Blog Posts

Did God Hurl That Lightning Bolt?

7/29/2019

We were on our way to the beach for a family vacation when we stopped for lunch at a Mennonite restaurant with delicious food and delightful crafts and artwork. We discovered a framed print while browsing through their gift shop that we liked the moment we saw it because it so clearly expresses one of the truths of our faith journey.

The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.

The print hung in my husband’s medical office for decades and has been displayed in our home since he retired. I’ve been looking at it today and thinking about the place where God's will intersects with God’s grace.

The Will of God

When we are trying to figure out God's will for our lives, we can count on three things.

God wants us to know his will. God wants to show us how to live our best life. It’s not like he’s trying to hide his plan from us. He speaks to us through the Bible, other people, books, circumstances, experience, and the patterns for living Jesus gave us during his time here on earth. We just have to listen and pay attention.
Our Good Father never wants to harm us. Some people will tell you that everything that happens in life is God's will. That's one of those "churchy" clichés that sounds good on the surface but lacks substance when you dig deeper. Some folks claim sickness, death, cancer, accidents, storms, destruction, election results, volcanic eruptions, and all manner of trauma and disaster are God’s will. That’s not true. It is not the nature of God to harm the people he creates and loves. And he loves every person in the world. Here's one example. Is it God's will that certain people die in a tornado? No. Atmospheric patterns on our planet cause violent weather events. Sometimes, people in the path of a storm are injured or killed. I've been struck by lightning. Inside my house. Twice. Did God hurl those lightning bolts at me? No. Both times, I was washing dishes at my kitchen sink right beside a window in a house located on top of a hill. It is the nature of lightening to seek water and high ground. (Side note: I’m officially off dish washing duty on stormy days now. In fact, a random cloud scuttling across the sky is enough to persuade me that chore can wait.)
We are free to follow our own way instead of the way of Jesus. God has a plan for our lives that he wants to clearly show us. He sent his Son Jesus into the world to model how we are to relate to God and to other people. But he doesn’t force us to be like Jesus. He always gives us the option to choose his way or our own.Jesus says, "Love your enemies," but instead of doing that we can make lists of entire groups of people to hate. Jesus says, "Forgive just as I have forgiven you." But instead we can refuse to let go of grudges against people we feel have done us wrong. The more we shout that we have rights and demand our own way the harder it becomes to live like Jesus, see God's plan, and understand his will.

The Grace of God

The grace of God encompasses all he is and all that he freely wants to give us in and through our relationship with him. We have continual access to his presence through prayer. He loves us unconditionally and completely just as we are. We can’t do anything to make God love us more. And we can’t do anything to make him love us less.

God wants to bless us with abundant life in him. God’s grace is the free gift of his love, forgiveness, peace, mercy, truth, and light. He will never lead us where his grace cannot keep. guard, protect, enable, reassure, sustain, and hold us in the goodness of his hand.

Grace and peace to each of you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May we bloom as we discover his will, living a faith of hope and joy.

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Connected by Grace: So, Why Are We Arguing?

5/3/2019

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My husband graduated from Ensley High School in Birmingham, Alabama decades ago. Over the years we have run into numerous people who also graduated from Ensley. This might not seem so strange if we still lived in Birmingham. But we have lived all over the world since then, and yet, we keep meeting people who went to Vic's high school. They are everywhere: repairmen, deliverymen, people who drop by the office, visitors passing through town, the folks sitting next to us at the theater, the Sunday School teacher in a class we visited. They all attended the same high school located in a city we haven't lived in since 1975.

My favorite story about this connection happened when we were missionaries in Colombia, South America. We were studying Spanish in the capital city of Bogotá. We attended a church that shared its facilities with two congregations: the local Spanish-speaking residents and English expats that worked in international companies throughout the city. One group had a worship service while the other went to Bible study and then we swapped locations. During the half hour break for the changeover, both groups met in a central area for coffee and fellowship. During the break one Sunday, Vic and I walked over from the Spanish service and introduced ourselves to an American couple attending the English service for the first time.They had moved to Colombia due to a job transfer and had been in Bogotá just a few weeks. The husband said they were enjoying the experience of living in a different culture.Then he chuckled and said, "One of the main reasons I'm glad to be here is because everywhere we go, we meet people who went to the same high school as my wife. We are finally living in a place so far away that she won't run into any fellow graduates." The wife put down her coffee cup and smiled, "Yes, I doubt I'll run into anyone in Bogotá, Colombia who went to Ensley High School in Birmingham, Alabama."

It is amazing how many ways our lives are intertwined with the lives of other people. We graduate from the same school, discover we have friends in common, work in the same field, have the same unique hobby, find out we once lived in the same neighborhood.If we are Christians, we share a common faith that intertwines our lives. Our mutual relationship with Jesus should be a powerful force for connection and unity.

Unfortunately, we currently seem more focused on what separates us than on what unites us. God's family includes people from different countries, ethnic backgrounds, political parties, denominations, cultural views, languages, and faith traditions. Despite these differences, we are blessed with the gift of belonging to each other because we belong to Jesus. We sure don't act like it sometimes. We will never reach our potential for sharing the gospel of grace and love if we spend our time drawing lines in the sand, arguing, and demanding that everyone think exactly like we do on every single issue.

To practice healthy faith, we need to focus on how we are connected to one another. There are so many ways our lives are intertwined with our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we concentrate our energies on the great truths we hold in common, we become an unstoppable force for impacting our communities and our world with unstoppable grace. When we practice intentional unity, we are empowered to encourage and love one another, share the gospel with joy, minister to those in need, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, heal the sick, and welcome the stranger in the name of Jesus who said, "In as much as you have done something for one of the least of these, you have done it for me." Matthew 25:40 NIV

I long for reconciliation among believers that will change light to darkness, hate to love, despair to hope, disunity to connection. We have the power to choose.

You can scream and argue all you want. I opt to look for the things that unite us. I choose to respect wherever you are in your faith journey. I will not require you to be in the same place on the path as me. I will not focus on divisive ploys. I will not belittle. I will not judge or condemn. Instead, I will focus on all the ways we are connected. We are united by the grace of Jesus, by the unconditional love of the Father, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We may not have gone to the same high school (although it wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out you graduated from Ensley), but if we belong to God, we belong to each other. And that is more than enough to propel me toward the kind of unity that helps me live a faith of hope and joy.

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When Bad Things Happen Do We Choose Fight, Flight, or Faith?

4/6/2019

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We love to take long trips in our motorhome. It is a joy to explore our beautiful country, visit National Parks, and view the breathtaking scenery along the way. The journey is as much fun as the destination.

While we were getting ready for one of our travel adventures,we left the door to our motorhome wide open as we shuttled from the house to the RV stowing last minute items onboard before leaving on our camping trip.

Unfortunately, a little bird with a compromised sense of direction flew inside and zoomed around desperately trying to find his way out. We tried to help by chasing him, flailing our arms, and yelling. I guess we terrified the poor little creature. He escaped, but he left something behind, and it was all over our bed. When we recovered from laughing at the absurdity of the situation, we changed the sheets and headed for the open road just a little later than our originally estimated departure time.

Sometimes, people of faith live under the misguided perception that bad things will never happen to good people, especially if the good people happen to be us. But the truth is that life is chaotic, we will go through dark times, and sooner or later a messy bird of some kind or the other will swoop down unexpectedly into our tidy clean spaces. If we live long enough, eventually bad things, whether small and aggravating or huge and heartbreaking, will come our way. We can respond in one of three ways.

FIGHT. Look for someone to blame for our current woes. Get mad at other people. Get mad at God for allowing such a horrible thing to happen. Dump angry words with wild abandon on anyone in the path of our problem.

FLIGHT. Run away from the negative situation. Move. Avoid the person we disagree with, change jobs, change churches, change friends. Substitute busyness for solutions. Hide in our rooms feeling sorry for ourselves.

FAITH. Hold on to our faith to get us through whatever trauma comes our way. God is with us in the turmoil. He never gives up on us even when we give up on ourselves. He helps us in our time of need even when we tumble so far into despair that we cannot feel his presence. When our dreams are crushed, when we are broken and wounded, when bad things happen, we have no need to fear. The love of God the Father, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are with us.

"I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39 NIV

We can trust with absolute assurance that no matter what comes our way, God is with us. He holds us in the palm of his hand with tender grace and unconditional love. This is how we bloom. This is how we live a faith of hope and joy.

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God Provides: He is Reliable When Life is Not

3/20/2019

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Update March 18, 2020: I first posted this devotional to my website on March 20,2019. I never imagined that one short year later we would be living through a worldwide pandemic. And yet, here we are. The Covid-19 coronavirus spans the globe. During these unsettled times, it encourages me to remember my favorite name for God: Jehovah Jireh, the God Who Provides. In the midst of disease, death, confusion, and uncertainty, I get up each day and do my part to slow the spread of the virus and flatten the curve. We don't know how long we will need to self-quarantine. We don't know when the disease will peak, We don't even have enough testing capability to know how many of us are already infected. But, I do know this. Even now: Jehovah Jireh.

The first year Vic and I were married, getting by financially was a struggle. We lived in a tiny apartment located in a deteriorating area of Birmingham. It had a leaky gas hot water heater that forced us to leave the windows open 24/7, even in winter, so we wouldn’t suffocate from the fumes during the night. It was furnished in an eclectic mix of cast offs from relatives, flea market finds, and homemade treasures. Burglars broke into it three different times but never took anything because we didn't own a single thing valuable enough to steal. We were young, madly in love, and finally on our own, so obviously, we thought it was the most awesome apartment in the history of the world.

Vic was in medical school and I taught first grade at a small Christian school. We had a very limited income, a strict budget, and $10 per week to spend on groceries. I made a lot of "rice and" dishes: rice and a smidgen of meat, rice and beans, rice and a can of soup. I devised a creative bill-paying system. I kept the bills in a drawer in our secondhand desk arranged by due date and paid them in order every month until we ran out of money. There were always a couple left over that rotated to the top of the stack to be paid first the next month. It worked. No angry bill collectors pounded on our door and the utilities were never turned off. Life was good.

Sometime during that year, we heard a sermon at our church on the different names for God. One intriguing name comes from a complicated narrative found in Genesis chapter 22. The short version is that Abraham trudged agonizingly up a mountain to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. On the way up, he spied a ram caught in a thicket to offer to God instead. Filled with gratitude that his son was spared, Abraham named that place Jehovah Jireh, which means The Lord Who Provides. It’s a strange story but it has a happy ending and it’s the source of one of our favorite names for God. Those two words became our secret faith code to each other. Every time we were backed into a financial corner, we just smiled and said, Jehovah Jireh.

Vic made a rustic hand-carved plaque to hang on our apartment wall inscribed with that precious name for God to remind us to trust in the Lord when things get difficult. That little plaque has traveled with us everywhere we have lived. We moved 16 times in the first 14 years of our marriage, so it has been on quite a journey. It hung on walls in the homes we lived in during medical school, residency, and a stint at seminary. It wandered all over Alabama, went to North Carolina, and traveled with us to Bogota and Barranquilla, Colombia where we served as missionaries. Today it hangs on a wall by the back entryway of our home so we see it every day as we go in and out of the house

Back then, I thought of God’s provision only in the limited terms of our financial needs. Four decades later, I know that it goes far beyond that. We lived in Colombia during the dangerous drug war years. There was constant fighting and violence. An embassy was bombed a few blocks from the corner where we stood waiting for a bus. In a city of seven million people, God provided a friend who happened by and drove us to safety. Our car was stolen at gunpoint with our two small children in the backseat. God provided a way for us to get them safely out before the two armed robbers raced off with the car.

The Lord continued to provide for all our needs after we moved back to the states. When people I loved died, God provided comfort and strength to put one foot in front of the other. When relationships fractured, God provided either the grace for forgiveness or the strength to walk away. When I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, God helped me discover healthy living strategies that led to my recovery.

In the darkest moments of life, God provides his great light to help me find my way. He fills me with his presence, grace, mercy, peace, and love. He opens my eyes to see that possibilities are everywhere. He cultivates in me a sense of gratitude that comes from him alone. He teaches me to bloom where I am planted, living a faith of hope and joy.

Jehovah Jireh. Yes, indeed!

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Bloom Devotionals for Women

3/6/2019

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Even though it’s March and I live in the deep south, there’s a freeze warning for tonight. The forecast says it’s going down to 24. You’d never know it by looking out my windows. Daffodils are blooming all over the front yard. Red tulips are poking up through the dead leaves. The quince bush is a riot of fuchsia. Tiny white flowers are unfurling on the Bradford pear trees. The yellow bells rhododendron, and wildflowers are popping up everywhere. It may feel like winter, but it surely does look like spring. The contrast is startling.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about adding a devotional blog for women to my website. This morning, I shrugged into my jacket and went outside pondering about what form it should take.I crunched through the fallen leaves to touch the flowers. I watched chickadees race to the bird feeders dangling from the barren tree branches. Spring taunted winter and I wondered which would win.

I thought about how often my life is like that. I’m a paradox trapped in winter when what I want to do is rush headlong into spring. Hope and despair, peace and chaos, faith and fear, sadness and joy struggle to gain a foothold in my life. Some days, I wonder which will win. I know the desire of my heart. I want to bloom and become and be all the beautiful things God intends for me to be. I want to live a faith full of hope and joy

And just like that, there it was. I knew what kind of devotionals I want to share with my readers. Women have so much to give to the world. We are each as unique as the thousands of different flowers growing on this earth, Sometimes, we may feel lost in a season of lifeless cold and darkness. But, as women of faith, we have the hope that this season will pass, that the time of warmth and flowers will return.

So, welcome to Bloom: Living a Faith of Hope and Joy. May we bloom and grow together in the incomparable grace of God the Father, the unconditional love of Jesus the Son, and the radiant light of the Holy Spirit. It may feel like winter. But spring is coming.

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Forward>>

Did God Hurl That Lightning Bolt?

Practical Priorities Newsletter

Welcome to the Email Friends Crew

Connected by Grace: So, Why Are We Arguing?

Practical Priorities Newsletter

Welcome to the Email Friends Crew

When Bad Things Happen Do We Choose Fight, Flight, or Faith?

Practical Priorities Newsletter

Welcome to the Email Friends Crew

God Provides: He is Reliable When Life is Not

Practical Priorities Newsletter

Welcome to the Email Friends Crew

Bloom Devotionals for Women

Practical Priorities Newsletter

Welcome to the Email Friends Crew

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