The Light in My Window

The Light in My Window

Monday, August 29, 2016

Love and gifts, part 1

I think it really hit me the other morning, when I picked up my Bible, journal, and cup of coffee...and realized I had no place to go to have my devotions. No cozy comfy recliner in my loft office. No sofa. Not even the porch swing or patio furniture outside. All we have in our house right now are 2 lawn chairs in the living room, a small table in the kitchen, and a bed. Not even our own bed, but I am thankful to not be sleeping on the floor!

We had not intended to be living in an empty house for 2 weeks.  But the sale of our house closes 5 days before the apartment we are moving to is available. Consequently, we have to move everything into storage, which means we are moving twice. And most significantly, we also had to move out of our house when we had some men available to help us. That happened to be last Thursday.

I am a homebody. I love my own bed, my familiar things around me, my comfortable routine. I don't even like camping. So this change in my surroundings and living in an empty house for this long is really hard for me. But during my time in the Word this morning, I read Psalm 119:114 - "You are my hiding place, and my shield: I hope in Your Word." It reminded me that no matter where I am, or what place I reside in, that my time with the Lord is is the important place. He is always the same and He never fails me!

Before I go any farther with writing this post, I want to emphasize that I am not writing this so that you will feel sorry for me. If that is what you take away from it, then I will have done a poor job of communicating and you will have missed my point. This is also a very honest post, about what I have struggled with recently. It is not easy to be transparent, but I do that hoping that it will help someone else.  I want you to know, dear reader, that God has been so real to me and has shown me so many things during this difficult time. The unexpected loss of a job, no income, trying to decide where to go and what to do, selling our house, moving away, having no church home, having to go back to work, and adjusting to starting anew is a lot to deal with, especially in the space of two months.

If I think about and dwell upon all these losses and changes, I begin to question God's love for me. That is compounded by looking around and comparing my life to the lives of others. Friends who are going on fabulous vacations, others having easy fun-filled summers, and even pastors who have been given sabbaticals by their churches made me feel discontent and envious. All I have done was serve the Lord to the very best of my ability and live a life that honors Him. Why is all this happening to me? Why is God giving all these gifts to other people, and not to us? Where is His love for me?

And then - I am so thankful for this - God showed me the problem in my thinking. Actually, more than one problem - the first is failing to remember that I deserve nothing. Everything I have is because of God's grace! But the other problem is the one I want to focus on, and that is this: I was equating God's love for me with the gifts He gives. Because He didn't give me the gifts I thought He should, and He was giving others bigger and better things, He must not love me as much.

What really made this clear to me was....Christmas. Yes, Christmas. I started thinking about it being almost September, and we all know that once September hits, Christmas comes upon us faster than a speeding train. And I began to realize that we have TEN grandchildren (the tenth to be born in December), not to mention 3 children and their spouses, and that Christmas is going to be very different this year. We certainly will not be able to give our grandchildren as many or the kind of presents that we would like to give them. Does that mean that we love them any less? NO!! If we give them a very small gift, or even no gift at all, it has nothing to do with how much we love them. It does not mean that our love for them is diminished. We cherish our grandchildren, and our love for them is in no way related to the size or extravagance of the gifts we give to them.

In the same way, God does not have to prove His love for us in the gifts he chooses to give us, or the ways he chooses to bless us. He proved His love for us at Calvary. The chorus of one of my favorite songs says it well:

"If You never speak another word of blessing,
And Your silence leaves me with a sense of loss,
I'll remember when my heart begins to question,
Any doubt that You love me
Was settled at the cross."

 (Settled at the Cross " by Lee Black, Phil Mehrens, Lyn Powell from "Be Our God" (Wilds).

When I begin to doubt that God loves me, I need to read and meditate on all the verses and proof in His Word telling me just how much He does! Just a few:

Jeremiah 31:3 - "I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn thee."  Ephesians 2:4 -  "But God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherein He loved us." 1 John 3:1 - "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." 1 John 4:9 - "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him."

There is another side to this: Because He does love us, God delights in giving special gifts to His children to encourage them. He has done that for us time and time again these past two months. In my next post, I will be sharing that side of God's love. In the meantime, remember that God loves you.

Blessings,
Kathi






Wednesday, August 17, 2016

What's Next?

I am at the blog first thing this morning, because I woke up with a Scripture verse on my mind. I have been enjoying these last few, quiet, precious mornings in my favorite spot in my sun-filled loft upstairs in our house with my Bible and my journal and my coffee. I'm going to miss this. I'm going to miss a lot of things. And that is why I am meditating on this verse this morning.

Micah 6:8 - "He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

There are a lot of verses that I might expect the Lord to bring to my mind with all that is going on in our lives right now. This wasn't really one that I would've thought of. But it is really speaking to me.

"He has shown you what is good"  He has shown us what is good - His will for us. His will is always good, because He is good. After much searching and pleading with the Lord for His will to be shown to us, and submitting to whatever His plan might be, He has answered by giving my husband a job. It is a secular job, in a field that is new to him. God has answered by leading us to a place to live. We are downsizing to an apartment that is less than half the size of our house. That does not translate to "inexpensive." Which means I will be soon be looking for a job myself.

These are huge changes. They are not forever - at least, right now we don't expect them to be. After much prayer we came to the conclusion that we need a year to get our bearings and discern what the Lord tells us is the next thing for us. But right now, this is the next thing.

So now that He has shown us what is His good will, what does He require of us?

1. To do justly. Just to obey and to do the next right thing. Even though it might be new and scary and hard.

2. To love mercy, or kindness. One of the sweet benefits of this dark time we have been walking through is more time together as a couple. We have been doing a devotional study on love, and one of the characteristics of love according to 1 Cor. 13 is kindness, so we make an extra effort to show kindness to each other. And when you are under a lot of stress and having to make a lot of decisions like we are, that is sometimes the hardest time to remember to be kind.

3. To walk humbly with our God. That's easy right now. When you don't have the answers and you don't have the resources, you have to rely on God. And that's a good thing. We can't do any of this without Him. We are depending on Him for everything. Every single thing in my life is changing right now, and I don't like change. (I will probably be blogging about that in a future post.) The best thing we can do right now is acknowledge our dependence on the Lord, and walk closely with Him.

Hoping you will do these things too.

Love,
Kathi



Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Trusting God in the Dark


The first thing you need to know is this: I have missed writing. And I have been working on writing this post for weeks.

And the second thing - this is the hardest post I have ever written. Although I express myself best through my writing, the words just wouldn't come. I thought last summer with my husband's knee replacement surgery and subsequent complications and recovery was hard, but the events of the past two months make last summer look great.

It is amazing to me that in mid-June, for the first time, I actually had two posts all written ahead of time, proofed, and in my draft box ready to post. One of them was a post on recipes for Father's Day. And in one of life's little ironies, the other post I had written was about the joys of being a pastor's wife.

You will not be seeing that post. Because I am no longer a pastor's wife.

It brings tears just writing that, because I still can't wrap my mind around that. I have been a pastor's wife for over 21 years. But it's true and I needed to let you know that. I will not be sharing the details of what happened, because no good would come from that. What I will be attempting to share is what Lord has been doing in my life in a very difficult season. And that theme will probably continue for awhile - at least I hope it will, because God's strength and encouragement to me is everything.

The last several weeks I have felt like I was walking in the dark. Do you know what I mean? When it is really dark, you don't see even a glimmer of light. You fumble your way around and bump into things that you don't expect. You aren't sure how you got there, and you have no idea of the way out. And every time you feel like you are beginning to find your way out of the dark place, you find out you aren't any closer than you were before.

The Lord has been so good to give me a lot of very special passages and verses of Scripture lately, but one stands out for this season in my life: Isaiah 50:10b - "Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God."

That verse was just for me. It gave me my direction. When you are walking in the dark, you gravitate toward the only source of light that you have. And according to this verse, that light comes from my relationship with God.  I have to trust Him to know the way out and to lead me. I know from my relationship with Him that I can trust Him. I have to rely upon what I know to be true about God. I might not be able to see those things right now, but I know from His Word that I can rely on my God who is good, wise, who loves me, and is in control.

So over the past few weeks, what was already a close relationship with the Lord has become even more precious. I have spent hours in the books of Isaiah and Psalms, reading and journaling through them, and praying. It has been the only light I have. And it has been good.

I know my blog has changed a lot since I began writing it 2 years ago. What began as an account of my life and chronicled some lighter topics of our home, recipes, and grandchildren has become more a sharing of my heart and of the things that God has been teaching me. That type of writing seems to be my "niche." I hope that somehow, in some way, these thoughts might encourage you. I don't want to assume that everyone who  reads my blog knows the Lord in a personal way, so if you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and begun a close relationship with Him, please let me know. That would be my greatest joy.

I am not sure what God has in store for us. Stay tuned and when I find out, you will too! Right now we are in the midst of packing. We sold our house very quickly, which was both a blessing and a concern, because we had no idea where we were going to go. It is a little disconcerting, to say the least, to be packing up and preparing to move in a little over 2 weeks, and we still aren't sure where we are going or what we are going to be doing.

Trusting God in the dark.

Tenderly,
Kathi