Category Archives: peace

awake: why we’re thankful in spite of the shaking

Posted on by August 26, 2022

Like many nights, I was already awake in the dark, in the wee hours, nursing Kavanagh. So I probably heard it coming but thought it was just the cats making noise downstairs. But then the noise turned into slight shaking, and then unmistakable rattling.

My first instinct is always to glance at the clock: 3:23. It rumbled in layers, increasing in volume and shaking – long enough that I wondered three separate times if this one would be as bad or worse than the 7.2 we had a couple years ago – before it finally slowed down, stopped, and everything went still.

awake: why we're grateful in spite of the shaking

But this one was only a 5.1. Vin checked on the kids and reported that some were awake, and some slept through it.

And then another one hit. But it was smaller, just 4.0.

Hours went by, and I was awake for most of it. So around six when I heard the dull, distant noise, I wasn’t surprised when another one came, smaller than the first but bigger than the second – we learn to judge these things based on duration, intensity, and whether or not certain wall hangings rattle. The website said it was 4.5 and apparently there had also been another one just half an hour earlier, but it was little and I never noticed. I probably thought it was one of us shifting in the bed, or Knightley stretching at the foot of it.

That evening I heard the noise again and immediately stilled, looking at the clock, wondering if another was going to hit. But no, nothing that time, so it must’ve just been the heavy tread of someone walking downstairs.

And as I realized it was nothing, I had a picture of the Biden-Harris campaign, and their fraudulent claim to victory.

The Lord knows the days of the blameless,
    and their heritage will remain forever;
they are not put to shame in evil times;
    in the days of famine they have abundance.

– Psalm 37:18-19

The mainstream news, social media, and anyone who gets most of their information from those entities and actually believes it, almost immediately proclaimed their victory and have continued to do so.

They did it, and still do it, in spite of enormous and mounting evidence of fraud, changes from recounts, and active and upcoming court cases. The streamers thrown in celebration are actually giving them more rope to hang themselves with.

They did it while suppressing information, censoring articles about criminal behavior, and “fact checking” posts they didn’t like.

They’re doing it about the election and they’re doing it about the virus and the jab and they’ll keep doing it about whatever else they want, if they can get away with it.

Meanwhile, governors continue to lockdown states and mayors keep locking down cities. Churches keep closing their doors. And in a move that looks very much like unethical job security, doctors who know that mask wearing both creates and aggravates terrible health conditions (see also here, and here, and here, and here, for starters) keep requiring them anyway.

It’s like hearing the distant rumble, wondering if it’s going to be the big one.

Is this the end?

In the upper rooms there were little rows of hard beds, and on every wall there was a notice and a list of Rules. Pippin tore them down. There was no beer and very little food…and Pippin broke Rule 4 by putting most of the next day’s allowance of wood on the fire.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

But no, I don’t believe it’s the end. I think it’s the tread of heavy feet, or at most, the relief of pressure in a small, harmless way that feels threatening at first but turns out to be nothing but the exhalation of pent-up gas.

The Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.

– Psalm 37:13

It’s causing us to stop for the moment and examine our surroundings, endure the brief threat, but overall it will bring alignment to that same environment, and prevent the big one from occurring.

The shaking exposes fault lines, weak places that require reinforcement.

“You’re arrested form Gate-breaking, and Tearing up of Rules, and Assaulting Gate-keepers, and Trespassing, and Sleeping in Shire-buildings without Leave, and Bribing Guards with Food.”

“And what else?” said Frodo.

“That’ll do to go on with,” said the Shirriff-leader.

“I can add some more, if you’d like it,” said Sam. “Calling your Chief Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you Shirriffs look a lot of Tom-Fools.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The excess shaking is teaching people to be alert at the slightest rumble. We’re awake, alert, alarmed at the threat, prayerful for safety, and the shaking results in justice as corruption is exposed and people decide which authority they’ll obey.

[The Chief] doesn’t hold with folk moving about; so if they will or they must, then they has to go to the Shirriff-house and explain their business.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself having anything to do with such nonsense….You can give it up, stop Shirriffing, if it has stopped being a respectable job,” said Sam.

“We’re not allowed to,” said Robin.

“If I hear not allowed much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

And there’s no doubt, the threat is real and dire. Many Christians shrug and say, Well, our hope was never in a president, persecution grows the church anyway, c’est la vie, what can you do – but if socialism came to any of our doors and completely removed our freedom of speech, our ability to purchase things we need, or force unwanted medical “care” upon our children, there would be no shrugging. These are not “oh, whatever” offenses. We’ve already begun to see them in social media censorship, threats from certain employers, and in the difficulty to get proper healthcare if you cannot wear a mask…ask me how I know.

“There’s hundreds of Shirriffs all told, and they want more, with all these new rules. Most of them are in it against their will, but not all. Even in the Shire there are some as like minding other folk’s business and talking big.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

And some people are happy to mind your business for you, shaming and blaming and accusing, wagging their fingers in all their self-righteous virtue signaling. Bless their hearts, they believe everything the mainstream media tells them.

But there are more people who don’t. They tend to have better manners and aren’t as loud about it. But make no mistake, they will get loud if pushed to do so.

“Raise the Shire!” said Merry. “Now! Wake all our people! They hate all this, you can see: all of them except perhaps one or two rascals, and a few fools who want to be important, but don’t at all understand what is really going on.”

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

This week, we are gathering.

Our neighbors are elderly missionaries, and they invited us to pray with them a few nights ago. They want to make it a regular thing. They’re not unwise, but they’re not afraid, either. Over tea and candlelight, we held hands and called on God to move in our country.

Last night we gathered with friends at church, studying forgiveness and honor and submission and authority. We honor the position, not the behavior. We obey unless we’re told to do something against God’s word. We shared homemade food and phone numbers, and talked about how, contrary to pop culture, silence should not be mistaken for betrayal, consent, or inactivity.

Tomorrow we gather with our oldest son and my dad and other family. There will be hugging. There will be political talk. There will probably be discussion of court hearings, more evidence of fraud, and likely – this is Alaska – a comparison of ammo inventory.

And I’m grateful for all those things, and more.

People are praying for us. Andrey is catching up in school and Reagan is reading five-letter words. Our neighbors are the cutest. People all over are dropping the bomb on election fraud. God is giving us wisdom and new ideas; our book sales are up and I’m excited about the next project already. And my African violet, which hasn’t bloomed since I bought it who knows how long ago, has flowers again.

I showed it to Vin this morning, and he said, “It’s the return of the King.”

And I think it is, or something like it. Thanksgiving is already here.

on repeat: the power of your mundane offerings

Posted on by May 2, 2022

If you’re super spiritual, you should just skip this post. I mean, if you read commentaries and offerings and begats for fun, and you have whole sections of the Pentateuch memorized, this probably isn’t for you. It’s for the rest of us.

on repeat: the power of your mundane offerings

If you had to look up the word “Pentateuch,” though, you’re in the right spot.

(Okay, is it safe yet? Because I’m getting ready to confess something. Deep breath.)

If you have ever read Numbers in the Old Testament, you know it can be a little…

Um…well…(cough)

Kinda boring. Right? A little repetitive.

Okay, a lot repetitive.

I’ve been reading chapters six and seven, and here’s what it says – just one very short example:

On the second day Nethanel the son of Zuar, the chief of Issachar, made an offering. He offered for his offering one silver plate whose weight was 130 shekels, one silver basin of 70 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering; one golden dish of 10 shekels, full of incense; one bull from the herd, one ram, one male lamb a year old, for a burnt offering; one male goat for a sin offering; and for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, and five male lambs a year old. This was the offering of Nethanel the son of Zuar.

– Number 7:18-23, ESV

FASCINATING.

No? What, you skimmed? You don’t want to hear all about the offerings? And you don’t want to hear them repeated verbatim twelve times (with the exception of different names of tribes, chiefs, and their fathers)?

Me neither. But here’s the deal: I was praying about it, and the Word never says “Blah, blah, blah” (you’ve heard me say that in Oh My Soul before) so I asked the Lord, Why do all the mundane details matter? Why are there so many of them in the Word and in our lives?

We do all these tasks that are never finished: the dishes, laundry, making the beds, teaching the kids, commuting to work. We repeat and repeat and repeat, and life is still full of them, never done.

And here’s what the Lord told me:

As you’re reading these mundane details, you are posturing yourself to hear Me. You are postured for Me to move in all these small things. You are postured to do a productive work even though you are “only” doing all those tiny, repetitive actions that don’t seem to go anywhere.

They are obedient to My calling for you, so they are going somewhere.

They are your offering.

And in the spirit of repetition, He keeps reminding me of it as I read parts of the Bible that are sticky, and as I deal with details in life that are sticky, too.

Repetition doesn’t have to equal boring and mundane. Sometimes we choose repetitive acts because they are relaxing and they help us focus on what is important – like taking communion or praying before meals, or going for a walk, or finding work for our hands so our minds can think clearly.

Earlier this year I started knitting again while I read. The movement helps me focus and it’s therapeutic for my hands. And as I’m getting ready to change colors, I’m right here:

Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:11, ESV

If you don’t know, knitting tends to be slow work. You repeat and repeat and repeat – especially in garter stitch, especially when you’re using the same color, row after row after row.

But it produces something.

Just like pages read, prayers prayed, and Scripture spoken: They all do something.

They produce results. They create and refine things…and us.

But sometimes it takes a while to see that progress – which is all the more reason to start today.

When we start a project, whether it’s knitting, writing, building, reading, painting, teaching, or any other creative endeavor, we are working toward something we cannot see.

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion.

– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The woman weeding the garden, the neighbor changing the oil, the friend delivering dinner.

The officer driving, the receptionist answering the phone, the doctor prescribing a treatment.

The dad bathing the preschooler, the mom teaching the kid on the couch how to read.

A million steps of creative, mundane, prayerful, powerful faithfulness: lives lived in quiet, repetitive offering, standing for freedom and redeeming the culture.

We aren’t disgusted or despairing because the blanket isn’t complete yet after only a few rows of stitches. We know it’s a process. We see the unseen, and we work toward it.

And this is how prayer works, too.

If you are praying for some big situation or discouraged over huge current events — remember, we partner with God to work toward things that are unseen, and they change.

So we read books. We speak Scripture. We write words. We move in faithful obedience.

We are going somewhere as we obey Him in all these small things. And that includes reading the Bible – and not skipping the sticky parts, because He speaks to us in those, too.

We pray from victory, and we pray toward victory. And it works.

We make all these little stitches, and we know they make the Kingdom come. Pretty soon, we’ll see the colors start to change.

_____

Free printable download for you: Bookmark or 5×7 print.

the process: how we move forward faster

Posted on by July 25, 2022

Folks, it’s been quite the process, but a monumental event has occurred at our house:

We have mastered the art of making hash browns. You may applaud if you’d like.

the process: how we move forward faster

After many years of trial and error, I thought I already had hash browns figured out. But thanks to Gordon Ramsey, we have now seen the light – and even better, Vince and Afton have seen the light, and they can make them for me.

(Kav is still in training.)

And these hash browns are…how do I explain this? You know how excited an opera singer sounds in the middle of those high notes? It’s like that. It’s like fanfare and fireworks.

What made the experience even better was that I had my favorite fork. If you don’t own a favorite fork, I’m sorry; you’re missing the joy of having a collection that can only be curated from thrift store shopping. It’s been years in the making.

This fork is special because it’s light, the tines are the perfect width, and most important, the edges of the handle aren’t sharp. You’re probably thinking that most silverware handles aren’t sharp, but I have a painful skin condition that notices those things. So having a favorite fork isn’t weird; it’s practical.

Vince, however, has named the fork.

He calls it Penelope. And that is weird.

The skin condition, along with the lack of sleep and other health issues are slowly getting better, but they, too, are a work in progress. I wish it was instant. I hate that it’s not. But most things aren’t instant; almost everything worth doing requires a process.

Right from the get go, in the beginning, God created. The world was formless and void, dark, and God hovered. It, too, required a series of actions to achieve the final result. The God who made us to create, who made us like Him, designed us to require process.

But we want the finished work now.

Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I have prepared.

– Exodus 22:20

There’s this amazing part in Exodus (and later in Deuteronomy) when the Lord calls the Israelites to possess the land. He says He’ll help them, but He won’t do it in one year “lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.”

And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. 

– Exodus 23:28-30

It fascinates me. The Lord told them to do something — He wanted them to do it, knew they couldn’t do it without Him – but then He promised that His help would only come little by little.

So annoying.

But He wanted them to grow. He knew they weren’t ready to possess the land fully yet.

He was teaching them that it was a process.

And maybe, like me, you are looking at things that seem to be taking way too long to come to completion. And like me, you need to hear that He is at work, both in clearing the land ahead of us, and also in clearing the land within us.

Or maybe, also like me, you are navigating situations that seem like a distraction from the work you ought to be doing.

A crisis comes up and it stalls progress – you can’t move forward and clear the land because now you’ve got to deal with this new situation, and it puts the real work on the back burner. We try to heal in one area but something just keeps knocking into it, constantly bruising it or tearing the wound open.

How can we move forward when we’ve got this new situation to deal with? How are we ever going to get this work done if it keeps getting pushed to the back burner?

And He says, I work on the back burner, too, Love.

I’m not limited to one location like you are.

While you think you are stalled, I am doing other work that must be done, that wouldn’t otherwise be done, if you were moving forward according to the ease of your own plans.

The distraction and the crisis are also productive. Deep work is being done so you can move forward faster when the time comes.

And I really want to move forward faster when the time comes. Sometimes I just want the time to come now. And there’s no shame in that, as long as we remember that His time will be the perfect time.

He has things to teach us in the mean time so the finished product will be so much better, the way it’s meant to be. For example, can you really have a great hash brown experience without accompanying it with jalepeno-chive aioli? I don’t think so.

Obedience to His process is the way forward. That doesn’t mean we have to sit back and take everything the enemy throws at us; it means we can stand in authority and identity in prayer, and we know that God is moving in spite of what things look like.

We keep our eyes on what He’s doing, and what He’s told us to do, and trust Him with the rest. Sometimes that looks like being still, which seems like no movement, no progress at all – just waiting, dealing with the new thing in front of us, no matter how annoyed we are that it showed up and interrupted our momentum.

He has a different momentum, and it is never interrupted. Yielded, we are always moving forward, regardless of how many things are on the back burner. 

He’s doing the work in both places as we trust Him for the perfect timing. Sometimes it’s only a minute away, and we have no idea it’s that close.

It will be a monumental event, like fanfare and fireworks.

______
*This is an excerpt from Work That God Sees, available here.