Flyaway

Welcome to Unseen. When we live unseen, either as caregivers or as people with chronic conditions, we are in special need of the traits discussed today -, strength, balance and courage. Read on for today's insights.

Flyaway

 

 Exd 15:2 The LORD [is] my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He [is] my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him.

 

The Olympics were a thrill to watch. People enjoyed the Fab Five and the way they bounced and twisted their way to gold medals.  I also love to watch my teenager compete in gymnastics. He has come a long way in a short time.  It takes three things to excel in gymnastics – strength, balance and courage. It requires tremendous upper body strength to support your weight, and even more to support your weight while twisting and turning. Balance is a key part in all the events. As exciting as the flips and handsprings are to watch, the slow, deliberate moves are just as impressive. Balance beam comes to mind, of course, with girls executing intricate moves on a surface less than 4 inches wide.  When it comes down to it, all the strength and balance in the world are useless without the courage to put them to work.  My son says that he is completely capable of doing a handstand on the parallel bars but that it is terrifying to look down and see the floor six feet away.  There is one particular move on the high bar called a flyaway. This move involves working up momentum by swinging and then letting go of a perfectly good bar to go hurtling through the air backwards. I confess that I watch through parted fingers while holding my breath. Fortunately for the athletes, and the parents, there are coaches, spotters and mats to increase safety.

In life we also need strength, balance and courage to be successful. In West Texas we are notorious for “pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps”. We are self-reliant which makes it hard to rely on God.  God understood this and addressed it. The word strength is mentioned 230 times in the Bible. God does not endorse bootstrap pulling. Many of the verses follow this theme;

 Psa 18:2 The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Exd 15:2 The LORD [is] my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He [is] my God, and I will praise Him; My father's God, and I will exalt Him.

2Cr 12:10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

It is actually a little scary to get our strength from God either because we feel unworthy or because we have to let go of control. It is much more effective than relying on ourselves, though.
             
                Jesus is our example when it comes to balance. In Luke 2:52 we are told he grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and Man.  When things got chaotic in his ministry, He was able to go and be alone with God. I am not sure if it is a function of our society or just our human nature, but balance is so difficult to find. We have to make the effort, though.
                Courage is where I often fall short.  Peter gets a bad rap, but he is the only disciple who got out of the boat and walked on the water. Many times when God asks me to do something, I am afraid to start. I may be afraid that I will fail and I may be afraid that I will succeed.  A good example is when I started writing in earnest.  I have mentioned before that I had seven really good reasons that I should not  or could not write a book and almost as many why I couldn’t write a blog.  Yet here we are, 3 years and two books later. Honestly much harder than letting God take care of my stuff is letting God take care of my loved ones’ stuff. Just like I watch the flyaway stunt with parted fingers and held breath, I watch my sons take flight in their lives the same way. What if they fall? What if they can’t get up? What if they don’t need me anymore? Well, they have fallen some. I watched my older son fall hard into addiction and rage, but God was faithful and caught him in the safety mat of grace and the Holy Spirit. My younger son has had different and less visible struggles, but God has been faithful to him too.
                Let God and His joy be your strength. Keep your life balanced as much as you can and have the courage to let go of your perfectly good bar. You can trust God to keep you and your loved ones safe in His grace and love.

 

 

 

Just Keep Swimming

Just Keep Swimming

            Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? Psalms 139:7

Imagine a fish swimming through the ocean. It swims through calm tidal pools and into underwater caves. It swims through reeds and kelp and darts past predators. It takes its food and its oxygen from the water. It would be absurd for the fish to ask, “Where is the water”? The water is all around and even in the fish. If the fish said, “There is no water here”, it would not make it true. The water provides the nourishment, refreshment and hiding places the fish needs.

Similarly, God is all around an even in us. He gives us shelter from the storm. He is with us in the hard times and the good times. Today was one of the hard times and I just wanted to crawl into a spiritual underwater cave and not come out. I was tempted to believe that God has left me in my pain, but I  know that He has not. The psalmist says,

            Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.   Psalms 139

                If you are swimming through dark, murky waters right now, take courage. You may be tempted to question where God is, but he is in you and all around you. Ask Him to give you eyes to see and ears to hear.

Do You See What I See?

Welcome to Unseen today.  Today's post takes a different angle of looking at things.  Instead of looking at ourselves as unseen people, we take a look at the things that are unseen. Read on

Do You See What I See?

 

We fix our eyes on what is unseen, not on what is seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal. 2 Cor 4:18

 

When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house. Many Friday nights I would spend the night with them. They had an amazing assortment of interesting gadgets. These often occupied my attention while they were watching Lawrence Welk and Heehaw.  There was a covered wagon made out of pewter, a box of “rattlesnake eggs” (a noise making gag toy), and an Emmet Kelly doll. One of my favorite things at their house was a triangular prism. I loved to hold it up to different kinds of light and see the colors it unlocked. The window, the light fixture and the television all had their own special rainbows. I would walk around the house with the prism up to my eyes just to enjoy the interesting perspective. It showed me things that I couldn’t see otherwise.

            The same thing is true in our spiritual lives. We look at the things we see around us and often see hurt and injustice. This is a fallen world, and whether through consequences of our own actions, spiritual warfare, or whatever reason, there is a lot of suffering. It is much more difficult to find the hand of God in these situations. This Sunday was the day after Christmas, and in church we read about Herod’s murder of the innocents. The preacher admitted to sometimes skipping past this difficult passage, and I understand. It raises some difficult questions.  What kind of monster kills hundreds of children just to eliminate one? Why would God allow it? Where was the justice? He went on to show how God did work through the situation, not only in sparing Jesus life, but also by working in the bigger picture. One of the things that he said is that even in terrible circumstances, God is present. Also, there are forces at work that we cannot see.

            I know that in my life there are things in my life that are not as I want them. I am personally dealing with hurt and injustice. I can see though, that God is blessing me even in the midst of my trials. In many cases, the blessings are not in material things or in circumstances changed that I can see. Instead, they are the blessings of watching my teenagers learn to reach out to God and accept the faith that we have tried to instill in them. They are the blessings of God’s sustaining grace in my storm. Looking back I can see how things lined up for God’s glory and my good. The storm is not over yet, but God is still in it with me. 

            It is so easy to look at the mountains in our lives and become discouraged. Instead let us remember what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:17 and 18:

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more     exceeding [and] eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

            Just like the prism was able to reveal things I could not see due to the physical limitations of my physical eyes, so the Holy Spirit can reveal things that I cannot see because of my limited spiritual eyes. Take heart and learn to see the things that are unseen in your own life and the lives of others

Good morning. Today's post goes to the heart of the feelings of living unseen - the fear and loneliness we experience. Read on.

Remember Me?

	"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! Is 49:15 When I was little I had a good trait that worked against me. I didn’t make a lot of noise. Consequently, I tended to be overlooked. One of my family’s favorite stories on me happened when I was about 2 or 3. We were at my aunt’s and I had gotten locked outside. I knocked and no one heard me. I called and no one heard me. Finally, I stomped my foot and yelled, “Somebody let this poor baby in!” I got in then. A few years later we were at my grandmother’s house. In the carport she had a great walk-in storage closet. It smelled like dust, turpentine and musty fishing nets. My brother and I were playing jail. We would lock each other in the closet and then come back in a minute to unlock the door. The problem was that my brother was in preschool and his attention wandered. He went into the house, got a drink and promptly forgot about our game and about me. After waiting a few minutes, I called out, and then started knocking on the door. The problem was that when he went in, he shut the storm door so no one could hear me. I thought I was knocking hard but apparently not. If I remember correctly, I was trying to figure out how long the air in the closet would last. After what seemed like half an hour, but was probably only a couple of minutes, someone went to the car for something and heard me. I can’t describe the joy and relief of hearing that lock turn and seeing a familiar face. Apart from the obvious lesson of “never play ‘jail’ with a four year old”, what can we learn from this? How many times have you felt like your life was a game where God and everyone else had gone for a snack and forgotten about you?  Do you feel that way today? This month has been very frustrating and the harder I tried to fix things the worse they got. Today was a rare lazy day. I spent some time just being and some time being still. (Psalms 46:10) God reminded me that he has been with me all the time and showed me how he has brought good out of my latest trial. Most importantly, he showed me that he has not forgotten me. At a time when I didn’t feel that God was personally interested in me or my life, he sent a preacher I barely knew to our Sunday School class. In front of the class, he took my hand in both of his and said, “God has not forgotten you and he has more for you than you ever dreamed of.” I cried, because that is my MO, but I was also encouraged enough to look for promises. Besides Jeremiah 29:11 and Is 43:1, I found this verse in Is 49:15. "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! The enemy would love for you to believe that when the good shepherd was counting the sheep, he said, “98, 99, oh, that’s close enough for government work.” Don’t you believe it. You are his precious child and he will never leave you or forsake you.