Lest You Think I Despair...
There is so much on my heart. Christmas tends to get me with a rawness, an amazing awareness of how much I've been given. Just how very much God loves me. Talk of babies and miraculous pregnancies and family and such. It's a hard time. Add in that it's the busiest time of the year at work and trying to get all the Christmas gifts made when my heart is heavy and exposed and the people around me are as wounded, if not more so, than I.
No, I don't believe in a prosperity Gospel. I accept and embrace the way of the cross and the ache in my heart for the wounds of the people around me. And am glad of it. Though it leaves me so raw as to feel I have too little to offer in terms of being able to interact with those around me as much as they might need.
I brought my little Bible to church with me. I need to finish recovering it so I don't use it as much lately as the NIV that Thanoslug and his family sent me. But it's my favorite. Today in church I was asked to speak about the service we did a couple of weeks ago where we went to low income apartments and did cleaning for people who are disabled and on the verge of eviction because of their inability to get around and clean. I talked briefly of the widow's mites and told the congregation that I've been diagnosed with panic disorder and social phobia but I can clean a house. As Kelly and I were going to the pastor's Christmas party Friday night we saw so many firetrucks pass us, each of them stopping at someone curled up on the sidewalk, possibly dead, probably dying of exposure, and only able to give them blankets. What little we did kept more people from being in that situation.
Any way, on the inside of my little travel Bible are the verses that I've clung to for years:
...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Phil 1:6
Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
...Behold the tabernacle of God is with men and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Rev 21:3, 4
Though He slay me,
yet will I trust Him.
Job 13:15a
A father to the fatherless
a defender of widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
God sets the solitary in families...
Psalm 68:5, 6a
No, I don't believe in a prosperity Gospel. I accept and embrace the way of the cross and the ache in my heart for the wounds of the people around me. And am glad of it. Though it leaves me so raw as to feel I have too little to offer in terms of being able to interact with those around me as much as they might need.
I brought my little Bible to church with me. I need to finish recovering it so I don't use it as much lately as the NIV that Thanoslug and his family sent me. But it's my favorite. Today in church I was asked to speak about the service we did a couple of weeks ago where we went to low income apartments and did cleaning for people who are disabled and on the verge of eviction because of their inability to get around and clean. I talked briefly of the widow's mites and told the congregation that I've been diagnosed with panic disorder and social phobia but I can clean a house. As Kelly and I were going to the pastor's Christmas party Friday night we saw so many firetrucks pass us, each of them stopping at someone curled up on the sidewalk, possibly dead, probably dying of exposure, and only able to give them blankets. What little we did kept more people from being in that situation.
Any way, on the inside of my little travel Bible are the verses that I've clung to for years:
...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Phil 1:6
Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
...Behold the tabernacle of God is with men and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Rev 21:3, 4
Though He slay me,
yet will I trust Him.
Job 13:15a
A father to the fatherless
a defender of widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
God sets the solitary in families...
Psalm 68:5, 6a