A New Series

I love the way that blogging is so fluid and the way we can experiment with options. I love the way each of you has been so supportive to me during all of my experiments! I love reading your comments and emails. Just wanted you to know that!

For this reason, I also want to share with you a bit about what is happening here. I have begun to write about the discipleship process I've walked through in my own life and with other women.

For over ten years, I've been helping other women find the relationship with God they long for. When I saw the effectiveness and realized I can only help a limited number of people face-to-face, I started writing so that one day I can share this process more widely.

How's it going? Frankly, it's a bit of a roller-coaster. What flows readily in conversation does not always flow readily on a page. Translating a dynamic relationship into writing is harder than it looks.

While I'm wrestling, I'm also navigating a life which is strenuous and in-between and unsettled. So I'm now looking to streamline, to simplify, to economize on my energy and time. The blogs matter. But I have to strike a balance between online publishing today and hard copy in the future.

I'm telling you all this because I hope you'll join me for an experiment at the Moonboat Cafe. I'm excited about the potential of this project. It's linked to my new book and it will be a "seed" planted for the future.

What do I want from you? I'll be asking each one of you to *follow* me at the Moonboat (if you don't already). I hope you will read the new weekend devotionals and participate by answering the questions I post. These questions will be excerpted from the study guide I'm creating. And I won't be asking you to also follow me here at Light For My Lamp. I know you only have so much time to read and respond to blogs.

I can't wait. Join me there?

A Witness to the Small Still Voice

To seek to fill a book with words about moving beyond words into solitude and silence is a daunting task; it is laughable really, if one sees the irony in it all. I have found myself . . . drawn to the task and yet somehow strangely resistant. On the one hand, I have been drawn to the task because my journey into solitude and silence has been the single most meaningful aspect of my spiritual life to date. . . . On the other hand, I am aware of the continuing challenge solitude and silence represent in my own life. Even though it has been well over ten years since I first said yes to God's invitations to enter more intentionally into these disciplines, I still find it challenging to protect space for these times apart which so deeply satisfy the empty places of my soul.

- Ruth Haley Barton

For those of us who are wanting to learn more about the benefits of quiet time, there is a slim volume entitled An Invitation to Silence and Solitude. In this little book, Ruth Haley Barton shares openly about her own personal discoveries from sitting still with God. The book earns it's 2005 Book Award from Christianity Today through it's crisp and elegant writing, it's universal appeal, and it's relevance to our lives. I found Barton's honesty deeply engaging. It was hard to put down the book.

I am richer and wiser through Barton's sharing, and I have been inspired to move into the landscape she has traveled. Although I've read reviews warning against the expectation that God would speak to us personally by giving us impressions, convictions, or ideas, and even against Barton's book in particular, I did not have any problems with her story or her helpful suggestions.

Barton is clearly in the center of centuries of Christian and Jewish traditions and is on sound scriptural ground. In addition to this, her voice is authentic and vulnerable: she does not ask us to do anything she has not done. She is not telling us what to do; rather, she is sharing from the perspective of a fellow traveler on the spiritual landscape.

I like, very much, some of her practical ideas to try. They can be used just as they are, or serve as a springboard for your own spiritual exercises. If your prayer life seems to be lacking something, this may be just what you've needed to help you move into a richer relationship with God. The book is short, and therefore very achieveable. The ideas are deep, but they are simply presented, and easy on tired eyes and minds.

Stories like this, from other lives with God, refresh me. Uncovering one is like finding a small delightful gift at my doorstep after a long day.

Photograph of Sliver Thread Falls, copyright 2010 by Benjamin Frear.

Technical Difficulties

It's the oddest thing. My laptop, just 6 months old, is having problems that it apparently can't correct. This means I won't be writing as many posts as I usually do. But I will try to check in as I can until I can get the problem fixed.

If you're visiting here, please feel free to click around and read whatever interests you.

Hopefully, I will be back soon.

The Gift of Hope

I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

my flesh also will dwell in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One see corruption.

You have made known to me the paths of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.

- Acts 2 ESV

It is your will and your delight for me to dwell in hope. Whenever I lose hope, I flounder. Not immediately, but soon. Oh you know it well, Keeper of My Soul.

You see how I shrivel under the haze of despair. You see how I turn to fleshly things for comfort. You know the way I stumble. You know the dark things I have pondered in the night.

And yet, you never give up on me. Your mercies are new every morning. What wondrous love is this which believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things? You have ever been hoping and enduring and believing.

Where you have believed, I have doubted.

Where you have endured, I have faltered.

Where you have hoped, I have despaired.

There is no amount of repentance that could pay for my betrayal. You know it.

Unflinching, you crossed that border between holy and flesh to provide with your last breath the life I could never reach alone. What wondrous love is this?

There are no words for you, My Savior. Come, Lord Jesus, have mercy. Take your rightful place as the guard on my heart. Seal it, oh seal it, for hope. Let hope be the light on my path and the sight in my eyes and the strength of my legs.

In hope shall I build and in hope shall I find and in hope shall I live the life that is truly life.

What brings you hope?

Photograph, copyright 2010 by Benjamin Frear.

Is There a Plan for Your Life?

A national author's blog has published a post suggesting that God doesn't have a specific plan for our lives. He even ridicules other believers who think so. His point? God offers us opportunities and leaves the rest to us. If we're waiting for God's plan for us to unfold, we're deceiving ourselves. We need to get to work.

My rebuttal is here:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me...

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them. ( Psalm 139:1-5, 13-16)

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“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you."

"You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you," declares the Lord, " and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile." (Jeremiah 29:10-11)

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For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)

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This sounds like a specific plan to me. But it sounds like one where we get to choose, too. Could it be that God is so great, so mighty and so wise that his plans include what he already knows we will choose and act upon? This is not a reason for passivity, but a call to action. It is a call to live a vibrant life of trust in God where we partner with him to bring about his plans for us.

That's a life I can get excited about.

What do you think?

A Verse For Me

Knowing what's in the Bible and understanding what it means personally are two very different things. The moment when I see what a verse means for me comes like an unexpected gift. It's as though a curtain which has been closed is pulled back. I get a glimpse of clarity, a vista that shows me where I've been and where I'm going.

I'm reading about Elisha these days. Not long after Elijah traveled in a chariot to heaven, Jehosophat inquired about a prophet who could help God's people. He was told that Elisha was the man who had poured water on the hands of Elijah. Jehosophat responded:

“The word of the Lord is with him.” Just on the strength of Elijah's character, he knew this.

So they went to find Elisha.

I love this one line, the way it's used to describe a man, a servant of the Lord, a follower of God.

The word of the Lord is with him.

The word of the Lord, the truth of God, was so infused into a life that the man was described by it. Recognized by it. Summed up by it.

As a writer, that would be the greatest honor -- to be described, summed up, like that. I'm a long way from it now, and I'm not quite comfortable with setting it up as my ambition. It seems too lofty. How would I know when I had reached it?

But marvelous, it would be.

I didn't understand this longing of mine until I read that verse. There it was, waiting for me. Waiting for me to uncover it and to be known and to know I am known.

I have been known all this time, by the Designer of the Universe.

This post was written for Emily's Tuesdays Unwrapped. Click on the badge above to find her blog.

Is there a verse that has a special, personal meaning for you?

Leaping the Wall

I've been turning this idea around in my mind for weeks. I'm at a crossroads in my life.

What if I just leaped the next wall and started? What if I just started writing what was on my heart? What if I stopped thinking about what someone else might expect? What if I stopped worrying about what publishers might be looking for? What if I just wrote the book that I must write -- you know, the one that if I don't write, I will regret it when I lay dying?

I've looked back and seen where I took great risks and did "okay." I leaped a wall, I fought a hard fight, I'm still standing at the end -- but I didn't actually gain the things I really wanted from it. Somehow, I missed what was required to be fully successful. I'm clueless about what else I could have done or should have been.

When I turn and look at my future, what do I see? More risks. More uncertainty. Another series of challenges. This is not the best time for leaping over any walls. Best to hunker down and wait for better conditions.

Yes, I can see how the landscape is on the other side. I can see beauty and adventure and mystery waiting there. But there's danger, too. I need to be strong to travel, and I'm not.

Besides, I haven't had the heart for leaping a wall again.

I can't decide which is worse: to try with all my might and fall short, or to decide to let the opportunity pass me by. I can't determine, by looking from this spot, whether trying with all my might, facing fears, and leaping walls make my life any better. I know enough to figure that the cost will be higher than my estimate and the rewards will be less satisfying than I hope.

You see, I've been here before. I've taken the leap, made the plunge, took the chance. And yes, it was good. But not great. I lost things on the way, things I'll never get back. We can't go leaping walls and think we're always going to land in a bed of roses. It doesn't work that way. Not in a fallen world. Leaping isn't a path to paradise. More often it's a path to battle.

This is the challenge for those of us who have already leaped walls and fought good fights: how to go on. How to do it again as though we're doing it for the first time. We weigh the cost. We consider what we know. We've already discovered it won't always make our lives better.

But I know this. It makes me better. Not more successful. Not stronger or braver or more competent in any way. No. Instead, it changes my heart. It humbles me. It makes me more compassionate and more aware of others. It makes me better at loving.

Why this is, I cannot say. But the person God wants me to become is on the other side of this wall. I could leap over, or not. He leaves the choice to me. It isn't success He's after. It's my character. I remember his words to me, returning from years ago to refresh my soul. They pour over me like a song.

For it is you who light my lamp;

the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

For by you I can run against a troop,

and by my God I can leap over a wall.

This God—his way is perfect;

the word of the Lord proves true;

he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

For who is God, but the Lord?

And who is a rock, except our God?—

the God who equipped me with strength

and made my way blameless.

He made my feet like the feet of a deer

and set me secure on the heights.

He trains my hands for war,

so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

You have given me the shield of your salvation,

and your right hand supported me,

and your gentleness made me great. (Psalm 18 ESV)

In the end, it is God's gentleness that makes me great -- makes me more like him. But I must do my part. We are partners, God and I. He looks to me to do what only I can do. I must leap the wall, run the path, fight the good fight in front of me. And there, I'll find my true reward, the one that can't be taken away.

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Lately, I've been sitting down every day to write the book. It's going well. But I want to know. How do you get yourself over a wall?

Photograph, 2010 Pisgah National Forest.

This started with a comment I left at Billy Coffey's post: The Bad Between. And I'm linking it to Faith Barista's intriguing "What if?" series. These are interesting to read, if you'd like more.