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Posted on August 30, 2019 by beverlyeash

Daily Reads 08.30.2019

Today begins our annual glamping weekend. Glamping is just a bit more glamorous than regular camping. Three families are involved. Two families pull their recreational vehicles to the third family’s house who don’t care for camping in the traditional sense of the word. We call their house the resort. It’s wonderful.

The families in attendance have grown from thirteen to twenty-one with one more on the way. We have shared weddings, funerals and births. Our children loved to hate one another as adoloscents and teens; two of them are married to one another.

This is the essence of a gaggle lived out. We worship together, we play together, we cry together, we build memories together. This week when I told my granddaughter, Finley, we were going camping and who would be there, her face lit up like the fourth of July. Already at two, she is learning the value of community.

Read: Hebrews 10:24-25

Gaggles are work. It takes effort to continue meeting together. Conflict between children makes meeting difficult; other times it’s conflict of schedules, jobs or hobbies. Press in! The results are worth the effort.

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Posted on August 29, 2019 by beverlyeash

Daily Reads 08.29.2019

Read: Matthew 18:20

“How large does a group have to be to count as a gaggle?” you wonder.

Geese live in gaggles. There are always lots of them. As an introvert, my gaggle wouldn’t be that large if I was a goose. In the reading from yesterday from the book of Acts, there were thousands of people gathering together. In the scripture reading today, two or three is a gaggle.

We are all put together uniquely and we don’t all have the same social needs. Simply put, a gaggle should be the size that meets your needs for community. It might be 10 it might be 4. In what size group can you be vulnerable and still feel safe?

And that’s your gaggle!

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Posted on August 28, 2019 by beverlyeash

Daily Reads 08.28.2019

“What exactly would a gaggle do if I had one?” you might be asking.

Read: Acts 2:42

Gaggles meet together in a variety of ways. Pulling a few ideas from this passage, a gaggle gathers around scripture. It might occur on a Sunday morning, a formal Bible study or a more informal discussion of principles found in scripture. No matter how it occurs, a gaggle values scripture.

Gaggles gather to fellowship. Fellowship is simply friendly association with others who share similar interests. It is the Friday night football game, Sunday night bonfire, knitting club, sewing klatch, shooting range, grilling contests – wherever your interests might take you with a common group of people.

Gaggles share meals together. My daughter has art work on her kitchen wall that says, “If the home is a body, the table is the heart, the beating center, the sustainer of life and health.”  (quote by Shauna Niequist from “Bread and Wine”) So many meaningful interactions happen around the table, enjoying good food and drink. Eating together has a way of lowering our defenses and allowing for safe spaces to develop.

Gaggles pray together. Some of our most meaningful times with friends have been in spontaneous or organized prayer times. It is an often overlooked tool we can wield to create deeper connections within community.

It’s time to get your gaggle on. Who will it be?

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Posted on August 27, 2019 by beverlyeash

Stay Calm and Carry On

Read: Hebrews 10:24-25

This is a busy week. Besides the fact that our youngest daughter’s wedding is just a month away, we are having a shrimp boil for the employees who work with/for my husband on Wednesday and camping at a friend’s house for the weekend. I decided I needed to compartmentalize every responsibility and work on one thing at a time. Today I did necessary shopping for part of the food for the boil and camping. I even threw in a couple of items necessary for upcoming showers and wedding festivities.

Basically, I am making every effort to remain calm and carry on. I want to enjoy every moment, every event…I want to enjoy the process, not wish it away.

Part of enjoying the moment is making time for friends. Last night we met four couples for our annual pontoon ride around a local lake. We enjoyed a few snacks and drinks, a lot of laughs and a little ice cream. But mostly, we loved one another well by just being together. It was a place of deep acceptance, safety and confidence. We shared freely and laughed loudly.

All five of the couples on board are empty nesters. Three of us have grandchildren. We need one another. The gaggle is a great place to talk about the challenges of life as we adjust to adult children, empty homes and grandchildren.

It’s important to have a gaggle of friends surrounding you. If you look that word up, you will find it means a disorderly and often noisy group of people. It also means an assortment of related things. I think I mean both of those things. Last night we gathered as an assortment of related people and our interactions were often noisy and even disorderly. And it totally met the need for community.

In the scripture reading for today, I find three things that a gaggle of friends can do for you. One, they motivate you to acts of love and good deeds. Which one of us doesn’t need a little push in the right direction every once in a while? It’s easy to become weary in well doing, so someone pushing you on is a wonderful gift.

Secondly, gaggles meet together. Face-to-face, we look one another in the eye and speak life. We share sorrows, disappointments, joys and wins. We need those who will look us in the eye and love us deeply.

Finally, we encourage one another. Today one of my gaggle called and said she thought I might be able to give her a little word of encouragement. I responded immediately with every word of blessing I could come up with, knowing that she had something specific in mind and I was sure I wasn’t hitting it. Sure enough. She was trying a new technique in her sewing project and ran it by me. I made a couple of suggestions, assured her she could do it and she tackled it with renewed confidence.

Who is your gaggle? I love it when I see my children gathering together with other adults their age and in their walk of life. They need friends who are in the same life stage. I love when our sewing group meets at church and there are women from every age and life stage.

You see, we need community. We need a gaggle, even if it gets disorderly and loud. And we need something in common that brings us together. It might be children, or no children, jobs, hobbies, music, faith…it isn’t about finding people your age. It’s about finding people who share something in common and are willing to do life together.

This is a busy time for me. Weddings, babies, blogging, sewing, travel – I need to know who my gaggle is and where I can find them at any given time. I would drop everything to be with them and they would drop everything to be with me. I need the motivation they provide to be the best version of me. I need to see them face-to-face and look them in the eye. And I need to be encouraged because some days the tasks are overwhelming.

So again I ask, who is your gaggle?

Until next time…

May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.

Numbers 6:24-26

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Posted on August 26, 2019 by beverlyeash

I used to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. It was a documentary television program about nature and wild life. My favorite episodes were the ones featuring lions (of any kind) chasing prey. The lions watched from a distance while an unsuspecting herd of antelope or other animal grazed on vegetation or drank at the watering hole. The lion targeted animals that didn’t quite keep up with the whole group.

As soon as a target was identified, the lion began working to separate the animal from the herd and then when it was isolated, she attacked. It always worked the same. Create distance from the group, isolate the animal, attack.

The devil works the same way. 1 Peter 5:8 warns us to be alert. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He identifies a likely subject. And then he will work to isolate his victim, and attack. His goal is to steal, kill and destory. (John 10:10)

There is good news in all of this! We are not unaware of his schemes (2 Corinthians 2:11) We know he is trying to create disunity and to isolate us from the community of believers. Stand firm against his schemes. Humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. (James 4:7-8)

Resist means to withstand, strive against or oppose something. Here we are exhorted to stand against the enemy. Refuse to listen to his taunts, his efforts to create disunity within your circles, his attempts to isolate you. Draw near to God by staying in life giving relationships, developing humble, open spaces to share honestly and invite others into your life.

There is another phenomenon I saw on Wild Kingdom. It was animals who, when threatened by an enemy, circled up with their heads together and their hind legs out. As the enemy tried to attack or separate them, they kicked with their powerful hind legs until the enemy gave up and looked for other prey.

Let’s start this week by giving the enemy a serious kick in the jaw! If necessary, gather some friends and do it together!

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Posted on August 25, 2019 by beverlyeash

Read: John 3:16-17

God didn’t send Jesus into the world to judge you or condemn you to hell. He sent Jesus to save you!

Today is a good day to receive God’s love into your heart. He loved you before you even knew about him. “For you are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10)

There is no need to be afraid. He is not mad at you. He doesn’t want to punish you. He is for you!

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Posted on August 24, 2019 by beverlyeash

Read: 1 John 4:16-18

Part Two

The kind of love God wants us to know is full of confidence. This confidence comes from knowing we lived like Jesus here on this earth. This perfect kind of love knows no fear. If we are afraid, it is because we fear punishment.

When life is going really well and all your dreams are coming true, fear that the rug is going to be pulled out from underneath you often visits. We fear punishment. Nothing can be this good.

When I am alone at night, fear that something bad will happen used to visit. I feared punishment. My thinking often went something like this: I am alone. Bad things happen. God can prevent bad things. God prevents bad things from happening to those he loves. Does he love me? Maybe not. Bad things happen… and on and on my mind went.

I had to learn that God loved me. He wanted me to experience peace beyond my wildest imagination. The enemy of my soul wanted me to know only deep, dreaded fear. He wanted me to be afraid of punishment. He wanted me to doubt God’s love for me.

I learned to replace the fear of punishment with words of grace, love and acceptance. I am a child of God. I am deeply loved. I have a great inheritance and a place at the table. I will never be alone. He watches over me.

Perhaps your fear is of dying. Not being certain if you got it right here on earth makes the transition to eternity a bit frightening. On your own, you won’t get it right. And there is no good work you can do to ensure eternity in heaven. Jesus said, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) And in another place he said, “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him (God’s son). But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18)

It sounds too simple and so we reject it and head down the trail of good deeds. And then our trust is in ourselves and what we can accomplish instead of in Jesus’ finished work on the cross. We have already proved we can’t say no to the devil and his schemes (See Genesis 3), so Jesus came to do it for us. Now we place our trust in him, and follow his commands. John said, “Loving God means keeping his commands, and his commandments are not burdensome. For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve our victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” (1 John 5:3-5)

Perfect, confident love is available. Without fear of punishment, we are unstoppable in what we can do in this world. It gives us the ability to love others without reservation. It will change your world!

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Posted on August 23, 2019 by beverlyeash

Read: 1 John 4:16-18

Part One:

It is my experience that one cause of fear* and anxiety* is not understanding how deeply we are loved by God. When we understand how much we are loved, we place our trust in him. We don’t trust those we aren’t sure truly love us.

I will be the first to say that it is difficult to grasp God’s love for me because 1) I can’t see him. 2) I can’t hear him. 3) I can’t feel him.

I say all of that from the perspective of being able to see, hear and feel an actual human body. Like, I can’t pinch Jesus or startle him. He no longer lives in a human body.

But he is alive! And I experience him in other ways. I see him in nature, I see him in my children and grandchildren, I see him in the people around me. He reveals himself through his word, he speaks to me when I am quiet.

Then I hear him. I know his voice and I listen to it. John 10:4 says, “After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice.”

He reveals himself to us if we are willing to see it. And when we are convinced of his love for us, we can trust Him.

To be continued….

*There is the reality of fear/anxiety from traumatic events and that is not the result of lack of trust in God. Healing from the episode is possible but I am not addressing that in this post.

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Posted on August 22, 2019 by beverlyeash

Read: 1 John 3:19-24

Guilt is related to the things we do. Sometimes guilt is hard to shake and comes as a result of actual wrong deeds or perceived wrong deeds. Guilt keeps us from enjoying freedom in relationships, whether the guilt is real or imagined.

I love this scripture. John points out that God is greater than our feelings and he knows our hearts. So, in other words, he knows whether our guilt is real or imagined. He is greater than that feeling. If the guilt comes from a wrong action, the solution is in 1 John 1:9 – confess it and move on.

If the guilt comes from a perception of wrong doing when there is none, God knows that. He is greater than that feeling. It is imperative that we expose the feelings of guilt and take care of them. Otherwise, they prevent us from coming to God boldly.

John makes it so simple here. God has one commandment: believe in Jesus’ name and love one another.

And that’s all folks!

P/S Some might argue that I have made it too simple. There has to be more to following Jesus than that. As I see it, all sin is a violation of the command to love God and one another. If we are loving God by believing in Jesus’ name and loving one another, we are fulfilling the law of Christ. See Matthew 22:37-40

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Posted on August 21, 2019 by beverlyeash

Read: 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

Before anything else, a person must believe that when he/she comes to Christ he/she is a new creation. It is a do-over, a new day, a second chance – whatever you want to call it.

Read: Romans 8:12-14

Here is the next hard truth. We are declared a new creation in Christ. He sees us with fresh eyes that don’t hold against us anything we have done in the past or anything we will do in the future. The hard part is joining with him in this new life. The old ways of living often pull at us, but Paul reminds us that we have no obligation to do what that old person used to do! We will have to find new friends, new activities, new ways of living. Or we will stay in the slum of life.

Do you believe you are a new person in Christ? Do the old ways pull at you? Perhaps you are trying to do it alone. Paul reminds us that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can put those desires to death. You don’t have to go at it alone.

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