Stirring the Heart

What could be better than four beautiful spring days in Estes Park, Colorado, at a Christian writer’s conference where chocolate is served?

Not much.

Besides the view, the company of like-minded scribes, and the chocolate, other perks included:

• No cooking.
• No laundry.
• No TV.

Downers?

·          

• No Bible. 
• No favorite coffee mug. 
• A flat tire.

First question, first night of the conference: “How does a Christian forget her Bible when packing for a Christian conference?”

First observation, first morning of the conference: “I miss my mug. And my Bible.”

First comment on first leg of trip back to the real world after conference: “I have a flat tire?”

At least I’d had chocolate.

As well as four days of encouragement, instruction, and insight for writing great fiction, such as:

“Don’t call attention to business as usual,” Andy Scheer told us. An agent for Hartline Literary Agency, Scheer said everyone knows the sky is blue.

“Act out your character,” said multi-published author Robert Liparulo. Get a feel for what’s really happening, how it feels, what the setting looks like. The discussion took a vivid turn when I asked how that applied to a decapitation scene in one of his thrillers.

“Show redemption and grace,” Kathleen Kerr said. The senior editor for Harvest House Publishers cautioned writers not to preach. “Show redemption through life.”

And that’s what makes me want to tell stories and stir hearts. That’s what Jesus did when he told of the faithful father and the prodigal son, or the woman who lost one of ten coins and searched diligently for it. He touched our lives with stories: “A sower went out to sow,” “A certain man went down to Jericho,” “There was a certain rich man …”

Thank God for stories, mountains, and writers who encourage other writers.

And for chocolate.

What's in Your Medicine Cabinet?

My children give me things that make me laugh and smile. Like grandchildren. And these beautiful flowers pictured above from my daughter so many miles away.

Several years ago I received a video (link below) as an email from my son. The son who set up the email account for me in the first place because I had no clue.

Every so often I play this link and it never fails to make me laugh, regardless of how many times I view it.

A wise king once said, "A merry heart does good like a medicine." This Mother's Day I'm sharing from my personal medicine cabinet.

Those of you who have perfect children that have never uttered an unseemly word might be offended at an expletive or two in the video. And I have no idea what other connections might be available from the same site—I know only that my children have made me laugh and smile for years. On their own. Even without videos and flowers.

So happy Mother's Day to all my readers, and may you have a merry heart.

Smile, it's Mother's Day.

New book, great story - The Map Quilt

Author Lisa Lickle snagged me with the first sentence. Her new release, The Map Quilt, caught me up in the lives of Hart and Judy Wingate, a young Wisconsin couple expecting their first baby. A former teacher myself, I knew just how Judy felt lumbering her way through the final days of school with her fifth-grade class.

But Judy refuses to take maternity leave. She wants to hear the speaker scheduled to culminate their studies of Harriet Tubman. She also anticipates the release of her husband’s latest ”green” project for his employer—until someone steals the prototype. And burns down the barn. 

Do these disasters have anything to do with an old quilt upstairs, an unidentified body Hart’s mother finds buried on the property, and the famed Underground Railway of the 1860s?

Lickle’s lively writing and flesh-and-blood characters drew me into the family farmhouse kitchen and right up to the table for a cup of hot coffee and vanilla nut cookies. And her story’s fast pace left room for nothing but a must-know yearning rivaling that of Hart and Judy.

There’s more than one story unraveling between the pages of The Map Quilt, and more than one family’s heritage on the line.

The Map Quilt is the sequel to Lickle’s original cozy mystery from Barbour, The Gold Standard. But Map Quilt stands on its own as well. If you're looking for a good summer read, pick up Lickle’s latest—and a tall glass of lemonade to go along with it.

For more about Lisa Lickel and her great new book, visit http://www.lisalickel.com/2012/02/map-quilt.html

How sweet is your grapevine?

Just the other day someone replied to an e-mail of mine by saying, “I forwarded your e-mail on to …”

Oops. I intended that correspondence for the recipient’s eyes only.

Too late. Tapping the “send” button is like squeezing the toothpaste. There’s no putting it back in the tube.

I have often told my children, “If you put it online it’s public.” Yet when I send an e-mail, I believe no one else will see it other than the person I wrote—especially not the person I may have written about.

Who am I kidding?

I cannot control what happens to my correspondence once it leaves my cyberspace docking point. So I’d better be sure that I don’t mind the content going viral, as they say.

Do my words belittle someone? Are they derogatory, insulting, offensive? Have I spoken as though in confidence about a private matter?  Would I mind if the general public read what I wrote?

Jesus saw this coming. He warned that our whispered words would resound from the housetops. Was he thinking of e-mail, cell phones, Twitter, and all the instantly humming avenues of social media that encircle our planet today?

“Let your conversation be always full of grace,” Paul told first-century Christians (Col. 4:6 NIV).

When my words hit the proverbial grapevine, I hope they’ll taste like grace.

TO MY E-MAIL READERS: Click on the title of the blog post to go to the actual blog where you can comment in the box at the bottom of the post. I’d love to hear from you!

Are You Washed?

I’ve been reading the Gospel of John for more than a year. Over and over. Every time I read through it I see truth more clearly or discover a new facet of God’s love.

Recently I read the familiar passage in Chapter 13 that recounts Jesus’ last private moments with his disciples. They celebrated the annual Passover feast, commemorating God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. And then Jesus washed their feet.

When Jews in first-century Palestine gathered in someone’s home, it was a cultural practice for guests to have their feet washed by a household servant—not by the host himself or another guest. The Lord’s deliberate act of servitude demonstrated the humility of love. But I believe it revealed even more.

Within the first few verses of chapter 13 we find a thumbnail sketch of Jesus’ entire mission. Each detail of the foot-washing—which may have taken roughly thirty minutes—can be matched to another corresponding action during Christ’s thirty or so years on earth.

The sketch begins with verse 3 as Jesus considered that he was soon “returning to God.”

Verse 12 repeats the verb: “When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place” (NIV). These bookend references triggered the connection for me.

In my journal, I wrote out what I saw happening and paralleled it to biblical references I’d heard or read elsewhere. It looked like this:

He removed His outer robes             He laid aside His heavenly glory  

He put on a towel                        He clothed Himself with humanity

He stooped before them                  He took the form of a servant

He washed away the dirt                He washed away our sin

 (It wasn’t His dirt.)                    (It’s not His sin.)

He put his robes back on                He resurrected in His glorified body

He returned to His place                He returned to His Father in Heaven

John prefaces his entire account of the Passover meal: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love” (John 13:1 NIV).

In “the full extent of his love,” the creator of the universe wrapped a towel around his waist and washed dirt from men’s feet. And in the further extent of that love, he washed the stain of sin from their lives.

Passover recalls the lamb’s blood spread above the doors of Hebrew slave homes. Those who believed and applied the blood turned death away. Those who did not believe did not apply the blood and their firstborn died.

The lamb’s blood saved the slaves from death only if they applied it. Christ’s sacrifice and the spilling of his blood saves us only if we accept it.

What about you this Easter/Passover season? Have you been washed by the blood of the Lamb?

Photo by AJ Spencer