character

"Character is what you are in the dark."

~ Unknown

What does the dark illuminate in me? What do I know about me that no one else does….no one else but God? The knowledge that He loves me in spite of my bent character …in spite of who I am in the dark, brings me to my knees. That kind of love un-does me and makes me want to continue to surrender to His transforming work in my life, to bring more and more of His light into my character, so that in the light …or in the dark, I am the same.

Grace and Peace,
Deb

sabbath time

First, I apologize for not having a blog entry on Saturday. I was a little busy. I was with 6 incredible women, sharing a weekend set apart to spend time with God. We were looking at what ‘Sabbath’ time means.

Sabbath is not observing a list of rules and regulations. We talked about how it is a gift of time from God, time to rest, to reflect, to enjoy nature, to sleep, laugh and play. While we had sweet times of solitude, there was also great fellowship. We learned, we rested and we played (one evening, some of us were outside catching fireflies!)

Sabbath wasn’t given to us by God to be a boring time. It was given to us because God knows our limitations. He knows how we are made and He knows we need time away from all the stressors we deal with the other six days of the week. One author likens our incessant need to always be busy as trying
“ to be like God.” Ouch.

What I know for sure is that when I take time to ‘be’ with God, when I take time to rest, and play and spend intentional time with friends…when I take the time to practice the Sabbath, I am better able to notice God and His movement in my daily life because I have taken some time to slow down.

I invite you to spend some time reflecting on the Sabbath and what it might feel like to have some much needed rest and some special time with God.

Can you live without it? You can….but why would you want to?

Peace,
Deb

grey

I can remember when I first became a believer that there was this definite line drawn in my new life. There was black, which was all I had left behind…the world and all it holds and then there was white…the new ‘spiritual’ world I had walked into. As I grew in my faith, that line got bolder and bolder. It seemed pretty easy to tell what activity, what behavior belonged where. There were secular activities and sacred activities. The secular included certain kinds of music, certain kinds of movies, certain kinds of books, behaviors, activities, etc. These were on the ‘black’ side of the line. On the white side of the line were different types of music, movies, books, behaviors, and activities. I was ok as long I chose the ‘white’ side. It made being a Christian easier. Most things could be categorized as either secular or sacred, non-Christian or Christian, black or white. Most things included people. I regret to say that sometimes I felt some superiority being on the ‘right’ side.

As God often does, He shook up my world. He took His big eraser and blurred the lines. The black blurred into the white, the white blurred into the black and there was this large area of grey. Great. Now how do I tell which is which? How do I categorize?

I think Jesus was showing me that he is the one who determines what is black and what is white. Everything belongs to him…all is his and he is the one who sees the heart. Things aren’t always as they seem. For example, Pharisees ~ white, harlots ~ black, right? But Jesus saw it differently. It wasn’t so easy, so simple, so obvious.

There is black and there is white but there is so much more grey. I’m becoming more comfortable with grey.

Peace,
Deb

creations

“If your heart is straight with God, then every creature will be to you a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine. No creature is so little or so mean as not to show forth and represent the goodness of God.”

Thomas A’Kempis

My heart must be very bent. I struggle to see the beauty in a thousand -legger. We moved into our house last October. The first time I saw one my heart skipped a beat. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. They are fast. Really fast. I guess I’d be fast too if I had a thousand legs. (I know it’s not REALLY a thousand legs….just seems that way!) I had not seen any in our last two homes. After the sighting, I directly went to Jeff and said, “We need to move.” I realized that was a rash decision. I took a few minutes and decided we could try something else first…an exterminator. Jeff wasn’t too keen on this solution either. So, I went to the internet to find out how I could rid our homes of these little beasts. Not such a good idea. It did not help me one bit to see page after page of thousand-leggers…in color! I had a really hard time sleeping that night.
I look at all of creation and see the incredible imagination of God. He is the source of the creative spirit. The shapes; large, small, miniscule, fluid. The colors, violet, maize, robin egg blue, scarlet. The textures; skin, scales, fur, hide. The legs: two, four, six, thousands. You get my drift.
No matter how I feel about a particular creature, it is a God –creation, made just the way He intended. I know He loves thousand-leggers. I’m just not there yet.
Enjoy His creation today.
Peace,
Deb

love

“Solitude eventually offers a quiet gift of grace, a gift that comes whenever we are able to face ourselves honestly; the gift of acceptance, of compassion, for who we are, as we are. As we allow ourselves to be known in solitude, we discover that we are known by love. Beyond the pain of self-discovery there is a love that does not condemn us but calls us to itself. This love receives us as we are.”

Parker Palmer

Spend some time today pondering this quote. Do you know you are ‘known by love’? Have you experienced the love that “calls us to itself”? The love that “receives us as we are”? Rest in that beautiful thought.

Peace,
Deb

inside~outside

The longer I follow Jesus the more I realize how much I have to work on. One would think the longer they work at something the better they would become at it. For quite a while I was confident that I was progressing in this journey. I think I based that on the external “biggies if you know what I mean. I don’t steal, I don’t murder, I don’t covet…ok maybe I still covet, but I try not to. I think that might count. On the outside, for the most part, I look and act like a Christian. And, I thought, for a long time, that I had ‘arrived’.

Several years ago, I realized that no matter what I was able to portray on the outside, there was stuff on the inside I hadn’t noticed, let alone addressed. Issues like feelings of jealously, bitterness, envy, or behaviors like manipulation or control. I realized that my motives and attitudes were not as pure as I had hoped. I just never had thought about it before. When I realized this, it was a rude awakening. I mean…how in the world would I ever be able to get a grip on my thoughts, my motives, my attitudes? Working on those areas of my life were/are not easy and it’s difficult to measure how I’m doing.

One of the awesome things about God is that He shows me what I need to work on, when He is ready for me to work on it. And…I have also discovered that He is really the one doing the work. I open myself to that work but it isn’t work I can do on my own. I know that because I’ve tried, for years, to change some of those things without significant results. Now I am learning to rest in the work God wants to do in me. I can see some changes, but I think I have a much more realistic view of how long this work is going to take. It will never be finished this side of heaven. Just knowing that allows me to not be so hard on myself but I also know I never want to settle for just an ‘outside’ kinda faith.

Peace,
Deb

splinters

i could leap over the sky
and float through the stars

if only i weren’t weighed down
with this thing called regret.

Steven James


Regret. I don’t like the way regret feels. For me, it feels like a load I am carrying. I just want it to go away. It’s like when I get a splinter. I chastise myself for whatever it is that I was doing when I got the splinter, hoping to avoid that situation ever again. Then, I need to deal with the splinter. I would like to ignore it but they just won’t be ignored. Every time you use the affected body part, Mr. Splinter reminds you he is still there. I hate splinters. I also hate the process of getting it out. It’s always a blessing when the splinter is sticking out, easily seen and simply grasped by the tweezers. But, at least for me, I usually don’t get those types of splinters…I get the ones that are invisible. You can’t see them…you can only find them by touching the area again and again. How are you supposed to pull it out if you can’t even see it? That’s where the needle comes in. I hate needles. I know you are not surprised by that fact.

My husband will take a needle and start digging, as if he has no nerve endings. I, on the other hand, have very well developed nerve endings and needles hurt. It just doesn’t make sense to me. You have a sharp object lodged in your extremity and …let’s see…how about we use another sharp object to dig around and find it! Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I hate splinters. But I cannot tell you the relief I feel when it is finally out. It is like that limb is born again.

For some reason, I am making a connection between splinters and regret. When I am feeling regret, I think about the situation that led to me feeling that way and try to figure out how I can avoid that situation again. I don’t like the way it feels. But, usually, I need to carry it around awhile. I go about my life and then I remember it and I feel it again. Like a splinter, I need to work it out….make apologies, change behavior, etc. Guess those are the needles. Then it passes and life feels right again.

I hate splinters and I hate feeling regret.

But…I’m going to love heaven. I’ll love heaven ’cause I am pretty sure there are no splinters there and no regret. Yeah – I’ll love heaven.

Hope yours is a day with no splinters and no regret.

Peace,
Deb