never been here before

This is Day 3 of a series of posts for the month of October. I’m joining Kate Motaung over at  Five Minute Friday  for the annual Write 31 Days challenge.  I will write about themes found in the book of Joshua each day, with a different word prompt. Today’s word prompt is HOPE. The book of Joshua is known by most to be a book of war. Battle after battle is recorded, violence like thousands dying because the Lord’s blessing left His people, heads of kings getting cut off, walls crumbling, cities and people plundered… So why has this book captivated my heart for so many years? Because I want to view all things with a lens of redemption. I really hope that doesn’t come across as holier than though, but my heart grows weary with all that is broken in the world. My heart is tired of always going to a dark place when there is light. I learned earlier this year that I have a natural (psychological?) bent toward the negative. Left unchecked...

This is Day 3 of a series of posts for the month of October. I’m joining Kate Motaung over at  Five Minute Friday  for the annual Write 31 Days challenge.  I will write about themes found in the book of Joshua each day, with a different word prompt. Today’s word prompt is CREATE. God created a future for them . Israel was finally free from slavery and their time in the dessert wasn’t wondering because f God. It was because of them. God was calling them back to Him. After generations of worshiping the false gods of Babylon, new habits needed to be formed. New hearts created. A calling back to the holiness of YHWH. I wonder what made God think they were ready to take on the Promised Land? I’d like to think it was something He saw in them – that their holiness was progressing. That those new habits were solidified. But we know from the rest of scripture that wasn’t the case. But He pushed them onward anyway, and still after all His pur...

This is Day 2 of a series of posts for the month of October. I’m joining Kate Motaung over at  Five Minute Friday  for the annual Write 31 Days challenge.  I will write about themes found in the book of Joshua each day, with a different word prompt. Today’s word prompt is TELL. The story of Rahab is one of the most redemptive stories in scripture for me. Remind me?  Rehab was the prostitute who took care of the spies Joshua sent to check out the situation in Jericho. Why is she a big deal? Because she wasn’t one of God’s chosen people and she was ordered by the king of Jericho to bring the spies to him. (She ran an inn, so it was likely the spies, once the king caught wind of the plan, would come to stay with her.) she she ignored the King of Jericho and instead hid the spies and lied to him. Seriously. Good for her. That could not have been easy. After hiding the spies, she tells them that she has heard the stories of their G...

This is Day 1 of a series of posts for the month of October. I’m joining Kate Motaung over at  Five Minute Friday  for the annual Write 31 Days challenge.  I will write about themes found in the book of Joshua each day, with a different word prompt. Today’s word prompt is WORSHIP. The book of Joshua has a lot of powerful themes, and one of them for me is centered around what worship means to God himself. But before we get there, let's take a look at what God commands of his people when conquering the cities. "But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. But all silver and gold, and every vessel of bronze and iron, are holy to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD.” (Joshua 6:18-19) "Devoted things" occurs several times in scripture, referring either som...

I am linking up for Five Minute Friday a five minute free write with a word prompt each week. Today’s prompt is “Depend.”  http://fiveminutefriday.com .  Being single stinks. I know some people who think we have it so easy without a husband, "you must have so much time". Without kids, "that's why you still look so young for your age" people say. They are just pushing the knife deeper in to my wound. While those things hurt, I think the hardest one for me is having no one else I can depend on. I learned a long time ago that I had no choice but to depend on myself. So I change my own tires, I hang my own pictures, I put together my own furniture, I pug in my own heavy packages, I take out my own trash. I have to do it all by myself. I don't consider myself a particularly lonely person. I'm introverted, so I don't need people around all that much. Every once and a while, though, I come home after a rough day and really wish I had someon...

I really don't like this word. Noting specifically came to mind about it when I first learned of the prompt.  Well... except that I thought "I really don't like this word." I'm not good at accepting what life brings me as enough. I always think, know, believe, wish for more. As if iIwere entitled to more than what I'd been given. This gets messy, you see, because I don't believe in accepting the status quo. "No acquiescing!" I cry in my heart. We are called to be more! We must push forward. That also can make me terribly ungrateful for what I've been given. There is such a tension in this. The already and the not yet. We are called to more - it's part of the molding and shaping into the image of Christ. Yet we aren't there yet and that leaves us discontent. Unsettled. We aren't accepting. Should we? What are we called to accept? What are we called to love as it is? And what are we called to be unsettled with, to p...

I am linking up for Five Minute Friday. The FMF is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home . Today’s prompt is “Place.” http://fiveminutefriday.com .  I’ve lived in a lot of places for my age, so I’m told. Nebraska. Kansas. Colorado. Nebraska again. Missouri. Arizona. Kansas again.  All of these places have good and bad memories attached to them. When a hint of them crosses my mind, sometimes it’s joy and sometimes it’s sorrow. And as with most people, I wanted to find my place at each place. But I’m not sure I ever have. I don’t want to go down the road of, “of course I’m the different one” again. I do that far too often in my life. But I have struggled, in each new start, to figure out where I fit in. What I could offer this new place. What it could offer me. I far too often associate a place with doing. When it really should be about being. While I still believe that God is ever-changing me, I am still me in each place. I bring a n...