So often we forget
About the love in life.
So many people hurting,
For their daily trials and strife
Can leave them hopeless and despairing,
But this, Friend, you can do.
Tell them often of God’s mercy,
That when their strength has failed them,
His will see them through.
~ Gerrie
Oh, what an absolutely, wonderful birthday I had this year. I am a whopping 48, but the older I get, the better I feel about getting older.
My family surprised me a week early (the 21st) with a surprise party. WOW! The first one I have ever had. The difference between a regular birthday party and a surprise party is, of course, the surprise. A surprise party requires much more forethought and planning. A lot of effort goes into it to see that the surprise stays a surprise, and all the while, everyone is thinking of the birthday person. That was the most special thing to me – to know I was in their thoughts.
Anyway, there was all the usual fanfare of a party, food, drink, favors, decorations, and guests. What can I say? I was overwhelmed.
I have often told my family, when asked what I wanted for my birthday, that all I wanted was a cake and a party. A surprise party, of course, was not to what I was referring. I meant that I just wanted to spend time with my family and the cake was just a topper for the day. Presents are wonderful, but unnecessary to round out the event. It is family – my husband, and my boys – and my friends that matter. Although they were not all able to be present, I felt them all in spirit.
How blessed I am to have such a wonderful family and such good, good friends. They certainly went above and beyond the call. When asked next year what I want for my birthday – I shall have a very hard time trying to think of anything more meaningful than what I received this year. I shall ride the tail of this year’s for a very long time.
~ Gerrie
by Bram Stoker – 1897
I picked up this little book in the Half Price Book Store a few weeks ago. The title was not really the only reason. It was mostly because it was a nice looking little book, cloth bound, gold gilded edges, mint condition, a little ribbon page marker attached, for only $3.98. Ok – so I am a bargain shopper.
Books of this nature do not particularly interest me, especially ones involving the supernatural and such evil sources, on the contrary, I shy away from them – bad dreams, you know; but I decided, on principal, that I would read the book since I had paid for it.
With that said, and the book now read, let me say that I would have paid ten times the asking price had I known for what I was in store – beautiful writing, interesting diary format, romantic characters I came not only to know, but also to be fond. It has been a long time since I found a book that captivated me beyond my desire to do most of my favorite things. I slept less, ate less, worked less, and played less. I kept it by my bed with my little book light handy should I awaken in the night, sleepless and in need of activity. I literally fell in love with the language.
Dracula was written in 1897, and although Bram Stoker was an extremely successful author, this work is the one for which he is most remembered. I tried to read from the beginning with the idea that I lived in that era. I wanted the “new discovery” of the vampire and the “un-dead” to strike me with the same disbelief and horror with which the characters were faced as their discoveries unfolded before them. I tried to forget all the preconceived ideas of my day so as not to taint the newness of the notion. It was difficult to say the least.
Actually, my first introduction to such a creature was in the 60’s when I was a child and I saw the movie Dracula starring Christopher Lee. What was my mother thinking in allowing me to see it! I remember the theater room quite vividly. It was long with an isle down the middle and seating on either side that, to so small a child, seemed to go downhill forever. In the theater you did not climb up to the seats as in most of today, you walked down to them. Not long after his first appearance, the frightening Christopher Lee sent me running back up the isle and out two large swinging doors at the back of the theater. Each had a small peep window in it. Behind those doors and looking through the peep windows is where I finished out the viewing. It seems silly now, but if I try hard enough I can still feel the fear.
Stoker’s character, Mina Harker, I would have to say, was my favorite, although every one of the others run side by side a close second. As I quote her here, I bear in mind that as evil as The Count was, and as surely as she believed then that she was under his evil spell, her compassion for his soul forged on parting the hate that was the drive behind her husband and companions.
“… my true, true friends, I want you to bear something in mind through all this dreadful time. I know that you must fight – that you must destroy … but it is not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he too is destroyed in his worser part that his better part my have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.”
And another from Dr. Van Helsing –
“He that can smile at death, as we know him; who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. Oh! If such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours!”
~ Gerrie
Spring – symbolic of new life – is it any wonder that the Christian world celebrates the death and resurrection of our Lord at this time of year? Does anyone really know the specific dates of these two events? Does it really matter?
Last Sunday morning there was a wonderfully moving presentation during church. Focus was on the death of Christ. Specifically, the question asked was, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The accompanying music and drama were beautiful and refreshing. It was very moving, but the surprise of the morning was yet to come.
With the singing sung and the drama performed, the participation of the congregation was required to further the meaning of the moment. Each person, one by one, filed forward toward the front of the church where there was erected a makeshift wooden cross. Each took a red, red rose petal and a pin from a basket there waiting. As was asked, each pinned the petal (representative of their sin) at a point of their choosing upon the cross. The front of the church buzzed with movement as people filed forward to be part of the show. It was difficult to see the cross most of the time for those passing by it. My husband and I sat very close to the back. When it came our turn, we too, did as the others, selecting a spot lower for me, higher for him. Then we returned to our seat. By this time, just about everyone had made their mark with their petal.
What a transformation! Not being able to see much of the cross during the pinning and now seeing it when all were seated – this cross, there at the front, symbolic of that on which the Lord hung was covered completely with petals. It was blood red! I was unprepared for the emotion I would feel when the sight of it hit me, and I do mean, “hit me!”
I said all wanted to be a part of the show, but I am certain that the “show” was forgotten as we all just sat for a moment and looked at the cross, covered with the mark of our sin.
This morning we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. The cross displayed last week that was so red is still there at the front of the church, only today it is different. Today it is covered with pure white rose petals. Of course – Jesus took our sin to the cross, but when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, our sins were washed white as snow – white as the cross there before us.
Seeing such a beautiful picture … well … all I can say is that it shall remain with me for a very long time.
~ Gerrie
We’ve heard the tales since we were young, heard the songs that have been sung about an evil spell.
Someone beautiful is cursed, we feel sad through every verse, ‘til a kiss and all is well.
The message that no one can see is clearer to someone like me.
There is no curse or evil spell that’s worse than one we give ourselves.
There is no sorcerer as cruel as the proud, angry fool.
And yet we cry, “Life isn’t fair!”
Beneath our cries the truth is there.
The power that will break the spell, we should know very well, is locked within ourselves.
Yet we’d rather blame and curse our fate than change.
We run from ev’ryone to hide from the pain, and all the shame.
The story’s old, we know it well, about a wretched, evil spell.
The power that will break this curse, oh I know all to well, is locked within myself.
~ Gerrie
Psalm 89:9 “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves arise, You still them.”
Psalm 107:29 “He hushes the storm to a calm and to a gentle whisper,
so that the waves of the sea are still.”
Matthew 8:26-27 “And He said to them, Why are you timid and afraid,
O you of little faith? Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was a great and wonderful calm (a perfect peaceableness.)
But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the
winds and the sea obey him!”
A category five hurricane inches toward the coast. Never has the city borne one of this magnitude. It still seems unreal to me. The air is fresh, the sky clear, the wind still. I tell myself, “It cannot be so!” Yet science has proven it to be. I see the broadcasts on the news of the still devestated targets of the most recent monster to rise out of the Gulf – Katrina. Rita is said to be stronger.
I could not possibly be the only one praying that the Lord would still the wind and calm the sea. But if I were – would the Lord honor just my lone prayer and grant my petition? Even so – I continue to say to the Lord in my heart, “You can if you will!” But if He does not will, then I know there is “… a place of refuge and a shelter from storm and from rain.” – Isaiah 4:6 – and I am grateful to Him, and I am at peace.
~ Gerrie
“If I can just see a light at the end of the tunnel, I know I can hang on! If I concentrate hard and focus on the light and nothing else, I think I just might make it!”
How often throughout my lifetime have I said these words? God only knows, I have lost count. When hard times came, it was all I could do to just grip myself tightly, stand rigid and wait – wait for them to pass. Most of the waiting was accomplished in a state of sheer panic; the kind of panic that left me unable to function, unable to properly care for myself, much less my family.
During a particularly hard time in my life, not too many years ago, I was again waiting … waiting for God to transport me out of the trial in which I found myself, out of the misery, and out of the deep, deep heartache. Many times I thought I would die of such tremendous sorrow if it did not end sooner than later. Sometimes I would literally envision myself being “beamed” from within to without as a player in a Star Trek episode might be transported from one place to another. Oh, how gloriously easy that would be, right! – And how silly to dream such a thing.
Then one day the Lord revealed to me a facet of myself of which I was unfamiliar; an attitude in my heart that I never knew was there. My perception of how things really were was from a wrong heart attitude. He has promised to be with me and bring me through trials and hard times, but I was only praying for Him to bring me out of my situations. I stood firm, hanging on to my sanity just waiting to be taken out, not taken through, and during the wait, I remained immobile and stagnate. How could the Lord possibly take me through something if I refused to move at all? No wonder! How grateful I am that God is so loving and so long-suffering.
I lived near a tunnel those years ago and traveled through it regularly. Of course, tunnels are usually dark or at least dim, and the light at the end is always very vivid, sort of ethereal. That is why, I suppose, it was so easy for me to just keep looking at it. It was actually hard not to look. Concentrating on the end kept my path straight and safe. Occasionally, though, my mind would wander, and I would allow my eyes to stray from the end and venture to the walls. At times I would see a little weeping in the walls, water trickling through tiny hairline cracks. It made me wonder how the water got through all that concrete and construction.
Then I knew! – Pressure; pressure from water on the outside of the tunnel. As I continued to think about this, I felt tears seeping from my eyes much like those walls and wondered from where they had all of a sudden sprung. The illustrations the Lord uses sometimes are so clear, and He knows exactly when my heart is ready to receive them. There was so much going on around me, and so much of the feelings associated with it I kept inside, that I, too, began to experience that same kind of pressure. I felt that if I let one tear out, there would be a flood, so I kept it all inside much like the tunnel walls kept all the water outside.
As usual, I was careful not to get too lost in thought looking from side to side while traveling. “I must stay focused on my goal – the light at the end … the demise of my trial,” I thought. But although my eyes returned to the end, my heart and mind continued to try and understand just what the Lord was trying to teach me in this.
It was there, in the tunnel one day that the Lord showed me the most beautiful picture of the way he would bring me through my trial.
God set a picture of a tunnel in my mind’s eye. It was a spiritual tunnel, of course, one for traveling from the valleys of affliction to the mountaintops of triumph. Journeys of this nature were common place in my life. But now I had a new perspective.
God showed me that while I was waiting for Him to bring me through my trial, I should not be so steadfastly focused on the end. Instead, I should be about the business of discovering what He wanted to teach me along the way.
Now I saw the picture, now I understood! In the tunnels I am never alone. The Lord is with me always, never leaving me, not even for one second. I should not focus so much on what the Lord is going to do at the end of the tunnel, but I should focus on what He is doing in the tunnel.
God can teach me in any situation, especially in dark times. Those things He wants me to learn seep through the hairline cracks in the walls of my trial tunnels – things like trust, faith, patience, endurance, godly suffering, clinging to His Word, and learning more of His everlasting love and mercy. However, I must be on the look out for them and be ever ready to receive them when they come my way.
A new determination to accept the promises of His peace and allow Jesus to carry my burden for me began to take root. I was about to begin a new and exciting journey, one filled with the assurance that the Lord was my companion through anything.
These days, when I experience hard times in my life, I am more willing to enter the tunnel. I know it may be hard, but I no longer enter with paralyzing fear and trepidation, but in anticipation of what God has in store for me along the way. I know it will always be good, and I know it will always restore my soul.
“Gleaning from the walls” busies my heart and spirit with things of the Lord. Hot though the Refiner’s fire may be, I dare not focus on the end of my trial for fear now of what I will miss while in the midst of it. I look forward to the learning, to the gleaning, to the closeness I will share with my Heavenly Father.
I have spent many a sweet time with the Lord in a “trial tunnel” since that first time He revealed their purpose for me – facing uncertainty, but certain my Lord was there with me – facing insecurity, but feeling secure in Him – facing an unknown future, but confident that my future rests in the hands of my loving Father.
~ Gerrie