Seeing God in the Circumstances of My Life

I am an old woman of almost 84 years. I like to call them ‘the bonus years.’ I get that from the Bible which says “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures…” (Psalm 90:10 NIV)

I keep an index card on my desk which is a quote from Fenelon’s book entitled “The Seeking Heart.” It reads: “See God’s hand in the circumstances of your life.” 

Out of the “circumstances” of my early childhood I have always been a questioner, a searcher, a ponderer of people, places and things. So in that vain, when I read that quote, I looked up circumstances in the dictionary*, It read as follows:

“circumstances 

-condition, fact, or event accompanying or determining the occurrence of another fact or event.

-condition in regard to worldly estate.” 

Today, the circumstances of my life are that our world is in what is being called “The Covid-19 Global Pandemic”— apparently started in China, has moved across the world and has now come to us here in the United States. In the state where I live, Idaho, we are some of the last to receive this virus. 

There are some real benefits to being the last! We can surely learn from all that the rest of the world has been going through and hopefully be wise in seeing the mistakes they have made but also as to what worked or is working. That would be first hand knowledge in a manner of speaking in that we are experiencing their ‘story’ in real time via all of the technology at our disposal today. 

Being the age I am, I feel I am actually blest with a unique perspective. 

When I was a child we didn’t even have a TV! We were too poor. The way we heard of the ending of WWII was by being huddled around our old upright radio, which I gave to my oldest son and I believe his oldest son now has in his home.

And yes! We had a phone and it hung on the wall and to call your neighbors you actually dialed their number and I still remember ours to this day, it was ‘2F24’ See how old I am! (And to think my great-grandchildren have not experienced life without a cellphone or iPad! I have heard that started around 2007 or sometime there about.)

But now,  back to ‘Seeing God in the circumstances of my life.’

I really did not like history class in high school. Not US History! Not World History!  But somehow, someway in God’s mysterious ways of dealing with us all, at some point I became interested in Biblical history. Not particularly how the Bible came down to us in all of it’s versions as important as that is, (and it is) but the stories of the history of the peoples recorded in the Bible.

Meanwhile, back to the dictionary definition of ‘circumstances’ this morning I noticed in that second part of the definition it mentioned only ‘worldly estate.’ Curiously I see I have always been ‘other-worldly’ minded. And that ‘other world’ always seemed to me God had something to do with.  I think I came to that conclusion as a child of five as I sat under the “Prayer Changes Things” plaque outside my mother’s bedroom. 

True, I was a child raised in church and going to church as a family. So obviously I was exposed to that view of the world. I realize some have not and some have been so tainted or put-off by all that ‘church stuff’ and they don’t have the same frame reference that I do. Be that as it may, I am sharing with you ‘the circumstances of my life’ and those were my circumstances.

Yesterday I listened to a portion of PBS news and Ann Patchett who is an author and part-owner of Parnassus Books gave suggestions on what to read together on Zoom or other apps available to us during these ‘circumstances of life’ we find ourselves in today.

So, I recommend to you the amazing history book of Jeremiah in the Bible** that contains stories just like ours today. Just this morning a friend of mine and I read together the story of an ancient people called the Israelites and you find their story in that book. The part of their story we read this morning was from Chapter 29-31. It was a delightful exercise this reading a book together over the phone.

We found wonderful advise there about what voices to listen to in times like these. Helpful words about panic, and conflicting messages, and God’s word to them “Don’t despair!” And so much more, not avoiding the reality of the situation, but a reassuring word that God still is in control and always has been.

Quoted Material:

Psalm 90:10 (NIV)

The Seeking Heart – Fenelon

*Webster’s Secondary School Dictionary with pages torn and cover nearly falling off, copyright date torn out by ‘wear and tear’ of use.! 🙂

**We read it together from Eugene Peterson’s “The Message:The Bible in Contemporary Language” but there are many versions out there even online apps.

Seeing God in the Circumstances of My Life

I am an old woman of almost 84 years. I like to call them ‘the bonus years.’ I get that from the Bible which says “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures…” (Psalm 90:10 NIV)

I keep an index card on my desk which is a quote from Fenelon’s book entitled “The Seeking Heart.” It reads: “See God’s hand in the circumstances of your life.”

Out of the “circumstances” of my early childhood I have always been a questioner, a searcher, a ponderer of people, places and things. So in that vain, when I read that quote, I looked up circumstances in the dictionary*, It read as follows:

“circumstances

-condition, fact, or event accompanying or determining the occurrence of another fact or event.

-condition in regard to worldly estate.”

Today, the circumstances of my life are that our world is in what is being called “The Covid-19 Global Pandemic”— apparently started in China, has moved across the world and has now come to us here in the United States. In the state where I live, Idaho, we are some of the last to receive this virus.

There are some real benefits to being the last! We can surely learn from all that the rest of the world has been going through and hopefully be wise in seeing the mistakes they have made but also as to what worked or is working. That would be first hand knowledge in a manner of speaking in that we are experiencing their ‘story’ in real time via all of the technology at our disposal today.

Being the age I am, I feel I am actually blest with a unique perspective.

When I was a child we didn’t even have a TV! We were too poor. The way we heard of the ending of WWII was by being huddled around our old upright radio, which I gave to my oldest son and I believe his oldest son now has in his home.

And yes! We had a phone and it hung on the wall and to call your neighbors you actually dialed their number and I still remember ours to this day, it was ‘2F24’ See how old I am! (And to think my great-grandchildren have not experienced life without a cellphone or iPad! I have heard that started around 2007 or sometime there about.)

But now,  back to ‘Seeing God in the circumstances of my life.’

I really did not like history class in high school. Not US History! Not World History!  But somehow, someway in God’s mysterious ways of dealing with us all, at some point I became interested in Biblical history. Not particularly how the Bible came down to us in all of it’s versions as important as that is, (and it is) but the stories of the history of the peoples recorded in the Bible.

Meanwhile, back to the dictionary definition of ‘circumstances’ this morning I noticed in that second part of the definition it mentioned only ‘worldly estate.’ Curiously I see I have always been ‘other-worldly’ minded. And that ‘other world’ always seemed to me God had something to do with.  I think I came to that conclusion as a child of five as I sat under the “Prayer Changes Things” plaque outside my mother’s bedroom.

True, I was a child raised in church and going to church as a family. So obviously I was exposed to that view of the world. I realize some have not and some have been so tainted or put-off by all that ‘church stuff’ and they don’t have the same frame reference that I do. Be that as it may, I am sharing with you ‘the circumstances of my life’ and those were my circumstances.

Yesterday I listened to a portion of PBS news and Ann Patchett who is an author and part-owner of Parnassus Books gave suggestions on what to read together on Zoom or other apps available to us during these ‘circumstances of life’ we find ourselves in today.

So, I recommend to you the amazing history book of Jeremiah in the Bible** that contains stories just like ours today. Just this morning a friend of mine and I read together the story of an ancient people called the Israelites and you find their story in that book. The part of their story we read this morning was from Chapter 29-31. It was a delightful exercise this reading a book together over the phone.

We found wonderful advise there about what voices to listen to in times like these. Helpful words about panic, and conflicting messages, and God’s word to them “Don’t despair!” And so much more, not avoiding the reality of the situation, but a reassuring word that God still is in control and always has been.

Quoted Material:

Psalm 90:10 (NIV)

The Seeking Heart – Fenelon

*Webster’s Secondary School Dictionary with pages torn and cover nearly falling off, copyright date torn out by ‘wear and tear’ of use.! 🙂

**We read it together from Eugene Peterson’s “The Message:The Bible in Contemporary Language” but there are many versions out there even online apps.

In Holy Fear

As I write this morning the world is in what is called a “global pandemic.” A vicious virus named “Covid 19” seems to have started in China, and has been spreading apparently silently and rapidly across the world. It has now arrived in the United States. If we did not believe before that we are a global society and not just living on a global economy that reality has now hit us square in the face.  All of us together live in a world that someone originally created for us all to live in. At least for me that seems like a bedrock truth. 

For most of my life I have been a reader of the Bible. Of late I have been pondering anew the 11th chapter of Hebrews in the New Testament which I like to call “The Hall of Faith.”

To my great surprise this morning I found a story that is dissimilar and not dissimilar at all to this global pandemic we are now in, and it has to do with fear. It is found in Hebrews 11:7 and it reads:

“By Faith Noah when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.”

Noah was told a pretty fearful thing! The whole human race was going to be destroyed! (Genesis 5:7) What I had not noticed with such impact until this morning was that it was in holy fear that Noah built the ark. Until just now, in this our world pandemic, and the fear we see demonstrated all around, I do not think I have realized the depth and weight of those words. I just must write them again, holy…..fear. Somehow it just calls to me this morning, drawing me in close. In the part of the world I live in I am seeing the panic and terror of fear displayed by empty shelves in the grocery stores emptied by the terror in people. There seems to be nothing holy there at all! Now others can’t find those basics on the shelves, will there be enough to go around?

So, once again I am drawn to Hebrews 11 and taking a deep look at all of the people mentioned and  finding their back-story  and realizing that every story has a  bit of mine too. In fact every big and little story in the Bible gives me a glimpse into how my little story is not that much different from everyone else’s in the world. The reality that comes down to me in this “unprecedented time,” as heard over and over again on the news, is that our current story is really not “unprecedented” at all! It has all been lived and told before.

What will be the end to all of these stories? At some level I believe it depends on our choices……..doesn’t it? 

Perhaps this is a time for us all to ponder anew the age old story of the Biblical account of the creation of the world and take stock not of our shelves, refrigerators or freezers, but of our very own lives. You can find it to read or review in the very first book Genesis and perhaps it might read a little different in this time of global pandemic. Perhaps you too could be convinced like Noah and believe God’s account of things.

I close with the first three verses of Hebrews 11 as rendered in my NIV Bible:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

My question today is “Is my fear holy?   How about yours?

Where does my faith lie?  How about yours?”

Scripture References:

Hebrews 11

Genesis 1-5

Quotations from the NIV Bible

In Holy Fear

As I write this morning the world is in what is called a “global pandemic.” A vicious virus named “Covid 19” seems to have started in China, and has been spreading apparently silently and rapidly across the world. It has now arrived in the United States. If we did not believe before that we are a global society and not just living on a global economy that reality has now hit us square in the face.  All of us together live in a world that someone originally created for us all to live in. At least for me that seems like a bedrock truth.

For most of my life I have been a reader of the Bible. Of late I have been pondering anew the 11th chapter of Hebrews in the New Testament which I like to call “The Hall of Faith.”

To my great surprise this morning I found a story that is dissimilar and not dissimilar at all to this global pandemic we are now in, and it has to do with fear. It is found in Hebrews 11:7 and it reads:

“By Faith Noah when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.”

Noah was told a pretty fearful thing! The whole human race was going to be destroyed! (Genesis 5:7) What I had not noticed with such impact until this morning was that it was in holy fear that Noah built the ark. Until just now, in this our world pandemic, and the fear we see demonstrated all around, I do not think I have realized the depth and weight of those words. I just must write them again, holy…..fear. Somehow it just calls to me this morning, drawing me in close. In the part of the world I live in I am seeing the panic and terror of fear displayed by empty shelves in the grocery stores emptied by the terror in people. There seems to be nothing holy there at all! Now others can’t find those basics on the shelves, will there be enough to go around?

So, once again I am drawn to Hebrews 11 and taking a deep look at all of the people mentioned and  finding their back-storie  and realizing that every story has a  bit of mine too. In fact every big and little story in the Bible gives me a glimpse into how my little story is not that much different from everyone else’s in the world. The reality that comes down to me in this “unprecedented time,” as heard over and over again on the news, is that our current story is really not “unprecedented” at all! It has all been lived and told before.

What will be the end to all of these stories? At some level I believe it depends on our choices……..doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is a time for us all to ponder anew the age old story of the Biblical account of the creation of the world and take stock not of our shelves, refrigerators or freezers, but of our very own lives. You can find it to read or review in the very first book Genesis and perhaps it might read a little different in this time of global pandemic. Perhaps you too could be convinced like Noah and believe God’s account of things.

I close with the first three verses of Hebrews 11 as rendered in my NIV Bible:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

My question today is “Is my fear holy?   How about yours?

Where does my faith lie?  How about yours?”

Scripture References:

Hebrews 11

Genesis 1-5

Quotations from the NIV Bible

Be Still and Be….

Many years ago I read the following “Be still and know that I am God” which of course is a quote from Psalm 46 in the Bible. But it was the way it was written down that drew my attention. I share it here this morning in our current world wide crisis of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know that!

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be!

With all of the current ‘goings on in the world’ that have been called to a halt we are being mandated by the ‘powers that be’ to come back to the opportunity to just….well …be.

I have always been full of questions! So my question now is do I even know how to be? What does it even mean to be? My trusted guide is the Bible since I believe it to be the inspired word of the God who formed me.  

Each year on my birthday I like to read Psalm 139 because it particularly reminds me that I would not be here on earth had it not been for the truth I find in verse 13 which says: “for you (God) created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  

I have a new ‘great-grand,’ as I like to call my great-grandchildren. It is my 60 plus year old son’s first grand baby. In this current age of instant access to everything it is a joy for me to see my ‘great-grand’ almost everyday through myriad of pictures. One of the earliest pictures was of him nursing at his mother’s breast and immediately my mind remembered a phrase from Psalm 22 which says :”..You (God) brought me out of the womb; you (God) made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.” (NIV) 

But perhaps my favorite of recent is my son holding Mikey Marvin under his precious little arms and talking gently to him and Mikey is trying so hard to talk back. The powerful impact that came to me is that precious child can not do anything for himself but cry. He cannot feed himself, change himself, take care of himself only cry for help and when responded to respond in kind.

So perhaps in this critical time in our world we all can come to value once more what every infant knows from birth that he is dependent on someone.  And the God I believe in claimed it was He who made it so and it will always be so.

So today even though it is hard to just … be..  I can… Be still and know that He is God. 

I pray that for you as well!

References:

Psalm 46:10

Psalm 139:13

Psalm 22:9

Be Still and Be….

Many years ago I read the following “Be still and know that I am God” which of course is a quote from Psalm 46 in the Bible. But it was the way it was written down that drew my attention. I share it here this morning in our current world wide crisis of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know that!

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be!

With all of the current ‘goings on in the world’ that have been called to a halt we are being mandated by the ‘powers that be’ to come back to the opportunity to just….well …be.

I have always been full of questions! So my question now is do I even know how to be? What does it even mean to be? My trusted guide is the Bible since I believe it to be the inspired word of the God who formed me.  

Each year on my birthday I like to read Psalm 139 because it particularly reminds me that I would not be here on earth had it not been for the truth I find in verse 13 which says: “for you (God) created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  

I have a new ‘great-grand,’ as I like to call my great-grandchildren. It is my 60 plus year old son’s first grand baby. In this current age of instant access to everything it is a joy for me to see my ‘great-grand’ almost everyday through myriad of pictures. One of the earliest pictures was of him nursing at his mother’s breast and immediately my mind remembered a phrase from Psalm 22 which says :”..You (God) brought me out of the womb; you (God) made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.” (NIV) 

But perhaps my favorite of recent is my son holding Mikey Marvin under his precious little arms and talking gently to him and Mikey is trying so hard to talk back. The powerful impact that came to me is that precious child can not do anything for himself but cry. He cannot feed himself, change himself, take care of himself only cry for help and when responded to respond in kind.

So perhaps in this critical time in our world we all can come to value once more what every infant knows from birth that he is dependent on someone.  And the God I believe in claimed it was He who made it so and it will always be so.

So today even though it is hard to just … be..  I can… Be still and know that He is God. 

I pray that for you as well!

References:

Psalm 46:10

Psalm 139:13

Psalm 22:9