Moments in Grace

It was Thanksgiving Eve and I was making dinner.  Putting a roast chicken in the oven, scrubbing potatoes, when the frantic knock came at the door.  Through the glass I could see my neighbor, motioning frantically for me to hurry, hurry. I open the door. She grabs it open and points at the sky.  She says the ghetto bird is circling and I need to pull the kids off the street, you just don't know who might be prowling.  I look and see the police helicopter circling in the clear blue sky.  She's talking fast and frantic.  She says she followed it all the way from the main road into our little suburb and why is it here?  Why?  And she says she left her ghetto neighborhood these months ago to get away from that bird, and why is it circling again?  It's not supposed to be like this here. She left that house and all the dark memories for a better life.  That house where her firstborn died, where she almost did too, and it's not s...

We were driving down the highway, sun filtering through glass, looking deep into leaves putting on their beautied best, and dancing warm in sunlight. We're looking, longing for...light and beauty to filter into eye and soul and penetrate from tree to me, and golden silence hanging. And then, I hear it, "These trees, they are beautiful, right?  But they do this, they change colors because...because they're dying?" "I mean, God, He planned it this way, they only become beautiful when they are dying?" And why is it so true? That this, all this glory, is only seen in the dying. And I think of all the losses we've had, all the people who have gone on to Heaven these past two years, and I see it, this glory.  This reminding that it's only through death that we can finally enter life. This beauty in death that is seen only in Christ.  And this death becoming life, and beauty. And Jesus said,"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the gro...

"My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly God's grace for you.  Stand firm in this grace." 1 Peter 5:12 NLT We've had our share of funerals over the last year and a half.  We lost three grandparents, an uncle, an aunt, a friend and then there was me. We almost lost me.  Or maybe I was almost found in heaven. When you come closer to death than you've ever come, it changes you.  It makes you realize a few things.  My hope is not in this world and it hasn't been since I was 18 years old, the day I died to me and came alive to Christ.  Sometimes it's only when you taste death, that you know life, the assurance of it. This weekend we celebrated life. The life of our sixth child, his first birthday.  We threw a big party and rejoiced that God has once again blessed our lives with a precious life to steward and love.  It is in bringing forth this life that I almost lost mine one...