Hey, my beloved sisters!
Though I won’t publish this post until Tuesday, the first day of October, I am writing to you on Sunday. I have the house all to myself today – not even a dog in sight – and I am sitting on my back porch as a generous rain soaks the ground, polishing the wide leaves of sweet gums on its way down. Our trees this far south are still plump and green and, right this minute, I don’t mind because the leaves have such a sheen on them in the rain that they look like vinyl. The temperatures will drop one slow degree at a time over the next month but we usually don’t have what people call “Autumn” here until as late as November. And it’s almost unrecognizable even then. Suddenly you just look up and the trees don’t have leaves and it hits you that you probably missed Fall on your way to work that morning when you ran into Starbucks for a dry cappuccino.
An Arkansas girl by heritage, I am on the hunt for Red October by mid September but I can’t think of a time since I’ve lived on the Gulf Coast that I’ve ever found it. Well, except when I close my eyes and look. And it is beautiful there. I do love Houston though, despite how season-challenged it is. Good people. Many, many who earnestly love Jesus and crave the sense of His presence and serve Him with both life and heart. Its diversity kicks up a rich climate for faith and a prime place to meet people very different from you who seek Jesus feverishly. It’s not as easy to keep your stereotypes tidy here.
In the early years of speaking, God purposed that I’d accrue copious hours of experience serving at various churches, women’s breakfasts and luncheons right here in our city limits and still get home to greet my children after their school day. I often pulled out of the driveway when they hopped on the school bus and squealed my tires back on the concrete just minutes before they pulled up at 3:15. My kids loved riding the school bus and, as it turns out (I write this with a smile), it was a grace to me. On paper, our lives shouldn’t have worked but somehow it worked (apply the term loosely) in practice. That’s the beautiful oddity of the will of God. What should easily work doesn’t work when He’s not in it and what should never work does work when He is. It’s crazy to think about in retrospect. He has been so faithful, just as He will be to you as you try to balance it all and seek His mercy through the insanity.
I wish I could somehow add the soundtrack of what I’m presently hearing to this post. I wish you could listen to the comfort of the rainfall, especially if you are feeling chaotic or anxious right now or frantic about how something’s going to work out. The water is falling steadily, not a soft shower or a downpour. Constant and consoling, almost like one of those sleep-settings on your iPad. And I wish you could hear 4 male hummingbirds competing over the feeder that is hanging about 8 feet from where I’m sitting. It mesmerizes me to watch them and I think you might like it, too, once you adjusted to the pace out here in these woods.
Sometimes we really do just need everything and everybody else to shut up for a minute and let us listen to the sound of God being God around us. These moments are brief for all of us. Just five days ago I was fit to be tied over something. I do mean fit to be tied and, over the weekend, greatly concerned about a situation even while I served. But I am going to sit here for the next few minutes and pour myself a cup of coffee while God pours these woods a cup of rain.
Well, I guess you can tell that I’m in a musing mood so perhaps I should wrap this post up before I work my way over to subjects like world peace and dark nights of the soul and existential crises and the beauty of aging and the delights of youth. Honestly, I can feel a poem trying to write itself in my head. This post must end with perfect timing before, indeed, my words start rhyming. Run for your life. It’s almost too late.
Here’s my Scripture for this October 1st!
Beth Moore, O God, You cause abundant showers to fall on Your chosen people. When they are tired, You sustain them, for You live among them. Psalm 68:9-10a The NET Bible
Amen, You do, gracious, merciful God.
I love you, Sisters. You are a joy to me. The next post will be registration for our SSMT celebration so we can get an idea how many to prepare for. Wooohoooo! It’s almost time to kick up our heels!
Tags: Scripture Memory 2013
Marie, from Post Falls, Idaho –
“Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.”
– 1 Corinthians 16:13 (NKJV)
Becky, The Woodlands, TX – “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:14 NIV
Diane – Roswell, GA
2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Heather from Hayden, AL: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9. KJV
Christine, St. Louis Park, MN As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 NIV
Deb, Becker, MN
I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ Lam 3:55-57 ESV
Mary Ann, Woodbury, MN
And your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
Isaiah 30:21 (ESV)
Alexis, Salem OR
“But He also turns deserts into pools of water, the dry land into springs of water.”
Psalm 107:35 NLT
Carolyn, St. Catharines, ON
My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare. Psalm 25:15 (NIV)
Beth,Troy
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
Sherilyn, Warsaw, IN
“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Exodus 14:14 NIV
Kim Burk in Thatcher, AZ
The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV)
Melissa, Augusta, GA
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.
Deuteronomy 7:9, NIV
Leah from Bloomington, IN: Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18 NIV
Rome, Georgia “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:8 ESV
Mary
Silver Spring, MD
Psalm 74:12 (ESV)
Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Jill
Plano,TX
O God, You cause abundant showers to fall on Your chosen people. When they are tired, You sustain them, for You live among them. Psalm 68:9-10a The NET Bible
Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t think only about your own affairs but be interested in others too, and what they are doing.
Philippians 2:3-4 NLT
Janice – Topeka, KS – Psalm 68:9-10a
O God You cause abundant showers to fall on your chosen people. When they are tired You sustain them for You live among them. NET
Diane from Chesapeake, VA.
“On the day I called, You answered me; You increased strength within me.”
Psalm 138:3 HCSB
He gathers the lambs in His arms, hugging them as He carries them. Isaiah 40:11(message)
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Ephesians 1:3 NIV
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3 (NIV)
Leverett, MA
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
Psalm 34:19 NASB
Lisa, West Des Moines, IA “Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” Proverbs 13:10 (NIV)
Tracy, Sidney, Ohio
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 1 John 4:9 NLT
Jess R, Katy, Tx
Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.
-Nehemiah 8:10b NLT
Janet, Bellevue, NE
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.
Phil 2:3-4 NIV
Cyndi from Sterling, VA
O God, You cause abundant showers to fall on your chosen people. When they are tired, You sustain them, for You live among them. Psalm 68:9-10a (NET)
Darcy, Rosenberg, TX “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
Who redeems your life from destruction, Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
Psalms 103:4-5 (nkjv)
Tomi, Des Moines. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. I Peter 1:3-5 NIV
Chelsey from Amarillo, TX
“He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.” Proverbs 28:27
Nicole Turnquist from Selden, NY
[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecc. 3:11 (NIV)
He is like the light of morning at sunrise
on a cloudless morning,
like the brightness after rain
that brings grass from the earth.
2 Samuel 23:4, NIV
Jen, Katy, TX
Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy.
James 1:2 NLT
Kelly from Denver..
You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you.
Song of Songs 4:7
NIV
Jackie, Mobile, AL
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me has not been in vain.In fact, I worked harder than all of them- yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
I Corinthians 15:10 NET
Betty, Wendell, NC
Proverbs 3:6 GNT
Remember the LORD in everything you do, and he will show you the right way.
Proverbs 3:6
“I am Your servant, and the people of Israel belong to You. So listen when any of us pray and cry out for Your help.” ~ 1 Kings 8:52 (CEV)
Sue ~ Hartland, MI
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not
tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you
wherever you go. ”
Joshua 1:9 NASB
Beth C., Huntsville, AL
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Colossians 4:5 NIV
Brittnie, Sugar Land, Texas
Psalm 16:8 NIV “I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
NIV
Jenna, Kansas City
linda, colorado springs.
but the lord has been my defense, and my god the rock of my refuge.
psalm 94:22 (nkjv)
Psalm 40:3a NIV
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Melissa from Goshen, KY…
A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.
Ephesians 6:10-11 (NLT)
Vicki from Grapevine, TX
I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. ~ Philippians 1:9 NLT
Heather Ferris
McDonough GA
“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Ex. 14:14
Beth, London Ontario
“And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
2 Corinthians 9:8 NIV