The Centurion said, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one to ‘go’, and he goes, and that one ,’come’ and he comes”. . . When Jesus heard this he marveled. . . Then Jesus said to the Centurion “Go!” Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. (Matthew 8:8-10)

This is a remarkable moment in the ministry of Jesus and so in the relationship of all humanity to our God. Jesus, who did not need to be told what is in a man (John 2:25) was amazed, and “marveled” at a Roman Centurion who boldly compared his life as a soldier to Jesus’ life as the son of God. He compared his military life, built on unconditional obedience, to Jesus’ life in his Father God.

Nothing at all about Jesus could be tangibly compared to a Roman Centurion. Jesus had no place to lay his head, relied on contributions from others, held to no schedule, moved about teaching and preaching, and healing, while the Centurion lived a highly structured life and received a paycheck . He followed orders as he was paid to do. He lived by clearly defined rules among others who lived by the same rules.

Nevertheless, the Centurion looked at Jesus and saw himself in the one and only one quality that they shared: obedience to authority. The Centurion was obedient to Rome, and Jesus was and is obedient to God. It was enough for the Centurion to be bold enough to ask for Jesus to heal the Centurion’s servant.

The Centurion understood that selfless obedience was a source of great power, and, more importantly, that Jesus’ obedience was to God Himself. Jesus, standing near Peter and the other disciples, responded with, “I have not seen such faith in all of Israel!”

(Matthew 8:13)

I have wondered if it is still possible to surprise Jesus such that he would “marvel.” In giving flesh and blood to His son, the Father allowed him to marvel at finding the work of His spirit in an unexpected place. Every one of us has places in our heart that have not been accessible to Jesus, places of fear, or bitterness, cynicism, or hated, or unbelief. Where one of these locked places opens up unexpectedly, I believe there is marveling in heaven at the event and Jesus marvels.

Love in Him,

Prue

My neighbor watched as I told my three year old daughter and her friend to look both ways before crossing the street in front of our house. “Be sure to look both up and down the street,” I said; and then we watched as she and her friend stared up at the sky, then down at their feet by the curb. “What are they doing?” my neighbor asked. “They’re looking up and down,” I said as I went to the curb, held their hands, and walked them across. Again I explained to the girls that we were looking to see if a car or other vehicle was coming on our quiet street. The girls were seriously trying to obey my directions while missing the point entirely.

Jesus said to them (the disciples) , “let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:14-16)

The qualities that Jesus observed in children must have been many, but the quality of simple obedience, based on unconditional trust is one that he looks for in adults to find their trust in him and in his Father. Such a trust is vital to a relationship with God, and Jesus sees children displaying it more clearly than most adults.

Simple trust shows up in some of Jesus’ parables as well. In the parable of the two sons, Jesus tells of a man who tells both sons to work in their vineyard. The first son said “No”, but later, he did go. The second son said”Yes”, but then he never went. There is no mention of punishment in this story, but only of the choices that two sons made. Jesus said that the first son, who, like a child, actually went after saying “no,” was the obedient son (Matthew 21:28-32). The first son’s moment of rebellion was swallowed up by his changing his mind and obeying his father. It’s a simple story, but it reveals Jesus’ sense that willing obedience in His children is close to God’s heart, whether it’s immediate or delayed.

The willing obedience of Jesus himself when he prayed to His Father in Gethsemane, “not my will, but yours” is the act of total obedience, the fruit of the unconditional love of his Father.

When I saw the little girls looking up at the sky, and then down at their feet, I laughed, but I was touched that they took such pains to follow what they thought were my instructions. Jesus spoke to his people about “such as these.”

Love in Him,

Prue

When we first moved to Spring, Texas, our only daughter was two and a half years old. I hoped that there would be other children near by, so we were delighted to find that the neighbors on each side included little girls nearly her age. As they grew older the three of them became friends and moved about in each others’ homes. The other two girls came to seem like family to me, and I was friends with their mothers. Today if one of those two women, both of whom live far away, arrived at our front door, I would welcome her as my own.

Maybe this is why it’s so easy for me to believe that God loves those who love and companion His own son: How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the mountain of life; in your light we see light. Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart. (Psalm 36:7-10)

The Psalms are full of spontaneous expressions of love and sweetness in the psalmist’s relationship to God. Sometimes they almost burst with expressions of joy and fulfillment.

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand. (Psalm 37:23)

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. (Psalm 119:103)

Paul, who initiated the arrests of Christians and had them imprisoned, wrote, Love is patient, love is kind. . . It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

(1Corinthians 13:4-7)

These are words of love expressed thousands of years apart. When we read them, we are listening to the love of God for ourselves.

Love in Him,

Prue

Cara, an acquaintance I met at a wedding reception, told me this story. For over a year she and Doug, her husband, had been fostering Brad, a junior high school boy they planned to adopt. Cara and Doug both worked at the school, she as a phys. ed. teacher and cheerleader coach, and Doug as a history teacher and football coach. Needless to say, they were a busy couple , for they were also active in their church.

Brad came into the kitchen one day and said, “I don’t have any clean underwear.”

Cara answered,, “Yes you do; it’s in your chest of drawers”

“I have a chest of drawers?” asked Brad.

“Yes!” Said Cora, “that piece of furniture in your room with drawers in it.”

“Oh!, said Brad, “I didn’t know that was mine,” and headed back to his room.

For at least the last two years Cara had heaped the clean laundry onto the living room couch and everyone helped themselves to their own clothes.

“Poor Brad didn’t even know he had a chest of drawers, or what it’s used for,” Cara said laughingly. Then she added, “I guess mothering means more than making sure they do their homework, and get to football practice.”

It reminded me of Proverbs 3:5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding . In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. That morning Cara received a reset for her home life, the kind of reset that God must love to deliver, as it came to a willing heart. Focusing only on our full “outer” lives can make us forget our laundry.

Mother Teresa’s sisters’ lives are spent largely in the public eye. Each nun owns two habits and a bucket in which to wash one while wearing the other. Their mission to the “poorest of the poor” keeps them outside their convents much of the time, but their daily exertions are fueled by early morning and evening prayer and scripture reading. Their

fruitfulness has spread around the world.

Doing our spiritual laundry is simply going to God daily: Create in me a clean heart, O God! (Psalm 51:10) Putting laundry away for others is interceding in prayer for those around us. Receiving a clean heart comes by confessing our sins. God’s calls to us to turn inward toward Him are not all as gentle as the reminder Cara received, but He is always calling, always waiting to deliver clean laundry.

Love in Him,

Prue

Migration

Wild geese have an innate instinct to migrate. Once when I was watching a flock of geese fly overhead I thought that their instinct was like God’s instinct to bond with human beings, but I caught myself, thinking it was disrespectful to compare our
God to a flock of geese.

Then I read this from St. Augustine: “Your love must migrate: cast of your moorings from creatures, moor yourself to the Creator. Change your love, change your fear; the only things that make good or bad lives are good or bad loves.”(sermon no. 313A)

If the geese reminded me of our God, it must have been His very intention that they should, and perhaps I could take a lesson from the geese about a heart that migrates from the things of the world, to the things of God: Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water (from a well) will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14) The astonishing gift of eternal life is the love gift of a bridegroom to His bride. It came from the heart of Jesus to the woman he met at a well. It was his to give, for it was the very reason he was born, so that all of our hearts could migrate to his Father’s heart.

The geese that fly in such beautiful precision don’t know why they come or go, but respond to earthly signals of temperature or length of daylight to gather and make their flights. But God has sent His Holy Spirit that we might recognize and respond to the very Creator of both the geese and ourselves, that our hearts might be able to migrate and to love an invisible God: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

This is how we know that we live in Him, and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit. . . and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:13-18)

The geese are beautiful and I delight in seeing them in the spring and again in the fall. For thousands of years they have signaled the changing seasons, entirely without human direction. Most people have seen them with awe and pleasure, and some are reminded of our common Creator. I believe that God intends every part of nature to carry His signature, to help our love migrate to Him.

Love in Him,

Prue

One year on the night before Christmas eve, my mother-in-law fell and broke her leg. She was alone in her apartment until a friend wondered why she hadn’t come to breakfast in the morning and tried unsuccessfully to visit her. The friend called the fire department, whose men quickly arrived and broke her lock and took her to the E.R. where she waited to have her leg set by a surgeon.

Jack and I arrived on Christmas eve and went to the surgical waiting room. Quite soon a young woman came out of the surgery and smiling, said, “Don’t worry, your mother is in very good hands, and I will be here to answer any of your questions.” When she started to return to the surgery, she turned and said, “My name is Mary. You may ask for me at any time.”

To this day I believe that Mary probably doesn’t remember that Christmas eve at all, but I will never forget it, for I felt overwhelmingly that we were experiencing a real reminder of Christmas right there in the hospital, a reminder given to us in the person of Mary, who happened to be on duty on Christmas eve.

St. Augustine wrote, “The male sex is honored in the flesh of Christ; the female is honored in the mother of Christ. (sermon no. 190) the “honor” that Augustine mentions comes from God , who chose Mary and Joseph to be the parents of His son. Augustine saw in Mary a woman honored by God. I believe that the notion that Mary was honored by God was a powerful influence in the cultures of the world that accepted it. It was an affirmation of the value of women in the eyes of God, a theme that gradually improved the lot of women from being the legal property of men to being persons in themselves.

When Jesus was confronted by the teachers and Pharisees about a woman caught in adultery , a crime punishable by death to the woman, he simply said, “ Let any of you (men) without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” At this those who heard began to go away . . . until only Jesus was left. . . “Woman, where are they?Has no one condemned you?” “No one, Sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. (John 8:7-11)

Mary, Jesus’ mother, said, From now on all generations will call me blessed. (Luke 1:48) That night in the hospital we were blessed by a young woman named Mary, but I believe all women and men have been blessed by the young woman named Mary who said “yes” to God.

Love in Him,

Prue

Astronaut James Irwin was the eighth man to walk on the moon in 1971. He was famous for this and for his remark, “Jesus walking on the earth was more important than man walking on the moon.” He was one of very few who could have made such an assertion with authenticity.

I believe that every soul can find a “ Jesus more important” statement for his or her own life. What difference has it made that Jesus has walked on the earth? It has given every Christian a second home in a church community and a resource by which each one can receive the forgiveness that ushers us into the Kingdom of our God. Jesus walking the earth has given us an assurance of life after death: “I am the resurrection and the life. The ones who believe in me will live, even though they die. (John 11:25)

The achievement of Apollo 15 was was a wonderful one for the whole world. It sparked imagination for children and adults alike. It was an inspiration and a hard-won victory after much planning, research, trial and error; and many resources were spent upon the project. James Irwin himself had wanted to walk on the moon since he was ten years old. He had told his mother that he would be the first to do it. The man who walked on the same moon that Jesus saw when he looked at the night sky, had thoughts only of Jesus when he saw earth from the moon, and he knew that Jesus’ walk was more important than His.

Love in Him, Prue

Abraham Lincoln always read aloud to himself, and sometimes I read aloud to myself. In the Bible a very important moment is facilitated by a man reading aloud to himself while sitting in a chariot. The incident was both natural and supernatural: Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south. . . from Jerusalem to Gaza. So he started out and on his way he met an Ethiopian, an important official in charge of the treasury of the queen of Ethiopia. . . Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading aloud from Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 26-31)

Of all the post resurrection events, this is one of the most appealing. Two men from different nations sat in a chariot and talked about God and His son. One of the two was responding to the angel’s instructions and the other received Jesus as his savior and was baptized. The angel was necessary for Philip’s errand, but the Ethiopian’s reading of the scripture aloud was also necessary for Philip to know and do his errand. It seems that God intends His people to participate with angels in the work of salvation, and nowhere is it more vividly displayed than on this road from Jerusalem to Gaza, between two men who would probably never see each other again, but whose lives had both been changed.

Enabling the natural and the supernatural to work together is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It can be seen in the Old as well as the New testament. The story of the Exodus combines the natural and the supernatural, both in God’s hands. In the New Testament, the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand from one boy’s lunch is the combination of the natural and the supernatural. When this is evident the effect is lasting, for, as with Philip and the Ethiopian, the supernatural hand holds the natural hand to reveal the Savior who is also our creator God of nature.

Around the year 387, St. Augustine’s conversion occurred when he heard a child’s voice on the other side of a wall singing, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” Augustine took up the book of Romans and was converted: How sweet it suddenly became to be free of the sweets of folly. Things that I once feared to lose it was now my joy to put away. . . You, the true and highest sweetness, you cast them forth, and in their stead you entered in, sweeter than every pleasure. (Confessions 9,1)

I sometimes wonder if anyone can overhear me reading scripture aloud to myself, and then I know, of course, Someone always hears.

Love in Him,

Prue

The Heart of God

God spoke to Abraham. He spoke to Jacob, to Moses, among others, and to a young boy named Samuel, who had to be introduced before he could know that it was God

who was calling him: Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if He calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there calling as at other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ Then Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’” (1 Samuel 3:9-10)

This brief moment, facilitated by Eli, is a seminal moment in the very history of salvation, as vital as Moses’ burning bush. For here the child Samuel unknowingly becomes God’s spokesperson and leader of Israel. He will move a nation in which: The Word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. ( 1 Samuel 3:1) This obscure child in Israel, Hannah’s son, would grow to anoint two of Israel’s greatest kings, Saul and David, to keep the nation faithful to the God who was remaining faithful to them.

God entered Samuel’s life in the gentlest possible way. God waited until nightfall and enlisted Eli’s knowledge of Him, to call the boy. God made no demands upon Samuel, as He had of Moses, but His call let the boy know that God exists, is real, and seeking to share His life and character with Samuel. The lonely boy had been found by the One who would befriend him for life. The message God gave to Samuel concerning Eli’s sons must have been frightening until in the morning when Eli accepted it.

From then on, Israel remembered that they were not alone, that their God had given them a voice and a mouthpiece: The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there He revealed Himself to Samuel through His word, and when Samuel spoke, all Israel listened. (1 Samuel3:21) The dry time of few visions and rare words was finally over, and Samuel’s ministry renewed the nation’s devotion to their God at the time in their history when the monarchy was born. It was Samuel who spoke the message of a future king after Saul : The Lord has sought out a man after His own heart and appointed him ruler of His people. ( 1Samuel 13:14)

God’s heart was touched by the heart of Hannah, and she gave her child Samuel to God to be His prophet. Better than anyone else of his time, Samuel knew the heart of God when he anointed David.

Love in Him,

Prue

The story of Esther in the Bible is a story of perplexities unscrambled as an unexpected savior emerged. Nothing about the orphan girl Esther suggested that she would save her people from annihilation in a pagan country to which they had been exiled. While it’s true that she was exceptionally pretty, there were many beautiful girls rounded up to please King Xerxes and to replace his disobedient queen.

At first neither Esther nor Mordecai, her uncle, perceived any advantage for Esther in having been chosen to be queen. Esther hid from the king her relationship to Mordecai . Everything in their new environment was strange, so strange that, though they were faithful to their God, they never spoke of Him to each other, even in a life and death crisis.

Esther never thought of herself as a savior. In fact, she remained ignorant of the cataclysmic plan of Haman, the prime minister, to exterminate the entire Jewish population living in Babylon, until Mordecai made it known to her. When she finally understood the crisis, Esther drew on her faith in God and what she knew of the rituals of her people: Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king. . . and if I perish, I perish. (Esther 4:6)

Esther risked her life in appearing before the king unannounced and uninvited, but her action won Xerxes’ full support. With the help of her uncle, Esther made a plan to reverse Haman’s actions against the Jews, and the relief was felt throughout the kingdom. Where chaos had reigned in the city of Susa, a peace settled into God’s people.

From one perplexity to another, Esther moved to stay loyal to her family and her people: For how can I bear to see the destruction of my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family? (Esther 8:6) Though His name is never mentioned in Esther’s story, the Spirit of God lives in Esther such that His will and His providence is richly displayed, as one perplexity after another falls to the soul who offers herself for the survival of her people. Esther is a foreshadow of another Savior whose sacrifice for his people will reach and rescue Jew and Gentile alike beyond the limits of time or place.

Love in Him,

Prue