Before I was married, my mother told me that the day would come when I would hear myself use an expression I had never used before, but that my husband used, “Don’t worry,” she said, “You haven’t lost your identity. You’ve just appropriated some of his. You are still your own self.” I found that it worked both ways, and we shared expressions that I hope expand both of our vocabularies.

“The days are coming”declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)

The covenant God speaks of to Jeremiah is like the covenant of a marriage, and the idea is very precious to God, as He mentions it many times in the Old Testament. It amounts to the free sharing between two individuals of their individual identities without either one losing, but both gaining in the “new covenant”

At the last Supper “Jesus said,’This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me’ In the same way, after the supper, he took the cup, saying, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’” (Luke 22:19-20)

Jesus knew that his disciples would recognize the thought of a “new covenant”, and that this one was intimate and personal for each of them. On the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus, as a stranger, explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

When we were first married, Jack was astonished one day when I said, “ I don’t know the answer. It’s beyond my ken.” Later he told me he could hardly believe that he had married someone who would use a word (“ken”) that he had never heard. It actually troubled him and he asked me not to use it . Some time later Jack used “ken” in a sentence, and seemed to forget that it wasn’t always part of his vocabulary.

God seeks ways to grow closer to us in the context of a “new covenant”, a bond that enables us to grow In trust and in affection toward the One who created the very idea of a covenant as a way to grow ever closer to His own children, and they to Him.

Love in Him,

Prue

On December 31 I read the last chapter of the Book of Revelation and found this:” I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who ha been showing them to me. But he said to me, ‘Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!’”

The angel calls himself a “fellow servant” with John. This strong, supernatural and sinless being declares fellowship with John, an apostle, yet a weak, even sinful human being. (“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8)

The Psalmist writes, “What is man, that you are mindful of him?. . Yet thou hast made him little less that God. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands. (Psalm 8:4, RSV)

The angel saw in John a fellowship that few of us even imagine, a place in the universe of God that transcends everything that keeps us earthbound and separated from our God. The angel’s humility in fellow-shipping with John gives us a glimpse of eternal life that is full of grace and promise for believers, and for those who look to Jesus for their salvation.

There are many angelic appearances in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments. Angels appear as messengers , as Gabriel appears to Daniel, Zechariah, and to Mary; or as rescuers, as the angel who appears in the fiery furnace with Shadrack, Meshach, and Abednego, (Daniel 3:24-28), and the angel who frees Peter from prison.(Acts 12:5-10

God grants all of humanity who will hear of it, a rich glimpse into His heaven at the birth of His son Jesus when the heavenly host of angels sings to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth , peace and good will among men with whom He is pleased.” (Luke 2:14)

In the mind of the angel speaking to John, those who love God are their “fellow servants”. It is a high and holy place to be, and if we let it humble us, we can in fact occupy that place. When he says, “Don’t do that!” he’s simply directing his fellow, John, not to worship any thing or angel but God, even supernatural persons or things. What an inheritance! What a fellowship! What goodness that God has in store for His whole family both now and in the future when He assembles His family.

Love in Him,

Prue

Driving home from a visit with our foster child’s mother, I was surprised when five-year-old Emily told me that her mother was going to “get another baby.” I was quite sure that if that were true, I would have been told, and so I said nothing. Emily seemed to think that it explained why she could no longer be with her mother, The reality was that her mother had an abusive boy friend who stayed with Emily while Mom was at work. It had been discovered when Emily entered kindergarten, and she had since been sent to two different shelters before she came to us.

“Another baby” was the only explanation the little girl could imagine for why she was separated from the one secure and loving person in her life. The loneliness and emptiness of her small life became evident in a moment, and the desolation of that thought struck me as I was driving.

All I could think to say was, “Emily, when a mother has another child, she loves that child very much, so much that her love for the first child doesn’t become smaller, but really becomes even bigger. She opens her heart to both her children an extra large amount.” Emily was quiet and I hoped then and even now, that it helped her.

“God has said, ‘Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged’” (Hebrews 13:5) The bedrock of the Christian faith is the certainty of God’s faithfulness to us, even when we have been unfaithful: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)

When we’re immersed in faithlessness, injustice, scandals and distortions of many kinds, it is hard to hear the voice of One who promises faithfulness rooted in love. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange–I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts.” (2 Corinthians 6:12).

Emily’s mother was not, in fact, pregnant, but it became increasingly clear that she would not be given custody of her daughter. Emily’s biological father visited and wanted custody, which he and his new wife were granted. Emily’s new stepmother opened wide her heart to this little girl, and one day when Emily returned from a visit with them, she said to me, “I had a good time! Now I have THREE mamas!” I was glad to hear it, and felt sure that she was ready to l leave us.

The Lord is faithful to His promises and this one He repeats in both the Old and the New Testaments, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you”

Love in Him, Prue

The Exchange

In the 1966 movie, “The Trouble With Angels” Mary a rebellious young girl at a Catholic school run by Mother Superior (Rosalind Russel),found the head of school finishing a project begun by another student who had fallen asleep. For the first time Mary had a real conversation with Mother Superior, who told her about her life in Paris working in a Couture shop as a seamstress. Mother Superior warmed to her subject and said, “I was in great demand, and I believe I could have made it as a designer.” Mary asked, “What happened?” “I found something better,” responded the nun with a smile. To Mary nothing could have been better than designing and wearing beautiful clothes, and here was a woman exchanging those for a uniform of black and white saying she had found something “better.”

“But he (Jesus) said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. . . That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses. . . for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

St. Paul makes clear a very great contradiction at the center of his relationship with his God. Paul had made an exchange by surrendering his self-sufficiency when Jesus called him to a deeper partnership with Him. In return Paul received the strength that would renew him when he felt weak.

Dealing with things that hold us bound and separate us from Christ in exchange for Christ’s Holy Spirit is the work of Christians constantly. It amounts to growth that enlarges our lives with others as well as with our God.

When asked by people who knew Him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”(John 6:29)

I’m convinced that one reason so many of us resist drawing closer to God through His Book and through prayer, is the fear that He will make demands we are unwilling to accept, and that the exchange made in the fictional story of the Mother Superior and in the true life of Paul will be too difficult or too unpleasant; but if we think of the One who is offering the exchange, of His Creativity, His Goodness, His Strength, Power, and strong Promises, we would have to acknowledge that He will be receiving the poorer exchange and we the richer. To be closer to our Creator, to experience eternity and perceive our own place there, to believe the promises until they live in us, is better than the best that we can construct by ourselves. Then the exchange will be simple.

Love in Him,

Prue

It was getting late when I went for the second time into my four year old granddaughter’s room to remind her to settle down and go to sleep. I looked at her wide open eyes and said, “I’ll just sit here in your chair until you go to sleep.” “You’re going to stay with me?” she asked, and turned over and was asleep almost immediately. I waited in the dark until I was sure she wouldn’t wake up and tiptoed out her door. I worried that she might expect me to wait with her every time I babysat, but this scene was never repeated. That one night she needed someone to “stay” with her.

That one day two disciples were steeped in grief walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus when they were joined by a stranger who talked to them kindly about the scriptures and the events that had caused them their grief. When they reached Emmaus the stranger walked on, but the disciples said, “Stay with us; it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” (Luke 24:28) the stranger stayed and broke bread with the disciples and they knew Him to be their friend and teacher Jesus. They knew, too, that they wanted to return to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they had seen the crucified Jesus.

In the new year I can hardly think of a more powerful prayer than the simple one of “Stay with us.” Perhaps our world has never been in greater need of the reassuring presence of our Savior God than now. When the multiplicity of needs and alarms that confront us every day leave us wondering where to turn, “Stay with us”, is a prayer that receives a prompt and powerful response. When we say “Stay with us” to our God, we effectively reverse the fall, for Adam’s sin made Adam hide from God, but “Stay with us” invites God into our lives, the very place He desires to be .

Jesus’ revealing Himself in the bread brought instant joy and consolation to the disciples, and even his disguised presence on the road brought “burning hearts” with a sense of His truth. “Stay with us (or me)” is a powerful prayer. I’m making it my New Year’s prayer.

Love in Him,

Prue

When Corrie Ten Boom walked into a men’s prison in Bermuda and started talking (shouting) about Jesus and God’s power to transform lives, she couldn’t be heard because of the noise coming from the cells. When she finally shouted, “When I was in a German concentration camp during the war. . .” , suddenly it became quiet and she was able to speak for over an hour to men who hung on every word.

Maybe it was the morbid interest in gruesome tales of suffering, but certainly it was the men’s identifying with one who had been a prisoner as they were. Sharing intense experiences produces powerful bonding, and Carrie used it many times in her travels to open the door to the Gospel.

The history of Salvation is supported entirely by the deep and abiding desire of God to bond with His people and for them to bond with Him: “They will be my people and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that . . . all will go well for them and for their children after them. I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.” (Jeremiah32:38-41) This yearning of the Lord for the love of His people was fulfilled when He sent His son, the One who will make “singleness of heart and action” a reality on the cross.

God bonds with Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Ruth, Deborah, Samuel, David and Esther and many more of His prophets and kings. He shares His life with them so that His people can know Him and listen to Him. At least twenty eight times in the Bible God declares, “They will be my people , and I will be their God”.

In the New Testament Peter wrote to the early churches, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His Marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”(1 Peter2:9&10)

Corrie Ten Boom, a middle aged Dutch woman, bonded with men in a Bermuda prison because of her time in a concentration prison. We can bond with a first century Jewish teacher and miracle worker because he agreed to die for the wrongs of the world, and now lives to bond with us.

Love in Him,

Prue

When Mary called Jesus to come in for supper, the name she used was “Yeshua”, the Aramaic for of the name “Joshua”, which was later translated to Greek, then Latin , into the English “Jesus”. As Christians we mostly forget that the baby Jesus was named for the prophet and leader Joshua, by instruction from the angel Gabriel to Mary: “Don’t be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him “Jesus” (Yeshua). (Luke 1:31)

Jesus’ name was so important that Joseph was also told: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name “Jesus” because he will save his people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21)

Both Mary and Joseph agreed and so it was that the Savior was named for Joshua, who brought the people of Israel into the Promised Land. It was Moses who successfully brought them out of Egypt, but Joshua who brought them in to their inheritance. Joshua ushered in the Hebrew people and settled them in the land. He supervised the distribution of the land and gave shares to each tribe and family.

In John 14 Jesus says to his disciples as he is about to face the cross: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My father’s house has many rooms, if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” In our modern lives it is God whom we first meet in Scripture and in church, but the one who draws us into God’s Kingdom is His son Jesus.

As Joshua went into the Promised Land to clear a place for the Hebrew people to live in peace and harmony, so Jesus’ Holy Spirit comes into believers to enable them to inherit eternal life and live with his Father on earth and in heaven.

Mary and Joseph’s boy is our “Joshua”. By accepting the cross, Jesus gave us access to the Kingdom of God, an inheritance that we didn’t earn but that God chose to give, and Jesus agreed to deliver. Long before Jesus was born God made clear His intentions through His prophets: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” (Jeremiah 31:3)

The angels on Christmas night attested to that wonderful love that would bring great joy for everyone: “A Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11) When Mary called Jesus to come in for supper, she was calling the one who would bring Salvation to you and to me.

Love in Him,

Prue

When I was born my father’s sister, my Aunt Mildred, selected a sterling silver pattern and purchased for me a spoon in that pattern. Afterward I received a spoon or fork or knife every birthday and Christmas from her. On Christmas Eve I was allowed to open Aunt Mildred’s gift only. My brother also opened his gift from her, a different toy every year. Some years I protested and was told, “some day you’ll appreciate these silver gifts, and Burr will outgrow his gifts.” I didn’t really believe this, but among the adults in my family it was much a repeated truth.

Aunt Mildred must have been surprised when our family grew to four girls and one boy, but she kept this tradition with all the girls. She was a school teacher who married in her 40’s and had no children of her own. I vividly remember writing compulsory “thank you” notes for “the lovely spoon (or fork or knife), and never even imagining the hidden gift behind the silver. It would take many years before I learned to appreciate the sacrifices our aunt made in order to supply all her nieces with sets of sterling silverware as we grew up, and the care she took to finish each set.

Who knew when Jesus was born, the real gift that God was giving to all humankind? “All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19) While there were some who had experienced a holy stirring , the hidden gift of Jesus birth and childhood was almost unknown except to his parents and cousins: “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?” Jesus said to them,

‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own town.’”(Mark 6:3) Though his presence has been here on earth for two millennia, Jesus is still without honor in much of the world. The value of the gift of the Christ Child remains hidden in many souls in the world.

The first time and almost every time I set the table with my silverware I remember Aunt Mildred. The first carol we hear on Christmas day we can remember the Christ Child. Christmas is a wonderful time to catch an inkling of the hidden reality of Christ’s birth. The carols , the thoughtful gifts, the reunions, all show us a love behind the holiday, a love that reminds us of Him.

Merry Christmas!

Love in Him,

Prue

This Christmas season I felt the urge to binge on feel-good Hallmark Christmas style T.V. Shows. I experienced a diminishing sense of pleasure at one romance after another, accompanied by starry-eyed children and some amazing “coincidences”

“Go back to your heart, and from there to God. You’re going back, you see, from the nearest possible place, if you have gone back to your heart.” (St. Augustine sermon #331)

Christmas is a time of reconciliation and return, of re-connecting with far-flung family members and friends. St Augustine is urging us to reconnect with our own hearts as well as with our other friends. Augustine lived before the appearance of Christmas trees, or even the display of a “creche”. Perhaps it was easier for him to say “Return to your heart”, as there were fewer distractions like binge-worthy T.V. Shows.

Nevertheless, when I read Augustine’s words they resound in my mind with the words of Jesus: “The coming of the Kingdom of Hod is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is”, or “There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20).

At Christmas the Kingdom of God becomes the focus of Christians as we witness again the arrival of God as man in the baby Jesus. For Mary he was literally inside her, next to her heart for nine months before Bethlehem. Jesus’ birth shows us how very close God is to all those who believe. It’s a low bar for the Holy Spirit of God to take us from imagining holding the infant Jesus , to fnding the risen Christ in our hearts. He Holy Spirit works to make that connection for us so that we may really “/Go back to our hearts” and find God there.

It would be thirty years before others would discover the Kingdom living within them when they found and followed Jesus, but we have the benefit of telescoping time, and at Christmas we can enter into the extraordinary gift with gentleness and even silence as we “Go back to our hearts”

I love the lights and the trees and the bows and the wassail and the carols and the reuniting, but the Saint says there is something more, just as Jesus directed us to where to find Him. We all need the “more”, for it brings us into the very family of our God, to share His life with us, a life without end, available to every believer who goes back to his or her own heart.

Love in Him,

Prue

The four year old daughter of Diane, a friend of mine, was so unruly that her mother could hardly control her. Lori was the youngest of three children and “willful” would be an understatement of her character. Diane talked to her pediatrician who told her, “You can be very strict, or very lenient, but it is constancy that’s required. You’ve tried many different approaches, but when they didn’t work right away you changed again and again. Have patience and stick to one method, and it will work.” It did. In a short time Diane told me that things had improved and she was actually enjoying her daughter. What a relief!

It’s not incidental that Jesus calls God his Father, and the disciples brothers. (John 20:17)

It’s in the human family that the earliest seeds are planted for our relationship with the living God.

When God gave Noah the rainbow God said: “ As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” (Genesis 8:22) That very ancient promise is still in effect. Constancy is a characteristic of our God. It’s the power of love in infinite ways, but constantly loving. When Diane’s doctor led her to constancy he put a rock beneath Lori’s little feet on which she could depend and rely. It was life-correcting for her, and opened up a new relationship with her mother in which both rejoiced.

God’s constancy was dramatically displayed in Exodus as He drew His people out of Egypt, then spent forty years accompanying them to the Promised Land, and ultimately settled them there. His constancy was tested when the people rebelled, but He never failed to assure them that whatever punishment they must endure, “I will plant my people on the land I gave them, and they will not be pulled up again.” (Amos 9:15)

Diane’s problem with Lori was solved fairly easily because Diane saw progress every day. Like hers, our walk with God includes attentiveness and even sacrifices, but we don’t always see daily progress. Discovering the Fatherhood of God is finding the nourishing and sustaining constancy of His love. It is having a rock beneath our feet that makes life secure and even strong.

All the best parenting that happened to us in our childhood is a picture of God’s divine parenting now. Jesus said “Our Father. . .” He means us to make that discovery.

Love in Him,

Prue