Category: Empowerment

Divine Interruptions…

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Sometime in college, a friend and mentor introduced me to the concept of “Divine interruptions”. She noticed that I struggled with unpredictable interruptions into my very well-planned and predictable routine schedule, but counseled that I had to stay open to the idea that God was allowing these interruptions in my day and plans. They could, in fact, be what has been termed in “Christianese”, “Divine appointments.”  If I could learn to consider them Divine, I could remain inviting and open to what God wanted to show me, and how He wanted to use me.

 

This transformed my approach to life. It’s still a struggle, but over the years, space has often been created to see God do something that only He could do. Life would be a small fraction of the gift it has been if my heart had been closed. I’m so grateful for this lesson early in my adulthood. Life, indeed, is a series of interruptions that can affect and change our courses. I want to continue to see these as invitations into His space…as a surrender of the plans I cling to into His capable hands.
Henri Nouwen has invited, “Let us try to see the pain of our human and spiritual journey “from above.” The great art is to gradually trust that life’s interruptions are the places where God is molding you into the person you are called to be. Interruptions are not disruptions of your way to holiness, but rather are places where you are being formed into the unique person God calls you to be. You know you are living a grateful life when whatever happens is received as an invitation to deepen your heart, to strengthen your love, and to broaden your hope. You are living a grateful life when something is taken away from you that you thought was so important and you find yourself willing to say, ‘Maybe I’m being invited to a deeper way of living.’ ” I want to live in such gratefulness.

How Great Thou Art-

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Consider, beloved of God, all the works His hands have made. “See the stars, hear the rolling thunder: [His] power throughout the universe displayed.” We are called to live in awe of our awesome Creator. What marvel exists that has not its foundation in His power? What vista stirs our soul that has not its roots in His creativity? What exists that owes not its existence & sustenance to His hand? And…not only does His power know no limits, nor His realm know no bounds, but His love & His goodness also know no end.  

 

He is not only great, but good, & He loves…you, as if there was no one else to love. This does not mean we will escape the trouble & toil of this adventurous life; we are, in fact, assured of it by our Saviour. It calls to mind C.S. Lewis’ story The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe. There is a famous scene where the youngest girl Lucy inquires of  her friend Mr. Beaver after the character of the legendary lion Aslan, the absent king of Narnia: “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

 

And of this “problem of pain”, we can say with author Philip Yancey that we find comfort in a God who was willing “to take His own medicine.” The long-favored hymn How Great Thou Art says in its final verse:

And when I think, that God His Son not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

That on the Cross, my burdens gladly bearing, He bled & died, to take away my sin,

Then SINGS MY SOUL, my Saviour God to Thee, How Great Thou Art, How Great Thou Art.

 

So, beloved ones, let’s, take in the goodness & might of our great God, & let that soul of yours, let it SING.

***Photo Credits: Ann Voskamp

 There is None Like You:

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One of my favorite worship songs has long been Hillsong United’s  There is None Like You.  I love to sing to the LORD:

 

There is none like You.

No one else can touch my heart like You do,

I can search for all eternity Lord

And find, there is none like You.

 

Your mercy flows like a river wide,

And healing comes from Your hand.

Suffering children are safe in Your arms,

There is none like You.

 

There is none like You, ( There is none like You, Lord)

There is none like You.

 

Once, as I was struggling deeply over the rejection of others, & sensing my own absolute worthiness to even sing this praise to my Holy God, He whispered to my heart: “Beloved, don’t you know I feel just the same way about you? I died so that would you know…so let me now sing this over you.” Desperately humbled & healed in the undeserved revelation of His grace., tears streamed down my face as He sang His song…this song… over me. For Him, there is no one else like me.  He made us all with special purposes, & fitted us all to sing His praises as only we can.  
Though the world rejects you, He never will. As He promised through His prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast, & have no compassion on the child she has born? I tell you, though she may forget, I WILL NOT FORGET YOU.  See, I have ENGRAVED YOU on the PALMS OF MY HANDS. Your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15-16). He waits to sing over YOU: “My beloved, ‘there is none like you.  NO ONE ELSE can touch MY heart like you do.  I could search for all eternity long, & find, there is none like you.’ ”  This is just as God spoke through Isaiah in chapter 43, verse 4: “Since YOU are precious & honored in my sight, & because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, & people in exchange for your life.”

 

***Photo Credits: Ann Voskamp***

Accepting Joy…

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Part of my very part-time employment at present is working with a woman who also has a severe neurological condition, though hers is far more severe. I model a few exercises and provide a little massage and stretching; she models so much more for me. She’s been sick for most of thirty years, and has spent thirteen of those paralyzed from the waist down and regulated to a wheelchair. And yet, she always has a smile on her face. When I asked her how she was able to be so upbeat and positive, she said that she wouldn’t want the husband who’s been her caretaker all those years to have to live with a grump. This made me smile; it almost seems like a casual and lighthearted approach to coping with illness, but it is most definitely far more. Long ago, she made a very intentional choice to live in acceptance, gratitude and joy, one I’m sure she has had to make that choice over and over again, but she has. Hers is a very cultivated positivity held perfectly in tension with practical surrender, and they end result is joy.

 

She calls it grace. It reminds me of what Ann Voskamp once wrote: “Grace is like the wind. It finds us as we are, but it does not leave us as we have been. All is grace.” Grace has met her anew each day in exactly the place she is; it continually shapes and molds her into the image of God. She’s a willing vessel in the hands of a skillful potter; anyone has only to look at my friend’s radiant countenance to be awestruck by its fragile strength. She’s a former elementary teacher, a mom and wife and daughter and sister and aunt and friend. She’s a quilter and a prayer warrior and a blessing to all who know her. I’m so very thankful: in a season of struggling to accept my own challenging circumstances, or perhaps simply arriving in the place where I actually have accepted them, God has given me this beautiful example. I want to accept the joy that fills and surrounds me and say with my friend and the saints of old, as voiced by the prophet Isaiah: “And yet LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter” (Isaiah 64:8).

 

*Photo by Ann Voskamp. 

An Iron Will: A Tribute to Georgine…

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Tomorrow is Independence Day, a celebration of what it means to know free life. The Fourth of July marks not only that for me: it is both the anniversary of a friend’s spiritual birthday in 1950, as well as that of her “home-going” sixty-four years later. She’s been gone for three years now, and it still doesn’t seem possible that’s a reality; I can hear her voice as if it were yesterday. From the day I met her when I moved to this area in 2008, she said I was a kindred spirit and adopted me as a granddaughter. She called me her “Sweet Pea”; I called her my “Mama G”. She reminded me of the grandmother I lost when I was nine years old: Mama G’s quiet strength, obdurate determination, compassionate presence and vocal faith mirrored those of my Grandma Thelma. I was instantly at home with her.

 

Mama G was an example of the faith and perseverance of the saints to all who knew her. She modeled for me how one could live well with serious illness, something she coped with admirably for almost half her life: the chronic and inflammatory autoimmune disease Lupus targeted her as a young mother. Everything she did over the next decades came at a cost, but she counted it all worthy of the price she paid. She told me often with great sincerity that she counted it a true joy to share even a small bit of the suffering that was our Lord’s, and she lived out its truth. Her best friend says she had an “iron will”. As Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” She helped all her loved ones (in other words, everyone she knew) to be shaped into the mold of our Savior. In the spring of 2014, she contracted pancreatic cancer, the same disease took my Grandma Thelma’s life. They say it’s the most painful way to die: since the pancreas sits on a bundle of nerves that travel throughout the whole body, its sensations are akin to those of crucifixion. Though a nerve block relieved that pain for a while, in the end she suffered its fullness. Again, she counted it all joy and faced it with that iron will, her eyes on Jesus. A few short months later, she went Home to be with God. In life and in death, she celebrated free life that did not come without a cost; her soul at last found its final rest. 

 

I am only one who loved this precious woman of God, she was precious to many, but I remember and miss her every single day. As I face each new dawn and dusk, I hear the words to one of her favorite hymns Carolina Sandell Berg, modeling the acceptant trust with which she lived all the days of her life, Day by Day:

 

Help me then, in every tribulation,

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Feeding on Mystery…

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In 1,000 Gifts, Ann Voskamp explains that the Hebrew word “manna” means mystery. In their wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land, the food the God of heaven and earth rained down on the Israelites was literally mystery. The sweet manna bread was given purposefully to be only sufficient for one day at a time, keeping the children of Israel continuously dependent on God to supply their each and every need day by day. No matter how many days God provided faithfully for them, they wondered with each new one if He could do it again. So it is for His children today: we are dependent on His provision each and every day. He faithfully provides for our needs, yet we are often filled with doubt that He will do it again. Our lives are full of paradoxes: glories and suffering fall on us all; rain falls on both the just and the unjust. So much is unexplained; our walk with the Lord can be nothing besides a walk of faith. We feed on mystery too.

 

In A Chance to Die, Elisabeth Elliott’s captivating biography of missionary Amy Carmichael, a letter is quoted that was sent to her by her mother. Amy had suffered a fall that caused an abnormal nerve response throughout her whole body. It left her bedridden for the rest of her life. These words encouraged Amy’s remarkable faith and  trust in the Lord that would be an example to many around the world in the coming years:

“He who hath led will lead, all through the wilderness.

He who hath fed will feed.

He who hath heard thy cry, will never close His ear.

He who hath marked Thy faintest sigh, will not forget thy tear.

He loveth always, faileth never, so rest in Him today, forever.”

 

I too, am currently in what could be called a wilderness season; I seem to have lost the path to the Promised Land. Trials of health and loss of career have led me out of Egypt and into a new place of dependence; the path is unknown and seems illuminated only one step at a time. I feed on mystery meted out in doses sufficient for each day. But if I’m wandering in circles through desert, I’m not wandering there alone. God has provided sweet sustenance through His presence and the companionship of true friends. He has fed my soul with beauty and peace; even the prickly cacti bloom in the barren land. I’m reminded of the prayer of George VI at the dawning of a new year:

“I said to the man at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light, that I may walk safely into the unknown.’ He said to me, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. It shall be to you better than the light and safer than the known.”

 

And so it is, and so shall it be. We put our hands into the hands of God and feed on the manna of His mysteries. We give thanks for it, break it, share it, and we call it…grace.

A Cadence  of Thanksgiving…

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Since the time I was introduced to author Ann Voskamp through her book 1,000 Gifts several years ago, my thoughts and journals have been filled with lists of gratitude. As I walk and work and wade through life, conscious choices have built practices that have transformed me. Psalm 118:23-24 says, “I will enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. I will say this is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” If we are ever feeling out of the fullness of His presence, praise is the solution to encountering it once more.

 

Making sure our prayers are balanced with ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication), and not simply petitions for our needs and wants to be met, is part of the discipline of the Christian life. In her book 31 Days of Praise, author Ruth Meyers  revolutionized my prayers to praise early in my Christian walk, but the poetry of Ann Voskamp’s prose awakened my senses in a new way. Truly, there are thousands of gifts to take note of:

 

1, 697-Waking up basked in sunlight.

1, 704-A fun breakfast with former students; hearing about their college adventures.

1, 707-Storm rolling in over the mountains.

1, 716-Dwelling in a place of refuge.

1, 722-Walking and processing with a friend.

1, 723-Cobalt blue of the Colorado sky; walking with Colorado sunshine on my shoulders.

1, 745-Sitting on the porch to read a novel.

1, 765-Kindness, grace and understanding of true friends.

 

Now my days resonate with a cadence of thanksgiving as I set the intention of capturing the thousands of ways God works to romance me each day.

***Photo credits to Love Does

“He Restores My Soul…”

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“You don’t have to come, but you always do. You show up in splendor, you change the whole room…”, sings Bethel artist Jonathan Helser in his song “Thank You”. Isn’t this so true? God continually shows up for us, perhaps in unexpected ways, but faithfully filling all those empty spaces that can seem so vacant of presence and the glorious.

 

I’ve always been a person with a very fragile strength. Sometimes it seems I’m a little too frail for this world. I’m empty when it comes to meeting the world’s great need, or to meeting my own brokenness. I don’t have the power to bring myself or anyone else to life….but, God does. He fills me with life and light again and again. My Shepherd satisfies my wants, not just needs, and restores my soul (Psalm 23:1,3). As Lamentations 3:22b reminds us, though we may lament our circumstances and feel sorrow that can dry us up, “His mercies are new every morning.”

 

He doesn’t have to come. God could have chosen to be farther removed from His creation. He could have made us only His servants and not the objects of His affection. Just what did we do to merit all the loveliness there is in this world? David asked in Psalm 8:4: “What is man that you are mindful of him?”. My creator could let my fragile strength and spirits remain depleted. But instead, He refreshes and renews and fills me with each new day; new mercies are offered day by day. He continually offers me Presence and encounters with the lovely and the glorious. “He prepares a table before me….my cup runneth over.”

Defined: Adequate or Inadequate?

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I am a teacher. This is how I’ve defined myself most of my adult life. It’s become not just an occupation, or even a vocation, but also an integral part of my identity. That wasn’t my intention of course, but unwittingly, it’s the identity I chose. Perhaps it’s because I’m single and “my kids” have been just that to me; perhaps it’s the tendency we all have, particularly as westerners and Americans, to let what we do define us. I’m reminded of an English movie I saw recently where two strangers meet and one asks the other, “And what do you do?” The new acquaintance responds, “My, aren’t you sounding American.” In any case, though our actions always speak the truth of our characters, and however much we are shaped by the icebergs of culture around us, I can’t let my career define me.

 

I’ve come up against this rather startlingly in recent months when it became obvious that I was no longer serving or caring for my students as their teacher should, primarily because of health challenges. Leaving teaching behind is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. To be honest, I guess I would say I feel a little groundless now, particularly in responding to the questions that characterize dinner parties.  My aunt has always wisely said it took her a long time to learn we are called human beings and not human doings for a reason. Just why is it so scary for us to offer up ourselves as we are without listing what we are doing and accomplishing? For me at least, it feels insufficient. But God says to me that He has made me sufficient. As Marilynne Robinson once wrote, and as quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech:

“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate; our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. You say, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God! Your playing small does not serve the world….and as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously liberate others to do the same.”

I am a child of God, defined only by how He views me: totally right with Him, completely accepted as I am, utterly worthy of dignity and delight. I’m clinging to that these days, trying to learn to see myself through His eyes.

“But Even If You Don’t…”

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An inspiring story I’ve loved since childhood is that of the three Jewish boys, Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego, who accompanied Daniel to the palace of the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. True to the prophecy of Jeremiah, God had allowed Babylon to lay siege to Jerusalem, and though a remnant remained, the majority of the Israelites were living in Babylon and exile. These four young boys, exemplifying the best of the tribes of Israel, modeled living faithful to God, despite their captivity. When they refused to worship the image of gold cast and commanded by Nebuchadnezzar, they were condemned to death, and thrown into a fiery furnace. They remained unburned and walked out alive. Their miraculous rescue, and the appearance of a fourth man in the furnace with them, is one of the great stories of scripture.

 

My favorite part, however, is their unwavering trust in the sovereignty of God, whether or not He did as they wanted. In Daniel 3:16-18, they respond to the king with this statement: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

 

I want God to heal me, to provide for me, to work miracles in my life…and I pray for faith to believe in Him for all this. But…even if…He does not…I still want to trust Him. I do trust Him. Mercy Me recently published a song called “Even If” that tells this story and proclaims this same largeness of faith and trust:

 

“It’s easy to sing

When there’s nothing to bring me down

But what will I say

When I’m held to the flame

Like I am right now

I know You’re able and I know You can

Save through the fire with Your mighty hand

But even if You don’t

My hope is You alone

They say it only takes a little faith

To move a mountain

Well good thing

A little faith is all I have, right now

But God, when You choose

To leave mountains unmovable

Oh give me the strength to be able to sing

It is well with my soul”