Valentines day is not far away.  If you visit any store right now you will see chocolate candies and Valentines.  As I was praying and reading through 1 John recently I thought to myself, what is sweeter than chocolate?  The love of God! 

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.God showed His great love for us by sending His one and only Son that we might live through Him. 1 John 4:9-11

Love is not just a feeling. 

It is an action. 

God acted on His love for us by giving the most precious gift.  In Genesis we learn sin entered the world when man and woman chose to disobey God.  Since then sin has been a problem for all of us. Sin is nothing more than knowing what God wants and choosing not to do it. 

There had to be a price paid for sin to bring us back into right relationship with God.  Jesus, God’s only Son became the sacrifice for our sin.  My mind can’t comprehend God loving me so much He would give the life of His Son.  Now my friend that is true love!

Sin is nothing more than knowing what God wants and choosing not to do it.

As a mom I cannot imagine giving my child’s life to pay for someone else’s bad choices.  My thoughts would be they made the bad decision, they should live with the consequences. 

Yet God chose us. 

He loved us not because we loved Him first, but because He just chose to love us.  It is so hard for me to understand how anyone could know what God did for us and choose to refuse His gift of love.  

What is my response to this precious gift so much sweeter than any Valentine we could ever receive? 

My response is to love others as Christ loved us. 

I choose to act on this love by speaking words of affirmation. 

I choose to forgive when someone wrongs me. 

I choose to serve others even when it is inconvenient or costs me something. 

I choose to love because He first loved me.  

My friend, this Valentine’s day why not give the gift truly sweeter than chocolate. 

Receive God’s love for you.  Then give love to others.  

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In a place not far away or long ago, an invisible creature called Covid-19 lived. He was a troublemaker that came from a long line of troublemakers. A third cousin killed 50 million people in the 14^th century. To do it, Bubonic had to inhabit the fleas that lived on rats. Covid told himself he’d never go that low. But he longed to make it into history books as Bubonic had.

Covid’s Corona family members for thousands of years had disrupted the lives of human creatures. They specialized in sneezing and head congestion. Their best efforts were in winter because they didn’t do well when the sun came out. The common cold’s involuntary hosts—what he called them—might miss work a week and feel miserable. But occasionally, with a real success story, they would curse their Creator. That was the goal! Covid wanted to far surpass his family, to be much more than just a nuisance. He longed to be deadly and feared!

One day he developed a brilliant plan. He started in the Far East where hosts lived in tight quarters. After infiltrating them, his army of minions spread. On planes, trains, cruise ships, everywhere his hosts went, they unknowingly carried and spread him to others before his time-released symptoms appeared. He’d achieved what his family coveted—a stealth offensive.

Soon the WORLD was filled with him! Now every history book would write about him with bold headlines – “Covid-19 the Pandemic of 2020.” Most human creatures obeyed their governments’ demands to be socially distant. That too worked well in his plan: not just to kill weaker hosts, but to cause psychological and economic depression. He was thrilled that he had totally disrupted life! Surely, this would cause human creatures to curse their Creator!

But then everything changed. In Italy (one of his greatest successes), people began singing to each other from their balconies. Medical teams from Samaritan’s Purse went into the most infected areas. Just as if he didn’t exist!

People in America stood or kneeled in hospital parking lots singing Christian songs and praying for medical staff and patients. And people everywhere suddenly appreciated truck drivers, grocery store workers, hospital janitors, and garbage collectors who kept doing their jobs.

Churches, forced to close their doors, met “distantly together with God’s people” by livestreaming. People used social media, FaceTime and Zoom to stay in touch with each other and keep their businesses afloat. Conversations between neighbors happened, but six feet apart.

Covid became incensed as he looked around. He’d closed bars and restaurants. He’d closed schools and parks and beaches. He’d even closed the churches! But he hadn’t managed to close the hearts of human creatures. Families were together instead of spread out in all directions. Many were praying, reading the Bible, and caring for each other more than ever before.

Suddenly Covid didn’t feel so well himself. He could tell he was losing strength. His army was dying. He’d done massive damage, but human creatures weren’t cursing their Creator. And the Creator wasn’t going to let him win.

He remembered what one of the Creator’s prophets had said, “But for you who revere my name, the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2).

He knew then that Sun, also known as the Son, would burn off everything he’d done.

Copyright 2020 by Vicki Huffman

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Two women visited a funeral home to pay their respects to a wealthy neighbor who had died. After signing the guest book, they were surprised to be the only ones in the viewing room. The first woman, who didn’t know the deceased well, looked down at the middle-aged woman in the satin of her costly coffin and said, “What a shame to die at a time when she had everything to live for!”

The other woman who had known some of the particulars of the deceased woman’s life replied, “No, she had everything to live on. She had nothing to live for.”

For thousands of years poets and philosophers have pondered the meaning of life. With the eternal picture in mind, Longfellow wrote in “A Psalm of Life”: “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal.”

A contemporary bumper sticker defined life more sarcastically: “Life is hard. And then you die.”

The last few days of a year are traditionally a time of introspection, often mixed with melancholy. Maybe the holidays do it to us, turning our thoughts to times past and present differences. In many families, the end of each year includes fewer members than were living New Year’s Day. That is true of my family as my husband, my husband’s first cousin who was more like a sister, and one of our two dogs are no longer among us. (People with pets will understand.) Such losses bring musings on the impact of their lives—and ours.

Despite the fact that life is hard, some transcend their circumstances. Take for example, a woman named Anna. The only place we see her in the Bible is in the temple eight days after the first Christmas (Luke 2:36-38). Anna was 84 and alone. She had lost her husband only seven years after their marriage and lived in a society in which widows were often paupers. Anna may have survived on the charity of others, but she was not a street person. She was a temple person. “She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying” (v. 37b).

Anna lived a life of devotion because she knew God and constantly yearned to know Him better. Anna was a prophetess, but nothing specific she said is recorded. The important thing was not what she said but what she saw. Anna saw the baby Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought Him to the temple to dedicate Him on the eighth day after His birth. The Lord let her recognize that He was the one that she and other faithful Jews had waited for—the Messiah. After seeing Him, she “she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (v. 38).

We don’t know how long Anna lived after this event. But we can be sure her life would have been filled with even more devotion than before. Her faith had resulted in sight. She had lived a life worth living.

Anna’s life—like ours—had nothing to do with what she lived on and everything to do with Who she lived for.

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My husband is dying. As shocking as that seems, it’s a sentence I could have written every day for twenty-one months since he got an “aggressive cancer” diagnosis. I knew what the tests would show after that doctor’s appointment was changed to the last one of the day—allowing patients to cry or scream in privacy.

The doctor explained that tests showed 70% cancer. Already metastasized. No cure. Palliative care only.

As we began this journey, I was determined to at least learn something from it. I knew the five steps psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross used to describe the death and dying process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They usually happen in that order. But patients haven’t been trained to go through these steps calmly and sequentially like a champion dog at the Westminster Dog Show. Living with a terminal diagnosis is more like a day at an overcrowded dog park where not all the furry friends want to behave. At times the fur flies; symptoms and treatments fight each other and confusion reigns.  

Many years ago, I was the caregiver for my mother as she died of ovarian cancer. She was a gentle, stoic woman, semi-apologetic to all who might be inconvenienced by her suffering. My husband is (like me) more Type A. At one point I believed he’d reached Step #5, acceptance. But then a new symptom or area of pain or hope for a treatment would come around the bend. He’d reverse course and board the denial or anger or depression express for a few more loops around the track. He’s not unique in that. Many take temporary detours, making an unpredictable journey more unpredictable.

Last week we came home from a 10-day hospital stay after the doctors had given up. The failing of vital organs meant that hospice care became the best option.

What does God ask us to do when there is nothing left we can do? He asks us to wait with Him. Someone coined a term for this: being in the waiting room. For us, the waiting room now contains a clock rather than a calendar.  

What can we learn in the waiting room?

In the waiting room, we discover that in our weakness He gives us strength. “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13)

In the waiting room, we find the “peace that transcends understanding” is possible because “the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:7, 9)

In the waiting room, we learn how temporary our bodies are. As we watch the body of our loved one morph, sometimes in terrible ways, we long for the new eternal body believers are promised. “If the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” (2 Corinthians 5:1)

My husband’s tent is being taken down. One of his last lucid statements was, “I want to go.” He’s ready to receive Jesus’ eternal promises that he claimed as a nine-year-old. He’s ready and waiting to go home.

And those who wait around him are also ready.

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“If I’m still alive on Christmas Eve, I would like your promise that I can go home for Christmas,” the frail young woman whispered to her doctor.

It was a cold day in December and the news Dr. John MacDougall had just delivered seemed colder still. Yet the devout young mother of a one-year-old child courageously received his diagnosis that she was near death. He made the promise easily, certain that she would not be alive at Christmas.

Eleanor had probably been pretty before tuberculosis came into her life. Her husband had no way of knowing that when he returned from World War II a short time before, he had brought a mild case of tuberculosis with him. His case was detected and treated, but not before his wife caught it. For Eleanor the war was just beginning, and she wasn’t able to put up much of a fight.

By the time she became Dr. MacDougall’s patient, Eleanor weighed only 87 pounds. Her right lung had a growing tubercular cavity in it. Her temperature stayed between 101 and 103. Her body was toxic.

The doctor decided to try a then-experimental procedure in which needles were injected into the peritoneal cavity to force in air and push the diaphragm up against the lung. If the treatment succeeded it would force the TB cavity shut. The procedure nearly killed her, but she was alive on Christmas Eve, and the doctor allowed her to go home for Christmas.

She went home only after promising not to hold her child and to wear a surgical mask around anyone but her husband who was now immune to the disease. She smiled brightly while being put in an ambulance for her trip home.

After returning to the hospital late Christmas Day, she grew steadily worse. Toward the end of February, new complications set in. She became nauseous. Another doctor suggested she might be pregnant. It seemed unlikely she had conceived in her weakened condition, but a pregnancy test confirmed it.

Even at that time, legally and medically, an abortion was an option because the pregnancy seemed to imperil a life already in jeopardy. However, Eleanor, her husband, and the doctors were against abortion. They were Christians. And the doctors were sure she could not survive the surgery.

Eleanor was fed intravenously as she fought to sustain two lives in a body that was too weak to sustain one. But then the unimaginable began to happen. By late March her temperature was down. She began to eat and gain weight. The growth of the TB cavity had stopped. An X-ray showed why. The diaphragm was pushing up against the lower lobe of the lung to make room for the growing child. By pressing the sides of the hole together, the child was saving the mother.

The baby was born healthy. And the mother was healed, the TB cavity closed. Eleanor went home for good within a few months of the birth. Dr. MacDougall received Christmas cards from her for many years. Cards that always reminded him of a Christmas miracle.

The child saved the mother. But it was not the first time. For on the very first Christmas, a Child was born whose coming saved His mother—and all who come to Him.

When the angel told Mary that she would bear the Messiah, Jesus, and He would save his people from their sins, Mary replied: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. . . . the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name” (Luke 1:46-49 NIV).

The Mighty One has done great things for Mary. And Eleanor. And us.

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What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Some famous quotes:

Henry Jacobsen
Praise God even when you don’t understand what He is doing.

A. Johnston Ross
If I have enjoyed the hospitality of the Host of this universe, Who daily spreads a table in my sight, surely I cannot do less than acknowledge my dependence.

Anne Frank
I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy.

Theodore Roosevelt
Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.

Alice W. Brotherton
Heap high the board with plenteous cheer and gather to the feast, And toast the sturdy Pilgrim band whose courage never ceased.

H. W. Westermayer
The pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts . . . nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.

Hebrews 13:15
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.

Edward Sandford Martin
Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Robert Casper Lintner
Thanksgiving is nothing if not a glad and reverent lifting of the heart to God in honor and praise for His goodness.

George Washington
It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.

1 Thessalonians 5:18:
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

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In 2003 Robert Matthews called a radio station and told them this: “[Two years ago] my wife and I found out we were going to have our first child. She planned a trip out to California to visit her sister. On our way to the airport, we prayed that God would grant my wife a safe trip and be with her. “Shortly after I said ‘amen,’ we both heard a loud pop and the car shook violently. We had blown out a tire. I replaced the tire as quickly as I could, but we still missed her flight. Both very upset, we drove home.”

That was the morning of September 11, 2001—a day every adult American remembers. Robert received a call from his father that morning, a retired New York City firefighter. Without telling him why, his father asked what his daughter-in-law’s flight number was. When Robert explained that she had missed the flight, Jake Matthews told him that her flight had crashed into the southern tower. Robert was too shocked to speak. His dad also informed him that he was on his way to help rescue survivors—that he felt he had to do something.

Robert continued, “I was concerned for his safety, of course, but more because he had never given his life to Christ. After a brief debate, I knew his mind was made up. Before he got off the phone, he said, ‘Take good care of my grandchild.’ 

“Those were the last words I ever heard my father say; he died while helping in the rescue effort. My joy that my prayer of safety for my wife had been answered quickly became anger. I was angry at God, at my father, and at myself. I had gone for nearly two years blaming God for taking my father away. My son would never know his grandfather, my father had never accepted Christ, and I never got to say goodbye. Then something happened.

 “About two months ago, I was sitting at home with my wife and my son, when there was a knock on the door. I looked at my wife, but I could tell she wasn’t expecting anyone. I opened the door to a couple with a small child. The man looked at me and asked if my father’s name was Jake Matthews. I told him it was. He quickly grabbed my hand and said, ‘I never got the chance to meet your father, but it is an honor to meet his son.’ 

“He explained to me that his wife had worked in the World Trade Center and had been caught inside after the attack. She was pregnant and had been caught under debris. He then explained that my father had been the one to find his wife and free her. My eyes welled up with tears as I thought of my father giving his life for people like this. He then said, ‘There is something else you need to know.’

“His wife then told me that as my father worked to free her, she talked to him and led him to Christ. I began sobbing at the news. Now I know that when I get to heaven, my father will be standing beside Jesus to welcome me, and that this family would be able to thank him themselves.

“When their baby boy was born, they named him Jacob Matthew in honor of the man who gave his life so mother and baby could live.” 

This story of a mother in distress and a man who worked to save her body while she worked to save his soul always brings tears. (Partly because I wish I had the assurance Robert received that I would see my father again one day.) But it also reminds me that while our fathers give us our natural life, they sometimes need our prayers and help finding the eternal life that the Heavenly Father wants to give them.

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! (1 John 3:1 NLT)

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A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. John 16:21

“A mother understands what a child does not say.” — Jewish Proverb

“Motherhood: all love begins and ends there.” — Robert Browning

“The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.” — Jessica Lange

“Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Mother is a verb. It’s something you do. Not just who you are.” — Cheryl Lacey Donovan

“The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.” — Elaine Heffner

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” ― Agatha Christie

“Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.” —Louisa May Alcott

“A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.” —Honoré de Balzac

“There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.” —Ambrose Bierce

{Vicki Huffman’s novel, A Secret Hope, about the relationship between mothers and daughters, is available on amazon.com Kindle for $2.99:  https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Hope-Vicki-Huffman-ebook }

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With becoming seriousness, he announced to the church the contents of the letter. Then he said, “I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter.”

There are times when we all feel like fools whether someone calls us one or not. Most of us don’t really need a special day—April’s Fool’s Day—to remind us of those times. Shakespeare put it this way: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

In our highly technical age, it is impossible to know everything about anything. Science says that we use no more than 10 percent of our brain’s capabilities. (And this is more evident in some than in others.)

In a practical sense, we must choose the areas in which we intend to remain ignorant. I have chosen nuclear physics, advanced calculus, and anything more mechanical than an electric can opener.

While ignorance can be bliss in some things, to be ignorant in vital matters is worse than foolish. It is asinine. I heard of two women who were looking through a colorfully-decorated card shop in California. Pastel Easter bunnies, chicks, baskets, and eggs filled the shelves and were suspended from the ceiling. One of the women picked up a card with a cross on it and was heard to remark to her friend, “Will you look at this? They’re even dragging religion into Easter now!”

This year Easter Sunday–commemorating Jesus’ resurrection after His death on the cross–falls on April Fool’s Day. At first blush that may seem a travesty, but God isn’t bothered by it. In fact, He made the first connection, saying through Paul, “The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

In other words, the only foolishness about the Cross and its aftermath, Easter, is in the minds of those who consider it too simple to be true or worthy of investigating.

On the first Easter Jesus, in His resurrected body, joined two of His followers as they walked to Emmaus, mourning the death of the one they had hoped would be the Messiah. As He walked with them, He didn’t allow them to recognize Him but all the way explained to them how the crucifixion had fulfilled God’s plan and was just what their Scriptures had predicted. He told them, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25-26).

There are, by biblical definition, many kinds of fools. The believer, like those on the Emmaus road, who has not gone far enough in faith to have peace and assurance. The fool who has said in his heart, “No God.” The rich fool who planned to increase his storehouses, eat, drink and be merry—not knowing it was his last day on earth. Or those like Paul who, undeterred by what anyone thought or what it would cost him, willingly became a “fool for Christ’s sake.”

An old song asks, “What kind of fool am I?” On April Fool’s Day—this year also the holiest day of the year—it’s still a good question.

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Just reading the words re-energizes me!

Rejuvenate
Repurpose
Renovate
Restore
Refurbish
Renew
Remodel
Rediscover
Reorganize
Revitalize

The dictionary defines the prefix RE as again, anew, backward. But that seems inadequate.

The whole beauty of the word RE is that it points forward.

RE means seeing the past and the future and doing something about it in the present. When I reorganize, I look at a messy old closet and put things in order so that my future is simplified. When artists creatively repurpose a piece of furniture, they take what it was and give it new purpose so the piece has renewed value. When a home is remodeled, the existing structure is not torn down, it is added to, or changed so that the modifications fit the new owner’s life.

RE connects the past to the present to the future.

I love Easter because it’s full of RE:

Rejoice! Resurrection. Rebirth. Relationship.

And it’s also full of again and backward. We celebrate Easter again and again. But unfortunately, we can’t see it anew because we do see it all backwards. We know the end of the story.

But what would it have been like to be in the crowd during Jesus’ day, experiencing great hope and then great loss, never comprehending Jesus would rise again?

Walt Wangerin writes in Reliving the Passion,“It is the experience of genuine grief that prepares for joy. . . . The disciples approached the Resurrection from their bereavement. For them the death was first, and the death was all. Easter, then, was an explosion of Newness, a marvelous splitting of heaven indeed. But for us, who return backward into the past, the Resurrection comes first, and through it we view a death which is, therefore, less consuming, less horrible, even less real. We miss the disciples’ terrible, wonderful preparation.”

Maybe it can’t be an “Explosion of Newness” for us, but we can realize how Easter connects our past with our future. Easter give us the opportunity to be reborn. Easter offers the privilege of remodeling, repurposing, revitalizing, reorganizing, rediscovering, reconnecting.

This Easter experience the RE in Resurrection.

Relive the Passion! Reconnect to God and rejoice in a relationship with the Risen Lord.

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