Live By Faith

For we live by faith, not by sight. 

2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV)

I saw the prompt this morning, and I thought I'd best let it sit and stew a little while before attempting to say anything meaningful in this scant five minutes.  So I exercised.  Lately I've been reading Beth Moore while exercising - you know, exercise for the body, words for the heart....  And I thought about "Keep".  The poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling came to me...if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.... (You can link to the poem here)   I can't seem to memorize bible verses very well, but I have a whole bunch of first lines to poems... hmm...

And I thought about the 'keep' in this first line - I thought about the news - I thought about the horrific news reports from the Middle East.  Beheadings.  Live burnings.  Using children for unspeakable acts.  I thought about the horrific news reports from Africa.  Kidnappings.  Sex slaves.  HIV.  Ebola.  

I thought about the news agencies responding.  Confirming reports.  Making sure of the facts - but reporting the rumors anyway.

And I thought....

The very act of speaking these actions, of writing these atrocities, of putting them into our world - damages us.  Damages us in ways we may never know for generations.  I listened to a woman speaking about building schools in Sudan.  She talked about generational violence - it is built into the culture.

Friends - violence is built into OUR culture.  Slender man.  A bucket challenge joke of feces and urine thrown on a young man with autism.  A woman with intellectual disabilities tied up with a string of Christmas lights and set on fire by people she thought were friends.  50 Shades of Gray.  I recently attended a workshop on bullying in our schools.  Violence is in our culture.  

I usually don't write about events that rip my heart and tear my soul.  That literally have me on my knees sobbing.  I try very hard to choose joy.  And there are times when only through knowing that God does not forsake us and will never leave us, can I move forward.

In the study I read as I exercised, Beth said she had heard a wise friend say that following Christ with the whole heart is like walking so far out on a limb that you can only proceed by faith, because if you try to walk by sight, you will surely fall.

Friends - we have to keep our faith in Christ.

Heavenly Father, Let us not let go of our faith in the face of this world.  
Let us not let go of prayers in our schools, of loving one another even as you loved us, 
even when we were sinners.  
Let us keep your joy in our hearts, even in the midst of horror.  
Help me to keep your joy in my heart, even in the midst of horror.  
You are God.  
You are good.  
You are.

Linking with Kate for 5-Minute Friday

Clothe Me in Faith

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. 

They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today 

and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, 

will he not much more clothe you—

you of little faith? 

Matthew 6:28-30

I have an interview today - for a new kind of position.  I have been preparing - reading up on policy and procedure, reminding myself of the technical vocabulary, asking myself practice questions, evaluating my strengths and weaknesses.  I want to be ready and I can't seem to stop thinking about everything.  Thinking - read worrying.

So, at the same time, I decided to take my camera around the yard yesterday.  I've just hung some photographs in my dining room and I have some planned spaces for a couple more pictures.  Green pictures.  

God is good.  I am putting my interview and job-search in His hands - again.  It is something I do on a regular basis.  Lord, I believe.  Help me in my unbelief.  In the meantime, here's my thoughts.  Jesus used the beauty of the flowers and grass to demonstrate how God takes care of us...even our clothes.  The common greenery I found around my home is more splendid than Solomon.  And it's not even the flowers of the field!  So, how much more will he clothe me....

Thought I'd share....

Oh God, thank you for the reminder of Your love, and Your care and Your blessings.  Clothe me in faith.  Help me to be a blessing to others. 

Irena Sendler

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age.  The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there."  This is what the Lord Almighty says: “It may seem marvelous to the remnant of this people at that time, but will it seem marvelous to me?” declares the Lord Almighty.

Zechariah 8:4-6

"When Hitler and his Nazis built the Warsaw Ghetto and herded 500,000 Polish Jews behind its walls to await liquidation, many Polish gentiles turned their backs or applauded.  Not Irena Sendler.  An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/irenasendler.html

I can't imagine having to make the kind of decision these mothers, these parents had to make - to save their children from a fate they knew they, themselves, would soon be facing.  To give up their children, their babies, flesh of their flesh, to a stranger - a woman who could only give them the choice, not the certainty of a better moment in life.  Not even a promise of a whole life - just the hope for one.  And the hope for a reunion one day - if only circumstances changed.   Heartbreaking.  Heartrending.  

Twenty-five hundred children saved.  Twenty-five hundred lives rescued.  The woman responsible was caught - her arms and legs broken - she was dumped in the forest, left to die.  But she didn't die for many, many years.  She remembered.  She remembered the cries of the children as they left - the cries of the mothers, sacrificing.  She thought it could never happen again - this inhumanity.  

She died in her apartment in Warsaw, ninety-eight years old, a reluctant heroine.

Faith.  A little bit goes a long way - mustard seed faith.  A lot moves mountains.  Faith in God, faith in ourselves, faith in humanity.  Years and years ago, God gave a picture of a life of redemption to his prophet Zechariah - a picture to tell to the people of Jerusalem.  Families - whole families - old and young - would be together in the city streets.  The idea was so foreign to the people at the time, so unbelievable, so marvelous - the thought of the kind of life where people grew to old age and children played in public - that God made the prophet add a disclaimer.  Nothing is too marvelous to Him - God of Miracles.  

So where's the faith?  

In the woman who did everything she could to save strangers she didn't know because it was the right thing to do.  Because she had a picture in her head - families - old and young - free and able to be in public together, to play, to sit with canes, to live.  She must have had faith that her mission was God-breathed, this faith that gave her strength to do what needed to be done.  She must have had faith that there were others, like her, who would step up when called and when needed.  And they did.  

In the parents who sacrificed in order to save their children.  In the lives of the children saved - who have experienced grace.  In God who provided the means and the miracles.  We can do miraculous things in His Name, with His help, to His glory.  In all times.  Even now, even today.   

Irena Sendler was a warrior for God.  A woman of faith.  Strength, hope and compassion  Today, I find joy in her story.  Below are more links.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021048/Female-Schindler-Irena-Sendler-saved-2-500-Jewish-children-died-aged-98.htmlhttp://www.irenasendler.org/

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.asp

Heavenly Father, thank you for your heroes on earth - people who follow you even into that Valley of the Shadow.  Thank you for showing us true faith and belief, strength and hope.  Thank you for teaching us compassion.

#TellHisStory: Letter to a Friend

I can't get you out of my mind.  About a week ago, I happened on a comment you made on Facebook, a comment about having a different-than-Christian point of view because you are an agnostic.  The word brought up memories of a time when I said the same thing.  You want to hear something funny, though.... I actually looked the word up again, yesterday, just to make sure that what you said and what I was thinking were one and the same.  And once I read the definition, I knew we were.  Because I see the searching in you.  I see the logical thinking, the fascination with science fiction, the taking reality one step further into an infinite universe of possibilities.  Agnostic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable...

I remember days of being open-minded.  If God exists and truly created the universe, then earth and mankind would be so small and insignificant as to be completely unnoticed - I believe I compared us to a drop from a sneeze...  Thou shalt have no other gods before Me - meant God was not alone.  If there was more than one god, then the whole premise of Judeo-Christian belief fell apart.  When a group of Jehovah's Witnesses came by, I asked them what made their beliefs different.  They said they believed that Jesus was on the throne in heaven.  My response to them was "Why? Is God dead?"   Open minded, right?  I loved Bible stories, but I didn't believe they really happened.  I believed just as equally in the possibility of fairies.  There seemed to be enough evidence that Jesus had actually lived, that he had been an amazing teacher of moral good, and that he'd had a huge following in his day, but Messiah?  Savior?  God?  No.

I wasn't in love with religion.  History had shown me that evil had been done in the name of God.  The Old Testament showed me a jealous God, an extreme justice, eye-for-an-eye God, a God of thunder, fire, and storm.  I was pretty sure that I didn't want to be a part of religion.

But, I also remember feeling left out.  Good people tried to do right, they cared about others, they gave to social causes.  That was me.   I tried.  I cared.  I gave.  I didn't say mean or ugly things.  I wasn't a monster.  But I wasn't a Christian.  People around me were Christians.  They said things like Have a blessed day.  They held prayer meetings.  They listened to praise music.  They talked about grace and forgiveness.    I wanted to join their faith club, but I couldn't.  My intellect wouldn't allow it.  I would have to believe in something that I couldn't prove.  I would have to talk to someone I couldn't see.  My integrity wouldn't allow me to fake it - I couldn't just pretend to go along with the group.  Not that group.

Faith was the answer, I decided.  Faith is that ability to do those things that I was rebelling against... to believe in the unprovable, to speak to the invisible.  So I asked a friend about faith.  "Faith is a gift from God," she said.   Back to the drawing board for me, then.  It hurt to think that this God of hers would choose to give her a gift and not me.  Tears.

Well, I couldn't very well call myself open-minded if I chose not to listen to the side I'd been fighting against. The side that had caused me to feel unwanted and unloved.  Another friend suggested a program at her church and I convinced my husband to attend with me.  It was called the Alpha program, and it changed my life.

Classes met every week; I ended up going to every single one.  See, the people who wrote the program knew me.  They knew my arguments.  I was an agnostic - I could argue either way about the existence of God.  I was open minded.  Jesus, a good teacher, had existed.  And that's where they started - with Jesus, not God.  The mind-blower for me was this quote from C.S. Lewis:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse - but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.

We are faced then with the frightening alternative.  The man we are talking about was (and is) just what he said or else a lunatic or something worse.  Now it seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend; and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem.  I have to accept the view that he was and is God.  God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.  

Mind blower?  For me, it was.  Because this statement put the missing piece of my illogic into place, turned it around, and made me believe - not only in the divinity of Jesus, but in the existence of God.  In logic, you know the outcome once A equals B, and B equals C....  So, yes, I went to every single class in the program - sometimes kicking and screaming, because I have to tell you, being a member of the faith club is not without work and expectations.  That gift from God?  Faith is given because we ask Him for it.  Simple as that.  Jesus?  He is waiting for us to ask Him into our heart.  Simple.

Here's the thing.  I know that we - you and I - don't really know each other that well.  We worked together - we talked a little.  I keep thinking about that saying from school - that thing we talk about when we analyze good teachers.  They won't care how much you know until they know how much you care.  I care about you!  I care that you are honest, and logical, and searching.  I care that you probably feel left out sometimes.  I care that you're trying to do this thing - this living right - all by yourself.  It breaks my heart to think of you without God.  Without Jesus.  Without the Holy Spirit.  The most amazing thing that I found in my journey back to God, is that He really never left me.  He hasn't left you either.  He loves you more than you will ever understand, and that's ok.  Sometimes you have to let go of that control and intellect and just know that All things are possible with God.  It's Theology 101 - He is God and we're not.  Period.

Please let me know how you're doing.  If all of this is just too much, it's ok - I still care and want the best for you.  Of course I'll joyfully share anything and everything else I've found on this journey - it's been quite a ride so far, and I'm looking forward to SO MUCH MORE!!

Love,

Janet

Just a note - I did actually write this letter to a friend, for all the reasons stated.  It was a first for me - I don't know exactly how I would have taken receiving a letter like this during my years as an agnostic.  But I just couldn't stop thinking about how grateful I am for God's grace, and how very different my life has been since I invited Christ in.  I was lost and now I'm found.  Admittedly,  life here on earth isn't always happily-ever-after  rosy, and I'd be lying if I said it was.  But having Jesus makes all the difference.  He truly strengthens and comforts.  I know that I am a child of God.  I know that I am loved and forgiven (!)  My redeemer lives!  

So,  I thought maybe someone else might be feeling lost...someone else might chance on this blog - might be lead to read this post... and maybe this personal letter would lead them to search - as I did.  I pray that if it's you, that God puts the right people in your life to help you, to teach you, to show you.

But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Deuteronomy 4:29

Another post from the archives - until I can get to writing again - which I sorely miss! Linking with Jennifer, Emily and Jen.

TellHisStory
Imperfect Prose

Unite