Donate & Dump

What’s the big deal about a bunch of rocks?  Seems crazy for me to wake up thinking about them, but actually the idea isn’t totally random.  Let me explain.  Last Saturday, our section of San Antonio was hosting Donate & Dump, which encourages residents to clean up and clean out.  The neighborhood brings in a donation truck for reusables and a trash truck for dumping everything else.  My husband and I loaded our give-aways into the car before we went to sleep Friday night, and I asked, “Lord, is there anything we should load tomorrow for dumping?”  At 4:30 AM, I awoke to the thought of rocks.  But what rocks?  And what would I do with these rocks?  I was too groggy to think.  When the clock glared 5:00, I was frustrated to still be awake, yet I began praying about many things and reciting my Romans 5 that I’ve been memorizing.  All the while, the idea of rocks kept recurring.  Next thing I know the clock shines 8:30, and my brain has progressed toward the specific thought of loading rocks from the backyard.  Suddenly I’m excited.  This is now making sense.  I throw off the bed blanket and walk into the living room to tell my husband.  For years, we’ve had piles of rocks in our backyard.  Trees have died, we’ve had to dig, the earth’s been rocky, and our regular trash pick-up doesn’t accept rocks.  The regular trash service says we need to drive our rocks across town to a landfill, and I’ve never arranged to drive that distance.  Consequently our yard has been decorated with piles of rocks that gradually blended into the scenery so much that I’d forgotten about them.  We just step around a pile here and a pile there as if they’re no longer eyesores.  So my husband and I happily loaded our rocks and drove over to Donate & Dump.  Everybody lent a hand to unload, and like shedding the thickest layer of any grime, what a relief came upon us!  We returned home to stand in the backyard and enjoy a gaze at clean land.  I’d forgotten what clean looked like.  The green seemed more crisp.  The brown appeared more fertile and fresh.  No clutter.  No blots on the landscape.  In fact, the air I breathed felt more free.  I wondered how we ever let those rock piles blend in.  Being without them now let me realize the hazards that build through carelessness.  The Bible talks about purity in Psalm 24:3-4, saying, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?  Who may stand in his holy place?  He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.”  No heaviness of pressure or any hurdle of misplaced priority.  Just welcomed simplicity of living with the Lord.  So I encourage you to avoid clutter.  Avoid the piles of junk that interfere.  I thank God for waking me at 4:30.

My Hindu friend

Ever want to share your favorite thing with somebody, but they’re not interested?  When it’s your favorite flavor of ice cream, the disinterest isn’t earth-shattering.  When it’s trust in Jesus as Savior, the disinterest hits hard.  We’re talking an eternity of effect here.  There’s a lady I’ve prayed for, a lady I love, a lady I hope will ask Jesus to be her Savior one day.  Right now she professes Hinduism.  I want her to know the love of Christ, and I’ve asked the Lord to use me for her sake.  Yet He has shown me to wait on Him for timing.  So eager to share one morning, I walked to her desk, only to see her reading a book.  Not just any book, but a book by a Christian author who writes about Christian living in contemporary terms.  And suddenly my eagerness withdrew.  How gentle a gesture for the Lord to show me He had it covered.  He wouldn’t need my services that day; at least He wouldn’t be employing my lips right then to speak of Him for the sake of my friend.  And so no words did I utter.  Rather, I just grinned to witness Him at work.  Really He is miles ahead of us all the time, orchestrating the seconds and minutes of every hour.  And though my friend has not yet claimed Christianity, the Lord led her to a bookshelf where her fingers selected a Christian title.  My job is to pray and be ready, and I ask the Lord to spill His words from me at the perfect time.  Psalm 40 begins, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.”  Verse 5 says, “Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done.  The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.”  And on this day, the act of waiting actually posed pleasure.  To not be ashamed of the Gospel—yes, of course, be willing to share the name of Jesus.  But seek Him first.  Be content in His timing.

Splash into quilting

A fish out of water?  Why do people say that?  It’s when they’re out of their comfort zone and gasping for air.  Yet as a child of God, that figurative fish not only finds its next breath but actually flourishes.  My latest fish bowl is a quilting group.  I don’t breathe easily around sewing, and so I hesitated to jump in.  But the opportunity to spend a few hours with these new friends sounded such fun that I hopped in the car and drove over.  And I loved it!  Seems many of the girls have little experience with quilting, but Christianity has built their friendship and given purpose for them to thread their needles.  My first meeting, we brought out all the scissors and made blankets to donate to a nursing home in honor of a mom who passed away.  What a sweet, tender, fun time among friends. God has a way of weaving all kinds of us into a task.  Isaiah 11 says He brings a wolf and a lamb, a leopard and a goat, a calf and a lion to live at ease with each other.  He makes docile neighbors of those who usually aren't.  He makes swimmers of those who don't swim, and He brings together a quilting group of nonquilters, adding smiles and laughter to encourage along life’s roads.  So I ask you to think for a minute: Have you noticed any new fish bowls lately?  Ready to get wet?

Inspired like Fahrenheit

I’d been ignoring Him.  At least I didn’t want to deal with this one thing.  My time with theater had shown I could actually memorize a monologue I once viewed nearly impossible.  And the notion had repeated in my head that I needed to memorize more than just theater lines.  Memorization of Scripture would be priority.  One day I visited patients in the hospital, and a lady asked me to write down Scripture for her family.  Suddenly my mind went blank.  No verses from Hebrews.  No verses from Psalms.  Nothing I’d memorized long ago was coming to mind, and the emptiness hit hard.  How reliant I had become on a concordance and having a hard-copy Bible at hand.  Yet this emptiness and depth of sorrow set me on a very determined road.  First I prayed, “Lord, don’t let this family here in the hospital be devoid of Scripture due to my neglect.”  The Lord pointed me to a hard-copy Bible, so I copied verses, humbly handed them to the family, and proceeded home to begin memorizing Romans 5.  Aside from the Bible, one of my all-time favorite books is Fahrenheit 451, in which the firemen take the backwards role of igniting fires.  Bradbury makes us think.  Toward the end, he introduces us to the bearded men who memorize books.  These men memorize to keep their knowledge safe and intact and out of the hands of the firemen.  Their minds are libraries.  Today, in real life, I need the wisdom of the Bible safe and intact in me.  The task of memorization has led me to meditate and more closely appreciate the love of God.  How immensely I am pleased to now answer the Lord’s prompt to memorize.  I’ve experienced anew the words of 1 Corinthians 13:4 – “Love is patient, love is kind.”  Will you choose to memorize as well?     

Love prevails for sake of victims

Months of work possibly down the drain.  Eight months of writing this curriculum, and I didn’t want to accept that it was over.  Not that I wrote every day or even every week, but it had been an ongoing project, and God had inspired throughout.  Yet according to a single recent communication, we now stood in a bleak spot, as we would be denied the interaction we hoped for.  We had planned to implement this coursework to aid the victims next month, and it’s a drastic understatement to say sexual exploitation and trafficking is a serious topic.  Our hope was high for connecting with these girls and aiding their recuperation and re-entry into regular life.  And as highly as we had hoped and as deeply as we were stunned, God took this difficult situation and subtracted out any hint of despair.  As I drove to meet up with my friend who began this ministry to serve these victims, the Lord refreshed me.  Realizing human tendency would have me slump into a bad mood, I observed quite the opposite happening.  The Lord protected me from temptation and supplied me new joy.  From my motionless posture of slowly digesting the bad news, the Lord rescued me into a positive perspective that wouldn’t allow me to fall back.  This roadblock would not win out over our love of these girls who have been hurt so deeply.  John 16:20 says, “…You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”  This was a new version of God converting bad into good, for that afternoon my friend and I recognized some very exciting and unanticipated avenues for ministry.  Indeed our hope in Him is worthy to guide us through the ups and downs of the ordinary day.  His truths are tangible for you and me.

Medical words of a volunteer

Physical pain forces us to pay attention.  When it's intense, we have no option to ignore.  Last month, our family felt the panic of pain pressing through my daughter’s body.  Dizziness, high blood pressure, a racing heart, then a week-long host of physicians that didn’t agree.  All the while, she’s enduring pain that excruciates throughout her upper back.  We’re praying, we’re pleading, and we’re empathizing alongside.  Then one day at my daughter’s hospital, there’s this unexpected conversation with a volunteer.  The 2 girls hadn’t seen each other in a while, and my daughter realizes this sweet volunteer has experienced almost exactly the same set of symptoms.  Her words brought such a welcomed calm to our whirlwind pace.  It seemed the Lord anointed the conversation, as if to say, “I’m here.  I know.  I see everything that’s happening.”  Just hearing about it made my shoulders finally relax.  It wasn’t a definitive medical diagnosis, but even greater, it was the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Still now, a month later, the doctor appointments continue, yet this particular conversation has been a highlight.  For whatever reason the Lord has allowed these events, we have been blessed to witness Him at work.  With new fervency, we sought Him, and He has reminded us we’re never alone.  Psalm 121 begins, “I lift my eyes up to the hills—where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”  Right there in our thick of things, right there in the eye of our storm, the Lord revealed Himself to us.  How I love Him for that.

God, my TV man

Last Tuesday, I had a problem.  My TV wouldn’t work.  I pressed the little silver Apple remote a bunch of times, but no Netflix.  Usual tendency would be to get frustrated, but the Lord kept me from it, as I remembered an experience He gave years ago.  One day I watched Little House on the Prairie and suddenly the TV blacked out.  It’s not a unique story really, except for the fact that I knew ahead of time I shouldn’t be watching TV.  Even if it’s a good show, the Lord had already let me know it’s not what He had in mind.  So fast-forward to last week when Netflix wouldn’t work, and the idea quickly comes that the Lord is serving as my TV man once again.  I knew Law & Order wasn’t what He had in mind for me, but I had taken the lazy road and thought, “I’ll watch this for 15 minutes while I comb out my hair and get ready.”  Nope.  It didn’t work then, and it’s not working now.  I needed to press forward with my curriculum writing.  I may have thought a 15-minute sabbatical would rest my brain, but not true.  So I pressed on, and the Lord provided energy and gave rest all at once, just as I needed.  After my curriculum meeting that afternoon, I returned home, and my husband turned on Netflix just fine.  Romans 8:26-27 says, “. . . the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.”  I realize these verses talk about prayer, but I figure somewhere in all the ways the Lord intercedes, He certainly has the capacity to serve as my TV man when I lack the discipline myself.  When I falter, He takes the reigns.  And I love Him for that.

Answers in Genesis

How far ahead does the Lord plan?  How early does He set circumstances and move people in order to answer your prayer?  This past semester, my desire to study Creation deepened.  Something stirred in my heart beyond studying the Bible on my own.  For years I’ve wanted to study with my husband because of the way he understands science.  I researched festivals and conferences, but the logistics of traveling cross-country hadn’t fit.  Then came this compulsion to attend a new church.  “Lord, what is this?”  By our third Sunday, I see in the bulletin that they’re hosting Answers in Genesis on Fridays.  My heart leaps in an instant, and I sit there absolutely flabbergasted!  The thought truly amazed me that the Lord would love little ol’ messed-up me enough to plan a Creation study at a new little church that sits at an unassuming little intersection in San Antonio.  And He brought a small group of people to study alongside me too, for He’s working on behalf of many all at once.  One girl tells me, “Our church planned this a year ago, so the Lord must have been waiting for you to arrive.”  That means that for this single occasion of studying Creation, the Lord began orchestrating more than a year ago, which reiterates how personal our God is.  How intimately He works in us and amongst us.  In Malachi 3:10, the Lord says, “ . . . see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”  May we anticipate His next answer to prayer with great joy.  May we savor the beauty of His handiwork.

God & the AC guy

Where do you mention God, and where do you not?  How openly do we include His name in conversation?  Various versions of those questions flashed through my head when talking with our air conditioner repair guy this week.  Glad to say he fixed our AC problem with just a pound of freon, but as I signed his service papers at our kitchen table, he mentioned his daughter leaving for college.  His voice dipped in sadness.  I looked up to see his eyes do the same, and what quickly came to mind was how the Lord eased me through that same situation with my kids years ago.  Right that second when the name of God hit, there was a hiccup in my heart.  Describe it as a point of crucial decision or maybe a spiritual test. If the Lord is prompting my heart, will I follow through?  Doubt rushes in, asking "Will I offend? Will it seem like I’m pressuring him? What if he gets mad?"  Actually the questions are valid, but in the end, whom do I aim to please?  For whose sake am I willing to risk?  I shared with our AC guy how I prayed in those years before, during, and after college.  He listened and never even hinted of becoming angry.  I knew great pleasure for having offered those few sentences.  I’ve felt those little tugs too many times to ignore them.  I’ve known blessings many times over for having followed through, and I trust the Lord blessed the AC guy to hear testimony about prayer.  All days of the week, in homes and workplaces and neighborhoods and schools, the Lord creates situations for us to serve each other.  I contend that we mention His name whenever and wherever He prompts—in public, in private, in whatever circumstances He calls.  He wants our entire world to know He is here and that He loves them. 

Funeral & speech therapy

Opportunities to pray come anywhere.  In April I met a girl at a funeral.  She’d entered college to study speech therapy and needed only to find somewhere to serve her internship in order to graduate.  So I prayed.  I was extremely excited to pray.  I told her I would pray.  All the while, I hoped to see her again to explain this particular joy that came in praying for her.  Then a couple of weeks ago, the 2 of us sat across a dinner table from each other, and the joy spilled over.  She smiled to tell of sending out bunches of resumés and receiving a single, unusual phone call in response.  That phone call was her answer to graduating.  Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Never should we underestimate any opportunity to pray.  Never rule God out, for He works anywhere and everywhere.  And how we’re blessed for Him to incorporate sinners like us into His work.