THE FRIENDSHIP CHALLENGE

It started out as a Bible study, not long after we moved into our community here in Florida, but I quickly realized the format would need to change, at least temporarily.  Once April hits, many of the people in our community go back north to avoid the summer heat, so only a couple of weeks after we began meeting at my house, half our group left.  I decided then that with summer nearly here and people coming and going we’d do a book study instead of a Bible study, so for the last few weeks we’ve been working our way through Carol Kent’s book, When I Lay My Isaac Down.  

 

As it turned out, this was a great choice because what has happened among the four women who have consistently studied together is that we are getting to know and love one another.  We discovered that we have had similar struggles – serious medical issues, family issues, past hurts that still haunt us.  We share burdens, cry, and laugh together as we discover how we’ve coped and how we’ve failed – and always what we’ve learned about ourselves and Jesus in the process.

We’ve each moved here from somewhere else and we long for friends.  The study itself is helping us go deeper with just a few on a faith journey together and it has been awesome.  We still want to broaden our friendships though, to find other friends with whom we can go to lunch, chat on the phone, spend time.  So this week we have been given a challenge to step outside our comfort zones and make the first move toward someone we don’t know.  

Everyone in our community has been so nice.  That comes with moving to a place where everyone is from somewhere else.  Everyone (or most of us at least) is wanting to make friends, but it’s a bit scary.  Not every personality is comfortable striking up conversations with strangers.  Not everyone likes to be the one to do the inviting.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years, even when my kids were small is this:  if you sit in your own house waiting for someone to invite you, you’ll wait forever.  I hated to do the inviting, still do today, but if I didn’t do it, no one else did either.  Years ago I decided that I was going to move the furniture to the edges of the room and invite the moms with little kids.  Sure, raisins would inevitably get squished into my rugs and juice spilled on my floor, but I would make friends and other moms would be grateful someone else did the inviting.  I was okay with that because I was making friends.

Not much has changed.  In this lovely community where we all live in brand new homes, not a lot of inviting is happening.  So, I’m going to swallow my social anxiety, bite the bullet, and invite women here.  And I have challenged the other women in our study to do the same.

I’m confident that the Lord placed me and these other women who meet here once a week in this very community for a purpose.  If the four of us have life issues that have thrown us, but that we have survived by the wonderful grace of the Lord, then there are surely more.  If we take the first step, who knows how the Lord will use us to gently bring other women into His kingdom.  

Feeling lonely and needing friends of your own?  Take the friendship challenge, step out of your comfort zone and ask someone over for coffee, or to take a walk, or to have lunch.  You just might find that someone else is as much in need of a friend as you are - and you may one day have the added blessing of sharing Jesus with your new friend.

IT’S VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL TIME!!!

 I did not grow up in a Christian home.  As a matter of fact, we didn’t begin even going to church until I was in my pre-teens so, apart from what my mom learned from her Christian grandmother that got passed along, spiritual things were not really a priority. 

I have some very early memories of church though.   

When I was in kindergarten and first grade I had a favorite aunt and uncle on my dad’s side, Aunt Elsie and Uncle Jim.  The highlight of my week was going to stay with them on a weekend.  On Friday afternoon my mom would put me on a bus outside my house with instructions to the driver to let me off at my aunt’s street about 20 blocks away (Who would do this today with a child so young??  In that day, in the early 50s, it was perfectly safe.)

My cousin Marianne would meet me at the corner of their street and we’d make a stop first at a tiny town library so I could get books to read while I was with them, before making the long walk down the hill to their house. 

 In the summers we went to their bungalow in Keansburg, NJ. Before we left, we had a supper of pastina!  (I’ve loved pastina to this day!)  On the way down we always stopped at what today we would call a flea market, but in that day I knew it as “the auction”.  

 

In the winter when I stayed with them they would sometimes take me to church.  I remember sitting at Aunt Elsie’s feet while she wrapped my hair in rags to curl it for church.  I thought I looked so beautiful in those spiral curls!  

The memory I have of going to church was from a Sunday before Christmas when I was staying with Aunt Elsie.  That day they were giving out a small box of hard candies to each child who came to Sunday school and they didn’t have one for me.  And why would they, when they didn’t know I’d be there, but I was hugely disappointed.  Not the best memory of church, but hey, it didn’t make me swear off church from that point on – praise the Lord.

The other memory I have of church occurred a few years later.  I was now probably seven or eight.  We lived down the street from a tiny Baptist church.  Mom and Dad sent my brother and I there for Sunday school, and I was a Pioneer Girl in that church, but as far as I remember, my parents never went.  

My best memory of that church was their Vacation Bible School.  I had never been to this now very popular ministry before and had no idea what to expect.  I don’t remember if I even went with a friend or with my brother or by myself.  What I do remember was that the teacher told stories using a flannel graph.  

If you don’t know the delights of flannel graphs, you don’t know what you’re missing.  The teacher had a large square board covered in felt on which she placed background scenes of mountains, lakes, deserts – whatever suited the Bible story  Then as she told the Bible story she added very artistically done characters, men, women, children, animals, also in felt.  I was fascinated, although to this day I do not remember what stories from the Bible were taught.  I just remember loving having them told with flannel board figures.  I think that memory, more than any other, is one of the reasons I am so drawn to the ministry of Vacation Bible School (VBS) today.  

At our church in New Jersey I participated in VBS for many of the years we were there.  I was a group leader, a registrar, and for the last several years one of the coordinators of service projects.  The last year there, with all the work that went into getting our house ready to sell, and then moving, I declined to serve and I knew that was a good decision for that time.

Now we are in Florida and have finally settled on a church home.  Jim and I have long believed we were saved by the Lord so that we might serve the Lord, and while there are many things we might do outside the church, we believe our primary responsibility is to our home church.  So this week was my week to jump into ministry with both feet!

Beginning Sunday, I’m going to be team teaching second through fifth graders with another woman twice a month.  I can’t tell you how motivated and energized I feel just getting my teaching materials and beginning to think of how to best teach the lesson to this group of kids.

And then yesterday, I met with the woman who is coordinating snacks this year at VBS.  Jim and I are going to help with that for the VBS in July.  Just hearing all about the snacks we’ll be preparing, each one designed to reinforce some truth from the Bible lesson makes my adrenaline soar!

The ministry of VBS, since that day long ago when I was just seven, has been my favorite of all the ministries of the church, for a number of reasons.  

First, it is the first time many kids will hear about Jesus, who really, really loves them!  Little kids are so responsive to Him, so tender hearted, so loving.  What a blessing to introduce them to Him.  Many times a child’s reaction to the message he/she hears at VBS will prompt a family to begin thinking about the spiritual needs of their family so that they begin coming to church.

Second, I love the energy of VBS.  Need a lift?  Get in a room with 80-100 excited kids, hear them sing, do the motions to the songs, shout, laugh. . . . it’s contagious and will lift you right out of the doldrums!  And anybody can handle that much energy for just 5 half days, right?

Third, the VBS ministry, all by itself, taps into the widest variety of gifts assembled in the church.  There are those who lead kid worship, those who prepare snacks, those who teach, those who park cars, those who register families, greeters, those who design set backgrounds, those who teach crafts, those who plan active games – plus a ton of people with administrative gifts who work behind the scenes putting it all together.  Before VBS even gets off the ground on the first day, a program is selected, decorations are being worked on, songs being learned, crafts put together, planning, planning, planning – months in advance.  

One of my favorite things to do during the week of VBS is to just stand by and observe everyone doing what they’ve been assigned, what they’re good at.  I love watching adults and teens relate to kids and love on them.  It’s the body of Christ at work and it’s awesome!

Fourth, this year in particular, the Lord is using the ministry of VBS to answer my prayers for friends and in this setting, especially church friends. I’m so grateful for that!  And so grateful the Lord sped up the process!  

So, what are you doing this summer in YOUR church?  May I suggest Vacation Bible School? 

AMAZING GRACE

If you read my blog, “Unmasked”, then you know that in that blog I was lamenting about a prayer I was praying to the Lord Jesus for someone I love.  The cause of my lamentation was that I had prayed the SAME prayers for someone else I loved for years without seeing much real life change and I was afraid I would wait years again this time around.   

What happened to FAITH?

The Bible, in Hebrews 11:1 defines faith in this way:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

I don’t know about you, but what I really want in those circumstances that never seem to get any better, is SIGHT.  I want to SEE glimmers of God’s work.  I want to see changes in the life of the one I love.  But that is not faith.  

Faith is the “evidence” of things I cannot yet see.  Faith believes that God IS at work, that He HAS things in hand, even when it is currently veiled from our eyes.  It’s the “substance of things hoped for”.  But the "hope" isn't a cross your fingers hope, it's a CERTAIN hope!  That's faith.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I find it easier to exercise faith when I’m waiting for something to happen in my own life, and much harder to exercise it when I’m waiting for God to do something in someone else’s life.  Why?  

I know those other people.  I know they aren’t necessarily looking to the Lord for help, or answers, or direction. Because of that, I think they’re going to be really hard to reach and even harder to change.  Oh, how I underestimate the Lord!  All the time!

Mind you, it was only back in the middle of April that I watched the Lord perform a true miracle in the life of my brother, completely healing him of adenoblastoma, on the very day he was to have life altering surgery to remove it.  I was alive with praise that day because I SAW the outcome with my own eyes.  There’s that SIGHT again!  

So how is it that once again, when I’m looking to the Lord to do a great work in my loved one, and He does, I still find myself taken aback.  In just two months, the life of the one I love has completely turned around.  

Why is the Lord so continually patient with, and good to me, when I am so lacking in the most elemental faith?  

The only explanation is grace.  And God's grace really IS amazing!

GOD'S GRACE IN OUR MOVE

Jim and I have lived in Florida now for nine months, and in this community for five of them and we LOVE it!  All the things I feared I would find hard have not been, and for that I have the Lord to thank.  He has been so incredibly faithful to us.

One of the things I feared before we moved from the northeast was adjusting to the weather here in sunny, but also hot and humid, Florida.  I won’t pretend that I love the heat and humidity of the summer.  It is pretty intense, but the winter was beautiful.  Some days were chilly enough to wear my fleece, but it was nearly always sunny, and guess what, it never snowed, not even once!

I never missed the kind of seasonal change we had back in New Jersey because Florida really does have its own seasons.  Early winter here felt like fall back in the north, and later winter felt like spring.  We didn’t have the changing color of leaves, and I did love that about fall in New Jersey, but we did have flowers, trees and grass coming to life again in late winter.

The community we live in is so beautiful, with its many lakes, and palm trees, and shrubs that stay green all year.  We loved going on walks in the evenings and sitting outside on our front porch where there is always a beautiful breeze.  I have been so excited with my little plot of land in our community garden where I’ve grown tomatoes, zucchini and red peppers in the winter!  What a fun and unexpected blessing of being here.

Probably one of the biggest things I feared before we moved was finding friends.  Jim and I both grew up in New Jersey and knew lots of people, some we went to school with, some in our neighborhood, many more from our church.  Jim still has two brothers living in New Jersey as well.  Leaving all of them was so much harder than some other things we left behind.  

As I’ve mentioned before in blogs, I’m an introvert, so while I like and want friends, it takes a long time for me to make the kinds of friends I’m looking for, true, kindred spirit kinds of friends.  Making friends here has been the most significant way in which the Lord has answered my longings and my prayers.

For one thing our community is very friendly and welcoming.  Since nearly everyone comes from some place other than Florida, everyone says hello, they ask where you’re from, and neighbors even invite you in for neighborhood gatherings.  I’ve met so many women here that way.  From participation in the garden club and the community service club, I’ve come to know their names and they know mine.  Common interests knit us together and give us something to talk about (So, how does YOUR garden grow?).

There is a women’s Bible study which meets in the clubhouse once a week.  In addition to enjoying the study, I’ve met many believing women as well.  I’ve invited a few for coffee and I’ve begun a study of my own that meets in my home.  Through both studies I’m meeting other women who want more than just a casual friendship.  I’m meeting kindred spirits, women with whom I can talk about the Lord and pray.  It’s awesome!

 Another of the challenges of our move has been finding a church to call home.  We loved our church in New Jersey.  It was our spiritual home and its members were family.  We really hated leaving.  We thought finding a church where we could feel just as much at home here would be so easy, after all, we're now in the Bible belt!  And there are LOTS of churches here.  

Before we left New Jersey we did our research.  We went on line and listened to sermons, we checked maps to see how far from our home each church would be, we read through doctrinal statements and we narrowed down the search.  In the five months we've been here, we visited three churches, each about the same twenty minute drive from our house and we stayed with them for at least a month.  We eliminated two for various reasons - too small, preaching okay but not great, not enough of a generational or racial mix for us.  

We have finally settled on one we think we can call home.  The preaching is great and we love the worship service, so we're ready to take the next step.  We've signed up to help with snack during their Vacation Bible School and I've volunteered to help out in the children's program on Sunday mornings.  We're so thankful to the Lord for His wisdom and direction in the process, and so happy we have found a church to call home - in a reasonably short time.

So after five months here, I have seen the Lord’s very mighty, and also patient, hand, taking this, “I don’t want to move to Florida”, woman and changing her heart.  I’ve seen His amazing grace lavished on me in helping me to make this really big adjustment so easily.  And I know the blessing of His goodness in providing for my friendship needs and in finding us a church. 

I’m so grateful to Him and praise His name!