by jphilo | Jul 21, 2014 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Last week, my heart grew heavier and heavier
as the media reported more and more bad news.
Downed airliners.
Fighting in the Middle East.
People in this country shouting at refugee children,
holding ugly signs telling them to to home.
I gave God an earful.
I told him I wasn’t sure about living in a world as cruel as this,
a world stripped of loveliness and compassion,
a world devoid of beauty.
And then, God answered,
as He so often does,
on my morning walk.
I looked up,
and there on the edge of the woods,
stood a doe.
Immobile.
I walked closer and closer
to where she stood sentry.
Closer than I’ve ever been to a deer before.
Close enough to see
her heavy udder,
her swollen teats.
She bravely held her ground,
watching over a hidden fawn,
trembling,
but never flinching
as I passed by.
Then, at the end of my walk
as I ascended our driveway,
God spoke again.
A male indigo bunting,
very small,
very young,
sat on the gravel only a few steps away.
He hopped about,
flew into the bushes unsteadily,
then flew with wobbly precision across the driveway
and perched in one tree,
then on the dead branch of another.
I stood,
transfixed by the courageous bird,
patchy with iridescent blue feathers
and intoxicated
with the freedom of flight,
until he took wing again
and flew away.
“My world is filled
with brave mothers,
with courageous children,”
He said.
“My world is filled with beauty.”
by jphilo | Dec 27, 2013 | Daily Life
Bruce Willis might be surprised to learn what this woman wants. If he took a peek at her Christmas list, he’d discover it was pretty short.
Because this woman doesn’t want more stuff.
Not after cleaning out her mother-in-law’s house in 2003 and her own mother’s house in 2008. She’s still trying to find places for some of their old stuff to live and convincing herself to learn how ebay works to get rid of the rest of it.
Really, this woman wants what most mothers want.
For her children to be happy. To find purpose for their lives and joy in completing it. She wants them to be healthy, to have secure jobs, and discover the sweetness and sadness of raising their own families.
This woman wants what most authors want.
To write books that impact readers and help them make sense of their lives. Along with sales enough to pay the expenses so she can write more books to impact readers and help them make sense of their lives.
And this woman wants to encourage others to know Jesus.
Not because she’s got all the answers and feels superior. But because she makes plenty of mistakes and her Savior loves her anyway. She wants everyone to experience that same kind of love and security.
But today, most of all, this woman wants to bake a pie that doesn’t boil over.
Even though her mother says the best pies always run over, this woman would like to take one of her crowd pleasing pies to a family gathering. Without fruit glaze dripping over the edges. Without the pan bottom sticky with fruity goo. But this woman won’t get what she wants until she gets over 1) her tendency to overfill the pie pan with fruit filling, and 2) her paranoia that a pie can’t possibly be cooked through until the middle is bubbling merrily, which means the edges are frantically boiling and spewing over the edge of the pan. This woman wants the impossible.
Bruce Willis has his work cut out for him.
by jphilo | Apr 1, 2013 | Church Newsletter Columns
Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and that He had said these things to her.
John 20:18
I love the resurrection story in John 20. Maybe because we’re both women, I identify with Mary Magdalene’s emotions.Her initial despair when she sees the empty tomb.
Her determination to carry Jesus’ body all by herself in a vain attempt make things better. Her joy when Jesus said her name, and she recognized the resurrected Lord. Her immediate obedience when Jesus commanded her to tell the disciples.
Then again, I’m not very proficient at the immediate obedience thing. If I’d been in Mary’s place, Jesus’ command to proclaim the resurrection of a man who three days ago had been declared dead, dead, dead would have stopped me cold. Because I would have made an excuse out of what Mary surely understood back in her day.
Without proof or the collaboration of other credible witnesses, no one would believe her claim that Jesus was alive. Besides, she was a woman, and before Jesus came along, women didn’t count for much. Especially not to the Jewish leaders who sent Jesus to his death and wanted him to stay dead, dead, dead.
How did Mary find courage to obey? I think the answer is found in verse 17 where Jesus calls her by name. “Mary,” he says, and she responds, “Raboni.” Then, she clings to the One who rose from the dead, the One who turned her despair into hope, the One who restored purpose to her life.
When the One who called her by name commanded her to spread the word, she held onto hope implicit in his resurrection. Clinging to hope, she made no excuses. She stood firm in the truth. She refused to water down the message.
She ran to the disciples and announced, “I have seen the Lord!”
Today, with Easter music still ringing in our ears, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection lifts us up. Jesus bids us cling to the hope found in the empty tomb. He calls each of us by name and commands us to announce the truth to a waiting world.
Jesus is risen!
The tomb is empty!
Death has lost its sting!
Our Savior lives!
In the wake of Easter, with the empty tomb behind us and a world perishing without hope before us, will we follow the example of Mary Magdalene? Will we obey and proclaim what we know to be true?
We have seen the Lord!
He lives!
Photo Credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net
by jphilo | Feb 8, 2013 | Daily Life
This past Wednesday was not a good day.
First, I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee in the morning and because I’d written the time down wrong, got there a half hour late. Being an impatient person, I hate to keep others waiting.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
After working on a blog post for over almost two hours, it refused to come together the way I wanted. Impatient people like me don’t have time to waste spend almost two hours on a single blog post.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The google chat audio feature was malfunctioning on my computer, so I missed an online meeting in the afternoon. Impatient people have no patience with technical glitches.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
A publisher rejected a piece I wrote for a devo Bible being compiled by a friend. Not only that, the publisher wanted extensive citations (including book page numbers) for a half-dozen quotes for other pieces I’d written. Impatient people don’t enjoy skimming long books to find page numbers.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Hiram spent all afternoon trying to file our income tax with Turbo Tax. He’s usually pretty patient, but after several hours of online chats with Turbo Tax experts and two phone calls, he was a little cranky. Impatient people like me think we’re the only ones with a right to be cranky.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The cold Hiram’s been fighting for two weeks came back with a vengeance that night. He ran a temperature again and coughed all night. Which didn’t sit well with a woman who needs plenty of sleep in order to be patient.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was this. I woke up Thursday morning and realized impatient people like me spend all their time looking at gray skies. We are so focused on the gloom, we don’t even see the gap in the clouds and the sun streaming through.
Impatient people like me forget they have
friends to visit,
blogs to write,
a computer that functions flawlessly 99.9% of the time,
writing projects to complete,
income tax refunds to file,
and a husband whose job provides sick leave and excellent health insurance.
Yes, that’s the worst of it.
Dear Father, forgive me for not slowing down to look for the gap in the clouds. Forgive me for focusing on the gloomy clouds and missing the joy of the Son. Please teach me to be patient…as quickly as possible. Amen.
by jphilo | Nov 2, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
But you can’t be serious!
You can’t condone evil!
So why don’t you do something about this?
Why are you silent now?
This outrage! Evil men swallow up the righteous
and you stand around and watch!
Habakkuk 1:13
The boxes in our attic are ordinary enough. A mix of old, dusty cardboard boxes and plastic tubs. Some of them house my journals, years and years worth of innocuous spiral notebooks and speckled composition books filled with my deepest thoughts and prayers. No one but me has ever read them. That’s a relief because they also contain plenty of edgy questions for God, too.
Raw questions about why he allowed our newborn baby to suffer. Hard questions about why good people are punished for doing what is right. Uncensored questions about why God doesn’t stop airplanes from flying into skyscrapers. Not stuff I want other people to see. Except perhaps our kids once I’m gone, so they can see the real me–a woman filled with more doubts than faith when exposed to the grimy, gritty side of life.
A quick read through Habakkuk makes me wonder if the prophet intended for anyone to read what what he wrote after his vision of the invasion of Judah.
- God, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen?
- How many times do I have to yell, “Help! Murder! Police!” before you come to the rescue?
- Why do you force me to look at evil, stare trouble in the face day after day?
- So why don’t you do something about this?
- Why are you silent now?
Would Habakkuk have written down these questions if he’d known his words would be read for several millenniums? Or would he have toned things down a bit?
I don’t know. But this I do know. We can be thankful Habakkuk recorded his questions, undiluted and uncensored. We can be more thankful that God saw fit to make Habakkuk’s raw, pain-filled words part of his holy Word. Because their presence in the canon of Scripture means our God welcomes our questions when life gets grimy and gritty.
In the rest of Habakkuk, God shows that he is big enough to handle our hard questions. Furthermore, he demonstrates that when we ask hard questions, he will give answers. Not always as quickly as we’d like. And not always the answer we want. Instead, he consistently gives the answers we need when we need them. And by his sovereign wisdom and power, he uses those unexpected, untimely, and sometimes unwanted answers to fill our hearts with more faith than doubt and to shape us into the real people he created us to be.
