Good morning…
A few of you wrote me touched by yesterday’s morning message (use “Previous” link above to revisit post). I felt compelled to issue each a challenge: “Text me by evening and tell me some of the ways God amazes you today. I will do the same.”
So by the end of yesterday, these moments of amazement came rolling into my phone.
- My best friend from over 50 years called from Florida. He ended our call saying, “I love you.”
- During our get-together, my 93-year old friend recited some lines from a poem I was reading to her. When I asked when she memorized it, she replied, “In high school.”
- My dog and I were reunited after two days apart and she greeted me like we’d been separated for two months.
- I read a remarkable poem, Bess by William Stafford. It is elegy for a woman who waged a silent, courageous battle with cancer.
- The clouds parted and a beautiful sun came out on a chilly afternoon. I was able to take a good long walk to see God’s handiwork, including two majestic hawks circling above the tops of pine trees.
- I got to rest my head on a pillow, close my eyes, and have a personal conversation with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
- I met with a man who sat in front of me at church on Sunday and we realize we have all these shared interest and our ministries connect.
- I feel my husband helping me from heaven, just like he said he would before dying four years ago.
- I got to see God connecting an underprivileged high school senior to the college of his dreams, opening up a bright future.
- We held open house for our ministry, now in its toddler stage, and it was so packed that we had to run our program twice because their wasn’t enough room for everyone!
- I had a thirty minute conversation with our young adult son who is processing how beautifully God is at work in his life.
Then I responded to each, sharing the ways I saw God beautifully at work in my day yesterday.
- Discussing our first chapter in our Thursday study with our young moms at church, called Just Open The Door: How One Invitation Can Change A Generation, it dawned on me that both the vibrant Women’s Ministry I am honored to direct and our online written word ministry were born from me opening the door to a clear, middle of the night call from God in 2005: “Host a Bible study in your home. AND write it week by week.” Remembering back, I was stuck in the dregs of my deepest depression after our uprooting move eighteen months earlier. God did not seem to mind that I had no friends to ask into our home and had never written anything for anyone else to read.
- Since last April, God has been crafting our Women’s Lenten Communion Service message for March 12th (save the date and come to Northside’s chapel 6:30 – 8:00 pm) through weekly walk and talks with the speaker. Today, she and I shifted our envisioning to include our Program Coordinator, the logistics lady who will help bring this beautiful evening to fruition.
- I felt inclined to make Stromboli for the parents of a close friend of my 24 year old son, a young man who died suddenly last April. I texted and asked the mom if she would like Stromboli and she quickly replied, “Yes, how thoughtful of you.” Stromboli night at our home with a basement of boys was her son’s favorite meal. I took it over to his parents and learned that last Friday would have been his 24th birthday, so this would be a special way for them to celebrate his birthday season. I did not know the perfection of the timing, but God did.
- Emailing with a new mom I have been praying for for months, she’s wrote: “Thanks for the beautiful note! We are happily home and in love with our precious baby girl. We feel your prayers, and I’d love to get together sometime once we are more settled.” I replied: “Oh, I remember those days. Cherishing each moment in a groggy state of love and exhaustion. You will come up for air at the exact right moment, and when you look up and out, think of me, email me, and we will set a date. Until then, feel surrounded by my prayers.”
We are in intimate relationship with an amazing God!
We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn’t have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That’s why we have this Scripture text: No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you (1 Corinthians 2:6-10, MSG).
…Sue…
P.S. Thanks to Gina MacFarland for today’s photo.
