Salty Zebra

  Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.   2 Corinthians 9:7  How are you? It’s a question we ask others all the time, but do we really mean it? Are we really interested in how they are doing? Much of the time, I would guess we are not, because we don’t even pause to hear the answer or follow up. Our culture, at least where I live, has come to see it as a greeting, not a question. We are conditioned to reply “fine” or “great” or “ok.” It is very uncommon to hear anyone say anything else. My husband went through a season where he defied the cultural norms of this question-greeting and he actually followed up on it. He would ask people what “ok” meant to them, where their percentage was. Did ok mean 51%? 60%? 75%? He wanted to know how people were really doing, and wanted them to know that he cared about it. It led to dozens (hundreds?) of interesting conversations, and all...

Image created with the assistance of ChatGpt   She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.   Proverbs 31:26  Proverbs 31 has always held a special power over me. It reflects a goal that I feel I fall far short of and could never achieve, but I so desperately want to. One year, when I only had two little ones, My husband gave me the most thoughtful gift for Mother’s Day. He and the boys (ok, him – they were way to young to help!) wrote out how they felt like I fulfilled each line of this poem. It met me in a place I so needed and encouraged me in my motherhood and wifely duties. Now, I didn’t think then, nor do I now upon reflection, that I actually fulfilled those things, but hearing from someone whose opinion I so respected that he felt that I did meant the world to me!   Proverbs is a book of wisdom and so it only makes sense that wisdom would be one of the critical aspects of the “Wife of Noble Character.” And how is her wisdom expresse...

 I didn't grow up in a Christian denomination that observes Lent, so for most of my life all I knew about it was that it had to do with preparing for Easter and giving something up, like TV. So, what is Lent? What does the Bible have to say about it? Should we give something up for a while before Easter?  As Advent is a season of preparation before Christmas, so Lent is a season intended to prepare our hearts for the celebration of Easter. Advent is a time of excitement and wonder. Lent, on the other hand, has a more somber, penitent tone to it. It is intended to help us recognize our brokenness as humans and our need for a Savior (1). It began early in the history of Christianity with new believers who were planning to be baptized on Easter Sunday fasting on the Friday and Saturday before (2). Over time, the church began fasting for different periods of time and in different ways leading up to Easter until finally, in the fourth century, a standardized Lenten calendar was est...

   Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, Ephesians 5:15  Interestingly, we explored this verse last Spring while doing the study, For Such a Time as This . What I wrote about then holds true today, but I feel like it has just a little more depth, a little more insight. I love how God’s Word is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword ( Hebrews 4:12 ). We can look at the same verse over and over, and each time we learn something new, but perhaps this is partly because we are not the same person that looked at it before. Since then, we’ve grown, changed, learned new things. The verses are the same, but we are not.  When you zoom out and look at the whole passage in Ephesians, we see that, according to verse 17 , living as wise involves understanding the Lord’s will. A few weeks back we talked about how to discern God’s will and growing in our ability to hear and trust His guidance. God brought Isaiah 30:21 to my attention that...

  Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.   1 Corinthians 4:2  This last year, God has been putting on my heart that I need to make sure that what I have isn’t just sitting there, it is accomplishing some growth. The clearest way to see this is with our money. An interesting blessing that came through my husband’s layoff last year was that I became more involved in the finances, much more involved. One of the things that stood out to me initially was that we had a significant amount of money sitting in an account that didn’t really earn much interest. Much of our savings my husband had put into laddered CDs that were earning better, but this money, which we had intentionally kept liquid in case we needed it, was not pulling its weight. I learned about High-Yield Savings (HYS) accounts last summer and we moved the money there where it has been happily growing ever since. I even looked at what bills we paid just a few times a year, ...

  If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.   1 Peter 4:11  I’m a very open person. I’ve been accused of “processing publicly.” When something’s on my heart I share it, and I don’t limit it to the people in my house or in my home group, I share it with the world on my blog. Well, I share it with the people that God puts my blog in front of and I’m not entirely sure how many or who that will be, so I figure it’s just public knowledge. In the suggested reading today ( Matthew 5:14-16 and 1 Peter 4:10-11 ), Jesus talks about how we should be like a city on a hill, letting our light shine and not diminishing it. Paul also commissions us to use the gifts that God has given and allow them to glorify Him.   Today’s verse tells me to live at 100%. I...