Giving All—Mind, Body and Brownies

By Rhonda Rhea –

My workout routine for today: stirred brownie batter. It was really thick brownie batter too. So thick I’m probably going to need a nap. Right after I eat this brownie.

I was contemplating being out of shape the other day as I pulled out my new gym membership card. I should explain here that my new gym membership card isn’t nearly so much about my workout routine as it is my imagination. But I figure even if I don’t have an active lifestyle, at least I do have an active imagination. So there’s that. Now if I can only teach myself to eat imaginary brownies. Yeah, not very likely, that.

Still, pretty sure I’ll eventually need to do something about all these layers insulating my abs. Disturbing as it is, each layer is about the consistency of brownie batter. Like parfait gone terribly wrong. Ew.

Didn’t I read somewhere I could “think” myself thin? In that vein, I think I’ll plan some imaginary cardio for later this afternoon. Then again, for all of us who plan to “think” our exercise, abs of batter will probably always be our buns of steel.

While we’re thinking about it, how about a reminder to put more than just thought into our faith life? An intellectual exercise alone will do about as much for our spiritual well-being as imaginary exercise will do for us physically.

Maybe you’ve read Romans 12: 1-2 even more times than I’ve dodged my workouts. I read it routinely. And though I read it routinely, it’s always a heart-charger. Like spiritual cardio, this passage so often becomes a faith workout routine for my heart and mind: “Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God” (HCSB).

That’s the kind of spiritual cardio that is truly heart-changing. I’m reminded here to present my body, brownies and all. And I’m reminded to let my mind be renewed too. Both are exercises of obedience. Both are exercises of faith. The Lord wants our bodies. He wants our minds. He wants us heart, soul—absolutely all. He wants us in the most complete, scrape-every-part-of-the-bowl way.

Following Him is not merely an intellectual exercise. It’s verified in our sacrifice. It’s at the point of total surrender that we’re free to understand, to “discern,” the “perfect will of God.”

O Lord, may we be ever-ready to give body, mind, heart and soul to you in loving obedience.

As far as the physical workout goes, I’m thinking one of the things I should exercise is better judgment. Yesterday I stood up, yawned, then totally counted that as my yoga. I don’t even do yoga. Not to mention, after that I figured I’d earned a brownie.

Blinded by the Light

By Kim Stokely –

For years, as the rest of the world succumbed to the lure of smaller, shinier and showier mobile devices, I resisted change. The last of my friends to get a cell phone, when I did, I made sure it was already archaic.

“Nothing fancy,” I told the guy at the store. “I just want to make calls, not microwave my dinner.”

I hung on to that dinosaur for as long as I could. Until it developed a mind of its own—shutting down and turning off at will. Randomly calling people when I hadn’t pressed their number. When the keyboard got so sticky I couldn’t send texts (the only way my kids communicate with me now) I broke down and entered the technologically advanced age of the smartphone (but only because anything less is now considered a museum quality antique).

And what I feared would happen, has happened.

I am constantly distracted by the shiny.

In my defense, the screen saver shot is of my adorable puppy dog.
How can I not stop to peek at her beautiful brown eyes when they appear on my phone?

And, look there! The little message face is smiling! It means I have a new text! Someone loves me! (Or they want me to pick up milk when I’m out, but the subtext is they care).

I’m not the only one. I’m sure you’ve noticed how everyone seems to keep their heads down as they type away on their mobile devices. No one has a conversation anymore without also checking their email, their Facebook page or crushing some candy. We’ve lost the art of face-to-face communication and instead find our BFFs in chat rooms and social networking sites.

But that’s not where real relationships are found.

Those are found in undistracted quiet times over a cup of coffee while you let a friend rant about a difficult job situation. They also develop in the silences that occur on long walks before the day begins, when the world, and your friend, are just waking up. Hastily written texts can’t take the place of a comforting hug. A Facebook post isn’t the same as a handwritten note.

The same is true of God. If I want a real relationship with Him, a deeper relationship, it means I have to spend time with Him. It means making myself stop playing another round of “Words with Friends” and opening up my Bible. It means not posting a picture of the great lunch I’m eating, but remembering to thank the one who provided it for me. These were things I used to do, but I’ve let myself get blinded by the lights. If I have one resolution for this coming New Year, it’s that I return to the less shiny days of my past and reconnect with God.

My “friends” on Facebook might start to wonder where I’ve gone, but God will know exactly where I am.

Cookin’ Up a Good Life

By Dawn Wilson –

Ask my family. I’m not a good cook. I’m a good baker. I’m a cookie pro. But the other stuff—nope.

Mud pies are more delectable than my beef casserole. My husband’s dinner beverage of choice is Alka-Seltzer. My sons refer to our smoke detector as “Mom’s oven timer.”

I’ve managed better in recent years. Holiday dinners now consist of Costco ready-mades.

Although my family remembers my cooking adventures with exclamations of “Yikes!” or “Oh, wow!” (and “wow” is not meant to be positive), they have other memories of home that more than make up for my recipe experiment “catastrophes.”

Looking back, I think my sons had a pretty good life, and our granddaughters are getting healthy servings of the good life, too.

By “the good life,” I don’t mean everything was peachy-keen. We weren’t “rolling in the dough,” and we had more than our share of problems; but there was something that held us together like that stuff that makes bread sticky.

No, it was someone … God.

God is the not-so-secret ingredient that helped us respond to each other in love. He showed us how to stay on mission as a family. We took Matthew 6:33 seriously: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (ESV).
The “all these things” included our food, shelter, and clothing—the basic necessities of life. Though others may not agree with our analysis, we felt rich because God was our Blessed Provider. We observed some other families with far more material possessions who struggled with their relationships, were never happy, and always in conflict or discontent. We knew we had it good.

As our sons matured, they realized how unique our family was compared to the many they saw in the world. I kept reminding them, “Knowing God makes a difference.” They saw other families suffer the consequences of making wrong choices—many of them falling apart in divorce or alienation. Then my boys compared others’ lifestyles to how we tackled stresses with the truth of God’s Word and practiced love and faithfulness. They understood the difference.

Along the way, God threw in some surprise adventures, like ministry opportunities as a family in Canada, and community holiday activities that filled our hearts as we honored the Lord.

Yes, in seeking God we enjoyed such rich blessing. The “all these things” meant so much more to us than possessions. We experienced the guidance of the Scriptures, a loving and supportive church family, encouraging friendships in Christ, and the joy to cooperate with God as He changed all of our hearts.

We know the “good life” doesn’t come from our good works, but from God’s good mercy and grace. It’s all about God’s good work in us (Philippians 1:6). His recipe for cookin’ up an amazing life can’t be beat.

The Gravity of the Situation

By Rhonda Rhea –

There are several reasons I’ll never skydive. I’ll give you my top two. First, I’ve seen videos of people skydiving. Their faces…well…they “flutter.” Wildly. Honestly, I don’t need to see my face flapping violently over my ears, thank you very much. That kind of wind velocity is just not meant for faces over 40. It ends up looking like a basset hound pup with its head out a car window—multiplied by how ever many years you are over 40.

I’m not daring enough to sass the math. Gravity plus wind velocity times X the number of years over 40. That’s an equation that simply can’t equal anything pretty.

But in addition to the math of it all, the second reason you won’t find me skydiving—and the biggest reason—is this simple: gravity. Seems to me skydiving could all too easily become sky-dying. It’s not even the jumping out of a plane part that scares me so much as it is the inevitability of the hitting the ground part. No it’s not the jumping, or even the falling. It’s the landing. And the possibility of it ending in a splat. Sometimes I wonder if people who skydive don’t really understand the “gravity” of the situation.

That reminds me, though, how glad I am that I know where I’m headed, eternally speaking. I don’t fear death. I will confess here, I do fear pain. Actually it’s not quite fear of pain. It’s more of a very vigorously enthusiastic hatred of pain.

But pain or no pain, it’s essential we know that our future is secure and that death, however it comes, is not the end. There’s amazing comfort there. And that always tends to put fear in its place. It even puts math in its place.

Second Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal,” (ESV).

The Amplified version of verse 17 refers to our existence on the other side of this flappy-faced life as “an everlasting weight of glory, beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!” Now that, my friends, is a weight that defies gravity. This is some math I can love. It’s a beyond-all-measure, never-ceasing glory. Its calculations are beyond comparison in this life. No need to bother with any old equation. This is the greatest of the “greater thans.”

I want to follow Paul’s instructions in this passage to “not lose heart.” As a matter of fact, instead of losing my heart, I want to keep it. And I know it’s some strange math, but I think keeping my heart means giving it away. A heart fully surrendered to Christ is one that is able to look past the pains of this life and to look past a wildly flapping, wasting-away face, experiencing renewal day by day. I want to live in that renewal. I want to live this life well in the power of the One who created me. And then, I want to finish well. I want to “stick the landing,” so to speak. Even if it ends with a splat.

A LOT of Hot Air!

By Liz Cowen Furman –

Every autumn, in Dubois Wyoming, near Yellowstone, we close and winterize our little motel, the Black Bear Inn. Draining the pipes prevents ruptures owed to the savagely cold winters. On several occasions, we have had to hire help to flush out the pipes. Last year, the men we contracted waited until after the first hard freeze. Their incompetence blew several expensive connections and cost us irreplaceable time while hustling to open in the spring. At that moment, we vowed to do the work ourselves, because replacing the cracked insides of nearly every toilet was such a pain in the drain.

When the time came to close the motel this year, all my assistants from home either fell ill or had prior engagements. Lee, my wonderful housekeeper, and her daughter, Sky, saved the day by helping prepare. However, we are not plumbers and were at a loss as to how to blow out the pipes once we drained them. During prayer request time at our church, I asked God to send anyone who knew plumbing preservation to help us accomplish this seemingly insurmountable task. God answered our prayer in the form of a cheerful handyman who volunteered to come the following morning and not only help but teach us how to do it ourselves.

Minutes into the project, our geriatric compressor blew a fuse and died. Generously, Lee volunteered the brand new compressor she recently purchased for her husband. After a few minutes of its service, the second compressor blew a gasket and perished. I called the local hardware store, whose owner was a dear friend of my late father-in-law, to inquire about renting a third compressor. When I arrived at the store he said, “I have the compressor for you, follow me.” We arrived at his place to find a compressor the size of my dining table mounted on a truck.

Once started, the compressor blew out the pipes in 30 minutes. However, it was so powerful we could not keep everything closed without blowing off the faucet heads. We solved this by opening all the faucets on the top half of the motel, then opening them all, to finally close the top leaving the bottom open, then repeat. It blew so much hot air that my hand under the sink faucet felt like a blow dryer was turned on it. Amazing how the right tool for the job makes it go more smoothly. It took us from about 9:00 am to 3:00 pm to find that tool but once we did, life was a breeze (more like a gale force wind).

Paralleled in our spiritual lives, issues arise where we don’t know what to do, or how to react. I have so often tried resolutions of my own. Inevitably, when I have killed my “geriatric compressor” (or brain) I resort to turning to the Lord. At least I used to. Now when something comes up that I’m not sure how to handle, I “seek WISDOM” in God’s Word, in prayer and from Godly friends.

James 1:5 states, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (NIV).

I am determined to ask God for help as a first resort from now on, rather than a last one. Join me?

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