How Remaining Faithful Led to Joy by Joylene M. Bailey

 

"What will you do in the mundane days of faithfulness?"

- Martin Luther -

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My January post told the story of The Lone Tree near Swift Current, Saskatchewan. How it stood alone, remaining faithful to its purpose even when nobody was there to see it.

I'm still intrigued by the quote above.

Mundane = ordinary, banal, normal, humdrum.

Well, my year was anything but ordinary in the "normal" sense of the word, as we moved from our home in the city to the country home we'd built. The tasks involved in moving see-sawed from excitingly whirlwind to tediously mundane. Packing and culling and what-do-I-do-with-Grandma's-wedding-dress kinds of decisions.

Through it all, though, I believe I was faithful in trudging forward even when every aching bone in my body cried for me to give up.

Faithfulness can look different for different people. For some, just getting out of bed day after day could be counted as being faithful. It often means doing the hard thing or the boring thing over and over and over, even if it's just packing that next box.

I began the year intent on being faithful. Faithful to my calling as a wife, mother, grandmother, writer, homemaker. Faithful to keep putting one foot in front of the other to accomplish whatever it took to get us moved. But I found as the year went on, I spent a lot of time thinking about God's faithfulness. In part, His faithfulness in fulfilling the promise, the dream, of our new home, something we'd been dreaming for more than a dozen years.

Now that we're moved in and mostly settled, I look back at the year and see all the many, many times He was faithful. Faithful in giving us the best, even when we couldn't see it. 

We were ready to put the shovel in the ground in March 2020, but then you-know-what happened. All of our plans and dreams seemed to fall through. But God brought us to a new builder: a stranger to us, but fellow believer, he was someone who understood our vision and worked with us to see it completed. Yes, we had to go back to the drawing board - literally - and that took loads of time. But God had it all worked out.

I'm learning more and more that God's sense of time and my sense of time are worlds apart. Yes, I know that all the best things take time, but I still want it in MY time. That's what I expect. Sure, I can handle waiting for a few months if that was in my plan all along. Waiting any longer doesn't come naturally to me.

God's timing, however, doesn't seem to work that way. I don't think it's linear at all. Maybe not even counted in days and weeks, months and years. It's HIS timing. Which takes into account all of past, present, and future history. It is perfect timing and I'm very grateful for it.

In future, I need to trust that His time is the RIGHT time. No matter the week or the year, it will happen at just the right time in history. His time. And He is faithful to His time.

We're so glad that this home was built in His perfect timing. It's so much better than anything we had hoped and planned. He knew better. I should have known that all along.

So you see, this year as I worked at being faithful, I was brought to His faithfulness. Reflecting on His constant faithfulness brought me to gratefulness. And gratefulness led to joy.

"Even when circumstances cloud our view, God's sovereignty is strong enough to hold us. No matter how loud the noise of the chaos around us seems, He always hears our cry for help.

Look past the noisy crowd, friend. Trust His faithfulness. Stand on His promises. Lean in and let the nearness of His presence steady your heart."

(From one of the devotionals in She Reads Truth Bible)

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Joy writes from her new home in rural Alberta where she lives with The Cowboy, and Chara the joyful Swiss Mountain Puppy. Find more of her Joy-infused writing at Scraps of Joy. 

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All landscape photos from Pixabay

The Lone Tree by Joylene M Bailey

 

Photo by jplenio of Pixabay

What will you do in the mundane days of faithfulness?

Martin Luther

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There is a tree on Highway 4 just north of Swift Current, Saskatchewan that locals call The Lone Tree. It was planted as part of a windbreak in the early 1900's by a bachelor Norwegian homesteader named Knut Mjolid. When it came time to sell the property, a gentleman's agreement was made between Knut and the new owners that if ever they were to take down the windbreak, they would leave at least one tree. That gentleman's agreement was honoured and thus, to this day we have The Lone Tree.

I think of that tree off and on, and wonder at its survival. Standing alone by a moderately quiet highway, unsheltered, braving bone-dry summers, or biting winter winds and everything in between, it has fulfilled its purpose for over 100 years. It has planted its roots deep and raises its limbs to the sky.

I'm told it is tradition to honk your horn when you drive past The Lone Tree. Other than those honks and the odd photographer wandering nearby, the tree spends most of its time being faithful to its calling, with no one watching but God.

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Faithfulness is not doing something right once but doing something right over and over and over and over.

Joyce Meyer

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These past two years have been hard. After the initial shock we thought, okay we can do this for a few weeks. But then the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, and the world got incomprehensibly chaotic.

People are weary. I see it in the irritable words spoken by customarily kind people. I see it in the inability to handle seemingly simple setbacks. I see it in panic, fearfulness, mistrust, and impatience. There is a palpable rising level of anxiety in the world generally. More and more prayer requests flood my inbox, making even the privilege of prayer heavy.

And what can I do? What can I do?

I think of The Lone Tree, doing nothing other than to be faithful to its calling.

It is not my job to heal every heart (or even one heart). It is not my job to fix the wrongs in the world. It is my job to be faithful. To carry on; to put one foot in front of the other; to look for opportunities to share love and kindness; to write one word after another after another; to sit in that chair in my study and do the work. 

And to remember that He is faithful. 

Always.

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photo by Hans of pixabay

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Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD's faithful love we do not perish,

for his mercies never end.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness!

Lamentations 3:21-23

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Joy has driven by The Lone Tree on several occasions, when visiting relatives in the Swift Current area and when traveling to Briercrest Bible College (when it was still Briercrest Bible Institute). She writes from Edmonton, where she lives with her soon-to-be-retired Cowboy. Find her Joy-infused view of the world at Scraps of Joy.

God's Many Faceted Love by Bryan Norford

Creation reflects the nature of God. Its varied splendour, its abundance, its joyful activities, and predominantly its faithful and loving relationships. That is a measure of God’s love for all humanity.

Of course, since Eden, humankind has been able to mess it up and introduce characteristics that are contrary to the nature of God, destabilizing the good earth, destroying its abundance, and turning joy into misery.

Even so, God provided a strategy that enables us to rediscover the missing joy we crave: He set out the Law—too often maligned by Christians and hated by those opposed to Him.

The Law was not an arbitrary set of rules to kill our joy—as many assume—but like creation, a further reflection of His nature; guidelines to a less natural, but temporary, refurbishing of His image formed in us at creation but lost at the fall.

The Ten Commandments summarize the components of love. Even Jesus summed up the Law as loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbour as we care for ourselves.

If we love God, we will not place other gods or goals before Him. If we love our neighbour, we will not kill him, steal from him, or covet his wife or anything else he has.

In fact, it was at the giving of the Law that God revealed His nature. As God set out a law that contained the ingredients of love, He also indicated the values by which He would apply that law: with compassion, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, forgiveness and justice. Exodus 34:6–7.

We humans recognize these characteristics because God has shared them as part of His image in us. Distorted though they are, as we express our love to one another with those values, we show evidence of our transformation to Christlikeness.

Does this sound like the love of a valentine? It should. For this is the standard of love God has set. Anything less is a thin veneer of self-serving affection posing as the real thing.

And that fullest expression of love: compassion, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, forgiveness and justice, should show first in our closest relationships, to our wives, husbands, and children, and then to the wider community.

Find God's direction in the Norfords’ marriage devotional, Happy Together, available in paperback or kindle from Amazon. 

A Legacy of Faith - Susan Barclay

My grandparents weren't perfect people, but they got the main thing right, and in so doing left a legacy of faith that continues to impact the lives of their children and grandchildren today.

I am thankful.

I am thankful for their example of what it looks like to actively seek a deepening relationship with Christ through daily prayer and reading God's Word. I am thankful for their great love for me and for their constant presence in my life, important investments that my earthly father was unable or unwilling to make.

Does their legacy live on in me? Ah, that is the question. I know I have a long way to go in gaining the crucial disciplines of regular prayer and Bible study. I can argue that I have a busy life as a wife, mother, employee, volunteer, and (aspiring) writer. But don't we all have time for the things that really matter to us? If Christ matters most to me - and I say that He does - won't I make time for Him? I'm not sure He buys the "I go to church, I give to the Lord's work, I write on Christian subjects" line. I know I don't.

I am thankful that He is patient with me. I am a work in progress and He knows it. Today, if you struggle as I do to be a disciplined follower of Christ, will you join me in turning over a new leaf? Let us commit to reading God's Word and praying on a daily basis. Even if when we start it's a mere ten minutes, I believe God will bless us and encourage us to spend more time with Him. Suddenly we will "find" time we didn't know we had!

As Steve Green sings in Faithful, may those who come behind us find "the footsteps that we leave, inspire them to believe." There can be no greater legacy.

Motorcycle Mama by Lynda Schultz

In my book of remembrances the exploits of Leola shine through. She's gone now, safe in the embrace of the Heavenly Father she loved and served so well.

Leola lived with her husband, two children, and elderly mother-in-law on a small vegetable farm about 60 km outside of Timmins, Ontario. They faithfully came into church every Sunday and after Leola's husband died, she took her life into her hands and learned to drive their old car herself. She worked in our Sunday School until she could work no more. When the car finally gave up the ghost, Leola bought herself a set of leathers and persuaded her son to come out to the farm on his motorcycle and pick her up for Sunday services. By this time she was well past retirement age. Always prim and proper, she'd change from her leathers into a dress and hat when she got to church.

Leola kept working the farm for as long as she could, even after the cancer diagnosis. But she quietly went about other business as well. She prayed through the church directory every day. She wrote regularly and faithfully to every missionary the church supported. During my years overseas it was no surprise to receive care packages from Leola–she was known among the MKs (missionary kids) as the "Kool-Aid" lady. Considering that her resources were very limited, those care packages, and the postage it cost to mail them all over the world, represented a sacrifice.

This amazing little lady also successfully completed a number of correspondence courses by mail from a seminary in Toronto, including several years worth of New Testament Greek. God had blessed her with a first-class mind.

Cancer became her shadow but she never allowed it to rule her life. In the letters I received from her she often joked about the various stages of the disease and how they, or their treatment, was affecting her. She would come into town for doctor's appointments, stop off at the church to rest between sessions or to practice Tai Chi in one of the rooms. We'd sometime catch her napping.

My last remembrance of Leola was the corn roast she hosted for the church family at her farm. I was home on Home Assignment that year. Her frailty was obvious, but she continued with her positive spirit though now it was tempered with that faraway longing for "home" in her eyes.

A friend recently told me that Leola, knowing that Lil loved teacups, had given her a beautiful pair edged in gold that she had received as a wedding gift fifty years earlier. Lil visited Leola in the hospital just before she died. Leola was unable to speak by that time. Lil worried about those teacups and wondered if perhaps Leola might have wanted to pass them on to her daughter. When she asked Leola about it, this plucky little woman gave Lil a huge smile and bravely nodded her head. "No" she indicated.

When I think of Leola I think of the widow that Jesus used as an example of faith and generosity in Luke 21. This dear woman gave everything she could to the Lord and he commended her for it. Just as she is remembered for her quiet walk of faith, so some of us remember Leola and endeavor to walk in her footsteps. And for such a little lady she left us big shoes to fill.

PRESS ON by Lynda Schultz

“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6:3)

I don’t remember ever having read this verse before, though surely I must have. This morning it speaks clearly, like a rainbow on the edge of a storm. I long for revival. The closer I come to Him the more I realize how much more I want, and need, of Him in my own life. As I weep for myself, I weep for the church and pray that the people who are called by God’s name will seek Him, will make Him THE priority on every level.

As I reflected on the verse, I decided to look up the word “acknowledge.” The results of my search were appropriate to Hosea’s message to Israel and our need today:

1. admit, accept, grant, allow, concede, accede to, confess, own, recognize.
2. greet, salute, address; nod to, wave to, raise one's hat to, say hello to.
3. express gratitude for, show appreciation for, thank someone for.
answer, reply to, respond to.

The attitudes expressed by these words should characterize our relationship to God. They give weight to what Solomon says in Proverbs 3:6: “in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” To ignore God is to suffer the dangers inherent in walking crooked paths.

Hosea tells us to “press on,” to keep insisting in this acknowledgment of God, even when the situation seems desperate. In Hosea’s world, Israel was thriving materially, but had wandered far, far away from God. His own life became an illustration of the unfaithfulness of God’s people. He was called upon to take the unusual step of marrying a woman who would not keep her marriage vows. In the end, Hosea had to buy her back out of a local slave market. He must have had many moments when he wept over his relationship with his wife, and despaired over Israel’s relationship with her God. Some have called Hosea “the prophet with the broken heart.”

However, Hosea’s own life also illustrates the heart and hope encapsulated in this verse. Just as he rescued and forgave his wife and kept his part of their marriage covenant, so God would do the same for His people. Hosea’s faith shines through as he insists on acknowledging the Lord despite the bleakness of the circumstances. He urges his listeners to “press on” in their relationship to God. He knows that just as he went to Gomer’s aid and offered her incredible love and forgiveness, so God would come and show those same mercies to Israel.

This promise remains current. Many in the Northern Hemisphere are enjoying the renewal of life as spring comes once again. Just as the spring rains herald renewal in the physical world, so God will come and bring revival, restoration, and renewal, to our spiritual world.

Don’t despair. Acknowledge Him. Press on in worship and intercessory prayer. Like the sunrise, He will come.