You Can't Look Ahead from the Rear View Mirror

     All mornings find a good cup of joe absolutely necessary. Some mornings, however, the coffee is just better, so good that it stops you with a semblance of alertness as you consider just how great it is. And so you say to yourself, “I think I’ll stop for awhile and enjoy these moments.” Maybe have some devotion time after your devotion time and more and more often, like this morning, I am finding myself not wanting to leave that time of worship and praise and awe inspiring wonder. Even today, I follow the ACTS way of praying; adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Only now, as I am older, I have modified it to ACTSAT. Oh, don’t misunderstand, my prayers are still chock full of confession and supplication! But the years have softened some edges and matured some outlook and the closer I grow to God it brings me again and again closer in the knowledge that He is so worthy and worthy to be praised – in a blinding sort of way that can only be expressed prostrate before Him. What in this world could not be done if God were in the doing?


     Certainly I won’t be able to spend all morning here in reflection. Soon I will be pulling out boxes and laying aside paper, tucking away treasures for yet another year. It will be a day job that I will dally into three and no matter how hard I try the last sparkles with not leave until April. Some of it will go rather fast as the flowers and whatnots get tucked away and the tree will go very slow as it always does. One by one the ornaments will be taken down, wrapped up for safety, and nestled in a safe box for storage. Many times I will stop and hold an ornament and remember the chubby little hands that so lovingly put it together over twenty years ago and, yes, if no one is watching I will laugh and I will cry. Laughter for those chubby hands and chubby smile and chubby wonderment that my boys always had as they readied our home for Christmas and tears of gratitude for God’s provision as He took care of us in some much harder times. It is a large tree that looms before me and it holds on its branches the imprints of the fullness of life.

     There needn’t have been more to our tree and yet there is. On what would be an old and dusty collection of life’s loving trinkets splayed across it breadth are newer and shinier treasures that dangle and dazzle before the lights. New chubby little hands have worked ferociously hard as only Christmas elves could to leave their marks of life in the promise of God’s provision. You have no idea what a couple of popsicle sticks and a whole lot of love can make but I promise you, if it surrounds a picture of a princess and a note that says, “I love you, Papa” or “I love you, Lama,” it has the power of landing great gratitude on the humbled heart. Oh, Lord, how can we ever adore or thank thee enough?

     What then could be the motivation for wanting to take down the tree and place all my memories away in hiding for so long again? Could I humbly suggest that while it is true that we will see the footsteps of where God has been all through our yesteryears we lay them aside because that is not where He is working now. Our tradition for closing out one season and opening another has great biblical roots and the God who led the children of Israel into a new land is waiting to lead you, and me, further today. I must, albeit lovingly, wrap up my trinkets one by one and give them rest because the Father is no longer there; He is holding me today and waiting for me tomorrow. And what waits for us in tomorrow? All tomorrows! And more chubby hands in the journey. Rick and I ask that you would join us in prayer as we seek to reach more hurting families in 2010 with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and open our lives further, and our home, to more children.

     May He bless all of you in 2010 with the imprint of life and the wonderment of eternity. What is it that you could not do if He were in the doing? I dare say, 2010 is the year to do anything and everything.

“My eager desire and hope being that I may never feel ashamed, but that now as ever I may do honor to Christ in my own person by fearless courage.” (Philippians 1:20)

A Christmas Story

“I have to trust God for the journey.”

Simple. Matter of fact. Unwavering. If you weren’t careful you’d miss just how quiet her voice really is. She says this so strongly and all at once you’re reminded once again how powerfully God works in the lives of those who love Him. You wouldn’t have to tell her that this is a world dotted with disease, she knows all of that first hand, but you couldn’t convince her that miracles still didn’t occur for she knows all about them now. That night we were coming together to pray for one more.

All the little ones are asleep now, dreaming Christmas dreams, while my big ones wrap last minute gifts and pots and pans clang together in a kitchen dusted with flour and beginning to smell like ham. I am in between dishes so I slip away to write before life speeds up again – somewhere, somehow I have to keep finding places to put the miracles. Some are on scraps of paper tucked inside my Bible or purse as they wait to go into a journal, others are noted on the back cover of my Bible and still too many rest in my head and on my heart and I fear they will never all be written down. But this one should because it’s Christmas and what would a Christmas story be without a Christmas miracle?

I had nothing to give her and she didn’t care, she never came to me asking for anything. Somebody else called me to see if I could help because she had inspired them but here it was a week before Christmas and the coffers are near dry. Food and gas, yes, but finding a place to lay your head when you have none is next to impossible and finding a home by Christmas is just out of the question. Especially when you don’t have a penny and won’t for another couple of months until you are out of school. So we did what Christians do, we came together to lift it up in prayer. It was when her small hands melded into mine that I noticed that she was missing a number of fingers. I guess it surprised me, not for the injury, but because she was completing Cosmetology School in record time. It couldn’t have made it any easier, could it? As I rubbed the places on her hands that had seen so much hurt, I asked before I thought, “What happened to your hands, honey?”

“Well,” Miss Liz, “That’s when it was all getting bad. We were all doing the drugs and selling the drugs and some of them, my boyfriend included, started to get nervous. They thought I was talking to the Feds about them and decided to kill me. They attacked me with a hammer, that there is what happened to my fingers and the side of my mouth, and then they set me on fire. It’s amazing I don’t look worse than I do.”

She doesn’t remember who put out the flames or much about the life flight to the hospital but she does remember that when she got better she went to jail – they all did. Whoever had been talking had talked enough. “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Miss Liz, I was running pretty bad and I deserved to go in. And I ain’t mad about it either, it was there I found Jesus.”

And so she did. I asked if she relapsed after she got out of jail and she laughed like she does and said, “Oh, yea, that very first week!” She was clean, but she didn’t know how to live clean. But, she did know Jesus so she walked herself right into a church and told them they had to help her learn to live clean. Just like that. She signed up for school, worked every single hour they would let her, and one month before she was done she is now homeless. And so, we did what Christians do and we gathered together to pray. The coffee house rocked there for a little bit, I’ll give you that.

“See, Miss Liz, this is why I just have to trust God for the journey. You and I both know that there is just no way for me to get a place for me and the boys by Christmas. Everybody knows that. But what I know that they don’t is that God ain’t done with me yet. He didn’t bring me here to just drop me off and say ‘No, more, that’s all you’re going, girl.’ No ma’am, He’s got work for me to do and I’m telling you, I’m going to trust Him for this.”

Now, you’ve got to know, I agreed with her. There was just no way for her to get a home in a week. And because this is what I do more times that I want, I didn’t want to promise her something I certainly couldn’t deliver on nor did I want to give her false hope. But……but you weren’t there. And so, as I held her hand and rubbed over those spots that still must hurt now and then I said, “I think you’ve got your trust put exactly where it needs to be.”

Two days ago….well, now three, it’s officially Christmas as I write this….she is given a key to her new home. It may have been the most joyous message ever left on my voicemail! A few phone calls and a couple of angels later she has rugs and dishes and lamps and whatnots because isn’t joy just like that, contagious as all get out? She’s nice and warm and tucked away with her boys and doesn’t have to worry about rent for quite a few months and how about that for a Christmas story?

So I have a few more dishes to cook and there’s a little more quiet to be had and soon the house will wake up to squeals of laughter and you know, that will be just fine. We love our babies and delight in their delights. I was most delighted the other evening, however, when I heard sneaking little girls crawling and whispering around the tree wondering the wonders of Christmas and I heard the wise big sister explain to the little sister, “You know, Christmas isn’t about us, it’s about Jesus. He’s the real gift.” It is my prayer that each person here knows that there’s miracles to be had – you just have to trust God for the journey.

Merry Christmas!

Precious Cargo

     I read about cargo cults a number of years ago but most recently began thinking of them during a quiet period I've had that's been focused on missions and evangelism.  During WWII, the military discovered a number of isolated tribal groups on various South Pacific islands that it was utilizing and began a practice of flying over the islands and dropping down food and goods.  Later, after the war, missionary groups sought to evangelize these unreached people groups only to discover that it was nearly impossible to do so for they had learned to worship the planes!

     Cargo cults don't really exist today in the classic sense as technology has made isolation nearly impossible, but many not so good things came out of those times.  A cargo cult mentality was developed and some people learned to control other groups with goods and services.  At the other extreme, some churches simply stopped their need meeting completely considering it to be a social program that did no good at all.  But in the middle, where most everybody still stands, the worst of the outpouring from the cargo cults is the fact that we haven't learned very much at all from history.

     The problem was never the cargo, it was always the plane.  Cargo is often the vehicle by which your compassion, and your witness, will travel.  It certainly was a good enough method of reaching the unreached for our Savior and He did it for every reason that we should do it too.  His heart was stirred by compassion!  For that very reason, Jesus did not load up chariots of loaves and fish and send them to the masses, although He very well could have.  No, instead He went to the people with the bread and fish and touched them in the process.

     This year, Christians have some of the greatest opportunities to reach out to our surrounding communities with hearts stirred by compassion and hands of help.  Many will deliver welcome Christmas dinners to families who would have instead gone without.  Others will adopt families for Christmas and surprise boys and girls in a most wonderful way.  These families will appreciate you, of this I have no doubt, and will talk about your good work for many years to come.

     But, if come next Easter their last sighting of you was the taillights of your car as you pulled away waving on December 24th, you have failed to deliver the most precious cargo of all.   

     This Christmas, I would like to challenge you to invest yourself into your community.  If you are meeting a need this year for a needy family (and Christian, is there any good reason you are not?), would you commit to loving this family all the way until next Christmas?  It would amaze you the work God has for you right there where you are already planning to go anyway.  I can think of no better way to see the reward of saved lives than Christians investing their faith into other people.  What better Christmas gift can you give than reaching out to someone fully enough to share with them the gift of eternal life that can only be had in the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ?

     "May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice."   (Psalm 141.2)

     Could our prayer, our compassion, and our witness this year be so fiery hot that it would warm the homes of many for all the months ahead?  It can, if that be your fervor and your passion.  It will, if that be your intention.  There is an inescapable truth - a person will always follow their heart's desire.  Where, my friend, is yours leading you?  I pray for the precious cargo you are carrying with you today.