shift

Ah summer! One adventure leading to another when lazy days slip by like clouds floating dreamily across the sky. Compared to the duldrum days of winter with snow covered streets and sidewalks and ploughs scraping parking lots, there are early risings and barefoot in the grass days. Winter bundles up in layers to keep frostbites at bay where minutes get marked by the dark mornings and equally dark nights. Oh to keep you here so much longer O summer with your sizzling sun, river rapids and backyard barbeques, mountain hikes and dips in the lake.

But you skimper away as fall prods slowly into the season, stepping on your delicate toes. You dash off too quickly but stop to survey the changing landscape with frosty windows, colored leaves and icy films on the pond. Gusty winds sway the backs of the tree trunks and nature begins to prepare for a change. Honking geese, crunching leaves and yellow school buses fill with exuberant faces as they start another calendar year. We miss you already dear summer!

And so, another holiday filled, lazy, hazy days of summer come to an end once more. We shift our focus and march into the time of bells and studies, school supplies and schedules. It’s a process. That’s what God is doing with us. Refining, honing, crafting, molding and making us more like Him. Shift from the me to Him; from the oneness to the unity; from the inactivity and relaxation to the “let’s get moving” in the direction He wants us to go.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58

Happy September!

Drought

It’s been a long, hot summer throughout the world. The Euphrates and Rhine rivers, reservoirs and dugouts are drying up. The global drought is from California to India; from the Sudan to Brazil and affecting us all.

The parched earth is crying out to the blue expanse asking for a glimmer of billowing clouds to bring the rain; begging for moisture to sustain the dry nooks, crannies and clefts in the rocks; the parched grasses of the fields; bring a refreshing annointing of moisture to restore the land.

It’s not unusual to have dry spells in desert-like climates, but there were extreme conditions for even Elijah in a time where there was neither dew nor rain for three years. He needed God and thankfully found fresh water and a widow that God provided and sustained him with.

It’s been amost three long years of global drought socially, emotionally and financially for many because of the pandemic. Our society though has been in a spiritual drought for much longer than that. The idols and Baal woship have dried our souls longing for the living water. Jesus is the only answer.

God continually asks us to come to him - with our burdens, our sorrows, our prayers. The scarcity of having Jesus in our lives is causing us to shrivel up spiritually. Why not run ahead into the rain and be washed clean, restored with hope and sustained in life?

The seventh time he returned and said, “I saw a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand, coming up from the sea.”

Elijah ordered his servant, “Go to King Ahab and tell him to get in his chariot and go back home before the rain stops him.”

In a little while the sky was covered with dark clouds, the wind began to blow, and a heavy rain began to fall. Ahab got in his chariot and started back to Jezreel. The power of the Lord came on Elijah; he fastened his clothes tight around his waist and ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel. 1 Kings 18: 44-46

Let peace, like a river overflow its banks into our souls and let the rain come. Drink from the fountain of living water and be restored.

Eunoia

Our battles are fought in the realms of our will before God. The daily struggle of our lives means that we have to be willing to fight as believers. Tenacity, resilience, courage and focus are our weapons. The lies of the enemy are arrows that bombard us with thoughts to fulfill our own desires, our wills and our plans.

But when the world is bleak and dark and we are sometimes falling apart, we hold on to the promises of God and stand firm in our faith. People don’t agree with us. We are misunderstood. Take up the sword of the Word and shield of faith to do battle with the enemy. Fill your mind with beautiful thinking and pure thoughts of love, truth and joy. Soar like the eagle.

There is an old indigenous legend that is about a warrior who found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a prairie chicken. The eagle grew up thinking he was a chicken. He scratched for seeds and insects to eat; clucked and cackled and only flew a few feet off the ground like his “siblings”.

Years went by and the changeling grew old, but one day he saw a magnificent bird flying in the sky. It hung on the powerful wind with graceful majesty and soared on its strong, golden wings.

When the changeling asked “What is that beautiful bird?” he was told, “that’s an eagle, the king of birds, but you could never be like him; you are a prairie chicken.” Sad to say, the changeling died thinking it was just that.

…but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31

So, don’t settle for a chicken when you can be magnificant and soar like the eagles.

quagmire

I’ve been there and I bet you have too. It’s that awkward, complex, or hazardous situation you find yourself in and it looks like there is no way out.

Plans that you had planned; went haywire. That relationship didn’t work out quite the way you dreamed it would. And that circumstance seems like the possible is impossible; looking like there isn’t even an exit sign in sight. What does one do?

David wrote about this exact thing in Psalm 52. David was not ruling; he was running for his life from King Saul. Doeg, a member of Saul’s army, “ratted out” David. David had just been in the city of Nob consuling with Ahimelech, the lead priest. Saul was enraged and had his men kill 84 priests because David had escaped his clutch once again. (1 Samuel 21-22 is worth the read.) David shared his thoughts by giving three solutions to his quagmire.

First of all, he needed to trust that God would see him through his situation. Then he thanked God and praised Him. Lastly, he said he would wait for God to work things out for His glory. And what about that green olive tree? Believe it or not, it can produce fruit for hundreds of years, it’s hard to uproot and grows 20-40 feet tall!

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God;

I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.

I will praise You forever,

Because You have done it;

And in the presence of Your saints

I will wait on Your name, for it is good Psalm 52:8-9

And so, we don’t need to stay in the quagmire. We can trust in the Lord, give thanks to the Lord and wait on the Lord. Things will work out because God is holding the exit plan in His hands. Stay rooted in His Word and keep the faith, for it is good.

build

Sometimes in the darkness I am twisted about finding myself up to my aching hips in sinking sand and sometimes a murky pit of despair. I have no desire to be drawn into the recesses of darkness of the damp basement, beckoning me, haunting my thoughts like a ghost wandering an old house searching for what was lost.

And so I grasp the tools I have - faith, hope and love - and I reach for the light just out of my grasp, but attainable if I keep building, slogging forward, one step, one day at a time like a caterpillar inching its way along a green leaf.

I wrestle with my thoughts, struggle under some of the burdens that I place on my shoulders and then I recall the Master builder, who has the blueprint of my life. His messages, scripture, promises I remember along with fragments of lines from memorized song lyrics and beautiful memories woven into the fabric of my mind. I know I will not stay in the dark and the broken. The sucking weight of negativity that wants to pull the walls down around me will collapse.

I consider what kind of society we are building. Is it the solid rock or faith principles that stand when the storms come or is it built on sand as we see it crumbling all around us? Are we building each other up by encouragement, love, words of truth and hope instead of despair, devastation and destruction?

Philemon 1:7 tells us Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord's people.

Let’s encourage one another in love and build what is eternal.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11

serendipity

I just finished reading Richard Power’s novel The Overstory a powerful book about how we are all so intricately connected through nature; trees in particular. Leaves flutter but the solid trunks are firmly planted. Some of the branches are broken; some sprouting new life, healthy and vibrant as they sway in the shifting winds. That’s what we are like.

When we are standing firm in our faith and rooted to the KIng, we dig deep down into the dust. That’s where we came from. We are like leaves changing with the autumn colors in the seasons of our lives as God works through us. Our scars, like carvings and lines in the bark are the outer edges exposed. Each is a unique pattern but we stand together. Knots on the outside, but inside a solid core; the rings of history as we connect with others around us - part of the forest. Part of the family of God.

From the seeds, to the roots, the growth and to the crown; there are so many parallels to the trees and stories interwoven in our histories.

The story of the underdog, the over achiever; the sob story, the success story but one story that never gets old or changes is the story of salvation - the soul story. The one about me as a sinner, someone who doesn’t get it all right; who has much to learn but I am loved by a God who chose me. And not because I deserve it, but because he loves me so much that he came into the world as a man to live and die on a cross so that I don’t have to suffer forever if I choose Him as my Savior. I confess that He alone controls my life because I have been born physically and now spiritually. It’s as simple as ABC.

Accept my humanness - I am a sinner. Believe that Jesus died - so that I can live, then Confess that He is Lord of my life. Each of us has his or her story, but sometimes we can’t see God’s story because we just chew on the thoughts and word and never grow. We have to swallow them and digest them to receive the Truth. It’s like finding something good without looking for it: Serendipity. You just have to receive it. That my friends is simply grace.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Philippians 2: 12-13