GROWING SEEDS: "My Letter To The Graduate"

Graduation Week  

(Originally posted in May 2017)

Dear Graduate, 

As you cross that long stage in front of your family and friends and eagerly close one chapter and open the next, there are a couple of things this old lady whose tassel was moved from the right to the left a thousand years ago would like for you to know:

Be An Individual.  There is a reason you are alive.  This culture we live in makes it far too easy to look alike, act alike and believe alike.  Discover who YOU are.....and don't be afraid to be different.  That goofy graduation cap on your head is a ticket to life.  You can stand out and you can be the change you wish to see in the world.  Learn to fly solo......

Help Others.  We all have a calling in life.  And if there's one lesson I've learned over all others, it's that we are placed on this earth to help other people.  In the book The Original Human Dilemma (2004), supposedly in hell, they sit around a great pot, all hungry, because the spoons they hold are too long to bring the food to their mouths.  In heaven, people are sitting around the same pot with the same long spoons, but everyone is full. Why?  Because in heaven, everyone uses their long spoons to feed one another.  So learn to feed others.  Discover the lesson of helping others....it will serve you well in this life.

Don't Let Technology Be Your God.  As someone who is writing this to you from her laptop with her cell phone charging as she types with buds in her ears, I know a bit about this subject.  Techno-gadgets are merely distractions.....just look around you....even us old people have made our phones our god.  If you are going to make a difference.....put down the cell, take the buds out and spend less time in front of the screen.  Put Real Life First.

Place God as the Driver of Your Life.  Really hear this....NOTHING else matters if you don't have God as your Driver.  You are traveling down the Highway Of This World at a rapid speed.  GET OFF....NOW.  There are exit ramps along the way and they lead to a narrow, difficult and rarely traveled path.  But this path is unlike the highway that leads to certain death and an eternity in hell....the narrow path leads you HOME.  Yes....you will most likely arrive home sore, scratched and tired from the bumps along the way, but you will LIVE to see Home.  

And be happy......that's exactly what God intended you to be!

Now go....jump into that next chapter with both feet!

GROWING SEEDS: "Don't Waste Your Light"

"He Breathed The Word, 

And All The Stars Were Born."  

Psalm 33:6

Picture this...

God...bigger than life...bigger than earth...bigger than the universe.  And He's blowing His breath straight-up into the heavens and making stars.  Like a sparkler on 4th of July, the bright stars are born by the very breath of God.   Can you just imagine??

When I was a chubby little girl with thick glasses, one of my favorite things to do when it wasn't cricket and grasshopper season, was to lay out in the backyard and stare up into the night sky.  I would daydream about soaring past the bright stars, zipping past the man-in-the-moon and flying straight into the arms of Heaven.  I still, at almost 60, daydream about this on those clear starry nights.

But He didn't just blow life into the stars; He blew life into you and me.  He imagined you first...then He smiled and blew breath into your mother's womb.  He always meant for you to be a light.  And much like the shining stars in the sky above....you were always destined to be a light to others.  You see, God doesn't waste His breath...He breathed you and me into being for a specific reason.  It was no accident...it was no "chance" happening.  There was a plan.  There was always a plan.

This little light of mine

I'm going to let it shine

Just as a star is meant to shine brightly as we lay in the grass looking at it from a trillion miles away, we were meant to be that same light to others.  But our light doesn't have to be seen trillions of miles away; it only has to be seen by the stranger at Brookshires, at Walmart, our friends and family at home, school and work, and yes, even at church.  It's our destiny...our one purpose and reason for being here.  To be the light He made us to be....and to love and trust the One who blew breath-light into you in the first place.

God never wastes His breath...don't waste your light.

Let it shine...Let it shine...Let it shine.

GROWING SEEDS: "We Serve A God Who Allows Hurt"

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a roomful of friends discussing each of our "coming-to-Jesus" stories.  It was a spontaneous conversation...one minute we were talking about our grandchildren and what color to paint the living room and the next, we were talking about how we each individually came to be friends with Jesus.

I love conversations like this.  I visualize Jesus quietly sitting at the table with us, whittling wood into a toothpick or something, and smiling.  Smiling cause He already knows our stories yet, goodness...He loves being a "bug-on-the-wall" listening to us share them with each other. 

The more I listened to the different stories, the more I discovered a common-denominator in each of our roads and relationships with Christ.  The commonality was, as our relationships with Christ grew, so did the difficulties, disappointments, and discouragements in our lives.  It was as though the tighter we held Jesus' hand, the stronger the winds smacked us in the face.  I would be amiss if I weren't honest enough to tell you I have wondered, on rare occasions, if whether the relationship was worth it.  I would imagine you have too at some point in this journey...if you're honest with yourself.  

So why are difficulties and disappointments part of the reality of our journey with God?  

Because in the words of one of my favorite authors, Lysa Terkeurst, "If the enemy (Satan) can isolate you, he can influence you.  His favorite entry point of all is through our disappointments (& difficulties).  But we serve a God who allows hurt.  But we also serve a God who uses hurt for good."  In other words, he wants to CRUSH you, sweet friend, by massively discouraging you!

Some time ago, I had a "friend" march herself over to my house and slam-dunk a hurtful comment straight into my heart.  It was like kerosene being thrown onto my already smoldering heart at the time.  But here's the really cool part of this story: Soon after she left, it was as if "Someone" were standing straight-up in front of me and saying:

"That - Was - Satan, Liz".

Please know I'm not calling my "friend" Satan, but I am saying he used her to discourage me...to disappoint me...to CRUSH me with his oversized foot.  And it worked.  For 5 minutes.  

 

When the winds of Disappointment, Difficulty, and Discouragement threaten to blow you off course, step back and listen for His voice to remind you who your enemy is. You might be surprised by what you hear.

GROWING SEEDS: "The Necessity of the Relationship"

When Chuck died five months ago, several dozen women showed up at a local coffee shop the next day to love and support me.  They placed their strong arms around my burdened shoulders and they mixed their tears with mine  They clinked coffee mugs as they toasted funny stories about Chuck and they stood together while they signed their names to a piece of paper around a long table of girlfriends....a piece of paper with a sign-up sheet to take Liz to the Ark Encounter, a life-size replica of Noah's Ark, in the Spring...to do what she and Chuck had never been able to do.

You see, Chuck and I had tried for three years to get to the Ark...but each time, "life" happened that prevented us from getting there.  As we tried once again to visit the Ark this past October, we found ourselves halfway there...somewhere between Memphis and Nashville...when he became ill for the last time.  We were forced to turn around and head back home.  Two weeks later, he was gone.  

As I've toured this incredible Ark in Kentucky with these 13 amazing friends instead of my husband this week, I have discovered a rare love between women.  Not just for me....but for each other.  It reminds me of the 12 men and Jesus who traveled together for several years learning about the value in the relationship...the necessity of the relationship....much like I have discovered with each of these women.  

I have also discovered as I walked through the doors of this Ark, that Jesus truly has been my Ark.  My place of safety and rescue from the impending storm, just as it was for Noah and his family. He is the invisible force...the place we put our Trust and Faith in when our lifeboat capsizes...when life doesn't turn out like we expected or death knocks on our front door.  

And sometimes it takes a confident step of Faith to walk through the tall open gopher-wood doors of the Ark to find Him standing there, offering you safety from the storms of this life...peace from the chaos of this world...and to hear Him saying...to you and to me, "Blessed are those who have not seen....and yet have come to believe."  

My friend, walk through that large open door to your Ark of safety...Jesus; it's your only protection from the storms that are coming. 

GROWING SEEDS: "There Is A Story That Survives Fire"

"Now is our chance to CHOOSE the right side.

God is holding back to give us that chance.

It won't last forever.

We must take it or leave it."

C.S. Lewis

When the steeple finally fell from a burning Notre Dame this Holy Week, it was like 3:00 pm, two-thousand-years-ago on Good Friday once again.  I could almost hear the words, "It Is Finished" as it fell in slow motion and the skies grew dark from the heavy smoke and eerie sadness.  The choir of voices from behind the police barricades...in one of the least spiritual cities in the world...could be heard singing the words to Ava Maria.  At the same time, my atheist friend sends me an email, "Say a prayer for me when you attend Easter service, Liz."  But to "who" I ask... if you don't believe in God?

The Friday He died...the day that changed the world...when the curtain in the temple was miraculously and lovingly ripped from top to bottom and opened the door to Salvation for you and I, oh, to have lived in that time and witnessed what happened that day!  Where would I have been in that crowd, I ask myself?   

Would I have been one of those in the group that yelled "Crucify Him", or would I have been one who bowed my head when I heard Jesus cry out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing?

Would I have denied Him like Peter or would I have run and hidden like the other disciples? 

 

So where would you have been in that crowd?  Would you have had your arm around Mary as she watched her Son being stripped and beaten, then forced to carry his own heavy cross?  Would you have stared...or looked away...as the nails were hammered into His wrists and feet?   

It's a fear of mine...not knowing where I would have stood in the crowd that Friday.

And today is Easter....a day we remember to stay rooted in His story...because His-story has to become OUR story.  And the words that should burn through our soul every-single-day should be "How am I spending His blood?"  

GROWING SEEDS: Jesus, Have Mercy On Me

Time is ticking...one more week before the curtain is torn...the sky grows dark...and our Savior cries, "It Is Finished".  

It was about this time some 2000 years ago that Jesus and His followers were approaching the city of Jericho just before heading to Jerusalem for the final time.  As they walked along the dirt road with the city in sight ahead of them, they passed a discouraged, but hopeful, blind man.  He yelled out over the noise of the crowd, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

People scolded him for being so loud and annoying....disregarding him as not being important enough to speak to Jesus.  But through the many voices talking, Jesus heard his cries.  He stopped, asked to have the blind man brought to Him, and proceeded to ask him a "Well, duh" question.  "What do you want Me to do for you?" Jesus asks him.

"Lord, I want to see," was his reply.  And Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has healed you."

"Of course he wants to see", we say as we sit in our armchairs reading this story.  Why would Jesus ask him such an obvious question?  Could it be that Jesus just needed him to be specific?  Maybe.  But it's hard for me to read this story without wondering what my answer would be if Jesus asked this question of me.  "Liz, what do you want Me to do for you?".  Whoa....suddenly the question becomes less obvious.

I "hope" my answer would be the same as the blind mans.  "Lord, I want to SEE".  Not through the lens of my eyes, but through the lens of my heart and soul.  And I hope Jesus' response would be, "Receive your sight, Liz; your faith has healed you."

You see, Jesus is constantly asking this question of each of us.  "What do you want Me to do for you, (place your name here)?"

How will you respond?

GROWING SEEDS: Grace Covers Sin

April 7, 2019

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. 

But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father–Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 

1 John 2:1

For two hours most every Sunday afternoon since January, I have spent it sitting next to a cute little pre-teen in our church's Confirmation Class (i.e., Baptismal-type class for those who aren't Methodist).  They are learning about the importance of Relationship between God and us...who God is (and isn't)....and how Grace covers Sin.

This past Sunday, they were asked to write out the word "SIN" in their own unique way all over a page in their study book..  I watched as my little mentee used squiggly lines to write out in her own artistic way, "SIN", all over her page with a light-colored pen.  They were then instructed to use a dark colored pen and write the word "Grace" on top of and to cover the sin words.  

As I watched her creative mind and hand working together to complete this project, it reminded me of an example I heard by Guest Speaker, Josh Hood, at our last week's Wednesday night service of The Stand.  He explained Sin and Grace this way:

Imagine you are sitting at a kitchen table with a filthy dirty plate in front of you.  The filth on the plate is your sins, your transgressions, your wrong-doings.  Now, imagine God sitting directly across the table from you with a clean white plate in front of Him.  This spotless plate represents His grace.  When we ask God to forgive us of our sins, it's as if He replaces His squeaky clean plate with our dirty filthy plate.  He swaps them right there in front of you on the table.  He takes your soiled and unclean plate full of sins and, in return, hands you His immaculately dirt-free plate.   

It was a beautiful visual of how undeserving I am that he would switch my sins for His forgiveness.  I've heard Grace explained as God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves.  That would describe you and me.

May the grace He has given you today, yesterday and tomorrow, be the grace you share with others.

Amazing Grace!  How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

GROWING SEEDS: The Masks We Wear

March 31, 2019

They say that once you top the hill of mid-life and start heading down the other side, the importance of the journey changes from one of Adventure to one of Meaning.  Ok, nobody said that....I said that....but most of us reading this right now are in the season of "Meaning".  We have shed the designer backpack (perfection) and are now toting a Walmart bag instead (reality).  The "things" that once were the most important, have been moved to the least important.  Funny how that happens as you slide down this side of life....

For my 50th birthday, my friends and family thought it would be a great Birthday gift to laminate Jerry Jones' (Dallas Cowboys) face and glue him on popsicle sticks in honor of....wait for it....me.  I've never been a fan of JJ and most everyone that's spent 5 minutes with me knows why.  But suddenly, everyone was waving at me from the side of our road and looked just like him.  It was like my worst nightmare.

I tell you this, because we all, at one time or another, have worn the mask we long to be seen in.  Fortunately, they don't all look like Mr. Jones, but we often feel the need to hide our brokenness, our sin, our pain and yes, our suffering behind a mask of happiness, perfection, and stylish backpacks.  It was easier when we were living in the season of Adventure, but now that many of us are living in the Season of Meaning, we find it harder to keep that false mask on our face during times of struggle.  

Interestingly, I get the most comments when I write about the hard times...the vulnerable times when I blink through the tears as I type that life is hard...when the string holding my mask on keeps breaking and you see the real me.  I'm guessing that you, too, are struggling to hold that smiling perfect mask on your face. 

But, if I've learned anything in my 50+ years, it's that we get stronger through the parts of our stories we'd rather not share.  It's in those parts of the story that we become unstoppable. Rebuilt, actually.  

But here's the cool part.  It's in the vulnerability of our story that allows others permission to take off their mask.

"But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, 

for my power is made perfect in weakness."  

For when I am weak, then I am strong."  

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

GROWING SEEDS: I Don't Have To Know the Plan to Know There Is A Plan

March 24, 2019

"I don't have to know the Plan to know there IS a Plan."

Have you ever been angry at God?  My sister tells me it's okay to be angry with Him...that He can handle it...that He understands how we can get angry with Him when He takes us down roads that appear to be dead-ends and doesn't appear to be for our own good.  And I'll admit, I'm going down such a road right now.  

How about that....I'm human after all.

This week, I have vented rather harshly to God.  The question "Why" has occurred no less than 2,679 times in the form of "Why would You lead me down this road...answering prayer after prayer after prayer....only to get me within a few feet of the Finish Line and pull the rug out from under me?"  Yes....this has been a common prayer-rant of mine for the past two days.  It feels almost like a form of betrayal and actually cruel of Him to do or allow such a thing to happen.  

But then the picture of Mary and Martha pops suddenly into my mind.  I think of these two cool sisters standing by the bedside of their dying brother Lazarus, urgently sending a New Testament-text to Jesus who is only a short distance from their home.  They know...and BELIEVE...that if Jesus will just stop what He's doing and come quickly, He can save their brother Lazarus from certain death; after all, he is one of Jesus' best friends they reason!  But then they receive word that Jesus isn't coming right away...He's staying put for a few more days...and they are desperate to understand "why".  By the time Jesus arrived where Lazarus was, he had been dead and in the tomb for 4 days.

And that's where I am now.  "Lord, why did You lead me down this road only to desert me now?"

And He says to me like He said to Mary and Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”  In other words, did I not tell you I had a plan?  You don't need to know the plan, Liz...you only need to believe there IS a plan.  Trust Me....it's for My glory and your own good.  

I promise.

GROWING SEEDS: Welcome Home, Prodigal

March 17, 2019

"While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; 

he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him."  

Luke 15:20

I just love the story of the Prodigal Son.  For the longest, my heart went out to the older brother who stayed home, worked hard and didn't cause his father any trouble......cause at one time, that was me.

When I was a teenager, my older brother who was 17, was enrolled in a church boarding school 10 hours away when he found himself in a heap of trouble.  I won't go into what he did, but suffice it to say, he got kicked out of school.  While he was driving himself the 500 miles home, my mother and father were busy making a gigantic sign to place in the yard that said "Welcome Home, Son".  When I drove up in my Chevy Vega from school that day and saw that sign, I was furious.  I couldn't understand why my parents were welcoming this good-for-nothing, troublemaker prodigal son of theirs, home with open arms.  They barely acknowledged me; they just continued looking out the front window for him to drive up.  I just didn't get it.

Many years later while talking to my Dad about this incident, I asked him why he welcomed my brother home without even a hint of anger and disgust.  I'll never forget how he looked up, as if his mind was rewinding back to that time, and told me that he and Mom were so afraid that James would not return home that night...they feared they might never see or hear from him again.  They wanted to make sure he knew how loved he was even with the mistakes he had made.....and he was forgiven.

It was a modern-day Prodigal Son story.  I admire my folks 1000x more now than I did then cause, you see, my brother turned out to be one of the most spiritual people I've ever met....no doubt because of the love and forgiveness of that day many years ago.

Thank God we have a Father who will go to the ends of the earth to forgive us, love us and welcome us home.