Nostalgia

Matthew 6:19-21 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I recently went to Branson, Missouri, to a “Five and Dime Store,” where everything in the store brought memories to my mind flooding back to when I was a child. The first thing that caught my eye was the candy. I remember as a child, sometimes my Mom would give us each a dime and at that time, 10 cents was worth a lot, We would instantly go to the candy section in front of the store and pick out ten pieces of candy, each of them costing one penny. We bought Kit Kats, Abba Zabas, Fireballs, Big Hunks, Bit-O-Honey, Black Cow, candy necklaces, Chick-O-Stick, Jaw Breakers and Necco Wafers, just to name a few. We would take our little paper bag back to our tree fort or to our front porch and we would sit there for hours and enjoy our booty of goodies and then we would be off to play with our friends until the sun went down. As I walked through the “Five and Dime Store,” there was a feeling that came over me and the technical term for what I was feeling is called “nostalgia.” The word “nostos” in the Greek means “return home” and “algos” means “pain.” I find it interesting that the word nostalgia means “return home + pain” which equals the discomfort you feel when longing to get back to your home. Nostalgia is a bittersweet longing for the past, the sentimental, the wistful feeling you get when thinking of happy days gone by. It’s wanting to recapture something you once had or once felt, some point in your life that was a golden time. Each of us possesses a sense of nostalgia when we think of sweet memories of holidays, of smells in the kitchen when Mom was baking and of pictures we look back on when we were young. One thing we can never do is go back, and things are always rosier in the rearview mirror if we allow ourselves to think of “the good old days.” Matthew 12:35 says, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” The interesting thing about spiritual homesickness is that it’s not actually a desire to go back to a place where we used to live; it’s an aching for a place where we will live one day. What we really have is a case of future nostalgia; we are actually homesick for a place we have never been, but that we really belong to. A longing to be with a family that isn’t flesh and blood, but a family where our relationships as brother and sister are far reaching to the ends of the earth. As children we learned early on whether or not our daddies were a safe place to go and a soft place to land when our knees were skinned, when our feelings were hurt or when our dreams had died. The word “father” conjures up a unique set of mental images and emotions for each of us. For some of us, it is warm and secure, while for many others it is cold and unstable, distant or even abusive. The response of our earthly fathers manifests itself and is revealed in our lives because the images of our childhood are shaped by our imperfect earthly fathers and how they loved us, if they were tender toward us or if they rejected us. By calling God our Father, we are establishing our identity in the kingdom of Heaven; we are acknowledging that we are His children with all the benefits and responsibilities that come with being in His family. We long for a day and a world in which God is praised and obeyed, a world where God reigns. Because we have placed ourselves in God’s family and under His authority, we welcome His work, and His way and we give ourselves to serve Him completely and wholeheartedly. Our priorities in life change and we long to be with Him in His heavenly home where our true treasure lies and where moth and rust will never destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal and where our hearts and souls truly belong. – Melody

Who am I

“Who am I?” is a question I frequently asked myself through the years. It was my question when my daughter died at birth, a time when I had hoped life was coming together with a predictable plan. It was my question when I struggled with sin and vulnerabilities, knowing God was distantly out-there, but who was I in relationship with Him? Did I even have a relationship with Him, or were there big “No Trespassing” signs directed at me? The inward ache longed to know the answer to that question, but the answer evaded me. I asked “Who am I?” when we began our first pastorate in the Columbia, SC, area, and I asked it again when our pastorate started in southern California. The answers – I am a wife. I am a mom. I am a teacher. I am a pastor’s wife. – only somewhat quieted the question, but sometimes they just gave reason for the question to be more taunting. I also knew – I was a nobody – a nobody who had been broken by my own wrong choices and the wrong choices of others – and knowing the inward me seemed to contradict the outward me. As life unfolded, I did learn I had to be real and responsive to the very pragmatic “me” that I believed I was. Pragmatic gravitates to the practical rather than the ideal. The dictionary taught me that a pragmatic person does what seems best, for the person, in the situation, with the resources available. Living out whatever “ideal” my thinking had shaped just wasn’t going to happen. The ideal pastor’s wife when we started decades ago, played the piano, sat on the front row when her husband spoke, and with her husband, greeted the congregation as they exited each Sunday morning. None of that was part of the very pragmatic “me.” However, my tendency to analyze and think rationally, allowed me to find what outwardly seemed best, and I worked at growing in those practical areas. The “Who am I?” question though still taunted. I seemed alive and responsive outwardly, but inwardly, bluntly stated, I was dead. My deadness though still longed to be vibrant, and real, and truly alive – from the inside out. I wanted a heart that was true before God, a faith that was steadfast and unchanging. I wanted the taunting doubts to take me to God, to allow me to call Him, “Father,” to find that God would always, always meet me in my doubts, and give me truth and the ability to walk forward one day at a time, moment by moment. I wanted the glory to be God’s. I wanted a relationship with Him to be all of Him, and none of me. I wanted a heart full of love for God, and for others, and a heart that would live Jesus, speak Jesus, and teach Jesus. I wanted to find who I was in a relationship with Him. But, how???? And then, a friend listened to everything I had inwardly rehearsed for years about the inward, broken, nobody me. The pragmatic me was looking for real answers from a real God who just maybe, would love the real me. And my friend took me back to the cross and helped me understand the power and the intensity of God’s plan, and the love that was, and is, behind it. She showed me a God I had never seen before. A God who wanted to be the foundation, the anchor, the very essence of an identity that would satisfy the taunting question of the inward me. A God who wanted to be my Father and my Friend. A God who would let me shout the words from deep inside my spirit, I am an eternally loved and forgiven child of God. That is who I am, not because of me, but all because of Him, and it cannot be taken away. That is who I am , and who God says YOU are if you call Him Father because of the cross, and you and I both are set free to live out our identity, and fulfill the potential God has for us, from the inside out. – Bev (Ephesians 2:1-13)

Under His Wings

Deuteronomy 32:11 “Like an eagle who rouses her chicks and hovers over her young, so He spreads His wings to take them up and carry them safely on His pinions.” I love when the Lord uses His creation to give us a glimpse of who He is. Our conference in Colorado this year was focused on eagle wings. God uses the eagle to describe how He cares for us. He reminds us that God is our shelter, a refuge from the storms of life. The picture of this was presented to us on Saturday when we had the privilege of seeing a real bald headed eagle center stage. His very presence was beautiful. To see this creature so close, you come to understand God’s reason for using this amazing creature as an example of His love and protection. This eagle was majestic in his stature. What was even more moving was when he opened his wings for all of us to witness. The sound that came out of each mom was the sound of pure amazement. This bird, who only weighed thirteen pounds, had a wing span of six to seven feet. He carried on his thirteen pound body around 7200 feathers. His feathers are strong and flexible. Each of those feathers plays an important part of the flight and protection of the eagle. The bald eagle has amazing eye sight. He has the ability to search for prey from one and a half miles up in the air. From that vantage point, the eagle can survey an area of some four and a half square miles. A bald eagle can spot prey the size of a rabbit three miles away! He will then fold his wings and dive down to snatch his prey. Like the eagle, the Lord will search to and fro for anything or anyone who wants to destroy us. He is able to protect us from our enemies even when we are unable to protect ourselves. The Bible tells us He will cover us with His feathers. He will shelter us with His wings. His faithful promises are our armor and protection. A great bald eagle can fly across a 2 mile lake in less than one minute. The average speed of that eagle is 120 miles per hour. When we are covered under His wings, the Lord’s swiftness to answer our call for help in our dark times can give our mind, body, and soul relief. Especially when we are in the darkness of grief. Under the Lord’s feathers is where we find our strength. We are also able to adjust to whatever life throws at us knowing we are protected with the Lord’s covering. The base of the shaft of the feather is where the softer down of the feather is found. That is where the baby chick finds warmth and comfort. Under His wings, the Lord comforts us and surrounds us with His warm love. The most amazing thing about eagles is that they have the ability to fly in a hurricane. What storms we often find ourselves in. Some storms are caused by others in our lives, some by our own bad choices, and some just because of a fallen world. The Lord doesn’t look at why we are in the storm. It is because of His love and grace for us that He calls us under the safety of His feathers. There we can find rest and stillness. There He will give power to the weak and strength to the powerless. He allows us to stay under His pinions as long as we need. In time He will gently encourage us into flight. When we trust in Him and gain strength we can come out from under His wings and we can soar high on eagle wings to a new beginning. Lord, what beautiful life lessons we can learn from Your creation. – Michele

Eternal Hope

I remember so vividly my desire to share Jesus with my children, especially as young children. Certain concepts I wanted them to catch with clarity and a childlike excitement. God loves them and wants them to be HIS kids. God is the one who created all the flowers and bugs, and rain and sunshine, and US!! The whole world was PERFECT when God first created it, and then the people God first made started making wrong choices, and doing what THEY wanted to do – just like us.......... But God STILL loved those people just like He still loves us, so God had a plan. He had a son named Jesus, and it sounds awful, but God chose, and His son Jesus chose, to let Jesus die on a cross so God would not have to punish us for our sins. Jesus was punished instead of us, on the cross. WHY??? Remember? God loves us, and He loves us even when we do things wrong, and He still wants us to be HIS kids. And with big tears in His eyes, God knew the cross was the only way for us to become His kids. But HE LOVED US, AND HE GAVE HIS SON JESUS, so WE could be His kids. And we keep teaching, and being good examples, and praying for our kids, and then, prayerfully, what we most long for with our own children, happens. They come to understand God’s love and God’s gift, and they ask Jesus’s gift to be big enough for them, and they become God’s children as well as our own. And even with the ups and downs of being our children in a messed up world, we are delighted because we now KNOW our children are God’s kids. And then in the midst of our joy, and our dreams, something happens, and our child is now in the literal Heaven-centered presence of the God who loves him, and as we walk our journey of grief, the assurance we most want is that my child is running, playing, dancing, fully engaged in delighting in fulfilling in Heaven the potential God has for him. Our grief though can sometimes shadow the God who loves us, and we hear voices and lies we would prefer not to hear. Those voices and lies though need to take us back to God and to the truth of His Word. 2 Corinthians 5 begins with the words that most comfort my heart. For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. ..... we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. In “who” we are on this Earth as children and as adults, the essence of “who” we are is called our spirit, and God is the creator of our spirit, but He also gives us an earthly body to live in. As believers, when our earthly death happens, our spirit immediately leaves our body, and enters the very presence of God in Heaven. And God has a home for our spirits in Heaven – eternal bodies that God Himself has made. So, our children in Heaven have eternal bodies, right now, that God has made. And in studying God’s Word, we realize that the body we had on earth is buried, but some day when Jesus comes back to Earth, that body will be resurrected and reunited with our spirit in Heaven! To be true to Scripture the body resurrected at that time is reunited with the spirit that it separated from. But again, to be true to Scripture, the body God first clothed the spirit with in Heaven, since it is an eternal body, must in some way, be united with the resurrected body. And the essence of all I have written is a powerful promise for the grieving mom. Yes, we will grieve, but our own spirits can be saturated with the truth that our child is literally in Heaven, clothed in a body God has given, fully healthy, delighting in all the perfections of Heaven, worshiping the God who loves him, and waiting too to be re-united with the earthly body she once had. O Father, thank You, thank You, thank You......................... – Bev (Related Bible reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-5; 1 Corinthians 15:50–54)