Yearly Archives: 2011

A Shining Star

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While running errands today, I got off at the wrong expressway exit, then turned the opposite way of the store. And I forgot to buy what I went to get, because I’d left my list at home.

At the pharmacy drive-through, the girl behind the glass said, “$8.15.” I put $8.00 in the drawer with a dime and nickel, but she immediately slid it back out to me. “That was a penny,” she said. I took the penny and substituted a nickel, but the drawer came out again. “Either send me a dime or another nickel.”

Simple tasks have gotten complicated, but this is my new reality, and whining about it won’t help. Besides, I’m not the only one struggling to adjust. This week I met another widow whose husband passed away just before Nate. Without even a minute’s warning, her Phillip died at their breakfast table. Rhea is only 23 years old and gave birth to a daughter one month after her husband’s death.

But there’s more. Baby Sandra arrived with major health issues that include frequent races to the emergency room, yet her mommy, the new widow, smiles and talks of God’s lavish blessing over these last months. After hearing her story, I was speechless.  My organizational blips are a pitiful excuse for complaining. If I had to step into this young girl’s shoes, I’d crumble. Yet she’s a sparkling example of taking God at his word when he said, “I’ll provide for you.”

Rhea leans on the Lord every day with the full weight of her complicated situation and has unshakable confidence he’ll continue to meet her needs indefinitely. She and her husband served together in Kenya, establishing homes for orphans. And because little Sandra’s recent surgery was successful, the two of them will soon return there.

For most of us there’s a huge gap between shouldering the burdens we’ve been asked to carry and our willingness to seek God’s help. In that gap of complete helplessness, we try to help ourselves, a ludicrous approach to our problems.

But the greater problem is setting God aside and using him as a last-resort solution. Self-sufficiency, esteemed in our society, is always a bust next to the way God wants to do things. His offer is to co-shoulder our burdens and sometimes obliterate them completely. By trying to do things our way, we not only risk making a mess but forfeit the supernatural blessing and unexpected joy Rhea is now experiencing. We also throw away a golden opportunity to give God credit for the amazing things that happen to us and around us when we abandon ourselves to him.

I asked Rhea if she has clung to any specific Scripture passage during these challenging months since Phillip died. Her surprising answer came quickly:

“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.” (Philippians 2:14-15)

Rhea is shining brightly!

Holy Fingerprints

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Life offers no greater thrill than an eye-popping realization that Almighty God has bent into time and space and touched us. These moments outweigh the excitement of delivering a baby, of being reunited with loved ones, of buying something we’ve always wanted, of winning an award.

Of course there’s one critical prerequisite to experiencing these thrills: a personal relationship with God. But that’s an option anyone can choose, because God wants us all.

When you, reader, come to the end of this post having read about my God-touch today, you may think, “No big deal.” Please know I’ve prayed about this for you, asking God to show you more of himself. No matter how small his contact with us, because of who he is, it’s spectacular.

Here’s a helpful word picture. At Christmas time, my 73 year old cottage got new windows, and because its winter, they’ve not yet been washed. Toddler grandchildren, visiting at the time, decorated the glass with their pudgy handprints, and although my little relatives are gone, they’ve left evidence that they were here.

God’s touch on an ordinary day leaves a far more important imprint on my life. To be marked by his supernatural influence even once is to crave more of it and more of him.

So here’s today’s holy fingerprint. While flying home from FL last week, I read through a book of quotes by Mother Teresa. After absorbing her thoughts on life and ministry, I understood clearly how and why she lived as she did.

Her words: “Whoever the poorest of the poor are, they are Christ for us – Christ under the guise of human suffering. Jesus comes to us in the hungry, the naked, the lonely, the alcoholic, the drug addict, the prostitute, the street beggars. If we reject them, we reject Jesus.”

As our plane landed, Mother Teresa’s sacrificial life impacted me, and I felt badly about my lack of contact with the poor. Short of supporting a little girl in India who I’ve never met, I’ve done very little and hoped to change that. As we pulled up to the gate, I asked God to show me what he wanted me to do. Who were the poor he wanted me to know?

Then Monday morning I came face-to-face with three poor people at the family custody window in the county courthouse. Although I didn’t feel God’s finger on me then, today I felt it.

I had prayed, “Who, Lord?”

And he said, “Them.”

Maybe I’ll end up back at family court, hanging around the halls to see what happens. Maybe God will make other arrangements as I continue to pray for those three, but he “marked” me this morning by letting me know I don’t have to hunt for ways to help the poor. He’s going to show me.

It was a small, gentle touch in which he made me aware of the link between my prayer request and his specific answer. And because it was done by Almighty God, I am in awe.

“Part your heavens, Lord, and come down.” (Psalm 144:5a)

By the Light of the Moon

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When Mom and Dad were newlyweds in the early 1940’s, Dad was called 1000 miles away on a rare business trip. Mom could hardly stand the thought of him leaving but came up with an idea. At 10:00 each night they’d both step outside and look up. As Mom put it, “Our eyes will meet on the moon.”

When we were kids and she told this story, I thought she was crazy. Later, in high school Latin class, I learned the word luna meant moon, and Mom’s story became the perfect example of lunacy.

Rumor has it when the moon is full, women go into labor more often and traffic accidents increase, along with irrational behavior of all kinds. I don’t know if that’s true, but science has confirmed something that is: the moon affects ocean tides. I suppose if it can pull on sea water, it can probably mess with the water in our brains, too.

Each month when the moon is full, I look forward to Jack’s midnight walk. If the sky is clear, I don’t even need a flashlight, especially during the winter when the trees are bare. Moonlight illuminates the road just enough to see. But when snow covers the ground, moonlight bounces off the white surface so brightly, it casts shadows much like the sun except that the neighborhood glows in silver.

God wants us to appreciate what he’s made. He doesn’t want us to love the moon, stars or sun to the point of worship and makes it clear such adoration is wrong. But he does want us to notice and attribute our amazing world to his doing.

I wonder how it must have been for God just before he created the Universe with its phenomenal heavenly bodies. Did he spend time planning what he was about to do? Did the Father, Son and Spirit enjoy round-tabling ideas about the not-yet-formed heavens and earth? Because God is someone who works in microscopic detail as well as in mega-ways, I like to think he enjoyed the whole process, anticipating, planning and doing.

If he approached the heavens and earth with eagerness, what must he have thought before making human beings? Although we’re like grains of beach sand compared to stars, sun and moon, we’re not insignificant to God. As a matter of fact, he sees us as the high point of his creation, the only thing eternal. He gave us each a soul, and in this we’ve been made “like him,” an astonishing reality.

It could be that the moon serves as God’s object lesson for us, not as a nightly link between separated newlyweds but as an example of reflection. Just like the moon mirrors the sun, we’re to reflect our Creator, a challenging assignment but a most worthy calling.

“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)