author - speaker - real bible loving gal
Love has a name
"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:18 (NIV)
I taught on this verse last week in the REAL Women's Bible study (you can listen to it online here). Then God put me in His laboratory - time for the practical part of the lesson! In the days since, I've encountered four lives that remind me to walk the talk. Allow me introduce them to you.
Christopher. I just came from his memorial service this afternoon. His name means "One who bears Christ" and according to the testimony of his family and friends, he lived up to that name. I've been acquainted with Christopher and his wife, Katherine, for a number of years, but I had no idea the impact he had from here to Japan. Christopher worked with his hands, building things, lighting things, climbing things, tiling things, fixing things at orphanages, camps, and missionary homes. He served the middle school youth and their leaders, accompanying them on trips and patiently teaching tweens and teens how to use power tools. Applauded for his deep knowledge of the Scriptures, he was humble enough to never step in or correct young pastors, even when he knew they were wrong. His love extended well beyond his knowledge in countless acts, sacrificing time, energy, and money. Everyone he served had a name, and he knew it. Every service was done to the best of his abilities. And people traveled thousands of miles to honor his life, now that he's with his Lord. He loved "in action and in truth."
Jack. A few days ago, I saw a sign posted outside one of the apartment complexes on our street - The Park at Monterey Oaks. They're holding a "Walk for Jack" on April 14th at 11:00 am. Jack steam cleans carpets at the complex. His wife is in hospice care, dying of breast cancer. The apartment staff is taking up donations, selling popcorn on Fridays, and organizing a walk on the Park's greenbelt to help the family meet medical expenses. Loving "in action and in truth" for this family can be as easy as buying a bag of popcorn, taking a 1/4 mile walk, or making an online donation (www.WalkforJacwww.WalkforJack.orgk.org).
Riley Jane. I remember when Riley Jane was born ten years ago. She was physically weak and challenged from the start. Wheelchair-bound her entire life and never able to speak a complete sentence, but she had a smile that lit up the room, and she loved to laugh and bounce and wear bows in her hair. Flu and pneumonia overwhelmed her fragile body last week, and we said good-bye to her on Monday, knowing that she's dancing for the first time in her brand new fully-functioning form. Her mother, Gayle, says that all of the hospital visits (probably around 100 in Riley Jane's short lifetime) and all of the heartache was worth it - the love Riley Jane's family gave her was returned to them seven times over. She loved - and was loved - "in action and in truth."
Dave. A close friend of mine has been ministering to Dave for the last couple of years. He is homeless, struggling with addiction, and physically very ill. Last week, the doctors told him that he has a serious liver condition - likely brought on by years of alcohol abuse - and has only months to live. They will perform surgery in a couple of weeks to try to make things better, but the diagnosis is grim. Even more grim is the fact that Dave has no home, no place to go for a safe recovery, no food to sustain him after he is released from the hospital. What little money he has coming in will help pay for a cheap motel room down the street from our church after the procedure. He will need someone to bring him food until he is strong enough to be out on his own again. It's more than my friend can manage on her own. Who will show him love "in action and in truth?"
Christopher. Jack. Riley Jane. Dave. Love has names like these. In my limited capacity as a human being, I can't love the entire world all at once. My brain can't even wrap around the concept, let alone my heart. But I can love them one at a time, if I take the time to get to know them. Know their story. Know their name. And then put action and truth in the love I'm called to give.
Because that's what God did for me. He didn't keep me at a distance and love me with just words. He entered my world, lived like I live. He hurt and wept and laughed and joked and worked. And then He gave Himself up - body, soul and spirit - so that I could be saved, only to rise again and prove that Love is greater than the worst this world can dish out. Love is greater than addiction, cancer, birth defects and death. And Love walks with me through all these things and more, promising to one day carry me to a place where I am beyond their reach. Until then, He asks me to love others as I am loved.
All because Love knows my name.
If you want to help Dave out or participate in the "Walk for Jack" in the coming weeks, let me know.
Abiding in Christ
This week in the REAL Women's Bible Study, we talked about abiding in Christ. 1 John 2:27 says "As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you.....just as it has taught you, remain in Him." Remain. Abide. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Nothing easy.
Abiding in Christ isn't the kind of thing we can check off of a to-do list, which usually makes women like me crazy. I'm a "get out there and accomplish something" kind of gal. I like my deadlines and I like the kudos that come with meeting them. I like the sense of satisfaction I get when I cross a line out on my task-oriented agenda. How does "remain in Christ" fit into that kind of mentality?
It doesn't. Which is the point. That's not to say that the Apostle John doesn't help me out with this little quandry. In the first chapter and a half, he's pointed out several things that help me remain in Christ:
- Remember the gospel of Christ, the beginning (1 John 1:1)
- Stay in fellowship with God and His children (1 John 1:3)
- Walk in the light of truth (1 John 1:7)
- Confess sin and accept God's forgiveness and purification (1 John 1:9)
- Obey His commands (1 John 2:4)
- Love one another (1 John 2:10)
- Don't love the world's way of life (1 John 2:15)
Good practical stuff. And by remaining in Christ in these ways, I experience the power of the Holy Spirit, the anointing, in my life. Gimme some of that!
As we ladies in the Bible study considered these things this week, we sang a song called "At Your Feet." It's an older worship song by the band Switchfoot along with a tag from another song from the group Iona, and we used to sing it here at FEFC some years ago. I've put the lyrics to the song below. Would you pray them back to the Father? Would you consider adding "remain" not to your "to-do" list, but to your "to-be" list?
At Your Feet (Switchfoot/Iona)At Your side, I find joy.At Your side I find my peaceAt Your side, I find a purpose.At Your side You meet my needs.I have run so far ahead and fallen way too far behindBut I belong at Your side At Your feet, I find rest.At Your feet, I find my peace.At Your feet, I find forgiveness.At Your feet, You meet my needs.I've wandered every crooked path, a bitter road I thought was sweetBut I belong at Your feet. In Your arms, I find comfort.In Your arms, I find my peace.In Your arms, I find Your tender holy love to meet my needs.I have sought a stranger's care and a liar's fading charmsBut I belong in Your arms.Oh, I belong in Your arms. Here we can bathe in a love that's divine.Here we can know I am Yours, You are mine.Here, in Your arms that are faithful and strong,Here with You, this is where I belong.
Making Contact
I love it when God makes contact with me. Now, I know, technically, He's in contact with me all of the time. But I crave those moments when God's touch is palpable, mind-blowing, and undeniable. That happened earlier this week. I'm praying through some tricky personal situations and God chose to answer me with Mark 5:25-34, a passage about a woman making contact with Jesus.
So Jesus went with him (the man whose daughter was sick). A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, "Who touched me?'" But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." (Mark 5:24-34)
It's a familiar passage to me, one I've probably read a hundred times, so I was surprised when it all but levitated off of the pages of my Bible the other day. I couldn't ignore it or move past it - like the Holy Spirit took my face in His hands, pointed at it and said "There! Read there!" Maybe you've had that happen to you, too. It's not immediately obvious to me how it applies to my specific situations. But as I've been praying it through, I learned some new things along the way that I'd love to share. Allow me to make some observations.
The woman in this passage suffered for a long time and all of the world's solutions failed her. In her culture, her bleeding made her "unclean" and unable to worship at the Temple. And since her society was largely centered around religion, her unclean status would have made her entire life very hard. That's why she was willing to go through so much to try to get better. She spent all her money on doctors, looking for solutions to her problems. She had probably tried all of the crazy - even painful - things anyone suggested, anything that held out a small hope of working.
I know that kind of desperation. Many of you know that I struggle with my weight. I've been tempted by all kinds of diets, pills, exercise plans, and fasts - some of them expensive. Maybe you've been struggling with a job, marriage troubles, health issues, kids or whatever. If you've been wrestling with it long enough, I bet you've been tempted the same way with self-help books and all kinds of solutions that the world has to offer. Some of them may have been extreme and maybe even painful. All of them have failed us. Which is where Jesus comes along.
The woman pressed through the crowd to get to Jesus. Oh yeah. I get that. My life is incredibly crowded most of the time. Obligations and demands on my time try to crowd me away from Jesus all of the time. Your list is probably not that different from mine. Family, work, friends, the occasional crisis, the constant laundry, the long to-do list, maybe even eating and sleeping. Some days it feels like getting to Jesus is as hard as braving the Wal-Mart crowd on tax-free Saturday. And yet, if I could just get close enough to touch Him....maybe, just maybe....
The woman just wanted to touch Jesus and then sneak away, but Jesus had another plan. That's me a lot of the time, too. Just give me a little touch of Jesus, just enough to fix whatever is wrong with me and let me slip back into my life. No need for a fuss. No need to make a big deal out of it. Just a touch of His cloak and He and I can go back to whatever we were doing.
Don't get me wrong. I admire this woman's faith. She knew where to go to finally get the help she needed. She had the tenacity to press through the crowd. And she had enough faith to know that just touching the corner of His robe was more than enough to give her the healing she needed. Maybe she was so embarrassed and humiliated by her condition that she didn't think He would stop to give her more attention. Maybe she didn't think she was important enough to warrant a proper appointment with Him. But maybe she was hoping to keep the whole thing a secret.
Jesus is not satisfied with being used for His power. He wants to give us way more of Himself than that. After the woman touches Jesus and tries to sneak away, Jesus stops and insists on knowing who touched Him got healed. Think about that for a second. Jesus stops in His tracks, looks around and asks who touched Him - AS IF HE DIDN'T KNOW! He is God after all. It reminds me a little bit of God walking in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve where hiding from Him. "Where are you?" He called out. Like a parent playing hide and seek with the child "hiding" behind the curtains.
The woman is forced to make a choice. Come forward into God's presence, or run as fast as she can the other way. No more sneaking around. No half-hearted measures. No sitting on the fence. She's either in all the way with Jesus, or she's out.
The woman chooses to be in. She falls at His feet and lays the whole story out for everyone to see. I'm sure she was terrified, embarrassed, and miserable in that moment. But at least three wonderful things happened. First, the woman was acknowledged by Jesus as worthy of His attention, even though the rest of the world considered her "unclean." Second, everyone knew that Jesus' power healed where all of men's efforts had failed. And third, Jesus declared that the woman's faith had made her a "daughter" of God.
I could go on for days about any one of these three things. But I hope you see the point. Making contact with God isn't a sneak-around kind of thing. It's not supposed to be, anyway. God doesn't intend to have us creeping in from the edges, getting whatever we need from Him and then crawling back to our everyday lives. When we go public with our interactions with the divine, amazing and wonderful things happen.
So as I continue to press through and reach for Him, I'm banking on a belief that one touch from Him will bring healing to all of the situations I've been wrestling with - my own bleeding wounds, if you will. And when He chooses to heal me, I hope I'm prepared to go public with the moment that God made contact with me. I'm all in, or at least I want to be. We'll have to wait and see if I'm brave enough in the moment to actually spill my guts at the feet of my Savior.
All this to say that making contact with God is no trifling matter. It's a powerful, amazing thing, when you think about it. We believers may take it for granted, but God doesn't intend us to. Instead, at least in this case, He intends for us to go public. Yes, He has power to heal all of our deep bleeding wounds. But then He wants us to share that power and give Him the credit - the glory - for what He has done in our lives. Oh, and He loves to call us "daughter" or "son," too. He doesn't give us the option of being secret believers. He wants us to be brave enough to go public, even if it's embarrassing and uncomfortable.
Are you willing to be brave?
Please remind me...
God has blessed me with many things, but grace and coordination are not among them. I've known this since I was young. I tried to water ski, and I hurt myself. I tried to snow ski, and I hurt myself. I went hiking instead of rock climbing (smart choice), and I fell into a cactus and hurt myself. I went climbing on some rocks at Perdenales State Park (not as smart a choice), fell and broke my arm, a.k.a. hurt myself. And yet, for some reason all of this escaped my mind when afforded an opportunity to go ice skating this weekend. I'll be careful, I thought. I could use the exercise, I thought. I can handle this, I thought. And then I fell. And I hurt myself. And only after nursing a bruised head and sprained elbow, THEN I remembered that I am a clutz.
Just because ice cream is available does not mean that I am the one who is supposed to eat it. That goes for chocolate, apple pie, french fries, and Frosted Mini Wheats, too. Where those frosted wheat bits and milk are, there you will find me. For some reason, there is a place in my brain that believes the world will crumble if I do not consume such wonders immediately. I don't even need to be hungry. A mere awareness of their presence is enough. These beautiful foods are gifts of God - but not just for me. I CAN share. I CAN have just a little now and a little later. I CAN wait until I'm actually hungry. I do not have to eat the whole box RIGHT NOW.
If I haven't updated my Facebook status today, that doesn't mean I don't exist. Most evenings I log in to see what's going on in my circle of family and friends. I scroll through the photos, announcements, and clever quotes, enjoying even this frail connection with the world outside. Then I look at the link at the top that says "What's on your mind?" And I go blank. There's nothing on my mind. Then I start to panic. Have I lost my mind? Did it slip away when I wasn't noticing? Has nothing happened at all today that is status update worthy? Is my life really that boring? Do I HAVE a life? Okay...deep breaths....oh yeah, social networking is not the real world. Thanks for the reminder.
No one's life will end if I don't check off all of the things on my to-do list today. In fact, no one will probably care. It's not that the work I do isn't important. It is. But so is eating and sleeping and my family and my sanity. Putting something in pen and ink on paper doesn't equate a contract signed in blood. Some things can wait until tomorrow. But....but...but....it's on the LIST!!!
Despite all of the above, God loves me anyway. In fact, the Bible says He's crazy about me. Me? Yeah... "enthralled with [my] beauty" in fact (Psalm 45:11). Thank you, Angela Thomas, for the reminder. I don't feel very beautiful very often. I sometimes don't feel very lovable either. Yet God's word stands as truth, regardless of what I feel. The Scriptures sit in my hands, ready to affirm all of His heart and his purposes in loving me with this crazy, absurd, unbelievable love. It's just that sometimes, I forget.
So what do you need to be reminded of?
My house needs to go on a diet
My house is fat.
The realization first dawned on me about a month ago. I finally cleared away time and energy to get out my Christmas decorations. And I barely had room to properly display all of my favorite bits and baubles. Two nativity scenes didn't make the cut - there simply was no place to put them. I have an entire box of decorations that went back on the shelf in the garage untouched. No room FOR the inn, let alone the holy family in the stable next door. It was a sad day.
My next clue came when I began preparing my guest room for family to arrive. At my house, the guest room is on the first floor, just off of our sun room/office with easy access from the kitchen and main living areas of the house. Which means that when I'm straightening up the main areas, I will often grab things, chuck them onto the guest room bed, and shut the door. Think of it as Spanx for the downstairs. Over time, the stacks of boxes, bags, odds and ends had piled up in every corner. Add to that the clutter from a kid's project or two and you can imagine the mess. But the disarray wasn't the problem. It was the five large trash bags of junk that I pulled out that alarmed me. FIVE??? What was I doing keeping all of that stuff in my house?
Now that family has come and gone, I've had a few days to assess my home's curves and bumps. We have plenty of space. And we also have crammed into that space way more than we need. Isn't that the definition of being fat? Taking in more than we use? Hauling around more weight than we should?
I suppose it's time to put my home on a diet. Time to carefully consider what comes in the door to stay. Time to exercise off some of the excess that I've collected over the years. Just like getting my body in shape, it will take time, persistence, self-control, and dedication. With a little bit of work each day, I believe I can make a change for the better health of my home. I'm at least willing to try.
So in 2012, my annual re-dedication to healthy living will include my living areas as well as my body. I want to limit my intake of sugar AND shopping. I want to move my muscles AND move some stuff to the curb. I'd like to look better physically AND have my house less cluttered, too.
What about you? Does your home need to go on a diet?
Waking up worshipping
On Saturday morning, I had that luxury. But I didn't do it. Instead I woke up worshiping God. No kidding. It's never happened to me before.
Last week was one of the two busiest weeks of my ministry year. We had a Women's Christmas Dinner on Friday night, serving about 265 women. It's a huge endeavor, and I have a wonderful team helping me. But I was exhausted when it was all over with. And I was looking forward to a long sleep-in on Saturday morning. I went to bed thrilled with all that had happened, how God had shown up and ministered to the women. And I woke up with Him on my mind and pervading the air in my room.
Instead of lolly-gagging in bed, I popped awake and was already praying before my mind was fully alert. My body was sore, but I dragged it down to the couch anyway. Instead of turning on the TV and easing into the day, I reached for my Bible. The mere thought of doing anything but talking to God and reading Scripture was simply unappealing.
I don't know if that happens to anyone else, but I can't recall it ever happening to me before. I don't think it had anything to do with me or how spiritual I am these days. I think it had everything to do with God showing up at the dinner and then invading my morning with an extra dose of Him. For more than an hour, I prayed, read the Bible, and "wasted time" with God.
I'd love to have that happen more often. I'd love to say that my heart is naturally inclined to spend time with God first thing in the morning. More often, my heart is inclined to mump and grump and grouse about cold bathroom floors and bad hair days. The only explanation for my unusual wake-up call Saturday is the invasion of an unusually gracious God pursuing me.
Now I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don't have to do spiritual calisthenics to manufacture a sense of God's presence. I don't have to cajole or beg or plead with Him for a moment of His gracious attention. No, I was dead to the world when He showed up in my bedroom and my brain. I didn't so much as give Him a "Hello how are You?" before He wrapped me up in a fluffy blanket of joy. Even now, I'm a little misty-eyed to think that He loves me and wants to be with me so much that He would wake me up to the fragrance of His Spirit. I'm not even sure I can totally put words around it. All I know is that I want more.
Have you ever woken up worshiping?
Playing with rocks
Sounds fun, huh?
Actually it was. We were working with the Austin Disaster Relief Network to help a family who had suffered great loss in the wildfires back in September. This family owned an 87-acre zip-line and wildlife center. 86 acres had burned. God's mercy saved their house, but not much else. What was once a lush landscape of oaks, cedars, and all kinds of grasses and vegetation for their herd of bison now looks like something out of a spooky movie. All you could see were tall, black, charred remains of trees, soot-colored soil, and rocks. Lots of rocks.
The property had been beautiful, I'm sure. The land had a couple of springs and ravines that would have been breath-taking, particularly if you were hanging from one of the many lines in the canopy above. I can't imagine waking up to the contrast every single day, like those home owners do. Heart-breaking. It's going to be years before it recovers. We were there to help it along.
The danger now is erosion. All of the vegetation that used to slow the runoff into the creek and ravines is gone. There's plenty of rich topsoil, but nothing at all to keep the rain from washing it all down the creek and clogging it up. So we collected rocks by the wheel-barrow load and began building berms and dams and blockades to trap the soil and keep it on higher ground.
All of this work had to be done by hand. Large machines on the property would compact the soil and crush any seeds that are taking root. As I searched for loose rocks large enough to be hard for water to move but small enough to be manageable, I could see hundreds of blue bonnet plants coming up from the black soil. There were small patches of grass and clover, encouraged by the fall showers that we've had. But these were tiny fragile things. The thought of a bulldozer trampling these signs of life was unbearable.
And so my husband, my children and I worked with others from our church and moved hundreds of pounds of rock. The property owner worked side by side with us, directing our efforts, and pulling fallen branches and trees into long lines to help slow down any water coming down the hillside. By three in the afternoon, we were all tired and sore. Our faces were smudged in black, our clothes filthy and we stank to high heaven. But a berm protecting the homestead and a three-foot high dam at the head of a ravine stood as proud monuments to our efforts.
The owner had tears in her eyes as we prayed with her to close the day. We hugged her and each other in satisfaction for the hours of hard labor. And as my family and I drove away, I looked back over the property and sighed. I prayed that the rocks exposed by fire would serve well in their new locations. Though the land was scarred beyond belief, what was uncovered was exactly what was needed. With the help of many hands, the owner could now have hope in the recovery of her little corner of paradise.
Have you been ravaged by a fire of one kind or another? Maybe not a physical fire, but something far more intense and devastating - betrayal,financial ruin, bad news from the doctor. What rocks have been exposed that are now available to shore up the weak areas and help you in the recovery? Perhaps all you need are some extra hands to come move things around and build up your defenses as you rest and recover. And with that help, Lord willing, someday you will be lush and beautiful again....maybe even more than you ever were. That's my prayer.
What's in a name?
Then there was the kicker named Succop. Doesn't look so bad until you say it out loud. The on-air commentators, after saying it a few times - "suck-up" - observed that had to grow up knowing how to fight. Not the best name for a professional football player, kicker or otherwise.
Names have always fascinated me. They shape our growing up years and impact our personalities, whether our parents believe it or not. My college friend named Plymouth Rock... and yes, that is his given name... can attest to it. What were his parents thinking? Were they trying to be cute? Did they consider the impact such a name would have on their son? He had to deal with the teasing all of his growing up and adult life. Surely that impacted how he developed and what he thought of himself as he navigated the jokes and questioning looks at every introduction. I would have changed my name for sure.
Which is interesting, because I did exactly that. My given name is Laura. Not a bad name at all. In fact, it follows a family pattern, giving me connection to generations behind me. My grandmother's name was Leola - five letters, begins with an "l", ends with an "a". I share her middle name - Katherine. So my birth name is Laura Katherine. I continued that pattern in naming my daughter, Liana. My issue with my first name came up in junior high school when I was one of five Lauras in my class. Way too confusing. Plus, I was feeling rebellious. So I changed to my middle name, which later got shorted to Kat. It only took nine years for my parents to figure out that I was serious. I think it was printing my wedding invitations under the name Katherine that did it.
Knowing how important names have been to me and others that I know, my husband and I took a great deal of care in naming our children. Not only does Liana's name follow the family pattern on my side, but her name means "vine" in Latin. It reminds us of John 15:5 where Jesus says "I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." We want our daughter to always know that she depends on her Lord always - it's part of her identity.
For our son, Devin, we chose an Irish name as a tribute to his dad's heritage. It means "poet" and harkens back to a day when poets were also warriors. It reminds us of King David, the man after God's own heart, a warrior for God's people and the most prolific poet in Scripture. Being after God's heart, strong and tender at the same time is our dream for our boy. So we wrapped up his name and identity in that.
The Hebrews were great about naming their children as a way of memorializing some characteristic or great moment associated with their birth. Samuel means "asked of God" and honors the Lord who gave Hannah a child after so much waiting. Rachel and Leah had a field day with their boys' names, naming each of them after the emotions and desires they had with each one. Names like Rueben (behold a son!), Simeon (hearing), Levi (joined), Judah (confessor) and Joseph (added) all reflect various stages in the rivalry between the two sisters as the tribes of Israel were born.
Sometimes that practice got a little weird, though. I'm not sure I would name my children Mahlon (pining) and Kilion (sickness) like Naomi did, no matter how bad the famine of the time was. Seems like you're destining your child to tough times, maybe like Whimper or Succop or Plymouth Rock. I think I'm more of an optimist than Naomi.
So how wonderful is it that God gives us the name Christian? It means "little Christ" quite literally. Our identity wrapped up in Him and representing Him to a messed up world. It's a name I don't live up to nearly as often as I'd like. I choose instead to name myself, just like I did in junior high. And the names I choose aren't nearly so pretty, like "selfish" or "driven" or "fearful." Even other names like Mom or Wife are incomplete as identities for me, and I often long to be something more (or sometimes less!) But God calls me His child, a little chip off the ol' block, a Christian. A name that continually calls me higher. Kinda cool.
So what's your name? What does it say about you and how does it shape who you are?
A Halloween Rant
I know a lot of folks love Halloween. I used to. I enjoyed dressing up and trick-or-treating as a kid. My children have enjoyed their annual costumes (this is our first year without them - another sign that they're growing up) and fall festivals at the church. So I'm not knocking my friends and neighbors who are looking forward to some good clean fun tomorrow night.
What appalls me is the complete disregard for decency that some folks have regarding this particular holiday. For example, the "House of Torment" billboard on southbound Hwy 183 that my kids can't even look at. The first time I saw it, I felt physically ill, it was so graphic. Or how about the house in my neighborhood on my way to the grocery store that has more zombies and bloody skeletons coming up from their lawn than grass? Or the horror movie trailers that pop up on TV so regularly that I have keep my finger on the channel button to keep my kids from having nightmares.
The horror part of Halloween has been around forever, I know, but I remember having to go to a haunted house or someplace like that to get a good gross out or scare. For the more sensitive folks - like my son - who can't handle it, all you have to do is avoid the haunted house. But these days, I can't drive down the road without telling my kids when they can open their eyes. So I'm ready for the Halloween grossness to go away.
When did it become okay to be graphically obscene in public this time of year? When did Halloween lose the fun in favor of the frightful? Am I just more sensitive now that I'm a mom, or have things really gotten worse?
I don't have any solutions - just frustrations. It's the ugly side of the world my family and I live in and we're going to have to learn to cope somehow. But at this time of year, I wonder what God thinks as He looks down on our billboards, television programming and party stores. I wonder that He doesn't zap us all where we stand.
Truth be told, when it comes to the holiness of God, as ugly as some of the Halloween stuff is, we're not that much further away from Him than any other time of year. That is to say, we're so far away from God's holiness and perfection that this annual backslide is miniscule by comparison. The depravity of man is just more obvious to me in October. And I don't like it. Now that it's come to the surface and the store fronts, I can't avoid it. Perhaps a better response from me, then, is prayer. And so I pray for my city, my culture, my nation. I should be praying all of the time for these things, for God to forgive our ugliness and our fascination with all things not Him. But it's only at this time of year that I'm really bothered enough by it all to do it.
Hmmm....maybe that's the good thing about Halloween for me. A call to prayer that's too loud for me to ignore. A way to celebrate God's power this time of year by falling on His grace, forgiveness, and begging Him for transformation. And, as usual, all of that has to start with me. Lord, change me to be a willing intercessor for my culture that is so far from honoring You!
OK...rant over. What do you think about Halloween?
Motion Sensors
Some of the motion sensors in the office are more sensitive than others, I've noticed. I was in the building late last week after a meeting, tying up a few loose ends. Most of the doors were closed as I made my way down the hall towards my little corner. My office light clicked on after I made it two steps into the room. Very convenient. But as I was walking out for the night, I noticed that one or two other office lights came on as I passed by. Even with the door closed. It felt a little eerie, actually, but I marveled at the fine-tuning of those sensors, catching the slightest breeze of my feet passing by through the gap at the bottom of the door.
I would like to be that sensitive, in some ways. One specific way, in fact. What if I were so sensitive to the motions of God that I just flicked on like a light switch every time He moved in my vicinity? Ready for action. Ready to serve. Ready to shine at the slightest breath of a move of the Spirit. That would be cool.
I find that I'm a lot more like the motion sensor switch in my own office, though. God walks boldly into my world a step or two before I notice that He's there. It takes more effort on His part to get my attention. He's gracious and patient with me, and knows that I work that way, and I'm grateful. He takes the time to step into my space and talk to me, lead me, let me in on what He's up to and invite me to join Him.
But I'd like to be a little more sensitive to His movements. Maybe light up like a big bright florescent bulb when He's approaching and ready to do whatever is next on His agenda. To shine out in my corner anytime He's on the move anywhere near me. Even before He's fully revealed His plan, I want to light up with anticipation and expectation That's what I'm praying for.
I haven't a clue how to adjust the motion sensor on my light switch. I didn't install it in the first place and I don't have the tools to tweak it. But I know Who does. And I think He's just waiting for me to ask.
Are you sensitive to God's movements in your life? Would you ask Him to fine-tune your sensors?
