This isn't exactly a Christmas blog either, but if we're going to spend extra time in prayer on the twenty-eighth of December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, as I suggested earlier this week, how shall we pray? We want to see solutions to the problem of gun violence in America. Here are some suggestions for using the ACTS format—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.
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A dear friend from church has stage-four cancer. She still posts cheerful thoughts on Facebook and wears a big smile when I see her. Helen wrote me recently that she had disconnected her telephone landline because she didn’t expect to spend much time at her house anymore. (She’s mostly with her family in a city a couple hours away.) She made no big deal about it, but it started me thinking what it would mean to say good-by to your home—maybe forever. My skating rink is open again! I am jumping (and spinning and dancing and doing three-turns and mohawks and all my moves-in-the-field) for joy! This isn’t a blog about skating. When I surveyed readers about what they most wanted to see on this blog, my passion for skating came out pretty much at the bottom. But this ISN’T about skating. It’s about my gracious God. “Trust without knowing” is a challenge. That is the definition of trust, as my American friend in Pakistan writes. If we knew how the story turns out, it wouldn’t be trust. Of course, we DO know how the story turns out: the Lord returns to save his people and restore creation to what he originally intended. We just don’t know how our little piece of the story will turn out. That’s where trust comes in. Moment by moment. Day by day. In America or in Pakistan. I teach fourth to sixth graders in Sunday school. Most of them come from Christian homes. They go to Awana; they can recite the books of the Bible and lots of verses (although they are a bit fuzzy on where those verses are found). When I taught about Saul chasing David, one of my boys had watched the video and told the whole story for me. But I’m not at all sure they could tell me who came first: Abraham, Moses or David. Did those guys live before or after Jesus? When were Isaiah and Jeremiah around? Daniel kind of floats through the history of their minds in a perpetual lion’s den. And Esther falls somewhere between Aurora and Princess Jasmine. When in the course of human events we come to the end of our resources and recognize that we are unable to solve the world’s problems on our own, it becomes necessary to dissolve the illusions that have connected us to our false hopes in armaments and political platforms, in education and government programs, and to assume among the powers of the earth the humble and repentant station to which Nature and Nature’s God has called us. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are equally sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. The first DVD my husband and I ever bought was The Lord of the Rings extended version, boxed set. I listen to the audio-book at least once a year (usually starting with The Hobbit and moving on through the trilogy). I have the soundtrack music to all three films on my ipod. The other day at the ice rink “Gollum’s Song” from the ending of the second movie, The Two Towers, came on. You may remember that Andy Serkis, the actor who voiced Gollum, won awards for his role that became far more than a voice-over of a computer-generated character. Technology has its down side (witness all the ads for Viagra and body-part enlargers that show up in my spam box) but it really has some great stuff too. Recently I have been enjoying Inter-Varsity Press’s Quiet Time Study page. It works its way through the Bible over a couple years with questions and links to the Bible Gateway page for that passage. I read the introductory paragraph, click on the link to Bible Gateway, read the passage, then line up the two windows side-by-side on my screen, read the questions one at a time and find the answers in the passage. Rejoice for He is risen! I will not leave you this week in the darkness of Friday afternoon. After #18 ("Beneath the Cross of Jesus" in InterVarsity's Hymns) comes #19! Thine Be the Glory, Risen, Conquering Son! I have been working on a short story about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on that long ago Easter afternoon, immersing myself in their grief, trying to imagine its transformation into joy as they recognized Jesus. (The lane at the left is on the campus of Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Kenya, but I can easily imagine my disciples walking down it.) For that reason verse two of this hymn struck me especially. Verse three makes me think of Thomas. Maybe I need to write another story. When I wrote a couple weeks ago about one of my favorite hymns, "For All the Saints", several of you wrote back with your own favorites or sharing your love for mine. (For some reason readers of this blog seem to prefer to comment in personal e-mails or on Facebook rather than on the blog itself. I guess they are shy. Or maybe FB feels more personal. Who knows? I’m just glad when you tell me what you think!) My sister mentioned #3 and #7 in InterVarsity's Hymns, which we used in family worship growing up. She didn’t bother to give their titles. She assumed I too would remember them from the numbers. She sent me back, thumbing through the slim blue volume on the shelf by the piano, reading favorite after favorite and remembering precious times of worship. |
AuthorLeAnne Hardy has lived in six countries on four continents. Her books come out of her cross-cultural experiences and her passion to use story to convey spiritual truths in a form that will permeate lives. Add http://www.leannehardy.net/1/feed to your RSS feed.
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