Thursday, January 19, 2017


To Do or not To Do

Recently, I had an unpleasant dream about one of my neighbors. Usually when this happens, I pray for the person. However, this time I awakened with another friend on my mind. I did pray for my neighbor, but I prayed more for my friend. 

I wrestled with whether to tell my friend about the dream. Normally, I would quickly tell the person, but this time I hesitated because my friend has had a terribly hard year.

2016 was an unusually hard year on most of my friends and neighbors. The year began with a cousin losing an early thirty-something. Then another friend lost a sister and later in the year a nephew, another lost an early twenty-something, and a week later a neighbor in her early sixties lost an early thirty-something who left behind a beautiful four-year-old whom she is now raising. I was there when that child was born and watched her grow up. Then a week later, another neighbor of mine lost her husband of 45+ years who just dropped dead in their home one night.  Later the same year, this same neighbor buried her mother. The list continues along with bankruptcy, other financial and inheritance woes, strange sicknesses, etc. 

Watching my friends and neighbors cope with grief and other assorted problems has been heart wrenching. Each one has faced multiple issues and is coping in his/her own unique way. I've shed and wiped away a lot of tears this past year. 

Thus, my hesitation in contacting my friend about the dream and the prayer and "vision" I had afterwards. I didn't even send this friend a Christmas card because sending one felt "inappropriate." 

I questioned my soul: "Was the dream just part of the intercessory process?" or "Is this something God wants me to share?" God knows I've had many "Job-ish-like" friends who have come to me with many words that made me feel worse instead of better over the past fifteen years. The unsick and the ungrieving just do not know what to say to the sick and the grieving. I did not and do not want to do that to anyone, especially my friends.

Thus, my delimma. God has not let this dream go. Every day in over nine days, I have awakened with that face in front of me. Every day in over nine days, I have been forced through many different circumstances to remember this particular friend. 

I guess - no, I know what I need to do. I need to write that letter and have already begun to craft it. Please pray that I won't be a friend like Job's.

All of that to say this: Every day we are faced with choices which determine whether we are disciples or deserters. These choices are the nature of His call - to obey or not to obey. Often the words He speaks or the deeds He asks us to do aren't pleasant. Really, it's always been this way. 

Check out John 6. Jesus has been performing miracles - feeding 5,000, walking on water, healing, etc. He faces the crowd and reads their mail: "You want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understand the miracles (basically, you don't understand who I am). Don't spend your time chasing the perishables like food; spend your energy seeking the life that I can give you." 

Later, he says a hard thing. "I am the living bread that came down from heaven . . . Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot have eternal life within you . . . My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Anyone who feeds on me will live because of me."

The crowd's answer: "Say what? Eat his flesh and drink his blood? I don't think so." 

His disciples: "This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?" Sooooo, many turned away and deserted Him.

Jesus asked the twelve who remained: "Are you also going to leave?"

When these hard choices come, and they will most certainly come, what will be our response this year? Will we flee or fight to complete what's been asked of us? I hope, I pray that my response this year will be with quicker feet than I had last year.  I do not want to be a deserter. I do not want to waste precious time deciding to obey.

We have to settle in our hearts BEFORE the hard choices come one, that we will follow and complete the task; two, that we won't be offended by what's been asked of us; finally, that we will believe in Him and in His call in spite of the strangeness and the mystery of it all.

We cannot pick and choose what we will or won't believe. Our only choices are to believe or don't.

My prayer is that we will take the step whether we understand or not and take it quickly, not wasting time. I pray that we will set our hearts to believe knowing that we may never understand this side of eternity.

To eat His flesh and to drink His blood is His call to us, a call that makes Him and His words to us our very life.

May we, like Peter, answer Him with, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give life. We believe and know You are the Holy Son of God." 

By the way, the letter is in the mail.     

Monday, January 16, 2017


Seeds

How rocky is your soil?
How blind, your eyes?
How deaf, your ears?
How hardened, your heart?
How cluttered, your mind?

Maybe you heard
but did not understand;
thus, the treasured seed was stolen.

Or maybe you heard
and even rejoiced
yet had no foundation
for truth to stick;
thus, the winds of problems,
changes, and persecutions
blew the precious seed away.

Or maybe you heard,
but life happened -
its worries and schemes
hatching only barrenness.

Oh, to have a heart
full of the loam
of belief and understanding,
a rich soil
ready for planting,
a heart awaiting
a plentiful harvest
from divine seed.

Prepare the soil.
Remove all impediments.
Plant the seed.

(My New Year's prayer for 2017)