Up the Sunbeam

-- The lush, grassy expanse was fragrant and inviting under the not-too-hot August sunshine, just begging for bare feet to run and jump and play there. Games of catch with balls of various shapes and sizes ensued, played by people of even more varied shapes and sizes. After a huge family dinner to celebrate my mother-in-love's 70th birthday, everyone decided to try out the new volleyball net brought along to the resort where we were celebrating. Oh the games people play, and the joy they get from playing them! . . . at least some of them do . . . although I have rarely been one of them. From as early as I can remember I have loved to watch  sports of all kinds.  Growing up the delighted daughter of a football and basketball coach, sports were as much a fixture in our everyday lives as the couch in our living room or the kitchen sink. They tell me I went to my first basketball game when I was two months old and by the time I started school I had spent untold happy ...

-- Everyone longs to  belong. There is a deep-rooted need, common to all, to have a place among our people, to be part of a family, a group of friends, to be integral to an organization or community, to belong . And we want to belong truly, not just have our name on an impersonal list of members. We long for a sense of wanted-ness, even needed-ness among the people who matter most to us. There is a good reason for our desire to belong. God wove that very longing deep into the fibers of our hearts when He made us in His image. We long to belong because God longs to belong ! I have thought a lot about what it means for me and all of God's people to belong to God , but have never really given much thought to how much God has told us about His desire to belong to us ! Are you, like I was, a little surprised at that thought? In God's Word, there are almost a thousand instances of the name "God" being preceded by a possessive adjective (my, your, his, her, our, ...

Here it is!  There is one box I must find first--the 22-year old cardboard box with yellowing shipping tape and Grandma Laurene's lacy handwriting with our used-to-be address in Oakland on it.  This is the decoration that goes up first every year! The contents are just as they were the first time I opened this box--two pieces of heavy foam sandwiching the prize between them.  The excitement is the same in 2010 as it was in 1988! Our very own jewel tree, designed and hand-crafted just for us by Grandma Laurene and Grandpa Dale. Like others in the family who had these special customized trees, Hero Husband and I, married just 8 months when we received ours, were being acknowledged as the beginnings of a new family, a new branch on the family tree.  I loved that! I looked at every single detail!  There were so many lovely vintage pieces of costume jewelry I vividly remembered being worn by both my Grandma and my Great Grandma before her. Oh, and look her...

"God is sometimes the strength of His people, when He is not their song" IVP NT Commentary on Psalm 118 Have you ever been there--are you there now--where God is holding you together, but your heart just cannot find a song?  You want to sing, but you don't have the spiritual breath it takes to run the notes through your vocal chords.  You WANT to be thankful--but REALLY thankful, not just listing gratitude because you're SUPPOSED TO and you know you SHOULD be thankful for so many things.  Underneath the debris of current hardships, you are actually thankful for these things but you can hardly find them in the clutter of your messy emotions.  You're fighting the cloying fumes of fear that everything you're thankful for today might be gone tomorrow because you're thinking of things you've already lost. Uh-huh . . . me too. So where do you run to find the real from-the-inside-out kind of gratitude that makes Thanksgiving spring out of you like a so...

-- Listen! Can you hear them? Can you hear the echoes of that very first Thanksgiving feast? In the hustle bustle of the kitchen with clanking pans and sizzling turkeys, listen close and you'll hear the distant sounds of women cooking over open fires, turning the spit for hours as the meat grew more fragrant and delicious by each turn. I wonder if they had any idea that we would still be following their lead and continuing their tradition 388 years later. Their hearts must have been so full as they reflected on all God had brought them through. They must have been keenly aware of missing people from home, and of the loss of friends and family who had started out with them, but who had not survived this far. They must have held each other that much more closely in this celebration of harvest and life, hope and freedom, all out of their gratitude to Almighty God who held them together. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracing . . . tracing . . . tracing . . . generation upon g...