Soul Sister Time

            I need to keep reminding myself that I know the end of the story.   When you read the Bible the beginning starts out so amazingly and it quickly goes downhill.   By the sixth chapter, God has to flood the entire universe.   The all-time low is when God is crucified and is laid in the grave.   That was literally and figuratively hitting rock bottom.             You’ve got to read all the way until the end to know the end of the story.   If you read it from beginning to end, you will see Revelation as the ultimate in God’s love poured out over the entire universe.               I have to admit that it took me a while to read Revelation that way.   In fact, though I have been reading the Bible from beginning to end since I was 16, I never read Revelation until I was in my late thirties.   Frankly, it scared me.   I didn’t want to know the end of the story.   I worked on digesting the rest of the Bible. Before the year 2000, a friend was teaching Precepts three-yea

  Time can feel like an eternity depending on the circumstances in which you find yourself. When engaging in a meaningful conversation, you may lose track of time; but managing each second of intensifying pain while waiting on your dental appointment can feel like an eternity. The time between birthdays as a child can seem like forever; yet those same 365 days seem to fly by in a flash after adulthood sets in. Today is my mother-in-law’s eightieth birthday. The Bible teaches us to think of time as short. Psalm 90:12 says Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom . A heart of wisdom will say there is just enough time for me to fulfill the ministry that God put me on this earth to do. Wisdom is knowing that God has given me only enough time to do what He planned for me to do. He won't waste a minute of my life, but how many minutes do I waste not focusing on what this life is really about? Working thr

              Sometimes you need to give up your faith to get faith.   What I don’t need is the kind of faith that is committed to what I believe is the right way for things to go.   I must constantly guard my heart, mind and spirit from clinging to my own rendition of faith.   For faith to be real, it has to be given by the Spirit of God, and not based on my own understanding.   Faith is sure of what is unseen.             I can’t move forward in faith until I recognize that I carry unexamined expectations of where the road of faith will lead me.   My childish beliefs about faith must be laid aside if I am to grow in true faith.   Since God is always for me, my faith might cause me to believe that everything will work out well for me and therefore not so good for those who come against me.   When the opposite happens, my expectations reveal that I have faith in my plan—not true faith.   I will never grow to true faith as long as I cling to childish faith, unexamined and unque

              Sometimes we find ourselves at an impasse in a relationship with another human being.   It can even be a relationship with someone who claims to be a Christian.   We expect more of people who call themselves followers of Christ.   When you happen to find yourself befuddled by the actions of another, think about how Jesus treated Judas.   You can learn a great deal from how Jesus responded to the ultimate betrayer of all time.             Henri Nouwen said, Without deep roots we easily let others determine who we are.   But as we cling to our popularity, we may lose our true sense of self .   Jesus dealt with Judas in the opposite manner of our natural human inclinations when we become aware that we are being wronged by another person.   Judas Iscariot is known as the great betrayer.   Though the Beatle’s song might play in your head, your heart probably resists empathy when you hear the name Judas.   So deceptive and hidden was his betrayal that he did it with a