Yesterday Dave and I were cleaning the kitchen after dinner and as I reached into the drawer where we keep our plastic wrap I accidentally cut my finger on the serrated edge of the parchment paper box.  Don’t ask me how, because I couldn’t actually tell you, but all of a sudden instead of cleaning up the kitchen, I was having to clean up myself.

As I prepared to write this blog today, I was thinking about my poor finger and worried about how much it was going to hurt to type on.  Funny how sometimes the smallest cuts, depending on where we get them, (paper cuts are the worst) can hurt more than deep ones.

And that started me thinking about people who are walking around with wounds on their hearts.  I’ve been there myself.  Broken and scarred.  Scared and angry.  Maybe you are one of those people.  Maybe you’ve done something, or had something done to you that has left a wound on your heart that won’t go away.  Something that keeps you from living fully and completely.

I am certainly not going to claim to have all of the answers and I don’t have a degree in psychology, but I have learned that the more I hold on to my pain….the more pain I have.  It’s easy to do.  It’s like a rock in the ocean of our heart.  We keep rubbing away at it and pretty soon it gets smoother and prettier and harder to let go.   But it’s still just a rock and no matter how smooth we rub it, no matter how pretty we make it look, it is still weighing us down.

Psalm 68:10, Psalm 111:5, Acts 14:17

God is our Provider.  God provides everything we need to live, not only foot to eat, but also food for our souls.  God does not give us things to enjoy life, but He gives us life so we can enjoy all things. 

We were made to enjoy life.  I said in an earlier post that I believe that as much as God acts as a force for light and love in this world, there is another force acting against God.  A force that wants to you live in darkness and pain and fear.

So what am I saying?  Give God your fear, your pain, your anger.  His love is big enough to take anything and everything you can give him.  One of my favorite verses is 1 John 4:18.  “There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear”.  Let God’s perfect love drive out your fear.   1 John 4: 16 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.”   God is faithful and unchanging and patient. He will be there for you.  He will provide for you.  You can rely on Him.

I am so thankful that I knew Jesus in my times of crisis and turmoil.  That the love of God was a part of my life even then, because I could turn to Him.  I could give Him my wounds and my hurt and my anger and His love was big enough to take it.  His love was big enough to heal me.  I don’t carry a burden of past hurts with me, because God is carrying them for me so that I can enjoy the life He has given me fully and completely.

I’ve said before that I don’t believe that bad things happening are part of God’s plan for us.  Just as we would never wish harm or pain upon our children.  But I also believe that He has the power to use our suffering and sorrow to our advantage.  To draw us closer to him, to share his love with us and perhaps help us to share his love with those around us.

If you are walking around with a wound on your heart, if you are still carrying your stone, no matter how pretty you think it looks, no matter how attached you are to it, it is still weighing you down.  I pray that today is the day you give it to God.  I pray that you can experience his healing powers just as I have in my life.  I pray that you let him heal you so that you can live the life of joy he created you to live, fully and completely.  Know and rely on the love of God.

God bless,

Meredith

In yesterday’s blog post I talked about relationship breakdowns.  As I went about my day, one of my errands was to stop by the church and drop off this month’s newsletter.  Almost immediately upon arriving I was handed a booklet from the previous nights centering prayer group.  The booklet was called “A Circle of Prayer: The Anglican Rosary for All of God’s People”.  (For those of you who don’t know the Anglican church in Canada is similar to the Episcopalian church in the US.)

Can you guess what the first prayer in the booklet was about?  Opening yourself up and showing God’s love to those around you.  It was a prayer for the very thing I wrote yesterday that I was struggling with.  I wanted to share that story with you because I want you to know that God is always with us. He will always answer our prayers, even if sometimes it’s in unexpected ways.  We just have to be open to seeing him acting in our lives.

So today I’m going to ask something from all of you.  I just received news that a family member of one of our readers has been diagnosed with cancer.  I’m asking all of you to pray for that person and his/her family.  I’m asking that we all pray for God to lift them up and strengthen them in their time of sorrow and to help them remember that even though they are walking through a tough time right now, God is with them.  He is always faithful and his love will never fail.

If you have words of encouragement or scripture you would like to share with this person, please feel free to include them in the comments section.

In Christ,

Meredith

Do you have people in your life that cause you to stumble and fall in your pursuit of God?  I do.  They are people that I love with all of my heart and I know that they love me dearly, but at the same time we seem to have the most trouble showing each other the love of Jesus.  The patient, kind, gentle love.  When I’m around them I have a hard time recognizing myself as the person I want to be, instead I feel defensive, frustrated, quick to anger.

I don’t think I’m saying anything revolutionary when I say that it often seems as if it’s the people we are most familiar with.  I think that’s because they are people who have had the most opportunity to hurt us.  Sometimes it’s the people that we know most intimately, and that know us, that can be the most difficult to love, and the most difficult to forgive.

I wonder how much of that is because of old habits?  Established patterns of behavior that we are doomed to repeat because that’s what we know, because they are familiar and comfortable.  I know that the people I struggle with have baggage. I even understand their baggage.  But I can’t seem to put down my own baggage long enough to show them God’s love.

I spent a lot of time in prayer over the past weekend, asking for patience, forgiveness, strength.  Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t.  But I always felt Jesus was with me, that he understood that I was trying and he was going to keep on helping me get back on track.  And I think most importantly, staying in touch with God kept me from feeling guilty about failing.  I knew I was failing.  He knew I was failing, but together we were going to keep on trying.

Relationships are challenging because they aren’t always about what you are doing.  I don’t know, maybe some relationships are beyond our ability to fix, maybe the only way they can be repaired is by turning them over to God.   That’s what I’m doing with mine.  I continue to pray that God creates in me a new heart, a new spirit.  In many ways I’m glad that I stumbled this weekend.  It keeps me from feeling too proud of myself and my faith journey.  Jesus didn’t go around bragging or feeling proud that he was the son of God.  He just tried to show everyone God’s love.  I’m going to pray that God continues to work in my heart and in the hearts of my family so that we can create new relationships that not only more accurately reflect the love that we have for each other, but the amazing love that God has for us.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

I can’t tell you how many times I hear people say that their biggest problem with God is that he lets bad things (things like abuse and cancer and war) happen to the innocent; to children.

I’ve thought and prayed about this a lot and I hope that the some of my thoughts on this help some of you.

I quoted a passage from 1 John 1:5 in Monday’s blog that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”  I want you to really think about that for a moment.  God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

When God created man, He loved him so much that He gave him dominion over the earth.  He put him in the garden of Eden – in Paradise and He gave man the most important gift He could – free will.  Free will.  And it was from that first man and woman exercising their free will, in choosing to disobey God and eat from the tree of knowledge that sin and pain and suffering and death were introduced.  So lets think on that.  God didn’t introduce pain and suffering and death…man did because he disobeyed God.  Because he was tempted by Satan.

People are always so afraid to mention that as much as there is a force for good in this universe – GOD, there is also a force for evil – Satan.  In John 8:44 Jesus says the following about the devil.

“He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 

Those are some powerful words.  He was a murderer from the beginning.  I think that the devil wants us to suffer and he especially wants us to blame God.  Anything that he can do to destroy the relationship that God intended to have with mankind is a win for him. He lies to us and tries to convince us that if God is so good, bad things wouldn’t happen.  Except that I think that is part of the lie that he wants us to believe, that bad things come from God.  Remember, Jesus called him the father of lies.  “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”  Can you really believe that a God so full of love and light wants children to suffer and die?

But God also gave us free will.  He absolutely will not usurp that.  If we lose our free will, our ability to freely choose God, then we are nothing more than slaves.  Our pain and suffering is the consequence of our sinful nature, of the original sin.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I believe a child deserves to suffer.  I have absolutely yelled at, and pulled away from God over the suffering of my own children at times.  But I have also learned that God has the incredible ability to take something truly horrible and make it a blessing.  God can’t subvert our free will by fixing this world we live in, this world we have created by exercising our free will, but he can make wrong things right if we turn to him, if we lean on him. If we trust in him.

I can’t imagine the heartbreak that comes from losing a child, but I certainly know the heartbreak of parenting a broken one, and I believe with all of my heart that they are welcomed into God’s kingdom.  That while we suffer here from their passing, they are in the arms of a loving Father. God is good. Don’t let darkness and anger keep you from having the relationship you were meant to have with God.

God bless

Meredith

Have you ever thought about an aspect of your personality that gets in the way of you doing the right thing or making the right choice?  I know my weakness is absolutely my pride.  Pride keeps us from saying sorry when we know we are wrong, Pride keeps us from asking for help when we need it.  Pride makes us speak badly of other people and causes us to view ourselves through a lens of distortion.

Think about a time when you have been furious with a friend, family member, loved one.  I have no trouble recalling that feeling of self-righteous anger.  But I also have no trouble recalling how incredibly difficult it was, when I was in the middle of that, to say sorry.  To humble myself and care about the person I was fighting with more than myself.  Because that’s what pride is, it’s selfish and self-serving.  And I think we can all agree that I’m not talking about the feeling you get from accomplishing something that you worked hard for.  I’m talking about the pride that sits like a lump in your chest and prevents you from reaching out to someone.  The pride that makes us need to be as good as someone else and take our eyes off of what really matters.

C.S. Lewis writes in his book The Problem of Pain about pride:  “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

When I talk to people about giving my life up to God; about putting him in control, very often I get the same response.  That they are responsible for their choices and all of the good things that they have.  They believe that saying God in control is tantamount to abdicating responsibility for yourself.  They are so busy looking down and around them that they can’t look up.  Their pride is so powerful and overwhelming that they can’t accept that they aren’t in control.  Because we aren’t.  We can’t control if we are going make it home from work safely, or that we won’t suddenly drop dead of a heart attack, or the way that our family and loved ones treat us.  But our pride deceives us and makes us believe that we are.

Instead of going through your day today feeling proud of your accomplishments and everything you have “achieved”, try going through your day with a sense of humble gratitude for the many gifts and blessings you’ve been given by your Father in heaven.  You may find that not only do you start to see yourself and your life differently, but being humble allows you to see others with more compassion and kindness.  You start feeling happy for their successes and blessings instead of envying them.

Ask yourself how difficult it would be for you to get down on your knees and thank God for the gifts he has given you in your life.  I’m guessing that if you aren’t in the habit of humbling yourself, it seems like an almost insurmountable thing.  But just like the feeling you get once you have broken through the barrier of your pride to apologize, the feeling you get from expressing gratitude and thanking God is so worth it.

Let go of your pride and gain a new life of peace and happiness.

God bless,

Meredith

We’ve all been there, right?  Feeling like we have too much to do, and not nearly enough time to do it in.  As a mom, sometimes that feels like an almost daily state of being.  I’ve been feeling that way with my work lately and I wanted to talk a little about how I’ve been managing that feeling of being overwhelmed.

God has been so amazingly good to me in my work.  I have so many incredible things happening, so many ways to share his words and work with the the world and I am so incredibly grateful.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get stressed.  How am I possibly going to fit everything in and still have time for my family, my life?  Just writing that causes the anxiety to rise up and my heart to start beating faster in my chest.  Panic that I will let one of my many balls drop.

I had a conversation at Baltimore Comic Con this weekend about God and how it’s not true that he never gives us more than we can handle.  He absolutely does, all the time.  But there’s a reason for that.  So that we can learn to lean on him, to turn to him.  Our priest told a story at children’s focus about a boy who was trying to move a rock that was simply too big for him to move.  He told his dad that he’d given it everything he had, but he just couldn’t do it.  His father asked him if he was sure he’d given everything.  The son said yes, he’d used every means available to him.  His father looked at him and said “You didn’t ask me.”  So simple.  So true.  When we are trying to move our immovable rock or climb our unclimbable mountain, before we give up are we sure we have used everything we have?  Have we asked God for help.

I know that the work God has put before me sometimes feels overwhelming. But I also know that through him and in him I can do infinitely more than I can ask or imagine.  Today, in all ways I submit myself and my work to God.  I know I can’t do this on my own, but I know that I can do anything with God’s help.

God bless,

Meredith