and who am I really, to tell you about these things? What grief have I known?
You might say that mine doesn’t measure up to yours. you may be right.
I was talking to a friend and we were saying that we can’t compare ours to each other’s.
Whether it’s grief or joy, it’s ours.
Mine
Yours
and we each feel
whatever we feel and it’s big and it
hurts
or it’s big and it’s
abounding joy.
We study the Bible, every Wednesday at the big church on the corner, where lots of people worship on Sunday and fewer worship and study during the week. We study and we talk about what we are studying and it’s
the best.
I learn and I talk (no surprise there) and I even listen and while it all happens
I learn more.
We have what we call a wrap up talk at the end of each Wednesday morning and it’s good. I took a turn a few weeks ago. I worked on that lesson and I learned.
My turn, was the story of David and Goliath and I had heard the story so many times I didn’t even need to read it before I prepared the talk. But I did it anyway. Read the story and listened to what God wanted to tell me about what I should say.
I wrote the words for that talk
Twice.
I read it and spoke it and changed the words and it wasn’t right. I prayed and I listened and I wanted it to be what God wanted it to be and it wasn’t, I was sure.
I wrote it again. The third time. While I was writing I knew, He was getting through to me. He was going to say some amazing things and He was going to use my mouth to plant seeds in hearts.
When I stood up to speak the words He gave me to speak
my heart was full and I talked and I learned while I was doing it and now I’m going to share it with you.
It’s unpolished, unprofessional, unscripted, unedited and it’s live. There are mistakes and I talked and then we listened to a song and I hope you will
hang in there and listen to the end. Listen to the five points and
Be Encouraged
because God has great things for us
for you and me and we can’t, we just cannot keep going through life, being attacked and broken and worn out by
Well, it seems about now, those of us who enjoy writing and like to share what we consider to be words of wisdom, have lots to say.
It’s that time of year.
You know, when amongst the hustle and bustle, we wonder about it.
Christmas.
spending, eating, giving, Pondering the negative twist of Consumerism.
Feeling guilt about too much shopping, too much chocolate, lack of sleep, too much talk and not enough
Stillness.
We reflect upon our memories of Christmases past. Happy Memories.
Or Not
Today, a few of us were sitting around a table preparing an event in honour of a new mom. Before we got to doing what we were there for, the greeting of the season passed between us.
Merry Christmas
A comment was made that most of us have heard before, A Not uncommon reply to the M.C. greeting.
Unfortunately it is not Merry for some and we all agreed wholeheartedly, knowing the truth of it.
Every beautiful, happy, celebratory event has the potential to be anything but.
It just happens. For one reason or for another reason.
Christmas though, the celebration of the birth of the Saviour, brings strong feelings of happy or sad or even depression. Broken hearts, difficult families, financial strains, emptiness, loneliness, are the sad reality of Christmas, for more people than we think.
Joy is part of the bouquet of fruit that God says we are to BE. We are to BE joyful, along with loving, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled. When we feel like it and when we don’t.
If only it wasn’t so hard, To Be what we are intended to Be.
Thorns.
Prickly, painful, aggravating, troublesome, tormenting and
sent for a purpose.
Paul was a hard worker. Gave his life following Jesus, showing the fruit he preached about. He had a thorn and nobody knows the particulars about it. I know enough about thorns though, to have an idea of the pain he endured, living with the one God saw fit to bless him with. Paul said he had asked God to take it away and God said No.
Where in the World do we ever get the idea that God will make our lives easy and free from hardship? Certainly not from his guidebook, His instruction manual, His Love letter to us.
God told Isaiah that even before the people cried out He heard them. While they were still speaking He would answer.
We are His creation, made in His image. From the beginning, His chosen ones have suffered and lived and died and cried out to Him for help.
He has always listened, at the ready to wrap His arms around and walk alongside.
Thorns make us dependent upon
HIM.
I have a thorn.
Oh it isn’t anything near as bad as some people live with. It isn’t sickness, or abuse, or chronic pain, or an empty stomach when I go to bed.
My thorn is
Darkness. Gloom. Melancholy and some refer to it as
Depression
Stormy weather for no reason.
The sun shines and that prickly, thorny, dark cloud rolls in, from pretty much nowhere. Sounds insignificant but believe me, I can get fixated on that pesky thorn to the point where I forget Completely
About Joy and the other fruit.
I start to concentrate on the grey and gloom and before you can say storm cloud, that joy joy joy down in my heart has vanished.
Joy is a choice
Bloom where you are planted
Be anxious for nothing
Just the time I don’t feel like praying is the very time I need to throw myself down at the foot of the cross. My thorn is different from yours, nothing like the ones in the crown eventually worn by the man who started out as the baby in the manger, but I can tell you it hurts like crazy. It’s part of my life. Likely will be forever, as long as I’m here.
I have been blessed, abundantly. Far above and beyond and that thorn of mine, when it rolls in, blinds me and binds me and robs me of the joy that is actually Mine. It’s mine because of the gift.
The greatest gift.
The baby, perfect and sinless, came.
He came so that even though there are thorns here in this World, His Joy could be mine. it could be yours.
Maybe you do a good job of hiding your thorn. Maybe you live fully, wholly, despite it.
If I can admonish you, encourage you today, this advent season, let it be with this.
Don’t let your thorn rob your joy. Carry on. Talk to God about it. Pour your heart out to Him. I can tell you chances are big that He won’t get rid of it for you. He won’t give you a life free from thorns. They bring you to that place where you kneel before Him and tell him what He already knows. You are sad, sick, weary, angry…needy.
He won’t take it away but He will do something better. he will remind you that He will never leave you. He will never turn His back and tell you to manage on your own. He will give you peace along the way. You can do it. We can do it. I can do it.
He will Do it.
He has done it.
Your joy is your choice.
I have so many favourite Christmas songs but this is one that brings me to my knees.
So, another birthday has come and gone. Birthdays seem to do that with more regularity and with increased pace, as the years pass by.
I remember when it seemed that my special day would never get there. Days, no, weeks before, I would lie awake at night and think about the friends and the cake and of course the presents that would all be welcomed with pleasure.
Let’s be truthful. A young one does not spend much time considering the years lived and the years ahead. Except that she just wants to get there. One year older that is.
A birthday is more about celebration.
I have heard some people say that we need to find as many reasons and opportunities to celebrate as we possibly can.
Celebration gives fuel to hope and who doesn’t like hope?
To instill in a child the idea, the concept, the truth of hope, is a gift bigger and better and more significant than any other.
Children don’t likely contemplate hope either. But it’s there.
Oh yes!
Hope instilled and even installed, by loving adults is worth more than anything.
I am a firm believer in tangible gifts.
Gift giving is one of the channels of my God given spiritual gift of hospitality.
I love giving gifts.
Maybe too much.
Perhaps I need to tone it down, step back a bit.
I don’t want to. (a peek into my strong willed soul)
Gifts given from a heart overflowing are a blessing to the recipients and most certainly to the giver.
For this woman, giving is a selfish thing.
I do it at least partly because I like how I feel in the preparation and the giving.
I hope you like the gift but if you don’t, I am sorry.
I received such joy in the thinking, gathering, wrapping and giving.
Secret shared…
Sometimes, after arranging and wrapping I set the gift on my table, a conspicuous place, so I can look at it. Sometimes I wrap it up early. A few days or hours.
I glance that way when passing by.
Admire the look of it.
So lovely
So pretty
So cool
I smile and continue on my way only to pass by again a few minutes later and experience the same pleasure.
Sometimes I make the gift giving into a game.
Such fun to walk the aisles of the dollar store and wait for the “lights to go on” in my head and my heart.
Most often the light goes on in my heart at the same time as my head.
Joy in giving
Joy in preparing
Just simple, plain, joy.
As I write this, the ideas, the words are darting through my mind. Oh so much to share. It might be useless prattle to some of you but to others it brings a smile of your own.
You don’t ‘get me’.
You totally see me.
It’s okay.
I am sharing me.
That’s the beauty of sharing.
Giving.
As much as it is intended to somehow bless the donee (I just learned this new word when looking for a descriptive word other than recipient)
The giving is largely about the one who gives.
I might be so bold as to say it is mostly about the giver
Again
I really hope you like it.
My heart sings when you like it.
But even if not
I have done what I am compelled to do.
Give!
Sometimes the gift can be held in hands. Tangible.
Other times it can only be grasped by the heart. Intangible.
It won’t be a surprise to you when I say
All of this gift giving talk reminds me of the very best and greatest gift ever.
Just as my boy asked the question, “how can people think there is no God”?
I say, “how indeed?”
The Giver, of every good and beautiful thing, watched and considered and said “it is good”. He looked at His creation, His gift to us and He was pleased. It brought so much pleasure to His heart. With pleasure comes a smile and it is not wrong to think that God smiled when He saw His gift.
He walked in the garden He created, amongst the beauty of the flowers and trees. He knew it was beyond human comprehension. He knew it would bring glory to Him. He created people in his image so that ultimately He would be glorified.
He knew of course, because He knows everything, that the gift he had make and given would be overshadowed by the evil that lurked. He knew that in addition to the physical beauty, this tangible gift, there would be a need for the greatest and most sacrificial gift of all time.
The intangible.
He knew that this essential gift was the only one that would matter to His creation. But because the created would not recognize their need of the gift, because they would reject the idea of the gift, many would die without accepting it.
He loved the created, the ones made in His image, so much, that He wanted to spend eternity with them.
He wanted to bless them with the ultimate gift of living forever, in His presence.
So sad that the evil one, sin personified, would separate us from life with God. The Creator.
And so
He came, as a baby who grew to be a man. The man was young. Hardly older than my boy who wonders at those who don’t believe.
And horror of horrors He willingly went to a cross.
He died on that cross.
The gift of gifts.
Given for me.
For you.
If only we will receive it. Recognize it for what it is.
The only way for us to Know and be in relationship with the Creator, the one who loves us beyond…
He loved us then and He loves us now.
Because of this great love, He died.
Friday happened.
God died for us.
Weep
Mourn
repent
And then smile and be glad.
Psalm 126:3
The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad.
