Two nights ago, my mom and I finished a puzzle that a friend brought us from Disney World. We all started the puzzle together, worked on it individually, worked on it with kids, didn’t work on it for awhile, and finally finished it after a week’s worth of diligent work. It’s a double-sided puzzle with images from the movie “Up” on each side. The love that Carl and Ellie share is clear in each image…
Sara Groves is my favorite. Her latest full-length album, “Abide With Me,” is a compilation of hymns, and for the past week or more I have one particular hymn stuck in my head: “The Love of God.” She didn’t write the hymn, but her arrangement has made the song accessible to me, and I absolutely adore the second verse. It reads:
“Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every tree on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky”
Did you catch that? If every tree in the world were a pen and every person in the world a scribe and every ocean in the world ink and all the sky a scroll…there still wouldn’t be enough people, paper, pens, or ink to capture and contain the love of God!
In other words…
The love of God is bigger than the Carl and Ellie’s of the world,
The young couples in love and the old couples married for 50 years.
It’s bigger than
friends and family,
puzzles and laughter,
work and play,
music and poetry,
politics and religion,
sin and judgment,
gay and straight,
black and white,
race and culture,
rich and poor,
The love of God—
“How rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.”
I don’t know about you…but I’m so thankful for the Love of God.
Amen?
And Amen.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Help Me To Love
One thing I learned on my trip to Romania: Foreign mission trips can easily serve as a pressure cooker for a person to face all of her issues. In just one week, I found myself looking in the eye my fear of failure. I struggled with my need to feel wanted, my ugly desire to be important, my equally ugly desire to be the best, and my frustrating insecurities in being liked. I also realized something that slapped me in the face—as much as I try to love, I miss the mark every day.
The devotion book that I took to Romania was Henry Drummond’s “The Greatest Thing In The World.” I’d read the book a few years ago and was profoundly moved by its words. I find myself profoundly moved once again, and this time I am making sure to absorb every ounce of the dense text. It seems as if each paragraph that I read in Romania spoke to an issue that I was struggling with that day. I found myself in tears more than once. And from my tears—from the pressure cooker of Romania—I wrote this prayer. I pray that it will be your prayer, too, if you, too, indeed, fall short of Love.
A slap in the face.
I claim to be a person of love. Yet if
Love is patient and kind;
If it does not envy, boast, or demonstrate pride;
If it does not dishonor others or manifest as self-seeking;
If it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs;
If Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth and
If it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres;
Then I am not truly a person of love.
God, forgive me for falling short,
For being envious and proud,
Self-centered and skeptical,
Short-tempered and long-remembering,
Condemning and judgmental,
And help me to love in Love’s fullness
From this day forward.
Amen.
The devotion book that I took to Romania was Henry Drummond’s “The Greatest Thing In The World.” I’d read the book a few years ago and was profoundly moved by its words. I find myself profoundly moved once again, and this time I am making sure to absorb every ounce of the dense text. It seems as if each paragraph that I read in Romania spoke to an issue that I was struggling with that day. I found myself in tears more than once. And from my tears—from the pressure cooker of Romania—I wrote this prayer. I pray that it will be your prayer, too, if you, too, indeed, fall short of Love.
A slap in the face.
I claim to be a person of love. Yet if
Love is patient and kind;
If it does not envy, boast, or demonstrate pride;
If it does not dishonor others or manifest as self-seeking;
If it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs;
If Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth and
If it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres;
Then I am not truly a person of love.
God, forgive me for falling short,
For being envious and proud,
Self-centered and skeptical,
Short-tempered and long-remembering,
Condemning and judgmental,
And help me to love in Love’s fullness
From this day forward.
Amen.
Monday, July 8, 2019
Real Mashed Potatoes
It’s easy to take shortcuts.
Isn’t that what half of todays’
products and businesses are for?
Fast food.
Fast cars.
Quick cash.
Quick credit.
Disposable razors.
Disposable relationships.
Instant route recalculation.
Instant mashed potatoes.
But sometimes we want real mashed potatoes.
So sometimes we need to wash away the dirt,
Cut away the bad spots,
Feel the steam and heat, and
Taste and re-taste until we get the salt, butter, and cream just right.
It’s easy to take shortcuts.
But sometimes...
Well,
Sometimes we just need do the work for real mashed potatoes.
Isn’t that what half of todays’
products and businesses are for?
Fast food.
Fast cars.
Quick cash.
Quick credit.
Disposable razors.
Disposable relationships.
Instant route recalculation.
Instant mashed potatoes.
But sometimes we want real mashed potatoes.
So sometimes we need to wash away the dirt,
Cut away the bad spots,
Feel the steam and heat, and
Taste and re-taste until we get the salt, butter, and cream just right.
It’s easy to take shortcuts.
But sometimes...
Well,
Sometimes we just need do the work for real mashed potatoes.
Monday, July 1, 2019
Angel Hair Pasta
I gave her a hand-carved antique piano key. My brother and his family gave her a nice handbag and bath salts and hosted a delicious birthday meal. My sister and her family gave her printed family portraits and Amelia made a beautiful birthday cake. But out of all of the gifts she received for her birthday this year, my mom’s favorite birthday present was a box of pot-sized angel hair pasta.
One of the dishes that my mom always makes the grandkids is spaghetti. It’s easy and all of the grandkids like it, so it has become an expected go-to every time the kids come to visit.
While some people leave their spaghetti noodles the length of the box, my mom always breaks the noodles in half so that they fit in the pot. Evidently, Amelia noticed my mom doing this the last time she was here and took note of the struggle that it can be to get the noodles evenly broken and in the pot all at the same time.
So when Amelia and her mom went shopping for birthday cake supplies last week and Amelia saw a box of pot-sized pasta for the first time, she immediately knew that she wanted to buy it for her Nana.
It doesn’t matter that we already have a box of pot-sized pasta in our cupboard. It doesn’t matter that we usually use vermicelli instead of angel hair pasta. It doesn’t matter that the gift cost no more than $2. What matters is that that box of pot-sized pasta was exactly what my mom needed to feel loved. Amelia had seen my mom, recognized her need, and sought to fill it without thinking twice.
Isn’t that we all desire? To be seen, recognized, and loved exactly where and how we are?
I doubt it’s a box of pot-sized angel hair pasta, but what is something that you have received at just the right time recently? Who is someone who has seen you and given you something priceless—whether that gift be something tangible or something we cannot see?
…
Now take that gratefulness, turn it around, and find your own box of pot-sized angel hair pasta to give to someone this week. Do it for Amelia. Do it for Love.
One of the dishes that my mom always makes the grandkids is spaghetti. It’s easy and all of the grandkids like it, so it has become an expected go-to every time the kids come to visit.
While some people leave their spaghetti noodles the length of the box, my mom always breaks the noodles in half so that they fit in the pot. Evidently, Amelia noticed my mom doing this the last time she was here and took note of the struggle that it can be to get the noodles evenly broken and in the pot all at the same time.
So when Amelia and her mom went shopping for birthday cake supplies last week and Amelia saw a box of pot-sized pasta for the first time, she immediately knew that she wanted to buy it for her Nana.
It doesn’t matter that we already have a box of pot-sized pasta in our cupboard. It doesn’t matter that we usually use vermicelli instead of angel hair pasta. It doesn’t matter that the gift cost no more than $2. What matters is that that box of pot-sized pasta was exactly what my mom needed to feel loved. Amelia had seen my mom, recognized her need, and sought to fill it without thinking twice.
Isn’t that we all desire? To be seen, recognized, and loved exactly where and how we are?
I doubt it’s a box of pot-sized angel hair pasta, but what is something that you have received at just the right time recently? Who is someone who has seen you and given you something priceless—whether that gift be something tangible or something we cannot see?
…
Now take that gratefulness, turn it around, and find your own box of pot-sized angel hair pasta to give to someone this week. Do it for Amelia. Do it for Love.
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