Author: Ragamuffingospelfan

Resting, Not Rusting

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“To wait upon God is not to sit with folded hands and do nothing, but to wait as men who wait for the harvest. The farmer does not wait idly but with intense activity; he keeps industriously ‘at it’ until the harvest. To wait upon God is the perfection of activity. We are told to ‘rest in the Lord,’ not to rust” (Oswald Chambers, The Place of Help).

I love that image. Waiting on the Lord is like a farmer waiting for his crops to be ready for harvest. He has to prepare the soil to receive the rain so that the seeds will germinate and grow. There is no amount of idly sitting by with folded hands hoping for a good harvest.

While we may not know the outcome of what we’re waiting for, we at least know something that God has placed on our hearts. We know one step of obedience to take. We also know that it’s not until we stop taking about obedience and finally obey that God reveals the next step and illuminates the next part of our path.

May we be faithful to wait well and not idly. May we learn to rest in the Lord, not to rust.

Church Is Hard

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I’d say Church is hard because we’re all broken and flawed people, scarred and marred by the ravages of sin. Church is filled with imperfect people. Yes, Church is filled with hypocrites because as much as we want, our lives never exactly line up with our words.

Let these words sink in and remember that while Church is hard, is where God has never failed to meet us:

“CHURCH IS HARD.

Church is hard for the person walking through the doors, afraid of judgement.

Church is hard for the pastor’s family, under the microscope of an entire body.

Church is hard for the prodigal soul returning home, broken and battered by the world.

Church is hard for the girl who looks like she has it all together, but doesn’t.

Church is hard for the couple who fought the entire ride to service.

Church is hard for the single mom, surrounded by couples holding hands, and seemingly perfect families.

Church is hard for the widow and widower with no invitation to lunch after service.

Church is hard for the deacon with an estranged child.

Church is hard for the person singing worship songs, overwhelmed by the weight of the lyrics.

Church is hard for the man insecure in his role as a leader.

Church is hard for the wife who longs to be led by a righteous man.

Church is hard for the nursery volunteer who desperately longs for a baby to love.

Church is hard for the single woman and single man, praying God brings them a mate.

Church is hard for the teenage girl, wearing a scarlet letter, ashamed of her mistakes.

Church is hard for the sinners.

Church is hard for me.

It’s hard because on the outside it all looks shiny and perfect. Sunday best in behavior and dress.

However, underneath those layers, you find a body of imperfect people, carnal souls, selfish motives.

But, here is the beauty of church—

Church isn’t a building, mentality, or expectation.

Church is a body.

Church is a group of sinners, saved by grace, living in fellowship as saints.

Church is a body of believers bound as brothers and sisters by an eternal love.

Church is a holy ground where sinners stand as equals before the Throne of Grace.

Church is a refuge for broken hearts and a training ground for mighty warriors.

Church is a converging of confrontation and invitation. Where sin is confronted and hearts are invited to seek restoration.

Church is a lesson in faith and trust.

Church is a bearer of burdens and a giver of hope.

Church is a family. A family coming together, setting aside differences, forgetting past mistakes, rejoicing in the smallest of victories.

Church, the body, and the circle of sinners-turned-saints, is where He resides, and if we ask, He is faithful to come.

So even on the hard days at church—

The days when I am at odds with a friend, when I’ve fought with my husband because we’re late once again. When I’ve walked in bearing burdens heavier than my heart can handle, yet masking the pain with a smile on my face. When I’ve worn a scarlet letter, under the microscope. When I’ve longed for a baby to hold, or fought tears as the lyrics were sung. When I’ve walked back in, afraid and broken, after walking away.

I’ll remember, He has never failed to meet me there” (Pat Smith).

Safe vs. Faithful

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I read something recently that resonated with me (and also convicted me quite a bit). I’m someone who would rather be safe than sorry, and comfort is usually my end game. May these words challenge you like they did me.

God did not call us to be safe, but faithful. Safe means taking no risks and never trying anything new. Faithful means that wherever I go and whatever I do, God is with me, regardless of what happens to me.

Safe means blending in. Faithful means taking up my cross daily and laying down my life in the figurative (and possibly literal) sense. May we all have a blessed year where we witness the faithfulness of God rather than merely a safe year:

“I am no fan of this new trend, wishing people a “safe” new year.

“It seems this cult of safety is advancing further into our vocabulary.

“It is a terrible value to base your year on.

“Imagine if the greats of history had decided to live “safe” lives, instead of good ones? Simply take those listed in Hebrews 11 – Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Rahab, Samson, Gideon… The list speaks for itself.

“Living for safety first will see you rendered next to useless.

“It is my genuine hope that I’ll continue to do many things this year that are not very safe.

“Because I hope to do what is characterised as “good,” not what is characterised as “safe.”

“Living for what is good and right involves risk and it involves pain – plenty of both.

“But when you do what is right, you can confidently entrust your safety to God.

“That is, God who says continuously to those who do such things, “Fear not, for I am with you.”

“This emerging safety cult is best nipped in the bud. Stop saying it and don’t start believing it.

“Meanwhile, I wish you a year in which you, “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” knowing that, “all these things shall be added unto you.” (even safety!) (Matt 6:33)

“Now, there’s something to base a year on.”
—Martyn Iles

New Year’s Day 2024

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This is my favorite quote for the new year. It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while he was in a concentration camp after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He penned these words, knowing they might be some of his very last and that he probably would not live to see the next new year.

These words are timeless and just as needed in 2024 as they were in 1945:

“With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely on each new year’s day

The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening:
the long days of our sorrow still endure.
Father, grant to the soul thou hast been chastening
that Thou hast promised—the healing and the cure.

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

But, should it be thy will once more to release us
to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
that we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us
and all our life be dedicate as thine.

To-day, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light,
leading us haply to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine e’en our darkest night.

When now the silence deepens for our harkening,
grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, in thy praise.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldy we’ll face the future, be it what way.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each new year’s day!” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

The Father’s Business

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One of my favorite epiphanies about Jesus came when I heard (or read) that Jesus’ first recorded words came when His parents found Him in the temple after He went missing. He spoke of how He must be about His Father’s business. His last words before He died were, “It is finished.” Everything in between was His Father’s business — that means you and that means me and that means those for whom He came to seek and to save.

That’s our business. To seek out the lost and help them find their way to Jesus. Like Jacob Marley said to Scrooge that Christmas Eve, “Mankind was my business,” and not the obsessive hoarding of wealth and titles.

Tonight, I am thankful that I was my Father’s business. So were you. That mission that started in Bethlehem and ended in Jerusalem was to find and save us. Jesus wasn’t the one who was lost. Not really. We were.

Boxen

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I started a new book recently. I’ve actually owned this book for a while, but for some reason or another have never gotten around to it. It was perpetually on my to-read-next list.

This is a collection of what C. S. Lewis, who preferred to be called Jack, wrote with his brother Warnie when they were kids growing up in Belfast in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t something they ever meant to be published but it was stories they wrote for each other to take their minds off of the outside world and losing their mother at an early age.

It feels a bit like the Beatrix Potter books (which they read as kids) where the animals wear clothes and talk and behave in human ways. If you’ve read the Narnia books, you can see where the seeds that led to those books came from.

These stories have typical childish spelling and grammar, but also they seem a bit advanced for children who were both under the age of 10. You can tell both these boys were intelligent and well-educated. I feel like these characters could have easily existed in the world that Kenneth Grahame created for The Wind in the Willows (which is a story that he also never originally meant to be published but wrote for his young son).

I’ve included a link to Amazon if you’re interested (although I think you could probably find it cheaper in a secondhand bookstore or through other book websites):

An Advent Prayer from Henri Nouwen

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I realize that we are past Advent. If you follow the ancient ways, then you are aware that this is the third day of Christmas, so it still counts. Also, this time of the kingdom of God being now and not yet feels like an extended Advent season as we wait for Christ’s return:

“O Lord,

How hard it is to accept your way. You come to me as a small, powerless child born away from home. You live for me as a stranger in your own land. You die for me as a criminal outside the walls of the city, rejected by your own people, misunderstood by your friends, and feeling abandoned by your God.

As I prepare to celebrate your birth, I am trying to feel loved, accepted, and at home in this world, and I am trying to overcome the feelings of alienation and separation that continue to assail me. But I wonder now if my deep sense of homelessness does not bring me closer to you than my occasional feelings of belonging. Where do I truly celebrate your birth: in a cozy home or in an unfamiliar house, among welcoming friends or among unknown strangers, with feelings of well-being or with feelings of loneliness?

I do not have to run away from those experiences that are closest to yours. Just as you do not belong to this world, so I do not belong to this world. Every time I feel this way I have an occasion to be grateful and to embrace you better and taste more fully your joy and peace.

Come, Lord Jesus, and be with me where I feel poorest. I trust that this is the place where you will find your manger and bring your light. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Amen” (Henri Nouwen).

On the Second Day of Christmas

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I read recently where in ye olden days, the Christmas celebrations didn’t cease on December 25. They just got started.

Apparently, Christmas wasn’t just a one day shindig. It was a 12 day feast. That sounds like my kind of party.

But my second day of Christmas saw me going back to work in the cold rain. Not much joyful or triumphant about that.

At least I have my Vintage Christmas stories to entertain me on my long trek to work. They’re all short stories and poems from the likes of Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, L. M. Montgomery, and others. It’s so very 19th century.

My plan is to watch my Christmas movies until at least January 6 (or whenever the Day of Epiphany is that marks the official end of Christmas). I may watch past that if the mood hits me.

It will be a bit sad to see all the festive decorations come down for another 11 months or so. There’s something about lit-up houses and yards full of seasonal characters that always lifts my spirits on a grey and cloudy day.

But I still refuse to let Christmas go just yet.

Merry Christmas 2023

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“Let the just rejoice,
for their justifier is born.
Let the sick and infirm rejoice,
For their saviour is born.
Let the captives rejoice,
For their Redeemer is born.
Let slaves rejoice,
for their Master is born.
Let free men rejoice,
For their Liberator is born.
Let All Christians rejoice,
For Jesus Christ is born” (St. Augustine of Hippo, AD 354-440).

Another Christmas Day has come and gone, but this time I refuse to say that Christmas is over. It’s not like the baby in that manger that we celebrate and sing about simply ceased to exist.

No, but He grew up into the sinless Son of God who chose the way that led to Calvary so that we might choose the way that leads back to God. He chose the nails, so that we might be healed. He chose all the suffering, so that we might finally know peace.

That is something to celebrate long after December 25 is over.

Lessons Learned Slowly

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“‘A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.’

This tiny window when the world falls asleep (or attempts to) on Christmas Eve is my favorite. Anticipation. What a gift!

Yes, we will wake up in the morning and devour our presents. We will rip our wrapping paper to shreds and down our favorite Christmas fare at the table. And then, we will feel it. The air falls flat. The glow from the lights fails to warm us fully. What’s different? Time has betrayed us. Another thing we love just cannot last.

That’s when my favorite Christmas song kicks in. “The thrill of hope” doesn’t expire tomorrow afternoon. We can access it anytime, even on a random Tuesday in March. The promise lingers. The truth remains. His birth was an entry point into time and space. His life and death? A timeless revolution. When will we ever learn that our silly calendars hold no sway.

Let us come together tomorrow with the understanding that the joy that this world affords is always tinged with sorrow, an afterburn that leaves us unsettled. Even still, let us lift our eyes to the eternal and everlasting promise. Our world IS weary, but our ‘thrill of hope’ can never, ever die!” (Jennifer Whitwell Christensen).

I used to love and dread Christmas Day.

I loved seeing all the presents as a kid and feeling all the nostalgic emotions as I got older, but I dreaded the inevitable letdown of Christmas being over for another year. I knew all those festive decorations would be going back into boxes and back into storage for another 11 months.

I dreaded coming to the end of Christmas Day and hearing the words “Christmas is over” when I was not even close to being ready for it to be over. Especially lately, when the whole season seems to fly by as quickly as one of Santa’s sleighs in the night sky.

It’s like the magical part disappears and the humdrum reappears and life goes back to grey after bursting forth in green and silver and gold and a multitude of other colors for a while. No more Christmas for 364 more days.

But the older I get, I realize that what I love most in this world are merely shadows pointing to a truer form I will know in the next. Everything that brings me joy now is a foretaste of a greater joy that no sorrow can steal nor death destroy.

When all the packages are gone and decorations put away, the hope of the season remains. I can truly be like Scrooge and honor Christmas in my heart all the days of the year because Christmas means that God has come near, and that remains true into January and beyond.