Archive for April, 2010
By His Grace
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I woke up this morning with a song in my heart and a dance in my feet. I love it when a day begins – and ends – that way. I slept great last night. I finished two grad classes yesterday and am sliding in to finish with just one more class which begins today. My husband fixed my computer, which I am quite sure had been possessed by some evil spirit. The sun is shining; the birds are singing with me on this springtime morning. My diet is working and the scales are going down, down, down. My husband and I are experiencing a new honeymoon of sorts after 32 years. My kids are doing well. I am expecting my first grandchild. I have friends who love me. My church is filled with amazing people. I have an appointment with my hair stylist who will effectively hide all my gray today and make my hair look like the sun kissed it. Someone is looking at my house for the second time in a week and I pray they make an offer so we can downsize.
Does life get any better than this? It is so easy to thank God during the good days, but what can we do when the days are not so good?
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The Power of Awakened Desire
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What do you think of when you think of the word “desire”?
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My Bridge Over Troubled Waters
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In 1969, Paul Simon wrote a powerful song which he and Art Garfunkel recorded in 1970. The expression of Paul’s heart in the song conveys the message that he would be a friend when friends could not be found; that he, himself, would be a bridge over his friend’s troubled water.
I was so struck by this thought yesterday as I listened to a lovely lady share how she had endured so many difficult things, felt alone so often, but God had revealed to her through a prayer team at our church that He had been her bridge every time over those troubled waters. She had not, in fact, been alone. God was there.
How many times have we felt abandoned during our hard times? And truthfully, many people do abandon us, but one thing I have begun to ask God in the last couple of years is that He would show me where He was during dark moments in my past. I, too, find that He has been my bridge, and that often the way He has done that was through others as they became “bridges” for me to walk on. My heart was moved to write these thoughts…
The Bridge
I hear the water below me
The power of its rushing
Stirs the fear within me
Yet the other side
Beckons me to keep walking
This bridge under my feet
Gives me strength
Although it doesn’t completely
Take my fears away
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Are You Tired?
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Isaiah 53:4 contains a beautifully mysterious phrase. Jesus carried our sorrows.
What an amazing thought! The very idea of “sorrows” invokes feelings of things that are weighty and burdensome. To know that there is One who will carry those things which are too heavy for me is a thought which comforts and encourages my soul.
Life is made of cycles and seasons, and you don’t have to live long to figure out that some of those are filled with sorrows and pain. When my life is filled with sorrows, I cry out for relief, longing to escape the place where my heart is torn apart. And Jesus answers. Sometimes his answer contain immediate rescue, but many times His answer carries this idea, “I will carry the sorrows for you.”
He always wants to carry our burdens, but we usually try to handle life in our own ways, carrying things in what we believe to be our own strength. The problem with that is, well, we don’t really have any strength! It is an illusion. Nothing reveals our lack of strength any more than sorrow and pain. When life becomes unbearable, then we are either driven to the feet of Jesus to ask for help or we are moved to reject him because we misunderstand his heart.
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The Truth about Shame
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Yesterday I blogged about a situation I had experienced where a mother wrongly used the Word of God with her son. In my estimation, her communication with her son was not honest and forthright. One of the most troubling things about the mother/son exchange that I witnessed was the way this mother tried to use shame to control and correct her son, all the while using the Word of God as her instrument of correction. (You’ll have to go back to yesterday’s post for more information.)
So the entire experience caused me to think about shame.
What is shame?
Why do we feel shame?
When should we feel shame?
When is shame unjustified?
How do we get rid of shame?
Dictionary.com defines shame as the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another. And another definition which applies to the scenario I saw yesterday is: to drive, force, etc., through shame. For most of us, shame is another word for embarrassment yet it can be much deeper than embarrassment.
I can think back to a time when my fourth grade teacher made me read a sentence over and over again into a tape recorder in front of my entire class until I could say a word correctly. Seems my Southern brogue was already in place and was corrupting my speech. I felt so ashamed as I tried repeatedly to say the word correctly.
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