Humor

Does Your Life Inspire Others To Soar?

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

Here’s a picture taken just after I completed a triathlon.

I’m the one in the hat. You can also tell which one is me because I’m the one that is “fit looking”. Just sayin’. Well, at least I should say that I’m the one that looks “fitter than I was”. Whatever.

Yes! We are wearing matching shirts! I completed this triathlon as a memorial for my dad, who passed away not long ago, and who inspired us all in physical strength by completing many triathlons.

Leaders inspire others by their examples.

. . . lead them by your own good example says the ancient text

How will our lives inspire others who are watching us, even though we don’t see them looking our way? By our example. Are you awake to who God is calling you to become?

In the last post, we talked about how God often wants to wake us up to His vision for our lives, if our ears are screwed on tight enough to hear Him.

God may be blowing open your expectations of what He can do through your life if you sense any of the following:

1) God is whispering about something you know you could never accomplish on your own strength.

2) God seems to envelop you in love, even for just a moment, or to touch your heart with His invisible love. With Him as the wind, holding up your wings, He can move mountains.

3) God is trying to wake you. He stands next to your bedside, gently nudging you. He picked up your ears off the floor. Will you put them on?

What does He see when He looks at you? Ask Him! If you don’t hear His gentle whisper, continue reading The Message. Every word read helps put a bit more glue on our ears, ever ready to fall off.

How may God be calling you to set an example for others of a life well lived?

Abba, continue to speak in ways that we can finally grasp the truth that You have much, much bigger plans for our lives than we do, with You at the helm, guiding us for Your kingdom purposes. Help us to be able to hear You more clearly, we pray. Keep our ears screwed on tight.

God Encourages Us To Complete The Triathlon?

/ Lori Lawe / 4 Comments

While my back still felt like an old lady’s, when I had to yell up at people so they could hear me as I spoke to their waist, hunched over, I announced I would do a triathlon.

“Well . . . if I can walk, I will do a triathlon,” I clarified.

This annoying back problem has GOT to get better someday, right?

And it did get better, praise be to God.

It didn’t help that the little kid I was playing with at the family dinner jumped on my back in a fit of fun.

My community gathered around me that same night and cared for me, lifting me to God in prayer.

My back felt better after that night than it had in a long, long time.

So, yup, time to do a triathlon.

I didn’t have as much time to train as I had intended, but I thought the bike part was about 10 km?

I was shocked as I picked up my bib the day before the race to learn that the bike part was 20 km. Could my back even handle being on a bike that long?

My husband coached me, like a parent coaching a small child. I needed some direction. “Now remember,” he said slowly, “You have your goals in the wrong order.” He coached me by holding up a finger for each goal. “The most important goal is not to get hurt,” he said. I had relegated that goal to Goal #3. He was right.

But in the pool, I felt God nudging me to swim faster (!). What does God care about an obscure triathlon where a bunch of fairly fit middle-aged people do their exercises?

(There were actually some young and very fit people there who definitely upped the cool factor of the race. Just sayin’. I’m sure I would have beaten John in the race to Jesus’ tomb too. Just sayin’. Not that that matters OF COURSE, but for those who are interested, I thought you should know).

Then I realized that God was speaking to me during this triathlon because God cares about everything we do. We can’t relegate Jesus to an hour on Sunday. Everything is an opportunity to grow closer to Him, if we can find our ears and screw them on.

Maybe there was a lesson here too, while completing this triathlon, that He wanted to nail through my thick skull, a lesson that wouldn’t sink into my brain any other way, perhaps.

And I went further and faster than I thought I could.

. . . THAN I THOUGHT I COULD.

How else are we limiting ourselves with what God wants to do through us?

What race is God asking you to enter that is too far for you to go, or that you are too slow to finish?

Are your ears lying on the floor, too?

Samuel took his flask of oil and anointed [David, the shepherd boy, as king], with his brothers standing around, watching. The Spirit of God entered David like a rush of wind, God vitally empowering him for the rest of his life. The Message

Ways that God may be trying to wake us, trying to translate His words into a language we can understand, trying to encourage us to pick up our ears, screw them on, and listen to His vision for our lives will be discussed in the next post.

The Way To Fight Climate Change is To Eat Beef (Seriously)

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I was looking around me, trying to figure out how to save the world.

We’ve got some problems, right?

“Tick Season” and “Wildfire Season” are the terns that replace what we used to simply call “Spring” and “Summer”.

The warmer winters allow ticks to flourish, and weird weather events are seen all over the world with increased regularity.

So how do we solve these problems, I wanted to know, as I took another bite of my snack and continued to half-watch my favorite iPad distraction.

One list of ways to curb climate change helpfully included “Turn off lights” as a to-do item.

“Come on! The world is falling apart and you are harping about turning off lights?” I thought incredulously.

OK – what are the MOST important things that we can be doing to reverse climate change?

I don’t have a lot of time here. The commercial is almost over.

It turns out, that the best thing we can do is to eat beef.

Now, two caveats:

(1) I didn’t say that we should eat MORE beef.

(2) I didn’t specify what KIND of beef we should eat.

We should eat LESS beef. For sure. Your hearts and knees will thank you. We should cut up that beef into TINY strips and use it to add flavoring to our stir fries, for example. But we should EAT beef.

We should ONLY eat ONE kind of beef. The kind that costs more money. But if we do point number one, above, and eat LESS beef as well to give our overtaxed bodies a break, we still come out ahead, financially. And we can enjoy a side of ultra-cheap beans with every meal, which will make our bodies happy too.

Anyway, having extra money to buy more plastic items that will break next week is one of the idols of our culture, enslaving us. But that is a conversation for another day.

Now, I finally get to the point:

Eat only beef that has been regeneratively farmed.

Yes, a big word for the end of a short blog post.

Check out this movie for a summary of this movement or wait for a future post for a detailed explanation.

Kiss the Ground

What are your thoughts?

Want To Be A Hero Too?

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I AM a NEIGHBORHOOD CHAMPION. I AM the COMMITTEE CHAIR. (For those who don’t know, the CHAIR is the TOP, MOST IMPORTANT position on the committee).

Of what, you say?

Well, of this group I volunteer with, the Firesmart program. The goal is to educate people about the most common causes for houses to burn down due to wildfire, and then to focus on doing the most important interventions that decrease the risk of a house going up in flames.

We encourage each other to clean up the downed branches that are fire risks in our community. And of course, with tinder-dry forests where we live, in the BC interior of Canada, it seems the trees are shouting, “Please consume me with fire!”

Many of the cedars are already red, dried up, and sad, living in the arboreal never land between life and death.

But I digress.

The point I was trying to make is that, well, have you ever noticed how manipulation is overtly used in our culture? For example, the assumption is by the Firesmart program that Jane-Neighbor (aka me) would be more likely to spend another X number of hours volunteering if we raise her up a bit in her own eyes.

She is MORE important than others. SHE ALONE is the CHAIR, and my favorite, a CHAMPION. I rode around on my bike last summer delivering flyers with information about the Firesmart program. And now, I can wear a badge, and elevate myself to the lofty level of CHAMPION.

We are all so ridiculous, aren’t we? And by the way, when I throw away the title of Champion or Chair, what do we have left? “Regular Mom worried about her kid’s future”. Somehow that title isn’t as important, we feel. How wrong we are! The secret superpower, the cape under our regular clothes, regular moms, regular dads, is actually of course, concern for the wellbeing of our kids.

Learning what wildfire smoke does to kids’ brains* – that’s my superpower. I would wave my paper fan all day long in front of my kid’s faces . . . desperately . . . untiringly if that would decrease their potential cognitive impacts. I don’t even need the elevated title of CHAIR to do that!

Barring that, I ride on my bike distributing flyers. Maybe my kids and us won’t have to drive away in a car in a hurry this summer, flames licking at our tires. We read about others in Lytton, BC who endured that a few years ago. It would be nice not to do that, actually.

I’d rather just be a regular Mom, reading my book on the wharf at the lake while my kids play in the water.

Instead, I am a super mom, manipulated to feel important. The incredible truth is that “Mom Worried about Her Kids” is a force to be reckoned with. She is the true powerhouse.

Have you ever read about those moms who lifted a car off of their kids when they were in danger? The critical line in that article is that “. . . we humans are, quite simply, stronger than we think.”

Ready to lift the car of a sick culture off of our kids?

Come on, Moms, Dads. It’s time to reluctantly put away the novels, look at the future of our kids 20 years out, and work together to do some lifting. Our kids may be trapped between wildfire smoke and flames licking their tires unless we can find a way to turn this big ship, our culture, around. Time for some real heroes to show their stuff. On board?

For now, we can use our voice here, as one example of taking off our Clark Kent clothes and jumping into the battle. And let’s continue to talk about how to be a real hero in a future post, shall we?

Blogpost Footnotes

*Statement from this article: “A growing body of literature also suggests that exposure to particulate matter may have neuropsychological effects in children, including associations with ADHD, autism, school performance, and memory.”

Don’t Laugh At Me Yet

/ Lori Lawe / 4 Comments

No. It isn’t funny. We concur with you. We empathize. We feel your pain. We’ve been there. This is NOT funny……. (yet). We turn away when the snicker rises up. We don’t want you to see the guffaw. Not YET. Yet is the keyword.

My daughter is a minor chemist. She has mixed and remade so many versions of slime that she could create her own YouTube channel if she wanted to (in fact, she does and likely will). She was thrilled with the quality and texture of her most recent recipe, bounding down the stairs to lay her magnificent creation before my unappreciative eyes.

“Oh yes, it’s more stretchy,” I expressed, grasping to appreciate homemade slime. She couldn’t hear my lack of astonishment. She was a momma and this new batch of slime was her baby. No one, nothing, could tempt her to see a lack of wonder towards her beloved. This I could understand.

But it was unbelievably annoying when later that morning, after using our bathroom, I automatically rested my hand where the hand pump soap sits, and … nothing. The soap was gone. I actually thought I was going mad. I couldn’t find my teaspoon measure (again) later in the day. Random things seem to appear from thin air in bizarre locations, and others disappear with no rhyme or reason.

So it wasn’t funny. Yet. Can we not even keep soap in the bathroom, this hygienic essential? What is wrong with our household? I stumbled to the coffee machine in an effort to increase brain cells, to seek comfort from another cup of java. How is it that we don’t even have what we need to function at the most basic of levels? I asked myself.

I was discouraged. My identity was somehow wrapped up in a $6 bottle of hand soap. If I’m the one directing this ship, together with my hardworking husband, why is there another hole in the boat?

Coffee wasn’t solving my problem. But laughter did. Unentangling my identity from the bottle of hand soap helped. Waiting for the YET, which I could sense somehow, was coming, was the relief that I needed.

So, of course, our daughter used the family bathroom hand soap to make her most recent batch of glorious slime. Why wouldn’t she? And yes, she did put it . . . somewhere. Now where was it?

Here is the YET. I am NOT actually incapable of having enough of the basic essentials available to avoid a major health hazard. I am homeschooling. And my daughter is the inventor. Of COURSE, we may not have soap to wash our hands every now and then.

Relating this story to a friend later that day was long enough for the YET to arrive. Pull my hair out, question my ability to safely homeschool my children a few hours ago. And now it’s funny.

Because our little inventor is ridiculous. And so am I. Who ties their self-worth to the state of organization of their home? We need each other, her and I. God has plans for us both.

So she returned the soap. I had a laugh with my friend, who relayed a similar homeschooling mishap, and we went on with storytime together. And I am learning again, that because I am ridiculous, and because I live with those who are ridiculous, funny stuff happens.

I see your lips twitching the next time I share my frustrating homeschooling mishap. It’s math time. Has anyone seen all of our pencils? You look away, trying not to burst into laughter in my face. Not yet.

But you are the ones chosen by God . . . chosen to be a holy people … from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted. The Message‬‬

Do you sometimes throw away your identity as a child of God and link your self-worth, instead, to a $6 bottle of hand soap, or other expectation for yourself as Captain of the ship? Are you frantically bailing out a sinking ship, or is this just not funny (yet)?

How To Avoid Spiritual Head Banging

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

It started its day by banging its head against the window. “Aw – poor little bird,” I thought. I wondered if it accidentally flew into the window. But then I heard it – thump . . . thump… thump… This bird had been caught in a Mobius loop, a cycle without exit.

“Must. Bang. Head. Against. Window!” it thought, its determined little mind hurling itself again and again at its reflection

I felt compassion for the little thing. These glass window panes are a menace to little birds with walnut-sized brains. Seeing its reflection in the window, it tried desperately to fight itself off.

It will get tired in a few minutes and fly away, I thought optimistically. When minutes turned to hours, I was starting to admire the little guy, in a “you’re crazy” sort of a way.

I scared it away, using my most terrifying howl. I won’t see that bird again today, I thought, pleased with myself. Not even a full minute passed before the little animal returned. BAM. Flutter, flutter. BAM. This thing is brave.

I placed pillows, and miscellaneous items against the window to hide its reflection. The bird merely defecated repeatedly on the pillows before flying slightly higher and slamming itself against the window pane. BAM. Fly fly flutter flutter. BAM.

I taped black paper on most of the window. Like the cat in “The cat came back” National Film Board feature, this bird flew to another window of our house, and then another and another. I followed it from window to window, covering pangs so it couldn’t see its reflection.

Soon I felt like I was living in Britain in WW2, with black paper from my daughters art supplies covering almost every window. Wham… wham… wham…

The black paper helped for awhile but with determined insanity, the bird found my loopholes. A week later, I found it delightedly smashing it’s little head against a forgotten garage window. BAM! It didn’t even back away when it saw me this time. It was busy.

Guess how long this has been going on? A few hours? Nope. A few days? Nope. So far we are at more than three WEEKS plus one day of thumping. The little guy is determined, for sure.

We left for a holiday, and when we returned, I was amazed to find the little bird still thumping, not wanting to miss even one day of it’s morning routine. Clearly now this bird was just in a habit. A VERY bad habit.

I saw another dark-eyed junco this morning, as I peered through the small hole of black paper taped to the window to peer cautiously outside. This little bird was pecking at the ground, fluttering about, doing regular bird stuff. It seemed to be having a better go at things, a more joyous life.

Why was the other little dark-eyed junco stuck?

And us? I see the same thing in other parts of life. In my church. Instead of standing back, offering our activities to God, seeing what God is offering new this season we “Must. Do. The. Same. Things. Over. And. Over” too. Even if it’s dangerous to our well-being. We are determined.

Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. The Message

Why don’t we ask God where we are banging our heads against the window, because, we too, like that stuck little Junco MUST. DO. THE. SAME. THING. OVER. AND. OVER.

Stuck spiritually?

Dislike reading the sacred text, the most influential book of all time?

Hate to pray?

Maybe it’s time to try a new approach.

Let’s pray together. I am excited to announce an online prayer time, and you are very welcome to join!

Details coming soon!

Jesus, teach us to listen, and to obey your voice into the bright and exciting future you have for each one of us, that we may, by Your power, share Your love with the world.

Let’s awaken, listen, respond.

Holy Spirit, what is the new thing that You are calling our hearts to soar into?

How To Make Homeschooled Kids Clean Up (Avoid Insanity, Parents!)

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

This post could make you feel like a Superhero Mama in Clark Kent clothes (OK – Clark Kent clothes with a bit of spit-up on them. Who’s looking THAT closely?) because this post is filled to the brim with advice about how to make your homeschooled kids clean up.

(Or at least there is one piece of advice somewhere in this post. I hope you can find it. While you’re looking, have you seen any pencils? We lost all of ours so it’s becoming harder to do our math.)

We moms sit on the floor, despair weighing us down as the kids fly paper airplanes around us, laughing, and the dog follows. We had a great day, yes. The homeschooling party is over for the day, yes. Mom is exhausted and she can’t even find a few inches of kitchen space to drag out the carrots to chop for dinner tonight.

HOW do you make the little rascals clean up???

This was the subject of many years of my careful research. I scoured homeschooling stores and dumped piles of regular dollars in exchange for a few cheaply printed “Mom Dollars” linked to “rewards that all children love,” believing the promise that THIS TIME, they will clean up.

It all failed.

In fact, sensing an inner weakness with their sixth sense (the one only accessible to children), one child purposely hid random items all over the house because “It was easier than putting it away,” she confessed, eyes downcast.

They are purposely trying to wear you down.

Don’t let them.

I printed this small quip that my brain construed one random Wednesday evening. And the sign stuck. And it worked. Voila!

For the price of – well, nothing, really – you can make your Grade 4 student practice their cursive and you’re got a sign too! But here it is – the magic formula…. Drum roll, please…

A touch of brilliance if I may say so, however immodestly. No eating until there is enough tidying that at least one clean bowl surfaces. AND since they EAT, and since the sign is staring you in the face AS you serve the food, you remember to enforce this new “homeschooling rule,” so Voila! Magic!

Notice the algebraic ORDER of things. FIRST clean up. THEN face stuffing.

The homeschool magic key unlocking every child’s inner Mr. Clean has arrived! You don’t eat until you’ve dumped a dozen or so shovelfuls of horse manure outside.

That would be if you were a farmer.

In our case, it is partially used math supplies and dirty cups with unfinished, carefully measured daily water allocation goals for each child. But you get the point.

And yes, I am aware that the phrasing implies that we are knee-deep in moldy, forgotten science experiments and half-finished math pages strewn about when it says “Clean up the place.” Duh – we are.

Also, I am aware that the words “stuff your face” don’t exactly imply dinner manners appropriate for Ms. Lovelybottom’s approval (I’ll explain her someday too since I have already told you other embarrassing stuff and you still like me).

The point is, the cleanup gets done. I can sit at the table with my feet up, sip a lemonade, watch them work, and realize that actually, I am doing a good job. Everyone is happy. Even, and especially, me.

For a few minutes at least.

But who’s counting?

And if it takes a ridiculous sign to make it through another week, another year? Well, print away, dear homeschooling parent.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop . . . The Message

We take a little homeschool bliss where we can get it.

At least we’ve got our priorities in the right order.

A clean house is overrated, anyway.

How To Interact Normally With Teens

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I really needed a relaxing afternoon with a chick flick movie and popcorn.

I asked my 17-year-old daughter to join me that afternoon after church. Fun!

At church, I felt the call of God to invite the 21-year-old woman to join us.

She had phoned me earlier in the week to ask for some advice about a boyfriend. I hadn’t had a chance to get back to her yet.

We picked up the 15-year-old after church and they all came for lunch.

After the movie, the four of us sat on the floor and whispered about boys and love and life and wisdom for two hours.

I thought only a few minutes had passed but was surprised that we had forgotten about supper.

But this is normal for us, in kind of an abnormal way.

We attend the women’s prayer meeting together – youth and teens and young women. We go to the women’s retreat together – all ages.

Why not?

This is what we do in the church.

My mind recollects 25 years back when I was taking a course for my Master’s degree. The Professor said that the church is the last place where we can collect sociological data that reflects all ages.

That surprised me like a 2×4 aimed at my head.

The church is the LAST place in our culture where people of diverse ages interact.

Wow.

Just because something happens frequently doesn’t mean it’s normal.

Maybe tossing our teens in the basement with a jumbo pack of Cheezies and a few other youths, knowing they will be staring into their phones and doing “who knows what?” is not “normal”.

Maybe hoping for the best for them as we try to forget them for a while, while we watch our own movie upstairs is not “normal”.

This is common in our culture of highly segregated ages. It is common for youth to share their hearts almost exclusively with people in the same age demographic, give or take 6 months, but is this normal?

No. Look to the church for normal.

There are some alternatives we can take to insert some “normalcy” into the “common un-normalcy” of our cultural expectations around how we interact with teens. Here are a few:

1. Push them out of the way at the buffet when you are trying to get at the cheese. Hey, you never know! It worked for me!

2. Wear weird pants and wait for teens to come to you. Hey, you never know! It worked for me!

3. Buy a Christmas present for yourself and pretend to give it to some youth. This may guilt them into interacting with you. Hey, you never know! It worked for me!

4. Bring your kids and youth to church. Try this while you are still bigger than them if they are physically resisting you.

The 70-year-old lady told me a story this week of the 7-year-old from our church who came over to sit next to her on the public bus. This child was genuinely curious about what the older lady was doing that day. They love each other because they have had some time in each other’s company.

That’s kind of cool.

The 90-year-old wise lady in my life, when I was a teen, turned me down a narrower, healthier path many times.

And I loved her too.

Anyway, let’s keep being the uncommon normal.

Society may depend on it.

Apollos was accurate in everything he taught about Jesus up to a point, but he only went as far as the baptism of John. He preached with power in the meeting place. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and told him the rest of the story. The Message

After a moment of thankfulness, and of laying the well-being of a teen we love humbly at the feet of God, does a particular person come to mind as someone who can potentially connect with them? For example, an aunt, uncle, business associate, elderly person, neighbor, or friend?

Jesus, we pray you would show us the wise adult in our beloved teen’s life who may have a key to open their heart.

When can we cook our youth their favorite meal and invite this person to join us? Let’s keep praying for the uncommon normal.

God is Handing Out Destinies – Do You Want Yours? (Part 1)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

When no one was looking – and shhh! Don’t tell anyone! – I closed the door to my bedroom and put on the dress. No, not my dress. My daughter’s dress. And yes, the red ball gown. I couldn’t leave it on the hanger. It was calling, calling to me. Wear me! Put me on! Dance in me! And so I obeyed it. The gown and I were friends already.

I swayed to and fro watching the material billow on either side. Then I twirled and “snap!” My husband took a picture of me. I laughed and continued dancing. I was a young girl again. Possibilities were endless. Who would I become?

A few minutes later, it was time to return the dress to the hanger. To give it back to its rightful owner: the one with a future stretched out so far in front of her, the horizon is still a blur. Don’t they give scholarships and opportunities to the youth?

Aren’t “they” searching for youth to raise up, to hold their hand on the giant escalator roaring into the sky? “There are opportunities for you”, the dress reminds. “Who you are is much more beautiful than what you recognize in yourself on an ordinary day”, the dress said to her.

So I went back to the dishes. To the laundry. To scrub the floor. (Wait – I never scrub my floor but don’t ruin the effect).

I surrendered my identity, the identity that God was whispering to me to remember when I took off the dress. “Gracefully surrendering the things of youth,” I thought stoically. I am mature now. Time to pass on the torch to stronger runners, to those without back pain.

Maybe it’s time for me to get out the TV and to stare numbly for the next few decades (Wait – I don’t have a TV either, but again… keep the mood!).

The point is, who am I? Am I the young girl, dancing in freedom, wondering what new doors of opportunity will open for me tomorrow? Am I catching hopes and dreams wherever I wander, storing them in a basket that I carry with me, overfilling with possibilities?

Or am I me? The has been, has gone. I had my opportunities. Am I the flower, wilted, with a bit of brown at the edges? Am I a cactus? Come too close to me with a balloon of freedom and I will pop it? Am I living in a box when God wants me to be free? Are you?

“Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.” The Message

Lord, help us to stop groveling on the ground like common beggars. Help us to stand, while leaning on Your strength. Wash us in your love. Help us to have the courage to take hold of the royal robes that You hold out to us. Let us never live in the lie, that just because we are beggars, we aren’t also daughters and sons of the King. Thank You for adopting us into Your love. May we run free into our destinies, we pray.

After a few minutes of thanksgiving, ask God “What blinders am I wearing, so I am unable to see the next thing You are showing me?”

Happy Easter (Every) One!

/ Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

It’s kind of disturbing to me that my post with the most readers (and you know who you are – shame on you!) was a post where I had written the smallest amount. Take that to its logical conclusion! Are you trying to say that the less I write, the better it is? Huh?? Huh??

I’m joking, of course.

I love all one of you.

Well, actually back at Christmas time, I only had one reader, but now I have many more!

Yes, many of them live in my household, and I do cook for them, so yes, I do have manipulative capital. “Have you read my post yet? No, you can’t eat.”

I’m not saying I would do that (family members – no comments, please) but that is one strategy to increase readership!

It’s OK. I’m actually having so much fun writing this stuff that I don’t seem to care much if anyone reads it because writing is proving cathartic to me.

Maybe I should pay you to read this stuff because I feel so much better after I write?

Ha! Nice try!

Wow. Marketing is everywhere!

Now, let me get back to ignoring you so I can write properly.

What were we talking about? Oh yes, Easter.

Happy Easter!

And since my most enjoyed post was the shortest I’ll leave it at that.

May your heart long for more, spiritually, in this season. May chocolate eggs no longer satisfy. May everything else that you have put your hope in, like a bridge that will eventually collapse with too much weight, be seen for what it is. May we learn to cast our burdens, cares, anxieties, and joys upon Jesus, His back broken for our sin.

And because He was broken, because it is Easter again this year, we have a strong arm to grasp hold of as we walk through the tribulations of this life.

Lift up your eyes! He is risen!

I look up to the mountains; does my strength come from mountains? No, my strength comes from God, who made heaven, and earth, and mountains. He won’t let you stumble. The Message