It is something we don’t think about. One breath in, one breath out. Without even being aware, it is God’s breath in our lungs bringing life; the removal of it brings death.
Read the beginning words of Genesis, and there it is for the very first time: God bending low, an intimate kiss as He placed His lips over the lifeless form of Adam, breathing His breath into Adam’s lungs, and there was life. What a wonder!
Read MoreHow fragile our plans are! They are the tiny gossamer strands of a spider’s web, broken, blowing loose and out of control, no longer attached to the carefully sought out surroundings.
How often our plans are ruptured, torn asunder; what seemed sturdy and sure, come undone.
Read MoreFor days, I have been rising before dawn, intending to write about the darkness. But as the glimpses of light begin to fill the sky, I am so drawn to the glories on the horizon that I can’t bear to think of anything but the light. Again, I have watched the first pinks arrive in the east and find them also reflected in the skies of the west, where Idaho mountains turn gold.
That is what brings me life: the appearance of the light. I think of last night – stepping outside to look up into the dark sky: the blue-black sea overhead held interest only because of the pinholes of stars piercing the darkness. The white clouds moving westward; were they illuminated by the moon? Again, in the vast night, it was the light I longed for.
Read MoreI will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:2 ESV
Where do I go with my sorrowed soul? My friend Charlie is dead. He is, but he isn’t. I know he is in the embrace of Heaven. His trajectory, drawing people to reason together, to question, to think, to see clearly for themselves, echoed another martyr’s voice: Stephen’s. Read Acts 6:8-8:4 if you don’t believe me.
Read MoreWe do not expect a righteous God. Nor do we expect to be persecuted in the name of a righteous God. What is this righteousness? Perfect, just, and true. We humans have a hard time measuring up to holy perfection. God’s righteousness does not always look the way we expect it to. Those humans encountering His Son had the same problem.
Sitting with the harsh words of Jesus just days before he would be executed by public demand is uncomfortable. He is not the gentle, mild, and kind Jesus holding out the love and compassion that we see in the children’s storybooks. He does not have a sign in his front yard reassuring us that everything will be okay. This is not that story.
Read MoreYes, Jesus loves me. These are the words I have known my whole life. I grew up in a home where church was our second home, and all the people there seemed to be family. My Daddy sat in his gray easy-boy every Saturday night reading his Sunday School lesson and served each week as usher and deacon. A meal was never eaten at our table without bowed heads of thanksgiving and his blessing of “Lord, thank you for these and all blessings, ‘Christ-sake, Amen.”
Read More“I am not the person I want to be. I want to be strong and resilient, able to rise above every circumstance to find a good way out, to power through difficulties, to soar above. It is cooler than I expected. The gray clouds again sit on the crests of the mountains, and no matter how I try, I can’t change my reality.
Which is what? No electricity. No water. Of course, no internet, no text, no phone service. Our weather information remains frozen on our screens since the last time we checked it Thursday evening before going to bed. We are marooned at a ski resort in the off-season with no snow. Two nights ago, the winds blew from the east with the approaching sound of a freight train; the rain blew sideways. During the black of the night, you didn’t hear the trees fall for the thundering sound of the wind in their leaves. It was almost as if they just quietly laid down.
Read MoreThese are not the thoughts we run to embrace. Pain and suffering. This song, these words, brought me up short this week as Pandora played and I edited. I stopped immediately and let these words of Lauren Daigle’s song wash over me and soothe my soul. “Lay it down…Oh Lord, I lay it down.” How perfectly appropriate to sit in these thoughts of surrender this week as Jesus walked steadfastly, unwavering to his cross.
This favored Son, who could multiply fish and loaves to feed thousands, who could quiet the storm with a word, who could open the eyes of the blind with a touch, and who could bring life back to a child with a prayer, could have certainly walked away from unnecessary pain and suffering. But that is the problem, I think. The pain was necessary. It was the only reality, the only solution.
Read MoreThese days, I sit for hours at my desk, at my computer, staring at words God has placed in my lap—163,922 of them! Jack said, “Georgia, books usually average around 40,000 words.” Yep. This manuscript is big, but so is the story of Jesus. Grammarly’s little ball spins, trying to whip my poor spelling, sorry punctuation, and Southern conversational expressions into shape.
I am really trying to stay focused. Carefully paying attention. Shutting out distractions. Be still my wandering thoughts! It is a time to stay near-sighted. Focusing on what is close at hand. Shutting down looking out at the far horizon and all those little dragons swimming in the deep. Do not look to the left or the right. Keep my eyes here. Keep my feet taking only one step at a time.
Read MoreThere are those words I don’t like all lined up in a row: discourage, make them afraid, work against them, and frustrate their plans. This is an old story, a common approach. We set out to do something God has commanded us to do – build something to honor the Lord – and there they are – the enemies showing up pretending they are there to help, but instead, the results are anything but.
I am in the book of Ezra. Of course, with my usual diversions, this is not this year's reading through the bible – it is last year's! I took a little left turn and jumped forward to the New Testament around August and now I am catching up where I left off in 2023. And here they are waiting for me, the descendants of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. True to God’s prophecy to Jeremiah 70 years have come and gone in captivity to the Babylonians, yet arms filled with silver and gold and the returned looted treasures from the burned Temple – and very importantly, the blessings and authority of the new king of Babylon, the remnant has returned to their beloved Jerusalem to rebuild the altar to their One True God and they have laid the foundations for a new Temple. Whew! That was a long sentence! And a long journey.
Read MorePraying without ceasing. Some days this is where we live. When the hurts are too deep. The prognosis too grim. The future too unknown. The path too dark. I don’t know how you walk through it without faith in a sovereign God. A God who rescues when all seems lost. A God who is proven and true and faithful when our faith is running thin.
I grew up in a home running on faith. It was always humming below the surface, in the background, holding everything together. I don’t know what it is to be in a place where God is not. I imagine it would be horribly lonely.
Read More“Would you like to sign up for a tour?” Mikah asked in all seriousness with a hopeful smile on her face. She had politely interrupted the always ongoing conversation between her mother and me. She held a notepad and pen in hand. All that was needed to take a guided tour through my home was my name, my phone number, and the time I was requesting. Of course, that specific time wasn’t avahilable because she had a previous appointment, but she could take me at 1:35 instead (five minutes later) if that worked for me.
With a loop of long-ago discarded keys in hand, she led me (and her mother, my niece) from room to room, stepping over her 3-year-old brother playing with the floor-size alphabet puzzle, around Jeff and the dog in a ferocious game of tug of war. After completing the circle of bedroom and bathroom and office as she pointed out highlights of the 'community', we ended up in the kitchen where she presented with an open arm "…the cookie making counter; suitable for making Christmas cookies and Hanukah cookies and well, really any holiday cookies…”
Read MoreI think many of you know I have been writing a book for the last 4 years. I began in January of the year 2020. You know that year. You know the year our world seemed to turn upside down and inside out. We were separated and isolated and our plans, so hopefully planned, were dashed to the ground while we waited and waited…
I sit at the same desk this morning I sat at then. The first three months of that year I faithfully started reading a chronological New Testament Bible, stepping into discovering Jesus anew. My neighbor Hannah and I had multiple engagements scheduled to share The Loving Father Project, songs from her album about God the Father's love interlaced with stories from my book Genesis. Of course, by the end of April, all gatherings had been canceled. Including all in-person services of the church my husband and I belonged to as members.
Read More"This is the longest goodbye…" Nancy said, and I think I agree. It is a perfect fall day here on Shady Lane. The sun is low, light filtering through my cousin Jack's oak leaves. The air stirs with a soft breeze, and the American flag in its stars and stripes glory sways from its perch on the front porch. We haven't covered the pool this year, so the water still ripples that perfect shade of 1950s blue. And I am still here camping out in my mother's house.
It is under contract. We have agreed on a short list of repairs. The movers come this week to pack up Nancy's furniture, with its own pedigree of family history; the Tanner pie safe and the turn-of-the-century white kitchen cabinet with red enamel trim (both of them refinished painstakingly by Daddy), Mama Cunningham's iron bed, the vintage formica kitchen table picked up from the side of the road, and oh shoot, we still haven't gone through those last two photo albums we just discovered – both from the 1940s, Daddy in France, Momma in nurses training at Greenville General Hospital and then stationed in Mississippi. At that point in time, they were on very different trajectories. It would be 10 years before their paths crossed again.
Read MoreI am waiting these days. But I am not sitting quietly, hands folded in my lap, feet firmly placed on the floor. It is tempting since my calendar appears to be relatively empty day after day after day – interrupted with prayer penciled in on Tuesdays, Mary Hall Freedom Village on Fridays, and church on Sundays. Perhaps that doesn't sound empty – but for me, it stretches out like a calm reflective sea. But it is an illusion.
Because the plumbers are here in Greenville in both bathrooms and the water is off and rumor has it they will return again next week when the replacement diverter for the 70-year-old plumbing arrives. The front yard is carpeted in their wheat straw and hopeful grass seeds from replacing piping for the gray water the week before. They did things differently in the 1950s out in the country. Old houses have old problems, and we mean to solve many of them in this quiet month of August.
Read MoreThere she was. Sashaying down the aisle to the right of where I sat in my pew at church; petite and blond, black skirt short, sweater formfitting. Knee-high black boots, a beret perched at a jaunty angle on her head. A kindred spirit. We had not met, but I knew that I knew her well. I was in my early 40s, she must have been in her early 60s, yet she moved with the energy of a woman in her 30s. Poised, confident, strong. My introduction to Joan Christopher Quillen from afar. I knew, the moment I saw her we would become dear friends.
I don’t remember when we actually met. I just know I was drawn to her like a bear to honey, and she to me. Our spirits aligned. Our values were perfectly in sync. I was her biggest fan, and she mine.
Read MoreIt is a spring morning. The earth has washed itself clean after two days of steady rain. The grass is greener. The limbs of the white oaks stretch overhead black against the mist of the morning heavens. A dog beside me on the window seat grows impatient for me to fix her breakfast, but my coffee is hot, and I want to enjoy the quiet entrance of the day just a little bit longer.
These days are numbered. The house that has always been home for me will soon have a sign in the front yard. Papers from our meeting with the realtor are still spread across the table, waiting to be read closely and signed. My to-do list this week includes ‘call the lawyer’ along with ‘finish painting the baseboards’ and ‘clear out the garage’. This is a season of change. A season that started almost a year ago and is accelerating.
Read MoreSix days before the Passover, Jesus, therefore, came to Bethany where Lazarus was…
John gives us everything we need to know in this introduction to the dinner. I imagine the invitation was engraved on heavy cream-colored stationary with a classic yet elegant script in gold. The date; six days before Passover. The next day they will be guiding the donkey through the streets of Jerusalem paved with cloaks and palm branches to the shouts of “Hosanna!” But tonight, it is a quiet affair in Bethany at the home of their friend Simon the leper (obviously it goes without saying he has been healed of his skin disease). There they all are, reclining at the table, a feast of celebration spread out before them. They have great reason to celebrate; Lazarus, once dead, is now very much alive!
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