This Flickering Hope

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

O Come

We cry out and we plead

O Come

We need You. We hope for You.

O Come

Our hope is a flickering flame.

There are no bonfires of hope in a world like ours, only flames that flicker.

Sometimes our flame flickers so much that it seems, at times, to go out completely.

Yet even if the flickering grows faint, hold on. It will not be extinguished altogether.

He promised.

…a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench; He will faithfully bring forth justice.

Hold on.

He promised He will come and set things right.

He is at this moment working through us – through you – to set it right.

His promise was proved by His coming the first time. As a baby.

As Emmanuel.

God with us.

He established His Word as true by making His Word take on flesh and dwell among us.

God with us.

Emmanuel.

O Come

We raise our arms to the heavens in a desperate cry of

O Come

He replies, I did come and I will come again.

Emmanuel has promised.

Emmanuel on the Cross

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

The beauty of Lent is the demonstration of God’s presence in all circumstances.

The beauty of the cross is the proof that God is with us.

Wherever you are, whatever your cross is today, God is with you.

Emmanuel. God with us.

From Advent to Lent, God stepped into His world and submitted to the same rules we must follow.

Whatever the reason we all suffer, whatever the purpose, we cannot say that God did not play fair by asking us to be subject to something He was not willing to experience.

Are you broken? Jesus is broken with you.

Are you lonely? Jesus was despised and rejected by men.

Are you betrayed by your closest loved ones? Jesus, too, was betrayed by those He loved.

Does grief seem your closest and most constant companion? Jesus grieved and wept over those who would not accept Him.

In the words of Corrie ten Boom from the hell of a Nazi concentration camp: No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.

When it feels as though life is beating you into the ground, when the weight of your burden does not allow you to rise from your bed in the morning, when you cannot carry your cross for one more step, you can know that He is here with you, carrying your cross with you, taking your burden on Himself.

Every tear we shed becomes His tear. He may not yet wipe them away, but He makes them His. Would we rather have our own dry eyes, or His tear-filled ones?

He came to us. He is here with us. We can be certain of Emmanuel in all circumstances.

If He does not heal all our broken bones and loves and lives now, He comes into them and is broken, like bread, and we are nourished.

Be nourished by the bread of life and know that He is with you.

Peace to you.

Final two quotes and many of the thoughts in this post are by Peter Kreeft in Bread and Wine

All photographs are copyrighted by Made Sacred, 2017.

Be Still

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Elizabeth

To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.

Be still.

Wait.

Be still and wait for God.

Be still and wait for God to come.

Advent is waiting and so we become still while we wait for Him to come down and rescue us.

We pause in our fighting and our striving, we rest from our grieving and our mourning, we stop to breathe in our busyness and our too much.

Just for a moment.

It doesn’t take any of it away. Yet.

But we become still like Moses with the Red Sea before and the Egyptian army after and we wait for God to fight for us.

We who have lived with the pain for far too long, we who have just received the phone call and sit at our kitchen table in stunned silence, we who can’t see how we will put one foot in front of the other much less get up from our beds in the morning, we who hide in our closets and weep our wracking sobs while we rock back and forth,

just for one moment we become still.

We remember that God is and that He is fighting for us.

It doesn’t solve or heal any of it. Yet.

But it will.

Oh, how it will.

We become still and we wait for Emmanuel. We wait for Emmanuel, God-with-us, to come down.

We wait in this season and we wait in this life for our Emmanuel to come down and fight and make it all okay again.

So for just a moment, take a breath and remember how He already did this once to show us that He will do it again.

Be still.

Wait.

edited from the archives

Be Still and Wait

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Elizabeth

Be still.

Wait.

Be still and wait for God.

Be still and wait for God to come.

Advent is waiting and so we become still while we wait for Him to come down and rescue us.

We pause in our fighting and our striving, we rest from our grieving and our mourning, we stop to breathe in our busyness and our too much.

Just for a moment.

It doesn’t take any of it away. Yet.

But we become still like Moses with the Red Sea before and the Egyptian army after and we wait for God to fight for us.

We who have lived with the pain for far too long, we who have just received the phone call and sit at our kitchen table in stunned silence, we who can’t see how we will put one foot in front of the other much less get up from our beds in the morning, we who hide in our closets and weep our wracking sobs while we rock back and forth,

just for one moment we become still.

We remember that God is and that He is fighting for us.

It doesn’t solve or heal any of it. Yet.

But it will.

Oh, how it will.

We become still and we wait for Emmanuel. We wait for Emmanuel, God-with-us, to come down.

We wait in this season and we wait in this life for our Emmanuel to come down and fight and make it all okay again.

So for just a moment, take a breath and remember how He already did this once to show us that He will do it again.

Be still.

Wait.

I Am Waiting

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Elizabeth

I am waiting.

I am waiting for orders to arrive so that they can be made beautiful with paper and ribbon.

I am waiting for this beautiful new life within me to be born into this world.

I am waiting as my Papa fights this cancer.

I am waiting.

We wait each evening, eyes bright with candlelight, watching Mary wind her way around to Bethlehem.

Advent. Waiting.

As I am still and wait in this Advent, I dimly grasp that all of life is waiting.
I am waiting for peace on earth.

I am waiting for joy to fill up our world.

I am waiting on God.

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret–it leads only to evil.

I am waiting for Christ to come and for all to be made right again.

The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.

I wait in Advent for Word to become flesh.

I wait in Time for Word to return again and repair this broken world, heal my sin-broken heart.

I am waiting for a tiny baby to come quiet in Bethlehem. For an angel to sing glory. For shepherds to rush breathless. For wise men to bow humbled.

I am waiting for Christ to come.

As I wait, I find that He has, in truth, been Emmanuel, God with us, all through the full time of our waiting.

I am still.

I am waiting.

Be Still and Wait

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Elizabeth

Be still

Hush

Wait

Advent

Do you hear it?

It is a whisper in the darkness.

He is coming!

Can you feel it?

It is a gentle touch on your heart.

Love is coming!

Wait.

In the stillness, we feel it — His movements. In the stillness, our hearts leap — His coming! In the stillness, we know it– what falls down upon us — breath of heaven. ~ Ann Voskamp

Will you be still?

Will you give God this one gift, the gift of you, of your full presence?

In the excitement and the sparkle.

In the loneliness and the hurt.

Wait.

For just a few moments, hush and listen. Listen for that small whisper in your soul. Pause to feel God’s Spirit love your heart.

Love.

Peace.

Joy.

He comes!

We wait…and find that He has been Emmanuel, God with us, all along.

art credit: The Nativity by Antonio da Correggio; Advent Wreath carved by 15-year-old Caleb Voskamp (click on the link to order your own…he gives all proceeds to Compassion)

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