January 15-16, 2013 Waiting on Him…

“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.” Lamentations 3:25

     Some days I feel like I have been waiting on God for a long, long time.  I have been praying for the situation with my children and their father to be resolved for over 5 years now, and I am still waiting.  I realize that when children are involved in a divorce it is a bit more complicated. I also realize that to some degree, their father and I will have to remain in contact, because of the boys, for many more years, but it’s like the turmoil, the issues, the custody, nothing has ever really been resolved to even begin with. How can you move forward when there’s still so much to figure out? When I consider what God has done over the past five years, the list is long. He’s made me stronger, in my faith and myself. He’s given me the love of a lifetime in my husband.  He’s provided for me with a steady job that most days I really do enjoy or at least a job I am comfortable in and able to discover joy on a regular basis.  He’s kept me with my boys and in their life in a big way! I’ve never really had to go too long without being with them, and he’s provided me with the opportunities to continue being an integral part of their activities and experiences on the island.  He’s given me a whole new family in Oregon and brought my own parents back together and in one place.  He’s made it possible for me to publish books with my kids, which I might never have been able to afford to do living anywhere else in the world with taxes and bills and all that comes with life on the “mainland.” He’s shown me how to let go, how to find peace in life’s circumstances no matter where you live or what is going on. He’s molded me and blessed me in countless ways over the last five years, but this one prayer, this one question in my life continues to go without a final answer. It’s in process, so to speak, and it’s been hard to wait on God to show me what He’s going to do. I may be wrong, but I sense all of this will be coming to a close soon (maybe not a permanent close, but one that will result in a big transition and change in our lives), and it may not be in the way I hope or expect. God’s ways and plans are not always what we expect, although, it will be what is best. So, what has God been doing while I was waiting on Him? He’s been preparing me for what’s to come. He’s been making sure I would be able to handle the answer when He finally reveals it to me.  And it’s not all about me…I feel sure He has also been preparing the boys for their future, making them strong for what’s ahead. I don’t know what even the most immediate future holds for us, but I will continue to seek God and wait on Him as I know He will be good to me and my boys if I will simply be patient and trust in His plan for us.  

January 11-14, 2012 History Repeats Itself…

“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18

     The past few days I have been reading through Genesis in my Daily Bible. As I read about the history of the beginning days of man, I am fascinated by it all. Genesis does not provide all the powerful, insightful verses that stand alone to teach us what we should do or not do, as the verse from Thessalonians above does or as the verses from the book of Luke are filled with being straight from the mouth of Jesus, but it does give a very accurate picture of our human nature and the human condition in general, even though the events and people described lived in a completely different land and time from our own.  On the 11^th, I began reading about Jacob and Esau, twin boys born to Isaac (Abraham’s son) and Rebekah. These two were destined from birth to be at odds, like Cain and Able.  They grew up to be two totally different men, then Jacob deceived Esau more than once in order to claim Esau’s birthright.  After their father’s death, he was forced run to another land under the threat that Esau would kill him if he remained in Canaan.  Sounds like a soap opera, right?  The good news is that Jacob and Esau never went so far as to kill each other (like Cain killed Able), and they came to a truce later on, but in so many ways, instead of learning from history, as humans, we tend to repeat it.  Abraham had problems with deceit, and these problems were passed onto Isaac, and then to his son, Jacob.  As hard as we may try not to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, at times, we’re just too human; we can’t seem to help ourselves. In the stress and fear of the moment, we will do things we never thought possible of ourselves, things we swore to ourselves we’d never do.  In spite of our fallible nature, God loves and blesses us still.  So, in everything, I will give thanks, even the mistakes I make regularly, because this is the will of God or at least it’s already a part of his plan because he knows us so well.  It’s amazing that we ever even doubt that God knows us, our plight, our fears, and our human condition today. It should be easy for us to believe that if we know anything about the history of man as recorded throughout the Bible.  He’s watched over us as we’ve acted and reacted to our relationship with Him and others in the same ways over and over and over again.  This is the human condition, to be born knowing nothing; as we grow, we learn about life through our very human experiences, experiences that often take us through making the wrong choices first and often based of our emotions instead of rational thought, then we figure out that we need to consider looking inside ourselves and hopefully, we find God throughout some part of this journey, and we begin striving to follow Him and become more like Him. The problem is that learning to become more like God is a life-long process because we start out without knowing anything and are raised by other humans who are still learning too. In so many ways though, it’s comforting to know that this life we live and the way we live it is part of the normal human experience ever since the days of Adam and Eve.  It means that when I make a mistake, there’s no need to sit around and beat myself up about it or have a “woe is me” pity party because I’m not alone in this world. We all make mistakes, and the best way to learn from them is the ask forgiveness from God and those who we may have hurt with our bad choices and move on, finding ways to become better through it, thanking God along the way for how he is able to take those lemons in our life and make lemonade out of them.  That’s one thing I’ve noticed about the people in Genesis, they thank God for the good and the bad, building altars and making ceremonies out of every truce made, every blessing given, ever narrow escape from an even worse fate that might have befallen them.  God is paramount in their daily lives, in their thinking. Every child born has a name based on how God has blessed them. Upon the completion of every successful journey, God is praised and remembered. That would be the one difference I see between the human lives recorded in Genesis and our lives now, God was not left out or forgotten, even in the midst of their sin. He was a central focus in every part of their lives. We will make mistakes, often the same mistakes humans were making thousands of years ago, but God has not changed either. He is still walking right there beside us. He may seem quieter than He was back then, but he’s still here, still working, still there for us, loving and blessing us. All we have to do is stop long enough to notice and listen for His voice in the darkness.  

January 10, 2013 Trust and Fear…

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths. “ Proverbs 3:5-6

     This is one of my favorite verses from God’s word, but I find it one of the hardest to put into practice.  I don’t even fully understand God and His plans for my life, so how can I NOT depend on my own understanding?  That’s all I have, really, my own understanding of life and things from my years of education and experience in this world. So if I interpret the verse correctly, it is saying I have to trust without knowing anything for sure; I have to seek His will by faith alone (because even when I think I know His will, I am soon dumbfounded by how off I have been in my assumptions about His will for me), and I have to allow Him to direct my path without a set of directions to follow and guide me. If I put this verse fully into practice, all I will have to guide me is my faith and my trust in Him.  Okay, so if God is all I have been taught, believe, and have experienced Him to be, than this should make perfect sense and be easy for me to do.  So, what’s the problem? It’s terribly scary, that’s the problem, not knowing anything, not being able to explain and understand the plans of our Maker for our lives because He is so much more in every aspect of His character and being than we could ever hope to be.  He knows all, sees all, and is able to put all of it into perfect perspective and lead us throughout our lives in just the right way, the way that will use our stubborn, selfish humanness to our advantage, allowing us to learn the most from our positive and negative experiences and thus, assist us in coming out the better for it in the end.  He knows it’s going to be scary for us. He knows the mistakes we are going to make. He knows us so well that He is able to take our inadequacies, our insecurities, our tendency to need to “go through” the experience ourselves to really grasp it and decide it’s not what we really want for ourselves and turn these into learning experiences that will really sink into our hearts and minds for the long haul.  And even though He knows all this, He still worked through men and His own son to give us a manual for life, the Bible, to tell us in great detail how to live successfully, peacefully, and with love and joy always, knowing we would struggle against doing what it says, questioning it and complaining that we just can’t understand what He’s trying to say. Why would He still give us His word, knowing us as He does? I think He did it because He still has faith in His creation, in His children, faith that there will be even one who can understand and appreciate it, even one who can live righteously and by “The Good Book,” so to speak.  If God can have that much faith in us, His sinful, scared, prideful creation…If He can still love us that much, to want to teach us His ways and help us to find His peace, love, and joy for life, then the least we can do is attempt to throw off our clocks of fear and put our trust and our faith in Him and His plan, wherever it may lead us.  

January 8-9, 2013 Practicing Kindness…

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

     One thing I always find myself praying with my children when we say our prayers at bedtime is to make good choices and be kind and loving to others.  I pray this because I know how hard it can be to actually do it all the time, even though it is easy to pray it.  I’m not saying my children and I go around with a scowl being cruel and mean to our friends, family, and co-workers that we associate with on a daily basis, but it’s easy to become comfortable with others and not really be fully conscious of whether or not we are being kind and showing love consistently. It reminds me of an experience I had today with a co-worker. She was upset and needed to talk it out.  She expressed how rude some of her other co-workers had been to her by walking into the classroom and talking loudly to each other while she was trying to lead her small group. Even the kids noticed and told the teachers, “Shhhh…” I agreed with her that they should have been more aware of their surroundings and the fact that they were being disruptive. Knowing the ladies I work with pretty well, I really don’t think they even realized what they were doing and how it affected the others in the room, but isn’t that the whole point?  How often do we go about our day, taking care of our duties, without noticing others around us and how we might be more considerate of them?  I get so busy sometimes that I have to stop, back-up, and start over, realizing I just walked into the room asking questions without even saying good morning first.  It’s because I’m comfortable, and living on a small island like we do, the ladies I work with are like my family for 8-10 hours of my day 5 days a week. Sometimes I even walk in the door at home after work and just start talking without stopping to give my family members a hug and kiss and simply say, “Hi, how was your day?”  I’m comfortable with them…just as they are with me.  All the more reason to consider more fully how I interact with them regularly. If I can be more conscious with those I am closest to, practicing kindness and tenderheartedness consistently, then it will make it all the easier to be in the habit of being kind and tender to strangers and acquaintances and others who really may need to experience a bit of unconditional love and benefit from it. Bottom line, getting into these kinds of Godly habits will bless us and others more than we could ever know or even imagine.  

January 7, 2013 Powerful Words…

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17

     I have only been writing regularly about the scriptures and how they inspire and teach me since the beginning of the advent season in December, but already, I am gripped by how powerfully it has affected my daily life. I look forward each day to finding a quiet moment to sit down and reflect upon God’s word and what God has to teach me through it.  I have always loved to have 2-3 devotionals by my bedside table, often reading several at one time. I do this because one may be dry to me that day while the other touches the very spot I needed comforting in and helps me breath a sigh of relief, knowing that someone else understands my life and has encouraged me to keep the faith through their own experiences and insight from God and His word. And even though I have my own dry spells where I fall asleep at the end of a day without having read any of the devotionals and Bibles resting right beside me, I never stay away for long, and for the first time in a long time, I am finding God’s word coming back alive in so many ways. Even Genesis, which is mostly a history of the early days of the world is fascinating; whereas, in the past, I must admit, it felt not so exciting because it was so far removed from my own life. But now, I just want to know and understand God and the world better, and Genesis explains so much of why we are where we are now in the modern world.  People today are no less sinful, no more wise that they ever were. We are just as impatient, just as insecure, just as unfaithful and untrusting of God and His plans for us as Abram was when he was waiting on God to give him and his wife, Sarai, a son along with His covenant to make him and his descendants into a great nation.  He committed more than one sin trying to make God’s plan come true in his time, not God’s, and because of that he brought more sin into the world through the conflict and strife brought about by his son, Ishmael, that he had with Sarai’s maidservant, Hagar, because Sarai started to distrust God’s plan and tried to make it happen through Hagar. So much of the conflict in the Middle East, even today, goes back to Genesis. Absolutely astounding!! We humans are so stubborn and prideful and unable to let go, but instead we hold grudges, we seek revenge, we fight for what is “rightfully ours” when all we are really doing is trying to be God, to do His job for Him, to show others that we know what’s best, even if it’s in direct opposition to what His word says about love and servanthood and in contrast Jesus’s example revealed to us when He was here on earth. Simply astounding. If we really considered the whole of God’s word without prejudice, without worldy judgment, considered it with a prayer for God to help us understand it the way he intended us to read it, can you imagine how humbled we would be, realizing that we have had it all wrong? We are not in control of anything; no one owes us anything; we do not deserve anything. We are lowly, sinful, misguided humans who need our God to save us and guide us, to correct us and help us find the right path. Life is hard enough as it is. Why not see if God and His word can’t help us to find that peace that only He can give, to find the answers that only He really fully understands and can lead us to. God’s word…that’s where it’s at. If you haven’t read much in the Bible, I encourage you to find out for yourself what God has to say. Hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?