December 31, 2017

Beside Restful Waters


I have always loved Psalm 23, the green pastures and restful waters. Those have taken on new meaning in our new home. A few steps in any direction and I can sit beside gurgling creeks or still ponds, surrounded by verdant pastures.

However, even in Idyllic surroundings, life can become complicated and worrisome.

Since the year 2009, I have been without health care insurance and have put off preventive exams due to the expense. Since turning a certain age and I now have insurance, my doctor has scheduled the tests. My brain went into overdrive. What if?

Streams in the Desert quoted 1 Samuel 7:12: “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”

He has helped through financial struggles, health issues, and personal challenges. He has provided compassion, strength, wisdom, and a miracle or two. Will he not continue? 

“For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me.”


December 23, 2017

Christmas Optimist, Pessimist, Idealist, or Realist?

We idolize the holidays, believing this special season changes the entire world and everything and everyone in it. Like Chuck Griswold, we become overly optimistic, believing in the ideal of the perfect family Christmas. Life is built on the imperfect, and we are usually greatly disappointed for one reason or another when our expectations are too high or unrealistic. Then we become pessimists at best and Scrooges at worst. I suggest something else - a true Optimist. An idealist who recognizes and acknowledges flaws, but chooses to focus on what is right, rather than what is wrong.

In the well known story, two boys were placed in separate rooms. One filled with every imaginable toy, the other with manure. After an hour observers went to each room to see the boys' reactions. Sure enough, the Pessimist could only complain. Nothing was right. Every toy had a flaw or defect. Noting this, the observers moved to the next room. To their amazement the Optimist was busy digging in the manure. They asked him what he was doing. His answer, "With this much manure, there has to be a horse in here somewhere!"

This holiday season will not be Courier and Ives perfect, not with family scattered across several states and cities and the usual dynamics causing conflicts and misunderstandings, or other concerns trying to push their way in to spoil it. It will be somewhere between A Christmas Story and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and with a little effort some What A Wonderful Life mixed in, filled with more blessings than I can count. 

I will go one step further. Those visitors on that first Christmas could have chosen to see only a poor family and a cold, dirty stable, but instead they saw the glory of God and the Salvation of Man, Emanuel - God With Us. 

Merry Christmas. May your holidays be blessed with love and joy in whatever form they take. 

December 01, 2017

What Would You Have Me Do, Lord?

Every so often we writers get into slumps and question why we write. Does it matter?

I fell into this trap yesterday. Re-editing the three books in my series for inclusion into a set, has been more daunting than I expected. It has also been humbling. How could I publish such drivel? Who would want to read it? So, why bother?

Unlike other times these thoughts have plagued me, I turned to prayer, asking God what He would have me do. He answered.

As has happened before, I have confused my listed readings and read one meant for another date, and there was my answer.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach if they have not been sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things? But all do not obey the gospel. For Isaias said: ‘Lord, who hath believed our report? Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ. But I say: Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world.’”
Romans 10:13-18

Once before God told me to write my stories that through them others might believe. (See Lions, Why I Write) One reader messaged me sometime back. “Your book is answering many of my questions.” How easy it is to forget those words, encumbered with the drudgery of writing and editing.

And so, I press on, doing the physical work of sharing His Word through stories, leaving the rest in His hands. Seems rather fitting as we enter the season of Advent. By sharing our stories peppered with His Word we become like St. John the Baptist a “voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaias.”

John 1:23