Reflection of Providence

Saturday October 23, 2010 I attended Wyatt Benjamin Scalf’s Adoption Party. Tuesday October 19, 2010 I had the great honor and privilege of watching his adoption proceedings. The air was light. The judge was jovial! How often do you see a judge jovial? This was a happy day – a day of celebration. This was the day when everything I already knew to be true became true. If you ask Wy to tell you his name he knows the routine. He puffs out his chest and recites what he has recited so many times, “Wyatt Benjamin Scalf”! He began to play with his name a few days after his adoption, saying it lower, then higher. He would cock his head and purse his lips…I was on the floor laughing. He got it! He was sort of over it. There had never been any question in his little mind who he was. Saturday evening was wonderful. There were tones of people in celebration, kids running under foot, down slides, between tables, hot faced, sticky, sweaty…and full of life. The evening was simple… food, friends, ...

On my bathroom mirror is the phrase: “Do what makes you strong in Christ!” This was taken from one of the Ransomed Heart Newsletters. Oh how I love the wisdom of John Eldredge. He ministers to the believer’s soul, reminding me that I am meant for communion with God. This is EXACTLY what I did today. I’m really quite sad this day is over. I’ve made choices for Him instead of against Him. Making choices against Him, if I’m really honest, is what I’ve been doing a lot lately. I awoke & had a beautiful Sunday School class with my one little student…Andrew. The service today literally wanted me up shouting. Sometimes I have a very hard time containing myself. I look around at the sometimes seemingly sleepy congregation & am like, “People, do you get what is being preached!” (Of course this is a metaphor, I don’t really look around, I sit in the front row now, so I can’t! ;) I’m sure one of these days I’m going to make a COMPLETE fool of myself, jump up, and clap my hands over my hea...

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings This is in the inside cover of “Counting Stars”, Andrew Peterson’s new album (which, if you don’t have it then you should get it, immediately!) Smote = derived from the word “smite”; which means literally “to hit”. The beauty of this one star hit Sam’s heart. Pierce = a verb meaning “to make a small hole”. Sam’s desperation was broken through in the realization that there was something the shadow could not touch. There is so much going on in the world that is devastating right now. Just in the last month I have heard more people of faith talk about how ...

There is this perpetual need for me to run in circles. It seems I was born doing so. I run and run and run as fast as my little legs will carry me, but I always end up where I started. I cycle through life hoping I’m gaining wisdom, certain I’m gaining more baggage. Changes come of course, but never those changes that really matter. The changes that yield me, bind me to His unchanging will. I face the volcanoes we call trials down here with desperate need of self. I hyper focus on the problem entreating the Big Guy in the sky to swoop down and save. Crisis averted I wade back out in my own little row boat of self-righteousness and start fishing in the stagnant waters of sin. There is a clear reason that the book of Hosea or the parable of the Prodigal Son strike me so profoundly. I’ve been both the Prodigal & the son that stayed. The son that stayed is bitter and frustrated and stale in his ‘goodness’. The Prodigal lives full throttle, pushing the envelope, dramatic at every turn, ...