2008 is already shaping up to be the wackiest year on record for me!
I began this year by asking the Lord to reveal Himself to me and to my friends in a special way as Redeemer and Provider. And, I asked Him to send a fresh passion for holiness among us.
When He reigns … it pours!
In January, I began to sense a strong call to formalize my personal teaching/speaking ministry. I’m still discovering what that looks like, but hopefully soon www.mariposaministries.com will display a purple butterfly logo and information about “Celebrating the Transforming Work of Christ in the Lives of Women” as well as teaching samples, and the verse God continually reminds me of, Isaiah 43:18-19, which says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. Behold! I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up, will you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness, a stream in the desert.”
In February, I got on an exercise and work out kick that has led me into the realms of kickboxing, Pilates, and 5K races. Look out, world; I may become a “ninja” yet!
And, then, came March. I have been praying since last fall for a house that is “safe, affordable, and big enough to host [YOOJ].” Just a few weeks ago, during my time with the Lord, I had the strongest impression that I should look into purchasing a home rather than renting. So, I am. I keep telling myself I’ll just walk through the process until the Lord shuts the door, but so far, the doors keep opening.
Finally, Wedgwood takes trips to the Peruvian jungle 3-4 times a year, and Jake and Dodie have been trying to talk me into joining one of these trips since they first started going four years ago. It appears the time has come. Today I received confirmation that from May 23 – June 1, I will be serving as the interpreter for half of the newest REAP Peru mission team. Our work will primarily be discipleship in some of the villages previous teams have already reached with the Gospel.
Did I mention I have a full time job/ministry, too? Things at Cornerstone Christian Women’s Job Corps continue as well. We have just begun our second Life Skills and Job Readiness training class of the year, and the four women God has given us are doing splendidly!
So, here’s the deal. I need your prayers.
*Pray for Mariposa Ministries, that God would continue to give me the pieces of that puzzle in order. Specifically, I need to design/select a logo, and learn how to host the website. And, always, pray for God to provide opportunities for me to grow in the areas of teaching/speaking/writing.
*Pray with me about the purchase of a home. I’m so excited that God might bless me with such a thing, but tempted to be overwhelmed by all of the details and the responsibility of homeownership. Pray for the right home at the right price in the right place!
*Pray for this trip to Peru, for the finances, for physical health and stamina, for spiritual preparation, and for God to seriously bestow a gift of tongues on me, that I would be able to clearly interpret all that needs to be communicated. (If you feel led to give financially to this trip, checks can be made payable to Wedgwood Baptist Church with my name and REAP/Peru in the memo line.)
*And, please pray for CCWJC and all that goes on there in the lives of women who are coming to know the Lord in fresh and exciting ways each week. We are abundantly blessed!
Love,
Kristen
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Grandmother Moore
A friend is saying goodbye to his grandmother this week, and in looking for words of comfort for him, I began searching for the notes I made when my own sweet Great-Grandmother passed away a few years ago. I was thinking that I'd posted them on here at one time, but I realize now that I wasn't even in the habit of blogging before she died. I found the tribute that I wrote for her, and I want to share it with you. She was truly a wonderful woman, a huge influence on the woman I strive to be now. I keep my favorite picture of the two of us on the credenza in my office as a reminder of all that she prayed for me. Here's what I had to say on that day in December 2004 ...
For my whole life, a big part of my identity has been the very special blessing of being the youngest of four living generations of Hutcherson/Moore/Barrett/Horton women. My great-grandmother, Ina Rea Moore, was one of the strongest women I know.
She was fiercely loyal to her family, and more importantly to her Lord. She’s been a prayer warrior, someone who has never been afraid to tell me that she loves me or is proud of me. She was married for 55 years before Granddaddy passed away.
She moved to Corpus Christi when she was 80 years old to be closer to my grandparents and the rest of our family. That’s a big adjustment, but she met the challenge head on, joining the “joy choir” here and making friends so quickly that we had to use the church hall to host her 95th birthday party.
Grandmother loved to travel, and she’s always been great at knowing how to laugh. One of my favorite ways to spend time with Grandmother was when she was with her baby sister, Aunt Bea. They could giggle like school girls, and it’s the most wonderful sound in the world!
Grandmother and I talked on the phone regularly. I don’t remember a time that I called that she didn’t pick up the phone and know exactly who was calling. I never had to tell her. She was just that good. She was strong and stubborn and wonderful. My Grandmother liked to dress up. She got up every morning and found a clean, pressed skirt and a blouse with buttons. She insisted on making her own bed each morning – even after her stroke last summer! Oh! And, she made honeyballs every Christmas for my mom and my uncles, dozens of them wrapped up and placed under the tree – because that’s what they wanted!
Grandmother loved us all – faithfully. She supported our mission trips, remembered our birthdays, and shopped for us each Christmas. In face, about a week after she went into the hospital, I spoke with her over the phone. She joked that she was glad the hospital had QVC so she could still do her Christmas shopping!
A great-grandmother sounds like a distant relative, doesn’t it? Not this one. She is a piece of our hearts, and permanent part of who we are. I miss her terribly. I cried when I heard she was gone, but nothing prepared me for walking into her room and seeing her things just as she left them and knowing she wouldn’t be coming back to them – or to us. I sat in her chair to think the night we got here, to pray, and figure out what she would want me to say to you today. I knew two things for sure.
One, this is a time to honor and celebrate her life. She wouldn’t have wanted us to be too sad or cry too long. And, two, this is a time to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ who she served so faithfully with all of her life.
Grandmother told my dad a few years ago when he asked her about heaven that heaven was more real to her than earth sometimes because so many of her family and dear friends were already there I thought that was an interesting statement at the time, but I don’t think I truly understood it until this week, until Grandmother went there, to be with our Lord, to reunite with her family, and suddenly, my own longing to be there grew and my concept of the reality of a life beyond this world became more concrete.
When he heard about Grandmother’s passing, a close friend reminded me of I Thessalonians 4:13-18, which says:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord Therefore comfort one another with these words.
I took my Bible and my journal with me into Grandmother’s room the night we got here. As I read over these words of hope sitting in Grandmother’s chair that night, I began to look around me. There was her walker, her medicine bottles, her magnifying glass sitting beside her Bible. That’s when it hit me.
Grandmother doesn’t need any of those things anymore. She is more alive this morning than she has ever been, and she is in the presence of the living Word of God. If there is anything that I think Grandmother would want me to tell you this morning, that’s it. That all of the things that she lived for, that the legacy of faith that she passed on to each of us is real, it’s truth, and it’s more glorious than we can imagine!
I Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
Today isn’t the end of our tears, I know that. I will miss her and we will all feel the loss of her presence here on earth, but I know that those tears are not really for her but for me. I cannot be sorry for her, for where she is now, for all that she no longer needs here.
For my whole life, a big part of my identity has been the very special blessing of being the youngest of four living generations of Hutcherson/Moore/Barrett/Horton women. My great-grandmother, Ina Rea Moore, was one of the strongest women I know.
She was fiercely loyal to her family, and more importantly to her Lord. She’s been a prayer warrior, someone who has never been afraid to tell me that she loves me or is proud of me. She was married for 55 years before Granddaddy passed away.
She moved to Corpus Christi when she was 80 years old to be closer to my grandparents and the rest of our family. That’s a big adjustment, but she met the challenge head on, joining the “joy choir” here and making friends so quickly that we had to use the church hall to host her 95th birthday party.
Grandmother loved to travel, and she’s always been great at knowing how to laugh. One of my favorite ways to spend time with Grandmother was when she was with her baby sister, Aunt Bea. They could giggle like school girls, and it’s the most wonderful sound in the world!
Grandmother and I talked on the phone regularly. I don’t remember a time that I called that she didn’t pick up the phone and know exactly who was calling. I never had to tell her. She was just that good. She was strong and stubborn and wonderful. My Grandmother liked to dress up. She got up every morning and found a clean, pressed skirt and a blouse with buttons. She insisted on making her own bed each morning – even after her stroke last summer! Oh! And, she made honeyballs every Christmas for my mom and my uncles, dozens of them wrapped up and placed under the tree – because that’s what they wanted!
Grandmother loved us all – faithfully. She supported our mission trips, remembered our birthdays, and shopped for us each Christmas. In face, about a week after she went into the hospital, I spoke with her over the phone. She joked that she was glad the hospital had QVC so she could still do her Christmas shopping!
A great-grandmother sounds like a distant relative, doesn’t it? Not this one. She is a piece of our hearts, and permanent part of who we are. I miss her terribly. I cried when I heard she was gone, but nothing prepared me for walking into her room and seeing her things just as she left them and knowing she wouldn’t be coming back to them – or to us. I sat in her chair to think the night we got here, to pray, and figure out what she would want me to say to you today. I knew two things for sure.
One, this is a time to honor and celebrate her life. She wouldn’t have wanted us to be too sad or cry too long. And, two, this is a time to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ who she served so faithfully with all of her life.
Grandmother told my dad a few years ago when he asked her about heaven that heaven was more real to her than earth sometimes because so many of her family and dear friends were already there I thought that was an interesting statement at the time, but I don’t think I truly understood it until this week, until Grandmother went there, to be with our Lord, to reunite with her family, and suddenly, my own longing to be there grew and my concept of the reality of a life beyond this world became more concrete.
When he heard about Grandmother’s passing, a close friend reminded me of I Thessalonians 4:13-18, which says:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord Therefore comfort one another with these words.
I took my Bible and my journal with me into Grandmother’s room the night we got here. As I read over these words of hope sitting in Grandmother’s chair that night, I began to look around me. There was her walker, her medicine bottles, her magnifying glass sitting beside her Bible. That’s when it hit me.
Grandmother doesn’t need any of those things anymore. She is more alive this morning than she has ever been, and she is in the presence of the living Word of God. If there is anything that I think Grandmother would want me to tell you this morning, that’s it. That all of the things that she lived for, that the legacy of faith that she passed on to each of us is real, it’s truth, and it’s more glorious than we can imagine!
I Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”
Today isn’t the end of our tears, I know that. I will miss her and we will all feel the loss of her presence here on earth, but I know that those tears are not really for her but for me. I cannot be sorry for her, for where she is now, for all that she no longer needs here.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Unfailing Love
I was visiting with my roommate the other day, having one of those long, lazy conversations that moves from subject to subject without much of a plan. I love those! Anyway, as we were chatting, I was playing with a bottle on our counter top that contains rolled up strips of paper with verses from the Psalms in it. We call it "Psalms in a Bottle." From time to time, I'd read the one I was holding out loud to her, and we'd talk about it for a minute. Then I came across one that talked about God's unfailing love, and I had a personal, spiritual epiphany. God's love does not fail.
You have no idea how badly I'd like to just stop this post there and leave you to chew on it for yourselves, but I'll unpack it the way it worked out in my head Sunday afternoon. I think I've mentioned before that I'm a "fixer" and I tend to be surrounded by "fixers" and often in our attempts to "fix" one another, we get into bigger messes in our relationships with one another than any of us ever dreamed of, muche less intended. The problem is rarely that we don't love each other enough, it's often that we love each other so much we just hardly know what to do with ourselves! :-$
As I thought about God's unfailing love, that's when it hit me. Sometimes, the messes in our relationships are because human love fails. It just does. We don't always do things correctly, even when we love, but God's love does not fail. Nothing in my life is the result of a failure in God's love for me. It is good and faithful and consistent, mighty to save. Unfailing. There's never been a time when God just loved me so much he couldn't help meddling and ended up making a mess of my life. He's never taken his eyes off of me for just a second so that in the absence of his care, I was in danger. He's never accidentally allowed anything to come into my life out of a failure to keep me. His love does not fail.
Today, I read Exodus 15:13. Check it out ...
"In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling."
You have no idea how badly I'd like to just stop this post there and leave you to chew on it for yourselves, but I'll unpack it the way it worked out in my head Sunday afternoon. I think I've mentioned before that I'm a "fixer" and I tend to be surrounded by "fixers" and often in our attempts to "fix" one another, we get into bigger messes in our relationships with one another than any of us ever dreamed of, muche less intended. The problem is rarely that we don't love each other enough, it's often that we love each other so much we just hardly know what to do with ourselves! :-$
As I thought about God's unfailing love, that's when it hit me. Sometimes, the messes in our relationships are because human love fails. It just does. We don't always do things correctly, even when we love, but God's love does not fail. Nothing in my life is the result of a failure in God's love for me. It is good and faithful and consistent, mighty to save. Unfailing. There's never been a time when God just loved me so much he couldn't help meddling and ended up making a mess of my life. He's never taken his eyes off of me for just a second so that in the absence of his care, I was in danger. He's never accidentally allowed anything to come into my life out of a failure to keep me. His love does not fail.
Today, I read Exodus 15:13. Check it out ...
"In your unfailing love you will lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your strength you will guide them
to your holy dwelling."
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