What can separate us?

I came home yesterday after six days of friendship, sunshine, below-zero temperatures, laughter, fun, trying new things, and experiencing the grace of God in new and unexpected ways.

I'm always a little sad on days like today. Just me, myself, and I at home feels quiet and lonely after nearly a week of being a part of a big family tripping over each other in a mountainside dollhouse. I miss someone's laugh. I miss another's hugs. I miss special facial expressions, and favorite phrases, and inside jokes, and the many hands that make a load both light and fun in the doing.

But I am comforted.

The day before we all headed our separate ways, scattering across the state and the country, I read Romans 8 in my devotions. Verses 38 and 39 have always had special meaning for me on the path God has taken me in this life, and He is using them afresh in my heart today.

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, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yes, the house is a little too quiet today. Yes, I am lonely for these dear ones that I love all the more in every time we have together. What I am clinging to today, though, is the fact that I will never, never, be separated from God and His love. He is here, today, right now. He is my Friend, my Brother, and my Helper. What's more...He loves me.

I can't ask for a greater promise and a greater truth than this.

Obsessed with death...and life

A visitor from a foreign country who arrived in my neighborhood in the last week might be stunned by this culture's apparent obsession with death. Just down the street, there is a house with a yard full of gravestones. Across the street, my neighbors have a skeleton hanging in their tree in the front yard and a coffin on the porch. A visitor from another culture who has never been exposed to the American holiday that is Halloween could indeed say this culture is obsessed with death. Why? they would wonder. Why this celebration of death? Why this focus on the gruesome? Why this obsession? What's wrong with you people?

As I sat in my church's Lord's Supper service this morning, one of the brothers brought up the point that the same visitor might ask the same questions of us in that meeting. You're celebrating the body and blood of a dead man? You're singing songs about His suffering? You're meditating on how he was beaten and crucified? Why are you obsessed with death?

...but they simply had some points of disagreement with him about ... a dead man, Jesus...

They aren't new questions. Why celebrate this dead man, Jesus? Why the obsession with death?

The answer...

... whom Paul asserted to be alive.

We aren't obsessed with death. We are obsessed with life. He came, He died, He LIVES that we might have life, and have it abundantly. By proclaiming his death, we proclaim His Life. By celebrating His death, we celebrate His life...and ours.

(Scripture taken from Acts 25:19)

Tempest in a teapot

It was time for afternoon tea. The table was laid with delicate china and delectable treats. As the guests and their hostess were enjoying the repast, their discussion turned to a controversial topic. One guest became very agitated and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

After an awkward silence, another guest laughed nervously and remarked, "Well, he's gone."

"No he's not," the hostess replied, "that's a closet."

How often I do the same with God. Our "conversation" isn't going well. He isn't listening to my side of the issue. I get up and storm out, but all I'm really doing is going into the closet. I'll have to come out again sometime, and He'll be there waiting for me.

Corgis, cottages, and a beautiful life

I just heard that Tasha Tudor has died. Growing up on the other side of the world, I had only heard vague mentions of her on Christian ladies' message boards, but then about five years ago, I happened to be channel surfing through our five channels of Japanese TV, and stumbled across a special about her. It was a Saturday night, and I should have gone to bed, but instead stayed up until 10 o'clock, enchanted by the story on my screen. The narrator was a quiet, Japanese voice, only snippets of which I could understand, but in showing a year of Tasha's life, divided into spring, summer, fall, and winter, I saw a glimpse of life simply and quietly lived.

The fact that I remember a television program five years afterwards has made me realize that her story moved something in me. Tasha Tudor lived without running water until possibly only 10 or 15 years ago (I can't quite remember), and I think at the time the TV show was filmed, she still didn't have electricity. Yet hers was a life filled with the simplicity and beauty of a well-tended cottage and garden, and in that, she was content.

In Tasha Tudor, I saw the delicate elegance and dignity of a quiet life, and I was stirred to aspire to the same. As life becomes more and more busy with responsibilities and problems and questions, the longing for such a beautiful life grows more in me with each passing day. May it truly be my ambition to lead a quiet life.

My ambition

In 1997, I was introduced to a thing called the internet. A friend of ours was going on a two-week deployment, and left us his computer to play with during that time. As a little missionary girl whose only contact with the world outside the mission field and her church was her few snail-mail pen pals, being able to e-mail and IM and participate in message boards was...exciting. Later, we got our own computer, and my world opened up permanently.

I was quite the little board butterfly (and this was even before the days of blogs!). I had to reply to every thread, and chat with everyone who popped up on IM, and reply to every e-mail within 24 hours. But...internet social circles are like any other social circle, and soon I was wanting to be noticed by all the "important" people in my little internet world. My ambition was to be the "important peoples'" best friend, and to be seen as an important person myself.

In a world wide web of links and backlinks and hat tips and member rankings my ambition now is, by God's grace, moving closer into alignment with God's desires. His Word that is speaking to my season of life right now is from I Thess. 4:11 - "...make it your ambition to lead a quiet life; to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we commanded you."

Does having a blog align with minding my own business and working with my hands? Maybe not. ;-) I have been so encouraged by other ladies online who are doing those things, and who blog about it, though! You will find some of them in the links in the sidebar. My goal for this blog is to share my ambition with you, that perhaps you may be encouraged the pursue the same.