The two female hummingbirds that daily visited our feeder have disappeared. The males had gone almost a month earlier. It happens every year around this time, and moves me to think of these beautiful, fragile creatures traveling from here in Northern Texas to South America, possibly crossing the Gulf of Mexico alone to arrive at their winter home. I feel a sense of loss, even though I’m certain that they, or others like them, will return next year.

The Imitation of Christ, a book by Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471) contains these words: “If your heart is straight with God then every creature will be to you a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine.” I can’t help thinking of our Creator when I see the hummingbirds, and wonder at their beauty, but especially at their perseverance in the challenging perimeters of their very existence. Fragile as they are, they endure heat and cold, wind and rain and persevere in their hunt for the nectar that sustains them.

The author of the book of Hebrews wrote about Christian perseverance: Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we professed, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good works. My righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back. But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved. ( Hebrews 10:23& 38)

Each of the twelve disciples, except one, managed to persevere in a faith that transcended any other interest they had in life, and they kept their faith and testimony until the end of their lives on earth. Among such a varied group of men, it seems amazing that the Spirit of God could so strengthen and support them that they became the backbone of the Christian church. Jesus spoke to Simon, “I tell you that you are Peter, (rock) and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) The gift of faith given them by the Holly Spirit as well as by Jesus himself, conveyed the strength and ability to persevere.

To me the hummingbirds are a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine.

Love in Him,

Prue

One of the many miracles that Jesus performed stands out for being a lesson and a demonstration to his disciples and to us, of God’s plan and interaction with His people. It is the story of the man born blind who was healed by Jesus as a display of God’s works and of the workings of faith in a fallen world: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3) This is followed by a remarkable healing in which Jesus spit on the ground to make mud to place on the man’s eyes, and told him to wash them off in the Pool of Siloam, which resulted in his vision being fully restored.

This was only the beginning of Jesus’ plan and provision for this unnamed man. Jesus was being pressured by hostile Pharisees when he went in search of the man he had healed. Jesus said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “ Who is he Sir?” the man asked, “ Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe.” and he worshiped him. (John 9:35-38)

This miracle was initiated entirely by Jesus, not by the blind man or any of his friends or family. It is a mirror in which we see reflected God’s purpose and his method in drawing His people back into his fold. In this miracle Jesus heals the eyes of a blind man, but unlike other miracles he goes beyond the healing to convey belief upon the man. This reaches beyond the life of the man’s eyes, to eternal life itself. It is a powerful demonstration to us of that which transcends all physical needs: faith itself. More important than physical vision was the belief he acquired in the son of God. That belief was the real gift to the mankind, as it would never end.

Today that gift of eternal life is still conveyed by Jesus through belief in his resurrection. The gift came to the blind man by way of a healing, but it comes to us by way of the cross on which Jesus died and from which he rose to open in us a belief that, like the man born blind, defies all denial that God is offering such a gift. The man knew that he was rejected by all the temple authorities, yet he worshiped Jesus, and Jesus had in Jerusalem a man who refused to deny him.

All of Jesus’ words and works display his Father to those around him, but in this episode we can see God’s very purpose in sending Jesus. Faith is a gift offered to all. To those who receive it and thankfully worship, the door to eternal life is opened.

Love in Him,

Prue

My older brother and I used to argue over whether or not there exists such a thing as “truth.” He insisted that “truth” is entirely relative, having no reality of it’s own, but defined differently by different cultures. I refused to accept that, and our arguments were never resolved to our mutual agreement. In the Bible , Jesus spoke of “truth” as a powerful liberator for believers: To the Jews who had believed in him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32) On that occasion the the listening crowd rejected Jesus at the suggestion that they needed to be set free. Their misunderstanding of Jesus’ words made the encounter a hostile one, as each person believed his own understanding of the meaning of “truth.” If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. . . (John 8:46) The subject of “truth” becomes very personal, as in this exchange Jesus reveals his identity as one who “belongs to God,” the Messiah himself.

Truth is the only coherent reality. It ‘s existence holds the universe together, and, along with love, it is the very character of God Himself. When Jesus was preparing his disciples for his death and resurrection, he told them, “When he, the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” (John 17:17) It was the gift of the Holy Spirit that would be given to the disciples at Pentecost .

The spirit of truth lived in the prophets of the Old Testament as well. In Numbers 23:19, the prophet Balaam said, “God is not a man, that he should lie.” Lying is attributed to mankind, traceable to the first lie in the garden of Eden. Moses also wrote of God’s character: He is the rock. His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and right is He. (Deuteronomy 32:4)

The apostle John wrote, God is Love. (1 John 4:16) The Christian churches have embraced the loving character of our God. That God is truth, we sometimes suppress, in order not to offend other religions or atheists; but to Jesus , his very existence is rooted in his Father God of truth. On his last night before his death, Jesus prayed to his Father for his disciples: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17) That same night he had told them, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

(John 14:6) The person of God : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is love and truth.

Love in Him,

Prue

In reading Exodus 18:13-23 I have often wondered at this scene of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, visiting Moses and the entire body of the Hebrew nation after they had escaped from Egypt. It is a seminal moment in the entire Exodus. Jethro said to Moses, “The work (of settling all disputes of the people ) is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. . . I will give you some advice, and may God be with you. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to Him. . . But select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, and fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people. . . but have them bring the difficult cases to you: the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter because they will share it with you. If you do this, and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.” It may be one of the most thoroughly human moments in the Bible; and I have sometimes wondered why this simple solution was not commanded to Moses by God, but was advised to him by his father-in-law. Jethro arrived at the Hebrew’s camp, bringing Moses’ wife and two sons. It was a joyful reunion for the whole family.

By the time of this incident, Moses had experienced an extraordinarily close relationship with the Lord. God spoke openly and often with Moses concerning large and small matters, but in this important change, God was pleased to send Jethro with the message. It was a “common sense” message, that dramatically changed Moses’ relationship with his people and freed him to be more available to God. This incident showed Moses and all humanity that reasoning and understanding are qualities acceptable to God when they are in the context of faith in Him.

It was an important day, not only for Moses, but also for Jethro and the whole nation of Israel. Obedience to God is strongly stressed in both the Old and New Testaments, but here is an example where the judgment of a human being was honored by God to be a right form of action for one of His people. The implications are huge, freeing the believers in God to make decisions and take actions that they understand are acceptable to God. Their Creator was pleased to share their lives and to work through their own reasoning powers, powers that He Himself had designed for them. To share the lives of His people had been God’s goal from the start.

Love in Him,

Prue

When Helen Keller (1880-1968) was seven years old, she was visited by a young woman who had been hired by Helen’s parents to instruct the little girl who was both deaf and blind. It was a visit that Helen later called,”my soul’s birthday,” for Annie Sullivan brought language to the blind and deaf child. It was the beginning of a fifty year relationship between Helen and Annie, and it bore more fruit than anyone on earth could have predicted.

Eventually Helen, with Annie’s help, graduated with honors from Radcliffe Collage and authored books and articles . They also traveled the world, and Helen performed for audiences. She could dance and respond verbally to questions delivered in sign language into her hand. Helen became a great advocate for the deaf and blind, and she became a founding member of the American Civil liberties Union.

Annie Sullivan’s impact on the life of Helen was portrayed in the play The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson. The title of the play was a quote from Mark Twain after he had seen the play: “Helen is a miracle, and Miss Sullivan is the miracle worker.” Annie Sullivan’s gift to Helen cannot be denied. In a few months she successfully disciplined Helen to become receptive to being taught the “finger language” that would bring her to the person she became. The famous turning point occurred at a well near Helen’s house when Annie held Helen’s hand under the water while she spelled out the word “water.” Helen later wrote that she was moved by a dim but joyful memory, and as Annie “wrote” the word it occurred to Helen that Annie was communicating with her by naming the water, and the entire idea of all the finger talking opened up in her mind , and she grasped that in some vital way, she was genuinely communicating.

Annie never stopped communicating with Helen, and the magnitude of the change in Helen produced Mark Twain’s remark; but Helen had yet to meet the One she called her Savior: Jesus. When she was fourteen years old Helen Keller read in braille some of the works of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist and mystic. It was in his writings that she discovered Jesus, and wrote, “I have always known that there is such a one, but I did not know his name.” “I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.” (Isaiah 65:1)

Mark Twain was wrong. Annie Sullivan did amazing things for Helen, and Swedenborg opened her spirit to the Lord, but remarkable as both of these were, there was really only one “Miracle Worker,” and it was Jesus Himself.

Love in Him,

Prue

Both of the two museums I have visited in Fort Worth, the Kimbell and the Amon Carter, allow visitors to photograph most of their exhibits. When I learned this I returned to the Carter to revisit a water color painting I had seen there, of three crows in a winter landscape , one upon a bale of hay, and two beside it in the snow. The light seemed to replicate perfectly a winter sky, with shadows on the snow. It was painted by one of the Gentling brothers, whose specialty was bird pictures, many of which belong to the Carter Museum.

I had the picture enlarged from my phone camera, and framed and hung it over my desk. It never fails to move me when I look at it, as it so strongly reminds me of my grandparents’ farm. It perfectly bundles and conveys to me an impression of the farm, in spite of the fact that the painter never even came close to Grandpa’s farm.

I believe that the entire world of nature is a canvas delivering an impression of our Father God; and that most of humanity is drawn to and seeks the natural world for a respite from the human stew, while some recognize God’s handiwork in what they see.

In the midst of extolling his love, the lover in “The Song of Solomon” says,”See! The winter is past, the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth, the cooing of doves is heard in our land! (Song of Solomon2:11-12)

When Jesus wished to convey to his disciples his relationship to them and to his Father, Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit. . .I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. (John 15: 1&5)

The world of God’s nature supplies respite and inspiration to God’s people. As Jesus spoke it, the inspiration in a grapevine was real and conveyed the exact relationship between the Father and son, and between the son and his disciples. In this comparison, Jesus revealed that the Father , (the “gardener”) disciplines even Jesus himself.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.

(Psalm 19:1)

When each soul discovers that he or she is not alone, and responds to Jesus’ voice: “Consider the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Mathew 6: 26) then we recognize the painter of our lives.

Love in Him,

Prue

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” (John 10:27)

In this passage Jesus is responding to a request from Jews who were gathered around him: “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” (John 10:24)

Here Jesus suggests that the folks in this gathering do not know him because they do not listen to his voice, or take action to get to know him by following him, as sheep follow their shepherd . It is a remarkably simple reply, and a window into a relationship with God’s son. The promise of eternal life was spoken by Jesus before his death and resurrection, but even before this, Jesus spoke clearly to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Eternal life is at the very center of Jesus’ message to the world. Jesus shared eternal life with his Father God, in and offering it to everyone, he is extending the family of God to human beings.

Sometimes churches reserve “eternal life” for funerals, but to Jesus, eternal life is God’s priceless gift to His people; better, even than a Promised Land, or having more descendants than there are stars in the sky, Entering eternal life is entering your eternal family, and finding everything you thought you had ever lost in your life. While it’s not possible to know everything about eternal life, just as it’s not possible to know everything about God Himself, we have a real sufficiency in Jesus , who came from eternity, entered helpless infancy among us, lived, loved and taught us, and in dying and returning from death, gave a path to his followers. He opened eternity to everyone who listens to his voice and follows him. To be a sheep in Jesus’ pasture is to have tasted eternity in time, and on earth.

Jesus didn’t leave his sheep to wander around seeking him or his Father. At Pentecost they received his Holy Spirit to ensure that news of eternal life could be spread throughout the world, and for generations to come: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.” (John 15:26)

Today “Eternity” gets a bad wrap, but Jesus presented it to us as a hope and a gift emerging from a well of love that has no end and that shakes hands with “Truth.”

Eternity with Christ is indescribably, everlastingly good.

Love in Him,

Prue

When our grandson was about ten months old, Jack and I were baby sitting with him for a few hours in an afternoon. He was a happy baby and we stayed in his room as he would creep around and pull himself up by a chair. Once or twice I noticed that he let go of the chair and for a second, stood on his own, then plopped back down to the floor. On one of those occasions he actually moved a foot as if taking a step away from the chair. After that, Isaac seemed to be possessed of a determination to walk. We watched him closely as he tried over and over again to stand and move forward. It was a phenomenon to me that he was so intensely focused on the movements of his body in order to stand and walk. Only a few days before this, Isaac was cruising the furniture, apparently without a care or a thought of walking on his own.

As I watched him I wondered what had triggered the intensity of his focus. Nothing we did or said diverted him from his efforts. He paid no attention to us at all. I felt that I was watching something as primitive as creation itself. The baby wasn’t imitating grown ups, but was clearly responding to an inbred urge to walk. He wasn’t laughing, but concentrating while we silently watched a crucial developmental event in his life.

We were awed. This was a spontaneous, unexpected event for us, and in that little boy I watched the spirit and the flesh working together to produce healthy and necessary growth. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people (unbelievers) are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

The phenomena of nature give us a glimpse of the limitless variety in the created world. Witnessing some of these things gives us awareness of the power and creativity of our God: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out to all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19: 1-4) To witness the struggle of an infant to come into his own and walk is inspiring. Thousands of years ago people wrote the words that would capture their awe and direct it to its source in God. Today our awe is no less than theirs, and we have their words in our Bible. Today Isaac plays baseball.

Love in Him,

Prue

He who does not have faith can communicate concepts, but only a person of faith can communicate faith. (St. Pope John Paul II )

One day when I was with a friend, we went into the kitchen of my parent’s home. My grandmother was sitting alone at the kitchen table with her head bowed in prayer in front of her lunch. My friend and I backed out of the doorway, and waited in the next room. “It’s funny” he said, “but I couldn’t help thinking that someone was listening to your grandmother.” My friend was not a church-going person, or possibly not even a believer in God, but he had been given a glimpse of faith that looked real to him. In truth, he had experienced a moment of grace.

Another moment of grace that I was privileged to witness occurred when I was visiting a friend in the hospital. Carol was suffering from breast cancer, and her mother, widowed just the year before, usually sat with her through part of every day. On this day her mother was late so I stayed until she came. When she arrived she seemed calm and said, “I had to have my tires changed today, and this was the only time they could fit me in. It was so strange. When I arrived, it was as if they had been waiting for me alone. I didn’t have to wait at all. The service man said,’Drive right into this bay. I’ll get started right now.’ When I drove out, I felt as if someone had gone before me and prepared the way. I would have been a lot later if it hadn’t happened this way.” Carol’s mother had received grace.

The Grace of God is like a much needed hug, a glimpse of an imperishable love that is steadfast and not dependent on anything from us. St. Paul famously wrote, “Love is patient, love is kind. . . It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (1Corinthians 13:4&7) The apostle John wrote, God is Love (1John 4:16)

Grace is granted to many as a reminder of an abiding love. God’s first commandment was to love Him in response to His love for us. The grace of God is a signal and a pathway to return that love, thereby growing closer to Him. My friend received a glimpse of it in witnessing my grandmother praying. Carol’s mother received an unexpected assurance and help that brought a consciousness of being cared for. In both cases, I praised God for allowing me a share in His abounding grace.

Love in Him,

Prue

From the time that Jesus turned water into wine, and his disciples saw it and believed that Jesus was in fact from God, miracles accompanied Jesus in his ministry. There were countless miracles of healing, a miracle of walking on water, of feeding thousands of people with a few fish and a a few small loaves of bread, and the miracles of raising a young girl, a young man, and Lazarus from death.

There were many other miracles, as well, but in one place and time Jesus ministered the Word of God to a people for whom no miracles are recorded. It is the place of a small town in Samaria, Jesus had spoken to a woman at the well outside of town. For a few moments he was alone with her; the disciples had gone into town to find food for them all.

Food had become unimportant to Jesus by the time the disciples returned with it, for Jesus had been been revealing his identity to the woman, something he had not done, even to the disciples as they were traveling. Jesus said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about. . . My food is to do the will of Him who sent me to finish His work.” (John 4:32&34)

Wherever Jesus had gone, he had been mobbed by people seeking healing for a myriad of illnesses and demon possession, but in this small village outside of Israel, Jesus spoke of himself, and most powerfully of his Father God. Other towns begged him to stay and heal even more, but this town wanted Jesus to stay and just talk. They wanted to hear the words of God delivered by Jesus to them, and Jesus stayed two more days with his disciples, for this request was part of the very reason he had been sent by God.

This incident in Jesus’ ministry came to Jesus when he was tired from the press of attention of the people he visited, and the demand for miracles from religious leaders. This interlude has been called “The first church”, for the people believed in Jesus simply by way of hearing his message and his relationship to God. In this village Jesus was enabled to see that his ministry on earth, his reason for coming to earth at all, could find fulfillment, not only in displays of divine power, but simply by the Holy Spirit in the vehicle of the words that he uttered regarding God’s relationships to human beings.

The apostle John wrote, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God. . . In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. (John 1:1) In an obscure village in Samaria, Jesus and his disciples lived the truth of that scripture.

Love in Him,

Prue