Is your dream as dried up as a "raisin in the sun'?

 My journal entry for May 2005 included this verse from Psalm 71: I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord God. I will make mention of Thy righteousness, Thine alone. And even when I am old and gray O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Thy strength to this generation, Thy power to all who are to come.

My prayer following this entry was, “Lord, I love to speak publicly and I desire to write a book. Both require having something to say! I offer this “loaf and fish” unto you. I open my mouth and ask you to fill it.”

Today, June 2013, eight years later, I did a radio interview with Lynne Ford at WBCL Indiana about Call of a Coward-The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife. The book I ended up writing years after the seed of desire was planted in my heart. Back in 2005, I was totally unaware of the path that was opening before me: a book written and published without my ever writing a book proposal. (Thank you God!)

But as I was praying before the interview, I thought of how often I’d heard Satan was the prince of the power of the air. For a fleeting moment a flicker of fear passed through me. Later, as radio host Lynne and I prayed together, I bowed in amazement at the power of the God we serve. Two Christian women, unknown to each other, but connected over the radio waves to proclaim the mighty deeds of the Lord. What had I to fear.

I look back over the past few years and wonder how I could worry my time for usefulness has passed. I marvel at the times I let hope leak out of me like air in saggy pool float, or let fear dismantle a dream.

It’s easy to feel confidence in retrospect. And yet it’s so human to lose the mountain vision down in the shadowy valley, where as the psalmist says, sadness and despair can make us think God has left us:  “it is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”—Psalm 77:10

Today as I celebrate the deeds of the unchanging Lord in my life and in the lives of his people, I think of you who feel your dreams have “dried up like a raisin in the sun,” as Langston Hughes writes.  You who are in the middle of a chapter that doesn't look as though it is going to have a good ending.

I want to encourage you with a prayer from Ephesians, but it’s hard to choose one because I have so many underlined in my Bible. Let me piece one together for you:

Father, you tell us to remember, but we forget. You tell us you are, and we worry you can’t. We don’t want to dish your word out like candy to a crying babe. We want to speak it for what it is—the word of God, which performs its work in us who believe.—1 Thess. 2:13

May we remember we are your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which you prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We ask to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge that we may be filled up to all the fullness of God. And that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened, so that we may know what is the hope of your calling, what are the riches of the glory of your inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of your power to us who believe.

(Eph 2:10, 3:19,1:18)

Blessings abundant friends. May you pick up that dream and offer it to the Lord,

Marcia

Ant power

There’s probably no better way to learn something than to teach it (other than falling flat on your face in front of the person you were most hoping to impress). So as my memoir class and I explore what our stories are really about, I ask myself “So what? What’s the story?” as I think of a funny anecdote, or a news headline, or even a scene that captures my attention.

Like this picture I took while my husband, pooch, and I were doing our daily doggie/owner health trip around the track. I keep coming back to it, wanting to draw wisdom, or life lesson, or something cosmically profound.

But it is in fact, simply an ant hole bursting through a paved walkway.

Beautiful in symmetry, I think. Rose-colored South Carolina clay mounded on asphalt. Maybe that’s reason enough to share it, but I, the forever lesson-maker, want to make something more.

I look up Scriptures referring to ants: Proverbs 30:25 says they are small but exceedingly wise because they use the bounty of the summer to keep them during the winter. Proverbs 6:6, curiously enough, uses the word wise again, telling us to look to them and be wise. I file the word “wise” and note the admonition to prepare and be good stewards.

I try the Internet: Ants. The largest around 11/2 inches; the smallest, a dash called the thief ant because it steals others’ larvae and food to feed its own. Impressive info; I move on. Ants are strong and can run fast. In comparison, if I had ant power, I could lift a car and outrun a racehorse. Amazing. Yet when you look at one of those little buggers (insects really) you can’t see the strength and power contained in that tiny body.

The thought of such marvels always brings me back to God. I think of how much strength He has put in the human will—attested to by the thousands of stories of endurance and survival over incredible odds. But even more than that—the power God says we have because of his spirit in us.

We don’t always grasp that so well. We know God says it. We memorize the verses:  “Now to him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory . . .” but all we see is the little ant with its six skinny legs.

And then, there are those days when we are stopped in our tracks by a tidy tunnel of dirt bursting through the pavement, and we remember—God always makes a way. Sometimes it is just a sliver of a crack in the darkness, but it is enough.

How great you are my God. You are beyond understanding. Many are the wonders you have done so that men would seek you.

I glory in your holy name; I will seek you and your strength. I will seek your face and remember the wonderful works you have done.—1Chronicles 16:10-12

  

Thank you for stopping by. May you see glorious reminders of his presence this day.