It is the middle of the week and everyone is in the house because of the Corona Virus. Justin has no schedule except to sit and study. Jordan has soccer practice on Monday and Wednesday. Aidan has study room everyday so he seems to be in the best shape of all of us. My husband went to school for a faculty meeting and I am trying to figure out how to teach online. 

This leaves us with lots of time on our hands. Way, way too much screen time for everyone! It would be so much better if I could just say, "Go play outside!" but this really isn't an option.

One of the good things about all of this time is I can read whenever I want to. I have been reading Faces at the Cross by J. Barrie Shepherd. I am reading this for Lent, which began last week. The book has more than 40 entries that are written in the first person. These are all people who were there during the Crucifixion. The entry I want to share with you is J. Barrie Shepherd's interpretation of what was going through Mary Magadelene's mind during the crucifixion.

The Face of Magdalen

So did we love him wrongly, after all?
Could this grim horror have been prevented?
Might it have never had to happen,
if we, if I, had only figured out the right way
to respond to all the love we found,
and felt and feasted on him. 

His love was unconditional,
always there for me,
even when he might have been provoked,
annoyed or disappointed 
in something I had said or done,
an attitude to others.
Our love -
mine I do know about, for sure - 
our love was always eager to possess. 
We loved him, those of us who got close enough,
just as one might love a thing of beauty,
cherishing its grace and loveliness, needing to reach out and grasp it,
have it be at our disposal, 
ready to be enjoyed at any moment.

He said his love, God's love, 
was just like that, 
was always there for us,
shining on us like the sun,
and would never let us down.
We didn't have to make it ours,
lock it up and throw away the key,
couldn't do that anyway, 
because God's love can not be held, 
can only be received and passed along.

And right then,
when we were with him, 
where he was tell us all this,
we could believe it, at least I could.
Trouble was,
he wasn't always there
and then the doubts began again.

You see, love is such a basic thing,
being loved is so important that,
if you can't be certain sure God loves you
then you just have to love yourself.
You have to watch out all the time
to make sure you don't get hurt.
You have to realize,
accept the fact that everybody else 
is busy loving their own selves.
So you can never fully trust them
because finally, when a life is on the line,
they will want it to be yours, 
rather than theirs.

See what happened to him.
See where his God-love got him in the end.
Do you suppose he still believes in it up there?
Do you think, with all the hurt and hate
He's seen these past few hours,
he still hangs on to what he taught,
and walked and worked at with us
all those weeks and months
that seemed to be leading toward forever
till they ended with a crash?

Now even the two thieves 
are cursing at him in their desperation.
Why must they pick on him?
Didn't they know?
His suffering's as bad as theirs,
and he's done nothing to deserve it.
Just to listen to them argue,
even up there when all is lost 
they can't agree on anything it seems.

What's that?
One of them is defending Jesus,
asking him to bless him in his death?
And jesus is assuring him or paradise,
blessing the legionaries too
as they gamble for his seamless robe.

What love is this?
What wondrous love is this?
Of all the miracles
I've witnessed these past months,
the miracle he brought about in my own life, 
this is the richest, truest of them all.
Even death, this cruel, bloody death,
cannot quench the flow of God's love in this man,
this man I love, and learn to in God by.

His body weakens fast now.
It's getting harder and harder for him to breathe.
And yet the love, God's love in him,
goes on, and on, and on.
It's almost as if that love can never die;
almost as if, beyond the grave, 
God's love in him will still go on,
will still be with me giving strength 
to love the way he did,
even to die the way he dies,
God grant it may be so.

One thing I know, 
whether we loved him wrong or not,
he loved us right.

______________________

Christ loves us in a way we can barely comprehend. He endured the cross for us. I am more and more certain of my own sinfulness as I walk through this life, but Jesus died to change all that. His arms are stretched out toward you. Accept his gift! 

Over the weekend, I heard about another beautiful person who passed away. I saw a notice on Facebook on Friday about Rachel Held Evans. I know she had the flu and I knew that there were complications from a medication she took to treat a routine UTI. I had watched and read as a prayer community had developed online in response to a coma she had been in. I don't know why I wasn't prepared for that news.

This is the third death from this year. The first was a wonderful teacher who had been central to the KOTESOL community here in Korea. She committed suicide, leaving many people mystified and confused, but it has brought up a discussion on how people living overseas deal with depression. The second was the father of a Sunday School teacher. He died well. That funeral was a beautiful celebration of a life devoted to God and family. 

In the midst of news about Rachel Held Evans, I am thinking deeply about salvation, sanctification, reflection, and how everything revolves around story. Our lives and our legacies revolve around story. We want to live in such a way that the story of Christ's saving grace is told through us. 

I think Rachel did that. A big part of her writings, her story, is her critique on modern day evangelicalism. She was reflective, opinionated, and critical. She was a faithful doubter and became a leader as a result.

The Atlantic wrote an article about her death. These next two paragraphs appear there as well as here in my thoughts.

“Death is a thing empires worry about, not a thing resurrection people worry about,” she told me in 2015. “As long as there’s somebody baptizing sinners, breaking the bread, drinking the wine; as long as there’s people confessing their sins, healing, walking with one another through suffering, then the Church is alive, and it’s well.” The lasting legacy of Evans’s writing, and of her public life, is her unwillingness to cede ownership of Christianity to its traditional conservative-male stewards—her unwillingness to give up on Christianity, period. 

Evans did not lead a denomination or a movement or even a church, but she did invite people to come along as she worked through her relationship with Jesus. Her very public, vulnerable exploration of a faith forged in doubt empowered a ragtag band of writers, pastors, and teachers to claim their rightful place as Christians. Evans spent her life trying to follow an itinerant preacher and carpenter, who also hung out with rejects and oddballs. In death, as that preacher once promised, she will be known by her fruits.

She has a legacy. She leaves behind family and community with her early death. Her story matters to us. Christ's death and resurrection is told in her story. She refused to give up on it.

Your story matters. My story matters. All of these stories matter. Stories open up paths of vision that weren't there before. Mitzi Kaufman opened up a discussion on how to deal with depression. The father of the Sunday School teacher, 'Teacher Yang', had me reflecting on legacy and vision for this mother, wife, teacher, writer, and pastor on what I need to focus on. Rachel Held Evans' death continues this this reflection on what is important. Her death and all these stores are about legacy. Her's reflected the fruit of the Spirit and not giving up on Christianity.  

It's all beautiful, and the stories need to be told. Why don't we start with the big one?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 
John 3:16 ESV

Let's tell our stories to each other in every way possible. Our words reflect back to the living Word of God. Let's story in person, on the page, over email and through social media. Let's tell our stories. 

#
You can't conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the appealing strangeness of the mercy of God. Graham Greene

To observe Lent is to strike at the root of such complacency. Lent is a time of preparation, a time to return to the desert where Jesus spent forty difficult days preparing himself for his ministry. He allowed himself to be tested, and if we are serious about following Christ we will do the same. 

Lent is traditionally associated with penitence, fasting, alms-giving, and prayer. It is a time to give things up and to balance it by giving to those in need. Whatever else it may be, Lent should never be morose. It does not have to be an annual ordeal where we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. 

We need to remember that Lent is an opportunity, not a requirement.

After all, it is the Church's springtime. Out of the darkness of sin's winter, a repentant, empowered people emerge. It's little wonder that some refer to it "this joyful season!"

Let's borrow from C.S. Lewis. Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. 

Our self sacrifice serves no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart's deepest longing: unity with Christ. 

In Christ, in His suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph, we find our truest joy.

This joy is costly. It arises from the horror of our sin, which crucified Christ. 

This is a kind of dread. There is this nagging sense that we have missed something important and have been somehow untrue to ourselves, to others, and to God. 

Lent is a good time to confront the source of that feeling.

It is a time to let go of excuses for failings. 

It is a time to ask God what we really look like.

Importantly, it is a time to face up to the personal role each of us plays in prolonging Christ's agony at Golgotha.

Richard John Neuhaus put it this way: "Send not to know by whom the nails were driven, they were driven by you, by me."

The Good News is that Christ overcame all our sins.

His resurrection frees us from ourselves. 

That beautiful empty tomb has turned everything around. 

We move from all that is wrong with us and with the world, and spurs us to experience abundant life. 

Lent lets us discover Christ anew. He is the scarred God, the weak and wretched God, the crucified and dying God of blood and despair amid the alluring gods of our feel good age.

Christ reveals the appalling strangeness of divine mercy and the Love from which it springs. 

Love that could not stay in an imprisoned, cold tomb.

We will surrender to Christ again. 

#Lent #Easter #Easterjoy #Christ #crucifixion #beauty #love

​John Bucchino is a talented composer and lyricist whose songs I stumbled on several years ago. My favorite tune of his is one called “Grateful.” “I’ve got a heart that can hold love,” it says, “I’ve got a mind that can think.” It’s impossible to stay depressed, writes Bucchino, when he remembers how he’s blessed. 

I get it. I am truly blessed and duly grateful, too. I’m grateful for any day of late that feels more like fall than summer. And for the birds outside my window that I love listening to most mornings. Grateful for the work that is waiting for me each day: good work that I enjoy; work that consistently puts gas in the car and groceries in the pantry and gives my heart and mind a workout in the process. Grateful for the friends whose questions keep me honest and whose prayers keep me close. For a husband and little boys that I adore. For parents who believed in me no matter what goofy thing I did. For big stuff like life and health and small stuff like raspberries available in spring and glory of autumn in October and November. For things hoped for and things unexpected. 

Mostly, though, I’m grateful that my heart knows whom to thank for all the goodness that is mine. Sure, the list of things is gratifying, but it’s the Giver who really makes my heart sing. Any gift divorced from its giver is a lifeless thing; I’m grateful God “leaves the tags on” for me so I can see where all the best stuff comes from.

God has enabled me to see with what I'm calling his gratefulness glasses. It doesn't come easily for me. My mother only asked me to count my blessings once a year at thanksgiving so it wasn't a habit for me. I had to meet people who I thought were worse off but had great perspective.

I recently talked to a godly young man named Brian who suffered severe burns in an industrial accident more than a decade ago. He lost 90 percent of the skin on his body, lost his eyesight, and had two arms and a leg amputated. As I listened to him, I was astonished at his utter lack of self-pity; on the contrary, he expressed great thanks for how God used the injury to cement his faith. He has become a tower of strength, and as he described his relationship with his wife, I marveled at the obvious intimacy of their relationship on all levels, even in the face of such a debilitating injury. 

I compared his Christlike, thankful spirit with my own whining when I suffered a common foot injury this past spring and had to take a few weeks off —and I just sighed. In a fallen world we can develop a radically unrealistic perspective. One severely disabled man said, “When you’re a quadriplegic, you look at a paraplegic and think, ‘Man, they’ve got it made!’ “ When we feel sorry for ourselves, we work against finding positive solutions. Brian can’t see his wife, and he’ll never be able to hug her, but he can talk to her, pray with her and for her, and comfort her with wise words of love, care, and concern. Through the Internet, he has even discovered ways to buy her presents without her knowing about it ahead of time. 

Sometimes, in God’s providence, certain pleasures may be closed to us, as they have been to Brian. God says, in effect, “This is not for you, at least not now.” We have to trust him to provide alternate pleasures —perhaps of an entirely different sort —that will sustain us in our trials.

The bottom line is without gratitude we are wallowing in our selfishness. With gratitude we can see with our Godly glasses on.

Feelings of entitlement feed anger; feelings of thankfulness swell our souls and can make us tear up with overflowing gratitude.

​Thanking God helps us recognize what pleasures we have while at the same time increasing our pleasure. Only when we become grateful for what we do have, or what we might work toward, do we find true joy. 

When we look at life through these Godly glasses, we become lost in wonder and convinced of God’s astounding generosity, marvelous mercy, and gigantic grace. Sin causes us to look at life through the lens of entitlement —that we deserve salvation without repentance, wealth without work, accolades without self-denial, health without personal discipline, pleasure without sacrifice. Biblical truth reminds us that, in reality, we deserve hell. 

Every small laugh, each tiny expression of joy, a simple meal —indeed, every single moment lived outside of the agony of hell —truly is an undeserved gift. When we add the assurance that the completed work of Christ guards our eternal destiny, our lives should radiate not merely joy but wonder and astonishment at how good God truly is. 

What are you grateful for—and for whom? What satisfies your soul and makes your heart sing? Whose presence blesses you like crazy? What beauties threaten to take your breath away? You really should thank Someone, don’t you think? 

Every generous act and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights; with Him there is no variation or shadow cast by turning. By His own choice, He gave us a new birth by the message of truth so that we would be the firstfruits of His creatures. JAMES 1:17-18 HCSB

Dear Mid-Life 40 something Birthday person (mainly me) but a few others including Wanda, Sumitra, Ann, Elizabeth, and others,

Happy Birthday! When you blow out your candles ponder over these things and whatever else your heart tells you to focus on. 

40-something. You’re about half way through life, old BraveHeart. Half way.

So let’s live backwards from your 90th birthday cake. We should always Live backward from the end goal. Look at who’s in the room singing off tune on your 90th birthday — and who are you making room for right now?

I want to be the weathered woman of 9 decades, still excited about life and God and grace, hunched over her cake, looking around a room of babies slung on hips and grinning teenagers and the gathering of the generations. I hope they sing old hymns and new style praise songs. I want to sing Amazing Grace to this group and recite Psalm 23 by heart and count our blessings together and eat cake.

I envision a rising of accents and the richness of skin colours and a poverty of spirit that knows the luckiness of Jesus-grace, and I hear the raucous of a room of the gloriously rowdy and live your life backwards from that last birthday cake. (Ann Voskamp)


What are my priorities that will be celebrated at this 90th birthday party? These are the things I’m focusing on now. My principles for this 90 year life.

1. Keep young people around. Especially the little people. They see things you are bound to miss without them.  Thank you Jordan for focusing on love, hugs, kisses, fun and sweetness.  Making a small person one of your greatest priorities makes your life great.

2. Read! Read the Bible. Reread books that touched you when you were younger. Read things that show you how to be a more compassionate human being. Read up on a new interest area. Learn something new. 

3. Stay in love. I’m holding on to this with all my life. Stay in touch, stay in truth and grace, and stay in the Story and, above all else: stay in love. Life is too short to move on to anything else. And mid-life is flat-out begging you: Risk it all. Risk large, risk now, risk your heart, risk for what ultimately matters.

Go back to school. Go reconcile. Go make it right. Invest in a dream that terrifies you. Do the hard thing that terrifies you. Start a business, a class, a soup kitchen, a friendship, a dinner club, a memoir, a church, a marathon, a family. Just start. Start over.
​
4. You life is art. Rake the risk and create! Risk is your friend who walks with you where you want to go. Risk is the friend who knows the way to where you want to go. Enjoy risk’s company.

5. Live into something bigger than you, that will require more than you, that will require faith and hope and miracles and God.Why waste your one life on any one’s small box?
Believe it:

6. Our God is a good God. Pray to Him. Make your life a prayer.Make your work your worship, make your days your doxology, make your life your liturgy, and make Christ your only King. Your work may burn up or cause you to burn out, but the prayers enfolded into the stacks of laundry, the stirred soup, the stairs swept — they will survive fire.

7. The cure to anxiety and an overwhelmed life begins with a daily overdose of Scripture. (Keep trying to memorize it)
Leave a Bible open to the Psalms by the sink, on the desk, at the table, eat His book every time you eat because the truth is: Stay in His Story to stay walking on waves.

What you focus on — is what you become like.
What you focus on — is what you become like.
Focus on good — and you’ll see more good everywhere to focus on.

8. Give more grace than advice.

9. You integrity is you only legacy. Hunger for integrity more than popularity, celebrity, or prosperity, — because your integrity is your only legacy.

10. Being broken is good. It keeps you soft and open and things can grow in soft and open spaces.

Let the rains come down into the soil of your heart, let whatever needs to rain simply come, and grow whatever He needs to grow, however He needs to grow it, because He reigns and knows what is best, and in our tender surrender, the glory of our God wins.

There may be another 40-something years left, there may only be another 16,425 days left.

And honestly? As many days, as moments, between here and 90, or as many remain?
​
At this 90-something party, I want to eat the cake of amazing grace. Pay attention to God. Pay attention to my family. Worship God in all that I do.
Be grateful, live given, show grit. 

I am a part of that epic story just as you are a part of that epic story! Your life will be celebrated in glory because you were created and imagined by a loving, beautiful, glorious Savior who cares for you. (Psalm 139:23-24)

Have a piece of that amazing grace cake!

An interesting development has occurred with my feet this semester.  Too much standing, exercising, mothering, and just plain, being on my feet has not been good. I have plantar fasciitis, where the heel of my right foot feels like a hot rock whenever I stand up. I am taking Ibuprofen and doing my best to stay off my feet as much as it is possible. I’m occasionally doing simple exercises thanks to a friend’s advice, but generally I’m not moving.
 
This means I have to be still a lot of the time. I'm learning the power of standing still. I’m not that good at it but I’m trying.
 
Things I once could do with ease are not so easy now...climbing, running, leaping...I can see the movement clear enough, but my body doesn't always do as it's told. So I surrender grudgingly to "still" and curse my weakness; never fully graceful in motion, I'm even less so now.
 
What's more, the stillness of growing older asks me to go go deeper than muscle and bone.   
 
By now I'm expected to still my tongue and not let words fly fast and loose. To hush myself when I know just the phrase I wish to hurl, and where I'd like to aim it. I'm asked to hold my ground and not be swayed by whims or fads, or pushed beyond propriety or kindness. Sometimes I am able; sometimes I am not. But I have the power within me to be still. At my core there's a solid and steady center, fixed even when I flail and flash and fall.
 
A recent piece of sad news held a snippet of a poem I'd long forgotten: Robert Frost's lovely "The Master Speed." He wrote it for his daughter's wedding day, and it's most-oft quoted lines are the final ones: 
That life is only life forever more
together wing to wing and oar to oar.  
  
Those are lines full of sweeping motion. They're beautiful...but the ones that haunt my mind are these: 
And you were given this swiftness not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will.
But in the rush of everything to waste
That you may have the power of standing still."
 
Father who knit my cells together and who keeps my heart beating in metronome steady time, let me grow to love the power, the glorious power, of standing still in and resting strong in You.  
  
"Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:13-15)   

Amen. I just need to be still.

It's interesting that the most famous Psalm, the psalm of psalms, is the one that many of us know despite the fact that we know very little about sheep or shepherds. If you have been a part of Christian culture for a reasonable length of time, you know Psalm 23 is etched in.  It's deep in our imaginations and it is the psalm most likely to be remembered by the aged and dying. 

Yet, this familiarity has its dangers. The sharp edges are blurred. Familiarity carries the danger of it becoming a cliche. I am hoping to give this some fresh meaning as you read.

There is something in this psalm that transcends the Palestinian countryside and the work of the ancient Hebrew shepherd poet. Can we realize in a fresh way how this prayer retains its beauty and truth in our world and concrete roads, fast cars, domesticated pets, and internet shopping?

_______________

The shepherd is the center of this psalm.  He is identified as an image of God. In one sentence we are transported in our minds from a Palestinian countryside half a world away and three thousand years ago into our own neighborhoods and work places where God is present. He is Shepherd-Lord. God is good and present. Life is a miracle and brims with beauty and love.

In verse 4, a shadow of all that is wrong in the world in introduced and threatens to move the good and merciful presence of the Shepherd: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (ESV).  The shadow is death - death valley.  This could be the darkest shadows of death: cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, divorce, domestic violence, grinding poverty, homelessness.

We live in the company of both the Shepherd and the shadow.

_______________

We need to talk about the sheep. God is the shepherd and we are the sheep. 

Sheep are notorious for their stupidity. If they are left to themselves, they wander into danger. They absolutely need a shepherd. The psalmist, knowing himself as a sheep "prone to wander' knows God as his shepherd. Many a time God's "rod" guided him around a deep chasm.  Life in the desert for both the shepherd and sheep is not soft. It is menaced by the dark shadows of the beast-infested valley. The threats to life are all around, but the presence of the Shepherd guides and leads, dispersing the threats.

_______________

The second half of the psalm (verses 5-6) exchanges the image of the sheep for that of an outlaw or fugitive: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies" (ESV).

Those who committed serious crimes in ancient desert culture would flee to the uninhabited desert. They would be hunted down until they were found in this harsh, dry, inhospitable climate.

There was one exception to unfriendliness of the desert for these men cursed by a past of sin and hunted down by the law of blood revenge, and that was the custom of open hospitality. Every wanderer in the desert was received into a shepherd's tent as a "guest of God" (Arabic term), furnished with food, and kept inviolate. The shepherd host took responsibility for his safety. This custom still prevails today in Bedouin cultures.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." This is the outlaw speaking. He is threatened by his past, but he is welcomed into the Shepherd's tent, and there, "in the presence of my enemies," he is served a meal. In the shepherd's tent he is safe.

_______________

God is the alpha and omega. He is the beginning and the end. We acknowledge Him at baptisms, at the beginning of human life. We acknowledge him at funerals, at the end of human life. He is also present at the conclusion of business careers, academic commencements, anniversaries, and birthdays.

But what about the in between, the large living interim between death and death, that long stretch between the beginning and the end? What about the middle? It is this period where we tend to belittle our small faith. Is God our shepherd guiding us through life? Is he with us during the fugitive years? Here is where we fall short.

Psalm 23 is a convincing witness that God is our Shepherd.  He preserves, accompanies, and rules us. We  are not created and then turned loose to make the best of it we can. He doesn't just let us fend for ourselves until we die and hauled before the judgment seat for an accounting of our conduct. He is our Shepherd. He guides us as we wander. He sustains us in our fugitive lives. 

Karl Barth put it this way: "We need not expect turns and events who have nothing to do with His lordship and are not directly in some sense acts of His lordship. This Lord is never absent, passive, non-responsible or impotent, but always present, active, responsible, and omnipotent. He is never dead, but always living; never sleeping, but always awake; never uninterested, but always concerned, never merely waiting in any respect, but even where He seems to wait, even where He permits, always holding the initiative. In this consists His co-existence with the creature" (Church Dogmatics 3.3, the Doctrine of Creation, 13)

The shepherd is a guide and a protective host. The Shepherd's rod and staff signal his leadership and a shared life of love and companionship; the Shepherd's table and cup anticipate his protection and sacrificial life of grace. Because not only do we need guidance in life to protect us from daily peril, but we also need grace to free us from past sins, to deliver us from the tangle of bad decisions and faithless acts.

And the psalm is not abstract. There are "green pastures", "still waters", "paths of righteousness" (straight roads), "valley", "rod", "staff", "table", "oil", "cup", "house". This is a relationship of personal presence.  The entire desert and range of experience of sheep and fugitive is brought into intimate and dependable connection with the Shepherd. 

He is a personal God that protects and guides on the one hand, and provides grace and refuge on the other.

__________________

​Do you know that the last word on Psalm 23 was spoken by Jesus? They were often on his lips, and his life was a dramatic exposition of the best of them. "I am," he said, "the good shepherd" (John 10:11). He lived and spoke Psalm 23.

We need to remember that there were good and bad shepherds in Palestine. The test of a shepherd was how far he would go in risking his life to protect sheep or fugitives. Would he lay down his life for them? Sheep can get themselves into dangerous and awkward situations. A shepherd who made the decision to go into a deep and dangerous canyon for single sheep at the expense of one's own life would not be a easy decision to make. We need to remember that neither fugitives nor the enemies hunting them down were harmless. A shepherd would think twice before opening his tent and seating him at his table, anointing his head and filling his cup with the presence of the man's enemies who were out to kill him. The shepherd led a dangerous life. 

When Christ said he was "the good shepherd" (John 10:14), I don't think they understood him to mean that he was gentle, kind shepherd would be nice to the sheep. They lived in shepherd country and understood the reality of a shepherd's life. Being a good shepherd meant taking the risk of life against beasts, robbers, and murderers and they understood this.

And Jesus did just that. He entered Jerusalem when it was filled with shadows of hate and murder. He faced the combined accusations and assaults of religion and government for the sake of all the wandering sheep and fleeing fugitives. He blessed Judas Iscariot with a meal on the same night Judas betrayed him.

Jesus Christ fills in the detail of Psalm 23. Our shepherd continues to work specifically and historically guiding us, saving us.

The prayer has shadows, but the Shepherd is never absent: guidance and grace. Guidance for us wandering sheep and grace for us as guilty fugitives. Guidance and grace triumph.

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of me life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

I would like to leave you with this poem from Elizabeth C. Clephane who wrote a poem entitled "The Ninety and Nine": 
    
    But none of the ransomed ever knew
    How deep were the waters crossed;
    Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
    Ere he found his Sheep that was lost.

Hallelujah and amen. He is our shepherd.

.There have three major themes that have been a part of 2017.  Teaching, writing, and pastoral work.  Let's look at each in turn.

September 2017 marked the beginning of my 20th year teaching English in Korea.  This was also a year of ups and downs.  Two of my classes were cancelled at the beginning of September just as I was completing a course on history.  I did not take this very well initially.  But, it turned out to be a blessings in disguise!  Due to only thirteen hours of teaching, I was able to:

1) get to know my students very well,
2) spent time tweaking lesson plans and thinking through new possibilities on old lesson plans,
3) exercised three mornings a week and lost over 10 pounds,
4) finished an Advent book that I have been working on since Aidan was a baby,
5) started to think through a blog in resilience for educators,
6) spent more time with Aidan after school.

This was the year I worked with my lowest and most difficult student ever.  I had never encountered anyone who absolutely refused to try speaking English in class until this past semester.  He never did warm up to the idea that he could try to speak and I would support whatever he tried.  This got me thinking about how fear can paralyze and what needs to be done to get over fear and develop resilience.  This will be a new project in 2018 and I look forward to delving in.

2017 is also the year I began to think of myself as a writer.  Despite the fact that I have been blogging since 2012, I don't think I really considered myself a writer.  Why not? This blog has been a creative outlet in so many ways.  I have poured out my thoughts on a myriad of subjects including teaching, random thoughts, family events, food, and book reviews.  The only common thread running through all of this is me celebrating what I thought was important in my life.  I realized I write for me more than for an audience.

This year was the first time I got up the courage to take an online course on blogging.  I signed up for Jeff Goins Tribe Writers course.  Even though I still haven't finished the course (I'm halfway through as I write this), I learned so much about how to write well, blog well, and how to do marketing in a natural, thoughtful manner.  2018 will be the year where I conquer the fear of others being critical of what I write, start a blog on resilience for educators, and finish the editing I need to do on the Advent book I have finished.  

And no, it's not a typical Advent book in any way, shape, or form.  This non-traditional book will look at the trees in the Bible, the stories the trees tell, and the lessons that they have to offer. 

Lastly, I have been involved in pastoral work with children.  KNU New Kids was launched in October of 2015 and it has been a great ride.  I've enjoyed watching this ministry grow from a handful of students to an average of twenty.  My heart feels good when I see the kids sing, dance, and enjoy God's presence.  I have led them through worship, told Bible stories, helped them memorize verses, played games, journeyed to Bethlehem, made crafts, laughed, cried, and hoped.  I have tried to teach Bible, but in the end I hope they will develop their own unique relationship with God and enjoy His good and gracious presence.  

All of these have involved God's heart, my heart, and a huge amount of creativity.  What did God call you to in 2017? More importantly, what do you think God is calling you to do in 2018?