March 18, 2020

Carrying or Casting? Our Choice in the Midst of Pandemic

March 18, 2020/ jan

The situation we now face is enough to send each of us over the edge with anxiety and fear. We have no idea how this will all go globally, nationally, and personally. We watch it all unfold as our government officials and staff spell out what they know day by day.

It is then that we have to remember we have a choice. Will we carry the weight of these facts and predictions? Or will we cast our care, fling our anxieties on Him who is on the throne of heaven because He cares for us?

March 18, 2020

[NEW LINK] In the Throes of COVID-19: Message from a Brother in the Lord in Austria

March 18, 2020/ jan

Hi everyone,

We are going through some unusual times.
Since I live in Europe, I feel a bit of a responsibility to write to dear friends and family in the US about the situation here and what it most likely will be like in the US in a few days.
Let me paint a picture of what may come in the next few days in the USA.
The Virus hit Europe several weeks before it arrived in the USA…

March 15, 2020

The Place of Immunity (a.k.a. QUARANTINE). . .Under His Wings

March 15, 2020/ jan

When in the deepest of troubles...when there is no consolation or comfort...go to the sacred place where you and the Lord live together and nothing can touch...the place of union with our God through Jesus Christ by faith (Colossians 2:9-10 ESV)...and rest in Him who rests in you (John 17:20-23 ESV)!

Hide me in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 17:8b

March 14, 2020

The Best Quarantine Ever!

March 14, 2020/ jan

Remembering where our life really is . . .

My REAL life is hidden [right now] WITH Christ IN God!

March 13, 2020

Live While You are Alive . . . even in a Pandemic

March 13, 2020/ jan

How do we live during this unsettling time? Is God still God? Can we children of God practice what we preach as in the times of relative peace?

Jesus comforted and warned His beloved disciples (including us) just hours before He died:

I have told you these things so that you will be whole and at peace.
In this world, you will be plagued with times of trouble, but you need not fear;
I have triumphed over this corrupt world order.

March 11, 2020

Lenten Meditation: a Word of Abandonment

March 11, 2020/ jan

Abandoned! Left on the "doorstep of Life"...but with no Rescuer in sight! What happens next in the unfolding drama of the crucifixion of our Lord is incomprehensible!

It's an abandonment so profoundly mysterious that it boggles the mind...but ravishes the believing heart! Let's watch it unfold...

It is noon. By this time, Jesus has already forgiven ...

March 09, 2020

Lenten Meditation: Eulogize your Living Loved One

March 09, 2020/ jan

In our week’s Lenten meditation, we focus on the Lord’s care for His dear mom as His own death approaches. How tender, how like a beloved son of a beloved mom! Caring for our treasured loved ones is at the heart of “family” in the purest sense of the word.

However, we often forget that true caring can be much deeper and more needed than merely physical care, as critical as that is. There’s a caring that touches heart and soul…one that meeting physical needs approaches, but a caring that perhaps only loving words can reach.

March 08, 2020

Lenten Meditation: a Word of Family Affection

March 08, 2020/ jan

Dear woman, behold your son...behold your mother. (John 19:26)

Jesus has a special love for His own. As we've already seen with His forgiving and saving attitude in the midst of excruciating agony, His concern was not with His own suffering. Rather His attention was next drawn to His precious loved ones at the foot of His cross, His mother and His beloved disciple John.

What agony Jesus must have seen on Mary's face.

March 05, 2020

Lenten Meditation: a Word of Salvation

March 05, 2020/ jan

Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise. Luke 23:43

Jesus seems to have a special love for lost people. I love the stories He tells in Luke 15. The first is the beloved story of the shepherd who has a hundred sheep but leaves the ninety-nine to look for the one that is lost. Then when he finds his lost one, he calls in his neighbors and friends to rejoice with him.

March 05, 2020

Be Thou My Vision -- a Hymn for my Every Day

March 05, 2020/ jan

For years this hymn has been my go to song…from the time I was “in the convent” back in the late 1960’s to this very day no matter my Christian context. And recently it has been my morning song as I awaken the dawn walking in my area — even as the darkness is departing and my neighborhood owl is singing out the final hoo-hoo of his “day.”

And so I sing…even aloud…despite the high school young people passing me by on their way to the bus stop, wondering about this weird, white haired woman softly singing. I love the focus. I love the plaintive melody. I love my indwelling God who draws me toward thoughts of HIM Alone. And I love the story behind the song…

March 04, 2020

Forgiven to Live...and Forgive

March 04, 2020/ jan

Until you rest in the finality of the cross, you will never experience the reality of the resurrection, which is Christ living in and through you! Unless you rest in the fact that Jesus did it all, you’ll be so busy trying to pay off your debt—atone for your sins—that you’ll never grow and enjoy the personal relationship that Christ has provided for you.

Bob George, Growing in Grace

March 03, 2020

The Forgiven Forgive: a Q & A to help

March 03, 2020/ jan

How hard it is for us to forgive, isn’t it? In our last post, we discussed some points that truly make sense in the entire process of forgiving others. But let’s backtrack a bit more and look at this as a Biblical Q & A session.

The following are notes from a talk I gave to a small group of young married women (I was the “older woman teaching the younger” Titus 2). So why not use this as your own personal Bible study and see what the Holy Spirit reveals to your heart and mind for your particular situation.

March 02, 2020

Forgiveness Revisited

March 02, 2020/ jan

Several years ago, I met with a group of moms to explore one of our Lord's first words from the Cross: Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. Luke 23:34

As our discussion went on, we talked about the struggle we all have to forgive our offenders. I shared a short section from a book that years before had an incredible impact on me in the area of forgiveness.

I used to think that the struggle to forgive was itself sinful...as well as the horrible feelings I had in the whole thing. But I've come to realize that the struggle and the feelings are all part of the human condition on this earth.

February 29, 2020

Lenten Meditation: a Word of Forgiveness

February 29, 2020/ jan

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English poet, once said,To err is human; to forgive, divine.

So true...but we humans more readily echo what someone else has said,

To err is human, but to get even? THAT is divine.

We struggle so, with forgiving our offenders! Perhaps that's why we are amazed and awestruck to realize that Jesus' first words from the Cross were ones of forgiveness.

February 26, 2020

Lenten Meditation: Last Words and Conversations

February 26, 2020/ jan

The last words of a dying person are important. They can communicate good or ill to those left behind. Why? Because the last words are so final...and so revealing of what was uppermost in the person's mind as he was leaving this earth to face his Maker. I've never been at the bedside of a dying person. But I have been with a few people just days before their death.

February 25, 2020

Dust to Dust but Glory to Glory!

February 25, 2020/ jan

From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday has taken on a new meaning for me in recent years, since my 91 year old mom passed away early in November 2015. There was something that arrested me right in my tracks the day of my mom's funeral. I was undone by deep sobs of realization. And the depth of it had been helped along by the incense and the reverence afforded the treatment of my dear mama's frail little body being put to rest (or so they say).

But it wasn't the finality of it all. It had already been final when she had breathed her last, days before.

No! It was the Sacredness that came crashing through!

February 25, 2020

Lenten Meditation: Dust to Dust

February 25, 2020/ jan

I grew up in a liturgical church. So from my childhood into my early adulthood, I observed the church calendar. Ash Wednesday marked a real turning point in the calendar year. It was a turn from comfort, frivolity, and enjoyment (think Mardi Gras) to a time of repentance, self-denial, and mortification called Lent. Ash Wednesday was a day when we all remembered that someday we would each die and face our Maker. The priest would put the sign of the cross on our foreheads in black ashes and say,

Remember, Man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. [based on Genesis 3:19]

February 23, 2020

Lent is coming: Join me Here?

February 23, 2020/ jan

Lent is really about thinning our lives in order to thicken our communion with God.

What if you fasted regret?

What if your friends fasted comparison?

What would be the fruit of fasting stinginess?

40 Days of Decrease is the perfect guide for those hungering to experience God's presence in a whole new way this Easter.

February 21, 2020

Waking Thoughts: We Will Dance

February 21, 2020/ jan

Wow, I hadn’t heard that song in years and maybe only then for the very first time…and not since. You see, I was in Indianapolis for an overnight stay because a medical procedure…maybe decades ago. The therapist had invited me to her church that evening, and I heard it for the first and last (or so I thought) time.

Then at the Memorial service for our dear brother in the Lord Mike Sabin on Tuesday evening, I heard it again. And it brought joy to my soul.

A Branch in the Vine