Connect with the PCA Women's Ministry:
FacebookInstagramEmail

When Pelicans Can’t Fly: God’s Comfort in Our Pain

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for animals. I’ve been known to pull off the road to move a turtle out of harm’s way, and I’ve taken home one too many little rodents after stopping by the pet store. My husband fears what might end up tagging along home with me every time I say, “Just running out to grab some dog food.” While on vacation, we took an evening stroll on the beach and I noticed a pelican in front of us standing strangely still. As we got closer, it became apparent that the bird was hurt due to a fishing hook caught in its wing. True to my nature, my heart went out to the creature who was clearly helpless in his plight and fearful because of our close proximity. I wanted so badly to fix the injured wing so it could soar again, but there was little I could do, and the bird was incapable of helping itself. Unable and Helpless I thought of this pelican a few times since returning home. Its presence was a vivid picture of my own inability to fix the brokenness I feel internally and that I see in the world around me. There have been times when personal suffering has felt paralyzing because no matter what direction I move, the pain still lingers. And as I watch headlines that blare agony, disillusionment, and death, I again feel unable and helpless. Paul was a man who knew suffering, and we see just a glimpse of the extent to which he suffered in his second letter to the Corinthians...

When Pelicans Can’t Fly: God’s Comfort in Our Pain2022-05-05T00:26:15+00:00

Our Good Shepherd

The global pandemic of 2020 brought fear and uncertainty to our world. “Shelter in place” became our new normal. In the midst of this crisis, I saw someone post a picture of a black sheep in a nearby yard. As one of the Lord’s sheep, I’ve loved sheep for many years and have seen them on farms both here and in Great Britain. But I’ve but never seen any in my neighborhood. So, I prayed that the black sheep would come through the woods and into our yard. Ten days later, I looked out the window and saw the black sheep along with a white one! They continued to come in our yard every day. They were calming and beautiful to watch, a great diversion from the news of the virus. As these sheep wandered into our yard each day, I couldn’t help but think of the comparisons in Scripture between us and sheep— between shepherds and our Great Shepherd. Prone to Wander The sheep wandered through the woods between our house and other houses in our neighborhood. They were lost and could not find their way home. They needed their shepherd to rescue them. I memorized Isaiah 53:6 as a child. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” I was like the sheep in our yard who had gone astray until I trusted in Christ for my salvation at age eight. He became my shepherd who rescued me and gave me new life in Him....

Our Good Shepherd2022-05-05T00:27:50+00:00

A Prayer for Abiding in Christ

“Get rooted.” It’s a quiet whisper the Holy Spirit impresses upon my heart when my mind starts to spiral or I’m tempted to react irritability or angrily to my outward circumstances, namely my kids. I’m thankful for this kind, yet bold reminder that stems from Isaiah 26:3 – “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts you.” I’ve ruminated on the gospel of Mark quite a bit lately. A major theme I’ve noticed is the crowd that follows Jesus, literally, everywhere, day and night, constantly pressing in with their needs. I’ve noticed that Jesus responds quite differently than I tend to – He has pity, He shows compassion, and mostly, He stays at peace. Even their constant need, and I mean constant need (check out Mark chapter 1), doesn’t disturb His inner peace. It doesn’t disturb Him abiding in the Father’s love. Anybody else have a posse of little kids? You can quickly relate to the constant following, the never-ending need, and even franticness when they think the need will not be met. And yet, Jesus.  Sometimes I think it’s easy to forget that Jesus was not only fully God, but also fully man. The author of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was made like us, in every respect: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16; also see Hebrews 1:10-18)....

A Prayer for Abiding in Christ2022-05-05T00:28:37+00:00

Learn and Unlearn: On New Life in Christ

I’m a Star Wars junkie. So is my husband Ben. We have two cats, Luke and Leia, and a dog, Hoth. Our parents implored us not to follow suit in the naming trend when we had kids. We didn’t, but we did instill in them our love for the movie trilogy. I recently watched The Empire Strikes Back with my middle son. It’s the second of the original trilogies and one of my favorites. It’s the first time we meet the wise old Master Jedi, Yoda. Young Luke   Skywalker finds Yoda in order to begin his own Jedi training and things don’t exactly go swimmingly. When Luke’s sunken starship bubbles beneath the watery surface he sighs in exasperation. Just a moment before he was using his mind to move rocks, but a starship? That was too big. Insert one of pop culture’s most famous dialogues: Yoda: “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Luke: “All right, I’ll give it a try.” Yoda: “No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” Not bad advice from a 2-and-a-half-foot green monster. It reminds me of what Paul wrote about our old and new selves in Christ Jesus...

Learn and Unlearn: On New Life in Christ2022-05-05T00:29:31+00:00

Five Lessons in Waiting on the Lord

I was 23 years old when I started praying daily for my husband and 33 when I met him. From the time we came home from our honeymoon, we prayed the Lord would make us parents. It wasn’t until the day before our 3rd anniversary when we finally received a positive pregnancy test. Waiting has often been a painful part of my story, but as I look back, I can see the Lord’s hand through it all. In many ways, the waiting was and is not complete, but in that sense I feel a kinship with many familiar Bible characters, and more so, the ultimate story of redemption. We are all waiting, aren’t we? How I long to wait well and in ways that honor God! When it comes to waiting well, the following are five helpful principles I’ve learned during long seasons of waiting: Be Honest with God. Your Heavenly Father knows you are in a season of waiting. He hears every cry of your heart, sees every painful tear that falls, feels every flicker of hope you feel. He knows it all, yet He longs for His children to be honest with Him, to wrestle with Him, and to continue to respond to Him in prayer, petitioning and trusting that He has not forgotten you. As Elisabeth Elliot said, “Waiting on God requires the ability to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts.”..

Five Lessons in Waiting on the Lord2022-05-05T00:30:17+00:00

The God Who Sees

So, she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing, for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Hagar and the angel of the Lord in the wilderness are an important piece to the relational gospel story between God and His people. It is a story for those who feel weak, used, abused, abandoned, those who are aliens, and those who long to be seen. El Roi is the God who sees us. This name of God is revealed in Genesis 16. Hagar refers to God as El Roi in verse 13, but to understand the importance of this name we have to see the name in the context of the entire story. In Genesis 16 we see Sarai desperately wanting to push God’s covenant promise along in her own human effort, control, and plans. In the text of Genesis 16 we see she suggests to Abram that he take her maidservant to be his wife. Neither Abram nor Sarai refer to Hagar by name in this entire account recorded by Moses in Genesis 16. She is a maidservant, an Egyptian in slavery in a foreign land, and she is used as an object by Abram and Sarai—unseen to them as the named woman, by the personal name Hagar—to Abram and Sarai, she is servant or just a pronoun. After Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarai deals harshly with her and Hagar flees. Hagar is pregnant, an alien in a foreign land, and up until this point has not been referred to by her personal name. She flees to a place on the way to Shur—a place that is so far from where Abram and Sarai lived that she must have traveled a very long way on foot to escape the mistress who mistreated her, never called her by her personal name, and dealt with her harshly. In the desert, the angel of the Lord speaks to her and calls her by her personal name for the first time in the text of Genesis 16. In Hagar’s response to the angel of the Lord, we see for the first time in Scripture, the recorded name of the God who sees, El Roi—the God who sees me...

The God Who Sees2022-05-05T00:31:10+00:00

Swimming in Grace

This is a fish story. This is not a grandiose tale of record-breaking sizes nor of hard-fought battles of rod and reel, waves and wrestling. The scale is smaller and the location is my daughter K.’s apartment, in an aquarium that is home to Bob, the longear sunfish. Bob’s home is lush with green plants, their leaves wave gently in the water. The rugged stones on the floor of the tank afford him places to hide, rest, and dart about. Floating through the water are smaller fish, the same kinds he was used to eating in the Tennessee waters from whence he came. All in all, a pretty good life for a fish. Except it wasn’t. In case you are wondering if maybe you’ve stumbled onto the wrong blog (fish?) let me assure you that I think I’m on pretty safe ground using a fish for an illustration. The world God made is rich with objects, analogies, comparisons, and every wonderful thing to use as a picture to help us know him better. Camels, sheep, lamps, and coins – when we have eyes to see – help us to understand abstract truths in a concrete way. Think back to your favorite Bible stories and I’ll bet you can think of a fish or two. A Certain Death This fish was dying. The problem seemed obvious. Bob suffered from an ailment called “popeye,” where a fluid build-up caused his eyes to bulge out wildly, marring the appearance of his beautiful turquoise and orange body. Blinded, he kept swimming straight into the glass walls of the aquarium, unable to eat, and slowly starving to death. My daughter tried to give him different food, improve the condition of the water, and even treat the water itself with medicine— all futile efforts. Bob’s blindness was due to an underlying infection, and without treating that, he would not make it. The problem was, how do you get medicine into a fish that won’t, or can’t, eat? K. sought a solution. Thanks to the Internet, You Tube, and a knowledgeable pet store owner, she found it. First she had to create a paste made of bloodworms (larvae that fish love to eat) and antibiotics. Next she put the medicated food into a syringe. Afterward she gently reached into the aquarium, took hold of the fish, and with her other hand used the syringe to squirt the food into its mouth. What a beautiful illustration of the gospel! Here are some truths I noticed. Perhaps you can find even more! An Illness A host of problems plagued this fish. He was blind, ill, and starving. Fixing the obvious problem— his blindness— wasn’t enough. The greater, underlying infection needed to be dealt with. What a picture of our hopeless, sinful selves! Remember what Jesus said to the paralytic, handed down through the roof by his caring friends? “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). Paralysis was not the worst of his problems. And the problems that paralyze us are minor compared to our overarching problem. Our sins need to be forgiven. Friends, whatever problem or need initially drew us to Jesus, we needed to realize our real problem was our separation from God. We needed to be reconciled with him....

Swimming in Grace2022-05-05T00:32:15+00:00

When a Tree Falls: God’s Faithfulness in Trials

In September of 2019 I embarked on a journey along with my husband. He walked 1,300 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to Orlando, Florida; I biked 310 miles from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington, DC. My husband loves doing crazy things and for some reason, I typically come alongside him! An Unexpected Obstacle For the first 310 miles of his “walk” I biked “with” him, although 98% of the time I was alone on the trail. He would get up each morning and begin his day on the trail while I drove 20-25 miles ahead to a trailhead, where I would park my car unload my bike and all the gear, get on my bike and ride back toward him, typically about 11 or 12 miles. Then once we met up, I would bike ahead of him his last 11 or 12 miles for the day, waiting for him every 5 miles until we reached the car. We would then set up camp and sleep until morning. We repeated this daily until we reached Washington, DC. (At this point our friend supported him with an RV and I drove to Florida to await his arrival 55 days later.) I consider myself a “brave chicken.” I typically think of everything that could possibly go wrong with a plan, but I tell myself that if I don’t do “it” I will miss out, so I push through with my chicken heart and my brave soul! This usually consists of a lot of research, planning, and even more prayer. But sometimes, even with all the research, planning, and prayer, the unexpected arises. And on this journey, it came about on Day Two. I was about 6 miles into my morning ride heading toward my husband, when I encountered a huge tree that had fallen on the trail. There was no way around it, over it, or under it. My only option was to go through it, carrying my gear laden bike. I had to lift it over part of the tree while ducking under a huge branch. There was also a tangled mess of vines I had to precariously walk through while I was climbing, carrying, and ducking!! God’s Faithfulness Through Trials Once I got through this obstacle, I took a break to reflect a bit on the scene. I was instantly reminded of my life—a life that has been filled with many unexpected tragic events that can seem overwhelming if I dwell on them too much. It made me consider the truth that in each of these events, there was no way around, over, or under, only through them. And it was through those situations that God refined me. His plans for each of these tragedies in my life drew me closer to Him in ways that on my own I could never have handled. Even in the events that occurred prior to my salvation, He used to prepare me to trust Him....

When a Tree Falls: God’s Faithfulness in Trials2022-05-05T00:32:59+00:00

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The florist shop in my hometown has been there for decades, an establishment owned by a woman who has a real gift for flower arranging. She also quietly practices her faith using her floral business as a platform to inform her customers of prayer needs for those in our community. Our florist knows first-hand the significant events in many of the locals’ lives. She has prepared flowers for births, proms, weddings, get-well wishes, and funerals, so she has a unique perspective into the major events in the lives of her customers. Next to the cash register in her shop hangs a small blackboard with two columns: one column for first names, and a second column for a one-or two-word prayer request. On a weekly basis, she types up these prayer requests and has them available for anyone who wants to take the list home. The lists are gone by the end of the week. These prayer requests have weighed heavily on my heart as I consider the needs of my neighbors: a diagnosis of cancer, a troubled marriage, financial problems, a stillborn child. As astounding to me as the tremendous needs are in my own neighborhood, it is even more astounding that every week random neighbors who enter the florist shop take the list home as a prompt to pray for their neighbors. Many, maybe even most, don’t know the people they are praying for personally. There is no specific church affiliation, no details of the prayer request, no last name of the person who needs prayer, just a quiet prompt for those willing to pray for a neighbor in secret. Jesus instructed His disciples about praying in secret. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matt 6:5-6) Who knows the effects these prayers in secret have had on those in need!...

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?2022-05-05T00:33:42+00:00

Connecting with Jesus Through the Lord’s Supper

Last Christmas, I received a remarkable gift from my grandmother, who is an accomplished watercolorist. She painted a picture of the first hibiscus plant I had grown at my new house in St. Cloud, Florida. As I gazed at the painting, I could imagine her masterfully applying washes of reds and pinks to form the blossoms and mixing lush greens for the leaves. By creating this painting, she entered into my context to remind me of our connection with one another. She could have painted a magnificent waterscape at sunrise from her living room window on Holmes Beach, but she chose as her subject my little container garden with the funky 1970s stenciled porch floor in the background, all of which she carefully marked out in detail. Watercolor represents a connection between my grandmother and me; we have painted together for decades, since she taught me when I was eight. The image she gifted was a tangible expression of this connection we share. When you take the Lord’s Supper, Jesus presents you with a gift that does this very thing! Life Connection         In the Lord’s Supper, God enters into our context and affirms the unbreakable, covenantal, life-giving connection we share with him. He uses humble, earthly items to impart to us something heavenly. In John 6, Jesus teaches the that he is the Bread from Heaven, and what that means for us: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me” (John 6:56-57, ESV). The life we receive as we feed on Jesus flows out of the life of God, grounded in the assurance of an eternal bond with him through Jesus Christ. In some mysterious way, as we take the Supper, the Holy Spirit joins us with Christ’s sustaining, assuring power in that moment (1 Cor. 10:16-17)...

Connecting with Jesus Through the Lord’s Supper2022-05-05T00:34:32+00:00
Go to Top