Are you Waiting for Wonder?

Hi Friends,

Are you in a waiting place in life? Perhaps a dry place, a barren place? If so, I wanted to share with you a little snippet from the book I'm working on now, which I'm calling Waiting for Wonder. The book is about Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Will you also pray for this book? I've only written the proposal (which includes the intro and chapter one) and publishers are considering it now.

Meanwhile, here is a little snippet that I hope will encourage you on your journey with God:

Who Is This God?

        This is a God who promises descendants as numerous as the grains of sand, to a barren woman.

This is a God who blesses all the families on earth through a woman with no family at all.

He is a God who reveals his glory through a man born blind, who could not enter the temple, the outcast.

And he reaches an entire town through a woman so ashamed she went to a well in the middle of the day.

This is what God does. God chooses us precisely for the places where nothing seems to change and hope is sparse. He is the God who uncovers the deepest place of our shame and pain, and promises to bless the whole world right from that very place. 

We sit in our barrenness, in our blindness, in our shame ... we may sit for a long time. But we do not sit without hope. Like Sarai, we hold the strange, impossible promises of God.

So, I look at Sarai.  And I know we are all barren. There are empty places in us all. 

       And I ask myself, will I set forth on this journey with her to discover a God who promises to take the places of my deepest shame and pain and transform them to bless the whole world? 

Will I dare step forward, knowing that the darkest places of my soul will be revealed, my pain will have no secrets, and promises may take decades to be fulfilled.

Do I dare embrace the empty places? Do I dare acknowledge my shame? And in doing so, might I embrace the very promises of God? 

When the Worst Happens...

Hi Friends,

Sometimes the worst happens. Sometimes you hope and pray and what happens is even worse than you feared.  Sometimes a dear friend gets devastating news. Sometimes a young man enters a church and lets bullets fly. People die. Hopes are crushed. And all seems lost.

Mary has been there too. Been there when her son was condemned to die, when the crowds shouted "Crucify him!" and Pilate pronounced the death sentence.  All her hopes, all her prayers, and death came anyway.

I can barely breathe when I think about it, really ponder it. So, this week, I wanted to share with you an excerpt from Wrestling with Wonder that speaks to my heart this week as I try to catch my breath  and catch of glimpse of Who God is when the worst becomes reality.

I hope you, too, will find hope and help in these words …


WRESTLING WITH WONDER Excerpt:

 Jesus had to die on a Roman cross for our sins so that we might be reconciled to God.

            There was no other way.

            Of course, Mary didn’t know that. But God did. And so do we.

            We know that the Messiah had to die a sinner’s death in our place that we might be free. From Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we know that if there were an easier path, God would have chosen it.

            In Matthew 26, Jesus prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”

            And the soldiers, crowds, and Jewish leaders came and arrested him. They bound him. They beat him. They crucified him. And it was the will of God.

            There was no other way.

            The Messiah did not ascend to an earthly throne. The religious leaders did not recognize him. He was rejected, a crown not of gold but of thorns pressed upon his head, anointed not with kingly oil but with his own blood.

            There was no other way.

            Isaiah 53:3-6 says:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,

  a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

  he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, 

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him, 

and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, 

each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

            He was sinless, and condemned. He was lied about, and the truth didn’t prevail. He was accused, and said nothing. He was scourged, and not rescued. And then he died on a criminal’s cross.

            There was no other way.

            Because “it was the Lord’s will to crush him,” says Isaiah 53:10. There was no other way for Jesus to satisfy his Messiahship. No other way for the prophecies to be fulfilled. No other way for the promises to come true.

            No easier way for Mary to become who she was always meant to be—not just the mother of the Messiah, but the mother of the Savior.

            “God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way,” says C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.

            The God who called Mary to face her worst fears is the same God who calls us. He calls in those times when the worst happens, when what we feared might happen does happen. When it seems like life has gone from bad to worse and every time we pray something even more awful happens, that is when God is saying to us:

            There is no other way.

            No other way for him to accomplish his will in your life, to make you the person you were meant to be. If this cup could pass, it would.

            But it doesn’t.

            Because this is the way. And sometimes we must walk in it, with faith, with trust, with one foot in front of the other, even when all our fears come true.

Lessons from Camping - When Life is Dark and Scary

Hi Friends,

We recently went camping for Joelle's birthday, and I was reminded of something I learned a few years ago when the twins were little. I learned that when it's dark and scary and things are new and different, to remember "Jesus here" and relax into the reality of the God who loves me and is near me.

So, if you're going through a dark, scary time, here's some encouragement:

Mommy's Here

            Darkness closed in around our camper just as the crickets began to sing. It was going to be a long night.  I knew it because there was no familiar crib, no Curious George toy, no door I could close to shut my two-year-old daughter off from the strange and scary noises of the night.

            I zipped up Jayna’s jammies and kissed her forehead.  Then, I set her on the bed in the pop-up camper and pointed to a spot beside the canvas wall.   “Night night time, Jayna. Lay down.”

            Her brow wrinkled.  Her lip trembled.  “Nigh Nigh?”

            “It’s okay.  Lay down.”  I pointed again.  “Close eyes.”

            She looked down at the spot.  Her eyes stayed opened.  Too wide. 

            I cringed.  “No cry.  Go night night.”  I patted the bed.

            She sniffed and scowled some more.  Then, she rubbed her nose and pranced in a circle around the bed, her head barely skimming the canvas above. 

            “No, no, no!”  I snatched her up and plunked her down on the thin mattress.  “Night night.”

            She sprung back up.

            I bit my lip.  I knew this wasn’t going to work.  Jayna was used to her own room, her own crib, her own little Winnie the Pooh bumper to keep her head from hitting the crib’s slats.  This wide camper bed, with plain sheets, wobbly sides, and a big pillow was nothing like where she slept every night.  It was strange, different.  Weird.  I sighed.  “Okay, just wait a minute.”

            I put on my pajamas and quickly brushed my teeth.  Then, I crawled into the bed beside her and pulled up the covers.

       

     She stopped prancing and stood still.  She looked at me.

            I patted the bed beside me.  “Night night.  Lay down by Mommy.”

            She plopped down and rolled on her side, her big eyes fastened on my face.

            I blinked as a swath of moonlight trickled in to illuminate Jayna’s face.

            She smiled at me.

            I smiled back. 

            She inched closer.  Then, she sat up and patted my shoulder.  “Mama hee-a.”  The words came out as an awed whisper.

            “Yes, Mommy’s here.”

            She laid back down and snuggled up next to me.  Then she began to laugh.  “Mama here.  Mama here.  Mama here,” she said between giggles.  She turned to face me.  A huge grin lit her face.  She touched my cheek.  “Mama.  Here.”

            I laughed with her as I held out my arms and gathered her close. 

            She closed her eyes, the smile still evident on her little face.  She was happy, thrilled, comfortable, secure.  Despite the darkness, despite the strangeness, despite the weird sound of a hundred crickets chirping outside in the night.  None of that matter, because Mommy was here.  The joy of Mommy’s presence drove all the fear away.

            As I laid there in the moonlight, with Jayna snoring softly next to me, I marveled that for her “Mama here” was enough.  And if that was so, shouldn’t “Jesus here” be enough for me as well?

            When I enter the dark places in my life, times laced with uncertainty, scattered with strange and unfamiliar sounds, why should I fear?  Jesus is with me.  He said in Matthew 28:20 (NIV), “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  Always.  When I’m traveling alone, when I’m in a group of strangers, when I’m trying something new, when I’m in circumstances that are unfamiliar and difficult.  He is with me. 

            When worries chirp outside my camper walls, when I can’t see beyond the end of my bed, when it looks like life is taking a turn to places that make my brows wrinkle and my lips tremble, then God says to me, as it says in Isaiah 41:10 (NIV), “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

            And so maybe, for me too, “Jesus here” will be enough.  Maybe I don’t need to fear because God is with me, wherever I go, wherever I lay down to rest.  Maybe I, too, can just snuggle in and have a little giggle.