“This personal memoir was an attempt to capture as honestly as possible my journey through the mid-life process. I had chosen the title of Stranger to Myself No More, which I felt more closely described the contents of the book than the title that the marketing department finally chose.

“This is an ‘inscape’ to use that descriptor from Gerard Manley Hopkins, a look at the inward journey of the soul. I attempted to capture the struggles of personal dislocation that occur from being a Mom, a woman with a profession, a husband in national media ministry and how that story intertwines with God’s action and persuasion in one life.”

“It is honest, frank, revealing and lyrical because it is an attempt to understand the meaning of my own life.”

 -- Karen Mains

by Karen Mains

When I think about the preaching and practical observances of my own past, is it any wonder I grew up with such a foggy conception of the Holy Spirit? Conversion was limited pretty much to “gettin’ saved,” and that meant being snatched from the pit. Water baptism, despite my Baptist background, centered more on controversy—dunking versus sprinkling; and, though necessary, it was an act of obedience to a symbol which was difficult to relate to modern life. I laughed recently when a young friend explained the circumstances of his water baptism. “The pastor just said, ‘We don’t really understand this, but we do it anyway, because our Lord told us we should.”

Hands were never laid upon me for the gift of the Holy Spirit. This elementary doctrine, as stated in Hebrews 6:2, was reserved only for those entering professional ministry. Moreover, I was never told that upon making my declaration of belief in Christ I could expect the Spirit to indwell me with Christ’s very Presence. The whole subject of the Holy Spirit was shrouded by confusion. Read more...

by Karen Mains

All the redeemed salvage that furnishes my home is a metaphorical reminder that Christians should be about the business of redemption because that, indeed, is God’s business. All my salvage reminds me that God specializes in the reclamation enterprises. He is the Original Scavenger, the One who reclaims and recycles those who have been assigned to the garbage heaps and to the discard curbs of the world.

Do you remember this litany from I Corinthians 2?

Not many of you were wise by human standards;
Not many of you were influential;
Not many of you were of noble birth.
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise;
God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

No wonder I get so much glee from salvaging: It’s in my spiritual genes.

I cannot tell you how much I believe in the power of the godly scavenger hunt. Seeking the outcast, sharing the message of the Gospel with those who feel they are unfit. Telling them of a God who became outcast in order to reclaim and recycle those who were outrageously deformed, discarded and lost. This seems to me to be the essence of the Scripture. It is a reclamation and recycling story. Read full post at Hungry Souls...

by Karen Mains

It occurs to me that church is a kind of Space Camp, an Advanced Space Academy that should be readying us for our universal habitation, heaven. Spiritual conversion and the resultant discipleship in following Christ are a kind of introduction to learning to live the heavenly way on earth. (Jesus described this as the Kingdom-of-Heaven-way.)

Church should model to us how to pass through this earthly sojourn with a kind of  weightlessness, knowing we will arrive at our eventual destination unencumbered by the burdens of materiality. Kingdom living now should prepare us to walk as those in heaven are walking, should train us how to endure the worst of life’s tumbles and spins and how to emerge as victorious survivors. Kingdom living should inculcate in us the dream of what will be, give us a hunger to dig into the mysteries of deeper realities, and fill us with a lasting yearning that allows us to interrupt the most mundane of activities (bagging groceries at the check-out counter) with the question, “Did you ever want to go to Space Camp when you were a kid?”

Do you ever have moments listening to the news when this overwhelming longing for heaven, for the ideal world without pain, sorrow, affliction, or evil suddenly floods your heart?

Do you ever wonder what it must be like to live in a place solely dedicated to walking the King’s way and obeying and benefiting from the King’s rule?

Are you excited about gathering with God’s people on the weekend because your presence together exponentially increases the spiritual viewing capabilities of the whole? (Yes, there is another world; there is a better way.)

Sadly, David and I are aware (partly because of our own unfulfilled “space”  explorations) that many Christians can’t find an earthly “camp” that really prepares them for heavenly living. Our churches, our lives as Christians together, seem to be so bogged down in the mundane, the unexciting, the meaningless, the world- infused, the human-preoccupied, the politically-motivated that we can’t seem to evoke longing any more in the hearts of the Kingdom campers. For too many, nothing “magical” happens any more on Sunday mornings. There is no Spirit present convicting us that we are not really walking the moon walk, nor are we any longer grieved that we have forgotten to turn our face to the stars.

For too many, church Space Camp is not what it is cracked up to be. It is not even a pale imitation, no longer even a creaky simulation, of living in Kingdom time, modeling for all those who care to see what Kingdom living is like, now, in the eternities. Read full content at Hungry Souls