Contemplating Life

  I am carrying some sadness inside. Things are happening that I just don’t understand or fully know how to process. I love the people in my world and I want to alleviate their pain. I want things to be good for them; I crave victory in their seasons. I pray for the evil to be removed and the hurt to not be allowed to continue.. But when things continue to “go south” as the saying goes, I sometimes don’t fully know how to process their hurt and my own. I am walking through a number of scenarios like this right now, and my heart feels sad. It’s easy to talk about what an awesome God we serve when the lions are held at bay and the fire and smoke doesn’t touch us. But what do you do when Daniel gets eaten? How do you process your thinking when he walks into the lions’ den and comes out torn to shreds? Or Shadrach enters the fire and comes out singed or even burnt to a crisp? From all appearances there is no good materializing from the battle, so does this mean that God stopped being pre

  When I was a child I was not raised in the church or the Bible. Yet for as long as I can remember I have hungered to know God, so as a kid I started going to a nearby church on my own. The first sermon I remember hearing was about the apostle Simon Peter. I remember leaving the darkened sanctuary at the end of the service thinking about this man who was a total screw-up in many respects, and yet…...God had a place for him. That sermon was a defining moment for me in my desire to know God, and it left me with a real affection for a man I had never met – the Apostle Peter. Over time I learned more of this man, and Peter really was something. His mouth often overrode his brain- he didn’t always stop to think before he spoke or acted. He was emotional, sometimes erratic, and even after the resurrection, as a leader in the church he still struggled with moments of compromise, because he so wanted to be accepted and loved by the people around him. Yet with all of his faults, God chose P

  I have been taking a break lately from social media. I am avoiding logging into Facebook and I plan to continue this hiatus indefinitely. I was seeing some very unhealthy signs in myself so I knew it was time to step away for a bit, and inundate myself with the Word of God and Truth. When I physically begin to fail, I know it is time to rest from some things, eat healthier, and pay attention to my body’s messages. This time is was my soul that was giving off signals that I needed to hear. I was worn and ‘soul tired’, and I needed to fix it. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love the fact that it has allowed me connections that I treasure: cousins that I haven’t seen since childhood but adore now; high school friends I had lost touch with but who now bless me with glimpses into their lives; a pastor/friend I have reconnected with whose humor I find riotous (sometimes I belly laugh and sometimes I do the head slap and ask myself “Did he really post that?”); and connecti