The "Little" Stuff

I often share the story from today’s Encouragement for Today devotion when I speak. During the last conference that I led, several women approached me separately with the same insight from this story. It was one that I actually hadn’t pondered very deeply.

They said, “I’ve always thought of an ‘idol’ as something really big in my life. Your story made me realize that even little things (like HGTV and “Southern Living” which fueled my remodeling obsession!) can take God’s rightful place as Number One.”

Wow! It’s true, isn’t it? It makes me think of Song of Solomon 2:15, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyard, our vineyards that are in bloom.” Sometimes it’s the “little foxes” that are the most deceptive.

It’s spending more time in the mirror than on our knees.

It’s consulting all our friends first and Jesus last.

It’s counting on our checking account for security.

It’s finding our significance in being a wife or a mother or in our job.

(I had to add one from an email I've already gotten this morning.) It's finding time to check our email or Facebook but no significant time to spend reading the Bible and praying. Ouch!

I remember being in the heart of Calcutta near the temple of Cali, the goddess after whom Calcutta is named. She is the goddess of death and destruction. You can just imagine how much fear is involved in the worship of this goddess.

The area was lined with booths filled with flowers, grains and other items being sold to those heading to the temple to leave an offering. I have never been surrounded by such poverty, filth and human misery. It was an area that included the city’s red light district—a place filled with women with the deadest eyes I had ever seen. The spiritual oppression was tangible.

I wanted to stand there and shout, “Do you see? How can you not see? Do you see what Cali has earned for you—fear, poverty, death, misery! True destruction. Turn to Jesus. He is kind and gentle of heart. He loves you and longs for you to turn to Him.”

But do we see? Do we see what our own idols have done to us? They have bought something so much less than what we were created for. We are created for relationship with Jesus, the One and Only.

Let’s beware of the idols, the little foxes, that come to kill, steal and destroy.

(Next week I'll be posting more lessons learned in Calcutta. I've enjoyed your visit today, and I'd love for you to come back!)

Where I End

Years ago after Barry's grandmother lost her husband of 64 years, I remember her saying "I don't know where I end and he started." It was a sentiment that pierced my heart as I collected memories of the years that I had known them.

Granddaddy was a semi-retired pastor. He was one of the sweetest, most fun and godliest men I've ever known. More than any other thing, though, he was known for adoring his wife, and she adored him right back.

In fact, he was known as such a wonderful husband that my mother-in-law immediately agreed to a date with his son during a summer that she and Granddaddy worked together. I sure am the happy recipient of the fruit of that pairing!

Granddaddy and Grandmama modeled oneness in marriage for every generation after them. Even my children got years to observe this outstanding marriage, and I'm so glad. Oneness is probably the greatest gifts of marriage but maybe the hardest to develop. Check out my friend Melanie's blog about oneness today. Reading her post made me miss my hubby even more.

Barry, I'm missing you, but I'm unbelievably proud of your accomplishments and how you provide for our family. Can't wait until convention is over so that my overlapping half is home!

Oswald Chambers gave me an Ah-Ha moment today. I've been struggling with (really against) a circumstance in my life. God has been speaking consistently to me about not complaining about manna, but it still has been chafing me.

In a moment of complete honesty with Him this week, I said, "But God I don't get it. Not only don't I LIKE it, but I don't see the potential good in my life." (Trusting Him like I do, I stand on His promise of a good outcome. I just really can't see it today.)

Here's what Jesus used Oswald to respond directly to my heart today:

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." 1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across. Oh, I can't deal with that person. Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you barged off because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.

The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God's aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the "long, long trail."

Are we partakers of Christ's sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say - ' 'Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!"

Pile Up

It is not good for a mom to spend the weekend in bed. Really. Don't get me wrong. My guys are great. They're very self-sufficient in a lot of ways, or I'd never be able to travel on the weekends like I do.

I had a long list for this weekend, though. I was behind already. Piles of laundry spilled over on the floor. The refrigerator was bare and the cupboards empty. The carpet needed vacuumed, and I'm pretty sure that the guys were going to start writing messages to me in the dust.

...and then tragedy hit.

I got sick.

Yep.

Today is Monday, and I feel lots better. Yeah! However, the pile up is now at critical stage. It will all get done with everybody pitching in. Four grown folks can get a lot done in a house.

It got me to thinking about my spiritual life, though. What happens when "stuff" (sin if I call it what God calls it) starts to pile up in my life? That same inertia that affects me in my overwhelming household takes hold of my heart, too.

It's hard to face piles. They're big and overwhelming. They make me feel shame. It's so much easier to sweep those piles under a rug or shove them into a closet. The problem is, as my wise friend Zoe has said, "Things under the rug don't just lie there. They rot." True, true, true.

My piles are reminding me to keep a short "gap time" in my spiritual life. I can't allow piles. I need to shorten up the time between sin and repentence. I need to cry out to God to make me aware of my sin as soon as it happens so that I can run to Him with it immediately to ask for forgiveness.

I need to pull it all out from under that moldy, dark rug into God's amazing Light and air where forgiveness and healing happen.

Tomorrow I'll attack a few more piles in my house and ask God again to expose any piles in my heart.

Beautiful

As I drove down a stretch of NC highway toward Chapel Hill (Blue Heaven--by the way) on Saturday, the canvas of color just took my breath away. Did the trees turn those vibrant shades of yellow, red and orange over night, or have I just been too busy to notice? Yesterday I soaked it in the reflection of those amazing colors in a pond as I sat by a fire at my friend's farm .

This time of year is my favorite--but maybe I say that at the beginning of each new season. I really do love the seasons.

I love the crisp, cool mornings, the stunning colors and the smoke in the air of fall.

I love to wake up to one of those rare, white, snowy mornings of winter in NC.

I love the crocuses poking up their cheerful heads, cherry trees blooming and little kids riding their tricycles down my sidewalk in spring.

And I love digging my toes in the sand while my big boys swim in the ocean and nieces and nephews build sand castles during the long, hot, humid summer.

Isn't God glorious? It amazes me that though He could have created the world in a very utilitarian way, He chose to make it indescribably beautiful. When one season would have done, He created four with nuances unique in each part of the world. When one butterfly species could have pollinated our flowers, He made 17,000 species of every color in the paint palate. And then He created a world of people (especially women) who would appreciate each brush stroke.

Beautiful, simply beautiful.