Category Archives: Jesus Christ

You Have the Sunshine

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What Do You Think? Wednesday
When you have no human place to go you always have that spirit place, that place where you should travel first, right to the feet of Jesus. And this is where I found myself Monday night in my bed in tears with fist hitting my pillow after a day of blowing my nose raw, rallying boys for meals and away from melees, encouraging them to complete work, getting mom more ice cream and on and on and on. On this night, two days after spending the night in the hospital with my newly discovered asthmatic 2 year old, three days with scattered sleep and three days without a shower I cried out to God, told Him I was tired and I didn’t want to be sick and that I was spent from giving and giving and giving and what did I have? I just wanted to get some rest and eat some choice foods and I had none of these. What do I have?

Like only God can, with His infinite wisdom and considerate care for my needs, not just my wants, He said so gently, “You have the sunshine.” I immediately thought about the scripture that says God shines the sun on the evil and the good when Jesus was telling His disciples to have mercy on their enemies because He does (Matthew 5:44-45). I didn’t know what that had to do with me. So he repeated, “You have the sunshine” then somehow I knew God was saying I had something bigger, something better, something more than rest and choice foods that my weariness had me longing for. I had a magnanimous blessing that I could never get for myself. If I could see the sun, I had life. I am living and breathing enough to give me another chance to live life, to make it better, to take a shower, eat choice foods and sleep. I have sunshine (even when it’s tucked behind the clouds).

Remember, your days may be gloomy but you, too, have sunshine, a reminder that we are still here and have another chance to make life better.

What was a word God gave you, perhaps directly, through another person, in the Bible or some other reading, which gave you the perspective that you needed?

Whitney but no Jesus

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We gathered around TVs, eyes glued there, thumbs on tablets and cells, watching and tweeting our way through. We couldn’t believe what our eyes did see: Whitney Houston was gone. We knew it to be true, though. The casket was there. The choir was there and so were “more stars than the Grammys,” said the pastor of Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church. This was Houston’s hometown church, the place where mother Cissy wanted to celebrate Houston’s life now in her death, a place familiar to Whitney, a comfortable place, fitting to send her to her ultimate home.

We gathered around TVs, tweeting the incredible, sounding off the unusual, after voice after voice talked about the Lord. Some actually said His name, Jesus, and we couldn’t believe that He was sent forth. Across the airwaves, throughout the nations folks heard about His goodness; they heard about His grace. I imagine they were hungry, on the edge of their seats wanting to know how to get this Jesus: Do I read the Bible? Do I go to church? Do I just say I love Him? Their eyes were glued, probably they knew that someone would tell them how to get them Jesus and be with Him even in death. But this they do not know, at least not from the Houston screen, the worldwide platform where the famous and familiar didn’t have to pay to say what I expected them to say: Jesus Christ, who is God, who Whitney claimed to be her God, died on the cross for the sins of mankind, but rose again after three days, defeating death and the grave. If those who say they sin and believe they need a perfect savior to help them sin less call on Jesus, that perfect Savior, to take away their sins, because they believe in their hearts that Jesus made that sacrifice, that He paid the price for their redemption, then they too will defeat death. They will have the power to live for Jesus in life and be with Him in heaven after death.

But they didn’t say this. They said the familiar, the comfortable, the unpeculiar. They blended in, went for the shout, never clarifying the doubt that surely thousands had. What God is love? How can I prioritize God? This made me sad. This made me mad that the Savior I know (and off the Houston screen the one they say they know) couldn’t hear them say that Jesus is Lord and that He said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” But their denial reminded me of what I must do on my arrivals: Wherever I go, whomever I meet I must speak the name of Jesus whenever the opportunity comes. I am thankful for a heart check, seeing if my blood freely flows Jesus and not just human red. There is power in the name of Jesus. In Him we live and move and have our being. Without Him we are nothing. Without Him, we get nothing.

But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven (Matthew 10:33).

Don’t be denied.

My One Thousand Gifts List
#451-460
Getting two complimentary CDs
Connecting with an old classmate
Intimate talk with a new friend
Watching a movie with Flynn
Getting ready for church and not being stressed without having help with the boys
Being able to hear the main parts of the sermon even with the noise of the cry room
Flynn having me pick up carryout so I wouldn’t have to cook dinner
The incredible sound of thunder and the beautiful brightness of lightening
Enjoying episode two of Wives and Daughters
A shower BEFORE the boys woke up

Costly Worship

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What Do You Think? Wednesday

In the kitchen stirring steel cut oats, a breakfast Joshua requested, he asked me about what seemed strange for someone to do: “Why did that lady put that stuff on Jesus’ head?” For the day’s school work he was reading Mark 14:1-9 when Mary of Bethany did the unthinkable, the seemingly unimaginable. She poured expensive perfume, a year’s salary, clean out its box and right onto Jesus’ hair. Others there sneered at her act, probably thought she was crazy wasting what could have been her livelihood for the coming months. But in a few minutes she poured out her best, all for Jesus. And Joshua, like the people—who counted Mary’s money like they had the right to decide what should be done with the proceeds from the perfume’s sell—wanted to know the meaning of this.

Jesus explained that Mary did this before He died, that she was preparing for Jesus’ death while He was still alive. You probably already know this but in Jesus’ day dead bodies were prepared for burial by being anointed with perfume and spices to preserve them. But Mary did this while Jesus still had breath in His body, giving off life right in her presence. Perhaps Mary was saying Jesus would always be alive with her, that she would not let Him die but take in His breath, take in His life, while He was yet living. Once she had Him in her presence there He would stay. She wanted the best to remain with her and loved him so that she gave him her best. Giving her best was the meaning of her outpouring and it doesn’t seem she thought twice about it.

So in the kitchen, among steel cut oats and a Bible story about a woman desperate to have Jesus, I tell Joshua that we too must be desperate, seek to be excellent, for Jesus. We have to give our best with our handwriting, in our time, in our talk, in whatever we do. This is how we keep Jesus with us, breathing life through us, showing the world that He is right with us. Being excellent—giving Jesus our best—is the Christian obligation. This we must do in honor of Jesus.

And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.—Romans 12:1 (NLT)

We were created for this before creation itself (Ephesians 1:4, 10-14). With Jesus loving on us better than anyone loving on us how could excellent worship not be our obligation? Please, tell me what you think.

Go In

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My kitchen mostly has been my bane. I cook there. I clean there. I stress there. I don’t want to be there, but feeding three growing boys keeps me there indefinitely. I want a trap door, to go through the floor, to disappear to a quiet world of no cooking and rest in God’s blessed presence. But breakfast and snack and lunch and snack and snack and dinner and snack tie me there. Of the many rooms in my home, the kitchen has become my castle and it’s from here that I rule. Sandwiches, ladles and soup make for lousy scepters yet the children rush in with their demands. And I command and cook, cuddle and coddle, encourage and flourish for my family in the kitchen, but in the kitchen I had been missing what I desired most: to bring unadulterated worship into this space, to shed the labor and lavish my Savior with love. How can you go into the Savior’s presence when in your presence is a pile of dishes, a dirty floor and demands for more? How can you transform the routine into a greater thing?

After nine years of pleading and pressing through
After stumbling from false prayer starts to settle fussy babies then trying to make it through
After murmuring and complaining that I can’t make it through
After wanting to give up, sometimes giving up, prayer and knowing without it I couldn’t make it through

After crying and crying out and snottin’ and shouting out I made it through with the “afters” in my rearview, my daily list of gratitude driving them far from me. So in the kitchen on an early morning after quieting the 2 year old back to sleep and making lunches for the day I began to praise: the gift of running water to rinse the knife makes me utter praise; the gift of three types of sandwich spreads has me in praise; the gift of wheat bread AND spelt bread has me singing praise; the gift of feeding my kids has me roaring in praise; the gift of a loving husband who wants to make his lunch has me in praise; and the gift of unadulterated worship comes and I am overcome and want to fall to my knees but hesitate, not wanting to drop to an unclean floor. But the One I adore was born on a dirty floor, hay maybe, among smelly barn animals and surely noises coming from more than His mother. The manger, the only place available for His birth, became the praise room for the magi, the mother and the earthly father to worship the miracle. God, the Great I AM, came in flesh, born among animal flesh and probably mess, to fulfill prophecy, His pre-creation destiny to rescue us from self. So I drop myself to my dirty floor and I worship my Savior even more, knowing that He sacrificed, coming in contact with dirty floors, soiled hearts, and unrepentant souls, ministered to know-it-alls and received anyone who called on His name. The manger door was open. When the door is open sometimes you just have to go in. I went into His presence, became reborn in His presence and came out an anyplace worshipper that only Jesus could make me be.

My One Thousand Gifts List

#391-400
Listening to the Thursday Night Bible Study CD in its entirety early this morning
Nate waking up early so I was able to put him down for a nap when Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah came over to watch a poetry DVD
The comedic styling of Nathaniel
Nathaniel and his self-satisfied looks
Hosting Simone, Tabitha, Alexis, Tanena and Josiah at my home and the sweet fellowship we enjoyed
Reading Motherhood for an uninterrupted period
Waking up about 10 minutes before Justus did and was able to release, turn on the stove to be cleaned and peel an orange before he awoke
Curt calling just to check in and telling me he was thinking about taking me to the Esperanza Spaulding concert
Being able to read in bed in the quiet of morning