Life That Is Light

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a one-word prompt without heavy editing and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “life.”

 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:-5, ESV).

In Him was life. And that life was the light of all mankind.

When I focus on Jesus, I have life. When I focus on other things, well, sometimes that life can get sucked out of me.

Like, recently, well actually for a long time now, meal planning and grocery shopping have sucked the life out of me. 

If it was just me in the house, my eating-out budget would be way bigger than my grocery budget. Just sayin’.

Part of my angst with this issue is that I have to prepare different varieties of each meal because my husband is a vegetarian for health reasons, and my daughter, though she eats most things I make, is still a bit picky. So I can go through recipes and think, ooh, that looks good! and then realize, nope, has meat. Or nope, she doesn’t like pork chops.

Now some of you might be thinking, don’t cater to the pickiness! And I try not to, but I also want to make things that people are going to like. Why purposely make something like pork chops if I’m the only one gonna eat ’em?

But doing the planning and then going to the grocery store, yeah, life sucking.

But maybe I’m looking at it with wrong eyes. How did Jesus approach food? How did he handle the physical needs of those around Him?

Well, I would like to have faith that my refrigerator would just refill itself like the baskets of loaves and fishes, but I don’t think that’s what God wants for me.

Keep my eyes on Jesus. Do what He has called me to do without grumbling and complaining.

But can I say that I’m happy I’m going on a retreat this weekend and don’t have to cook?

The Life Giving Lake

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for 5 minutes on a one-word prompt, without heavy editing, and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “deep.”

I walked to the edge of the lake and stuck my toes in the water. It was surprisingly warm. I figured it must be shallow because everyone knows that deep waters are cold. And mysterious. And dark.

So I began to walk further in, exploring, a little hesitant, not knowing exactly what I’d encountered, but figuring I had heard enough about this particular lake to have some idea of what I was getting myself into.

Boy was I wrong.

I knew nothing about this vast, unsearchable body of water. I didn’t know that it would beckon me to go deeper.

I didn’t know that it would encompass me, overwhelm me, yet buoy me and keep me safe.

I didn’t know that I would never, ever be able to fathom its depths. That I would never know everything there was to know about it.

But I could see myself reflected in its depths.

And I would be drawn back to it time and time again. In fact, I would never want to leave. And I never had to. I could live there, in fact, I had to live there.

What I didn’t know is that life was in its depths. And after all, it wasn’t dark beneath the surface. It was surprisingly, amazingly, overwhelmingly, bright.

 

Where Else Is There To Go?

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. I write for 5 minutes on a one-word prompt. No heavy editing. I just see where it takes me. Today’s prompt is “where.”

In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, we are told the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. There were actually more than that, because that was just the number of men. Amazing story. Truly incredible.

The very next story is about Jesus walking on the water. Wow. OK, so that’s pretty awesome.

After that, we are told of the hard things that Jesus told the crowd, and then things He said to His disciples alone. These things were so difficult, that John records “After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (6:66).

How heartbreaking that must have been for Jesus. They had just seen what He had done. In the next couple of verses, this conversation takes place: “So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God’” (6:67-68).

In other words, “Where else is there to go?” Jesus had said He was the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one could come to the Father except through Him. He was the bread of life. He was the living water. No one else had made the claims He had. No one else was offering eternal life.

It was either walking with Jesus and having life and joy, or walking away into eternal sorrow.

Choose life and joy.

Our Unbridled Freedom Will Lead To Our Ultimate Destruction

Freedom of religion.

Freedom of speech.

Right to bear arms.

Freedom of assembly.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We hear a lot about freedom in America. But what happens when those freedoms have no boundary?

Freedom OF religion becomes freedom FROM religion. Your religion is wrong, so you shouldn’t be able to practice it. If someone doesn’t believe in God, then your practice of your religion offends them. There should be no sign of faith in any public place. That’s not freedom. It’s no longer about practicing your religion without government interference; it’s about demanding that I not be offended because of your beliefs. Without the boundary of love, that freedom has become twisted until it’s unrecognizable from its original intent.

Freedom of speech becomes license to spew hatred to any who disagree.  You have the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, about whomever you want. The other person’s feelings don’t matter. It’s not about being able to voice your opinion without fear of prosecution anymore. Without the boundary of love, that freedom wounds deeply and wins no souls.

The right to bear arms becomes an incensed fight to stockpile weapons that have nothing to do with hunting or hobby. It doesn’t take into consideration logical arguments about waiting periods and mental health. Other fears, experiences and thoughts on the matter aren’t important. Without the boundary of love, that freedom screams irresponsibility and insensitivity.

Freedom of assembly becomes an excuse to riot and destroy and loot in the name of a worthy cause that could be so much better supported with peaceful demonstration. You’ll get your 15 minutes of fame, all right, but what have you proven about yourself? Without the boundary of love, that freedom simply shows the world your worst side.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness becomes an excuse to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, to hide our elderly in nursing homes, to forget the disenfranchised, to change our gender, to marry whomever we want, or to do anything else that we might see as the way to our happiness. We can justify anything. There are no longer black and white issues. Nothing is wrong anymore. It’s MY life. Stay out of it! Without the boundary of love, those rights are excuses to make things more convenient for ourselves.

We’ve lost our moral compass. In the name of freedom we are chasing every wind and demanding that we be allowed to do whatever we want without interference, and the government is catering to the loudest voice. And the consequences of this unbridled freedom will be our ultimate destruction.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Free to love, free from the tyranny of sin, free to worship God with no barrier, free from condemnation because Jesus already paid the price. But shall we then use that freedom as a license to sin?

May it never be.

Life is Precious, Life is Sweet

“Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.”

― Albert Einstein

When life isn’t held sacred, as Einstein says, we really shouldn’t be surprised when it is taken so casually. Bombs, abortions, mass shootings, stabbings and the like. My soul is weary of the turmoil it encounters every day. But we don’t consider life sacred in this country. When people get too old to be “useful,” we forget them in nursing homes. When someone is severely handicapped, we speak of euthanasia. If a child is unwanted by its mother, we do away with it.

I, along with many, have been appalled at the revelations coming out of the Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia. It’s horrific. And on top of that, we struggle to understand the motivations of those who would plant bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Did you know that a group of families from Newtown, Conn., all touched by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, was there participating? Thank God they had all finished the race, and their families were out of the grandstands and back at their hotel, before the bombs went off. I can’t even imagine what was going through their minds.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

— Jesus of Nazareth (as recorded in the Gospel of John, chap. 10, verse 10).

Satan is a thief, and a liar. He steals everything that is of value to us, and the chief of that is life.

Outlawing guns won’t help. Tighter controls on abortion clinics won’t help. The Boston bomber used pressure cookers, for crying out loud! Only Jesus will cause all things to be new. Only Jesus will turn hearts from evil.

My heart is heavy for those who lost loved ones, limbs and eventually, if we keep going the way we are, their liberty.

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:35-37).

My prayers go out to all those affected by tragedies, conspiracies, the hand of evil and the acts of someone else’s will. That covers just about everyone, doesn’t it?