The Redeemed Rose

If you have a good marriage, and if your parents modeled a good marriage for you, BE THANKFUL!! It occurred to me last night that my parents would have been married 42 years today. Instead, they have been divorced for 22. They divorced when I was 13 (although they had been separated a couple times before that), after 20 years of marriage. It seemed crazy that people could be married for that long and then still divorce.  My mom was only 20 years old when she got married (my dad 21). I’m sure my dad must have loved her (or at least thought he did) and was filled with those early feelings of rapture and bliss as they dated. I’m sure my mom took joy in planning her wedding (even though she was never big into hair, makeup, clothes, or lavish decor) and had wonderful dreams about what her future would be like. I wonder what the first years of their marriage were like before I was born. It didn’t occur to me till last night that they were married almost 7 full years before I wa...

I am always amazed how God can reveal new layers of understanding in Scripture, even if you have read a passage many times. This is a part of what I took away from this time through the Song of Solomon: Love is powerful - It is a strong as death, has flashes of fire, and many waters cannot quench it nor floods drown it (vs. 8:6-7a) Love is precious - Even if a man offered everything he possessed for it, it would be a ludicrous offer and never enough (v. 8:7b) We all have a desire to be loved and cherished by another - We all want to be that “only one” among the hundreds that our love adores and esteems above all others. We all want to feel precious, desired, and belong to another. (vs. 6:8-9; 7:10) While romantic human love is a precious and divine gift to be highly valued and enjoyed, human love WILL disappoint if we are looking to it for our ultimate satisfaction and worth. Only the love of Christ, to be known by Him in a saving way, can perfectly fulfill our longi...

1 O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me;  2 many are saying of my soul, "There is no salvation for him in God." Selah  3 But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.  4 I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah  5 I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.  - Psalm 3:1-5 Last night, I woke up around 3:30 and couldn’t fall asleep again until 5 or 5:30. This doesn’t happen on a regular basis (like every night) but it happens more frequently than I would like. The “foes” that kept me awake were my anxious thoughts. There were “many rising against me”. I know from my experience with essential oils that I am not the only one who deals with this problem, because the issue of sleeplessness or waking up and not being able to fall back asleep because of “mind-racing” is one of the most common concerns people bring to me. My mind ran the gauntlet of all the areas...

It’s too nice of a day to stay indoors! The flowers that the kids and I planted are doing GREAT, but so are the weeds! I wish I had had the money to put down blackout tarp at the beginning. It would be a lot less work now, so if I get the money, I may still go back and do it. But in the meantime, I took the opportunity of a beautiful day to clear out the flower beds.  Whenever I am weeding, I am always reminded of how our spiritual life is like a flower bed or a garden. If we do not tend to it, weeds start to spring up. Let it go for a few days, and you may only have a few tiny sprouts. It’s nothing, right? “I’ll take care of it tomorrow”, we tell ourselves. Sin always starts small and seemingly harmless. But let it go unchecked for a little while longer, and now you’ve got big trouble! What seemed like not such a big deal is now firmly rooted and harder to dig out. We must be constantly on the alert about what we are letting grow in the garden of our hearts.   Pro...

God made a covenant promise with Abraham, that He would bless him and make him the father of many nations. When Abraham and Sarah did not see this promise being fulfilled according to their perceived timeline, or fathom how God could possibly make this happen given their circumstances, they grew weary of waiting, and decided to act.  “ Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.  And Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. - Genesis 16:1-2 (Full story: Genesis 15-17, 21) This passage reminds me that when humans try to take a good thing into their own hands and do it their way instead of God’s way, we taint it and foul it up. We want it now; we want it our way. Our limited mind cannot comprehend how to get it any other way, so we twist and perve...

     I had an "AHA!" moment while reading Job chapter 32 today. Have you ever had something that you have been feeling for a long time and just couldn't quite put your finger on it to explain it? Today, Job 32 nailed it down for me.    In the previous 31 chapters, Job is afflicted, his three friends come to comfort him (and do a good job of it until they open their mouths), then Job and his friends proceed to argue back and forth like a bunch of whiny high school kids. His friends insist that he must be unrighteous or else God wouldn't have afflicted him, and Job insists that he hasn't done anything wrong and has every right to complain. They go round and round and round, until finally a refreshing new voice appears and smacks some sense into them. Enter Elihu, a younger contemporary, who begins to speak: "Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job because they were older than he. And when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three m...

 Here I am at CROSS Conference in Indianapolis, taking a youth group to hear about God's plan for missions, and I am struck with thoughts of my friend Danielle.  Why do I miss her so much more when I'm at a missions conference? Maybe it's because she spent a year of her life as a teacher-missionary in South Sudan. Maybe it's because I can picture her being here with me, and the thought makes me cry right in the middle of the crowd of conference-goers. But most of all, it is because she loved missions so much. She would be so excited to see all the different opportunities and ways that God has been working around the globe;  exuberant about taking the name of Christ to the nations. She would be beaming from ear to ear, green eyes glittering with excitement, literally bouncing up and down as she pulled me from booth to booth, talking a million miles a minute.    Her passion to make Christ known to unreached people groups puts me to shame. My husband tells me...