Go and be fishers of men

About twice a year our church goes and does service, rather than attend a service. Our neighborhood is our church and the residence are our congregation. Here's a short video to better explain:



About 60 people in our congregation of 90 were divided into 5 service projects. One of those service projects we happen to do every Sunday which is the Evergreen Rehabilitation Ministry. We take a team of preachers to the local Rehabilitation center to give a 10 minute sermon, some worship and communion to those who can't get out and attend a church. This is also a great way to spread the Good News since not everyone who attends the service has been saved.

After service is over we walk the halls of the center and say hello to the residence, offer prayer or just listen to some of their stories. It often helps to have a baby in your presence because nothing else makes their heart and eyes light up more than seeing God's precious bundles of joy. Rehab centers are many times used for those who need care after major surgeries and procedures, but more often than not, it remains a final home for many before they pass on. Furthermore, rehab centers have many elderly residence and, sadly, not many of them get many visitors.

Last Sunday my husband was blessed with the opportunity to give the sermon at Evergreen.

As he spoke about how everyone is born with a place in their heart for God (he calls this our "God space:), I watched as the residence listened intently, every now and then nodding in acknowledgment of the words he spoke upon. His tool was an infant shape sorter toy

and he used a story about how he'd watch his little brother play with his shape sorter toy. My husband explained how his little brother would try to fit the block into the round hole and would either figure out that the block goes into the square hole or he would get frustrated and give up. Often times, he'd be able to get the block part of the way into the circle however couldn't force it all the way through the circle hole.

My husband spoke about how sometimes we try to fill the hole with self help books or addictions but neither of which are ever fully satisfying to our empty spaces.

The only thing that can fill the emptiness completely is our Father in heaven.

I loved how others got to enjoy the wisdom and knowledge my husband has to share. His warmth and love radiates throughout. Even Zoe felt safe enough to share a prayer request at the end.

I need to slow down

Oh my goodness! I haven't posted in a very very long time. Sorry 'bout that! I'll try to be better.

My weeks have been filled with work and spiritual boot camp. I do a hard-core women's ministry on Monday nights until 9:00, Tuesdays I meet with my life coach, Wednesdays I have my small group/bible study and by the time I get to Thursdays I'm just pooped and that doesn't include church and fellowship on the weekends.

Work has been very busy. I've been taking over maternity leave for a co-worker who is due back in another week or two. I'm thinking of taking a vacation once she gets back. Hopefully my life will get back to some sort of normal soon. Although I fear that "some kind of normal" is retirement.

However, even though my days seem to be filled, I've managed to do some painting. This has helped me to reconnect with myself. Here's one painting I did for a study on Matthew 5: 1-12, the "Blessed be's":



The title is "Newsong." I chose this title because in the old testament God is One to fear, One to say, "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," One about sacrifices, order, and commands, One to punish the sinners and put to serious tests the faithful. However, in the new testament there is a new God, a kinder God, a more loving and intimate God who came to Earth and became more like us through His son, Jesus. Just like God reveals Himself with a new body, He brings a new song and new command, to love your Lord with all your heart but above all love your neighbor as you love yourself (1 John 2: 7-8). He shows us in Matthew 5: 1-12 how blessed we are. In this new song there's hope, faith, love and peace.

I tried to reinvent this through my painting by showing this new song as it is in my heart. Because the pictures came out kind of fuzzy I'll describe what elements the painting contains. The staff lines are made up of 5 themes (from bottom to top). For the bottom line I wrote, "You've put a new song in my heart Lord," which marks the beginning of the song. Next comes "forgiveness" because that's where we first must understand that our Lord forgives all of our sins upon redemption. The third line shows "hope" because once we've asked for forgiveness and accepted the forgiveness from God, we start to gain hope for a new life, a better life. On the fourth line is "faith" because we must trust in the truth and faith is what gets us there. Last is "love" because above all else there's love.

I didn't do this painting to preach, I did this to inspire...mostly myself. This is a reminder to me of how God has worked in my life and I hope to inspire that fire to light up in the hearts of others.

God bless!

Plenty of Boxes

So my BFF's kid, Zoe, was over at our house last week. As I do almost every day, I came home for lunch for my afternoon tease. I call it my afternoon tease because it's one hour of freedom from work which is just enough time for me to get unmotivated to go back. So As I was laying on the couch, snuggled up to my husband, loving every minute of it and not wanting to go back to work, I said to him, "Honey can I just quit and stay home with you forever?" He replied, "Sure!" But curious about how we would survive financially I asked him, "What would we do about money?" He said, "Well, we'll have to live in a cardboard box and eat leftover, cold and bug-infested McDonald's burgers from the garbage can, but at least we'd be together." I didn't like that answer, so I started thinking about another way we could not work and not have to eat gross food and live in a cardboard box. Knowing that Zoe was listening in on our conversation, I asked her if she thought Nanna and Pappa would have any extra room at their house for me and MMT. She continued playing with whatever it was she was playing with and without skipping a beat nor looking up at me, she promptly and cleverly replied...

"Sure! They've got plenty of boxes!"

"I wanna knock 'em on the head, Daddy!"

This one is for you, Dad:

Some of my most favorite moments growing up were fishing with my Dad. Every fishing hole I've ever fished with him are locked forever in my memory. To this day I can smell the freshness of my hikes in the woods to reach our destination, the combination of moss, trees, dirt, water, and little orange fish goop we'd stick on the ends of our bait to attract the biggest Rainbow Trout we could find. Those were my favorite fish, probably not for the taste nor their beauty but probably for the simple fact that the name had the word "rainbow" in it and I was the biggest Rainbow Bright fan ever.

With my Dad in front of me hiking down to the river bed, I would carefully watch his every step, follow exactly in his every footstep, keeping in mind the words he would often say to me, "watch your step, punk." If we arrived at a steep part in the trail, he'd climb down it to turn around and look up at me with his arms open wide assuring me he'd catch me. Trusting him, I'd jump into his arms and he'd place me back down on the path. Once we'd get to the river, it was never enough just to set up at the end of the trail and begin fishing, we'd head down the river, of the beaten path, to find the best spot. We'd climb rocks, cross over logs perfectly placed across the river from a fallen tree, perhaps get our feet wet crossing the river at a low spot because the other side looked more intriguing. If the water was too rough or too deep for my little feet Dad would pick me up and prop me on his shoulders, carrying me across the river to solid ground. Many times he'd reach his hand out to me and pull me across to the next big rock he was standing on if my legs couldn't jump the distance.

These adventures weren't just about the fishing, they were about the journey to get to "the spot."

My Dad and I share the same spot along the river, it's a hike to get to but the rewards are worth it. There are natural hot springs that come up out of the ground at the top of the hill above our spot and trickle down through the rocks into the river. There's sort of a cliff that goes up on one side of the hot springs where fossils are buried. At the bottom of the hill are flat slabs of rock that reaches out into the river. There you can take a dip in the river's deepness or catch fish that camps out under the shades of the slab.

The day that my Grandmother passed away, she asked my Dad to take her to that area so she could gather moss for some flower pot arrangements she was making. Dad loaded her and some buckets into the truck and they went on an adventure. She took the long journey down the ravine. Once they got to the river, she looked at my Dad and said, "I would like you to scatter my ashes here when I die." They started the hike back up. She complained about her arm hurting and stopped frequently to rest. She was a trooper though and made it back to the truck with moss in hand.

Later that evening Grandma passed away from a heart attack. It was almost as if she knew it was going to be her last day.

Dad scattered her ashes at our spot. This was 6 years ago.

For some reason fishing just isn't quite the same anymore. I've tried fishing by myself, with my husband and with friends but I just don't get the same level of satisfaction from it. This is something special that I have between my Daddy and I.

I haven't been back to our spot since Grandma passed away and I suppose I'm due for a visit. However, I visit it quite often in my memory. I can visualize Dad helping me reel in my "big" 4 inch Rainbow Trout, pulling it out of the river and laying it down on the slab we stood on. After unhooking the fish he pulls his heavy-duty pocket knife out of his pocket to knock the fish unconscious, and I say in excitement, "I wanna knock 'em in the head Daddy."

Jesus' name is God. He is Creator and powerful.

A little over a month ago, I was asked by my worship leader at church to do a painting for the church on one of the Advent themes, faith, hope, love, and peace. And, oh by the way, I was also asked if I could help Zoe do one so we could see Jesus through a child's perspective.

Though I was excited to do a painting for my church and use that time to reflect on the reason for the season, I was thinking, "[big sigh] not another task on my Christmas-time to-do list." But with a joyful heart and time put aside, I embraced the task and got more out of my time with Jesus through this painting than I initially thought I would obtain. Ironically, my word was "faith." This word has haunted me over the past year. This word has been my Christian focus for quite some time. I go through periods of time where I focus on a certain aspect of my walk with Jesus that needs a little fine-tuning. My faith department was more like in the need of a complete full body makeover, 90% totaled, broken down, beat up, Ford Pinto. To sum it up, I've never been really good at giving full control of anything over to God.

So this time spent focusing on what it means to give up my ideas of a self-controlled style of living to a God-controlled, faith based, style of living, was certainly powerful.

However, I got even more out of it through Zoe's painting and the time spent with her reflecting on what God's love looks like through her eyes.

I spent my time thinking about how it would be best to help Zoe with understanding what God's love meant. Especially since we were nearing Christmas, I was focusing on trying to keep her attention away from any Christmas-themed ideas on what God's love looks like to her, ie. a Christmas tree with presents and bows, or a manger-themed painting. My only goal was to keep her focused on what God's love looks like to her without Christmas being involved.

We made a rough drafted sketch of some ideas she had on God's love before diving into the big-girl canvas. When she was confident enough, we proceeded. She handed me a marker and placed hands towards the bottom of the canvas in order to trace them. Once that was completed she colored them in (the color she chose was yellow because God glows). Then she grabbed a blue marker and drew a huge circle just above the hands resembling the world...you know because Jesus has got the whole world in his hands. She scribbled inside the blue circle green and blue, green for the continents (which she later called planets) and blue for the oceans. She asked to spell out the different planets and oceans so that way people would know it was the Earth... I think it's just because she wanted to practice her latest hobby, writing (she takes after her mom in that respect...seriously, since she's learned to write, the girl has had to spell everything out). At the top of the canvas she colored in about three inches of solid blue and just below that some stars for the heavens. Under that and just above the world she drew a solid line of hearts to show that God's love covers the whole Earth in which he carries.

She reminded me, in her own innocent way, that God carries me through His abundant love. What an amazing kid. When I saw the video, I immediately started to choke up. Tears ran down my face while I sat in amazement and overwhelming pride for this 5-year old. I know I've felt proud of others in my life but this was truly the most proud moment I've ever had, as if she were my own kid. Mostly, I was proud that she had this innocent ability to move and inspire not just me but other members of our congregation.

She finished her painting with a story on our Lord, which is the title of this post:

Jesus' name is God. He is Creator and powerful.

She's exactly right. He is so powerful that he can speak through a 5-year old little girl into the hearts of his full grown children.

AMEN!