Water Into Wine

Recently, someone said something like, "I really don't have anything to offer. I don't sing, and I don't teach. I don't have any special talents. I couldn't possibly do that."

My thoughts? Hmmm . . . . BS! (Sorry!)

God has enabled and empowered ALL of us to do the incredible.

So, what if your offering is just water?

So, what if your offering is just a piece of bread or a cookie?

So what if your offering is a just a hug, a note, a cup of coffee or tea, a kind word, etc.?

These are NOT "little" things. NOTHING offered in Jesus' name and prompted by His love is an ordinary, common, unadorned anything. EVERYTHING given in Love's name is EXTRAORDINARY. Each of these "small" gifts becomes a miracle when offered in the light of His love.  [Read Matthew 25, especially verse 40.]

When we say, "I can't. I really don't have anything I can offer," we're first of all calling God a liar and finally simply quitting. We're giving up . . . without a fight.

NOWHERE in scripture is it okay to give up.

Since God in His mercy has given us this new way [new life],

we never give up . . .

For God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness,"

has made this light shine in OUR hearts . . .

we are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. (2 Corinthians 4)

The Creator of the universe who gave light to the world and who gave us THE Light of the World has imbedded His light, His love in us to share with everyone we know and meet. 

Who are we to call His gifts insignificant nothings?

Who are we to say we have nothing to give?

We have everything worth anything to give. As He offered Himself completely, we too should freely offer ourselves.

I encourage myself and you today: LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE! Let Him take your water and turn it into wine. Don't let fear keep you from serving. Yes, behind every one of those "I can'ts" stands FEAR. Fear is not of God; Faith is of God.

In 2 Corinthians 4 (read the whole chapter -  really good), Paul quotes Psalm 116:10: I believed in God, so I spoke.

Believe today and speak.

Believe today and shine.

Believe today and offer your whatevers.

I believe your whatevers will become miracles for those around you.

Couldn't we all use a miracle?

Say not you cannot gladden, elevate, and set free;

that you have nothing of the grace of influence;

that all you have to give is at the most only common bread and water.

Give yourself to your Lord for the service of men with what you have.

Cannot He change water into wine?

Cannot He make stammering words to be instinct with saving power?

Cannot He change trembling efforts of help into deeds of strength?

Cannot He still, as of old, enable you in all your personal poverty

"to make many rich"? 

God has need of thee for the service of thy fellow men.

He has a work for thee to do.

To find out what it is, and then to do it,

is at once thy supremist duty and thy highest wisdom.

"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."

~Canon George Body, circa 1840

WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?

I hesitate to post this, but I have to.

So many of my friends and acquaintances had loved ones who died last year.  This year isn't starting off much better.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and in the two years thereafter, I received soooooo many cards and phone calls and visits and flowers and meals and offers of help with all kinds of things like housecleaning and yard work. However, many times I found myself in  "worse" shape afterwards than I was before all because the "well" sometimes do not know how to interact with the "ill." Sometimes they say some incredibly insensitive things that get the marbles rolling for hours. Have you ever tried to corral those beasties and stuff them back where they belong? You have, haven't you? Not fun. 

I sincerely thank God for and ask His blessings on everyone who tried to or did help me and my family during this time.

One of my most memorable cards was one that simply said, "This sucks!" Pardon if that language offends. This card and the person who sent it brought a smile to my face and light to my day.  It said exactly what I wanted, no needed to hear. I still have that card today.

Yes, the "well" sometimes don't know how to handle the "ill." Neither do those who haven't lost a loved one know how to interact with the "grieving."

Illness and death change us. Life is never the same afterwards. One doesn't simply get back to his old self because part of himself is gone - for good.

Thus, I post the following today. Maybe the information here will help eliminate the awkwardness that often arises when confronted with someone who is grieving (or recovering from an illness). A friend of mine who lost a loved one last year shared this with me so that I could share it with others.

My Wish List

(author unknown)

I wish you would not be afraid to speak my loved one's name. They lived and were important, and I need to hear their name.

If I cry and get emotional if we talk about my loved one, I wish you knew that it isn't because you hurt me: The fact they died causes my tears. You have allowed me to cry, and I thank you. Crying and emotional outbursts are healing.

I will have emotional highs and lows, ups and downs. I wish you wouldn't think that if I have a good cry my grief is all over or that if I have a bad day I need psychiatric counseling.

Being bereaved is not contagious, so I wish you wouldn't stay away from me.

I wish you knew all the crazy grief reactions that I am having are in fact very normal. Depression, anger, fear, hopelessness, and questioning of values and beliefs are to be expected following a death.

I wish you wouldn't expect my grief to be over in 6 months. The first few years are going to be exceedingly traumatic for me.

I wish you understood the physical reaction to grief. I may gain weight, lose weight, sleep all the time or not at all, develop a host of illnesses, and be accident prone - all of which are related to my grief.

My loved one's birthday, the anniversary of their death, and the holidays can be terrible times for us. I wish you could tell me that you are thinking of us on these days. And if I get quiet and withdrawn, just know that I am thinking about my loved one and don't try to coerce me into being cheerful.

I wish you wouldn't offer to take me out for a drink or to a party.

This is just a temporary crutch, and the only way I can get through this grief is to experience it.  I have to hurt before I can heal.

I wish you understood that grief changes people. I am not the same person I was before my beloved died, and I will never be that person again. If you keep waiting for me to get back to my old self, you will stay frustrated. I am a new creature with new thoughts, dreams, aspirations, values, and beliefs. Please try to get to know this different me. I'm the one who'll be here from now on.

_______________________________________________________

Rivendell Resources grants anyone the right to reprint this information without request for compensation so long as the copy is not used for profit and so long as the paragraph is reprinted in its entirety.

Again, I thank everyone who has loved me through everything the last fifteen years. I appreciate each of you and pray God's very best for you and yours. I also thank my friend who sent this to me because the last thing I want to do is be awkward around or say anything insensitive to you or to any of my friends who are currently grieving. I do not want to be the one who looses their marbles - though I will help them pick them up.

   

    

Often have I struggled with what the Lord would have me "do," especially so throughout the last fifteen years when my ability "to do" and my mobility have been compromised by various things like cancer, degenerating body parts, physical pain, aging, and even a near-death experience. Today, even the simplest tasks wipe me out.

I confess. I constantly wrestle with guilt and shame and feelings of uselessness because I can no longer accomplish what I once could.

I know. I know - these are unreasonable burdens, deceptive opponents. Yet, I wrestle - maybe not as much.

We all wrestle with what God's will is for us. "What has He called me to do?"

While doing some research early this morning, I ran across an interesting passage in John (NLT) which describes Jesus just a few hours before He was betrayed.

He had loved His disciples during His ministry on earth,

and now He loved them to the very end. (13:1)

Another translation says that He showed them the full extent of His love.

What did He "do" this night to demonstrate this mindboggling love?

• He washed feet.
• He broke bread.
• He poured out wine.
• He taught.
• He prayed.

He chose this night of all nights to wash His disciples' feet. Most people wore sandals back in Jesus' day, so feet got tremendously dirty. Most people today don't enjoy handling someone's dirty, stinky, sweaty, crusty feet. Yet, Jesus ignored the dirt and grime and washed their feet.

Imagine their amazement. I believe it was Peter who said something like, "No, Lord." See, this was a job that one's servants did for the family and for guests. Jesus replied with something like, "If not, you have no part with me, i.e. you're not my friend." Peter quickly changed his tune: "Lord, not just my feet but all of me."

Jesus had probably broken bread and poured wine before tonight, but on this night he spoke about the bread and the wine as never before. "This is My body, broken for you . . . This is My blood poured out for you." He basically told them that He was about to die. They didn't pick up on that. He had been trying to prepare them for His death for a while, but they lived as if He would always be with them.

Finally, He taught them and prayed for them and  for all who would follow Him in the future. Yet again, they did not understand His words.

What He was really doing in these simple acts was painting a picture of how we should live. He was, is our Divine Example. Our call is to follow in His steps, to live as He lived, to do as He did, to love as He loved.

These do's are His will for our lives.

• To love, to serve regardless of the filth out of a love for Him.
• To be broken bread and poured out wine for others - The wisdom we learn from our life experiences can encourage and strengthen others. The light He has given us can bring healing and strength and hope and a willingness to persevere. (This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.)
• To love the Body of Christ (the church) enough to participate fully in its life, to be one with Him as He is one with His Father, to share His truth, and to pray for  all.

These actions remind me of the Old Testament call.

He has shown you, O man,

what is good and what the Lord requires of Thee.

To do justly,

To love mercy,

To walk humbly with our God. (Micah 6:8)

As I grow older, the more I realize that our call is really a simple one: To love Him with everything we are and have and to love others likewise - to love as Jesus did - "to the very end". May I remember this the next time I'm tempted to wrestle with what the Lord wants me to "do" because Jesus has already shown me what I am supposed to do and how I'm supposed to love. 

Give me a heart

set like flint on Thee.

Wherever I go,

may Thy beauty I see.

Thank you for family,

the joy they bring.

Comfort, companionship -

their offerings.

Build my houses.

Lay down every stone.

May Your heartbeat be the central tick

of all my desires and plans alone.

Tear down those houses

constructed exclusively by me.

Replace them with structures

secured only in Thee.

This, O Lord, is my prayer today.

My life is in Your hands.

Having done all that I know to do,

Let me stand. Let me stand. Let me stand. 

Complain, Complain, Complain

I hate making New Year's resolutions, so I don't. They're just broken promises. Familiar with the drill?

I'm awesome at keeping promises to others, but I suck at keeping promises to myself.

Any who, if I were to make resolutions other than those made to God, mine would be to be more thankful, to be more generous, to be more loving, and to be more content and not complain.

You might ask: "Why be more content and not complain? Doesn't everyone complain? Isn't complaining the nature of our beast?"

Yes, but why complain if complaining only makes us more miserable?

Lately, I've noticed that I've been complaining too much. 

• When I complain, I'm NOT trusting God.
• When I complain, I feel like I KNOW best what I need instead of believing in His love and providence.
• When I complain, I am NOT thankful for what I do have; I'm just concentrating on what I don't have.
• When I complain, I am doing something that god HATES. (Check out the first five books of the Bible . . . and all those afterwards.)

I of all people should not be complaining.

• Just a mere fifteen months ago, this woman was dead . . . almost . . . literally.
• Just a mere year ago, this woman could croak only a note or two. We're talking bullfrog singing on a lily pad. Truly! I sang low notes I've never ever sung before.
• The past few years, my trusty cane and/or walker have been my constant companions.
• For the past fifteen years, I've faced cancer three times among other ailments.

No, I have NOTHING to complain about.  I AM ALIVE. MY THROAT IS HEALED. I CAN WALK AGAIN. I AM CANCER FREE. AND I MADE IT THROUGH ALL THE OTHER STUFF. Thank you, Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!

I also have a home, a paycheck, a vehicle, food to eat, and a wonderful family who didn't abandon me throughout all of this. I have at least ten or fifteen people, maybe more, whom I call TRUE friends. On top of all of that, THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE LOVES ME!

Unfortunately, life happens, but in the midst of life happening, I don't have to make myself more miserable by complaining. In the midst of it all, those Everlasting Arms cradle me unless I'm a wiggle worm and constantly wriggle myself right off of His lap.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 10: 5+ that God's displeasure with His people was because of their complaining, grumbling, and discontent.

These things happened as a warning to us,

so that we would not crave [lust after] things as they did

or worship idols as some of them did . . .

Don't grumble.

I'm rereading Elisabeth Elliot's Keep a Quiet Heart. Amy Carmichael, a missionary to India who was bedridden and crippled for the later part of her life yet did not neglect her call, influenced Elisabeth and her husband Jim, also a missionary to South America who was murdered by the very people he sought to save. Elisabeth later returned to this tribe and ministered to them.

Elliot reminded me this week that the things we complain about just may be the "instruments whereby the Potter intends to shape His clay into the image of His Son." Amy Carmichael would say, "See in this a chance to die." In other words, be content in the blessed assurance of the goodness and faithfulness and mercy of God. His goodness and His mercy DO follow us all the days of our lives.

So, I leave you with a summary of Elisabeth's list of "Several Ways to Make Yourself Miserable" in hopes that I will strive to achieve my goal of not complaining. Life is what it is.

I have a choice: peace or misery.

• Count your troubles. Name them one by one over and over and over again.
• Worry every day. Don't get out of practice. It might burn a few calories.
• Have a pity party. If you pity yourself, no one else will have to.
• Try to serve both God and man.
• Find out what the Joneses [not aimed at Jimmy and Jaimie] are buying and where they are going. Try to outdo them even if it gets you deeper in debt.
• Stay away from absolutes [truths]. What's right for you is all that matters. Be and individual. Be independent. Don't be stressed over what others expect of you.
• Make sure to protect your rights. Never think about other people's rights. You have your life; they have theirs.
• Don't fall into a compassion trap where people can disappoint you and take advantage of your generosity. If you get too involved in another's troubles, you might neglect your own.
• Don't let Bible reading, church going, and prayer get in the way of what's really important - TV, news, gaming, sleep. Invisible things are eternal. Stick with the visible ones.

If we do these things, our hearts will be anything but "quiet" this year.

May the peace of God rest on us all.

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.     

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)