One Year with God

DAY 81:  We are an amusement park family.  Specifically, we are a roller coaster family; but it wasn't always so.  When my kids were young, one of them was terrified about the idea of getting on a coaster - even a kiddie coaster.  While the rest of the family climbed aboard for the best thrill of the day, I usually stayed behind on the park benches with my daughter.  She absolutely would not consider going.  It just looked too scary. "Honey we will be right beside you. You won't be going alone.  You can sit in the car with daddy." Even with the promise that we would be right beside her to guarantee she would be safe, she would have none of it.  For several years, she choose to sit and wait for up to an hour on the park bench while her dad and brothers braved the the hairpin turns, daring drops and loop-the-loops.  Then one year, when her dad offered as he always did to take her on the coaster she said, "I'm ready now.  I'll go." A...

DAY 80: Long ago I came up with this brilliant life strategy. All my friends had to be older than me so that by comparison, I would seem young.  This worked great for about 20 years. You can imagine that as I have gotten older the pool of likely candidates has gotten smaller.  At 49 there are now two generations of people I can't associate with if I want to feel better about myself.  Thankfully, I found out about a group that was just perfect for me.  It is a prayer group that meets every week specifically focused on praying for missions and praying for the other members of the group - who all happen to be 65 and older.  I LOVE THEM!!! My friend Susan and I are the babies of the group... in our forties. We are most often referred to as "the girls" and "you young ones."  DELIGHTFUL!   The bonus is that we also are being mentored by these women of God who have forgotten more about walking faithfully with God than we may ever know. From them we experien...

DAY 79:  Making friends is a labor intensive activity.  It requires more than just being friendly.  That's the easy part - well, at least for most people.  Being an actual friend is hard work - and kind of risky.  To be a friend means giving time, something many of us find in short supply.  It means being transparent and letting another person know the real you - the good, the bad and the ugly.  And it means developing enough trust to let the other person help you move in the right direction -while you do the same for them. Acquaintances, which I am a big fan of, are content to just let each other be, settling for chit chat about kids, and weather, and politics.  Acquaintances don't challenge one another to be more, be better, be uncomfortable.  They don't care if you are secretly crabby to your spouse or impatient with your kids.  The don't want to know if you struggle with temptation or are afraid to do that big thing you dream ab...

 DAY 78: When I was in third grade I faced a temptation so great, I could not resist.  It was Christmastime and the smallest package under the tree had my name on it.  I had no idea what it could be.  Every day that went by I became more and more curious.  I had to know what was in the beautiful tiny package under the tree with my name on it.  Then one holiday afternoon, while the whole family was out in the yard, I sneaked in and secretly unwrapped the gift. It was so thrilling.  I carefully unsealed the tape on one end and slid the surprise out into my hand.  It was a shiny new harmonica. I didn't dare blow it.  Instead, I slid it back in the paper and taped the end up as good as new. For the next five days I was miserable. I was guilt ridden that I had opened the gift without my parents permission. I worried about how I would act surprised when I opened it for real. All the joy of my gift had completely evaporated. It was still under the...

DAY 76 I'm not sure what happened this morning.  I turned my alarm off at 7am an d put my head back on my pillow.  When I rolled over again, it was 9:30!!! What happened to the time ? I may have lost two and a hal f hours of my day, but I am thankful that I never have to worry that even a second slips away from the hand of God.   Today's Bible reading was a great reminder that while I am confined by time (and space) God is not. He controls time and everything that orbits within it.   The book of Luke, while it is a narrative, is also a picture of God working precisely according to His own time table.  This chapter, which begins the story of Jesus public ministry, starts by marking time. Luke3:1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiap...

DAY 75: I am not good with numbers. As a writer, I am partial to letters. Letters, when combined and deciphered, can create wonderful stories to help the imagination soar. They tell the story of history.  They record the grandeur of kings.  They communicate emotions. They entertain, inform and inspire.  Letters help us define who we are and express how we feel! Numbers count us.Number count weight and age. Number are not flexible or subject to interpretations.  Numbers have no imagination . They do not care how you feel. They are precise and unforgiving. Letters begin discussions and debate; with numbers you are either right or wrong.  Numbers are the pharisees of the universe - nothing but rules, rules, rules. So imagine my shock today, as I discovered an important lesson hiding in the numbers of a headcount in our daily Bible reading.  Israel had finally completed 40 years of wandering in the dessert as punishment for failing to go in and conqu...

DAY 74: As a stay at home mom, I had a hundred conversations with my friends over the years about how to find time with God in the midst of raising kids.  As a working mom, I didn't have time to have conversations with my friends about how to fit God into the mix.  In every season of life for any person, not just moms and not just those with kids, it is a struggle to keep the main thing, the main thing when everything wants to be the main thing.  Eventually I discovered a secret: The more I try to "fit God in" to the business of my life, the more He winds up on the outside.  My life will never surrender time to God.  It is usually a life gone wild.  So the key, at least for me, was changing my perspective:  I nstead of fitting God in my life, my life had to fit in around God. If anything is going to get left over, it shouldn't be the eternal things. Today I saw a group of guys who must have operated under that philosophy.  They might have be...

DAY 73:     If you were raised in Sunday school you know the story of Balaam and his donkey.  It's a Sunday school teacher's ringer for a disruptive four-year-old class.  I really like it, too. Among other things, it reminds me that God is an animal lover.  Balaam is a seer who lived a good bit away from a ruckus that was stirring as the nation of Israel, after 40 years of wandering in the dessert, finally begins its approach to the Promised Land.  It had been an eventful journey for the two million plus Israelites as the nations they passed by kept challenging them.  But God was with His people and He gave them military victory over those who came against them. Now they were approaching the people of Moab - historical cousins to Israel.  Moabites were descended from Abraham's nephew Lot.  They were aware of their distant connection but were fearful as the mob headed their way, not because of violence, but for crowd control. N...

Day 72: Yesterday I said that Elizabeth, the elderly mother of John the Baptist, was more than an octogenarian mom.  Her response to being a small part of God's very big plan did not loose sight of His loving kindness toward her, His own beloved child.  In the midst of the blessing, her heart did not get sidetracked by the gift, but first savored the love of the Giver.  So that, and other reasons, makes her my role model.  As the story continues in Luke, another is added to my list. This time, however, the woman I want to emulate isn't a woman at all - just a girl with very big faith.  Six months after the Angel visited Zechariah with the news that Elizabeth would be a late-life mommy, he visited a young bride-to-be.   She was in the midst of thinking about her own wedding.  As my friend Pam likes to say, she was probably busy picking her colors:  would they be brown or - brown?  So many decisions to make. So many plans to dream about...

DAY 71 and it's the book of Luke: The retelling of the arrival of the Messiah begins again, this time from the investigative notes of Luke, the doctor who was a companion of Paul.  His "careful summary" begins with the explanation that he himself had diligently followed up on all the reports of Jesus' life that were circulating and included what he could definitively confirm. I know a few doctors , and I think it is safe to say that they are generally good with details, and facts - even if not always bedside manner.  They are far more concerned with getting it right than anything else - even worrying about your feelings.  Perhaps not the quality you want in a best friend, but highly desirable when someone is dealing with life and death information.  As I read through Luke, I hope to keep in mind that God used a doctor to record the details of this summary, remembering that every fact he included he must have considered crucial. That being said, the first thing I...

DAY 70:   The New Testament passage for today is a familiar one.  Of all the Bible scriptures, it is those that describe the death and resurrection of Jesus that create in my mind a scene as familiar as if it were my own memory.  From entering the city on the donkey, to the arrest in Gethsemane, to the brutality of the crucifixion, I breathlessly "relive" it all as it unfolds in the living Words of scripture. And every time I am moved by the reality of it. I  How could I not be? My greatest insight is always the same when my focus is the cross: Oh, what a sinner am I!   New and fresh I am humiliated to think that Christ endured all for me- as I am.  Yet, even in my shame, I am overwhelmed by His love.  Reading it again, I pondered on that, letting the images form in my mind of the mob, the whip, the thorns, the robe, and my Savior's words rasped to the mob: "forgive them." The weight of it crushes any illusions that I have that it is I who found God....

DAY 69: I moved through the Old Testament passage for the day and had to laugh at how well God knows me. The story retold is that of Korah, who is a levite like Moses and Aaron.  Korah was a person of influence and of responsibility as part of the tribe of caretakers of the Tabernacle. He was part of an important ministry to God and the people. This, however, was not enough.  He was jealous of Arron and his sons, who had been proclaimed Priests; and he was jealous of the authority Moses carried. He began to fixate on how his work compared to theirs. So like any ministry leader hungry for power, he begins to stir the pot. Korah went next door to the neighboring tribe of Reuben and found some fellow malcontents.  You can imagine how that conversation must have gone sitting around the campfire knocking back the goat's milk. "Yeah, Moses thinks he's so high and mighty, but you know, we are just as wise and he is. Our ministry should be bigger.  We should be in charge...

DAY 67 :  Our family loves adventure; the more action the better.  So when we had a chance to take our young family to family camp we were all in.  Like most family camps it offered the standard, shuffleboard and volleyball; but what excited our family was the high ropes course - that is until we got a look at it. At that point, our seven-year-old daughter began listing out her reservations.  As I looked up to the top of the 30-foot pole the guide wanted my baby girl to climb, I could feel the reservations welling up in me, too.  The objective was to climb this very tall telephone pole, figure out a way to stand on the tippy-top without falling off, and then leap about eight feet into thin air to try to grasp a trapeze bar.  For dramatic effect, the decking below was painted with a bull’s eye.  It was very intimidating!  Many of the adults passed on the opportunity, but I could see that Hannah wanted to try yet lacked the courage. ...