Footsteps

This is the video "Footsteps" by New Tribes Mission, featuring the Bible Translator Lisa Kappeler.  It's an amazing look into the lives of the people serving the Lord on the mission field.

When life gives you lemons...

Have you ever heard the phrase, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?"   My understanding of the sentence is that when bad things come your way, you should simply make something good out of them, or at least look at them in the most positive manner possible.  I struggle with that one, with being happy despite the circumstances, and I think that a lot of other people do, too.  Sometimes other people become down about something that we think isn't a big deal, and we think that they just need to lighten up a bit and then life'll go on just fine.  Other times, it's the opposite—we make a big deal out of a seemingly small thing, and other people start avoiding us because we're complaining and upset about something that's really out of our control.  That's where we need to look to God.
I did a study on the will of God and how we should react to it today, just so I can understand why "bad things" happen in our lives, and what we should do when things don't exactly go our way.  1 Peter 4:19 sums up the whole matter really well:

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.

That passage is really hard to comprehend, even though it reads easily enough.  Some people may say that the summery of the verse is "if you're suffering or hurting, it's according to God's will and you should respond to his will by doing good."  I disagree.  I think that the summery should go something like this: "Our faithful and loving Lord will at times make us suffer by His will; during these times we must commit ourselves to His faithfulness and continue to grow and mature in Him."  We need to trust Jesus in the times of our suffering, rejection, pain, or frustration—this is the only way that we are able to grow and do good.  If we chose instead to turn away from God and vent our frustration and anger against other people, all it does is cause more hurt, but God's made a way for us to grow through it instead—by keeping close to Him.
So the next time "life's giving you lemons," don't give them back or act like they don't exist.  Make a big pitcher of lemonade—something sweet from the pain—and share it with family, friends, and most importantly, God!

My Hero

I was listening to the radio today and heard the song Hero by Abandon.  The song has a really neat chorus in it—

There he goes—a hero

A savior to the world
Here he stands with scars in his hands
With love he gave his life so we could be free
The savior of the world

The song really made me stop and think—it's truly about what trusting, believing, and living in God is all about—the Savior of the world, the One who stands watching us with love in His eyes as He is nailed to a tree.  This is the One who let men beat Him, women spit on Him, carried His own cross up the hill until He collapsed under the weight and pain.  He gave Himself to us to be killed, and He let us kill Him without mercy.  And then we watched Him die.
Acts 3:14-15 says exactly what I'm trying to get across here: "You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.  You killed the author of life, but God raised Him from the dead." (emphasis added)

We, (you, me, everyone) in this crazy, broken, hurting, dead world we live in killed that Man.  And it wasn't just a man—it was the Lord, God, the One and Only, the Beginning and the End.  The Author of Life.  Our Creator.

He died, we live.  He rose, we'll rot.  How do we explain this?  Christ the Lord died, we killed him, but then He rose.  And here we are—alive in the body, moving, living, breathing, but when we die, we don't ascend into heaven, we get tossed into the ground.  As I read my Bible during school today I came across some other people who were wondering about this—why the Savior of the world died, and why we killed Him—and why He rose and we die.  The people of Acts were sort of concerned about the whole confusing thing, so Peter began explaining it to them.  They were "cut to the heart" and scared, unsure of how they would enter heaven if they were simply going to die.  They asked Peter and his friends,

"'Brothers, what shall we do?'

Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.'"  (Acts 2:37-38, emphasis added)

That's what the song makes me think off—here's this guy with blood running off his hands, his head, his feet, with bruises and cuts all over his body, and yet he endures it without complaint.  For us.  He wants us to understand that a true hero is one who loves above all else, who doesn't mind ridicule, who is willing to forgive.  He is the hero, the Savior of the world.

Dishes, Names, and Burning Bushes

As I was standing in front of a mountain of dishes tonight, the kitchen lit by a dim florescent bulb, I realized that I had been letting my blog become sadly neglected.  I think that my dog did too, based on the dejected way that she was looking up at me from her bed next to the sink, but then again, that could be because she has a love for maple syrup and eggs.  She has the best I'm-starving-pitiful looks.  And I usually fall for them.

But back to the subject, as I stood there listening to Cat Steven's Greatest Hits and sinking my hands into the dirty dishwater, I wondered what I should write for my next blog post.  At one time (actually, not too long ago), I had it all figured out—I actually came up with ideas of what to write about, and then I sat down and wrote them, but that hasn't been happening lately.  So while I brainstormed, I came across a totally unrelated thought: people seem to get my name wrong when I call them on the phone or introduce myself for the first time.  Grace doesn’t seem that hard to pronounce to me, but I've been called everything from Stacy to Trace—I must have bad pronunciation.  Then I wondered if I could use that in a blog post, you know, stem off of the "getting my name wrong" thing and do something cool with it.  I started thinking of passages in the Bible that might somewhat sort of correspond with that topic.  Can you come up with any?  Most likely not... but I remembered a passage that definitely had to do with names: Moses being called by God.
In Exodus 3-4, God (in the form of a burning bush) and Moses have a very serious conversation.  God's obviously chosen Moses to do His work here on earth, to take the people of Israel out of the land of the Egyptians and to the Promised Land, but Moses isn't so sure.  After a number of questions and excuses—Moses goes from wondering out loud if the people will even believe him to how horrible of a speaker he was—Moses finally asks the One Question that he had been dying to ask.  I can imagine how his knees were knocking as he asked it:

"But Moses said, 'Pardon your servant, Lord.  Please send someone else.'" (Exodus 4:13)

God was angry.  In fact, the passage states that his "anger burned against Moses."  Now I don't know about you, but I don't want the anger of the Lord of everything burning against me.  Moses was probably scared to death and didn't know what to do next.  He was upset, because the Lord had found the "wrong person" for the job.  Not that the Lord ever makes mistakes, Moses most likely reasoned that He just confused the name "Moses" with someone else's, someone braver, better, a public speaker and rabble-rouser.  But no. 
God had chosen Moses for a Big Purpose—to show that the smallest, most incompetent among us can become great and accomplish his dreams.  Although I don't know if Moses' dream at that time was leading thousands of people out of a city and into the desert with a king and his army trailing behind.  But one day, God knew that Moses would come to love the people that he lived for.  And the Lord wasn't about to let Moses miss that opportunity to love them.

Even though that's completely off-topic from people getting my name wrong, I think it's an important lesson to learn—God gives us seemingly impossible, unfathomable, crazy, unacceptable, strange tasks because He wants the best for us.  So the next time you meet up with a burning bush... but seriously.  When He calls, listen.  Don't assume that He's mixed up His names.

Honestly, by VOTA

This is one of the best songs about honesty and what our lives really look like that I've ever heard.

Eagle Lake in the winter!

The Painted Isaiah

The little kids do a special project at Home Depot now and then, and these are the pictures from the last one.  The project was a wooden snowman that they got to paint--can you tell?