Tuesday, January 14, 2014

God's provision

I'm thinking of Jesus as He prayed "Give us each day our daily bread Luke 11:3"... Funny, I am hoping for at least a weeks worth of bread not a days worth.  As I age, it feels much more uncomfortable to be living day to day instead of having a nest egg or retirement fund of some kind.  We are way better off than most people in the world.  We have way more than today's bread in the cupboard.  Shoot, we have a cupboard to put food in for heaven's sake!

So what comes first, our provision from the LORD or our trust for that provision? There are lots of passages in scripture where God explains His actions as being motivated by the trust that was put in Him. Like 1 Chronicles 5:20 " He answered their prayers, because they trusted in him." So what can we trust Him to do?  I don't believe that God is the candy man...He is not there to feed our selfish ends. I believe there is an intimacy inferred in this passage... I'm thinking the trust these people had was not the kind of trust you give a bridge that you drive over but more the kind a child gives when He reaches his arms out to be carried across the street.  One trust is relational and deep, the other is a form of using.

A child's trust in their daily bread has nothing to do with the next day.  They only receive what is on the table today. I've never heard my children ask me what tomorrow's dinner will be.  They only ask, "what's for dinner?" They fully trust dinner will be there when it's dinner time.

God, Help me find that kind of trust today.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Remember

I know it is important to remember things.  You have to be able to find your way home, what your name is, what your allergic to.  But beyond that why do we have a memory?  What is it for?  I think memorials are important to God.  When the Hebrew people crossed the Jordan River into their promised land.  God instructed them to take 12 stones from the river as they were crossing it and make an alter by the banks of the river as a memorial (Joshua 4:7).  He wanted them to remember what happened there.  He wanted them to teach their children. He wanted them to remember who He was and what He did for them. When Jesus took the cup at His last passover feast he said, "Do this, in rememberance of me" (Luke 22:19).  And so we do... or do we?

I have a box full of sweet things that remind me of my children.  Pretty little dresses and shoes.  Blankets that their grandmother made and priceless handmade trinkets, little expressions of their admiration and love. As they start to have children of their own I have started to give up at least the clothes and the blankets.  They are of no use in a box! But many of the things that meant so much to me as I packed them away, here a pair of overalls, there a pretty dress that looked so precious on but all too soon was grown out of.  I realize that those little people grew and became something you can't really encase in a dress or blanket.  These things mark a time in history but they tell nothing of the people they once clothed.

Raising children was so much fun! I loved watching as they developed their own personalities and sense of humors.  They are sweet individuals with great hearts and amazing minds.  The things I really want to remember you can't capture with a picture or a hand print or a dress. You had to live with them day in and day out to really get the whole picture of who they are...and even then there is more every day to discover! They are way more than anything I could put in a box to remember them by. And now these trinkets seem empty in comparison.

I'm thinking the same goes with God and Jesus.  I'm thinking that God wasn't really into a pile of rocks.  I don't think He wanted us to spend our days staring at them.  I think they are to remind us of Him... really Him.  Not that He did something as much as why He did something. The Hebrew people spend years, day in and day out with God as their guide and their provider.  What exactly are they meant to remember? I'm thinking that Jesus meant more when He said, "Do this in remembrance of me" than that we should eat what He ate that day...Jesus too spent years with His disciples, day in and day out, teaching and modeling a nature that they took years and then some to comprehend. He wants us to know Him... to get to know Him... to really know Him.  To remember who He is, that He will return... and why.  

Sometimes it good simply to remember.



Monday, January 6, 2014

More on Chaos

It's been a while since I have posted anything.  It has been a year like no other for me.  It is still my continuing battle to fight chaos but it feels like chaos is a huge adversary.  We started about a year ago to pack up our big house.  Our plan is to fix it up and sell it so that we could cut our expenses and thus our financial chaos.  It seemed like a simple goal.  But it has taken us a year and we are still working at it.  Oh well, one day at a time. 

We are recovering empty nesters.  I am not sure God ever intended us to be in this faze in life but here we are and I'm not sure what to do with myself.  I had been a homeschool mom for almost thirty years.  That's a long and wonderful time but perhaps it feels more quiet on account of the fact that my kids were always here before.. It's been over a year since my last one got married.  Now they all have babies of their own (one on the way!).  Grand babies are awesome but I don't like the part where you give them back.  I know most people do.. but I LOVE kids.  I love my kids. I love their kids... That's part of why we are working so hard to conquer the chaos.

Through all the years we raised our kids.  One thing always followed another and chaos was brushed aside as something we would address... someday.  There wasn't time for that.  I didn't have energy to face it... I was too busy.  Now that I have time I realize that it's time to face it.  I look at friends that I have that are older than me... they are too old and too tired to face the chaos.  Their kids know that they are going to be left to deal with it when my friends die.  I don't want to do that to my kids.  I want to deal with it now, while I can.  I want to trim down before it is really too much for me.  I want to gift my children with order.  Think I can?  One thing's for sure... I have the time to try.

The house is on the market, I pray for God's timing for a sale.  I have to keep remembering the value of timing.  It feels like I can just taste the day when I don't have to figure out how to make that house payment.  But I live in the north.  It is freaking cold outside right now.  I remember the first time I heard a radio announcer say it was going to warm up to freezing.  I thought it was a funny concept but if it warmed up to freezing today it would be almost forty degrees warmer than it is right now.  Brrrr! I am grateful that we didn't sell our house last month or we would be facing trying to move stuff in this weather.  God's timing is always the best! 

In the mean time, it is a good time to sit down, have a cup of tea, ponder and write, don't you think?