The Cupboard is Bare

Isn’t it amazing how we can have a cupboard full of food, yet can hear the cry from our families, “There’s nothing here to eat?” We know there is plenty of food in the house. No one is going to starve. But then they know that, too. They’re not really saying they can’t find anything to eat. What they’re looking for is something that will satisfy. Our souls are like that. We long for something that will satisfy our inner hunger. We look into the cupboard that is filled with all the world has to offer: movies, relationships, big houses, fast cars, and nice vacations, and yet see nothing to eat – nothing to satisfy. But God knows how to satisfy our hunger pangs.
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Does God Have A Workout Plan?

By Cheri Cowell

Most of us have some form of health goals for the New Year. It seems that every other commercial on television is about losing weight or getting healthy. I’m told that gym memberships increase by over 60% the first six weeks of the year, but decline to their normal numbers after that. Just this week I heard a fitness expert say we need to spend at least three hours each week on some form of physical exercise, and double that if we want to lose weight. He said that for most people, simply walking more is a good place to start in order to create an exercise habit that will stay with us throughout our lives.

How many of us have similar goals for our spiritual exercise? The goal of living longer, being healthier, and possibly looking better this time next year propels us towards making lifestyle changes. But what image or goal is going to drive us to make the commitments needed for our spiritual exercise?

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A New You

By Cheri Cowell

We talked often in my childhood home of what heaven was going to be like. We spoke of the people we loved who had gone before us and what fun they must be having in the perfect place God had prepared for them. We just knew that my great-grandmother, Mumsey, was in a perfectly outfitted kitchen, baking heavenly treats for the heavenly host. We knew my grandfather was in the woodshop building beautiful pieces of furniture for the many altars in heaven. I now appreciate the gift my parents gave me in providing those happy discussions of heaven.

My father was a diabetic and took insulin shots three times daily from the age of nine. He is now in heaven and I am grateful he no longer suffers that pain because he has a new body and one day I know I will be with him again and will hug him with my new body. What a gift that assurance is.

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Pointing Fingers

By Cheri Cowell

Have you ever spent time with someone who finds fault with everything and everyone? These people drain us. It’s easy if we just chime in, but tiring if we’re working hard not to join them. While walking by someone dressed inappropriately a negative comment slips, then the conversation quickly turns to the loose morals of society and how our mother never would have let us out of the house dressed that way. How easily we use our superior yardstick to judge others.

In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders were the keepers of the moral codes, and thus arbiters of who was acceptable to God. If anyone had studied the codes they would have discovered no one followed them and thus no one deserved acceptance. In order to cover this weakness, the elite created more difficult-to-track rules. Following rules—and pointing fingers when they were broken—consumed them.

Jesus came along and said, “I am setting up a new kingdom with a new way.” He knew we couldn’t keep all the rules, and that keeping rules was not the point. He wanted us to simply love others as we have been loved, and to give grace as we’ve been given grace. That doesn’t leave us much room for pointing fingers, does it?

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New Creatures

By Cheri Cowell

We are fascinated by the movie concept of humans remade into bigger and better beings. From Clark Kent to Superman, from David Banner to the Incredible Hulk, we have been frightened and at the same time drawn to the concept of transformation. In Hollywood, at least for now, transformations from good to evil have proven disastrous, but those from ordinary to extraordinary have saved the day.

Might it be that we are so drawn to these transformations because deep in our hearts God has planted a seed of transformation? Might it be that we know we are destined for a re-make?

Without God we can only imagine a transformation like those of Hollywood. Yet, God is better than any movie producer ever was. His “movie” stars a man from Galilee who dies a horrible death in order to defeat death itself. As the victor of that battle, He has won the right to transform His followers into His own image, and He sets about this task one heart at a time until the entire world has been offered the opportunity to accept this transformation. The transformed then become part of His Army of Believers, doing battle every day with an unseen enemy, but with an outcome that is already guaranteed. Isn’t this the best movie ever written?

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