Tag: devotions for women

12 Bible Verses about God’s Love

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verses-about-Gods-love

  • Psalm 86:15 (NIV)
    But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
    slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
  • Psalm 103:8 NIV
    The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
  • Psalm 136:1 NIV
    Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
    His love endures forever.
  • Isaiah 30:18
    Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
  • Jeremiah 31:3 NIV
     The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying:
    “I have loved you with an everlasting love;
    I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
  • Zephaniah 3:17
    The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.
    He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
    but will rejoice over you with singing.
  • John 3:16 NIV
     For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
  • Romans 5:8 NIV
    But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
  • Romans 8:37-39 NASB
    But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
  • Ephesians 2:4-5 NIV
    But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
  • 1 John 4:9-11 NIV
    This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
  • 1 John 4:16 (NLT)
    We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

Digging out the minivan

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luke3I got stuck in the slushy mess.

Driving out yesterday was a cinch.  After a mass of snow and ice hit our area over the weekend, we now had temperatures in the 50s.  It was warm, bright and sunny and we needed to get out of the house.

The snow was no longer snow.  The ice no longer ice.  It was a slushy concoction and when we walked in it, our feet sucked down into the wet.

So, we inched out of our driveway and headed to freedom at the library and the grocery store!

But by the time we got home, the slush had melted even more.  It was like quicksand now, and we were sitting in a huge minivan loaded down with one mom, four kids and a week’s worth of groceries from Wal-Mart.

So, my minivan just slurped right down into it the moment I drove into the mess.

I unloaded the children.

I unloaded the groceries.

And I grabbed a shovel to dig out the slush from around the tires.

It didn’t take much to get the van moving again, (it’s only snow after all), but then we just sunk right down into the slush again every few inches.

Finally, I realized what this was truly going to take.  I was going to need to dig a path for each tire until no more melted snow and ice remained anywhere my tires needed to go.

I had to prepare the way.

So that’s what I did.  I shoveled the melted mush out of the way and drove just as smoothly as could be back into the grooves of an already worn path.

That’s what John the Baptist told the curious crowd gathered by the water to hear him preach:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
    make his paths straight‘ (Luke 3:4 ESV)

In her book, Jesus, The One and Only, Beth Moore says:

The original Greek word for ‘paths’ is the word tribos, which means ‘a beaten pathway.’ In a personal way God wants us to prepare a path.

This isn’t a path that’s just stumbled upon; it’s one that’s beaten out and formed with purposeful intentionality.

What would that mean for me?

If I stood on the bank of the river and heard this wild-looking prophet telling me to make a beaten pathway in my life for the Lord, what would I need to do?

I’d need to dig out the slush and the mire, the mess and the grime.  I’d need to clear it all out of the way so my heart was ready for God to come in power and might to do a new work in me.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that grace and righteousness depend on me shoveling out sin with my own two hands gripping the shovel.

But it does mean I need to be yielded and ready for the work God wants to do.

I can’t hold on to my plans.

I can’t cling to my agendas.

I can’t try to hide sin in the corners of my heart.

 

Preparing a way for the Lord means listening and not shutting Him out.

It means offering up my heart to Him and asking the Holy Spirit that question that I can be oh-so-hesitant to ask:  “What do you need to change in me to make me more like Jesus?  I offer you my heart and I ask you to do the work.”

I know what that means.  It’s risky.  It’s dangerous.

He could try to teach me patience.

He could put difficult people in my life to teach me how to love more truly.

He could bump into my perfect plans and replace them with His own.

In my flesh and in all my selfishness, what I want is what I want:  My expectations, My hopes, My thoughts.

But what I want truly, deeply, more than anything else is for God to transform me, to take off those rough edges and mold my heart so people see Jesus in me.

So I yield.

I pick up the shovel.

I ask God to prepare my heart for the work He wants to do in me and through me.   Beat out a straight path in my life.  Wear it right down, Lord, so I’m ready for what you want to do.

I join Him in the task, knowing that I want Jesus, just Jesus, always Jesus more than anything else.

 

 

5 Simple Ways to Remember to Pray for Others

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pray-for-others

“The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.”
1 Timothy 2:1 MSG

“I’ll pray for ya!”

That’s what we promise.

But do we really remember?  When life crowds in, do we keep our promise to pray for surgeries, doctor’s appointments, marriages, infertility, job interviews, ministry events, concerns about children, or direction….not for ourselves, but for others?

Because truth be told, so often we’re selfish, attending to our own needs and forgetting the needs of others.

Or maybe we’re distracted. Far too busy.  Simply forgetful.

We need, though, not just to say we’re going to pray, but to truly bow down at the throne of God and lift up our friends, family, and church members, interceding on their behalf. 

Oswald Chambers wrote:

“Your part in intercessory prayer is not to agonize over how to intercede, but to use everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence to bring them before His throne and to allow the Spirit in you the opportunity to intercede for them.  In this way, God is going to touch the whole world with His saints.“

God does not appoint one person in a group to pray for everyone else or call one person to intercessory prayer and give everyone else a “Get Out of Prayer” card.

He invites all of us to His throne room on behalf of the people we meet in “everyday circumstances and people God puts around you by His providence.”

Perhaps God sent you through that particular line at the grocery store so you could meet and pray for your cashier.

Maybe the hairdresser who checks your name off the list and calls you back to the shampoo bowl was God-appointed so that you could pray for her.

That interruption in your day that sent you to the store unexpectedly may have been so that you could meet up with a friend from small group who needs prayer.

So then, how do you combat forgetfulness and busyness and self-centeredness and make praying for others a consistent reality rather than a broken promise?

  1.  Mark it on your calendar: Mingled among doctor’s appointments, ballet lessons, and cookouts, prayer requests dot my calendar.  Surgery dates, job interviews, baby due dates, and court appearances are marked on the squares so that I will remember to pray on the very days necessary.
  2. Pray right away: If someone calls me with a prayer request, I may very well pray right there on the phone.  If not, I pray as soon as I  hang up.  I may be cutting onions, stirring pasta, washing dishes or folding clothes while I’m doing it, but I’m praying while it is fresh on my heart and mind.  If I receive an email with a prayer request, I pray over it as I read and as soon as I’m finished.
  3. Pray as you read Scripture:  As I read, I ask God to reveal Scriptures that I can pray for those on my prayer list and He does.  Right there in that moment, Bible in my hand, I pray for the person who has popped into my mind in association with that verse. ” God, place a new song in her heart” (Psalm 40).  “God, fill her with the knowledge of Your will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9).  Every time I open my Bible, I begin a conversation with God that often includes requests for others.
  4. Stop, Drop and Pray: We’ve all had those moments when we’re running through our day and a friend appears in our thoughts for a moment.  “I need to call her,” we might think.  Or, “I need to remember to pray for her later.”  I’ve learned to obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit and pray right then and there.  I don’t need to wait until my quiet time to lift up a friend to God.  I stop where I am, drop what I’m doing even if only for a few seconds, and pray—-before I forget and before urgent things distract me.
  5. Post It:  I’ve tried keeping a notebook of prayer requests before and it hasn’t worked for me.  What I have done, though, is find ways to post the prayer requests so I see them all day and pray for them often.  I have a prayer list for my kids on my refrigerator door.  I’ve posted index cards around my desk with prayer requests for others.  I have a prayer card in my Bible and another in my car.

Too often we try to confine prayer to specific times, meetings, sacred places and holy moments.  But prayer can happen right here and now.

As soon as the Holy Spirit nudges our heart, we can offer those prayers up to Him on behalf of others.

Originally posted 5/25/2011

Have mercy on us

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daniel 9

My oldest girl gave a speech that was bursting with righteous indignation.

Her class had misbehaved in the school lunchroom.

These fifth graders had been out of their seats, standing up on the little round chairs attached to the lunch tables.

They had been loud and obnoxious.

So they were punished.

It wasn’t just the misbehaving few, though, who bore the load of consequences.  Oh no, the whole class had to write a letter of apology to the lunchroom monitors.

And that wasn’t fair, my daughter said.

Why should she apologize for the bad choices of others, for their immaturity and out of control actions?  She had sat there quietly eating her lunch.

Yet, she had to write, “I’m sorry.”

So, she devised a plan: Write a letter that absolved her of responsibility.  “I’m sorry that others in my class were out of control.  I’m sorry that other students were so bad.”

That kind of thing, the kind of line-in-the-sand distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, the right and the wrong, the worthy and the unworthy, the good and the bad.

We’re experts at these kinds of distinctions.  We draw lines politically.  We draw lines socially.  We draw lines at work and maybe at church more than anywhere else.

Our prayers are “us” versus “them.”

“Lord, please forgive those people who sin.  Please forgive those who really aren’t following you.”

We know those prayers don’t include us, of course, not the good and holy ones who clearly have earned God’s favor.

Yet, I challenge my black-and-white, rule-following, fairness-and-justice-demanding daughter with a prayer from the book of Daniel that’s a shock to pride and self-righteousness.

Israel had committed idolatry.

Not Daniel, of course, but masses of people had been traipsing after foreign gods and stone idols for generation after generation.

Israel had disobeyed the law and dishonored the temple.

Not Daniel, of course, but so many others had turned their backs on God, choosing blasphemy and rebellion instead.

God finally declared, “enough is enough!”  He disciplined his people by allowing them to be conquered, the temple destroyed, His people taken away from their homes.

Now Daniel was in Babylon, one of the first to be carted away from his home and taken into captivity in a foreign land.

He was now a subject of pagan kings, living and working in an environment often hostile to his faith.

Daniel bore the full weight of God’s punishment for his people, but he hadn’t done anything wrong.

He was a sinner, of course.  We all are.  Yet, he hadn’t committed idolatry.  He hadn’t defiled himself.  He hadn’t sacrificed children to Molech or bowed down to Baal.

Still, when he prayed for his people, Daniel said this:

“Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. 6 Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets… (Daniel 9:4-6).

We have sinned.

We have disobeyed.

We have not listened.

We.

I share this with my daughter and I ask her to consider what it would look like if she apologized for the “We” and not the “Them.”

She didn’t do anything wrong, yet could she humble herself enough to set aside the ‘fair’ and ‘just’ and choose the low and the merciful and the heart of intercession?

“I’m sorry that our class caused such a disruption.  I’m sorry that we didn’t behave in the lunchroom.”

Could she make that choice like Daniel did?

Can we?

When we pray for others and when we pray for our nation and for our churches and our communities, our husbands, our kids, our family, our friends, can we choose to pray with them instead of praying while looking down at them?

Not, “Lord, please forgive my husband for not praying like he should and leading our family like you want him to.”

Not, “Lord, please forgive my friends who gossip.”

Not, “Lord, please forgive the people in our country who are messing it all up.”

No, like Daniel, we drop down on our face before God and cry out, “God forgive us!!  We have messed up.  We have sinned.  We are unworthy.”

And we know this truth, that God doesn’t wash us clean because we deserve it, not because we’re good enough or holy enough or righteous enough to merit grace.

Daniel said it:

We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy (Daniel 9:18 NIV).

How could this change the way we pray for our marriages, families, churches and nation?

 

The Grace God Gives for the Wearied Soul

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psalm 51-12

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.

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.

My perfect future

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Psalm 31-15

At least eight of them were going to live in big houses.

One of them wasn’t going to have a big house.  His house was going to be BIG.

They would compete in the Olympics, be world famous surgeons and vets and carpenters, play professional sports, write books, run businesses, and make a lot of money.

They would drive Jeeps or a Ford or a convertible.

They would all marry, have several children (whose names they already knew) and live incredibly happily ever after.

These were the futures my daughter and her fellow fifth graders described during their DARE graduation this week.

We parents in the crowd smiled and laughed and probably some of us cried.  What a wonderful, beautiful, sometimes humorous thing it is to hear eleven-year-olds dream.

My daughter jumped right in there, dreaming with the best of them about education, career, marriage, having kids, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Lovely thoughts, all of them.

But when they read her “My Future” paragraph at the graduation ceremony, I finally succumbed to the tears when I heard her concluding words: “My future is in God’s hands.”

Whatever happens…

Even when the plans don’t turn out the way she hoped or expected….

Even when life gets crazy or even just slightly uncertain…..

“My future is in God’s hands.”

I take this to heart.  Shouldn’t we all?

My eleven-year-old self never planned or expected all that God has done and all that He has planned for me.  My life has twisted itself up into a thing of beauty that I never could have created on my own.

There were seasons I thought God was messing it all up.

He told me ‘no.’

He changed my direction.

He made me wait ‘forever.’

He carried me through valleys of darkness when I couldn’t see the next step right in front of my face.

Maybe now I already know the answers to the questions these kids were asking:  Where would I go to college? What would I study?  Who would I marry?  How many kids would I have?  Where would I live?  What would I do?

Yet, still there’s that constant compulsion to lay the future all out clean, perfect, organized, and bullet-pointed with measurable goals and a five-year-plan of how to make it all happen.

My own daughter’s wisdom brings me back.

Do I need to know all that?

Or do I need to just know this:  ‘My future is in God’s hands’?

I think of Joseph, the perpetual Old-Testament dreamer.

God gave him so much more than a fifth-grade perfect-life wish-list.  God gave him prophetic visions of his parents and brothers bowing down to him in homage and respect.

Then he was trapped in a pit while his brothers plotted to murder him.  He was sold to slave traders and carried off to Egypt.  He was falsely accused and thrown into prison.  He was forgotten and left to rot in the jail while others were freed.

It might have looked like one great big hopeless mess.  How could Joseph ever make those God-given visions work out?

The truth is he couldn’t.

And he didn’t need to.

He just needed to keep living, day after day, moment by moment, obedient to God, trusting that God was in charge of his life story.

Louie Giglio writes in his book The Comeback:

Maybe your dream is to go to school or get a degree or accomplish a certain task or find a certain spouse or start a business or move to a certain place or create a movement or carry the gospel to people who’ve never heard it before. Those may be great dreams, but there’s a bigger dream that overrides everything else: it’s that your life counts for the glory of God.

This is the constant dream we can cling to at all times and in all situations:  May our lives bring glory to God.

Yes, in the prison.

Yes, in slavery.

Yes, even when all the dreams come true.

Ultimately, Joseph told his brothers:

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life (Genesis 45:5 ESV).

Joseph knew nothing happened just for his own benefit, personal comfort or ultimate happiness.

Everything he endured was so God could ‘preserve life.’

His life was tucked into the grander story, the God-story, the story of salvation.

That’s true for us, as well.

We can dream, plan, plot and strategize, but ultimately we return to trust.

We trust that our lives can glorify Him. We trust that He has a grand, God-story for salvation, and we have a place within it.

We trust that our future is in His hands.

Having Hope When You’ve Been Stepped On

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Acts2

My daughter was about two-and-a-half when she stepped on a butterfly.

We do this every spring as we prepare for Easter, order a cup of caterpillars and follow their journey to new life.  We watch the change, marvel again at the miracle: how the tomb doesn’t always mean death; maybe it means resurrection.

We remember that we are the ones who die to self and then gain new life in Christ, like caterpillars willingly spinning themselves into tight dormancy only to be made new.

We watched those caterpillars climb all over the tiny plastic cup for about a week.  Then they scaled the sides of the cup, flipped themselves upside down and wrapped themselves into a chrysalis.

They looked dead for a week.

One morning, I shuffled around the kitchen, moving through routine with my eyes barely cracked open.  Poured cereal. Made tea. Oversaw teeth-brushing and hair-brushing.

Then I saw the wings.

The chrysalis had cracked open and there in the morning light sat our first butterfly, fanning his wings slowly while the other caterpillars remained entombed.

Over the next day or so, the other new butterflies pushed their way out and flexed their wings.

We squeezed drops of sugar water on freshly cut chrysanthemums and watched the butterflies strengthen.  First they sat in stillness.  Then they hopped to the bottom and explored.  Then they started flying around in circles, eager for freedom.

So, we set them free.

We gathered into the garden in the warm sun of a spring Saturday and one by one released each butterfly.

But we forgot to explain the difference between butterflies and bugs to my youngest daughter, I suppose.

When one of the butterflies flew up and then back to the ground, she squashed it with her one tiny foot stomping down on the ‘pest’ just like we would crush any spider.

It was like a slow motion moment in a film, with us leaping to try to rescue the butterfly and prevent the impending doom, but failing in the end.

Amazingly enough, that butterfly still lived.  We eased him and his bruised wing onto a flower where he could enjoy some food without needing to fly.

Maybe you’ve been that butterfly.

Eager to fly.  Excited for freedom.  Hoping for beauty.

Then crushed, bruised, broken.

Maybe you’ve started this year with anticipation, holding your breath for that first sign of good news.

And you’ve already felt like a giant foot has squashed you to the ground.

Maybe it seems like nothing ever changes even though you desperately long for it to change.

Proverbs 13:12 says:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Hope isn’t a fickle whim, a fanciful impression that maybe good things will come your way.

Hope is a steadfast knowledge, an anchor of truth that without a doubt you know: God is good and He will take care of you.

And when you feel a little bruised and battered, like a butterfly crushed at that first taste of freedom, hope can feel a little shaky, a little elusive, a little hard to see in the deep of the dark.

Surely Noah must have had those days, floating on that ark long, long after the rain had ceased.

How long, Lord?  When will this end, Lord?  Will we ever get off this ark, Lord?

He started sending out messengers of hope: ravens and doves.

He was desperate for the assurance of dry, solid ground.

Then one day, the dove brought him an olive leaf.  More than that, the dove brought him renewed hope.

Max Lucado writes:

“An olive leaf.  Noah would have been happy to have a bird but to have the leaf!  This leaf was more than foliage; this was promise.  The bird brought more than a piece of a tree; it brought hope.  For isn’t that what hope is?  Hope is an olive leaf—evidence of dry land after flood… (From A Love Worth Giving)

When we are weary and defeated, we can seek hope.  We can send out those doves and ravens and ask God for a sign of dry land after flood.

When we are strong, we can be the dove for another.  We can bring olive leaves to the hurting. We can bring reminders of hope and God’s faithfulness to those who can’t see the solid ground.

Do you need an olive leaf today?  Do you need to bring an olive leaf to someone else who is hurting?

Here are 30 Bible Verses on Hope to help.

Originally published 1/5/2015

We are not forgotten

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psalm 20-6

For the record, I’ve never forgotten one of my kids at a store or anything.

But there was the time I left a child in the minivan.

When my youngest daughter was about four, she used to run into the house as soon as we got home and then hide behind the curtains.

She always hid in the same place.

She always thought she was both hilarious and amazingly creative for hiding in that same exact place.

And then when we’d all load out of the minivan and step into the kitchen, she’d jump out and ‘surprise’ us.

Only that night, I shut the minivan door and trudged into the house with my arms loaded down with stuff, stuff and more stuff after an evening at church.

A few minutes later, my husband asks, “Where’s Catherine?”

Well, isn’t she hiding behind the curtains like she always is?  Why hasn’t she jumped out to surprise us yet?

Actually, no, she was still in the minivan.

She never climbed out and never made any noise about it, so we’d left her locked inside alone and in the dark.

Not one of my prize Mom moments, I’ll admit.

My husband carried our baby girl in and she cried for a bit over feeling lost and forgotten and even a little afraid.  She wasn’t traumatized, though, (God’s grace right there!) and I’m not even sure if she remembers it ever happened.

I do, of course.

We’re slow to forget mistakes and easily traumatized by our own failures.

But I can still see her now, arms wrapped around Daddy’s neck, face buried in his shoulder, leaning into him in gratitude and relief because he had remembered her and he had come for her in the dark and carried her out of loneliness into a place of safety.

He saved her.

This week I read in my Bible:

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided (Genesis 8:1 ESV).

God remembered Noah.

All those nights shut up in the smelly ark, rocked about by the ever-present water, Noah may have felt forgotten, abandoned, trapped, and left to rot away from mildew and a bad case of cabin fever.

And maybe we know what that’s like.

Maybe we’ve felt like God didn’t hear us, wasn’t aware of what we’re going through, wasn’t paying attention, and had simply forgotten us right in the moment of our greatest need.

The Israelites probably felt that same way, sweating and groaning their way through hundreds of years in Egyptian slavery.

It’s clear that they weren’t silent sufferers, either.  Instead, “the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help” (Exodus 2:23).

“And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.   (Exodus 2:24-25, ESV).

God remembered them, too.

I love how the Message breaks this down:

God listened to their groanings.
God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
God saw what was going on with Israel.
God understood (Exodus 2:24-25, MSG).

God listened.  God remembered.  God saw.  God understood.

There’s something else, though.  Something true for Noah.  Something true for Israel.  Something true for us even now.

When Scripture tells us God remembers, it doesn’t mean He ever truly forgot us.  It’s not like He had a case of temporary amnesia or couldn’t recall our name or lost track of our plight.

Or left us behind in the minivan.

When God remembers, it’s a sign in Scripture that this is the moment He’ll reveal His activity.  It’s the moment when everything God had been doing in the hidden places is clear and revealed and brought to the light.

No more waiting.

Now it’s time for God to be on the move.

He orders the waters on the earth to recede so Noah and his family could step out of that ark onto dry ground.

He calls Moses from a burning bush and tells him to go lead Israel out of Egypt.

So, we can hold fast to this same truth as we groan in our own need, whether it be the annoyance of a daily stress, the repentance over a habitual sin, or the hardest of life’s challenges.

God hears us.  God remembers His promises to us.  God sees us.  God understands.

And then He rescues.

Now I know that the Lord saves His anointed; He will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of His right hand” (Psalm 20:6, ESV).

 

 

Well, that was a failure

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lamentations 3-22

Our morning routine on that first day back to school after winter break went flawlessly.  My kids were up, fed, dressed, and packed for school 20 minutes before the bus’s arrival.

We even added in the coats, hats, and gloves for the first time this winter and my kids still walked out the door early that Monday morning.  Someone pin a medal on us or something!

And then.

Only one word describes that afternoon: STRESS.

Before Christmas break, we had those Monday afternoons down to an exact science: Forty minutes between the time we get home from school and the time we need to walk out the door to ballet.

No problem.

In those 40 minutes, my kids changed out of school clothes and into dance attire.

I emptied the backpacks and lunchbags.  By the time we left for dance, I had their school folders cleared out; reading logs, behavior logs, agendas, and take-home folders signed; lunches packed for the next day and dinner made.

Wham.  Bam.  Thank you, ma’am.

But not this week.

Oh no.

We were a right awful mess.

Over the break, I washed all the dance clothes and thought I put everything back in the right dance bags.

On the contrary, my six-year-old couldn’t find her tights.

No problem, I found them.

Then, she had the wrong leotard in her bag.

A little more of a problem, but after some searching, I found it.

Then, her dance shoes felt tight and didn’t fit anymore.

Okay, I pulled down our bucket of dance shoes (I have quite the collection) and resized the child’s foot.

She put on her dance clothes, but forgot to take off her underwear first.  (For those who are not dance moms, underwear under your leotard is a no-no because it shows and looks embarrassing. I actually Googled that once to find out how ballerinas kept their underwear from showing.  Seriously.)

My baby girl and I had a good laugh at how much we’ve forgotten over the break and I asked her to change again.

Only then she put her stockings and leotard on inside out.

Bless her heart, I thought she’d cry for an hour over that one.  She was just so tired of changing her clothes already.

This time, I helped her into her dance clothes myself.

I loaded everyone into the minivan with five minutes to spare, plopped into the driver’s seat and realized I didn’t have my key.

Then I spent the next five minutes searching the house for the missing key only to find it on the key ring exactly where it’s supposed to be so I don’t lose it.

For real.

It was an all-out miracle because I didn’t lose my temper or explode.

But I did cry.  I sobbed a little around the house as I hunted for that key and called out a desperate cry over and over, “Jesus, help me.  I know I’m a mess and I’m just not making it today.”

But here’s the thing:  We arrived at the dance studio on time.

My daughter looked perfectly cute in her shoes, leotard, and tights (sans underwear).

I even remembered my checkbook to pay the tuition for the month.

It probably looked like we had sailed through that afternoon of craziness just fine.  Maybe it looked like I had it all together.

Nevermind that internally I had one grade to give myself for my afternoon’s performance: F as in Failure.  F as in good grief, Mom, could you possibly get yourself together already?

But oh such grace is this: We can try again.  I know we’ll get back to that smooth routine and it will go better next time.

And, even if it doesn’t, Jesus isn’t giving up on me because of a lost leotard and foolishness over my car keys.

I read this promise in Scripture:

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease (Genesis 8:22 ESV).

The rhythms of creation itself are a reassurance of the rhythm of grace.

Day and night come ceaselessly.  I will wake up to a new day, a fresh start, an opportunity to try again and maybe even get it right this time.

More than that, whole seasons come and go with certainty.

One bad year of planting isn’t the end.  Spring will come anew and I can plow the field fresh, drop the seeds into the earth, and look forward to a better harvest.

I can count on it.

The failures of one day, one moment even, are only permanent if I choose to give up instead of going forward.

Fresh starts and new beginnings: That’s what God promises us, season after season, day after day.

 

That will never happen to me

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Jeremiah 33

She bawled uncontrollably at the tragic news.

Her two older sisters had brought home five—-count them, five—–birthday party invitations within three weeks.

She had not.

I assured her: You will have parties to attend.  You will receive invitations.  Your social life has not collapsed, bit the dust, or ended in ruin at the ripe old age of five.

You will be the one bringing home the party invitation soon.  It will happen to you.  Moms know these things.  We’re smart that way.

I promise.

Meanwhile, she screamed with one long Lucy Ricardo-style wail at the total hopelessness of the situation.

“No, I won’t.”  She finally screeched out.  “I’ll never (wail) be invited (wail) to a party (wail) again (extended wailing).

As a mom, I know I should feel this deep compassion for her tiny broken heart, but really, I hid my smile behind the folder of school papers she handed me.

Five-year-old drama can be so amusing.

I sent her on her way to wash her face and to overcome her despair.  Then I opened up the yellow folder and sorted through all of the projects and worksheets.

Right on top sat a tiny white envelope: a birthday party invitation that had been there the whole time she’d been having a meltdown about a lack of birthday party invitations.

Oh mercy.

God sure can act quickly when He has the mind to.

I carried that invitation right over to my still-tearful child and I taught her right there:  Didn’t Momma promise?  Didn’t I say to have hope?

But I tuck this truth deep down in my own heart because sometimes I’m a five-year-old child wailing about a party invitation.

Oh, the crises get bigger with time.  My own adult life has trials and traumas of its own, but my reaction hasn’t altered so much with ‘maturity.’

I have grown-up ways of jumping headfirst into hopelessness instead of bringing my needs to the God of Hope.

We cling so often to the promise in Scripture:

 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).

But we miss out on so much in this verse if we overlook what was happening to God’s people when Jeremiah was writing this promise.

They weren’t headed into victory or into a promised land of rest and blessing.

God was declaring a season of enemy siege that would lead to utter famine, a time when they’d be tempted to eat the flesh of their own dead children.

God told His people that Jerusalem’s walls would be crushed and the Babylonian enemy would drag them off to a foreign land where they could no longer worship in the temple.

This was more than a childish meltdown about a birthday party.

This truly was desolation and despair.  It was the ugly of life at its ugliest.

And yet, here still God’s mercy covers all.

God tells His people, “Yes, it looks bad.  It’s going to hurt.  Discipline does that.  But I don’t have plans to harm you.  I have a hope and a future for you even as you face captivity and exile.”

He would never abandon them.

God’s mercy shines even in the darkest places.

Jeremiah pours out God’s promises.  He declares:

“After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place”  (Jeremiah 29:10 NKJV).

“Behold I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.  And I will cause the captives of Judah and the captives of Israel to return, and will rebuild those places as at the first. (Jeremiah 33:6-7 NKJV).

“Again there shall be heard in this place…..the voice of joy and the voice of gladness….” (Jeremiah 33:10-11 NKJV).

More than that, God assured His people:

‘In those days and at that time
I will cause to grow up to David
A Branch of righteousness;
He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. (Jeremiah 33:15 NKJV).

Oh yes, He’d send the Savior.  The Messiah would come and rescue them indeed.

God’s promise to them wasn’t “if…”

“If you make it out of captivity….”

“If you ever get to come home again…..”

“If you don’t all die off or get subsumed in the foreign culture while in exile….”

Gods promise was “When” and it was “I Will.”

And this is why we hold on in the dark, in the trials, in the moments we can’t see what God is doing, because God doesn’t abandon His people.

He carries them.  He rescues them.  He comes for them.

He does and He will.

 

 

Originally published 10/22/2014