My cardboard Jesus...

At Christmas time my eight year old grandson surprised me with a cardboard Jesus he had made out of packaging from a gift we had purchased at Ikea.

The first thing I noticed, (you too?), was how very, ummmm, "bosom-y" Jesus was for a man.

But, after the initial giggling to myself, I remembered that one of the names of God,  is El Shaddai.

The root word of Shaddai is shad, meaning breast.

The full meaning of El Shaddai is "One mighty to nourish, satisfy and supply".

 I began to wonder if God wasn't trying to tell me something through my cardboard Jesus.

God is Love the Bible says.

If God is love, then He is all the facets, the sides, of love.

One of those facets is the love we would call motherly love.

We are all familiar with God's father heart, that He is indeed "Our Father".

But in His great heart is also the nurturing heart of a mother.

He is the perfect parent all wrapped up in One God.

We all need, at one time or another, the protective strength of a Father.

But, sometimes we need Someone to just hold us and sing over us like a mother.

Sometimes we need Someone to make us chicken soup.

He's mighty and He's tender.

He's strong and He's nurturing.

I'm quite smitten with the details my grandson put on my cardboard Jesus.

The crown of thorns taped to His head.

The loin cloth, the sash, the beard.

This is the picture of Jesus that came out of my grandson's heart and mind.

For some reason, his Jesus, is quite "bosom-y", 

and now that I think about it,

so is mine.

Still following,

Arise, shine...

I listen to it for two or three months, over and over and over.

Handel's Messiah plays via my iPhone as I close the door to my home office and have my morning devotions.  

It plays through my earphones while I go on my daily walk/run.

 I put my phone on the iPhone dock in the living room, 

filling the house with Handel's music as done by the London Philharmonic,

 as I do the dishes and mop the floors.

It's in my mind, my thoughts, my heart, the words of Scripture put to music.

The story of the Messiah, the prophecies of His coming, His birth, His death, His resurrection,

 His return, all there in this heaven born music penned so long ago.

It's my constant companion through the holiday season, 

and even after it lingers in my mind and thoughts.

The words of Isaiah 60 won't leave me.

Arise, shine;

For your light has come!

And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.

For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,

And deep darkness the people;

But the Lord will arise over you,

And His glory will be seen upon you.

The Gentiles shall come to your light,

And kings to the brightness of your rising.

The words become personal.

Him in me and I in Him.

His light filling me so full that His glory is seen upon me.

Me like a God-magnet that others are drawn to.

Not to me, Elizabeth, but to Him, to the Jesus in me.

It becomes a prayer.

Arise.

Shine.

Come.

In the darkness, arise over me.

Let Your glory be seen in me.

Let others come to the Light through me.

It becomes the cry of my heart.

It is the cry of my heart.

Shine, Jesus, shine.

Still following,

When you're surrounded by suffering...

It seems a bit "Pollyann-ish" to "count it all joy" when surrounded by suffering.

After all, doesn't Proverbs teach us that a person who sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes away a garment in cold weather?

I get that.

Sometimes you need someone to just sit there and listen, or better yet, to cry right along with you, when your world is falling apart.

Trying to cheer someone up who's world has just come crashing down can be down right insensitive.

But in the ministry, if I was sorrowful every time someone I care about was going through a dark valley, then I'd have to walk around in sackcloth and ashes 24/7.

Yet, I do feel their pain.

On Monday, Columbus Day, the Hubs took an extra day off.

We had just had a weekend long, joyous celebration/dedication of our new church building.

We were tired and happy.

The weather was clear, mild, beautiful.

Our three year old, blonde, blue-eyed granddaughter was at our house for a long promised sleepover.

Chunks of pork and barbecue sauce were simmering away in the crock pot, filling the house with savory smells.

My heart was full of joy and contentment.

Yet there, in the back of my mind, was an ever present knowing, that people in our own church, people that I care about, were going through their own personal nightmare. 

Trials that twist your stomach up in knots as you try to fall asleep at night, and wake you up with sinking dread in the morning.

In the back of my mind was a twinge of guilt that I was having a good day, while they were suffering.

I felt this when I was in Ghana.

I wondered how I could co-exist happily, joyously, on the same planet with all of this poverty and need, and not walk around with perpetual guilt that I was born in a world of more than enough, while they lived in the land of not enough.

Yet, how does my guilt help them?

How does it help relieve the suffering of people I know and love, or the Ghanaian across the world?

Then flashes of memories from Ghana clicked into place like pieces of a puzzle and gave me some God perspective...

...a "driveway",  red clay and rutted, leading up to a home there in the city of Koumasi, and planted along both sides of the drive, a narrow row of scraggly flowers...

...in a village, poverty so thick you could smell it, touch it, and hanging in the doorway, decorative strings of pop bottle lids, clacking against one another in the breeze...

...in Homabenase, the village where we're building a well and irrigation system, there on the corner surrounded by homes made of the red clay mud, one young mama puts another young woman's hair up in curlers...

I realize as these pictures flood my memory, that whether I'm surrounded by the suffering of others, or in my own valley of suffering, by counting my blessings, by noticing the beauty in the midst of the mess,

 I'm "planting flowers" in the middle of poverty,

 I'm stringing pop bottle lids to make music when the winds of adversity blow,

 I'm putting curls in my hair while wearing rags,

 I'm refusing to give in to hopelessness, to despair.

I "count it all joy"

-by counting, literally, the blessings in my life in spite of any trials going on around me, or that I'm going through myself

-by bearing other's burdens and laying them on the shoulders of the only One big enough, capable enough to handle them

-by acting in obedience to help in tangible ways, cooking a meal, sending a note of encouragement, making a phone call, giving a ride, giving financially. 

 It's tempting to give up, throw my hands up in despair, and give in to the hopelessness that the needs are too many, too much. 

 But there's always some small thing I can do. 

 If I pray, God will show me what it is.

And so I pray, and then I obey.

It's the least I can do.

Still following,

A Journey of Forgiveness - Part One

It’s strange how the details of my surroundings at that moment are seared into my memory. The sun shone through the upstairs bedroom window of our tall yellow house, its warmth spreading across the quilt covered bed that Daddy told us kids to sit down on. He sat on the other twin bed facing us. The paint on the bedroom wall behind him was flat, minty green, scuffed. The closet door was ajar, the interior was dark. What I don’t remember is even more strange. I don’t remember the words he used to tell us he was leaving Mama and us. I don’t remember the expression on his face, or if he cried. Stranger still, I don’t remember my own emotions. I don’t remember if I said anything in response or if I cried. I think something inside my nine year old heart just went numb and shut down.

In a large family like ours, spending money wasn’t just handed out willy nilly. But that day, Daddy handed us kids some spending money and told us to walk the couple blocks to the variety store on the main street of our little town and buy ourselves something. I guess that he didn’t want us kids to see him filling up cardboard boxes with his belongings or driving away in our big, old Oldsmobile station wagon.

I remember the details of the sidewalk as we walked to the store, so I guess my head was hanging. The sun was warm on my neck and back. I felt like I should be more excited about getting to buy something and numbly picked out some modeling clay. I remember the smell of the clay and the way it stained my hands reddish brown when I played with it. But I don’t remember if I cried myself to sleep that night or not.

The next couple of years, the memories are all foggy with only a few clear memories bobbing up to the surface of my mind, rather like those red and white floats Daddy tied to our fishing line when he took my little brother and I fishing in the nearby river. Sometimes we’d spend the night camping by the river, me, my little brother and Daddy, sleeping in the back of the old station wagon snuggled together. I remember another overnight stay at a little apartment Daddy must have rented. One cold, rainy night, I was in the very same upstairs bedroom that Daddy had sat us in to tell us he was leaving. Unable to sleep, I leaned my head against the cold windowpane and stood there crying, straining my eyes as I looked out into the dark night in the direction that I thought Daddy’s apartment was. I cried and prayed for him to come home. I remember my youngest brother and I sitting together on the old wood floor of our enclosed back porch, talking together about if there was some way we could get Mama and Daddy back together. And I remember Mama standing in the dining room of the tall yellow house, talking on the black dial rotary phone with the curly cue cord that always got hopelessly tangled up, and telling whoever she was talking to that she’d take him back if he’d just come home.

The day Daddy drove up in the station wagon to pick us kids up for our Sunday afternoon visit with a lady in the front seat next to him, the weather was dark and gray. He told us that this was his new wife. I had seen her before. She and her husband had been friends with Mama and Daddy. So this was who he had traded my Mama for, I thought. (to be continued…)

Still following,

Elizabeth

Maximum load...

I can feel when we've both reached maximum capacity.

We get snarky, easily irritated, easily offended.

We're weary in well-doing.

Our shoulders are hunched from bearing the burdens of the people, their hurt, pain, brokenness, and yes, even disobedience.

Then there's the burden of our own frail humanity on top of that, the knowledge of our own inadequacies and mistakes, our own sinful nature.

We're just not enough, never enough.

That's when I'm like David, wanting wings like a bird so I can fly away and be at rest.

Sometimes, I think about how life would be different not in the ministry.

Not knowing people's problems and issues.

Not feeling their pain.

Not bearing their burdens.

Not fearing that we're somehow failing them.

Just a normal, ordinary life, going to a job you can actually walk away from after eight hours.

Living wherever we wanted to live.

I choose the beach.

A life by the sea is where I escape to in my dreams, a life where it's just about us and not about others.

So, with no vacation in sight until after the new church building is complete, we run away for just a day.

We run away to the sea.

He always meet me there, by the sea.

I think He's especially fond of it too.

He always reminds me of His greatness there.

He reminds me that the burdens I bear for others aren't meant for me to carry.

I've been forgetting to cast them off of my shoulders and on to His.

The biggest one, the most burdensome, is the burden of us.

Our own failures and mistakes, our own inadequacies, our not enough-ness…

not smart enough, wise enough, loving enough, for this job He's given us to do.

Our weakness, I've got to cast that one onto His shoulders too.

He knew what He was getting into when He chose us.

There, walking by the sea, he reminds me of His greatness and His great ability to take care of it all.

On the car ride home we listen to old school Don Potter.

And this song reminds me that I'm a prisoner of love.

I'm reminded that I am bought with a price beyond compare and that my life is not my own.

I'm reminded that from the time I was a little girl I knew I was called for more than an ordinary nine to five life.

I was called to follow Him, no matter how rough the path may be.

I was called to live a laid down life, a life of love and service.

I choose yes, I say yes again.

On that car ride home, leaving the sea behind me, leaving my fantasy life behind me,

I say yes.

Still following,

Elizabeth

The dancing God…

I skyped with my daughter and grandkids in Ghana yesterday.

My homeschooled grands were excited to tell me that for a few hours each morning

they now go to the Christian school next to the church.

They’re the only “obruni” in the classes full of beautiful, black Ghanaian faces.

When I asked my grandson what he learned at school that morning, he said.

“Allah is not God.”

I smile.

He is, after all, in Ghana with his parents and sister as Christian missionaries.

(Though it’s not politically correct to say so, either the Bible is true or it isn’t,

and if it is, then the God of the Bible is the One True God, and His Son Jesus is the Only Way to Him.)

My grandson proceeded to tell me that people who worship Allah cannot dance in church,

but people who worship the true God of the Bible can dance when they worship.

This makes me smile too.

Ghanaians love to dance during worship.

First the women start, a conga line of worship, hankies waving in the air.

Then they mosey back to their places and the men dance,

and my grandson, he joins right on in.

I kind of regret that when I was in Ghana last month,  I didn’t join the line of dancing ladies.

I thought about what my grandson said all the rest of the day.

The Ghanaian teacher could have used any of many theological examples

to contrast Allah and the God of the Bible…

God created the heavens and the earth.

Even before creation, God knew man would need a Savior,

and in His mind and heart already decided to offer up the sinless sacrifice of His own Son,

so that He could adopt us as His own children,

 just so we could be wrapped up in the same great love that already existed between Father, Son, and Spirit.

(The God of the Bible LOVES…does any other God love?)

Jesus was born of a virgin.

He lived a sinless life.

He died a cruel death on the cross.

He rose again three days later.

He ascended to heaven and sits at God the Fathers right hand interceding for us.

He’s coming back to earth to make wrong things right once and for all.

The teacher could have said any of those things.

Instead, the teacher taught the children that the difference between Allah and the God of the Bible

is that God wants His children to be able to dance.

I really believe it’s true.

David, the man after God’s own heart, danced before God in worship.

And God, He sings over us and twirls with delight, when He thinks about His kids,

all because He loves us just as much as He loves His Only Begotten Son, Jesus.

On my walk/jog yesterday afternoon, the truth of this dancing God, Who wants His kids to dance,

settled right down into my heart,

and right there in the middle of the the street I kind of wanted to

look up to heaven and lift my arms high and do a little twirl,

and I kind of regret that I didn’t.

 

Still following,

Elizabeth

 

Swimming lessons…

He said that when he came to Jesus, everything in his life changed.

He stopped drinking.  He went to mechanics school.  He learned to drive and he started a business driving others around Ghana.  Now he has other drivers working for him too.

He’s a leader in the church now.  He’s married and has one son that he has put through school.  He had another son that died, and when he tells us this I see the pain in his eyes.

He drives the treacherous Ghanaian roads with the skill of a Nascar driver, weaving in and out among the thousands of cars on the busy city streets, and dodging the potholes the size of ditches and disabled cars left abandoned, on roads winding through jungle and remote villages.

He looked out for us like a mother hen, especially my grandchildren.  He was strong, protective, funny, kind.

We stayed at an American hotel chain on the coast, and not far from the Accra airport, our last night in Ghana.

He said he didn’t know how to swim, as he watched our grandson and granddaughter paddling around like fishes, there in the deep end of the hotel pool.  He’d never been in a swimming pool, he said.  Evidently, this was the case with most of the Africans at the hotel.  It looked like segregation, them all in the shallow end, and us “obruni” the only ones in the deep end.

My son-in-law said he would teach him to swim.  He taught the grandkids before they were old enough to go to school.

When it was just us at the pool, he got in.  This strong African man had fear in his eyes.  My son-in-law tried to explain that he just needed to relax, that if you relax you will float, the water will hold you up.  His muscles stained and time and again his head went underwater as he flailed and fought.  He came up snorting water, grabbing his head for the burning pain of water in his sinuses.   Aloud he cried, “Father, help me.  I want to learn to swim!”  Long after my son-in-law got out of the pool, giving him a few simple things to continue to work on, he stayed there in the shallow end of the pool, straining, struggling, fighting the water.  Relaxing didn’t come naturally to him, and neither did giving up.

My eight year old granddaughter wouldn’t give up on him either.  She stayed right there with him, encouraging him, coaching him along.  That big, strong Ghanaian man laid all pride aside, and let this little eight year old girl help him.  It was one of the most tender, dearest things I’ve ever seen.

He didn’t figure it out, not his very first time ever in a swimming pool.  He told us he wants to find a way to get access to a swimming pool near home, somewhere that my son-in-law can work with him some more. 

Even now, remembering, my heart cries out,  “Father, help him!  He just wants to learn how to swim!”

 

Still following,

Elizabeth

 

An addendum to the post above.  Just received this photo from Ghana.  The swimming lessons continue at a local pool at the university.  Here our dear friend gets a little confidence boost from a yellow inner tube.  Will you remember “K” in your prayers?