Tag: devo

An Idaho Christmas

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Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
-Colossians 3:15

Hello, Christmas…

Another Idaho winter has descended upon us.

In my neck of the woods, that means a little snow and a lot of gray days. But leave the river valley in any direction, and you’ll soon be skating on icy roads and snow. On the weekends it also means the occasional pop of birdshot as a Duck Dynasty wannabe wanders around the river road below us looking for an easy dinner.

It’s unnerving to look out the window and see a gun pointed my way.

Ah.

Christmas in Idaho.

It’s five days after Thanksgiving, and I’m feeling inadequate as my exuberant Facebook friends display their freshly decorated trees and trade Christmas recipes online.  In our log cabin, the only hints that Christmas is coming are a lovely poinsettia from my daughter-law, one Christmas card, and the meager pile of unwrapped presents I’ve bought for the annual family celebration.

My husband has hopefully set the decorations out in his shop in what may be a hint. I have yet to even venture out to take a look at them. I usually love Christmas, but this one has been dampened by the suffering of someone I love.

I worry. I fret. I give in to the  gloom.

Then I remember.

This is why He came.

Let heaven and nature sing!

Two thousand years ago, the world was much the same. Except it was a world without hope. This Christmas, we can be ruled by the Christ of peace, the Lord who delivered us from the futility of a life without Him.

In Jesus, Christmas dissolves into Thanks Giving and every day is a celebration. Our hearts are no longer controlled by either minor daily irritations or devastating loss. Until the day we see the magnitude of His victory, we ride out the highs and lows and choose to rejoice.

He rules the earth. Let heaven and nature sing: Joy to the world.

Maybe I should take a look at those decorations.

The Yoke in My Head

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Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me,
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.
For my yoke is easy and My burden is light.
-Matthew 11:29-30

The sun was a fiery ball in the bay sky. A splendid dinner of  barbecued steaks, prawns, and all the good things that go with such a meal sat contentedly in our  stomachs as we gathered on the deck. A friendly wager rested on the exact moment the sun would slip behind the ocean’s vast horizon.

We were enjoying the last hours of an awesome family vacation, our first since our son was injured sixteen years ago. It was a gift from a cherished cousin and her husband, and one that was more needed than I could ever truly express.

My cousin couldn’t know just how raw my soul was.

I have long struggled with Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:29-30. I always understood He was speaking of allowing Him to carry our burdens for us. I just never could reconcile that with the reality of my life. We raised five children, with all its attending joys and cares. I educated all five of them at home, a daunting task at any time, but especially so after our son was injured.

After his spinal cord injury in 1997, we were told caring for him at home would be “impossible.” I had to add “accomplishing the impossible” to my to-do list for each day.

Then circumstances required I return to school and become a licensed practical nurse. In my spare time, after I’ve done the impossible for the day.

Now I am an author, with its attending responsibilities.

Most of these things I have made peace with and even found joy in their midst. Then, lately, a crisis in my extended family descended upon us. The pressure has been nearly unbearable for me. It has been a crushing yoke, permeating my thought life and consuming my days.

The vacation came just in time. At the beach, I was not available to solve a single problem. It wasn’t that trouble wasn’t happening; I simply could not solve anything until I returned home.

The freedom in my brain was exhilarating. In this rarefied air I made a startling discovery:

The yoke Jesus wants me to give up is the one in my head.

He never told us life wouldn’t be hard. In fact, He promised us a life of trial as His disciples. But that wasn’t the yoke He was talking about. He wants to relieve the burdens my soul is carrying.

I thought I already knew this. In principle I understood He wanted me to give Him my life and my problems. And I have always tried to trust God.  What I didn’t realize was how much I worry-think about things all day long. I have been yoked to my thought life, mentally pulling a heavy cart of burdens. It was only when I was unstrapped from them that I realized how much life they stole from me.

We returned after our vacation to new and intimidating challenges here at home. But I am determined to live at the beach. I left that heavy, old yoke in the foaming tide at sunset. I am actively learning to stop whenever I catch myself falling back into old thought patterns of worry and analyzing and trying to sort out the complexities assaulting us. I still have to work, but I don’t have to turn over my soul to it.

If you want to reach me, I will be here.

But my heart is at the beach.

To Kill the Longing

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We inched down the winding mountain pass toward the ocean, smothered in a thick fog. After ten hours on the road through a fierce thunderstorm, our nerves were frayed. We rounded a curve and our headlights caught a raccoon in the middle of our lane.

The light dissolved his eyes into a watery green glow. He reared up in hapless defiance and raised his little paws as if to fend us off.

My husband swerved, barely missing.

So far, it was the most positive thing that had happened on the trip.

It was our first real family vacation in sixteen years. A generous cousin offered us the use of their beachfront rental for a week on the Oregon coast. Knowing a trip of that length would test our ability to travel with Kevin’s extensive medical needs, we planned as carefully as we could.

Then the week before the trip, The Resistance began. Aaron’s mother had a medical emergency and was ordered by her doctor to go immediately into an assisted living center. The family was inundated with a myriad details to get her moved within a few days.

The day before we left, we were still taking care of her issues while trying to pack. That night, there was a thunderstorm, taking out the power for two hours. Since Kevin sleeps on a ventilator at night, we had to switch his equipment over to emergency power and watch to make sure he was okay.

We left the next day after a few hours of sleep. Immediately out of the driveway, our nearly new van flashed a warning light. We spent an hour in town getting it checked out.

Back on the road again, we watched an ominous storm gather around us. It descended in earnest over the Columbia Gorge. A gale slammed us sidelong and threatened to blow us off the road. Lightning hit so close we actually had to try to keep from touching anything metal inside the van. Thunder boomed above our heads.

We hit Portland during rush hour. “Margie,” our little GPS guide, taunted us by commanding us to crisscross between lanes of heavy traffic. We turned her off and found our own way.

We finally made it to the coastal highway, only to be hit with a heavy rain. As we inched down the winding mountain pass, we were wrapped in a heavy fog.

We arrived at our lovely beach house shaken but unhurt. Our son and daughter-in-law arrived a few hours later, telling much the same story.

“It felt like something out of ‘This Present Darkness,’ ” my daughter-in-law mentioned.

Bingo.

All the time I thought it was just me. The warfare was so intense, it was insane. It didn’t make sense.

My first thought was, “It’s not like it was a Billy Graham Crusade. Why should the devil care that we’re going on vacation?”

Before the week was over, however, I realized why the battle to get there was so fierce. It was a truly blessed time. We played together and prayed together. God spoke to us in the Christian music, the fellowship, the laughter, and the peace. We stood on the beach and listened to the sea. We watched the sun set the water on fire every evening and gloried in the blaze as it sank into the horizon.

I got to see my beloved extended family again. We swapped family stories and laughed and cried until it hurt so good.

In Brazil they use the phrase “Matar saudades.” It literally means, “to kill the longing.” For sixteen years, we have lived in the valley of the shadow. Life has been hard. Many of the simple joys have gone by the wayside as we struggled to make it through each day. For the most part, we’ve adjusted to our new normal and submitted to the discipline it takes to keep Kevin healthy.

We’ve learned to accept hardship as our path. We didn’t expect to encounter something so extravagant, so rich, so abundant. To be blessed with such generosity. To be alive just for the fun of it. To kick sand in the face of loss.

Now I know why it was such a struggle to get here. This was more than a vacation. We came to kill the longing.

 

Photo courtesy Grace Thorson 

 

Recently I had the honor of being featured in an interview with author Aaron Gansky. Check out the interview at http://aarongansky.com/author-spotlight-pamela-thorson/.

Sight Unseen

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We walk by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7

One year our sons received an atomic clock for their office wall. They took it out of the box and showed us how it set itself to exactly the right time for our time zone. As they held the clock up, the hands moved around the face as if by magic, setting themselves to the command of a radio signal sent out from Colorado. 

I was suitably impressed. I didn’t know people could buy clocks that set themselves by radio signal.  

But it shouldn’t have seemed so bizarre. Every day I sit at the computer and take for granted that the images and sounds coming to me have been beamed down from a satellite in space. If I stand outside next to our satellite dish, however, I will see no pictures or sounds moving through the sky. They all exist on a bandwidth my senses can’t pick up until the signals are converted by machines. 

Though I can’t see the signals floating in space, I have no doubt they are there, because I see the images and sounds they produce on my television and computer.We all operate by this same principle daily, accepting what we don’t see, because we see its effects. 

Electricity, for example, can’t be seen by the human eye; yet it is powerful, even deadly. We have learned to respect its power and harness its energy for our use. The wind operates in much the same way -invisible, strong, and real. If I stand outside, I can feel its presence; if the wind blows down a tree, I can see its effects. 

Just try to tell someone electricity and wind don’t exist.

Yet we question the existence of God merely because we have never seen Him. As we accept wind, electricity, and radio waves because we know what they do, we can accept His existence because we can see His power at work all around us. We see His creation, we feel His presence, and we experience the effect He has on our lives as we operate in His Spirit.

We are finite beings, created with limits. There are dimensions we can’t discern with our physical senses because we were not created with that ability. But there is so much more that lies beyond our eyes. It is a world beyond our dreams, revealed through God’s Spirit.

We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18

The world we can see is full of uncertainty. But we can walk through it with courage, knowing this world is not all there is. The Lord Jesus Christ left one dimension to enter ours. He purchased, with great cost, a secure future in a dimension more real than the one we call our home. One day it will be revealed to us in all its glory. 

For now, we accept it – sight unseen.  

You are Invited

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If you’re reading this today, you’re alive.

Maybe you don’t feel that way.  Instead, you’re barely holding on. You feel numb, unworthy of God’s love.

It’s especially easy to feel that way if you’re one of the thousands of people suffering from chronic disease or devastating injury. Perhaps you’re one of the millions of people who care for them. Either way, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have what most would call a “normal” life.

Boy, have I been there.

Our son’s spinal cord injury in 1997 plunged him into the world of disability and dumped me into the world of caregiving. I quickly learned that the fight for life is as primal as it gets.

It’s a lonely trip. It’s an honor. It’s a tightrope walk between the two stretched over a chasm of uncertainty.

Today I’ve served more than two decades as a caregiver. Every step of the journey, God has held us, even when I didn’t know He was there. His comfort has been the golden oil sustaining me through every trial. He has taught me to relish each day I can breathe and think and worship my Creator.

Rejoicing in the Lord always.

Trusting in a faithful Father for tomorrow.

Life is a gift, an invitation to a very special party. Let’s treasure what we have this moment and believe God will keep eternity safe for us, for the day when the lame walk and God dries our tear-stained faces.

That day’s coming. Until then, we will conquer whatever comes, together. No matter what you’re going through right now, you can be assured you are never, ever alone. You’re important to God, and you’re important to me.

You’re alive. You’re safe. You’re precious in His sight. 

That’s worth singing about. Come on, join the celebration!

Fear of Flying, Wild Monkeys, and the Call to Courage

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Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears. –Arthur Koestler

Be strong and courageous, and act; do not fear nor be dismayed,
for the LORD God, my God, is with you.
1 Chronicles 28:20

A cold sweat drenches my palms. Fear courses through me in jagged waves. My stomach lurches wildly as the panic ebbs and flows. I am falling, falling, falling.

Well, not really. It only feels that way as the plane jostles in mild turbulence as it skirts Hurricane Bertha. The year is 1996, and I’m on my first international flight to Brazil with my husband, pastor, and his wife.

Not only did I make it there without incident, we had a wonderful trip and returned safely back to the States two weeks later. Along the way I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Bryce Canyon, and the night lights of Miami for the first time from the air. We flew above a lightning storm and watched the light show beneath us. Although it was in the dark, we flew over the city of Caracas, Venezuela, the Amazon River, and the Brazilian capital of Brasilia. We landed in Sao Paulo on a sparkling day twenty-eight hours after we flew out from the Spokane airport in Washington.

In Brazil we were introduced to its beautifully exotic land and people. We fed bananas to wild monkeys, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, sang worship songs in Portuguese, and drove over hair-raising roads traversing the country. We visited large cities and slums. We held the babies in an AIDS clinic. We wept and laughed and prayed with the wonderful people we met everywhere.

We returned home more thankful for all we have here.

What an amazing journey I would have missed had I given in to my fear of flying and stayed home!

Our family has been in some fearful places since then. God has always brought us through safely with a new understanding of His glory, richer for the losses we’ve gained.

Lately, doors have been closing and others have been opening. Fear once again sits on the doorstep, baring its ugly teeth and challenging us to pass by. We can stay with what is safe, known, near to the water line of our comfort level.

Or we can take that terrifying step into the skies.

Today the familiar feeling of falling has hit my insides once again. I’m not on a plane right now, but our lives have just entered the boarding gate. God’s revving the engines.

Do you feel God calling you out of the ordinary? Are circumstances driving you to the border of the unknown? How do you handle fear when God calls you out of your comfort zone?

Is faith or fear going to win today?

Lost in Space

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The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard
And it totters like a shack,
For its transgression is heavy upon it,
And it will fall, never to rise again.

Isaiah 24:20

They were intrepid. They were bold. They wandered space encountering monstrous aliens and fearsome worlds. The story line in the old sci-fi television series Lost in Space was as cheesy as the aliens, but it fed the new interest in the world above us ignited by the space race. This theme was revisited on a slightly more sophisticated level with the Star Trek series Voyager.

No trip to outer space has yet revealed signs of the Borg, though, but instead has offered us a breathtaking glimpse into the expansive mind of God. High above our heads, planets spin at God’s command; the sun blazes at exactly the right distance to sustain life on Earth; the constellations and nebulae thrill us with their serene beauty. The only dastardly creatures to roam the galaxies are the unseen leagues under the command of Satan.

Even then, the skies hold little interest for them.

After all, the battle is here, on Earth, the only piece of God’s real estate actually lost in space. While the universe whirls obediently at His word, our planet alone lurches headlong toward destruction as its inhabitants brazenly moon their Creator. The angels watch in amazement, the demons cackle in amusement, and creation longs for the day the rebellion is finished.

Earth was created to be the best of God’s work, a blue jewel in the crown of the King. But our sins rained down death upon our heads and a curse that could only be broken by royal intervention. And intervene, He did. God is at work in our world, redeeming a people for Himself and displaying the majesty of His grace to His entire realm.

It may not look like it, but each day brings us closer to rescue. At precisely the right moment, Christ will return to deliver His people, end the rebellion, and restore the planet to its intended glory.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly,
but because of Him who subjected it,
in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption
into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

 

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit,
even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
the redemption of our body.

-Romans 8:19-23

Today those who trust in the Lord Jesus wait for Him, aliens trapped aboard a toxic rocket hurtling through space as nations battle to throw off the final restraints to all-out lawlessness. The world appears to be running into the fire. A conflagration is coming, but the Lord Jesus has given us a powerful promise: 

Take courage; I have overcome the world. -John 16:33

God, we are told, is the Blessed Controller of all things. Nothing surprises Him, and nothing is beyond His power. We are safe in His hands, and we will be delivered. We are not lost in space. With our eyes on those beautiful heavens from which our Redeemer will appear, we say with the Apostle:

 http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-planet-earth-space-image19328303We are looking for new heavens and a new earth,
in which righteousness dwells.

2 Peter 3:13

In the War for Independence, Who Will Be Their Voice?

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Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless;
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:17 NASB

A heat wave has gripped the nation as the United States celebrates Independence Day. In the midst of withering triple-digest temperatures, a cold wind blows. The chill is coming from the icy fingers of death…the death, that is, of compassion.  

On July 4th of every year we cheer the American Revolution, committed to the radical notion that every human is equal in the eyes of his Creator and deserving of the most basic of freedoms: 

Life.

Liberty.

The pursuit of happiness.

How ironic that the end stage of such a war would, over two hundred years later, those three essential rights would come with asterisks, that the basic foundation stones for our society would be moved at will by those to whom we have charged the defense of our nation.

Today life is only granted for those who are deemed wanted or useful to society. Disabled, defective, or incomplete humans have no place in Darwin’s brave new world of the survival of the fittest. As medical resources have become more scarce, we are already in the process of moving quietly toward allocating care to those most likely to benefit from it in restored contribution to society. 

The tenets of liberty and the pursuit of happiness have also been perverted to legalize perversion and squash religious freedom. The long slide down this slope began decades ago, when we began throwing innocence in the trash along with unborn babies, nativity scenes, and school prayer. 

I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. Over twenty years ago, I was fighting to keep the doctor from making my disabled mother die because, in his words, “Her life is worthless.” This was not a woman in a coma, but simply crippled and silenced by strokes. 

When she first knew something was going wrong in her body, she told me, “Pam, give me every chance to live.” When the time came to give her that chance, the doctor didn’t even ask what she would want. She was worthless, no longer counted.

Sixteen years ago, I was fighting to keep the doctor from pulling the plug on our son after his spinal cord injury. Kevin also wasn’t in the mood to die, but that doctor didn’t ask his opinion, either. Evidently, he no longer counted in the economy of life.

One fight occurred in America; one in Canada; but both were part of the deliberate parade toward exterminating those who do not fit our definition of “useful.” This march transcends nations, politics, and administrations. It’s not being orchestrated by doctors, nurses, or even politicians. It’s the heavy boot step of an unseen enemy with one goal: to destroy all humanity and thus hurt and rob the Creator who made us.

He’s found plenty enough help from us. Our society is sick; in fact, our world is sick. As we fall collectively farther and farther from God, the compassion and care for others that naturally flows from His heart falls with it. Life no longer has dignity by virtue of being. The body is no longer considered the temple of a living soul, but a glob of throbbing tissue and random brain waves. Life itself is open to interpretation.

It’s all been complicated by the advance of medical technologies that have blurred the lines between living and dying. When to give up has become harder and harder to decide. I understand the pain endured by many families in making the tough medical decisions necessary for their sick and injured loved ones.

This isn’t about those issues.

This is about speaking for those without either voice or choice. It’s about remembering that we are made in the image of of the great I AM; valued because we are. It’s about those with power using that power to protect the powerless. No one should have to prove that they can be useful on order to deserve life. 

No one but God has the right to give and take life. Nor does anyone have the right to decide who is worthy of our care. The more I learn about what is being done today in the name of medicine, the more I mourn, and the more I determine this:

For those without a voice: I must speak.
For those whose limbs are silent, I will, by the grace of God, be their hands and feet.
To a hurting world, I long, with all my heart, to be the expression of His comfort.

America, America, as we celebrate this birthday, may God shed His grace on us, the undeserving. 

Hero

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Everybody loves a hero. From white knights to Spiderman, Wonder Woman, and firemen – we all adore larger-than-life figures. Hero is a timeless concept, a word chiseled in stone and swathed in red, white, and blue. It evokes images of dashing figures and just-in-time deliverance.

A hero is someone we can believe in, lean on, and trust with our lives and sacred honor. A hero is always there.

My hero is the Lord Jesus. He’s the only person who ever lived a life that was absolutely unsoiled, perfectly gentle, and truly wise. He has never left me forsaken on the railroad tracks of life as the inevitable wheels of death came charging down the rails- although I’ve squirmed a few times as I heard the rumble of disaster approaching. But He’s always arrived…just in time… every time.

He’s big. He’s strong. He’s amazing. He’s the royalty that bends down to pick up the peasant. He’s my King, and He never tires of riding out on the white horse to swoop me up out of my latest fall into some messy pit.

But life for us is not about being the eternal damsel in distress. God has saved us for a purpose:

He calls us to follow Him. He commands us to take on the nature of His Kingdom. He calls us to purity, wisdom, discernment, and courageous action.

He calls us to a life of heroic deeds.

Rise to the challenge. Live like you belong in the Kingdom. Be someone’s hero today.

Two Wolves: When Your Soul Is Shredded

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There are two wolves inside us.
The one we feed is the one that will grow.
-Native American proverb

The attacks came without warning, one after another. These last months our family has been reeling from a series of setbacks we never anticipated. Problems we didn’t cause and can’t fix.

Yesterday was so bad I just had to escape from the phone and the stress and the numbness shredding my soul. I bolted down the driveway and glanced around, remembering to check for snakes and the coyotes that had been calling this morning up the dry canyon above our house. Occasionally they wander all the way down to the yard looking for wayward scraps or cats.

Usually I alternate between anger and pity for them. Anger when they kill our animals. Pity when the summer is hot and barren and they comb the hillside in mangy coats looking for food.

Yesterday I envied them.

I wanted to flee up the canyon wall far away from humans and their struggles, to find a way out. I needed escape. I wanted to release the fear and the anger and the helplessness.

Actually, I wanted to howl.

Instead, I walked for a bit and returned to the house. Our family circled the wagons, as is our habit when new challenges threaten one or the other of us. We spent the evening together, drawing strength from each other as we enjoyed a meal and movie.

Today, the wolves are again at war. Today I halt between two opinions. Is disaster on the horizon? Or is God at work in a mysterious and mystical way?

Fear and Faith sit at my door. Both are ravenous. Will I feed one and allow myself to be consumed, or will I feed the one that will send the predator packing? Which one will I give my trust?

So it comes to this. I must choose to turn off the outside voices feeding the beast and give my mind permission to feed my starving soul on the goodness of God. This was surely what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote these words:

…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is of good repute,
if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

Dwell on what is good and holy. Frolic in the fruit of the Spirit. Reach for the joy set before you. Trust in a faithful Creator.

If you’re as hungry and dry as I am, pray with me:

Here I am, Lord. 
I’m dying on the inside.
My enemy is too strong for me.
Strengthen my faith; teach me how to trust You.
Help me to close my ears to the voice of the predator.
Give me eyes to see Your great power and love.
Feed me.  

Amen.

 

 

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