The Redeemed Rose

I remember coming in from recess on a hot spring day, sweaty neck and dirty knees, standing in line with a bunch of other matted-haired children for the drinking fountain. Hinging down and titling my neck at my turn, I couldn’t wait for that cool stream of relief to roll down my throat. To my dismay, all that escaped from the fountain was a paltry trickle. I could barely absorb enough to dampen my spongey tongue, so I walked away, unquenched and unsatisfied.  There is another story about a water fountain, found in the Bible. The prophet Moses had just led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. As they journeyed through the wilderness, God’s chosen people naturally became thirsty, but there was no water to be found. They griped and grumbled and grit their teeth at God. Then God spoke to Moses and provided a solution. He commanded Moses to strike a rock with his staff, promising that water would come out. Moses obeyed and the people were no longer parched.  I have read or h...

  What is holding you back? We all have things we want to achieve, goals we want to reach, or areas in which we want to grow. In the Old Testament, the Israelites wanted to take possession of the long awaited land God had promised them as their inheritance. But there was something holding them back.  Their sin.  After wandering the wilderness for forty years due to their sin, the Israelites were finally poised to take possession of the land of Canaan. They had just miraculously taken the city of Jericho, and were gunning to take the next city of Ai. They didn’t think it would be too hard; after all, they had just witnessed a fortified city’s walls fall completely flat! So they only sent a few thousand men to go up against roughly 12,000. Nothing is impossible for the Lord! But they quickly came running with their tails tucked between their legs and thirty-six men dead! What on earth had happened? Their leader, Joshua, fell on his face before the Lord in lament! Why wasn’t...

  Hopeless – “having no expectation of good or success, not susceptible to remedy or cure, and incapable of redemption or improvement (Merriam-Webster).”  We feel it as despair or that dark hole of existence we think we will never be able to climb out of. As of late, it seems to be a common theme for many people. We feel hopeless about politics and pandemics. We feel hopeless that our situation will ever change or that our prayers will be answered.  The apostle Paul found himself in a hopeless situation. As he was sailing to Rome under soldier-guard, their ship struggled along due to poor weather. It wasn’t long before they were caught in a violent storm. The crew, beginning to fear the worst, threw the cargo and the ship’s gear overboard. As the storm raged on, they gave up all hope of survival if they stayed on the boat. Despite Paul’s assurance that there would be no loss of life, only of the ship, the sailors still sought to sneak away on the life boat, But Paul spoke...

  What does true discipleship look like? We often read about it, but how does that translate to being lived out in everyday life? In Paul’s letter to Titus, his child in the faith, he instructs him on the importance of sound doctrine and doing good works and lays out a model for passing down this instruction from one generation to the next—older men to younger men, and older women to younger women:  “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.”  (Titus 2:2-6) This is organic discipleship. The fact of the matter is that we are always going t...

  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...