Mother’s Day 2012

My mom on the front row at Becky and Isaiah McGuffey’s wedding in 2010.

 

When I was growing up we had a tradition. On Mother’s day we wore a flower (from our garden because this time of year in Alabama there are plenty of blooms). Anyway, if your mother was living you wore a red rose and if your mother was not living, you wore a white one. My mom wore a white rose starting when I was 3. She has been without her beloved mother many more years than she was blessed to be with her. Mother’s day was always a little sad around our house. I know my mom was torn between being the wonderful, selfless, mom she was every other day and just needing a little time to grieve her own loss. I am thankful that as in almost every other area of life, my mom was a pinnacle of grace and compassion in her own grief, translating into understandable and gentle terms something that I am sure was agonizing in her heart.

I am so thankful that for 51 years I have been a member of the red rose club! I am certain I have the best mother on the planet.  She parented me well and diligently when I was growing up and has gradually transitioned to the best friend I have ever had other than my sweetheart, Clint.  She has the rare combination of extreme intelligence and godly humility that causes everyone who is blessed to know her to come away encouraged and awed.  I hope some day to develop  the grace and discretion that my mom has.  I have certainly had a good teacher all these years.

I hope that the Lord has put someone like my mom in your life and perhaps He is using you to be that person in someone else’s life. If you are a woman, accept the challenge to be the awesome encourager to someone this year. If you have children, start with them. If you do not have physical children, focus on cultivating spiritual children. Be that Sunday School teacher, aunt, neighbor or grandmother that some child is desperately needing. The world is made a much better place by women who know how to love and nurture properly and there is a scarcity of them in this present day. I hope you will step up to the plate this year. I also hope you have someone in that mothering role toward you.

God bless you!

Lawana

 

Me Offended?

I spent a lot of my youth being offended about something.  Much of my early married years I walked in a cloud of hurt feelings and resentment. Thanks to a faithful pastor who wasn’t afraid to speak the truth to me, I began to understand the underlying reason why I was so easily offended.

The present day church is plagued by many problems…as many problems as individual people can have. Of all the sin issues that tarnish and hurt the church today, I believe that being easily offended is one of the most dangerous.

Often people have changed churches frequently looking for a soft spot where there will be nothing hurtful or offensive. Sometimes people leave church altogether because someone hurt them with their words or their actions. Churches are split, pastors are discouraged, marriages are dulled, children are spiritually stunted because people like you and me are too easily offended.

It is clear in scripture that one of the purposes of the church and Christian fellowship is to sharpen the believer. Sometimes this sharpening is painful. Always, as in sharpening a physical knife, material has to be removed in order for the sharpening to occur. We all want to attain spiritual sharpness but few of us want to hold still while the sharpening stone does its work.

What I am trying to teach myself to remember is that the Lord sends abrasive situations ino my life. The brothers or sisters who just seem to be difficult and in need of change may be just the right grit to put the edge back on my life where I have allowed it to go dull. Whoever it is that I most want God to change is probably the person that the Lord has sent my way to sharpen me up.

Why is it that we are so easily offended by people and processes that God intends for our good? There is a simple scriptural reason. We do not love God’s law enough.

Psalm 119:165

¹⁶⁵Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.

God has given us his law, not just the 10 commandments or the old testament, but the entire Word of God. If we love the boundaries the Lord has given us for our thoughts and behaviors as we should, we will be hard to offend when God uses another person in the church, in the pulpit, or in our family to bring correction or exhortation into our lives. People have left churches over carpet color, over what someone said about their child, because the pastor preached about something they were sensitive about or because their church had standards of behavior or dress that they were unwilling to submit to. What if these people loved God’s law enough to seek it out and find a scriptural solution to their hurt feelings or resistance to change? What if I love his Law enough? I hope to find out.

God bless you!

Lawana

 

Sunrise/Sonrise

I love getting up before the sun and watching it as it rises and brings with it the warmth of color that makes the view come alive. I have been blessed in every home I have ever lived in (remarkable!) to be able to see the sun rise over something scenic. Actually, I don’t remember being interested in the sunrise in the first two houses I lived in, but starting in first grade, in Oxford Alabama, I could see the sun rise over Boozerville lake just to the South of the Ramada Inn. There were often herons and red – winged blackbirds  stitching their way through those sunrises.

The next house I lived in from 5th grade until 10th, had a hilltop and another house due East so sunrise came a while after daylight. I missed the early hues and subtle changes of the sunrise there, but that place carried with it the greatest variety of fragrance and bird song I think I have ever known. Think of the Christy movies and you will have a clue what I experienced every morning, After I grew up, I saw heart-rending sunrises from several locations in Northeast Alabama, all made more poignant and memorable by the enormous variety of animals and flowering plants that join the wake up spectacle.

My husband and I later  explored Southeast Alaska. Some of the most sparkling and majestic sunrises are there. In Ketchikan and on Prince of Wales Island, there is so much rain and so many mornings are veiled in it that when there is a clear morning, everything is so splendidly clean and crisp, perhaps with a mist or fog interwoven that the sunrises you do see are so mind gripping, I cannot forget them. It doesn’t hurt that there is usually a waterfront and occasionally sea mammal play involved.

All across the United states, I have studied the way the Lord paints the mornings and evening. I particularly remember watching a glorious sunrise from my friend’s house through a window screen. With my nose pressed to the screen, the scene was “pixelated”  before digital photography existed. I just love the glory of sunrise. I admire the expression of my Heavenly Father on the canvas of His creation. Of course, I can’t ignore the obvious analogy between the sun rise and the SON rise.

As glorious as the sunrise is, the rising up from the grave of the SON OF GOD was the one time event by which all time and space are tuned. About 2000 years ago, the only begotten Son of God laid down his life and poured out his blood to wash away the sins of all who would believe on him. This was prophesied throughout the old testament and fulfilled to the letter. At this time the host of Hell rejoiced at their supposed victory and a spiritually dark night shadowed humanity. BUT! As the darkest time in the natural world is before the sun breaks the Eastern horizon, also the darkest time for all creation was the time before the LIVING Son of God broke the chains of death and arose from his borrowed tomb to walk again with men on the Earth before taking his place seated at the right hand of his Father in Heaven.

The Light of the World had dawned on a lost and dying humanity! The SONrise that mankind had yearned for had come! Come and bask in the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ! Everyone who confesses their sin and accepts the atoning blood of The Lord Jesus Christ will be saved from eternity in Hell! Thank you, Heavenly Father for the SONrise and for the many sunrises we have had to remind us of the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

God bless you.

Lawana