“God is the only comfort. He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way. . . . Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair” (C. S. Lewis).

I think sometimes we want faith to easy and comfortable. It is simple but not easy. There’s peace to be sure but not comfort — at least not in the way most people think of it. Faith only grows through trial and testing. Many will fall away, but the true faith is the one that perseveres to the end. I believe God won’t lose anyone who has come to Him in saving faith. That’s what brings me great comfort.

“A lenten prayer to avoid entitlement from Richard Rohr:

‘Maybe we all should begin our days with a litany of satisfaction, abundance, and enoughness. God, you have given me another day of totally gratuitous life: my health, my eyes, my ears, my mind, my taste, my family, my freedom, my education, clean water, more than enough food, a roof over my head, a warm bed and blanket, friends, sunshine, a beating heart, and your eternal love and guidance.

To any one of these we must say, “And this is more than enough!'”

I’m sure I’ve posted this before — and it’s a bit early since Lent doesn’t officially start until Wednesday — but this is true no matter what time or season of the year it is. We all need a lesson from time to time in enoughness to avoid the trap of entitlement that so many have fallen into.

I still think if we spent more time giving thanks for what we have, we’d spend a lot less time being envious of those who have what we don’t (and what we think we need). It keeps us from the sin of comparison, which is the thief of joy.

Lord, thank you for all that I have — my health, my home, my family, my friends, my job, my car, and so many other things (not forgetting the grace and love from You that keeps me alive and that saved me). For all these, I say, “This is more than enough!”

This is a reminder to myself. I need Jesus.

I need Jesus more than I need a wife.

I need Jesus more than I need financial stability.

I need Jesus more than I need a newer car.

I need Jesus more than I need that next flannel shirt.

I need Jesus more than I need that next vacation.

I need Jesus more than I need to see “my people” elected into office.

I need Jesus more than I need to see everybody else abiding by the code of conduct that I decide is fitting.

I need Jesus more than I need coffee.

I need Jesus more than I need the next breath.

I need Jesus more than I need to be affirmed and acknowledged and loved.

I need Jesus more than any self-help study or any 10 steps to a better me program.

I need Jesus. Period.

“Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books. Words whispered, shouted, and sung. Words that move, dance, and change in size and color. Words that say, ‘Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me, sleep with me,’ but most of all, ‘buy me.’ With so many words around us, we quickly say: ‘Well, they’re just words.’ Thus, words have lost much of their power.

Still, the word has the power to create. When God speaks, God creates. When God says, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), light is. God speaks light. For God, speaking and creating are the same. It is this creative power of the word we need to reclaim. What we say is very important. When we say, ‘I love you,’ and say it from the heart, we can give another person new life, new hope, new courage. When we say, ‘I hate you,’ we can destroy another person. Let’s watch our words” (Henri Nouwen).

The old saying that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me is a lie. Words spoken in hatred and anger have done more damage that all the sticks and stones put together. The damage isn’t always apparent. Sometimes, it doesn’t show itself to the naked eye. But people carry more grievous wounds from words than from any physical harm. Words can harm. Words can kill.

That’s why James talks about the tongue so much. He said that such a small instrument can cause a world of destruction or can bring healing and wholeness. He also said that you can’t say you love God and hate your brother. You can’t speak about love to God and then use that same tongue to defile and denigrate others.

Choose your words wisely. It is true that we have two ears and one mouth so that we listen twice as much as we speak. Let your words be full of wisdom and not wounding, for building up and not breaking down.

“May the words that come out of my mouth and the musings of my heart
    meet with Your gracious approval,
    O Eternal, my Rock,
    O Eternal, my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14, The Voice).

“Be thankful for the smallest blessing, and you will deserve to receive greater. Value the least gifts no less than the greatest and simple graces as especial favors. If you remember the dignity of the Giver, no gift will seem small or mean, for nothing can be valueless that is given by the most high God” (Thomas a Kempis).

Sometimes, I wonder if we really even know what constitutes a small blessing versus a large blessing. I keep thinking about the story where thieves broke into a pawn shop, but they didn’t steal anything. Instead, they switched all the price tags, so that the big items went for pennies and the smaller items cost a fortune.

In the current culture, what we esteem as valuable and what we discard as worthless are sometimes mixed up and messed up. We hold entertainers very highly and make them rich off of our adoration, while we throw pennies at our essential workers– those teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, firemen, and so forth who really are what hold the society together.

Is is any wonder we don’t get God’s ways? What He values and what we value are sometimes very different things. We treasure the temporary while God tells us to seek the timeless and eternal treasures that can never be taken away and that never rust or decay.

To be thankful for the smallest blessings is to begin to see through God’s eyes what matters most and what is really priceless in the grand scheme of eternity. To God, the value of one human soul is worth more than all the gold and silver and diamonds and rubies in the world. To God, that soul was worth dying for. And that soul was yours.

I’d amend that last statement. Someone is always watching when we go through our daily trials and turmoil. God sees and God knows, and that is enough.

I believe it’s one thing to die once for your faith in the literal and grand sense and quite another to die daily to yourself in a million small ways. I’d hope hat I could be bold enough to give my life for Jesus, should it be required, but I know that I experience a lot of little deaths every day in the form of inconveniences, sacrifice, discomfort, and other losses.

Maybe if you’re able to learn how to die to self in small ways, when the time comes, it will make the grand sacrifice possible. You see that the same grace that enables you to endure the daily trials will be with you in those final moments.

Selfishly speaking, I don’t want to see anyone called to lay down their lives for Jesus. I don’t want it to come to that. Yet I know in many places of the world, it does. To be a believer is to invite persecution and martyrdom.

Lord, help me to be faithful, no matter what. Help all your children to trust you, no matter what. Remind us of Your promise that you will be with us to the end . . . and beyond . . . no matter what.

Over my week of quarantine, I did a little bit of early spring cleaning. Ok, I did a lot. I didn’t realize how much clutter I had until I got too far into it to back out. I was starting to think I’d made a huge mistake.

I confess I had lots and lots of old papers I had just stuffed into drawers, hoping to one day get to them. It was not my finest moment or one of my smartest moves, but that’s where I was. I had a lot to go through and clean out.

I didn’t have room to put anything. I had turned into a borderline hoarder (or maybe just a full-fledged hoarder who would’ve ended up on one of those reality shows in 20 years). It was not pretty.

But I got rid of a lot. I took a car load to recycling. I took two loads to Goodwill. It’s funny, but it’s almost like I can think more clearly without so much clutter.

I think spiritually speaking, God sometimes leads us through seasons of letting go. He wants us to get rid of the bad– bad habits, bad ways of thinking, bad choices– to make room. He even has us to let go of the good that hinders us from receiving God’s best.

So many of us, including me, live divided and distracted lives. We have so many things demanding our attention at every moment that it leaves precious little room and time for God. And God is so much more important than anything else that competes for our affection and itinerary. We crowd God out in a sense by leading hurried, hectic lives with too many irons in too many fires.

It’s good to make room for solitude and quiet. It’s good to have time to dig deep into God’s word, not just glance over it occasionally. It’s good to have hobbies and passions and activities, but under one overriding priority of knowing God and making Him known. That trumps all else.

Plus, I found a few hidden treasures that I’d forgotten about over the years. When you make time and room for God, you always find the reward far exceeds any sacrifices you might make. You find that the more room for God you make, the more of God you see working in and around you.

I won’t give away who wrote this until the end because I don’t want it to color what you read. Just read this true story and be ready to have your mind blown and your heart encouraged.

“Once when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for the circus.

Finally, there was only one other family between us and the ticket counter. This family made a big impression on me.

There were eight children, all probably under the age of 12. The way they  were dressed, you could tell they didn’t have a lot of money, but their clothes were neat and clean.

The children were  well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two, behind their  parents, holding hands. They were excitedly jabbering about the clowns,  animals, and all the acts they would be seeing that night. By their excitement you could sense they had never been to the circus before. It would be a highlight of their lives.

The father and mother were at the head of the pack standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband’s hand, looking up at him as if to say, ‘You’re my knight in shining armor.’ He was smiling and enjoying seeing his family happy.

The ticket lady asked the man how many tickets he wanted? He proudly responded, ‘I’d like to buy eight children’s tickets and two adult tickets, so I can take my family to the circus.’ The ticket lady stated the price.

The man’s wife let go of his hand, her head dropped, the man’s lip began to quiver. Then he leaned a little closer and asked, ‘How much did you say?” The ticket lady again stated the price.

The man didn’t have enough money. How was he supposed to turn and tell his  eight kids that he didn’t have enough money to take them to the circus?

Seeing what was going on, my dad reached into his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill, and then dropped it on the ground. (We were not wealthy in any  sense of the word!) My father bent down, picked up the $20 bill, tapped the man on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, this fell out of your pocket.’

The man understood what was going on. He wasn’t begging for a handout but certainly appreciated the help in a desperate, heartbreaking, and embarrassing situation.

He looked straight into my dad’s eyes, took my dad’s hand in both of his, squeezed tightly onto the $20 bill, and with his lip quivering and a tear streaming down his cheek, he replied; ‘Thank you. Thank you, sir. This really means a lot to me and my family.’

My father and I went back to our car and drove home. The $20 that my dad gave away is what we were going to buy our own tickets with.

Although we didn’t get to see the circus that night, we both felt a joy inside us that was far greater than seeing the circus could ever provide.

That day I learnt the value to Give.

The Giver is bigger than the Receiver. If you want to be large – larger than life, learn to Give. Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.

The importance of giving, blessing others can never be over emphasized  because there’s always joy in giving. Learn to make someone happy by acts of giving.”

~ Katharine Hepburn

I’ve been wanting to watch these old movies for a while now, and with being quarantined, I finally got my chance. The movies are Marius, Fanny, and César. If you’ve seen the movie Fanny with Leslie Caron from 1960, you know the story.

If not, the gist is that a young man named Marius, who works at a bar with his father César, loves a young woman, Fanny. He also yearns for the sea and to get away on a ship. An older man has asked the woman to marry him, but the Fanny loves Marius.

The girl becomes pregnant, but not before Marius has gone off to sea. So she marries the older man who will claim the child as his own and save her from the shame of being an unwed mother (this is the early 30s, mind you).

There’s one part that particularly struck me. When she’s giving birth to her baby, the older man, Panisse, asks her to hold on to his hand. In her pain, she digs in with her fingernails and leaves scars.

That got me thinking. Doesn’t love always come with scars? I don’t mean that love is destructive and bad. I mean that love is always costly. Any kind of love, not just romantic. C. S. Lewis once said that to love anyone is to have your heart broken, and that the only remedy for that is to keep your heart locked away and never allow yourself to feel or to care.

The proof of Panisse’s deep love for Fanny is the scars that he bears on his hands. Doesn’t that sound familiar? There’s another who bears the scars of His sacrificial love. That’s how the apostle Thomas is able to recognize the risen Jesus. That’s how we will know Him when we see Him.

Henri Nouwen talks about those believers who serve in love as wounded healers. We have all made poor choices and suffered the consequences of our own stupid actions, but we all bear the results of living in a fallen world. We have scars and wounds that we carry as a testimony to what we’ve endured, and those scars and wounds can also be the best part of our witness to the saving grace of God who heals and redeems. We are the wounded healers.

Love always seeks the best of the beloved, no matter the cost. God in His infinite love didn’t spare anything for us, and He’s called us to love each other the way He loved us. He’s called us to love the lost in a way that shows His great mercy and grace, not ashamed of scars but mindful of Him who was obedient to the point of death for the love of us.

I’m thankful that God did that. I’m thankful that God didn’t leave it to me to figure out a way to get myself cleaned up and out of my own mess. I’m super thankful that He didn’t leave me on my own, trying my best to bridge that unfathomable gap between me and God.

The language that God was speaking through Jesus was the language of love. Not the gushy romantic kind of love like in all those Nicholas Sparks books. Not even the love of parents for their children.

It was the love of sacrifice. It was the love that laid down its life for me when I needed it most but deserved it least. It is the love of the unmerited favor of grace for undeserving sinners. Because we could never get to God, God came to us and spoke to us in a language we could understand. He became the language we could understand.

The language of Jesus. The language of love.