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God’s Glory May Be in the Scars

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She’s a petite woman with a penchant for wearing sparkles. Chad and I first met her out in East Texas when she would arrive with gusto at different community events, her husband and daughter smiling behind her while she invariably grinned in her honest way and “told a funny.” They’re a singing trio, all extremely talented, but she is the talker of the family, and she weaves stories about God’s goodness throughout their concerts. I was reminded of this when she and her family stood before our little church on Sunday. It’s been years since we laid eyes on the three of them, but they drove out west and delivered the same heartfelt singing and story-telling that I remembered from days past.

Something was different, though. This little sparkly, joyful woman has been struggling through an autoimmune disorder, and when she walked into our church on Sunday, she did so with apologies. Her always-smiling face bears the marks of the disease that she has been battling. She placed her hands gingerly on her pink cheeks, wanting in some way to hide the signs of illness that she felt had to be explained. She was self-conscious and embarrassed by her appearance. Yet, she smiled as usual. And she thanked God. And she got up on a platform in front of hundreds of people and worshiped Him.

I sat on the front row and felt blessed to be a witness to this moment. I have no doubt that she would have been perfectly content to hide in her room while this disease alters her face. She could have easily justified her choice to stop singing, to stop traveling, to stop having this experience of explaining over and over again to a brand new group of people why her face is so changed. Yet, here she was, glorifying God all the more as she stood to honor Him even now and especially now, singing and speaking of His goodness and His faithfulness and of her desire to bring Him glory. In essence she reminded us that it’s not about her face. It’s about Jesus.

I felt sharp pangs of conviction there at the foot of the platform. I had beautiful skin as a teenager, but for unknown reasons when I turned twenty my skin turned on me. I have struggled with acne for all of my adult life and my face bears the scars. At times I become virtually obsessed with my imperfect skin, wishing for something better and different, wondering how I could hide it, bury it, disguise it. Many a day I have wished that I could stay in my house, stay home from church, stay away from my friends and family, sit at home and wallow in misery over the face that I don’t have. Chances are we all have some insecurity that could easily hold us back from doing the work God has for us. We all could find reasons to stay at home and wallow in our obsessions over things that aren’t that important.

On Sunday I sat on the front row, my teen-aged daughter at my elbow. I wondered if she and I would take this moment to heart, if we would remember how one little East Texas woman stood before us with her pink, swollen cheeks, with her insecurities displayed for everyone to freely observe. I wondered if we would remember the lesson that the Holy Spirit gently taught that day, that God’s glory is sometimes more clearly displayed when we are at our most vulnerable. That our struggles and our sufferings are never wasted in the hands of a good God. That even when healing hasn’t arrived, when things are just as bad today as they were yesterday, He can still receive glory and honor through His children.

Chances are that my daughter will remember this lesson more clearly if she sees it in me. So, I’m thankful for the picture that is burned in my mind, a sequin-clad singer with a face that told a tale of God’s glory. May I remember it forever.

Very Good

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Through the forest, past the twisting, singing brook, beyond the dancing vines and under the mossy ridge of a fallen oak tree sat a tiny caterpillar. She was green, like most caterpillars, and she had the most delightful smattering of freckles that seemed to cheerfully shimmy down her fuzzy back. She, having no memory of where she came from or who she was to be, was content to travel around her small area of the forest, admiring the beauty all around her.

One of her favorite places to sit was near a little grove of spring flowers, where the butterflies met each day, showing off their amazing colors and their graceful ways. The caterpillar did run across other animals who seemed useful or nice, but the butterflies were her absolute favorite. Soon she became completely obsessed with butterflies.  She determined that they were the only animals in the forest who really mattered because, after all, what could be more important than being beautiful? They brought so much glory to God with their gorgeous colors and their special ways. She thanked God for blessing the world with such beauty, and she prayed that one day He would turn her into one of these lovely creatures, admired by all for her colors, her grace, her beauty.

The little caterpillar could hardly wait to grow up, so sure as she was that she would someday become a gorgeous butterfly. Finally, the day arrived and she closed herself up into her snug cocoon. She was so warm and cozy, and she fell asleep dreaming of the brightly colored wings that she would soon be able to show off down at the flower grove.

At last she awoke from her big sleep, and she could tell that she had grown up. She began to wiggle and push her way out of her little room, in such a hurry to race to the brook and see her beautiful new self in its shiny surface. As she tried out her new wings, she was amazed by how fast she was, how lovely she already felt, and how much God must love her to create her this way, with a butterfly destiny. When she made it to the brook, she stopped short of the water, landing on the bank and bracing herself for the incredible beauty that she was about to behold. She inched one delicate foot forward, then another. Finally, she looked at her reflection.

She watched her own face as its expression shifted from excitement to shock to anger. Where were the beautiful colors that she had felt destined for? She was brown. Not just brown, but ten shades of brown. Brown like dirt. Like dusty cobwebs. Like all of the non-beautiful, boring, plain jane things in the forest. She thought God was going to bless her with amazing beauty, grace, butterfly talent, but what she got was just okay. Sure, she had wings. Brown ones. Sure, she could fly. Big deal.  She could never go to the spring flower grove looking like this! She was not a glittering butterfly. She was a moth. Yes, she had to admit it. She was a tiny, doesn’t-matter-to-anyone, brown, ugly, nuisance. This is who she grew up to be. How could she be of any use to God now? She really didn’t understand why He had made her this way.

So, she asked Him.

And He answered, in His patient way: “My sweet little one, let me show you how I see you.”

Hopeful, the moth looked into the water once more, and she could hardly believe her eyes. She looked…exactly the same. The same tiny brown wings. The same boring shades of beige and tan and ecru and eggshell. The same lack of beauty. The same unremarkable form that she had been so disappointed by just moments before. She didn’t understand.

“Don’t you see?” the Lord whispered in the breezes that swirled around her ruffled wings. “I made the rich brown earth where flowers dazzle the eye and where tiny earthworms tunnel their intricate paths.  I made the fuzzy spiders in the forest who decorate the trees with their exquisite webs. I made the fine grey mist that covers the craggly tops of mountains. I made the mud puddles where happy birds splash after a rainstorm.”

The little moth did love the grey misty mornings. She did enjoy watching her feathered friends play after a rain shower. Mud puddles aren’t bright and beautiful. Earthworms certainly don’t shimmer in the sunlight the way butterflies do. Yet, God made them. Could it be that mud and mist and spider webs and earthworms and even little brown moths can bring God glory, too?

“When I look at you,” the Lord whispered, “I see YOU, just as I made you. My creation. And I say: very good.”

Just then, a bouncing black bug landed on the water, breaking up the little moth’s reflection into dozens of ripples.  She thought about what God had said. When the water stilled again, she noticed for the first time the intricate patterns etched in brown on her delicate wings. She noticed the cute little spots of white that splashed across her back. She saw how God had made one of her tiny antenna slightly longer than the other, and she giggled at the way her teensy mouth turned down at the corners just slightly. The longer she looked at her reflection, the more she began to see the hand of God in the unique way that He had formed her, with love and care and creativity.

Suddenly she felt blessed to be here, in this beautiful forest, just a little brown moth with wings, small as they were, to carry her from place to place.

If you travel to the forest you may see the little moth, although you probably won’t notice her.  She still enjoys watching the butterflies at the grove of spring flowers.  But, she doesn’t have much time to sit and admire them anymore.  She is too busy doing the special jobs that God gave her.  She learned that she doesn’t have to be red or blue or shimmery purple to bring glory to her Creator. She is exactly the size, shape, and color that He wanted her to be, and when He looks at her, He loves what He sees. Now when she slows down for just a moment and catches a glimpse of herself in the brook, the little brown moth can’t help but smile. She remembers God’s words and repeats them happily to her reflection: “Very good.”

Being the Church

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A few days ago, we drove east, until the modest, stubby mesquite trees of west Texas gave way to the majestic, fragrant pines that hide the horizon and cover the eastern part of the state with lush greenery. We were home. Well, one of our homes. It was the first church that took a chance on a starving artist, turned attorney, turned pastor. This is where we remembered that life is fun, where our sweet church taught us what it looks like to be selfless, to be generous, to be patient. These people took us in and loved us well when we moved here ten years ago. And now, five years removed from these precious friends, we drove there again this past week to honor the life of a dear church member who had encouraged us many times through the years.

In the funeral home’s hallway, I rounded the corner to find a chapel filled with dear old friends, people we adore and miss terribly. I listened as one of Sawyer’s preschool teachers told me how attentive he was as a toddler, how he would intently listen as she taught and then he would open his baby mouth and ask deep questions. We talked about how he has such a tender heart toward the Lord, and I got the rare opportunity to hug her and thank her for the years she invested in him, for the ways that she helped to nurture a sensitivity to the Spirit that I see in him today.

I watched as friend after friend approached our children, exclaiming about how much they have grown. I reminisced with an 86 year old who had made sure, six years ago, that she was the very first person to come to our house to hold Emerald after she was born. One of our favorites, a tall, white-haired friend who used to keep Chad company in the front seat of the church bus while he drove all over the countryside, walked into the room, and we heard about some of the many sorrows that he has endured in the time since we’ve been away.  Still, he smiled, he hugged us, and he commented on the kids’ freckles. He has always loved freckles.

And then, as the service ended and it was time for us to say goodbye to our dear ones all over again, I walked out of the chapel arm in arm with a sweet friend who used to invite us to her home where she and her husband showed us old pictures and their beautiful glassware and made us fried catfish just for fun. One night we sat with them, just sat with them and ate hamburgers when their son passed away. We just wanted to be close to them. We sat and ate hamburgers and reminded each other that God is good. As we walked out of the funeral home, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “You didn’t know it, but you saved our lives that night.”

Tears sprang to my eyes. It was such a precious reminder that, in the church, God has gifted us with the sweetest opportunity to experience all the joys and sorrows of life with each other. To sit together and eat hamburgers when every word you think of saying seems wrong. To sit together in solidarity, knowing that even tragedy can’t break our faith, that no unexpected heartache can loosen God’s grip on us. To sit together, remembering that Christ is enough. He is always enough.

I know we have many more moments like this ahead of us. Times when we will just hunker down with loved ones right in the middle of a hurricane of heartache. And there will be times when dear friends will do the same for us. This is the church. This is one of the many reasons that we need each other. And, I am so thankful that I got to go “home” this week so that I could be reminded that we are called to give all of ourselves to each other.

As we made our way back west, the sky opened up again. The gorgeous pinks and oranges of the sunset cast a funny hue on the wide horizon. I smiled as I watched our beloved hometown come into view. This is where we belong. This is where we are called to give ourselves away. This is where the rich, beautiful blessings of the church continue to pour out on our little family. I’m thankful.

41 Years Old

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Tomorrow I will officially turn 41 years old. I recently heard another blogger talking about how when she turned 41 she decided she was going to do all the things that she wanted to do but had always been too afraid for. She woke up at 41 and completely changed her life. Then she wrote her book and she got on all the talk shows. It’s been fun to watch it all unfold, spying on her life from a distance, seeing a whole bunch of her dreams come true.

Tomorrow I will wake up early and meet a swarm of sweet kids at the church parking lot to head to camp. I’ll get on stage and jump around and sing and I’ll dance in my awkward way, and the day will be long and Texas summer hot and oddly fun. I’m not expecting any revelations when I wake up as a 41-year-old. Here I am, with a blog that has lulled through the summer and a book that is still unwritten, dishes waiting patiently in my sink, three kids who are trying to deny the fact that school will soon be starting. Here I sit, still not reading my Bible enough, still praying too little, still fearing too much, still letting the same old sins creep up on me while I get distracted by all the things that don’t matter.

But, God never quits being patient with me. He is patient like the dishes in my sink. Like the laundry in my baskets. He is patient like that book that is still in my brain. Only with his unending patience comes compassion, understanding, and great love. He has shown me again and again through these decades marked by my imperfection that his grace never stops covering me. He is good. And his goodness keeps binding my wandering heart to my Savior.

There are so many ways I wish I were different. But, one thing I know for sure: Jesus never quits. He never stops saving me from myself. He never throws up his hands in despair and walks away. Blogs and books and even families fade and pass away, but His grip on me is sure.

So, I guess instead of deciding that year 41 will be the year that I finally do all those things that need doing, I will pray that this will be a year of remembering instead that nothing in this wide and wonderful world matters more than the love of Christ. The fact that he would stoop to love me is a miracle that I hope I never get over. Let all that I do in year 41 be for you alone, Lord. You deserve all the glory forever.

Every Testimony is Dramatic and Miraculous

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My Christian testimony is what many would call vanilla. I came to know Christ when I was eight years old. My family was something straight out of a 1950s sitcom–hardworking father, loving stay-at-home mother, two kids and a dog. We were deeply involved in the church that my parents grew up in, and I don’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love Jesus or didn’t want to live according to His word.

It’s true that when junior high school hit I didn’t always make the best decisions. I tried out some different personas for short periods of time. But, for the most part, God has kept me on an extremely short leash. Anything I tried was immediately found out and punished. I felt humiliated by my sin, and was known during my growing up years as a “good girl.”

I went to college and didn’t experience any kind of trauma or drunken mistakes or shocking revelations. By God’s grace I made sweet Christian friends and we lived for the Lord as well as we knew how at the time. I married Chad, and he has helped lead me closer to Christ as the years have gone on.

I have no dramatic background story or miraculous turnaround to speak of. I don’t have one of those testimonies that make people say to one another, “You have GOT to hear what God has done in her life.” No, my story is simple and may not seem all that profound or even interesting at first glance.

But, the truth is that every single Christian testimony is dramatic and miraculous.

I may not remember a time when I didn’t love Jesus, but it is there in my history–a period when I was 100% dead in my sins, as dead as Lazarus in the grave. And then the Lord called out to me, and I heard His voice. How much more dramatic and miraculous can a story get? I was once dead, and now I am alive! I was bound for hell, and Jesus snatched me out of the clutches of eternal torment. May we never be guilty of seeing that kind of saving grace as ordinary or humdrum. It is the very power and love and goodness of God on display in a dramatic way, even when we forget it and we start to feel inferior to all of those with the fascinating and drama-filled testimonies.

God has worked a stunning miracle in my life. I don’t know why He has protected me from so many heartaches, but I’m grateful. If you also have an undramatic testimony, know this: there is nothing basic or boring about the life-transforming power of our Lord Jesus Christ. The angels throw a party every time someone comes to Christ, and the parties aren’t less enthusiastic for the freckle-faced eight year olds. Salvation is never small. It is big and dramatic and miraculous, every single time.

Let’s never forget what Jesus has done.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:1-5

What He Holds

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When I was a kid, Vacation Bible School was the highlight of my summer. I still remember how the slightly watered-down KoolAid tasted when it washed down exactly two sandwich cookies from the local grocery store, each lovingly placed on a white napkin and eagerly gobbled up by children who were that special brand of midsummer morning starved.

I remember how much I looked forward to painting the red bricks on the outside of the church with water, the brilliant notion of some long ago Bible School director. The buckets and paint brushes and cool, cool water were a big part of my summertime dreams as a child.

This past week, in the grand tradition of many, many summers long past, our church was filled to the brim with excited children. When you are a grown-up,VBS is all at once the most fun thing you do all summer and also the most exhausting. In the famous words of then four year old Sawyer one final day of Vacation Bible School, when I am done with VBS, “my hair is tired.” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a more perfect description of how one feels on that last day of a long week of over-the-top enthusiasm and  Holy Spirit-inspired patience. Maybe it’s the consecutive days of restraint that is really what so completely wears out a VBS worker.

This was Adelade’s first year to be a VBS volunteer. She effectively graduated from Vacation Bible School last year, after years of loving every second of it. It was sad for me, thinking about how quickly the time goes, about how she had passed a milestone that we could never really return to–the days when she would wake up with the sun, smiling before her eyes were even open, ecstatic in the first seconds of consciousness because she knew it was a VBS day.

This year I watched as her long and lean frame took the stage, helping lead the children as they sang and learned the motions to the fun music. For the most part I didn’t think much about it. Her enthusiasm was still off the charts. Her smile never waned. She was having great fun. But then in one, tiny mama moment, I stood at the back of the sanctuary, watching one of the more mischeivous boys from my class walk, no, run, no, tumble to the bathroom, and I was mesmerized by my first-born daughter, standing there at the front of the room. It was only a few seconds before the spell was broken by the tumbleweed of a boy who was barrelling toward the restroom. But, in those seconds I felt like I was seeing the beginnings of who Adelade really is and who she is to be.

The next day I sat with my rowdy little class and watched them listen intently while she taught them about the hope we have in Christ. She was so sincere, so true and sure as she spoke of the love of Jesus, and I found renewed hope in my Savior just by watching what He is doing in my dear little girl.

Thirteen years old. Vacation Bible looks different now. It looks like a lanky teenager and braces and teacher break room privileges for my own little Adelade. And as her faith and understanding grows, I’m learning that a merciful by-product is the growth of my own faith and understanding, just watching in awe while Jesus forms her into a girl after his own heart.

This week she managed to meet David Platt. When she spotted him in the hallway of a huge convention center, she gasped. She literally gasped. The president of the International Mission Board was standing right in front of her. So, she smiled up at him with that silver-bracketed precious grin that turns up at the corners. They talked about seventh grade and Secret Church, and she walked away encouraged.

And tonight she came through the door with red eyes, tears still flowing as she tried to explain things that words don’t quite have the capacity to express. She had prayed over young missionaries at their commissioning service, and all the while God was speaking to her own heart. The same David Platt who had been so kind to her yesterday was now on a big platform, speaking about calling and mission and the way that the Holy Spirit will sometimes grab you so tightly that you run out of vocabulary to describe what it feels like.

And in all of this she grows. She changes in ways that I never could have predicted back on those simple summer mornings when she awoke with a grin and a VBS song in her heart. And I change, too. I learn how much more she belongs to Christ than to me. I learn to bind my wandering heart to a Savior who calls little girls and makes them courageous Christ-followers. I learn to loosen my grip on my teary-eyed, God-gripped daughter, remembering once again that God’s hand is sufficient.  I will trust His hold on us. He is good, and He is working here.

The Long Drive Home

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She was the kind of girl who always said the wrong thing. She tried to claw her way into the popular crowd, in her de-clawed, shy kitten sort of way. It was high school in the early nineties, and we were all just doing the best we could with the very little that we knew about being teenagers. It felt like none of us really had a clue as to what kind of reaction we would get when we opened our mouths to speak, and we continually tested out all of the different ways to be, a petri dish of social experimentation in small town America.

I was no different. Predictably labeled the “goody two-shoes” of the school, I don’t remember being particularly kind or thoughtful. She was new to our school, and when the popular crowd rejected her she turned to me, and I invited her to come to some sort of youth group event with my church. I don’t remember where we went or what else happened that night, but I remember feeling like I was being mean to her. Somehow she was just such an easy target. She kept saying things that were ridiculous. I kept setting her straight. In the back of a dark church van I, the oldest leader of the youth group, sat with a crowd gathered round me while I ungraciously showed everyone all of the ways that a Christian shouldn’t be.

And then, somewhere along the way, on a long Texas road, her expression changed, and she asked me in all sincerity how to become a Christian. Imagine how my heart stopped for a moment while I realized that after my poor treatment of this girl all night long, I was the last person who should be trying to share the gospel with her. I had misrepresented Christ and refused to see this girl through spiritual eyes, and so I stumbled through a weak explanation of how Jesus changes us. I sat there in front of her, changed, knowing that I had acted all night like I never met Jesus before in my life.

And I was crushed.

I was a high schooler. I had so much to learn about Christianity. And even though I don’t remember much about my high school years, this was one of those rare moments when God was dealing with me so closely and so clearly that it cut me all the way to my immature little soul. I loved Him so. Yet, I was only beginning the sometimes painful process of being refined and sanctified by my gracious God. And in His goodness He has never let me forget the way I felt that night in a church van, as the passing interstate lights played across the face of a girl who was turning to me, of all people, for gospel truth.

I hope I have grown since then. But, I often find myself wondering if the woman from the insurance company who has put me on hold (again) could turn to me for the gospel. Am I treating her in a way that wouldn’t make me blush with shame if she asked me about my Jesus? When the fast food restaurant gets half of the order wrong and I am already running late, am I reacting in a way that would make me feel good about proclaiming that I am a child of God? After all of these long years of being molded and changed and taught by the Holy Spirit, I still have a hard time seeing those around me through spiritual eyes. I still fail to remember that they are souls, not just representatives of a company. Not just school teachers. Not just mamas or mechanics or police officers. Not just kids on the playground who aren’t treating one of my babies right. Not just awkward high school girls who always seem to say the wrong thing. Souls, one and all.

Paul said that we need to preach the word, being prepared in season and out of season. Part of that preparation is simply seeing the people around us. Really seeing them as needy sinners like ourselves. How else can we “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching”? The simple answer is that we can’t. Not effectively. Not if we are seeing people as nothing more than characters to be dealt with. But if we open our eyes to the spiritual needs around us, it will change the way we treat everyone that we come into contact with. And then we will really be prepared to talk about the gospel at any time.

I don’t know what happened to the girl from the back of the van that night so many years ago. I pray that Jesus rescued her. I’m thankful I can see her face in my mind today, a reminder of how much I still have to learn, twenty-something years later. I’m not ashamed of the gospel, but will I be ashamed of myself when a gospel moment arises?

Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruction. 2 Timothy 4:2

Truly Safe

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On Sunday we ate breakfast together, a family of faith chatting in the fellowship hall, eating donuts and breakfast tacos. We hugged. We laughed. We talked about the week that had passed and the one that was beginning. When our bellies were full we moved to rooms all over the church; Sunday school rooms that have heard the gospel proclaimed again and again through the decades. Emerald was in the basement, newly painted with cheerful art on the walls. It’s where several women from our church hid from a devastating tornado that hit our small town in 1951. They stayed there and were safe, sheltered by this building that has stood like a beacon on Main Street since 1916.

Chad and I walked upstairs with our friends to sit in a circle of chairs, looking each other fully in the face while we turned to scripture and heard the words of Christ. Chad taught from John chapter 21. Impulsive Peter had just jumped out of the boat to swim to his Savior because he couldn’t wait for the rowing and the docking and the rigmarole. There he stood, dripping next to the fire where Jesus was cooking breakfast, and he heard from the Lord’s mouth a hard truth: …when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. Peter understood what these words meant-he would glorify Christ with a martyr’s death.

Follow me. A simple directive from the Lord of Lords.

Follow me anyway. No matter what. We sat there in our nice clothes in our comfortable classroom, and we bowed heads together and tried to imagine what it could mean to follow Jesus no matter what. We stood up and men slapped each other on the back and women hugged and winked and walked downstairs to gather our children to us.

In the sanctuary I sat in my usual place on the front row with a long line of kids beside me. The future of our church. They sit together and sing together and draw together and learn the ancient words of scripture together.

We settled in and Chad began preaching. I looked down the row to all of the sweet faces, kids who are so loved and cherished by this family of believers. I wondered what their futures would look like. What is it going to be like for them, answering Christ’s simple, glorious, difficult call: Follow me.

I heard a noise coming from the hallway. A fussy baby with his frazzled mama, maybe. But, as my mind sometimes does, I imagined something much more sinister. I considered what I would do to protect these precious little ones if someone busted through the door of the church in this moment. I realized I would only be able to shield Sawyer and his friend, the two children closest to me. I banished the thought quickly with a whispered prayer and refocused my attention on the words of life pouring out of my husband as he preached the gospel.

Less than an hour later as I prepared lunch for my little family, I read about the terrors of the church shooting in Sutherland Springs. I was shocked to imagine that at the very moment I was wondering about the noise in the hallway during worship, an unthinkable horror was happening just down the road in that little Texas church.

Sanctuary. A place of refuge and safety.

As Peter stood there with Jesus, taking in the somber truth that He had just heard, he turned to see John closeby. He pointed to him, his friend, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and asked, What about him? And Jesus answered in the way that only God in the flesh can: If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.

I pictured a little group of ladies a half a century ago, huddled together in the basement of our church, listening to the train-like roar of an F4 tornado, sheltering one another from the broken glass. Within these walls, we are safe, they must have told each other as the storm raged overhead. How they must have prayed. How they must have wondered if the whole place would come tumbling down on top of them in that moment. God held up the building, and the women walked out into an alien landscape, where many of their neighbors didn’t fare so well.

The truth is that there is no way of knowing where the storm will devastate and where it will blow on by.

Chances are good that when mothers and fathers and grandparents and children met at First Baptist Sutherland Springs on Sunday, they hugged. They laughed. Men slapped each other on the back and women winked and gathered children close. They probably didn’t say so, but they all felt it was true: Outside of this place the world is crazy. We come into the sanctuary and take a deep breath. Within these walls, we are safe. They had no way of knowing that a storm was coming.

Following Jesus is a different kind of safe.

It is safety that cannot be stripped away by any weapon or any disaster. It is a safety that gives us freedom to follow Jesus, really follow Him, no matter what, because we know that He holds us in His hand. It is a safety that doesn’t mind if we ask why because the answer is always the same: He knows. It is a safety that keeps us fearlessly relying on His plans and His ways and His goodness. It is a safety that will bring us back to our churches, back to our family of faith, back to our way of living and dying well.

It is a safety that led Peter to keep going, to keep preaching, to keep following Jesus right to that martyr’s death that Jesus talked about. And, as Peter’s body died, never at any time was he unsafe.

Nor were any of our brothers and sisters in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday morning.

Jesus holds us tight through every storm.

I pray that the little ones on the front row beside me will understand that following Jesus isn’t the brave thing to do. It isn’t just for the courageous or the brilliant or the wise. Following Jesus is the safest thing. He is that good. His ways are that tender. No one and nothing can ever snatch us out of His powerful hand.

No matter what.

The God of the Hurricane

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They found her today, drifting there in the middle of the chaos of flood and hurricane, clinging to her mother’s lifeless body. She is only three. She has probably learned all kinds of words and phrases and ideas in the past year of her life. I remember when Emerald was three, and she handed me her cup. Here ya go, precious lady! she said, and I giggled and watched her big blue eyes and promised myself I would never forget it–such a grown up thing to come out of that tiny, heart-shaped three year old mouth.

I wonder where the little girl in the flood will find the vocabulary to express what she has been through today. I wonder where she will find the heart to survive the tragedy of watching her only mama, that precious lady, drown before her eyes. Her mother was trying to save her. And she did. The dear little girl was rescued from the swirling, teeming water by nameless men–heroes who keep going back into the turmoil of a world washed away by Hurricane Harvey.

So many stories are emerging from the wreckage of south Texas. But, this is the one that wrecks me. One tiny girl, clinging to the body that brought her into this world, holding tight to the mama who gave of herself in every possible way. Plucked from the choppy water. Kept by God. Sheltered by her sweet mother and a multitude of angels.

I’ve read of another mother who sheltered her baby in the water. She made a basket of reeds and placed her chubby son inside, shoving him out into the unknown, just grasping at the chance to save his life. He, too, was kept by God and guarded by angels until he was plucked from the treacherous waters of the Nile river.

Maybe one day someone will tell the little rescued Texan about baby Moses. Maybe eventually, when she begins to wrestle with the truth that God’s ways are higher than ours, when she wonders with heartbreak what hurricanes have to do with the glory of God, when she looks toward Heaven and cries out to her maker, Why?–maybe the church will be there with answers from God’s word. Maybe she will find a local body of believers who will take her in, who will nurture her with the good and true words of the Bible. Maybe she will find comfort in the greatness of a God who always has a plan, who wastes no storm, no heartache, no tragedy.

We need churches who will be there for her and for millions like her. Churches who refuse to bow at the altars that this world erects. Churches who unapologetically proclaim that God is sovereign and He is trustworthy–yes, even here, in rushing flood waters in Beaumont, Texas, in August of 2017. He is good, even here, in the death of one heroic mother and in the life of her cherished three year old daughter. He is powerful, even here, when the why is easy to ask and hard to answer. One thing we know for sure: He is righteous.

The God who directs the wind and the waves does what He will.  But, we must never forget, when we look at this sweet three year old miracle, that the God of the hurricane is also the God of the rescue. His ways are high. His purposes are good. And, His church should always be a light on a hill for those who wonder why. I pray that my church will be that. I pray that yours will, too. And, I pray that this sweet baby will one day run into the arms of a church that will teach her the truth that God had a good purpose in all of it.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the
winds and the waves obey him!” Matthew 8:27

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him.
Nahum 1:7

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