Divine Ordinary

Today, I am linking up with the Grace & Truth Linkup over at Arabah Joy. You can find out more about it HERE.

I’m tired. I sat down this morning during my scheduled, blog writing time (I’m trying to be a bit more organized and intentional about my writing these days), and I stared at the wordpress page for a new post.

The title bar was empty and the white box underneath was empty, and I really had no idea how to fill it. Because I feel empty – all poured out.

I just got done doing a workshop at Converge 2016, a big teen conference. There were probably around 900-1,000 teenagers there and maybe 300 volunteers. While I am tired, I can’t imagine how exhausted the main organizers and leaders of the event are this week. I’m sure they’re feeling pretty empty, too.

The thing is, though, it’s not just Converge. I’ve been incredibly busy since the New Year. We had basketball season which is our family’s busiest time of the year since both my boys play and my husband coaches. Right after that a good friend had a baby shower which was quite large and elaborate. My youngest son was in the school play which consumed an entire weekend (not to mention all the back and forth to practices). He also plays baseball. Then a few weeks later, there was Converge.

In the meantime, I teach a women’s Sunday school class every week, and I volunteer at Guiding Light Ministries where I’ve recently taken on a bigger role. Now I’m on their board of directors, not to mention regularly meeting with the director and trying to be helpful in whatever ways that I can. In fact, I have a lunch meeting in a few hours today.

I have my son’s graduation party to plan and a birthday party to plan before that and a women’s brunch I’m helping with – did I mention I am the world’s worst event planner?

Not to mention, I am busier than ever with my writing – both on this blog and the children’s books I’m working on and the editing book that is slowly coming along and the idea that I should probably have some kind of website that ties the book writing and the freelance editing I do together somehow. Oh and learning to market all that stuff and master social media channels (of which, I am mostly clueless!), and taking a photography course so I can improve that, too. And I do have children and a husband and family and friends that need me and I’d like to see once in a while.

It just all feels like too much.

So, as I sat on my wicker love seat on my back porch this morning, I just felt empty – all used up and dried up with nothing left to give. I was feeling not just empty, but frustrated and overwhelmed and exhausted, too.

This was supposed to be the year that I said good-bye to overwhelmed and busy.

This was supposed to be the year where I slowed down and focused on less rather than giving pieces of my attention to more.

This was supposed to be the year where I concentrated on nurturing and growing relationships.

This was supposed to be the year that exchanged busy for abundant.

This was supposed to be the year I wrote a book on that topic because busy is killing us. I know it’s killing me.

Yet, this year, I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been.

So, this morning, I came to my quiet time, I came to the feet of Jesus with nothing to offer and nothing to give, and a lot of questions. He pointed me to Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

And it felt like blinders fell off my eyes. We talk a lot about trusting God with our finances, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of anyone using the same principles when it comes to our time. And our time is a much more limited resource than our money. You can pick up an odd job and make a bit more money. You can set some money aside and save it. That isn’t true with time – we all have the same 24 hours every  single day, and we can’t save slow  hours for another day.

If I believe God is truly enough, if I believe He has equipped me to do what He has called me to do, if I believe that ultimately, the results are up to Him, NOT me, I can trust Him with my time. I can be faithful and obedient in setting aside a certain number of hours to work on the things I feel that He has called me to, and I can trust Him that it will be enough because He is enough. Like the 3 loaves and 5 fishes, when I give my time to Jesus and use it as He directs, He will multiply the results. When I refuse to be ruled by my to do list and instead surrender that to Jesus every morning so HE can direct my steps – even if that means interruptions and not getting done what I think needs to be done – He will bless my obedience much more than if I had ignored those promptings from His Spirit and tried to cross one more thing off my to do list.

My faith HAS to be in God and His abilities rather than in myself and my own abilities or the latest productivity hack or learning just one more thing or just pushing myself a little harder. Being faithful to our callings can so easily tip into doing it all in my own strength which ends up making me feel overwhelmed and discouraged – at least for me – because I am never enough. But Jesus is!

Like the plant that currently sits in my office, I was looking (and feeling) a bit parched and wilted around the edges. But Jesus if faithful to meet our every need. So, like the plant that perked up and reached toward the sun when I watered it this morning, I feel my own spirit soak up the Living Water and reach once again toward the Son, ready to grow and give and go.

Are you feeling a bit parched lately? Maybe a little empty? How is Jesus meeting you right where you are at? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

So, this is our final post in this series on fear. If you are just joining in, you can read Part 1; Part 2 and Part 3 to catch up. To wrap up this series, I want to share what I believe is the key to defeating fear’s stranglehold in our lives: God’s love. I know, it sounds so cliche doesn’t it? If you’ve gone to church as long as I have (which is roughly over four decades), you’ve heard, “God loves you,” about a bazillion times, and yet, if we truly got this concept, if we truly knew down to the marrow of our bones that God – the God of the universe that put the stars in place and filled in the seas and sculpted the mountains – that same God LOVED us, I believe it has the capacity to completely change our lives – and free us from the chains of fear.

That phrase “made perfect,” means “to be made complete.” We can’t be made complete until we truly know and understand God’s love for us. It’s in understanding the full depth and breadth of Christ’s love for us that allows us to live full and complete – without being captive to fear. That phrase “cast out” is the Greek word balio, and it means, “to throw out or let go of something, not caring where it falls.”

When I was a kid, I lost quite a few things because I’d get so focused on something else, I wouldn’t even remember I was actually holding anything. I remember I had bought my mom a birthday gift – some make up. I was walking around the mall, totally absorbed in checking out various stores. When I met up with my parents, I realized that the bag with the makeup I had bought was gone. I had been so taken up with other things, I didn’t even realize I had dropped it somewhere along the way. I lost countless winter hats that way too.

Putting aside the fact that I was sort of an airhead when I was a kid, I picture this verse the same way. Those fears you and I clutch so tightly will fall from our hands, unnoticed, when we become totally enthralled in the reality of God’s love for us.

There is another verse in Ephesians that I love, too.

That word “know” is the Greek word, “yada” which denotes a deep, intimate knowing. It’s sometimes used in the Bible indicate sex between a husband and wife – for instance, “And Adam knew his wife.” It means more than a surface knowing. You’ll notice that the result of truly understanding and “getting” God’s love for us means we are filled up with God. When you are filled up with God, it’s much harder to also be filled up with fears.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know I lost my brother last summer to suicide. (you can read his eulogy HERE and my thoughts on the mental illness that plagued him HERE). It was something that we feared would happen for a long time. My mom especially feared this outcome. I don’t know – sometimes, I think God granted her a special grace to prepare her for what no parent should ever have to face.

His death has been the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through. I have lost all my grandparents and a few friends over the years, and while those losses certainly hurt, there is a different kind of pain when someone is taken from you in this way.

But even though it has been hard and excruciatingly painful (I still have random moments of tears, especially as we approach my oldest son’s graduation), there has been beauty in it too.

You may wonder how in the world that can be, but I experienced – first hand – the God of the universe bending low to stitch up my torn up heart and to heal that gaping wound. Yes, it left a scar and sometimes that scar hurts and reminds me it is there, but it’s hard to express the tenderness and love I felt during those awful first few months.

I have this wicker love seat out on my back porch and I’d head out there with my Bible. And God just ministered to me. I felt completely surrounded by his love. And knowing and experiencing that tender love, I have found a lot of the things I used to be afraid of don’t really hold me anymore because I KNOW that even if the worst happens, God will walk through it with me every single step.

And God has brought good things out of the awful, too, which continues to blow me away. I taught a workshop on fear at teen conference this past Saturday, and during the alter call, I was able to share my story of God’s faithfulness in walking me through the darkest of times to encourage and help a young girl who was struggling. How like God to make the ashes of grief into something beautiful like comfort for someone else.

I’m not saying I’ll never struggle with fear again – in fact, last week I realized that I was afraid to teach my workshop on fear (that’s irony for you!), but all I have to do is remember, and I feel those choking chains of fear loosen and fall away, unnoticed, as I turn my complete focus on God’s love.

How about you? Do you really know that God loves you – not the world – but you? Do you feel that you have somehow stepped outside God’s love or you are somehow unlovable because of something in your past or a sin that plagues you? I would challenge you to go to Romans 8:31-39 and write it out, substituting your name for every us, we, and you. I’d love to hear about ways God’s love has freed you from your fears!

Blessings, Rosanne

p.s. Don’t forget to download your free fear worksheet HERE!

In the previous post in this series on fear (if you missed them, you can find Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE), we talked about Jeroboam and how he was a great example of what NOT to do when it comes to fear. (You can also get a free printable worksheet to help you pinpoint and overcome your fears HERE. )Today, we are going to look at a king whose example we can actually follow. His name was Hezekiah, and his story can be found in II Kings 18.

The first thing you need to know about Hezekiah was that he was the king of Judah. (Remember, the nation of Israel had split with 10 tribes going one way and retaining the name Israel, and two tribes becoming Judah).

The second thing you need to know is that, unlike his father before him, Hezekiah was a man who followed God and had a desire to obey all of God’s commandments. In II Kings 18: 3-6, it says that Hezekiah trusted the Lord; he clung to the Lord; and because of that, the Lord made Hezekiah prosper.

The third thing you need to know is that during this time period, the big, bad guy in the neighborhood was Sennecherib, the king of Assyria. Assyria was a very powerful nation and they were conquering a lot of the neighboring countries near Judah. In fact, God had allowed Assyria to carry away Israel (the 10 tribes) into captivity because of their continued disobedience to God. Sennecherib decided that since he captured one part of the nation of Israel, he may as well have those other two tribes too. Add in the fact that Hezekiah had stopped paying the tribute his father had agreed to, and Sennecherib was ready to take care of this pesky little country once and for all.

So, Sennecherib captured the cities of Judah, and Hezekiah finds him right at Jerusalem’s door. He tries to appease Sennecherib and pays him an enormous sum of gold and silver with the understanding that Sennecherib would then leave Judah alone. However, Sennecherib is not the most reliable guy, and as soon as he has all that gold and silver, he sends his army with some of his most trusted men to besiege Jerusalem. His men basically give a message to Hezekiah that in a nutshell says you may as well surrender because your God won’t save you and He can’t save you because He is no better than all the other nations’ gods who didn’t save them either. To add insult to injury, Rabshakeh, the Assyrian king’s man, shouts all these lies about Hezekiah to the people of Judah, trying to get them to turn on Hezekiah.

When Hezekiah is told all this, his response reflects his daily walk with God. First, he heads to the temple to seek God’s presence, and then he heads to God’s prophet Isaiah to seek wise counsel.

Isaiah tells Hezekiah that God will confuse Rabshakeh with a rumor that will make him leave – and that is just what happens. When Rabshakeh gets back to Assyria and realizes the rumors are false, he sends Hezekiah a very threatening letter that tries to scare Hezekiah by casting doubt on God’s abilities to protect Judah.

Once again, we see Hezekiah’s response to very real threats and danger. He spreads out the letter before the Lord. I can just picture Hezekiah kneeling on the floor with all this parchment spread around him and asking God, “Okay, now what do I do with this?”  I love that – don’t you?

Hezekiah does four things in the face of his fear.

He seeks the Lord.
I love that this is Hezekiah’s very first response anything he comes up against something that scares him. He doesn’t try to figure it out himself. He doesn’t talk to it with his friends. He doesn’t brood on it or obsess. He simply takes the problem and spreads it all out before God. Of course, Hezekiah built this habit before he was in the middle of a crisis. In II Kings 18, it says that Hezekiah trusts the Lord and he clung to the Lord. When Hezekiah seeks out the Lord with his very real fears and problems, he’s going to someone he knows well. He can seek the Lord because they have a history together. The more I get to know God, the more I trust Him, and the more I trust Him, the more I seek Him out – whether the going is tough or not. This is a far better answer than my old response which was to freak out or call a friend and freak out.

He praises the Lord.
I don’t know about you, but when I am up against something that is scaring me to death, the last thing I think about doing is having a little worship time. But this is one of the first things Hezekiah does, and it is so wise. Praising God is a way to remind himself of just who God is and all the great things He has already done for Hezekiah and his people. When we take a moment to truly praise and worship God, even when our knees are knocking, it gives us perspective. It reminds us of just how big our God is in comparison to our problems and our fears.

He tells God all about his fears.
One of my favorite verses is in Psalms 34:4 where it says, “I sought the Lord and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” The only way God can deliver us from our fears is if we bring them to Him. It is in His light that the shadows where our fears lurk are driven away. In that light, we often find out what we fear was really nothing at all. And even if what we fear is legitimate and real (like Hezekiah’s situation), in God’s presence, we can see the bigness of God which makes even the scariest things seem small in comparison.

He asks God to deliver him and his people.
Hezekiah has spent his life following God’s commands. It says he clung to the Lord, so it probably seemed natural to him to ask that same God for a little deliverance. Hezekiah knew he served a God that delighted in coming through for His people. So many times, we might bring our fears or problems to the Lord, and then we take them back with us, thinking we have to solve our own problems and come up with our own solutions. But God WANTS us to ask HIM for help – not try to do it all ourselves. The bottom line is that Hezekiah believed that his God was big enough to overcome the Assyria – even when the evidence suggested otherwise. Hezekiah’s personal relationship with God underscored his belief that God was good and loved His people enough to intervene on their behalf.

This is why I love these stories in the Old Testament. There are so many cool things you can learn from the people who live in these pages. So, how about you? What is your first response to fear? Does one of HEzekiah’s responses speak to you? I’d love to hear about it!

To help you work through your fear, I put together this worksheet, so be sure to download it!

Blessings, Rosanne

As I said in Part 1 of this series, t, I’m doing this workshop on fear. Quite honestly, I was sort of overwhelmed on what to speak about that would be the most helpful. I mean, as we saw, there are literally dozens of people who allowed fear to make them do some pretty dumb things. However, as I prayed about it, God brought to mind the stories of two different kings. Each faced fear, but one handled it well and one didn’t. Today, I’m going to talk about the guy who completely missed the mark – Jeroboam.

To understand the story, we need to get a little context going. The nation of Israel had three kings: Saul, David and Solomon. Saul screwed up (because of fear mainly) and God removed the kingship from his family. Most people are familiar with David and his story. He was a man after God’s own heart, and so God promised Him that David’s line would continue and produce the Savior of the world. Solomon started out pretty good, but he had a big Achille’s heel – women! In fact, he had 1,000 wives and concubines, and the Bible says that Solomon was not wholly devoted to God, so all of these wives (many from foreign countries that worshiped false gods) turned Solomon’s heart from God and he started also worshiping false gods. This was the one thing that God absolutely would not tolerate (and god the nation of Israel in trouble over and over and over again). So, God said He was going to take the kingdom away from Solomon’s family, but since He made that promise to David, God would allow Solomon’s son Rehoboam to retain two of the 12 tribes of Israel: Judah and Benjamin.

Enter Jeroboam. We find the story in I Kings 11. The Bible says that Jeroboam was a valiant young man, and Solomon noticed him and gave him some authority. God also noticed Jeroboam and sent a prophet to chat with him. The prophet basically tells Jeroboam that because Solomon has wholeheartedly followed God, God was going to remove all but the 2 tribes from his son, and God had decided to make Jeroboam the king of the other 10 tribes.

The prophet Ahijah tells Jeroboam just what God wants from him in verses 37 and 38, “I will take you, and you shall reign over whatever you desire, and you shall be king over Israel. Then it will be, that if you listen to all that I command you and walk in My ways, and do what is right in My sight by observing My statutes and My commandments, as My servant David did, then I will be with you and build you an enduring house as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you.”

It’s pretty clear cut. God is promising Jeroboam that if he just follows God, Jeroboam will make his house prosper like David’s house. That was a pretty hefty promise. God is offering Jeroboam the throne and a legacy if Jeroboam just follows after God and obeys His commands.

So, it happens just as God told Jeroboam it would. Solomon dies. Rehoboam loses most the kingdom. God even intervenes when Rehoboam decides to go after Jeroboam to get his torn kingdom back together, sending a prophet to tell Rehoboam not to fight Jeroboam.

Unfortunately, Jeroboam is fearful of keeping his throne. In I Kings 12:26 and 27, it says, “Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will return to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” (emphasis mine)

If you read I Kings 11 and 12, you’ll notice that nobody is even talking about returning to Rehoboam. There are no murmurings against Jeroboam. All these fears are in his own head, and instead of remembering the promises God had made to him, Jeroboam nurtures these thoughts until his fears make him do something really, really dumb. He makes two golden calves and sets them up in two different places for the people to worship. If you know anything about the history of Israel, the previous golden calf thing didn’t turn out so well for them. Not only that, but he makes up a feast and an entire alternative religion for the Israelite people to practice.

You know, right after God removed Solomon’s son from ruling over most of the tribes of Israel for worshiping other gods. God had promised Jeroboam the throne. He had delivered on that promise.  The very first threat to Jeroboams reign as king, God diffuses.

In response to this, Jeroboam somehow comes to the conclusion that his throne is in jeopardy if the people go to Jerusalem to worship (which was in Rehoboam’s territory), so he needs to make false gods.

Yep, that makes total sense.

You’ll notice the fears that Jeroboam has all originate in his own head. Satan is a master at taking the areas we are insecure and with a few well-placed whispers, fanning the flames into all out terror and fear. In our panic, we end up doing something really stupid just like Jeroboam.

I can point my finger at Jeroboam all I want, but I tend to have short term memory loss when it comes to remembering God’s promises and the ways He has come through for me, too. How about you?

I think we can learn something from Jeroboam though. We can learn the art of taking our thoughts captive, because if Jeroboam had immediately recognized that his thoughts had run away with him, he could have at least tried to reign them in.

We actually have an advantage over Jeroboam. No, we don’t have prophets that come to our doorstep and share directly from God, but we have God’s Word written down that we can turn to anytime we want. God has given us a grid through which to run our thoughts and fears. It’s in Philippians 4:8. “Finally, brethren, 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.” The word dwell here is the Greek word logizomai which means to reckon or count over. Vine’s says it means, “to think upon a matter by way of taking account of its character.”

So, that means we are to take account of the character of our thoughts. Are they true, honorable, right, pure, lovely of good repute or excellent? If so dwell on those things. The opposite is implied here. If they aren’t, don’t count them over.  The idea of recounting something brings to mind someone obsessively counting their money or of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings taking out his ring and continually rubbing it and calling it, “His precious.”

Quite honestly, if we only ask ourselves about the truth of our thoughts, we’d be much further ahead. How many times have you worked yourself into a knot over something that isn’t even true? We fret and worry and freak out over something that we don’t even know to be true. We treat our “what ifs” like they are gospel truth, and the more we repeat them to ourselves, the more likely it seems like they will come true.

So how about you? What are your thoughts like? Is the inward soundtrack in your mind feeding your fears? If so, what can you do today to turn the sound track off and start playing some truth instead? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

I’m going to admit something to you. I’m sort of cheating. See, I am doing a workshop on fear for a youth conference, and it is taking up much of my time and attention as I study and prepare for it. So, to be honest, fear is kind of on my mind, and so, I’m dragging you along for the ride. I hope you don’t mind! 🙂

Four hundred years ago, a guy named Michael de Montaigne said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

Fear is something that keeps us from doing so many things. It steals the joy from our days, prevents sleep, costs us peace of mind and even money. But according to a recent study, 85% of the things we worry will happen never do, and with the 15 percent that do happen, 79% of the test subjects said they handled it better than they thought or that the event taught them a valuable lesson that was worth it. So, that basically means that about 97% of the stuff you worry about is a huge, colossal waste of time!

As I was studying to get ready for this workshop, I was sort of stumped as to which way to go because honestly, there are SO many examples of fearful people in the Bible, it was hard to pick someone to focus on. While I dearly love the whole Bible, and the truths found in the New Testament make up the foundation of my faith and theology, I have to admit, that I really love the Old Testament. I guess it’s probably because, at heart, I am a storyteller and I can’t resist a good story. And the Old Testament is filled with some of the most interesting (and bizarre) characters around – many of whom struggled in some way or another with fear.

I thought today, we’d take a little tour of some well-known people in the pages of the Bible, our own little Fear Hall of Fame, if you will. Some of these folks might surprise you because they are better known for their moments of faith. In fact, several of them are also listed in the Hebrews 11 passage which is often called the Faith Hall of Fame. Which just goes to show you, just because you are fearful in this moment, that doesn’t mean that you can’t walk in faith in the future. Today, though, let’s take a peek at the Fear Hall of Fame and see what we can learn about the lies fear tells us.

The very first story in the Bible is about Adam and Eve. You might be wondering what they have to do with fear, but Eve’s whole eating-the-fruit-she-shouldn’t-have debacle is rooted in the fear that God is not really good. (I wrote more about Eve in my Women of the Bible series) She took that orange or apple or mango after Satan tempted her, but he was just watering the insecurities and fears that were already seeds in her heart. She was afraid that God was holding out on her. She had this entire, perfect garden, but there was one thing God wasn’t giving her. And she was afraid He was holding back something that was good. She couldn’t understand in her human, finite mind why the tree was off limits, and so in her fear, she assumed it meant God was keeping back something that was good.  Fear tells us that God isn’t really for us. 

Abraham is probably most well-known for the fact that he took off for points unknown just because God asked him to. He’s also well-known for being willing to sacrifice his son, also because God asked him to. What isn’t as well-known is that along the way, he ran into a few kings who thought his wife was super hot. So, in fear, Abraham asked Sarah to pretend to be his sister. Yeah – not cool. He believed God enough to follow Him into the unknown. He believed God enough to be willing to sacrifice the son he had waited for forever. But keeping a few kings from killing him over his very gorgeous wife. Nope. Apparently, that was too big for God. Fear makes us forget how God came through for us in the past.

God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child. But when menopause came and went, and there was still no child, Sarah decided she needed to do something to make that happen. God had said a child of Abraham’s body (and implied it would be Sarah’s child, too), so Sarah rationalized her way into giving her maid Hagar to Abraham in the first case of surrogacy on record. This decision caused a heap of trouble that has rippled through history. The Jewish people and the Arab people are still fighting it out. Fear tells us the natural order of things is bigger than God’s promises. 

All his life, Jacob’s mom had told him he was going to get the blessing, that he would be treated like the first born, but when things got down to the wire, Jacob felt like he had to step in and sort things out. He feared that God wouldn’t follow through on His promise (or maybe he feared his mother was delusional after childbirth). In any case, by stepping in, Jacob ended up on the run from his family for years, and he never saw his mom again. Fear tells us that time will run out before God comes through for us. 

God appeared to Moses in a burning bush (which incidentally didn’t freak him out), but when God asked Moses to go back and talk to Pharaoh, Moses came up with just about every excuse in the book as to why he wasn’t the man for the job – from fearing he wouldn’t know what to say to fearing he wouldn’t be believed to fearing his speech impediment would keep the message from being effective, God finally had to get angry to get Moses moving. A funny little story from this encounter. When Moses asked how the people would believe he was sent from God, God gave him a few signs he could perform. One of them was throwing his staff down and it would become a snake. When this actually happened, it says that Moses fled. Apparently, he was afraid of snakes, too. Fear tells us God has called us to something He failed to equip us for. 

Saul looked like a king. The Bible said he was head and shoulders above all the men. But despite his kingly appearance, Saul was kind of a scaredy-cat on the inside. In fact, when it came time to crown him as king, they found him hiding in a shed. The man had some serious insecurities. The secret to those fears can be found in I Samuel 9:21. When Samuel finds Saul and tells him that he wants to eat a meal with him, Saul replies, “Saul replied, “Am I not a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and my family the least of all the families of the  tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak to me in this way?” Fear tells us we are not enough. 

These are only a fraction of the people fear sidelined or took out all together that litter the pages of the Bible. I hope you’ll join me as we look more closely at fear, what it is, and how we can overcome it.

So, what are you most afraid of? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

Before I get started. I wanted to congratulate Diana Knapp who won the copy of Triggers in the recent give-away! Congrats Diana! I’d love to hear what you think of the book after you read it!

For many of you, this past Sunday was one of celebration – the celebration of a Savior who is risen. After all, that’s what makes Jesus so different than other religious types. His promises weren’t empty. In fact, the only thing empty was the grave that couldn’t hold Him!

Although my particular church tradition does not observe Lent or Holy Week, I was doing a study on the life of Jesus by Beth Moore that happened to culminate with Jesus death and resurrection this past weekend. I didn’t actually plan it that way, but I was so thankful that it happened that way. It felt like I walked with Jesus that last week and it made Easter Sunday all the more meaningful to me.

The study didn’t end though with Easter Sunday. It went through to the end of the book of Luke when Jesus, blessing His followers, ascended back into heaven. Just like us, the next day dawned after Easter Sunday, and we have to ask ourselves what we are going to do with it.

Because the mundane of Monday always follows celebration of Sunday, doesn’t it?

Some of the Gospels have several chapters after the resurrection, but not Luke. Luke wraps up his Gospel pretty quickly after the women find the stone rolled away that resurrection morning.

But Luke does include a little journey taken on the Emmaus road that is rather interesting, and it is not recorded anywhere else in the Gospels . Although it happened centuries ago, that walk on Emmaus Road has something to teach us today. You can find the story in Luke 24: 13-35.

This part of the story takes place right after the women had gone to the tomb and found it empty. They run back and tell the disciples but it says in verse 11, “But these words appeared as nonsense, and they would not believe them.”

Then Peter runs to the tomb and also finds it empty, but the others still can’t really believe that Jesus is risen. Even though Jesus told them about a thousand times that that was what was going to happen, they just can’t quite bring themselves to believe Jesus.

So, two of Jesus’s followers – we’re told that one was named Cleopas – start on the seven mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and along the way they have an interesting encounter.

As they walk along, discussing the past several days’ events, a man joins them. He asks what they are talking about and Cleopas basically asks the man if he’d been living under a rock since everyone else knew that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified. In verse 21, we come to an interesting sentence. Because remember, before Jesus died, He very clearly said He’d die but would rise again on the third day. The women had been to the tomb and seen that it was empty. Peter had been to the tomb and also observed that it was empty.

So Cleopas says with this very gloomy, sad look on his face, “But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.”

Despite Jesus’ promises, despite the evidence staring them in the face, Cleopas and his unnamed companion have lost their hope.  I think we can learn a lot from these two men because we sometimes lose our hope too – because we put our hope in something other than Jesus. Let’s look at four ways they misplaced their hope.

They were so overcome by Jesus death that they couldn’t believe in His resurrection – even when the evidence was right in front of them. 

We can scoff if we want, but how many times do we miss the obvious blessing or work God is doing because all we can see are the circumstances. Let’s face it, in today’s world, all we have to do is turn on the news or surf the internet, and there are plenty of circumstances that could discourage us and make us feel helpless and hopeless. It’s easy to let the pile of hard stuff obscure the real source of our hope for the future.

Their hope was in earthly deliverance when Jesus offered so much more than that – eternal deliverance. 

Cleopas and his friend were upset because even though they believed that Jesus was the Messiah, their idea of deliverance was vastly different than God’s plan of deliverance. You see, many who followed Jesus were expecting an earthly kingdom right then and there. They were wanting Jesus to throw off their Roman oppressors. They were looking so intently for an earthly deliverance, they missed that Jesus had provided an eternal deliverance.

We do the same thing. We see all the problems in this world and we look to a politician or a system or a program to fix it. Psalms 146:3 says, “Do not trust in princes or mortal men, in whom there is no salvation.”

It goes on to say in verse 5, “How blessed is the he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose help is in the Lord his God.”

No matter how many promises someone makes or how good they look, we risk losing our hope when we place it in anyone other than Jesus Christ.

They saw life in the immediate and missed the bigger spiritual picture. 

Like Cleopas and his friend, I know I often get so bogged down in the details of my daily life, so immersed in the minutia of the mundane,  I totally miss the bigger, eternal picture. Even though we live here on earth every day, this is actually not our home. We are just supposed to be passing through. When we keep that in mind, it is a bit easier to pull back from daily life and catch a glimpse of God’s bigger plans. All Cleopas and his friend could see was Jesus’ death. He didn’t realize that in losing the battle, Jesus had ultimately won the war.

They were so focused on what they considered the answers, they missed Jesus right in front of them.

It’s natural to look for the answers to our immediate problems , but like these two men, we can become so taken up with the “right” answers, we miss Jesus in our midst. We can get so taken up with what the world offers up as a good solution, we forget that God often chooses the most unlikely answers, and people, to reach the best conclusion.

There is a lot going on in the world today – from the crazy election season to the terrorist bombing of the Brussels’ airport. It’s so easy to set our sights on something or someone who can fix it and make it better. In fact, we can get so taken up with the person or thing that we think is the answer, that we forget that no matter what happens, Jesus is ALWAYS the answer, that He never leaves us or let’s us down (which is more than we can say for any human).

So, let’s not only celebrate Easter as a day to remember Christ’s resurrection but let’s allow it to remind us where to place our hope – not in any person, place or thing in this world, no matter how appealing.

People and plans will always let us down, but Jesus is always faithful. He is our anchor of hope. Without that anchor, like the two men walking to Emmaus, we too would be sadly adrift and without hope.

Blessings, Rosanne