Moments in Grace

Standing at the sink, soap suds filling my hands I hear a voice behind me.   “Mom, I feel like I don’t have a purpose.   I mean, I can’t do anything well.   I’m not really good at anything, I don’t have any talents or whatever.   Why am I even here?” I know this question all too well, precious child.   In a world that manufactures idols out of ordinary people every day, where people make idols out of themselves, where movies, t.v. and social media continually tempt us to self-aggrandize and self-publicize, and where all it takes is one glance at another person’s facebook page to make you feel that all of life is a competition to be won and you are clearly the biggest loser that there ever was, yes, my child it can be hard to feel like you matter. But I need to tell you something. You matter to God. You are important to God. Because God, the eternal Creator of all things, does not make trash.   He does no...

The way of the cross is not an easy way. It is the way of dying that leads to life and greatest fruitfulness.   When I came to know Christ I understood the cost but had no idea what it would mean for me. How God takes those who seek to follow Him and a time comes when he asks them to lay down everything that they hold most dear to their hearts so that they would   find that He alone is the true treasure worth seeking. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know how hard this path would be.   But I was willing to count the cost, whatever it may be, even if it cost me my life. But, can I be honest and say, there have been times I’ve struggled with resenting the hardness of this? There are times that I have struggled to keep my heart in the place of full surrender.   Maybe outwardly I was obeying but inwardly sometimes I have been angry, depressed, confused.   And the prosperity gospel of the Western world that says if you follow Jes...

When I met her for the first time, she looked ordinary to me, unassuming, like any grandmother, anywhere, with salt and pepper hair and a soft, generous smile.   How could I have known that I had met a hero?   On that very first mission trip, into the high Mexican desert, up the winding dirt roads to land of cactus and cattle and smiling children living in structures made of sticks tied together with twine, how could I have known that there was a gem buried in those desert mountains?   That there was a gem of a woman tucked away in the sparsely dotted folds of those mountains, a hero of a woman with a name like a gemstone.   Her name was Garnet. And this gem of a grandmother, she led our team up these winding mountain roads and we bounced and jarred over rocks and packed dirt in a white twelve-passenger van, she told us her stories. The stories of a life lived full out for Jesus. She told us that she had come to this desert land when she w...