Archives for September 2013

The Salt and Light of Fostering

Salt and Light of Fostering

We continue to pour into the life that God has allowed to grow and flourish within our home for the last year. We, and those in our sphere, have sought to be the salt and light of Jesus to our child.  Today we await yet another decision on reunification with his biological parents. In the waiting, I would like to pause and remember our foster care journey as documented at This Temporary Home, and invite you to join me over at iBelieve to read my confessions as a first time foster mom. Click here to read this post.

Thank you for your prayers for our Little E. and thank you to the over twenty-five new e-mail subscribers of This Temporary Home in the last weekend. Your presence is an honor and a trust. Enjoy this look back with us at our foster journey from the earliest days to the present.

  • Tomorrow’s Race (here)
  • Pour Another Cup (here)
  • Simple Addition (here)
  • Lessons for Everyday (here)
  • Lord Give Me Eyes to See (here)
  • I Must Remember This (here)
  • Confessions of  A First-Time Foster Mom (here)

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Step Into Fall

Step Into Fall

Last week we looked at the changing of seasons. As you sip your favorite fall drink, or grab another pumpkin treat, here are some fall-time posts from the archives. Let’s step into fall together shall we?

Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction? (Amos 3:3, NLT)

  1. Harvesting Hearts of Principle (here)
  2. Apple Picking in the South (here)
  3. To Carve Out a Light (here)
  4. Thanksgiving: To Lay Down a Life (here)
  5. Stepping Back in Time (here)

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The Changing of Seasons

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The fall, a time of tailgating, football, pumpkin treats, and the fading smell of freshly sharpened pencils. This fall finds our family at more soccer games than football because our Emily is playing Upward Soccer with her good Coach Dad.

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This fall also finds us saying goodbye to Little E for four days a week as he goes off to visit his biological parents respectively. I am fighting this one however as any sane person will admit that a two and a half year old boy needs a steady home…not a rotation of three. The joys and struggles of foster care are abundant this harvest season. However, this little boy is abundantly worth both the joys and struggles we sow in hopes of an eternal harvest of joy.

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From the acorn caps scattered under our feet to the delicious caramel apples gathered in the grocery store, signs of fall are everywhere.

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Finally, as the fall season approaches on the 22nd of September, the fall of man also is on full display… everywhere. Diagnosis after diagnosis, declaration of judges in federal and local courts, and a call to weapons of war resound in our ears constantly reminding us that this earth is in a state of decay.

As we face the decay of life, season after fleeting season, we must remember the hope to which we are called. Ponder the hope of a new heaven and a new earth. We are to seek the changing of the eternal seasons from finite time to the infinite realization of relationship between God and man. We long for the return of God’s created order to earth. We long to see the miraculous a midst the fall.

We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming. (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 99, emphasis mine)

This season as we tromp crunch, crunch, crunch through the dead and decaying leaves, let’s also look up and admire the blazing colors of the glorious changing of seasons and pray for the changing of the eternal season to come.

As we hear the acorns falling plunk, plunk, plunk on the rooftops and the hoods of cars, let’s pray in turn for the miraculous falling of the Holy Spirit over the multitude of hurting people in our spheres.

May this change in season tune our souls to seek the eternal season to come.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. ~Ecclesiastes 3

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From Wonder to the Belly of a Whale

Magical moments in the ocean of life, we splash and dance like the world is our playground. Other times we feel  terrifyingly small in the presence of a great and wondrous  creation that at any moment can overtake the strongest man’s strength, or shock us like an unwanted visitor. Often, we live in between the two extremes with a holy fear and a sacred desire for discovery.


Emily Beach Crab

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I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. (Psalm 139:7-10)

I am so thankful that I can never get away from the presence of God.

Jonah foolishly thought he could escape from the Lord’s presence as he fled to Tarshish on a wooden vessel.

But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish. (Jonah 1:3)

Never imagining that God would send such a great storm for him to face his disobedience, Jonah sacrificed himself for the ship and men he traveled with “in the opposite direction” of God. He plunged into the farthest ocean depths and was swallowed into the belly of a great fish. Even there God heard Jonah’s cries of repentance and his pleas for deliverance.

You don’t have to be running from God out of disobedience to feel as if you have plunged into the greatest depths of the sea.

Do you utter a cry for deliverance from your present state? Do some moments, or days,  feel as if you have plunged into the farthest of the ocean’s depths and the times of dancing on the shore, of wonder, and rest seem a distant memory?

GOD STILL SEES AND HEARS YOUR CRIES FOR DELIVERANCE…and He hears mine too. Praise His great and glorious name! He hears us, friend, and he has not turned a deaf ear to those who belong to the family of Christ Jesus.

Perhaps our deliverance will come when we least expect it. Like searching in the ocean for a vacant shell and instead pulling out a huge and glorious living creature,  He will deliver us to newness of life from what now seems the mire of death and decay…our whale-belly experience.

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But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the LORD alone. (Jonah 2:9)

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Of Our Crosses and Christ

Along the way, they came across a man named Simon, who was from Cyrene, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross. (Matthew 27:32, NLT)

It is beautiful that in the body of Christ we no longer are forced to carry another’s cross, but it is our privilege to do so as a member of the family of God.

Because Jesus bore the cross of Crucifixion for our sins, we are free to bear one another’s  daily burdens in prayer.  Richard Foster said this of intercessory prayer:

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Who needs help carrying their cross today in your sphere? Be a willing Simon for them.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s a light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!~ Helen H. Lemmel

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