Whispers of Truth

In my reading this week, I came across a sentence in a prayer that has resonated with me and won’t leave me alone. The image has rubbed itself into my mind and etched a place in my heart. My gratitude overflows and my mind keeps tracing it. Here it is, this sentence in the midst of an entire prayer about shortcomings, a prayer about living in the wilderness, about discouragement and yet the hope that lies even there in Christ: “ Death dismays me, but my great high priest stands in its waters and will open me a passage, and beyond is a better country ” (“Shortcomings” from The Valley of Vision , p. 85).  My fixation isn’t really on the part about death so much as Christ standing in its waters opening me a passage to a better country beyond. I had just gotten to Hebrews in my daily reading when I read this and decided to read the whole book in one sitting instead of slowly perusing it and chewing on it as I normally would digest it. Having read it often, I knew that I would see a pictu

As a farmer, my husband relied heavily on irrigation for the crops he was responsible for growing in the warm heat of the Deep South. The pipes would be laid across a large field that needed irrigating and would connect eventually with the source of water. The pump would then pull the water from the source and deliver the water to the field where the irrigation system would spread the water to the thirsty plants. Now, mind you, my explanation of how this works is simplistic, so here’s my disclaimer: I am only the wife of a man who understands the concept and applied it often, waking me up at all hours of the night to go turn it on or off before technology caught up with the need of farmers (and their tired wives) to sleep and do other things beyond irrigating crops . . . Anyway.  I thought of all this today as I read a prayer from The Valley of Vision called “Self-Knowledge” that begins with “Searcher of hearts, it is a good day to me when thou givest me a glimpse of myself” (p. 6

What Patterns Are Patterns are often the thing most needed and the thing most despised when someone is learning to sew. Honestly, when making a quilt, I love the freedom FROM patterns because they have always frustrated me seriously. Trying to figure out how to cut them accurately, how to interpret the directions that seem to be written in an undecipherable language, how to make them work for me as intended. Using a pattern isn’t easy to a novice, which I am. (Believe me, I don’t speak as a professional.) In truth, I have a pattern that has been lying on my sewing table  for two years now  (as well as the requisite fabric to make the pattern with already washed and ironed and waiting for me). I hate interpreting how-tos that badly. I want to, but my want-to is broken when it comes to actually making the thing I bought the pattern for. If reading the Bible for a new believer or someone who is not yet in Christ is anything like interpreting a pattern for one unfamiliar with them, I can

As a teen, I remember more than anything wanting desperately to just belong. In some ways, being in band met that need as we were all thrown together so much. In other ways, I tried to meet that need by being a part of a softball team. Sometimes those two groups collided and didn’t gee and haw, and then I felt trapped between them, wanting the people I liked to just get along. Sometimes it was the desire for a group of friends or a single friend to accept me as I was and to love me as I loved them, as it seemed I never cleanly fit into either category of friends. I was somehow both and neither. Sometimes my desire to belong was directed at finding one person who would love me forever. As an adult who had been given that one person, I still longed for close friends to share the journey with, especially when raising small children and at home alone so far from extended family while Greg worked so many long hours to provide for us.  Belonging has always been important to me, yet my under

I walked the pastures and fields of my youth this week and found myself lost amidst the changes of thirty-plus years. The fields still call to me (although two-thirds no longer belong to my family), gently rolling hills full of solid black cows instead of the familiar brown ones with white faces from my childhood, tall trees I remember as much smaller in height and girth, and a pond surprisingly the same. The corn crib, barn, and chicken house starkly missing from the  landscape like amputated limbs that still feel present in spirit, phantoms my memories.  The Formation of Grooves The grooves are there, soul deep, worn paths that take me back to distant days spent in youthful pastimes (like mud pie making and Zebco fishing and puppy chasing and playing in the blanket tents my grandmother built), to gangly teenage years spent with friends (tending my brother after a dog bite, family fish fries with young cousins, playing my flute for the cows), to fleeting college days and brief vis

If someone were to walk through my kitchen or sewing room, I might look like I am sewing, but in my mind I am piecing together a blog post. You see, it starts something like this: A few weeks ago I went to a local Hobby Lobby to hopefully find and buy material to make a milestone mat for my new photography business. There are a few babies that will be here soon to take pics of. Hobby Lobby had what I needed, and a really nice (yet feisty) older lady helped me to understand how to put it together, giving me how she would do it, all kinds of useful tips like wash the fabric first, cut it “this” particular way, etc. I got home and promptly threw the fabric into the washer before gently drying it. A few days later, I am standing here actually looking at the directions that she alone had seen when cutting my fabric out. It goes like this: #1: READ ALL DIRECTIONS BEFORE BEGINNING. (I start sweating a bit. Didn’t do that! Broke my cardinal rule I always told my kids to do before starting

I’ve been thinking a lot about respect lately as I ponder the scriptures, as I speak to women, as I think about teaching young women of marriageable age. I am not speaking of the R-E-S-P-E-C-T as Aretha’s catchy '60's song speaks of it but rather the respect that the Bible says husbands are due inside the covenant of marriage. I promise they are two completely different things. In Ephesians 5 Paul speaks of marriage in the context of subjection to one another in Christ, a very unpopular concept I've written of before. When Paul tells women to be subject to their own husbands in marriage, he has already laid a foundation of God’s work in their lives through His sending of the Christ and Christ’s sacrificial work that redeems. He has already told men and women to imitate God (v. 1), to spend time trying to learn what pleases Him (v. 10), to be careful how they walk because the time is short and the days are evil (v. 15), to keep the joy of a song in their hearts at all time

I especially have missions on my mind. My sister-in-love, Kim, leaves her mission today to come home for yet another ear surgery. The pull to stay behind and ignore what her body needs tugs hard, but the need to come back is immediate and necessary, already having been delayed because of the spike in COVID cases the past few months. This medical need takes her from the place she wants to be, serving, ministering, sharing, building, and it is hard.  As I read preparing for a WMU devotional tonight, this is on my mind, and it intersects with my daily reading in Thessalonians over the past few days. When God's people spend time with Him in His word, He is always good to bring connection and relevance to our lives through it, and Hebrews 4:12 speaks to this: “The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (NASB). Th

A strange phenomenon is occurring. An ongoing crisis rages in our land, and our churches sit, for the most part, startlingly empty. Thousands of people in the United States and all over the world are dying daily, and instead of rushing the gates of heaven pleading for mercy, those claiming to be His stay away from each other, isolated in fear, blaming God for not stopping COVID-19 instead of imploring Him to end this plague of our times.  Think about it. After 9/11 the churches were full to bursting, the prayers being lifted high even in the abject fear of what had just happened and what could happen in the war to come. Maybe it is the rapidity with which things happened, the suddenness of the crisis that killed almost 3,000 people and injured 6,000 more in one day that drew people to God. Maybe today’s ongoing crisis that has claimed 705,000 people to date (in less than two years) and has sickened 44 million people in the USA alone has provided an opportunity for the enemy to keep pe

Often in my life I have heard people mention that one can’t out-give God. This is absolutely true. Romans 8 tells me that God has freely given me all things in Christ and the chapter is chock full of what He has given: His eternal love, my very life itself as well as my inheritance in Christ, a future hope and glory with Him, the ability to overcome when I face temptations and the problems this life brings, my freedom in the Spirit, and my firm belief that nothing can separate me from Christ.   Sometimes this idea of not being able to out-give God is used to manipulate people or to distort the truth found in this chapter. This gospel I believe is not one of prosperity, not  in the sense that all things will always be prosperous and go well with me here on earth if I just give enough to God.  The gospel in which I have placed my hope is Christ alone , who died for my sins, carrying them to the cross, putting them to death so that I might live through His work. He is the giver. I am

A few weeks ago one of my former students met with me for coffee and some conversation to catch up on what’s happened since I last saw her at her high school graduation. The meeting stemmed from her asking for some advice/help with one of her papers, an offer I had left open for my students whenever they had a need or a question while in college. Honestly, most don’t take me up on it, but a few have along the way. Sometimes their confidence just needs a boost, a reminding of the things they already know but have forgotten. College assignments can quickly become overwhelming, very similar to the life for which college is preparing them in their chosen fields.  My sweet student gifted me with a beautiful book that she had signed, dated, and embossed. Then she excitedly told me what it said and that the embosser was mine. An embosser is often a very small press that through pressure creates a raised design or a seal onto a piece of paper. This type of seal validates the authenticity of a

Southerners are known for their long goodbyes.   This isn’t news. We love to visit at length with our friends, whether it be at church, in the yard, at a chance meeting in town, or at a restaurant over a meal. Letting the conversation go, leaving the ones we love, involves separation. During the pandemic that has spanned more than a year-and-a-half, the rare chances we have to spend together are even more precious to us and the leaving even harder to come by when we have them because the reality of not being sure of our next chance to be together in person, much less our next breath, is even more real. Jesus’ leaving took time too.  His disciples didn’t really have their feet under them yet . . . three and one-half years isn’t enough time to understand what He was trying to teach them—it would take their lifetimes to begin scratching beneath the surface of what He had planted in them. He had to leave to accomplish His purpose; He had to say goodbye for them to be able to understand an