WOMEN'S MINISTRIES BLOG

On Sunday, June 13, 2021, the President and First Lady of the United States attended Sunday services at Sacred Heart Church, St. Ives in Cornwall. The two were in town for the G7 Summit in which talks among world leaders centered in part around concern over global warming and care for the planet. Father Philip Dyson had not been given advance notice of his prestigious guests and, according to The Guardian, “admitted he was slightly nervous while conducting the service.”

Every twenty-six years, on a Sunday morning in February, my church invites me to take the pulpit. At least, that’s the pattern thus far.

Evangelism. It’s never been something I felt myself gifted in. It didn’t come naturally. Kind of embarrassing for a missionary to admit, huh? But I realized a number of years ago that when it comes to the Christian walk, evangelism is a RESULT of something, not the something itself.

Here we are at the beginning of a new season. People are emerging. This summer promises to be a little more full than last summer. We are hoping to “get back to normal.” Except . . . we are not the same. We have been changed.

Do you ever stand in front of your bathroom sink and peel the contacts from your eyeballs with relief? I’ve done that more times than I can count—most recently, oh, about ten minutes ago. Sometimes it’s because my eyes are dry from a long day of staring at the computer screen.

I think it was providential. In winter 2020, I read John Mark Comer’s remarkable, relatable book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. He talked about how our lives were so crazy, so filled to the brim and then followed with marvelous chapters on Silence, Solitude, Sabbath, Simplicity and Slowing. I was taken with the goodness of those ideas.

“Why didn’t anyone warn me? Why didn’t someone sit me down and explain to me how hard this was going to be??” I remember standing in my living room, taking in the scene of pandemonium with shock in my heart. I mean, I knew parenthood was more than cute little smiles and giggles, but I didn’t expect THIS. I wish someone would have given me the heads up. Something along…

Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look,      and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it,      and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jer. 6:16) Stand and look. Ask. Walk and find rest. They seem like straightforward commands with a beautiful promise. Stand by the roads—by the place of…

For a few weeks now, my neighbor has been digging in her yard. Not the normal kind of spring gardening and planting of things, but the kind of digging that has her shoes muddy and her grass looking like the surface of the moon. I started to notice Maria was spending most of her spare time in the yard, suited up to attack what lay under the surface.

She had her arms up around her head, shielding her face. A teenager, angsty, probably with a bad attitude a lot of the time, but now she was experiencing the frustration of two of her “friends” yelling and hitting at her.