Sabbath Sunrise – a prayer for my son

Paint my boy a Sabbath sunrise, Father – one filled with the color of hope, not the cover of despair.

Take the pain that’s been smeared onto his canvas at night and replace it with splashes of your morning grace.

What she has taken from him, replace it with what you have given to him. A hope. A future. A plan that includes something best, not something less.

His are deep wounds, bleeding red, hot, and furious. Stop the hemorrhaging with your hands—the very ones that bled and shed red for our sin and our pain.

I can no longer cradle him in my arms. My lullabies sing harshly, and I have few words to fix the ache within. Only scattered thoughts to fill the awkward pause in between his despair and his healing.

So Father, would you paint him a Sabbath sunrise? Would you paint me one as well?

How we need the color. The warmth. The reminder that all has not been lost in the night.

Your sun still rises. This is gain. This is resurrection. This is Sabbath.

Give us eyes to see it, minds to conceive it, and hearts to believe that you painted it just for us—your perfect peace in the midst of a perfect storm.

For him, my boy with a broken heart. For me, his mom whose heart breaks alongside.

Amen.

Anchor Verse 2014 ~ Kept

 

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” –Isaiah 26:3, ESV

Kept.

This is who I want to be in 2014. This is how I want to live.

Kept … in perfect peace—the Father’s pledge to me preceded by my obedience to him. That obedience? To trust God first and, then, out of that unwavering confidence, to lay, lean, rest, and support my mind upon him … to stay with God.

With that trusting and in that staying comes a God-guarded, perfect peace—completeness, tranquility, safety, and contentment that cannot be secured in any other way. Like a night watchman keeping vigilance over his vineyard, the Father promises to safeguard my peace so that the harvest remains intact, healthy and thriving to fullness.

I don’t imagine I’ve ever experienced this perfect peace long-term. There have been moments, even days, perhaps a season or two of holding this kind of sustained, perfect peace, but I want more than seasonal glimpses. What I’m after is an enduring fellowship with this God-protected contentment.

And so, when I dreamed about these words from Isaiah 26:3 a few nights ago (to be fair, I didn’t know they were found in Isaiah 26:3 at the time), I awakened in the morning holding a fresh purpose for my 2014. This year, I want to know my Father as Keeper. I want to be kept in his perfect peace. Accordingly, I must tend to my trusting and to my staying.

A pledge preceded by an obedience. A pledge and an obedience tucked securely within the set of bookends who can and who does author such reality:

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

You. God. Father. Keeper.

He is where I begin my 2014. He is where I’ll finish. And in between my now and my then, a long season of trusting and staying … an enduring season of fellowship with God-protected contentment.

Kept. This is who I want to be in 2014. This is how I want to live … anchored and held by the rich truth and work of Isaiah 26:3. And so I offer my “welcome” to this New Year, and I offer my welcome to you as well. For as much and as little as we are able, the fellowship we share here is a stone of remembrance for me on this journey of grace. May God keep you strong and in the faith this 2014, and may you be guarded by his perfect peace every step of the way.

Stay with God,

December 26th

I’ve been waiting for this day for several weeks now.

December 26th – the day after Christmas.

No wrapping. No baking. No one needing me quite so much. More peace. More quiet. More time to take a walk beneath the beauty of a setting sun. This is where I found the Christ-child; this is where we talked it over, just God and me. Thoughts and words and prayers regarding the doings and outcomes of my yesterday.

We had much to discuss.

It was good to get away with Him—to take a walk around the lake and give some attention to my soul. I am grateful for the respite, for this December 26th. It’s been a day of recovery for me, of welcoming the new while cataloging the old.

Oh, I wish I could manage my December 25ths a bit better so that I didn’t need my 26ths so very much, but I’m fairly certain that a 25th of such magnitude cannot self-sustain. A 26th is the necessary requirement of a 25th—a grace of godly proportion that allows a soul to dance in close proximity to the manger without the distraction and/or judgment of a larger audience.

Sometimes the manger gets pretty crowded on December 25th.

But the 26th?

Well, today there was more elbow room. Today, it was easier to catch a glimpse of the baby Jesus.

December 26th – the day after Christmas. This is where the star has led me. This is where the Savior will keep me. What tender, sanctified peace for my journey! I pray for you a similar portion, friends.

Merry Christmas and Christmas always, this December 26th and beyond. What Christ came to do for us and in us he is doing. Ours is a forward work of grace. Keep to the road of faith, and remember … our best days are ahead of us!

Shalom,

PS: How might I pray for you as we walk together this final week of 2013?

Christmas Is

She held on tightly, arms wrapped fully around my waist and her head burrowed deeply in my coat.

“Mom, I don’t want you to go.”

Her plea was persuasive but not enough to keep me from loading up the van and making the two hour trek northward to my parents’ home.

“I know, baby, that you don’t want me to go, but it is because of this very reason that I must go. You see, I have the same kind of love in my heart for my mom as you have for me. And this is my way of wrapping my arms around her and letting her know that I, like you, don’t want her to go.”

And with that, my daughter released her grip, signaling her willingness to share me. To allow me to make the journey home so that I might spend a few hours expressing love tangibly. Not so much in words, although words always find their way into such extravagance (case in point – this post). Mostly, it’s just living love by being together.

This is why I make these frequent trips home. This is how I hug my momma’s heart and express to her from the deepest place within me …

“Mom, I don’t want you to go.”

Not that she plans on doing so anytime soon. This isn’t a good-bye post. Mom (and dad) are in good health. This is just one of those pauses in the road, a rest stop of sorts when all I have to give is the gift of a few words added as a postscript to the gift of a few moments spent together.

Isn’t this mostly it … the message of Christmas? A family’s love wrapped up in moments? A child wrapping arms around hearts and expressing that which often seems inexpressible?

Love.

Oh there’s faith and hope and all the many soulful expressions of a life lived with Jesus, but at the end of the day … at the end of our journeys, love wins the day. Love given to us on earth. Love given to us from heaven.

It’s in these pauses—these moments that we take to hug one another—where we’ll find the heartbeat of Christmas. Wherever love lives, God is.

Some 2000 years ago, a Father hugged his Son and sent him on a journey to his mother’s house. She, in turn, hugged the Gift as he arrived. I don’t know about the many conversations that must have transpired between Mary and Jesus during his earthly tenure, but I imagine there was one or two not so unlike the exchange shared between my daughter and me just a few days ago. Perhaps something along the lines of …

“Son, I don’t want you to go.”

“I know, mom, that you don’t want me to go, but it is because of this very reason that I must go. You see, I have the same kind of love in my heart for all of God’s children that you have for me. And this is my way of wrapping my arms around them and letting them know that I, like you, don’t want them to go. Instead, I want them to be with me, in the place where I am going. This is why I must make the journey home to my Father’s house. This is why you must let me go.”

And with that divine declaration, Mary released her grip, signaling her willingness to share her son with the world. Indeed, living love by being together! God with us. Immanuel. God in us. Immanuel. God through us. Immanuel. This is the message of Christmas.

Tend to your loving this week, friends. Keep it in mind, and then take the time to live it with arms and hearts wide open. Wherever love lives, God is. May it be so for each one of us in our pilgrimages to the manger this year. As always …

Peace for the journey,

 

Circuit-riding Faith …

She reads to me about his life, this man named Francis Asbury.

Do you know of him? I do. I’d better. Why?

Well, I’m the daughter of a Methodist preacher. I’m married to one as well.

I grew up in Wilmore, KY, home to Asbury College and Asbury Seminary. I graduated from the former and ran the halls of the latter during my growing up years, cutting a path between my professor, daddy’s office and my registrar, momma’s office. In a later season, I’d have an office of my own in that hallowed institution. Francis Asbury was, in part, one of the reasons behind my being raised where I was raised … being reared how I was reared.

I am a Methodist. I don’t make much of it here at the blog, because I’m a Christian before I’m a Methodist, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess those denominational lines run pretty deep within me. So when my daughter was assigned another book report (she’s a fan of Christian biographies recently reading the stories of Corrie ten Boom, Amy Carmichael, and William Booth), I hand selected this one for her. Perhaps it is time she knows something of her spiritual roots.

Francis Asbury was one of the first circuit riding preachers in America. Sent here by John Wesley in 1771, Francis (a.k.a. Frank) spent the next forty-five years riding the circuit amongst the burgeoning Methodist societies and preaching the kingdom of God. He averaged 6,000 miles a year on horseback (a lifetime total of over 270,000 miles) and delivered over 15,500 sermons. His first night in America he chronicled his thoughts in his journal:

“ … When I came near the American shore, my very heart melted within me to think from whence I came, where I was going, and what I was going about. But I felt my mind open to the people and my tongue loosed to speak. I feel that God is here and find plenty of all we need.” (Benge, Francis Asbury: Circuit Rider, 2013, p. 53)

From whence he came was England into an America convinced of their need to cut ties with their mother-country. Francis tried to delicately step his way through the growing controversy between the colonies and England, governing his thoughts, words, and deeds by his desire to spread the Gospel and grow the church. However, because of their ties to the Church of England, circuit-riding preachers were often met with suspicion by colonists who tagged them as Loyalists. Many circuit riders abandoned their posts – some into hiding, some sailing back to England. By late 1777, Francis and another preacher named George Shadford were the last two, English-born Methodist circuit riders in America. Again, from Francis’s journal:

“Three thousand miles from home—my friends have left me—I am considered by some as an enemy of the country—every day liable to be seized by violence, and abused. This is just a trifle to suffer for Christ, and the salvation of souls. Lord, stand by me!” (ibid, p. 98)

The Lord did stand by Francis. He must have. I am (in small measure) living proof. And although my daughter and I have yet to finish this biography, I know how it ends … at least for now. God’s Word is alive in my heart and, just this morning, I meditated on that Word while listening to the words of my preacher-husband standing behind his Methodist pulpit. My mother did the same, listening to my daddy who stood behind his own pulpit. My in-laws the same. My sons? Well, they were in the pews of their own Methodist congregation. This is who we are. Christians first. Methodists second, and by the grace of God, saved to the uttermost.

I don’t know if Francis Asbury understands the influence he’s had on the spiritual landscape of America, but if he could look down from his heavenly post today and catch a glimpse of what his forty-five years and 270,000 miles’ worth of riding has birthed, he would know that his faith—his witness and his willingness—was no trifling matter. His faith was an eternal matter, one that continues to reap kingdom dividends some 250 years after he first glimpsed the American shore.

May it be so for each one of us. May our faith—the witness and willingness of our hearts—be no trifling matter. May it, instead, last eternally as we travel our circuits and spread the love and life of Jesus wherever we go.

Ride on, Christians, and leave a holy trail of Jesus behind you as you go. Someday we’ll all look back on these lives that we’ve lived and be amazed by how our paths of grace have changed the landscape of humanity. What a privilege to share this traveling ministry with you. As always…

Peace for the journey,

PS: Check out our special Christmas offer on Peace for the Journey and Beyond Cancer’s Scars ($11 each plus free shipping) – click here!
 

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