On Release and Restoration

2 Comments


I want to preface this post with a warning that there is little whimsy within. This is a serious topic that has been heavy on my heart for some time. I finally decided to put my pen to paper, technically my fingers to keyboard but you get the gist. I have been thinking about the parable of the Prodigal Son a lot lately. I have shared my thoughts with family and a few friends thinking that in sharing my thoughts I might free my mind to move to a new topic but this story has stuck with me so I am sharing my thoughts with you.

Luke 15 is a collection of lost things. It is, for me, a very visual chapter. Jesus, the master of truth as story, beautifully shows us the desperation of God’s heart for the lost. It is a short chapter which recounts three tales; a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. We often concentrate on the lost son and ignore the other lost items in this passage but if you look at them in their entirety you see that the unifying thread doesn’t play out the way we expect it to. First, Jesus tells the story of a man who, having 100 sheep, leaves 99 in order to go find the lost sheep. Secondly, he tells the story of a woman who, having lost one of 10 silver coins, searches every nook and cranny of her house until it is found. Both of these stories end with the man and woman calling their friends together to celebrate the recovery of that which was lost. Jesus tells us, at the end of each of these stories, that there is rejoicing in heaven when a sinner repents. I have always loved that thought. I remember when I become a found sheep and I was so excited at the thought of, as my dad always put it, partay time in Heaven, on my account. Finally, Jesus tells us the story of a man who had two sons. The younger son came to his father, asked for his inheritance and shortly thereafter took off only to find himself penniless, friendless and envying the posh lifestyle of pigs. He wises up, heads home and, just like the man and woman in the previous two stories, his father calls all his friends to come and celebrate the finding of what was lost.

As I kept reading this chapter over and over I had a realization about these stories and why they felt slightly disconnected to me. I looked at the three lost things and the ones who had lost them and found some very powerful instructions for us. As a public service announcement I’m about to, as my Grandpa Gill would say, “quit preaching and go to meddling” so please be prepared for the possibility of uncomfortable moments ahead. Here we go, let’s dive in and I’ll share my realizations on:

The Parable of the Lost Sheep – The Unknowing Lost

I have the unusual perspective of having worked with sheep in years past and I learned very quickly that sheep are not the sharpest knives in God’s drawer. We read that the sheep were in the wilderness or open country, they were not in a pen or sheepfold. They were free to graze wherever they wanted and a sheep will stumble into danger very quickly. It doesn’t seem at all unlikely that a sheep, in open wilderness, will wander off into the unknown. They are not wise, they are not crafty or devious, but they just don’t pay attention to where their stomachs lead them. It is a shepherds duty to be mindful of where the sheep are. He cares for them because they can’t care for themselves. If a sheep is lost there is a high probability that it will not be long for this world. There is great joy when the defenseless lost one is brought back because the shepherd knows the danger of the wilderness that the sheep cannot begin to comprehend.

The Parable of the Lost Coin – The Overlooked Lost

The lost coin is in a different situation. It is lost in a place of safety. It is lost at home. The coin can’t wander off (although my money does seem to fly out of my pockets with unprecedented speed sometimes). The coin has been lost because someone lost it. There is no evidence of theft or malicious intent, just a lost item. It makes me think of the old adage “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. There’s no danger facing the coin, it simply has to be looked for. It was misplaced and neglected, probably in the busyness of every day life. Once she realized the coin was missing, the woman thoroughly searched her whole house. With great effort and determination she turned on the light and put some elbow grease into finding it. Anyone who’s ever done a spring cleaning only to discover misplaced or forgotten treasures among the dust bunnies and cobwebs knows the feeling of elation when a lost item has been recovered. You feel giddy, excited and accomplished when you find what you set out to find. When something has been lost its value is so much greater because you have a clearer understanding of what it is really worth to you. And now to the main event…

The Parable of the Lost Son – The Willful Lost

Oftentimes, when we talk about this story we concentrate on the prodigal and his journey to restoration but I found myself concentrating on the Father (just a little note…when I was sharing my thoughts with family and friends I discovered that my friend, Jason, was studying the same verses and he wrote a wonderful post about the Older Brother on his blog thechristiansage.blogspot.com, you should check it out). What stood out to me was the stark difference in the behavior of the Father in this story compared with the behavior of the man and woman in the previous parables. In the sheep parable it says that man goes after the lost sheep UNTIL HE FINDS IT. In the coin parable it says that woman seeks diligently UNTIL SHE FINDS IT. When his younger son comes to him and asks for his inheritance the Father hands it over. He knows his son, he knows what’s going to happen but he gives him his inheritance and, then in complete reversal of the preceding stories, HE LETS HIM GO. He doesn’t take off on horseback searching highways and byways, cities and towns. He lets him go! You see he understands something about this lost item that we seem to have forgotten in the church today. This wasn’t a lost sheep in open pasture, following his natural bent, or a coin in safety that had been misplaced or overlooked. This was a fully formed son who had been trained to recognize the value of his Father’s land, taught about the riches of his inheritance. He had been raised in the Father’s house, given every tool he would ever need to be part of the Father’s vision for the house. This was a son who willfully, intentionally left the safety of his Father’s house and the Father LET HIM GO! We know from the story that the son came to the end of himself and realized that, even if it was just as a servant, he would be better off in his Father’s house than where his own passion and desires had taken him. We also know that when he returned the Father, didn’t just throw a celebration, like the man and woman in the stories before, he saw him from far away and took off running to gather his son into his arms again. We have heralded this act of redemptive love in books, songs and more messages than one could probably listen to in a lifetime. (Here’s where the meddling intensifies) We have worked so hard to behave like and identify with this Father who loves without recrimination, who embraces his filthy, impoverished son with rapturous joy and blamelessness that we have totally missed the behavior of the Father up to this point. The Father let his son go and didn’t just let him go but let him go with no expectation of ever seeing his son again. We can see evidence of this in the last verse of the chapter where he says to his older son “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead…” How many people do you know who are desperately trying to hold on to a lost son, a willful, intentional lost son, by any means necessary? How many of us are turning a blind eye to sin in order to keep the prodigal from leaving? How many of us have skipped ahead to the end of the story and embraced the prodigal with no recrimination and great celebration without ever releasing them to pursue their own lust and come to the end of themselves? It makes me think of 1 Corinthians 5. Paul is dealing with the church about a man who is willfully lost to sin and Paul gives a bold instruction to them. He tells them to deliver the man to Satan…WHAT?! He essentially tells the church to give the man over to follow his own sinful lusts, not because Paul was a sadist but for a much higher purpose…so that the lost man’s spirit may be saved. Paul continues to remind the church that there were people that they weren’t to associate with, the sexually immoral, the greedy and swindlers, the idolaters, drunkards and so on, but he wasn’t talking about those out in the wilderness. Paul was talking about the willful lost in the Father’s own house. He didn’t give instruction to make them feel safe and welcome. He didn’t give instruction to validate their feelings and let them know that they were loved just as they were. Paul’s instruction was that the church was not to associate with these willful lost, not even to eat with them; in fact he ends this part of his letter with the statement “purge the evil person from among you”.The Father, like Paul, knew something important and valuable that we have forgotten. He knew that until his son recognized the value of the Father’s house he would never be able to truly be part of the Father’s house. He would be on the inside looking out and never be able to appreciate the sheer goodness of his Father’s house. Paul wasn’t suggesting that the willful lost be cut off in an effort to be cruel. Paul was looking beyond the here and now. He clearly states that the purposes of this releasing is for the saving of the spirit.The Father released his son, with full expectation that he would die before he saw him again. He knew that until his son had reached the bottom of his barrel there would never be a need for his redemptive, restoring love. When we are unable to release our sons we are making a very simple, incredibly dangerous statement. We are saying that we do not trust God. That’s it. We have allowed sin to stay, not just stay but be comfortable, in the camp because we do not trust God to care for the lost. The shepherd who searched until he found, the woman who diligently worked until she found, the Father who released with no expectation and received with restoring love…we trust our own powers to keep over His mighty, gentle hand. We allow fear and intimidation to deceive us into thinking that we can somehow love these willful lost into restoration. That’s not what the parable tells us. The willful lost must be released to God’s care because His infinite care is the only thing that will call the willful lost home. How many times have we delayed the Prodigal’s return because we never let him go? How many times have we run ahead and cleaned up the pigsty so that the willful lost won’t know the sting of their choices? How many times have we allowed a little sin to infiltrate our mindsets, values and morals for the sake of preserving a willful lost soul and not realized it until it was too late? If you have a prodigal, a willful lost, one who has been raised in the Father’s house LET THEM GO! Let them go with no expectation of return. Trust God to do what He does best, lead them by His loving hand to the place where they recognize the value of His house. Break the chains of fear and intimidation that you have allowed to bind you and release the prodigal. You cannot restore what has never been truly and sincerely lost. A willfully lost soul can’t see the need for restoration until they come to the end of their own will and find God’s will instead. I am sure that the Father of the lost son spent many hours praying, crying and hurting but I am also sure that in that moment of return all those tears were returned as joy. You see the Father trusted God. We get this beautiful hint when we read that he saw his son from afar off. He had no expectation of his son’s return but he hoped and so he watched for him. No one had to tell the Father that his son was coming, there was no unexpected knock at the door. He was watching and waiting and when he saw that precious humbled heart making his weary way home the Father ran. He ran to offer restoration before it was ever asked of him, he ran to offer love and compassion because his son was finally ready to receive it. Stop holding on to what you have no right to! Give your prodigal to God for the saving of their spirit and buy a good pair of running shoes because you have a glorious sprint to train for.

Vanishing Vehicles and CSI Values

Leave a comment

When I was little we lived in an old farmhouse with a tall staircase just inside the front door. I used to love jumping from the stairs onto the wooden floor below. I loved the sound that the floor made when I landed and I loved the free-falling sensation that accompanied my triumphant leaps. I would start at the bottom step and jump from one step higher each time until I finally jumped from the very top. I remember being about 5 and having a very intense conversation with my dad about how it wasn’t possible for me to jump from the top because it was too high and it was dangerous. He, very reasonably, pointed out that I was quite small and if I jumped from the top I wouldn’t make it to the bottom but would instead land on the stairs and hurt myself. I remember sitting there and nodding my sweet, curly head in obedience but I also remember it was the first time I ever disagreed with my dad. You see I knew, absolutely knew, that I jumped from the top step and landed on the floor. As I got older and learned new things I found that I could no longer jump all the way from the top to the bottom. I had learned about things like gravity and my knowledge pinned me to the earth. Somehow I lost my certainty in the floating; I lost faith that my beloved stairs would vanish from beneath me as I descended, depositing me safely, giggling on the warm, wooden floor.

The other morning I was driving to work and as I merged onto the highway there was a small dark car in front of me, a white truck beside me and no one behind me. I wanted to pass the car in front of me so I checked my rear view and then looked to see where the white truck was. In a mere matter of seconds that truck, nondescript and average in every way, had disappeared. It wasn’t next to me, wasn’t behind me, wasn’t before me…it was just gone. My first thought was to check my mirrors and see if it had gone off the road or become disabled. I slowed down so that I could take a good look and found no evidence of the truck. It was weird to say the least. Usually there are a few people on the highway that I wish would vanish but this was a real puzzle. My second thought was almost laughable to me “what if that truck was translated like Enoch or Philip” but that thought gripped me intensely. Why would it be laughable to me or seem silly and a bit mad to think that someone had been translated off the highway? Why, when there was no evidence to the contrary, did I have such difficulty viewing the miraculous as a viable answer to the mystery of the missing truck? I began to think about how people, in general, love to find the answer. We love to make all the pieces fit and have answers for how everything comes together. When you think about the sheer number of crime procedurals that populate our television schedules it seems pretty obvious that we’re wired to hunt for answers. We are like dads who want to make sure that our daughters aren’t doing anything that would harm them, so we educate them about the dangerous realities of their play. We work so hard to de-mystify our world that we have forgotten that we’re encouraged to have child-like faith.

In Luke 18:17 Jesus tells us that if we don’t receive the kingdom of God like a little child we won’t enter it. I am not a theologian by any means, but I have always thought that this verse was about perspective as much as anything else. You see, if I can’t see the miraculous all around me then I am not able to participate in it. If my eyes have been so clouded by facts and figures that I have lost the ability to see the kingdom then, of course, I won’t be able to enter it. Unless I believe that there is a magical kingdom through the wardrobe I’ll only ever find a place to hang my coats; but in order to believe in magical wardrobes or translated trucks I have to look beyond reason to something deeper and higher. I’m not saying that reason should be laid aside or facts should be forgotten, they are valuable and have important purpose and place. I am saying that reason and fact shouldn’t hold the highest place. I’m saying, maybe we should stop searching so intently for the facts surrounding the vanishing vehicles in our lives (believe me over the next few days I searched that road for skid marks, broken branches, tire ruts in the median, anything that would provide a logical explanation and found nothing). Perhaps we should be a little more child-like in our recognition that when the Word tells us that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37) it means nothing. For my part I believe that I really did jump the entire length of that staircase because I didn’t know that I couldn’t. The facts didn’t measure up to the truth that I had jumped from the top, safely, many times. I also choose to believe that a random white truck was translated from one place to another on an inconsequential stretch of Pennsylvania highway a few days ago and I pray that whatever God sent the driver of that truck to do was successful because it was business for a Kingdom that has to be believed to be seen. I believe that if nothing is impossible than there is a whole lot of miraculous possibility that I have not been embracing. I believe!

Whimsy, Wonder and Worship

Leave a comment

When I was little I loved spending summer evenings outside catching lightning bugs (or bug lightnings as my brother, Jon, used to call them). My mom would give us a Mason jar to put them in and my dad would punch holes in the lid so the lightning bugs could breath. I would carefully position grass so that their temporary jar home was soft and so that they could hide but we would still see them. I loved turning off the lights and watching the glow come from the little jar. I remember my dad whispering “guys come see the fireworks” and we would gather on the front porch or the deck of the pool and just watch the lights that filled the trees and fields around our house. I have to say that nature’s little dancing lights are still my favorite fireworks show. My dad also taught me to love the early summer evenings when the frogs would sing. Whenever he heard them he would quiet everyone and we would just sit and listen for as long as we could. The flurry of moving lights coupled with the musical chirps and croaking still stirs my heart with a heady mix of memories and wonder. A few years ago I had the enchanting pleasure of getting to know a wonderful young lady from Northern Ireland. Watching her experience the whimsical dance of fireflies for the first time was one of the great joys of my life. I feel that same joy when my nieces or nephews beg to go outside and catch the little glowing orbs that float through the humid summer air or stop to listen to the rhythm of the frog and bug symphonies. I felt that same joy when I had the delightful honor of seeing some beloved Hawaiian friends experience snow for the first time. There is something precious in noticing the little graces that hover on the edges of our days. Whether it is a snowflake, a glowing insect or some other miniature miracle I encourage you to take time to notice and appreciate how fleeting and glorious these treasures are. What a marvelous God to make snowflakes so delicate, fireflies so luminescent and frog song so melodious. He could have made it all sterile and perfunctory but He gave us beauty instead. Beauty is not a necessity, it is a gift. I hope that wherever you find yourself you see the beauty in the small wonders and are filled with joy, delight, inspiration and praise to the loving Creator who fills our lives with wonder, if only we are willing to see it.

Picking Daisies

2 Comments

As my fans (Mom, that’s you) might remember I once posted about unrequited love on Facebook. Quite a few years ago my unrequited love and I went to a movie. There was a beautiful scene where one of the characters was going on about how much she loved someone who would never love her. I was caught up in the moment and deep in thoughts about my similar circumstance when the object of my affection leaned over and whispered “Wow, she really loves him and he just doesn’t get it”. I have never in my life (and keep in mind that I have three brothers who are expert button pushers) wanted to do someone physical harm as badly as I did in that second. I was angry, heartbroken, frustrated, hurt, flustered and wryly amused all at the same time. I was hoping that my tears would be attributed to the movie, not my wealth of conflicting emotions and by the time the credits rolled I had sorted myself out and was cool as a watermelon (I’m not quite cucumber shaped). Looking back the whole thing makes me chuckle but at the time it wasn’t a favorite event. Thinking about the state of my heart, I can say with absolute certainty that there was nothing Christ-like about me in that instance.

Many of us have heard the words of 1 Corinthians 13 over and over again. It’s a very popular passage in church, at weddings and anywhere else conversations of love take place. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I was certainly not feeling kind and I was definitely feeling irritable to say the least, but John 3:16 tells us that Christ-like, godly love is sacrificial; “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.” and, sitting in that movie theater, my only thoughts were of myself. How does God do it, how does He love us even at the cost of His own son? John 1:10-11 talks about Jesus experiencing unrequited love, it says “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” The one who created the world, loved the world enough to come as a sacrifice, wasn’t recognized by the object of his deep love. I can’t imagine the intense agony of being so deeply rejected!

When you were little did you ever pull the petals off a daisy, playing “he loves me, he loves me not”? If you were anything like me you counted the petals to make sure you always ended with love. I imagine Jesus doing the same thing but I suspect it would sound a lot less like my childhood play and a little more like this: “I love them, I love them, I love them”. My love is sometimes patient, it hopes sometimes, believes some things and endures to a point. I will admit that there’s nothing terribly impressive about my love. The Bible is full of verses about love that I can never measure up to. How can I repay, with my frail, inconstant love, such vast, all-encompassing love? This is one of the many things about God that blows my mind. I can love because He loves me (I John 4:19)! God knows what it is to be human, Jesus walked the same earth that I do and He understands this life, both from the eye of the creator and the created. He knows that humanity cannot truly love so He equips us with the ability to love like Him. Hebrews 13:20-21 shows us this in Paul’s benediction “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” This equipping is further illustrated in I Corinthians 2:9-10; “But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” I love the glimpse of this precious gift that’s given to us in Romans 5:1-5; “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us; it’s so amazing it needs to be repeated.

There are days when love is hard to muster. There are moments when it would be much easier to deck someone than to respond with compassion. In these moments, if we’re really listening, I’m sure we can hear the Holy Spirit whisper “I love them, I love them, I love them and because I love them, so do you”.

He Gets Me!

Leave a comment

I have been thinking a lot about mistakes lately. I make them, you make them, we all make mistakes. Most of the time mistakes are silly and unintentional, simply the result of not focusing on the task at hand (like going into the men’s room at Panera because you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing). The mistakes that have been circling the drain of my consciousness have been the mistakes made through willful disobedience. There have been times where I have made choices based solely on my own desires, without regard for consequence or godly obedience. I’m not talking about the traditional good-church-girl taboos, I am talking about putting my desires above the needs of others. I am talking about choosing to serve myself and not those around me. These are mistakes that have led me to speak hurtful things to loved ones or be careless with someone else’s pain in an effort to get my own way. Selfishness leads to all sorts of disastrously elegant tangles that require nothing less than the mighty hand of God for extrication!

In the midst of my mistake centered pondering I was reading Lamentations (you know, the party book of the Old Testament) and I came across one of my favorite passages. I always forget that it’s in Lamentations because it inspires such hope and, let’s face it, a book with the word Lament in the title doesn’t seem to be the instinctual place to go when you’re looking for hope or a little cheering up. I love so many things about this passage. It comes after a diatribe about afflictions and sufferings with phrases like “though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer” or “my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is”. There are some very intense tribulations going on. There is discouragement,dismay and disillusionment and then there is verse 22:

Lamentations 3:22-24

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul “therefore I will hope in him.”

When I read this verse I usually focus on the fact that God’s love is steadfast and never-ceasing. I get inspired by the depth of his faithfulness and mercies that never end. I know that I’ve talked about new morning mercies with loads of people at one time or another but for some reason what struck me this time was that the mercies are new EVERY morning. It doesn’t just say that God’s mercy is never-ending or perpetual or always available. It says that his mercies are new.

I should probably interject here that I love reading the dictionary. I love etymology (the study of origins of words – not entomology which is the study of insects, although I’m sure that the study of insects has produced some fascinating, colorful language). I pulled up my old favorite, Noah Webster’s 1828, and looked up a few of the descriptors in this passage. New has some terrific definitions; “lately made, invented, produced or come into being; renovated, repaired so as to recover the first state; fresh after any event” etc. but my favorite was this one, “not before used”. Next on my plate was Every. Noah only has one definition for every; “Each individual of a whole collection or aggregate number. The word includes the whole number, but each separately stated or considered”. When talking about mornings, the word every, in this verse, includes all mornings collectively and each morning individually. All mornings to ever exist are included in this every. Now for the main event, Mercy. Here is what dear Noah has to say about mercy and his definition is so beautiful that I can make no addition; “That benevolence, mildness or tenderness of heart which disposes a person to overlook injuries, or to treat an offender better than he deserves; the disposition that tempers justice, and induces an injured person to forgive trespasses and injuries, and to forbear punishment, or inflict less than law or justice will warrant. In this sense, there is perhaps no word in our language precisely synonymous with mercy That which comes nearest to it is grace. It implies benevolence, tenderness, mildness, pity or compassion, and clemency, but exercised only towards offenders. mercy is a distinguishing attribute of the Supreme Being.”

I was struck again by the magnificence of this hope. Each morning, every morning, God provides benevolence, tenderness, mildness, pity or compassion and clemency (to forgive or to spare, tenderness in punishing, disposition to treat with favor and kindness) to me, the offender. Why? Because He knows me! The God of the universe knows me. He knows that I’m just as likely to be mean-spirited as I am to wander into the wrong restroom. He knows that I struggle with selfish motivation on every day that has a morning. He knows that I juggle potential mistakes like a circus pro. He gets me and, because my loving, Heavenly Father gets me, He made a way for me to keep putting one foot in front of the other when the cold hand of reality slaps me with the gravity of my mistakes. He gives new mercies every day because He knows me. Don’t get me wrong, the presence of mercy is not license to make mistakes willy-nilly. In fact, the presence of new mercy every day is evidence of such incredible, compassionate love that it should inspire the desire to be proven worthy of such benevolence. That is where the hope comes from. I have hope that each day, when given the opportunity, I will choose others over self, I will recognize the value of mercy and, through God’s great faithfulness, I will honor the mercy of the day with obedience and love. (Although you might still find me in the wrong restroom someday, blushing wildly and scrambling for the door.)

Under Pressure

1 Comment

So, I started a blog and thought to myself, “this will be fun, I can share my thoughts and maybe they will bless someone.” I was rather surprised to discover a mounting pressure that began to well up in the back of my mind. Suddenly there was an entity that I had committed to and it caused a flurry of questions to surface; “what if I don’t have anything to say?”, “what if I say too much?”, “what if I, unintentionally, hurt someone?”, “what if no ones reads this?”, “what if someone reads this?”, amongst other foolish internal queries. This ramble of thoughts by no means absorbed my day, they were just a few fleeting impulses that crossed the landscape of my mind but I gave them credence. Silliness, I’ll admit, but pressure inducing silliness. How often do I allow such silly, inconsequential things to have power over me? How many precious moments have I wasted in giving up when I should have just taken a breath to remember the goodness of God? Anxiety isn’t a force in and of itself. It is a relinquishing, not a vanquishment. To relinquish is to voluntarily cease to keep or claim, to give up. I find it a little humiliating how I quickly capitulate to this toothless enemy and lose the comfort of a soul at rest. I have discovered that I tend to be more anxious about little things than I am about big things. I think that I tend to push God into the position of only being concerned about the “big picture” items and that I am on my own with the day-to-day concerns. Every day is full of opportunities to remember that God is endlessly faithful. He is faithful in every aspect of my life, big or small. I will probably relinquish my peace tomorrow, several times if I know myself at all. I will also remember that there is a God who loves me with an everlasting love. He has told me, over and over in His word to fear not and I’m going to trust Him. So, I started a blog and people may read it or not, I might say too much or not enough, I might accidentally hurt someone but I’m not going to fret about it. This will be fun, I can share my thoughts and maybe they will bless someone.

Grab a bowl of ice cream and join me on this delicious adventure!

2 Comments

I’m going to keep this short and sweet (just like me). I have a lot of thoughts that tumble through my head in the course of a given day. Occasionally I post them on Facebook but mostly I keep them to myself. I have a few dear friends (and a persistent mother) who keep encouraging me to write something; a book, a devotional, a menu…anything. I decided to start with a blog and here I am at the beginning…a very good place to start (commence with bursting into song all you die-hard musical lovers). I have no idea how often I might post or what I might have to say; I may rehash or expand some of my old Facebook posts in addition to sharing new ideas and thoughts. In all honesty the biggest reason that I’m doing this is because I love the title of my blog and my friend Jason told me that if I didn’t use it he would steal it. Whew, theft averted!