Help Wanted!!!

Hello, friends!

Last year around Christmas time, I began writing a series of essays, filled with “half-baked ideas” about Christmas and the cookies we eat around that time of year. Well, the time has come to revise them. I would like to take a stab at publishing them, and I’m praying to that end; however, even if God closes that door, I do want to revisit and improve them.

To revise them well, I need your input.

Here’s are some ways that you can help, if you have the time.

1) you can pray for me as I finish writing and revising =) any time the subject comes to mind, pray about it with me =)

2) if you read them last Christmas and have a minute to drop a comment to me, I’d like to know which one (or ones) stood out to you the most vividly–I mean, which ones come to mind most readily without your having to re-read them? And if you can tell me something that was memorable about it (or them), I’d be even more grateful!

3) if you have the time to re-read one or more of them (or to read them for the first time) and can comment on them, I’d like to know which statements made the most sense, which connections were clearest to you, which lines you liked best, anything like that. It helps to know which parts worked best so that I don’t lose them!

4) mention them to people who might find them enjoyable. invite them to read and comment on them

To access them, you can click on the “2007 Christmas Cookies” link at the top of my blog home page.

Thank you for your help and for you time and for your support and for your prayers.
Thank you for your comments, one of the most enjoyable parts about blogging.

Merry Christmas!

ministry quotes

Funny how God brings things together from different sources! Last week, His topic seemed to be “ministry.” Here are two quotations that He used to get me thinking, two quotations from different sources.

>“The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
~Frederick Buechner (qtd by Richard M. Webster in “Study to Enrich Inquirers and Candidates” Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) From Sunday School class (a study on our calling to ministry as Christians)

God is always working where the world’s deep hungers are located. Sometimes they’re buried very deeply, but He knows just how deeply they’re buried. I want to be where He is, doing what He created me to love doing.

> “Ministry is only an outward manifestation of our relationship to God.  Without the relationship, ministry is just dust.  With it, ministry is gold.”
~from an e-mail to me by a friend and former teacher, Jody Wong

I love this quotation the most. Sometimes when ministries change, we start to feel that perhaps we have made God unhappy with us or feel as though our closeness to Him is dependent upon what we are doing for Him. Over this past year, He has been showing me that my relationship to Him is the thing that will always go deeper than any ministry.

Esperando

Hoping.
Waiting.
The Spanish verb “esperar” means two things: “to hope” and “to wait.”
I wonder how they translate this verse:
Psalm 130:5-5
5. I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.

A few months ago, our pastor did a series on the seven Hebrew verbs translated “wait on the LORD” in the Old Testament and the things they teach us about waiting for God. Waiting is not something that is easy to do. We grow tired. We become discouraged. We think that perhaps we missed the bus and there’s really no point in waiting anymore. We give up and throw in the towel and go away–if you were waiting for any activity on this blog, you probably gave up a long time ago!

But Pastor pointed out that waiting on someone shows how valuable they are to us. And it’s true. Think of how a parents waits for his baby to be born or how a gardener puts in seedlings in hopes of a good harvest at the end of the summer. But I know it’s true even more from my own life as people often end up waiting for me. I have heard over and over that being on time shows a regard for the valuable time of those I am meeting; true, but being waited for has showed how much those waiting for me regard me. Not that I am making them wait as a test to see how much I am loved! God forbid! No, the tardiness is an attribute I am both learning to accept about myself and working on changing. But I know sense of value that comes from being waited for without a mention of the sacrifice the person waiting for me has made , and I know the sense of worthlessness that comes from being berated for my slowness. I want to say, “If it was so difficult to wait, then why in the world did you do it? If you didn’t want my company, why did you bother waiting for me?” On the other hand, I feel safe, accepted and loved just as I am when someone has waited for me and hasn’t complained (much).

Today, another message from another pastor reminded me about waiting on God. When we wait, we wait because there is hope. And even when we cannot understand what God is doing, we can wait for Him because we know that when He is finally ready to unveil his work of art, it truly will be a masterpiece. Today’s message reminded me that to wait on Him, I need to commit to Him the issue I am having trouble understanding and then carry on with my life, trusting Him to take care of things. The message I am sending to Him as I wait for Him is “I know that you can’t fit things into my timetable right now, but I trust that You are working things out so that they will be the best. I’m willing to wait till You’re ready to show me.”

My sister and I waited up for my parents to get home from their trip tonight. It’s late, but waiting up for them was worth it. They are worth it. [seeing their reactions to the changes we made in the living room was worth it, too]

Hoping.
Waiting.
Because He is worth waiting for.

Estoy esperando para El.

Salmos 130:5
5 Esperé yo a Jehová, esperó mi alma;
En su palabra he esperado.

what’s my measuring cup?

Grandma broke her measuring cup the other day–one that she’s had for a long time. She had put hot tea into it (it’s one of those glass pitchers that measures up to two cups) and then, after pouring that out, had put cold water into it. You guessed correctly: it cracked down the middle! (last week was a bad week for breaking glass containers! I had done a similar thing a couple days before!)

That incident sorta connects with a quotation I found in Oswald Chambers’s writings a couple days ago:

“Wherever one’s hopes are founded, there will that person’s idea of prosperity be. And whatever the soul conceives to be prosperity will become that person’s measurement of hope.”
~ April 18 Devotions for a Deeper Life Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986.

I didn’t even finish reading the day’s reading right away; I had to stop and ponder that statement. What do I consider prosperity? How do I measure my hope? I know what the “Sunday School” answer is. But the “Sunday School” answer gets its bad rap from the very fact that it’s pat rather than practical, easy rather than real. I have a vague notion of what I’d like the answer to be. But I wonder what the answer really is, what my life shows it to be. And I wonder what it is becoming, what God is making it into.

How do I measure success? Am I a success because I averaged 10 minutes per book that I had to write assignments in tonight? I think it’s a good average by the estimates I have heard, but will my boss think so when she arrives on Monday morning to find that there’s still a little more to do to get ready for the evening? Do I measure my success by my own estimations or by others’ opinions? or both? or neither? Not “how should I measure them?” but “how do I measure them?”

It’s got me pondering–not morbidly, but curiously; not fearfully, but interestedly.

Obviously, I’m not measuring my success by how early I get to bed at night. Maybe I ought to . . . =)

Dried up

Trust in him at all times; [ye] people, pour out your heart before him: God [is] a refuge for us. Selah
Psalm 62:8

Hi, God.

I’m trying to do what You said to do with my heart–pour it out before You–but I kinda have a problem. See, I tip it over to pour it out, and nothing comes out. I think it’s dried up and caked in there, maybe a little like spices do when they’ve been sitting in the cupboard too long and gotten a little moisture in them. And, well, I’m not really sure what to do now because I can’t really pour it out, see?

I took my heart to someone I thought might care to see this strange phenomena that is going on in my heart, but . . . well, she was ready to pour out her heart at the moment and mine wasn’t exactly pour-able. Actually, it wasn’t really like she poured out her heart. It was more like just shaking some of its seasoning out to flavor my life. And I really was glad for it. It’s fun to hear her adventures.

I called another friend today. Wow! Was she ever busy! I really wasn’t expecting that she’d be able to scrape free the caked stuff in my heart. I was hoping that I’d hear a little of how she was doing. I think she needed a little encouragement, and it was really nice to hear a few sound-bites of her life. The call made me smile. I hope it made her smile, too.

Another friend was a bit confused by it all. She was a little panicky, too, as though I was panicky about what in the world this stuff was and was hoping that she would fix it. She really didn’t listen but kept suggesting recipes that I could sprinkle it into. Not quite what I think I’m supposed to do with it . . . hm.

I took my heart to another friend. As I showed her the dried-up stuff that used to be my heart, she listened and tried to understand; but she really didn’t know what to do with it any more than I did. And, frankly, I’m a bit tired of talking about it all. That’s part of the dried-up-ness. It’s like “what’s the use?” Ya know?

Another friend was better able than I to “pour out” her heart. I suspect that I didn’t know what to do with her heart any more than my other friend knew what to do with mine. But somehow the act of listening and trying to understand produced a little moisture. I think the shared moisture helped, but it didn’t last long. I’m dry and caked again.

So, here’s my heart. I was bringing it to You all along; I just had some stops along the way. I’m not sure what to do with it, it’s so dry. It doesn’t want to laugh or cry but it wants to do both; it’s both frustrated and content somehow; it’s tired but doesn’t want to go to bed; concerned but not worried. What do You make of such a heart? Shouldn’t it be crying out to You right now?

Hm. It shouldn’t, huh? This is normal? You say that this is what happens sometimes to hearts that have been working hard and pouring themselves out and opening themselves up to face the elements? So. I guess this means You know what to do with it, then? Whew! What a relief! I was getting a little tired of trying to figure it out. Make something good with it, ok?

I’m going to bed.

=)