For Mother's Day

What my mother means to me:

Graciousness.

Mercifulness.

Lovely.

Tenderness.

Boldness.

Gentleness.

Kindness.

My mom is an amazing woman. While working a professional job saving lives, she raised two kids. She put up with the antics of my dad (and mine, ‘cause raising a boy is straight sanctification I assume) and did so in a way that bespeaks godly, biblical submission to his authority. (That is not to say my upbringing was in any way chauvinistic. It is to say my dad was/is the spiritual leader.)

Mother’s day, the day to celebrate what mom has done for her kids.

For protecting her kids like a bear.

For being the only one to console a broken heart.

For being the nurse to fix scrapped knees.

For saving tiny shoes and old pictures.

For the correction little sinners need.

For the tears at our graduations and awards.

For the life of love given to another.

 Yet, some have lost their mom. Whether from the slow wear of time, cancer, or suddenness of a car wreck she won’t be around this Sunday. Indeed, eventually, most of us will face the time where we bid our final goodbye and try to remember her as she was.

So Mother’s Day might as well be another way to say unconditional-love-care-support-gentleness-kindness-and-protection Day -- for all. The druggy on the street corner, the friends who have lost her, the kids who know her, and everyone else, ‘cause mom was always there for me and what better way to celebrate who my mom is than to imitate her?

Eyes Wide Open

Keep our eyes open.

Sometimes the way things were wanted is the way things weren’t meant to be.

Sometimes you’re talked to in a way, which never was before.

Sometimes you just begin to wonder what really might be the plan.

All in all the plan is still there and God is still King and you are just his creation used to shine forth his beauty. But if we walk with our eyes, spiritual and physical, closed then we miss the gorgeous reality of what’s all around us and supplant it with the faux reality of imagination.

But imagination will never be able to replace that which is real. The gaseous will never reform the solid.

No asymptote will intersect and no tornado is without trace.

But far too often we cling to the fake. We pine for the Hollywood effect rather than the wonder of what’s real. We want the asymptote to meet and the tornado to be clean. But it never will be.

So, to keeping our eyes open. Not to what we want, but to what is. That by grace we are saved and by mercy we are redeemed, while in the face of death there is salvation.

In work we are there for a purpose. In fun we are there for a purpose.

Not that every situation’s purpose must be sought out and journaled about, but rather we are to be where we are with the same boldness, which took Jesus to the cross.

Calmly we accept what is before us. Prayerfully we walk into where we are. Trustingly we look to the sovereign nature of our God. Boldly we know that Jesus is our only hope. Gently we lead those who follow. Courageously we see our own faults. Forcibly (and graciously) we keep our eyes wide open to soak in every smallest portion of the trip.