Tag: Anticipation

Everything new!

But God’s work is beautiful May 16, 2024

Revelation 21:3 Look, I am making everything new!

Ecclesiastes 3:11 God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart.

Genesis 1:31 God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

I find nothing so refreshing as a walk in the woods. The rhododendron blooming all over Pittsburgh right now remind me of a walk I made when I was trying to complete—in sections—all 70 miles of the Laurel Highlands Walking Trail. On a previous hike, Dave and I noticed the buds covering the rhododendron plants along the trail. This time, they were in full bloom, stretching as far as we could see through the trees in every direction. Breathtaking.

Shutterstock: Silga Be

I would not have seen this had I sat at home.

As gorgeous as our world is now, something even more beautiful awaits us—a new creation, unspoiled by the events of millennia and the impact of billions of people. I can’t wait! CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory and The Great Divorce imagines our need to grow our souls to be able to coexist with such intense beauty. One way to do that must be to open ourselves to the beauty we already have available to us.

God also does beautiful work in our lives. I would love to see and share this beauty! With Pentecost this Sunday, we will enter what the church calendar calls “Ordinary Time.” It’s in our day to day “ordinary” living that God enters and does extraordinary things. I would love to “see” and share the beauty of what he’s done for you! When have you seen God intervene and make something beautiful from a difficult situation? Don’t keep this loveliness to yourself! Honor God’s power and love by sharing your “But God” story.

Here’s how: write your story in one page and send it to me: debrakornfield@gmail.com. I post twice a week and will let you know when I post your story. If you like, you’ll be able to share the link with others.

If writing isn’t your thing, you can text me to schedule a time for you to tell me your story (by phone or by Zoom), and I’ll write it for you. Don’t worry—I’ll send it (or read it to you) before I post to be sure I have the details right. You’ll have a written record of an important moment in your life. And you’ll encourage other people who need to see evidence that God is still alive and well and active in our world today.

Will you accept the challenge to remember and tell how God turned crisis into beauty in your “ordinary” life?

Anticipation

But the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings

Malachi 4:1-2 The day of judgment is coming … But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And you will go free, leaping with joy like calves let out to pasture.

Luke 1:53 He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

I couldn’t write yesterday. I felt empty, and at the same time, stuffed way too full. This morning when I woke up, I asked the Lord what to share out of that empty fulness. So here we go.

At our house, the Christmas stockings are small. I didn’t grow up with the tradition of Christmas stockings. Having them at all began when our dear friend Jane Keep knitted small stockings with the names of the five of us for Rachel’s first Christmas, Dave-Debbie-Danny-Karis-Rachel. Several years later, she added Valerie, not quite in the same style as the original five. Since then, God has doubled the number of our Christmas family. Though there are now fourteen stockings, we’ll host twelve around the table on Christmas Day: Karis, though we all feel her presence, does not take up space at the table, nor does our granddog, June.

The stockings hang empty now, awaiting the creativity of family members coming up with tiny treasures and candies to tuck into them. Empty, yet replete with anticipation.

Over the last few weeks, several events I anticipated with one idea in mind, proved to be quite different from what I expected. In each case the production was spectacular, but not what I had imagined. The first was the movie The Most Reluctant Convert, the Untold Story of C. S. Lewis. Then an Andrea Bocelli concert (thank you, Val and Cesar!), followed by our church’s delightful St. Nicholas Market, Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers. I won’t take space to explain why, in each case, the real thing was different from my expectation.

This last weekend (well, Friday through yesterday) held a half dozen unanticipated outcomes, maybe more depending how I count them. Can you imagine Bach’s Toccata and Fugue played on an accordion?! Or the richness of the Lessons and Carols service Sunday? Or the Heinz Concert Hall filled with worship as Byron Stripling and Vanessa Campagna’s voices soared with What Child Is This, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Go Tell It on the Mountain, We Three Kings, Silent Night, O Holy Night and Joy to the World at the Pittsburgh Symphony’s “Holiday Pops” concert? Or the comfort of my daughters’ arms around me through Jim’s funeral? Or—

No, I’ll stop. Too many words, too much music and beauty to absorb. And concurrently the realization, this Advent, that as I imagine Jesus’ first coming, and try to imagine his second, I have only the shadow of an idea what to expect. The reality will be so much more than I can possibly anticipate.

But it will include, as seems a perfect description for Jim right now, healing. Freedom. Leaping for joy.