He’s all about LIFE!

But the Spirit cares about his creation

Isaiah 32:15 … until at last the Spirit is poured out on us from heaven. Then the wilderness will become a fertile field, and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops.

Isaiah 34:16 Search the book of the Lord and see what he will do. Not one of these birds and animals will be missing and none will lack a mate, for the Lord has promised this. His Spirit will make it all come true.

When I think of exuberant beauty, I think of the flowers that transformed a rustic camp into a paradise at my daughter Valerie’s wedding.

Interesting—just before I started writing this blog, I read an article about MAID—Medical Assistance in Dying, which is legal in several countries and (so far) eleven states.

The pros and cons of MAID reminded me of Karis’s struggle to understand transplant friends who made that choice, feeling that life is always the correct answer. In her suffering in the last months of her life, though, she re-thought her perspective to the point of feeling compassion and comprehension of why someone would choose when and how to end his or her life. She didn’t do it, but she certainly thought about the joy of being with the Lord, free from all that constrained and hurt her here on Earth. In the months before her death, she wrote often in her journal, “Father, please, please take me Home. I can’t do this anymore.”

I went from there to contemplation of Isaiah’s celebration of LIFE, of both flora and fauna, mediated by the Holy Spirit, and the blessing to people of flourishing, fertile fields and animals. (Even the deer, groundhogs, turkeys, and bunnies that plague my efforts at gardening, Lord?)

I’m writing a book with a double setting: Bethlehem/Jerusalem and Heaven. The Heaven of my imagination overflows with vibrant life of every kind and natural beauty that is the “real thing,” only reflected in the mountains and valleys, rivers and oceans, gardens and fields of waving grain of our world. In creation, I see how much God cares about the details of texture and color and fragrance, of shape and function, of variety and mystery in our amazing world. How could Heaven not celebrate every form of life?

I think that even when, through human negligence and abuse, species become extinct on Earth, hurting their Creator’s heart, they are preserved in Heaven. How else could Isaiah’s promise be fulfilled, that not one will be missing?

I invite you to read aloud Isaiah 35. Yes, the whole thing, all eleven verses. Because our Lord is the Author of life, in all its forms. And that includes our own hearts and imaginations.

Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and the redeemed will be filled with joy and gladness (Isaiah 35:11).

A 3000-piece puzzle called Life that our daughter Karis put together, framed, and hung. I’m trying to find out the name of the artist.

Gentle and quiet

But God’s Spirit loves beauty

Job 26:13-14 God’s Spirit made the heavens beautiful, and his power pierced the gliding serpent. These are just the beginning of all that he does, merely a whisper of his power.

Isaiah 61:3 To all who mourn in Israel, the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair.

1 Peter 1:2, 3:4 God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his Spirit has made you holy. … Clothe yourselves with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.

I love hiking! Nothing soothes my soul more than unhurried time in the gentle beauty of woods. Birdsong and the music of a brook, the exquisite beauty of tiny wildflowers, fleeting glimpses of deer and other woodland animals, shade and sun and breeze combine in beauty that is precious to me.

Catoctin Mountain Park, Steve Walters

I enjoyed all this last week during our family reunion, on a trail in the Catoctin Mountain Park in the lovely company of a beloved niece and nephew. They were patient with me when I needed to breathe a bit on the ascent, and the rich conversation we shared has given me food for thought ever since.

God created us to love beauty. His Spirit creates and sustains beauty both surrounding us and within us, in harmony with his own nature.

I hope that today you and I will find space to soak in the loveliness of the world and people around you. And find joy in the work of the Spirit in our own hearts.

Fairest Lord Jesus (“Beautiful Savior”) unknown writer, 1662, Stacey Sings Hymns.

The music of ordinary life, by Margaret Shearer, author and actress, Pittsburgh, PA

But God’s truth is ever present

I have been writing since I was a child.

I have always had the idea that imitating my Creator opened spiritual paths in my life to which I should pay attention. So, I began seeking that path in my daily life which led me to be more observant. There were many blessings given to me each day. They had been given throughout my life, but there were also hardships. In recalling these situations, it became apparent that there are Godly truths all around us. I began to pursue these truths. The music of my ordinary life was easy to commit to paper.

And then the Holy Spirit intervened. In 2020, when the Lockdown began, it occurred to me that I should deepen my writing and now I had the time to do so.

Each morning I sit aside the first hour of the day to pray and during this time, things I had seen or things I had forgotten would be clearly revealed, and so I put these thoughts on paper and spent most of my time writing. I can honestly say that the ideas that came to me during this time were not conscious ideas. I could use this prayerful time because I was physically alone and isolated. I have known since I was a child that the Triune Trinity is continually close.

I did not set out to write a book. As the Nation and indeed, the World became more and more secular, my concern was that the values which had been instilled in me since childhood were disappearing and perhaps all of us were bogged down with despair; confusion and depression.

But God’s Truth is ever present and everlasting. It is there in the small things and the large; in our daily encounters, in music, in relationships good and bad, in nature. In every aspect of our lives, God’s truth can be found. This book attempts to bring to our minds and our spirits the knowledge that God is always present and He reveals himself in every aspect of our daily lives! We can find the sacred in the secular.

It is worth our time to seek Him and give Him praise!

(Debbie) Read more below about Margaret’s beautiful book. You can find it here.

In troubled spiritual times in our nation, world, and in our daily lives,

we can live with hope and inspiration!

With amazing photographs to illuminate the text, it makes a great gift.

Can wonder really be found In ordinary life? If you’re stuck in thinking the path we walk is ‘merely’ ordinary, nothing could be further from the truth! Light shines through the ordinary, and inspiration can be found in its reflection. I started my search to find truth in the spiritual darkness our nation seems to be in and discovered spiritual truth beyond what I saw and experienced each day.

I invite you to join me on this path. Once seen, I believe you will find, as I did, that the ordinary becomes extraordinary! It is there to be found. We can lift our every-day experiences to the light and behold the ordinary as a sacred gift.

My writing includes poems, short stories and op ed columns accompanied by beautiful photographs which pertain to each subject. These are stories which illuminate the long-held American values that seem to be disappearing. Here’s a sampling:

 What’s In Your Ordinary Room
 Midwest American Values, They Do Exist
 Soul Food At The Corner Store
 How Do Single Mothers Survive
 Laughter Is Important
 There’s Richness in Solitude
 Can We Count The Steps of a Lifetime
 A Cat Teaches A Lesson In Sharing
 It’s Not Just A Game, It’s Baseball

May you be blest in your search, find your way, and become a blessing to others who may be seeking THE WONDER OF DAILY LIFE.

With love, Margaret

Margaret Phillips Shearer holds degrees in Fine Arts and Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Stephens College. As a professional actress she performed leading roles in over 150 productions in major theatres across the country including the Stratford, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She appeared in featured roles in film and television including ABC’s six-part mini-series, Black Beauty and as Desdemona in the ABC TV National production of Othello.

In order to spend more time with her two young sons, she moved into the creative development area of film and television, and for over 25 years worked at Disney Studios, Island Pictures, Warner Brothers, Scott Free (Ridley Scott’s Production Company), and DreamWorks in Los Angeles. She was an Op Ed Columnist for the Glendale News Press, owned by the LA Times and distributed throughout the Los Angeles area, all while raising her two sons as a single mother.

Mrs. Shearer is semi-retired, is an active volunteer at her church and still appears in films and television commercials as well as being a lecturer on Shakespeare at local colleges and universities in the Pittsburgh area where she now lives. She is the mother of two sons and has two grandchildren.

Longing for Restoration, by Meg Sateia, Pittsburgh mom and educator and artist

But God makes beautiful things

Isaiah 35:1-2 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.

This is what we found when we came home from Colombia. More about that next time!

Longing for restoration has been a theme for me as I waited for two surgeries last year, after a long time of attempting to resolve my problems non-surgically, and as I tried to be patient though the recovery process. Ever since sin came into the world, we exist in a perpetual state of longing for things to be made right.

Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we can have hope that God cares about the pain in our world enough to enter it Himself and that He is powerful enough to put an end to death and sadness. He promises to come back again someday and mend all that is broken.

Isaiah 35 gives a glimpse of what God’s kingdom will look like when it is restored to its intended design. It will not just be improved, but perfected. Beyond meeting our basic needs, all of creation will flourish and be made beautiful.

This year I’ve taken comfort in the fact that God doesn’t ask or expect us to fix all our problems in our own strength, but that He invites us to participate with Him in His work of renewing what has decayed and creating new things that are good. When we think about the current wars, our deteriorating bodies, relational conflicts, or our selfish hearts we can feel overwhelmed. But help is coming. Justice is coming. Jesus is coming.

In the meantime, we don’t have to sit back and say, “Nothing matters, because it’s all going to fall apart anyway, and God will just fix it all.” Just as I give small tasks to my young children to help with a bigger job than they can do on their own, the Lord gives us our small part in his work. He uses us despite our past or ongoing faults, with whatever limited resources we have.

As we humbly engage in God’s redemptive work, our values become more fully aligned with God’s values. We become invested in the people and things we’re responsible for and we grow in desiring their good.

For me, working for good means homeschooling our kids, teaching classes on our homeschool community days, helping out in Kids Church, taking meals to people, and hosting people for dinner. I also enjoy weekly time for creative projects like drawing and songwriting.

What’s going on in your corner of the world? Where do you long for restoration? What areas of growth or healing have encouraged you? How are you working to bring about goodness and beauty? I would love to learn from you!

Beautiful Things by Gungor

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.

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?

Unfading beauty

But God values inner beauty

1 Peter 3:1-12 Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God. This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They trusted God. … For instance, Sarah … You are her daughters when you do what is right without fear.

1 Samuel 16:7 People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

Last week, while taking a photo requested by the publisher of the Karis book in Brazil, I accidentally caught my face in an unguarded moment. When I saw it, I was dismayed and promptly deleted it. Is this what people around me have to look at? For the first time, I felt old.

Diane Morris, a friend since 1988 when she cared for missionary kids at our new mission agency, OC International, left a lovely little book with me after a recent visit. It’s called 31 Days of Encouragement as We Grow Older, by Ruth Myers. Diane told me, “It will be fun to know we’re reading the same thing!”

Tuesday’s topic was “Never Too Old to Change.” Ruth writes, “It’s never too late to grow in important ways. … We can pray, Lord, show me things you especially want me to overcome by growth in the three things so important to you—faith, hope, and love. We can pray for increased faith in God—for quiet trust in place of anxiety, fear, or an ‘I can’t’ feeling. Someone infinitely bigger than us is in control. More and more, Lord, may I choose to trust in you.”

Is anything more attractive than quiet, confident trust in our Lord? Teach me, Lord, to do what is right without fear. Increase my faith.

P.S. I wrote this post before reading about the Southern Baptist “Abuse Apocalypse,” here and in other accounts.

Without question, this fits with the theme of God looking at our hearts rather than appearances. Interestingly, I had just read two relevant chapters in Diane Langberg’s (a second Diane for today’s post!) must-read book, Suffering and the Heart of God, How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores (2015). Chapter 12 is titled “Leadership, Power, and Deception in the Church and the Home”: Power has been given to us so that the world might see something of the glory of God in the flesh—full of grace and truth. That glory is evidenced in humility, love, sacrifice, and death to anything that is not like Jesus Christ. It is a hard road (p. 212).

I highly recommend Diane Langberg’s crystal-clear account of how self-deception leads to the abuse of power. In Chapter 13, “Sexual Abuse in Christian Organizations,” she says, “Some of us have faced the power of systems that name God’s name yet look nothing like him. … We forget that anything done in the name of God that does not bear his character throughout is actually not of him at all” (p. 220).

Here is how she closes the chapter:

Our God demonstrates again and again in his Word that his kingdom is the kingdom of the heart, not the kingdom of institutional structure. … God hates sin wherever he finds it and has gone to death to destroy it. Do we really think he wants us to avoid the death of an organization or institution by hiding sin, by failing to drag it into the light? He would rather see every human organization and institution fall than see such things preserved while full of sin. … When Jesus first called his disciples, to what did he call them—a profession, a creed, a task? No, he first and foremost called them to himself. I fear sometimes we have lost that call … breaking the heart of the Shepherd. He desires our primary allegiance to be love and obedience to him no matter the cost. When we pursue him above all else, the body of Christ will be the safest place on earth for the most vulnerable sheep. … May we, who are already in positions of power and influence, lead the way by falling on our faces, imploring God to make us like himself no matter the cost to our positions, our programs, our organizations, our ministries, or our traditions (pages 228-229).

We could add, I think, “or our politics.” We can’t put anything ahead of Christ in our hearts.