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SMILE

She smiled at a sorrowful stranger.
The smile seemed to make him feel better.
He remembered past kindness of a friend
And wrote him a thank you letter.
 
The friend was so pleased with the thank you
That he left a large tip after lunch.
The waitress, surprised by the size of the tip,
Gave part to a man on the street.
 
The man on the street was grateful;
For two days he'd had nothing to eat.
After he finished his dinner,
He left for his small dingy room.
 
He didn't know at that moment
That he might be facing his doom.
On the way he picked up a shivering puppy
And took him home to get warm.
  The puppy was very grateful
To be in out of the storm.
 
That night the house caught on fire.
The puppy barked the alarm.
He barked till he woke the whole household
And saved everybody from harm.
 
One of the boys that he rescued
Grew up to be President.
All this because of a simple smile
That hadn't cost a cent.
 
     Author unknown

Eight years ago, nursing a broken heart, I carried my bible and sad self across the sand of the beach up the block from my parent’s house. I plopped myself onto a towel, wrapped myself in a warm sweatshirt and read the Word Alive.

It was on that beach, in that sweatshirt, sitting on that towel that I first read these words:

“Silence is praise to you, Zion-dwelling God; And also obedience. You hear the prayer in it all.”

Psalm 65:1-2, The Message

Those words changed me.

At the time I was at a crossroads: I had just left my job, seriously injured my back, broken up with my boyfriend and more importantly, I had just begun to sense the Lord calling me into ministry.

I’ll be honest, it was not the best time for me.

And then I read those words.

“Silence is praise to you…God…and also obedience.”

That verse was the fuel to get me through one of the single most trying times in my life. I still say those words daily and remind myself of those beach moments. Where I would sit before my God, completely silent, offering obedience, listening.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the needs and wants of our every day. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t ask for things from our God but I do think we need to be still and know that He is God.

Would we choose our words more carefully if we really wrapped our minds around the truth that you & I speak to The Living God? Have we forgotten His eternal Holiness in our quest for comfortable lives? have we lost our sense of awe?

I want to be a woman who will shed her constant asking and quietly sit at His throne for the sole purpose of knowing Him more.

What would happen if we offered Him not only obedience but our silence as well? What if instead of constantly speaking, we stopped to listen? I wonder, has our God been waiting to speak to our hearts if only we would quiet down before Him?

Could it be, today, Zion-dwelling God is asking for your quiet?

***
What is the Lord asking of you lately? Do you often set aside time to sit in His presence without filling it up with words and worries and wants?

Do share!

Do you spend more time considering your physical blemishes or your spiritual blemishes?

We know the answer, don’t we? Sadly, it’s written all over our blogs, Tweets, conversations, and whatever else. We (mainly women, but dudes do it too,) spend incredible amounts of mental energy agonizing about what we should look like, wish we looked like, and hope we look like. I wonder how much would change in us if we gave that much mental energy to what our souls looked like.

What if we abandoned the physical obsession for, say, six weeks, and only focused on the spiritual “fat” in our souls? What would happen?

I can tell you that for me, my obsession with my body image has given way to a greater awareness of my soul image. I will never be what I was at 18. I will always bear the marks of carrying and giving birth to four children. I will never, I say NEVER look like those fake images on those magazines where my 11 year old gets a good look at what is FALSE. (angry mom)

However, I can always be changed by God.

He will always work in me to firm up my sagging mercy.

He will never tire of lifting my heavy heart.

He will always be quick to shrink my ever-fattening pride.

The cellulite of my self-absorbed mind will be flushed out with confession and praise.

And the crows feet around my worried eyes will be moisturized by lessons in faith.

When we focus on this, our bodies will follow suit. We will treat ourselves with honor and respect when we learn to honor and respect more and more the one who gave us these bodies.

me included…

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” 1 Corinthians 6:19

By Jan Hunt, M.Sc.

1. We expect children to be able to do things before they are ready.

We ask an infant to keep quiet. We ask a 2-year-old to sit still. We ask a 4-year-old to clean his room. In all of these situations, we are being unrealistic. We are setting ourselves up for disappointment and setting up the child for repeated failures to please us. Yet many parents ask their young children to do things that even an older child would find difficult. In short, we ask children to stop acting their age.

2. We become angry when a child fails to meet our needs.

A child can only do what he can do. If a child cannot do something we ask, it is unfair and unrealistic to expect or demand more, and anger only makes things worse. A 2-year-old can only act like a 2-year-old, a 5-year-old cannot act like a 10-year-old, and a 10-year-old cannot act like an adult. To expect more is unrealistic and unhelpful. There are limits to what a child can manage, and if we don't accept those limits, it can only result in frustration on both sides.

3. We mistrust the child's motives.

If a child cannot meet our needs, we assume that he is being defiant, instead of looking closely at the situation from the child's point of view, so we can determine the truth of the matter. In reality, a "defiant" child may be ill, tired, hungry, in pain, responding to an emotional or physical hurt, or struggling with a hidden cause such as food allergy. Yet we seem to overlook these possibilities in favor of thinking the worst about the child's "personality".

4. We don't allow children to be children.

We somehow forget what it was like to be a child ourselves, and expect the child to act like an adult instead of acting his age. A healthy child will be rambunctious, noisy, emotionally expressive, and will have a short attention span. All of these "problems" are not problems at all, but are in fact normal qualities of a normal child. Rather, it is our society and our society's expectations of perfect behavior that are abnormal.

5. We get it backwards.

We expect, and demand, that the child meet our needs - for quiet, for uninterrupted sleep, for obedience to our wishes, and so on. Instead of accepting our parental role to meet the child's needs, we expect the child to care for ours. We can become so focussed on our own unmet needs and frustrations that we forget this is a child, who has needs of his own.

6. We blame and criticize when a child makes a mistake.

Yet children have had very little experience in life, and they will inevitably make mistakes. Mistakes are a natural part of learning at any age. Instead of understanding and helping the child, we blame him, as though he should be able to learn everything perfectly the first time. To err is human; to err in childhood is human and unavoidable. Yet we react to each mistake, infraction of a rule, or misbehavior with surprise and disappointment. It makes no sense to understand that a child will make mistakes, and then to react as though we think the child should behave perfectly at all times.

7. We forget how deeply blame and criticism can hurt a child.

Many parents are coming to understand that physically hurting a child is wrong and harmful, yet many of us forget how painful angry words, insults, and blame can be to a child who can only believe that he is at fault.

8. We forget how healing loving actions can be.

We fall into vicious cycles of blame and misbehavior, instead of stopping to give the child love, reassurance, self-esteem, and security with hugs and kind words.

9. We forget that our behavior provides the most potent lessons to the child.

It is truly "not what we say but what we do" that the child takes to heart. A parent who hits a child for hitting, telling him that hitting is wrong, is in fact teaching that hitting is right, at least for those in power. It is the parent who responds to problems with peaceful solutions who is teaching his child how to be a peaceful adult. So-called problems present our best opportunity for teaching values, because children learn best when they are learning about real things in real life.

10. We see only the outward behavior, not the love and good intentions inside the child.

When a child's behavior disappoints us, we should, more than anything else we do, "assume the best". We should assume that the child means well and is only behaving as well as possible considering all the circumstances (both obvious and hidden from us), together with his level of experience in life. If we always assume the best about our child, the child will be free to do his best. If we give only love, love is all we will receive.

I read this several years ago and have read it several times since, and each time I do, it renews me in my calling. Women have come into my life, placed by the hand of God. Some have been mothers, some have not, but they have each imparted grace and wisdom that I take with me on my journey. To each of them, thank you for allowing God to “use you.” I’ve been watching.

A reflection on motherhood from Elisabeth Elliot

“You mean that’s all you do?”

That’s all? As a mother, your life is given to taking care of people–small ones, to begin with, whose wants never seem to cease. Sometimes when your days seem to be wholly taken up with wiping things–dishes and sinks, little runny noses and big slow tears–you wonder about what “fulfillment” is supposed to mean for you. You wonder about being (besides the perfect wife and mother) the hostess-with-the-mostest, creative, intellectually productive, beautiful… and slowly your dreams seem to evaporate.

You’ve been listening to what they’re telling us nowadays about how important it is to find yourself, express yourself and assert yourself. Maybe you’re thinking that you’re nothing more than somebody’s wife and somebody else’s mother. And what kind of life is that?

There is a tribe in the Southern Sudan called “Nuers” where a woman’s name is changed not when she becomes a wife, but when she becomes a mother. She is “ManPuk”–”Mother of Puka.” Among the Nuers, being someone’s mother is what makes a woman’s life meaningful. Two thousand years ago there was another young woman, of the Jewish tribe of Judah, who understood that truth. The world has never forgotten her–Mary, the mother of Jesus–because she was willing to be known as, simply, Someone’s mother.

Motherhood is a calling. It is a womanly calling… and let’s not be cowed by those who extinguish the light and joy of sexuality by trying to persuade us to forget words like manly and womanly. At the beginning of time when God made the first man and the first woman in His image He put both under the divine command to be fruitful. The woman’s obedience to that command meant self-giving. First she gave herself to her husband–he initiated, she responded–then she gave herself for the life of her child.

A woman knows, in the deepest regions of her being, that it is this very self-giving for which she was made. Single or married, her level of maturity is measured by how much she gives to others. If she’s married, she gives herself to her husband and she receives. If she’s a mother, she loses her life in her child and–mysteriously–she finds it.

A woman knows that no one can really say where the giving ends and the receiving starts. It is no wonder we are confused when urged to look for some “better” or “higher” vocation in which to “prove our personhood.” No wonder we are distressed to be subjected to male standards, or told that the notions of femininity and masculinity are obsolete.

Old fashioned notions they are indeed, but they weren’t our own to begin with. They were God’s. He planned the whole system, and it’s God Himself who calls. He calls some to be single, some married people to be childless, but He calls most women to be mothers. There are, the Bible tells us, “differences of gifts,” and they’re all given to us according to God’s grace. None of the gifts of my own life–not my “career” or my work or any other gift–is higher or more precious to me than that of being someone’s mother.

If our calling is to be mothers, let’s be mothers with all our hearts–gladly, simply, and humbly–like that little peasant girl Mary who spoke for all women for all time when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word” (Luke 1:38).

May we look to Jesus’ mother as an example in each of our lives. May her obedience, her faithfulness and her simple, gentle grace inspire us each and every day of our lives. May we too have the grace to speak the words of Mary, in faith,

Philippians 4:13 (NIV)
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

1 Timothy 4:12 (NIV)
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

Sometimes you may think there isn’t much you can do to serve God. Maybe you feel too young. Maybe you feel scared. Maybe you just don’t know where to start.

It’s great that God gives you His Word in the Bible to encourage and teach you. He will provide you the strength needed to do anything He asks you to do.

We’ve put together a list of some ideas of ways you can glorify God by helping others. Pray and ask God to show you how to use the abilities and interests He has given you to serve him.

• Find a way to encourage someone each day.
  Speaking encouraging words can be as simple as saying, “Thank you.” Ask a friend how she is doing. Tell your little brother he did a great job. You will be encouraged as you encourage others.
• Take a portion of your allowance and give it to God.
  God takes care of you. Giving a portion of your allowance to Him helps you remember it is all God’s anyway. Your church is a good place to give.
• Collect blankets or coats to share with people in your community who are cold during the winter.
  Ask your church for advice on how to get these items to people in need. If your church does not have a means of donating coats and blankets, have your parents help you call the local rescue mission or salvation army.
• Have a bake sale or lemonade stand to raise money to help someone.
  There are always people near where you live or far away who need help. You might raise money for a family adopting a child. Ask your parents to help you think of people who would be helped by the money you raise.
• Draw pictures and take them to a nursing home.
  Your skill in drawing a picture can brighten the day of an elderly man or woman in a nursing home. See if you and your parents can also stop to say hello and visit with people there.
• Cook one night a month for your parents.
  Your mom and dad help you in so many ways. Show them how much you appreciate them by cooking for them one night. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Maybe you make great sandwiches or pasta. Be sure to tell your parents how much you appreciate them.

He was my last grandparent. The other three didn't get to see my daughter Elle. Early last month, he left us to be reunited with my grandma. He was 93 years old. I would say he had lived a full life - seeing all of his children established in their own lives, he met all of his grandchildren and he already had great grandchildren. It is enviable that he got to leave all of his cares behind at last and he wouldn't feel pain anymore, although he will surely be missed.

Reasons why I miss him:

• He always welcomed me and my cousins to his humble abode, that is why I am close with my cousins on my mother's side. He liked to have us kids surround him, especially during special occasions.
• He always encouraged my writing capabilities. He praised the poems I've written ever since I was in Elementary and High School.He really liked the poem I wrote for him.
  
• He rewarded our academic advancement with gifts. Once he gave me a watch for my graduation.
• He was one of the most talented people I knew. His calligraphy was very remarkable. There was so much I didn't know about him. I realized this because during his wake, one of my uncles was saying that Grandpa used a bow and arrow to catch fishes before. He was quite adventurous when he was younger. There was even a time he was captured by the Japanese occupied the Philippines, he was almost killed by execution by firing squad. Knowing how to write in Chinese saved him. I wished we had more time together, and I wished he told me these kinds of stories.
  
• He really delighted in little kids, he was always smiling when I bring Elle with me to visit him.
• Overall, the Grandpa that I grew up with, the Grandpa that I knew and loved, I really do miss...
  

TODAY'S SCRIPTURE

"But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself,so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God"
(Proverbs 4:18, NIV)

TODAY'S WORD from Joel and Victoria