Tag Archives: perseverance

Into My Heart

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Into My Heart

Into My Heart

Into My Heart

The thought was overwhelming. Although I was driving I took my phone out of my pocket to call my wife who was several counties away for an appointment.  At that very moment I saw she was calling me.  Now I had forgotten to take my phone out of its silent mode and I had not been aware of the incoming call.

Although the call was not an emergency, it was a reminder in a wonderful way of God’s very presence inside me.  “Into my heart, into my heart. Come into my heart Lord Jesus. Come in today.  Come in to stay.  Come into my heart Lord Jesus!”  I still remember learning that song as a child. I remember believing it as I asked the Lord Jesus to come in.

It has taken a lifetime from that moment so long ago to appreciate how powerful a change this has made on my life.  God is truly our Great Friend, unlike any other.  He consoles, guides, promises, protects, chides, disciplines, encourages.  He loves!

In my life as this wonderful Friendship has grown I have long lost count of the many ways He has done these things.   I cannot imagine a life without Him!  My greatest concern is displeasing Him.  I know that I am far from perfect and that I do displease Him at times. It is at those times, when I realize I have gone astray in some way that my heart breaks and I run as fast as I can back to Him.  How thankful I am for His many wonderful promises!  “I will never (ever) leave you!”  “Your sins and transgressions I will remember no more” “I will come and I will receive you to myself”  “I am with you always, even to the end of this age.”  And they go on.

As I said, I cannot imagine life without Him.  Into my heart He came.  In my heart He stays.  Have you asked?  Do you believe it?  If you don’t I would love to talk with you and tell you so many, many stories of how good, how faithful, how wonderful is this, the greatest of all Friendships.  It is an offer to everyone no matter who you are or what you have done.

Stumped

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Stumped

After a morning of chopping, sawing, digging, and prying it is still unmoved!

At first I thought it would be an hour long project. That was before I dug down and looked at what was below the surface.

Let me back up. I cut that tree down over a year ago to make way for planting grapes, blackberries and blueberries. Since then I have repeatedly cut away new growth emerging from an ugly stump barely six inches across. So I decided I would get rid of the thing. How hard could that be?

Before I cut it down this tree did not stand out as different from the others. But on the morning I decided to get rid of its stump I discovered a real difference in this tree just below the surface where no eye had seen. Beneath the surface there were huge roots, nearly as big in diameter as the stump itself stretching in every direction. After cutting each one (with considerable effort) it still would not budge! Obviously, deeper still there are roots holding it in place, tenaciously to the ground in which it once emerged as a tender, young sapling.

This week we learned of yet another mass shooting at a Naval yard in Washington. Other weeks we are faced with healthcare problems or the threat of government shutdowns and war, or a recessionary economy. We struggle with broken homes, wayward children, or a shocking diagnosis from the doctor. The list goes on. How can we be prepared for such a world as this? These problems seem intractable because there is more to them than meets the eye.

I believe the answer is in that tree stump. The word “stumped”, meaning there seems to be no easy solution to a problem, emerged during the days of building our national rail system. As the tracks expanded great trees were encountered. There was no way around removing the stumps but that was easier said than done. The setting of the sun on many days left the workers “stumped” with how to remove them.

Jesus came not as a general, a president or a philanthropist because God knew the solution to a troubled world could not be found in war, politics or finances. Our world is “stumped” because we have not learned to look beneath the surface. When we allow God to probe our hearts and reveal to us our broken human nature which is beneath all our problems we are taking the first steps. Only the God who made us, and who loves us can root out all that keeps our lives and our world broken.

Grand Master

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IMG_20130626_170600“In 40 years of teaching art, you are my only failure!”  My own mother said this to me.  “You can draw your breath and flies, and that is all you can draw!”  This might seem pretty harsh but she meant it.  It was true– sad, but true.
      Hanging on the wall in my office at church in a most prominent place is my only effort at painting.  It is a picture of “The Spirit of St. Lewis”, flying low over an ocean buoy during Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
        I was about 10 or 12 years old and I was in tears, looking at the mess I had made of that painting.
       “Joe, what’s wrong?”
       “Ohhh Mom!  I can’t do anything right!”
        “It’s not so bad.  Let me have your brush.”
        In her aged, skilled hands my splotchy attempt at sunrise BECAME sunrise!  The blob of orange paint I had carelessly dropped became a buoy bobbing in the endless expanse.”     I looked in disbelief at what had just happened and exclaimed, “Mom, I guess I AM an artist!”
        Now, years later, when I realize I have messed up or when someone comes into my office fretting over an error in judgement, I look at that painting and think of the greatest Master.
       God is a wonderful and talented Artist.  He is so great that nothing I do can ruin the painting that is my life.  But I must do these things:

     1.  I must be serious about the painting that is my life.
     2.  I must be honest and admit that I have messed it up.
     3.  I must hand my brush to the Grand Master.
     4.   I must be patient and trusting as before my eyes He transforms my mess into a true work of art.

      When I did that long ago, my painting ceased to be mine alone.  It became Mom’s and mine.
       Today when I do this with my life, it ceases to be mine alone.  My life becomes a portrait of God in me.

Bugs and Weeds

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gardenerBugs and Weeds

It’s a nice idea.   Going out to the garden and just pulling off the vine or out of the ground fresh, healthy, wholesome food.
I wish it were that easy!  Bugs know how to hide.  Those clever little squash bugs, flea beetles and grass hoppers know how to hide and avoid you like the plague.  How can it be that a creature smaller than a bread crumb can confound our best efforts to feast on the summer’s produce?
And then there are weeds! Even as my first grape vine emerged from near extinction, only a foot or so away another vine emerged looking exactly like my grape.  Which one was my grape and which was an impostor?  Was it an impostor at all?  I honestly could not tell the difference.  Sometimes I think bugs and weeds are smarter than we are!
Losing weight, finishing school, getting that degree, finding a job, finding reconciliation in a failing marriage, reaching a rebellious son or daughter.  It seems life is filled with bugs and weeds that threaten to steal from us our dream of a summer harvest.  We can be tempted to just give up and let the bugs and weeds win.
In our ‘war’ on weeds and bugs here is what we have learned:
1. There will always be problems, bugs and weeds.
2. Reality is not as easy as it seemed when you were dreaming about it.
3. If you want to eat, prepare for the work to be harder and longer than you thought.
4. A garden requires constant vigilance.  You can’t rest until the harvest is in.
5.  It’s easier to go to the grocery store but not nearly as satisfying.
6. If gardening were easy, everyone would do it.
7.  If you quit, ‘fess up that you never wanted it bad enough to begin with.  Admit you didn’t have what it takes and don’t blame the bugs and weeds in your life.  Recalculate your goals, aim elsewhere or look within and find something more.

Nothing worth having is easy.  Choose what you are going to give your life to carefully and then be prepared to spend more than you dreamed and work longer than you thought to reach it.  If it is worthy of your best effort and good for you, then God will help you, in the end, to eat the good fruit of a life well lived.