"Fearfully and wonderfully made"

              The “newest” baby that I ever saw—other than our own—is the third child of a former student of mine.  I met Janice more than 20 years ago while I was tutoring at the Writing Center of a local community college.   We became friends that semester, in part, because she needed an encourager in her efforts to succeed in college, a path only she, one of ten siblings, tried after her family came to America from Vietnam.  My husband and I became her American family, and we saw each one of her three children in their first days before they left the hospital.

               But John, the youngest of the three, we saw when he was only an hour old.  Janice had a planned C-section that morning more than five years ago now, and we were called to go in to see her while she was in a recovery area.  But then the nurse came in carrying the baby and shortly thereafter, this little one was in my arms.

               Our first grandchild was born just over three years ago in the mountains of North Carolina.  We had timed our visit to begin just before his due date, and because he did not pull any surprises, we were “on the ground” from Henry’s first minutes of life.  Our second grandchild, little Mason, was in a bit of a hurry and arrived about three weeks before her due date.  We caught our first “live look” at her when she was just 8 days old.  Our son proudly walked her out to our car when we finally arrived after a long but exciting car ride to Alabama.  Yes, we have traveled far and wide to share even a bit of such special moments of life, and being there was worth every mile driven.

Among all of life’s blessings, the safe arrival of a healthy little one is among the greatest and grandest.  Indeed, the handiwork of God always amazes.  Little fingers, tiny toes, works of wonder each one.  And we are deeply grateful.

On our drive back, we were sent on a detour along highway 139 not too far out of Nashville, Tennessee, where we had spent the night.  After seeing the 139 sign several times, I decided to take a fresh look at the words of Psalm 139, some of which are very familiar.  God is depicted as the Masterful creator as the psalmist declares, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14).  Such an intimacy is described between God and his little creations.  “Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed.  And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (139:16).

Our beginnings with God are quite intimate, and just as we as parents long for closeness with our children, God’s desire is for continued closeness with His children.  Choosing to stay close, to continue in love and gratitude with God and with each other, are surely imbedded in “the days fashioned” for all of us, each and every one.    

              

                

"With God" makes all the difference

                If you are or have ever been part of a small group of Christian people (in my experience, usually women) who come together with a real desire to learn more about God, then you are blessed, truly blessed.  And if this group wants to learn from God and from each other as they work through study materials, then bump that blessing up a notch.  With such a group as I have described is where I spent a few hours recently tackling a challenging lesson on sanctification.  We worked our way through specific questions and various additional comments on particularly hard issues.  I think we all had a little better understanding of this Christian exhortation to be sanctified, set apart unto God for His use and purposes when we went back “out into the world.”  A world, incidentally, that we are to be out in but not actually part of.

                And there it is:  another aspect of the Christian life that we surely can’t pull off on our own.  And isn’t it great that we don’t have to.  The lesson that centered on sanctification also emphasized our position “in Christ” and the role of the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.  That presence and its importance are at the heart of Jesus’s illustration of the vine and its branches.  In John’s gospel, Jesus explains:  “I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).  We are to abide in Jesus and He in us—no other dynamic will achieve sanctification or anything else truly rooted in the love and power of God Himself.

               Now here is where it gets a little more interesting.  Just this morning when I had some quiet time here at home, somehow I came to a curious pairing of what I would say are very basic yet important aspects of this life of holiness, faith and love that we are called to live.  Yes, apart from God, we can do nothing but with God, nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:37).  These are from the words spoken to Mary by the angel who came to her and revealed God’s plan for her, a young virgin, to bear God’s own son.  Since Mary was understandably overwhelmed by this message, the angel went on to explain that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and God’s power would accomplish what to our minds would seem impossible.  Thus with the declaration that with God’s own presence and power at work in her and upon her, this miraculous conception could really happen.

               Mathew records another encounter that reveals God’s great ability when the disciples are observing the difficulties of leaving worldly possessions behind to follow God.  Jesus talks about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and they asked, “Who then can be saved?” (Mat. 19:23-26).  Jesus's explanation is simple and rather blunt:  “With men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”  Again, the wonder-working power of God can only be accessed by His living presence in us and our great dependence and awareness of the Holy Spirit who still speaks in that “still, small voice” Ezekiel heard after all the roaring wind, earthquake, and fire that preceded it (1 Kings 19:11-13).

               In Psalm 46:10, God gives a simple and clear directive:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  That has been an important and strong suggestion that God has brought me back to over and over again.  A more modern day version might be, “Ok, just simmer down.  Stop all the worry, the what ifs, the fears and frustrations—not unjustified feelings.  Now listen, carefully and diligently, to what I have to say about it all.”  Obviously, God can get His points across far more eloquently and simply than I can.

               God’s loving kindness is new every morning, new and greatly needed.  I thank Him for the opportunities to experience His grace and grow in our understanding of His counsel both in those times when we do come apart from the world to listen and when we come together with other seekers to collectively listen to God and to one another.  He is the God who calls us to be sanctified, to realize that on our own, we can do nothing.  Isn’t it wonderful news that we are not left with just this nothing.  We are clearly directed to believe that with God, there is another nothing, one which knows no limitation to the possibilities God can accomplish when He works in us as we abide in Him.  Indeed, with God ,nothing will be impossible.

 

Having Hope

                I have been on a long and winding road for some years trying to find identification and treatment for a set of symptoms including muscle and joint pain, stiffness and fatigue.  There have been numerous rounds of physical therapy, blood work, scans and doctor visits.  Just this past week, I met with yet another specialist, a hematologist, after a blood test result was way out of the normal range.  After sharing some information related to the blood test, this new doctor said for now she had “more questions than answers,” thus moving on to the need for further testing.  But then she said something that seemed to want to check out my “hope” amidst all of this.  My quick and direct reply was, “I have hope,” to which she added, “That is good.”

               What she didn’t ask and I didn’t offer was exactly what this hope that I have is or where it comes from.  Mitt Romney spoke of “binders full of women.”  Well, I have binders full of hope, God-given hope and faith—not the actual substance of hope but the bits and pieces recording scriptures, hymn and song lyrics, striking phrases from sermons, teaching and motivational stories, that I have written down in binders dating back to at least 2009.  I have written them down to have a record I can look back to at times, but perhaps more so to aid the process that somehow turns these gleanings into spiritual manna God seems to want to write on our hearts when we seek Him.    

               Almost 40 years ago now, I became ill with what seemed like the flu with the complication of pericarditis, an inflammation of the sack around the heart.  After some weeks of getting a little better only to feel sick again, I went to the hospital for a week’s worth of tests.  Only one which my doctor referred to as a “red herring” (a term I had previously been unfamiliar with) showed a positive reading, and this blood test was to be repeated in a couple weeks.   The second test also showed positive, and the antibiotic to treat paratyphoid (what? you might be asking) got me headed more steadily on the road to improvement. 

               It was during this frustrating and scary period that an English teacher I had worked with at Normandy High School encouraged me to read my Bible a little differently than I had thought of it before.  She pointed me more specifically to Jesus and to this written word as a present day opportunity for God to “speak” to me, personally.  Even more unusual, she suggested that I underline any passages that really caught my attention and ministered God’s comfort and hope to me as I read them.  And thus began a discovery of the very real and ageless work of God and His Holy Spirit for those who seek Him in any day to build in us the spiritual wisdom, insight, and hope, all of which marvelously create that wonderful gift of faith, even the kind that moves mountains of difficulty.

               One of the benefits I have come to appreciate about reading and absorbing the stories and teaching of the scriptures, Old and New Testaments alike, is what we can learn about God and about living a life of faith by the power that God can supply.  For example, David, the young shepherd boy, had learned how God’s name and power could be his help against beasts attacking his sheep.  That same God could help him win a confrontation with a huge giant that experienced and well-armed men were intimidated by.  Thousands of hungry people were fed from the scraps of a young boy’s lunch because Jesus knew what His father could do.  Desperate, sick people came to Jesus and he opened blind eyes and cleansed lepers from the dreadful effects of their disease.

               Jesus told His disciples that it was to their advantage that He would be going away.  In John 14, He talked about how the Father would send the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who would teach them all things and “bring to your (their) remembrance all things” that He had told them.  It is quite remarkable how this Holy Spirit, the living presence of God within us, can bring to mind a verse, a hymn lyric, a strong Biblical promise that some time previously we have read or heard.

               One of the times God brought “back to my remembrance” something meaningful I had read happened about 8 years ago.  I was a little fearful about an upcoming change involving where one of our children would attend graduate school.  You know how those “what if” chains can get started in our mental musings.  But seemingly out of nowhere, this line kept coming to my mind, something about not forgetting the “possibilities born of faith.”  This didn’t seem to match any scriptures I could think of, but the magic of Google identified the source to be a prayer penned by Mother Theresa.  “May you never forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.”  Hope and peace from God to my listening and needy heart, words from a prayer I had read in an email but had forgotten about.

               I do have hope, fed and fueled each day by the fresh living water God will bring to us when we look to Him, when we set out expectations in what He promises and only He can give.