Joyful Words Blog
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path.
– Psalm 119:105
– Psalm 119:105
A wise man once told me that life is a series of blessings and shadows. I’ve come to believe that neither one is meant to last forever. I’m all about the blessing stage but the shadows are not my favorite. It’s funny how the shadows can seem like they are gonna last forever and it’s easy to wallow in the struggles and disappointment and feel like the Father has forgotten all about me. I suppose one of the great lessons of discipleship is to live the truth that God is with us trough all of it and His plan includes the perfect shift between the two. I realize when I’m in a season of blessing, I can forget to praise and thank Him and when I’m in a season of shadow I can surely run low on trust and hope but my impatience and self-pity can really take a jump! I’ve spent some time this summer praying about what the Lord might really be trying to teach me, and He led me to a string of lessons that have been helpful in trying to balance the blessings and shadows.
Time moves so fast and our days are so busy that our weeks can just become a blur. I think a big key to balance is to take time to think back on the day and really recall what happened. Sometimes our blessings and shadows are big events but more often they are a string of little things. It’s a really good idea to ponder the day before the next one begins, so before you tuck yourself in and end the day, these three questions can help us pause, ponder, thank, ask and feel His peace. You can answer these three questions in your mind, or an even better thing would be to share answers with your spouse or family. I wish I had done this with my kids before bed when they were growing up…what insight it would have given me. First Question: What was a blessing today. It could be a success or achievement, a fun moment, a kind deed done or received or something lovely that brightened your day or surprised you. Second Question: What was a shadow today. Maybe it was a disappointment or a discouraging event. The shadow could be a worry or an activity that wrinkles your peace. Perhaps the shadow is a result of a bad choice made by you or someone else that has led you to feel hurt, embarrassed or angry. Third Question: Where did you see God today? Some of the Father’s fanciest work comes in the quiet still moments when things just seem to “fall in place” and we might think such things are “random” or “coincidence” but in truth all things come from God, so we need to give him the thanks and the credit for touching our day. The more we get in the habit of noticing all the ways He touches our days, the more we begin to see how mighty and busy He is in our lives. If all we did was ask and answer those three questions each night, there would be so much joy in our blessings and our shadows. When you answer these questions and let the Father speak to your heart, you might be prompted to apologize or thank or acknowledge things. He can use this time to show us how to draw closer to Him and discover that all the events of our day are designed to bring us so close to Him that we can be lost in His shadow. A Seed To Plant: Pray about these three questions and think about how you can make them a big part of your day. Blessings on your day!
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Every now and again I run across something that just doesn’t seem to belong or have relevance anymore. I was cleaning closets recently and found an old rotary dial phone with a long spiral cord. I also have a potato slicer and French fry cutter that belonged to my Grandma Thelma. She used it in her kitchen when I was little girl. Both of those items have been replaced with more modern, convenient, efficient updated models so the old ones are cast aside as if they are no longer useful. There is a key word in this scripture passage from St. Matthew’s gospel that might seem as irrelevant as those old treasures hiding in my closet. That word is meek.
We strive to be strong and successful. We pray for the grace of patience, perseverance and wisdom. We admire people who are confident, powerful leaders with vision. To tell others our goal is to grow in meekness would be a little like seeing a rotary dial phone in a Verizon store! To be honest, when I came across the word meek the other day, I decided to give it a look and some prayer. I think I need to change my opinion about that word. I think it’s a word we might all be able to relate to better than we thought and I’m certain it’s something we could use more of. Long ago in biblical times the quality of meekness was highly respected and aspired to. We tend to view it as weak, timid or passive but that was not the message Jesus was teaching when he shared the Sermon on the Mount. Meekness in its true meaning is the opposite of those things. Being meek doesn’t mean you are weak and have to take everything like a door mat, it means an active and deliberate acceptance of undesirable circumstances that are part of a bigger picture we can’t see. Being meek doesn’t mean throwing in the towel, it means giving God authority to do what he wills with our life. True meekness can be measured by how closely related we are to the will of the Father. When we make that relationship first, we are content in his love and his control of our life. If we let him be in charge, we realize everything happens for a purpose and we trust in his plan. If we are more centered on ourselves and our comforts and our pride we tend to fuss and complain and point out all the things that don’t go our way. If we are low on meekness, we tend to see the world through the lens of poor me instead of God’s got it all figured out! If someone rich in meekness is treated unfairly or wrongly it doesn’t mean that doesn’t sting, but vengeance or revenge isn’t part of their reaction. Their first reaction is to pray for the person who has wronged them and give the rest to God. A meek soul realizes that God is the source of justice and that all situations contain lessons. Sometimes the lesson is for us and sometimes the lesson is for somebody else and taught through us. In order to grow in meekness, we have to admit regularly that we are not equal with God. Through our great dependence on Him we grow and we trust and we think WAY more about him than about ourselves. I suppose meekness is a bit like realizing we truly need to settle into second place and stop trying so hard to be in charge, on top and number one. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of meekness building to do! A Seed To Plant: What are some of the areas in your life that could use a little more meekness? Spend some prayer time this week with this old word with a great and misunderstood meaning. Blessings on your day! August feels very different than it used to. I remember those feelings that bounced back and forth from, “I love my job, I’m so excited for a new school year” to “Oh my gosh…I’m not ready yet”. I’m entering my second school year of retirement and August is so peaceful but every time I pass school supplies, I wonder what God has planned next. I’ve discovered time after time that He is so full of fancy surprises and I’m left saying, “that wasn’t how I thought it would be!” When I retired, I spent months re-branding and re-building Joyful Words thinking I would launch across the country doing ministry in giant places. I did everything I felt He asked me to do but some weeks the garden is the fanciest place I go and it’s not how I thought it would be, but my life is wonderful. He still calls me to do ministry, and it is such delightful work, but it isn’t the impressive stuff I thought it would be. One day in prayer a question popped into my head that hit me hard. I felt the Lord ask who I was trying to impress! I spent several months writing a book and had visions of being a fancy author but it takes a year to get a book through all it’s stages so I’ve done lots of quiet waiting and that wasn’t how I thought it would be but there is so much peace knowing I did something really hard that was all His idea and if the book doesn’t sell a single copy, I’m at peace because I did what He asked me to. Growing up, I wanted to be a wife, mom and most of all a grandma. God blessed me with all of those things, and it wasn’t how I thought it would be…it’s so much better! My husband is amazing, my kids have grown into fabulous adults who married amazing people and the four grandbabies that fill my heart are not what I thought they would be…they are infinitely better than I could have ever imagined. I think back on my life and all that I planned and remember the disappointments, frustrations and failures and realize they didn’t turn out like I thought they would…there was always more to the story. I think about the hurts and frustrations with dating and planning and test scores or friendships which were so tough to wade through and I realize they didn’t turn out how I thought they would. I look back over the last three and a half decades of marriage and family and recall challenges, hardships and frustrations. We were met with bills, budgets, schedules and expectations that left us frazzled and fussing about things we never thought of, but we didn’t stay stuck there. As the kids grew up there were games, fair animals, friendships, report cards and dates that were marked with sadness and joy. A few things along the way felt tragic and countless things weren’t at all the way we thought they’d be, but great lessons came anyway. There have been so many times it has felt like the rug got yanked out from under us but by the Grace of God, we always got back up and almost every time, things turned out even better than we thought they would. The truth is, the Father and I don’t always think alike. I may not be traveling to giant venues in impressive places, and I probably won’t have books with my name on the cover in bookstore windows or on a bestseller banner on Amazon like I thought I might, but I’m good with that because I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be doing exactly what He needs me to do. My target audience isn’t a classroom or a fancy place like Hawaii or Los Angeles, but His plan for my life right now is playing out in my house rocking babies, writing blogs, cooking and playing with little people and loving my big kids. When I saw the picture on my camera roll of the grandkids and me, I couldn’t imagine anything greater and I’m pretty happy that this season of my life didn’t turn out like I thought it would. Trusting in His plan brings great hope and with that hope comes the peace of knowing things shift and change. As long as I’m standing upright and drawing breath, I know He has work for me to do and I have to be willing to follow where He leads me and serve who he leads me to. I hope I never quit saying, “this isn’t how I thought it would be!” A Seed To Plant: Make a list of the times God hijacked your plans and things were not how you thought they’d be…and make note of how he blessed you in those times? Blessings on your day
I remember hearing a long time ago that if you were dating a person and you wanted to really understand if they were the “right person” you should read this passage from 1 Corinthians and insert their name. I thought that was excellent thinking, but I was already married so I didn’t give it much thought. I have no idea what made it pop into my head the other day, but it just sat there. I began to see the power intended in this verse from St. Paul as all of social media simmers and steams with opinions about the Presidential race.
As the latest political commentary bubbled in my heart I came across this quote by St. Teresa of Calcutta. "Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next-door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.” I’m not sure we understand how important it is to love one another. It was the basic command of Jesus yet we seem to get it so very twisted up. As all of this tumbled around in my heart and my head, I remembered that I have absolutely no control over anyone else’s actions but my own and it made me start to think about how I loved others. The teacher in me thought about a scoring rubric or grading scale for judging my “love ability.” Somewhere in the middle of a really long bike ride on a beautiful Sunday afternoon this reading had a purpose, and I realized the rubric already existed. I pulled out the New Testament, found 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and began to read it slowly inserting my own name. It sounded like this, “Sheri is patient, Sheri is kind. Sheri is not jealous; Sheri is not pompous…” I’ll be honest, there were parts I really couldn’t say out loud because they weren’t consistently true. I wanted to say, “Sheri is not quick-tempered…most of the time or Sheri endures almost all things.” It was not an easy read! It was glaringly obvious where I fall short. I can’t change the world, but I can change me. There will always be awful stuff going on in the world; there always has been and one grandma from Michigan isn’t going to end world violence but God isn’t asking me to. He’s asking me to love others as he loves me. This reading from St. Paul’s letter is a great place to start. The cool thing about it is, if I try harder to get it right, not only will I feel better, but the Father will be pleased and who doesn’t want a new way to please the Father. It might sound so simple, but I really believe the world will get better if we all learn to love a little harder. Blessings on your day! A Seed To Plant: Spend some quiet minutes reading this passage and inserting your name and see where the Holy Spirit leads your heart. |
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Sheri's writing can also be found at Faith Catholic Publications and on CatholicMom.com
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