Good morning…
Over Thanksgiving break we were up before anyone else in our family, so my oldest daughter and I enjoyed coffee and a great conversation. I asked her, “So what new thing is God teaching you right now?”
Since she has left her job as a medical assistant and is now meeting with people who are interested in supporting her with prayers and with funds as she responds to God’s call into college ministry, the biggest thing she is learning is trust. She’s learning to trust God in myriad new ways.
“So, mom, what new thing is God teaching you?” she asked, as I sat on the floor in the middle of a bunch of multi-colored beads, creating jewelry in pure delight.
“Well, actually I am realizing that I have no idea why I love finding things at secondhand stores and re-creating them into something beautifully new,” I said, baffled. “I lose myself in creating soulful jewelry, making arrangements with living and dying flowers and adopting original art that calls to my spirit. I don’t know why I take such delight in finding lost things and re-creating them new.”
“Isn’t that what we are all designed to do?” she surprised me with her intriguing question. “God made us to be co-creators with Him, to gather the lost, to help people find God and to watch the love of Christ re-create all of us.”
“Thank you for saying that,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. I love finding lost things and re-making them. As I share these leather bracelets with three antique glass beads, I teach women to repeat God’s truth, ‘I am wrapped in the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ I pray over each bracelet, praying that it becomes a tangible symbol of God’s strength within us each day.”
I love writing with God and having our words go somewhere, out into the world through our daily blog. Now as I make these “Lost. Found. Re-created” symbols that tell the story of our souls, I will have a stronger sense, that as time joyfully evaporates, I am responding to the creative call of God in my life. I love the fact that tonight, tomorrow and Saturday, these soulful re-creations have somewhere to go. For the first time I am sharing these handmade gifts at a holiday market in my friend’s home.
As I took gift items over last night, I met another creative woman who is selling elf kits in my friend’s treehouse outback. A total newbie to this experience, I was so grateful for her friendly spirit, her wise advice and her helping hands.
“You are ‘maker’,” she said. “‘Makers’ are wired by God to create. You are definitely a ‘maker’.”
I bask in the affirmation of two women, one younger and one older, one knows me well and the other just met me.
Be lost.
Be found.
Be re-created.
“Isn’t that what we are all called to do?” my daughter’s words rewind in my mind. “You are definitely a ‘maker’,” said my newfound friend.
As I look forward to returning to my friend’s treehouse this morning to arrange fresh and dying flowers in the same containers and adding new jewelry I made in the middle of the night, my heart delights in the tangible gifts of God. Selling these re-created items, mix and match, proceeds will go to Blue Skies Ministries, a non-profit providing beach vacations for families impacted by childhood cancer.
If you are in the vicinity this weekend, please stop by our holiday market and pick up some gifts that joyfully give back.
Together let’s live into the new verse God taught me last Sunday: We have become his poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfill it! (Ephesians 2:10, TPT).
…Sue…
