The To-Do List

I LOVE a To-Do list! I get such satisfaction out of writing down everything I want to get done in a day’s time and then crossing it off as I go along. I’ve been known to add something to the list so I can mark through it. I know I’m not alone in this. The feeling of accomplishment is such a great reward! I sometimes forget to bring my list to the LORD though. That might seem trivial, but hours and minutes build into days and years. This is what life is made of. I am building a life. All my efforts to live a good life and serve Him are wasted without Him filling and directing me. It becomes my project and my priorities instead of His. I come to think I know best.

 Psalm 127:1, “Unless the LORD builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain, unless the LORD watches over a city, the watchman stays alert in vain.”

 I cannot help but think of the massive project we have in rebuilding our church and school right now. If we really believe it all belongs to Him, we must consult Him regarding every step of the process. What does God want for this facility? How does He want to use it? How does it fit with His priorities? In what ways will it bring Him glory? Are we asking Him? Are we going to be upset if it seems less than what we hoped? Do we trust that His way really is the best way? Do we believe He cares? When Solomon built the Temple, God cared enough to provide detailed instructions, and it was magnificent! I believe He has good things in store for us and look forward to the day we are all together in the new sanctuary joyfully worshipping Him! As wonderful as that will be, the new sanctuary will also only be temporal. But there’s a better one,

 

Hebrews 8:1-2, “…we have this kind of high priest, Who sat down at the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle, which the LORD set up, and not man.”

 

Let us fervently pray.

 

joyce hague

So You Want to Be an Actress---

 

As a student at Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, Iowa, I participated for one year on the traveling drama team. The cast, three men and four women, prepared a Bible-based 3-act play and presented it at various churches in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana during the school year.

One of the characters in the play was a griping, complaining, homely old woman who plagued her browbeaten old husband, as well as anyone else around, with her incessant crabbing. The part was played by Dee, a sweet and sensitive girl who was an excellent actress. If you wanted a “witchy” character, Dee could deliver!

Sometimes after our presentation, we visited with our audience while we were still in costume, though not “in character.” Once, after this event, when we met in a back room to remove makeup, Dee was in tears. She told us that during the visiting time, a young girl had marched up to her, stomped her little foot in anger and, with as much rage as her tiny self could muster, shouted, “I HATE you!” Dee was crushed. She was unable to separate her own personal feelings from the character she played. Though Dee was sobbing, the rest of us were delighted. We heaped our praise on her. “Dee, the girl said those words because you played your part perfectly!” “You were convincing!” “She believed you!” “You’re a great actress!” I do not know if the honest praise of knowledgeable friends could, for Dee, overcome the pain inflicted by one critic who could not understand what had taken place.

If we call ourselves Christians, we are, to someone, representing Christ. I hope we are not merely “acting” in our role as “Christ’s ones,” however, we are, indeed, two characters. We are ourselves – individuals specifically made by God – and at the same time, we are representatives of Him. We should be striving to represent Christ as closely as we are able. The better we “play our part,” the more the “audience” will view us and treat us as they view and treat Christ. He told us this. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” Jn. 15:18-21

Wait. That’s not my personal goal. I don’t want people to hate me. I don’t even want them to dislike me. If we are going to take on the “role” of Christ’s woman, not as an “act” but as our real life, we are going to have to separate our own feelings from our “part” as a character in Christ’s drama. While we may feel hurt if someone hates us for Christ’s sake, He had a different perspective on that. “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22, 23.

Blessed! Blessed! Rejoice! Leap for Joy! The praise of the knowledgeable One is of true significance; the pain inflicted by those who do not understand should not distract us from our determination to play our part as accurately as we can. Let us at least try to be mistaken for Jesus.

 

^{--Lynda Shenefield}

 

Lamentations

 “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1)

“Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!” (Ps. 44:23)

“For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” (Ps. 43:2)

“Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants!” (Ps. 90:13)

Do these verses make you cringe just a little? How can someone speak like that to God? Is that really OK? Wouldn’t you be shocked if you heard someone get up in church and begin to pray with this kind of language? And yet these prayers are preserved for us in Scripture. And not only are these passages preserved, they are actually songs that were sung! They are songs of lament, full of sorrow in a broken world, crying out to God to do something, to show Himself, to see and act on behalf of His children. I am currently reading a book on lament by an author who believes that this type of prayer is sorely needed in our world today. As I am reading, I am also doing a personal study of various psalms of lament as well as the book of Lamentations. I am seeing that, as author Mark Vroegop says in this book on lament entitled Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, that lament is “the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.” Vroegop shows how the majority of the lament psalms follow four steps. I would briefly like to present these steps in hopes that, one, you will see them in Scripture as you read the psalms of lament, and, two, that they would fuel your own prayer language as you wrestle with pain.

1. Turn to God – The incredible thing is that in their deep sorrow the various authors of the lament psalms turned to God, even when they felt that He wasn’t listening. They didn’t turn away in bitterness. They didn’t get angry and let go of any belief in a good God. In the midst of their questions about Him and why He wasn’t near, they turned TO Him. I remember reading Timothy Keller’s book on suffering years ago in which he states that Christians who go through suffering either turn to God and draw closer to Him as a result, or they grow bitter and turn away from God. And I made a resolution that no matter what the difficulty, even if I didn’t understand or doubted God Himself, I would turn to Him with my questions. This is what we see the psalmist doing. To read really shocking language, turn to Lamentations 1 and 2. Here we see the author acknowledging that God has “become like an enemy,” “swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob,” and has “killed them in the day of [His] anger, slaughtering without pity.” And yet, even in that belief of God’s sovereignty over Jerusalem’s destruction by enemy nations due to her sin, he still prays to God and pours his heart out to Him.

2. Complain – I’ll be honest. I struggle with the word ‘complain’ here which in my mind is always sin. But what is meant here is the honest speaking of the struggles that one faces and one’s feelings as in the verses mentioned above. It doesn’t try to couch the prayers in nice language or pretend the hurt isn’t as bad. You will find many complaints in the psalms as David tells God how his life is being hunted, how the wicked sit and wait in ambush and seem to be prospering, how he is mocked and despised. Complaint lets us bring our hardships, frustrations, and even our honest feelings to God; He already knows them anyway. We don’t come to God angry as if He had to give an account, but we do come humbly and honestly, pouring out our hearts before Him.

3. Ask boldly – We bring our requests before God, believing that He is sovereign and almighty. What types of requests do we see in the lament psalms? Asking God to not forget the afflicted and to call the wicked to account (Psalm 10), to see and answer and preserve life (Ps. 13), to deliver from one’s enemies (Ps. 22), to not be silent and to listen to one’s prayer (Ps. 28), to not remember one’s sins (Ps. 79),  and to be taught His ways (Ps. 86). Vroegop points out, “They call upon God with such authority that it seems as if they’re commanding God to act. Their confidence in God’s character and their knowledge of His past deliverance compel them to make bold requests. The writers of lament stake their claim on what God has promised to do.”

4. Choose to trust – I love that so many psalms that start so bleakly end so beautifully. Psalm 13 which so shockingly begins with “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” ends with “But I have trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.” So what happened in between the beginning and ending of that psalm? David turned to God, was honest about his struggles, took his complaints before God, requested boldly for Him to act, and then chose to trust Him, reminding Himself of the truths of God’s character. The point of lament is to push us towards this point where we acknowledge who God is and leave all in His hands.

May we learn how to lament, for we too live in a broken world that needs this language. As Vroegop points out, one in three of the psalms are written in this “minor key.” Lament allows us to grieve deeply and yet trust God whole-heartedly. We lament illness and cancer and death. We lament racism and human trafficking. We lament the coronavirus and the far reach that it has had in so many areas of life. We lament our children who have wandered away from the Lord. We lament the pain and brokenness in the world, and with the psalmist cry out, “How long, Lord?” And in all our lamenting, we ask boldly for God to act and we acknowledge His goodness and our trust in Him. Have you been struggling lately? Why not follow the example we see in Scripture and pour out your heart in your own prayers of lament? May you find God’s grace meeting you there.

--Amy O'Rear

Jenga or a Strong Tower

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My daughter brought me a Jenga game last week.  It sounds like a challenging game.  Stack all the blocks into a tower, then take turns making the tower totally unstable.  You know, one person at a time removes a block, trying to keep the integrity of the tower.  But sooner or later, the tower will fall and the person who caused it to fall will be declared the loser.  This game might be fun for the young with steady hands, but in my shaky hands, the tower will fall, sooner, rather than later.

            Right now I feel as if my life is a Jenga tower.  One block after another is being pulled out, leaving a very shaky Jenga tower. 

            The Covid virus hit first, robbing me of face-to-face encounters with even the people I love the most, including those I saw only at church.  My son and his wife and my two granddaughters moved to Pennsylvania.  My son, in concern for my well being and fear of exposing me, gave me only one chance to see them and hold them before they left. Other family members were very careful.  I also lost face to face with my dear friends at church when Grace was forced to cancel services.

            Then came the tornado on Easter Sunday, hitting my daughter’s house and many other houses, and our dear church building with its funny additions and twists, gone. (Yes, I know the church is people, not buildings, but life happened there, funerals, weddings, holiday services, weekly seeing those we love, and we had already lost those face to face meetings.)  To get to my daughter’s, I must pass that heartbreaking corner.

            And Covid continues—isolation, masks (and tension between the maskers and the no-maskers, often between family members), limited supplies (thanks to my daughters I’m doing very well in that realm.) Thank goodness the toilet paper crisis seems to be past!

            Then there are health issues, my own and those of people I love. Many of those with health issues I can only text or call; I’m not allowed to see them.  Some of them have been in the hospital, dropped off at the front door, not even one person with them.  Others have been allowed one visitor, but it hasn’t been me. And those who have actually lost a loved one during this time have been deprived of receiving hugs or having someone cry with them. We have lost that privilege.

            All of these have pulled blocks from my Jenga tower.  It is wobbling dramatically.  If one more block is removed, the whole thing may come crashing down.  But then I remember, my tower is not a Jenga tower with blocks being removed daily, threatening its stability.

            “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous run to it and are safe.” Proverbs 18:10

            “Blessed be the Lord my Rock. . . My lovingkindness and my fortress, My high tower and my deliverer, My shield and the One in whom I take refuge.”  Psalm 144:1-2.

            “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. “ Psalm 18:2

            “Be to me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me. For you are my rock and my fortress.” Psalm 31:1-2

            “I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:2

            Though pieces of my Jenga tower seem to be trembling, I have a strong tower—it cannot tremble, it will not fall.  God is my strong tower, my refuge, my fortress.  I will trust and I will thank Him.

 

            The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped.  Therefore my heart exults, and with my song I shall thank Him.” Psalm 28:7

           

                                                                        Faith Himes Lamb

A Lesson From the Berry Patch

One of my favorite things about summer is the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables we get to enjoy. I don’t have a big garden, but I grow a few things, and one of my favorite challenges is to see if I can eat each day something I grew myself. Sometimes I substitute something I harvested myself from someone else’s vines or bushes.

This year, I’ve had the privilege of picking lots of berries. I went with some family members to pick blueberries and got to pick alongside my five-year-old granddaughter. “Just give the berry a little twist,” I said to Wren. “If it comes loose, it’s ready. If it doesn’t, don’t tug.” We set out to fill our buckets, and I went on to tell her, “The best berries are the ones that just drop into your hand when you touch them. They are the sweetest.”

Wren kept waiting for a berry to drop into her hand, but I don’t think it happened. Here’s what happened to me, though. Holding the bucket with one hand, I picked with the other, usually picking several berries before dropping them into the container. And those berries that were ripe enough and sweet enough to just fall into my hand? Sadly, I often had my hand too full of inferior berries to be ready to catch them. What a shame! I thought, watching the juiciest, sweetest prizes fall into the deep grass. Sometimes I could stir around in the grass and find these treasures; most of the time, they were lost.

Later, at home, I picked blackberries from the thicket behind my house and experienced the same pangs of disappointment watching perhaps the best wild blackberry of the day disappear into the underbrush. The little tinkling bell of a lesson became a distinct clang, and I knew this was what I would share with you. By now, you are no doubt sensing the very lesson that God handed to me this summer: It is possible to fill our hands with so much good stuff that we can’t grasp the best.

By “hands” here, I mean time, energy, headspace. I can fill my mind with so many novels, movies, jokes, songs—not bad stuff, but not the best—that I don’t have time or room to think of the very best. The precious hours of each day can be so full of cleaning out closets, perusing facebook, checking the tomato vines one more time—all wonderful pursuits that can also yield valuable results—that I run out of time to study God’s word and sit at His feet.

The story of Mary and Martha comes to mind. Jesus never said that Martha was being wicked; He just said that Mary had chosen the better thing, the thing that would bring her peace instead of frustration.  The psalmist implored, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

In addition to actual prayer and Bible reading, perhaps there are other valuable things God is speaking to you about. Finding time to call a friend or write a letter.  Helping out with a project at church or in the community (as much as possible in these strange days!). God made each of us different, and no doubt He has a plan for you and for me that will fill our buckets with the very best. I’m not suggesting that we give up all our interests and pursuits, but I pray that we listen to the Holy Spirit and be obedient. Your sweetness might not look like mine, so I promise not to judge.

I’m just asking myself, What do I need to loosen my grip on so I can be ready to grab something better?

--Sherry Poff