Arms Opened Wide

“I feel like a terrible mother,” a friend shared with me recently. I could easily relate to the fear that erupted when her child disappointed her expectations. How often do we speak to our children about how they need to behave and they fail miserably. Like we do with God. Now I’ve done it and meddled in an area that may cause my readers to shut down and look for something more uplifting to read.

In case you’ve stayed, God loves you. We may overreact to another’s failure because we don’t really know this truth. No matter how many times we fail, no matter what we have done, He loves you and me. He died to show us this love.

As we grow in our relationship to Him, we allow Him to transform how we think about our lives and those He’s given us to share it with.

What do you and I say to those who share their failures and disappointments with those they love? Picture the cross. The vertical bar represents our relationship to God, the horizontal, our relationship to our fellow men [including our children]. When the horizontal becomes dysfunctional, we can go to the vertical bar and cry, “Abba, Father!” The good news is that He is already there with arms opened wide.

Failures and disappointments open the door and allow God to enter and teach us His ways. Humans are not so ready to listen when they think they have it all together. The Bible is very clear that we do not have it all together and need Him more than we think we do.

Keeping Time

When our son entered college many years ago, he said the most important thing he could learn was how to manage his time. I've wondered about that, and still do. Time can be a gift. My husband says that time is the biggest thief of all. Perhaps he feels that way because the older we get, the faster time slips away.
For me, time has stood still this month of July, 2010. In joy, that our second grandson is about to be born. Life doesn't get any better than when there are grand-kids to spoil. There is a bittersweet sadness to this month as well. One of my dearest friends has escaped the march of the clock and stepped into eternity. She was a special lady, one who made others feel genuinely loved. To those of us who stumble over the spoken word, gasping out a grunt for a condolence or looking like a deer in headlights when challenged; Jerie had the right words at the right time. "A man finds joy in giving an apt reply - and how good is a timely word!" Proverbs 15:23 NIV People were drawn to her, if I daresay, like a moth to flame because of her eloquence.
We were friends for many years, separated only by time and space. Even though most of those years we were separated, I find so much of her around me. Pictures, letters, recipes and even scribblings on the back of old menus and postcards remind me of the times we had together. In the hollow of this time, I've decided to savor the years of our friendship and allow time to move forward: honoring her memory and bringing glory to the God she loved.