Today we discovered the Final Four in college basketball’s March Madness. While an orange ball was tossed back and forth down 94 feet or so of highly polished maple, across the country men and women shouted from their living rooms with reckless abandon in support of their favored team. Once all was said and done, many made their “voice” known about the outcome – supportive or otherwise.

I’m often caught off guard by the intensity of truly die hard sports fans. Their devotion. Their adoration. Their loyalty.

More than 2,000 years ago people in Jerusalem felt like this. As prophets had foretold, a man named Jesus would enter the city, and when He did, His disciples (“Fans” of His, if you will) got excited. They began to shout – words of praise and honor and recognition. They acknowledged who they knew Him to be and all the miracles they had seen through Him. When the religious leaders of the day heard about this, they told Jesus to tell the rowdy bunch to be quiet. His response was that even if He did, the stones would cry out. Continue reading

I love spring. It’s like the world suddenly wakes up from a nap that went on for just a little too long. Or we move from black and white to techno-color…

Trees begin to bloom, grass is green again, birds come together chitter-chattering like long-lost family members gathering for a summer reunion. People remember that they actually enjoy being outside. Kids ride bikes.  Adults rediscover walking, and messing with the lawn and neighbors they may not have even seen since fall. Grills get dusted off and fired up. Spring just feels like a good mood to me.

I think God is a lot like Spring.

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Thank you, Linda, for being the first “minivan fan.”

…but let’s back up. That came later. The title, I mean. Many years later. Out of the blue.

The message was what I knew. For so many years, I had convinced myself (and I think quite a few others) that God had created me to be a wife and a mom. It just felt like the right thing. The most sensible thing. The how-could-this-be-wrong-why-wouldn’t-God-want-this-thing? But what God had so lovingly shown me, many years earlier, out of a broken engagement, actually (my Isaac on the altar, if you will), is that when you consider The Beginning, His design for us was this: one at a time, for His good pleasure and to be His image-bearers on earth.

Adam was hard at work in the garden doing several things, co-existing with his Creator before God decided to bring Eve into the picture. And don’t even get me started on the whole “it’s not good for man to be alone thing” as I personally don’t think that applies solely to marriage. Think about it, my friends…when people are by themselves too much, they just plain get weird, and selfish…and WEIRD! God designed us to hang around and interact with one another – even to need one another for a variety of reasons. Continue reading