Category: So That the World May Believe

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Katherine Pasour’s Honoring God with My Body

“What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” Romans 7:15~ 

That’s a verse that may come to mind when we’ve eaten too much of something that isn’t so good for us.

At this point in the year, most people’s New Year’s resolutions are long forgotten. Eleven days remain in Lent.

The closer we get to Easter, the more I dream and plan of the things I want to eat that I’ve done without for some time. As I begin to shop for our family’s traditional foods, I find myself yearning for foods I’m better off limiting or avoiding altogether.

Enter Katherine Pasour and her new book Honoring God with My Body: Journey to Wellness and a Healthy Lifestyle.

As most health and wellness books do, Katherine’s calls us to eat and exercise well, get enough sleep, and manage stress.

Even so, this book is not just another health and wellness book to collect dust on your shelf while you shame yourself for eating yet another cookie (or six).

Katherine presents a spiritual road map. This book strikes at the heart of our eating, sitting, restlessness, and worrying about things we cannot control.

We’ve spent years, perhaps decades thinking we have a food problem or a job problem. Many times, though, our problems are spiritual. We have forgotten who we are and who God is. We’re focusing on the wrong things.

“Healthful living is not just about what we eat or how active we are, although those two aspects of health are very important. Achieving good health involves recognizing the many dimensions of health: physical, mental spiritual, emotional, social, and vocational. These aspects intertwine, each one affecting the others. When all aspects of health are balanced and viewed as important, we can strive for better health.”

Honoring God with My Body is organized for daily study for an individual or group.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Annie Yorty’s From Ignorance to Bliss: God’s Heart Revealed Through Down Syndrome

I will give thanks to You, because am awesomely and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well. Psalm 139:14

In the poem “Welcome to Holland,” Emily Perl Kingsley compares her experience as a mother of a child with disabilities to someone planning a trip to Italy but ending up in Holland.

Future parents dream of going to Italy and touring the Coliseum, which translates to having a healthy child with typical challenges such as skinned knees, struggles with algebra, and a broken heart over lost adolescent love.

Prospective parents don’t dream of going to Holland, which has tulips and Rembrandt, but represents having a child with challenges parents didn’t expect.

Kristen Groseclose takes issue with Kingsley’s portrayal of “Holland” as an initial disappointment that turns into gratitude for flowers and art. She states the poem is rather “a generic spin on a painful situation.”

In From Ignorance to Bliss, Annie Yorty shows us her journey from the diagnosis of Down syndrome in her first born daughter Alyssa, through the pain of realization and struggle, to the destination of wisdom and gratitude for what is.

Annie grew up with an inherited belief that our value is in what we can achieve, especially intellectually. Having a challenged child meant rethinking human value, understanding our sacredness without regard for capability.

“If I believed her [Alyssa’s] life had value, and I instinctively did, my understanding of what gave a person significance was flawed. If she had worth superseding what she could do or give, from where did her significance originate?”

Aside from the existential question about life’s value came the overwhelming nature of the practical issues: doctors, specialists, therapists, homework from therapy, a support group dealing with rights and responsibilities, floods of information and predictions (mostly dire) about what to expect. And medical billing.

The last one especially resonates for me. Last year at this time, my husband and I lived in the aftermath of his third heart attack. Billing issues abounded. Invoices from multiple doctors and two hospitals, and documents required by a medical sharing entity had me leaping through hoops from the moment the first bill arrived, consuming uncountable and irretrievable hours. The final resolution took 363 days.

For the new mother of a handicapped newborn, such battles must have seemed as though they would stretch endlessly. It’s a special kind of purgatory that seems it will never end.

We measure children’s advancement through life by achievement and growth. We marvel when they take their first steps, ride a bicycle without training wheels, and learn to read. We mark a wall or door post with their height and a date.

Measuring spiritual growth is a bigger challenge. Milestones include decisions to resist temptation, to exercise grace instead of malice, to sacrifice desire for good–even someone else’s, and moments of rejoicing.

As children grow physically, we grow spiritually day by day through prayer, fellowship, nourishment of the Word, and wrestling with difficult circumstances. There is no physical mark that shows our progress.

Annie Yorty has brought us her wrestling. Through this book, we watch a soul developing. In reading, we grow too.

Photo Credit: From Ignorance to Bliss cover, Lana Ziegler, Derinda Babcock

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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The Plan

Their lives were set.

They had worked at their jobs all their lives.

They thought they knew which way life would turn for the rest of their days.

There was a hope for Messiah, in their minds a political savior, to free them from the Romans. But mostly there was routine, the everydayness of work and home.

Then they met Him. Perhaps He was the one. the one who would save them from the oppression of Rome. That was their plan.

They were fishermen and a tax collector, the tax collector recruited to stop working for Rome, to find a higher cause. Surely overcoming the earthly oppression of Rome was the plan.

The disciples listened. They followed. They believed.

They still thought political freedom was the plan.

Then one betrayed Him. Another denied Him. One stayed close to the end. The rest scattered. They watched their plan end.

They watched their plan die.

The fishermen returned to their boats, back to the routine, back to the everydayness of every day.

Life would be as it had been, as if He’d never lived.

Then He arose. Rome stayed, but His followers changed.

They received fire from heaven.

They were never the same.

That was His plan.

They turned the world upside down.

His plan.

His rising, a lie?

You may say so, but who dies for a lie?

Only one disciple would not be killed for believing Him who said, “Follow Me.”

That one would suffer exile and write his encounters with Him whom he’d followed at the cost of all else–all else but eternal gain.

All else but God’s plan.

This plan remains today.

To show us how to follow Him.

To make us never the same.

His way through His plan.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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The Way

He stopped me in the hallway at work–my former teacher, then a colleague. He’d been studying Greek, because, he said, teachers should always remember what it’s like to learn something difficult.

He asked me where in the Bible Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

I directed him to John 14.

He was especially interested in the word way, uncertain whether the English translation came from methodos or hodos. The conversation sparked my own investigation. I’m glad the terms I looked up were easy to understand (always a plus when dealing with Greek).

Methodos means a way of searching–inquiry. That meaning is secondary, but it’s the one my colleague mentioned. Methodos also means scheming, craftiness, and deceit. Strong’s Concordance finds it twice in Ephesians (4:14 and 6:11). Scriptures that warn us first of the cunning craftiness of men, then to beware the wiles of the devil.

But Jesus did not use methodos in John 14:6. He used hodos. Like methodos, hodos has different connotations. “It can mean not only a road, a path, but also a practice.” So it is not only the way to go, the direction we take, it is also how we walk, how we encounter God and others through our lives.

Jesus is not a means of inquiry. He is the way to God. And He gives direction for our lives.

Before His followers were called Christians (Act 11:26), they were called the people of the Way. In Acts 9:2, the people “belonging to the Way”–hodos–were those Saul hoped to persecute as he made his way along the road to Damascus. Being called a follower of the Way was descriptive. Being called a Christian was an insult.

They stood out among the crowd. Some didn’t like that.

My colleague also wondered about the root of the word Methodism. Methodism’s founder John Wesley was well versed in Greek. Had Wesley intended to associate his view of the Christian life with methodos–a way of inquiry?

We were both surprised by what he discovered.

The name Methodism came in derision–just as the name Christian had in the early Church.

John and Charles Wesley’s fellow students at Oxford called them Methodists because they were methodical in their spiritual discipline and their ministry efforts.

They stood out among the crowd.

John Wesley once said, “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”

Wesley knew that to follow the Way was not the easy way.

Wesley, like Luther before him, did not set out to establish a new church. Luther wanted to reform Catholicism. Wesley wanted to reform the Church of England. In fact, Methodism did not even become its own denomination until it arrived in America.

In England and America, Methodism planted churches and encouraged moral living, literacy, and philanthropy. Wesley encouraged William Wilberforce in the fight against slavery. He advocated prison reform. He urged Christians not to simply collect and send goods to relieve the misery of the poor, but to go to the poor individually, each Christian engaging in personal ministry.
 
When He walked this earth, Jesus invited people to follow him. Wesley didn’t invite people to follow Methodism. He invited people to follow Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Strong’s Concordance renders truth (aletheia) in John 14:6 as reality. It translates life (zoe) to include both the “physical (present) and . . . spiritual (particularly future) existence.”

The Way, Truth, and Life invites us to a path that leads to reality for eternity.

And there is no other hodos.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Food for the Soul

“As Chesterton saw, it is the search for truth that keeps us sane, because it always brings us back to reality. And why is reality so important? It is what we are made for. Reality is the food of the soul.” Stratford Caldecott

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance includes a moment from his youth when he didn’t understand the difference between intelligence and knowledge” (59). A classmate had shown off his multiplication skills. Vance had yet to realize the concept even existed.

He felt stupid. In response to his sense of failure, Vance’s grandfather devoted time once a week to drilling the youngster in mathematical concepts. Papaw showed patience when Vance got frustrated. Papaw crowned success with ice cream. The lessons stuck.

But Papaw wasn’t the only one to enrich Vance’s mind. His mother introduced him to the library and encouraged reading in the home. His father introduced him to faith.

Papaw was a rock of stability for the boy. Mom? A sea of dysfunction. Dad? Absent in his early years. But what they gave was enough. Small meals of wonder.

Growing up in a community that did not value learning, Vance “received a different message at home” (60). Today, he’s a graduate of Yale Law School, a best-selling author, and a US senator from Ohio.

Some messages are brief but resonate all our lives.

Today, kids receive a message adults convey implicitly. This message has worked its way down from parents, teachers, and other adults to the next generation and the next.

The message is that the main purpose of education, at its conclusion, is the ability to engage in a particular kind of employment. And once that employment is attained, aside from any related training, education has come to an end.

Sound education translates into more earned dollars than unsound education does. High school graduation produces more dollars than dropping out. Often but not always, a college degree produces more money than just a high school diploma.

But earning money is not the be all and end all of learning.
 
Classical education in Europe during the Renaissance was founded in the idea that learning the truth about various subjects, math, music, history, literature, and science, would lead a student to the truth about God. The subjects were the basis for the primary topic–theology.

Knowing the truth about God would lead to a purpose beyond oneself.

Such learning would not end. It certainly wouldn’t end when the student left school behind and entered the marketplace. It enriched and captivated the mind and spirit throughout life.

Education gave birth to the idea of a Renaissance man–someone who had mastered various subjects, not just six ways to make widgets. Learning wasn’t a means to a job. It was a means to a life. It showed the way to wonder. It was food for the soul.

But western culture rejected truth and modern education has shut God out. Now one’s purpose is to find one’s self. Now purpose is found within self not beyond ourselves.
 
Such an education makes the world small. It makes a life small. It reduces us to what we do and fails to recognize who we are–who God made us to be.

But small voices still carry wonder in them. Voices in a wilderness, to be sure–voices to convey big purposes beyond self.

Voices that point to flowers, treetops, stars. That teach children math and show them books. That open a world of opportunity.

Voices of sanity and reality. Voices to feed the soul.

The world is filled with soul hungry people. But small voices can speak a resonating language of bread.

If you own wonder, share your bread.

You never know how far someone might go on a small meal.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage

It’s the type of book you might read “for a friend because nothing like that would ever happen to me.”

Even so, 70 percent of men use porn. One in six women struggles with addiction to porn. Being part of the Church doesn’t exempt us when 50 percent of pastors use porn too.

Porn is everywhere. It touches all of us causing wounds, seen and unseen, but always felt even if we don’t understand their source.

Bob and Dannah Gresh have felt the hard slap of porn addiction in their marriage too.

And unlike many other Christians, they aren’t hiding their struggle. They’re showing us their journey to help us along ours.

“One book won’t fix a marriage.” That’s how Dannah opens her newly released book Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage.

The book specifically addresses couples who struggle with his porn addiction and her response to it. Yet the advice is applicable to a variety of challenges couples may face.

Dannah writes in a tone that makes you want to pour a cup of tea for yourself and relax as if she were right across the table from you understanding your every heartache.

Her personal story, introduced with an account from her husband Bob includes sound, step-by-step counsel.

  • “stop pretending everything is okay
  • strengthen yourself in the Lord
  • fight for your husband instead of with him
  • discover 6 essential beliefs every marriage needs to survive broken places
  • participate in your husband’s redemption story”

Books like this one are important because they touch our lives right where we wrestle. Right where we feel that we can’t let anyone else know what our inner combat is all about.

Disclosure: I’ve known Bob and Dannah for more than a decade and a half. I received a free copy of this book for review as part of the launch team. That doesn’t color my conviction that years from now, because of this book, couples will be together who wouldn’t be without having heeded its message.

And if they’ve taken this book (and others Dannah recommends) to heart, their marriages just might be thriving.

Read this book. Cover to cover. Use the supplemental materials. Follow the directions. Cry. Pray. Cry. Share your burden. Cry with someone else. Heal. Forgive. Heal.

And follow God’s path on the good way forward.

Even if you’re just asking for a friend.

Photo Credit: Cover photo [of Dannah’s book] of pictures clipped to wire copyright © 2019 by martin-dm/iStock (1178573531).
Cover illustration of plant pattern copyright © 2019 by Asya_mix/iStock (1186132289)

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Who Are We?

The woman stood in front of the congregation to tell her story. She had never spoken to such a large group before. I was in the auditorium “by chance” that day. I had come to hear my grandchildren sing. But an extended conversation in the hallway meant I missed my intended purpose that day.

I went home knowing I had been there for a reason very different from the one I had planned.

Her story drew me in. She had been pregnant for the second time. She spent weeks in bed nurturing a baby her doctors told her would never survive. And even if the child did survive, it would never walk, never be normal.

“It”. It is such an awful word when referring to a human being.

She should have an abortion now, they said. She fought the doctors. She finally found one who wanted to help her, to help her baby survive.

The weeks turned into months. The child arrived–a girl. She would not survive, the doctors said. But she did.

As this mother finished her talk, the doors at the back of the church opened and a little girl did not walk down the church aisle.

She ran. Beautiful, perfect, running. She was never an it.

She is set to graduate from college this spring. She has lived what we in America consider to be the most normal of lives.

All discussions about unborn life, life limited by illness or disability, center on one question: Who are we? Are we sacred souls made in the image of a great God who loves all, weak or strong?

Or are we just a mixture of electrical synapses and chemical reactions, a useful collection of spare parts?

One mother knows the difference.

Deep down, we all know it too.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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When Satan Stops Lying

“[T]hat ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9 ESV).

Satan loves to lie. He loves to help us justify our actions. He loves to convince us that his way is the only way.

Ultimately we see the truth. And that’s okay with him too. The knife of his lie is in us. Realizing the truth twists the knife.

In her forthcoming book Happily Even After: Let God Redeem Your Marriage, Dannah Gresh points out the effects of our realization of truth: shame.

“The enemy of our souls is so double-minded.
He convinces us that sin isn’t so bad before we do it.
But afterward he tortures us with our unworthiness
because our sin is so very bad.”

Some sins we can recover from. Others leave lasting consequences.

“After my abortions, I couldn’t listen to a baby cry. If I was in a store or restaurant and heard a baby’s cry, it sent a chill up my spine. Think about our nervous system and how everything that happens to us is stored there. There’s a reason that a baby crying did this to me,” Emily Rarick.

And that reason is truth–the realization that abortion, what seemed to be the apparent easy way out at the time, was no such thing. Emily realized that abortion kills babies. She knew it killed her babies.

Another big lie of our times debunked–that we can change who we are:

“I want to tell everyone what they took from us, what irreversible really means, and what that reality looks like for us [trans people].

“No one told me any of what I’m going to tell you now.”

. . . Now, now I’m trapped in the wrong body” TullipR (de-transitioned man)

The lie that TullipR followed changed his life permanently and irrevocably.

That lie states that God made a mistake.

God doesn’t make mistakes. Only we can do that. He’s trying to save us from ourselves.

Sex change surgery is supposed to be an easy (or easier) way out. You think this way, and we can adjust your body to meet the hopes of your thoughts. It would be harder work to adjust your thoughts and feelings to what your chromosomes and body chemistry and structure already are. That’s the lie.

“[T]he medical evidence suggests that sex reassignment does not adequately address the psychosocial difficulties faced by people who identify as transgender. Even when the procedures are successful technically and cosmetically, and even in cultures that are relatively “trans-friendly,” transitioners still face poor outcomes. Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D.

Poor outcomes. And convincing the rest of us that it’s right doesn’t change the outcomes.

The lies that aborting unborn babies and changing the sex of children when they’re too young to decide and too easily manipulated eventually come to light for most.

It takes time, sometimes.

One study claims 95 percent of women have no regrets five years post-abortion. The study has a low participation rate (37.5 percent, despite paying the participants). It disregards what happens to the non-responding participants for the first five years and the responding percentage of women over the next five years.

“In 2010, at the age of 18, I had two abortions a mere six months apart. My regret was not instant, in fact, it was years before I truly realized what I had done. It crept in slowly, little by little, taking pieces of me and breaking me in ways that I never imagined possible.” Emily Rarick

“Pamela Whitehead, executive director of ProLove Ministries, said it took her a decade to identify the effects of terminating her pregnancy. Just days after her abortion in 2001, the 9/11 terrorist attack happened, and she buried her grief. In the following years, she attempted suicide, became addicted to drugs, and lived in a homosexual relationship even though she wasn’t a lesbian. It wasn’t until 2011 that Whitehead realized her abortion had been the ‘precipitating factor’ of her self-destructive decisions. ‘I could trace it back to that event,’ she said.”

Regarding transition surgery, a controversial study but one quoted by the Obama Administration in 2016 says:

“We note, mortality [death, most often from suicide] from this patient population did not become apparent until after 10 years. The risk for psychiatric hospitalization was 2.8 times greater than in controls even after adjustment for prior psychiatric disease. “

The lawsuits filed by detransitioners who’ve realized the truth–that their desire to change was transitory– have begun in earnest.

Truth comes to light eventually.

Too late for many.

Desire truth. Embrace truth. Speak truth.

And so save some.

Photo Credit: Pexels

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. Restoring the Shattered is published through Morgan James Publishing with whom I do share a material connection. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Night and Day

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.  God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Genesis 1: 3b-5~

Evening and morning–the first day. That was how God measured days. We flip it around. In our minds, our days begin with dawn and end with sunset.

In that change, we show our preference for daylight. And we show it in other ways as well. Our brightly lit streets are illuminated to a degree far beyond our need to have a well-lit pathway. Our cities glow and flicker as business interests compete for our attention. We are like moths, and like moths, we find artificial light more attractive than natural light. And the more light we have the more we want–as in addiction.

In The End of Night, Paul Bogard takes a secular look at our desire for more and brighter light.

“As our surroundings grow brighter, we grow used to that level of brightness, and so anything dimmer seems extraordinarily dim, even dark. This is exactly what happened as artificial lighting developed through the ages. The once glorious oil lamps became dim and disgusting with the advent of wonderful gas lighting, which then became smelly and awful and unbearably dim the moment we saw electric light. . . . [O]nce our eyes get used to seeing brighter lights, we must have brighter lights.”

We favor the daylight so much that we miss out on the night–on what God intended for us to get out of the night. Bogard asserts that our sleep problems–insomnia and other sleep disorders–are due to a lack of darkness. Artificial light on our streets and in our houses makes it impossible to achieve the level of darkness that promotes good rest.

But there’s more.

We consider a day as the time we move from light into darkness. God set up a daily system that moves us from darkness into light. There’s a metaphor for redemption in that view.

And as we see God’s glory through his complex and beautiful creation during the day, we see the same at night–if we can still see it in spite of the artificial light that conceals the lights of the sky.

Bogard writes: “[I]n the night skies under which the vast majority of us live, we can often count the stars we see on two hands (in the cities) or four (suburbs), rather than quickly losing count amid the more than twenty-five hundred stars otherwise visible on a clear night.”

Those who stand on the observatory deck of the Empire State Building see one percent of the stars those in Manhattan could see during the 1700s.

Our world is ever-brightening 24/7 with artificial light. It obscures the natural beauty God put in place to light our way and show his work.

And sometimes the light that captures us best is the small rectangle right in front of our faces.

I want to be careful to let even the light of my screens show me His way–His very self.

And I want to take care to look up and remember at least that there is much more there than what my eyes perceive.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1: 1-5~

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you credit the author.

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the entities I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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The Value of Wonder

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” G.K. Chesterton~

One year between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I had the blessing of being sick. Good timing. After Christmas. When there’s time for not doing much.

One day: A granddaughter was sick along with me. Two bad cases of winter yuck: coughing and head stuff. We each claimed a couch and a blanket. Since she is the other Rod Serling fan in the family, I put in a DVD of Twilight Zone episodes. Black and white images flickered in the glow of a wood fire and a lit Christmas tree.

We found a twilight of wonder with Serling voicing over our dreams.

The next day: Still sick, but in solitude, I wanted to stitch away some time. To finish restoring a quilt. If I finished it (and applied some Lysol), two granddaughters could dream underneath it for our then-annual New Year’s overnight.

As I sewed, I searched for some background diversion. Flipping channels, I found two-inch deep television. I settled on Netflix and discovered The Little Prince.

It’s a story within a story. An eccentric neighbor relates the story of The Little Prince to a young girl. Her life is consumed with the essentials of preparing for adulthood, her mother having mapped out every waking moment. No time for dreaming. No time for wonder. Only enterprise, but without the vision of wonder.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish,” Proverbs 29:18.

The neighbor shows the girl the stars. Beyond them, she sees what is truly essential—what the neighbor himself has already learned from the little prince.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

When we find wonder—the invisible that shapes our souls—we learn the essence of who we are. And that essence speaks in everything we do.

We learn that the world can be full of patient wonder. And patience is not found in a thirty-minute sitcom that resolves a superficial crisis.

Wonder takes us deeper than two inches. It teaches us to endure. And endurance pays off with a prize.

The prince: “Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”

Patience is, of course, a virtue. And wonder will always teach us virtue. C.S. Lewis shows us what happens when we lack vision and thereby lack wonder: “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise.”

Without wonder, we have only empty enterprise. We have no virtue and no vision.

On the first night of the New Year, two young girls and I settled down with a bowl of popcorn and The Little Prince. Then they dreamed under the completed quilt.

Soon enough they will be grown-ups, at times consumed with the essentials of everyday living, but the prince reminds us that,

“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”

May we count ourselves among the few who remember—because only those who remember that wonder comes from God can participate in it with Him.

“Then Joshua said to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.’” Joshua 3:5

Photo Credit: Nancy E. Head

Nancy E. Head’s Restoring the Shattered is out in paperback! Get your copy here!

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