Pay Attention

The Lord has been whispering in my ear, “Pay attention.” Those two words have repeatedly come to mind throughout this week as I have read scripture and as I noticed them printed on a bookmark I recently placed in my journal, which reads, “The beauty of life lives inside the smallest of moments – (Pay attention).”

“Pay attention!” I often reminded my fourth grade students.  No matter how many times I said it there would usually be a handful of students who would fail at a task simply because they hadn’t paid attention to the directions.  Have you ever filled out a form in cursive handwriting using ink and afterward discovered that you were supposed to print the information using a pencil?  Recently I was ordering something online for someone’s birthday and realized I would need to expedite the shipping in order for the gift to get there on time.  I spent a good hour filling out all the information and clicked on the “purchase” button. Then as I checked over the receipt with the completed order, which I should have done prior to clicking  “purchase,” I noticed that I failed to check the express shipping box and the gift would possibly not make it in time for her birthday! I had to go back, cancel the first order, fill out a new order, paying careful attention to check the correct shipping method and finally clicked on the button labeled: “purchase!”  Time wasted simply because I did not pay attention to the crucial shipping method box!  If only I had paid attention the first time I filled it out, I could have gone to bed an hour earlier. 

The Lord reminded the Israelites in Isaiah 48:17-18 “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.  If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”    Paid attention in the text refers to the Hebrew word, Qasab, and means, to listen, give heed, or pay attention.  The truth of this scripture is so relevant for our lives today. When we hear the truth, and obediently pay attention to God’s Word and His Promises we will experience His peace.  That is the peace that goes beyond explanation or understanding. (Philippians 4:7) It is a peace that guards and protects us from living out “If only” moments. Paying attention to God’s promises will bring strong peace of mind and build strong character.

The writer of Hebrews warns, “We must pay more careful attention therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” (Hebrews 2:1) If we fail to pay attention to the truth we have heard in the past then we tend to wander away from the path God has for us. We drift aimlessly through life and accomplish very little of all God has planned for us.  When I direct my attention to the truths, warnings, and encouraging words that people have spoken to me in the past it helps me to persevere in whatever it is God has called me to do.  Paying attention produces perseverance, which results in greater faith.  After Jesus was raised from the dead, His disciples recalled something prophetic Jesus had said prior to His death on the cross, which led them to believe Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken to them earlier.  (John 2:22)  Recall leads to reclaimed faith and a refocused life.

Last Sunday, the power went out as our pastor was making an important point in his message.  People, without hesitation, began turning on their cell phones as if attending a candlelight service. The light of the phones enabled us to see in the unexpected darkness.  Within a few minutes the power was restored and the light shone brightly once again, as Pastor Gregg took up where he had left off.   Sudden darkness takes us by surprise and often we panic rather than reach for an accessible light.  Peter encourages believers to pay attention to the Word in the same way you pay attention to a light shining in a dark place.  (2 Peter 1:19)  “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” If you find yourself in an especially difficult or dark place, keep your eyes on the Light.  “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)  His Word directs us in the dark times.  Jesus promises that whoever believes in Him, the Light of the world, will never walk in darkness, but will always have the One who illuminates life.  (John 8:12)  So, as one who has been redeemed by the Light of the World we are encouraged to let our light shine before all men in such a way that they may see our good works and glorify our heavenly Father.  (Matthew 5:16) Our good work is simply paying attention to His Word, seeking Him in our dark times and believing that the Light will see us through.  In turn, those who are not just walking through a dark time, but are dark dwellers may see His light reflected in us and be drawn to Him.

This week let’s pay attention to what is true, obey it, and without hesitation use it to light our dark and difficult places.  May others see the Light who illuminates our lives and be drawn to Him who gives peace, perseverance and purpose. 

Until the light dawns . . . 

Pay Attention,

Nancy

What My Children Taught Me About God

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John 1:14

Full of grace and truth . . . God is fully grace and fully truth.    He is justice and He is mercy; two sides of one coin.  God is beyond that description.  I see Him now as more like a diamond, with an infinite amount of facets and carats. 

I recently read an article about astronomers finding a huge diamond in space.  “It is 2,500 miles across and weighs 5 million, trillion trillion pounds, which translates to approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros.”  The article went on to say that “the hunt for the crystal core of this white dwarf has been like the search for the Lost Dutchman’s Mine.  It was thought to exist for decades, but only now has it been located.” (Center for Astrophysics) 

When studying Romans and looking into the election or choosing by God of those who will be saved my Bible study class as well as their teacher, (that would be me) are left puzzled.  It is beyond our understanding, as it should be.  For Paul says in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!”  The more I study of God’s Word the more I realize I do not know, and that I will never know all there is to know until I see Jesus face to face. 

As I walk on the treadmill each morning I use that time to pray.  I pray for my children everyday as I walk and meditate on His Word.  Yesterday as I was meditating on the truth found in John 1:14 about Jesus being full of grace and truth my mind flashed to my children.  I have learned much about myself and about my heavenly Father through my children.  Becoming a mom gave me such insight into the Father’s love and His great care He gives His children.  As a mom I have been humbled many times through my inadequacies as a mom and through the words and behaviors of my own children.  As I contemplate the message of the Gospel, that through Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross that I now stand declared righteous in my heavenly Father’s eyes, I see also His truth and His grace.

Jesus came full of truth and grace.  Will, my first born, was full of truth, the law follower. He saw things black or white, no gray!  Structure was his middle name!  Having things clean and perfect was always his goal.  This goal is unattainable and so he would experience insecurity and fear of failure in his attempts at perfection. However, when he discovered music he began to worship and lead others in worship.  His worship of the Perfect One full of truth broke through his own self-righteousness and he became a humble author who called himself, the adoring mess. 

Sarah, my second and final child, was full of terror at first and then full of grace.  She would run up to adults and kick them in the shins just because she wanted to!  Then when the first day of kindergarten came her grace and mercy literally “kicked” in.  Her teacher met me at the door after that first day with, “The other teachers and I were appalled at Sarah’s behavior at recess today! She kicked a boy while he was on the ground.”  Once in the car I asked Sarah what had happened at recess.  She explained, “That boy was picking on the kids all day and when recess came I saw my chance to let him have it!”  She was taking up for the weak and defenseless, something she often does now as a lawyer. 

As a mom of two, very uniquely different children, I have learned that when we are given to pride and self-righteousness that worshipping our Holy Creator God brings us to our knees in humility and when we are a terror in the eyes of some that God’s grace rises up causing us to reach out to others in mercy.  Encouraging Will to use his gifts of writing and music turned his messy perfectionism into adoring the Perfect One through worship.   Taking Sarah to Kenya to minister to orphans strengthened the gift of God in her, allowing her to use her gift of mercy.

God is all truth and all mercy for a reason.  We need both in full measure!  Rather than accusing God of not being all good when bad things happen or of not giving the punishment you feel others deserve, remember that God is all truth and all grace.  He is beyond our understanding, beyond our explanations, beyond our terrors and our messes!  Jesus came full of truth and mercy. Trust Him, even when you don’t understand it all! 

Truth and Grace,

Nancy 

Our Days Are Numbered

 About five years ago I began to literally number my days.  A couple of years before I started this counting of my days, our pastor taught through the book of Nehemiah.  Nehemiah had been given the task of rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem.  He prayed and fasted and prayed some more.  He then set out to accomplish this task, with the help of God.  The Bible tells us that Nehemiah and the men of Jerusalem worked night and day and completed the wall in fifty-two days.  When our pastor reached this part in Nehemiah he issued a challenge: “What could God do in your life if you gave him the next 52 days?”  That was an awesome challenge and I am sorry to say I did not do anything with the challenge until about two years later when I came across Psalm 90:12 in my devotions one morning, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  I needed some wisdom and I needed to complete some unfinished things in my life.  So, my mind went back to my pastor’s fifty-two day challenge and I determined that day to give the Lord every fifty-two days to see what He would do in and through my life.  I began dividing my year up into seven “fifty-two day cycles,” which leaves me with one free day.  That free day is my Sabbath day – a day of rest from counting!  This might all seem a little meticulous to you, but it has brought accountability into my life.  Counting my days keeps me focused on what God calls me to do in smaller chunks of time.  Counting my days helps my days to count!

Last Friday, March 7, was my fourteenth day of my current “fifty-two day cycle.”  It was also the day my husband and I attended a former mentor’s surprise seventieth birthday celebration. His wife had invited family, friends from all over the world and the men he had mentored in the past, along with their wives.  It was an amazing celebration of a life lived with the purpose of multiplication.  He began a discipleship ministry some forty years ago training young men and women to walk with Christ with the purpose that they too would train other young men and women to walk with Christ, who would then go and train more men and women to walk with Christ.  The cycle has gone on now for forty years!  At the celebration I looked at the men and women seated around my table, who had been mentored by this man thirty-five years earlier. This was the first time I had seen some of them in as many years.  They were all mentored as they worked for his ministry where they were given such jobs as packing materials in the stock room, running errands, editing materials, traveling with their mentor and helping with whatever was needed.  All five of these men and their wives were still walking with Christ. One started and has led a student discipleship ministry for over 30 years, one still ministers to college students and their leaders, one is a successful Christian businessman, one a seminary professor, and one is a mission’s pastor for one of the largest churches in the country, sending out lay people on missions throughout the world. These people were the fruit of this one man’s ministry; they were fruit that lasted!  

Five interns thirty-five years later.

Scripture tells us “The length of our days is seventy years – or eighty, if we have strength.”  (Psalm 90:10)  Our dear mentor celebrated seventy years last Friday and was able to see the fruit of the years he had poured into those men.  He has lived all the years the Bible has promised and now due to strength he presses on.  I only have about thirteen more years to seventy.  I am praying that I will make each day count and one day be able to see the fruit of my labor. As I now count down these forty days of Lent I am not only looking to live an abandoned life for Christ, but also an influential life for Christ.  I don’t want to make a name for myself, but I want to make His name known by pouring what I know of Him into the young women in my life.  Won’t you join me in counting your days?  I will pray for you today the words of Psalm 90:17, “May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.” 

Counting my days!

Nancy

A Cross Fit Challenge

This year the Lord led me to three words: Listen, learn and lead.  Then He showed me how each word should lead to the gospel.  I am intentionally listening to hear His voice above all others, to learn the deeper meaning of the gospel message and to lead others by sharing what He teaches me.  The Lord called His disciples to listen in the darkness and in the quiet in order to proclaim in the light whatever they had heard whispered in their ear.  (Matthew 10:27)  The result of the disciples listening and learning from Jesus is found in the Bible in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.    

I committed to the Lord to share each week in my Sunday morning Life Bible study, what I was learning about the gospel.  We have been going through the book of Romans, focusing on the gospel of Christ.  I have often heard that out of obedience comes blessing. Over the past 10 weeks of obediently sharing the gospel story in my class I have had the joy of hearing from different women how they have been challenged or encouraged through the Word.  This past Sunday, when class was over, one of the ladies in my class approached me.  I recently had heard her story of how she was pregnant and living in Cambodia in 1975 when the Communists came in and forced all the residents of her town to the countryside to labor camps. She did not know about Jesus at that time, but knew there must be a God.  The Lord rescued her out of Cambodia five years later and was offered passage to the United States.  As we talked in the hallway last week she was full of joy and excitement. Speaking in broken English she kept telling me, “I understand, I understand!”  I am sure I looked puzzled, and then she said, “I knew God and believed Jesus, but I never understood what it all meant until now.  The Word you taught today opened my ears and my eyes and I understand!”  Tears welled up in both of our eyes and we had a little worship service of our own right there in the midst of a busy hallway of a mega church.  She understood for the first time what Jesus had done and that she no longer had fear or anxiety.  She knew that nothing would separate her from God’s love!

Her words have been on my mind this week as I began preparing myself for Easter.  I am reading a book, “Bread and Wine,” which is a collection of readings for Lent and Easter by many different authors. I have lingered long over this one sentence from the introduction of this book, “Lent (literally “springtime”) is a time of preparation, a time to return to the desert where Jesus spent forty trying days readying for his ministry.  He allowed himself to be tested, and if we are serious about following him, we will do the same.”  I desire for my eyes and ears to be open to the deeper things of God just like my sweet Cambodian sister’s eyes were opened this week.  Psalm 51:12 says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.”  My prayer, as I go into this season of Lent, is that God would test me, examine my heart and restore to me a greater joy.   And that through this desert experience He would draw me into a deeper understanding of and connection with Jesus.

The Lord has already been at work refining my mind and heart.  Last night I was writing an email expressing my frustration over someone’s actions and how I had done everything I could to help and was ready to throw in the towel.  I kept rewriting and editing the email and when I was ready to hit the send button something stopped me in my tracks!  It wasn’t a something, it was the Holy Spirit, that still small voice inside me, saying “This isn’t about what you don’t or do deserve, it is about giving up what you think you deserve and instead giving grace, My grace."  

Then words that I had hidden in my heart came flooding into my mind, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but make himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”  Jesus was God and was with God from the beginning (John 1:1), but chose to come to earth in the form of a baby inside of a young virgin’s womb in order to fulfill His calling as Savior.  The Bible says He grew in wisdom, in stature and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52)  First He had to grow up and then it was time to go out to save a dark and dying world.  But before He could fulfill the call of God He had to go through forty days in a desert with no food, no water, and endure extreme temptation from the Devil himself!  I believe the first thing God is calling me to do in this season of Lent is the same thing He called Jesus to do – to give up living an entitled life and start living an abandoned life. 

Avery and Will

My son and daughter-in-law have become Cross-fit enthusiasts.  They have both disciplined themselves physically by enduring intense workouts that have involved lifting heavy weight, jumping on top of boxes and doing hundreds of chin-ups.  They look phenomenal.  Their bodies have been transformed!  Jesus’ desert experience was the beginning of his cross fit experience.  The Lord was conditioning Him for the path that ultimately would lead Him to the cross.  We have grown up in a world that tells us daily that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that as a result we are an entitled people.  Jesus said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of man did not come to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:43-45) My first day of observing lent, He has tested me and I have seen my failure.  I have sought entitlement instead of abandonment.  Will you join me on a cross fit challenge?  The cross fit challenge is this: To set aside being praised, honored or served by others and instead take up Christ’s call to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Him and serve others.  I am looking forward to forty days of transformation. At the end of the forty days the goal is that He will have become greater and we will have become less.  We will be transformed in heart and yes we will look phenomenal, because we will look a little more like Jesus.  I want to say with my sweet Cambodian friend, “My eyes have been opened and I now understand more fully what I already believed!”   

I would love to hear from you and how you are planning to take the cross fit challenge.  I am praying for you as you seek to live an abandoned life and asking that your eyes will be opened to know more fully the gospel story of Jesus.

Looking forward to Easter!

Nancy

Love Conquers All

Do you know that God is for you?  No, really, do you know that nothing that you could do will ever keep God from being on your side? His love is beyond measuring and beyond understanding. Perhaps you have heard that God is love and that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that we might possess eternal life.  He loves us so much that He actually wants to spend an eternity with us!  Do you love anyone that much that you would want to spend every minute of eternity with them?  Well, God loves you that much.  The problem is many of us don’t really believe that God loves us. We think that we have crossed the line and are beyond saving.

I remember my earthly father’s struggle with love.  He was fun loving, hard working, and courageous in many ways. He loved to listen and to dance to music. It must be where I get my love for music and dancing. He never met a stranger.  My mom would send him on an errand to get a couple of items at the grocery store, but he would tend to get sidetracked as he got involved in conversations over the produce or in the parking lot with complete strangers.   Where was the struggle you may be asking?  The struggle was not with what or whom he loved but it was with receiving love from others and from God.  That must be where I get that. 

I remember talking with my dad and asking him many times if he had received Christ.  He would always answer yes, but then add, “He could never forgive my sin.”  You see, I believe it was that inability to receive the Father’s love that kept my earthly father bound up in feelings of worthlessness, anger, and addiction.  By the time I was in middle school my dad had turned to alcohol for comfort and was a full- fledged alcoholic. He wasn’t the same fun-loving man I knew as a young child. My dad was brave, as well. I will never forget as a young girl, watching him chase a huge bull around the pasture behind our home.  He wasn’t afraid of that huge animal, yet he had become a man bound up in fear of never being good enough. Where was his bravery now? 

My dad lived most of his life like he was walking a tight rope stretched across the downtown skyscrapers.  He lived in fear that he would fall and that all his efforts would never be good enough.  He was partly correct.  We will never be good enough to earn God’s love.  Now picture the tight rope just inches above a huge, sturdy safety net.  If you slip and fall you won’t be hurt, because your fall will be short and soft.  That is God’s love. His love is always there ready to catch us when we fall.  Nothing to fear, because there is no step we can take that is out of the reach of His love. 

One Sunday morning in a church in Missouri I prayed that God would do whatever it took to open the eyes and heart of my dad to see and accept His love.  Only a few months later, I received a call from my mom informing me that my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  My mind went to that Sunday morning plea for my dad’s salvation.  Could this be His answer?  I would never pray for anyone to be diagnosed with cancer!  That was not what I prayed. I prayed, “Lord, whatever it takes.”  Within a few weeks after his diagnosis, my dad started going to church. He quit drinking and within days was convinced of God’s love in the midst of his suffering the effects of alcohol withdrawal and cancer treatments.  God’s love had overcome my dad’s fears and feelings of unworthiness.  He was radically saved and his life was a living testimony of what God’s love can overcome.  After he was baptized you couldn’t keep him from sharing his faith.  My mom called one day to tell me some amazing news.  She and my dad had been to visit a friend who was also suffering with cancer.  As they were preparing to leave their friends bedside, my dad asked the friend if he could pray for him.  He proceeded to pray aloud for his friend.  My mom said she just about fainted!  That was the first time in their 43 years of marriage that he had ever prayed aloud with her. My dad had not only been convinced of God’s overcoming love, but he had come to realize that even cancer could not separate him from God’s amazing love. 

If you are struggling today to accept, or be convinced of, God’s love for you take the plunge! Jump off the tight rope of trying to earn God’s love and fall into the arms of the One who loves unconditionally and eternally. May your statement of belief be that of Paul’s in Romans 8:38, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing (not even yourself!), will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   

In the love conquering Name of Jesus!

Nancy 

Joyful Anticipation

Anticipation (noun) 1. Expectant waiting; the feeling of looking forward, usually excitedly or eagerly, to something that is going to happen.

  

I have lived my life always looking forward to something:  graduation, new job, marriage, children, and now grandchildren.  I believe that God places in us a longing to look forward.  In fact, in Isaiah 43:18-19 the Lord says, “Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past.  Behold, I will do something new. Now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?  I will make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”  The Lord wants us to look forward to what He has planned to do in and through our lives. 

The problem is that I lose that excited and eager feeling of anticipation.  I find myself living more in dread that in joyful expectation of what is coming next.  As a fifty-something empty-nester, I have seen my anticipated hopes and dreams come to life through my own graduations, jobs, marriage and children.  I am hanging on to the joyful anticipation of one day becoming a grandparent, but other than that at times my vision of future glories fade.  Last week’s cloud that I wrote about in my last blog posting was partly due to my lack of vision.  I had lost sight of what God might have planned for me in the future and so my “looking forward” had given way to doubts, fears, and regrets. 

I had to choose to drag myself out of that pit of self-pity and bad vision to a view above the clouds. Matthew 6:22-23 says that “the eye is the lamp of the body; if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad your whole body will be full of darkness.” I needed a clear vision of my life. It seemed all my dreams had been fulfilled, so what would I be looking forward to in my “growing old” state of mind? 

I went to the gym early on Monday morning in search of a clear new vision.  I found it on the treadmill.  As I walked I asked the Lord to show me a purpose, a new dream to look forward to.  A picture so clearly came to my mind of what He was calling me to.  I saw a vision that was clear, detailed and very real. The Lord gave me a glimpse of what He is calling me to give the rest of my life to!  That vision began with a vision of Him.  The Rend Collective Experiment version of “Be Thou My Vision” came flooding through my earphones and straight to my heart:

You are my vision, oh king of mine heart

Nothing else satisfies, only You, Lord

You are my best thought by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, Your presence, my light.

Are you looking forward to something with joyful anticipation?  If your eyes are bad right now and you can only see the darkness, then get a glimpse of Jesus, our Light, Redeemer, Savior, and soon coming again King!  “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?   But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”  Once you place your life into the hands of Jesus He begins to reveal Himself to you and His plan for you; a plan that includes one day seeing Him face to face and spending an eternity of joyful anticipation in His presence.  Now, there is nothing more satisfying, more exciting, and more joyful than looking forward to that! 

With Joyful Anticipation!

Nancy 

A Reason to Sing

There is a song that All Sons and Daughters sing that keeps going through my mind. The song is titled, “A Reason to Sing.”  It starts out with the cry of a desperate heart confessing,  “I need a reason to sing!”  Sunday morning I awoke in a cloud, a dark cloud.  I forced myself from my bed and out of the cloud long enough to pray and prepare my mind and heart to teach a lesson about the ongoing war within every person.  The war can be stated precisely using the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:15, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”  Once in the classroom the Lord provided me with boldness and with words to communicate His message of grace.  The lesson went well and as we gathered for prayer after class our prayer room filled to capacity.  The prayer time together was sweet and powerfully authentic as the women poured out their hearts to the Lord.  I was on a high as I left church that day! He had given me a reason to sing. 

The cloud that greeted me Sunday morning was back by sundown.  Why was I feeling so down, discouraged and on the verge of despair?  At first I blamed it on just missing my children.  They are so far away and at times I feel so disconnected to the very ones I had given birth to.  I looked around my small condo and wondered if I would ever get it to the place I wanted it to be.   I began to wonder if I had even missed out on what God called me to do?  Boy, my mind was definitely in a thick cloud of self-pity.  Nothing seems right with my world.  But, I didn’t have time to stay there for long.  I had to prepare for Monday, as I was to show up for jury duty!  A sense of dread and fear nipped at my heels as I went to bed with jury duty on my mind.

Monday, I got up early to pray, read through my devotional along with some verses to try and head off that dark cloud that still wanted to engulf me.  Just to be on the safe side I slipped a few of my scripture memory packs in my purse to keep my mind focused.  Twenty-two of us were lined up according to our assigned number and led into a courtroom with men in suits and a woman judge presiding.  The judge spoke to us about what would be expected of us and thanked us for doing our part to see that justice would be carried out.  Then the questioning began!

 The case involved a former prisoner and two prison guards.  The former prisoner was suing the prison guard saying that his civil rights had been violated.  The lawyers were looking for jurors who would be fair and unbiased.  The last question the lawyer asked has been going through my mind over the last few days.  He asked us to tell him the first one or two words that came to our minds when he said the word “prison.” He started with juror number one, which would be me, and went in order all the way to juror number twenty-two.  I answered with the one word, “cell,” as it was the first word that came to my mind.  The jurors who followed me had similar answers such as, locked-up, criminal, scary, and hard.  Finally, the very last juror, number twenty-two, spoke a word that no one expected: “hope!”  A moment of silence fell on the courtroom as everyone pondered what she could’ve possibly meant.  We were then all dismissed for a short break while the lawyers chose who would and would not be on the jury for the trial.

After our break we were led once again into the courtroom where we would learn our fate.  The Judge began to read the names of those who were chosen. I held my breath as I listened.  My name was not called and I was free to go!  The cloud that greeted me on Sunday was still following me around.  I had been released from jury duty, my husband was home after a week away, and I should have been celebrating! Instead I could only focus on all that I hadn’t accomplished because of having to sit around a courthouse for four hours!  Where was my head?

The cloud did not lift until this morning!  I went for my daily treadmill walk with my scripture memory cards in hand and my earphones on my head and the Son began to shine.  I focused on one of my memory verses, “But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.”  (1 Samuel 30:6b)  I listened to the words play in my ears, “I need a reason to sing.  I need a reason to believe you still hold the whole world in your hands. . . Your peace is the melody you sing it over me now.”  That is the reason for juror twenty-two’s answer of hope!  The music continued, “I will sing to my God and King for you’ve been good always.”

I had been in the prison cell of self-absorption, focusing only on what I lacked.  It was only when I soaked my mind and heart in the truth of God’s Word that I was able to break out of that prison of despair through the Door of hope!  Another scripture verse came flooding into my mind, “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation.  My God will hear me. Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy.  Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is a light for me.” (Micah 7:7-8) After teaching a lesson about our on going war within I was blindsided by the enemy’s song of discouragement.  In my cell of self I could only see the dark and hear the song of gloom.  I am so glad I kept asking the Lord to show me the way out of my self-made cell.  “Why are you in despair, O my soul?  And why have you become disturbed within me?  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.”  (Psalm 42:11) 

If you find yourself in a self-made prison cell of self-pity today let me remind you of what the God of hope sings over you, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.  He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”   If you have never experienced the peace of Christ or the hope of God I invite you today to enter through the Door, Jesus.  He stands ready to break you out of the prison of self and lead you to His wide opened spaces of extravagant grace, unending peace and a future filled with hope.  (Romans 15:13)

Singing a song of hope,

Nancy