VBS for Grown-Ups: Even When You’re Left Out….

June 23, 2014June 23, 2014Leave a comment

Vacation Bible School. That’s just for kids, right? Silly songs. Silly skits. Silly costumes. Kids stuff. Sure.

But is there any message in Scripture that God delivers just for people 12 and under? We older and ‘wiser’ ones sometimes make faith so complicated when the simple beauty of truth is what we really need.

This week, I’ll be singing songs and doing those silly skits from Group Publishing’s Weird Animals VBS at my own church.

Here on the blog, I’ll be sharing with you those same stories, the same lessons, the same truth, but for grown-ups.

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Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high,
who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes, with the princes of his people (Psalm 113:5-8).

“Mom, can you tie my shoe?”

I kneel down, slightly off balance, and whip the laces into loops and knots.

“Mom, can you wash my hair?”

Bending over a daughter with her eyes pinched tightly shut, I scrub with shampoo and rinse away suds.

“Mom, can you show me how to play this on the piano?”

I stoop to press the keys, one hand pointing to the music, the other playing notes.

“Mom, can you hold my hand?”

Tilted to one side, I lean over to entwine our fingers and we swing our arms together.

“Mom, I’m hurt!”

Dropping to the ground, I clean the wound and press on the miraculously comforting Princess Band-Aid.

Life with children is a life bent low. It’s the ministry of kneeling down, stooping over, leaning, and bending to wipe, scrub, heal, hold, read, listen–to love. So often, it’s the movement down to hug a child and lift her up.

God bends low to reach His children, too.

He could have sat, poised on His righteous throne, holy and unresponsive to our need.

But He didn’t. Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Sacrifice, is the great Love of God bending low so He could raise us up.

And He continued that ministry. Finding Peter’s mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever, Jesus “bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her” (Luke 4:39).

Petitioned by a leper for healing, Jesus “reached out his hand and touched the man” (Luke 5:13).

Confronted by an angry mob gathering stones to throw at the adulterous woman, Jesus “stooped down and wrote on the ground” (John 8:8).

He could have stood at a distance. He had the power to heal with words alone, and sometimes He did.

These ten lepers, society’s outcasts, living away for so long from family, friends, faith, they didn’t even know they could come to Jesus. They knew the rules. Stay away from others. So, “they stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!'” (Luke 17:12 NIV).

And He healed them with a word, just simple instructions.

But other times He chose to make it physical, and it so often required Him to bend low, to stoop, to reach out.

Jesus didn’t mind the mess. He touched the “unclean,” when it was against the rules for them to have contact with other humans for fear they’d stain the holiness of others.

Jesus got down in the dirt with people. And not just the high and mighty, the lofty, the righteous, the elite.

With the shunned, ignored, rejected. With the outcasts. With the unclean and the sin-stained.

With them.

With us.

Even now, He promises, “surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20 NIV).

If you feel left out…rejected…outside….outcast…shunned….dirty….not good enough, never good enough, never gonna be good enough…..

Drink in this truth:

Even when you’re left out, Jesus loves you.

God is not waiting for us to get cleaned up, to overcome, to fix it all up, to force holiness either. He isn’t put off by our faces smudged with dirt, our hands caked with mud, our fingernails lined with soil from trying to claw our way out of the pit we’re in.

Instead, David tells us:

“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand (Psalm 40:2).

You cannot be so deep in the darkness to be beyond His reach. You cannot be so covered in dirt that He’s scared away or disgusted.

God puts on His muddy boots, wades in and rescues us so that we can be with Him.

As Lysa TerKeurst writes:

We may be overlooked by others, but we are handpicked by God.

Originally posted May 11, 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 book, Ask Me Anything, Lord: Opening Our Hearts to God’s Questions, is available now! To read more devotionals by Heather King, click here.

A family motto for summer

June 18, 2014June 25, 20141 Comment

My daughter asks, “Why is it so much easier to get along with friends than with sisters some times?”

Four days into summer vacation and she’s already pleading for more time with friends and less time with siblings.

But here’s the truth I tell her….time with others destroys masks, facades, and fake perfection. It has a way of dragging all of those sins and faults, all of that selfishness and the bad attitudes from where they stay safely hidden during play dates and public outings.

Anyone can behave for a few hours on a play date.

That’s what I tell her.

Then I remind myself: Any mom can respond sweetly to her child who is having a meltdown in the Wal-Mart aisle five minutes into your shopping trip when there are people around who might overhear you.

And those TV moms—sure, any of us could be super creative, fun, and even-tempered enough to fill 40 minutes of film footage once a week.

God isn’t satisfied with superficial sweetness, though. He wants genuine transformation. He wants the world to look deep and long at us and see the reflection of Christ, not some plastic Jesus or some temporary super-Christian persona.

It’s part of His design with family and others to wield us as tools, chipping away at one another, breaking off the pieces that simply need to go, and masterfully forming us little by little into tried-and-true, walking and talking, in-season and out-of-season examples of Christ in the world.

Proverbs tells us:

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17).

So He places us in families and in community with one another.

And then He gives us summer seasons…when we’re up close and personal and with each other all day instead of scattering away to schools, activities, and our own busy lives.

It’s so much time so close together that causes the explosions….when she won’t share the game, and she says something unkind, and she makes annoying noises, and her piano playing is too loud, and she’s hungry and impatient, and she wants to go to the library when she wants to stay home in her pajamas all day…when all this “self” collides with the “self” in everyone else, that’s when He reminds us of grace.

Maybe that’s the lesson in summer, after all.

Grace to rest.

Grace to stop the frantic running from school pick-ups to evening activities, tossing back granola bars to your kids from the front of the mini-van while you rush to ballet where you yank hair back into buns and push in bobby pins before class begins.

Grace to linger over the cup of tea in the morning instead of putting on the drill sergeant hat and barking out commands to children to get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, find shoes, pack lunches and then kiss them on the cheek and send them out the door just in time to rush onto the school bus.

Grace to skip the chores and pack the car for the beach.

Grace even that I need to extend to myself—to not adhere completely to the writing schedule, to post late to the blog or even miss a day—because we’re out enjoying the summer and I’m taking this time I’ve been given with my kids for these few short weeks and I don’t want to miss it. ephesians4-32 photo by Jaroon Ittiwannapong

And grace for each other.

This is the mom speech I make for my daughter after a sibling melt-down.

In this family, we give grace because we need grace. When someone makes a mistake, we don’t mock, or point fingers, or jump up eagerly to show off how they were wrong.

After all, we need grace. We receive grace, so we show grace to others. It becomes my call, my standard, my motto for this summer with my kids:

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

Paul wrote this:

And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ (Ephesians 4:32 HCSB).

And that’s how we breathe in and breathe out when daily annoyances and mistakes, sins, and forgetfulness, bad days, troubles, and trials threaten to consume us.That’s what we do when others step on our toes and bruise our feelings. We forgive because we’ve been forgiven.

This summer, we lean back full into this grace and rest. Choosing not to be stressed over the schedule, but to relax in relationship. Choosing to forgive the hurts and cease the fault-finding as Christ uses this season together to transform us.

That’s the grace that is summer.

Originally posted June 12, 2013

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Invest in Friendship’?

The miracles that don’t look like miracles

June 9, 20141 Comment

I heard the sad news that the man in this story passed away this morning. I’m remembering him today just as he shared a sweet memory of his own mom and I’m praying for his family….

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Years ago, the sweet man who led our church choir leaned back in his stool at the front of the music room. He told us in a slow southern drawl what he remembered about his mother.

On the dark and stormy nights of his childhood, when the thunder raged and lightning struck close enough to illuminate his room, he would awaken to find his mom sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed. She sat with him through the storms, praying over him, even while he continued to sleep.

That’s what he remembered about her: her presence in the stormy nights.

Last night, I supervised the brushing of teeth and the donning of pajamas, packing lunches and backpacks, and laying out clothes for the new day. We read bedtime stories. We prayed as a family.

This morning, I poured cereal and I buttered toast. I placed ice packs in the lunches and zipped up the backpacks.

I helped with shoes and socks, combed hair, and reminded my daughters (too many times) to brush their teeth and to do it well because they don’t want cavities or bad breath and, by the way, we’re going to the dentist next week.

I checked the weather and then I held out jackets for each girl. I broke up a fight and gave a crying daughter a hug, calmed her down, and then placed the two sisters on a school bus. Photo by Viktor Hanacek at PicJumbo

The day was like every day.

I don’t remember these childhood moments, not my mom tying my shoes or helping me put on my jacket, supervising bath time or pulling my hair into pigtails.

But she did them. My life is filled with years and years of everyday acts of love I don’t remember.

Usually these acts of love remain unnoticed and undervalued . . . unless they’re missing. Those children who aren’t fed well, bathed, read to, hugged, kept safe, and tucked into their own cozy beds at night feel the lack.

What will my kids remember about this time with me? It’s not likely they’ll remember the moments of jackets and breakfasts and backpacks.

But they might remember the special times, like waking on a stormy night to see mom by the bed.

And I wonder, what do I remember about God, my Father? Usually, it’s the stormy times when I awaken in fear only to find His presence. It’s the times He’s kept me safe and delivered me from danger.

Yet, we so often overlook the miracles of everyday grace, the simplest signs of His affection and the fact that He cares for our needs and yes, sometimes even our desires.

When we always look for the glorious miracle, the immediate and the extraordinary, we miss thanking God for the gradual, the expected, and the small.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “A slow miracle is no easier to perform than an instant one.”

We revel in the answers to prayer that come fast. The ones that don’t require interminable waiting and inconvenient patience.

We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” and then miss the miracle of everyday provision.

In the book of Nehemiah, the exiles who returned to Jerusalem skipped sleep, fended off enemies, prayed, and labored with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. They hefted bricks until the walls of Jerusalem were complete, all in just 52 days. It was a miracle. Even their enemies knew that:

When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God (Nehemiah 6:16).

How easy it would be to overlook the miracle, though, because it didn’t look miraculous.

As Kelly Minter writes in Nehemiah: A Heart That Can Break:

“It’s worth noting that so far we’ve read nothing of angels, burning bushes, or talking donkeys. Instead, we’ve seen God use what we might consider ordinary to bring about extraordinary transformation: prayer, repentance, willingness, hard work, sacrifice, humility, faith. Though miraculous displays of God’s power are to be desired and cherished, I’m equally impressed with God speaking silently to Nehemiah’s heart in the most ‘normal’ of circumstances. Be encouraged that the common, everyday realities are ideal environments for God to put something in our hearts to do” (Minter 116).

So we thank Him for the daily bread, for forgiveness, for mercies made new every morning, for unceasing faithfulness, and His goodness (Lamentations 3:23-26). We thank Him for the quiet and the everyday and His presence.

It may not be showy and ostentatious. Still, it’s love. That’s worth remembering.

Bad Boy

June 6, 2014June 6, 20142 Comments

“No, no, no. Bad boy. Bad. Boy.”

I’m in the back room of our house and I hear my oldest daughter chastising someone in the living room.

We don’t have a dog and it’s useless to lecture cats about their behavior. So, I’m curious and concerned. Who could she be talking to?

I see her in the living room sitting with her eight-month-old baby brother, who apparently is grabbing at her long Rapunzel-style hair while she holds him.

“Bad boy,” she says again.

I scoop him right up and then I explain it to her gentle:

“Babe, we don’t call him ‘bad boy.’ He’s beautiful and wonderful and curious. You can teach him, ‘no’ and you can give him other things to grab than your hair, but we don’t label someone as a ‘bad boy.’ Ever.”

But then the next day, I’m changing the baby’s messy diaper and I hear my four-year-old behind me.

“Oh, Andrew. Bad boy.”

I explain it all again to her and my other daughters listen in. I hope they don’t miss out on the truth of what I’m saying here because this is just plain important.

We do not call him Bad Boy.

I just don’t know where it comes from. I’ve never talked to my children like dogs. I’ve never changed a diaper or disengaged my hair from the pudgy hands of an infant and said, “Bad girl” or “Bad boy.” I can correct their behavior without the hurtful labeling.

So, what is this natural inclination to legalism and to guilt-ridden, shame-filled name-calling?

Isn’t this Christian walk this difficult balance of knowing we are depraved sinners in desperate and absolute need of a Savior? Prone to evil. Apt to sin. Not worthy of heaven on our own merit or labor.

And yet we are also dearly loved and covered by the heavy blanket of grace. And the God who loves us, He knows we’re not perfect. He knows our clumsy way of tripping right into messes of our own making.

If He thought we were perfect, He wouldn’t have sent His Son to redeem us. We wouldn’t have needed it.

Ephesians says it right there:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV).

So, I want to be holy to please the God I love. But when I mess it all up, I never seem to accept the forgiveness He offers. I just keep apologizing and rehashing the disappointment. I expect the discipline and the punishment.

This is because I let Him down. This is because I did something wrong.

This is because I’m a ‘bad girl.’

In an article called How to Rise a Pagan Kid in a Christian Home, Barret Johnson talks about Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales, who said, “I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity.”

Johnson asks:

Do you teach your kids “be good because the Bible tells you to” or do you teach your kids that they will never be good without Christ’s offer of grace? There is a huge difference. One leads to moralism; the other leads to brokenness. One leads to self-righteousness; the other leads to a life that realizes that Christ is everything and that nothing else matters.

So, do I want to strong-arm my children into good, moral behavior? Do I discipline them so their hearts are turned to Christ and the desire to be like Him? Or do I discipline so they will act respectful, tell the truth, sit still in church, not embarrass me in public, and stop hitting their sister in the back of the minivan?

I’m reading, The Good Dad, by Jim Daly and he pins me right down because I’m too often a woman who expects perfection from myself and a mom who expects perfection from my kids:

We all fall short of God’s standard of perfection….This understanding of our own imperfections helps us avoid the modern-day legalism that endangers so many Christians…It’s okay for your kids to fail sometimes. Because that’s often how they learn best.

Nobody’s perfect. That’s why we need Jesus.

That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want, sin however we feel like it, no consequences, no worries.

It just means that while we strive for holiness, we know it’s not all on our own. We rely on Him to help us. And when we fail, God isn’t yelling at us, “bad girl.” So we can stop yelling it at ourselves.

We live thankful for the grace.

We rest in His love.

We stop looking back and keep moving forward.

30 Bible Verses on Hope

June 3, 20142 Comments

Job 14:7-9 NASB
“For there is hope for a tree,
When it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
And its shoots will not fail.
“Though its roots grow old in the ground
And its stump dies in the dry soil,
At the scent of water it will flourish
And put forth sprigs like a plant.
Psalm 31:24 NIV
Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the LORD.
Psalm 33:18
But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,
Psalm 33:20-22
We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in you.
Psalm 39:7 NIV
“But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.
Psalm 43:5 NASB
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
Psalm 71:5 NASB
For You are my hope;
O Lord God, You are my confidence from my youth.
Psalm 71:14 NASB
But as for me, I will hope continually,
And will praise You yet more and more.
Psalm 119:81 NIV
My soul faints with longing for your salvation,
but I have put my hope in your word.
Psalm 119:114 NIV
You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
Psalm 146:5 NIV
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
Psalm 147:11
the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.
Proverbs 10:28 NASB
The hope of the righteous is gladness,
But the expectation of the wicked perishes.
Proverbs 13:12 NASB
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 23:18 NASB
Surely there is a future,
And your hope will not be cut off.
Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
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.
Lamentations 3:25
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
Romans 5:2-5 NIV
through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Romans 8:24-25 NASB
For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
Romans 12:12 NIV
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Romans 15:4 NIV
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15:13 NIV
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 13:13 NIV
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Ephesians 1:18 NIV
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people
Colossians 1:27 NIV
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
1 Timothy 4:10
That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.
Hebrews 6:198-20 NIV
God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews 11:1 NASB
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
1 Peter 1:13 NIV
Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.
1 John 3:3 NIV
All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

I Bring Mess; He Brings Beauty

May 30, 20142 Comments

“But you remain the same, and your years will never end” (Psalm 102:27).

“Mom, I know how to spell the word ‘kissing.’” Photo by Viktor Hanacek

That’s what my daughter told me when she was in first grade.

I wonder how to answer. Marvel over her accomplishment? Ask to see her spelling list?

Finally, I decide to stick with Classic Mom: “Wow, that’s a pretty big word. Spell it for me.”

Immediately, my first grader breaks out into the full-voiced sing-songy chant:

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.”

Some things never change.

The same chants, the same games, the same tears, the same laughs, the same hand-claps and rhymes and teasing from generation right on to the next.

Some things never seem to change with me either.

The truth is I need a Savior. I can make 50 resolutions a day not to lose my temper with my kids, but the moment my poky child pits herself against this super-speed mom, I fail.

In my own, the holding it together and the being perfect don’t happen. I find myself sitting in the pupil’s chair again, learning the same lesson from God that He taught me last year, and the year before that, and year after year after perpetual year.

In lessons of patience, grace, love and flexibility, I learn so slow.

But there’s something else that never changes.

God.

He’s immutable, unchanging, “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), who doesn’t alter “like shifting shadows” (James 1:17)

In all of my wayward sameness, I choose to go back to the beginning.

That same God, who stared at the dark shapeless mess and saw the potential beauty of the created earth sees beauty in me, as well. He sees it in you.

No one but God could have seen the potential in that pre-Creation space. Genesis 1:2 tells us, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Formless, empty and dark.

And God said, “Let there be light.”

Our God can make glorious possibilities out of nothingness, painting the sky onto a blank canvas.

He is original and uniquely imaginative, designing solutions that our finite minds could never have achieved. That means when I am hopeless with no possibility of salvation, I know my God can create a solution that is beyond my comprehension.

And I know He can bring order to the most disordered and messy aspects of my life just as He shaped the earth out of what was “formless and void.”

So when it comes to the things that just don’t seem to change in me, it’s best for me to “let go, and let God.” I struggle and strive to do the work of self-improvement, only to fail at the first sign of stress.

But when I call on the name of Jesus and bring the messy disorder of it all to Him, He sifts through the mud and mire and brings forth treasure.

It takes honesty, though, the heart-felt, soul-bearing truth when we finally just say, “God, this is a mess. I can’t do it. I’ve tried. I’m a failure at this. I’ve done it again. I’ve fallen into the pit.”

When we finally stop pretending to be perfect, then and only then, can Jesus get busy creating, forming, cleaning, and ordering the mess we’ve brought to His feet.

Lisa Harper wrote,

Our Redeemer will carefully help us sort the treasures from the trash. If we’ll just be honest about the emotional boxes we’ve squirreled away, Jesus will take charge of the cleaning process (Stumbling Into Grace).

Our honesty allows God to do the dirty work of changing us. So, even when it’s painful, and even when it’s slow, and even when it’s hard, we know that we really aren’t staying the same. The lessons may be the same-old, same-old, and yet our never-changing, immutable God teaches us a bit more and goes a little bit deeper.

We’re growing. Sometimes in shoots and spurts. Sometimes in painful inches.

Sometimes we can’t see the change at all, but our roots far below the surface are digging deeper down, planting us firm into the soil so that God can do the visible work later without toppling us right on over.

We’re changing. But, praise God, He’s not. He’s what really never changes. With all His patience, and all His grace, with the love that manages to see beauty in our mess, He’s the Ever-Faithful Creator and we His beloved creation.

What messes do you need to hand over to our Creator God today?

Originally posted 11/4/2011

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Create Beauty’?

The sky is falling (or is that the cheesecake?)

May 28, 20142 Comments

The last time I made cheesecake, it fell on my daughter’s head.

True story.

We loaded up that brand new, never-before-used springform pan with cream cheese and sugar and eggs and all the yummy, gooey goodness of cheesecake batter.

I lifted up the hefty weight of this New York-style cheesecake and just as I made the move over her head and towards the kitchen, the bottom of the pan just collapsed and out ran the cheesecake all into her hair and down onto her forehead and back and hands.

Even after an emergency bath, she smelled delicious.

Their grandparents arrived for a visit and handed the girls hard hats to wear while baking, just in case mom decided to make cheesecake again.

So, I’m browsing through recipes for summer picnics and I see this cheesecake covered with cherries and consider the possibilities.

But I also consider my daughter’s reaction.

Cheesecake? I hate cheesecake. It’ll fall on my head.

As if every time I bake, she’s in the line of fire. Or that every cheesecake ends in a messy implosion and a dessert shampoo.

She is, in effect, terrified of cheesecake. Or, to be more precise, afraid of being present while I’m baking cheesecake.

All this month, I’m pursuing the presence of Christ by enjoying the Creativity of our Creator God, and in between pictures of desserts and ingredient lists and recipe instructions, I’m thinking of what to do when the sky falls, the world caves in, or when the cheesecake unexpectedly slams down on your head.

Truly I have these terrors of my own, restless anxiety and sleep-stealing fears that leave me pacing before God’s throne long into the night.

Like Change: The way it shifts my life and maybe I’m tossed a little off-balance, all that routine and familiarity disturbed by the unexpected and unknown.

What is it about that unplanned phone call, the shifting of an expectation, the closing of a door, the altering of a plan? It knocks me right off of my two solidly planted feet and I’m grabbing a hard hat for fear of the sky (or a cheesecake) falling onto my hapless self.

But change is one thing that’s constant in this life.

Here’s what’s also constant: God’s presence. His help. His perfect plan. His love.

The Psalmist said:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
(Psalm 46:1-2 ESV).

Because, after all, God didn’t just create this world and then let it go. It’s still all in His hands.

So, I’m doing all this fighting, all this power-praying asking God to please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, do not let things change….

But maybe I’m praying against the work He wants to do for me, and maybe even the work He wants to do in me.

Like those Jewish captives who had been carried off to Babylon and lived there under Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and then Beltashazzar’s.

Maybe they always longed for home and Jerusalem, but they lived day in and day out in a Babylonian city and under Babylonian laws.

Slowly that foreign city became home.

Then came those Medes and Persians… conquering the empire with a regime change, shaking up every ‘constant’ the people had in that day-in-and-day-out life.

What if Daniel had fought against it? What if those righteous captives had asked God to please just keep things the same? What if they set up prayer vigils pleading with God to keep that conquering nation at bay? What if they had clung to the known and rejected the unknown?

Even if they were captives, after all, at least they knew what this captivity was like.

But they would have missed out on the blessing God planned for them.

And so might I.

Long before He ever allowed Jerusalem’s walls to fall, long before Israel’s captivity began, God ordained the time it would end and that King Cyrus of the Medes and Persians would be the one to send His people back home.

He promised change and the change was for their benefit.

He promises this for me, too:

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18 NIV).

All these changes around me are so that He can do a changing work in me and transform me to be more like Jesus.

So, what do I want, after all?

Maybe I’ll need to wear a hard hat, and yet I’ll choose His presence, wherever that takes me.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Create Beauty’?

When you can’t keep up with it all…maybe you’re not supposed to

May 23, 20142 Comments

My older girls picked up their knitting needles this week.

They have big plans of what they can make with one ball of yarn and two thick needles: Hats with pom poms to match stripey scarves for every family member and friend.

For now, I tell them: Keep it simple. Practice the steps, row after row. No need for fancy patterns or agendas. Just stitch after stitch until they are even and right.

We’ve corrected our fair share of lost stitches, tangled yarn and strangely elaborate knots. Mostly, though, we’re fighting against extra.

I started my oldest girl out with 15 little loops and within 3 rows, she’d nearly doubled the length of her project. I counted them out—27 stitches now. We counted out 5 stitches for my next daughter and she immediately increased that to 10.

It’s not purposeful, of course. Just an inadvertent grabbing of yarn in the wrong place, slipping on two loops where there should be only one, until finally their project has doubled in size. And if I let them continue unhindered, it’d triple and more.

So I pull out the row and start them again.

This is how you grab just one loop at a time. This is how you count your stitches after each row.

But it’s just so easy with momentary distractions and the way we pick up speed to do this, too.

This month, I’m learning to create in order to draw near to the presence of our Creator God. As I pull out these knots of string, I think how God is at work in me.

He starts me out with 15 simple loops of yarn. He establishes the rhythm and the pattern, and He measures out the resources so I’ll have enough for all I need.

I focus at first and watch each stitch carefully.

Then I begin to rush and think about other things. People ask me questions. I look away instead of on my project.

Somehow I’ve slipped on extra stitches. God asked me to do 15. Just 15. So simple. He gave me enough.

But now I have 30 and I’m frantically working, trying to keep up with it all. I’m running out of resources and fretting over how I’ll ever be sufficient for all this need.

When I finally hand over the tangled mess to this patient and gracious God, He takes me back, eliminates the excess and starts me over again. Just 15 stitches, Heather. I only asked You to do these. No more. Nothing extra. And I’ve given You all You need, more than enough, for this alone.

It’s busyness, of course, that rushes us into grabbing more. We say “Yes” when He wants us to say “No.” We feel pressured into volunteering and there’s the pride that convinces us that we can save the day.

Usually, it’s all good things: Bible studies, meetings, committees, volunteering and relationships. Then we find ourselves doubling up those stitches again, and when we read those words of Jesus, they don’t even make sense. How could He promise us this when we feel so worn?

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV)

There’s another way, though, that those stitches sneak right on. It’s not busyness; it’s expectations. We tell ourselves what a Good Mom, a Good Wife, a Godly Woman and a True Friend does.

We’ve condemned ourselves right there, always trying to measure up to some perfect standard, tossing on stitches until we just collapse in failure and then we feel it: I’m a failure and a mess. I can’t keep up with it all, even these 15 stitches. Not like “her,” so perfect and together.

But God didn’t ask us to be perfect. Or to be like “her.”

He doesn’t impose impossible standards or withhold grace.

In the Message, the same verses in Matthew say:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly(Matthew 11:28-30 MSG).

It takes purposeful determination to protect the few stitches God’s entrusted to us, to fall into those unforced rhythms of grace rather than frantic rushing and condemnation. No slipping on extra loops of string, not with busyness and commitments or expectations and burdensome requirements.

Protect what He’s asked You to do and do it well, with all Your heart and mind, knowing that He’s given you all you need for just this much and no more.

Originally published May 31, 2013

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Create Beauty’?

Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometimes I don’t: Finding stability in a fickle world

May 16, 2014Leave a comment

Yesterday, I felt like I could run a marathon.

I clicked that exercise DVD off and felt strength, like my limbs had grown long and powerful in 30 minutes.

I was a lean, mean, health machine who laughed at crunches and slammed through jumping jacks with precision and ease.

Today, I was about to throw my running shoe at the TV screen because that guy in the t-shirt and gym shorts wouldn’t stop jabbering. Couldn’t he see I was short on oxygen after just 5 jogs in place?

When someone is suffocating right in front of you, don’t you bypass the small-talk and incessant chatter and tell them to skip to the end already and go have an ice cream cone or something?

Some days choosing blueberries and yogurt with granola comes easy.

Other days I need chocolate so bad I want to order a hot fudge sundae from McDonald’s–hold the sundae.

Isn’t so much of life like this incessant movement back and forth and back and forth, making progress, stumbling, feeling accomplished, feeling like giving up?

Some days I’m attacking that to-do list with energy and focus. The next day I’m distracted and just want to play hookie from grown-up life.

Some days I’m relaxed, spontaneous, fun mom. The next day I snap in half when three of my kids demand that I help them right this second, now, now, now as if they can’t see with their own two eyes that I only have these two hands.

What is this roller coaster life I lead? Why these fickle whims and why is perpetual progress so elusive?

I read in Beth Moore’s Whispers of Hope:

If we place our faith in what God is doing, we should brace ourselves for a lifelong roller-coaster ride. Our faith will be high and mighty one day and free-falling the next because it is based on the apparent activity of God in our circumstances. ….In our most difficult losses victory does not result from seeking God’s answers or His activity. Many answers will never come; much of His activity will never be seen. Victorious faith walks evolve from seeking Him. In Hebrews 11:27 we read that Moses “persevered because he saw him who is invisible”–not because he saw the burning bush. He gazed straight into the face of the invisible God. He built His faith on Who God is, not what God had done.”

She says, “When you don’t know what God is doing, you can find stability in Who He is” (p. 112).

Moses looked right past that burning bush. Sure, it caught his eye, but he glanced at the bush so he could gaze on God.

That compelled him into perseverance, into pushing past the fear and insecurity, pain, anger, the possibilities and probabilities of failure, and the overwhelming threat of the unknown.

I admit it. Sometimes I flop down in the middle of these circumstances and think—this is what God will do. This is how God acts.

But He’s so much more creative than little ol’ me and those unexpected ways of His send me into spirals of doubt and worry.

Why isn’t God doing what I want Him to do, when I want Him to do it, how it makes sense to me?

That wobbly faith of mine, it’s revealing the cracks in the foundation, how I’ve trusted in what God does, not Who He is.

I think of the farmer in the parable, sowing that seed on the rocky soil, on the path, among the thorns.

And I think how I’m fickle here, too.

I’m this avid gardener in April and May. But come July, one summer rainstorm sprouts a rain forest right in my front yard. I walk out that door and step into a mighty jungle that has grown to towering proportions overnight.

Overnight, I tell ya.

And a girl just can’t keep up with that, not in the mid-summer Virginia heat and humidity.

The weeds choke out those tended and welcome plants, just like that parable says.

Yet:

the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop (Luke 8:15 NIV).

The NLT says they:

hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.

Cling to it.

There it is.

Look past the burning bush and fix those eyes on Jesus, on WHO He is, constant in every situation.

And hold on for dear life to God’s Word, not letting those fingers fall loose for one second.

That’s what prompts our hearts into patient perseverance. That’s what produces this abundant crop of a harvest if we just don’t give up.

A Curtain, Alice, Cinderella and God’s Custom Design

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014Leave a comment

She wanted to be Alice, she said.

This year, they celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday by dressing as their favorite literary character at my kids’ school.

We have the world’s largest dress-up collection. This should have been easy.

But we do not own a pre-made costume for Alice during her whimsical Wonderland adventures, which meant we needed to make one.

Creativity, sewing, costuming—not my best things.

But surely, I thought, someone in my town must have once owned a white pinafore-style apron perfect for an Alice costume and large enough to fit a third grade girl.

And surely said person wanted to pass that on to someone else by donating it to a local thrift store or selling it at a consignment shop or yard sale on the very weekend when I needed such an apron.

So, we shopped. Copyright: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/profile_wolfelarry'>wolfelarry / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

All afternoon I shopped.

I did not find an apron.

I did, however, find a curtain with white eyelets and ruffles reminiscent of an Alice apron.

Many women could have snipped and sewn that curtain into an apron in about 15 minutes.

I took an hour or more. It was an extended evening project complete with ripping out the seams where I messed up and re-sewing what I got wrong.

But in the end, I held up that custom-made curtain-to-apron (complete with a pocket!!!) and felt real and true pride like I may never have felt before in my life.

I had overcome my allergy to crafts and my sewing machine phobia. I had labored and been found worthy. I had toiled and reveled in my success.

Or something like that. I was super proud.

Last week, my second daughter announced she needed a pauper Cinderella costume for her song in the school talent show and that meant she needed an apron.

But not an Alice apron. A Cinderella apron.

See the difference?

Dear children, have mercy.

So, I adjust the original design and adapt, turning the curtain that had become Alice into Cinderella.

At some point in the 9 years of being a mom to daughters, I have become a seamstress who produces custom designs; not a good one, perhaps, but after all, we all have our limits.

And while I’m still apt to prick my finger with the needle and still have to pull out the instruction manual every time I have to re-thread my sewing machine or my bobbin (wow, I know what a bobbin is!!), still I sew.

Still I stumble along into creativity so that I can draw near in the presence of the Creator.

Because God, He is this expert artist.

I read in Colossians:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him (Colossians 1:15 ESV)

In He is My All, Debbie Alsdorf writes:

“By Him and for Him. Those few words give new meaning to my life. They are my personal slogan. They explain what I love for and who I live for….those words—by Him and for Him—-simplify my purpose and meaning. They simplify my choices and help me focus on what’s important (He is My All, p. 82).

God teaches me between stitches and threads that He is the Custom Designer.

You and me—Alice, Cinderella—whoever we are, we are by Him and for Him, handmade.

Not just who we are, either, but He weaves in this also: what we’re placed here to do.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

You are made by Him and for His purposes and what you’re doing right here and now, it may not seem life-changing, world-altering, stage-worthy, award-winning, or crowd-gathering, but it is of value to Him.

This home…this husband…these children….this ministry….this friendship….this job….this calling….this waiting….this service….

He has designed You for this…

and this for you.

So, feeling insufficient? Feeling restless? Feeling unworthy? Feeling unnecessary? Feeling uncertain? Feeling overwhelmed?

Remember His custom design and the way He creates perfection, and the way He creates beauty all in His time.

To read more about this 12-month journey of pursuing the presence of Christ, you can follow the links below! Won’t you join me this month as I ‘Create Beauty’?

Heather C. King – Room to Breathe

"He's solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul" Psalm 62:1-2 (MSG).

Tag: Jesus

A family motto for summer

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

The miracles that don’t look like miracles

Bad Boy

30 Bible Verses on Hope

I Bring Mess; He Brings Beauty

The sky is falling (or is that the cheesecake?)

When you can’t keep up with it all…maybe you’re not supposed to

Sometimes I feel like a nut; sometimes I don’t: Finding stability in a fickle world

A Curtain, Alice, Cinderella and God’s Custom Design

My devotional for today:

We need grace.

We receive grace.

We show grace.

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today:

My devotional for today: