Where Satan’s fingers go, death results. His meddling installs emptiness where God has provided abundance and doubt where God has made certain. Satan cinched Adam and Eve’s upheaval from the garden and his scheming hasn’t changed. He still aims to yank mankind from living in God, using temptation, confusion and sin.

The enemy’s propositions can appear harmless and simple. Sensible, even. “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. Genesis 3:4-6 Though she knew she was disobeying God, Eve convinced herself there was some goodness in her disobedience. Perfect, smiled her enemy. Then he was in, Eve was out and the tendrils of sin were free to creep.

Faith covers those vulnerable places that might otherwise be defenseless in the beguiling face of evil. Faith says, “I can’t see around the corner, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, so I will make the only decision I do know to be right: trusting what God said and proceeding in His ways.” Even Jesus spoke the Word of God to drive off the devil. When I step forward in faith and the finished work of Jesus, standing in what He says is true and good, the tendrils of the enemy shrivel and retreat, for they have no power in the victory of Jesus.

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death  through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Romans 5:12

Clear away all that is uncertain and vague and find truth in God. In His presence I touch humility, my base, the place where I hear His voice and ingest His Word.  Rightly oriented to God, I find my place in the world, illuminated by His light. Knowing Him I find who He has made me to be.

When I am in turmoil, the path may be shadowy, the outlook bleak, but He never is. In my spirit I go to Him. I breathe, close my eyes and call to Him. He is already there. Yes, He is. He is always there. He brings peace to the believer.

God lives within me, ready to speak a word and hold me still. God, His Holy Spirit, the ship in which I navigate the world. I mustn’t jump ship and ever swim alone, my Lord left His Spirit to carry me. He shows the way.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Hebrews 1: 3. He waits for me there.

I know this loving God, I know that He sent Jesus, His radiance, to reconcile me to Him forever. I have been created by God in His image, placed safely in His arms by Jesus and live in His presence by the gift of His Holy Spirit.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:14

 

God uses my circumstances for His plans and His plan to form my circumstances. I am created for God’s hands, in His hands I create. I was created to, all of His children are.

Someone is decorating the docks and boardwalks back in the park woods. It always makes me smile to come upon the notes and bold artwork. I understand the need to gush in joy while walking in nature. What better way to do it than painting flowers and words of hope, echoing God’s creation back to Him and to all who wander by?

That’s what “making one’s mark” is, ultimately. To be so inspired that others may behold it and worship and revere the One who bestowed the gift!  To make a mark for God’s Kingdom one must be rooted in Him, sustained in Him, and flourish in Him. One needs to walk with Him, talk with Him and hear His call, then move. Create. Serve. Work. To His glory.

The rest is in God’s hands. When I work in His name, He gathers my blooms and finely arranges them to be seen and distinguished from the rest. God makes a glorious mark upon the world with the good things I create.

His  master said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have  been faithful over little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.  Matthew 25:21

In the heavy heat of July, the sycamores surrendered their mottled hides and cluttered the slope down to the pond with jumbo puzzle pieces of bark. The fabulous array of curious shapes was strewn on the path, over fence rungs and adorning bushes. Some, hanging in long strips from trunks and branches, waited on a summer storm to release them to the mossy bed.

I meandered the shade among the giants and couldn’t help but be distracted by this new cast of characters. A few found their way to my hands and I examined them as I walked, so substantial and interesting.

 Next day, I went with a paper bag and filled it with this stuff of inspiration. Surely one could frame these, or something. The bag sat untouched in my office for weeks until one day a huge black spider appeared on the ceiling above it. After wrangling that into submission, I grabbed the bag, ran out of the house and deposited it in the trash can.

Strangely, I felt regret over these stolen pieces. I had turned the sycamores’ elegant strokes, their abstract art installment, into nothing but rubbish. How presumptuous, to think I might improve on the Creator Himself. Well, no, I don’t really believe He would mind if I relocated a few pieces of tree bark, or used them to create something beautiful to my eye. There was just a truth in this I needed to see.

It is good and wise to confess the supremacy of God in each and every endeavor, to be humble in each and every way. In this way I am able to seize the charge of His calling on my own life and mindfully leave the spider and the sycamore to do the same.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

 

Frogs talk to each other, they converse in the cattails at the back of the pond. I’m here. I’m over here. Good morning.  Back at ya. I allow myself a polite step or two into their bog, their quavering deep notes are a balm to my ears. 

I don’t know what the frogs are saying but I assume they’re acknowledging each other and their common, amphibious ways.  Having heard their conversations many times now, I believe it would be a glum, despondent frog living alone in a pond without the intimate croaks of others.

I might as well have been dropped into a deep, dark swamp in the early days of my son’s addiction. I prayed, certainly, and I knew God was near, but the isolation from my prior life and everyone in it was bewildering.  It was as if my old language and orientation to life had been stripped away. I had nothing to offer to the norm, so blithely moving around me, nor did it have anything to offer me.  Thank God, for the love and growth in the rooms of recovery, for it is His blessing upon me and the ones I join, that returns us to the land of the living, healed and restored.

  One day my son told me his friend’s parents wanted to talk to me. They too had lost their orientation to life. They too longed to speak and listen to someone who could enter that terrible darkness with the warm light of serenity and understanding. I couldn’t go to them fast enough. As I left they called me an angel. I am not an angel but I know profoundly that compassion is a balm to the soul and sharing it with others is essential to my life in Jesus.

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.                2 John 1:12

 

It was the year we were married and my husband’s father was dying of cancer. On one of our visits home, I came down with a terrible cold and since we were there for a week, I was concerned that I would spread it to my father-in-law in his vulnerable state. It was then I was introduced to the healing benefits of echinacea and goldenseal. After just one cup of the fetid tea made of roots and powder from a bin at the local health food store, my symptoms lessened and in the matter of a day, I was remarkably well. Later I would learn this miraculous plant was the beautiful purple coneflower I had often admired. God has such amazing ideas.

His omniscience is unfathomable. I may only notice that single thread–the robust elixir and the stunning perennial–but I know Him and I know His master plan is incalculable and replete with those silver threads—an infinite network of provision, fulfillment, and sustenance all weaved together by His inconceivable artistry. God’s love is the very essence of all this wonder.

Of course, the One who loves me and created me would also create the essentials for my wellness. Of course, His answers are not only in His Word but can be found in the very fruit of His Word. God spoke all these things into existence, His voice resounds in the flower, in the root and in me. Regard the purple coneflower—just one strand in the magnificent tapestry of God’s grand design!

But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. Jeremiah 10:12

 

Recently my son was a candidate for an honor at school. A classmate protested, her eyes rolling, “Not him, he gets enough recognition.” She may someday learn, as a child of God, that He has callings and benefits without limit for all who would embrace them as the gifts they are. 

My son takes great joy in being helpful and congenial. He often returns home from school pleased that he was able to help a teacher or comfort a friend and occasionally perplexed when he is met with derision for it.  Focus on God and His will, my son, and leave the complaints to Him.

God has made each one a vast field of capabilities and missions.  One person’s life’s work can be as grand and far-reaching as he or she will abide to in Christ. No one knows God’s plan for another and attempting to make it smaller in any way is denying a shaft of His light to come forth. 

I have put up walls myself, sometimes because of the jeers of others, sometimes because of the doubt that I could become all that He made me to be. I can keep myself hemmed in and not in service to God’s great will for me or I can remember that God is on the other side of that fence waiting to join me in whatever endeavor He has planned for us.

I am created in the image of God. His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. The fruit of His children can never be too much or too many, for it is all to His great glory

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

 

I came to know the pond well—the koi, the turtles, the ducks, the changes in vegetation and the water. My eyes anticipated tender burgeoning simplicity at the pond in all seasons, so when the occasional piece of trash floated into the picture, it stuck out to me like a sore thumb and, in that moment, stole my serenity. Litter feels like an assault on the teeming life around it and sometimes I can allow the reactions of others to do the same to my spiritual ecosystem.

That’s life in the big city, folks. And that’s life on earth. There will always be the possibility of an affront on sanctitude, an insult to the purest of intentions and the kindest of deeds. This shouldn’t be a surprise, this should be held as gospel truth.

When I was very young, my friend Joanie and I decided to collect money for the poor. My Grammy’s friend Louise lived in a tiny, one room shack and I wanted to bring the change to her, as my Grammy often brought Louise dinner and produce from Pop Pop’s garden. Holding a mayonnaise jar, we knocked on the doors of our neighbors’ and asked them to give money for the poor. After a few houses, I heard my mother’s voice calling me and returned home. She said the lady next door called and told her what we were doing. Mom understood, but others might not, she said. Dejected and embarrassed, I handed her the jar and Joanie and I found something else to do.

Scoffers scoff, litterers litter, rebels rebel. Children of God love. Tend to the poor, the children, and the fertile ground in doubter’s hearts so that it springs to life in Him. Keep tending, no matter the rejection. Keep loving.

Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you.  Reprove a wise man and he will love  you.  Proverbs 9:8

 

One day I walked with a child.  This was the only day of my year in the park that I brought along a friend. Several people asked to walk with me but I always declined. On this day, though, Joy came along and I walked with her.

No, the name of that one with the pink toes isn’t Joy, but I will call her that here. Surely, my walks have brought me joy, but none that transcends the true joy of a child!  This entry would be a chapter to accommodate all the joy we had!

Galloping in the sandy courts, Joy found a volleyball and called me to play. The net loomed high and wide above her tiny physique, but whether her serve went over, under or straight into it, Joy only bounced back. I was captivated with Joy as she grappled the playground bars. Her legs swung into the air with abandon, keeping her keen ballast and propelling her onward to the finish–a leap into the next joy to discover! She took to a swing like it would toss her to the stars and a slide, as if it would drop her into heaven itself. 

At the pond, Joy’s toes kissed the water’s edge, as her roving wonder buoyed with the ducks and wafted through the reeds. In the gazebo we rested. She smiled for my lens in the cool streaks of shade and sunlight, her teeth in all stages of childlike joy. When it was time to go, I invited her on one last adventure–a stroll around the pond to spy a frog or a turtle or a snake. Joy tiptoed behind me in the damp grass and slowed even more as we neared a curve in the path, the snake’s favorite spot. So I scooped her up in my arms and Joy clung to me as we peered into the underbrush. We didn’t see the snake but we squealed with joy anyway.

But Jesus called for them, saying, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder  them, for the  kingdom of God belongs to such as  these.”   Luke 18:16

Fear seeks a deep, dark place to hole up. It can’t be left out in the open where it may be touched by light, for there it stands a chance to dissipate and weaken, and fear can’t have that. It needs the abysmal, to thicken and come to a boil.

I have never been in such fear as when my son was in addiction. In the early years, I holed up in the basement watching television, playing games on my computer and staying safe from the light that would dare to dissolve my fears. I thought I needed to attend to my fears so they couldn’t surprise me. I spent my hours with my nightmares, getting to know them, asking what they were going to do next.

I also prayed. Isn’t that funny? I essentially befriended my fears, all the while begging God to release me from them. I could find no hope great enough to release me from their grip until I went to a 12 Step program for friends and family of alcoholics.  There, in a warm circle of others, I spilled my fears out onto the floor where they gradually faded away 

in the fluorescent lights of church basements.

No, it wasn’t really those lights, it was His Light. He led me there. He provided those rooms, those people, those healing principles for me to become brave enough to let go of my fears with the promise of His Truths. God is the only place to turn in fear. His Light softens it and slowly fills the dark places with hope

How long, O Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen?  Habakkuk 1:2