Loaves and Fishes at Vacation Bible School

It was the first night of Vacation Bible School and at times I wondered...why did I sign up for this?

Vacation Bible School! Come one, come all! A time when the church invites the community in, going door to door with flyers.

And, yes, the community came, in the form of a foster mother, bone tired. She dropped off two little preschool boys, both of them probably drug babies.

The little one ran from the group during sidewalk chalk. Fearing he would run into the street, I gave chase, finally grabbing a corner of his shirt before he reached the parking lot. He fought me on the way back and I wondered why preschool teachers aren't paid $100,000 a year.

College professors? Is their job so hard, compared to the everyday preschool teacher? We get it so wrong, don't we, when it comes to caring for our nation's children--when the preschool teacher resorts to food stamps and the college professor buys tickets to the symphony and orders the steak and lobster?

I looked into the older ones eyes as he tried to wriggle away during closing ceremony. Such a vacancy there, it shocked me.

He kicked, howled, laughed at his own antics and I wondered about his future. Would he be bound in handcuffs and locked away before age 16?

Who does something like that...takes drugs and destroys a babe's mind in the womb, so that containing the child takes experts and institutions? Who destroys the gift of life and then expects someone else to handle the consequences...like foster moms and preschool teachers?

Grieving, I held him the best I could, but I didn't want to come back the next day. We had a group of preschoolers who represented a fallen world's woes: drugs, divorce, custody battles...sin, sin, and more sin.

I showed up there to love and teach, but the children couldn't sit still long enough to receive. If I really believe that nothing is so big love can't eclipse it, where does that leave drug babies?

I felt guilty at closing ceremony, for wishing I didn't have to return the next day. Is that what Jesus did when the humans down under got under his skin? Did he say, "Why did I sign up for this?" Did he tell his Father he didn't want to come back the next day?

If I want to resemble Jesus, I have to invite the woes of the world in. I have to sign up to receive the community, while they are still sinners.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Tonight I teach preschoolers about the loaves and fishes and the 5000, and I feel just like that: I've got way too little to offer. 

Prayer Time: Dear Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you that you stayed here, Lord. You didn't go Home until your appointed time. You never give up on us and we want to be like you. We want to believe that nothing is so big love can't eclipse it. Take our meager loaves and fishes Lord, take what we have to offer and make it enough. Make amatuer preschool teachers and everyday mothers into enough. Eclipse our brokenness, our imperfections, with your love, with your Cross. Help me speak you, tonight, Lord. Create a miracle today, like you did so long ago, please? 

In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

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When Anxiety Hits Like a Tidal Wave

My daughter's surgery just happened to come 5 days before my Vacation Bible School teaching commitment, and the first week of my children's ministry coordinator job. This is a tough surgery to recover from, so I'm not able to keep up with laundry or dishes, much less work on VBS lesson planning.

I've been holding my little girl. A lot. She's been feverish, which is normal after a tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy. The fever can go up to 102 degrees and last a week. I'm choosing to sit and hold her, kiss her, stroke her hair, whisper I love you--supporting her through the pain.

When I get up, finally, I do think about the lessons I haven't finalized, and the church commitment I hope I'll be able to live up to. Not to mention the clutter that's collected while I've held my daughter; I have to look at it so of course it adds to the overwhelming feeling.

Panic this week felt like a tidal wave about to hit, several times. The good news is I'm getting better at controlling anxiety. I feel the waves but I don't let them hit me. My self-talk has changed, by God's grace.

I think about the Lord and his standards for me. I remember that I need only please Him. I remember that it's his strength that sustains me. His wisdom that carries me. I remember that if I'm living for Him, than my tasks are for Him, too.

When panic threatens, I do a heart check. Panic and fear are not from the Lord. His yoke is easy; his burden is light. I ask: For whom am I laboring? For myself, or for the Lord? Things straighten out pretty quickly after that, whether it's anxiety about raising children, fulfilling other commitments, or just getting it all done.

We develop unreasonable expectations when we seek to please ourselves or those around us. Naturally, anxiety sets in as a result of our thwarted vision; our evil intent.

Oh, yes. Even church ministry can swim in evil. The Lord says our hearts are deceitful.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

I remembered today that He loves the little children and he will serve them well, through me. I don't have to impress anyone with a fabulous lesson for VBS. I don't have to impress anyone with my ministry coordinator skills.

What does the Lord want from children's ministry? Simply that the children will feel safe and loved at Sunday School, that the volunteers would reflect His love and grace, and that the parents will feel comfortable leaving their children long enough to go serve or hear a sermon.

A good lesson would be wonderful too, but the Lord cares about relationship most of all. If our commitment is to build relationship--to love our neighbor as ourselves--whatever we teach beyond that will be more readily accepted.

Women wear so many hats nowadays; anxiety is, unfortunately, commonplace. We need to change our self-talk and check our hearts. For whom are we laboring? And what does the Lord want, versus what we want? 

When we match our vision with His, Peace is our companion.

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Beth's Surgery and a Volunteer's Heart

My little Beth had her tonsil and adenoid surgery yesterday morning. She and I stayed overnight and arrived home this morning. She woke up about every two hours last night and the stay wasn't much different than my time in hospitals with my newborns.

Exhausting. Nurses in and out frequently.

When they first brought me into recovery Beth was crying inconsolably, and despite my best efforts, the crying continued. It wasn't long before I felt like crying myself, overwhelmed with her need and my own emotions over seeing her in pain and so helpless.

I prayed for strength, and for her to relax so the pain medicine would work.

A volunteer senior citizen stopped by her bed, noticing she'd been upset. He was God's angel.

Children's hospitals have a strong volunteer staff from the community, represented largely by senior citizens. We go to this hospital many times a year--Beth's rheumatologist is there, as well as the ophthalmologist who treats her intermittent, arthritis-associated eye inflammation.

This sweet volunteer brought Beth a volunteer-crafted, fabric-covered teddy bear, gorgeous and girly, full of tiny butterflies and pastel prettiness.

One look at that beautiful teddy bear made Beth stop crying. She accepted it immediately and hugged it to her breast, as though all the love put into it flowed into her little heart.

Tears in my eyes, I touched his arm and told him how grateful I was. He was just so pleased, his eyes telling me how much he loved his job.

As I watched Beth, a dedicated little mother, hug that teddy for the next 24 hours, I knew that in my old age I would be a hospital volunteer, helping children and overwhelmed mothers overcome moments of hospital despair.

Nothing is so big that love can't eclipse it. Hasn't our Heavenly Father taught us that? That the greatest of these is love?

1 John 4:7
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Colossians 3:14
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity

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When You Feel Inadequate

This morning, driving home from a Children's ministry meeting, I felt so inadequate. How did I get involved in this, God? Why was I the only one who responded to that request for help in the church bulletin? Surely the right person is not me, but someone else?

I love children, I love teaching, but my job won't entail much of either, really. 

Do you ever feel inadequate for the work God's given you? 

My main spiritual gifts are teaching, faith, giving and exhortation. And yet, the job I'm called to do involves managing staff people, parents and Sunday School classrooms from birth thru Kindergarten. We have two classrooms in this age group, and hope to add a third for the 3-year-old preschoolers who are too young for the 4- to 6-year-old curriculum.

I'm warm and I smile a whole lot, but I'm also shy. I don't walk up to people I barely know and start chit-chatting. People reach out to me initially and in subsequent weeks I grow comfortable with them and begin to check in with them socially before or after service. The relationships are a blessing to me, but they exist because of someone else's good social skills, not mine. Someone was brave enough to take a chance with me.

And the ministry job before me? It's a highly interactive one, as well as a detailed-oriented one. I can handle details well, but the people? How will my shyness affect my job? Will people misinterpret and think I'm unfriendly...or worse, snobby?

My home church meets in an elementary school and has no extra ministry for children; there's just Sunday School. I asked and I'm told I can plan a Vacation Bible School next year. I would really like to, but could I manage such a Herculean task, which is, more than anything else, managing people, resources and time? 

And did I mention, my children are always with me? (I like it that way, really.)

With these changes in my life, will I still be able to write regularly, which is such a blessing to me and such an integral part of my relationship with the Holy Spirit?

Driving home today, I remembered that Moses felt this way too when asked to serve.

When God appealed to him, Moses was eighty years old and felt very inadequate.  Excuses abounded. "Who am I that I should go?" (Ex.3:11). "But they won't listen to me" and "they won't believe me." (Ex.4:1). God told Moses what to do to win over the people. But Moses' next excuse was: "But I don't speak good" (Ex.4:10). Finally, God told Moses to take Aaron with him to speak for him.

Ideally, we would all serve in the capacity best suited to us. This is precisely why spiritual gifts inventories are so popular in churches nowadays. Most Christians have probably taken at least one.

So why didn't God ask a good speaker to do the work, rather than Moses? And why did God ask me to be a socially-adept manager, when clearly I'm not?

Joshua also fought feelings of inadequacy. In Joshua 1 God tells Joshua, more than once, to "be strong and courageous". Another three times God said, "Be strong and of good courage" (1:6), "be thou strong and very courageous" (1:7), "Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed" (1:9). 

Solomon was a young king. Was it feelings of inadequacy that prompted him to ask God for wisdom, above all else?

In Jeremiah 1:6, Jeremiah tells God his fears: I'm too young and I don't speak well.

When Samuel appealed to Saul about God's desire for his life, Saul replied, "am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel; and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin?" (I Sam.9:21)

Spiritual gift inventories are nice, but obedience is more important. 

At some point, God will ask you to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable or inadequate, whether it's to stay with the spouse you despise, raise a special-needs child, handle a cancer diagnosis, care for an aging parent, or manage a huge ministry undertaking, such as Vacation Bible School.

You will want to make excuses, like Moses and Jeremiah and Saul. And like me.

When we stay in our comfort zone, who shines? We do. Conversely, when we step out in faith and obedience to do something hard, who shines? 

The Almighty God.

Scripture speaks to us of this phenomena in the verses below, and we mustn't be afraid. For doesn't the fear come from the sin of pride, really? We want to shine, but we fear we'll fall, instead?

We must step out humbly, joyfully, obediently, with our eyes on God and His power, not on ourselves.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

John 15:5

“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me – and I in him – bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing.

Philippians 2:13
for the one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort – for the sake of his good pleasure – is God.

Philippians 4:13
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Your turn now. What difficult things has God asked you to do?

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Stop Envy & Discontent in 7 Steps

Let your conduct be without covetousness; and be content with what you have: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. – Hebrews 13:5

Do you struggle with envy or discontent?

We all do, but rarely for the same reasons. For example, I don't envy people for their things or destinations or vacations. I don't envy a childless woman's flat stomach or her pretty legs clear of varicose veins. I don't like my varicose veins, but I remember when my legs were clear too. Every women gets her turn to have her body in its virginal state; my turn is past, the same as it is for wrinkle-free skin and hair without white strands.

Envy is a struggle for me in this regard: family gatherings.

When I see cars at people's houses around holiday times, probably indicating a family get-together, I feel depressed that we're so lonely on holidays. I envy the people inside for their laughter and good cheer, and for their support.

It's just us here so I'm always on duty for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner and every other holiday preparation. Holidays can feel exhausting, not relaxing, though husband helps with the kids and the cooking. But a woman knows: there's still the planning, shopping and budgeting of food and time.

I know what some of you are thinking: The more extended family you have around, the more dysfunction you deal with, because every family has dysfunction. Maybe you'd rather cook for days than deal with hours of dysfunctional sibling or parental tension.

Yes, true, but when I drive by a happy party I don't think about the dysfunction inherent in these settings, I think about the good cheer, the togetherness, the support. The grass just looks greener over there, on holidays.

A time will come when my kids are older and we'll have more time to make friends, perhaps creating a merry table with them. God heard our cries and blessed us with our single Christian friend Dean back in January, whom we knew in California and who now lives 45 minutes away. He comes when he's feeling well, enjoying the children and vice versa.

I know this: God is not honored by envy. It's a sinful snare--the enemy's lies prevailing in our hearts for a time.

I know His plan is perfect, regardless of my feelings. My reaction is the problem, not God's plan. I'm good about counting my blessings except at holiday time.

Whatever the reason for your own envy, along with me, you can benefit from these strategies:

1. Repent 

Envy is the sin of covetousness, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 11:10). We should fear His reaction to our ongoing sin, as a people who love him and want to please him and bring him glory. We need to confess before God and turn 180 degrees, signaling true repentance.

2. Be spiritually prepared--head off Satan by praying ahead of time. 

If it's that certain woman's flat stomach or shiny new mini-van, pray before you see her: for a pure heart, for a grateful heart, and that you'll be able to: rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Romans 12:15

3. Do a topical study to gather Bible verses about your personal envy issue. 

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Gather all you can about your specific topic, and about contentment and gratitude in general. Read all the scriptures and then pray them into your heart, which is an act of faith that God will change you--it's an important step to true heart change. We can read a scripture and think it sounds wonderful, but change comes when we care enough and believe enough to ask God for help; we can't change on our own. 

"Dear Father, I ask that this scripture be realized in my heart...that I would live its truth and bring you glory. Change me, Lord."

4. Keep track of your progress. 

Psalm 103:2 Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits--

Next time you see that woman and don't give her van or her flat stomach a single thought, rejoice. Tell God thank you. He's heard the cry of your heart. He loves you; he rejoices in you. He's faithful.

5. Count your blessings. 
Psalm 40:5 Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.

Counting our blessings is not about being thankful for what we have in comparison to others. It's about realizing that in Christ, we have everything.

6. Be generous with your blessings. 

Acts 20:35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

7. Trust God and surrender completely. 

Mark 14:35-36 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Know that His plan for your life, including how you spend holidays, is perfect. Recognize and celebrate His sovereignty, perfection, and faithfulness. Give up having it your way: Lay down your life, your plans, your hopes, for the glory of God.

There's no greater joy, no greater gain, than when we surrender to our Lord completely, our white flag indicating we love Him more than we love ourselves. 

When His glory finally becomes our goal, we can be perfectly content.

Relevant Scriptures:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. – 1Timothy 6:6-7

Let your conduct be without covetousness; and be content with what you have: for He has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. – Hebrews 13:5

A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. The heart of him that has understanding seeks knowledge: but the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness. All the days of the afflicted are evil: but he that is of a merry heart has a continual feast. Better is a little with the fear of Yahweh than great treasure with trouble. – Proverbs 15:13-16

A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy is rottenness to the bones. – Proverbs 14:30

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatever state I am in to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. – Philippians 4:11-13

Prayer Time: 
Dear Heavenly Father, how we love you. Thank you for your beautiful, steadfast, sacrificial love. You gave it all to redeem us and we want to live for you, honor you and bring you glory. Change our hearts, Lord. Whatever state we're in, teach us to be content and thankful. Help us to truly repent of envy, to be spiritually prepared through the power of prayer, to study your Word, to track our progress, to count our blessings, to be generous, and to surrender fully to you. We have everything in You, Lord. Open our eyes so we can truly see what the Lamb of God has done for us.

In Jesus' Name I pray, Amen.

Giving Thanks Today:

~ sunshine on Monday

~ fireworks

~ kids bowl free (Mary got 4 strikes and 3 spares in two games--by rolling the ball!)

~ a little headway on our fruit fly problem

~ morning glories climbing the fence

~ neighbors loaning my boys and the neighbor kids a bike ramp

~ little Beth's tonsil & adenoid surgery is this Wednesday. Breathing normally will be such a wonderful thing for her after all these months.

~ Paul playing beautifully on the piano

~ Beth playing with her dollies so sweetly

~ God's Word

~ Knowing that He is so faithful and loves us so much

~ Compassion letters

~ four precious children filling my home and heart

Giving thanks with Ann Voskamp today for Multitude Monday, at Holy Experience.

What are you thankful for today, my friend?


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