It was dark and we bumped down the street in a hot bus. “Look the other way,” someone called and several guys turned their heads. A woman stood with bare breasts and a leg pushed out at an angle.
I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. Because not far from her were three little children crouched under a bush. The harsh street light brushed their faces.
The next day the same hot bus stalled in traffic. A little guy raced toward us, dirty water sloshing in a tin bucket. He stretched to reach the lower half of the bus windows. “Get away,” the driver called. I pulled out a few dollars and held it out the window. The boy grabbed it and ran. (more…)
“I just don’t understand why I can’t do this better,” she said.
The 40-something woman put her head in her hands. “I should be able to do this.”
Or maybe not.
She was trying to teach high schoolers. They were intimidating to her. Some walked all over her, ignoring her rules, defying her authority. She didn’t connect with them. Felt they were unfriendly, closed-off. (more…)
I discovered a new blog today that I love. The author is Anne Jackson, author of Mad Church Disease. I think I liked her immediately just because of the title of her book, but then I read her blog.
Guess what she’s done?
She’s encouraged people to give over $90,000 to change the world. If you ever read my teen blog (Real Teen Faith), you know that this is my heartbeat. Sometimes as believers we point out what we think is wrong with the world, but forget to do something about it, or we wait until we can do something big, forgetting that together we can really make a difference.
I’ve been sitting on a challenge for several days, afraid to ask you or others for help. It seemed too big. It was difficult to ask people to help you in your dream to make a difference. But when I see what one person can do when she teams with her readers, her friends, and strangers who just want to help, it encouraged me.
So, tomorrow we’ll talk. Okay? Cuz I have a dream to place some books in the hands of women who just want a second chance.
Excerpted from My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers
The Baffling Call Of God
“And all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished … And they understood none of these things.” Luke 18:31, 34
God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s, because God’s purpose is never man’s purpose.
There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after.
From Suzie: Isn’t it funny how we strive after purpose, instead of God? I’m not really talking to you; I’m looking straight at my own image in the mirror. If I look at my to-do list today it is full. Every one of them is wrapped around “ministry”. And yet purpose is not what I do, but who I walk with today who is a friend, is God, is peace, is life, is joy. I love ministry. I love writing. I am passionate about these things.
But the simplicity of faith is that my “calling” is to simply walk with God through the good, the bad, the sticky, the challenging, the amazing, the ordinary days and moments of my day.
If you want to read the rest of this Oswald Chambers devo, click here.
I swam with her and the other women at the YMCA on Saturday. I carved out a couple of days to spend with mom. She is strong again now, recouped from her scary illness in April. It was a wake-up call for me, that I might not always have forever. Funny, since that is something I talk about often, and believe.
“Do you have your swimsuit?” she asked.
“I do,” I said.
Her face lit up. The greenhouse pool at the Y was at a smokin’ 113 degrees, but the water was cool and wonderful. The aerobics weren’t strenuous, and in fact I think that most of the women just moved around a whole lot while they talked with each other.
There were lots of comments from the other 70-somethings, like, “who is this pretty young’un?”.
I love to be called young’un at 48.
Mom’s friends were sweet, and interesting. One lived in Germany for 11 years while her husband served in the military. Another was a grandma with three thirty-something children and she was raising a grandchild. Another had suffered some extreme health problems over the last year, but her concern was for my mom and her recent bout.
As I drove home I thought about my mom’s smile. It’s beautiful. It really is. She has somehow managed to keep a youthful, vibrant smile and she used it alot that day. She was happy, and it just didn’t take much.
Remember how we talked about passion last week? How we get so caught up in the busyness of life that minutes, days, years tick by and suddenly we realize we’ve invested time, effort, emotional and physical health in things that don’t mean a lot when we stop and measure it?
I’ve decided that making my mom smile is a worthwhile endeavor, and that throwing a swimsuit in my backseat and hanging out with her friends for an hour every once in a while is a good thing.
A professor just died. He wasn’t famous, until he was diagnosed with cancer. He gave a last lecture describing how he viewed life now that it was ending. To date, this lecture has received millions of hits on YouTube. His inspirational talk has caused millions to rethink what matters. I hope you’ll check it out.
Blog Action Day: Poverty
I discovered a new 
It takes so little to make my mother happy.
