GO HOME AND TELL
Monday, November 20, 2023
Blow the Shofar
Blow the shofar
until I am deaf to the world
until the noise of discouragement fades to nothing
until the sound of grief is no more
until only the sweetness of Your words is heard.
Blow the shofar
to awaken my love for my Redeemer again
to blast away the selfish sin caked on my heart
to shake my soul until it aches for Your Truth
to move me in line with Your will and not mine.
Blow the shofar
while there is still time
while we long for the sound
while our hearts bleed for the peace
while we gather in Your name.
Blow the shofar
With the wind 9f Your Spirit
with the sound of Your love
with the strength of Your power
with the desire of Your heart
that each of us will hear when You, Lord,
Blow the shofar.
Friday, July 21, 2023
Choices
One or two or A or Z
Choices staring back at me.
Simple ones that matter not,
Simply choose whate'er they got.
Mumble through from day to day,
Grumble through whate'er they say.
Red or green or pink or blue -
Doesn't matter what you do.
Then comes one before your face,
It brings you short - you stop the race.
There before you - have to choose -
Something dear you just might lose.
This one matters - this one stands -
This one changes all your plans.
Choices brought you to this place,
Now will you choose His loving grace?
Or will you turn to never see
How choices change eternity.
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Just flowers
It was on my mind during work, on the way home, cooking dinner. The most beautiful carpet that God's nature sows. Full soft purple mats of flowers singing the song announcing spring. And intertwined with this beauty,a noxious weed that I don't know the name of but am all too familiar with. For each spring, bursting forth among this gorgeous phlox carpet are thousands of sprigs of the nasty stuff. My daughter thought they were seedlings of phlox. The twirling, clinging fingerlings of the weed wrap around the plox and choke it, mimicking the flower but only for a brief time. For the weed will choke the flower, then wilt quickly in the sun and heat of the summer. Its roots barely touch the earth and it cannot cling to life with even the faintest hint of drought or overwatering or blistering sun or even dog paws running across it. And yet it continues to strive to strangle the phlox, whose roots are deeper, stronger, inter-connected, who faithfully carpets the floor of the garden with its beauty and fragrance; a gift to everyone and everything around it. Why do I tolerate these toxic weeds that are so opposed to the true flowers? Why do I let them have their season to drop their seeds to continue their battle against the phlox? Why do I let "little" sins choke out the truth and beauty of the Holy Spirit? Why do I allow bitterness and unforgiveness to drop their seeds in our family? Let me go get my garden gloves.........
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
In between
At this stage of life I thought I would have "it" all in place, in order, planned out. But... I'm in between 60 and 70, in between /almost empty nest, in between two stages - me still working outside the home and hubby "retired" - in between two communities, two churches, two homes in two states even! It might sound very odd to younger people, but 60s are weird (yes, 1960s were weird, too :D!). You have to plan both for the possibility of dying in the next few days/months and for living another 30+ years, contradictory options in many respects. But there are other "in betweens" thrpughput life that are hard, too - in your 20s it seems everyone else is married and you are "in between relationships"; in your 30s you might be trying to conceive and "in between" wanting to be a parent and successfully giving birth or getting that great news from the adoption agency; you might be "in between" a terminal disease announcement with a parent and that final gasping grief of loss; in between joblessness and a job; in between marriage counseling and reconciliation or separation; in between a bad decision and forgiveness and healing; in between surgery and recovery..... life brings some hard - really hard - in betweens. So how do we deal with these? How do I trust God when my ears ring with silence? How can I rest when my world is spinning in unsettled restlessness? How do I keep focused on love. and service. and peace when I am so totally overwhelmed with the uncertainty of all of these in betweens? Psalm 37 says 3 times what to do - wait on the Lord - and 3 times what NOT to do - do not fret. Many scriptures tell us to wait, trust, be patient, but today I went back to Psalm 37 during this hard "in between" to also read the do NOTS - do not fret! Lord, help me trust. wait, but most of all to not fret. Thank You for Your beautiful Psalm to remind me.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Squawking Ravens
It was one of those perfect sunrises. Gentle waves whispering to the sandy beach, puffy clouds clinging to the blue turning pink horizon. Tiny orange and yellow fingers rising silently above the clouds reaching upward in hopes of the sunburst yet to come. A couple of anchored sailboats rocked to slow rhythms in the distance but not a soul in sight to spoil the beauty of my perfect sunrise and communion with the Creator of this masterpiece. With my eyes and heart fixed on the eastern spectacle, a peace overflowed what seemed to be the whole world. Not living at the coast, an ocean sunrise is a rare joy for me and I breathed in every atom of the whole scene. .....And then.... SQUAWK! SQUAWK! On the pier light above me sat an ugly raven. "Shew!" I cried, waving my arms. Not sure why God created these things to interrupt His beauty. "Shew!!" I cried and waved my arms again, this time dropping my open Bible. By now I had decided that Satan was on the prowl and was in the form of a raven. A big, ugly, bill-to-big-for-his-head raven. Why wouldn't he fly away? I was determined now - the Mama bear in me took over and this creature was going to leave this scene if I had to climb that pole and knock him off. "Shew!" I continued to cry to no avail. Then I noticed it. The sun had risen, even chased away all the puffy, foggy wispy clouds and was continuing its journey. And the point of my joy - watching for the burst of sun onto the blue ocean - had been missed. But it was not the raven who had spoiled the sunrise. It was me. My thoughts, my focus, my attention had been on "my" experience and not the rising of the sun. How often, how very often, God has provided beauty and joy and peace and I have blamed the ravens for missing His blessings. How many times have I lost sight of THE light because I've been so focused on the world's distractions, my own perfectionist expectations of what it "will be"? I focus on the squawks of the world instead of the glow of God's presence and miss His glorious gifts right in front of me.
Proverbs 4:25 "Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you."
PRAYER: Fix my eyes on Your Glory, O Savior, and flood my soul with the Light of Your Presence. Keep my gaze straight, and deafen my heart to the distractions of this world, knowing that even the "ravens" are in Your control and for Your purpose. Remind me to rejoice always in Your creation, Your beauty and Your blessings all around me. Amen.
Sorrow and Joy. Me too.
Ruth and Naomi. What a paradox, what a story. Recently our Pastor preached from Ruth 1 with perspectives and insights that shook me. A father leading his family away from the promised land because things got hard. 2020 was hard. Then so was 2021. In fact, other years have been hard, some much harder for us personally. How easy to turn away from God's promises and look for worldly solutions when times are hard. Been there, done that. Naomi calulated her self-worth based on her role as a wife, mother to her children, instead of the exquisite value of God's creation as part of HIS special plan for her. When her expectations of what "should be", what she was worth in her own eyes, fell apart, she was filled with bitterness. "Naomi" - bitter. How very much of my life I've done the same. Bitter - me too.
Orpah listened to logic and turned back to see if she could find a better solution. This is what the world, relatives, your own heart and mind tell us is the "right" thing to do. Yep, me too. Only Ruth stuck it out and claimed "my God" before she even knew if she would die of hunger and how severe she might be persecuted in a community that she knew would hate her. The heartache of poverty, losing loved ones, moving from home, ring as only distant truths in the depths of sorrow in my soul so I cannot fully understand the hardness of her decision but only know a shadow of it. The joy of knowing that the Lord is in control, has an eternal plan and remains sovereign even in sorrow... I also know only as shadows not having to personally endure such deep sorrow of loss. But still her faith in the midst of severe unknown trials while grieving the loss of a spouse and dire famine yet choosing to remain faithful to rely on, trust in God, those are mountains and valleys that I can see through Ruth's eyes, or in my sisters who have - or right now are - enduring pain of the deepest kind. These circumstances are creating severe sorrow, but also I see their joy in the LORD multiplied through that sorrow. Ruth is mirrored in each of us. And as family, we share these sorrows and these joys. Me too. If we let the Lord water our sorrow with HIS love and words, it will blossom into joy. And we will be part of HIS story - like Ruth - whose hard decisions, love of her family, willingness to trust the Lord - was blessed as one who was an ancestor of the King of Kings Himself! How good the Lord is to take our small lives and use them for HIS eternal, unending glory. Today - right now - let every decision I make be in trust of Your faithfullness like Ruth - let me too.
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
What happens if after "Going Home" you "Leave Home..."
Recently I was brought back to this old blog and was shocked at how different my life is now compared to 7 or 10 or more years ago. Of course, now it's 2022 and everyone's life has changed due to COVID and all its ripple effects. Six years ago I went back to work. After COVID working from home, everyone is talking about, and doing studies on "Return to Work" or "Return to Office" (RTW/RTO). After being sure I was to "Go Home and Tell" many years ago - a beautiful season of life - it became clear in 2015 that I was to "Leave Home and Go Back", "Return to Work". Back to work, back to the non-family mission field, back to having to worry about hair, and clothes and things that I know don't matter for eternity but unfortunately do matter in the workplace. I was very frustrated - again "my" plans had been sidetracked - didn't the Lord call me home? Didn't HE call me to pour my life into my husband, family, community, church, ministering to those around me? Why in the world would HE call me to go back into "Egypt"? Or did HE............ maybe HE is calling me to be obedient to HIS timing, HIS calling, HIS place of service, once again taking me out of my comfort zone and putting me back into a place I did not choose. In the past six plus years, I am back face-to-face with my old demons, my old fears of not being "successful", my old frustrations of inequalities, injustices, incentive tempations to push my way through. Had I not grown any in the Lord and knowledge of who HE was, who I was, how to rely totally on HIM alone? Had I not learned to trust Him and His timing and ways at all during those years when I went home to tell? On top of that, some of those precious children are now grown and have chosen to walk away from the love of Christ. Talk about feeling like a failure. Feeling like years and tears have been wasted and now I have to return back to the old dog-eat-dog-I'll-never-be-good-enough work world and face all of my fears and frustrations. Oh, ouch - "I", "me", "my" keeps ringing in my ears (and evident in those sentences above!). Was I sure that I was being called back into the work world and being obedient or was it just our financial needs (wants) of the "I" "me" "my"s? I'm not sure. At some point, though, I have learned one thing - GOD is bigger than my choices - good, bad and ugly ones. And so I trust that even if the reason I "Left Home" to go back was the wrong reason, HE knew that before I did and if I seek to be a vessel for HIM, HE will use that decision anyway. How do I know this? Well, years in to this "new" journey I see now that HE has brought across my path at work many with broken marriages, estranged children, a father whose son was murdered in mistaken identity as a drug dealer, a 52 year old wife who lost 4 children to miscarriage and then lost her love-of-her-life husband unexpectedly to an anuerysm, a 9/11 NY twin towers survivor still dealing with the guilt of surviving, two single Moms at totally different stages of life, two different Muslim women from other countries, an MK who had lost his zeal for Christ, several managers who have had very negative experiences with "church" and therefore sadly do not understand the true love of Christ and the cross, and some beautiful sweet sisters in Christ who encourage me in my wobbly walk. Someone once said even a small, quick matchlight penetrates the deepest darkness to bring light and hope. And the LIGHT OF THE WORLD has promised to be with us, no matter where we are. That's one sweet promise.
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