Salty Zebra

 A week ago, our pastor's father, who himself is a retired pastor of over 35 years, spoke at our church on what he called, "The prayer of importunity."  Now that's a word I'd never heard before and I was fascinated by it. Over the last week this message has been brought to my mind more times than I can count and when it returned to my mind this morning, after reading today's LGG blog post , I decided it was time I shared my musings with you.   The biblical prayer that this message, and my subsequent musings, were based on can be found in Luke 18:1-8 . In this passage, Jesus tells a story, a parable, about a widow who had a great need. She sought out the local judge who, unfortunately, was a person who feared neither God nor man, to get the justice she so desperately required. Being this type of person, he had no intention of granting the widow's request, but she didn't give up, and so eventually he gave in, not because he had had a change of heart or ...

  This morning, our pastor brought up an interesting point that has been resonating in my mind, so I'm going to write about it here. He shared that Jesus, when speaking with regular people, didn't spend a lot of time pointing out their flaws and mistakes and what they needed to fix. Instead, He pointed out what they needed to focus on going forward.   He told people to follow Him .  He pointed out the blessings of the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and others. He praised people's faith. The point is, He didn't sit there tearing them apart and telling them everything they needed to do better at. So why do we do that?  We do that to ourselves, feeling like we have to clean ourselves up and be "good" before we can come to God, before we can serve, before we can... anything. Really, we're letting the enemy win when we do that. We're cooperating with his plan to keep us quietly useless. If Satan can't keep us out of the Kingdom, then he'...

   Have you ever lost something? I'm not talking about misplacing your car keys, but losing something for good. Like, it's not coming back, ever. It can be disheartening, disappointing, or downright depressing! But sometimes I think it's a good idea to step outside of the situation a little and look at it from a different perspective.  Many, many years ago, when my kids were little, I had a Winnie the Pooh coat. It was my favorite winter coat. In fact, it was my only winter coat. I had a closet that was on the small side, so every spring I would pack up my sweaters and winter coat and other winter clothes and break out the summer wear. Then, in the fall, I would reverse the process. One year, the fall of 2004 to be exact, I went to get out my winter clothes and my Winnie the Pooh coat wasn't there! I searched all around where the bin had been in storage. I checked other bins with the kids' clothes in different sizes. I went through every closet in the house, checked...

  So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.   1 Corinthians 10: 31 I have a long history with restrictive diets. Really, it dates back to my childhood watching my family yo-yo dieting with Slim Fast and other equally toxic and unmaintainable eating styles. Those early messages were so conflicting and confusing. “Food is bad, because it’s so good.” I’m not sure how you ever really clear out those founding memories. Sugar is bad. Salt is bad. Fat is bad. Carbs are bad. Artificial sweeteners are bad. Red Meat is bad. Gluten is bad. Dairy is bad. Oh wait, but most of those things are good and necessary too. As an adult, I’ve bumped up against several needs for diets. When my children were born, I wanted to lose the pregnancy weight. My babies had severe allergies and I was nursing them, so I had to cut out dairy and soy – not an easy thing to do at the turn of the century when labels were still very lacking. Then my body started ...