a scared horse' 
or 'fluttered like a surprised bird'.
"War horses will stand the booming of cannon 
and the bursting of shells at their feet. 
Some Christians are like scared rabbits. 
They jump and run at the first adversary who says 'Boo!' 
They have no more courage than grasshoppers and shy at every shadow... 
Panic is the worst sort of defeat. It is rout... 
The signal of life or death comes from God, 
not from the fickle crowd at a gladiatorial show." 

Fear is the enemy to fight.
The enemy's tactics throughout the book of Nehemiah 
were concentrated in provoking fear.
Whether it was from declared enemies, or enemies in the guise of friends, 
Nehemiah was urged to act on fear. (Nehemiah 6:10-14) 
But the Lord's purpose 
was that he should continue the task He had given him,
and ignore the voice of the 'prophet' that said, 
"They're coming to kill you, 
and they're coming to kill you by night. Hide!"

In our day, too, sometimes the voices even of other believers 
urge us to fear, to run, and hide.
Let's rather do the work the Lord has given us to do, 
and not be terrified by our adversaries.
Those voices are propaganda, 
and they are attempting to get us to do the enemy's work for him, 
by laying down our tools and abandoning the Lord's work.
Make Satan fight his own battles: don't score victories for him.
The Lord is with us, as long as we are with Him.

A quote from a mother during German occupation of Ukraine to her sons: 
"Whatever they [the Nazis] tell you to do, do the opposite."
She recognized they were the enemy.
The enemy of our souls is not on our side. 
Obeying his voice will not save us from the things we fear.

The Overcoming Blood

I find myself pondering the life that's in the blood.
The life of sin, that infects and reproduces,
that multiplies and overwhelms,
and results in a life bled out.

There was a doctor laboring in a hopeless fight
to save his patients from a death that just kept conquering.
And he got infected with it, too.
And he knew the disease, and he isolated himself.
And by the grace of God, he overcame it.
He was raised up from that death bed,
and his face glows when he speaks.
And his wife's face looks full of joy and wonder.
And he's been asked to share his story with news channels,
and to speak to Congress,
and to talk to the President about how to conquer this death.

But more than that:
he keeps opening his veins for fellow human beings,
and donating his blood -- the overcoming blood.
It was something that a recovered patient had done for him,
while he lay dying of the incurable plague.

And I think on Jesus, dying of my sin,
and raised up full of Life,
and He opens Himself up to conquer my infection.
He offers His overcoming blood,
to fight my plague from the inside out,
so I can grow clean and whole.
The Life is in the Blood.

And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, 
and because of the word of their testimony; 
and they loved not their life even unto death.  
~Revelation 12:11

Overwhelmingly, In All These Things

Every now and then, I read something in the Word
and rearrange it mentally for emphasis,
or to try to grasp better what it is saying.
This morning it was out of Romans chapter 8.
What it says is this:

Who shall separate us from the love of the Christ? 
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, 
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
(according as it hath been written--
`For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long, 
we were reckoned as sheep of slaughter,') 
but in all these we more than conquer, through him who loved us; 
for I am persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor messengers, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things about to be, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I was reading a New American Standard this morning,
so it was a little different.
Not different in meaning, but different in words.
(As a side note: one of the remarkable things about the Living Word,
is that it lives in every language.
Translate it into the most lowborn language you can find,
and let the lowest common denominator of humanity read it and believe it,
and it will raise him up and transform him.)
Just to think a little more about what was being said to me, I rewrote it:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
In tribulation we overwhelmingly conquer.
In distress we overwhelmingly conquer.
In persecution we overwhelmingly conquer.
In famine we overwhelmingly conquer.
In nakedness we overwhelmingly conquer.
In peril we overwhelmingly conquer.
In the face of the sword we overwhelmingly conquer.
In being put to death all day long like sheep being slaughtered, 
we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Nothing can separate us from His love.

It is a shocking, revolutionary doctrine, which I still wrestle with.
But there it is.

Wherever It Goes

To the church he founded
the same week he was beaten with rods,
and left with many wounds,
and thrown in prison, Paul later wrote this:
But I would ye should understand, brethren, 
that the things which happened to me 
have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the gospel; 
So that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace, 
and in all other places; 
And many of the brethren in the Lord, 
becoming confident by my bonds, 
are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 
Philippians 1:12-14

The thing is, the gospel can't be chained.
See, this was the city where the chains broke with him in them.
Where an earthquake, instead of crushing him under the debris of the jail,
broke him loose,
and woke a dead jailer, and took him out of the dark and into the Light.
These people should have known already what Paul wrote to them --
that just because he had been bound, it hadn't bound the gospel.
It was to their credit that they worried about him.
True brothers would.
But had they forgotten the birth of their own church?

You can't abort the gospel.
I heard a woman say once how she had heard the Lord speak to her
while she was having an abortion.

You can't drug the gospel.
I know people who were plainly changed while high as a kite.
I've heard of drunks mockingly repeating what they heard the pastor say,
only to have a hearer transformed.

I know a man who was living in a garbage dump, hungry, in a Muslim country.
He thought he saw a loaf of bread, and he shoved a child to get it.
But it wasn't bread.
It was a piece of paper, and it said,
"Believe on the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and you shall be saved."

God's Word has power wherever it goes -- even if that place is a tired church,
or an unconcerned church kid.
It wasn't that I'd never read my Bible before.
I certainly had -- I was raised in church.
But there was so much good literature out there to read.
I wanted the best.
I read in an encyclopedia one day that the Psalms in the Bible
are some of the world's best poetry.
So I began to read them on my own.

When the nightmares woke me up at night,
I remembered something I had read:
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High 
will abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
My terror changed to peace, and I couldn't stop reading it.
I wept over Hosea, read in the Living Bible version.
You know, the one that says His Word is a flashlight to my steps,
because 'lamp' is so archaic?
Hosea -- a story of a heartbroken husband with a tramp for a wife.
And plainly, God identified with him.
With a man in love, and so unfaithfully treated.
But a man willing to take her back.

I think about Paul, the things that he suffered,
and the man that he was when he was changed.
This was a man who approved the violent death of the church's first martyr.
A man who participated in the tearing apart of Christian homes
and Christian families,
and the legal pursuit thereof.
A man willing to travel to Syria to rout out the Christians from there, too.
A man breathing out threats and slaughter against the disciples.

When the Lord asked Ananias to go to him, Ananias argued.
He had heard of the evil this man had done to the saints,
and the power he had to do more.
Maybe the Lord was unaware of these terrible deeds?
But the Lord said, "He's My chosen vessel."
And when Ananias went, he called him 'brother'.

I'm thinking about and praying often
for our persecuted brothers in Syria and Iraq right now.
But I am also wondering who might be a chosen vessel of the Lord Jesus Christ
who simply has not yet been knocked off his horse?

It has been long years
since I had the joy of spending time with that brother
who was saved in the dump.
I don't know where he is anymore, but his gentleness remains with me.
I have a vague memory of him telling with tears and shame
how he had helped to throw a Christian into a pit.

We brought him to the airport once,
and being Middle Eastern, with a Middle Eastern name,
he was stopped at security, even before the increases since 9-11.
He had an electronic Bible in his bag,
which the agent suspiciously demanded to know about.
He was delighted.
He pulled it out of its case, turned it on, punched in John 3:16,
and showed it to the guard.
The guard was busy, and was trying to move on to the next person.
"Read it!" he insisted.
And the guard did. Out loud.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, 
that whoever believes in Him, should not perish, 
but have everlasting life.
His eyes teared up, and he nodded.

Are you praying for these persecutors?
Because some of them may be brothers who just are not yet born.
And they may be the very evangelists God intends to speak through.

Too Many Apples

My garden has been a little neglected of late.
The tomatoes are a jungle
that has made passage down the rows nearly impossible.
I go out to pick ripe ones, and I find them.
But there are clusters in the middle whose flashing red is beyond my reach.
The large leaves of the suckers obscure my view,
and the spiders have wrapped webs around the thick growth in the center
that makes me loathe to reach in to grab some.
I planted tomatoes because I love tomatoes.
I want to eat them, not let them go back to the earth.
So I recruit my husband, and together we begin to cut.
The goal is to make the fruit reachable,
to give ourselves a clear view,
and to trim away what only drains resources,
complicates the purpose of the plant,
and causes good fruit to go to waste because it cannot be seen to pick.
To simplify.

I saw a news story today that set my mind thinking about cutting back, too.
A sheep was found in Australia who had never been shorn.
It looked like a tribute to Twinkies.
A good shepherd shears his sheep, cutting back that heavy wool,
freeing it to walk and to live.
A sheep that is never shorn is wasting its energy, and getting far too hot.
And a good gardener cuts back even green growth.

A local farmer was talking with me several weeks ago,
and I asked him why the neighbor's apple tree (which overhangs my garden)
was throwing its apples into my garden before they were ripe?
He asked me some questions about the tree, the way the fruit clustered,
and the state of the apples that fell.
Then he told me there were too many apples.
They were crowding each other.
He said that if we were to carefully twist off every other apple,
the apples that were left would grow large and healthy.
That was something to think about.
Twisting off healthy fruit for the sake of healthier fruit.

My Dad Didn't

My Daddy.
Sometimes I think a lot about him.
He is sixty today.
He fathered two daughters before he got a son.
I am the first.
I got him when he had no experience.
When he was still young, and he worked so hard,
he was usually asleep in his chair before I went to bed.
He let my sister and me fill his hair with barrettes.
He chased us around the house on his hands and knees,
and tickled us when he caught us.
"Daddy! Play Tickle Monster!" we shrieked.
He let us ride his back and pretend he was a horse.
He has a broad, strong back,
and it was difficult for our little bodies to hang on and balance.
I loved him because he bought me a Tonka truck
that I could drive my Barbie around in.

He let me climb in the rafters of houses he was building.
Sometimes let me up on the roof with him.
But also reacted with alarm when he saw me go higher than I should have,
or act carelessly with things that required caution.

When Dad was building our first from-scratch house,
we lived in a garage he had built.
In laying a good foundation for the house,
he had to pump loads of soapy sand mixture into the footprint to level it.
I got home from school that day,
and my mom told me to dress in messy clothes and come help.
I think we were helping air bubbles to release or something,
but basically we were given permission to jump off the foundation walls
into a sloppy wet mudhole.
It was awesome.

He never acted like women and girls threatened him
with brains and opinions, or pink paint and flowers.
I remember when he was getting ready to teach out of John one day,
and he came to a passage Bible teachers argue about.
I was a teenager, and he read me the passage,
and asked me my opinion on it.
And then he listened to my answer.
We were not afraid to speak if we had something to say,
and he was never too puffed up to listen.
When he had sons, we weren't suddenly banished to the kitchen.
We were welcome around the dining table
when visiting pastors came to our house.

He corrected us calmly, when he had to do it.
Mom did more of the day to day instruction,
and he didn't undermine her authority with us.
He didn't come in and undo what she had asked of us.
He reinforced respect with his own respect.
He wasn't much of a voice-raiser, except when he was on the phone.
I wonder if his hearing was going,
because he always raised his voice to talk on the phone.

He is not a meddler in other men's business.
If asked, he gives wise counsel.
Sometimes he'll give wise counsel in spite of not being asked.
Usually because the consequences of the error being committed
are going to harm someone else.
But I have watched him teach things to other men,
and he teaches them in such a way that they feel like men
even though the mistake they are making is not too manly.

I wanted to be a building contractor when I grew up,
because my daddy was a building contractor.
I still want to be like him, but in my own woman-way.

My dad was so accepting of the personhood of his wife and daughters,
that I have found myself sideswiped a number of times
by men who claim to be Christians
and stomp down the personhood of the Christian women in their lives:
who shout them down if they speak truth.

My husband said to me one day,
"I think some men like to exchange 'shut up' for 'submit' in the Scriptures."
I'm glad my dad didn't.

So Much Dirt

I was out in the garden weeding again,
counting tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers,
and looking with glee at the purple turnips swelling up.
Examining my yellow zucchinis.
And reaching into the tangle of tomato plants
to pull those weeds that want to take over out by the roots.

So much dirt.
You need the water to loosen the weeds,
but the water also makes the dirt so much dirtier.
I had flecks of it on my face, and ground into my knees.
I weed barefoot, so I'm sure you can imagine the state of my feet.
I wore gloves, to give me courage around the pincher bugs
and the spiders lurking in the leaves,
but the mud still got through.

It made me think about the importance
of washing with the Water of the Word myself
even as I try to help someone else pull their weeds.
Because that dirt just gets on everyone.

"My friends, if someone is caught in any kind of wrongdoing, 
those of you who are spiritual should set him right; 
but you must do it in a gentle way. 
And keep an eye on yourselves, so that you will not be tempted, too.
Help carry one another's burdens, 
and in this way you will obey the law of Christ."
Galatians 6:1,2