A Girl in Music Ministry

  Before you read this, hear me out: I have personally attended funerals for people who died due to complications associated with COVID-19.  I do not for one second take that lightly or disregard the pain of those who have experienced the effects of COVID directly.  The purpose of this blog post is to challenge the unwarranted panic that has led to extreme reactions, many of which are detrimental to our society, causing more harm than even the virus itself. When will it stop?  When will the madness end?  I'm afraid it never will.  And it's so very sad. Disease is a part of life.  Pain is a part of life.  And yes, even death is a part of life.  What we do in the meantime determines if we are living or just existing.  And right now, too many people are just existing due to an irrational, excessive, all-consuming fear of a virus. If I manage to go a day without hearing anything about COVID-19 it must mean that I stayed at home all day without turning on the TV or looking at socia

 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13, NKJ) It's a verse we see everywhere - on T-shirts and mugs, wall hangings and bookmarks.  Sports teams use it to pump themselves up.  Students say it when taking a test.  Professionals think it when interviewing for a job.  Parents pray it when parenting gets tough.  Using scripture in our daily lives is certainly not a bad thing!  Colossians 3:16 tells us to "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly" (ESV).  The problem is, verses like Philippians 4:13 are often singularly plucked from the Bible and stamped onto a product with little thought of the original meaning of the verse or how God intended for us to interpret it. There are many Bible verses that sound amazing and ARE amazing - verses that give us hope and inspiration and remind us of the love of God.  For example, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm

I keep looking to myself for confirmation that I am a Christian.  Looking to myself for proof.  Being terrified that it's all a farce. Today God reminded me to stop looking at myself.  I will never find salvation there.  Salvation is found in God alone. If I examine ME, I will always find doubt, fear, impure motives, desire to be my own god and go my own way, failure. If I examine GOD, I will always find forgiveness, love, grace, redemption. In the words of Paul in Romans 7, "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature."  I am never going to find contentment, peace, and joy in myself.  For, my inner self is wrought with decay.  The burden of salvation lies with Jesus, and he paid that cost on a cross once and for all.  It is finished. All that's left for me is to surrender, basically to say, "I give up!"  And I have done that. Salvation does not mean the end of spiritual wrestling.  It is actually the beginning.  Christianity is hard. 

I am convinced that the elemental goal of working out our salvation is realizing that all it requires is to abide in Christ.  That is crux of the matter, which upon first glance can seem too simple, almost anticlimactic, but which in truth is the pinnacle of realization that results in the peace, the joy, and the assurance we spend our whole lives trying to achieve. I gave my heart to Jesus at the age of six, understanding that God is real, that He sent Jesus to the cross, and that because of Jesus’ death I could invite him into my heart and live for him.  I would spend the next thirty-five years of my life figuring out the truth of the Gospel, often failing miserably, but inevitably held aloft by the Holy Spirit who was actively pursuing me and leading me toward enlightenment. At six years old I was told that salvation is a free gift, so I accepted it.  Perhaps one minute into my salvation it became a stranglehold of striving toward perfection that would ultimately choke

I’m a “cat person.”  I love cats.  Ask my friends and family, my co-workers, and they’ll tell you I’m a cat person.  I really wasn’t a cat person until college when I adopted my first sweet kitty, Chloe, who acted as an emotional support animal to me during a difficult few years.  For real.  Nowadays, Brad and I always have at least one kitty at home, usually two, and we adore them.  Those silly, sometimes snooty, personalities keep us entertained.  And all of our cats have either come from a shelter or we’ve found them as strays.  When we had a dog, a sweet chocolate lab named Gabe, he came from a shelter too.  No breeders for us; we want a rescue.  And I have to say walking by all those pups and kitties in cages at the animal shelter is pretty difficult.  It hurts my heart. I like animals in general.  Not snakes, though.  Definitely not snakes or most reptiles or nasty bugs.  Not a fan of alligators or those giant rat things.  Cockroaches are only good for flushing down the toil

This past weekend I was in Washington state for a Christian music conference.  Wow.  I could write several blog posts on what I learned and how I was changed, and maybe I will.  But for now I’m gonna write about Noel.  Noel came the second day of the conference (I would have remembered if she had been there the first day.)  Someone brought her in and sat her down at a pew a few rows back and to the right of me.  When I say someone brought her in, I mean led her by the hand because Noel is blind. That part was obvious right away, not only because of how she was helped to a seat, but also because of the way she kept her eyes shut and felt her way along the pew.  What became obvious after that was that she also has some other issues it seems, perhaps mental health issues that caused her to sway in her seat incessantly and blurt things out on occasion. It was not the Tourette’s syndrome type of random blurting sometimes associated with that disorder.  This was fully church-appropr