O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.
Archive for the ‘Faith’ Category
Sunday
Posted in Faith on April 13, 2008| 6 Comments »
Sunday
Posted in Faith on March 30, 2008| 10 Comments »
Because He Lives
Posted in Faith on March 23, 2008| 9 Comments »
(Quite possibly my favorite hymn in the universe)
God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
How sweet to hold a newborn baby,
And feel the pride and joy he gives.
But greater still the calm assurance,
This child can face uncertain days because He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
And then one day I’ll cross the river,
I’ll fight life’s final war with pain.
And then as death gives way to victory,
I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He lives.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone!
Because I know He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He lives!
Deuteronomy 8:7,10
For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—
a land with streams and pools of water,
with springs flowing in the valleys and hills…
…When you have eaten and are satisfied,
praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.
Sunday
Posted in Faith on February 17, 2008| 1 Comment »
2 Samuel 22:33-34
It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.
Sunday
Posted in Faith on February 10, 2008| 1 Comment »
Isaiah 61:11
For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.
Why?
Posted in Faith on January 30, 2008| 36 Comments »
Snow fell all morning as we struggled our way through school. What was piling outside the sliding glass door was so much more interesting than what was on the page. Finally we got enough accomplished that I called it quits. After a quick lunch, the kids bundled up in about a million layers and roared out to play in the snow. It’d been windy too, and the drifts made some awesome heaps.
The younger kids rassled and thrashed and heaved snow everywhere. Amid the play, the big boys also shoveled the drive (for the princely sum of $7 each) and my 17 year old daughter and I took turns with the camera. It wasn’t till a good hour later that they all trundled back in, touching my face with their icy hands, delighting at my shocked recoil, and heaping their dripping coats around the fireplace to dry.
We hooked the camera up to the TV to look at the pictures we’d taken, and exclaimed over the amazing amount of snow that had fallen. As we looked at the pictures, I told our newest daughters that this was the snowiest winter we’d had in years. “I think God knew you wanted to see snow and He’s making sure you have plenty of it to play in,” I told hem with a smile.
My 12 year old smiled, momentarily pleased. Then a shadow crossed her face. “Yes, I wanted snow. But I wanted my [Ethiopian] mom too. I prayed for her to get better. Why did He say no to that?”
My heart was suddenly heavy for her. I told her how sorry I was about her first mom, and listened as she talked awhile longer. But my words of consolation felt as weighty to me as confetti.
This evening I am still wondering what I could have said. Was there something that would have eased her pain, helped her make sense of her life, pointed her towards faith?
My faith in God is foundational to my life. Despite the bad things He’s allowed, I’ve had such abundant evidence that God watches over me. I have no doubt that He cares about the details of my life. I pray my children willl all have that faith. But is faith easy for me because I’ve led a privileged life? How hard would it be for me to trust if I’d lost MY mom at age 9?
How do you help a child find a way to trust when she has such intimate experience with a time when God let the bottom drop out of her world — in spite of her prayers?
Sunday
Posted in Faith on January 27, 2008| 5 Comments »
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him
Psalm 103:13
For Kelli
Posted in Faith, Window On The World on January 22, 2008|
Read this. Thanks.
Gifts to the Future
Posted in Faith on January 16, 2008| 11 Comments »
(I am re-running this post from November 2006 (see the comments about it here) as a submission for a writing contest that Lysa TerKeurst is having on her blog. Go check it out and submit something yourself if you’d like!)
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Gifts to the Future
This evening while wrapping the first gifts of the Christmas season, I once again caught myself thinking very un-Christmasy thoughts. During my first gift-wrapping session each year, with a feeling akin to superstition, I make sure to wrap at least one gift for each person in my family before I quit wrapping. Labelled, with a handwritten little ‘I love you’ message and placed under the tree.
Only when I have wrapped a gift for every single person can I quit, relieved. Now if (heaven forbid) something happened to me before Christmas came, each of my precious ones would have a Christmas gift from me.
This morbid little obsession began the year my husband’s grandmother died. She died in early December, and as we cleaned out her house after the funeral, we discovered sacks of wrapped Christmas gifts, all carefully labeled with family member’s names.
We brought home our gifts and put them under the tree. Over the days that followed, as we ate casseroles from kind friends and opened sympathy cards and watered the death-bouquet on our dining room table, we also stole looks at the mysterious gifts from her.
On Christmas Eve we opened them to discover hand made Christmas stockings for each of our 4 children, and a Christmas tree skirt for John and me. Those were some of the most precious gifts I’d ever gotten. Gifts made for us while she lived, and opened by us after she died.
Since then, wrapping Christmas gifts for my family makes me morbid. It reminds me of my frailty, and of my longing to leave of part of myself with my loved ones. Yes, Grandma was in her 70’s when she died, and I’m only 39. Lord-willing, I’ll run through reams more Christmas wrap before I make my way to Heaven. Heck, I have every intention of wrapping gifts for great-grandkids, just as John’s grandmother did. But you never know. And so I wrap quickly, and sit back in relief when everyone has a gift.
Thinking this evening I realized that the really important gifts from John’s grandmother were not wrapped in red Christmas paper. Her steady love. Her beautiful smile. Her open Bible next to her rocking chair. Her adoration of our children. The words she spoke so often: “You kiddies are doing so well! I’m so proud of you!” Those were her most precious gifts to us.
Those gifts from her make me think of the gifts I hope to pass on to my precious ones. Hope for the future. Warm-heartedness. A tendency to break into song as if life is some wacky musical. Faith in God above all else. I pray that no matter what happens, my children will know that legacy passed on by me.
As much as I am looking forward to Christmas when I can watch my children and my husband opening the gifts I wrapped in paper for them this evening, those gifts are as dust compared to the gifts I cannot wrap — the gifts I am doing my daily best to give my family, a song and a smile and a hug and a prayer at a time.
Mary Ostyn
owlhaven.wordpress.com 