by jphilo | Nov 4, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
…in everything give thanks
For this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
I Thessalonians 5:18
This morning I was a wee bit discontent during my morning walk because it was 7:00 AM and still dark.
I hate walking in the dark.
A few minutes later the sun rose, and the temperature dipped, as it often does in the chilly, late autumn dawn. My hands were double-gloved, but they went numb in the cold.
I hate it when my fingers go numb.
To get my blood flowing, I walked faster. Pretty soon my hands warmed up and the sun rose higher, bright in the cloudless sky. The brightness made me squint, and my eyes started to water.
I hate squinty, watery eyes.
A little later, my path curved, and I no longer faced the sun. A peculiar scritchy, scratchy sound came from a nearby parking lot,so l turned to see what it was. A shivering young man was scraping the frost off the windshield of his car. For the first time in a long time, I thought of our years in South Dakota when we never had a garage.
I hated scraping the windshield on frosty mornings before work in those days.
Inside me, a voice whispered. You don’t have to scrape windows anymore. You don’t even have to leave home to work any more.
I looked up and blinked. The sky was an intense, chilly October morning blue. The sun blazed bright and turn the thick carpet of frost into a field of glittering diamonds. The air smelled fresh, as satisfying as a drink of cold water on a hot day.
Suddenly, I was grateful for the still, chilly air stinging my cheeks. I was grateful for a sunny day after so many cloudy ones, grateful for this strange, cold month, grateful for a garage, grateful to the God who put me in this place on this day in this weather he had chosen.
“Forgive me, Father,” I whispered. Then I walked home, smiling and squinting at the sun.
by jphilo | Oct 5, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and burst upon that house;
and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.
Matthew 7:25
Lately, my world has been riddled with peskiness. First was a critter invasion that began with the mouse upstaging Pastor Tim’s sermon a couple Sundays ago and ended the following weekend when Hiram removed a mouse nest from an air vent in our car. Who knows how long it had been there, but the little devils had hung curtains and decorated their living room with Costco furniture before we threw them out.
The same weekend, the weeds in my flower gardens required gallons of my blood, sweat and tears to get things back in shape. As if that wasn’t enough, when I talked to a fellow saint in the parking lot after church the next day, I was stung by a bee.
I don’t know about you, but when I became a Christian, I signed up for things like peace, grace, salvation, sanctification and forgiveness. I did not sign up for unrelenting peskiness. But the longer I’m a Christian, the more peskiness I encounter. Sometimes it’s not just minor peskiness. Sometimes it’s major, life-threatening, tragic stuff.
Whenever my whine-o-meter kicks in – over paltry things like weeds in my flower beds, and over tragic things like a deadly accident – I remember a comment a very wise friend made about Matthew 7:25. “The verse doesn’t if a storm comes. It says storms will come. That means Christians can count on storms. And it means Christians can trust their Rock to stand firm when the storms arrive.”
Now isn’t that what Pastor Tim’s been saying every Sunday since he started preaching in Mark? Jesus didn’t promise to eliminate sickness or sadness, struggles or storms. He promised to heal our diseases and grant joy in the midst of sadness. He promised to be a Rock to stand on when we struggle, hope in the midst of storms, peace in the midst of peskiness.
Lately, I’ve been learning that when I became a Christian, I signed up for something bigger than peskiness. I signed up for Immanuel: God with me, God in the bee stings, God in the mouse nests, God in my son’s illness, rebellion and healing, God in Mom’s Alzheimer’s, a great big, faithful God in the midst of my pesky little boat.
And ever so slowly, I’m learning to appreciate what I signed up for, though I could do without a few of my traveling companions. Don’t get me wrong. I want God to stay. But the mice can jump ship, the sooner the better.
by jphilo | Sep 1, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance,
And in Thy book they were all written,
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
Psalm 139:16
For years, I’ve been waiting for God to do something with my life. I frequently reminded Him that I’ve suffered plenty, been patient a good long while, been as faithful as I knew how to be, and that if He has plans for me, He’d better get cracking ‘cause time was a-wasting, and I wasn’t getting any younger. When I managed to keep quiet and let God work, He matured my faith and taught me to rest in His promises, spend time in His Word, enjoy the day at hand, and wait for His perfect timing to unfold.
But I didn’t keep quiet and let God work very often, which explains why He waited fifty years to move His plans for me into high gear.
But suddenly and unexpectedly, about a year ago, that’s exactly what he did. In September, my role as my mother’s primary support person ended. I was able to finish the first draft of my Different Dream manuscript of meditations for parents of really sick kids ahead of schedule.
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, our son called from his monastery after Thanksgiving. Allen asked Hiram and me to help him find mental health treatment for the medical trauma he’d endured as a child. For the next month, God answered prayer after prayer with lightning speed. Our son’s treatment was wildly successful. Despite being on the road with him, I edited Different Dream and sent it to the publisher ahead of time.
Throughout the winter and spring, God continued to work at mock speed. Suddenly and unexpectedly, our son found a good job and the wonderful woman he’d left behind six years earlier. Mom’s house sold a day after being listed. An editor wanted to see more chapters of the mystery novel a friend and I were writing. Our daughter met her steady boyfriend. Hiram became a runner.
This summer, God revved things up even more. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the editor who read the mystery chapters asked to see the complete manuscript. Our son became engaged. The release date for Different Dream approached, and there wasn’t enough time to get everything – the website, the marketing and promotion, the mystery novel, our daughter back to college – done beforehand.
But one day, suddenly and unexpectedly, everything was finished. That morning while I walked, I thanked God for the fifty years of endurance training that had prepared me for the marathon of the past twelve months.
When I returned home after my walk, three cardboard cartons sat on the doorstep. My books had arrived, suddenly and unexpectedly. Almost like God planned it that way.
by jphilo | Aug 1, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
As each one has received a special gift,
employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God…
so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ,
to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
I Peter 4:10 – 11
We’re just back from our annual adventure in the Idaho mountains. For one week each July, members of my husband’s extended family come from Korea, Iowa, South Dakota, Siberia, Georgia, and England to work, play and worship together. The gathering is a marvel of administration, engineering, and cooperation as relatives converge to further their common goal of improving the Family Camp facility so future generations will have a place to connect and pass on their rich heritage of faith.
Every year, family members willingly share their talents – from hanging sheet rock to playing with the babies, from preparing three meals a day for forty people to cleaning the bath house, from mudding walls to taking pictures for posterity, from picking huckleberries to leading morning devotions – to reach that common, long term goal.
Every year, family members look beyond denominational lines and worship styles to gratefully and humbly praise God for the grace of His presence and for calling so many of us into relationship with Him, to His glory through Christ.
This year, as the camp construction projects moved ahead, my mind hopped from Idaho to Iowa. I thought about the adventure our church family is embarking upon this year. As we move from two-dimensional blueprints to a three-dimensional building, we’ll have to cooperate, share our talents, and unite around the common goal of creating a facility able to meet the needs of future generations. To do so, we’ll have to maintain unity for not just one week, but for fifty-two, if we ever want a welcoming place to pass on the rich heritage of faith entrusted to us.
Can we do it? Not on our own, we can’t. The unity we need requires a bucket load of prayer, along with a whole lot humility and gratitude. The only surefire way I know to stay humble and grateful is to focus on the manifold grace God has showered upon us for almost a decade. Humbled by His grace, we can share our talents. Grateful for Christ’s transforming work in our lives, we remain unified. And as witnesses of God at work among us, we forge ahead in the name of Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
by jphilo | Jul 1, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way.
Isaiah 53:6a
The other day a tiny, dark pebble of a toad hopped across the road in front of me. When I halted, it did too, so I slowly eased my camera from its case and snapped a picture of its itty-bitty buttsy-wuttsy, the portion of its anatomy closest me. But I was hankering for a head shot, so I circled around. But before I could press the shutter button, the toad leaped into the air and landed, backside to the lens again. We repeated this little dance until I gave up and settled for a compromise: a side view of the little fellow.
While I tucked my camera away, the toad hopped in energetic circles on our little gravel road, But his efforts got him no closer to the soft, cool grassy ditch. From my vantage point, I knew that if he didn’t get moving, the next car down the road would splat him flat as Wiley Coyote under the steam roller. So I snuck up behind him, scooped him into my palm and bent to gently set him on the grass. But my arm was far from the ground when quivering, he sprang from my hand and in an impressive free fall, landed feet first, and dove for cover.
“Silly thing,” I thought and shook my head. “Don’t you know I saved your life?”
I went on my way, but as the day went on, the encounter disconcerted me. Somewhere, the tiny toad’s fear in my presence mirrored my fear of standing in the presence of God. When God looks me in the face I grow uncomfortable and afraid. I turn away so I can’t see Him. And I fool myself into thinking that means He can’t see me.
Continually, I try to move away from the One so vast I can never leave His sight. Energetically I hop in circles, afraid of the Rescuer who stands far above me. He sees the danger and death bearing down on me and gently carries me out of harm’s way. But I refuse to trust Him. Instead, I leap from His hand, totally unaware that He has rescued me from peril.
“I’m no smarter than that little toad,” I think and shake my head while I whisper a prayer.
God, make me wise enough to turn in Your direction and brave enough to trust You to rescue me.
by jphilo | Jun 1, 2009 | Church Newsletter Columns
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden,
and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28
I woke with a headache, the kind that laughs at Tylenol, and knew it would be a long day. I pushed through my exercise routine and Bible study. But after the first round of my morning walk, I almost packed it in. My head pounded as I trudged up the driveway. Writing deadlines pressed on my shoulders. I was tired just looking at the weeds in the flower bed.
A rustle in the grass by the fence and the flash of a white tail interrupted my worrisome thoughts. A young doe, startled by either my footsteps or my gloomy expression, skittered between two pine trees. There she halted and turned my way, then held still while I took several pictures.
Energized, I decided to walk another lap. When I reached the driveway again, I checked the glade where the deer had been. To my surprise she still lay there, resting on a cool, shady patch of dirt covered with a soft carpet of pine needles. I unzipped the camera case, snapped pictures of my new friend, and set off on the final lap of the morning.
When I returned for the last time, I felt the deer watching me before I saw her, still resting in the same quiet place. Why wasn’t she afraid of me? What calm possessed her and allowed her to rest when I tromped by?
Our gazes locked, and her still, brown eyes filled the air with peace. I chided myself. If Bambi’s mother can rest in the presence of a harried, headachy woman, shouldn’t I be able to rest in the shadow of the Almighty? After all, I’ve known Him a lot longer than she’s known me. We studied one another’s faces for a few seconds more. I was the first to turn away.
My headache was as insistent and urgent as ever, but a calm invaded my heart as I opened it to the One waiting in the cool, shady recesses of my soul. My weariness evaporated and my burdens lifted as there, in His presence, I found rest and strength for the long day ahead.
