God, Teach me how to walk barefoot!

Tom Crow just sent me a little devotional thought by David Jeremiah on weakness, using:

He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. 
Isaiah 40:29 

 There is no doubt that when I am weak and helpless, I depend on God more and His Strength is always there for me. I like  David's secondary scripture even more, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:

The Thorn in the Flesh

7 And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me,“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

From day to day in my new life in Costa Rica, I feel weak, unable to communicate, unable to get even some basic things accomplished, then I breathe deeply, say "What? Me worry?" and then turn it over to God and live by faith.

All my life I have tried to be organized, plan ahead, and accomplish many lofty goals. Most of my plans have never been completed, but God has blessed me with serendipities that I would never have thought of! As I responded back to Tom:

The American culture seems to teach us to not admit weaknesses or faults but rather lift ourselves by our own boot straps while God wants to teach us how to walk barefoot. :-) No scripture reference for that Charlieism. But I do enjoy walking in sandals!   :-)

"When I am weak, then I am strong."
2 Cor. 12:10

  

TRUSTING GOD

As I am two days away from the move to Costa Rica, I am trusting God more and expecting Him to give me more purpose in life than I have felt in my simple volunteering in church and other places here in Nashville. And the fact that I don't know everything that will happen is part of the adventure and excitement of the move. I am abandoning a lot of supposed security here in the states, though financially I know it will just get more difficult here. In the process of this thinking I was reminded of the poem/prayer by Thomas Merton which I may have shared here earlier. I discovered it in 2012:

Prayer of Abandonment

Thomas Merton

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain
where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
and that I think I am following your will
does not mean I am actually doing so.

But I believe
the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all I am doing.

I hope
I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear,
for you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

Avoid Stress? I'm choosing to Simplify Life!

Today's "Message of the Week" in The Tennessean by Ray Waddle uses the lives and focuses of the various Saints honored today on All Saints Day and sums it up by saying they all depend on confidence in something bigger and more enduring than our ever-demanding inbox! For me stress is avoided mostly by putting my dependence on God, my higher power; and also by trying to keep life simple.

My move to Costa Rica is partly for this reason and I pray I will keep it simple there (one can overload/overstress anywhere). Today's post in my Moving to Costa Rica Blog talks about this briefly as I mention re-discovering Richard Foster's book Freedom of Simplicity which I just loaded on my Kindle Fire. The current act of getting rid of all the many years of accumulated stuff is freeing and adding simplicity before I even move! Then when I get there, I am not going to get a car, choosing rather to walk, ride a bike, and use public transportation. I can hardly wait! I feel stress leaving my body already. Life will turn to relating to a new community and focusing on nature with my cameras, which is summed up in "loving God and loving people" all around me. That is life! Pura Vida!

With Ray Waddle Today & Glimmers of Hope Yesterday

Ray Waddle, freelance writer and former Religion Writer for The Tennessean newspaper has always been a favorite short article writer. That is probably because he seems to think like me a lot!  :-)  He spoke at a senior adult luncheon at First Baptist today and kind of rambled, mostly about his new book, Undistorted God, from Abingdon Press. I bought one and had him autograph it and look forward to reading it. Not tonight though. It is time for The Roosevelts by Ken Burns!



Yesterday the Sunday school class discussion kind of confirmed my belief that we need to depend on God and trust Him to provide for us in every situation which is what I'm doing on this overseas move thing. Then in worship Pastor Frank continued his series on the Lord's Prayer,

Your kingdom come.Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10 HCSB  -  Which again confirmed my strong feelings that "His Kingdom" is really in us or happening by us as we are incarnate with Jesus acting through us in our daily lives. It is to me more about how we live our lives following Jesus than some future earthly kingdom or heaven. And this is what I want to happen with my life in a new country, regardless of which fellowship of believers I find to relate to. "God help me to be your kingdom that your will may be done in me on earth.  Amen"

Where Am I Spiritually?

Sometimes I don't know. Going to church now-a-days I often feel like a third thumb, not really a part of things beyond being a greeter and usher which younger people are generally not interested in. This empty-nest mid-life church crises for older people is very well described in this online Christianity Today article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september/midlife-church-crisis.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=12017377&utm_content=299016903&utm_campaign=2013

All of the above makes me so much more open to a totally new spiritual adventure if I move to Costa Rica. Who knows what kind of church or fellowship or channels of service? And my love of nature and how it puts me right beside God in so many ways was partially spoken to by my favorite newspaper religion writer, Ray Waddle, in today's Tennessean:


Earth saves room for human delights

For The Tennessean

Last week in Montana, my wife and friends and I encountered three grizzly bears walking across our narrow trail, hardly 40 feet away. My group was naturally thrilled. I naturally worried: We could be killed. It was a mother grizz and two cubs. The scene would turn bad if mama bear felt threatened.

Human domination of nature suddenly meant nothing. We were at the bear’s mercy. But she had other things on her mind — raising a family, getting home. We weren’t worth a second thought. She disappeared with her cubs into the brush without a trace, ignoring our cameras and good intentions.

Immersion in a mountainous wilderness (in this case, Glacier National Park) reveals the silent prehistoric earth as it was before human commentary, sacred texts or gasoline. Out there, it’s hard to see how we fit in, except as disrupters.

Scripture says we were made to rule over Earth’s creatures. So we assume we came along early enough to name everything and organize the place, and it’s been our plantation ever since.

Yet science (for the moment) says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and homo sapiens are maybe 200,000 years old, and we got civilized (started writing) about 5,000 years ago. Which means we arrived late to the banquet. How did God get along without us for 4 billion years? Did God put us on the map only recently because there’s no way we could inhabit the planet for billions of years without destroying it? That’s my guess.

The secret complaint against evolutionary science, I suspect, is not the science but the insult to human ego that a Creator could manage for so long without our companionship. Seen from geologic time, God’s intentions are a bottomless enigma. Yet a miracle abides: our capacity for the poetry of belief, words knitted together against time and chaos in order to bring us closer to the divine spirit. This gift is laid at our doorstep every morning in the golden sunrise.

On this trip I read poet William Stafford, whose verse suggests nature is always watching and waiting, ready to reveal its mind, its balanced economy, its implacable will, its majestic creatures. “The slow current of the life below tugs at me all day,” he once wrote. “When I dream at night, they save a place for me.”

Fierce and patient Earth saves room for human delights — a Tennessee stream, a Kansas plain, a Connecticut autumn, a Montana bear and her cubs, watched from a safe distance.

Columnist Ray Waddle is a former Tennessean religion editor and author of a new book, “ Undistorted God” (Abingdon Press). Reach him at ray@raywaddle.com.

Grace - The Story of My Life

Titus 3:7
The Message (MSG)
3-8 It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.

Wow! No other translation says it quite like that! Yet it is what God's grace is. I'm working on the Volume 3 of my Scrapbook Biography and thinking of titling it "Grace" or something about grace. Volume 1, the first thirty years was really about growing up with exciting adventures, learning, becoming a self-centered young adult, loosing a lot of my innocence and naivete. Volume 2 tells the story of both grand adventures and failures in marriage and child-rearing, surviving it all through God's grace, though wounded and hurting in my second thirty years. Volume 3 is the happiest of the three stories as I find great joy and fulfillment in retirement, another example of God's grace, undeserved happiness that I credit to His Spirit! The story of my life.

This was one of the focus verses of today's sermon on grace by Frank Lewis.