Thankful for God's promise of restoration

God uses the rhythms of life to reflect His eternal plan.  As I age, my awareness increases.

For instance, we are now in the season of death.  

The leaves have fallen from the trees, 

most of them, 

and those that have not

hang withered and brown, 

or frostbitten.  

The fields are bare, raked clean after the harvest.  

Flowers have gone to seed.

Here and there, fallen fruit lies rotting on the ground.

Nothing is growing.  Cold has arrived, manifesting in a crystalline coating that sparkles on the lifeless remains of plant matter.  Soon, all the decay will be covered decently in a burial of white snow.

How fitting that this is the season, now when the days are at their shortest and the dark creeps around us before we can get safely home for the evening, now the small white lights of Christmas appear, strung across porches and glowing at windows.  Baby Jesus came to challenge the darkness, a tiny human child, born in a secret place, God's most amazing weapon, cloaked so humbly that hardly anyone realized what was happening.

This tiny baby was the beginning of the fulfillment of the greatest promise, the promise of restoration.

Patiently, God planted and waited
and nurtured and waited
and watered and waited
and fertilized and waited
and waited.

Of course, for God, waiting is different.  For God, a thousand years are like a day.  For us, an hour is like a thousand years.  We have a hard time waiting for God to complete His perfect plan.  But He promises that He will.  He promises that He is making all things new.

Behold, He says, I am making all things new.  (Revelation 21:5)

What you sow

does not come to life

unless it dies.

And what you sow 

is not the body that 
is to be,

but a bare kernel,

perhaps of wheat 

or of some other grain...

What is sown 

is perishable;

what is raised

is imperishable.

(1 Corinthains 15:36-37, 42)

Jesus taught us: Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

We will come to life.  We will be raised.  We will bear fruit.  We will be imperishable.  Actually, we are currently raised with Christ, and bearing fruit through His Spirit.  Although our bodies are not yet imperishable, our souls are.  We, who have faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, are on a triumphant trajectory toward eternal glory.

He is restoring us, and we will be restored.

Joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:5)

As through Adam darkness and death entered and permeated creation, so through Christ the flow is reversed and light and life will reign forever.

Every tragedy, every single calamity, every tear, every ache, and every pain will be transformed into a reason to praise Him, a demonstration of the love of God, and the power of God, and the glory of God.

If then, you have been raised with Christ,

seek the things that are above,

where Christ is,

seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above,

not on things that are on earth.

For you have died,

and your life is hidden 

with Christ in God.

When Christ,

who is your life

appears,

then you also

will appear

with Him in glory.

(Colossians 3:1-4)

I am thankful for God's promise of restoration, and I am thankful that God always keeps His promises.

Thankful after all

Today I awoke at home, deeply thankful to be here, in the comfort and quiet of my own bed, in my own bedroom, in my own house.

The sky was very, very white outside my window, behind the intricate bare, black branches of my maple tree.  As I looked out my window at the white and black view, I saw puffy snowflakes slowly drifting down among the branches like particles of grace, white flecks of motion, gentle and lovely against the stark backdrop, yet adding no color.  Sometimes a gust of air would carry them upwards, and somehow, even though the sun was completely hidden behind a thick layer of white cloud, they shone softly with its reflection.

As I write about the beauty I saw, I realize that I am more thankful than I thought I was, because, you see, I was struggling with hurt, a headache and a heartache, and I didn't think I was thankful.  But by the grace of God, I am thankful, and to Him belongs all the praise.

I didn't think I was thankful, because I was experiencing a fear, and it was a fear that sprang out of things I have learned, and things that haunt me from past experiences.  Memories are powerful things, and they center around the Momentous Occasions of our lives.  We remember the Momentous Occasions, and we remember how people treated us.  We are much more apt to forget how we treated others, but we remember our own emotions; ah, how we remember those.

I awoke with a heavy heart and a lump in my throat.  A lump in my throat.  That's such a cliche, and yet, so accurate.  I was thinking about Momentous Occasions of the past, marred by bad behavior, selfishness, obliviousness and misunderstandings, but mostly selfishness.  I had a fear of Momentous Occasions yet to come, and the premonition that they will be similarly marred, cloaked in hurt and darkness and division.  The thing is, where Momentous Occasions are concerned, you don't get a second chance.  They are once and done, and the memory is sealed.  Weddings, funerals, births.  Somebody ought to tell you:  It matters.  Do it right.  Be on your best behavior.  Be gracious.  Please be gracious.  You will never be sorry for having been gracious.

Momentous Occasions are like photographs, and you want to look your best in the memories, because the memories will be made, one way or another, and they will last.  Why isn't this common knowledge, widely shared wisdom, something everybody knows and lives by?  Why does it take so long to learn, and why does the learning of it have to come through failures?  Why, even once we start to learn it, do we focus on "them" and not on ourselves?  They shouldn't wreck the memories, we declare, while neglecting to seek the grace we could extend to mitigate the damage.

We can only control ourselves, and even that is a dubious endeavor.  We need the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us, helping us, empowering us.  Oh, God, help us.  Help us to give grace, even when if feels like it is being sucked out into a black hole.  Help us trust You to use our meager sacrifices for Your perfect purposes.  Help us trust that what we give to You, You will never waste, but instead multiply into blessings that magnify Your glory and bless us with goodness.

Here is a story of a mystery of God:

Our ladies' Bible study is studying 1 Corinthians.  We are studying 1 Corinthians primarily because I wanted to study 2 Corinthians, but felt obliged to study 1 Corinthians first.  I had never studied any Corinthians in context, although I knew a good many verses from these epistles, out of context.  I never knew how it all fit together.

As we began our journey through 1 Corinthians, I was struck by two things:  (1) This is a tremendously difficult book (no wonder pastors rarely exposit through it), and (2) It is all about humility.

Yes, humility.  Right now.  Humility is what I am studying.

All the evils of the world will cease when humility reigns.  Humility.  Humble.  Humanity.  Human.  Do you think God allowed this word etymology to evolve together for no good reason?

In the Corinthian church, they suffered under a plague of pride and competition.  They took the good gifts of God, His word, His teachers, even the gifts of the Spirit to equip each believer, and they perverted it all into contests.  Honestly, they were actually elbowing one another out of the way in order to get first dibs on a hearty serving of the communion elements.  Can you imagine?  They boasted of how free they were in Christ, and displayed their freedom by boldly committing sins, then bragged that their freedom to sin made them all the more praiseworthy (1 Corinthians 5:1-2).  The Apostle Paul told them they were getting things backwards.

They were a sick bunch, and their sickness was rooted in pride.  The cure was to become humble, to empty themselves and let the Spirit of God flow in and fill them with grace.  Do all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).  Look to the interests of others, give up your rights for the good of others, and seek the things that build up the body of believers.  Be humble.

Humility is putting the interests others ahead of our own interests.  Humility is love, and love is humble.  Love is kind.  It is not proud, rude or self-seeking.  It is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  (1 Corinthians 13)

Humility is something we must do ourselves.  It is the opposite of humility to insist that the other person be humble.  One cannot say, "You must keep no record of the wrongs I've done to you!"  Rather, one must depend on the Lord to help with the casting away of the records of the wrongs that one has suffered, oneself.  It is very hard.

Yet, how Providential that this is exactly what the Lord is teaching me, right now, as I stand on the edge of the cliff of a Momentous Occasion where, once again, hurts seem certain to spring up into eternally engraved memories.

And then, again by the Providence of God, I recently had the opportunity to listen to some excellent audio books of the Chronicles of Narnia.  As these old, familiar stories unfolded, I noticed, from my ever-aging perspective, how constantly Lewis wrote about humility and pride, and the goodness of the one and the tragedy of the other.  He is a master of showing, not telling, and in my older age, he moves me to tears more often than not.

Humility is love, and love is grace, and grace is forgiveness.  It's all one big, inextricable weaving of virtue into a blanket of godliness that covers and heals.

This is what the Lord calls us to.  This is what the Lord calls me to.  He has lavished grace on me, and I must pour grace out on others, following the example of Jesus Himself, who washed His disciples' feet and then poured out His life on the bloody cross of Calvary.  This is what it is to have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

I think again of those silent, bright, moving snowflakes among the dark, naked maple branches.  In a scene that would have been stark and depressing, they brought lightness.  It is the season of hope.

These three remain: faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13).  By faith, we believe in the sovereignty and the goodness of God.  This faith begets hope, hope that He will make it all beautiful in His time, as He promises.  Hope finds its fruition in love, both the growing love that we have now because of the presence of the Holy Spirit with us, and the fullness of love in which we will dwell in eternity.  Love is the healing of the nations, love is the safe place where we neither commit nor endure hurts, ever again.

Let all that you do be done in love.

1 Corinthians 16:14

If you follow this principle,
with the help of the Holy Spirit
who works miracles of grace,
you may even be able to go back
and retouch old memories,
bringing beauty from
the ashes of the past.
For this I am truly, deeply, transcendently
thankful.

Thankful for the Holy Spirit

I am increasingly, overwhelmingly thankful for the gift, the treasure of the Holy Spirit of God.

God is with us today, in our age and time, through the constant, abiding presence of His Holy Spirit.

He is our salvation and our righteousness.

He is our power and our confidence.

He is our comfort and our security.

He is our teacher and our wisdom.

He, the Holy Spirit of Christ, dwells within my body, which is His temple.  He is my hope of glory.  He promises never to leave me nor forsake me, even unto the end of the age.

Of course, at the end of the age, we will enter the fully unveiled presence of God.

But for now, the Holy Spirit carries us through this broken world, reminding us of our hope and enabling us, through His encouragement and His power, to persevere until the end.

Thankful for warm feet

This time of year, my feet are often cold.  They get especially cold when I take off my socks to go to bed, and they can take a long time to rewarm under the covers.

In the morning, however, my feet are toasty warm.  It is the most delicious feeling, the feeling of dry, enveloping warmth running right through to the tips of my toes.  I'm thankful for my furnace, my bed, my soft cotton sheets, my blankets, and my husband, who is an excellent heat source.

I am thankful for the luxurious feeling of waking up with warm feet.

Thankful for these outrageous gloves

I used to lose gloves all the time.  A small black glove slips unnoticed to the low, dark corners of life.  Also, I have wondered if people tend to take nice, understated black leather gloves, like ballpoint pens, useful pieces of property that are often laid down thoughtlessly, and everybody's look the same.  Maybe people don't even pilfer them on purpose.  "Are these mine?" they wonder, as they tuck them into a pocket.

When I lost my favorite dark brown leather, silk-lined gloves that I bought in Paris in 1996, I was really sad.  I decided that something had to be done.

Since it seemed that I kept losing my gloves because of their subtle appearance, I decided to buy a pair that would be hard to miss, visually.  I bought a pair of pink and fuchsia striped, thinsulate-lined humdingers.  They don't match anything.

For over seven years, I have not lost these gloves.  Sometimes, I may be tempted to wish I would.  It is almost (almost?) embarrassing to wear them.  However, they are always there, always easy to find.  And nobody is tempted to steal them.

Yesterday as I suited up to walk Duffy in the bitter cold, I grabbed them out of the mudroom, and I was thankful.

Thankful for my Verse of the Year this year

Every year on January 1, I pick a word or two (and eventually sometimes three) to focus on through the year.  This year I chose the words Power and Glory.

Then, I find a verse to go with my words, and I memorize it.

This year's verse is 1 Chronicles 29:11. . .

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, 
and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty,
for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is Yours!  
Yours is the Kingdom, O Lord!
And You are exalted as Head above all!

I truly love this verse, and I feel better every time I say it, remembering who my Heavenly Father is, and how powerful and glorious, with authority over everything.  It is the antidote for sadness, anxiety and frustration.

I think of it when I say the Lord's Prayer, especially the beginning and the end:

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name.
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven . . .
For Yours is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory forever!  
Amen.

Thankful for warm, cozy clothes

It's colder than it was at this time last year.

The chill stiffens my muscles and creeps into my bones.  Walking the puppy is not the joy it was a few weeks ago.  Snowflakes dangle in the air, then alight on the shrubbery, where they stay, thin but determined, a powdered-sugar dusting of white coldness.  They are not melting.

So, I am thankful for warm clothes!  I especially like big, soft, bulky sweaters, broken in and oozing with comfort.  The one I'm wearing today is particularly soft, and has a zipper.  Shawn gave it to me for Christmas one year, and it was a size or two too big, which was disappointing to him, but not to me!

I'm thankful for warm, cozy clothes.

Thankful for an EASY recipe for gluten-free pumpkin pancakes

Lots of gluten free recipes are complicated and putzy, and also full of rice flour, of which I am not a fan.

In the world of gluten free eating, I aim to eat as cheaply, normally and simply as possible.  Thus, I was thrilled when my experiment with gluten free pumpkin pancakes turned out to be surprisingly successful.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pancakes

For one serving (multiply as desired):

2 eggs
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats (GF)
salt (in a salt shaker)
ground cloves (in a shaker bottle)
cinnamon (in a shaker bottle)

Crack the eggs into your blender.  Add the pumpkin, oats, two shakes of salt, one shake of clove and three shakes of cinnamon.  Canned pumpkin varies, so if yours is particularly thick, you may need to add a tablespoon or so of milk, almond milk, or water.  Blend until smooth.

[If you aren't desirous of being particularly healthy, you could also add some sugar to this recipe, but I find that the syrup I pour over my pancakes gives more than enough sweetness for me.]

Cook in frying pan over medium heat for three minutes on the first side.  Flip, reduce heat, and cook for three more minutes.  Your cooking time is where you can customize these to your personal taste.  If you like them moist and almost custardy in the middle, like pumpkin pie filling, cook a bit less.  If you like them fluffy, cook a bit longer.  Stoves vary, so watch closely and don't burn them!!

Serve with real butter and real maple syrup!

I am thankful for quick, easy gluten free recipes made with things I already have in my pantry!

Thankful for a Very Big Deal

Once I had a friend who told me her mother measured circumstances by this litmus: "Is it a life?"  If the answer was no, her mother would declare, "It isn't a life."  And that was that.  No big deal.

In the scheme of things, there are big deals and not-so-big deals.  We are often tempted to measure the magnitude of something by its dollar value.  For instance, it seems like a bigger deal if you get sick and have to miss a vacation in the Caribbean, than if you get sick and miss having coffee with a friend.  Likewise, it seems like a bigger deal if you win a new car, than if you win a free Coke.

When our heads are screwed on properly, we understand that money is not the biggest deal.  Life trumps money, and the biggest deals of all involve life and death.  Life is priceless.

This is why today's thankful post is a Very Big Deal.

I am thankful that we have a little grandbaby who is expected be born right around Christmastime this year.

My mind is boggled at the thought of this new life, who even now pokes funny shapes in his mama's stretched belly, and visibly cavorts in all the space available, ever striving to push for more.

Amazingly, through the wonders of modern technology, we have already seen this baby's tiny face, and it looks remarkably like his mama's tiny face, when she was newly born.

Grandbaby's face

Grandbaby's mama's face

as a newborn

God is the Giver of Life.  I am thankful for this new life, and joy, and hope for the future, and precious memories of the past.  I am thankful for the linked chain of family and love.

I am thankful.

Thankful for walks

I am thankful that I can walk, and that I have beautiful places to walk.

Walking is exercise.  How amazing and wonderful is that?

I love to walk outside, and see the beauty of the trees and the great wide sky.

Looking up, I see blue space, flickering leaves, bare twigs, sailing clouds.  Looking down, I see crunchy fallen leaves, green grasses, stones, gravel, dirt, and various plants, pods and puddles.  Ahead lies a path, beside me a thicket.

I love to walk, moving my legs, rolling my feet, swinging my arms, squinting into the sun and breathing.

I am thankful for walks.

Thankful that it isn't winter yet

There is nothing so gorgeous as the last days of autumn, when afternoon sun comes slanting through turned leaves, gold and orange and red.  The leaves catch dollops of light, juggling bright spots gently in a chill breeze under cold, clear, blue sky.

I want to walk and walk, before the snow falls, soaking in each moment before it is gone.  The days go fast now, especially since we turned our clocks back.  It's dark by 5 p.m.  Another day gone, another day closer to winter.

And yet, it is not winter.  Not yet.

For that I am thankful.  Seize the day!

Thankful for Duffy

I'm just going to go ahead and burn the Duffy card at the outset, because I need to explain why I may be missing some thankful posts this year.

This little dog-baby.

When you are used to old, settled dogs, it is quite a flurry of newness to bring a young pup into the household.  And when you no longer have any children at home to play with the young pup, well.  It all depends on you, yourself . . . and you may be past your prime, a tad tired.

But a cute puppy is one of God's most aesthetically amazing creations, in my opinion.  It is a great blessing to have a puppy, to play with him, feed him, and laugh at his wild tricks.  An uninhibited, carefree, energetic puppy brings a person right up out of the doldrums.

Today Duffy and I were taking a walk, and we noticed a neighbor who used to have a golden retriever, playing in his yard with a small black puppy.  His old dog must have died about the same time ours did.  He and I both got a bit misty-eyed, swapping stories.  Duffy, at four months, is about the same size as this other puppy, who is nine weeks right now.  She is a golden-doodle, and she is very playful, which is exactly what Duffy has been hoping for.  They romped and rolled and wrestled with no signs of slowing, until the school bus dropped off a gaggle of kids and I was able to tear Duffy away amidst the distraction.

I am thankful for Duffy, but right now he is creeping exploratorily around my study, making chewing noises near electrical cords, and I need to go. I've already had to pause once, to rescue some delicate hand-washables that he stole off the drying rack, and ease them from his piranha-like teeth.

So, if I'm scarcer here than I have been in Novembers past, please realize that it is only on account of one of the things for which I am thankful.

Oooops... there goes the wastebasket.  No lie.

And the entire drying rack just crashed.  Signing out.

Thankful for lots of things

I missed a bunch of days of thankfulness,
but not because I wasn't thankful.

I wrote once before that I was thankful for roads,
and I am,
even though I wish I didn't need to be.
Recently, I was feeling
decidedly unthankful
for Wisconsin,
which lies between
my current home and my natal home.

The last few times we have driven through Wisconsin,
blizzards have raged,

and this last time, once again,
Wisconsin sleet and snow assailed us.

But,
I am very thankful for a safe drive.

I'm thankful for my mother,
who turned 86 on Saturday.

My phone camera foreshortens and distorts in the oddest ways.
My mother is a tiny person,
and these golden roses were very large,
but the camera makes the proportions look ridiculous.

Still,
I cannot quite image how I came into the world
through such a tiny person.
A mother is a precious and mysterious thing,
the one who cradled me in her body before I was born.

I am thankful for a mother who
gave me life,
raised me to know Jesus,
and is still here to be visited!

Thankful (it's November)

I finally realized that today is November 1.  Happy November 1!

The tradition of writing daily thankful posts in November has been a huge blessing to me.  I should have been planning a bang-up premiere post, but I've been caught off-guard instead.

There are so many things to be thankful for . . . big things, small things, serious things, lighthearted things.

Right now, at this moment, at 4:17 p.m. in the afternoon, when I haven't started dinner, this is what I am thankful for:

A package of unfrozen ground beef in my refrigerator, which will make dinner much easier than it otherwise might be.  I am thankful for this simple and adaptable ingredient.  I think I will make chili.  A steaming pot of chili would be lovely on this cold, dark, rainy day.