Tried With Fire

I'm rereading Humble Roots by Hannah Anderson with a group of women in the church. This excerpt is from the chapter we will be discussing tonight. As often is the case with providence, I needed to read these words again because a stray thought and unanswered question brought a wave of anxiousness. I am the planner who tries to calculate all possible outcomes. My mind works like a decision tree. But it's not all up to me. I am a child of a Father who knows exactly what I need, not the Little Red Hen who has to do it all herself. Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled. We pursue certain ends, but we can't know the future. But part of humility also means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will be fulfilled in ways we cannot imagine.... If we limit ourselves to working only when the signs are promising, if we only plant when everything is perfect, we limit ou...

I'm posting at Out of the Ordinary today. It's funny how my pastor's recent sermons have provided the exact encouragement I needed from the Word at exactly the right time. Being reminded of who God is in His Word is a lifeline in the middle of a trial, so God's timing is pretty amazing. I just got off the phone with my dad. Today was a rough day for him and my mom. He never knows what the dementia may bring, but the stress ramps up when my mom won't comply with the care that is necessary and good for her. Because of the disease, she will question and argue, and because of the disease, trying to reason with her is futile. This is hard for my dad when all he wants to do is help his wife whom he loves. I encouraged him as best as I could, and we prayed together on the phone. When I hung up, then I could release the tears I had been holding inside. It's no wonder the Heidelberg Catechism refers to this life as a vale of tears. Read the rest of the post here ...

I am posting at Out of the Ordinary today: "It is no good telling the bereaved mother that Christ still loves and cares for her if she has only been taught to think of Christ in terms of how he works on her own feelings and in her own experiences. She needs to be able to see that God is much greater than her experience of him; she needs to know that, whatever her current feelings of anguish and despair, God is trustworthy and loving; and she needs to know that assurance is not necessarily about emotional highs but about knowing that God is faithful even though the whole world appears to be falling apart around her..."   Carl Trueman She needs to be able to see that God is much greater than her experience of him... This passage by Carl Trueman hits close to home. I was not a bereaved mother but a heartbroken wife wondering where God was when my husband walked out the door. I would never have owned it at the time, but God was pretty much the God of my experience...