Good News!

I have good news!

The king has come. He is full of love and he is good.

He brought his beautiful kingdom with him, and he offers us a better life in that kingdom.  

And he is offering to adopt us as his sons and daughters.  We can live with him forever.

He will forget our past; we need only turn to follow him and he will make us like new.

The kingdom is now open to everyone who believes in him!


This was in my heart as I awoke this morning. I hope it resonates with your heart and if you have not already, you will turn and follow Jesus, the King.

Am I Wearing the Cross? Or Is It Wearing Me?

Am I wearing the cross,

or is it wearing me?

These words turned over and again in that semi-wakefulness before dawn. I have never worn a crucifix. It wasn’t about that.

I remember thinking as a ten-year-old self that I was “very religious.”  I was thinking that because I attended church with my family. While I no longer want to be religious, those days did set my feet on The Way.

Still, in those early days, I was wearing a cross. My outward behaviors were the crucifix I wore.  I wore it Sundays, and eventually throughout the week.

Today, decades later, the cross is wearing me. It is for me as Paul wrote: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Jesus has become my entire spiritual ecosystem.  It is in and for His Kingdom that I live. The Kingdom is the place where my hopes and dreams reside.  By His grace, I have been made a son of God (John 1:12) -- a son of the King of kings: a prince, you might say.

In recent years, I have realized that from my identity will flow my behaviors and even my thoughts.   If I wear a cross around my neck or on my lapel, that’s one thing. But if I am a prince in the Kingdom of God, that's another thing entirely.

If this sounds like boasting, it is. I am  boasting about the one who took a mess like me, and turned me into a prince.  

 

I know that my journey of faith is not complete.  However, I also know this: when my Father looks at me, he sees a prince of His Kingdom.  That is who I am and who I am becoming.

He is willing to do that for you, too.  

Walking, Talking Miracles and the Goodness of God in the Ordinary

I realized tonight that I couldn't make a fingernail that works like mine if I tried a half hundred years. I couldn't make a digestive system that works like mine in a hundred. Or a neural / endocrine signaling system in double that.

I'm a walking, talking miracle, and I'm so used to me that I take it for granted.

There is much for which to be thankful in these still damp hours of the new born year. As the example of the fingernail suggests, my list could be very, very long.

But let me show you just two on my list; two walking, talking miracles: my granddaughters.


Being thankful keeps my attitudes right-side-up. God is good, and I never fail to see that in my family and friends and community and in this incomprehensibly complex and beautiful creation.

I repeat that often: God is good. I do it not because my King needs to hear it, but because my soul needs to be sure of it.....even in times of sudden, painful loss as was our experience last month. He is still good.

And I practice thankfulness because it constantly reminds that He is indeed still good.

Granddaughters make that joyfully obvious, but even my fingernails proclaim it!