Sometimes, and sometimes frequently, I catch a glimpse of sunlight from the kitchen window on the counter top and almost catch my breath at the beauty of such an ordinary sight. It’s not only this, but other common sights around the house and yard, and even neighborhood. Familiar objects strike a chord with their beauty. I used to dismiss such things, but now I think that they counteract some of the dreadful news we often hear that showcases dismaying conflict and evils in the world. I dismissed the feeling of beauty as an escape response, but now I think it is a lift of the veil of earthly wrong to glimpse the life of God in our midst. It reverses the sense of emptiness at the current events we are powerless to change.

In his Spiritual Diaries, Pope John Paul II wrote, “This feeling of beauty is a type of fulfillment of Christian prayer, through which the world becomes an epiphany of God.” Beauty in any form, but especially in nature, is a reflection of its creator. The sense of beauty delights and elevates us with a perception of grace on earth. The psalmist declared, One thing I ask from the Lord, the one only do I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple. (psalm 27:4)

Beauty is one of the strongest hallmarks of the presence o God. When we begin to see beauty where we never saw it before, it is a spiritual shift that echos the beauty of the Lord. The psalmist as well as other Biblical writers knew this experience. Jesus himself read from Isaiah when revealing to his people his real identity: The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, . . . to provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning. . . (Isaiah 61:1&3)

Our front door has a panel of beveled glass that catches the morning sunlight and splashes rainbows around the living room floor and walls. When I see the rainbows I experience the oil of joy, for they remind me of the beauty of the one who loved us enough to ensure our salvation. There are endless times when beauty works for our God to convey His presence. We have only to “ask, seek, and knock” to find and experience His beauty. (Matthew 7:7)

Love in Him,

Prue

One autumn Jack and I traveled to Houston, Texas, to hear a guest preacher who had been invited to give a series of sermons. He was a well known preacher from radio, T.V.. and online. The pulpit where he preached was situated in front of a soaring wooden cross on the wall behind him. We were attending only one of the services.

After the service began, a voice from the congregation started shouting and eventually heckling the preacher: “You are lying! You don’t worship God; you worship a piece of wood! You worship anything in the shape of a cross, but you don’t worship God!”

I turned to see who was speaking, and saw a young Islamic man sitting in the section to the left of us. The room was well attended, but he was clearly distinguishable, as he sat near the aisle. The preacher finally paused and addressed him, and asked him to wait until after the service when he, the preacher, would be happy to sit with him and talk. The young man did not respond to this, and continued his tirade. Finally the ushers escorted him out. I could see that he left the building, apparently with no intention of staying to talk.

It is hard to understand that after thousands of years the message of Christianity could be so profoundly misunderstood, but I could not help remembering Jesus’ words to his very first believers: In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. (John 16:2-3)

Jesus spoke these words just before he introduced the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples: Unless I go away , the Advocate will not come to you: but if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:7) The priceless Holy Spirit of Christ would companion the disciples to protect their faith and their message when Jesus returned to the Father. This gift, little understood at first, and still mysterious because the Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity, nevertheless continues to deliver Christ to us to this day.

I believe that it is the deeply personal relationship between wholly human and wholly divine, the Christ, and ordinary people, that other religions cannot accept. To some, it is not possible that there is truly a living bridge between God and humans where we can meet. The story is too simple, and the gift too great. But for eleven disciples (later, twelve) and countless saints and believers throughout the centuries, Christ is the very real and very true bread of life itself.

Love in Him,

Prue

A minister once told this story about himself. When he was quite young, perhaps ten or twelve years old, he had a gift of being able to play the piano by “ear”. His mother paid for lessons, and all his teachers were impressed with his ability. His mother also knew that he had not ever learned to read music, but that he could easily “copy” his teacher and sound very good. Finally he was given a new teacher who placed a piece of sheet music on the piano and told him to play it the best he could. “Will you show me how you would like me to play it?” he asked. “I don’t want you to play it according to my style, but according yo your own understanding,” she answered. He was thoroughly defeated, and had to admit that he couldn’t read music.

After that he began the laborious process of learning to read music, and to play the piano accordingly. He became much more accomplished, and could have had career as a professional musician , but became a Christian minister instead. Some times he plays to piano for his congregation. All the years that he played by ear were not wasted, of course, for he became ever more accomplished.

When I heard this I thought that even an extraordinary gift can become a stumbling block to our growth in understanding our Christian life. With the rare gift this young man had, it was hard to see any need for it to be “harnessed” into conventional music.

Paul wrote about the struggle to be motivated by God instead of by ourselves: My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthians 2:4) The moment of transition for Peter and some of the other disciples occurred when Jesus appeared to them by the Sea of Galilee after the resurrection. Jesus advised them to cast their nets to the right side of the boat and when they made the big catch, to bring fish to his fire on the beach, where he had bread for them as well. There Peter’s life changed forever. (John 21)

Jesus never condemned the fishing done by Peter and the others; he simply transformed it through his Spirit to a new life for Peter, and eventually for the world.

The young pianist needed to surrender in order to realize his real potential. The moment we perceive that the Spirit of Christ is waiting patiently for us to turn over ourselves to him, the transformation can occur in us. It is beautiful music.

Love in Him,

Prue

Michelle was a three year old little girl when her family, including an older sister and brother, moved into the house across the street from our house. I soon got to meet the whole family, and we became friends. My daughter had just left home for college, and I was “empty nesting”, so I enjoyed Michelle and her siblings being near by.

One day, when I had been visiting with their mother, as I turned to leave, Michelle said to me, “You know, you could have a new baby, because my Daddy has lots of spare parts in the garage that he would give you.” I thanked her very much and said that it was a very kind offer. I didn’t laugh or even act surprised, but I thought that my neediness must have been detected by this very young child, or perhaps her mother had explained to her my “empty nest.” In either case, I was touched that she wanted to supply a remedy to what she thought was my need.

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. ( Matthew 6:7)

Jesus gave many strong assurances that God is present with us and wholly knowledgeable about our needs and desires: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you; for everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened to him. (Matthew 7:7-9)

If a three year old child with no resources at all, can wish to fill my need as she perceived it, how much more an omnipotent God, who creates life itself on earth, can fill the real needs and desires of all our lives. The promise is absolute. Jesus makes no exceptions. It all takes place in a relationship of trust and faith, and ultimately of love for the one who promises: The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love Him with all your heart and all your soul, and live. ( Deuteronomy 30: 6)

Neither Michelle nor I ever mentioned the spare parts in her father’s garage again, but I did feel that though my nest might be empty, my heart was full of gratitude and joy in my new neighbors.

Love in Him,

Prue

God used a powerful image in comparison between Himself and a woman with a new -born baby. It’s an appealing image, for it is universally understood, and lets us have an inkling to the bond that God seeks with us: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16) The image is one of profound intimacy, of a deep and life-long bond; and then He acknowledges that among humans not every such bond is lasting, but that in Him it lasts for eternity. It is a oneness between Him and human beings.

I have identical twin nephews named Charlie and Toby. One day Toby was walking downtown on the sidewalk when he heard someone yell from a car, “Charlie!, Toby,! Charlie! Toby! Whoever you are!, Hi!” It was a friend from college who, like many of their friends, couldn’t tell the twins apart. While they looked almost exactly alike, they differed in their interests and activities, and even lifestyles, but to this day the two of them share a deep and irrefutable bond.

Just before his crucifixion, Jesus called his disciples “friends” (John 15:15), but after his resurrection he told Mary Magdalene to tell his “brothers” that she had seen him alive: Go to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).

The brotherhood that Jesus created with his disciples is no ordinary brotherhood., It’s more like a twinship between Jesus and each of the eleven and ultimately between Jesus and every one of his followers: I pray also for those who will believe in me through their massage, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us . . . (John 17:20)

This oneness is essential to Jesus, and the eleven of his twelve disciples entered it. It’s the oneness that Jesus seeks with everyone, for it comes from the heart of his Father. It’s the love that Jesus had for his people: Righteous Father, . . . I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that I myself may be in them. (John 17:25-26) Being one with Christ makes us all brothers and sisters.

Love in Him,

Prue

“When this son of yours, who has squandered your property with harlots, comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:30) These are the bitter words of a faithful older son to his father on the return of a faithless, wrong doing younger son. They are entirely true of the younger son, and not only that, but the father never even waited to hear his younger son’s confession of doing wrong before he embraced and kissed his boy. The love of the father was entirely inexplicable, considering the real offense of the son, but this is the very crux of the story told by Jesus of the Prodigal Son. The love of the Father that knows no limits, is itself inexplicable except by His son, Jesus, who gives us the parable.

The prodigal does nothing at all except return to his father’s home where he hopes to find employment to save himself from starvation. He is like the lost sheep in Jesus’ other parable of the shepherd who retrieves a lost sheep and carries it on his shoulders to reunite with the flock: I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine . . . who do not need to repent. ( Luke 15:7) The Father who embraces his erring son in spite of all he has done, is the Father who loved us before we ever loved Him.

Neither the prodigal nor the sheep sought their father or shepherd out of affection or loyalty, but the shepherd and the father sought them out of great love for them. This is the mystery of God’s real character of love: We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19) This love is immeasurable. Human beings who thought they knew God, put His son to death, and the Father chose to use this wrong doing to deliver salvation to humanity. If such a thing can be forgiven, then such a love is real beyond our imagination, and cannot be denied.

Even before Jesus’ resurrection, David, who knew wrong doing personally, wrote, Create in me a clean heart, O God. . .Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

(Psalm 51:10 &12) This is addressed to the Father who met his wrong-doing son in Jesus’ parable, the Father who meets us in every prayer.

Love in Him,

Prue

In 1674 King James I of England wrote and published “King James, His Counterblast to Tobacco”, a treatise on the damage that smoking tobacco caused. He asserted that the practice was harmful to the lungs, mouth, and discolored the teeth. It fouled the breath and made a person smell bad and unpleasant in company. He was forceful in his arguments, but the effect on his people was to make fun of their monarch and consider him eccentric for his ideas. Tobacco smoking was popular and even considered medicinal by his citizens. James was ridiculed for his ideas.

In 1896 New York City passed an anti-expectoration ordinance forbidding spitting tobacco in public places and on public transportation. It came under a great deal of resistance: citizens declared the rule, a law of cruelty against a “natural impulse.” It was said that it curtailed individual freedoms, and granted the government too much power. Spitting tobacco had been acceptable behavior for men indoors and out and on all forms of public and private transportation. It was argued that the health “benefits” of spitting outweighed the threat of the spread of tuberculosis.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the this world, . . . the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived . . . at one time gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts… But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by Grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. ( Ephesians 2: 1-8)

Every generation offers examples of our need for penetrating truth and understanding. Today there are countless disagreements over almost every aspect of “civilized” life. Through the thick smoke of misunderstanding and foolishness, God sends us His word in clarity and in love. The call to us is from our creator, full of truth and a harbor for our spirits in the midst of confusion: For the word of the Lord is alive and active. Sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13)

Love in Him,

Prue

Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah arose.

( 1Samuel 1:9)

The arising of Hannah at Shiloh is one of the most pivotal moments in the history of both Israel and of Christianity; for this is the spiritual moment of decision in the mind of a young woman that will change history.

Hannah had been grieving for not having a child, though she was married to an attentive husband. Hannah stood up when she had come to a resolution that she would make a direct appeal to God, with a bargain, that if He enabled her to conceive a son, she would give the son back to God. She had come to believe that God Himself might want a son as much as she did, and so accept her request. When she arose, it was to go to the tabernacle and to present her petition at the altar. She spoke her bargain to the Lord.

Hannah prayed “in her heart”while her lips shaped the words. At this time, no one in Israel had the faith of this young woman, whose faith was shaped by her need. Even Eli, the high priest, failed to recognize a real prayer when he witnessed her speaking with God. When Hannah arose from her prayer, she had ceased grieving and no longer wept in the presence of her rival wife, for Hannah was the second wife of her husband.

God answered Hannah’s prayer, and she gave birth to the little boy who became a great prophet in Israel. One more time Hannah rose up, to take her little boy back to the tabernacle to Eli. There without tears she left him, probably two, three, possibly four years old, to be brought up by Eli the priest. Only once a year Hannah could visit him, bringing him a new robe every year. Hannah never tried to get out of her bargain with God, and God blessed her with three more sons, and two daughters. (1 Samuel 1:21)

Even so, Hannah never forgot her firstborn. When Samuel grew up, he lived in Ramah, the home town of his parents.

Hundreds of years after Hannah arose, another young Hebrew woman arose, and traveled to Bethlehem, where she, too had a baby after a conversation with the Lord, this time with His angel. Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. ( Luke 1:40) Hannah had said, My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted up. (1Samuel 2: 1) Both women arose toward their God, and our God.

Love in Him,

Prue

One day when our Sunday School class was discussing Corrie ten Boom’s description of Amsterdam at the end of World War II; of the eighteen wheeler trucks from Canada waiting at the border for the Armistice, to move in and deliver food for the starving Dutch population, Peggy DeRuyter exclaimed , “I saw those trucks! I saw them in Holland!” She had been a child at the time. “It must have been a big relief to see them,” I said. “Yes, she answered, but the real relief, the food we lived on, was the food that came from the sky.” “Do you mean the CARE packages from the U.S.?” I asked. “Yes, she said. “Those are what saved our lives and fed us.”

It has been estimated that more people in Europe , and especially in The Netherlands, died of starvation than on the battlefields during World War II.

Peggy was a Dutch woman who had immigrated to the United States with her family and with the sponsorship of a Lutheran church. She passionately loved the country that sent food, and that she now called “home.”

Peggy could identify with the Hebrew people as they found “food from the sky” every morning on the floor of the desert. She knew what it was to be aware that someone was conscious of her plight and moving out of sheer fellowship with her and her people to come to her relief.

The manna that Moses’ people received sustained them for forty years in the desert. It was part of the glue that bonded the people to their God. It was the most elemental means by which God displayed His Fatherhood, by feeding His family of human beings: I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. . . This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6:48-51)

More than three thousand years after the Hebrews woke up to manna on the desert, we go to communion and partake of a piece of bread or a wafer and a sip of wine or grape juice to celebrate the very flesh of God’s presence with us. The communion opens the door to the passionate gratitude of souls who are offered eternal life from the son of God. We receive a glimpse of the joy Peggy received, and the stirring of grateful love for the One who calls us His own, even when we barely know Him. This is the bread that comes down from heaven. . . whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

(John 6:58)

Love in Him,

Prue

When my sister Holly and I visited our childhood home after many years away from there, she rang the doorbell and we were met by two young girls who were home alone. I explained that we had once lived in their house; and would we be allowed to visit them? They answered that they would have to call their mother to know if it was OK, which they did; and surprisingly, their mother said “Yes, you can show them the house and yard.” We promised not to stay long.

It was a nostalgic visit. The girls were eager to know how the house had changed. It was almost the same, but the kitchen had been made into a family room, with a fireplace added, and what had been our dinging room was now their kitchen. The experience left a deep impression on me, and the girls seemed intensely interested as well. Saying “Thank you, and good by,” was like a second and final good bye to a period of my life. I was quite sure that I would not see that house again.

Afterward Holly and I drove to Church Street, where the church of our growing up and our confirmation stood. We searched and thought we were lost in the small central New York town of Cortland, until we understood that the church had been razed some time ago, and the grassy place it used to occupy was all that we could see. After visiting the house, finding the church completely gone was a shock. It had been built in 1803, when both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were alive. I experienced a sharp sense of loss. Later I learned that the congregation had moved to a new building just outside of town, where there was plenty of room for parking and growth; both of which were lacking at the old site.

Places are not living things in themselves, yet they hold meaning for us: My Father’s house has many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am. ( John 14:2-3)

Clearly Jesus knows the need we have to be “at home” in a place, to feel connected to a place, and he offers himself and his Father as the “place” where we will find ultimate home, the love and acceptance of family that makes places dear to us. It brings me joy to know that other children are growing up where I did, and that other people have a new church home. Jesus promises that where he is, is home.

Love in Him,

Prue