by Roseanna White | Oct 4, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| Degas’s The Millinery Shop – don’t ask me what this has to do with my topic today, LOL. I guess hats are a blessing? |
Yesterday as I emailed my best friend, I shared with her a little sermon I’ve been preaching to myself all week. The subject? Blessings–and how we’re not entitled to them. Naturally, I figure if it’s been occupying my thoughts, I must therefore share it with everyone today, LOL.
noun
1. the act or words of a person who blesses.
2. a special favor, mercy, or benefit: the blessings of liberty.
3. a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.
4. the invoking of God’s favor upon a person: The son was denied his father’s blessing.
5. praise; devotion; worship, especially grace said before a meal: The children took turns reciting the blessing.
In my mind, do you know what this makes a blessing? A gift. One given to the person being blessed at no charge, freely. One that ought to be received with grace and gratitude. Certainly when we receive blessings from the Lord, we thank Him for them (or should, right?) and praise Him for His loving kindness and faithfulness.
And when we receive a blessing from another person, we often tell them so, tell them what their gift means to us.
But how often are we like the Israelites in the wilderness? How often do we receive that manna, those blessings, day after day and begin to forget that they’re gifts? That we need to be thankful? That instead of whining for more, we ought to be shouting anew every day, “Wow, amazing! Thank you!”
We get desensitized to the good just as we do to the bad. We start to take long-standing blessings for granted. We go from being amazed by them to expecting them. Then to demanding them. And then to thinking we’re entitled to them, that we deserve them, that, if they stop for a time, we are being neglected or ill-treated or punished.
But we’re not. Seriously, stop and think about it. Were we being punished before those blessings started to flow? No. So if they stop, are we punished then? No. We are simply returning to the status quo. It’s only our perspective that has changed.
Which always reminds me of this part in 1984 where the government has to cut the chocolate ration by, like, two ounces a day or something. (Rationing chocolate! YIKES!) They know the people are going to be upset, so do you remember what they do? First they announce that the ration will be cut by six ounces (okay, I forget the numbers, but you get the idea). The people protest. So they graciously raise it again by four ounces–resulting in the two they needed to cut. And the people rejoice, because they feel like they won back something they had lost, rather than realizing they still came up short.
We do this sort of thing all the time, and in both directions. We can be so far ahead of where we were a short time earlier, but if there’s anything at all we deem negative, backward, then we think we’ve fallen, even if we’re still levels above where we used to be.
But you know what? I think sometimes we need to “lose” something, so that we remember it wasn’t ours to begin with. That it was a gift. That it was a blessing, not an entitlement. We need to remember that sometimes when something is withheld, it isn’t an attack on us. That is isn’t a punishment. That, often, it has nothing to do with us at all. We’re just the hand outheld, waiting for our ration.
A free ration–so who are we to complain if it isn’t delivered one day?
Because when it comes down to it, what am I really entitled to in this world? What do I deserve? What do I have a right to get angry about if it’s withheld? If we’re to trust the framers of the Constitution, it’s pretty basic. Life. Check. Liberty. Check. The pursuit of happiness.
Catch that one? We have the right to the pursuit. Not to the result. That, my friends, often has to be earned. And if it’s given without our earning it…well then, that’s the gift. That’s the free bonus. That’s what ought to make us raise our hands to heaven and shout our thanksgiving.
There are so many things I’m thankful for. And in a normal day, so many things that frustrate me. But this week, I’m working hard to keep them all in perspective. Because God is so, so good to me. I deserve nothing and He gives me everything. I deserve pain and He gives me healing. I deserve to be cast out from Him and He pulls me close.
I’m not entitled to His love or to His blessing. But He gives it. And so do His children. And when they can’t…well then, maybe that’s when I ought to be trying to bless them instead.
by Roseanna White | Sep 27, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| High Expectations by Arthur John Elsley |
Tricky things, aren’t they? Expectations. On the one hand, we’re told to expect great things, especially from God. On the other hand, they can lead to disappointment. Take, for example, these two opposite quotes:
I don’t have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.
~Michael Landon
High expectations are the key to everything.
~Sam Walton
An obvious split opinion on this topic. =) And I’m not sure where I come down on it, so I figured I’d think my way through it in a post. Because wherever I’ll end up on it ten minutes from now, it’s a topic on my mind after conference.
On the one hand, I will state definitively that it is good and right and necessary to expect great things from the Lord. Honestly, I don’t know that it’s even expectation so much as faith. Trust that He will deliver what He has promised. Which isn’t usually (sometimes, but not usually) specifics–a nice house or fabulous car or fame–its overarching stuff. He promises that He will be sufficient. He promises that He will sustain us. He promises us that no matter how alone we feel, He is beside us. And because of that, we can expect Him to show up when we come to Him with open arms. We can expect to feel Him move in church. We can expect blessing when we follow Him.
But that doesn’t mean the blessing will look like we expect it to, right?
Because conference is on the brain, I’ll use that as an example. There have been years when I felt there was no need to go, and years I felt I should. Did I always see results? Um . . . maybe, eventually. But rarely like I thought I would. From my first conference, I did indeed sign with my top pick agent. From my second, I got a lot of manuscript requests–didn’t sell to anyone I met there though. At least not that book. 😉 Last year I went and came away with a feeling of “What was the point of that?? I don’t regret going, but…”
See, I think when we get a promise from God, a directive that we obey, we form specific expectations. Like if God says, “Go to the conference,” we expect to come home with a feeling of euphoria from having made that awesome connection or even to get a “Yes!” from an editor there. (It’s happened! I’ve seen people leave with contracts!)
But isn’t that kind of putting God in a box? Saying, “You promised You’d move, so obviously it must be this way.” I know that’s what I’ve done. But it just doesn’t work that way.
We have such finite perspectives. We can only see so far ahead. And usually only straight ahead. Our view is colored by our feelings. And while we can’t get away from that, from the way we’re made, God’s asking us to trust Him. Not to give up our expectations . . . but to never give up on our expectations. Does that make sense? To hold tight to them even when we feel disappointed. To hold to Him. To keep knocking, keep beseeching, keep pounding the gates of heaven. And to do that trusting that the promises are still there. That He’s leading us toward a shining mountaintop, even when all we see is the shadow of the valley.
And we also have to realize that sometimes we never see the true effect, though often enough people hear of it years later. So, so often God calls us to a specific place to meet one specific need of someone else. We obey a directive expecting a tangible result for ourselves. And so can be baffled when we see nothing. But who’s to say we didn’t do exactly what He wanted us to do?
We all deal with expectations every single day. Our own, and others’ on us. It’s the way we’re made, and I think it’s a good way. We ought to expect. We ought to desire. We ought to stand up, reach out, and strive for our goals. But we also must let go of specifics, we must relinquish the idea that we know what God intends. We don’t. We can’t.
But we can know, trust, expect that He’s got a better view of our lives from up there than we do down here. And that if we just listen, He’ll lead us through this maze without running into the dead-ends we tend to ram headlong into. And we can also know that if He leads us into one, it’s to meet somebody there. Or, maybe, to get out of the way of something steaming up behind.
Yes, we’re going to be disappointed when we have expectations. But we’re also going to keep following, wondering where the fruition will come. So expect. Believe. And don’t give up.
What are you expecting today? And what should you be?
by Roseanna White | Sep 13, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
At the beginning of August,
I blogged about the trip we took to Texas and how it opened the door for us to start teaching our kids about volunteering and helping others wherever they see a need. Well, when we got home we talked to our church about starting a monthly day of service in our area, and now we’re happy to see that coming to fruition.
We’re going to start small, with trash pick-up at a local park. Also planned are things like caroling at the local assisted living facilities in December and helping at the food pantry in November. All things we can bring the kids along for, and hopefully brighten a few days.
To make it all official, my hubby dearest is making
t-shirts for the occasion, and so we started trolling the web for some great quotes on helping others. We ended up with this one:
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| Quote, obviously, from Einstein. Design by Roseanna. Blinding t-shirt color that I didn’t quite capture here chosen by my hubby 😉 |
But we found so many great quotes, that I just wanted to share the ones that most struck me. My favorite was the MLK one, but it was just too long:
“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can
serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t
have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve…. You don’t
have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. ” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
And some other great ones . . .
“Service is the rent we pay for being.” ~ Marian Wright Edelman
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank
“Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss about it as possible.” ~ Dickens
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” ~ Dickens
“Many small people, in many small places, do many small things, that can alter the face of the world.” ~ Anonymous
“To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.” ~ Henry Ford
Personally, I think these are some great things to be keeping in mind as I prepare for the ACFW conference next week. This year, my prayer for the conference is that I might be a blessing. I don’t know how better to start on that goal than to put aside thoughts of me. And think of you instead.
by Roseanna White | Sep 6, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
7 But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. 8 So,
affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you
not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had
become dear to us.
~ I Thessalonians 2:7-8
I read these verses the other day as part of my daily reading, and they hit me pretty forcefully. Paul here is talking about how they as sharers of the gospel behaved among the Thessalonians. And as a young mom, this analogy rings so, so true.
“As a nursing mother cherishes her own children.” I nursed two kids in the past almost-seven years, and let me just tell you that when you’re doing so, absolutely everything you do revolves around that. I chose my clothes based on my kids. Dresses? Too difficult to manage. Delicate necklaces? Ha! No way, no how. Chunky belts? Forget it–they would dig into the little one. I chose my food based on my kids. Too much caffeine? No, that could make its way into the milk supply. Certain foods that I ate could give them gas. Go out to lunch without the baby? It had better be carefully scheduled in those 2-3 hours I had between feedings.
But you know, it wasn’t a difficulty. It was just the way things were. It was what I did because I love my kids and had made that decision for them. Because I love them so much I would give them my life if they needed it, so what was a dress or a favorite necklace or a third cup of coffee?
What nursing a child comes down to is your life not being your own. It revolves around them. We think not for ourselves, but for our baby. And that’s the way we’re supposed to behave toward those we’re nurturing in the Lord too?
Ouch.
I do try to consider such things as my witness, my appearance, whether my faith is shining through my words and deeds. But to that extent? I don’t know that I have. And that really makes me pause and consider.
You know when my hubby and I get into fights? When we’re both focused on our own wants and desires rather than the other’s. You know when the kiddos frustrate me most? When they wrap both hands around their wills and cling. You know when I bet the Lord shakes his head at us? Yep. When our thoughts are filled with me, me, me instead of Him.
Instead of them.
He calls us to a beautiful thing. He calls us to nurturing His other children. He calls us to a love that is selfless and pure. More, a love that is natural. All He’s asking us is to let our transformed hearts guide us in our ministerial relationships. To not let that be overpowered by our selfish sides.
But you know, it can also be painful. It can tax the body, the mind. And if they push you away? Oh yeah, the pain can get pretty bad. We see that in some of Paul’s letters, don’t we? His agony when these young Christians he helped convert, who he is trying so hard to nurture in faith, reject his teaching.
That’s the way we ought to feel. Not just shrugging it off, but seeking after them. Drawing them close again.
I always love when I discover a facet of God revealed through the way He built families, and this is definitely one of those. He loves us…and calls us to love in return. Such a simple command in its essence–but far too often overlooked in this world that tells us to focus on ourselves.
by Roseanna White | Aug 30, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says:
“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”
15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
I read this section of Ephesians 5 over a week ago, for the umpteenth time. Before, it was those first verses I quote that always struck me. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light…
Walk as children of light. What a command! I love the constant imagery in the New Testament of light versus darkness, of being the light, reflecting the light, living the light. (Y’all might remember my post on how we should shine…). It’s something I’ve thought about and talked about a lot because, well, it’s just so powerful. So deep. So thought-provoking. It’s always struck a chord.
But this last time when I read this chapter, it was verses 15 and 16 that slammed me. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Did you catch that? That bit about redeeming the time? I never had. When I pondered redemption before, it was always as something we received, that beautiful gift of Christ. He redeemed us. That means he saved us from death. Literally purchased our life with his own. According to dictionary.com, this is the technical definition of “redeem”:
1. to buy or pay off; clear by payment: to redeem a mortgage.
2. to buy back, as after a tax sale or a mortgage foreclosure.
3. to recover (something pledged or mortgaged) by payment or other satisfaction: to redeem a pawned watch.
4. to exchange (bonds, trading stamps, etc.) for money or goods.
5. to convert (paper money) into specie.
Understanding how that applies to our souls is big. Huge. But it’s used differently here. Here we are not the redeemed…we are the redeemer.
Yikes. I don’t think I ever paused to realize before the sheer responsibility Paul is showing us here. That we are the redemption of our time, of our age. Though surrounded by evil, we are to buy our neighbors more time to learn the Good News. We’re to be those ten righteous men in Sodom that would have stayed judgment. We’re to be the David for the sake of whom the nation isn’t forsaken.
We’re to be the light that staves off the darkness.
Of course it comes back to that. 😉 That is, after all, the instruction on how to redeem the times. On what it looks like when we walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. But I’ll no longer read that as a simple command to do–now I also see the inherent why.
Because we don’t shine into the darkness to light our own way. We shine in the darkness to draw others to Him. We shine to show the Truth to those trapped in the dim, dim cave (thank you, Plato). We shine because without us the days would be night, and there would be no reason for God to withhold His judgment from the world.
But the world isn’t ready to be destroyed. And it’s up to us to buy it a little more time. To pay with ourselves, just as Jesus did for us. To give our lives to this walk, this Way, this fight, so that just one more souls can see the path. Can be bought and forgiven. Can be redeemed.
Can then join the ranks of those redeeming. It’s a call to action, that charge. A purpose. One that changes the way I see that dark, evil world around me. Not just as something deserving destruction–but as something that needs to be saved from it.
by Roseanna White | Aug 23, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I had a nice, insightful post planned for today. Filled with brilliance (ahem) and thought and pondering a scripture that jumped out at me. I was just beginning to delve into the contemplation required for it when an adorable little face appeared beside mine. Grinning. And chanting, “School, school, school.”
Yeah, see, we decided we’d start the same day my niece did–today. But I kinda forgot to take into account that on the first day of school, I don’t have to lasso my darling girl to her chair at 9 like I do later in the year–she’s begging to begin at 6:30.
So . . . yeah. That’s what my morning has been. =) Getting Xoe back into math and handwriting, introducing her new spelling book. And going over letters and numbers with Rowyn. Pulling out her reader and trying to figure out what in the world this diamond-diagram thing is they have in the copywork section of my curriculum. Convincing Rowyn that his reading lesson can wait just a minute while I read Xoe her spelling words. Needless to say, blogging has slipped just a bit this morning, LOL.
I promise you that wonderfully insightful post on next Thursday. And tell you it has to do with redemption, but an application of it I’d never considered until I read it earlier this week. And for now, back to school I go!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.