Unreasonable requests, unreasonable grace

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I looked at the sign on the door and asked my daughter if she wanted to change her mind.

That is to say, I asked her again.

I’d been asking her for a month after receiving the pamphlet about two historical day-camps in our area, visiting living history sites and creating projects like Indian pottery and a windmill.

My oldest daughter asked me to sign her up right away.

My middle daughter declined just as quickly with a brief “no thanks” and a determined shrug.037

But we stood there and looked at the sign on the door on day one of the first camp: Spots still open for future sessions in the other location.

So I asked again and once again she shook her head with an emphatic and decisive “no.”

Until the next day at 11:00 a.m., just two hours before camp started for the day, when she inched over to me and whispered: “Mom, I’ve changed my mind.”

She needed help overcoming foolishness, stubbornness and fear, help with redirection and what to do next, help figuring all this out and making right what was wrong.

And she was willing to ask me for it, to trust me with her problem because it was just too big for her after all.

My mom’s heart broke for her because I love her, that’s why.  Even if it was her own choice and the mess of her own making, still I felt that stirring of grace.

I knew what it took for her to stand at my feet and confess truth.

I knew because haven’t I stumbled to the feet of Jesus with mistakes and failures covered in a right-awful mess time and time and too many times again?

Hadn’t I hung my head so low and cried because I knew it was my own foolish fault and how could I expect grace so undeserved?

But that’s what grace is: Unearned, unmerited, undeserved, poured out all over us never because we’ve racked up enough good behavior points to cash in for a blessing.  Given because He loves us, simply because He chooses to give.

So, I told my daughter I couldn’t promise anything, but I’d ask about her joining in the next camp.

She was so bold.  She asked, couldn’t she after all just join in the camp that was taking place that day AND the next one in a few weeks?

I was too embarrassed to even ask for anything so unreasonable when I called the official number on the phone and left a voicemail message. I inquired about open spaces in the next session and left it at that.

Then we packed into the car and drove almost an hour for day two of the first camp session and walked in with my oldest daughter.  The lady manning the sign-in table saw me and realized I had left the voicemail message about the girl who changed her mind.

And she asked:  Would my daughter like to just join the class today so she didn’t miss out and then do the one in a month, too?

My daughter nodded, I signed the form and she was in.

Just like that.

But I paused a moment with this girl of mine before sending her into that classroom for the day.  I looked into two bright blue eyes and said—“Look what God did for you” and then I cried my way right out of there.

Because God had showed her this abundance of grace, more than I had even dared to ask for.

It was unreasonable grace.

But then, isn’t all grace really “unreasonable?”

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

I will comfort you there in Jerusalem as a mother comforts her child (Isaiah 66:13 NLT).

and he says:

I will answer them before they even call to me. While they are still talking about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers (Isaiah 65:24 NLT).

I consider this today when I’m thinking of need and not God’s promises, thinking of trouble and not His strength, thinking of what’s wrong and not how He loves me.

Hadn’t God loved my daughter enough to surprise her with this grace?  Hadn’t it been a shocking gift, so generous, so much more than I was even bold enough to request?

And God loves us like that. He comforts us like a mother comforts her child, not just with a hug and a tissue for the tears.  No, with intervention and provision, without remonstration or annoyance, but with so much compassion.

He doesn’t just answer the prayers we pray…but those we can’t even groan out, those we aren’t brave enough to put into words, those we’re sure are too much to ask and the ones we don’t deserve answered.

Reasonable?  No, not at all.

But grace, yes, grace the way God gives.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Orange Makeup/White Shirt and Forgiveness

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“I’m so grateful we never have to stand at a distance from Christ. Not only is He incapable of catching our ‘disease,’ but also He is never reluctant to embrace us”
(Beth Moore, Jesus: the One and Only, p. 242)

I love my kids.  Normally, I’m eager to accept their hugs and I’ll wrap them up in my arms at the slightest whim.

The other night, though, my daughter was fully decked out in her costume as an Oompa Loompa in a production of Willy Wonka, Jr, complete with thick, bright orange makeup all the way to her hairline and down to her neck.

…And she wanted to hug me.006

…While I was wearing a white shirt.

…A really, really white shirt.

Did I mention she was orange?  Really, really orange.  In fact, I think Crayola should consider naming a new color “Oompa Loompa Orange” in her honor.

So, I hugged her at first with an intricately choreographed dance, making sure her orange head never made contact with my clothing. She bobbed; I weaved.

Then, I stood still for a moment and tilted her face to the side so that only the top of her head touched me.  (Her hair, thankfully, wasn’t orange!)   I gave her what I’ve decided to call “the sideways head hug.”

My goal here was a kind of sterile affection: Showing love without staining my clothes.

I’ve learned this dance over years of practice as a mom.  Kids, after all, come at me every day with Oreos on their hands and spaghetti sauce oozing from their fingers. More paint makes it onto them than every makes it onto paper and then they reach out and touch me to get my attention.

In fact, most of my clothes bear the marks of their hands on my thighs (where they could reach when standing up as toddlers) and on my shoulders (from the times I picked those little ones up).

When I read through the Gospels, I’m amazed at how Jesus essentially wore a white shirt and yet never failed to hug, squeeze, lift up, and cherish all those who came to him—even when they were covered in stains of sin, death, and all that was unclean.

He never dodged them in attempts to escape the messiness of their lives.

When the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years braved the disapproving crowd in order to reach Jesus, she was unclean.  Continual bleeding meant continually being cut-off from public worship and physical contact with others.

One brush of her skin against your arm and you’d be unclean, as well.

Yet, she touched Jesus and He didn’t flinch or condemn her.  He didn’t sidestep her presence.  He healed her and set her free.

When Jesus saw the coffin of a widow’s only son pass by surrounded by wailing mourners and his mother in despair, Jesus could have slipped away and ignored it all.  Touching a dead body was a guaranteed mess, making you unclean by the law’s religious standards.

Jesus did it anyway, though, telling the dead boy to arise and then watching this only son embrace his mother again.

Jesus ate with the rabble, touched the eyes of the blind, and laid hands on the demon-possessed.  His was a physical affection, the real and true fingerprints of God placed on undeserving lives and unclean situations.

Yet, instead of being tainted or stained Himself, He brought purity to others.

Paul put it this way:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Too often we miss the significance of this fact: Jesus did what was unclean and yet nothing could penetrate the purity of the Son of God.

He was sinless, blameless, totally righteous before God, but He didn’t use that as an excuse to separate Himself from others.  Instead, it was His joy to absorb their stains of sin, now bleached white when laid at the feet of the Messiah.

It’s what He did on the streets of Galilee and Judea and Samaria.

It’s what He did on the cross.

It’s what He does even now when we let Him get involved in the dirtiest, muckiest, and most sin-plagued aspects of our lives.

That’s what John assures us when he writes: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This means we don’t need to hide away or shun his society.  We don’t need to pretend the unclean blots on our lives don’t exist.

It also means that we can follow his example by no longer worrying about our clean white shirts and start doling out affection without restraint, not avoiding the mess of others when it makes us uncomfortable.  Like Jesus, we “walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2).

Sometimes real love means getting messy, maybe even orange.

Originally published as Orange Makeup/White Shirt on August 15 2012

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

What I’m Pondering

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Maybe it begins in the hospital, that first moment you see this little life and she blinks her eyes in your direction because she’s heard your voice, un-muffled for the first time by the sound of your heart beat and the shushing of your womb.

Maybe, if we’re being truthful, it begins before that.  We moms analyze morning sickness, aerobic kicking routines versus squirmy tummy rolls, a baby sucking his thumb on the ultrasound or another one turning somersaults and having to be chased around by the technician to keep him on the screen.

We think about our children, consider their character, who God has made them and how He has gifted them.

We think about what they like to eat and why, whether they keep to the schedule willingly or fight it all the way.  We consider whether they are spontaneous, creative, artistic, apassionatemomnalytical, strong-willed, stubborn, articulate, shy, introverted or extroverted.

And then we ponder what to do about it.

Like how I still remember the first time my middle girl handed me a fistful of air and asked me to eat the “sandwich” she had made for me when her older sister had never yet cooked up a pretend meal for me to taste.

Or how I watched as one of my daughters played with her toys by lining them all up in one straight line, categorizing the farm animals into groups.  And my second daughter played with the same toys by creating elaborate story lines and interactions like, “Hi, what is your name?  I’m here to see the farm!”

And how two of my daughters can play for hours on their own without any need for outside conversation or stimulation and my oldest daughter can’t survive 15 minutes without someone to do things with her.

I ponder all this because God has given me these gifts, these children, and being a mom means engaging in the discipline of pondering, taking the time to listen without speaking, watch without intervening, evaluate, assess, and yes, even marvel.

Sometimes we miss it.  We’re busy; they’re busy.  They struggle and we don’t realize it.  They needed us and we failed to see.  They hurt and we were distracted.

But our desire, our goal as moms, is to mother like Mary, who

“was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them” (Luke 2:9 HCSB).

We do this because want to get this right.  We want to parent these blessings with wisdom, making the right choices for their benefit and for their future.  God teaches us who they are only when we take time to pay attention.

In her book, The Passionate Mom, Susan Merrill writes that a mom must

ponder everything she learns about her child so she can truly know her child.

This in turn becomes a spiritual discipline all its own, because pondering is the call of every mom.

More than this, it’s the call of every Christ-follower.

None of us can randomly and haphazardly scramble through this life maze and find wisdom without hunting for it or choose to turn here and there correctly without actively pursuing direction.

The Psalmist challenged us:

Let the one who is wise heed these things
and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord (Psalm 107:43 NIV).

Wisdom comes from heeding…from pondering.

And what do we meditate on?  What do we watch so carefully and take our time to consider, churning it over in our mind, thinking of the implications and action steps?

We ponder the “loving deeds of the Lord.”

Not just skip right over them in haste and busyness.  Not shout back a hurried “thanks, God” as we tumble on our way headfirst into another crisis.

No, here we pause and take the time to see and to say, “Look how God showed His love for me…what does this mean for me now and tomorrow and every day to come?”

Solomon assured us that attaining wisdom is an active pursuit:

Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding.  Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding.  Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures (Prov. 2:2-4)

Tune in.

Concentrate.

Cry out for it.

Ask for it.

Search and seek like it’s the greatest treasure and you the Indiana Jones in this adventure.

Knowing our children doesn’t happen accidentally.  We don’t become the expert on our baby instantly at birth or know all we need to know to parent them into adulthood before the nurse rolls us out of the hospital in the wheelchair.

We learn through pondering.

And this God of ours…who He is and how He works, what He desires and plans for us…we can’t fathom without the wisdom that comes through pondering His loving deeds and pursuing wisdom actively, passionately, constantly, and even patiently.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Renew, Revive, Restore Us Again

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I could recognize the discouragement. The perpetual fatigue in the face and in the slumping of the shoulders, not extreme, but ever so slightly burdened down low.

It was clear in the mechanical activity, not the joyous friendliness of cheerful service like before. Now my friend moved from point A to point B, task one to task two, not smiling, just doing because doing is what needed to be done.

I recognized the discouragement because

I

Have

Been

There

Before.

We who have been weary can see the signs in others, the trudging, the exhaustion, the worn out soul fraying at every edge and held together with patches and slipshod stitchery.

So we come alongside our friends, our Christian sisters and brothers, those whose burdens we’re supposed to remove so they can walk free and unencumbered for a time.  We remind them of God’s goodness, His grace.  We encourage them in their efforts, cheering them on with reminders to persevere and not give up and yes, there will be a harvest in time, and no, it isn’t all in vain.

How do we know?  That’s what they might ask.

Oh my friend, how I know.psalm51

Because contrary to what you might have heard or expected, the Christian life isn’t all easy and Christian service isn’t all joyfully inspiring and pouring out to others out of an overflow.  Sometimes we’re emptying out the last few drops from our own parched souls, not knowing what to do when we’re dehydrated and depleted and still others hold out needy hands for more.

Yet, we know this also.

We pour out…everything….and He pours in anew.

You might think you’re alone in this, stumbling over your own weaknesses, serving to exhaustion, not seeing the reward or the gain or the purpose or the point.

Yet, the prayers of saints long before teach us that others have desperately needed to be renewed, revived, restored.

The Psalmists prayed:

Will You not revive us again
so that Your people may rejoice in You?
(Psalm 85:6 HCSB)

and

Restore our fortunes, Lord,
as streams renew the desert.
Those who plant in tears
will harvest with shouts of joy.
They weep as they go to plant their seed,
but they sing as they return with the harvest  (Psalm 126:4-6 NLT)

and

God, create a clean heart for me
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
 Do not banish me from Your presence
or take Your Holy Spirit from me.
 Restore the joy of Your salvation to me,
and give me a willing spirit (Psalm 51:10-12 HCSB).  

Their prayers would be unnecessary, meaningless even unless they felt the need for the renewing, the reviving, the restoring work of God in us.

We need the grace again, the joy again, the steadfast spirit again, the life again.  That’s what they asked.

That’s what we need, too.

Eugene Peterson wrote:

Nothing suffers from time quite so much as religion.  The skeletal structure of obedience becomes arthritic, and the circulatory system of praise becomes sluggish.  The prayer ‘revive us again’ keeps the body of Christ youthful and responsive to every new mercy and grace in God (Praying With the Psalms).

So we offer to help carry the cross for a time through this valley and we remind them of the hope and the promise as we travel along together.

We tell the fullness of our testimony, not just the revival, the renewal, the restoration after the fact…not the destination without the journey or the end result without the in between.

No, we remember that we were worn out and limping and God renewed us.

We were dead and hopeless and God revived us.

We had lost everything and God restored us.

God did this for me, that’s what we say.  And He will do this work in you, too.

And we pray, of course we pray.

We ask God to fill them right up again, fill their own parched souls so they are overflowing. We ask for strength anew and energy for each day, for reminders of the vision and reassurance of the harvest.

God’s plan isn’t for us to walk through discouragement alone, not any of us. How could we ever survive it, after all, if we thought we were the only ones and that somehow we must be here because of our own fumbling and faltering?

But to know others have been there, have made it through, and have traveled back to tell us the good news and to pray for us along the way…that’s the grace God gives for a wearied soul.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Bleeding Words: An Offering

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Ernest Hemingway said:

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Now we’ve graduated to Word Processors, but still the pouring out of self onto paper burns painful at times.

But not when you hoard it or hide it away in safe shadows.  I can sit here typing away sentiments, thoughts, emotions crammed into words, hit the save button and tuck it away just for me. There’s no danger in that.

It’s in the sharing with others that you open your heart all up, vulnerable and unprotected.

So, I sat at that computer screen and had to breathe in and out a few times before opening the attached file.  It seems forever ago that I sent my editor the complete manuscript for my book, one file ask-me-anything-lord_kdattached to an email that read: Heather King-Ask Me Anything Lord.

And now here she had sent it back, this time marked as edited.

Sometimes in a wave of anxiety I think, “Oh, it would be so much easier to just end the exposure and hide myself away again.”  No more writing and hoping others like it, hoping no one criticizes or critiques.  No more posting to a blog or sending in articles to magazines or submitting manuscripts or book proposals to editors and waiting for the replies to come.

But in my heart, there is also this desire for growing and learning and for obedience, and this is my hope as I finally assume enough bravery to open up my editor’s attachment.  After all, don’t I want to hear what she says?  Don’t I want to mend and amend and improve all the time so every single day I’m more useful to God?

Yes.  I want my offerings to God to be ever more beautiful. When He asks me to lay it down, I want to have the gift in my hands to give, not locked away.

So, I double click the attachment in one quick act of bravery and scan through the comments.

I sigh out one heaving release of a held breath.

What she says blesses me.  I learn.  I edit here and understand there.  Really the changes aren’t so hard.  And instead of working alone, surreptitiously typing away on a private document, now I have shared the work with another.  We’ve united in our effort and it is better for the working together.

Sometimes, that fear of being hurt and the desire to be safe keeps us from ever raising our hand to volunteer or making the phone call with an offer to serve. Maybe instead of shining ourselves, we’re content to linger in the shadows so no one will see us in the light.

Yet, obedience means accepting the danger and willingly giving anyway. It means preparing our gifts, tending them, investing in them, honing them, learning from others so we can offer up what is a “pleasing aroma” of sacrifice to our God.

Shortly before Jesus’s betrayal and arrest, he dined at a man named Simon’s house in Bethany. A woman entered the feasting room and broke an entire jar of expensive and fragrant oil over Jesus’ head. Her prophetic gift to Christ, anointing him before his burial, was a public act of worship, not a safely private and hidden offering.

And she was criticized. The men at the table scolded her and evaluated her offering. They complained it was a waste of resources, unnecessary and without purpose. Others may have judged her, but Jesus quieted them saying:

“Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for Me….She has done what she could” (Mark 14:6, 8 HCSB).

The offerings we bring to God are never about our glory or about competing with others or meeting expectations. It’s not about numbers, not about ‘success,’ not about being the best or at the very least being better. It’s about giving what we have, the very best we can indeed give.

Jesus’ is the only opinion that mattered at that table, and yes, it should be all that matters to us.

And He is simply pleased when He can say of us like he did of the woman with the alabaster jar, “she has done what she could.”

With what He’s given you, in the way that He’s designed you, using the passions, past, personality and gifts that He’s placed within you, are you doing what you could?

Not what anyone else could do.

Just what you can do.

If that’s what matters to Him, that’s all that should matter to us.  So despite the danger of exposure or the fear of critique, we offer back to Him what He has given us.

Heather King is a busy-but-blessed wife and mom, a Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Catching Fireflies on a Summer’s Night

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Originally posted July 6, 2012

“For one who has died has been set free from sin.”
Romans 6:7

It’s what summer looks like to me.

Stepping out into the slightest hint of coolness in the final minutes of a hot summer’s day, we carry an empty Mason jar with a foil lid folded down over the edges of the glass.  The sun drifts down and the light dims so that we can see the fireflies at play.

Last night, I called them “lightning bugs” like we did as kids, and my daughter scrunched up her nose in confusion.

Lightning bugs.  Fireflies.  It’s the freedom of summer.  We stay up past bedtime and run around the yard swinging our arms and cupping our hands trying to catch one. firefliesfreedom

On TV, whenever you see a jar of fireflies, it’s lit up, a natural lantern for the evening jaunt.

But I haven’t seen this.  Last night as I watched the few captives in our jar, they remained dark.  They didn’t expend any energy for light.  Instead, their every effort remained focused on escape.  Most of them immediately scaled the jar and sat at the top, right up against the foil, just waiting for me to open the lid again so they could fly to freedom.

Usually, we manage to defeat their various tactics and keep them in the jar until the end of the night when one daughter whines because she didn’t catch one and another daughter begs to catch just one more.  Then they all ask if we can just keep them overnight or for an hour or just a few minutes.

Pleeeeease?   Pretty please?

But I’m sympathetic to the plight of our captives.  So, before we trudge inside we lift up the foil lid and let loose the fireflies.  They jump into the air and without hesitation light up—probably sending out a warning that predators are on the move.

Whatever their message, freedom helps them shine.

Their freedom comes at little cost to them really.  They’ve made attempts at escape, but most have failed.  Ultimately, their freedom flight simply requires me to lift the foil beneath my fingers.

Our freedom, however, is costly.  Physically, most of us receive the gift of freedom because of the sacrifice of others.  I read this week that Thornton Wilder, the famed American playwright and novelist, fought in both WWI and WWII.  People like him paid the price for people like us.

In the same way, our spiritual freedom carries a high price tag, one we could never pay.  Instead, we are the recipient of freedom because of another’s sacrifice.

Paul tells us:

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Freedom is God’s design for us.  It has always been His intention and plan and Christ willingly paid the costly price on our behalf.

Jesus is a freedom-giver, a defeater of oppression and freer of captives.:  “…God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38 ESV).

But Paul charges us with a task, as well. Christ offered us freedom and now it is our job to “stand firm” and refuse to submit to slavery again.

It seems foolish and yet we often choose prison over the freedom Christ offers.  We sit in the bottom of our Mason jar, unwilling to fly and light up the night.  Perhaps we want to do it on our own, scale the glass, escape the lid.  Perhaps the night air is too frightening and the jar too comfortable because it’s what we know.

Do you do this?

If anxiety is your jail, do you rebuild the prison walls by wallowing in fear, allowing your mind to travel where it shouldn’t, looking up information that you know will disturb you, inciting emotions and then letting them run wild?

When the rigors of legalism and the chains of people-pleasing threaten to oppress you, do you submit–check the boxes, follow the crowd, follow expectations, try not to rock the boat, don’t do anything crazy or radical?

If shame holds you captive, do you allow Satan to throw your past in your face, to call you names, to cover your eyes so you can’t see the totally loved, totally forgiven person Christ has made you?

God never meant for you to live oppressed.

So, now that He’s offered you freedom . . . live free by living in truth (John 8:32).

Combat lies with the Word.
Feed on a diet of Scripture so that doubts and Satan’s schemes starve.
Be alert to the first sign of shackles and chains as Satan, the world, and even your old habits try to sneak them onto your wrists and feet.

Freedom is Christ’s gift to you, so refuse to accept captivity any longer.  He’s called you to shine and to fly and to share the message of sweet, sweet freedom with other prisoners.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

The Adventure of the Cherry Pie

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It began with a bag of cherries.

Cherries truly are the gold of the fruit world, so I’ve only bought them twice in over thirteen years of marriage.  This time, a super sale had enticed me to carry home a bag of this sweet and juicy cherrytreasure.

My daughters tasted them once and mostly were done.  Only one daughter and I continued to enjoy them day…after day….after day….until I knew I needed a plan to use the cherries before I had to toss rotten cherries.

Obviously, the answer in such a fruit crisis is to bake a pie.  So, domestically inspired, my daughters and I made the pie crust from scratch and left it in refrigerator to chill before rolling it out into the pie pan.  Then, we carefully followed the recipe for cherry pie filling.  It said I needed four cups of cherries to fill the pie.

I had exactly four cups.  Not 4-1/4 cups or 3-3/4 cups.  Four cups absolutely on the line.

It was a sign, a heavenly smile on my cooking project.

So, my eight-year-old and I pitted those four cups of cherries (without a cherry pitter) and felt thoroughly proud of our pioneer selves.

Yet, as we stirred the filling on the stove, I felt that first quiver of nervousness, that nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be enough to fill the pie.

I was right.

Once the dough was rolled out and the absolutely delicious homemade filling that we were so proud of was poured in, we knew the truth.  We only had enough for half of a pie and I was all out of cherries.

This began the series of minor annoyances that disrupted all of my homemaking tranquility and left me stressed, bothered, tired and frustrated within an hour.

Like how I pulled out all the ingredients for my homemade chicken and barley soup and couldn’t find the chicken stock I needed, not anywhere in any cabinet in the entire house, although I knew for sure I bought it at the store that week.

And how I put the homemade bread dough into the oven in the same bread pan I always use at the same setting with the oven rack positioned in the same place as always—-and started to smell burning after 15 minutes.  The bread had risen so high it was actually touching the top of the oven and burning.

So, I pulled the bread out quickly and placed it on the counter while trying to reposition the oven racks only to smell more burning.  In my haste, I had put the bread down on a stove burner that was still on from my failing soup.  The bread was burned both top and bottom now.

It was at this point that I started crying out to Jesus…over cherry pie, lost chicken stock, and burned bread.

A week later, of course, the bothersome kitchen disasters had passed.  I bought a can of cherry pie filling that night and finished off the baked goods.  We ate the middle of the bread and I found a way to make soup anyway.

Then, I opened up the kitchen cabinet doors and found the chicken stock that had been missing just days before.  There it sat exactly where I remembered placing it, exactly where it should have been, exactly where I had looked over and over in one desperate rumble through the cabinet after another.

So, why?  Why, God, all of that unnecessary drama over things as simple as soup and bread and pie?

Maybe I don’t meet with recipe disasters and random kitchen mishaps every day….and yet every day there are the distractions: The yanking on our hearts to worry here and bluster with frustration there.  The nudging us off our faith foundation and the pecking away at our peace.

In Psalm 86, David prays over his own litany of troubles.  Eugene Peterson notes:

There are fifteen petitions in these seventeen verses: concentration is weakened by the distraction of clamoring needs (Praying with the Psalms, June 24).

Fifteen reasons for David to fall to his knees, one pesky annoyance after another, one overwhelming crisis upon another.

And it’s all just so much, so difficult to focus on Christ and to claim peace, so hard to ignore the circumstances and insist on faith.

So, David prays:

Give me an undivided heart to revere your name (Psalm 86:11).

And this becomes our prayer when life is overwhelming or when days grow difficult, when we’re hit wave after wave with bothersome trifles and knocked flat over by the powerful current.

One heart….one mind….united and unwavering in my intentional focus on Christ.  This is what we need.

Amen.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

A Sleeping Lion is Still a Lion

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All of them seemed ready to show off that day.

The morning was cool, that one break in the summer heat and the chance to enjoy outside without dehydration, heat stroke, headaches and fatigue.  So, we packed a picnic lunch and visited the zoo, even zipping up jackets at the start of the day because of the chill in the air.

On a cool enough day, the animals in the various habitats are willing to leave dens and the burrows under the earth that protect them from the sun.

The prairie dogs bobbed up and down.  The giraffe paced back and forth, his nose barely missing the walkway for zoo onlookers where we stood.  The elephant tossed his hay and the baby monkey swung on ropes and tumbled all over his ever-patient parents.

But the lions.

Always the lions sleep on the highest rock in their habitat, hot day or cool day or whatever.  They lounge and stretch and only occasionally blink their eyes open long enough to yawn and maybe  lionreposition their mass to ease into a more comfortable position or soak up more sun.

Years and years we’ve been visiting this zoo, and I’ve never seen the lion climb down from the rock, never seen him roar or shake his mane.  We’ve never seen the female lion dash across her habitat, stalk imagined prey, or be alert for danger.

Still we marvel at their sheer magnificence, the mightiness of their demeanor.  How their muscles still display power even when they look just as lazy as my two house cats asleep on the arms of our sofa or the foot of my bed.

And we take pictures them, of course.  I have just about six years of pictures of these lions resting on the rock.

I’d think perhaps that their lack of care or nonchalant attitude is simply the fate of the captive lion.  They feel safe in their man-designed haven, provided for and comfortable.

But today I read in Isaiah:

When a strong young lion stands growling over a sheep it has killed, it is not frightened by the shouts and noise of a whole crowd of shepherds.  In the same way, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will come down and fight on Mount Zion (Isaiah 31:4 NLT).

And this I read in the Daily Bread devotional, as the writer describes lions lounging in Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve:

Their serene appearance is deceiving…the reason they can be so relaxed is that they have nothing to fear–no shortage of food and no natural predators.  The lions look lazy and listless, but they are the strongest and fiercest of all.  One roar sends all the other animals running for their lives.  (Our Daily Bread, JAL).

They have nothing to fear.

That’s why the lions don’t stay alert and awake on that rocky cliff.  It’s why they don’t take shifts of standing guard or pace around their zoo enclave with nervous awareness.

It’s why the same beasts out in Kenya feel free to lounge and linger as they drink from a stream and slowly stride through the grass rather than run, stalk, or pounce.

Isaiah writes that this is true of our God, this Mighty Warrior as He leads the armies of heaven, undaunted by opposition.

Oh, but how I tremble and pace with anxious uncertainty! How one phone call or email, one personal confrontation, one malicious bump into my carefully planned schedule, one interruption, one comment by another can leave me feeling so shaken and, yes, afraid.

And why, I wonder at times, am I reacting this way?  Isn’t this in God’s hands?  Even the decisions of others, the way they seem to hold power over my future or the ability to hold sway in my life, is just a ruse.

And why, I wonder, does it seem like God is lounging on the mountain rather than roaring and shaking His mane and displaying His might?  Why can I be in a nervous tizzy of reactionary emotion and He’s not flustered or bothered?  He’s calmly in control.

It’s because our God has no reason to fear.  No need to tremble at the noisy clamoring of our enemies, our frustrations, our annoyances, our worries and obstacles.

And it is our Lion of Judah, our all-powerful God, who gave Isaiah “a strong warning not to think like everyone else does.  He said, ‘Don’t call everything a conspiracy…don’t live in dread of what frightens them.  Make the Lord of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life.  He is the one you should fear, He is the one who should make you tremble. He will keep you safe” (Isaiah 8:11-14).

We aren’t to worry because we fear only God–no other crisis or threat or shaking of our life–and we know He keeps us safe.

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Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in the Fall of 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

That’s What I Want

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I’m a tiny bit of a Wal-Mart celebrity.

It’s eight years of working with our small-town church’s Vacation Bible School …plus eight-and-a-half years of being mom to young kids who have too many friends to fit the playdates into the schedule…plus years of singing songs with kids in our church’s Children’s Church…plus some children’s community theater work …and Voila: Wal-Mart Celebrity Status.

Pushing my cart around the store, totally focused on comparing coupons with the 50+ options on the shelves, trying to keep up with the shopping list and the meal plan, I’ll still know it’s happening.

A child recognizes me.

Sometimes it’s a whisper, “Mom, I know her!  She’s from ____!”

Maybe it involves finger pointing or bashful waving.

Occasionally, I’ll be just about tackled down in a football hug.

My favorite is when they recognize me but they can’t remember why, so they are simultaneously trying to get my attention while looking a tiny bit confused, a lot shy, and maybe even socially panicked if I actually wave back.

Oh, fame.

But this isn’t really fame, of course, not in the worldly sense of paparazzi, limos, mansions, TV commercials, bestsellers and autograph lines.

This is just kids excited that you made a difference in their lives in the way only a rural, small-town church girl and momma can.

Maybe it’s pride, the world, Satan, or just ugly sin, but something drives us so often to push and shove our way to the front row of this crowded planet.  To be recognized.  To be the best.  To gain followers and have that spotlight track us around a stage.

But the world is a crowded and noisy place with so many people clamoring and shouting in order to be heard over all the ruckus.

Mostly our motives aren’t deep down evil.  What we want, really and truly, is to make a difference for God.  We want to be part of His ministry, be His hands, His feet, His voice.

We want to do something “Great” for God, believing that God has called us to “Great” things and is going to give us a “Great” ministry.

Yet, “Great” to God so often requires humble invisibility and sometimes painful but unrecognized giving.

Jesus said:

whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:43-45 NIV).

“Great” means service, even slavery.  It means self-sacrifice so extreme it’s life-demanding.

What if “Great” means bringing up Godly children who serve the Lord into adulthood?

Or building into a strong marriage that lasts and models Christ’s covenant love and faithful commitments to a world bruised and beaten by the lies of selfish passion and cheap vows?

Or sticking with that tiny Sunday School class or small group year after faithful year?

Or being content with Wal-Mart Celebrity Status or even less recognition than that?

My husband says it:

Desire Impact, Not Fame.gideon

Impact.  Aretha Franklin belted out a plea for R-E-S-P-E-C-T, but Impact is what I want.

Not glory for me; just glory for Him.  Not attention for me; just praise and honor for Him.

And impact doesn’t start by reaching out to crowds and arenas and the world en masse.

Impact begins with obedience right in our homes, churches and communities.

If God takes us on beyond that, Amen.  So be it.  God’s will be done.

If He doesn’t, still it is yes and Amen.

In her study, Gideon, Priscilla Shirer notes that Gideon’s first assignment as God’s Mighty Warrior was to:

Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah polebeside it (Judges 6:25 NIV)

His work began in his own home, not leading the Israelite army into battle against the Midianites.

And Abraham’s calling didn’t begin as founder of a nation.  Instead, God said:

For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just (Genesis 18:19).

For Gideon, for Abraham…for us, that means focusing on the everyday, the invisible, the humbling, the self-sacrificing, the mundane, and the small and always, in all things, giving glory to Him.

As Priscilla Shirer writes:

What lies ahead in your journey is not nearly as critical as where you are right now…your greatest impact will be done here—in the ordinary rhythms of your daily living (Gideon, p. 63).

That is where impact begins.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King

Clash of the Agenda

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Clash of the Agenda or I could call it an Agenda Conflict (capital letters for emphasis). That’s what it was.

My plan: Get my family dressed and presentable QUICKLY and then run out to register kids for swim lessons QUICKLY, then rush home, accomplish a million things and leave for other to-do list items shortly thereafter.

My daughters’ plan: Enjoy the full benefits of a summer morning.  Fight over a television show and insist that each child choose one entire program to watch before eating breakfast.  Arrive at the breakfast table one….at……a……time.  Carry around clothes for the day rather than actually putting them on and generally move through the morning at a slow and easy pace.

It wasn’t just them, of course, sabotaging my agenda.  Unexpected phone calls and email messages sidetracked and distracted me.  Finally, I decided we simply needed to leave so we drove to swim lesson registration leaving behind unwashed dishes, a pile of pajamas on the sofa, unfolded laundry on the loveseat, and general mess.

I even tried not to stress over my daughters’ hair being combed with fingers and not arranged into ribbons, bows, barrettes and headbands, but I gave in and swept their hair into whatever hair accessories were floating around my Mom Bag before actually going inside to register.

Agenda Conflict is a fact of life.  We can’t plan out every detail of every day of every life season and expect success.

Especially as moms.

It’s a stressor, a reason for my heart to race as I try to balance accomplishing my goals and remaining relatively sane while negotiating life with people whose agendas conflict with mine.

But it’s also a flex-or.  It’s a way for God to gently or even not-so-gently nudge us out of the driver’s seat of our lives once again.  And it seems a perpetual process for me, this becoming flexible enough to hand over control even to a Trustworthy God.

Because I’m not a go-with-the-flow person.  I’m not an arrive-whenever and do-whatever-works, leave-the-dishes-in-the-sink and change-direction-when-necessary kind of girl.  At least not naturally.  Not unless God demands it.

Which He does.

Because He alone can be God of our lives.  He has the prerogative to interrupt plans and redirect our course.  He has the option of taking the three-year-plan and deciding He’s ready to move here and now, this moment!  Or, He could choose to abandon the plan all together, crumple it up, toss it and maybe even leave us without an agenda at all as He whispers, “Trust me and that is Psalm 31enough.”

We can’t pray super-spiritual prayers of devotion to God and promises to submit to His will and then throw a stressed-out tantrum when the phone rings, the email comes, and the kids drag their feet on a busy morning.

Instead, those prayers for His Lordship in our lives require that we mean it in the everyday frustrations of Agenda Conflict and the unexpected U-turns in life that leave us hanging on breathless.

We must pray with the Psalmist, “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15 NIV) and “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21 NIV).

We could press our agenda, of course, determined not to abandon the plan for anyone or anything.  We could demand it make sense on paper and make decisions on statistics, facts, and appearances alone.

But we could miss out on God’s blessing.

When Abraham began his journey to the Promised Land, he traveled with his nephew Lot until their shepherds began battling over prime grass and watering holes.  Finally, they knew they had to separate and travel in two different directions.

Abraham was on a God-directed mission to a land of promise, and as the senior member of their relationship he could have demanded “first dibs.”

Instead, he trusted God enough to leave the direction and the timing of his journey in God’s hands.  He allowed Lot to choose first, saying simply, “Separate from me: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left” (Genesis 13:9 NIV).

At best, that seems like a coin toss to me, a fifty/fifty chance of getting the blessing.

At its worst, it feels like trusting your future to a fallible human, a selfish one at that.

But surely Abraham’s life, times and future were in God’s capable hands regardless of Lot’s choice.

Had Abraham pressed his own agenda for his own benefit, maybe he would have chosen as Lot did, to pitch his tents outside of Sodom.  Instead, God led Abraham on to blessing, all because he ceded the right to decide, to direct, to lead, to push, and to stress and left the agenda and itinerary up to God.

Heather King is a wife, mom, Bible Study teacher, writer and worship leader.  Most importantly, she is a Christ follower with a desire to help others apply the Bible to everyday life with all its mess, noise, and busyness.  Her upcoming book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, will be released in November 2013!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2013 Heather King