Spring roller coaster...

Where we live, the temperatures have taken us on a roller coaster ride. One day it's nearly 80 and the next, we're pulling out jackets to try to keep from freezing. Evening temperatures dip into the frost range and daytime highs struggle to break into the 50's.

And then there are the winds and the rains. The tornado watches and the severe thunderstorm warnings. Hot and cold, it seems, do no coexist very peacefully.

When you think of it, God's Word lets us know hot and cold mixed together isn't a good thing, either. Remember the admonition to the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3?

14 "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

For the longest time I thought hot or cold meant either on fire for the Lord or lost. But when I was in a Bible study on Revelation a couple of years ago, there was another explanation. If the people were cold, they would be like the proverbial drink of cold water... refreshing. If they were hot, they would be like therapeutic hot springs, bringing healing. But they were neither. Just lukewarm. Bleh!

What about you? As you celebrate Spring and go about your daily life, are you a cool refreshing moment in someone's day? Or are you a hot friend who leaves others able to move through life with less pain? Or are you neither?

Spend a little time asking the Lord to make you what you need to be today for His glory.

New Life...

Can you think of a time more bursting with new life than Spring? I can't -- especially this year.

I have several friends who have either just had babies (and by "just" I mean this week) or are imminently expecting the arrival of a little one. I don't see how anyone can look at a newborn without breaking out in worship. Only God can create and sustain life. He is, after all, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. Grab a Bible and flip to Revelation 4:11. I dare you to memorize it and meditate on it over the next week.

Somehow we get the idea that we have a hand in the creation thing. True, there are certain acts that perpetuate God's creation for which we have to be present, but don't think for one moment that one single life gets created apart from God's divine purposes and plans.

I didn't always think that way. When we first started trying to have a family of our own, I thought making babies was the easiest, most guaranteed thing in the world. After a year of trying, we realized... hummm... we're doing everything we're supposed to do, but hummm... no baby.

Infertility is a bear. If you have been through it or are in the midst of it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's heartbreaking to want something so badly, following all the steps - tests, timing, trying, testing, tears, treatments, tests, timing, trying, tests, tears, treatments... Depending on God's plan, it can go on and on and on. Then people starts to look at you "that way" and you feel awkward for making them feel awkward. And you want to be so content and so full of faith that it doesn't matter on the timing of when you have a baby or even if you ever have a baby, but your heart hurts so much you ache all over. Yep. I've been there.

I learned many things during our season of infertility. Probably the biggest lesson I learned was that God alone is the Giver of life. We pretty much exhausted what humans have been able to figure out about infertility. Nothing we could do, nothing the doctors could do made a baby for us until God's timing was fulfilled on that one. I am fully convinced that not one single human being is here by accident. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. No... considering the odds of any humans being here at all, there is only one explanation for every baby who is ever born: God, Creator and Sustainer, ordained it. What a blessing we receive when we welcome the lives He creates.

...All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
~Psalm 139:16

I pray you'll take a few minutes to read over Revelation 4 and Psalm 139, and spend a little time worshiping the One Who sent His only Son so that we can celebrate life for all eternity.

Wondrous new life

The picture below didn't come out very clearly since I had to take it from inside through a (admittedly dirty) window and screen, but it is our momma dove (whose tail you can see sticking up on the right) camped out in her nest, also known as my hanging basket! Her eggs recently hatched and I think she and her little ones have moved out to another nest, probably because she wasn’t expecting to have her quiet home disturbed a few times a day by our family going in and out the door a couple feet from her home! I was sad to see her go because it was truly glorious to watch new life emerge just outside our front door.

It gave me a daily reminder to praise God for being the author and creator of all life. I’ve had a lot of those reminders lately: not one but two births in my circle of friends this month, the blooming daffodils in my backyard (that sadly died with the snow!), the white blossoms adorning our Bradford pear tree (which my daughter mistook for snow when she first saw them!) in our front yard, the new skin that’s regenerating where my recent staph infection was on my leg, and the little boy kicking inside me who we should be blessed to meet in less than a month! So much new life to celebrate!

As spring officially begins later this week, I encourage you to look for the new life that God is creating around you and use it as a reminder to praise Him! And, of course, the new life that I’m most thankful for is that which He created inside me when I became His child and the promise held for me in His resurrection that we will be celebrating on April 10th this year.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ~2 Corinthians 5:17

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ~Romans 6:4-5

(If this “new life” thing seems strange or foreign to you, my friend, please email us at CelebratingChristmas@gmail.com. We would love to explain it in more detail and share with you about the new life God has created in our hearts and lives!)