Blog Makeover

Well, the truth is, I got tired of my blog. Tired of the theme, the pictures, the same-ness. It was getting musty. So I did a blog makeover. On this “new” blog, during a new phase of my life, I hope to share some of my God-moments with you through poetry, prose, and pictures. And I hope (ahem) to post more often than in the previous months.

For those of you who have me on your blogroll: It would be great if you could take a moment to reenter my URL so that my new blog name is displayed on your list. The post titles will still feed into your blog, but unless you reenter the exact same URL in your blogroll, it will be under the old title. Make sense?

What do you say? Do you like the new look?

Excited.

Right now, I’m tired of that word. Everyone says it to me. “Are you excited??!”

Yes, and no. Right now, I don’t love the fact that I’m moving in four weeks. Everyone assumes I’m excited. They may be right. After all, I usually agree nicely, “yes, I am excited.” However, I am not ONLY excited. I am not jumping up and down excited. I am actually very sad about all the beautiful people and places that I am leaving behind. And honestly, the main question I ask myself is, “Am I crazy??”

Let me modify that one statement. I said I am not jumping up and down excited. That means I don’t FEEL super excited. (I said I was sick of that word.)

A lovely girl named Beth showed me something very profound recently. It’s the verse, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) I’d known the verse for years, but not the way Beth explained it.

She explained it like this: My own understanding of situations in my life is so shallow and limited. I see from a foggy perspective. But God sees the whole picture. I need to trust that His understanding is infinite. To trust that He knows all the best things for me. In His understanding of my life, there is something incredibly beautiful ahead. Something that brings glory to Him and joy to me.

My own understanding, right now, is that I’m leaving almost everyone, every place, everything I love behind. That God is leading me away from my heart. Not that I’m not anticipating my new life* in NYC, but I’m also confused and sad about leaving. But His understanding is so much bigger than mine. And I know that in the big picture, through ways I know not now, He is leading me closer to His heart. And so, I trust. I don’t know what He’s doing. All I know is that He knows what He’s doing.

Maybe, just maybe, I’m not so tired of the word excited after all. What else can you be when you serve such a big God??

“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” Psalm 138:8

*For now, my plans are to stay there about a year, but I have a feeling life will never be the same again. (That may very well be a good thing.)

a little child shall lead them

It is impossible to capture a week of VBS in a blog post. I am all at once grateful, excited, challenged, sad, and heartbroken for so many who don't know God. Oh, and exhausted. There are a lot of things I could write, but for now, I just want to share a song that one of my students, a 5-year-old girl, made up and gave to me on a piece of paper Friday night. (Her mom wrote it down for her.) This girl doesn't come from a Christian home; her dad told me he practices all religions because he doesn't know which one is right. I was so touched by this song...things like this make the week more than worthwhile.


God made the sun.

God made the trees.

God made you.

God made me.

God made the day.

God made the animals.

God made the spring.

God made our family.

God's going to give us a new life.

Loving Jesus

"Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him, and say that we love Him..."

As I contemplated the beautiful words, I was suddenly startled to realize what I was singing. The words that came to me were, "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."

Wait a minute, I thought, I was singing about Jesus! Jesus is the One I love, and of course I long to see Him more clearly, to know Him more intimately. But...Jesus as "the least of these?" I'm not so sure about that.

What if "to reach out and touch Him" could mean getting my hands dirty? Allowing God to break my heart for those He loves, and I tend not to? (Or don't want to because I will get hurt.) The fatherless, the abused, those who have made lousy choices that have taken them miserable places (that I don't want to enter).

John Smucker's sermon this morning, entitled "The Test of Heaven," resurfaced these thoughts in my mind. He preached from Matthew 25: 31-46 where Jesus at the final judgment declares to the righteous, "As you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me," and to the unrighteous, "As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me."

Of course, I do not have to know people like these...the poor, the prisoner, the sick or anyone else whom I often consider unworthy of my time. I can smile at the people I see in town and consider my Christian duty accomplished. But the fact is, it's not.

As John Smucker said, "Every person is uniquely and individually precious to God." This is why I am asking God to open my heart to those He loves, to give me grace even to seek out those whom He seeks.

You and I have a choice. We can choose not to concern ourselves with the least. Or, we can choose to know more clearly the heartbeat of our precious Savior, and enter into the Kingdom He has prepared for us.

Another quote yet from John Smucker; I can’t promise this is verbatim, but it was to this effect: “In for any community or church to survive, it must care about the needs of its own members and about the needs of the culture around it.”

Grant us, Jesus, the desire to truly see You and express our love for You.

precious in His sight

Four precious sisters who came faithfully to VBS and kids' club are moving away next month. Tonight as I drove through town I stopped at their house with a Bible storybook as a going away present. All four girls were outside and came running to hug me. They had been running through a sprinkler and were sopping wet and adorable! I ran to get my camera and we did an impromptu photo shoot on the sidewalk.

Isaiah 57:15

"For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
'I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite."


We offer pieces
Broken and shattered
Grateful that this offering
You accept, and love.

A. W. Tozer on the sacrament of living

"We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them...Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there."

"In order that I may be understood...I would throw into relief the practical implication of...the sacramental quality of every day living. Over against its positive meanings I would like to point out a few things it does not mean.

"It does not mean, for instance, that everything we do is of equal importance with everything else we do or may do. One act of a good man's life may differ widely from another in importance. Paul's sewing of tents was not equal to his writing of an epistle to the Romans, but both were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship. Certainly it is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden, but the planting of the garden can be as holy an act as the winning of a soul."

--A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" Isa. 6:3