I doubt...but This I do know....

It seems to me that it has been a while since I have posted anything but a lot has occurred in my life since the last time I wrote anything. I have been the happiest that I have been in a while. I’m enjoying my work and as they say; sometimes no news is good news. That seems an idiom I have been using a lot lately. There has been a lot of pleasant growth lately. I went through a period of forced, and painful growth where priorities were made, changes were incorporated and views were challenged. I was in the refiners fire, and now I bask in what it is that I have been made for (that is not to say I have arrived). 

It seems like the melancholy falling of the leaves of Autumn brings about a contemplative phase. While I do not know the Fall like I once did, I imagine what it is that I am missing and what it is that I presently have. We all go through seasons in life. Times and seasons that perhaps we would rather not go through. Those seasons always prepare us for something else. There will be great rejoicing in the days to come! Rejoicing comes from a knowledge of where we stand and in Whom we stand. As a tree is rooted in Christ and it flourishes, so do those who are stedfast in Him. Though the storms come and hail beats down and breaks off the branches we realize our own need for the Word, for the Gifts that God gives, and for the understanding of that rich sacrifice which he has already made for us in Christ. 

While I bask in a “spiritual spring” or perhaps in a harvest, I realize that there are others who may be in a “spiritual fall,” preparing themselves for the battles of the cold winter. Being rooted and established in Christ means we live not in a spiritual fast, but a spiritual feasting even when there is famine. While in draught we may not “feel” the present joy of salvation, we can know it is there; a banquet offering life and salvation in meager portions with abundant blessings. Through a small bit of bread and wine we can know and move through those unpleasant seasons of doubt. We can know that we have fellowship in times of isolation, we have forgiveness when we find ourselves bearing down upon ourselves, and we have life and salvation right now. This gives us cause to continually say: Christ is risen! He is Risen indeed!  

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7

A Pleasant Friend to Follow....

I may have said this before, but; throughout the week I attend several services and a Bible study all revolving around the same text for the assigned lectionary reading of the week. This allows me a lot of time to reflect on one specific reading.This past lesson reading was from Ruth. The reading stuck out to me as I also reflected on my last post on Hannah. Like Hannah, Ruth has a message to draw us into, and understand our Lord and His faithfulness as shown to all. 

The words that struck me were the very words my brother and his bride had chosen for the reading for their Wedding. Beginning with the words; “Where you go, I will go...” Ruth makes it known to her mother-in-law that she is ready to deny herself and all she is to take on the identity of another. When I thought about these words and how they apply to my life I found great comfort in them. With an uncertain future and a long road ahead of me, I admit that I don’t always have the conviction of faith like Ruth. I forget that the very one who holds all my tomorrows is the very One who died where I should have died. He was buried where I should have been buried, and has also in the midst of all this given me a future worth living. Recently, I have been contemplating a life very different from what I grew up to know. A life away from family and friends, and in a culture different from what I have always known. While intimidating at first, I came to realize that no matter the difference, change, distance and difficulties for lack of control or knowledge of how things will be, One thing never changes. The one constant in my life allows me to enter into a boat in the midst of a storm. The One who calls the earth into being calms the storms and holds my unseen future in his hands in a way that reminds me that there is a calm in the storm. The calm comes along side of me and says; “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go, where you lodge I will lodge.” When friendless, He is our friend, when barren he fills our arms, when lost he is our way. He proves this in the stories of our past, in the Old testament and in all of history. We need nothing more than the God of Naomi to be our God, to look to the cross and know that death cannot part us from Christ; the God of all the living.  

Ruth 1:16-17

“Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God. 

Where you die, I will die,
And there will I be buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me.”

A Manger for Hannah's Drunken Cries.

For a while I have been studying the barren Hannah of 1 Samuel 1 as if it were a story to teach me to be faithful in order to receive God’s blessing. I sometimes thought that if I could pray like Hannah, perhaps God would listen. Maybe I just need to abandon all my pride and pray shamelessly like I’m drunk, and then God will know that I mean business about the things I am praying for. Or maybe, if I promise him my firstborn child He will grant me those desires of my heart. 

Recently I found that Hannah’s story has proven to be a comfort to a dear friend who has experienced two miscarriages in a very short timeframe. This made me think that perhaps it isn’t as much about “me” and my prayers, but us, and our story. I realized that there is beauty when the same story can comfort two women in two very different positions in life. We are both drawn into the same story as we are both drawn into the same cross and as we both have the same story of Salvation. The story of Hannah began to draw more color and meaning when understood as a promise and not a formula. 

If God fills the hungry with good things, how much more strength will he and has he shown with his arm to the barren like Hannah? It may be that the barren may remain barren in this life, but God filled a manger so that the fruits of his salvation might be made known throughout all generations. We bear a promise of salvation and a common story there in. We share in the story of Hannah, Sari, Leah, Rebecca, and Mary even if our prayers for children aren’t granted. While Christ is our ultimate source of healing, life and salvation, we find comfort in these stories knowing that even with an ultimate plan, God still blessed the lives of these women. He was still mindful of them, just as He is with us. So it is in these stories of bareness where we learn to look more to Christ and less to the individual. We then live more with the perspective of drawing close to the cross of Christ and to the manger that Christ entered to fill every void in our lives.  

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Hannah

1 Samuel 1:12-14New King James Version (NKJV

And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk.  So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!

Cleaved

Today I awoke in the apartment of a friend who I became connected with in one of the strangest and most beautiful ways. I met her in another country at a conference for a few days. We clicked and she later came and visited me in the Dominican Republic, and last night she opened her home up to two traveling missionaries(a.k.a. me and one other missionary). It was a very brief stay, and even though our periods of being together have often been brief, it is as if we have known each other all our lives, and there is always the assurance that we will see each other again. This week, I have said, “goodbye” to many friends. Not for the first time, but nonetheless it has still been very difficult. Today I also had to say, “goodbye” to a fellow missionary who I had been traveling with since we left the Dominican Republic. While I know I will see her again, the weight of the farewell hit me as I was driving away. There is never a doubt that I will see these friends again but there is a pain within me every time the reality of “goodbyes” and “farewells” sink in.

 While as Christians we share the hope of a glorious reunion in heaven, it doesn’t change the fact that while we live in these broken bodies here on earth, we will continually face the partings of friends and families. I must admit that I thought with time they would get easier. But as fatality has made itself known in saying farewell to friends and family, the reality of goodbyes becomes tinged with a bit of morbidity. I am also beginning to realize that the more I open up and love the deeper the pain of partings becomes. In the midst of all these goodbyes I was reminded today of a great “goodbye” that the disciples endured. 

In celebrating the ascension today I reflected on the connection between my own “farewell’s” and those of the disciples. In my journey home today I kept thinking; “How many more times am I going to have to endure this?” Obviously; as long as I continue to open myself up to others, it will go on for as long as I live, until that day when others will be saying “goodbye” to me. The idea of this left me empty, with a sense of there being a bottomless pit and a sensation of endless falling. “How long!? How many more goodbyes? How many more heartbreaks?” Then I thought about the disciples. What a strange, sad parting the ascension must have been. Sure, there would have been joy at knowing that their Redeemer lives and because their Redeemer lives they too would live again. However, wasn’t the blood bath in which they initially said “goodbye” as their rabbi and teacher was taken from their presence enough? Now they had to do it again. Now they had to watch Him be taken from them again. Now they had to discover how to move forward without their great teacher present. Perhaps they wondered how real the past forty days were. If they had in fact lived it and not just woken from a very long dream. Now, they had to start all over again; but not without a helper. This same helper comes to us and binds us all together in our baptism. He makes us One and promises us a joyful reunion in heaven for each of the faithful who die within the grace of God. We ourselves and the disciples have hope, and while we may be cleaved for a time from one another, we are never without hope. We have Christ and all His promises and truths that He gives us in His word. So in the midst of cleaving, we can cling to the cross and remember all we have received one for all in the sacrifice of Christ. We now have fellowship not only with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirt, but with all the company of heaven. So, the more painful partings we endure in this earth give way to a greater joy of many more joyful reunions.   


John 14:18
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

Don’t look back....don’t even look at the clock

When I was in high-school I had an uncle who had schizophrenia. He would do things that didn’t always make sense to the considerably sane mind. One Christmas when I was in high-school he gave me an expensive bottle of perfume. Being the sensible girl that I am I took it back the store that he got it from and exchanged it for a really nice watch. He called me up a week later and asked me how I liked the perfume, I looked I my watch and said; “Oh, I like it!” 

A year later for my birthday I asked for a cell phone. I got my first cell phone my senior year of high-school (yep...I was ruined) it was a little brick. The first official call I got was from my father. I excitedly answered and he said; “Katie! Is your sister there?” I said with gaiety at having received my first phone call, “well she is driving, why don’t you just talk to me!” He said, “Well, you guys need to go to your grandmothers house, your uncle Bill has died” What a first phone call! The same uncle who gave me the “perfume/ watch.” That summer a day before entering into college the battery on the watch died. 

I used that watch all through culinary school. I would take it off and thread it through the button hole on my chefs coat to keep track of time on breads, tasks, and competition projects. Other days I would take it off and thread it through my tank top strap or my shoe laces so I could go for a run. After Culinary school My grandmother died and so did the battery in my watch. I changed the battery and went on to another track in life. I went to Concordia Seward to study to become a deaconess. I bought a bike! (No that isn’t an A.D.D. joke!) I would take my watch off and attach it to the handle bars to avoid a tan line. 

I distinctly remember driving to Fort Wayne and passing a Wal-Mart on the highway when my watch stopped. I was keeping close track of time so that I arrived at “The Fort” on time. I pulled over to take a quick break and change the battery. I took it to the jewelry counter and the kind lady played around with it and pushed the lever inward and it started again! We both had a good laugh about it. My bad...I just had it in my head that this thing goes out whenever I am making major life changes. The next day, I woke up in my own room in Fort Wayne Indiana with a massive Theological journey ahead of me and a dead battery in my watch. I took it to a special battery place, they offered for only $15 a lifetime security that said they would replace the battery in my watch for free (apart from the $15 payment) for the life of the watch. I inquired of the various locations of this special battery place and declined the offer and decided to just pay the $5 to have the battery replaced. I was on my way with a fully functioning watch. The following summer I did what I call “Watch watching.” I was in a job that caused me to constantly look at my watch and wait and hope for the next break, or better yet, for when I would be free (you know you have been there!). 

I used that same watch to calculate the time difference between New England and NE, and when it would be appropriate to call my friends on Skype. I got into another “Watch watching” job in England, and then I got into Chaplaincy where I divided the hands on my watch between “tea time” “visiting hours” “team meetings” and “charting.” That summer I went home with a new future before me. The battery died. I changed it, and went on my merry way. 

That watch sits on my desk now, may she rest in peace. Last Christmas I got very ill and I had to go to the doctor in the Dominican. I had to have an x-ray taken and went into a tiny room with a technician, he shoved me into a bathroom no bigger than a tiny closet and asked me to take off anything with metal; there went my watch. I dropped it on the floor and the glass cracked and the hands just twitched like a dead cockroach (a little ironic). There are so many little battery places on the streets of Santiago that I took it to one of the little street vendors. The kind sir fixed it for 50 pesos (a little more than 1 USD) and said if it stopped working to bring it back to him. Well...for it to “stop working” it would have had to worked properly in the first place. 

I decided to give my watch the dignity of an honorable discharge and put it on the shelf. I tried to replace it with another watch that only lasted a week. I gave up time. I gave up tracking time. I gave up placing significance on the death of a battery and decided the time is now! Our lives are changing every day. By the grace of God, I face a new adventure every day that my watch couldn’t even keep track of. I would be replacing batteries everyday were there merit in my theory. I discovered that my one eye on the past and one on my watch was no longer working. I was given the grace of a broken watch so that I would stop looking down and start looking up. Now the clock just is in my life, it is not my life. Now time is only an idea not a lord. Sometimes the things my uncle did, didn’t make sense, but he taught me something very precious in the bottle of expensive perfume that he gave me. Sometimes stopping and smelling the roses should not be exchanged for sensibility. Time runs out, batteries die, and in the end what was it all for? The woman who washed Jesus feet understood the urgency of sharing in a beautiful thing. With a broken watch and a lesson hard learned over the past 12 years, I press on knowing that what we have been given is this moment, and this day to be used for the glory and the honor of the One who gave up everything for a time to save us for eternity! 

Mark 14:7-9

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁷ For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. ⁸ She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. ⁹ Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

Marked by the blood of THE Lamb

I was reading my treasury of Daily prayer...as I do in the mornings...and I read a text this morning that I think we have all read several times and glazed over. Within the Exodus we hear many times of God “testing” his people. We even hear of it in Genesis where God “tests” Abraham.  Sometimes we even talk about it in our lives and in our little circles saying things like; “God is / was just testing me” or “the silence of God is just a test to see if I’m trusting Him or not” or even when we talk of others, “Job was tested.” For whatever reason this has always rubbed me the wrong way. The Hebrew verb can also be translated using the English words; try, prove, or tempt. I would venture to say that most of us think of this verb in connection to the Devil, and we confess in the sixth petition of the Lord’s prayer; “God, indeed tempts no one?” In addition, we at times tempt, try, and test God often in our own lives, as did the children of Israel, provoking God to action, most times in anger. Perhaps the notion of God doing to us what we do to him and the devil does to us is difficult to swallow because it is difficult to imagine a loving God doing what we sinners do in malice. 

Perhaps ‘God testing” rubs because I used to cheat on tests, (I started and stopped that in the second grade) or perhaps it is because I hate tests, or maybe it is because I always think that whoever is giving the test is secretly out to get me. I have never had a very positive perspective on tests. I get nervous, I choke, I forget everything I should know or that I once had committed to memory. Tests in my mind have been a “make or break” deals. The worst of all the subjects for me was spelling. I can only hear out of one ear, so when covering homophones I just grabbed a shovel and a plot of land and started digging because I knew I was going to die, and I didn't want to be "that student" who raised her hand after each word and said; "Could you repeat that in another sentence?" So, going back to God then; as one who “tests.” I think the problem in my perspective and perhaps for others, is we think there is a mark with all tests. You study, you take the test, you pass or you fail, done. God however, doesn’t work like that. He continually tests and not for a mark or grade. He continually places us in situations where we can look to Him and trust, or look to ourselves and see what happens. It isn’t to prove anything to Him, it is only to show us. Just like with the children of Israel wandering through the desert. He continually tested them not to prove their worthiness of entering into the promised land. No, he already selected them to enter the promised land. God is faithful, and committed. The teacher knows his subject better than the students. He gives them these little tests to show them just how faithful He truly is. So they can know for their future wanderings that He does as He says He will. He tests, so that we know Him better and so that we do not have to test Him. He examines us and our hearts so that He Himself can know how to teach us better of Himself. He shows us our sin, to show us our Savior, and He tests our very being so we know what we might become, but only in and through Him.

I find it interesting that there really isn’t a “pass” or “fail” in God’s testing. Sure the Israelites and many of the Patriarchal fathers turned their back on God when they needed to be trusting Him, but the beauty is that it isn’t a fail because God is still faithful and uses those moments to teach us. Our greatest fail was in not listening and trusting His words that He breathed on us in creation. But our greatest gain is learning that our failures are blotted out by the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The very One who took the test in our place, and completed it in all faithfulness as only God could do. Every test is gain as we look to the one who washed us clean and made us white. In Christ we have one who goes before us, and completes what we otherwise would fail. He makes our bitter waters sweet, He promises us healing and cleansing from our sins, and He feeds us with His very body and blood. To quote my supervising pastor at the end of every one of His sermons; “Thanks be to God, for this Jesus Christ! Amen!” 

Exodus 15:25-26 So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

Fighting Against Death

Today was difficult. I cried my make up off and it didn’t take many tears to do that, but even still...it was the first time I cried this much in and among my friends and deaconess students. One of our deaconesses sent me a message to let me know that a woman we had been visiting quite regularly had gone severely ill. This morning I received the call that she had passed away early in the morning and they were trying to find enough money to get the body from the hospital to the home. I have written on funerals before and how they have to burry the body immediately so I have explained that things go quite quickly. 

While the deaconess students and I are all still learning together how these things work and how we communicate the Gospel in the midst of pain and suffering, we know in one another the unity of Christ that carries us through these difficult events. The woman who died left four children behind, and their pain was made known. They suffered for not being able to stop the effects of sin and death upon their mother. My friends; the deaconesses, suffered for not being able to stop the pain of what that death would bring. I suffered to see the tears that rolled down both the children’s faces, and my friends faces. I suffered because it rendered me helpless. My heart has held many people up in prayer as sin has played it’s nasty final card of death, and every time I feel so powerless. Yet every time my arms are held in those of one who is carrying a cross much larger than mine, I am reminded; here God has given us, one to the other so that He can be made known, and I am humbled and honored. 

As I watched both the children and my beloved friends, I saw them fight against death while holding the promise of eternal life within their hands. Here a mother had left her children, yet God has not. God remains present in His word, and in the Body of Christ.  Here in the final days of lent, just before Palm Sunday, a mother no longer walks the lenten path of repentance and reflection on her saviors death, but she lives in the light of the resurrection. She lives to sing the Easter hymns now while we remain to sing the lenten ones. She lives to praise her Savior face to face. Tears may flow and doubts, worries, and sadness linger over our heads and block the light of the blistering sun but not the heat itself. Yet; we hold the light of the world and all His promises, and we support and love one another in these promises. Because He lives we too shall live. Because He lives, we cling to those promises in our veil of tears.

Christ Is Risen, Christ Is Living:

1.)Christ is risen, Christ is living, Dry your tears, be unafraid!

Death and darkness could not hold Him, Nor the tomb in which He lay.

Do not look among the dead for One who lives forever more;

Tell the world that Christ is risen, Make it known He goes before.

2.)If the Lord had never risen, We’d have nothing to believe.

But His promise can be trusted: “You will live, because I live.”

As we share the death of Adam, So in Christ we live again;

Death has lost its sting and terror, Christ the Lord has come to reign.

3.) Death has lost its old dominion, Let the world rejoice and shout!

Christ the firstborn of the living, Gives us life and leads us out.

Let us thank our God, who causes Hope to spring up from the ground;

Christ is risen, Christ is giving Life eternal, life profound. 

1.) ¡Cristo vive, fuera el llanto, los lamentos, y el pesar!

Ni la muerte ni el sepulcro lo han podido sujetar.

No busquéis entre los muertos al que siempre ha de vivir, 

¡Cristo vive! Estas nuevas por doquier dejad oír.

2.) Que si Cristo no viviera vana fuera nuestra fe:

mas se cumple su promesa: ¨Porque vivo, viviréis.¨

Si en Adán entró la muerte, por Jesús la vida entró:

no temáis, el triunfo es vuestro: ¡El Señor resucitó!

3.) Si es verdad que de la muerte el pecado es aguijón, 

no temáis pues Jesucristo nos da vida y salvación

Gracias demos al Dios Padre que nos da seguridad,

que quien cree en Jesucristo vive por la eternidad.   (LSB #479)