Tag: hope

Soul Food For the New Normal

April 3, 2020 /

As I post this, we are adjusting to the reality that this crisis is going to stretch on much longer that we had thought – feeling more like global extended rehab than a quick trip to the Minute Clinic.

It has the potential to bring out the best in us, but also may reveal some issues in our relationships that we’ve been glossing over. My prayer continues to be that we won’t fill our time with just a different set of numbing distractions, but will come out on the other side of this kinder, humbler, stronger, more self-aware.

So, here are some resources that I pray won’t be distractions, but add value and joy to your physically distanced day!

I always recommend this podcast, but I love, love, loved this episode from the Transforming Center with Ruth Hayley Barton and Steve Wiens, called Listening and Responding to God Amidst the Covid_19 Crisis.

Thanks to my sister-in-law, Susan for passing along this song so appropriate for this season.

I was fascinated by this photo essay called The Great Empty, showing famous places around the world and what they look like during this time of isolation. This emphasizes for me that we are all in this together – it is a global challenge that connects us all.

I love this story about a restaurant in California that is giving people the option of paying for catered meals to be delivered the departments of local hospitals as well as offering regular take out!

Also I’m encouraged by so many creative ways we’re finding to stay connected!

Our friend, Derek posted this, brightening our day.

For our part, we’re decorating and driving in a birthday car parade tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for pictures on Instagram, and daily devotional thoughts on my Stories.

We’re also all retaining our ability to laugh with and at each other!

This season has been a great one to try new recipes since I have a captive guinea pig (John)! The other night I made this – super easy, few ingredients and yummy!

Shrimp Scampi Pasta with Asparagus (VIDEO)

How are you holding up? What’s bringing you joy?

When Jesus Doesn’t Show up and Something Dies

January 25, 2016 /

Years ago I had a dream I believed was from God. There was a quiet Holy Spirit whisper.

I trusted Him (I thought).

I worked hard. I asked the right questions. I got the right permissions.

I was affirmed for my gifts in the area of my dream. I won awards.

And then, painfully, my dream was demolished by a series of choices outside my control.

A friend said it was like I walked out into an intersection I had been told was safe and was run over by a mack truck being driven by people I trusted.

I waited expectantly for God to swoop in and fix everything.

But God was silent.

He didn’t right the wrongs. He didn’t correct the injustices. I was left with the death of illusions, trust, and my dream.

Jesus lingered “somewhere else” and didn’t show up in time.

Like in Monday’s post, God didn’t make sense to me.

I think all of us have times when God has seemed inattentive, uncooperative, or late. What do we do when Jesus doesn’t show up and something dies? Continue reading

Seeing Light in Darkness

March 10, 2015 /

Saturday we sprang forward and Sunday it was an unbelievable 46 degrees here. Spring, that shameless hussy, is flirting with us. There was a guy in church with shorts on. Seriously.

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If you’re reading this from Florida, or Australia, or Nazareth, this may not seem like it’s a big deal, but I live in MINNESOTA, where it often snows on Easter for Pete’s sake!

Nevertheless, I’ve been seduced.  I’m finally ready to unplug the white twinkly lights that have been dressing up our pine tree and bushes since November when the Dark crept up on Minnesota and we needed a reminder that the Light will always prevail.  We needed something to cheer us, something to assure us that there are things to celebrate even when they are hard to see.

These days, as the sun hangs around a little later each afternoon, and streets become drippy and puddly, and green things begin to consider whether it’s safe to peek out of the cold ground again, our pine trees look a little foolish with twinkles, all dressed up at 4:00 when it’s still light. Like a teenage girl anxiously dressed early for prom and trying too hard to be noticed.

So I’ll unplug the lights and enjoy the sun, and I’ve even turned off the heat, but I’m on my guard because March is the month that is constantly playing “Ding Dong Ditch”.  She fools us into answering the door, sure there is Springy goodness waiting on the other side, and then Bam! Ha! We open and winter slams us in the face.

One thing we can be sure of is that light will prevail, and the lengthening days are a reminder that.

“The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5). 

Even in the long winter months when all can seem lost, there are glimmers of God-light. Continue reading

What Are You Hoping For?

March 2, 2015 /

“Hope” is a weird word. I’ve always felt like it’s used a lot, but it’s kind of fluffy and fuzzy, often without substance, like pink cotton candy.  We’re drawn to it cuz it’s pretty, like a wish, but I think maybe we don’t really understand it in a way that’s helpful in our “with God” life.

We mistakenly think that hope is positive thinking, or the tingly good feels, or confidence that things are going to turn out the way we want them to.

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John started preaching a series on hope a couple weeks ago.  It’s caused me to reflect a lot about this word.  I think where we get off track is in the object of our hope.  I know so many people who are longing, wishing, hoping for something deeply important to them – healing from cancer, a baby, reconciliation in a relationship, marriage, a job…

And that’s good and natural to ask God for what we hope for.  Jesus says “Come to me…” and “What do you want me to do for you?” and “Pour out your hearts…”

But when I put my hope in my specific picture of a future, that’s where I get in trouble. I’m trusting in circumstances and feelings and myself more than putting hope in my God.  If I cling to my specific picture of hope I make an idol out of it instead of offering it with open hands to God who knows better than I, and who can, even in this broken world, bring good that I can’t imagine out of despair.  It may not be the good that I conjured up, or the perfection I would experience in an unbroken world, but like this quote says: Continue reading

Enough

March 7, 2014 /

I’m writing this from the balcony of another hotel in Israel.  This time in Jerusalem.  It’s early morning and church bells were just echoing nearby.  I kind of expect to see Maria from the Sound of Music scurrying by below me – late to morning mass.  But here she’d be passing Imams and Rabbis as she ran.  A tad different than Salzburg.

My times here in the Middle East are always ones of competing images.

Yesterday morning we spent time in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. I try to picture him running the hills of pine and cypress trees and working by His father, the carpenter. In the afternoon we were in Galilee, where Jesus fed crowds, and healed and preached on the Mount of Beatitudes.  He walked on the water and calmed the same.

And Jesus walks alongside me with the command that often seems impossible, “Be still and know that I am God.”

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Alongside these visual reminders of Jesus’ time on earth are the overwhelming images of a land divided, a land in conflict – unable, seemingly, to get along.  Israelis and Palestinians.  Christians, Muslims, Jews.  Some think supporting the state of Israel means hating Arabs. Others think that those who want to talk about the plight of Palestinians must hate Israel. Continue reading

When You Need Someone to Hold Hope for You

December 4, 2013 /

It was years ago now, when the doorbell rang and I dragged my weary, wounded self to open it, my eyes perpetually aching from tears that I could not seem to stop.

I felt destroyed, demolished.  As if a mack truck, driven by a team of people I loved and trusted, had run over me without a thought and as I lay mangled in the intersection folks walked by, happy and oblivious to the damage they had passively assented to.

I was exhausted, and lonely, and tired of battling despair.

Continue reading

An Advent Sunday Morning

December 2, 2012 /

As I write this it is the first Sunday morning of Advent.  It’s foggy and ugly outside my Starbucks window, but I live in Minnesota so I know snow is right around the corner which makes me so happy.

I’m an early morning person, but I know many are just now lumbering, hustling, shivering, or springing out of bed.  Some to get kids dressed and combed.  Some, bumping around a dark empty house or apartment alone.  Getting ready for worship.

Some will be driving to church with an attitude of habitual going-through-the-motions resignation.

But for me…and for most I think, there is always a glimmer of expectation.  As small as a twinkle light, but it’s there for sure.  A tiny bit of hope that we’ll meet God in that worship space and hear a whisper from Him.

Continue reading

Never. Under. Estimate my Jesus.

November 30, 2011 /

Every Monday evening from 5:00-6:00 I have what is both the most discouraging and most powerful hour of my week.

Three years ago I started tutoring a 9 year old girl named Erica who moved here from Togo, west Africa with her twin brother Eric, and her older brother Sylvanus.  Erica and Sylvanus have made the transition to a new city, a new culture, a 5th (yes, 5th!) language, and are catching up academically in a new school.  Amazing.  Courageous.  Inspiring.

Eric is just as courageous, but he is now a 12-year old boy who has fallen through the cracks of the system…been passed along because that’s convenient…been teased by his peers when he’s trying to catch up by doing 3rd grade level work as a 6th grader.

So now I tutor Eric, sitting in an old inner city church that looks like it’s out of The Bells of St. Mary’s.  We sit at a huge table with about 10 other loud, chaotic, disruptive kids who are supposed to be doing their homework, but would like nothing better than to foment a Middle School revolution with Eric as a compatriot.

Every week, for the first 15 minutes, the revolutionaries seem to be winning.  Eric has no use for me.  He grumbles.  He makes excuses. He’s too cool.  It’s too hard to work when others are playing.  I wonder why I make the effort to fight the traffic and the snow and the dark to drive into this neighborhood for a kid who doesn’t care.

And then, every week, when I’m about to give up, in an instant, the tide of the battle turns and Eric gives in and starts reading to me or doing his times tables.

Now here’s the thing that floors me.  None of the chaos around us stops.  All the other kids are loud and distracting…arguing, throwing things, flirting…But once Eric is engaged, nothing (and I mean nothing) will deter him from his concentration.

Yesterday he chose an Amelia Bedelia book and as he’s reading and pencils are flying through the air around us and boys are fighting all around us I’m thinking “This 12-year-old kid is going to be bored with this book!  He’s gonna give up any minute.  I would!”  But no.  Not only does he keep reading for 40 minutes, he asks questions, and follows my directions to write a summary for his teacher.

At the end of our time, everyone has left to go downstairs to dinner.  Eric and I are  alone at the big table and it is finally quiet.  I look deep into his beautiful African brown eyes and say, “Eric, you are amazing.  You have the most remarkable ability to focus and remember what you’ve read.  You have worked so hard.  I am proud of you and you should be proud of yourself.”

His eyes don’t leave mine.  He doesn’t look away.

Now Eric is a 12 year old boy remember, so I don’t expect to get much of a response, but he looks back at me with the unmistakable expression of a starving kid being given a morsel of hope.  

And I think, “How can I not come back next week?”

When I get to my car the tears come as I think this is just one hour out of Eric’s whole week.  One small statement of affirmation in a sea of taunting and apathy.  It’s not enough.  It’s not enough.  He needs so much more.

And then I turn on the car and the words come over my cd player…

“Never.  Under.  Estimate my Jesus.

You’re telling me that there’s no hope.

I’m telling you you’re wrong.”

And I start praying for this little boy.  “Abba Father, do what only You can do.”  Multiply this one measly hour.  Multiply these paltry words of affirmation in the life of this precious boy.

Where in your life are you feeling hopeless?  What words do you think Jesus might speak to you? 

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