Strange Timing

Strange Timing

by | Nov 20, 2025 | Cancer Journey, Fantasy, Thoughtful Thursdays

Sometimes, God’s timing just leaves me astounded. Even when it’s something that, to most, would seem small. I had one of those moments in my writing world just after getting that call about the lesion on my brain, and I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about it. To tell about how God provided exactly the outlet I needed…and more besides.

Princess Iraja from Amazed
Awakened Book 3

Allow me to introduce Iraja. If you’ve read Awakened, then at the end you may recall a baby named Bleu. Well, 150-some-odd years in the future (keeping in mind that my magically Awakened people in this series are very long-lived), Iraja is Bleu’s wife of 34 years. (If you have not read Awakened, the point of this introduction has nothing to do with that story world and everything to do with my life. Bear with me, LOL.)

Several weeks ago, as I was diving into book 3 of this fantasy world, Amazed, I was debating which points-of-view I wanted to include. I knew that obviously I would have my heroine, Aziza. I knew I would have the king of Ellas, Stefanos. I knew I would have her hometown would-be sweetheart, Galenos. And I knew I needed one more, a POV to represent another part of the world. I’d already decided Prince Bleu and Iraja would be in Ellas during the story.

I’d also already decided that Iraja was dying. Oh, I created a fictional, fantasy disease for the purpose, linked to the oddities of this world. Nothing real. But it was fatal. It had to be, for the purposes of my plot. This isn’t a spoiler—they know it when the story starts, know she has only months left to live. So I was debating which of them would be the more poignant POV—the one about to lose her life or the one about to lose his wife.

I shared the debate with my husband and my P&P ladies, and ultimately I decided to go with Iraja’s perspective, largely because that kept a balance of two male and two female POVs in the book. Happy with that, I started the story.

Prince Bleu from Amazed
Awakened Book 3

Then came that phone call you’ve all heard about by now. The one that said I might have Stage 4 cancer. For weeks, I sat in a place of not-knowing. First, I didn’t even know if I was riddled with the stuff again. They thought it likely it was in my lymph nodes. It could have been in my bones. It could have been everywhere. (It’s not, but I didn’t know that yet.) As David and I drove home from that oncology appointment, where my doctor talked to me about palliative care, assuming this was what the tests would reveal to be necessary, I said, a bit stunned, “This could be the thing I’m going to die of.” And I wrestled with the reality that is always true but just became more true. My days are numbered. They always are, yes, but then I felt it.

And this was when I opened up my document and realized that the next chapter would be Iraja’s first POV. And friends, though I am not a crier and certainly not when working, tears stung my eyes. For one moment, just one, I hesitated. Did I really want to write this now? This? A woman struggling with her own mortality and how to say goodbye to her family?

Then I realized that, yes, I did. More—I had to. I realized that, first, when I decided a week before to make her my fourth POV character, God had nudged me toward an outlet. A way to work through and express my thoughts, my feelings. My fears and dreams. To wrestle with what I might leave undone and what I desperately wanted to do. To remind myself that even now, He should be praised. Even now, especially now, I need to embody love above all, as Iraja does. And I also realized, even after those tests proved that whatever is going on, I do not have cancer all through my body and am probably not dying any more quickly than usual (LOL), that He provided a way for me to have an insight into this woman that I otherwise would not have had. Which seems trivial. Silly.

But it’s not, not to me. It’s critical. Crucial. Because I know very well that there will be readers facing down their own struggles, their own life-altering diagnoses when they pick up this book in the future and think to escape their own world into one completely fabricated. And I want to give them a point of connection…and hope. I want to help them fasten their eyes on the Lord, as writing it helped me to do.

I was hesitant to mention this coincidence of timing to David—because while I was at peace with all this, it was harder for him. Which, again, reminded me of Iraja and Bleu and how I’d already decided they would be. Iraja, who had always known her Awakened husband would outlive her, who would stay young while she grew old; who had wanted decades more with him but trusts that even this is part of God’s plan for her life.

And Bleu, who is breaking. Bleu, who loves her so deeply and can’t imagine what life is going to look like without her. Bleu, who knows he likely has centuries left to live, and they look like a barren wasteland spreading before him without the woman he loves.

Over the last few weeks, there have been so many times when my precious husband pulled me close, rested his head against mine, and said, “You have to be okay. I can’t do this without you.” In those early days, all I could do was hold him. All I could do was promise, “If it’s Stage 4 cancer, then I’ll just set some records, right? On how long I can survive on these meds. I’m not giving up, honey. I’ll fight. I intend to have years and years left. We’ll get to our fiftieth.” And he’d bargain, “Seventieth. No—seventy more. We’re both going to live to be over a hundred.”

Over the last few weeks, every time I open up that document on my computer, I’m amazed (ha! Title of the book…) anew at how even this, this small, tiny, inconsequential thing, was planned so perfectly by the Father. Even this, He helped me set up in advance so that my heart would be more peaceful and my story richer.

Every time I write Iraja into a scene, whether it’s her POV or someone else’s, I see this woman choosing life even as she’s dying, choosing love even as she’s spending her last months on enemy soil, choosing faith even as her dreams are cut short…and I realize that’s who I want to be, whether I have a year or a decade or a century left to live. I want to be the person who embraces her enemy and sees in him a friend—and so, makes him one. I want to be the person who cries her tears and then fastens on her smile. I want to be the person who will change the tides of a story—not by sheer brute force, like her magical husband can do with the literal tides in this fantasy world. But by the power of her love.

So here’s Iraja. A princess-by-marriage in a fantasy kingdom, so very much unlike you and me in our real, humble world. But also very much like us—a child of the King of kings. Beloved of the Father. Chosen by our family. A woman who makes a difference not with power but with acceptance, with love, with a determination to see in others what God sees in them. Iraja is who I want to be.

Here’s Iraja, whose perspective helped me understand my own, as I stared one possible end in the eyes. 

I pray that, someday, when you read her POV, she’ll minister to you as she did to me. And you’ll remember that even in the small, tiny, inconsequential things, God’s hand is always at work.

Word of the Week – Eucharist

Word of the Week – Eucharist

by | Nov 17, 2025 | Holiday History, Holidays, Word of the Week

We are still in the “Thanksgiving” theme over here. And any Catholics among us (or Greek/Latin scholars, or church historians or theologians) will take one look at this Word of the Week and say, “Well, duh, of course you are.”

Simply–eucharist literally means “thanksgiving.” But we aren’t just going to leave it with the SIMPLE answer, of course. Where’s the fun in that?

The word is straight from the Greek (via Latin and then French and finally English) from eu, which means “well” and then the stem of kharizesthai, which means “to show favor.” That big long verb comes from the noun kharis, meaning “favor, grace” in Greek. In biblical Greek, eukharisteo is the word used any time in the New Testament where they talk about giving thanks to God for His blessings.

And as Christians, what is the thing we are MOST thankful for? That’s easy, right? Jesus’ sacrifice. And what did He give us to remember that sacrifice, to partake of it with Him? There are many names for it these days. Holy Communion. The Lord’s Supper. But the earliest name was simply “the eucharist.” We participate in the Thanksgiving. (Which is what my fantasy-future characters in Awakened call it–just “the Thanksgiving.”)

The word eucharist has been used in English since it was brought here by the French around 1400 and was used strictly for the Lord’s Supper. Before the French brought that word, this sacrament was called “the housel,” from the Gothic hunsl, meaning “sacrifice.” We see examples of that in literature like Canterbury Tales, which predates the French influence.

As we focus on gratitude in this month of Thanksgiving, I hope we all remember that the ultimate blessing is the one we partake of in that eucharist. When next you taste the bread or fruit of the vine, let that meaning soak through you: thank you, Lord. You gave yourself, and I give you thanks.

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In His Hand

In His Hand

by | Nov 13, 2025 | Cancer Journey, Thoughtful Thursdays

A few weeks ago, as I was in that season of waiting to learn whether cancer had spread once again through my body, I had the simplest, most beautiful realization.

I’d been thinking a lot about how when rest in Him, we’re cradled in His hands. There’s such comfort in that, right? Such peace. Perhaps, if you’re a visual thinker, you imagine a parent cradling a newborn baby. Or perhaps even an artistic image of you as you are right now, full grown, cradled in an immense palm capable of supporting the whole earth.

Before, whenever I’ve considered the phrase “in His hand,” that image of rest is what I focused on. That the Lord’s palm is a place for respite. A place of refuge. I’ve also frequently thought of Him raising the other up around me to shield, to guard, to protect.

There is, I think, a deep spiritual truth to those metaphors. We do rest in Him. He is our shield, our protector, our salvation.

But as I shared my health updates and began answering the hundreds upon hundreds of emails and comments (each one a blessing—thank you!), as others opened up about their own struggles, I felt that stirring deep in my chest. The same one I noticed last year, when this same thing happened. I remember thinking, back in spring of 2024, that this was a blessing I’d never considered—that when I am open and vulnerable about my health struggles, it invites you to be open and vulnerable with me in turn about yours. And I then have the privilege of praying for and with you, of writing down your name. Of knowing I am not alone and getting to assure you that you are not alone either.

It didn’t take long for that same realization to wash over me this time, with the brain tumor looming. But as I was reflecting on all the unexpected blessings of those weeks of not-knowing, of waiting, of facing down fears once again, I was first thinking, “Thank you, Lord, for holding me in Your hand.” And then, when I considered this gift He’d given me of getting to reassure others of His love and provision, it hit me.

When we are in His hand, safe and secure, we are not just resting. Not JUST resting. We are working too, for His glory. We are being used. We are, as I’ve always prayed I would be, a tool in His hand.

In our modern lingo, being “a tool” isn’t usually a compliment, LOL. But let’s actually take a look at why we use it that  way (yes, I just went and looked up the etymology—I am me, after all. 😆)  By the 1660s, if one person was using another as a means to an end or for their own purpose, without care for that person, said person was called a tool of the other. So by 1700, calling someone “a tool” meant that they were useless or shiftless—which is to say, they had no self-directed purpose, so could only be used by others.

Not a great character trait in human terms, no. But it takes on whole new meaning, doesn’t it, when we consider the Master’s hands? Those hands created everything that has been created. Those hands fashioned our world. Those hands shaped mankind, preparing our form for the Breath of Life. Those hands were born into this world as a baby. Those hands hugged His mother, His earthly father. Those hands learned how to shape wood as humanity had to do it, how to lift and help and soothe.

Those hands lifted in blessing, and when the bread was broken, it multiplied instead of dividing. Those hands commissioned apostles who could go and do His work. Those hands touched the sick, and sickness fled. Those hands raised the dead. Those hands calmed the storm. Those hands accepted nails through them, so that He could offer us life eternal.

To be a tool in those hands is no insult. To be a tool in those hands is to receive the gift of co-creating with Him. 

When we are tools in His hand, He uses us to shape the world, to shape each other. He uses us to embrace those who need comfort. He uses us to build, to lift up, to soothe.

He uses us to multiply His love instead of divide. He uses us to spread His gospel and share His gift of salvation. He uses us to heal. Us to bring life. Us to calm the storms around us.

He uses us, in our suffering. He invites us to give it to Him, to join it to His. Because His suffering changed the world, friends, and keeps on changing it. So when we give ours to Him, when we put ourselves into His hands, when we say, “Take it. Take all of it. Take all of me,” we aren’t just saying, “Keep me and protect me and shelter me while I rest.” Not just that.

We’re also saying, “Use me, Father. Use me as a chisel, to chip away what doesn’t belong. Use me as a lathe, to smooth and soothe. Use me as a hammer, to drive home the Truth of your love and secure that truth in the hearts who need to hear it. Use me as a square to help others align with you. Use me…use me. Even now, when I ache, use me. Even now, when I am uncertain, use me. Even now, when all I want to do is fasten my eyes on you, use me to show others where to look too.”

I have seen others, shining His light in their darkest moments—I’m sure you have too. And I will never look at them the same again. Because now, whenever I see our own human weakness, I will see His strength anew. Now, whenever I hear human lips say, “I can’t,” I’ll think, “You don’t have to do. You just have to be. Be in His hand, and He will use you.”

Because ours is not a God of not-doing. He is not a God of laziness. His Creation is ongoing. His making is eternal. His love is an active, consuming, multiplying thing. By His nature, “I Am” is not just a statement of being but of action. He is the God of Abraham, who called him forth from among the nations. He is the God of Jacob, who led them out of slavery and into the Promise. He is Christ, the Son of God, who came to earth to save us.

And He always, always uses us in that plan. He always uses men and women to accomplish His will. We are His tools. And it is no insult.

It is the most amazing thing in the world. To know that, in His hands, we always have purpose. We can trust that even when we’re curled up in His palm, desperate for rest, we are not useless. He is still using us. Even when we can’t see how, we can trust that He is at work.

We can rest in Him…but He is never at rest. He is always moving. And, praise God for His goodness, He carries us with Him as He goes, as He works.

And perhaps, really, that is true rest—knowing that we can always have purpose in Him, even when all we can do is say, “Take me. Hold me. I am yours.”

Word of the Week – Wishbone

Word of the Week – Wishbone

by | Nov 10, 2025 | Holiday History, Holidays, Word of the Week

Ever wonder what the deal is with the tradition of pulling apart the turkey’s wishbone? As we enter Thanksgiving month here in the US, I thought it would be fun to look into some of our history for this holiday that you might not already know.

First, the word itself. Wishbone as a word only dates to 1860, but before that, it was wishing-bone, and also called the merrythought. Both names have the same idea behind them–that whoever gets the longer end in that tug-of-war game gets to make a wish or have a merry thought. The tradition, with a fowl’s furcula bone, dates back to the 1600s in England and traveled with colonies to the New World. 

But…why?

Well, that gets interesting. And also, ahem, a little spicy. 😉 Brace yourself. So, according to Roman legends, this ritual actually dates back to the Etruscans, who were the precursors to the Romans in Italy. Like many ancient societies, they practiced divination and reading omens, often using the entrails or other bits and pieces of animals, quite frequently birds. This bone in birds was favored specifically because its shape resembles legs and, ahem, the groin area. Which means it represented fertility, prosperity, the very place from which life springs.

This resemblance is also quite possibly why it earned that merrythought name in English. (Sorry, friends, our ancestors don’t much care if they make us blush, LOL.) Through much of English history, two unwed people would play the game with the bone, to see who would marry next. Or if that wasn’t their wish, then they’d make another instead. Hence the names.

Did you ever pull apart the wishbone after the turkey’s carved?

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The Peace Prayer

The Peace Prayer

by | Nov 6, 2025 | Thoughtful Thursdays

Many years ago, I came across this prayer–very well known in Catholic circles, but I was a Protestant at the time and hadn’t run into it before. And it was so beautiful that it stole my breath. So beautiful that I shushed everyone in the car and read it aloud to them. We were sitting in line for a car wash at the time. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do, LOL. I remember the kids behind me, David beside me, and these words filling the space.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

It’s known as “The Peace Prayer” or “The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.” If you’re not familiar with St. Francis, he was born to a noble family in 1181 but felt a call to join the Church. He gave up everything, donned a coarse brown habit, and went to live in the woods. Stories say he was able to speak to the animals. And soon, he began to draw people to his austere way of life because of his fire for the Lord. He founded what we now call the Franciscan Order.

He was a man who chose to live outside of the demands of society so that he could be a pure instrument of the Lord…which had a profound effect on society. He shunned material wealth in pursuit of spiritual riches. And this prayer is just one small part of his legacy.

This prayer is one that has taken up residence in my soul. My church has recently begun reciting it at the very start of every service, and so it’s been fresh on my mind. As I meditate on it, I decided it would be fun to really look deep into each line. 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…

It leads off, of course, with the main goal. That we, as children of God, would be instruments of His peace. What does that mean? Well, Francis goes through the how, but let’s first examine what it is and why we’d want it.

As I reminded us in my Word of the Week this week, the primary definition of peace has always been “freedom from civil disorder or war.” If we are asking to be instruments of peace, that means that we want to be used to stop unrest. We want to be the means by which disorder is halted. We want to be the ones to lead the way in laying down arms and instead holding those arms out wide like Christ did for us. If we are instruments of peace, we do not seek division but unity. We do not seek to win but to reconcile.

Is that what we desire today? Truly? In this world, this country that is so divided…are we actually praying to be used for peace or are we instead praying that our enemies be cut down and silenced? Something to think about, isn’t it? Because peace is not about winning, friends. Peace is about halting the fight entirely. Now. Assuming we want to do that (and even if we’re not there yet, I hope we can agree it’s what we should want), how do we do it? Francis provides us with quite the road map.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love…

Where is there hatred? Everywhere. It’s all around us, and you don’t have to do more than turn on the news or scroll social media to see the proof of that. 

That’s not the most dangerous hatred though. The most dangerous hatred isn’t what’s without. It’s what’s within.

When we harbor animosity for someone, when we want to shout “What’s wrong with you??”, when our pulse pounds with outrage over the stance someone is taking…friends, this is hatred. We as Christians don’t usually want to call it such, because we know we shouldn’t hate. But it doesn’t matter what we call a thing if we’re doing the action of that thing. We cannot condemn their “hate-filled speech” in words that return the hate and maintain any kind of moral ground just because we use synonyms instead of the word itself.

Even if we don’t want to admit our feelings are that intense though…are we sowing love? Do we meet each horrible thing that someone else does with a good response of our own? Is our first response to pray for them, pray the Lord shows them His mercy and grace, pray that they embrace a full relationship with Him? Do we earnestly seek their good?

And more–are we acting on it? Sowing is an active verb. It’s what farmers do with seeds. We need to be PLANTING peace all around us, friends, especially where there is hatred.

And that active sowing, that planting, is what governs the next few phrases too.

Where there is injury, pardon

We are all familiar with injury. Sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s emotional. Sometimes it involves our bodies, sometimes it involves our circumstances. I’ll admit it–when I learned that the health care subsidies were being let to lapse and my insurance rates could skyrocket up to $20,000 a year, I felt that like a wound to my chest. It hurt. Not just that my government would choose to do it, but that so many people insisted this was a necessary cut of wasteful, fraudulent spending. It didn’t feel that way to me. It felt like people were saying, “I don’t care if you can afford your healthcare.”

I could choose to sow bitterness. I could choose to sow vengeance. I could choose to sow hatred. Instead, God calls me sow–to plant, to pursue–pardon.

That means I need to go out of my way to forgive and to wipe the slate clean. Every time we’re hurt, every time we see a hurt in others, we shouldn’t be building a wall. We shouldn’t be making a case against them. We shouldn’t be adding to a list of ways they’ve wronged us.

We should be holding out our hands and offering forgiveness and reconciliation. 

Where there is doubt, faith

Doubt. We’re going to run into this too, first in our hearts and minds, and certainly in the world around us. Believing in something unseen is hard. Believing in a God who is good when our world is filled with evil can be a challenge. Clinging to faith when we feel alone and forsaken can seem impossible.

But faith is not a feeling. Faith is a substance. It IS the evidence, not the thing we need evidence of. Faith is the manifestation of hope and the proof of all we can’t see or know with our senses. And this is the thing we plant in fields of doubt. First in our own hearts and then in those around us.

Plant the truth of the God who sees, the God who knows, the God who loves, the God who wills our best. Plant the truth of the God who sacrificed His one and only Son for us. Plant the certainty that Christ remade the entire fabric of the universe and that there is something better than this world waiting…something that has come into this world through Him. His kingdom is HERE, friends. It’s now. And we are how the world sees it.

Are we planting that reality in the fields of doubt around us, showing it through love, being the hands and feet of Christ to an aching world?

Where there is despair, hope

In many languages, these two words are clearly opposites even in their form and spelling. In French, for instance, they’re espoir (hope) and desespoir (despair, literally “un-hope”). This is certainly true in the Latin that St. Francis would have written this prayer in as well, with hope being sper and despair (you can already see it, right?) desperatio. (From which we get both despair and desperation.)

The relationship between the two words isn’t so clear in English because we use the Latinate for despair but an Old Norse root for hope. 

They are irreversibly linked though. They share a root. They are opposites. So where we see despair and desperation, our job is to hack off that prefix. To take out the “not.” Banish the un-maker. And plant instead the root of the word.

Hope. Hope means “trust in our salvation,” friends. “To have confidence.” And its very definition is rooted in the trust we have in God.

We are NOT always going to feel it. But again, faith and trust are not feelings, they are actions, and those actions bear the fruit of hope. Spread that hope all around you and all throughout yourself. Choose hope. Choose trust. 

Where there is darkness, light

Oh friends, the world looks so dark, doesn’t it? Every generation, we think this is the darkest it’s been. But every generation has thought so. Because the darkness has always been pervasive. 

And that’s why God sent a Light into the world. 

When I was in middle school, I bought this tiny little doll-sized book of quotes. It was maybe 2 or 3 inches by 4 or 5 inches. Such a cute little thing, I couldn’t resist. And I read through it many times. One of the quotes in there was this: “There are two ways to spread light. To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

When you don’t feel like you can generate light on your own, that’s okay. You don’t have to. You can REFLECT it instead. When you cannot be the candle, then hold the candle. Hold it aloft to light your own path and to scatter that darkness. 

Because we know the Light. And we are called to be children of that Light. Not of darkness. Don’t let it close in, don’t let it win, but don’t ever think you succeed by fighting it off. We do not fight darkness with things of darkness–violence or hate or resentment or power. We fight darkness by walking into it with the Light of Christ before us. We fight it by shining out His love. 

Where there is sadness, joy.

I love this one. Joy is so important to me, and I have long talked about how it isn’t a feeling either, but a choice. And as such, it’s something we can share. We can spread. 

There is a time to cry, yes. And when we sit with someone in their sorrow or sit alone in our own, the answer to it is not happiness. It’s not necessarily laughter or fun.

The answer is to know that no matter how upset we are, how we’re grieving, how sorrowful we feel, life is still beautiful and God is still good. That when praise does not come easily, we offer it anyway as a sacrifice. And God will see it and pour blessing out upon us. Not physical gifts but Words of Life. He’ll surround us with His love. And we’ll have this deep, abiding knowledge that we are NOT alone, and that we are cherished, and that even the ugly bits–pain and sickness and loss–are an opportunity for Him to provide, to show us His love, and to use us to draw others to Him.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

This line is a setup for the ones to come, governing them all. For everything that follows, we should NOT seek the first, but, with His help, the second, granting that we are only servants and that He is our true Lord and Master, the one whose will we have sworn to obey. Even when that means we may not seek…

To be consoled as to console

Let’s face it. We like to be consoled. We like to receive comfort when we’re hurting. We need arms to come around us and encouragement and assurances to buoy us up. We all do.

But we also need to be willing–no, EAGER–to be those arms coming around others. To be that encouragement. To offer that assurance.

Even when we don’t feel the same grief. Even when their loss means our win. Even when we’re still hurting. Because we should not so much seek…

To be understood as to understand

THIS. Oh, guys. I literally had a Christian man on social media tell me I was going to hell because I expressed a desire to understand those who held the “other” position.

Understanding does not mean condoning. Understanding means that we can comprehend a person’s motives and love them. Just as God loves us, even though our ways are certainly His ways, right?

We always want people to understand us. But we’re not nearly so quick to try to understand them. But when we do…when we truly understand someone, we cannot help but love them. It doesn’t mean we agree, it (again) doesn’t mean we condone sin. It means that we literally “stand in the midst of” their thoughts and feelings and circumstances.

We stand with them. Not insisting they move to us, but going to them. Reaching out. And by doing so, seeking not so much…

To be loved as to love.

These days when I think of walking out love, I think of my Patrons & Peers group. Just in the last few weeks, they have demonstrated what it means to seek to love above being loved in so many ways. When one of the ladies realized another was having financial difficulties, she reached out about taking up a love offering for her, and though the other ladies had no idea who it was for, they gave. We ended up sending her about $1,500. When I mentioned to the group a total stranger who’d emailed me, in a dark place and feeling so alone and without hope, they said, “Let’s invite her in. Let’s shower her with cards and gifts and encouragement.”

We all want to receive that love too–of course we do. But when we look beyond ourselves and instead see the aching hearts around us, when we reach out to them and say, “You are seen. You are cherished. Your life is sacred and you have been chosen by the One Living God, you are His precious child and He would literally die for you,” we are answering the most basic call He puts on our lives.

When we seek above all to show His love, it does not return to us void. Even if we’re rebuffed, it’s not returned to us void. Because love will ALWAYS make a difference. Perhaps in the heart of the person you’re loving, perhaps in those who see it, and absolutely within ourselves.

The more we love others, the more we love God, the more aware we are of how He loves us. The more we love others, the closer we draw to Him.

For it is in giving that we receive

When we give that love, that understanding, that consolation; when we sow that joy and light and hope and faith and pardon and love…you know what happens?

We’re filled. The more we pour out, we more that flows in, directly from the hand of God. We don’t do it to receive, but He does not leave us empty. He does not leave us dried up and withered. He fills us to overflowing so that we can keep pouring.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned

The prayer Jesus taught us makes this clear. Forgive us our sins AS we forgive those who sin against us. If we refuse to forgive, then we have effectively frozen our own hearts. And frozen hearts cannot receive the nourishing waters of life. We have to break up that ice, melt it, let the flesh of our hearts soften again, so that we can receive that forgiveness in turn. So that it can pour into us and through us, to revive us and refill us.

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

As an adult decades away from my first reading of the Chronicles of Narnia, I would always say that The Last Battle was my favorite of the series. “Really?” my best friend asked me on a writing retreat, during the time when I was reading the series out loud to my kids. “Why? I found the story not nearly as compelling as the others.”

“It isn’t the story,” I admitted. “I couldn’t have even told you what it was about until I started rereading it. It’s the theology. When I read it as a kid, this story taught me as nothing else ever did that this life is but a poor reflection of Heaven. C. S. Lewis taught me that the best, the pinnacle, the thing we should want most is what’s waiting in the after.”

We cling to this life and we love it because it is a gift from Him. We value it, as we should, because it is sacred and precious.

But it’s only the seed, friends. It’s only the beginning. It’s only the “in a mirror, dimly.” What waits for us is something MORE, something greater, something filled with everything we most desire: Him.

We should yearn for heaven because that’s where Jesus is. And to be with Him will be the fulfillment of our every wish. Just as He died and so broke the chains of death forever, so too we know that when these mortal bodies pass away, it’s just the releasing of the chains. It’s the manacles falling free.

To live…to live is Christ. To share His love, His joy, His peace with those so desperate for it is a beautiful, awe-inspiring, amazing gift that we are given, one to be cherished and taken seriously. But to die? Well, that’s even better. That’s gain. That’s passing into the world where we reign with Christ. Where, from His very throne room, we can sing His praises with the angels and declare the most eternal truth:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
    who was and is and is to come!”

He is our every answer. His love is the answer to hatred. His pardon is the answer to injury. His faith is the answer to doubt. His hope is the answer to despair. His Light will forever pierce the darkness and defeat it. And with His joy, no sadness can ever hope to prevail.

This, friends, is what peace means. This is what it means to be an instrument of it.

It means putting aside self in favor of Him. It means seeking not our own but His, for the sake of others. It means being to the world what Christ is to us, knowing that to live in Him is but a foretaste of what’s to come.

Quite a prayer, isn’t it? Here’s a little image I made with it to display for myself; you’re welcome to save it and share it too.

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