Yearly Archives: 2011

Surprise Party

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All of you blog readers know I pray for you daily. God seems to supply different requests on different days, and I fully believe as these prayers reach him, he turns around and customizes the answers toward your specific needs. After I write the blog each day, which often takes a couple of hours, I re-read it, which makes me a blog reader, too.

Cyberspace is a strange place. In the last year or more you’ve learned more than you ever wanted to know about me, but I know very little about you. My son-in-law Adam, who shepherds this web site, tells me 317 of you are subscribers, with many more visiting the site each day. I can’t even imagine who you all are, and I don’t have access to a list of your names. (As you subscribe, your privacy is preserved.) You are what I call “cyber-surprises.”

Praying for you has given me two other cyber-surprises:

1. I’ve gained a better understanding of God’s ability to be active in every person’s life every day.

2. Though I don’t have details about the lives he brings to my attention each day, he applies my prayer to them.

It’s a zooming-out and a zooming-in. God is teaching me to think larger than my known world while simultaneously reminding me he’s got one-on-one intimacy with each of us. When I try to make sense of this, smoke comes from my ears, but of one thing I’m sure: your presence at this web site is a thrilling cyber-surprise to me.

Today I thought back to the 42 days of Nate’s cancer. When we were swamped with phone calls, emails and notes from people asking what was happening with him, this blog answered that need. It delivered the requested information without taking us away from Nate. There just wasn’t time to do it any other way.

Sadly, there still isn’t time. No one at my house is terminally ill, but neither you nor I have enough time to meet with or have lengthy conversations with each other. While I was praying for you this morning, feeling frustrated over the one-way-ness of a blog site, God gave me an energizing thought.

In the hereafter, we’ll meet. God is planning a cyber-surprise party for us that he’ll transform into a just-plain-party! And we can celebrate togetherness throughout eternity. You’ve already “met” me, but I’ll get to meet you at the party, and you’ll get to meet the other blog readers. We’ll have the fun of looking into each other’s faces, hearing each other’s voices and chatting about our earthly histories. This will be a blessing the likes of which we can’t yet appreciate, one of the endless goodies God is preparing for us.

By the way, because you already know everything about me, when we get to God’s party, I’ll expect you to do all the talking.

“You are members of God’s family.” (Ephesians 2:19b)

Looking at Lent

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My kitchen calendar tells me this week is the official start of the Lenten season, 40 days of preparation toward remembering Christ’s sacrifice and celebrating his resurrection. I grew up in a protestant church that didn’t practice Lent, but I remember Catholic neighbors who did, and thought I was lucky not to have to give up stuff like they did.

In my 65 years I’ve never participated in Lent. But now I’m attending a new church where a Lenten sacrifice is a choice, and I’m going to try it. The purpose of Lent is to make our hearts right before remembering the crucifixion and celebrating the resurrection. The 40 days represent the time Jesus prepared for his ministry in the wilderness, a time during which he sacrificed eating in an offering of difficult self-sacrifice.

When I was young, our Easter season consisted of spring vacation, which brought us to Good Friday, followed quickly by an Easter worship service and a lamb roast. It was heartbreaking to dwell on how intensely Jesus suffered because of us and for us. We preferred to skip over Good Friday to the happy tune of, “Up from the grave he arose!”

The idea behind Lent is to invest 40 days in a “season of sorrowful reflection,” a period of grieving over Jesus’ death. Three things are important: extra prayer time (focusing on God), fasting (focusing on self-deprivation) and giving (focusing on neighbors).

Like any spiritual discipline, Lent can become legalistic, entered into by rote habit or because someone else forces the issue. But as a way to honor Christ’s sacrifice with a sincere heart, a quiet participation in Lent is an effective thank-offering to our Savior.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been asking God what he’d like me to surrender as a Lenten gift of worship. Ideally it would be something I do or eat daily, something I’d really miss. Should it be certain foods? Trips to the beach? My ipod while walking Jack?

Today I decided. I’ll give up my favorite daily treat: rice cakes and peanut butter. Although that may sound insignificant, my kids all know I’m addicted to this combo, and they’ve seen me eat 7 or 8 in one sitting. Back when I was trying to lower my cholesterol, I quit rice cakes for several months, a difficult challenge. In the end, red yeast rice pills worked better on the cholesterol, and I went back to my PB and rice cakes.

A Christian’s body is the temple of God’s Holy Spirit. Sacrificing something we physically crave is probably a good way to privately acknowledge that our bodies are not our own and that we’ve bought with a high price, paid by Jesus. What better time to think about this than in the weeks leading up to Good Friday.

When Easter morning finally arrives, many families will begin that day with hot cross buns, but I’ll be celebrating with rice cakes and peanut butter.

“Give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” (Romans 12:1)

A Sparkling Day

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As the sun rose and hit last night’s snowfall, the neighborhood burst into beautiful sparkles. But by the time Jack and I walked to the beach mid-afternoon, the sun’s warmth had done away with most of the new snow. Nevertheless, I picked up pretty stones on the now-visible sand and was impressed with how many of them sparkled in the sun, some as impressive as geodes.

Then I noticed rows of tiny icicles hanging beneath pieces of driftwood left on the beach by winter storms. In the sun, these glistening beauties were like rows of glass thermometers with light dancing inside.

When we got home, sunshine through my windows was hitting a crystal piece of art my friend Julie had given me, splashing hundreds of bright rainbows all over the room. When I spun it, it was better than a crystal ball on New Year’s Eve!

The sparkling snow, the stones, mini-icicles and glass art all came to life when sunbeams hit them. Although each was attractive in its own right, when sunshine was added, they changed from ordinary to dazzling.

This same comparison can be made between Nate and me. I’m living an ordinary life here in Michigan, sleeping, waking, eating, doing all the everyday things. Nate is leading a life for which no word of description is good enough. Even “dazzling” doesn’t do it. It’s outside of our human thinking.

I studied the mini-rainbows on my walls and floors this afternoon, wondering if there will be rainbows in heaven, and if they’ll be even more spectacular than the ones I was looking at. In addition to the rainbow mentioned in Genesis, there’s also one surrounding God’s heavenly throne, another encircling an angel, and still another around the Lord himself.

I think of Nate in relation to all this sparkling beauty and wonder what he must think. I knew him well after 40 years of marriage and would have had the right answers on a quiz about what he was thinking in any given situation. But now I can’t say.

The one thing I do know is that some day I’ll see these supernatural rainbows, too, and become acquainted with the sunshine of heaven, which we’re told is actually Jesus. My guess is that his light will transform every heavenly thing into sparkles. With all the jeweled walls of the city and crowns of the saints, my afternoon rainbows will be small potatoes compared to how things will shine in glory. And Jesus himself, as the bright light of heaven, will be the sparkliest of all!

This afternoon I came home from the beach with a baggie of pretty beach stones. Will heaven have a beach? I know there’s a sea-like-crystal there, and I’m wondering, will the stones at the water’s edge be genuine jewels? Maybe the sand, too? And will Jesus be standing there? Oh my…

If that’s all true, I know why God keeps the wonders of heaven beyond our imaginations, because trying to picture them now is taking my breath away!

“The Lord their God will save his people on that day… They will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown.” (Zechariah 9:16)