The Iron that Sharpens Me

There are people in this world who, after knowing them for awhile, you realize that God has placed them here for His reasons, and you just happen to reap the benefits of His plans by knowing them.
Shiuvaun is that person for me.
Our children share birthdays, her oldest, my youngest.
Jennifer holding Nic, celebrating thier birthdays together with Audrey and Sarah.

Our girls are a week apart in age.
Audrey and Sarah.....another birthday.

We have been in each other's lives for years, and shared so much.
In so many ways we are as different as day and night, yet in the subtle, underlying ways, we are so much alike, we have wondered if we aren’t really sisters in some fashion; Oh wait, yes we are…………in the Lord.
I have written about her before during the election when people were sooo virulent in their political stance.
We differed on that and I wrote about it, and how we solved it.

I want to say though, that it is because of her and her reading and knowledge of the political playing field that I have been compelled over the last several months to research the reasons for voting the way I will. She has always been good for me when it comes to pushing me to find out for myself what I think, how I interpret information, and how it will affect my choices. She is intelligent and what I consider to be a well read, voracious reader, thus I feel she has only my best interests at heart, when she spurs me on in this fashion.

Shiuvaun and I have been through some of our hardest days in the battle over the educational welfare of our children, and during that time of “lifting rocks and finding monsters”, we hung on to each other, and took the unconventional step at the same time in the decision to home school our children.

Ours is a story that has put us on the same side in educational warfare for the sake of our children and on opposite sides when it has come to decisions of life choices, and politics, but we have found like David and Jonathan (don’t ask me who is who), that our friendship runs unbelievably deep through all of these things.
The scripture in Proverbs 27:17 comes to mind when I sit and regard the relationship we have.

As iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

The fact that we can sit and discuss these differences and continue to love each other and be there for one another is what I cherish most about our relationship. Our priorities are straight. We have placed our relationships above philosophy, politics, and distance realizing that variety is the spice of life, rulers come and go, and telephones, and email are a gift. We realize we were all created differently for a reason, trusting God to reveal it to us as we go through life. Heartache and challenges only seem to bond us closer together, for age, as it comes, seems to remove the layers of trivial issues exposing the valuable instead.

Maybe it is because we are women, maybe it is because of our differing backgrounds that we have found and latched on to each other, hanging on more tightly as time has come and gone. Whatever it is, it is a precious gift, and like most precious gifts is not tangible, nor should it ever be taken for granted.

I remind you of all this to say that her blog is up and running. She will write, she will probably make you laugh and cry, as she shares the poignant stories growing up in South Dakota. She will compel you to think, and she may even rub you the wrong way, but she will NOT allow you to get lazy or stagnate in your thinking. As she said the other day when I visited her in KC, while referring to an issue they had been battling about with the city of Independence,
“I called them at least twice a week, sometimes every day, they didn’t realize who they were dealing with………………” Yep,that is sooooooooooooo Shiuvaun.
Read her………she’s in my sidebar.

Play date!

Casie called this morning and invited me to come for a "playdate" with she and Holt. I threw on my overalls, drove over and had a WONDERFUL day!



Sometimes you just need someone to crawl up in your lap and make you realize that the snaps on your overalls are more interesting than you ever thought possible! :)

The Greatest Miracle

In my devotions yesterday morning, I reread the all familiar story of the paralytic whose friends took him to the roof of the home Jesus was visiting, and tore out the roof as to lower him down, directly in front of Christ that he might be healed. (See Luke 5;17-26)

The man and his friends went to receive healing. Forgiveness may not have been what they were after, they were after wholeness, and they saw wholeness in a physical sense. Jesus knew the man needed complete and total healing; physical & spiritual—he received it all.

Jesus “saw their faith”- he saw them do something considered radical to get to Him, to get their friend to Him; an act of faith. They tore the roof off of a house, for goodness sake! Something easily repaired perhaps, but their friend was not as easily repaired and required radical measures to get him to Jesus.

The Pharisees and the Sadducees seemed to miss it all. They were so hung up on the fact that Jesus said the man’s sins were forgiven that it looks as though they missed the miracle entirely.

When I read passages like this I ask myself, “Were healings of that magnitude so common place that the chief priests were immune to seeing them when they happened?” Was this miracle, a man being able to take up his bed and walk after being paralyzed, such a common everyday occurrence that they shrugged it off and chose to dwell instead on the law, or the breaking of it instead?

Maybe the Pharisees and the Sadducees saw this man as someone of no value, unclean. Maybe they considered this miracle wasted on someone like that.

Whatever their thinking, they missed not only the miracle of this man’s physical body being restored, but the healing of his spirit through his encounter with Jesus Christ. He was reborn at that moment as a new man. Someone who I am quite sure became a follower of Christ.

Do we do that as good followers of Jesus, church goers, who have sat in the pew for years? Do we focus on the law and the breaking of it more than we look at the miracle? Not only did the Pharisees and the Sadducees miss the miracle, but they missed the forgiveness of sin. They refused to accept the free gift of God—Salvation—through Jesus Christ!

Do I accept the forgiveness of sin? Or am I like the Pharisees and Sadducees and refuse to accept the fact that God forgives the sins of everyone? Do I get so hung up on the law that I miss the miracle of forgiveness?

I realize that forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, through Jesus Christ is the greatest miracle He ever performed. Forget the Red Sea, the manna, water from a rock, and axe head floating, the sun standing still. Forgiveness through Jesus Christ is the greatest miracle God ever performed on our behalf………I don’t ever want to miss it!

God is walking me down some new and unfamiliar roads right now, and He is allowing me to see right before my eyes, His grace and His mercy, His compassion and His desire to restore and forgive us his children. I’m learning to see things anew, and not miss the miracle or the salvation that it brings.

What do you believe?

As I read the story at the beginning of Luke of the pronouncements of Christ’s conception and that of John the Baptist something came off the page—don’t you love it when God does that?

In Luke 1:6 it refers to Zachariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, as

“……righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances, of the Lord, blameless.”

WHOA! What a description! I cannot imagine someone so dedicated to doing all that God has commanded, and obviously being soooo good at it; blameless! Are you kidding me!?!?
But wait! On over in Luke when the story tells how the angel of the Lord appeared to Zachariah while he was performing his priestly duties, the angel struck him dumb and unable to speak---WHY?

“because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time.”

Obviously, Zach was following all the rules, doing the stuff, and he and Liz where thought well of because of their perfect behavior and lifestyle.

This strikes me because even though they followed the law, and fulfilled the commandments they still didn’t believe the word of the Lord when it came to them; they didn’t believe that:

“with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

And Liz, even at 6 months into her pregnancy, when Mary arrived for a visit, and the baby leapt within her at the joy of the voice of his savior’s birth, questioned her part in all of this.

“But why is this granted to me, the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Following the rules, fulfilling all the orders and directions doesn’t enable you to “believe” when the time comes for you to. Even those of faith and following all the rules don’t necessarily see and believe. They may even go so far as to question God in the midst of their own miracle.

Abraham “believed God.......”; he believed God.
Believe!

Where I'm at right now......

".......we probably differ on some points we once thought were absolute."

Kathy Nickerson on "Mercy Street"

Thank you Kathy