Salute!

How do you SALUTE our God? Going to church, modeling Christian behavior and doing good works all honor Him, but what about finding a quiet space and simply praising Him? Giving God the best of our quiet selves in a gesture of total surrender and thanksgiving is a humbling and honoring way to pay respect or “salute” our creator.

The dictionary describes “SALUTE” as: to pay respect or honor. To address with expressions of respect. To express respect or praise for; honor; commend

The bible tells us to “salute” one another with a holy kiss. Romans 16:16

If we salute our Lord first, he will fill us with His perfect love so we can Salute others with a genuine heart.

SEEK out a quiet space.

ASK the Lord to meet you

LISTEN to His whisper.

UNDERSTAND the wisdom He imparts

THANK Him with praise

EXPERIENCE God’s perfect peace

As Christians, may we all have the courage to SALUTE our God wherever we are, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in so we can truly honor Him in all things.

LUST

For the first time in my 10 year marriage to an amazing man, I confess that this week I have experienced the feeling of LUST.
I lust after the perfect floor plan! If you feel relieved, don’t. It’s a serious thing and I don’t think much different than the lust one experiences for a man, a drink or the myriad of other things we can yearn for in this world. Lust. That word has struck me smack dab in the head and left me searching for ways to stay grounded, stay in the word and not be so obsessed with what I want. The dictionary explains lust using words such as overwhelming desire, intense and unrestrained. As my husband and I search for the possibility of a new home, I have found myself googling images and placing my things and my life in the perfect floor plan with an overwhelming, intense and unrestrained lust! Have you done this lately? It’s not hard to do. Honestly, just walking through the aisles of target might have you wanting. Wanting. Wanting! All with the justification that the things we want are so small and cheap that we’re actually doing our families a favor by getting them. So is it really a BAD thing to want? After all isn’t it in a women’s DNA to nest, take care of our homes and provide a beautiful place of peace and comfort for our loved ones? Yes! But we have to be careful that the inner desire in us to want THAT, doesn’t become greater than our desire to want HIM. And so this week, I am carefully and prayerfully asking God to keep my eyes on HIM. I am trusting Him to provide all that we need. I am thanking Him for all that He is. I am working hard to quiet the “wants” and awaken the “thanks” and in the end I know the only house that is truly worth my intense overwhelming desires and thoughts, is the House of the Lord. Amen!

Lord, thank you for creating us to be nurturing, caring, purposeful nesters and caretakers. Thank you for putting the desire in me to want to be a good wife and mother. I am so grateful for this life. I confess that I have lusted after worldly desires and I ask that you forgive me and replace my “wants” with thoughts of YOU. Fill me with the gift of your presence and help me to stay focused on you. Help me to put aside any anxiety or worthless stress that moving into a new home can bring and fill me with a calm, peaceful security that can only come from YOU...because my true hope is in you Lord. In Jesus name, Amen!

1 John 2:15-16
Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does- comes not from the Father but from the world.

FAITH HOPE LOVE

Lately these words have been speaking to me, filling me with a great desire to truly know their meaning. And in my path, people have been placed to show me just how powerful these words that have been pressed into my heart can be.

This weekend I travelled to Red Deer Alberta to visit my uncle who is in palliative care at the hospital. My sister, aunt, cousin and I hold his hands, comb his hair, rub his feet and play soothing music to comfort him. We share memories with each other and laugh about the ways we were. I watch his face for a smile. We fill the room with LOVE for this man who lies in bed a different man than months before when he stood and spoke in front of a reunion of family members. A reunion he insisted on organizing even when no-one wanted to step up. Something in him knew the timing was perfect. We reminisce in the quiet of the hospital room, the snow banks lining the streets below. One by one, family members sweep through the room with their offerings of help and encouragement. The love in that room, raw, without reserve. Beautiful. Pure.

My sister and I are filled with the desire to visit my other Uncle. The one who has been an addict most of his life. The one who went to prison at 16. The one who would be going to prison again. The one I am ashamed to say I wrote off as “hopeless.” Now we run to him with opened arms. I see him not as a drug addict but as my uncle. I see his sin no different from my own. I see an urgency to love him where he is at and to whisper in his ear “I will be praying for you.” I am convicted of my judgement of him and the barrier between us is stripped away leaving a deep desire in me to pour into his brokenness.

The night after I return home I am at a bible study sitting across from a beautiful woman I am meeting for the first time. Her blond hair shiny, eyes sparkling, her skin smooth and glowing. She is a mother. A wife. And she is full of the goodness of the Lord. I see that in her face even before she speaks. She opens her mouth to share of her past. An 80 pound toothless addict walking into the doors of prison. An addict. Prison. THIS beautiful vibrant woman. The words roll and shatter into pieces in my mind. And suddenly as I am looking at her I realize that I am looking at HOPE in the living flesh and my heart cries out for my uncle’s salvation. In the morning I stand in the christian book store, tears streaming down my face as I hand the sales clerk a bible and ask her to inscribe it with my uncle’s name. The name of the man I know there is HOPE for.

When my uncle first went to prison, I was four years old. My mother encouraged my sister and I to send him a note and so we sprung into action. My sister who was 8 wrote him a letter and I drew him a picture. We loved our uncle simply and purely. My own children are now 4 and 8 years old and I am thinking of the irony of this as I get ready to mail my gift to him. I am sending him a drawing again, only this time, it is a picture of FAITH, HOPE and LOVE wrapped in the WORD of God. I have FAITH that God has the power to smooth his skin, fill his hollow body and breath new life into his soul. I know that the God who restored the beautiful woman in front of me, healed her with his grace and loved her with his mercy can do the same for my uncle, and standing here now, because of the people God has placed in my path, I get it. Maybe for the first time, I really get it.

May the gifts of Faith, Hope and Love live in your heart for all to see.

Happy New Year!

Like a seed with so much potential
The New Year
plants itself in our lives whether we are ready or not. Life goes on.

This Christmas as I sat at the kitchen table of our family farm and watched my grandfather pass the potatoes to his new girlfriend I felt so many emotions at once. The loss of my grandmother was heavy on my heart. The house seemed different with her absence. My grandfather seemed different too. He had a sparkle in his eye that wasn’t there last year. He had a lady friend named “Joy” by his side that he was fussing over tenderly, sweetly, the ring he gave her shining up at all of us. Change is hard for most people. Sometimes it’s plain heartbreaking, but God gives us hope to cling to and the promise of something more. My Grandfather was devastated when my grandmother passed away. I remember holding his hand in the airport coffee shop and crying with him as he told me about her going to be with the Lord and the sweet memories of their life together. We could’t have imagined the “Joy” that has come into his life since, but God has given my grandfather peace and joy and a loving hand to hold at the age of 84. The mix of emotions I felt at the farmhouse unravelled by a quiet whisper that told me that while things were indeed different, they were also just fine. Life goes on...and sometimes seeds that were planted long ago can bloom again and again.

Seeds
Growth
Acceptance
Joy
Love
May your New Year be full of all of these and more...in Jesus name.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

The Window Dresser

When I was in my 20’s living in Toronto, my family scattered across the globe, I remember going for a walk one night. As I passed by a street of beautifully decorated houses, I stopped for a minute to have a conversation with God. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but I do remember having a lot to say. I remember seeing the lights on in one of the houses and watching a family inside. As if window shopping, I told God, I want that. I REALLY want THAT! I didn’t hear a response. I only felt the bitter cold, and the wind biting at my cheeks as I walked home alone. That night I wondered if God was really listening. What I know now, is that He was listening. I just never stopped talking long enough to hear His response.

The truth is, we long for things. We look in the windows of others lives and whisper, if I had THAT. We’re only human. We want the precious baby that would complete our family. The job that could give our family so much more. A cure for cancer so our loved ones would not have to suffer.

Whatever you long for in the “window” of your heart, with gratitude and thanksgiving and hands toward heaven, lay down your request at the feet of Jesus. Surrender it to Him, and then, well, stop talking. Wait. Listen. Be still and know. Know that the God who created this world, the God that sent his Son to die for us....He’s already got your window decorated. He’s prepared it so tenderly with His love, that you would weep if you were able to see it all at once.

I wish that in my 20’s I understood that. Move along Karen. What I have for you is not in someone else’s window. Wait until you see what I have prepared. The things I have for you will be there....in my time. God’s perfect timing.

Rest in the truth that God has your life planned right down to the finest detail. The things you long for, the things you talk about and ask for, God knows. He is listening. He has never left you even for a second.

He is the window dresser of your heart....in all things.

This Christmas, as you stop to admire the beautifully decorated windows of your neighbors, Thank Him for the ways in which Our Heavenly Father has decorated YOUR life here on earth, and into eternity.

Philippians 4:6 Don't worry about anything;instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for all He has done.

Hebrews 12:28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe

Thanksgiving

Colossians 3:15-17

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Today my daughters and I lied down in the grass and giggled. We made up silly stories under a cloudless sky, felt the ground beneath our bodies and squeezed each others hands. We said "Thank you for this beautiful day Lord" and we meant it.

Thankful. FUll. In Jesus name.

As Thanksgiving approaches may you give thanks for all things great and small.

Rainbow Catching

I’ve been playing this sweet little game with my 3 year old daughter. In the morning and at dusk when the light pours through our windows we see rainbows all over our dining room and bathroom. Colors pour over the table, climb the walls, and spill onto the floor. We curve our hands into hearts and frame all the rainbows we can find. If our hands get too close to the rainbows, they create dark shadows over the light and so we hover our hands just slightly above the light so we can see the beautiful picture inside our hearts. We call it “rainbow catching”. It delights me to watch Annalise frame a rainbow and pretend to put it in her pocket for safe keeping. Our game doesn’t last long as the sun rises or sets but long enough to hear my Father in heaven whispering to me and I share this lesson with both of my daughters....Jesus gives us messages that He wants us to capture and share with others but we must be careful not to put too much of ourselves in the message or like our dark shadows over the rainbows, we risk blocking out the most important part... God’s beautiful light.

I love you Jesus. You fill my life with so much beauty. Beauty there are no words for. Everyday in your sweet way you show me, whisper to me, fill me, equip me, and shine your light in my heart. I pray that neither my hands ,nor my words will block out that light. You are everything.
p.s. Rainbow catching is my new favorite thing!

2 Corinthians 4:5 Our message is not about ourselves. It is about Jesus Christ as the Lord. We are your servants for his sake.


2 Corinthians 4:6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.