The Redeemed Rose

  Pastors are facing depression and anxiety in record numbers this year. As if the numbers pre-COVID weren’t alarming enough, the pandemic has added an unpredictable monster in the cave that could pop out or change form at any moment. Pastors are having to make decisions they have never had to face before and for which there was no training or warning. Many pastors have been let go while countless others are facing church closures, either from a decline in membership and tithing due to COVID or because the pandemic exacerbated underlying issues causing the volcano to erupt.   As a pastor’s wife, I can vouch for the anomalous stress that COVID-19 placed on my husband. Trying to lead a church during a pandemic has been the most arduous time he has ever experienced in fourteen years of ministry. All of our pastor friends have unanimously agreed that the stress and pressure on them is overwhelming and their anxiety is higher than ever.  As I see the discouragement, ...

  We’ve all had to wait.  Wait in line for a package, for test results. Waiting isn’t fun.  We are impatient people.  We want instant turn-around. And those are just small things. It becomes even harder when you’re waiting for something of greater significance. Perhaps it’s waiting for future plans, a legal matter, or for a pandemic to end! Right now our family is in a waiting period. We are a pastor’s family in between churches; something we never anticipated happening. We have no idea what is coming next for us. We are just living in the “in between”.  In the summer of 2002, right before he was supposed to start college, my husband felt the call on his life to preach the Word and shepherd a flock. In 2009, he was ordained into the pastoral ministry by the church we were attending. Since then he has been on staff (sometimes the only staff) at five different churches, and we have made four major moves.  At each church we’ve served, we have always said we we...

  “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?”  (Jeremiah 17:9) I feel the truth of this statement like a sinking stone in the pit of my stomach.  I know I am a follower of Christ.  I know I have repented of my sins and trusted in Jesus’ finished payment on the cross to reconcile me to God the Father.  But I also know I am a great sinner.  While I can’t undo Christ’s payment for my sin, I feel the blackness and wickedness of my old self oozing out, threatening to infect and reclaim my new heart for itself.  There are dozens of warnings in the Bible telling us to keep watch over our hearts because they are prone to go astray. While I do not believe that people can lose their salvation (Christ keeps all whom the Father gives to him), if we let our hearts wander too far, for too long, we may find that we never truly repented and believed in the first place. This is a startling and sobering thought.  Judas was...

  As someone who has personally struggled with depression and tried to minister to loved ones in the thick of it, I have experienced how difficult it can be to know what to do or what will help. It can be easy to throw up your hands in defeat. But before you do, know that there is hope.  Here are ten things you can do when someone you care about is depressed:  1) Be patient    It’s easy to see the depressed person lying in bed  again,  or walking around in that familiar dark storm cloud and think “Here we go again!” Although the depressed person may have withdrawn inwardly, what they don’t need is people to give up on them.  In these situations, we need to model our Savior, who was steadfast and longsuffering, and follow the instructions of the apostle Paul who said we must walk in patience, bearing with one another in love, and bear each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2; Ephesians 4:2). 2) Don’t say, “Stop having a pity party” (even if they mi...

  Springtime means gardens for many people. While my husband and I have tried our hand at vegetable gardens before, it had been a few years and we are still novices! The big difference between this year and times prior was that we had never had to till the ground ourselves! But how hard could it be? We planned out our garden on paper. Visions of sweet peppers danced in our heads! Towers of tomatoes, rows of corn and green beans, lettuce, zucchini, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts were all going to be ours for the picking!  We pictured just a few quick and easy pass-throughs down the rows, the tiller shredding sod for us like lettuce leaves in a salad shooter! Then all those nice, neat rows of rich soil would be ready for planting! Simple! We figured out how much space we needed in between each plant. My husband meticulously measured out the plot of land. Then he plugged that tiller in and got to work! “This is going to be a cinch!” we thought.  That is, until the blades hit...

  When was the last time you spread the good news?  What an odd time to think about spreading things!  News sources speculate that COVID-19 is about to hit its peak in the United States. “Slow the Spread” hashtags abound on social media. People are thinking about social distancing, not disciple making.  But as I read my children their Bible story about how the first century church grew, I saw these words on the page:  “As the good news of God’s kingdom spread, still more people repented and believed. The good news spread and spread and spread! The word that was preached in Jerusalem went out all across the land. It spread to people in Judea. It spread to Samaria too. Later the apostle Paul spread it as far away as Rome. Far and near, people from every nation were beginning to follow Jesus as their King.” ( The Big Picture Story Bible ) During a time when the globe is thinking about slowing the spread of a virus (and rightly so!), Christians need to be speeding t...