Tag: devotions for moms

Christmas means God on the move

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christmas15

Today, I plunked down $0.88 for a new address book.

Then, I laid its 13-year-old, well-worn predecessor to rest.

It was time.

In that old address book, I have crossed out.  I have drawn arrows.  I have swirled over old addresses and entered in new.  I have stuffed envelopes with corrected info into the pages.

This year during ‘Operation Christmas Cards,’ I flipped through that edited mess.  Seven more family members moved this year to new homes in new places.

Most of these are happy moves: The new-job, new-marriage, new-baby kind of celebration.

Others are moves of in-between, of change, of loss and sadness and finding new hope for the future.

Since I have an intense dislike, maybe even horror, of writing in pencil, though, I can’t just erase and start afresh at each new life event.

That’s when I realized the truth.  It wasn’t time for more corrections.  It was time for a completely fresh shart.

It was time to move on.

And it strikes me right at that moment as I fill in the blank pages A-Z, surrounded by Christmas decorations and Christmas cards, that Christmas itself is about moving.

God began that progress, journeying to us:

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9 HCSB).

He makes the first move.  He steps into the void we can’t breach, the abyss of sin we can’t possibly cross, and He leaves the glory of heaven for our sake.

Jesus isn’t the only One who moved that first Christmas, though.

“The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth” (Luke 1:26).

Mary and Joseph loaded up the donkey and trekked slowly “from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the City of David, which is called Bethlehem” (Luke 2:4 HCSB).

The angels arrived on the hillside to announce the Savior’s birth to shepherds and then “left them and returned to heaven” (Luke 2:15 HCSB).

Then, those shepherds in their excitement said, “Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened” (Luke 2:15 HCSB).

Days later, a man named Simeon was guided by the Spirit and went straight to a GOd-appointed place:  “he entered the temple complex” (Luke 2:27 HCSB).

Wise men from the east searched the night sky and could no longer remain at home, complacent, apathetic, mildly interested but not engaged when they saw the mysterious star.

No, they moved.

They committed to the journey, packing camels, loading supplies, asking questions.

They must have left so much  behind:  Family, possessions, homes, a culture they knew and friends they loved.  Maybe they left position and power in the dust in order to arrive in a foreign land as strangers and outsiders searching for a King they couldn’t describe whose name they didn’t know.

Where were they going?  They did not know.  When would their journey end?  They could not say.

Just like Abram long before, the Magi left their homes to travel to an unknown destination for an uncertain amount of time.

Friends must have called them crazy.  Family might have questioned their sanity.

Yet, they kept moving because a star “led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was ” (Matthew 2:9 HCSB).

Christmas is about the faith of movement, about faith in action.  No standing still.  No remaining the same.  No stubbornly refusing to leave the old in pursuit of God’s work anew.

In a season steeped in tradition, God shows us that He can do the surprising and unexpected.  He is at work.  He is in motion.

Christmas is angels and shepherds, sages and a teenage girl, the righteous and the ordinary, all abandoning their plans, agendas, comfort, and homes, leaving it all behind so they would not miss what God was doing.

Are we so willing to move?

When God calls, when He is active, when He is at work and He comes to us, will we also go to Him?

I’ve finished filling this new address book now and for a while at least everything is settled and set.

Yet, I’m hushed with expectancy.  I’m at the feet of Christ with anticipation.  I’m asking the question and I’m silent, breathlessly waiting for the answer He gives:

“God, what are you doing and how can I be there?  I don’t want to miss it by refusing to move when you move. Lead me this Christmas.”

 

 

Pa rum pum pum

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Glory to God

 

Pa rum pum pum.

I am practicing for the church Christmas cantata.

So is my two-year-old son.

I hear him from the backseat of the minivan, singing along with the CD, instinctively drumming his hands to The Little Drummer Boy.

Then he wiggles and bobs his head and does a little toddler dance of intense motion.

Pum pum pum, he sings.

All this Christmas season, my son has been singing this song.  It’s his favorite.  He reacts the same way every time, with participation, with whole body involvement, with spontaneous joy.

And, besides all that, it’s the one song that he knows most of the words to.

Pum pum pum.  He belts it out.

It’s not a Christmas carol I’ve ever given much thought to.  Being the realist I am, I’ve always balked at an extra-biblical kid with a drum hovering near the manger scene, rapping out a rhythm for the newborn Savior.

But as a parable….as a story digging God-centered truth down deep within me…..it’s captured my attention.

Perhaps this is because I’ve played it over and over and over again for my son and then it gets stuck in my head and I pretty much cannot escape hearing this song all….day…..long….

It’s here, this line, that gets me every time: “I have no gift to bring…that’s fit to give a King…. Shall I play for you?”

What’s more fitting than our worship?

What’s more treasured and valued by God than our praise offering?

Some of you might be fighting for the joy this season.

You could rush yourself right past the purpose of Christmas, caught up in the busyness, buried in the rush, made breathless by the expectations and demands on your time, on your attention, on your wallet, on your soul.

Maybe it’s hard to see the Light of Christmas through the crushing darkness of your circumstances.

This year, though, I’m not fighting for joy; I’m fighting for worship.  For awe.  To be captivated anew by the weight of His glory.

I’m battling and warring against the ‘blahs’ of same-old, same-old.

It’s remembering that family movie nights with The Grinch, hot chocolate and popcorn, lights and wreaths, traditions, baking sessions, and picking that perfect present are fun, but they aren’t ‘it.’

It’s hearing that well-known Christmas story one more time and gasping in amazement that God came down for us.

Not rattling off Linus’s speech from the Peanuts’ Christmas movie (love that, by the way), but letting the truth sink, sink, sink into the hardened soil of my heart to  saturate me with Christ’s astonishing love.

And then responding like I should in the face of so much glory—on my knees, hands raised, heart expectant, worshipping Him as spontaneously and as wholeheartedly as a two-year-old crooning along to The Little Drummer Boy in the minivan.

My truest response to God’s greatest Gift should be an offering of praise.

That’s Mary.  She sings in worship:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:46 EV).

That’s Zechariah after 9 months of silence:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
    for he has visited and redeemed his people (Luke 1:68 ESV).

That’s the angels who spontaneously exclaim in one unified voice, praising God:

 “Glory to God in the highest
 and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:13-14 ESV).

That’s the shepherds, who high-tailed it off of that mountain to see this Savior.  They left the infant Messiah that night:

“glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20 ESV).

That’s the wise men, journeying with anticipation and finally arriving to see Jesus:

And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh (Mathew 2:11 ESV).

At church, I tell the children playing wise men in the Christmas program to kneel and set their gifts (carefully) down as they bow.

But I tell them the truth, how those magi didn’t gingerly drop to one knee in the presence of Christ.

No, they hit their faces to the ground in adoration and humility.

In Unafraid, Susie Davis writes that the word really means:

They prostrated themselves and did him homage…laid out completely.  Hands in the dung.  Soiled robes.  Crowns knocked off.  Faces to the ground.

A poor girl from a small town.

A faithful priest.

Lowly shepherds.

Sages from afar.

The Christmas account is awash with praise: Spontaneous, heart-resonant, knees-to-the-earth surrendered worship to a Savior so worthy, to a Savior so compassionate, to a Savior so glorious.

What can I bring Him?  I am so small.

I bring Him my worship.  I give Him my all.

 

We Bring All the Pieces to Him

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christmas-perfection

The first crash of that shattering glass hit and it was just the day after Thanksgiving.  We were only one day into the Christmas season and only about 1 hour into Operation Decorate the House.

‘Twas an accident of course.

The penguin soap dispenser hit that floor and ended in a puddle of hand soap and broken glass.

That’s decorating with kids.

Accidents happen, you know.

An hour later, another crash.  Our box of special, keepsake, treasured ornaments hit the floor and a daughter cried with remorse.

Still, a little sweeping, a little mopping, a little gluing, a little comforting and we slipped back into the decorating groove, crooning along with Bing Crosby to White Christmas.

Stuff is stuff.  Things break (especially when you’re clumsy like me, especially when you have four kids like us).

Look at our Christmas tree from afar and it still has that glow of perfect.

Look up close and you’ll see the ballerina’s feet are glued on, Noah’s ark is missing a dolphin leaping up out of the ocean waters, and the three kings no longer carry a sign: “Wise Men Still Seek Him.”

Brokenness can still be beautiful when we look with eyes of grace.

But when we squint up close to critique and criticize….when we look right past the glory and seek out the flaws…..suddenly that’s all we see.

Perfectionism is a bully.

It muscles in and takes over our perceptions.

It demands that we see only brokenness and faults.

It insists that we remain chained to the past, obsessing over mistakes, battering us over past sin, beating us up with shame.

Lysa TerKeurst writes:

My imperfections will never override God’s promises (The Best Yes).

The promise of Christmas is “God with us.”  The promise is that when we were farthest from Him, He came to us.

The promise is that we didn’t have to get it right on our own or check the boxes of the law until we’d met some prerequisite to grace.

We didn’t come worthy.

We came needy.

And He came down.

Our imperfections never negated the promise of Emmanuel’s presence.  Not then.  Not now.

He still promises us this, “And surely I will be with you always” (Matthew 28:20 NIV).

He is with us always, but not to leave us there in the brokenness.

Sometimes we stop right there at this thought: “Beauty in the brokenness.  We’re all a mess in need of a Messiah.”

Sometimes we stop right there and, dare I say it, glory in the broken?  We cling to our mess instead of releasing it to Him.

But the glory is in the Healer.  The glory is in the redemption.  The glory is in the One who puts His own pure robe of righteousness over our shaky shoulders.

He doesn’t leave us naked and ashamed.  He “has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10 NIV).

We’ll never be perfect in our own striving and strength.  True.  But we don’t have to remain stuck there in the mud.  He grips us with the hand of grace and pulls us out of that pit so we can move forward with Him.

Those disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection didn’t have it all right.  They didn’t have perfect understanding.  Their belief was delicately trembling and about to topple their whole foundation of faith.

They thought Jesus had been the Messiah, yet He had died.  These rumors from ‘crazy women’ about an empty tomb left them confused and alarmed.

But Jesus walked alongside without them recognizing him, going back to the beginning, telling the story start to finish.

When He was about to leave, “they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them.”

There at the dinner table, He broke the bread and their eyes opened wide to the truth: This was Jesus.  This was God in their midst.

God’s presence doesn’t depend on my perfection.

God’s presence doesn’t demand perfect understanding or faith without fail.

But if I want God’s presence, then I have to invite Him in, urge Him strongly, “stay with me…..”

He can only make us whole when we trust Him with the pieces, all of them:

God made my life complete
    when I placed all the pieces before him. Psalm 18:20 MSG

We bring all the pieces.  We don’t hold any back.

We lay them at His feet, not running away or hiding from Him.  We come into His presence, broken as we are, and He makes us whole and holy, and He stays with us.

Originally published 12/10/2014

I have wrestled with light

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John 1-5

I have wrestled with light against darkness this year and I have won.

It was a hard-earned victory, though, so while I have conquered, I am weary.

For a start, I slipped together the parts of our pre-lit Christmas tree, plugged it in and noticed burnt-out bulbs dotting the tree here and there.

Only, I couldn’t find the replacement bulbs.  Anywhere.

So, I gave up.  Most of the lights still worked, so I loaded that tree full of colorful beads and family ornaments.

Then, deep down in the bottom of the Rubbermaid ornament container, I discovered the baggy holding the new light bulbs.

(Note to self:  It’s easier to replace lights on a tree when it doesn’t have ornaments all over it.  Next year, make sure the lights are on top of the ornaments in the box.) 

I finish the tree and move on to new things.

We have lived in our home now for 11 years.  I have the Christmas decorating pretty much down to a well-rehearsed performance.

The garlands and lights are already strung together.

The strategically placed bows tell me where the corners sit when they are hung.

So, I just lift this Christmas greenery onto the nails that are in the same place as last year and the year before that and years and years back.

I plug the lights in.

And, voila.  Christmas beauty in our home.

Only some years I am not so lucky.  I plug in the strand of lights and it is dark.  Dead.

Then I have to decide. Fight the fight?  Hunt relentlessly for the bulb I need to replace to get this light strand shining again?

Or concede defeat from the beginning, untangle the dead lights from the garland and replace it with a new strand?

For years, I chose the hunt.

But usually I ended a thirty minute wrestling match with the light strand with my hands cut to pieces, broken fingernails galore, and absolutely drained of Christmas cheer plus this:  a still-broken string of lights because I never found the offending bulb.

So, now, I choose to protect my joy and replace the lights instead.  For about $5, I am a happier mom at Christmas time.

This year, though, my struggle has taken on new forms.

It was all of 40-some degrees out this morning with a bone-chillingly cold rain falling and I stood there in my heavy sweatshirt battling the light.

Somehow this year when I hang that same-old garland in the same-old place with those same-old lights, it didn’t fit.  I either had too many lights or too few.

I do not know how this happened.

So, I have been working at this for days now because of our insanely busy schedule and the uncooperative weather.

Today, I have decided, is the day that I end this.  I will win.  In the rain.  In the cold.  I do not care.

So, I stretch and twist and wind that light around the garland, get to the end, plug the lights in….and half the lights don’t work.

These are the lights I just tested three days ago when they worked just fine.

So, I fight.  I dig around the Christmas boxes until I find the replacement lights and I begrudgingly search for the burned out bulb because this year….this year, I will not be defeated.

Finally, I win.

I do not have the most beautifully or elaborately decorated home by anyone’s standard, but I do have light, and I am pleased.

Because light is worth fighting for.

And how we have had to fight this year.  

Have you?

I have attended the funerals.

I have prayed for those who lost their children.

I have listened to the bitter hurt of mourning and sadness.

I have reminded myself over and over of this: first things first–in the crushing busyness of the schedule, I choose Christ before all, and this is hard and it is yet another fight.

I have calmed my daughter down again and again and again when she frets over ISIS and terrorists and whether she is safe.

And right there in the midst of all that darkness, I look for His Light.

Because this is what God promises.

John tells us:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5 ESV).

Later in his life, John writes it again:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5 ESV).

Even in the pitchest black of the darkest night one shiny bulb can split through that darkness with fierce determination.

Even in the pitchest black of your darkest night, God can split through that darkness because Light is Who He Is.

This Christmas, seek His light.

 

This is What He Told Everybody, Anytime, Anywhere

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Romans 1

I wrote this post almost exactly 2 years ago to honor an amazing man who spilled Jesus everywhere he went.  Mr. Altemus went to be with the Lord this week and I am remembering his testimony and his contagious faith today.

I wished him a happy birthday.

I’d seen the pictures that week of family and friends celebrating his 94th birthday at the Chick-fil-A in our tiny town.  So, of course I wanted to join my “happy birthday” with theirs.

He accepted my birthday wishes with a friendly grin and then opened up his wallet to show me a treasure, not cash or check or credit card, of course.

No, he had packed his wallet full of small Gospel cards that he’d designed and had printed up himself–200 of them.  He fingers the Bible verses as he tells me all about them, about how they tell of Jesus loving us, dying for us, forgiving us….and how we can spend eternity with Him if we accept Him as our Savior.

Then he touches his hand to the cross he wears, two nails formed together, and he tells me how he’s given away oh 14 dozen or so because Jesus took the nails for him and me and for all of us.

I gave him a birthday greeting.

He gave me the Gospel.

I received the greater gift.

He knows who I am, knows I’m a Christian, worships with me every week at our church.  Still he shares.

I smile as he talks, smile at his enthusiasm and his boldness, and smile to think that Jesus must be his very favorite thing to talk about.  How many hundreds of times has he shared this very same message with others?  That’s what I wonder…that’s why I marvel.

And that’s why, later that night, I still ponder a 94-year-old man who used his birthday to share the Gospel with a church-girl like me.

I feel the Holy Spirit nudge, the conviction deep.

He, after all, overflows with the gospel.  He tells me about Jesus not because I need to know or because I look like a lost soul, but because talking about Jesus is what He does everywhere, to everybody, without fear or shame or concern for public opinion.  There’s no keeping it hidden, no compartmentalizing his conversation into Jesus-talk for church folks but small talk about the weather for anyone else.

Indeed, he could say:

For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes–the Jew first and also the Gentile (Romans 1:16 NLT).

Could I say this about myself?

It’s easy, of course, for God, Jesus, the Bible, grace, sin and forgiveness to be my sometimes conversation in safe places with safe people at safe times.

But I’m a people-pleaser, anxious not to offend, worried about the awkwardness of a difficult conversation, the tension of loving confrontation with the truth, or what might happen if someone doesn’t like the salvation message on my Christmas card.

Faced with this man, though, who is clearly not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I long for unashamed boldness and passion.

In The Christian Atheist, Craig Groeschel writes:

….I believe one of the main reasons people don’t share their faith in Christ is that they don’t really believe in hell.  Many of us are out of touch with the genuine urgency.

He hits the truth and I wince with this pain:  I don’t feel the urgency to share the news of Christ.

I believe the Scripture and that our choice here isn’t heaven or nothingness….heaven or a lesser heaven…..heaven or a mildly uncomfortable but ultimately more fun destination.

It’s heaven or hell.  Either/or.  Black or white.  Here or there.  No in between or sugar-coating or gray.

Yet, I’m sometimes more worried about the here-and-now consequences of a difficult conversation than I’m concerned about the ever-after results of others not knowing Jesus.

Street preaching or door-to-door Gospel-selling isn’t the mandate here.

But being prepared.

Being yielded.

Being ready.

Being willing.

Being articulate, clear, simple, passionate.

Being purposeful.

Being loving.

That’s the example he sets for me, a 94-year-old man with a wallet full of Gospel cards and a pocket heavy with nail crosses.

Originally posted 12/6/2013

That’s What He Said

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Psalm 33When my middle daughter turned six, we took her and some friends to the circus for her birthday.

Before the show, we ordered six Happy Meals from McDonald’s.  The cashier asked me each time, “Is this for a boy or a girl?”

For a girl.  All girls.  Six—yes, six—girls.

When we finally filled up every cup, unwrapped all the straws, and handed around the food, the manager popped around the corner to see us.  “Six girls!  Shew.  I just had to see all six of them.”

We assured him only three belonged to us.

At the circus, the birthday girl sat next to her friends on one end of the row.  My husband and I sat all the way on the other end. 

After each act, though, my brand new six-year-old shot all the way across six seats to climb into her Daddy’s lap.

She was scared.  Every time the music grew the least bit dramatic, she was sure the dragon in the show was coming out and it was a real dragon and it wanted to get her.

Sometimes you just need to be safe with Dad.

We need nothing less from God, open arms and the chance to climb up into His lap when life grows tense and what’s waiting behind the curtain feels ominous and overwhelming.

Later that night, I asked my girl, “Did you enjoy your birthday trip to the circus?”

“Yes,” she raved, “It was fun.  But I didn’t like that my friends kept saying, ‘The dragon is coming next!’ even when it wasn’t.  And they said “The dragon is real,” and it wasn’t.”

“Didn’t Mommy and Daddy tell you the dragon wasn’t real and you didn’t need to be afraid?”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.”

“And who do you think is most likely to tell the truth about things like that?  Mom and Dad or other kids?”

Pause for silent thought.

These were just friends, sweet, good friends who weren’t out to scare her or trick her.  They were making guesses and playing games.

Even so, she chose to listen to mistaken experts and believed their well-meaning false reports.

In the book of Matthew, some phrases jump off that page chapter after chapter:

“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet . .. ” (Matthew 1:22).
“For this is what the prophet has written” (Matthew 2:5).
“And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet” (Matthew 2:15).
“Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled” (Matthew 2:17).
“So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets” (Matthew 2:23).
“This is He who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 3:3).
This was “to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 4:4).
“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah” (Matthew 8:17 and 12:17).
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah (Matthew 13:14).

Matthew tells us that God stays true to His Word.

Even though it seemed unlikely and impossible, even when it took a long time, He fulfilled every detail of His promises through Jesus.

 

In her book, The Shelter of God’s Promises, Sheila Walsh writes:

“The two Hebrew words we translate into English as “promise” are the words dabar, meaning “to say,” and omer, meaning “to speak.”  In other words, when God says something, when God speaks, that is as good as it gets.  He means what He says, and He says what He means.  It would appear as if we, humankind, had to invent the word promise because what we say or speak cannot always be trusted, so we upped the ante with a new word.  But when God speaks, He cannot lie” (p. 12).

The word “promise,” then, exists for our benefit, not God’s.  Every word He utters is truth, reliable truth, unwavering truth.

We combat other voices every day:

Well-meaning friends and family, even our fellow Christians, who make guesses and share opinions about what’s next for us.
Circumstances that scream reasonable-sounding assertions of hopelessness, abandonment, and utter despair.
The world shouting out its unfiltered opinion all day, every day.
Our internal dialogue with Satan’s interjections of shame, condemnation, and doubt.

But today, we can choose to ignore this fear-filled noise, climb up into Abba Father’s lap, and rest, knowing that we are His.  We are loved, safe, protected, and more, because that’s what He said is true.

Originally published on APRIL 23, 2012

More than a spoonful of sugar

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Ephesians 5-1

I kept checking the tickets that I printed off weeks before.  Did I have the right day?  The time?

Every time I unfolded the creased sheets of paper and read the details, I marveled at God.  Really and truly in awe.

It started with such a simple thing, the Broadway show, Mary Poppins, coming to good old Virginia on its final run on stage.

I made the first tentative request:

Lord, I know this isn’t something I need and I do need other things instead and this is crazy and extravagant.  And I understand if you say, ‘no,’ because I know it’s a silly thing anyway, but oh how I would like to go.

It felt so selfish to even ask.  Normally I stick to the basics: car repairs, bills, car tax payments…that kind of thing.

But then we received unexpected Christmas money, enough to pay for exactly five seats to see the Broadway show for my whole family.marypoppins-1-1024x768

And I’m struck right then by this kind of extravagant grace, the way our God loves to bless His children, enjoys giving them good gifts, promises to give us what we need and then sometimes does more, giving us the very desires of our hearts.

Why then, knowing His character, do I treat Him like such a stingy Scrooge of a God so often? I hesitate to even ask him for another coal for the fire.  

I avoid His gaze and stammer out requests as if I’m a burden, a pest.

Even when it’s a Need and not a Want, I pray and ask, but give Him an out, not truly trusting that He will do this, that He could do this, that He would want to do this for me.

“Well, I guess if you don’t provide it’s just Your will and Thy Will Be Done,” that’s what I pray in a sort of hyper-pious acknowledgment of His sovereignty without any confidence in the might and mercy of His character.

But what would have happened if blind Bartimaeus had been hesitant about his need, reluctant to ask, limiting his request and thereby limiting his Savior?

Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

“Lord, I want to see,” he replied.

Bartimaeus didn’t try to give Jesus an easy out.

“Lord, I’d like to be a little less blind than I am.  Jesus, if you could just correct my vision a little bit I’d at least be able to walk around.  Could I see in just one eye?  Could you maybe provide me with a guide or seeing eye dog to help me out?”

No, Jesus asked what he wanted and Bartimaeus wanted to see—see all the way.

And Jesus didn’t just open his eyes to the minimum amount necessary for mere survival.

He made the blind man see, truly see, abundantly, without reservation or drawback…100% see.

Sometimes our God tells us “no,” out of love and His infinite wisdom. He’s no over-indulgent parent giving into the whims of spoiled children.  And He’s no prayer request vending machine, automatically dispensing answers indiscriminately to whoever puts in the coin.

But there are times it just gives Him so much joy to give us not just the daily bread, but the Krispy Kreme as a special treat.

Paul wrote:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV)

and

Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that (Ephesians 5:1-2 MSG).

He’s no miser, this God of ours, rationing His gifts to us and frowning grumpily when we need….or even sometimes when we want.

And while we trust His “no” when He declines a request, one of the reasons we trust His love and best intentions for us is because “no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11 ESV).

If He knows it’s good, it blesses Him to give it.

And it blesses us to receive it as the lavish, rich, and extravagant grace it is, not what we deserve or have earned, but what He has given anyway simply because He loves.

Originally posted FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Choosing to love by choosing to listen

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Psalm 116-2

My daughter didn’t talk for a long time.

Oh, she understood everything I said and communicated in lots of other ways, but she just refused to really, truly talk as a toddler.

Then one day she opened up with a tidal wave of language.  She didn’t learn how to talk one tentative, uncertain word at a time.

She just talked.  It was as if she’d been storing up years of language until she could express anything and everything she felt.

And now….

Now, she’s a talker.

She wakes up in the morning talking.  She leaves for school talking.  She climbs into the minivan after school still talking.

We live with a steady stream of conversation from the first “good morning” to the final “goodnight.”

I love to watch her face and her hands.  She throws every part of her body into what she’s saying.

Her head bobs and her hands fly to her hips as she says, “Really!  I did that.”

She arches her eyebrows.  She scrunches up her nose.  She’s a non-stop flow of enthusiastic communication.

My introvert self sometimes recoils from conversation.  Sometimes I’m bound to slink away where it’s quiet, even if it means hiding in the corners of my own mind and ignoring the noise around me.

I have an insatiable need for nonverbal time.

Besides that, I’m a task person more than a people-person.  I think tasks.  I do tasks.  I complete tasks.  And sometimes I let those tasks take priority over people because I’m mixed-up that way and this is the pit of sin I fall in over and over.

So a few weeks ago when this little girl would sidle up to me ready to chat, chat, chat, I started turning my whole body toward her so she could see my face.

I put down the book.

I closed the computer.

I  left the dinner on the stove to simmer so I could listen to her.

Sometimes, life is a whirlwind of crazy in my house.  There are moments when it’s not possible for me to flip off the activity so I can flip on my listening ears.

So, I tell her that.  I say, “Give me five minutes.  Let me finish this and then I can listen.”

Then I keep my promise.

I don’t know if she can feel the difference between the distracted me and the attentive me, but someone once told me, “Listening is an act of love.”

And I choose to love her in the way that her soul needs to be loved.

I learn this, but I never seem to master it. Could any of us?

Could we ever get to the place where we’re experts at loving through patient and compassionate listening?

Yet, God does this for us.  He bends low to hear our cries, leaning into us so He hears our every word and our every heart’s cry.

Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath! (Psalm 116:2)

More than that, He quiets the noise of heaven at the sound of our prayers.

In his book, The Great House of God, Max Lucado highlights the volume of heaven based on the first eight chapters of Revelation:

The angels speak. The thunder booms.  The living creatures chant, ‘Holy, holy, holy” (4:8) and the elders worship…The souls of the martyrs cry out (6:10)…The earth quakes and the stars fall…One hundred forty-four thousand people…shout in a  loud voice (7:10).

Heaven is louder than my house in that mad rush through our after school routine of homework and piano and change your clothes quickly for dance lessons and make dinner and pack lunches and sign agendas and rush out the door (hurry, so we won’t be late!).

Heaven is louder than my minivan.

But,

When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour (Revelation 8:1 HCSB).

Half an hour of total heavenly silence ticks by.  In the quiet, an angel steps up with:

…a large amount of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the gold altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up in the presence of God from the angel’s hand (Revelation 8:3-4).

The prayers of the saints enter God’s presence in the hush of heaven.

The way I listen to my kids, my husband, my friends should be how I want to be listened to….should be how God listens to us.

He bends down to us.

He quiets the noise.

He gives us access to His presence.

How can we be better listeners for those around us today?

I am not your servant

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John 15-15

“I am not a servant.”

My youngest daughter says it first in a matter-of-fact tone.

I can’t hear the other side of the conversation so I don’t know what request prompted this response.

I do know she gets her answer from me.

I say it sometimes to my kids when they ask me to hop up from the dinner table (before I’ve even taken a bite of my own food) to get them something they could easily get themselves.

I say it when they call out “Mom!” while they are watching TV and ask me to stop working to get them a drink of water.

I say it to remind them that, while I love them and I love to do nice things for them, sometimes they treat me like unpaid kitchen help.

And that’s not right.

So I listen in as my daughter repeats her response broken-record-style.

“I am not a servant.”

“I am not a servant.”

Then she sings it in a high opera voice, “I am not a servant…..”

Finally after what seems like the twentieth repetition of this phrase, her older sister bends over and picks something up off the floor.

The six-year-old has grown wise to this new trend, how her older sisters think because she’s smaller, she must perform all tasks menial and low-to-the-ground so they can continue with whatever far-more-important thing they’re doing.

She’s standing up for herself.

After all, what she really wants, what she truly desires in her little sister heart-of-hearts, is for these bigger girls to play with her.

She doesn’t want to fetch dropped Legos off of the floor.

She doesn’t want to get them a paper towel or find them a sharpened pencil.

She wants to be friends with them.

Shortly before His death, Jesus said something profoundly moving to His disciples:

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  (John 15:15 NIV).

Not servants, but friends.

He offered them so much more than the menial tasks of mindless obedience, the fetching and finding and picking up of hired help.

He called them friends.

For the disciples, friendship with Jesus didn’t change what they did.   Jesus loved by serving sacrificially and humbly, and He told them to do the same.

But He invited them into His heart and His plans.

Of course, it doesn’t mean we aren’t serving God day in and day out, loving others in humble of ways, emptying ourselves so we can drench another in the compassion and mercy of Christ.

There is, after all, beauty in late night sessions with a sleepless baby and days spent tending to sick children.

There’s beauty in the ugly, the mess, the pain, and the exhaustion of caregiving.

There’s beauty–God-glorifying beauty— in heading out the door each morning to a job that demands everything you’ve got and more so that you can provide for your family.

The beauty isn’t in the act itself.  It’s not in the changing diapers or the washing away filth.  It’s not in taking out trash or sitting through mind-numbing meetings where supervisors pile on work.

It’s that you’re doing all of that for someone else.

Your labor on behalf of others may not earn you any earthly regard.

You may trudge through another day of work without a nod in your direction and a genuine ‘thanks.’

Your child may overlook the fifty lunches you’ve made for her and complain the one day you forgot that she likes Oreos, not chocolate chip cookies.

And you can feel absolutely invisible.

But right in that moment, Christ chats with you.

He tells you everything the Father taught Him.

He asks if you’ll take part in His agenda, in His passion and plan for loving others with grace, mercy, compassion, generosity, and humility.

Not because He only values what we do for Him.

Not because we earn His favor by going, going, going all the time.

Not because He wants us constantly to be doing at all.

It’s because He’s offered us His presence—in the moments when we’re sitting at His feet and the moments we’re stooping to wash the feet of another.

He desires friendship, and friends aren’t acting out of duty or serving out of compulsion.

We’re living and breathing and serving and loving because He’s given us access to His very heart.

Our friendship with God means we do and we cease doing at the impulse of His love: our lives, our hearts, our actions guided and motivated by His very own love at work in us.

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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

 

What other moms say when they find out you are having a boy

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Deuteronomy 33

After having three girls, when I found out I was having a son, other moms chimed in with tons of wisdom.

They told me to be quick with the diaper changes or I’m bound to get peed on.  (I did.  At least twice.)

They told me to prepare for climbing, running, growling, and dirt (lots of it).

They told me no one would love me like a son, not ever.   “It’s different than with a girl,” they said.

One mom told me how her son would cradle her face in his tiny palms and say, “You’re bootiful, Mommy.”

And another mom told me her son announced he was going to marry Mommy when he grew up.   When she explained that Daddy had already married her, the little boy scowled and said “Dad’s lucky.”

Mom after mom told me that no one treasured her as unconditionally or completely as her son had when he was little.

And then.

Then older moms started warning me.  They are still offering forebodings of doom.  I’ve had several depressing conversations just this week about my future.

“When you have a daughter, you have a friend for life,” they say, “but a son ditches you as soon as he finds a wife.”

I get it.  “Leave and cleave.” I don’t want my son to be a stunted mama’s boy.  I don’t want to break up his marriage by pitting myself against his wife or refusing to let go.

But I wouldn’t mind if he chooses a wife I could get along with or calls me once in a while.  I wouldn’t mind a visit here and there and I’d hate it if he only hung out with ‘her’ family instead of sitting around our holiday table sometimes, too.

I’ve been enjoying this season with my son, loving and loving it.

I love train shirts and train toys and train books and conversations about trains.

I love airplanes and bulldozers and how we have to point out the fire trucks every time we walk past the fire station on Main Street.

I love making faces at him in the mirror and growling out funny voices.

I love toting along a few trucks everywhere we go.

This is my great joy.

But this week, other women have been telling me to enjoy it now because I might as well kiss my son goodbye in a few years. So I’ve been more than a little sentimental and emotional.

It’s my nature and my way to pray about my kids’ future, their choices, their passions, their careers, their spouses, and my son is no different.

A week of prophetic doom, though, has my heart more fearful than hopeful or prayerful.

And then I read Jacob’s blessing for his son, Benjamin:

‘Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between His shoulders.”  Deut. 33:12 NIV

I don’t know what may have your heart turning somersaults of fear instead of clinging to hope this week, but my kids’ future has done it for me.  It’s made me clingy and tearful.

Yet, this verse offers me security and peace.

This isn’t the season for me of farewells or parenting adult children and worrying over their not-so-adult decisions at times.

This is my season of early morning snuggles on the sofa before everyone else awakes and making pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse.

It’s my season of listening to all of their news about their day at school, laughing at funny lunch escapades and wiping away tears when another girl gets mean.

It’s my season of bedtime hugs and bedtime stories.

And it’s my season of lifting children up….up into my arms, snuggled into my chest….up onto my shoulders, high so they can see, high so they can be carried and so they can rest.

That’s what God does for His beloved.

He lifts us right up out of the mess and the weariness and sets us between His shoulders and tells us to ‘rest.’

Don’t strive.  Don’t fight.  Don’t wear yourself out trying to keep moving forward on your own.

Let Him carry you.

High up there on the shoulders of our God, our perspective shifts.

Stop fretting about the future.

Life doesn’t depend on us to fix it and make it happen; our future depends only on Him and He is so dependable.

We are safe from danger.

We can cease striving.

We see the big picture.  All that trouble we were in below looks so small from our new spot on the shoulders of the Lord.

So I choose to rest here with the Lord, enjoying safety, enjoying this season, enjoying His presence, enjoying being His beloved–handing over fear and holding on to hope.

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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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now!  To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

Copyright © 2015 Heather King