Out of the Ashes

Today is Easter! I invited me neighbor boys from my old house to attend the party with me. They have come before and it has become something they enjoy. One day they could be overheard playing outside while singing about the Son, and saying His name. What a beautiful sound to my ears. It was proof the Love was sinking deeper into their hearts. 
 After the first time of inviting the boys to the party, each Sunday after that they would wake up early and come down to my house and peek their beady little eyes into my windows, waiting and asking 1,000 times when it was time to go to the party. I loved their excitement, but their peering into my windows and watching my every move until we left for the party I could have done without. Since moving, I realize I miss those beady little eyes peering in my windows, and the reminder of those that are so excited to learn more about our Dad. I love those boys! 
 Today as I reflect the love of the Fa...

Forgive me, I know lostness isn’t a word, but it is the word that fits best here. All day yesterday I was struggling, I could barely hold back the tears, and life just seemed overwhelming.   I was angry and upset, and feeling undone. While there were many factual frustrations in the day, the way my mind and emotions were handling them were out of the norm for me. I kept telling my roommate, this is not normal for me. This is not how I usually handle stress or frustration.   I kept crying out to the Lord for help, but it wasn’t until the evening that I stopped and really inquired about why I was feeling the way I was, and what is was that I was even really feeling. As many of you know the Father often speaks to me in pictures. I immediately saw a picture of a little girl lost in the market- people coming and going. She has been separated from her father. The father could still see her and knew where she was, but she didn’t know where the father was. She was LOST and T...

For “all the single ladies”…(can you hear the music playing?)  This post is for you. It’s no surprise to anyone that I am waiting for my husband to be married. Here in India, I have a blaring reminder that I am 33 and still single and unmarried.   Everywhere I go, almost daily, people ask me, “Are you married?”   Which is immediately followed by the next question, “Why aren’t you married?”   I wish I had an answer for them.   They often ask me, “don’t you want to get married?”   They remind me that I am getting old and if I don’t have kids soon I might not be able to.   They tell me many things I already know. They give me their advice and tell me how to find a good husband.   I find their advise somewhat humorous in a culture that has arranged marriages, and most of the women speaking to me have never had a love marriage in which they got to decide who they wanted to marry or use any of the “helpful” advice they are giving to me. Someti...

Walking along in one village I met a woman named Parbhati.   She smiled immediately and asked me my name. She said I have heard about you. Her husband had worked for a friend of mine in the past. Although, we had never met before it was as if we were good friends. She then said this to me, “I would have never met you if you never came here". Those words play like a record in my ears. The truth is most of the people that live in the villages never really leave and come to the bigger cities and towns.   Some of them literally have never left home. They remain secluded in little villages in remote areas. They are unreached in so many ways, but the thing that rings most significant and loudest is that fact that they have never heard of our Father and His Son. I think of how the Shepherd sometimes leaves the flock to find the one lost sheep. I think of how the word says He won’t come again until all have heard.   There are so many that have never heard. I can hear them a...

I traveled to a nearby village one weekend. This one was new to me. As I walked along we chatted with the ladies that came along the path. My friends and I were on a leisure hike for the day while the ladies around us were working hard: to wash clothes in ice cold water, to carry heavy loads of leaves and branches back to their homes for their cows to eat, and to take care of things around their homes in order to provide for their children. They barely had time to stop and chat. One woman carried her baby on one hip while balancing a huge bucket of water on her head. The mountain climb was steep for me with merely a backpack on. I can't imagine carrying water on my head and a baby on my hip. We stopped to chat with a group of ladies gathered at a small trickle of water rolling down the mountain where they had gathered to wash their clothes with the small amount of water that was flowing down and a rock. Some days, I wish the whole world could taste and see the things ...