I sang “O Holy Night” from memory, listening to those around me.
I sometimes wonder even in a setting surrounded by believers, how the miracle of Jesus could be so, if I’ll ever truly understand the complexities of the Trinity and how in the world there could be such immeasurably undeserved grace that I’ve been given, been shown, keep receiving.
In contrast, I wonder things like why my children had to be grandparentless so young. Why bad things like fatal accidents happen around Christmas, why the threat of violence and fear feel so palpable in our day.
I understand. This is earth not heaven and I know God has and had a plan for my parents I can’t yet fully understand.
Still, contemplating life with question draws me closer to steadfast faith. The woman at the well stood next to Jesus, Jesus who knew all her secrets and sins and yet offered her himself for a new way to live.
She walked away wondering “How could it be?” and shared with all the townspeople who then decided for themselves…it must be so! I, too choose belief.
We don’t always understand. Often, we won’t ever. But, choosing to believe in the one who hears and responds to my prayers, often in big ways, more often small, is the way to believing even more.
““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:16-17 ESV
Merry Christmas. May your questions always lead you back to believing what is humanly unbelievable.
Believe in Jesus, the baby, the boy, the man amongst men, women, and children. God’s Son, our Savior because of underserved crucifixion and a glorious resurrection.
Jesus, who is seated next to God, the Father and is seeing me, sitting on a quiet Christmas morning and typing words about Him, maybe saying…see, she’s growing. She’s believing more and more. She knows she’s fully known and loved.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but yesterday on a couple of occasions, I felt God seeing me. I felt Him near. The veil between earth and heaven was translucently thin.
In my car, with a list of places to deliver art and calendars, in between being among hurried and intent on shopping people, a playlist emerged. Songs I hadn’t heard before both caused me to pray and to praise. A deep connectedness to God’s spirit within me, led to warm tears and others to a lifted open hand.
No wonder, I’ve been resting with the words, “Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask you to stay.”
My favorite people in the Bible are the vulnerable and uncertain ones. I’m drawn to Job. I’m strengthened by David. I adore Martha and can relate to Jonah. Thomas, the one who needed proof and wasn’t afraid to admit it. I love the ones who wondered.
“Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29 NIV
Who believe and cling to times when their belief was solidified, made tangible evidence.
The Lord is near.
Believe. Accept the freedom of a sweeter commitment, the language of the heart, not rational.
As Martha was met by Jesus, distraught over the death of her brother, she told Him she still believed in His goodness, in the purpose of Him.
Then, she went to get her sister Mary.
“She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”” John 11:27 ESV
Mary stood next to Jesus and asked why he waited so long. Jesus wept.
Then he told the sisters to take him to their brother although it had been four days.
“Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”” John 11:40 ESV
Lazarus was raised. Jesus told them both and all who had followed out of grief and curiosity, that this was the way God intended it, so that all would believe, not just the sisters.
All, like all of us.
“So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”” John 11:41-42 ESV
I woke up early, got my journal, books and pen and then felt the need, like a gentle call to read my (actual)Bible.
The Mary and Martha story is good. Always.
God’s timing is not ours. Don’t give up hope. Don’t stop believing in the grace, strength, mercy and presence of Jesus. Look at your life, remember times you asked for help and help came. Times of desperation because of delay of some sort.
Sometimes I pray “God, show us your glory today, come through in a way that it’s clearly you…’cause I’m not able on my own.”
And Jesus has come, has remedied, relieved, given me strength when I am weak.
These words gave me permission to consider my wandering, validated a truth I see in myself and wondered how many others wrestle with the same question.
Where is God today?
Why do I feel I’m in this battle alone?
What if my faith is fleeting?
Faint, yet pursuing. Judges 8:4
This verse describes a throng of warriors’ commitment to battle with their leader, Gideon.
“And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing them.” Judges 8:4 KJV
I jotted down three verses from my Bible one day last week, folded the paper and put it in my “to do list” book.
The passages were from Psalm 42, Luke 2, and this Old Testament text.
Often, a trio like this will wrap me in its embrace of understanding, acknowledgement of question, and offering of clarity and peace.
Gideon, David and Mary share a theme that resonates. They wavered in their confidence and faith, maybe in a way like me, asked God to be near, asked Him to show evidence that their faith wasn’t without hope. That they can wander away and wonder in a questioning way and they can be themselves.
We can be ourselves.
God welcomes that.
David gives countless templates for questioning conversations with our approachable God.
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” Psalm 42:11 KJV
Today, I pray you notice the Christmas around you. That you feel a nearness with Jesus, God’s intentional gift for us.
Nearness, more near than any humanly possible things.
Jesus Christ, the baby, little boy and man who dwelt among others and now, if you’ll allow Him dwells within, His Spirit
Strength and peace.
I pray that you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, not just the idea of Him, although it surely is the most beautiful idea on its own.
A baby born to then die for us. A baby born without sin to become a man crucified cruelly although without sin.
I pray you believe and that you begin to pursue and never stop pursuing even on dismal days, days when you’re battle weary and days when you being invited to participate in such a miraculous truth seems unbelievable.
“And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” Luke 1:45 ESV
Continue and believe. If life leads you to question, continue and be at peace.
Imagine being with the most prolific teacher, one you’re humbled, challenged, encouraged and fascinated by.
Grandma Mornings
I had an English professor, Honors English in my Freshman year. She saw my timidity and yet, she gave no mercy when it came to writing. Honesty, brevity, tenacity were her standards, more so than grammar.
Write with honesty. Don’t copy.
Don’t quit.
I left that college and that Honors English professor after barely eight months. Art scholarship and English were sidelined by events uninvited.
I wish I could remember her name, that tiny framed woman who commanded the room.
She taught me about doing hard things. She spoke of choices that would bring joy.
It’s crazy really, the forceful tone she used to cut no corners and instruct me has been my motivation for as long as I can recall.
I was afraid of her. I was unsure.
She told me I belonged in her class and I should never forget it.
I have been writing all my life in one way or another.
My writing lately is cursive, blue ink in my journal and most days an early morning Instagram post.
Honestly.
I honor that petite professor who never played favorites. Shy poor girl me or sorority blonde, she taught us to write and to continue writing.
She left us all with what was important.
Most important.
Jesus left the disciples with many commands that he hoped they’d honor. He told them doing so would lead to joy.
Most of all,
He said, “Love one another”.
Some mornings I read a verse or more and I write a sermon to self. Mornings like today, I share it:
Look for light today, where the love of Jesus falls and changes the simple or hard things.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12 ESV
Years ago, I concluded that God made us all so different, so uniquely difficult in our ways, so individually changed by our circumstances in not always so easy to love ways, so that we’d be challenged to obey the command to love one another.
The greatest commandment isn’t a suggestion.
The other day I “vented” with a friend about difficult people. She listened. I listened. We had things in common. I didn’t feel better for my venting. Wished I hadn’t.
Notice how you feel when it’s a challenge to love others, choose the way of Jesus to do the best you can.
You’ll feel better for trying, for doing what the teacher instructed.
Remember, we don’t know the experiences that lead to the behaviors of others. It really is all about perspectives formed by circumstances.
We just can’t know the whole story of anyone other than the portion they share.
What we allow to be influenced by Jesus, by love, by vulnerable secret places exposed to light, lends itself to our stories being rewritten.
We begin to believe the vastness of God’s grace is for us, not just for others.
We loosen the bitter, cynical ropes that tether us to making sense of past wrongs and in a gradual epiphany type way, we see hope as more than a sweet little word.
We may wonder why it took so long and we may fear falling back into the questioning pattern tattooed on our soul by trauma.
We may wonder over this change causing glimpses of heaven.
Or we might decide to embrace it.
We may just move this Christmas season from believing and accepting Christ Jesus
To fully embracing Him.
We’ll be easy on our fragile human hearts when they try to grow stiff again.
We’ll pivot towards the soft light of love, we will reset our hearts on hope again.
We will say to ourselves, maybe on little post-its or with pen on our wrists.
“healed”
…by his wounds, I am healed.
We’ll continue seeing God. We’ll be amazed where He is.
“having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might” Ephesians 1:18-19 ESV
I lost my glasses on Monday, the cute ones, the ones a little bolder than my typical tortoise or black. Like most people my age, there are spare pairs everywhere. But, not on Monday.
We drove down the pretty road bordered with deeply rooted trees. Her mama had left a forgotten treat in the mailbox.
So early in the day, my readers must have slipped from my pocket or fell from my lap.
It’s an interesting dependence I now have on them, like a security blanket for a baby.
I catch myself thinking I have a pair like a headband only to pat the top of my head to be sure they’re there and find only hair.
On Monday, I was without them. I warned people I responded to in texts. They were unbothered by my typos.
By the end of the day I was managing just fine. My daughter didn’t find them on the road and I decided, oh well they’re just gone.
I gathered my things in the passenger seat once I was at home. Glanced down in the space between seat and console and saw a strange sight. I decided my husband had left some stuff in my car.
A little glass case, black with faux fancy logo with a pair of readers in the color peridot. I lost them so long ago.
Not as fancy as the blue, but I loved them and missed them.
Why am I writing about finding reading glasses?
It’s the thought that came after, the clarity in a sweet message from God.
About good in God’s time and God’s way, about the way answers come when we accept we don’t know, can’t be in control of everything.
The way God is the very best at the “art of surprising”.
On Tuesday, my granddaughter wanted another treat. It was close to lunchtime and she had a slight runny nose, but would never tell her grandma she was feeling bad.
(Memories of her strong mama here, rarely voicing a need or trouble.)
I let her lay on the floor, not flailing but fussing. Let her let her mood play out, allowed her to reconcile what she wanted with what her person in charge decided was best.
From the kitchen, I heard her whine change to elation.
“I found Gamma’s cross! Grandma, I found Gamma’s cross!”
She ran over and handed me the tiny gold cross, the one Gamma lost months ago and we all searched until we settled on not finding and stopped searching.
I called Gamma. Told her “Guess what?” and quoted our precious granddaughter.
She found the cross.
Under the couch, found when a little toddler tantrum decided to get quiet and lift the fabric of the couch to hide underneath. How she spotted it is really nothing short of a miracle.
No one else would’ve looked there.
Yesterday, we had a sweet day together. The back seat of my car strewn with a used pull-up, tiny books, little cards and juicy cups, and “guess what?”
My fancy blue glasses.
Hmmm, a surprise.
I had a thought yesterday as I listened to the words of a popular song “My Jesus”.
I thought “I don’t feel the nearness of Jesus now.”
I told God that very thing, asked Him to help me see what’s blocking my view or maybe, just to show me it’s okay to not always be searching, rather to wait for his revealing.
Gamma and Grandma both wear crosses, I suppose it’s one of our granddaughter, Elizabeth’s favorite things, our necklaces.
And our bracelets.
Yesterday, she sat in my lap and asked about every charm on my bracelet, the tiny artist palette, the little girl and boy silhouettes, her mommy and her uncle. She spotted the tiny angel, a gift from my husband prior to her birth. She said “That’s like my angel”, an angel her mama’s grandma gave her when she was just a baby.
One charm she skipped over is the circle with the missing charm, a tiny mustard seed enclosed in glass. Lost so long ago, I stopped searching.
When I called Gamma, teary with excitement, she called our granddaughter “my angel” and I agreed.
She added, “Now, let’s wait for her to find your mustard seed!”
“That would be something!” I said.
The sketches on the thin pages of my Bible often overlap with faded color, the Psalms especially.
Remember when you refused to say “diet”, instead lifestyle or good choices for my health? Maybe you’ve counted calories, drank smooshed up vegetables in a pretty glass, restricted cream and sugar in your coffee.
All in an effort to be well, to be satisfied with yourself, body and soul.
Yesterday, I gazed at the casserole dish of cheesy baked spaghetti my daughter made. I remembered the day I would’ve gone for thirds, if by myself eat the rest of it.
I let the memory help me, I let it fade into the shadows. I left it there.
I woke up early unnecessarily today. I prayed beside my bed that God would help me keep learning, keep listening, keep strengthening my spiritual health.
I see the word prompt for today is “taste”. Rather than think of passages like kind words being sweeter than honey or tasting and seeing that the goodness of the Lord is good.
I rested for a few minutes, soaking up a passage I never tire of,
The passage about the woman who’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years and had gone broke trying to get well, to find a solution to her blood saturated clothing.
The crowd was thick. She could get close to Jesus without being noticed. She did. She touched the hem of his robe and instantly everything changed. She got well.
Jesus knew it. Knew she was there. Knew she was desperate and called her out from her chosen obscurity, her hope to keep herself secret.
“When the woman realized she couldn’t hide any longer, she came and fell trembling at Jesus’ feet. Before the entire crowd she declared, “I was desperate to touch you, Jesus, for I knew if I could just touch even the fringe of your garment I would be healed.” Luke 8:47 TPT
All eyes and ears were on her then, Jesus didn’t just heal her, He gave her the voice to invite healing for others.
I haven’t thought of it this way until today.
Others see and hear us. See how we’ve changed and keep seeking to be healed.
On Sunday (isn’t Sunday always okay tomorrow I start the diet day?) I considered doing Whole30 again.
The diet that restricts certain foods as a way for you to learn what is specifically not good for you is work. It takes effort, makes you feel like a brave fighter or a competitive something or other.
But, there’s no cheese allowed, no cream in my coffee, no chocolate, no red wine, no bread, no sugar, no peanut butter (!!!). The “no” list is long.
Earlier this week, I embraced a friend in a funeral home. I didn’t expect to hear her words through tears. I just know they surprised me, sweetly and certainly she spoke.
“I’m gonna need you.” she said before I spoke a word. On the way to this visitation I almost decided against I decided I’d offer myself as a person to call.
I’d tell her “If you run out of friends to call or no one’s available, you can always call me.”
You see, we know each other but not dining together or visiting each other’s home sort of friends.
Her greeting me with “I’m gonna need you.” surprised me and then it didn’t.
This thing called blogging, posting what God tells me on Instagram, this sharing of sitting on the sofa sketches at night, this creative thing God so graciously made me to do.
It has an audience of listeners, seekers, “needers” like me.
It’s just me being vulnerably, being honestly me.
My “sermons to self” sometimes become hopeful words for others, I suppose.
I pray this anyway.
So, on this chilly quiet morning, I make myself breakfast. I don’t skip it thinking I’ll eat later. I am intentional with starting the day filled with possibilities and errands well.
I take the English muffin top and toss it. I like the bread, but I just choose the bottom. I add sharp cheddar to the egg white and turkey sausage and let the broiler make it bubbly. I add a dollop of cherry preserves to balance the savory. I place it on the pretty china.
I sit and enjoy it.
Like I told my friend who is grieving and I continue to tell others and myself,
“Take it easy on yourself.”
Offer as much mercy you’ve shown others to yourself.
Cease striving, seek wellness.
Be humble when convicted, but don’t punish yourself, don’t let bitter regret or self-hate simmer.
Continue and believe.
Believe you’re fearfully and wonderfully made and so fully known and loved.
Be well. It is well.
“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” Psalm 139:14 ESV
Thank you for sustaining me Lord, for keeping me well, for reminding me of what harms and what helps me, what makes me a beautifuloffering, a vessel to pour out newlife, love and listening. Thank you for showing me gently what limits my abilities, takes me from your Spirit. I am listening. I am learning. Thank you. Because of your mercy, Amen
It occurred to me as I thought of today’s prompt, “trust”, that so many of the words we use may be less powerful, more pretty, even cliche.
Trust is a word I write every morning, some days God follows with a bold period and often underlined.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Proverbs 3:5 KJV
Trust.
I start the day with this written commitment. Still, some days it’s nothing more than a pleasant hope, a halfhearted decision to remember God is my Father and I am His child.
I can trust Him.
Even if trusting humanly is a challenge for me, an established avoidance or cynical pattern.
I can decide to trust God.
Words like trust, faith, redemption, and salvation are powerful and unchanging words.
They are the fruit of our Creator’s character and intent for us.
They are God’s covenant.
“Promise”, another word we hold loosely when we consider it from human experience, is just as valuable, a weighty word.
Today, I will trust God. I will know and cherish words like trust, faith, mercy, grace, freedom, salvation, healing, and peace.
I’ll embrace these words tightly, held and certain like a child being cradled in the strong arms of a parent.
“I am carrying you.” God
He keeps His promises.
He gives joy, trust, patience.
We’re not able on our own to sustain these.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,” Galatians 5:22 KJV
But, as for me, it is good to be near God. Psalm 73:28
Morning Spot
Changing my morning spot with the season means I’m facing the morning sun. I’m not able to linger as long. I’m motivated to move forward, toward the new day, the give and take back cycle of surrendering its way to God’s control.
The longer I stay, the more unavoidable is the glare. My face looks towards my journal, the three words on focus.
Holiness
Health
Change
Waking today, to a one step forward and three back kinda feel.
So, I ask simply for more grace.
Look up again, the sunlight now dappled through the pines.
I pray.
Turn my face towards the sun, Lord. Empower me to let the shadows fade away. All knowing, Father, you are good and only do good. Settle my mind and heart on this truth.
“The day is yours, and yours also the night; you established the sun and moon.” Psalms 74:16 NIV
we run away from our discomfort... but it doesn't leave us. to heal we need to turn around and face it, experience it and once we truly do we are out of it. We heal and we grow.
2 Timothy 1:7-8 For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. This blog is about my Christian walk. Join me for the adventure.
Lisa Anne Tindal 