Star-fish

    When things aren't going right in your life, who do you blame? We live in a society that can't place blame quickly enough. It can't possibly be the actions of the individuals involved. It must be a faulty system of some sort, an environment that causes poor behaviors, or a person using some mind altering chemical. It can't be that people sin and sin causes consequences and those consequences are usually worse than ever imagined.      We seem averse to taking responsibility for our actions. It's almost looked upon as a weakness to apologize. Rather, we employ lawyers, mediators, and others to hid our guilt and shame, trying to convince all who will listen that we are in the right. Someone else has failed us, causes us to get that angry or jealous, and do things we know in our hearts we should not do.      I read Genesis 42 today and the "blame game" appears to go back thousands of years! You probably remember the jealous brothers of Joseph, the...

      As a teacher of middle school students (for a short period of time in my life), the response, "Whatever," was not uncommon, especially when a student was caught making less than helpful choices and didn't want to take responsibility for his or her actions. By definition, whatever means a lack of restrictions as in, "I can do whatever I want." Or it can mean "at all," as in "You are no help whatever." But some have changed the definition, at least informally, to mean a "reluctance to discuss something or indifference about something."      In the Bible, the use of "whatever" has a totally different meaning than an indifferent teenager would express. Colossians 3:23 states, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." Mark 11:24, continues this use of whatever to indicate not indifference, but complete faith, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask fo...

      I have been reading Genesis recently, and the twins Esau and Jacob are an interesting pair. The Bible tells us in Genesis 25 that "the babies jostled each other within her" womb (v. 22). Esau was a hunter and Jacob "stayed among the tents" (v. 27). One day Esau came home hungry from a hunting trip and asked for some of Jacob's red stew. Jacob agreed to give it to him under one condition, that Esau would "sell" Jacob his birthright first (v. 31). Esau agreed because he was dying of hunger (v. 32).       In Genesis 26, Isaac, the father of the twins, did as his father Abraham did to his wife Sarah and told the people of the area, the Philistines, that Rebekah was his sister and not his wife as he was afraid of the people of the land and what they might do to him to get his beautiful wife. In the mean time, Esau was intermarrying with women from the land, both Hittites that became a "source of grief" to Isaac and Rebekah (v. 35).   ...

       My husband has a passion for gardening. Even after numerous run-ins with the tools of his hobby, including stitches, tetanus shots, and even antibiotics due to injuries from wayward clippers and hedge trimmers, he can't get enough of it. Today, as I attempted to garner information on a new, large bandage on his arm, he attempted to elude me. I pursued him and finally he confessed to hitting himself with a crowbar (too long a story to include here). But my response was less than sympathetic, I burst out laughing!  Not exactly the response that gets you "wife of the year" awards. But it seemed like a scene straight out of a Three Stooges comedy act!       In our morning devotions, my husband and I read about people who are passionate about sports, wearing crazy gear and spending enormous amounts of time and money on their hobbies. The author asked whether as Christians we have that kind of passion about following Christ. I started thinki...

Growing up, I met or observed various Christians or ones who said they were Christians and what I saw, even as a kid, didn't impress me. I don't know what in my youth or even young adulthood I was looking for, but it wasn't people who seemed to look down on others for any number of reasons. The Perfect Christian was nowhere to be found, in my eyes, yet many seemed to see me as much less than perfect.  I didn't grow up in a Christian home, so many of the things that longtime Christians took for granted i.e. Christian vocabulary, traditions, and Sunday School songs, were foreign to me. I was invited to church by elementary and high school friends, even a boyfriend in college, but it was a lot...music blaring, hands raised, even some dancing in the aisles and laying on of hands. I was confused and uncomfortable.  Then, at 25 years old, God caught up to me and showed me that what I was looking for in life, wasn't working out and wasn't His best, or even second best,...

       I taught our one-year old Cocker Spaniel to "wait" for her treats or before bolting out the door on a walk. Today, she had torn the head half off her little stuffed moose toy and I was repairing it. She sat patiently watching me thread the needle in and out of her toy, until she could wait no more and started pawing at my hands to release it. I told her to "wait," the command she's familiar with, and she sat back down and waited until I was done and threw it for her. She bound off after it.       My own ability to wait, is much more limited. I can hear the Lord saying to me, "wait," a command He knows I haven't learned well and I paw at the Lord to relieve me of the pain, the problem, or the issues at hand. There's too much time in the waiting. Waiting requires trust, faith, patience, and hope. Sometimes, waiting doesn't seem fair, other times, it's just unbearable watching the destruction occurring in front of me, helpless to st...