Day 29 It's about Time

O God, why have you rejected us forever? Why is your anger so intense against the sheep of your own pasture?...We see no miraculous signs as evidence that you will save us... Why do you hold back your strong right hand? Psalm 74:1+

Okay, so where is that stinking box I sent you through the mail? Is it stuck in a corner of a USPS airplane somewhere or is someone with light fingers making gallo pinto and eating your MacIntosh apples? Who knows, maybe it's one of those packages that gets stuck in a sorting machine and shows up 37 years later. (Although the smell of the apples would give it away way before then, I'm sure!)

We're not very good at waiting these days. How our American culture views time and how much that view has changed in the last generation is significant. We're not very good at waiting for much of anything--including the mail.

But, the truth is that we simply can't maintain balanced lives if we expect everything instantly!

Our impatience easily spills over into our spiritual lives. When problems aren’t resolved, we get angry at God. When we don’t see growth in our lives as quickly as we'd like, we get depressed. When we think that God isn't able to change lives and fix problems instantly--when we don’t see miracles happening--we wonder why God doesn’t act on our behalf.

The simple truth is that following Christ takes time. Growing in maturity takes time. Character building takes time. Resolving most problems takes time. Building strong families and relationships takes time.

God, help Sarah take a longer view of time today. Remind her that you're still our all-powerful king, and you're at work in her life. You have your own timing. (And hers may well be different!) Help her to trust that your timing is perfect when it comes to her life. Amen.

Day 28 A Loud Mess

"If I give all I have to the poor and give my body to hardship, but do not have love, I gain nothing." I Cor. 13:3

Yep. I was a loud mess this week over someone who was a total jerk. I'm sure he had a point, but it was interfering with my work....and he seems to think his problem is mine. Sheesh. What a putz.

Could the whole thing have used a little love? Oh, yeah. (What it really got though, was an M&M McFlurry and a handful of Tootsie Rolls--THANKS!! ;)

Humor can defuse tense situations, but this verse lays out God's plan for relationships, difficult or not. Love is indispensable for helping us "like" people who are frequently unlikable, for keeping us from flying off the handle, for forgiving others, for keeping our relationships healthy and our lives joyful!

"The Love Chapter" tells us that love is patient, kind, doesn't envy, doesn't boast, isn't proud or rude, isn't self-seeking, short-tempered, and doesn't keep a grudge. It doesn't delight in evil but seeks truth, protects, trusts and hopes, and keeps hanging in there.

It's pretty darned hard to find a better description of how to get along with the difficult people we deal with everyday. Through it, God can overcome evil with good through us.

We use the word "love" a lot, God, but love is at the heart of your heart. Teach us how to better love you and the people around us. Amen.

Day 26 Construction Season

…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

It's the end of construction season in Michigan lately....all of the road projects that have been clogging up the highways for months are being cleared out and cleaned up, and after that are roads so smoooth you can rollerskate on them. They are lovely to drive on....not a single pothole or construction cone anywhere!

But what a pain in the butt this summer! Every detour we took was lined up with traffic from everyone else trying to avoid road work. The “road less traveled” just meant there were that many more cars at a standstill in one lane instead of two. All summer, construction disrupted my travel habits.

It's a lot like God. When we give Him our lives, telling Him we submit to His best, He takes us at our word! And the overhaul begins and he upends our lives in a particular area, changing patterns and ways of interacting that we've gotten comfortable with: They weren’t very effective, of course, but they were familiar and they get you where you're oing eventually.

In His kindness, God had a smooother way in mind. A way that would result in our looking a whole lot more like the “real me" that He has planned. So the inconvenience began, the pain was no fun, it felt like we lost more than not…and it sure took longer than anyone would have liked. But what a difference it makes....At the end, it's worth it.

I'm celebrating beautiful, well-constructed highways today! I'll try to remember this moment next summer when those orange-vested crews start in again. We can be sure, though, that God will complete what he starts in us, because he loves us, and one day we will be complete!

Day 25 A Word from Thessoloniki

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. I Thess. 5:16-18

Day 24 It's Enough

In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. John 14:2

You know how psych profs like to mess with student's heads. One prof gave his students a test: each student in his or her mind envisioned a journey along a path. Each student was told to create his own details of the journey.

At the last part of the path was a wall, where they were told to write down what that wall looked like and how we got to the other side of it. Then, they shared some of their own differing details out loud. At the end, the professor explained what each detail about the wall and getting to the other side of it represented in their lives.

When it came to the wall, some classmates saw a large concrete wall with barbed wire or a brick wall that they had to scale and struggle to get over. The professor called on one student and asked him what his wall looked like.

His answer seemed very different from the others in the class. His wall was the wall of a home, and to get to the other side, he simply opened the door and walked in. The professor looked at him for a moment, and said, “Interesting, " because according to the professor, the wall represented the student's view on death, and how they get to the other side represented the amount of fear one has in facing death.

The student who saw the wall as a home was a Christian. The end of this life meant going home to heaven. We don’t need to be afraid of the afterlife or dying or what comes next because we have the promises of Jesus in our lives. We have been given the mercy and grace of a Savior who died for us all so that we can have eternal life with him.

The Bible gives us glimpses of heaven, but not an ultimate picture of what is waiting for us. What we do know about heaven is this: It will be home. And that is enough. There is no reason to be afraid.

Day 23 Extreme Makeover

Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

CS Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that our lives are like a house that God wants to remodel. The Spirit of God wants to move from room to room and bring about a new you… in every part of you.

Give God permission to remodel you. Let the power that created the world and the love that brought salvation to all of humanity can be released even more in you.

Day 22 The Cornfield in my Mind

By faith Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. Hebrews 11:8

 Before you were born, Dad and I would get in the car on Friday or Saturday to go out to eat. Many times, we didn't know where we wanted to go, we would just start driving and try to decide....With both of us hungry and a little grumpy, this usually didn't go well...Half an hour later we'd still be in the car, starving, and still looking for a place to eat. We knew where we were headed (dinner) but not where we were going!

The idea of knowing where we're headed but not where we're going is similar in some ways to our journeys as followers of Jesus.

When we respond to Christ by faith, we begin a lifelong journey. We are called to follow Him. But, life’s circumstances and experiences are always changing and detours along the way are a routine occurrence. So, we face our journey one day at a time, trusting that we know where we’re headed (Christ-likeness, heaven, etc.) even when we can’t clearly see where we’re going.

Faith makes our journey possible and worthwhile. Abraham's story is comforting. He modeled the journey of faith for us: one way or another, God has called us to this journey as well.

God called Abraham to leave his home and everything familiar to go to a land and people he did not know. He knew where he was headed even though he didn’t know where he was going. His life was a journey filled with ups and downs, wise and poor decisions, victories and failures.

In the end, the Bible says that “Abraham believed God, so God declared him to be righteous.”

  In Santa Fe, you might feel like you are wandering. You might not have any idea where you are going next in the journey or how this year's experience will help you. But keep being obedient. Keep following Christ. Take comfort in the fact that God holds both you and this day.

In His hands, you are safe.

Day 21 Envision Peace

It's not well known (probably by just about anyone but me! ;) but today is the International Day of Peace. 

"Peace is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't work for peace once in a while, you work for it all the time. Peace is a habit. Unfortunately, so is violence."
 
Everyday, the news is littered with calls to the next "war of choice" and stories of shootings on neighborhood streets. What's the sense in having one day dedicated to nonviolence and ceasefire?
 
I think that every day should be Peace Day and that having even one day of nonviolence and ceasefire requires more than luck, more than good intentions, and more than exhortations - it requires new ways of seeing, new skills, new tools, new kinds of power.

Peace and justice are an "all time thing" in our homes and neighborhoods, our workplaces and communities, our cities, prisons, and social movements.

Day 19 How not to feel really Comfortable

I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of wine could do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. CS Lewis

Day 18 Seeing Differently

I spied them through the streaming throngs of shoppers at the farmers’ market.

“Are those cloud berries?” I asked the farmer who stood offering samples of his crops.

“You know what cloud berries are? Must be Swedish.” I laughed. I do and I am, I told him.

I was, however, wrong about the berries. They were not cloud berries (not even that they grow in non-arctic soil), but orangey currants instead. Still, the farmer told me, he was impressed with my keen berry eyes. As was I.

Perhaps neither of us should have been that impressed, though. According to a study led by Israel Abramov, a psychology professor from Brooklyn College, men and women see differently. And, as a woman, spotting berries is among the things my female eyes were made to do.


“Females are better at discriminating among colors,” the study said, “while males excel at tracking fast-moving objects and discerning detail from a distance --evolutionary adaptations possibly linked to our hunter-gatherer past.”

All this is to say that the study thinks my ability to spot berries from across a farmers’ market is evolution at work, something that made my prehistoric sisters’ berry-picking role easier.

Now, normally, this sort of talk makes me nervous. Rebellious, even. Normally whenever I’m told what I should be or do because of my gender or heritage or education or location, my immediate instinct is to prove them wrong, to bust out of whatever box I feel tightening around me. (Oh, yeah!)

But my reaction to this study was quite different. The idea that we see the world differently--whether because of gender or because of experience or quality of eye sight or because of opinions or knowledge or whatever - gets me pretty excited. Especially when there are hints that God created us or allowed us to evolve to see things differently. Although, I confess: I’m not really as interested in how well women see berries or men chase prey as I am in how we see issues and how we see God Himself at work in this world.

Especially as we sit knee-deep in election season--when we sift through politically charged Facebook statuses and take digs in casual conversation--It’s wonderful to imagine that it really is true that some of us vote one way, and some another, not because we’re smart or stupid or ill-informed. Maybe, just maybe, we vote differently because God made us to see issues and solutions differently. Not because one is wrong or right or good or bad, but because we are simply different.

Same goes with how we see God in the macro--or doctrine in the micro. It’s wonderful to be able to believe that just as God allowed our physical vision to evolve depending on our gender roles during a time period, so might He have allowed our views to evolve, so might He have gifted us with different vision, different ideas, different opinions.

Things that make this world richer and lives more interesting, if we see them in that light.

God, help us to "see differently" and help the Christian community to be more open do different perspectives. Amen.

Day 17 If the Devil can't make you Bad, He'll make you Busy!

The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still. Exodus14:14

Life without margins is "crisis mode living." Having a day or two in crisis mode is doable...when it becomes a lifestyle it's a problem. It's not sustainable to spend every waking moment of almost every day trying to figure how to keep all your plates spinning and how to juggle all the balls in the air.

In crisis mode you keep running, even on empty; faster and faster, project to project; deadline to deadline, school, jobs, friends, church; and it just gets faster and faster.

People who live this kind of lifestyle eventually crash.Their plates fall, and they have to pick up their lives in pieces.

Here are some wise, preventative words to keep close to your heart.

Slow me down, Lord.
Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, in the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tension of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of singing streams from my memories.
Teach me the art of taking minute vacations--slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a good book.
Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life's enduring values so that I can accomplish all that you have planned for me to do.
Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong because it grew slowly and well.

Day 16 Passion for Justice

Is this not the fasting I have chosen: To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. Isaiah 58:6

TS Eliot said that in our attempts to bring about justice throughout history, we seek to find "systems so perfect that no one will need to be good." This is hard to imagine...especially for you this year. :)

The last century held its fair share of revolutionary attempts to find the perfect, just society--that included massacres, misery, and massive injustices of their own. Sometimes our cries for justice are so politicized by ideology, even the jargon of justice can get shallow.

But God is passionate about justice (yes, love and anger). God calls people into politics, prisons, and poor communities in Nicaragua to loose the chains of injustice and take opportunities tear them out by the roots. All of this takes much wisdom--and not just our own wisdom--but God's.

Sometimes justice is a cup of cold water. More often it's a process.... It's breaking out of our own self-centeredness and listening to the voice of compassion within us. That prophet Bob Dylan said, "What good am I if I turn away when I see how you are dressed?"

Only you are the Just Judge of all, God. Search our hearts so that we can be part of the solution and not the root of the problem of injustice. Amen.

Day 15 And.....We're Back!

So, today I'm thinking about fear--mostly because one of my monthly cable TV interviews for the office is working in Niger, and she's afraid to go on-air given everything that's going on in the world this week. (Little does she know what a piddly small production this is!)

There is a lot of coverage for militant religious acts in the press now especially, but our reality as Christians is that this impression of defiant courage is really a reaction to fear.

If we take a step back from the bluster and threat of people we fear, we can hear what Isaiah 51 says. "Who are you that you fear mere mortals, human beings that are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker (and Redeemer!), who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction? Where is the wrath of the oppressor?"

God says that this bluster and threat is so inconsequential, he can't even find it! (Where is that now...?)

We know that God loves his creation, and that we, who have taken refuge in Jesus, are saved through his death.

I love Psalm 91:1-4. "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge."

A bed filled with the warm downy feathers of God's peace....Ahhh.

Give Sarah courage when life brings her fearful situations. Help her, like Jesus, not to flinch, but to forge ahead with joy in your love. Amen.

Day 11 Two Buckets

A church went to Honduras on a work trip in the last few weeks. Here is one of their impact stories.

Most of our mornings in Los Charcos were spent working on the addition to the church building. We worked alongside some of the local people and with our translators (women from Tegucigalpa).

We REALLY could have used more supplies, especially BUCKETS.

Our leader Tim just said, "We've only got two buckets." And he gently pointed out that the local people were content with our progress.

So we just paced ourselves with that.... No quick fixes, but time to take in our surroundings, our teammates, and our own bodies (rest, water, work).

As I reflect on it now, I realize that "only two buckets" is good for me to remember each day. God has in mind His pacing for my life and sometimes He might only want me to use "two buckets" to accomplish it.

Slow down. Take a breath. Take a nap. Think about things that are happening and your perspective about them for a while today. Love you.

Day 10 Peter was not a Methodist :)

Your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. I Peter 3:3-4

So what is the deal with this verse? Is Peter saying that Christians should look drab and dowdy? Some Bible interpreters say no--and here's why.

Peter is using a teaching method that's typically Hebrew. (Aren't you relieved? I am!) It depends on a shocking impact to get you to think about a principle. Jesus used this technique when he said we should hate our father and mother (Luke 14:26). You know he didn't mean for us to take that literally.... He's just saying that our love for him should be even greater than our love for our parents.

Peter is saying that if we don't have a loving spirit, no amount of jewelry, make up, or nice clothes is going to compensate. Or, in the Sarah Palin version, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." :)

Jesus, continue to grow a loving spirit in Sarah. Thank you that her outward beauty complements the joy and peace she has because of you. Amen.

Day 9 Faith Quote.... Surprise?!

"My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead." Barack Obama

Day 8 A Good Answer to Yesterday's Good Question!

 

Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

In God’s kingdom, being odd is part of simply following Jesus. We are “aliens and strangers in the world.” Jesus was odd too. In Him, God became flesh and lived among us, inviting us to embrace a foreign way of thinking; to exchange our focus from the physical to the spiritual, from the fleeting kingdoms of this world, to His everlasting Kingdom. He invites us to dance instead of walk; to be odd…simply odd.

But, this odd life is not for the sake of appearing weird. Being odd for the sake of Jesus is the highest of callings. It’s living an odd life marked by love, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, humility, and self-sacrifice.

A. W. Tozer said, “A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for one whom he has never seen. He talks familiarly every day to someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of another, empties himself in order that he might be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up. He is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge.”

As it turns out, maybe feeling odd isn’t such a bad thing. In fact, perhaps if the world does not recognize the oddness of Jesus in us, we should start to wonder why.

God, sometimes even our Christian friends don't recognize Christ in others--they think it's personality or sexuality or beauty. Help us to remember that being "different" is a compliment from people who don't know that they see you in us. Thank you for a daughter who is adorned with beauty inside and out. Amen. 

Day 7 Good question!

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
 - C.S. Lewis

Day 5 Liberation

Isaiah 61:1b   He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners… Isaiah 61:1
 

This is a reflection by a pastor who now works in Nashville, Tenn.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my name and telephone number were etched on to a wall inside a cell of the local police station. At some point, I must have helped someone in the Scottish town I was serving, and he or she had marked it on the wall. Perhaps they had been drunk and disorderly, or had been caught stealing lead from the church roof or shoplifting. Whatever the circumstances were, I may never know, but years later, when I returned to Maybole, someone told me that my name was still etched on the prison wall.

I can remember a time when I received several calls from a few shady characters in the town. I helped them as best as I could, but I didn’t realize that the manse telephone was being circulated throughout Maybole’s underworld. It was just a small town of 6000 people, but we did have a few frightening families and unsavory personalities. I guess they latched on to me because of my own alcoholic background.

I love the fact that Christ can be our Deliverer when we are prisoners to sin, addiction, and darkness. He has the capacity and power to set us free from the shackles of problems and the chains of fear that we all experience from time to time. Isaiah’s prophecy reveals a Savior who is very much in control of the world and in whose justice, mercy, and grace we can all rely.

We don’t need a number etched on our self-imposed prison walls to liberate us. All we need is Christ in our hearts and He will see to the freeing of our souls.

Lord Jesus, we all sin. Sometimes those past mistakes depressingly imprison us, shackle our souls, and shatter our dreams. Come to us, Lord, and free us from our fears, release us from our anxieties, and cleanse us of our sins. In Your Holy and Liberating Name, we pray. Amen.

Day 4 The Irish Bible

"The more a man has, the more he wants,
This I don't think is true.
I never met a man with one black eye
Who said he wanted two!"
                   - Leprechaun 1:15

Being content with the blessings God gives us brings peace of mind, but being covetous is a restless evil that at it's root is ingratitude.

Coveting causes us to forget the blessings we have and want what we don't have. Then, if we get what we were coveting, we soon want something else we don't have.We always want "just a little more," don't we? I do. That's why it's restless.... There's always something more to covet.

The thing is, coveting "stuff" takes our thoughts and desires exactly in the opposite direction of the riches God gives us--and the contentment that comes with them.

And it's not that "stuff" is bad--It's good! But God wants you to put him first: he's got the rest covered so you don't need to covet....It's "striving after the wind." Keep your eyes on him and do your best... Go for the real stuff -- God's stuff lasts!

"Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and ALL THAT STUFF be added to you as well." Matt. 6:32 (Mom Version)

Help Sarah to recognize the riches you've given her and keep her eyes on you! Amen.

Day 3 Walking in Light

God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all.... If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son purifies us from sin.1 John 1:5-7

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." I really love the use of light in the Bible. God says that when we walk with Jesus, we walk in the light.

Light helps us see where we're going. Without the light of God, we can't possibly know how to live our lives. Living in darkness is incompatible with living in the light.... If we want to walk with God, we've got to stay away from the darkness and walk in the light.

These verses in I John say that there are two important results of walking in the light. The first result is fellowship – right relationships with our family and friends. Second, when we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin and restores our right relationship with God.

There are no more important priorities in life than those. God says that the way to ensure that our lives are in proper perspective is to walk in the light.

Help Sarah to walk in the light when darkness surrounds her this year. Show her places in her life where there is darkness and help her to give them over to you. Thank you that your light lets us see where we are going--especially when it's just one step at a time. Amen.

Day 2 Deep Roots

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked...that person is like a tree planted by streams of water. Psalm 1:1-3

Tumbleweeds are common in the desert. They're plants that don't get enough rain during the growing season, dry out, and break free of their roots. They roll across the open land, blown by the wind and scattering seeds as they go.

Those who trust God and delight in his law are like trees planted by streams that don't run dry. Their leaves stay green, and they bear fruits of righteousness.

They have deep roots that sustain them in times of drought, and they are not blown here and there, weakened by doubt when life gets tough.

Thank you God for Jesus, the living water, who quenches our deepest thirst and keeps us alive in the barren places where we sometimes live--like the desert! Amen.

Day 1 Can't Not

The beloved of the Lord (That's you.) will dwell in safety because of Him. Deut. 33:12

Help Sarah get settled in quickly and smoothly to her apartment and with her new coworkers. Amen.