My Hope

I think I've said this before, but maybe the thoughts have just run through my head.  I'm saddened by the divide in the church that just seems to be getting greater and greater.    We are called to be one body.  I am not speaking of everyone, but there are some people that have made us feel as we no longer belong to the body because they don't view the things we do as being of value.  We are so grateful for the members of the body who have lifted us up and confirmed our call to be here for such a time as this.  We will not stop being a part of the body just because some people have said "I don't need you!"  God has placed us where He wanted and we will continue striving to carry out the unique role for us.  We strive to please God, not man.  But that doesn't make it easy to sit and listen to the hatred.    Are you working in unity with the rest of the body?  Are you telling other parts of the body they don't belong?  We only need so many eyes and s...

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...

Training wheels Teaching M how to ride a bike didn’t go quite the way I envisioned.  I really thought I’d be running behind her holding onto her seat try after try and bandaging plenty of scraped hands and knees.  In reality, it was much easier than that.  We made an early attempt to remove the training wheels but she seemed frozen in fear.  She’d barely make one rotation of the pedals before hopping off declaring she was scared she was about to fall (even though I still had a tight grip of her seat).  She didn’t allow herself to get enough speed to really take off.  We were getting nowhere so we took the advice of seasoned grandparents and put the training wheels back on, but at a higher level.  We taught her to listen for the sound of the training wheels hitting the pavement and how to straighten the bike back up when that happened.  After a while riding this way, one of her wheels literally just fell off.  She didn’t even realize she was riding without it and stopped not because s...

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 wrote the first part over of this post over the summer but never actually posted it. At the time I'd posted a few back to back and didn't want to flood everyone's e-mails with one more thing. Today though I experienced the same humbling grace from my kids so I thought I'd share both experiences. "Recently I was humbled by the grace of my children. GFM always has group gatherings to pray for people as they head out and also to hear about what’s happened on mission or vision trips. I love going and hearing and praying, but they aren’t the most child-friendly, particularly for children that have a hard time sitting for any length of time. I feel like there are times my children have to learn there are times they have to be quiet and times for play- a time for everything under heaven. Unfortunately, I told the girls we were going to a party. It really was a going away party of sorts… but not party in the sense that a 6 & 4 year old automatically pictur...

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...