Hey, my dear Siestas! I hope you are well and thriving in Christ! For those of you who may have been with Priscilla, Kay and me in Las Vegas, thank you so much for the privilege to serve you. You were a fantastic group! All three of us would have brought you home with us if we could have. Thank you for your patience with us and your astounding diligence in the Word. You hung in there when I would have sworn and declared we’d have worn you out.

Just in case somebody could use the encouragement, I thought I’d pitch something out on the table that God ministered to me this morning then led me to share at staff prayer time. Maybe some of you are like us. We each have some long term prayer requests out there that we’re still waiting for God to bring to wild fruition. Like you, we get tempted at times to give up on that thing ever coming to pass even though we were so sure it was God’s will and had the support of His Word. Maybe we got what we thought was a vivid word from God about something but now we’re confused. Sometimes we really do misinterpret what He said or what His Word promised and God graciously reveals that to us. Other times, however, we let impatience strangle our spirits and near-sightedness steal our vision. We lose sight of the fact that He’s using time and subsequent events to bring the word to pass. His point to me recently has been that if I’d live in a greater present reality and awareness of all He’s brought to fruition, I will be more patient and full of faith concerning what is still in process. The thing is, we’re on to the next request before we’ve even gotten a chance to sit and savor how He answered the last. Maybe this is too much review for some but I’m one of those kinds of people who needs to constantly relearn things.

God’s been reminding me of the powerful words of Isaiah 55:8-11.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

The part He’s really been highlighting to me is the “seed for the sower and bread for the eater.” Seeds: words we’re planting and waiting on. Bread: words that have endured the test of time and the heat of the furnace and finally made it to our tables. Here’s what occurred to me. At any given time, we have both: words from God we’re still waiting on and words from God that have recently come to pass. Sometimes we’re so focused on the seed that hasn’t shown a harvest that we ignore the bread sitting right in front of us. We faint from sowing the seed because we’re not eating the bread. Stop a minute. Consider what God has done. Marvel over how He’s answered prayer and brought words to pass. Think about a crisis five years ago that doesn’t even take up ink in your prayer journal anymore. Reflect on how many things God has taken from seed to bread in your life. Note it. Meditate on it. Don’t drive through it. Dine on it. Slap some butter on that warm bread and savor a slow bite of it!

I don’t know about you but sometimes I’m so busy pestering the seed that my bread is gets stale.

While you wait on that seed, eat that bread.

I love you,
Beth

Hey, my dear, dear Sisters! I had the biggest blast with the Siestas who made the trek to San Antonio and missed the rest of you so much. I’m back from a real, live vacation and pecking away at my computer in my office. Star’s right here at my feet. It’s Labor Day so my beloved staff members are with their families just as they should be. Since I really did take the week off (I usually cheat and still throw work into it somehow but refrained this time), I really needed the day to get a jump on the load I knew would be waiting tomorrow.

I’d have lots of silly things to tell you but my frame of mind is seriously tempered by Gustav. Having lived in Houston for 35 years, I, like anybody half-awake on the Gulf Coast, am highly alert to the constant wave of threats written across the sky from August through October. We find ourselves in a terrible quandary, asking God to cause the storms to bypass our areas but sick at heart to imagine them hitting another. None of us want to lose our homes but none of us want to see others lose theirs either. Of all people on the planet we want spared, surely its the population of New Orleans. Oh, Jesus, especially the poor. And, Lord, our dear Franklin Avenue Baptist and other faithful fellowships like it that have only recently reopened their doors. Have mercy! My heart has been in my throat for the areas devastated by Katrina, many of which have yet to be rebuilt. Let’s give highest praise to God that He sucked some of the air and water right out of Gustav’s angry lungs. This morning in my quiet time I reminded our gracious Father of His powerful words to us in James 5:16b-18. “The prayer of the righteous man is powerful and effective. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” Elijah, a man with “like passions as we” prayed a change over the weather. THE WEATHER. And God heard him and said yes. That ought to give us some courage to pray like the same thing could happen today.

Keith and I have been in the wonderful middle of nowhere for a solid week on our cactus land at the edge of the Texas hillcountry. No cell phones. No internet. Just him and me and our two new baby girls, Star and Geli. The most exciting things we had going were watching God paint sunrises and sunsets, cooking on the Old Smokey, dodging rattle snakes, and taking rides on our rigged-for-dirt-roads golf cart with the dogs to admire the wildlife. I read the new Jan Karon novel (I think the name is “Home to Holly Springs”) from cover to cover and LOVED IT. Yes, I’ve read all the Mitford books and am so sad when one ends and another is not out yet. She is one of my favorite all time fiction authors. I want to be her BFF.

On the way home Saturday afternoon, however, we saw the eeriest sight. Keith was asleep at the time and yours truly was driving his big ole blue Ford truck. I even went the speed limit. (Believe it or not, I’m a slow driver. The leading cause of road rage in America, you might recall.) We were going east on Interstate 10 and right around the Luling exit I came over a hill and saw 200+ yellow school buses from Dallas, empty except for the drivers, in the left hand lane traveling lickety-split in a caravan our same direction. A police car led the pack and another had its back. We’d seen several Red Cross emergency vehicles already on our way home but this sight beat all. We knew those school buses were heading either to Houston or New Orleans (it was still up in the air – no pun intended – at that time) for emergency evacuations. I told Keith to wake his hind up and look at a sight he might live the rest of his life and never see again. It was so freaky. And to be one of very few vehicles heading their direction while traffic packed the west-bound lanes was sobering. There was no turning back, though, because Curtis, Amanda, Jackson, and our little Avocado were in Houston and I was going to be where they were or bust. Turned out our fair but hot city would be just to the west of Gustav’s fiercest breath. Far better than that, it appeared that New Orleans might not be hit as hard as they were three years ago. Oh, Lord, be her levee.

Anyway, I’ve looked so forward to saying hello but feel like it’s just not the day to be silly. And, oh, could I have been silly. After all, I’ve been perched on a porch for a week watching my man move the earth all over heck’s half acre on his green tractor. About the time I decided to venture out on my own and go for a walk, he popped the clutch and hollered, “Lizabeth, did you bring your snake boots?” Where am I? But I’ll just have to save that for another time.

I love you. Gulf Coast girls in particular, let us know how you’re fairing through the weather. We are on our knees for you.