Moments in Grace

Pain can be a great purifier.  It tests us, it tries us, it reveals us to us.  Pain is often the place we find out what we are made of, what we really believe and exactly where our hope is placed. Pain is a mighty instrument of God’s grace. It is in the moments of greatest pain that we see what we are trusting in, where the foundation of our hope is bedded and exactly how deep our trust in God is. In the last year I have experienced more pain than I ever thought possible.  But in the moments of greatest pain I found out one thing:  Jesus is all I need. I found out that “my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ my righteousness, I dare not trust the sweetest frame but only trust in Jesus name.” On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand. For me the words of Psalm 23 became like bread and water.  I prayed them back to God in confession, in desperation, in faith.  I prayed them over and over, usually many, man...

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 sun was shining into my windshield like glory flashes as I made the commute down to the University.   I was on my way to the Bible study for international moms and this was week two.   And I was trying to pray.   My mind was wandering over last week’s lesson, our first group, and my baptism by fire.   I had been asked to lead the study the very first week of the group and I had, but I was feeling in a word, inadequate.     The group is made up of mothers from all over the world, some brand new to our country, most only here for a year or two at most.   About half to three-fourths are believers and the rest are seekers, women who want to understand the Bible and who God is but who have little to no spiritual experience with Christianity.   And these women ask difficult questions.   The kind that make you want to hide under a rock because you are not sure that you can possibly explain what they are asking...

On the day that the international mom’s Bible study starts up, I’m there with my own six week old son, strapped to my chest like I’m Sacagawea ascending the mountain with Lewis and Clark.     Maybe I feel a little like her, this woman who embraced these visitors to her nation and showed them the way to map out a new land.   And isn’t that what we’re here to do, to study the map leading to new life?   Life in Christ is what we are seeking, and these, my fellow sojourners, are looking for new and better Land and I don’t mean America.   There is a map to Heaven, and it is found in this book.  The Bible isn't just for Sundays.  The Bible is your everyday map and who really wants to walk this wild world without one? As I look around the table at these faces, breathtaking beauty, I catch a glimpse of wonder, Heaven touching earth.  Because when we behold Heaven this is what we are going to see: people of every skin color, language, nat...

So maybe the winter that never ends is really starting to get to you.   And after four solid months, now becoming five, of snow on the ground and biting wind and temperatures below freezing, you are longing for sun and trips to the park and just some warmth again.   It can be easy to start to complain.   It can be easy to start to whine a little. It can be easy to think of all the things you wish were different. And in these March days, maybe like me, you are reading through the Bible in a year and once again you come across this story in Numbers, this story of a people who found themselves complaining. And maybe you read these words and see yourself for a moment.   You look into the mirror of the Word and you see the ugly and the true and you realize that these words are an alarm for maybe…you. Because right there in the book of Numbers, is the story of the Israelites and their trip into the wilderness and how they got deliv...

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...

  So maybe you’ve been fighting the dark and the cold like some kind of polar vortex epic battle. And maybe you’ve been feeling like maybe the dark was winning. I think I can relate. Maybe your days have been hard and depression has been lurking like some kind of stealthy snow fox and maybe for a while you might have lost your way in all that blinding blurring snow.   Well, there is hope for people like us. People who sometimes get lost, and sometimes fall off the map, and sometimes can’t even remember what grace is let alone write about it and sometimes can’t even remember who they are. There is hope. When life turns you upside down and you can’t quite remember how to get back up, you can remember this….hope will find you. When, the day before Thanksgiving, I found out I was pregnant with our seventh child, I have to be honest and say, the wind was knocked out of me. And even for me who spent years working in the pro-lif...

It happened on that busy pre-Christmas Saturday, amidst the whirl and spin of preparation.     The light bulbs began raining. Or more specifically, it began raining out of the light bulbs. That’s what my four year old said as he ran for help, when, as he was sitting in the living room he saw water raining from the ceiling out of the living room light bulb. No one believed him at first.   But he was thankfully persistent and in a moment people came running to see this spectacle of amazement, this miracle of sorts.   Because who ever heard of raining light bulbs? And where was Momma?   Well, I was Christmas shopping on the one day that there was time for that.   And Daddy was in charge.   He said it happened in five minutes.   In five amazing minutes our two year old, who apparently was raised by chimpanzees, climbed up on the toilet, then from the toilet he climbed up onto the sink, from there he reached up in...

On the morning that the snow was coming down all sleet and icy in gray October sky, she came.   She knocked on my front door, and we asked her in.   We asked her to sit down and would she join us for a moment? Join these six kids of mine and a friend and I, all sitting around the kitchen table having hot chocolate, and tea and coffee.   We were reading John chapter 3 while some kids were hanging upside down from couches. Some were wildly running.   And some were finding wool hats to put on so that the moment I said that we were finished they could run out into the snow/sleet whirl and enjoy a taste of the first glimpse of winter.   When she arrived we were almost done.   Almost done for the day with our Bible study time, and here she was, like she had been invited to the party. Like she had heard some unseen voice whispering to come in.   So, she knocked and she came. I don’t really know her.   I don’t really know her sto...