Whatever He Says

Living is like flying a kite. There is a beginning and an end to the journey and lots of obstacles will try to stop you. But I will never turn back. My self-confidence will never end. It shall pick me up when I fall and give me strength so I can finish the journey . My 10 year old, Emma, showed me this poem. It is word for word the way she wrote it. I cried when she read it to me. The depth of it touched my heart and spoke to me of a child who knows she is valuable, she matters and she is able. It spoke to me of hope, and a bright future. It told me that all of the times I have said, "God made you special. He loves you and wouldn't change a hair on your head. You matter to the one who created the Heavens and the Earth." She listened. I was reminded of a message from our Pastor. He spoke of the shooting at a school in the United States where a young man went into the Science area and opened fire killing many innocents and then himself. He had released tapes to the news, an...

Two weeks ago, I sat in my classroom at church surrounded by my ever expanding little group of pre-teen girls and asked them if they've ever been embarrassed of being a Christian. "Be honest and put up your hand if you've ever felt embarrassed by loving Jesus." I said. No one met my eye. All hands stayed firmly clasped in their laps...until my hand went up. Slowly other hands began rising tentatively into the air until every hand in the room was up. "Good", I smiled at them, "I'm glad you are being honest. It's okay to feel like that sometimes, especially when we know that some people are going to treat us differently, maybe even badly because of our beliefs." I then asked the girls if anyone of them could give an example of a time when they had felt embarrassed. One in particular stayed with me. The girl who shared her story is not a Christian. She is so new and so fragile in her journey to faith. As she spoke to me, she tried to make it s...

For the past 2 years I have taught a class of kindergarten aged children at a club run out of our church on Friday nights. I took over the class after a year of some difficult behaviour. I was placed there because I offered the firm, yet loving approach that they needed. It was successful. Two years later, the class has grown and the children - whom I have grown to love - have a structured and enjoyable environment to learn about God. They like the classes, and they like me. But I wasn't happy, I wasn't where I wanted to be. I desperately wanted to teach the older group (grades 6 & 7), but that place was filled, and I couldn't find anyone who was willing to devote the time and energy to the kindergartners, so I was stuck. And God told me to stay and wait. Sometimes I really hate when He tells me to wait. But I did. Two weeks ago, the leader of the older group had to quit for medical reasons and the only replacement we could find didn't want that class. She wanted to...

Friday was a PA Day for my 3 daughters. They'd had a late night the day before and woke up a little out of sorts. They fought about silly little things all day and by lunch time I was thinking some very unpleasant thing about who ever came up with the idea of a PA Day. I put lunch on the table and called up the stairs, "Kids! Lunch is ready!". My 6 year old had forgotten something up in her room and as she made her way up the stairs in a hurry to get it, she came face to face with my 8 year old who was on her way down for lunch. Now, the problem was that they were both on the same side of the staircase (the one with the railing), and neither one was willing to move. "Mom! She won't move!" They each cried out to me. I came around the corner to straighten things out and was hit by an onslaught of all the reasons why they shouldn't be the one to move. "I don't feel well. I could get dizzy and fall if I let go of the railing!" , "I was h...

Numbers 33:55 (New Living Translation) 55 But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live. The people of Israel were camped on the opposite side of the river Jordan, looking across to Canaan, the Promised Land, when God gave Moses these instructions for them. Theirs was to be no army of occupation--they were to completely drive out the inhabitants of the land, destroying the images of the gods the people worshipped, leaving no trace of them. It's easy to see how hard those instructions would have been to follow, but God warned them that anything less than that--any compromise or half-hearted commitment--would have painful consequences. The people who remained would be like splinters in their eyes and thorns in their sides--an endless stone in their sandal. I'm a long way from Canaan, but there are a few "Promised Lands" in my lif...

Last night, I kissed my 3 young daughters goodnight, tucked them in and left them in their warm beds. They lay there praying for the buses to be cancelled the next morning because of the impending snow storm. I smiled to myself as I made my way down to the living room where my husband and a crackling fire awaited me. I settled down on the couch and remembered being a child and knowing that the buses may not run the next day. That excitement came back to me and I fell asleep later with a wonderful peace, certain I would awake to blizzard-like weather and be able to sleep in. At 10 to 7 in the morning, I was awoken by the sound of tiny ice pellets being driven against my window. The same excitement I'd known as a child raced through me. I hurried into the living room and turned on the local news. The anchor woman began rhyming off a multitude of cancellations. It seemed that buses everywhere were cancelled...everywhere except here. I made my way upstairs to wake my very disappointed ...