2018 Comes to a Close

And just like that, 2018 comes to a close. I started the year with the word Nourish (and also Cherish), and I must say that I did not concentrate on the words as much as in the past. I needed something to help me get going for the year, to focus, but they were not as concrete as past words Faith and Mercy so it was a bit different.  I was able to accomplish the goals of reading aloud through the New Testament with my children this year and read through the Old Testament again personally, and we surely are nourished by His Word. I love the conversations that we have had and the growth I have seen in their understanding. We continue to homeschool and learn and mature together. We have had some exciting development this year in our studies and some fun travels. It is a blessing indeed to have this time together. I still feel very lacking in the desire to better nourish relationships and cherish this time more, and I will continue to work on this in the coming year.     

The end of 2018 brought news that we will move our family to a new home and town in 2019. We have been in move-mode for several months, which I will admit I am not finding a time of nourishing and cherishing. I pray that I can cherish the time we have had in our small town and will relax more and not neglect nourishing the ones I love through this time.

Onto a new year and a new adventure…

The Lamb: Christmas 2018

The Lamb

All those years prophesied,

Pictures and shadows galore,

All the lambs slaughtered,

But still there’d be more.

Then one day to shepherds

Angels appeared

Bearing great joyful tidings

For a new baby boy.

To those caring for lambs

Came the news of The Lamb,

Agnes Dei: Lamb of God,

Jesus Christ, Savior of man.

He had come to the world:

Immanuel, God with us,

And we’d need no more lambs

To show us the way.

Jesus Christ is the Way,

Fully God, fully man,

He came to save sinners

And to rise again.

This Christmas and always

We remember He came.

Love brought Him down.

His grace made the way.

Merry Christmas from the McLennans 2018!

May this find you worshiping The Lamb this Christmas season.

His Truth Brings Peace: Sing unto the Lord

            On Monday nights, our church has Mission Night. People pray, write letters, visit people in the community, and sing hymns to the residents as the nursing homes. We often go sing as a family at the nursing home. We are not any of us great singers, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not what it is about. It is an opportunity to praise God in song as well as to bless the residents with the beautiful truth of God’s Word, presented through the hymns, and just to show them someone cares enough to visit them. I believe that this is a great way to honor our Savior.

            It is often sad to see residents in the depths of dementia or just the weakness that comes with age. I see the curse of sin about this earth, how our bodies deteriorate as we near death. We were created to live forever. Sin entered the world and with it death. Praise God that He sent Jesus to redeem us, to give us back eternal life, to not only forgive us for our disobedience but to step in and take our punishment that we might have His perfect righteousness. It isn’t too late for these people though. They can still hear God’s truth and be saved, not saved from an earthly death, but saved from an eternal death. They can walk from this life into His eternal glory with Jesus as the Savior. Many of them know Jesus, and they just need to be reminded of His love and comforted by His promises of Heaven. I love to sing that truth, to sing about the cross and about Glory.

            I was greatly blessed at the nursing home last night. I had silently prayed that this would be a time of worship and also bring comfort to the residents. Across the room I saw a woman struggling in her wheel chair, trying to get out. She had a strap on her so that she would not fall. I could see the distress on her face, the confusion, and the fear. I stood there and continued to sing, not sure if I should walk over there, not sure how I could help. As I saw her continue, I decided that I should go. I walked across and pushed her wheelchair up to table. She told me that she had to go home, that her mother wanted her home, that is was dangerous to stay out late. Oh the heartbreak that dementia brings. I tried to calmly tell her that I was going to sing some songs with her. She was panicking. I told her that she would be taken care of, that I was going to sing about Jesus. I stood there and began singing the hymn along with the others across the room. She started to calm and she closed her eyes. We sang a few songs, and I thought perhaps she had fallen asleep, but she looked up at me and said, “That’s so nice.” God was blessing her with peace through the hearing of those hymns. I continued to sing out the truth of those hymn (broken through tears), thinking of the great truth, praying it comforted her heart and another resident who looked panicked and needed this healing truth of Jesus. I sang to the other woman and smiled as I thought of my Savior and Heaven. She closed her eyes again and then would look up and smile. As we sang the last song, she was now beaming and singing along. I prayed for her to have peace as we left and she thanked us for coming. Oh the joy that filled my heart as I saw God’s mighty hand of love. Oh how I love my Savior and the truth of His Word.

            As I read my Bible after I returned home, I was reading in Psalms and hearing God speak about singing to Him, about how worthy is He, how great are His works, His love, His mercies, and also about Him not forsaking us in our old age. Oh how I cherish His Word and how He nourishes us by it and through it.  

“Do not cast me off in the time of old age;

Do not forsake me when my strength fails.”

Psalm 71:9

2018: Nourish (and Cherish) and Ephesians 4: Walking with a Word through the Lens of Scripture

Why choose a word (or two, or a phrase and a Bible verse) for the year? Well, I think sometimes we have a hard time focusing with so much going on around us. Choosing a word, for me, helps me to dig deeper into God’s Word, not to just find my word (although I do look for what God says about it, for He is the author of all and His wisdom is immense), but also to just really hear Him speak to me. He still speaks! Just open the scriptures and read. How kind and loving a Savior we have that He left us His very words to speak to us. Along with choosing my words, I made it a goal to read through the entire Bible with the word so that I do not miss what my Savior has for me, how I can better know Him and serve Him. I also choose a Bible verse or two to try to recall throughout my studying. God’s Word proves itself. When we look at scripture in light of scripture, it grows deeper and richer.

When I chose faith in 2016, I read the scripture and saw how incredibly faithful my God is and that faith is truly a gift from the Faithful One, Who is overly and abundantly worthy of my faith. I saw that faith doesn’t come easily, that sometimes questioning everything we believe helps us see why we have faith in the first place. When I chose mercy in 2017, I saw how merciful my Savior is and how I can be merciful because I belong to the Merciful One.

I love how the words don’t just go away when the year ends. I still see faith and mercy every day as I sit down and read God’s beautiful truth. As I add a new word, the richness increases, and maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with these words. Maybe it has absolutely everything to do with the time I spend with my Savior, the time I spend with His words. As His Word makes a home deep inside us, it become the lens we look at everything through, and when we look through the lens of scripture, we see God’s faithful, merciful work all around us. We see how His plan beautifully continues to unfold under His sovereign care.

In late December, I read something that someone wrote, and the word nourish stuck out at me. I thought that would be a beautiful word to focus on in 2018 as I continue to dig in and be nourished by God’s Holy Word. I know God wants me to be nourished by His truth.

In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and the sound doctrine which you have been following. (1 Timothy 4:6)

I also know that He wants me to nourish my children with His truth.

You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road when you lie down and when you rise up. (Deuteronomy 11:9)

I want to continue this, to read the Bible personally and to read it with my children (Reading the scripture with my children this last year has been an immense blessing as I see them grow in their knowledge and understanding, our family growing together the way God created us to thrive). Teaching the Bible to other children and to other women has also been an immense blessing. Oh how we grow as we search to be able to teach. What a gift God gave us allowing us to learn and to grow in knowledge and understanding and wisdom. He is a good, good Father indeed.

            I also knew that the word nourish was about more than just the spiritual food we need, it is also about what we can do when we are spiritually nourished. I want 2018 to be a year that I nourish relationships, with my family, with my friends, within my community, and within my church. I have seen so many heartaches, so much tearing down in this last year, and I know that we need to be coming alongside one another to build one another up, to edify the body. Ephesians 4 is a chapter in the Bible about the church and unity and the Christian walk. I pray that this year God will guide me to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling which I have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to reserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” I am a part of one body, and by His grace I have been given gifts to work for His service, to build up the body of Christ. We are not to be tossed here and there but to grow together by sound doctrine, “speaking the truth in love.” My walk should not look like the world. My relationships should not look like the world. I know Christ. I have the truth found in Jesus. I am to “be angry, and yet do not sin.” I am to “let no unwholesome word proceed from my mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.” I have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. May I “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from me, along with all malice.” May I “be kind to others, tender-hearted, forgiving others, just as God in Christ also has forgiven me.”

            I am so excited to walk with purpose this year. My husband and I are making efforts to spend time with each other, as a family, and with our children individually. We are reading the scriptures together and we are reading good literature together. We have recently read The Hiding Place and are currently reading Tramp for the Lord. Corrie ten Boom has been and continues to be a great encourager to us to be nourished by God’s Word that we might walk out our purpose of serving Him, showing others the way to the Kingdom, to our loving Savior who will never leave our sides. We saw how very dear the Holy Scriptures were to Corrie and her sister Betsie and how God did miracles to make them available in the depths of darkness, to shine His light and truth where evil seemed to prevail. We saw how powerful the Bible was to save and know it continues to be. We saw how the ten Boom’s cherished it.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

           

Cherish. I was only going to chose one word, but the word cherish keeps coming to my mind as well. I think that there is a lesson there, that what we nourish and what nourishes us is what we cherish. So I will walk out 2018 with nourish and cherish. I will seek to cherish the life-giving Word of my God while I seek to be nourished by it and to nourish others with it. And I will cherish my family and friends and my church, while seeking to nourish those relationships. Oh how I look forward to all God has to teach me this year and how He will choose to work in me and through me for His glory!