My heart is broken

This week has been a week of tragedy. The brutality at Virginia Tech is something I can't get my brain around let alone write about. This week I found myself with my head down on my desk pleading with God on behalf of so many parents. Parents who lost their children.

My babies keep me from the arrogance of thinking I am a spiritual giant. I am not. I fear for them. They so easily become my idol - the things that make me say, "Oh, God, not them. Please don't use my kids. Don't make me one of those parents who share the miraculous things you have done after the death of a child they once held."

I am a frightened child.

A dear friend called me yesterday. She called to tell me her 13 year old brother had died. My sweet, precious friend has lost her baby brother, and her mother, a true Believer and enjoyer of our Jesus, has lost her son. She has gone from a mother of a healthy thriving boy to a mother in mourning within a matter of hours.

There is heartache in this world that can overwhelm.

Last night as I drove home in the dark I began pleading for Christ's return, pleading for the rapture. For Him to come, for Him to come and meet His saints in the air. For him to call the name of that poor mother, for her to hear the trumpet sound, for her to experience pure joy. For her to experience the ultimate healing her baby boy now knows. For her to be home free.

Now I am sitting here left with the words of my friend. With tears, she simply, but not simply at all, said, "God's plans have not changed. God's plans have not changed."

I have never heard such worshipful words. In the midst of pain, in the midst of anger, in the midst of a grief few of us will ever know, she utters, "God's plans have not changed."

Yet I, in my humanness, am paralyzed with the knowledge that a school building can be breeched without effort by a killer; or that a little boy can have only a slight fever one day and be dead the next.

In my humanness, I am afraid - in worship, I am transformed. This week, this very night, I will choose worship.

I will worship a God who rises to show me compassion (Isaiah 30:18)

I will worship a God, the only God,who went out to redeem a people for himself (2 Sam 7:23).

I will worship a God that consults no one (Isa 40:14), yet says to His rebellious people, "Come, let us reason together (Is 1:18).

I will worship a God who never sleeps nor slumbers (Psalm 121:4) but grants sleep to those He loves (Psalm 127:2).

I will worship a God who repays wrath to His enemies (Isaiah 59:18) yet sent His son to death , so HIS enemy I would no longer be (Romans 5:10).

I will worship a God who says to me, "though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor will my covenant of peace be removed." (Isa 54:10).

I will worship this God.

I am a frightened child, but I am a child of The Almighty God and I will live in Him. I will live in Him because there is life no where else.

Confessions of an inept control freak.

I am a control freak.

I've noticed when people say this they tend to almost be giving themselves a little pat on the back. They say it in the, "Oh, yes, I am a control freak" self deprecating voice but there seems to be a hint of pride. Sort of like, "Of course, I am a control freak. Look at me, look at how well I do things, look at how clean my house is, look at my "I see skies of blue" kind of life. Of course, I am in control. I know this is often the intent behind those words because, pathetically, I have often been the one saying them.

This week I came face to face with my control freakishness and realized although I may be a control freak, I am an inept one at best!

My grocery store theology

There are some places where you can really hide who you are. Church for instance. We all put on a really nice face, smile and say hello. No matter how late you are running, how long it took your kids to eat their breakfast, how many times you had to search for your little boys Bible, or pick up his offering he had dropped for the seventh time, when you walk through those glass doors it's as if you've had an extreme make-over. Our lives are bliss!

Not so much with the grocery store...In the grocery store, no one pretends. If you are not someone who likes to chit chat, at church you still stop and give the obligatory few words, but in the grocery store you duck down the cleaning aisle to avoid contact. At church you wait patiently for your slightly long winded Pastor to wrap things up, at the grocery store you dart from line to line figuring out which one will be the fastest.

Easter meant more this year!

A few nights ago a few friends and I were talking about Peter. We were laughing about how he always seemed to be disrobing and jumping into water and how he tried to deny he knew Christ, even to the man who just watched him cut the ear off of his relative. The guy
seemed to have more nervouse energy than he knew what to do with, a sermon illustration just waiting to happen. I wonder if he takes a good ribbing from all the other saints everytime his name is mentioned from the pulpit.

After the conversation I started reading Peter's first letter to the scattered church. My first thought was, 'How can this be the same guy?' He is telling them to rid themselves of envy(2:1). Now this is the guy who, when Christ tells him he will face a martyr's death, his first words are, "Oh, yeah, well what about John?" He tells them to submit themselves to every authority(2:13), to be like Christ who did not retaliate in suffering but trusted himself to God(2:23). This just doesn't fit the Peter paradigm, for instance see the above mentioned ear incident!