When you feel your joy being depleted, no matter the cause, remember your joy comes from the Lord. Happy is an emotion and changes just as quickly as a traffic pattern, but joy, true joy, is from the Lord.
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God is not carrying around a big stick to hit or prod us with, to get us ‘back on track’ so that we can be ‘doing everything right’. He is leading us with gentleness.
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When God always goes the extra mile with his boundless grace and overflowing love for us, shouldn’t we as his children do the same? Ephesians 5:1-2 tells us to “‘Be imitators of God and live a life of love’ for then our lives are a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”.
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Follow your heart. Be true to yourself. Believe in yourself. Live your truth. All that matters is that you are happy. Manifest that. We have all heard at least one of these mantras. If you have social media especially, you have seen one of these posted. Our society speaks these phrases daily. I have seen them on Instagram, seen them in cute script as a tattoo, heard them in casual conversations, and had them quoted by different trainers I exercise with online. They are lies. While they have a nice ring and look pretty when we write them in an aesthetically pleasing font for a post, they are lies. They are not biblical or words Jesus spoke.
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I love that the Bible has so many verses on joy and rejoicing. St Paul who wrote to the Philippians from prison says ‘Rejoice, again I say rejoice.’ When Jesus prays for himself, his disciples, and for us his children, he prays that we will enjoy the joy he enjoyed. Doesn’t that sound beautiful?
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A more appealing alternative to finding solstice in nature than my ow futile attempts at solitude when I had young children; in moments when I craved a quiet respite, I would flee to the bathroom or my small closet. I would wonder, in those busy times of child-rearing and child training, if I would ever be able to have a clean and orderly patch of my small world for more than 10 minutes at a time.
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Seminary has stretched me in many ways and urged me to grow in empathy and experience. One class I am taking this semester is Christian History 50 CE - 1500 CE. Stick with me here. My class has learned about ancient theological arguments that have shaped the faith we practice today and divided the then-forming Christian tradition. Our professor arranged a visit to an Eastern Orthodox church to learn about their traditions, which are different than ours in the western church.
Read MoreThis month we started asking why we didn’t receive more answers to our prayers. Then, God issued a challenge - are we ready to RECEIVE the answers to our prayers. It’s funny how that works. As Christians, we talk about prayer and the mighty work God can do. However, we forget the second half of the verse…believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. All of these years of prayer - and we forgot the second half of the verse!
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A couple of years back when I visited Appa, he took me to his room and opened a draw, as if to show me a treasure. There in neat piles were all the letters, cards and paper clippings I had posted to him over the years. My eyes clouded with tears. That day I saw the soft tender part of my tall, dark, handsome and strong father.
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As a kid I loved stickers. Every single sticker I could get my hands on got a place of honor in my Lisa Frank sticker book. Mostly they were random “good work” stickers from school or a smiling tooth giving a thumb’s up from the dentist’s office. And 90s kids, remember the sticker boxes? They opened like a treasure chest to reveal several individual compartments filled with rolls and stacks of colorful, sparkly stickers.
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Joy, contentment, happiness, gladness. All similar words and arguably interchangeable. But what do these words mean to you - really?
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We have a sandbox at school. My students like to make sand pies, dig to the bottom of the box, make tracks, build sandcastles. Everyday is a completely new adventure when it comes to the sandbox. The other day, I sat down by a tiny human (about three years old) who decided to build a sandcastle. He chose the perfect pail and perfect shovel. Then he sat down to begin his work. He meticulously shoveled sand into the pail until it was full. After a few tugs on the pail, he managed to turn it over into the sandbox to dump the sand out. As he pulled the pail up, I watched the sand topple down in a messy heap. I took a breath, prepared to reassure him that we could try again together. But he looked at me with the proudest smile you’ve ever seen, and giggled.
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The other day I was at my church helping to set up for an event when out of nowhere I felt tiny arms wrap around me in a hug. I glanced down to see a little girl that I had never seen before. She looked up at me and said something which both surprised me and stuck with me: “I love you… what’s your name?”
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As I write this, I have been unable to hug my family in over 8 weeks. I have fortunately seen them in the past few weeks in short spurts with quite a bit of social distancing. For some, COVID-19 may have left you unemployed. During this season, you may have suffered anxiety, panic attacks, and depression
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I don't know about you, but during this time of lockdown, I have actually found it harder to be consistent with my quiet time rather than easier. It should seem the opposite, shouldn't it? Now that many of our social plans, outings, and even regular work hours are disrupted, shouldn't it be easier than ever before to come before the Lord? To carve out that time?
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Recently my son’s health began to decline, whilst trying to navigate this I was preparing to teach on Sunday. I kept on moving forward, childhood illnesses come and go, and I imagined this too would pass. My assigned passage was James 1.
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We’ve all heard the following phrase in some form. Maybe we’ve even said it ourselves: “Life happens and it isn’t always fair.”
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I used to play tennis in high school. At least three times a week, we would run drills in the afternoon. The countless hours of sprinting, swinging the racket, and hitting shots over and over again seemed mind-numbing in the moment. But by the end of my senior year, I could see how much I had improved since being a freshman. I could play tennis well because I had practiced it almost every week.
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Camp stove. Fuel. Pot. Fork. Breakfast. Dinner. Coffee. Water purifier. Granola bar. Tea bags. Extra socks. Sleeping bag. Down jacket. Long underwear. Change of pants. Fleece vest. Mere Christianity. Water bottle. Apple. Toilet paper. Toothbrush. Toothpaste. Pack cover. Fujifilm XT2. Coffee mug. Cord to hang a bear bag. More extra socks. Trekking poles. A hat. Phone charger/lantern. Overnight permit. With one last run-through of my mental checklist, I hefted the pack on my back. I adjusted the shoulder straps, clipped the hipbelt and tightened the chest strap. And I headed to the trailhead.
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