plans

The Brevity of Life

SHARON ROCKWELL | CONTRIBUTOR My mother was known in our family for her pithy statements which were intended to impart wisdom. One of her favorites was “Life is short and then you die.” That may have been a child’s version of a verse from the book of James, “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). As children we would appeal to mother for sympathy when something earthshattering occurred in our world. Complaints like “My fort fell over,” “My sister hit me,” and “I forgot my lunch money” would be met with those words of wisdom. “Life is short and then you die.” We received little sympathy but learned not to make the same mistakes a second time. During my college years, a neighbor who had already raised her family passed away after a long illness. The woman seemed so old to me. But I recall my mother commenting that her life seemed so short. At our neighbor’s funeral, the pastor talked about life being a dot on a line that extended to eternity. My mother’s words came back to me: “Life is short and then you die.” But this time those words had a broader meaning to me. I had watched our neighbor live her life knowing that she would die sooner than she expected. She used her time to pray for others, to encourage others in their faith, and especially to remind anyone who would listen that life is short and getting right with God was of vital importance. She once asked me if I was living a godly life while I was away at college. Her awareness of impending death made her bold in her conversations with others. She knew life was fragile. She knew life is short and then you die...

The Brevity of LifeChristina Fox2024-04-18T17:05:29+00:00

On Milestones, Maps, and How God Directs our Paths

ELLEN DYKAS|CONTRIBUTOR Are you a journaler? I’ve been one since age thirteen and now, ninety-two journals later, my story is there with all its dreams, foolishness, heartbreak, life-in-Christ surprises, and…HOPES! As a teen, I dreamed of writing books and traveling the world to help people. Little did I know how God’s amazing plans for me would unfold! For starters, the first two books I wrote both had some form of the word “sex” in the title…I mean, I seriously did NOT see that coming when I was thirteen years old! When my first discipleship workbook, Sexual Sanity for Women: Healing from Sexual and Relational Brokenness, was published in January 2013, I was thankful and expectant. Thankful because producing this resource had been a long, somewhat challenging process and finally, after more than three years of book “pregnancy,” the workbook was born. I waited expectantly to see the response and impact on women’s lives. One message came in on publishing day from a woman: “You do know, right, that 99% of women in the church will never engage [with] this? Most churches won’t even consider this!” Initially, I felt frustrated and angry. I didn’t want balloons and accolades—but perhaps a little encouragement and thankfulness! But GOD...

On Milestones, Maps, and How God Directs our PathsChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:36:44+00:00

How the Gospel Speaks to Our Disappointments

I appreciate the convenience technology affords us, especially in these times of social distancing, but there are some things I refuse to let go of. I’ll take a printed book instead of an e-version any day, still subscribe to the local newspaper, and prefer a pretty paper calendar over one connected to my email. In fact, I have some traditions associated with the latter. I start each year by writing birthdays and anniversaries on the pristine pages. These milestones are recorded in ink. All other entries are penciled in as they come up— adventures to look forward to, savor, and then look back on as well as more mundane commitments like getting my teeth cleaned. I suppose my habit of writing changeable events in pencil began shortly after my career did. (I didn’t have a computer, much less an iPhone in 1980!) I soon discovered there are many moving pieces to corporate life and that meetings were apt to change as were travel plans, so pencil it was. Forty years later, I’m still penciling in items subject to change. Cancellations Here, There, and Everywhere I never would have imagined all the times I’d reach for my trusty Pink Pearl eraser this year. One by one, activities came off my calendar — appointments of various kinds, lunches with friends, 5k races, garden tours, even Grammie days[1] — disappearing into so much eraser stubble. The avalanche of cancellations gradually turned into a trickle, sparking tentative hope the few remaining events, further in the future, could be salvaged. Alas, the cancellations continued. A calendar entry marking a much-anticipated family reunion in South Dakota became the latest to succumb to my eraser, another casualty of unknowns surrounding the trajectory of COVID-19...

How the Gospel Speaks to Our DisappointmentsChristina Fox2022-05-05T00:35:14+00:00

Living the Bigger, Better Story God Plans for Us

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19 In the new year of 2017, I recorded some big plans in my journal: Create a prayer planner to help people grow in healthy prayer habits. Walk alongside our daughter as she planned her wedding; attend our son’s college graduation. Continue teaching Bible study at the jail. My Plans vs. God’s Plans As a gospel coach and a Type A personality, I enjoy making plans. Every new year, I set aside time to revisit the stories of the “awesome deeds” (Psalm 145:6) God has done in the previous year and to pray and think about what stories he might write in the coming year. I don’t make resolutions, which I know I will break; I make plans, which I hold loosely. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with such a practice, I have begun to wonder if my plans, like the desires C.S. Lewis wrote about long ago, might be too “shallow” and too “weak.” Given that we serve a God who is forever doing “brand new things,” I wonder if I am happy “making mudpies in a slum” when what God has planned for me is a “holiday by the sea.” [1] In 2017, the year I recorded those plans in my journal, it seemed the Lord had different plans. While our son did graduate from college, and our daughter did get married, and I did continue teaching at the jail, the Lord also wrote a bigger, better story in my life. In August of 2017, when our twenty-two-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor and proceeded to have four brain surgeries over the next nine months, I became more intimately acquainted with the God who was determined to do an astonishing “new thing,” to “make a way in the wilderness..."

Living the Bigger, Better Story God Plans for UsChristina Fox2022-05-07T22:45:33+00:00