First Coming

First Coming
by Madeleine L’Engle

He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.

He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

Waiting

Putting our old Christmas tree skirt out today reminded me of waiting...waiting 26 years ago for our youngest to be born...waiting and worrying and wondering as I was on bedrest pretty much all of the last 3 months of my pregnancy...waiting for a due date(Dec. 26) which passed...many ultrasounds and stress tests...the waiting long...in the waiting time this tree skirt was made. Waiting...

It is Advent. A waiting time. A journey towards a celebration of a baby's birth. Jesus' birth. What was Mary's waiting time like? Did she wonder and worry? After all, she knew she was carrying God's Son! What did she feel in the waiting and when He was born? This child , this King, this Savior!

 

 

 

...we waited, and finally after being induced twice, our son was born healthy and well! And we rejoiced and were thankful! 

 

 

 

Speaking Clearly

 

"I believe that we know much more about God than we admit that we know, than perhaps we altogether know that we know. God speaks to us, I would say, much more often than we realize or than we choose to realize. Before the sun sets every evening, he speaks to each of us in an intensely personal and unmistakable way. His message is not written out in starlight, which in the long run would make no difference; rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day; it is a message that in the long run might just make all the difference.

Who knows what he will say to me today or to you today or into the midst of what kind of unlikely moment he will choose to say it. Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery. But I believe that there are some things that by and large God is always saying to each of us. Each of us, for instance, carries around inside himself, I believe, a certain emptiness – a sense that something is missing, a restlessness, the deep feeling that somehow all is not right inside his skin. Psychologists sometimes call it anxiety, theologians sometimes call it estrangement, but whatever you call it, I doubt that there are many who do not recognize the experience itself, especially no one of our age, which has been variously termed the age of anxiety, the lost generation, the beat generation, the lonely crowd. Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him."

Frederick Buechner

 

 

 

Be Silent

A poem I am 'sitting in' that was shared a while ago with us. 

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone,
Empty
Before your God
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
be silent.
Be still.
Let your God
Look upon you.
That is all.
God knows,
Understands,
Loves you with
An enormous love.
God only wants to
look upon you
With love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God-
Love you.

Edwina Gately

Peace, Beauty and Roots

Had a bit of time while Henry was in his speech group today before we had his individual speech therapy and since the hospital is near the lake and the day was beautiful, I headed there.   Yesterday was a bit of a harder day as Henry was feeling frustrated with not being able to speak like he used to.  He had difficulty while on the phone with one of our sons and that was hard for him.  Normally Henry is pretty positive but sometimes it all piles up just like it does for me at times.  He just wants to be 'normal' again, to be able to speak without getting stuck, to be able to joke around like he used to, to be able to read easily and comprehend and understand what he just read without having to read it a second time, to be able to write a sentence without struggling, and a whole paragraph even...so many things that we took for granted before.  It is so hard to see him down and I just want to 'fix' it for him but I can't.  So in times like this we just hold each other and cry together.  There are so many changes for him that it is actually amazing he does not get down more often. Thankful for that for sure! 

There is always a peace and beauty by the lake that just seeps into my soul. What I needed this day.
  It being the end of November, it was quiet and still...time to just breathe...
The beauty of the day, the stillness, the quiet lapping of water just wrapped me in peace for that time.

Beautiful moments...a gift...in this day.

 

 

 

 

 

These gnarly roots caught my attention.  Half of them are exposed and seem to be hardly holding on and yet the tree is held firm.  Thought about how it sometimes feels like the rug has been pulled out from under us so to speak, our roots are exposed, but those roots do hold.  Sometimes feels like they are barely hanging on but they are.  As I am writing this our wedding text is brought to mind. 

 

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. 

Colossians 2:6-7

 

 

 

 

Finally Back...November Reflection

The last number of days I have been taken back a year and I am reminded of a couple of events from November of 2011.  One is a silent prayer retreat for women that I went to at the end of that month that was such a blessed and needed time.  I know for some of you just the idea of being silent with God seems like the last thing you would ever want to do or be comfortable with.  I admit I was sure nervous about it the very first time I went to one back in 2008, but once you allow yourself to just "be" and to listen to however God might speak, it is amazing that He actually does!! Sometimes it is through scripture, sometimes through nature, sometimes through music, or a book, through journaling or art or any number of ways that are unique to you.  God knows what speaks to you because He knows you, He created you and every one of us is different.



where I found something special on my walk at the retreat

 Anyways, I was reminded today of something I found on a walk during that retreat, that I believe is connected somehow to the other event that I thought about this week.  That event was one of my first assignments for a Leadership Development Course that I am in which meets monthly.  I started that course in October of 2011, another scary step for me!  The assignment was based on a book by Joyce Rupp called "Praying Your Goodbyes".  We were to reflect and write on an exercise of praying a goodbye.  She writes about new hellos being found in the goodbyes.  I won't share here what 'goodbye' God led me to, but as I reread what I had written, I realized that something God put on my heart in that time was being answered a year later...or at least I think it is being answered.  Following are excerpts from my assignment/reflection that month.  I was 'praying my goodbye' at a special place that is not far from our home near an orchard.

"…I stood in the quiet and you could hear the distant sounds of traffic and 'life' but here it felt lonely and removed from everything.  I looked at the orchards surrounding me and there too was a loneliness or sadness as the leaves were dying, the apples were mostly gone and snow was just beginning to fall very lightly and quietly.  The sky was dark with clouds and fog.  Definitely a feeling of goodbye and endings.  Then I noticed birds flitting around and chirping...Those birds seemed like a sign of life in the middle of dying.  A hello in the midst of goodbye.  They were cheerful and moving and gave me a sense of hope, of new things maybe.  I felt like it was time to move on and went to walk through a row of the orchard.  As I came by some dead weeds, out popped more birds that I did not know were there.  Kind of cool.  Are there new things or people that will come out of unexpected places?  As I walked down the row, my attention was drawn to one small red apple that was still on the branch amidst dead and dying leaves. More life amidst the dying. Another picture of a hello in the goodbye?  It was small, but it was red and inviting, so I picked it.  That apple also symbolized the hope of new hellos.  I don't know when or how long, but I have to believe that they will come."

Just in this last week alone I see the hope of new hellos and my heart is glad.  I had almost given up hope of seeing them.

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This post is also a new hello to a blog that I have not written in since before Henry's stroke.  So much has happened and changed in our lives since that day in February of 2012.  Too much to write about now.  Maybe one day...

 

Friday the 13th?? No, just a regular old, frustrating day

Ever have days where it just seems like no matter what you do or how hard you try, things just don't go the way you would like or plan?  Yesterday was like that for me.  I had a list of things I needed to do on Friday and I was determined to get things done smoothly and as quickly as possible. And of course, everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong.  And so, it all took longer and I felt frustrated.  My dream of getting things done efficiently and well went right out the door.  And to top it all off, because I was pressuring myself to get done, I made mistakes and I forgot things.  Domino effect... needless to say, I was not happy with myself.  You might think, what's the big deal??  Maybe in the big scheme of things it isn't, but yesterday was a day that I just really wanted to do things well and feel good about it and instead I ended up feeling frustrated and inadequate.  Hopefully, this week will be filled with much better days.

A New Year and Peace

Listening to a CD this morning and a song sparks memories..."My Peace I Give You".  Maybe because I just talked a couple of nights ago with my daughter how God gave a peace that passes all understanding when I literally felt His hand on my shoulder one night many years ago.  My dad was in an intensive care unit after complications from a kidney transplant and me and my siblings were gathered in a small room in the intensive care waiting area.  We were upset and very frustrated with doctors and stressed.  It was so painful watching my dad suffer and we just did not know what to do.  And so we began reading scripture (particularly the Psalms), praying and even singing which is something we normally did not do together.  But it is times like these that you become desperate for God.  It was as we were reading Psalm 46 :10 "Be still and know that I am God" that I and others literally felt God's hand on our shoulder and an incredible peace filled us!!   I said to my siblings that I needed to tell mom who was with my dad.  When I came there and told her, she said she had felt it too.  It was so amazing.  God did some incredible and amazing things that week through my dad and we really thought he was going to get better and would have some incredible things to tell but unexpectedly my dad died on October 31, 1988, a week after complications began. 

They had 'lost' dad briefly right after complications began but were able to resuscitate him. One of the first things my dad did when I first saw him after that, was squeeze my hand SO hard and nodded as vigorously as he could when I told Him that Jesus was with him.  He then pointed and was trying to ask about the kidney and I saw a tear shed when I told him that they had to remove the donated kidney.  He had been so excited to receive it.  But after that he did not talk about the loss, all he wanted to pass on was what he had experienced and that God was real!!   He never talked much about his faith or God before and that week it was all that mattered and so important to him.  That in itself spoke volumes to us.  It was often difficult for him to talk because of tubes and meds, etc. but one of the first things that he said was "that God told him he could not stay because his work was not yet done".  That is why we thought he would get well and have incredible things to do and tell but in that last week God used him in very powerful ways.

 My dad was very involved in the business community and in the kidney foundation and so there were many people at his funeral who did not know God and we heard later from many who said that the things my dad said and his experience really touched their lives.   I am the exact age my dad was at that time and this past year God really put it on my heart that I needed to tell my dad's story again at our family reunion because so many of the grandkids and younger members of the family were so young or not even born and did not know him or his story.  During that last week, he told his pastor to "tell the people to love the Lord...tell the people"...and he also said to my mom, "God is so almighty, how are we going to tell everyone?"  He also said that "sometimes we have to suffer to learn but we will never suffer as much as Jesus did for us on the cross."  The way he spoke it was as if God had taken my dad right to the cross.  We were amazed. 

Only one other time before had I felt God's hand on my shoulder so literally and that was as I was singing 'Thy Word' during the final concert of 'Reflection", a group Henry and I were part of in Lethbridge before we moved to B.C.  That was just a few months before my dad died.  Was God already then giving me a real sense of His presence with me and preparing me for what was to come a few months later?

And so all of this comes back to me this morning at the beginning of a new year.  God is real, He is there and He gives us His peace.  A peace that passes all understanding.  It can come in the middle of our storms in life.  God is with us in our joys and in our sorrows, in our laughter and our tears.  In this New Year ahead there will be laughter and there will be tears but I pray that no matter what, we remember that God's presence and His peace will always be with us. 

Dad, that last week was a very hard week for all of us and we miss you even after all these years.   I thank you for the testimony you left us.  You would be so proud of your grandkids and great grandkids.  Our prayer is that they too will love and serve God with all of their hearts.  We pray that your testimony will be passed on and that through us all, your kids, grandkids and great grandkids,  we will continue to "tell people"through our lives that God is Almighty, that He is real and that He is LOVE!