Celebrating Anniversaries

Today would have been my 39th anniversary with Frank. I met him when I was sixteen, in an ice cream shop in our home town. He was home from college for the summer and I was fresh out of high school. We dated three years. Man oh man, seems like a lifetime ago. He's already been in heaven for SEVEN YEARS!

I wish I could call his cellphone and hear his voice and ask what he’s been doing all this time—though for him, it may only feel like a few days have passed. When we are finally cut loose from these bonds of time and space, I think it will all feel different.

This month, my three kids are all celebrating anniversaries, too. I can’t believe my daughter has been married 15 years and my sons for 10 and 6 years!

If I could give any advice about marriage it would be, ENJOY every bit of it! The struggles, and all the ups and downs! They are all part of your unique journey together and the memories will only sweeten with time.  

Don’t worry. The things you don’t like won’t last forever. But YOU are something special! CHERISH one another! Remember that you are a TEAM, one flesh, and all the trials along the way are only meant to make you stronger. Sounds cliché, I know, but they will!

I just finished reading Joni and Ken, the Untold Love Story. Wow! Joni Eareckson was part of my own life as a young Christian. In fact I got to meet her in Boston once, and we talked about the time I was “paralyzed” in New Guinea. Carried out of the tribe on a stretcher, I didn’t know if I would ever walk again.

I had a small taste of that limitation, being bedridden for only a month, then progressing to a wheelchair for another month, and finally, I made it to crutches when my youngest was 4 months old. That was hard at the time, but a perspective-changer for sure.

Joni’s story had encouraged me through it, and I was happy just to hold her hand and thank her. What a precious daughter of the most High God, a champion in my eyes! Here, 33 years later, she is still bravely continuing from her wheelchair to touch millions around the globe. She paints with her teeth, sings with all her heart, and travels to encourage broken lives all over the world.

 

Joni and Ken Tada have been able to embrace affliction, their love for one another has deepened with time, and God has used them mightily. What an inspiration they are!

So, to all my kids and all my married friends, Happy Anniverary!

Live well.

Love strong.

Savor your time together.

 

ADVENT!

My friend Scott spoke about Zechariah and Elizabeth Sunday morning. The story is found in the very beginning of Dr. Luke’s gospel and piqued my interest with a whole new perspective. Honestly, there’s no other book in the world like God’s Word! Even after 39 years of serious Bible study, there is always something new, like diving in the ocean. You can never exhaust the wealth and riches of it, and there is always some fantastic new treasure to be discovered.

After 400 silent years between Malachi and Matthew, all the years of waiting and praying for a child, the DIVINE STORY breaks back on stage. The curtain rises and we, the reading audience, come to the opening scene: the day Zechariah was chosen by lot to offer incense in the temple. Steeped in Jewish tradition and the laws of Moses, Scott pointed out that he was 1 out of about 18,000 priests on call. It probably felt like winning the lottery to have this opportunity to serve.

Let me insert a thought about that--a striking contrast to the AWESOME PRIVILEGE we have today! We are urged (at the end of Hebrews 4) to approach the throne of grace with confidence, since Christ’s death on the cross caused the temple veil to be rent in two from top to bottom. He opened the way for us to approach God freely at any time and call him Abba Father! Back in ‘the day’ however, you had to be selected to enter into the presence of God, in the holy of holies. They even had to tie a cord around his ankle in case he fell dead due to a misstep and had to be dragged out!

But getting back to the main stage of our story, the precise timing and hand of God in the details was evident when the old man stood before the altar and now his day got even better when an angel appeared and said, “Your prayers have been heard.” Wow! Who among us wouldn’t LOVE to have that happen? “Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you and many will rejoice because of his birth…”

It’s a great story, isn’t it? Don’t you love it when someone finally has a breakthrough and a dream is fulfilled? We often skim over the details of a familiar tale, but “well along in years,” they had probably carried an unfulfilled desire for a child for decades. For all we know, this couple was in their seventies or eighties, and had every reason to give up hope. Insert another cultural tidbit: Elizabeth’s barrenness was actually just cause for divorce in those days, but they stuck with it. They chose to stay the course, and both were called blameless in the sight of God.

God knows the desires of our hearts. We can’t change our circumstances, but it’s up to us what we do with them. We can shake our fist, blame the heavens and powers that be, or we can rest in the hands of a loving God and trust that He knows. That’s it! It’s not really very complicated. The God of the heavens understands and he has a plan for all this. It doesn't matter how long it takes. It doesn't really matter if I understand it all. His perfect will is well worth waiting for, and when He moves, it's going to blow your mind!

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (I Cor 13:12)

I hope that whatever you're going through today, you'll stay the course knowing, God understands. Say in your heart, Lord, give me the strength to endure the waits, and the wisdom to trust in your promises. Amen.

Hungry for Blood

I hate mosquitoes.

Don't you? Look at that picture! It's enough to make your skin crawl.

This is a strange thought to have dancing in your brain first thing in the morning. Especially when I opened my eyes to a whitened world of snow-covered pine trees here in New England. Why am I even thinking about mozees?

Maybe it was a whining sound from somebody’s brakes outside, or a hissing from the furnace, but I woke up remembering how much they aggravated and annoyed us on a daily basis when we lived in the jungle for sixteen years. 

They are thirsty blood-hunters and blood-thirsty hunters. A nuisance when I was trying to sleep, hovering behind my elbows when I was trying to work, and landing on my ankles when I was trying to teach. Try as you might, you could never cover your entire body in that heat. Thank God, there were refreshing heaven-sent reprieves from their misery!

It wasn't just the annoyance of their stinging bites. In the tropical jungle, they infect you with malarial parasites and all who lived there struggled with repeated cycles of fevers, chills, vomiting and mind-splitting headaches that would last for three days. New chloraquine-resistant strains were breeding around us too, like the deadly cerebral version.

So, what is it about them? Mozees, so hungry for blood, relentlessly seeking a warm body on which to prey. Those pesky varmints march out in force no matter what the obstacles. In the jungle we would burn stinky coils, use lotions and sprays, and swat at them with little straw brooms, but nothing could deter the vicious band. Yes, mosquitoes teach a solid lesson in perseverance that could bolster any army.

Do I seek God with diligence, or do I easily get distracted and let little things derail or disrupt my pursuit of the Almighty?

One day it hit me, even mosquitoes were created with purpose. They could either drive us out of our minds, or drive us to God.  

Truth is, we need blood to survive physically, and a blood covering to ensure we live eternally. We need the shed blood of a sin-bearer in order to be forgiven.  

God said, the life is in the blood and without it there can be no forgiveness of sin. The whole message of the Bible makes this key point.

Without the blood of our sin-bearer, we will not survive the judgment seat of God on our own merits. We need the covering of a pure and worthy sacrifice. We need Christ, whose blood was shed on the cross of Calvary in our place in order to receive forgiveness before a holy and righteous God.

Thank God for His heaven-sent relief!

If you haven't found relief perhaps a better question would be, are you diligently seeking? Maybe mosquitoes are God's little reminders to the planet that we need blood to live, and we need to seek until we find it or we will not survive.