My Hope

The struggle is real.... I’ve been struggling this past week.  There are so many conflicting views and thoughts on my news-feed and I’m wrestling with reconciling them all.  I love the community we’re in.  When we moved here I imagined it would be a step towards ministry and knew we could impact refugees in the area, but being here for the past year and a half has been so much more than I ever imagined!  The friendships I’ve made have enriched my life so much!  We share each other’s joy and pain.  I feel like the time here has stretched my faith and caused me to examine in different ways what it means to truly live my life as a Christian.  Welcoming the tired, the hungry, the huddled masses is not just something that is symbolic of my view of America, it goes to the very core of my beliefs as a Christian and being here I’ve been able to practice that faith in a way more richly than before. It’s not that the outreach I’d done in the past was superficial, but it truly wasn’t incorpora...

I love how God’s word is living and breathing in our lives. It is constant and unchanging but He reveals himself to us in new ways as we search the scripture. I feel like I’ve been able to read the Christmas story with new eyes multiple times during the past nine years. This year the gospel account of Matthew was the one that spoke most to me. Matthew’s account shows the need for the young family of three to have to flee Bethlehem to escape the killing spree of King Herod. Matthew 2:9-23 9 After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. 12 And being warned in a dream not to return to H...

We’ve been focusing on Ephesians 6 with the girls and I’ve been really thinking about what it means to be an ambassador of Christ. I know ambassadors at the international level, but I have experience as an ambassador for Florida State University. I loved it! I gave tours to prospective students and their families and attempted to persuade them to attend. We shared the highlights of many of the colleges and put positive spins on things like community bathrooms. I couldn’t always speak from experience- my dorms residence halls were recently renovated and had suite style rooms and my single major was special education. I could memorize the information about some of the other things though and point them in the right direction if they had specifics. If they requested it far enough in advance or there was last minute availability, we were always happy to make arrangements with advisors from the departments they were interested in and encouraged people to tour both styles of dorms...

I’ve heard that Atlanta is the new Hollywood, but until now I’ve been living in my international/mom bubble. Recently though the two merged. An episode of 24 was filmed next door to some GFM property, so the girls and I took a field trip to check everything out. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t a whole lot to see. There were a couple of huge semi’s full of equipment blocking our apartment complex and some lighting rigs, but all the action was inside a house in the neighborhood. We could tell there was stuff happening, but I honestly have no idea what the episode will entail. We won’t know right away either. The show will air sometime in February… for now it’s undergoing the editing process. Two days of filming and four months of editing seems like a lot of work for a one hour show (45 minutes once you factor in commercials). Do we allow God to work on us from the inside, editing (or pruning) us? At times it can be difficult. We’ve put work in, only to have it trimmed...

Church felt so healing this Sunday after the weight of this week. The Holy Spirit never ceases to amaze me in how He works through people. Our church had been planning this Sunday for weeks (or longer) and God’s timing (as always) was perfect. In the midst of so much racial division in our nation, our church had a unified service. The church we’ve attended in Atlanta has a very large building and so twelve other congregations also meet there. They’d been planning a combined service for this Sunday long before the tragedies brought fear and outrage. The church worshiped in English, French, Spanish, Burmese, Karenni, Nepali, Lautu, Senthang, Hakha, and Swahili. I couldn’t help but wonder how amazing heaven must be as my eyes filled with grateful tears. I just felt so much joy and hope just being a part of it and lifting praise as part of one body. I love our pastor and his challenging messages, but this Sunday was excited to hear a pastor from Kenya speak. He preached on Jes...

Where are you in your relationship with Christ this Resurrection Sunday? Are you dining at the Passover supper with Jesus- blissfully unaware of what you’ll soon be called to do? Do you know that something is coming, but you’re focused more on who is sitting where? Are you looking for someone to overturn the oppressive government or do you search for a servant king? Maybe you’re in the garden, fighting to stay awake. You know what you’ve been told to do and yet you struggle to obey. Maybe you’ve seen the innocent mistreated and you react in anger and violence rather than allowing God to bring justice. Perhaps you’ve just experienced the death of your Rabbi, teacher and friend. You don’t know what to do and so you hide from this world and wait until things are clearer. You protect yourself by denying your relationship. Maybe you’ve seen the risen Messiah. You have touched his hands and feet. Now he is telling you that you will suffer the same. Will you accept the ...

Easter is coming up soon and I’m excited to see what this reminder of Christ’s resurrection will bring. I know that Christ lives within me the entire year through, but I feel this time of year is an amazing time of both reflection and renewal of my faith. Perhaps it’s because I was baptized on Maundy Thursday fifteen years ago, but I think it’s more than that. We are reminded during this time that death has no grip on us- that Christ has overcome the grave- and Satan has been defeated. I don’t think this is lost on Satan either, so it’s a time we must be prepared to fight the spiritual battles of this world. I gained a different perspective on Easter eight years ago. I’ve always tried to picture it through Jesus’ vantage point but came to realize how it must have pained God to give up his firstborn son as well. He knew it was coming and he knew the grave could not hold him, and yet death would not Passover His begotten Son as it had the Israelites so many years before. I pos...

I’ve seen the resiliency in so many of the refugees coming into Clarkston. The pictures and stories of the things they’ve endured don’t always seem to line up with the outer strength they show. How many of us would crumble if our families and towns were completely wiped out? Yet, they find strength in each other. Hospitality is huge in Middle Eastern cultures, and I’m finding I have a lot to learn- both about giving and receiving. I found out last week that I’d (unknowingly) offended someone. My friend, A, had asked last Monday if I’d accompany her and some of her friends to the optometrist in order to help fill out the forms. Besides school work, I’d had no other commitments, so we packed up M’s work and headed out to help. Afterwards we were invited back to their apartment for coffee and tea, but I politely declined. We still had school work that hadn’t gotten finished in the waiting room, dinner to fix, and I was worried that whatever was served might throw off my blood s...

I had an amazing time seeing family and friends recently and am looking forward to seeing everyone next week too! I was grateful to be able to share at our church while in Bainbridge and a friend asked me to post part of my message. Much of what I said I’ve also written about in these three posts http://hope535.blogspot.com/2015/09/fleeing-home.html , http://hope535.blogspot.com/2015/11/part-2-world-divided.html , and http://hope535.blogspot.com/2015/11/part-3-call-to-acts.html so I won’t bore you with repetition. I asked everyone to imagine the following situation- I ask you to read through them slowly and let each sink in: A man and his father discuss the raging war and lives being lost. They both agree that it’s best for the man to leave his home and now is the right time. He gets to a new and foreign place only to be whisked away from his host family because they’re afraid of the danger that may befall him simply because of where he’s from. As time passes he makes f...

How often do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable? To bear our souls and admit when we don’t have it all together or all the answers? Our society doesn’t encourage it, instead we arm ourselves and put up fronts both individually and as a country. There are times I understand it. What is the purpose of showing your weaknesses to someone who may turn and use it against you? 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 9 And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast [a]about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with [b]insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. Last night I had the privilege of talking to someone who allowed himself to open up and be vulnerable at the risk of disappointing others. He didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but got to know Christians and ...

Part 3 A call to Acts It’s easy to fear those that are different than us, but we are told that perfect love drives out fear. How then should we react? How did the early church react when they were persecuted from all sides? Did God call for the annihilation of those that martyred Stephen. No. He welcomed at least one of them into His church and changed his name to Paul. I don’t blame the apostles for being skeptical (Acts 9:26). I have no doubts that they wanted to make sure this was the real deal, that he wasn’t trying to sneak his way into the inner circle in order to gain insight and bring greater destruction. We have the advantage, we’ve gotten to fast forward to the end and see how God used Paul throughout his life. The early disciples just had to trust in the changes they saw (I’m sure it also helped that God gave a vision to Ananias). Paul went from persecuting to being persecuted. He did not seek suffering, but he did not run from it either; nor did he return vi...