Tea Time Tuesday: Mary: God's Chosen Mother

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“And coming in, he said to her, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’”

Luke 1:28

Mary inspired me throughout my adult life. A woman, living faithfully in a tiny, obscure village, inside the walls of her own home, unnoticed by others found favor with God. Before the angel came to her, she had already practiced faith in her mundane moments of life. She engaged her thoughts in the words of God as shown through the magnificat, her pronouncement when she saw Elizabeth. She had already devoted herself to God as a servant. (“Behold, the Lord’s bond-servant; may it be done to me according to your word.”)

It is not from a place of worldly influence, or accomplishment that a godly woman caught the attention of God, but from an authentic place of humble worship of her creator, a place of serving faithfully in the normal moments of life. God saw a heart willing to love, follow, respond to Him.

It is not our works that will impress our Heavenly Father, but a heart that seeks Him. We will never be perfect in our works, but we can be devoted to grow, to love, to respond, to learn from His heart and ways. I had seen the Holy Spirit working in our home and lives because of His ways, love, response to our love for Him, desire to follow Him day after day, over years.

“Learning, understanding that every woman has potential to embrace her own story, to become queen over her own domain, to work hard to leave a legacy of wisdom, love, gratitude, grace emerged in my heart as I walked through parks and meadows of Oxford and wrote in my journal. Women, I believe, through God’s design and strength, are amazing creatures. They have the ability to civilize the world. They can influence the development and character of the next generation of adults by pouring out love, consistently training, teaching, modeling faith, virtue to the next generation. At they persevere through life’s trials and challenges, they model the way to live life wisely, resiliently. The book of Proverbs hails the value of such women, “her worth is far above jewels.” (From my latest book, Well Lived)

Join me on my podcast for more encouragement. Get your copy of Well Lived for heartfelt inspiration.

Being Obedient To Jesus In The Hidden Years

When I look back on my life, birthing four children, having three miscarriages, moving twenty times, and living through the seasons of their growing up years, I realize that most of my life was spent loving my family well in the midst of chores, character training, thousands of meals, and lots of cleaning up our messes over and over again while seeking to growing spiritually and intellectually along the way. I was hidden in the rich soil of shaping a great life.

What we do when no one is looking shows the integrity of our lives. To live by our convictions even when no one else notices becomes the most important work of all because that choice honors God and not ourselves. What we practice, we become.

Living in the humble existence of a praying, teaching, guiding, and loving parent might not result in awards, but believe me, there are many rewards. You will bear rich fruit in your life as your embody the story and purpose God has spoken into being for you. And you will witness the fruit in your child's life again and again as they grow into their story.

Read more about this in Teatime Discipleship.

Feeding Your Soul With God's Beauty & Delight

As Paul wrote in Romans 1, God's creation in nature provides multitudes of examples of beauty that reveal countless lessons and impressions about our Creator.

To deny our souls this pleasure is like denying our bodies healthy food. Eventually our bodies will become unhealthy if we neglect them. So our souls will shrivel and die if they are not fed on the beauty, love, and delight of life that God created.

Satan would love for us to block out the miraculous evidence of God's creative genius, which speaks volumes to us of his constant presence and reality. To resist this temptation, we must remove those things in our lives and schedules that put blinders on our souls' eyes. We must engage with his very present, physical reality through what he has created us to observe every day.

Share in the comments your favorite way to engage with God's beauty and presence in your everyday life. Do you plan time to walk outside? Or tend to your garden? Or listen to rain on the roof, plan picnics in the spring? I want to hear from all of you!

Read more about this in Dancing With My Heavenly Father.

We Are Always Setting An Example For Our Children

"But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day." Proverbs 4:18

By walking in integrity at home, my children received from my life, training for battles that were ahead of them. By walking through the obstacles and curves of our lives, trusting God, living by faith, choosing to endure, our children became familiar with what it looked like to walk with God in the midst of their own challenges.

We must lead the way and set a solid foundation for the paths our children will follow. Teaching our children to walk truly never ends.

Are you walking in wisdom today? Is your life one you want your children to follow? Is your pathway in your life with God getting brighter and brighter? May God lead us on His path with integrity in each step.

Read more about this in The Mom Walk.

Tea Time Tuesday: Celebrate, Receive Joy With All Your Heart

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Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,

 Joy of every loving heart. 

There are many differing opinions about how we should celebrate Advent or the Coming of Christ’s birth. Some say we must be somber, some say simple and not worldly. But I see Christmas as a time to reenact all that is beautiful and true. We focus on the light in the darkness, that Jesus invaded a fallen world to restore it, to bring hope, to become the light of our every need.

When I arrived home, I entered into the thrill of making my home sparkle with lights, wreaths, our Christmas tree, and knick nicks and treasures every where that speak of the hopefulness of our precious Lord come to earth.

Stockings hung by the fire with care, 3 fresh pine wreaths with berries and I strategically placed birds nesting between pinecones, lit by a soft scented candle, fairy lights aglow in every corner of the room, flowers and poinsettias reminding of friends gracing our home with gifts. We hang the stockings of those who will be with us this year—and place the other ones of our loved ones out on an antique couch to remember our precious ones who cannot be with us. All of this and our favorite Christmas cookies will meet my adult children who are returning from the UK and New York this year. These are some of the familiar scenes that have graced our home for many years and will speak familiarity, comfort: "our place" when all walk in the front door. 

Creating traditions over the year with your family will cultivate a family culture unique to your own heritage. Each of us has agency to decide what is a priority to our own family with consideration of our unique values, personalities and preferences. Yet, when a celebration is practiced year after year, together, pathways of security are roughed out in hearts and minds to remember these practices as moments that speak of love, home and intimacy shared to build life-long community.

We will prepare our beloved a simple candlelit Shepherd's meal for Christmas Eve; place favorite Christmas themed books on every table, have my Christmas luncheon that I have held for 30 years of a gathering of women to share legacies of stories with cold raspberry soup, scones and jam; a yearly brunch at a dear friends’ home and silliness shared, carol sings and potlucks, and more.

It is not so important what we choose to do as it is that we seek to be intentional and cultivate an atmosphere of reverence for the profound entrance of Christ as a baby, vulnerable yet announcing and establishing a kingdom where we are welcome citizens, whose history we get to be a part of for eternity.

Your home is a laboratory of the life of Christ, where He can be seen through the incarnation of himself through our music, our love, our feasts, our faith, and lights that reflect His very presence in our lives. The peace and the comfort we receive from belonging to Him, hidden impressions of faith are laid strategically over years of celebrating Christmas together on the foundations of our children's hearts that will speak to them of His hope in their lives long after they have left home. This year, practice those that build the beauty, mystery and hope that baby Jesus came to give. 

How Moms Reach Hearts

I am determined that those I love will find solace, welcome, comfort, acceptance, truth, and ease. And so, following Jesus’ model of service and hospitality, I choose to prepare for and serve those who share my home and those who enter my doors.

When body needs and emotional needs are met and minds are filled with nobility and inspiration, then souls are predisposed to want to follow the God who is revered in all of these rituals. It is not the indoctrination of theology forced down daily that crafts a soul who believes; it is the serving and loving and giving that surround the messages where souls are reached.

A truth told without love and grace is a truth that is rejected. Would Jesus’ message have had the same impact without His feeding thousands and taking children into His arms and washing the feet of His friends? It is in service that God incarnate is recognized. And service begins with serving those who are closest to us, making home the very best place to be.

Read more about this in The Lifegiving Home.

Breaking Bread Together Creates Heart Ties

All these we cultivated carefully through years and years of sitting down together, through multiple hours of cooking and baking and preparing meal after meal, through the disciplines of teaching manners and fostering conversation. Our determination to incarnate the life of Christ in every detail of our time together, even our meals, had forged a legacy of love.

Breaking bread together, sharing food, sitting at table eye to eye is essential to individual growth and relationship. Adults and children are not just bodies to be fed, but also minds to be challenged, hearts that depend on emotional input to survive and to grow as healthy human beings, and spirits that long for connection with God and purpose in life. Feasting together is a powerful way to fulfill physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

Read more about this in The Lifegiving Table.

Tea Time Tuesday: I Didn’t Know My Children Would Be So Different

My Sarah in Oxford

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“If I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging symbol.” -1 Cor. 13

I never knew my children would be so different — from each other, from Clay, and especially from me. This means that I haven’t always seen things from their perspective, or understood their choices. Our tastes might vary, our preferences can be unique. It is not always easy to love. That doesn’t mean our children aren’t listening to us or our foundational training or truths shared.

But they must be able to live out their faith in God, the truth of His word, the virtue of Jesus through their lives within the confines of their own God-given personality. God created our children so very unique and diverse. But each one needs our words of validation, acceptance just as God made them, and our understanding for who they are becoming and were made to be. (By the way — our husbands might also be extremely different in temperament than we are and need the same grace!)

Being loved is practically the oxygen we were made to breathe in order to keep alive inside, to flourish. An aching, longing pulses beneath, where no one can see. As the body requires food to stay alive, so the depths of a person hungers for love in order to stay alive. Each person longs for love that embraces, validates, affirms; that whispers, “Just as you are, I love you. You delight me. I think about you, cherish the day you were born. You are my beloved one, always will be, no matter what.”

Each of us was crafted with a heart container that would need to be filled with love. Though no one can see from the outside whether ours is empty or full to overflowing, each of us has the ability to fill up another's cavern with words, touch, humble service, sacrifice, understanding, generous gifts as we extend the life of Christ who is the source of life, love. But ultimately, it is Jesus who is the source of the love through our lives that will fill the holes in our hearts. He sympathized and lived in understanding of legalists (pharisees), tax collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the rich, the skeptical, the child-like, prodigals.

Psychologists agree and we all sense that a mother's love is one of the most constant resources of God's love to children, able to sustain, strengthen, heal, and restore a child — to bring hope for the future of a child, endurance during difficult times. Her love is a vibrant, living picture of what Christ is like. When we love our children well, model to them what it is like to live a life of deep faith in our amazing God, our children will better be able to catch a glimpse of the remarkable life God has planned for them.

So many verses remind us of this foundation.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

If you have not love, you have become a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

May God give you the grace today to choose to express and truly love those in your life well.

More on today’s new Tea Time Tuesday podcast: Food, books, Sarah's new book (Reclaiming Quiet), music, and more

Building A Loving Home Is Our Most Lasting Legacy

God ordained family and home to have eternal value as the place our children are shaped in the transcendent image of God, through our homes. This is our most lasting legacy. Even as Jesus served us through His sacrificial life, so we model His love through our sacrificial life.

To build a civilized home life is the work of a lifetime, not achieved in a short period of time or without great effort and perseverance. This is what makes our role, as we raise and mentor and love our children, so profoundly important.

Read more about this in Awaking Wonder.

This Season Matters So Much

With all seasons, God speaks to us through nature and His own visual art. In splendid glory and bursting color, autumn teaches us that life is always changing. Life and this season right now, is about to change.

Life passes quickly and the autumn of any part of our lives reminds us that one more year, journey, season is about to pass. Another season is gusting and whirling quickly forward to blow away the leaves and to bring the stark reality of another season, its own beauty and its own limitations.

We will never have this year, this day, this moment in which to invest again — it will be fleeting and over, as one autumn marks another year soon to be past. The beauty of the dry, dying leaves reminds us that the glory of the season is almost gone, and so we must do our best to cherish the days if we are to be wise.

Today is the day in which I may pour out love by writing a note, making a call, serving a cup of tea, praying for one I love. Perhaps this is the day I might bring inspiration, serving and touching hearts, pointing in this moment of glory, the divine creator. Teaching what is true and right and good, modeling faith, forgiveness, mercy and unconditional love.

Today, I am praying for you, because this day, this season, matters so much. Take time to notice the miraculous, to hear the music, to dance to the joy that today might bring and to rest in the endless love of one who is preparing a feast for us in the not too distant future.

How can you pour out your love today?