Be Still And Know

The first written words that came before me this morning were, "Be still and know that I am God." As I sat and thought about this, thankfulness formy grandchildren and the directions their lives are taking kept coming into my thoughts. But also there was the desire that they might have wisdom to depend on God more each day. So for my grandchildren and all the other grandchildren out there my prayer is that you will "Be still and know that He is God" in the deepest recesses of your heart.

The Pressure Of My Circumstance

Isaiah said that the Lord spake to him “with a strong hand.” Isaiah 8:11. Oswald Chambers calls this ‘the pressure of our circumstance.’

I have a new friend whose life, a number of years ago, was indeed impacted by ‘the pressure of her circumstance.’ She was a farmer’s wife in a small Ontario town, the mother of three little boys, her life pretty much ordered by the daily demands of her situation. One morning her husband went to the barn to do the morning chores. When he returned to the house he found his wife blind. Their circumstances immediately changed, their faith and attitude toward God did not. They saw this situation as a message from God that would change their lives, though they knew not how.

I don’t know the detail of how they moved from this small Ontario town to a tribal area of Senegal in Africa.. I only know from the story that her husband told that they lived there for 39 years, that they never asked for a dime of support from anyone in all those years, that without medical training he did what he could to help the area sick and without flight training he flew supplies in to the impoverished people that they lived among. He ended his story by telling us that “the Lord gave me my wonderful wife for 49 years but now He has asked for her back”. He was telling us that his wife now had Alzheimer’s and was a resident in the Long Term Care Centre where I visit weekly.

I have come to love this woman dearly. I often find her with a huge laundry basket of cloths - brown cloths, green cloths, gold cloths. She is carefully folding them, stacking them, unfolding them and folding them again and restacking them. All this is done with a quiet concentration and joyful smile. You see, the children will be along soon and will need dry clothes. Do I feel sorry for this woman? Not a bit! Sometimes I have to stretch my imagination to it’s limit to join her in her world but it is always a world full of peace, of generosity, of gratitude for God’s gifts. She is always glad that she was home when I came down her road, that there is a pie on the oven almost done and wi will be able to share a cup of tea and a piece of pie in just a minute or so. There are clean sheets on the bed and if I would like I can spend the night. She has been praying for my boys (how did she know I had boys) and Jim has gone to help some folks but he will be home any minute. I hold her hand and stroke her arm and wander through her world with her, a world so different from many - a world free of discontent, of criticism, of complaint. When I go to leave and give her a hug, she always takes my face in her hands and tells me she will pray for me - often she tells me I am an angel sent from God and she hopes that she is home the next time I come down her road..

Circumstances! Do we see God’s hand in them moving us to places where He wants us to be, to attitudes He wants us to have? Or are they just happenings in our lives to us? This lady’s muddled mind has done more to change my attitude toward what my life is than probably anything over the 70 plus years of my journey. I am so thankful that He saw fit for me to know her............................Wilma Lansdell

P.S. Don’t ask me when or how, but somewhere along her journey her sight was restored.

Goc Versus Paul Newman

The story is told of a woman out shopping on a hot summer’s day. When she passed an ice cream shoppe she decided to treat herself to an ice cream cone in an effort to cool off. She went into the store and ordered her cone. As the clerk was preparing it she became aware of someone standing beside her. She turned and found herself looking into the big blue eyes of Paul Newman. Immediately her neck felt hot and her knees felt weak. About that time, the clerk returned with her cone, set it in the holder on the counter and asked for $1.75. In her befuddled state, trying to pay for her cone, she spilled things from her purse, had trouble finding the right change and became ever more flustered. Finally, she got it all together and left the store. She was only a short way down the street when she realized she had forgotten her cone. She returned to the store only to find Paul Newman standing in the doorway. He said, “Did you forget your cone?” to which she replied, “Yes, I did.” Paul Newman then said, “Well, lady, it is in you purse.”

Recently, I heard a minister begin his sermon with this story. He wasn’t using up his time just to tell a funny story but to try and compare the awe that we sometimes feel for our heroes of any stripe - acting stars, musical stars, sports stars etc. - in comparison to the awe we feel for God. He went so far as to ask, “Whan was the last time an encounter that you had with God cause your knees to feel week?” Thought provoking!

Robert Capon has said the church “is a community of astonished hearts that God has saved them.” One dictionary meaning of astonished is ‘struck dumb with wonder’

Marvin P. Dalton said, “ Oh, what a Savior! Oh, hallelujah! His heart was broken on Calvary; His hands were nail-scarred, His side was riven, He gave His lifeblood for even me.”

Jack Hayford said, “ Majesty, worship His majesty. Unto Jesus be all glory power and praise.”

The writer of Hebrews said, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.”

May we all, as we enter this new year, exalt the God of the universe in our lives and see the icons of this world for what they are - people with a talent different than ours but with no power to bring us lasting joy or peace. We will have a far better 2010 if we do!

The Battle Rages On

My husband has a dear friend, one he has never met, one who lives all the way across the country. Sometime ago this man’s wife took his three children and left with a restraining order in hand that he was not to contact them. My husband has been praying fervently for several weeks that there might be some contact over Christmas. It did not happen. What to make of this. How is God working in it all?

Do you have issues like this in your life? Oh! I know! nothing as bizarre, nothing as serious as our friend’s story But let’s be honest - do we have absolute peace in our lives? Is our health everything we would like it to be? Can we count on our job being there for another year and paying what it has paid for the last? Are all of our children conducting their lives exactly as we think they should? It goes on and on!

In mulling this over in my mind this morning I became re-convinced of something I came to believe fifteen or so years ago. Exactly when this world was created and exactly how I don’t know! Exactly who God will save and on what conditions I don’t know! But this I feel fairly certain about. There is a huge battle going on between God and Satan and God wants to use me to win that battle. How He needs to use me I know not, nor can I ascertain the amount of hurt I will suffer nor what form it will take. But one thing I know, I will not be called to endure more than I can bear and that in the bearing I will learn and become a better person. And so, it seems to me, that even in the worst of what life has to offer I should be able to find peace. I should be able to say with Mary this Christmas: “May it be to me as You have said.”

My Inheritance

I was raised in a home where money was scarce. Most of my clothes came from boxes given to us by other people or were made from material that my mother ripped up and remade to fit me. I remember my mother making me a dress from new material when I was six, a white voile dress with yellow flowers. She bought me a new dress when I was eeven and made me a suit from new material when I was fifteen. Those stand out in my memory. I think everything else fell into the first described categories.

My mother lived until she was past 90. The last five years of her life were spent in her own room at the Meaford Nursing Home - a place she loved and enjoyed to the full. Her rent for this modest space was something around $2000 a month. Despite the very modest means of her life and the expense of these last years, when she passed away there was a modest inheritance for each of her six children. That was the most poignant part of her passing to me - not that I had a little cash but that after all the years of careful living financially, she had cared for a family and then for herself and still a little to spare at the end. It was our inheritance.

When I picked up my devotional book this morning the page fell open informing me of another inheritance. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled.” John 14:27. My inheritance!! My little inheritance from my mother is long gone - spent!! Yet this huge inheritance from my Father above, at the deepest levels of my emotion, of my thinking, of my attitudes, of my behaviors, so many times sits unused, unspent. I wonder why! Do you know?

A Fun Galatians

We have just returned from a fun vacation (a fun Galatians to great-granddaughter, Bayleigh). It rained, it snowed and the purpose of the trip, at least in the hunter's minds, was probably not realized. But what fun it is to have great-granddaughters, to be around little ones when one is in her eighth decade (think I have the right one) was. For any readers who don't know Remington is our little dog. He was outweighed, out heighted and all the other outs by the five other family dogs in the crowd, not to mention outrun by the two little girls who at three and almost two have found their legs. I made the mistake of taking Remington to the cabin where the little girls and one very large dog lived for the week. He did very well with it all for a while, but then on one race through the sunporch he lifted his leg at the table leg and you know what ensued. Bayleigh, following close behind, stopped and called, "Mommy, come quick! Reninghan just spilled his juice." I hope my memory retains this one into my ninth decade!
Why am I telling you this? To encourage you in several directions. If you have a marriage you are thinking of canning, think again! A family held together through the generatons is worth working for! If you have a son-in-law or daughter-in-law (this doesn't apply to you, girls!) that you don't like much, learn to! Good family relationships cannot flourish where love does not flow freely in all directions. If you have some possessions that are more important to you than the children in your family, change your mind! I guarantee that antique piece of furniture, that new carpet that you are protecting, that old car or whatever else is dear to you won't have a good word to say about you at your funeral. My most prized possession at this point in my life is my relationship with my grandchildren. And I feel pretty donfident that as the next generation increses in number and in years they will swiftly become a part of that 'prized possession' circle.

Isaiah 61:1

“ But to really understand Grace you have to do more than study it academically or quantify it theologically. To Get what Grace is, you have to have it offered to you in a moment when you are so repulsed by your own sin that you expect anyone who knows to be equally repulsed. “
The above came to my desk in the form of an e-mail to my husband from a pastor for a church all the way across the country. I don’t know this man, nor do I know what fellowship he was pastor for, but I know my heart breaks for him and his family. His wife and his three children are gone, the house where they lived empty. He has no home, no job and no family. Why? Because Satan won a major battle in his life and there was no one there to snatch him back from the abyss. And this story is being repeated in one form or another over and over again all over this land.

Why does Satan hold such sway over every segment of society? Where are the Christians, where are the churches who are supposed to be modeling, sharing, passing out in abundance the love of a God who wants to heal a broken heart? Please read with me a paragraph from John Eldridge’s book ‘Waking The Dead.’ “Satan realized he couldn’t stop the church. Oh, he tried. He arranged to have Jesus killed as a babe. He tried to seduce Him as a man. He tried to marginalize His message by having the religious establishment discredit Him. Finally, he had Him crucified. It backfired. Badly. Then he tried to stop the young church through intimidation and through death, having most of them killed. It also backfired. So he turned to a backup plan. If you can’t beat ‘em...join ‘em. Infiltrate their ranks dressed as an angel of light. Then slowly bring a veil over all that is good and beautiful and true. Take them captive through their own religion.”

And so, here we are today with churches of every creed and kind protecting their own way of thinking, sequestered with their own ki nd, and if they reach out at all it is to persuade others to think like them. And no one is fighting the war against Satan. Indeed, most of us would not feel like we were part of a war, or if we do, we have mis-identified the enemy. And mis-identified the battle field - in our own hearts. Would we be like Jesus? Then we must ‘heal the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives and open the prisons of those who are bound.’ Isaiah 61:1.

Look again at what my hurting brother said: “ But to really understand Grace you have to do more than study it academically or quantify it theologically. To Get what Grace is, you have to have it offered to you in a moment when you are so repulsed by your own sin that you expect anyone who knows to be equally repulsed. “

When is the last time you have been repulsed by your own addictions, your own sins? When is the last time you have tried to lift a hurting soul up by telling them how God is helping you with your addiction, your sin?

‘But I have no addictions.’ you say.. Then that makes you better than Paul, way better than David. And lots better than me. I have several and each one is more serious than chocolate!!