What's Your Problem?

It seems this time of year everyone starts focusing on improvement.  As we close out the old year and usher in the new, our hope is replenished with a new drive to be better than we have been before.  We start noticing that we eat too much junk food, watch too much television, spend too little time with our children, focus on the negative too often and so we start developing a plan to resolve these issues.

We buy health food and exercise equipment, turn the television off and play a board game instead, and bask in the day's achievement.

Then next week rolls around and the kids are back in school and we have returned to our regular busy work schedule and a healthy meal is out of reach when McDonald's is around the corner.  The day has exhausted us and the new episode of our favorite show beckons us to cozy up on the couch with some potato chips.  Enter negativity as we nurse feelings of defeat and self-loathing.

We have all been there to some degree, whether it was a failed New Year's Resolution or some other aspiration.  Sometimes it seems best to not resolve to fix anything, rather than end up disappointed.  Or to resolve to accept defeat gracefully and not beat yourself up over it.

So what's your problem?  What are you striving to improve?  Is there any hope that you will not be making the same resolution next year when we welcome 2012?  I have never been one to make New Year's Resolutions.  I do not like the feeling of failure and so I err on the side of caution.  If I make improvements on my own that can be commended at the end of the year, so be it, but I am not committing myself to anything on paper.  I have never felt shame in admitting that either.  I always prided myself in not getting caught up in the sensationalism of the new year.  After all, if you over-indulged your sweet tooth at Christmas, self-control is likely to be just as elusive a week later.  I am not in the business of fooling myself.

So, I left my self-improvement goals to be made later in the year, as I felt inspired.  It seemed to me I would be more likely to succeed if I had a life-changing moment that lead me to turn the television off and put down the chocolate bar.  The turning of a new year is the flip of a calendar- hardly life-changing.   But these cathartic moments have been few and far between, leaving me to accepting the same old Katie with the same old bad habits year after year.

However, this new year pressing in on me has felt different.  I feel like God is calling me to a higher standard for myself.  Christianity is not all about God revealing in drastic ways the things I need to change in my life.  Rather He is asking me to be committed enough to Him to daily examine myself and ask for His guidance in removing and improving the faults that keep me from following Him.  I know the area I most need to improve upon is my prayer life.  And as I say that, I realize I started off this blog entry without saying a prayer first (no wonder it has been such a struggle to write).  I do not spend enough quiet time with God and it is ever apparent to me that life would be so much easier if I did.  So there is my New Year's Resolution- to have a committed prayer life where I daily spend time in prayer focused on God revealing His will for my life.

What is my hope in keeping my resolution?  Psalm 25:3 promises, "No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame."  My hope is in the Lord's faithfulness, not my own.  I know that his mercies are new with every morning, and when I fail Him, He will not fail me.

Whatever your resolution this year, commit it to God.  He is the great resolver of all things.  He is in the business of making all things new.  His faithfulness to you will far outlast your faithfulness to yourself.

"Do Not Be Afraid"-The Message of Christmas

Zechariah was a priest on duty burning incense in the temple when an angel of the Lord appeared before him to tell him his wife would give birth to John the Baptist.  He was "gripped with fear."

The angel Gabriel came to Mary and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored!  The Lord is with you."  Mary was "greatly troubled at his words."

The shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks at night and an angel appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and "they were terrified."

Gripped with fear.  Troubled.  Terrified.  These are not the words we focus on in the Christmas story.  We fashion our Christmas songs and tidings around the words "joy," "peace," "glory," and "good news."  In our Christmas pageants and retelling of the story from so long ago, we tend to breeze over this common theme of fear among the main characters.  As I read Luke Chapters 1 and 2, I found myself troubled by the response of Zechariah, Mary, and the shepherds.  Why were they afraid?

Certainly if a stranger appeared to me out of nowhere, I would be frightened.  It seems they reacted naturally, but at the time, I wrestled with the idea of their fear in the presence of God's angel.   Perhaps it is because we are so often encouraged to seek comfort and peace from God, that I could not reason why an angel of the Lord would evoke fear.  The shepherds were terrified at the glory of the Lord.  I was reading the Christmas story to prepare my heart for the magic of this season and I was left with unrest.  The words "terrified," "troubled," and "afraid" played over and over in my head.

I recalled an old co-worker of mine who once told me that if she were to enter a church the whole place would go up in flames.  Though she said it with a laugh, I know that she felt there was some truth to it.  She felt an unworthiness.  She knew that if she entered a church she would feel the weight of her sins that much more.  They are easier to carry around with us in a world that expects and accepts our faults.  But in the presence of God, in His church, suddenly we feel exposed.  

Zechariah, Mary, and the shepherds were afraid with good reason.  They knew they stood before a pure, holy, and just God who revealed their sin.  Adam and Eve ran and covered themselves with fig leaves after disobeying God.  They hid in the garden because they were afraid.  They knew that God had the right to deal with them justly and they feared what He might do.  Don't we all?  Isn't this what has kept us running our whole life; hiding behind lifestyles and lies and decisions that lead us anywhere but to a God that we have wronged?  We fear what He might do because we know what we deserve.  We have denied you, God.  How can we stand before you without fear?

Now what I am about to tell you was such a revelation to me, I cried last night.  They were tears of release, of joy, of gratefulness.  I hope that I can capture that moment for you, so that you might feel what I felt in reading these words.  Do you know what the angel said every single time, to each he visited?  "Do not be afraid."  He said it to Zechariah, then to Mary, then to the shepherds.  Do not be afraid!  And it occurred to me that this is the message of Christmas.  We do not have to be afraid before our God.  The angel stood before them and said there was nothing to fear any more, because God was making it all right again.  That baby in the manger was wiping away the fears of this world.  We were running from God, so He came to us in the form of a precious, non-threatening BABY.  He was declaring His love for us, crying, "Do not be afraid!  Come, and worship me.  I will make you whole again."

1 John 4:18-19 says, "There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because He first loved us."  God is calling you to be made perfect in His love.  He wants to drive out that fear that you are not worthy, have not earned it, that He will change His mind, that you will lose His favor.  We can love Him, only because He first loved us.  He so loved us that He sent His one and only son to be offered up as a sacrifice so we no longer had to fear the bondage of sin we have found ourself in.  

This Christmas do not be afraid to come before your God, exposed and vulnerable and ladened with sin and doubt, because His message is that you can come before Him fearlessly carrying all of that baggage and lay it at His feet.  "Fear not!" He cries, "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord."  It is the message of perfect love, driving out fear, hand-delivered by a God who loves you.

Communication Breakdown

I love receiving mail.  Phone calls from my husband while he's at work make my day.  I check my email regularly and love keeping in touch on Facebook.  New comments on my blog have become a new source of excitement.  I suppose when you are a stay-at-home mom with two small children, communication with the adult world becomes so valuable.  But it's not just that.  I really enjoy the idea that someone was thinking about me, that someone wanted to share parts of their day with me.  It is a nice feeling to know you are thought about.

Colette's memory verse this week for school is "The Lord delights in the prayers of His people." (Proverbs 15:8)  I was suffering from a bad attitude yesterday and the verse was a friendly reminder to communicate with God.  Often it is my sister that I call up when I am having a rough day (or a good one... or a boring one... or a regular one... you get the point).  We chat about the good and the bad and share in our frustrations.  I always feel better when I hang up the phone.  Communication is good.  Colette's verse reminded me that communicating with God is the best communication I can have all day.  As I once confessed in an earlier blog, I am guilty of shying away from God when I am not in the best of moods, particularly because I like to wallow in self-pity and there is no chance God will allow that.  So yesterday I was wallowing away about being stuck at home due to poor road conditions with two kids who got up way too early and were full of naughty energy and draining me of mine, when I read this verse to Colette.

I paused to consider if God could possibly delight in hearing from me in my current state of crabbiness.  I am not sure I "delight" in speaking with someone who is in a sour mood, but I do like being a source of comfort to others.  It is a special friendship that confides in you during times of trouble.  It is why I appreciate my relationship with my sister so much because I do not have to be ashamed of my emotions, nor she, hers.  And it is this kind of relationship that God is asking of me.  I imagined God just waiting for my status update, thinking, "Katie's in such a foul mood- why doesn't she just come talk to me?"  I bet it hurts Him to know He holds gifts of peace and joy and happiness and I reject His offerings.

I know that if I was going through some life-struggle and I withheld it from my sister, she would wonder why once discovered.  I know it would likely cause her some sorrow that I chose to suffer on my own and did not trust her with my feelings.  And isn't that the case when we choose not to communicate with God?  Not only does He feel sorrow that we are choosing to suffer without the comforts that He has to offer, but that we are often not trusting Him with our true emotions.  Yesterday, despite me being aware of how completely irrational I was, I was furious about the snow.  I am not a fan of cold, shoveling while pregnant, bundling small children, scraping windows, icy roads, and ultimately, being stuck at home.  I had plans for playgroup (a wonderful opportunity to communicate with adults while my children play) and grocery shopping.  Both were sidelined by the snow.  Meanwhile the kids woke up an hour earlier than usual and I was tired.  Telling God that His snow was messing with my plans was not a conversation I wanted to have... with Him, anyway.  I called my sister.  We both grumbled about the inconveniences of snow.  My feelings felt validated.

But I laid in bed for a long time last night considering that verse and feeling shameful for my bad attitude yesterday.  I realized that I was dealing with bigger issues than snow.  I have a really poor communication system with God.  He delights in hearing from me, not because He remains clueless about my day to day until I do, but because it exercises my trust and faith in Him.  It shows that I delight in hearing from Him, too.

James 5:16 tells us that "the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."  I do not believe this means that a prayer can change the will of God, rather that it will change our heart to conform to that will and find the peace and understanding that God offers in it.  So often we allow our struggles to complicate our day, rather than consider how God might use them for our edification.  While many yesterday were delighting in the blanket of snow and it's beauty, I wasted away the day being angry about it.  Today as I look out on the snowy landscape I am reminded of how God blankets us with His love and His purity, making us a new creation on a daily basis for so long as we allow Him to communicate that message to us.

A Lesson From Jeff

I do not know what Jeff's specific diagnosis would be.  I do know that when most of the world would consider him to be disabled, God sees the finely crafted tool He created for His purposes.  Jeff is a member of Christ Lutheran Church of Milford where Jon and I were members before transferring to Heart of the Shepherd.  I am not sure how our friendship began, but it was not long before it was established that if we were attending the same service, we would have the pleasure of sitting with Jeff.  Often we would walk in to the sanctuary to find Jeff had already opened our hymnals to the correct page and laid them out on our seats.

I can not tell you how many times Jeff's heartfelt worship brought tears to my eyes.  Though he can read without difficulty, occasionally a hymn will be too fast for him to keep up, but it does not prevent him from singing.  Jeff would always speak of how God is our shepherd and watches over us.  Often he would remind me of these simple truths at an appropriate moment when I most needed to hear it.  It seemed almost prophetic at times.  As Lutherans we believe in infant baptism and when Colette was born we had her baptized within a month.  I remember feeling some hesitations about whether it was the right time to have her baptized, but the morning of her baptism Jeff said to me, "Jesus said, 'Let the children come to me.'"  It was the perfect reminder that no moment is too soon to place your child in God's hands, giving back what He gave you.  I cried at how easy it was for Jeff to see and accept these very simple truths of God when my mind is so often confounded by what this world and my limited reasoning argues against.

One of the most common phrases Jeff says is, "God still loves us."  The word "still" touches my heart every time he says it.  Still.  Even when I turn my back on Him.  Still.  Even when I doubt Him.  Still.  Even when I sin.  Still.  The word is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "remaining in place or at rest; motionless."  Despite my actions, God's love does not move away from me; it rests on me.  How often I have needed that reminder so frequently delivered by my good friend, Jeff.

Thinking about Jeff always brings to mind a verse I love to contemplate; 2 Corinthians 12:9, "But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."  The apostle Paul had some "thorn in his flesh" which brought him great torment that he had prayed God would remove.  That verse was the response he received to his prayer.  I do not view Jeff as weak.  I see him as someone truly empowered by the Gospel; a man with a strength of faith that I admire.  This world would view him differently.  He is seen as one with limited capabilities.  So often God chooses what this world writes off as weak to proclaim His power.  It was no coincidence that Jesus started off his life in a stable, the son of a mere carpenter and a woman of no noble background.

When I consider some of the great stories of the Bible, it often seems that God is not stepping in until the last minute- it seemed to the Israelites the only options they had were to drown or surrender to captivity to Pharaoh's army... until God parted the Red Sea, Daniel prayed to God and landed himself in the lion's den... before God declared Himself as His protector, Jesus slept on the boat while the disciples grew weak in the knees at the storm that surrounded them... before the waters were calmed, and the disciples huddled in fear for days, worrying that their fate would be the same that Christ suffered... when He finally rose from the dead and showed Himself to be the Messiah for which they waited.  Some may have wondered in those moments where God was.  Some of us may still wonder why He would have let things get so bad before He stepped in.  How often have we wondered at the weaknesses in our own life what God's waiting on before He takes them away?

What storm has raged in your life so much so that it seemed you had to wake this God from slumber before He came to rescue you?  And how many times did you ask, "Why a storm at all, God?"  Because His power is made perfect in our weakness.  If God never allowed the Israelites to be pressed up against the Red Sea, never allowed Daniel to be tossed to the lions, never allowed the storm the day Jesus slept, never allowed His Son to be crucified, who would declare His power and might?  If the Israelites had time to take a different route, they may have patted themselves on the back for their mapping skills.  If Daniel had never been caught praying, he may have rewarded himself for his stealth.  If the storm never came upon the disciples, they may have not even considered their "good fortune."  If Christ had not died, so many of us would not see the ugliness of our sin.  But these things happened so that we could see no other answer, no other way, but God.

Whatever it is you may be suffering, consider that God will soon be revealing His glory and power to you.  It is in our own weakness that we can boast of the power of Christ.  Imagine how the Israelites, Daniel, and the disciples faith soared after they were put through great suffering.  I doubt they would have asked those circumstances to change, for the strength of faith they gained.

A Season of Preparation

Her back was probably aching from the child filling her womb.  Were her ankles swelling from the travel?  The motion of the donkey stumbling along the path must have caused additional strain on a tired bladder.  Perhaps she was too exhausted to be hungry.  The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a rough 70 miles, would take days.

I think about how, as my own belly swells, my trips away from home are limited in the last weeks of pregnancy.  Precautions are taken to assure that I will be able to make it to my hospital in time for my baby's arrival.  I have started arranging my home, adjusting my routine, preparing my children for the change we will all experience in a couple of months.  I have been cutting myself slack in housekeeping and allowing a little extra sleep here and there.  Mary was traveling to Bethlehem.

She was traveling to Bethlehem in her last month of pregnancy at a time when our modern world would have cautioned her to "take it easy."  She was too far from home for the comforts of her mother to coax her through labor.  No midwife was arranged to be waiting for her in Bethlehem.  There was not even a certainty of accommodations when they arrived.  By today's standards, if I were to take off on my due date for a leisurely trip out of state, I would be considered irresponsible.  Mary was faithful.  She didn't have a choice but to take the mandated trip with her betrothed.  There was no advocacy program for pregnant mothers to opt-out of the census.  I wonder if the cloths she wrapped her baby in were packed in expectation of his arrival or if it was what they happened to have available.

What did she do to prepare?

I have been sorting piles of newborn clothes to be washed and folded.  We have been shopping for bunk beds for Colette and Mary's room so that we can make the crib available.  Prenatal appointments are written on the calendar and I have faithfully re-read all of my prenatal care handouts and baby books.  Soon I will be doubling recipes so I can serve half and freeze the remainder for the first hectic month of Baby's life when dinner seems impossible to manage.  Mary will be undergoing potty-training in the next month so that there will be only one set of diapers that will have to be washed every night (hopefully) once Baby arrives.

In this season of Advent, when our hearts are to be set on preparing for our King, I think about what Mary did to prepare for Him.  How did she prepare her parents for this news, a young girl of 15 or 16, pregnant with the Child of God?  What was Joseph doing?  How did he grapple what was happening to the woman that he loved and remain faithful to her?  Did he build a cradle, talk with the experienced new fathers in his neighborhood?  Did Mary's mother coach her on labor signs, prepare her for the difficulties of nursing?  

Every first time expectant mother gets warned at least once by some well-meaning informant, "Your life will never be the same!"  And every first time expectant mother wonders at how she can prepare for something so unknown.  In the days of technology, we place our trust in the doctor's judgements on the sex of the baby, the health of the baby, the ease of delivery through conveniences like epidurals and caesarean surgery if things go awry.  We trust in the multitudes of products we buy and diapers we pile up in advance.  We read books written by experts to set our minds at ease about the pains we will face in labor and how to manage our babies upon arrival.  In whom, in what did Mary place her trust?

"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered.  "May it be to me as you have said."  Luke 1:3

Was it easy for her to trust God through the whole pregnancy?  Even with my modern reassurances that everything is moving along smoothly, I still find myself worrying about the baby's health and my own.  I still focus on fear when the day becomes overwhelming with two children clamoring for my attention even though I am the product of my mother providing for seven of her own.  Maybe because Mary had nothing but God to trust in, it was easy for her to cling to Him.  There are so many distractions in the details we have available today; it is easy to feel less of a need to depend on our Creator, the Creator of this life inside me.

The details of this Christmas season- the decorating, shopping, social events- pull us away from the main task, preparing our hearts for the Savior.  It would serve us well to consider what Mary did in preparation for her son, our Savior.  We know very little of the physical preparations that she did.  We know that when the day arrived, she was far from home without a bed for herself or her baby.  I think Mary held on to that moment when the angel appeared to her, reliving his words, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God."  How often she must have had to revisit those words to assure herself that everything was going to be alright!  I certainly have not had any angelic visitations proclaiming God's will for my child, but have I ignored the opportunity to hear the voice of God whisper His peace into my heart when I do not take time for quiet prayer?  Have you?  Mary prepared her heart by treasuring up all that was happening to her and pondering them in her heart.  She stored these miraculous moments in her memory so that she could hold onto them as certainties when faced with her own uncertainties of raising the Christ Child.  God wants to give you treasures to store up in your heart.  He wants to speak love to your heart through this baby in the manger.  Are you too busy with details to hear the message?

 

 
 

Are You the One Out of Ten?

Funny how it took me awhile to settle on a topic for this week.  My goal was to crank something out before Thanksgiving so I could relax and enjoy the holiday, and my mind was drawing a blank.  It occurred to me that my intent for Thanksgiving was to focus on enjoying my time with my family and delicious food, and I was not leaving a whole lot of room for contemplation of all I have for which to be thankful.  I decided despite it's cliche-ness, we can all use a reminder to be thankful.

On his way to Samaria, Jesus was approached by ten lepers outside of a village (most likely they were not allowed in the village due to the contagious nature of the disease).  They called out to Jesus to heal them and He told them to show themselves to the priests which was the necessary step for a cured leper to take in order to be allowed back into the community.  Luke 17:14 tells us, "And as they went, they were cleansed."  One of the ten lepers, upon seeing that He was healed, came back praising God loudly and fell at Jesus's feet, thanking Him.  "Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?  Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?'" The leper was a Samaritan, a nation considered to be idolaters.  Then Jesus tells the man that it is his faith that has made him well.

So what about these other nine?  The interesting thing about the way this story plays out is that Jesus instructs the men to go show themselves to the priest before they show any signs of healing, and they start walking.  It is clear that they were all exercising faith at this point and it was this faith that brought their healing for it was "as they went" that they were healed.  We know they were all healed because Jesus said, "Were not all ten cleansed?"  The question is why did only one come back to thank Jesus?  Perhaps they worried if they came back to thank him they would not have completed their directions to show themselves to the priest and could risk a relapse of illness.  Maybe they were just caught up in the moment and forgot.  We could speculate that they were still uncertain that they were fully healed and they were waiting on confirmation from the priest to join in thanksgiving.

I think all of these theories could be very likely, but I wonder about another that is rooted only in my own pattern of ungratefulness.  I wonder if these men in some way felt entitled to the healing they received.  Maybe it's just my cultured-American attitude reading into it, but I think about all of those times I have forgotten to thank God for my blessings as a result of my feelings of entitlement.  I feel entitled to my home, my children, my husband, my food, my church, my internet access, my car, my relaxation, my health.  I have worked hard for them- are they not deserved?  And if I were to be in a position where I risked losing one of them, would I not pray to God and flaunt my hard work and faithfulness as a reason for Him to give back what I rightly deserve?

Now those feelings of gratefulness are flooding my emotions.  There are many who, by my standards of hard work and faithfulness, deserve what I have and press on without it- the family relocating to an apartment due to job loss, the woman desiring children staring at a negative test again, a wife finding herself alone after tragedy, the man who knows nothing of a hot meal, the nations that can not worship freely a God who offers them the only comfort they may ever know, the single mother riding the bus to the library so she can look for jobs, the caregiver of an elderly parent with dementia, the child dying of cancer.  We are not entitled to any of it.  Our hard work and faithfulness is not a guarantee for "the good things in life."

What is a guarantee is that our Savior Jesus Christ will carry us through any time of trouble in this life, on to our heavenly home.  He has promised to be our source of strength and comfort when every other thing and person fails us.  That is the guarantee of our faith.  Everything else is a blessing, a little extra bit of grace that we are to be using to bless the hearts and lives of others.  It is what we do with these blessings that shows how grateful we are for them.  So when we gather around the Thanksgiving table this weekend and remind ourselves of what we have to be thankful for, let's not forget to be the reason that someone else is thankful.

Adventures in Christ

Adventurous has never been a word I would use to describe myself.  I have always been more of the cautious type.  In fact, a lot of my good choices in life were made in the interest of safety rather than it being a good "moral" choice.  As a child, I followed rules because adults were intimidating.  I never dabbled in drinking because there was no appeal to me in losing self-control, much less vomiting.  Cheating in school was never considered because the risk of being caught was... well... risky.  Whenever I moved to a new city, I established my route to work or school and stuck with that, shopping only at the stores along the way.  I use the crosswalk at all times and get anxious when my husband leads me otherwise.  I use my blinker on desolate roads.  You will never catch me in the express lane with 13 items in my shopping cart.  Rules are meant to be followed.

Perhaps that is why the Christian lifestyle has always had its appeal to me.  As the exact middle child of seven children, I have always found myself to be a sufferer of "Middle Child Syndrome."  At the top of the list of symptoms- the inability to make decisions.  Rules often eliminate the need to make a decision.  The decision has already been made.   So when it came to a lifestyle of following Christ in the sense of moral decisions, I had very little struggle.

Jesus has always been a safe choice.  He gave me purpose, answered my whys, and left no uncertainty for me about where I was heading after this life.  I felt like I had all bases covered.  Jesus was a first aid kit that I carried in my purse and pulled out when faced with the boo-boos of this life.  And He also helped me avoid many "ow-ies" along the way.  Safe.  Just my style.

But lately, He's been getting really risky.  This word "adventure" keeps coming up in my daily thoughts.  There is this pull toward excitement.  To me, up until very recently, following Christ has always been about leading my life in a moral way that serves others and points them to Him.  There never appeared to be any risk involved.  The problem with my definition is it was still my life and I was not giving up a whole lot.  There was no sacrifice in leaving an old life behind- maybe some of you snicker at my opting for "How Great Thou Art" over Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" as described in my last blog, but that was about as sacrificial as it got.  It was still my life with a future that I had always had mapped out- stay-at-home mom with lots of kids and a little bit of time to write.  A nice, safe future.

I have often envied those Christians with the powerful testament of that life-changing moment where faith took over and the life of drinking and drugs became history.  Recently I attended a witnessing workshop and heard from people with testimonies like this and I cried at what beautiful works of Christ they were.  They were men that lead these brash lifestyles choking up as they shared what they lived for now and what they left behind.  They were jars of clay with ugly beginnings that Christ was molding into beautiful images of Him.

I know when I tell you I have always been a straight-laced fuddy-duddy, Christianity seems like an easy decision.  It may seem to some blindly-made, lacking intellect, done only out of what was "the right thing to do."  I hope that my previous blogs have made you think otherwise.  There was definitely a lot of mental struggle for me, and I did a lot of research to come to the convictions I profess.  Still, the life-changing moment never happened for me.  I can tell you moments of growth, but no one would look at the Katie-of-old and the Katie-of-now and proclaim, "My! How you have changed!"

But lately, I have been feeling it coming on.  The risk, the excitement, the adventure.  My heart keeps pounding at the thought of it.  This blog was a start.  Not that it was a bold change, but it was a commitment to start speaking about Him on a regular basis and offering Him up to those who don't know Him.  I hesitated the first time I went to share it on Facebook.  What if it offends?  What if it begs questions I cannot answer?  Yet, if I wrote only for the edification of those already firm in their belief, what good would it really do?

Then I read the book "How Good is Good Enough?" and I told my husband I wanted to make it available to anyone seeking.  "Offer it on the blog?" I thought.  Risky.  Supply and demand and postage costs would be unpredictable.  But God keeps telling me to do it.  So here I am, joining Him for an adventure to offer to you, whoever wants it, the book "How Good is Good Enough," and trusting that He will provide for the demand.  If you have ever wondered how good you have to be to get into Heaven, if all religions lead to the same place, if there is anyway to know the answer to life's biggest question; you need to ask me for this book.  You can email me at bloggingtobless@hotshepherd.org and I will get you a copy.    

I'm leaving behind a life of pew-warming and predictability.  Following Christ is all about handing over your life so that He can mold it into its original design.  I know I am safe in Christ but I am ready to live through Him.  I don't know what He holds for me in tomorrow, but that is the whole idea of adventure.  Want to join me?

Being Made New

It used to take me an hour to get ready for school every morning.  I used to curl my hair and meticulously apply makeup.  On my drive to school I would elevate my mood by blaring Led Zeppelin.  My highs and lows of the day were measured by whether or not a crush spoke to me.  To close out a stressful day, I would go shopping with my best friend, spending most of my paycheck on something I hoped would make me feel more attractive, wanted, needed by whomever would take notice.  These were the things that defined me.  It was what I loved.

I am lucky if I get to take a shower two days in a row now.  My morning routine consists of finding something that is clean and fits, brushing my hair if I remember and brushing my teeth.  I can't wear makeup anymore due to sensitive skin, but even so, I don't think I would take the time to apply it.  Though I can still appreciate the musical talents of Led Zeppelin, I don't gather the same enjoyment from their music.  Going on a shopping trip now means heading to the grocery store, which I actually love doing, but my fulfillment comes from whittling my receipt down to pennies versus the high I would get from spending $60 on a pair of jeans.  My day consists of making my husband and children feel attractive, wanted, needed, loved.

On my thirtieth birthday my husband asked me if there was anything that I wanted just for me, not for the purposes of serving someone else.  He knows that I tend toward gifts of need for the household.  I never answered him.  I could not come up with something that I really wanted that did not involve providing for someone else.  It scared me.  It sounds silly to me now, but I sat there wondering if I had lost myself somewhere in the midst of motherhood.  What defines me now are the people around me.  And there was a little bit of resentment there.  I think all mothers go through this struggle at some point.  It's what empty nest syndrome is all about.  Our identity becomes imbedded in our children and our old desires to serve ourself transition to serving our children, so much so that it is hard to find enjoyments that we can call our very own.

I am not trying to say that I don't have indulgences just for myself anymore.  I can neither confirm nor deny a stash of dark chocolate that no one else knows about.  The truth is I have more of a difficulty serving myself now than serving others.  As a thought would come to mind of something I could splurge on just for me, it would be defeated by a more sensible option.  I struggled with whether this was a bad thing or a good thing.  Certainly the resentment I was feeling about it was bad, but overall I knew I did not want a token of that past lifestyle where I lived for myself.  My joy is in serving my family, in hearing my husband delight in a dinner I made, in watching Colette grow in discipline, in seeing Mary explore new things, in the child that grows inside of me, in taking my time, talents and treasures and blessing others.  These are the things that define me.  It is what I love.

Shortly after one of my friends became a Christian, she cried to me and said, "I don't know who I am anymore."  At the time I was so puzzled by the statement.  She had always been very chameleon in nature, taking on the likes and interests of whomever she was dating at the time, but as a Christian she had started making decisions apart from pleasing others.  I was seeing so much growth in her character that I could not understand what she thought she was missing.  To me, she was unveiling the person that was always hiding inside.  Now I understand that for so long her sins had identified who she was, that as she stepped away from them, she felt like she was leaving her self behind too.  I could not understand why she was mourning this because I saw it as the necessary growth of a Christian.  We are called to become a new creation in Christ.

There is trepidation in taking on this new life in Christ for a lot of Christians.  Too often we allowed our sin to define us- I was a self-centered, image-oriented, impatient teenager that delighted in worldly things, whether I would have admitted it at the time or not.  It is how we know ourself to be and who others have come to know.  It is why so many of us struggle with leaving them behind.  It took me a long time to admit that I did not receive the same satisfaction from listening to Led Zeppelin that I once did.  It was hard for me to say that praise music had taken that love's place.  I am sure it is laughable for some of you to read this, but I felt very elite in my taste of music and even held those who lacked the same appreciation in disdain.  Now I enjoy music that embraces it's original intent to bring glory to God.  I am moved by songs that sing His praises.  While Led Zeppelin remains arguably one of the most talented bands of all time, they certainly did not seek to bring glory to God.  And I certainly wasn't seeking to bring glory to Him during the time that they spoke to me most.

God wants to make you a new creation.  He wants to place desires in your heart that will lead you down paths you never imagined going.  He wants to replace those beaten paths of sin with trails that lead to treasures in Him.  He wants to expose those temporary joys for their superficial nature and guide you to the eternal peace and joy that you will only find in His gift of Jesus Christ.

Let Him.

In Romans 12, verse 2 Paul pleads, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will."  It is easy to conform to the patterns of this world in cranking up a song that praises promiscuity and vanity, delighting in a tv show that is profane in nature, buying into consumerism, fulfilling gluttoness desires.  As we renew our minds by allowing the desires of God to replace those of our sinful nature, His will, which is good and pleasing and perfect, becomes evident to us.  This is the new creature He makes of us.  What we find joy in, take peace in, seek comfort in defines us.  How much is your sin defining you?
      

A Promise for You

Perhaps it is a combination of just turning thirty and being pregnant, but I have had the quivery-lipped, stingy-eyed feeling for the past 24 hours.  If you are female, you probably know what I mean.  It's that lump that climbs up your throat at the smallest threat to your emotions and despite telling yourself to pull it together, you cannot swallow it down.  Colette kept looking at me like I have a boo-boo; large sympathetic eyes and she would quietly lay her head in my lap.  Re-enter lump and quiver-lip.

Maybe you don't ever have these kinds of weepy days and I am making the assumption that this is just a feminine quality.   But I am sure all of us have had those days where our emotions run amuck and failure seems to be in stride with our every step.  The dirty laundry, unmade beds, couple extra pounds, overdue blog entry, Colette and Mary's confused stares- all mocking me this morning.  Everything I was facing was nothing anyone couldn't trudge through with the right attitude, but I could not even conquer my own attitude this morning.

I have struggled with negativity my whole life.  I admit that I have difficulties around positive attitudes because it does not allow me to indulge my raw emotions about a situation.  Today I realized the actual battle that I was facing was entirely within myself.  Galatians 5:17 states, "For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want."  The reality is I am a child of God.  The reality is I am loved by Him.  The reality is He is creating a good work in me and I am pushing through like never before to submit to that, which is exactly why another force battles against me.

There are so many of us that are not willing to admit that there is someone out there working against our gains in Christ.  I have trouble even now pointing my finger and confidently saying that the devil works against us.  Perhaps it is because we just finished up with Halloween and we see how lightly some take his threat to the goodness in this world.  He has become a gimmick to many.  There was a time where I did not admit to his existence.    

The frustration that we experience as Christians is that we continue to sin in a sinful world and provide the devil with fodder to parade out in front of us.  He is constantly building a case against us that we are not worthy of the love God has for us.  On days like this I am all too tempted to hear him out.  But there are such words of hope to follow in that passage of Galatians.  Verse 18- "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."  Do you know what this means?  It means that despite my faults and my many failures that the devil does not want me to forget, God does not measure me up to the law.  Instead He looks to His Son who died for me and sees the blood that covered those sins and calls me to cling to that!  Christ died while we were still sinners!  God knows my failures.  What is important to Him is how I overcome them.

I told you I could not conquer my attitude this morning.  I did not conquer it, but God did.  He was waiting the whole time for me to come to Him and I didn't do it until I started typing this blog.  Remember how I told you I like to indulge my emotions?  So often I know that God will not indulge the way I am feeling and so I do not go to Him.  What is evident to me now is that I was not indulging my emotions, but the devil.  He was trying to immobilize me, sink me further into feeling like a failure as a wife and mother and Christian so that he could convince me to stop trying.  But the whole while God was holding out promises to me that I was not accepting.  As a child of God we are entitled to the fruits of His Spirit.  He has promised to us the ability to be filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  I am the one who denies myself these treasures because I have allowed the argument that I do not have a right to them.

Galatians 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."  I let myself be burdened by the yoke of slavery by using the law as a measure of how God viewed me.  I became a slave to the law trying to save myself, but Christ already saved me.  I must stand firm in the love that He has for me, so that I do not let the devil gain a foothold in my emotions again.  Not only does Christ love me in spite of my failures, but He has given me the ability to live by His Spirit so that I can be better than I was today.  That promise is for you too!  Live by the fruit of his Spirit and do not be burdened by the yolk of sin.  Christ already took care of that for you.

Wash and Be Cleansed!

I have a friend who used to throw sheets over her mirrors.  She had heard of a religion that believed your soul could be stolen if you looked in a mirror at night.  My husband went to law school with some very intellectual individuals who would not take a test without their lucky article of clothing.  I have many faithful Christian friends that forward me emails promising blessings and riches if I pass it on to seven people in the next seven minutes.

Often we are more apt to believe the extravagant rituals and superstitions than the simple call of our God.  The Bible constantly condemns the people of Israel for putting their faith in an idol they had created with their own hands.  It sound ridiculous to us that someone believed that a golden calf could bring rain or offspring, but we put our faith in hopeless things as well.

We put more faith in our intelligence, career, family, or money- all which could be gone in a moment of tragedy- than we do in God and His ability to provide us with all that we need.  God asks us to seek first His Kingdom and all else will be given to us.  It really is that simple but we would rather trust our own creations than our Creator.

The Biblical story of Naaman is a perfect depiction of how we often make belief more complicated than it really is.  Naaman had a leprosy, a horrible skin disease that was very contagious and often left the victim disfigured.  Naaman was told that he could find healing through the great prophet Elisha.  Elisha instructs Naaman to wash in the Jordan River seven times and he would be cured.

Naaman goes away angry and says, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel?   Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" (2 Kings 5:11-12)  Naaman was expecting some kind of showy affair or at least wash in rivers that were considered cleaner than the Jordan.

Naaman thought the river or the ritual held the healing power, but it would be his belief demonstrated in following the instruction that would cure him.. Elisha could have instructed him to wash in a different river or roll in the mud or do ten jumping jacks and he would have been healed either way.  Naaman doubted God's capabilities of healing him and was putting his belief in the act of the cleansing.

Naaman's servant reasoned with him, "If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?  How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed!'"  Naaman is convinced and washes in the Jordan and is healed.

Like Naaman, God has given us the same simple commandment: Wash and be cleansed!  We act out our belief in God through Holy Baptism, where we are washed clean of our sins through the belief in the sacrifice of Christ.  Through his cleansing we are cured, but we must believe in order to be cleansed.  And just like Naaman, we often doubt the simplicity of the whole thing.  We say, "I thought surely God would ask me to do good works, to sell all of my possessions, to pay for my sins, and make myself acceptable in His sight first.  Doesn't that make more sense?"

How often do we overlook and limit the miracles of God because we count it too simple to believe in?  Our life has been tarnished by our sin.  We have separated ourselves from our Creator by placing our trust in the things we have created.  We have covered ourselves in the filth of greed, lust, and hatred.  We are burdened by our actions and our hearts are grieving.  And our God is making a simple call for us to wash and be cleansed.  Have you overlooked His call because you were looking for something more complicated?  

Are you in the belly of a fish?

The story of Jonah is one many of us have heard since our youth.  Jonah is told to go preach to the Ninevites, a city practicing wickedness, and Jonah catches the next boat available heading to anywhere but Nineveh.  As a child, I had always assumed that Jonah feared for his own life and that was why he ran.  But the truth of the Book of Jonah is quite different.

Jonah thought he could run away from the task God had asked of him.  He then finds himself on a boat in the midst of a terrible and unexpected storm.  The passengers are terrified and pray to their respective Gods.  Jonah is sleeping when one of the men come to him and asks that he pray to his God.  Jonah confesses that he is the reason for the storm and tells the men to throw him overboard.  The men try to row toward shore instead, but when they find this impossible, they pray that God will not hold them accountable for their actions, and throw Jonah overboard.

The next part is the well-known part of the story where Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish.  He survives for three days in the belly of the fish and then is spit up on land.  He then goes to the Ninevites and warns them of the threatening destruction of their evil ways.  They repent of their sins and God has mercy on them.

What follows I found to be very surprising.  Jonah becomes angry and prays to God, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home?  That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.  Now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."  Jonah 4:2-3  Jonah leaves the city and sits in a barren place to sulk and, it appears, to die.  A vine grows up over Jonah and provides him shade and he is "very happy about the vine."  Then a worm chews the vine and it dies and Jonah is left in the blazing sun and a scorching east wind.  Again Jonah is angry with God.

"But God said to Jonah, 'Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?'

'I do,' he said.  'I am angry enough to die.'

But the Lord said, 'You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned with this great city?'"  Jonah 4:9-11

So I discovered that Jonah did not run out of fear, but because he did not want the people of Nineveh to be saved!  I find it so interesting a confession as it is believed that the book of Jonah was written by Jonah himself.  I wonder if Jonah had some personal issues with the Ninevites or if he just saw them to be so rotten that he could not handle them being saved.  I look at myself and think of those I withhold the Gospel from.  There are people whom I have deemed "unsaveable."  I thought my husband was not capable of becoming a believer.  I thought he was too comfortable with his lifestyle to consider a need for God.  I look at a lot of people that way.

My mom told me the other day that she was going to give my business card for the blog to some old acquaintances of mine.  I said, "Oh, they're not religious.  I don't think they would be interested."  I have wondered why I had said that ever since.  Why not give it to them?  Was I worried it would offend someone I don't even talk to?  Or did I deem them incapable or unworthy of salvation?  (Not to claim that this blog has the ability to save the lost.)

So often we limit the list of those we want to receive salvation.  Murderers, molesters, cheaters, or someone who hurt us are people we do not want to run into in Heaven.  Usually we draw the line of acceptable, "salvageable" behavior just a few feet past our own poorest actions.  The mentality seems to be if you have done no worse, than I am okay with you "getting in." Most think they are good enough to be saved.

The story of Jonah shows us that we are all good enough to be saved in the sense that we are all in need of salvation and it is not limited to any one group of people.  Jonah himself was no peach.  He certainly wasn't the loving-caring-for-others-in-need type.  At least not in this story.  He denied God's call.  He got angry with God over something that should have lead him to rejoice.  But God had great mercy on him.  God could have allowed him to drown.  He could have allowed the Ninevites to kill him.  He could have allowed him to die as he asked.  Yet God was so patient with him, waiting for Jonah to come to an understanding and showing Jonah how valuable his one life was and then comparing that to all of the lives in Nineveh.

Are you in the belly of a fish?  Is God calling you to share his news with someone you have deemed unworthy?  Could your current circumstances in life be a result of ignoring that call?

Pray that God would help you to share the Gospel unbiasedly as He calls us to do.  Pray that God would cause your heart to love those you struggle to love.  Pray that you could experience joy for every sinner saved.  The greater the sinner, the greater the grace.  Isn't that what makes our God so great?
  

To Anonymous

For some of you who have not been following the dialogue I have been having with an Anonymous reader, this post may seem outside of the spirit of the blog.  I can not email Anonymous or respond in private and so the best way is in a post.  Please understand that I feel compelled to respond to this reader, because I once sat where s/he did.

To Anonymous-  I will do my best to answer your questions, but I have to start out by saying that I can not, nor can anyone else reason someone to faith.  You will not be able to reason yourself to faith.  What I was trying to explain in my blog about reason becoming my God was that I only looked to my own intelligence to determine the "rightness" of God.  Faith is a giving over of reason to God.  I understand that this isn't easily done, as I have always been of the inquisitive nature.  I still am.  And what you will notice in the Bible is that many of the "greats" questioned God- Job, Solomon, David, Moses, Abraham, Thomas.  I don't think that questioning God is the equivalent of turning our back on Him.  I am sorry that I gave you that impression!  I do think that if we are not going to God with our questions, we place ourselves in a dangerous position of turning from Him.  I was trying to encourage you to go to Him with your questions.

This is how I view my faith.  I have trusted God to have the answers that I myself don't have.  He has been faithful in revealing to me His truth in the doubts I have brought to Him.  Please don't think that I am free of the struggle of doubt, but I have learned that I can not hide from God, but He is merciful when I come to Him with my doubts and sin.  I pray very regularly, "I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!" Mark 9:24

I want you to know that I am not frightened by the questions you pose, and hope this is not what you said you may not "write here again."  I am firm in my faith, so you do not have to worry about shaking it or taking it from me.  And I do not think that you are trying to convince me that I am wrong.  I see you as someone who is honestly seeking answers, just like I once did.  I am thankful that you have chosen to engage with me.  I wonder if it would be more easily done through email, only because sometimes the formatting of the blog poses problems in how I would like to line by line answer your questions.  I certainly am not suggesting this to get you to reveal yourself to me or to "hide" your thoughts from my readers.  I think it is healthy for Christians to know the very real struggle that so many have in coming to faith.  I have family members in this same struggle.  I wish I could hand my peace over to you and have it be that simple.  For you to consider, you can email me at bloggingtobless@hotshepherd.org.

I am not sure I will be able to get through all of your questions today.  The girls are napping right now but there is no guarantee how long that will last.  Regarding the Native Americans and any that grow up in a culture different than ours- I want to first say that accepting belief in Jesus Christ does not mean you are condemning them.  I know that this is what it feels like.  I place my trust in a good and gracious God and can only trust in what He tells me.  The rest I leave up to Him.  Do I think that you must believe in Jesus in order to be saved?  Yes.  I think there is a reason that this makes me feel uneasy when I consider those that don't believe- some my own siblings, relatives, friends.  If I did not feel uneasy about it, I would not be encouraged to tell the gospel to them.  We are continually reminded of the urgency in sharing the Gospel in the Bible.  I believe there is a wrong way and a right way to do this.  We are also told that the Gospel will offend some.  It is not always an easy truth to hear.

I do not support solely the reading of the King James Bible.  I have read that as well as other versions of the Bible.  I am confused when you refer to the "Jesus of the King James Version of the Bible" as though He is different from the other translations of the Bible.  The message from Bible to Bible is Jesus saves.  It is not like the King James was the first copy of the Bible.  It was the first English translation of the Bible, but the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew originally.  We have many original texts that our current English Bibles have been translated from.  I have to touch on the oral history as well.  I want you to consider how important it was to a culture to properly recite an oral tradition before the age of writing.  It is not like our current culture of telling stories where details get lost or distorted.  They valued that knowledge more than we can understand in our age of media.

Regarding the Sabbath, the early Christians starting gathering on the first day of the week to commemorate the day when Christ rose from the dead, which was Sunday.  The Book of Acts describes this transition.  I don't think God cares what day we set aside for Him, as long as we are setting aside a particular time to worship Him.  Romans 14:5-6 touches on this.  Galatians 4:8-10 also discusses the difficulties the early Christians faced in following the law in a legalistic sense versus following it in a faithful sense.  I believe that it is good for me to set aside time in my week to worship God and to draw closer to Him, but I do not believe it is necessary for my salvation.  The Law was always a guideline to lead us to faith.  There was never an opportunity where a man could follow the Laws of God to perfection and hence "win" salvation.  That is where Jesus came in.  He is the answer to the sin, the imperfection we all face in our life.

You said you admit you are "ignorant, flawed, selfish, sinful, boastful."  We all are.  Recognizing that is the first step to rectifying that.  I know that I can not lead my life in a way that will always be pleasing to God.  God can not ignore the sin in my life.  If He were to draw a line and say, "All sinners who have only sinned thus many times under thus many circumstances will be considered righteous, all others condemned," where would he draw that line?  God's salvation is not exclusive.  It is offered to everyone sinner, even the worst kind.  Paul was a murderer of Christians.  David murdered so He could have the wife of another man.  But God does not limit His forgiveness.  It is offered to anyone, even those who once denied Him.

Colette is up so I have time to address one more question and the others I will get to shortly.  You asked, "If I agree that a rich man getting into Heaven is easier than a camel passing through the eye of a needle, what should I do about any pursuits of wealth?"  God does not look down upon the wealthy, in fact, He often blessed the faithful with riches.  The intent of these riches are to bless others.  My husband and I tithe (as well as support other charitable organizations) not because we believe it will earn us anything, but because we believe we have been blessed so that we can bless.  I know that God continues to bless us because we continue to be faithful in blessing others.  There was a period of time when I was out of work and my husband was only working one day a week.  We had to decide if we would continue to tithe during that time.  We decided that our faith had taught us that God would provide for us and we continued to tithe.  Faith is about exercising!  It's not just about what I believe, but how that belief leads me to action.  If I say I have faith and have no works, my faith is useless.  I have found that every time I put my faith into action, God proves Himself to me.  When we decided to tithe, we were scared about our decision, but we went to God with that fear and told Him that we were trusting in Him.  This is what He wants from you.  He wants you to come to Him with your doubts and with your sin and step out in faith.

My friend, you are in my prayers.  I know what a powerful thing that is.

Response to Comment

This post is in response to yesterday's comment on the blog post "He Didn't Do It For Nothing."

When I left high school and went off to college I had not been attending church for awhile.  I still claimed the Christian faith and did not see church as a bad thing, but whether confessed or not, I saw it as an unnecessary thing.  I was not reading the Bible either.  I was doing exactly what most of my peers were doing.  I was trying to find success, trying to find happiness, and trying to do good for myself.

During this time, I started struggling with my faith, without even realizing it was a struggle.  I thought I understood my God.  He was loving.  I was always able to accept that.  So then I started reasoning- If God is a loving God, how could He condemn anyone to Hell?  Well, certainly He must not was my resolution.  And if there was no Hell, no need for a Devil then either.  I was on a slippery slope to determining that there must not be a problem of sin, but never seemed to go there.  Maybe it's because that always seemed to be prevalent and obvious in my own life- my selfish greeds and lusts and laziness.  Yet, I hung on to the belief in the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  I don't know what I thought He was saving me from at that point because there was no Hell in my mind.  I suppose I thought He was saving me from myself, showing me a better way to live life by serving others.  But I wasn't even doing that.  I was just looking to serve myself- be comfortable with myself, my beliefs, my happiness.

Slowly, my reason became my God.  Whatever I could not reason with my finite mind, was tossed out as irrelevant or unnecessary to be understood.  No Hell, no devil, no false gods, no wrong beliefs.  I started developing a theology based solely on my reason.  When I did read the Bible on rare occasions, I came across other "issues" that didn't meld well with my reason.  Noah's Ark seemed laughable to me.  All of those animals were not fitting on one boat.  Clearly this did not happen.  And then there was the problem of the story of Creation versus Evolution.  Creation could not have taken place in 6 days when science tells us it was millions of years of evolution.  And so the Bible became this odd source of wisdom for me where I would pick and choose what made sense and what didn't.  If something made sense, I accepted it as truth.  If it didn't make sense, then clearly it was untrue.

The Bible told me God was a loving God.  I believed that.  The Bible said Jesus healed the sick, the lame, the blind, and raised Lazarus from the dead.  I believed that too.  And as I said, I continued to believe in Jesus as a savior of some sort.  At one point, I started reasoning that maybe death was not the end of life here on Earth.  I wanted to hold on to this belief that Jesus was going to get me into Heaven, but in doing so, I knew that it caused some problems of exclusion for all of those people who didn't believe.  I had to reason a way for them to get into Heaven so I decided that when we died, if we hadn't found our way to Jesus yet, we would be reincarnated and given another opportunity.  This fit well for my belief that there was no Hell and no God willing to condemn anyone.  So I guess, though my thought process never specifically lead me there, I would have to believe that Adolf Hitler was wandering around in someone else's body looking for Jesus.

My theology started to fall apart on me when I had trouble reasoning something.  I would look to the Bible for wisdom, but I had rejected half of the philosophies it held.  I realized this made it an unreliable source.  My theology had been built on the idea of a loving God.  This "fact" that I wanted to accept was in the Bible.  My foundation was crumbling.  Was God a loving god and did He even exist?  I didn't feel like I could go to the Bible anymore for answers, so I went to God.  I prayed for God to reveal Himself to me.  I prayed that He would help me with my belief in Him and my unbelief in Him.

For the first time ever, I read the Bible straight through.  It was amazing.  I think the turning point for me was when I read the story of Noah's ark.  What I had skimmed over every other time I had read it was the measurements that God instructs Noah with for building.  Every other time this had seemed unnecessary and boring, but now I realized those measurements were there for me and my doubting mind.  Studies have been done to prove that it was very possible for all of the animals to fit on the boat.  What this spoke to me was that I had been ignoring the signs that God was giving me to come to a solid belief in Him.  I wasn't going to God for explanation on my doubts; I was depending on my own intelligence which has been proven to falter.

Have you read the Bible cover to cover?  If not, take that journey.

So often we want to reason our way to faith in God, but that is not faith at all.  Faith is trust in the unknown.  What I encourage those lacking in faith to do, is to stop reasoning and step out in faith with a prayer to a God- a God that you are not even certain is there and ask Him to reveal Himself.  Be honest in your unbelief.  Then ask Him to help you with it.

You asked, "Can you believe in your God without having to believe anything else is 'false?'  Is that possible?"  My answer is no.  Because the God that I have come to know through my faith says that there is one way to Him.  I accept the whole Bible as truth.  I can't cover every reason why in this one blog entry, but there are many reasons.  This blog is the story of my faith.

Your example about the book and the many interpretations that can be derived from the same material being read, leaves something out.  I think that those interpretations can be wrong.  Let's not forget that there was an author with an intent in mind when the book was written.  As an author, if someone drew a conclusion from one of my writings that I did not intend, it does not make that person's interpretation true.  I understand that good and captivating creative writings leave open opportunities for the reader's interpretation.  I do not believe the Bible was written with that intent.  I believe that it was God-breathed, His very word, handed down to man.  I believe that He knows that in it the words of life are contained.  I believe that He gave it to us to lead us to Him.

So what of those that don't believe?  Yes, I do believe that they need Jesus to be saved.  It makes my heart ache.  You asked, "Once we've identified who is wrong, what do we do with them?  My guess is, we start by telling them they are wrong."  It is not a popular belief, but yes, it is mine.  But we tell them in a loving manner and out of love.  It is offensive to hear we are wrong, but don't we need to hear it when we are?  In the world of law, we have a duty to protect each other from harm.  This is why we have lawsuits of negligence because someone did not properly inform another of possible harm.  Are you willing to accept any religion as "true" for that person- even ones that are cultish and regarded as crazy by the general public?  If you have to draw the line somewhere, where is that line?  Are you willing to accept that a belief that there is no God will lead that person to the same place of a person that believes in a God?  If you believe that there is a God at all, no matter how undefinable, wouldn't it be right to help the atheist at least come to belief in that God?  If there is a God, what should He do with those that don't believe in Him?  Force them to believe?  Give them no opportunity for doubt by revealing Himself?

If there is a God, what would you expect of Him?  Some guidance on who He is?  Would you expect love from Him?  Or is your creation the only thing you gained from Him?  If He exists, what would you have Him do with the people in this world that turn their back on Him?  What would you have Him do with those that are evil?  What would you have Him do with the ones that just don't care about anything but themselves or the ones that aren't trying to be a better person but just trying to enjoy life?

This is what I believe- I believe that God created us out of love and He desired us to love Him.  In order for it to be real love, a decision of our own, He had to give us the option to not love Him.  I believe He is deeply saddened when we don't love Him because He knows the gifts He has to offer us if we would love Him.  I believe that He demonstrated this opportunity of choice to love by placing the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.  I believe that Adam and Eve chose not to follow God by eating from this tree.  I believe that God still loved them and all of those who fall away from Him.  I believe that I fall away from Him everyday.  I believe that I make decisions that He does not desire for me and that lead to sin and separation from Him.  I believe that I am separated from my God because He is a holy and just God and He can not look at my sin without addressing it.  I believe that the wages of sin is death which is an eternal separation from God.  Yet, I believe that He desires to have me return to a relationship with Him like He had with Adam and Eve in the garden where He walked with them.  I believe He wants me to discover His great love for me and to help others discover it too because it is a sad thing to miss out on it.  I believe that the answer to my sin was in the gift of Jesus Christ who died on the cross as payment for my sin and yours and that if we do not accept His payment for our sins, then we have to pay for it ourself.

Why else would I write this blog?  If I believe that there are other ways to Heaven, who am I writing for?  Why would I care for the Jew, for my brother, for the Christian falling away from faith, for the atheist, for the undecided, for the Muslim?  I write because I care, because I love, because I have this awesome peace in my heart that I want you to have too.  I write because I can not deny what my faith has called me to do, to lead the lost to their Savior.          

 

He Didn't Do It For Nothing

He did not have to.  There were other options.  He had plenty of time to change his mind.  He knew exactly what I would do; how I would not deserve it.  He knew you would never deserve it either, that none of us ever would, but He did it anyway.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

This is the beauty of my God.  This is what sets Him apart from all of the false gods of other religions.  He did not ask me to be worthy- He knew I never could be.  He does not require me to work my way to Heaven because I would never get there.  The only perfection He needs from me is through the reflection of His Son; I just have to accept the gift.

God knew there was no way I would ever deserve the sacrifice He made, but He died for me anyway.  Me!  And what did I do but give Him one more reason to suffer?  Christ loved us despite everything He knew we would do that would cause Him suffering, and He gladly took up that cross for us.

Why would Christ have loved us?  Why would He have offered Himself up for those that had rejected Him?  Were we anyone to be loved?  Did we seek to glorify Him in our actions?  Not in the least!  But Christ's desire is for us to know Him and have an eternal relationship with Him.  He made Himself and His love known to us in His selfless act of dying on the cross to suffer and die for the sins we had committed.  God made the first move and not because we were desirable, but because we needed Him.  It is because Christ first loved us that we love Him.

We were lost without Him, and we were lost because we rejected Him.  We separate ourselves from God when we sin, because we are choosing something other than His Will.  Like Adam and Eve, we are a creation trying to survive without our Creator, and it's not working.  Why do so many still not recognize what Christ has done for us?  Even some Christians will say that Christ is not the only way to Heaven, as true Christian doctrine teaches.

Well I'm not willing to accept that.  You can not tell me that my Jesus died for nothing.  When we are willing to accept there are other ways to Heaven, we are in essence looking Christ in the face- the face that was spit on, beaten and bloodied- and saying, "Thanks, but no thanks.  I'll do it my way."

As a young Lutheran there was a part of our liturgy that always confused me.  During our confession we say, "Oh most merciful God, who has given Thine only-begotten Son to die for us, have mercy upon us and for His sake grant us remission of all our sins."  I never understood why for "His (Christ's) sake" my sins should be forgiven.  I knew that it was for my sake and for my sins that Christ died.  I thought we should say, "For my sake, forgive me my sins," because I knew that without Him and His suffering and death, I would perish.

It was many years before the beauty of those words became clear.  In an age of relativism when everyone picks the religion that "works" for them, where everyone just strives to be a "better" person and that's good enough, I realized why it was for Christ's sake that we plead for forgiveness.  Christ died that we might live.  He didn't do it for some; He did it for all.  He didn't do it as one means for us to become right with God; He did it because it was the only way.  Christ died for us because His love for us would let Him do no less.

Don't let what Jesus did be for nothing!  This is what I am pleading to God in confession.  God has given me the power of leverage, because if I call on what Christ did for me on the cross, God will surely not reject me.  Christ did not do it for nothing.  He suffered and died for me, that I might be forgiven.  For the sake of what He has done, for the sake of His sufferings, for the sake of His death, Lord, do not let it be for nothing, but forgive me my sins!

When Christ died on the cross for the sin of the world, He knew He was dying for a world that had rejected Him and would continue to reject Him 2,000 years later.  He died knowing He was dying for a world of sinners, but He did it anyway.  He did it knowing that some would still think that just trying to be good would be good enough.  When we think that being a "good" person is good enough, we make what Christ did worthless.  But it was not worthless.  In fact, it is the only thing that gives us worth.  The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Most of us are willing to admit that we aren't perfect, so what level of imperfection is still "good enough?"  We can't make it there on our own, but Christ's death for our sins is the only way we can become pure again in the eyes of God.

Not in this life will I ever fully understand why Christ did what He did for me, a poor miserable sinner, but I know that He didn't do it for nothing and for His sake, I'm taking Him up on His offer and accepting His gift to me.

Thank You for my Blessings!

As I considered starting this blog, I wanted to choose a name that gave a clear image of my intent.  I want to be a blessing in the hearts and lives of others and felt that my desire to write allowed for this opportunity, so "Blogging to Bless" was an obvious selection to me.  What was not so obvious, was how blessed I would be by this blog in return.

Let me first say thank you to those who have offered their loving encouragement.  I don't write for self-gratification, though it is one of the most satisfying activities for me.  I truly want my writing to be an encouragement to others to grow in their faith in Christ and to be a testament to those who don't yet know Him as their Savior.  So to those of you who have offered their thoughts and comments, thank you for reminding me why I am doing this.

This blog has been a blessing to me because it is requiring of me some serious self-examination of why I believe what I believe, how I got here, and how far I have yet to go.  It has helped me hold myself more accountable for my day to day actions and witness.  But the biggest blessing came yesterday from my friend Lisa.  I always share a link to my blog on Facebook after I make a new post.  Yesterday I shared the link to my post "I Am Your Servant."  Lisa posted on my Facebook page the following:  "I could go on forever, but I will just say how crazy and awesome it is that I googled "servant's heart" this morning, hoping for guidance and seriously thinking of you and one other person at church who set such an example for me and others.  This is something I am working on, and you hit on so much that I thought and prayed about this morning.  Awesome."

It is awesome!  God works in such wonderful intricate and intimate ways in our lives.  I didn't know why I was inspired to post that blog yesterday, but God knew it would be an answer to Lisa's prayers.  When we start handing our lives over to Him (and believe me, I am still working on that), we start seeing Him revealed to us on a regular basis.  I just can not stop marveling at His good work yesterday.  To some it may seem coincidental, to others a small work, but I just see so much glory in it.  First, that He is faithful to us when we pray.  Second, that His word does not return void.  Third, that serving Him just leads us closer to Him.

I have had my moments of shaken faith and doubt, but I hold fast to my God because He continues to do good work in me.  I feel so blessed that God has revealed Himself to me and His intimate design for my life so many times- in my cousin Matthew, my husband Jonathan, the postcard, my children, and now this.  He knows that we live in a troubled world and that we need a restoration of faith regularly.  We get this through serving Him.  There is no time that I feel closer to Him and know His truths more certainly.

If you are struggling to know God, to feel Him in your life; if you feel like you have sought and not found; if you wonder why He has not revealed Himself to you, serve Him.  Taste and see that the Lord is good!  Try out His love, not by basking in it, but by using what he freely gives to love on others and you will begin to see how great is my God.

I think too often we take credit for the good we do and forget God's hand in it.  When we do that, we miss His revelations in our life.  We hit the disconnect button and distance ourself from Him.  What happened yesterday wasn't because of me.  It was because of God.  He heard Lisa faithfully looking to Him for guidance and He didn't let the prayer go unanswered.  I thank God that He blessed me with the opportunity to be the tool to answer someone's prayer.  Do you know you have that opportunity too?  Just look around you.  Someone is praying for a sign of love right now.  Do you know who it might be?  Someone is in desperate need of some encouragement.  Are you too hurried to offer a kind word? Someone is in physical need.  Are you passing them by?  Take the time to stop and be the answer to a prayer today.  I tell you it is far greater than having your own prayer answered.

My heart is blessed.

I Am Your Servant

"Because I am not your servant, that's why!" I angrily told Colette one day after she claimed "convenient dependence," as I like to call it, when she wanted help with something she was quite capable of doing on her own.  She has this handy knack of falling to the floor in helpless despair at the request of the simplest task like putting on her shoes.  Suddenly my totally independent when-she-wants-to-be 3 year old, needs Mommy's help at the most inopportune time.  But my response that day struck me in a way that has made me never repeat it again.
 
Am I not her servant?  And my husband's?  And yours too?  And why should I resent so much this blessing of position that God has given me.  Not every woman has the opportunity to serve a husband or children.
 
Please, don't misunderstand me.  I am an advocate for raising children who are healthfully independent.  I take opportunity in reinforcing to Colette during her moments of Mommy-inherited stubbornness that I only ask because she is capable of doing or learning.  There have been days of half-hour long silent battles (on my part- she compensates for me in the noise department) where Mommy refuses to put her socks on for her.  But to retaliate by claiming not to be her servant is simply a lie.  A mother is in service to her children and to deny that does the child a disservice.

There is a certain mundaneness to motherhood that wears on the soul- the spilled cup of milk on the freshly mopped floor, the next meal already being planned for as you are cleaning up the last one, the battle that comes with every request to pick up toys, the hourly need for a reminder that there is a better way to ask for help and a gentler way to treat your sister.  Too often I am disappointed by the lack of glamour in what I do.

It is not that I am looking for a constant thank you and heartfelt appreciation.  What I lack is actually self-recognition for the good that I do.  As a Christian, I have always struggled with serving God in the small things.  I tend to deem those in blatant need (poor, starving, ailing) as the ones I am to serve, forgetting that God places in front of me everyday opportunity to serve Him in a way that may go unnoticed by the rest of the world.  If I fail Him in these opportunities, I will also miss the opportunity to serve in a grander way.  "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much..." Luke 16:10

God entrusts me everyday with my children and my husband and those I encounter.  If I take lightly my service to them, how then can I expect to serve the hungry, the poor and the ailing?  If I have failed to replicate the love of Christ to my children and my husband, my love for others will fail.  1 Timothy 5:8 says that "if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."

Now, I do believe we can become dangerously over-committed to our households.  If I shirk every opportunity to serve someone in love at the justification that my family needs me first, then I fail to show them an active love in Christ.  I also risk becoming lazy in my service to Christ and his Kingdom, when my clean kitchen floor becomes more important than my neighbor who needs some loving comforts in a time of need.

It is a struggle to feel like I am doing something overtly "christian" when I am wiping someone's bum (forgive me) for the tenth time in a day.  But if I were to deny my service to my children, I could not stand a faithful witness to them of God's love for them.  We all face the mundane in our world and it is easy to get caught up in the complacency of what needs to be done.  It is even easier to forget that in all we do, we are to do it in service to the Lord.

One day while checking out at Kroger, the cashier launched into a story about how she was in need of a winter coat and stumbled upon the perfect one at a Salvation Army.  I grew uncomfortable at the line behind me as she told me the coat was made for her- the perfect color and fit!  "Isn't the Lord good?" she proclaimed.  I nodded.  She went on to tell me how He supplies our every need when we are faithful to Him.  And then she told me about her church.  I had never seen her before.  I have never seen her again.  This was years ago.  But I know her name was Jacqueline and I will always remember her as one who remembered to serve her Lord even as a cashier at Kroger.

As we go about our day, we should remember to accept our position as servants, no matter what title this world has given us.  We all have an opportunity to lovingly serve others in the manner that Jesus served us.  It requires some humbling and some sacrifice, but we gain much from these small opportunities.

Confessions of a Hypocritical Christian

On my last blog entry I received a comment from an anonymous reader who saw my post as evidence of my being "true to my faith."  In the open discussion that we had it was stated that I was not hypocritical because I willingly admitted that I had faults.  The comment has lead to much round the clock thought for me.  So much in one comment has left me with enough material for a series of blogging, which is why I encourage you to share your thoughts as this reader did.

So what have I been thinking?  Truthfully, it has been how much of a hypocrite I am and how much we all are.  It seems parenting has caused me to walk the path of hypocrisy more frequently.  I suppose it is because I see so much potential in my children to be better than I am.  I try to encourage them to make better decisions than I did and do.  If they do what I tell them to do, and not watch what I do, they will be fine.  Even now I see the failure looming ahead in that philosophy.

Colette, my 3 1/2 year old, seems to be the world's slowest child, born of an admittedly impatient mother, who had prayed for years that God grant her the gift of patience.  His answer to my prayer?  Colette, an opportunity to exercise patience on a very regular basis.  When Colette steps in a doorway she must observe from the doorway the entire room before taking another step.  She is unaware that the door is being held by my foot as I juggle grocery bags and a 20 pound child in my other arm, my purse sliding down my arm and catching on the doorknob.  I shout, "Move!  Move!"  Sometimes I have to nudge her with the knee of my free leg.  She is always baffled by this and proclaims, "I am!"  It's no wonder at lunch she taps the table impatiently and whines, "I don't have a drink yet!"  Half of her lunch is gone and I have not even prepared mine as I say, "Mommy's working on it!  You need to be patient!"  It's ugly, I know.

Colette has not learned patience from me.  I have failed her in becoming better than myself in that area and there are so many others.  I want her to be patient.  We talk about the virtues of being patient, but they are the words of a hypocrite.  On the days that I am more conscious, I make apologies to her for being impatient, or forewarn her when Mommy is getting impatient with some of her antics.  But most days I think I find my demands reasonable in my mind.

A hypocrite is a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs and feelings.  I am not saving myself the hypocrite label by stating or embracing my faults.  If I know those faults to be bad and I believe I should be living otherwise, yet continue to succumb to that fault, I am a hypocrite.  I am a hypocrite.  Aren't we all?

I think the heart of the matter of hypocrisy is when does it take from the truth?  For instance, if someone warns you to never start smoking as it is an awful habit; dangerous to your health, expensive and addictive, as they light up their Marlboro, does it at all negate what was just stated?  A truth was spoken that can't be denied.  It is dangerous to your health, expensive in almost every scenario, and extremely addictive.  Perhaps the effect of that truth has been diminished to a degree, but the truth about smoking still stands.

So it is with the truths of Christianity when we warn against the dangers of greed as we hold back on helping those in need and shake our fist in the face of hate and forget to look in the mirror at our inability to love our neighbor as ourself.  We know these things to be true, but if we preach it and do not live it, the weight of the truth is lost.  The truth itself remains, but our effect is diminished.  We can not preach the truth of Christ and lead unbelievers to Him, by living hate.  But the truth of Christ and everyone's need for Him still stands, even in our hypocrisy.  

I have been thinking a lot about Christianity and how it is, in my experience, the most oft-labeled religion of hypocrisy.  Why is that?  There is no single man who ever followed any religion to perfection (aside from Jesus Christ and that's another whole series of blog entries).  So why do Christians get written off as hypocrites so often?  The answer I searched for is what delayed this blog entry because it took me a long time to reason it out.  I hope that my thoughts on this will generate additional thoughts on your part as I do not claim to know the answer, but this is what I figured.

I thought about Paul a lot.  Was he not the first self-proclaimed Christian hypocrite?  "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."  Romans 7:15  So from the start, have we Christians been doomed to hypocrisy?  Paul was stating what we all struggle with Christian or not.  Just ask anyone who has ever dieted.  They do not really want to eat that piece of cheesecake, so why do they?  It is a battle of temptation and we sinners face it everyday.

I think that Christians are labeled hypocrites because we firmly proclaim our inheritance in Heaven in the midst of our very visible sin.  To the non-believing world, a world that strives for equality and justice, the hypocrisy seems so evident.  We don't deserve Heaven!  We are adulterers, murderers, cheaters, and liars that want to lead the lost to our God.  To the non-believer we are taking another puff of our sin and blowing out smoke as we proclaim the way to Heaven.  They have already stopped listening before we get to Jesus.  Our world has taught us that we get what we deserve, so when we proclaim Heaven, it is apparent that something doesn't mesh.

It is tough being a Christian.  I don't want to deny my sin, but I don't want to embrace it.  I want to fight the good fight for the battle against the temptations of this world that await me every morning.  But it is not just an internal battle, but a battle against what the rest of the world views me as.  In order to point them to Christ, I have to be clear in accepting my ever-present need for Him.  It is easy for me to tell you that I am a sinner, because it is the only way Christ makes sense.  If I wasn't a sinner, I wouldn't need Him.  We are all hypocrites in need of saving everyday.

The Offerings of a Three Year Old

This is a post I made on Facebook a couple of months ago, so some of you have already seen it, but I think it is a valuable lesson and reminder to us all of how lucky we are.

Through her Sunday School Colette has been collecting money for the children in Haiti. For each new day we say a prayer as we place a quarter in the box and add a nickel every time we eat something. Although we have talked about the children several times, it was not until today that it really made an impact.

We received an informational packet in the mail with pictures of a particular suffering family. Colette stared at the pictures with such a sober look. "Where are their clothes?" she asked. I explained that they don't have much to wear and sometimes they don't wear anything at all. "Don't they get cold?" she asked. I tell her yes and she stares at me for a long time, processing. Then she nods her head and looks at the picture more. She flips from one page to another.

We look at a picture of their shack and I explain that their house is much smaller than our house and everyone probably sleeps in the same bed. We count the children who live there. There are 5. "Maybe just two kids sleep in each bed," she wonders aloud. I tell her that they all sleep in the same room and it is very likely all in the same bed. She goes back to staring.

After awhile of silence, she stands up. I figure her attention span for the topic is exhausted and I am ready for her to move on too. It is hard to see a three year old burdened with the worries of the world. But then I see her raise her arms above her head slowly, then her arms out to the side, and her hips start to sway. "I'm dancing for them, Mommy," she tells me. "Who, Honey?" I ask. "The kids without any food," she says. My heart is heavy with pride and sorrow. I watch her little body move in very serious motions so unlike our usual "Dance Party" dancing.

"Do they have toys?" It's been at least 15 minutes of discussion- longer than most topics last in our house. I figure she is segueing to playing. "No, Honey, no toys," I say and I tell her how any money they get has to buy food because food is more important than toys. She is busying herself in her toy kitchen now. I begin to clean up lunch dishes in my own kitchen and surveying all of my "stuff" with guilt. Minutes later Colette runs over to me with a big smile on her face. "I made dinner!" she proclaims. I need her sunshine now. "Guess who it's for?" she asks. It's almost always for me. This time it was for "the kids, Mommy, without any food." I hug her and tell her she is a very nice girl.

It is time for Mary to take a nap. Colette always insists on being upstairs when I am so we go up the stairs, carrying the new shoes we bought that morning. It begs the question, "Do they have shoes, Mommy?" It's getting harder to answer these questions without crying. "They don't," I say. Suddenly Mary's new dressy shoes seem frivolous to add to her collection of sandals and tennis shoes. Three pairs.

I help Colette on the potty and she asks where "the kids" go potty. Usually potty conversations are a hot topic in our household because it's so taboo. We're not allowed to talk about potty stuff unless we are on the potty. Today, it is different. She needs to know and I tell her. It's not pleasant. She takes it in with wide eyes and nods. My lip is quivering and she hugs me when she gets off the potty.

I dop Colette off at her room to play while I nurse Mary and get her to go to sleep. It is hard to turn my thoughts to anything other than those children with their dark faces and large eyes. I think about how for that mother her children may be her only source of joy and yet must bring her so much sorrow when she can not provide for them. I ache for her.

When I come out of Mary's room, Colette is not in her bedroom. I search the upstairs and then come down to find Colette coloring at the kitchen counter. I am surprised to see her here because she is usually so fearful of being somewhere other than where I am. She has several different pieces of scrap paper out and she has colored on each one. "There is a different color on each one!" she says proudly, "Do you know who these pictures are for?" I know the answer, but I don't want to lead her so I shake my head no.

"It's for the kids, Mom, without any food."

Colette is napping now. We said a prayer for "the kids" and I asked God to keep reminding us of how lucky we are because we so often forget. I don't know if she is asleep but she's very quiet. And I am just thinking. I've been thinking about how my little girl offered up everything she had today in love to these children. She didn't think out what effect her actions might have on those kids; she simply did what she could. The beautiful thing is though Colette didn't have money to give them, what she did is move me and I have that ability to really change lives, beyond a quarter a day.

What I am saying is- when we make an offering in love, regardless of what it is or how unhelpful or lacking it may seem, God turns it into a blessing for others. And I'm hoping that you will think about that today. What offerings of love can you make today to be a blessing in the hearts and lives of others?