My Hope

It’s Ramadan, a time of fasting for Muslims everywhere. They are called to abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset for a month as one of the five pillars of Islam. My friend shared that she only fasts for part of it and talked about how hard it is to fast. My friend’s husband isn’t fasting and was told by other Muslims that if he didn’t fast, he wasn’t Muslim. As a Christian, I believe you can be a Christian without fasting. It is not the act of doing or not doing something that unites us to Christ. Rather it is our faith in him. She started asking questions about Christians and fasting. I found myself wondering how to answer her though. As Christians, it is not a requirement to fast but we are called to fast. Matthew 6:16-18 doesn’t say ‘if we fast’ but rather ‘when we fast’. It isn’t an ‘if/then’ statement. We often turn to Matthew 6 and examine the Lord’s prayer, but when we look at it as a whole and see the big picture, what amazing instruction Jesus gi...

Isaiah 50:4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. As a mother with an infant, everybody always asks about sleep. Generally speaking, V is pretty good about sleeping through the night (she usually wakes up once, eats and goes right back to sleep), though she doesn’t really have a great nap routine yet. I think it just comes with the territory of being the third. You just have to sleep when you can, wherever you can. Our trip back home left me feeling sleep deprived though. It started when she slept well in the car and decided to stay up the first night instead (I’m not complaining- I much prefer that to the wails that could have insued on the way down). Then there were a few nights I did it to myself because I wanted to visit people so I stayed up late and got up early (plus woke up for her in the middle of the night). By t...

It seems like at every turn lately, my plans have been backfiring. The doctor that I thought would be doing the surgery didn’t and the doctor who was my last choice ended up being the one to deliver V. We thought both grandmothers would be here the first week to ease the older girls into life with a newborn. The only glitch… both girls came down with stomach bugs and so the grandmas whisked them away to Florida so as not to infect the rest of us. M’s birthday just passed and I thought I may be able to pull off a celebration with just family and maybe a fun outing instead of a big party but as the day approached it quickly became clear that her heart was set on a celebration surrounded by friends. The list goes on with lots of unscheduled bumps and hiccups, but you get the picture. My concern about the doctor ended up being unfounded and the surgery went well. The girls ended up having a great time and don’t seem a bit fazed that they missed V’s first week of life (M d...

Salt A friend of mine made some unleavened bread for communion recently. The thing that stood out to me the most as I partook of the bread was it’s saltiness. I generally don’t think of bread as salty (except for garlic bread) and so I was surprised at the first taste. Normally during communion I try not to focus on the food itself, but rather the meaning behind it, but this time I felt like God was speaking to me through the flavor. Remember the salt. I just finished a great book by Bill Hybels, “Just Walk Across the Room” that I highly recommend. It gives a lot of great practical advice in seasoning our lives with salt. While I’ve always tried to do this, I often miss opportunities and either over or underseason my speech. Colossians 4:2-6 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may...

Medical practice I knew I was choosing a teaching hospital. It was one of the reasons I considered it when choosing an OB after finding out we were pregnant. For the past five years I’ve shared our story with the medical students at FSU and have loved having the opportunity to hopefully impact them in their careers and thought this might afford me the same opportunity. I was surprised though at the limited number of times students, residents or fellows attended my appointments. This week I found out it’s because they’re all getting their time in on the maternity wing of the hospital rather than the doctor’s visits leading up the point of delivery. It gave new meaning to the term medical practice as I sat there getting my epidural. A team of people had come through pre-op introducing themselves and letting me know they would be doing my anesthesiology. I wasn’t really sure why it took 5 doctors to numb me and watch my levels, but I soon learned. Only one of them truly had mu...

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...