Due to my travel schedule and the fact that Carla Boelkens, the Director of the Global Bag Project, volunteers one day a week in the GBP office, neither one of us has had time to appropriately market the beautiful reusable shopping bags the Kenyan women make to earn a living for themselves and their children. Consequently, we have had few home parties in the last months, and home parties are our major venue for selling their products.

I’m clearing my schedule for the days ahead so that I can rectify this, but for the time being, the $225 rent for the storage room we use as a Global Bag Project office is overdue.

I had a meeting in Danville, Illinois this past Saturday. Danville is about three hours from West Chicago, where we live, so I looked forward to the drive downstate as a time I could spend concentrating on prayer, and I had several wonderful uninterrupted hours interceding for the people I love and thanking God for all the amazing gifts He pours into our lives. On the drive down, I decided that I would use the money from my book table sales to pay for the rent, which I thought was about $250.

The women’s meeting was a delight. I’m pretty sure that if I attended Second Church of Christ in Danville, Illinois, all the gals who planned this event would become close friends—believe me, that is a wonderful feeling to have about all the strangers one meets on the road if you are part of the speaker’s circuit.

When I opened the envelope that held my honorarium, I discovered that I had been paid almost $200 more than the fee I was offered—this was an unexpected and welcome generosity (since my personal checking account was down to $34.41). What a lovely God who cares for us in such immediate and practical ways!

Not only that, I discovered that I had sold $249 worth of books, only one dollar short of paying for the GBP rental fee. How does He do this? I wondered. With all His children all around the world, how does God give us what we need when we need it almost to the exact amount? Obviously, I could make up the dollar difference.

I had money enough to pay for the groceries I bought on the way home for the crowd that was coming for Sunday dinner (I’d taken $100 in small bills from my checking account to make change for the book table).

Coming in the front door, I called out to David, “I’m home!”

He replied, “Oh, I have a surprise for you.” It was a small—but nice—royalty check for a book I’d written. (All in all, an exceedingly profitable day.)

This morning, sitting at the desk, I realized (and had forgotten) that my Social Security check is electronically transmitted on Wednesday. Now I have money to pay for help with spring cleaning the yard (two teenagers of close friends are my yardmen), buy topsoil and compost for the garden boxes and the new cold frames, and plant the cool weather crops that hopefully some nearby nursery has started for me.

I’m a wealthy woman! And—the monthly GBP rent is $225, not $250—so I won’t even be out one dollar to make up the difference. Actually, I sometimes feel a little sad for people of great wealth. How can they possibly know the delight of living day to day and seeing God meet their needs, pay their bills in unexpected ways, or feel the rush of joy that comes from knowing that a Heavenly Father loves you so much? Do they even understand that He is able to provide for you down to the last penny?

“On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

I spy God!

“The pilot will give up his seat and sit in the cockpit on the jump seat. There are now two seats and if you hurry, we can get you on this flight to Portland, Maine.”

The gate attendant had figured out a way that David and I could both make this flight. We had been standby passengers number 3 and 4 with four empty seats registering on the overhead screen that shows the list of standbys and how many seats are left empty.

I shuddered when the monitor showed that there were now only three seats left, then two, then one. “Both of you can’t fit on this flight. Do you want to fly separately, or do you want to step down?”

As David and I paused, then jointly decided we would wait for the next flight (some five hours later), which would land us at our destination around 11 o’clock at night, she suddenly had a bright idea. “Wait here. If I don’t come back, just know that the plane’s doors have been closed and the flight is scheduled to depart.”

To say the least, it was a tenuous moment, but we are learning to exercise absolutely trust in this flying without tickets world. Airlines move their flight personnel to and fro using the open seats on scheduled flights and sometimes our places in line are commandeered by their necessity to go where they go.

In just a moment or two, she was back, hurriedly hastening us down the runway. “Make sure you thank the pilot,” she called to us about five times. I figured that was pretty important to do.

“Glad you made it on board,” said a stewardess.

“Who do we thank?” I called out. She pointed to a pilot scurrying into the cockpit. “Blessings on you for doing this,” I called to him. “I will bless you this whole flight.” He ducked his head—a younger man, a little embarrassed by the attention—but he had given up a seat with legroom so that one of us could take it and so that both of us could be on the same flight. This meant we would arrive at our destination with plenty of time to find our way after a two-hour drive.

But really, as generous as this unknown man was (moving probably because he thought of his own friends and family members who had also been given standby passes; two extra passes are granted to each employee), it is really God to whom we are suspecting we owe a debt of gratitude. This is the fifth or sixth flight we’ve taken in the last months with standby passes where we’ve been given the last seat on an airplane. Somehow (knowing how really busy and preoccupied He must be), assigned Standby Angels seem to be negotiating seat arrangements, no-shows, and our ownwould-be flyer anxiety levels.


He shall give his angels charge over you is much more than a comforting and familiar phrase from Scripture. These days, it is a practical reality. I think of it every time I am given the last empty seat on an airplane, no matter what my number may be in the standby line.


I spy God!

I returned from Maine with a cold coming on. Oh, drat! I thought. It seems that the last few months since Christmas have been spent treating and recovering from one minor physical distress after another. But a cold is a cold, so I doctored myself with Airborne®, the “Effervescent Health Formula” (according to the label) “Created By A Second Grade Teacher” who was tired of catching her students’ communicable diseases. And, I sent David to Walgreens to pick up bottles of Dayquil® and Nyquil®.

On Saturday and Sunday nights, I slept a good six hours deeply without waking once. On Monday, I dragged myself into the office, but came home early. On Tuesday, I decided to bow to the inevitable and stayed home, napping in the morning, then reading on the couch in the living room where David made a fire for me in the fireplace.

I finished reading 1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick. I labored through our book club book (deadline: this coming Sunday) titled, My Name Is Red by Orhan Pomuk, a modern Turkish author writing a murder mystery set in the 16th Century Ottoman Empire and dealing with the narrow world of the court miniaturist artists. (It was a good book to read on a sick day because it required one’s full attention.) I finished off the small pile of magazines that I hadn’t had time to read, waded through Richard D. Wolff’s Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism and finished the final chapters of Christopher Hitchen’s Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, which I have been reading off and on throughout the year since he died.

I did make my dentist’s appointment Tuesday afternoon. Feeling badly that my cold was four days fresh, I apologized to the hygienist, “I thought about cancelling my appointment.” “Oh, no,” she said. “We have all these little kids through here.” Indeed, I could see several wiping their noses even as we spoke.

“In fact,” said the dentist, coming in and shaking my hand, which I instructed him to wash, thinking of all the tissues I had been using (one was even now tucked under my thigh as I was stretched prone on the examining chair). “I think we protect ourselves from bacteria and viruses too much. The first year I was in practice, I caught everything. After that year, I have just been healthy. Getting sick is often the way the body strengthens the immune system.”

So he examined and cleaned my teeth. We commented on the new technology. He scanned my mouth and tongue and gums with a blue light ray to determine that I had no cancer. He came up with a treatment plan for the dental work I needed in the days ahead and somehow the two of us started exchanging humorous comments and started laughing so much that the gals at the desk gathered in the hall to see what was going on in the examining room.



So this is what is good about colds:

You have an excuse to come home early from work.

You can take a morning nap.

You sleep well at night due to the decongestant and antihistamine syrup you swigged at 9 o’clock in the evening.

You can read through all those piles of books that you have neglected.

You can cancel on evening meetings.

You can go to see the dentist anyway and he won’t catch your germs because he’s developed dental antibodies.

You discover that your new dentist has a sense of humor.

Your husband will bring you a bowl of popcorn in the afternoon when you have gone to bed.

You can enjoy one of the last fires of the season in the fireplace.

You have time to thank God for the good life you have lived and the many graces that are experienced in each day, day after day, day after day, even when you have a cold.

I spy God!

I’ve been trying to get all my medical exams and tests done in the first few months of this year, and it is an enormous interruption to fit it all in because of my already-full schedule. But since I’ve not had a breast exam or a Pap smear or a bone density test (not to mention blood work, etc.) for the last six or seven years, and since Medicare pays for that yearly examination, I really didn’t have any excuse not to proceed, especially since my doctors are all retiring. Consequently, I’ve also had to put together a new medical-personnel system.




My sister recommended a general physician. She gave me an exam, then recommended which tests I needed to make appointments for at the nearby hospital. Our office manager pulled the names of dentists who are open to new patients and also accept our Delta Dental insurance. I actually drove past their offices to see which I liked the best before I made a phone call. (At my age, dentists are a big deal—I have one molar missing and one that has broken in half.) And I signed up with a kinesiologist to begin examining the places where I was nutritionally or chemically imbalanced.




When the hospital outpatient office called again to inform me that they needed to retake one of the imaging photographs and that I needed to make an appointment for another mammogram, I was too busy to get upset about it. We have no history of breast cancer in our family, and frankly, I have other physical ailments that are of bigger concern to me (like my lack of sleep). Lots of friends have also been called back for repeat exams, with no negative results.




However, sitting in the waiting room of the “Breast Treatment Center” with six other women all wearing those ugly hospital gowns, then having to wait a little longer than I expected (“You know this could take up to two hours,” said the nurse at the counter. No, I hadn’t known that) made me realize that I was a little anxious.

The eventual conclusion was that the original photo had shown what they were calling a little tissue shadow—nothing at all to be worried about—and that I didn’t need to wait for a second opinion on the x-ray.


It was then that I felt how good it is to have good news. Often, many of us go through life with shoulders unknowingly clenched waiting for the bad news that doesn’t come (given a whole lifetime of living) more than it does come. Our papers and the Internet are filled with horrific stories of murders and human aberrations, fires and famines and floods—no wonder we all too often expect the worst.


Years ago, Oprah Winfrey made popular the random-acts-of-kindness movement. “Your toll has been paid by the gentleman in the car in front of you…” and other sorts of small considerations. It was actually a lovely idea.


However, what about another movement that encourages random good-news bearers? “Here’s some good news,” we could say to one another. “You do not have to replace your water heater.” “You have unexpected money coming to you from an unexpected source.” “You are healthier than you think you are.”

Would these kind of comments eventually help us unclench our clenched shoulders? Would we be able to see, with enough good news, that much of the universe is a benign and loving place created so we could enjoy and be at wonder about its glory?


How remarkable that the word “Gospel” means “the good news.” God looked into the long future of mankind’s historic passage and knew that this reality of good news would be imperative for our survival, for our fruitfulness, for our constant encouragement. Scriptures say that the apostles “went about preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God.”


So let us speak this word of power; let us look into our own personal lives and detect what, exactly, is the good news of each day. And let us tell it to others. Then let us look into the divine plan in the world and discover the good news that is in God’s mind. And let us tell it to others. “On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24.)


I suspect—in fact, I can promise—that this practice will make a huge different in our outlook and how we feel about our lives. Let us learn to live in the good news, and let us randomly get into the habit of sharing it with others.


I spy God!

 Did any of you see the recent movie Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck? It’s about a secret operation to extract six U.S. diplomatic personnel who escaped from the U.S. Embassy at the beginning of the Iran Hostage Crisis. That historical event happened in 1980.


In May of that year, Mount St. Helens erupted, hurling steam and ash 60,000 feet into the sky. The November 1980 election put Ronald Reagan in the White House, replacing Jimmy Carter. That December, Beatle John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment. Oh yes, that’s right, most of us think. But old news is just that—old news—we don’t think about it much.

Not to the Christians living in Jerusalem in the year A.D. 66. Roughly 32 years earlier Jesus had prophesied:

“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you will know that its destruction is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written.”

                                                                                  (Luke 21:20-24, the Olivet Discourse)

In the late summer of 66 A.D., 32 years after Jesus spoke those words, a Roman force of 40,000 soldiers came from Galilee to quell a riot in Jerusalem. Would you believe that huge army was not only resisted, but routed?

Reveling in their triumph, the jubilant Jewish defenders began promoting the cause of complete independence from Rome. In the spring of AD. 67 the Romans began their retaliation under the ruthless leadership of Titus, the son of the Emperor Vespasian. He led the 50,000 troops that had gathered on the Mediterranean Coast toward Jerusalem to lay siege to the city.
Christians, remembering the words of Jesus spoken three decades earlier, began leaving in large numbers, settling in Pella, on the west side of the Jordan River and north of Jerusalem.


Read the complete article about Advent Watching by visiting my blog. 

Last week, partly because of so much travel, and partly because of the arthritis that I suspect is beginning to make its home in my body, I just didn’t have the energy to tackle the work that is complaining to me about not getting done.


Moreover, I had volunteered to be in charge of the church potluck. We are just forming missional communities, and each one is delegated to take care of various potluck dates, but because we are all new to this system, I was a little dubious about what kind of help I would have.


Because our church meets in a school gymnasium, most everything we need has to be hauled from our storage trailer or from our homes, then we need to clean up and haul everything back. My list included: pack up coffee pot, creamers, sugar, white mugs and basket for discards; pull three bins down from the attic, which store 100 rattan serving plates, paper plates, plastic silver already rolled in napkins, tablecloths; clean off outside lanterns and stand; refill salt and pepper shakers, spoon brown sugar in a crock and chopped nuts in a bowl; load up roasting pans with 50 aluminum-foil covered sweet potatoes. Needless to say, our car was full.


To read more, click HERE.

My faith that God is guiding my journey is tested every time I use my standby pass to travel by air. A friend has graciously made this available to me, and we are beginning to total up the amount of monies we are saving as David and I both have a great deal of journeying in our schedule this year.

However, my trust is tested every time I check in, receive my boarding pass (with STBY clearly labeled on it), then find a place in the waiting room to see whether I make the flight or not. The trip I took two weeks ago entailed a leg out of Chicago to Phoenix, then out of Phoenix to San Francisco, then from San Francisco to Modesto, from Modesto to San Francisco, and finally from San Francisco back to Chicago.

The mid-morning flight from Chicago to Phoenix was fine. My name was number four on the posted standby list. The plane was large, other travelers had flown out on earlier flights—I was even assigned a seat in an exit row, where the leg room is much more compatible than in the painfully crowded economy rows.

Leaving Phoenix for San Francisco was another matter. The 10 o’clock flight was full, the plane was smaller, and my name was number six on the list. I have made it a rule of thumb not to scoot from counter to counter, trying to take care of myself, but simply to trust the process of boarding and reassigning. I’m learning to simply let the Lord take care of me. Because I was troubled that morning by something pressing upon my heart, I decided not to read or make notes for writing, but to spend the time in prayer and to include all the strangers who also were waiting to fly to San Francisco.

Because I was paying attention, I realized that a good number of folk were traveling through San Francisco to different points in China. Our flight was delayed due to fog in the Bay Area, and the gate attendant called for people connecting to Seattle. About four people were reassigned to another flight. They weren’t on the standby list, but it did mean that more seats had become available on the full plane.

To read more, click HERE.

I took a vow that I would not watch television during the 50 days of Lent. Along with this vow, I also promised that I would take the supplements provided by the kinesiologist I chose to see on the high recommendation of a friend.

God is often very funny when he takes us at our word. Not only have I been too busy to watch television, our DirecTV cable does not work. I tried to turn on the television for my granddaughter and her friend, Jake, but for some reason, it just wouldn’t cooperate.

Checking the cable connections in the back, the little notations on the back of the television over the electronic holes were all written in techno-Greek, and it truly was techno-Greek to me.

But I got the point—God was gently reminding me that I had made a vow and He was going to gently help me keep it.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a little time, fiddled with the remote commands, and got the television working. We had a clear HD picture, clear audio, the channels switched as designed. “Television’s working,” I reported to the houseful of people who were wondering what had happened to the TV. “Don’t ask me how.”


But I didn’t stay to watch it. I marched upstairs (only to get out of bed and take the handful of supplements I had forgotten to count out and swallow) and finally, went to bed.


“Present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable worship.”

This is the Scripture I’m chewing this month (some teachers call it meditation, but the word in Hebrew, I’m told, means “to chew on”). It is Romans 12:1. I am slowly working out what it means to be holy and acceptable. I still have a lot of figuring to do to fully understand this, but I know it has something to do with me getting healthy, learning how to sleep deeply, and not spending hours zoned out in front of the television.


God has made that perfectly clear (and there are people who say they don’t hear His voice, can’t guess His intentions). That is not my experience, not my experience at all.


I spy God!

I have been on an extraordinary schedule the last month—a January trip to visit possible filming sites in the Dominican Republic, a board meeting in California, starting up our missional community at the church, grandchildren visiting, back to the Dominican for a film shoot in February, home to a preaching assignment, then out to California again for a book I’ve been contracted to form.

All along the way, I’ve felt like a surgeon in the operating room where efficient, highly trained nurses place in my hand the exact tool to get the job done. In addition, I’ve tried to catch up on all my neglected medical exam (didn’t show up for a thyroid examination, and missed to breast exam appointments). David has been taking phone and Skype interviews on the documentary film he put together that focused on the slaughter of Nigerian Christians at the hands of the Boko Haram, Islamist extremists.

I’ve had people over for dinner and our eldest granddaughter took her spring break to introduce the new boyfriend to this side of the family. My journal (when I’ve gotten to it in the midst of all this busyness) is a record of evidences of God’s care.

Take the granddaughter’s new boyfriend, for instance. Jake arrived in our home just in time to haul the leather chair out of my daughter’s home, get it in the back of her truck, then take out the old recliner in David’s study that now refused to do anything but recline. The discarded chair was moved into the garage and the new leather recliner (well, the one I bought at Goodwill for $14, at any rate) was hauled upstairs. (It looks great—very.)

Jake had also spent a half-hour shoving Christmas boxes up that were waiting for a hand in the garage (and crowding our car when we parked it). Not only did he happily and willingly give a hand with the physical stuff, but he also helped David set up the new iPod that was purchased so he could Skype for these video interviews as well as have a portable means of communication so that he would not be tied to the personal computer at the office.

Oh, let’s see, it’s March, I really need help getting those boxes up into the attic—WHOA! Jake can lend a hand.

David’s knee has been bad, but I have a truck and some strong college kids. We can get the broken chair replaced with that stylish leather chair.

How in the world are we going to get this iPod figured without help?—oh, wait; we have help. Jake can do it.

I can go on and on, but I think you get the point. This morning we talked with a classroom of Palestinian children. Their teacher, a daughter of a friend of ours, had been reading them our book, Tales of the Kingdom. So we Skyped one another, and there were all the kids popping in front of the camera, waving their hands to ask questions. We talked for a half-hour before their school day ended.

And guess what? It was all to the exquisite timing of our granddaughter bringing her new boyfriend up from Indiana Wesleyan where they both go to school who “just happened” to be around when we needed him. Jake can do it. (Scalpel. Forceps. Needle and thread.)

Thank you, God. I spy You!

I took a vow that I would not watch television during the 50 days of Lent. Along with this vow, I also promised that I would take the supplements provided by the kinesiologist I chose to see on the high recommendation of a friend.




God is often very funny when he takes us at our word. Not only have I been too busy to watch television, our DirecTV cable does not work. I tried to turn on the television for my granddaughter and her friend, Jake, but for some reason, it just wouldn’t cooperate.


Checking the cable connections in the back, the little notations on the back of the television over the electronic holes were all written in techno-Greek, and it truly was techno-Greek to me.

But I got the point—God was gently reminding me that I had made a vow and He was going to gently help me keep it.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a little time, fiddled with the remote commands, and got the television working. We had a clear HD picture, clear audio, the channels switched as designed. “Television’s working,” I reported to the houseful of people who were wondering what had happened to the TV. “Don’t ask me how.”


But I didn’t stay to watch it. I marched upstairs (only to get out of bed and take the handful of supplements I had forgotten to count out and swallow) and finally, went to bed.


“Present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable worship.”

This is the Scripture I’m chewing this month (some teachers call it meditation, but the word in Hebrew, I’m told, means “to chew on”). It is Romans 12:1. I am slowly working out what it means to be holy and acceptable. I still have a lot of figuring to do to fully understand this, but I know it has something to do with me getting healthy, learning how to sleep deeply, and not spending hours zoned out in front of the television.


God has made that perfectly clear (and there are people who say they don’t hear His voice, can’t guess His intentions). That is not my experience, not my experience at all.


I spy God!