sabbath

no post today. enjoy the sabbath....

relax

Tomorrow is the Sabbath…a day of rest. But for most of us, Sunday is a day to catch up on everything we don’t get done throughout the week.

God didn’t design us to run seven days a week. We are finite beings and we have limited energy. But you couldn't tell that by looking at us! We don’t like to admit that we are tired, that we need rest, that it might be good for us to relax. What is productive about that?

I fall victim to this mentality too. To take time to read for pleasure always brings me some level of guilt. If I am going to take the time to read, it should be something that pertains to my work or my ministry. Reading fiction? How will that benefit the world? Or watching a movie, listening to music, taking a walk?


But, that is my faulty thinking. God is present in relaxation the same way he is present in work. He made me and he knows it isn’t good for me to keep going without resting. I seem to be the one doesn’t know it. And, I bet you suffer from the same malady.

Rest is a gift from God…a gift that we don’t exercise enough. We think that sleeping covers it but our mind need to rest in its ‘awake’ state. We need to learn how to play and rest as well as work.

Tomorrow is Sunday. You can practice sabbath time any day but perhaps it would be a nice start to plan some time tomorrow as ‘sabbath’ time. Relax…..the world will go on.


Grace and Peace,
Deb

desire the ocean

Sorry this is late…my internet is out at home.

Ok…now to my ‘mud pies’. What do I settle for?

Small love….I don’t love as fully I could. Fear of rejection, getting hurt, being left….all keep me from loving fully. I allow these fears to keep me playing in the mud pie of inadequately loving.

Little trust…if I truly trusted I would never fear what tomorrow might bring, but I am concerned, at times, about the future. I know, intellectually, that God holds the future but I often live as if I don’t.

Playing it small…if I truly believed that God loved me and speaks clearly to me, I would run to what it is I feel he has called me to. But I move into it hesitantly, afraid it won’t happen instead of walking fully into it.

Sleepwalking….the beauty of God is all around me but most of the time I sleepwalk through it, settling for an occasional glimpse instead of being intentional about looking for it.

Busyness…I fool myself by thinking my ‘busyness’ measures my impact. God cares about people not tasks…relationships not projects.

Prayer…I talk more than I listen. I believe that God has awesome things to say to me but I don’t take enough time to listen to him ‘cause I’m too busy stating my case.

Talking….I sit in the mud pie of talking when God has an ocean of listening that would be much more enriching to me.

Risk….I’ve gotten a bit better at this over the years, conquering, with God’s help, a fear of flying, which enabled me to travel all over the world, even alone at times, but I still live life on the safe side. I want to live a life of adventure.


Fear of death…I am so tied to this life that I fear leaving it. I truly am playing in the mud pie when the beautiful, immense ocean of heaven is right on the other side.

I think you get the idea. I often live my life making mud pies because I can’t envision what being at the seaside would be like. What are your mud pies? I encourage you to take some time today to think about this…what keeps you from seeing the extravagant life God meant for you to have??

Lord, let me always be looking on the horizon for the ocean and let me run to it.

Grace and Peace,

mud pies

"Indeed if we consider the unblushing promise of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

C.S. Lewis


I invite you to take some time today and sit with this quote. Where are the places in your life where you have become content playing with mud pies because you are unable to imagine the ocean that awaits you? What have you settled for?

Tomorrow I will share some of my mud pies.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

love letter

“Just as you do not analyze the words of someone you love, but accept them as they are said to you, accept the Word of Scripture and ponder it in your heart.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Scripture can often be treated as a textbook. We approach it as if we are studying for a test. How many facts and figures can we cram into our heads? We think the more we know about God, the more we know God.

How much different would it be if you approach Scripture like a love letter? If you spent time preparing your heart and spirit to hear what God wanted to say directly to you? If you looked at verses as words written to you from God?

I invite you to read the Scriptures slowly, taking smaller portions at one sitting. Pay attention to what stirs your heart. Then stay with it, ponder it, write about it, ask questions as to why it moved you. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you about it and tell you what He wants you to know.

Begin to see Scripture as a love letter from God to you and you taking the time to ponder it’s meaning, as an act of love back to Him.

Grace and peace,
Deb

time out

Today I had a wonderful talk with a friend. She said that God has her at a place in her life where he wants her to rest, to wait. He has told her there are only a couple of things she may do, but there are other things…good things, that He doesn’t want her to do right now. It is hard for her to sit back and not ‘do’. She is used to being very busy. But she believes that God just wants her to rest in His love, that He is having her rest so He can do work in her that will prepare her for what He has for her in the future.

We joked about how God has her sitting in the ‘timeout’ chair (not to be confused with the ‘naughty chair’!). “Time out’ is allowing her to rejuvenate, to regain her footing. It is allowing her to gain perspective and she is learning to wait…to wait for God to tell her it is time to move. It is not the most comfortable place she has been but she knows she is right where she needs to be.

Is God calling you to spend time in the ‘time out’ chair? Is He ushering you into a place of rest, a time of listening? Are you cooperating or are you kicking and screaming the whole way? Once you sit down and rest, you will find that you like it. Slow down and take a seat.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

sky jewelry

GOD, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name.

Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk,
and silence atheist babble.

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?

Yet we've so narrowly missed being gods,
bright with Eden's dawn light.
You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,
repeated to us your Genesis-charge,
Made us lords of sheep and cattle,
even animals out in the wild,
Birds flying and fish swimming,
whales singing in the ocean deeps.

GOD, brilliant Lord,
your name echoes around the world.

Psalm 8


I invite you to spend a few minutes meditating on this psalm. What arises out of the text? What grabs your heart? What resonates with you? Spend some time reflecting on its meaning for you and lift a prayer to God in response.

Grace and Peace,
Deb