I have changed my random thoughts several times since I started writing this blog. I’m doing it once again, and I hope for the last time. I woke up this morning with a strong impression that I needed to change the intent of my random thoughts. I think now they might be less random. 

At times throughout my life, I’ve had strong impressions or words clearly spoken into my spirit. The timing of those impressions leads me to believe that God is the author, mostly because they come when I am seeking a specific answer to something, both in prayer and in Scripture reading. They may inspire what I write or speak or teach before others. Or they may lead me to make a particular decision, like what happened back in my college days.

I dropped out of college after my first quarter at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky because I was recovering from a severe case of mono that had come upon me during Christmas break. I wondered if I should go back. I loved the campus and had made many close friendships, but was thinking I wanted to major in journalism and Asbury didn’t offer that. One day or evening—I’m not sure which—I was specifically pondering and praying over this decision, when the words of Proverbs 3:5-6 came clearly into my mind. It was odd because I had no idea where in the Bible those words were found and I didn’t remember ever memorizing them—yet there they were.

A few weeks later, I was visiting a friend at a different college campus in Kentucky, thinking about how much I loved the area, when just as clearly as I heard Proverbs 3:5-6, I heard the words, “Go to the University of Kentucky and major in journalism.” I did just that. I still had Asbury friends nearby, and made new ones as well. And I was still in the beautiful Blue Grass State.

I have always loved to write—more than that to report things, to tell stories. True stories. And I have always been fascinated by how a blank piece of paper becomes full of whatever words you want to write. Something from nothing. Representative of the first creation. God, though, is so much better at it than any of us.

I am often not quite sure what I’m going to write about in a blog. I do look for unusual stories to tell; but for the last year, my time has become more restricted with a six-hour drive each week, putting me in two different places to call temporary homes. It has been necessary to live like this, but this period of time is soon coming to an end. For now, my writing and my quest for unique stories to tell has been hampered. But I have had some clear indications come to mind that wherever I resettle here in Lynchburg, Virginia, God is going to provide the perfect place for me to write and research. I will still be near family and remaining with my same church family.

These were the years I had begged God to use me to write. And this blog has provided some great assignments. Also, a clear book idea that when I find the time to work on it—is absolutely so much fun to research, plan, develop, and write. I find myself thinking, yes, yes, this is what I truly have longed to do. Many thoughts, many subjects, many projects come to mind of how much more I could accomplish. Better said, what I believe God wants me to accomplish.

If I weren’t writing, I’d be a teacher or a social worker. Not sure which. When I graduated with my degree in journalism, my mom who was a teacher told me if she hadn’t been a teacher, she would have been a journalist. Interest in this vocation is definitely being passed through the bloodline. I have nieces and nephews and children who are fantastic writers.

I feel strongly that vocation-wise God has always directed my paths. First as a mother, a childcare provider, and currently a grandmother, but also in publishing and then pregnancy center ministry. He has made them all fit together, and given me personal training opportunities. I have learned never to doubt the places where I find myself, but to see what it is I can do there to share Jesus. 

I haven’t taught a children’s Sunday School class in many years, but retirement has offered me that opportunity. In preparing for the lesson coming up next week, which is about Joseph in Egypt while he was still estranged from his family, the point is made that God was preparing Joseph to be used in the salvation of many from hunger by the suffering that Joseph endured. I say the same. 

The training ground wasn’t always pleasant, but it was vitally necessary. Just as with Joseph, there were plenty of times that various facets of ministry spread out before me. For several years, I did childcare in my home. Numerous families were impacted by that, as their children spent hours in my home. Yes, my furniture often got trashed, my house was full of people and activities and noise, and I often found myself at Walmart late at night buying food and craft supplies for the next day. But many seeds were planted in those young lives. Parents found a place to relax after work, as well as a listening ear. 

My publishing career gave me the best training I could have ever hoped for in that field.  I learned how to produce actual books, partnering with editors, authors, artists, printing companies. My colleagues were exactly the people I needed to work with at the time, and from motherhood I had learned organization and scheduling that was a big part of that job. I also learned how to make indexes for books, particularly Scripture indexes, since I was working for Christian publishers. 

When I left the publishing industry full-time, I continued working as a freelance indexer, making sure that Scripture cited was quoted correctly—so much time spent in Scripture and reading good manuscripts through the years, and still today. I have always noticed that at all times, what I’m doing in that role as I look into passages of Scripture can be directly related to what God wants me to read at that particular time in my life. 

The 11 years I spent as an Executive Director in pregnancy center ministry opened a new world for me into counselling and the state of America’s young people. Their hunger for the Gospel, for Jesus, that is actively being dismissed and shut down by a culture in direct partnership with the enemy. Going into all the world with the news of Jesus Christ looks very different in ways and means than it did when Jesus instructed us to take it to all nations as He rose into heaven. What remains the same is the message and our hearts’ desire to serve our Savior. 

The nations themselves and the cultures they represent, however, move more quickly down a decadent scale with technology hastening the process. According to Psychology Today, “the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s.” Their world is often centered on an unreal world of social media in which its participants portray an unreal version of themselves in order to attract attention from other unreal people they may never meet. Rewards without effort, and self-gratification are the way of life. Large numbers of them end up in situations that would have shocked and disappointed their great grandparents. 

Sin has always been with us, but it took a while at the beginning of time for disease and destruction to gain a good foothold; for life expectancy to go from centuries to less than a hundred, for whole cultures to be eliminated. Still, after God promised Noah to never destroy all the world again, things began spiraling out of control in a short period of time. Today we are left with family and moral breakdowns nationwide, and lonely people of all generations who are spiritually destitute.

Jesus came and was Light in the darkness, providing Himself as a ransom for many. Even so—darkness is quickly blacking out our communities, and the Light we should be reflecting often flickers. Consumed with ourselves, we become complacent and unaware that our neighbors can’t see for the darkness. Sometimes we criticize and judge their blindness. 

What might awaken us is a murder a half mile away as a man lies dying at the entrance of Dollar General. Or someone’s daughter goes missing and no one is quite sure where she is till her parents discover that she has been talking online to an older man a few states away who was somehow able to pick her up after school and take her away. Or you never see your neighbor who spends most of her time drunk in bed. Or your child ends up in jail. Or is shot dead in school. Or you hear from your sister that your nephew is an addict and living on the street in a nearby city. This is our world. Sin has darkened it and we are the Light because we know the Who the Light is. 

Am I reflecting that?

Even before I was born, God knew me, He loved me, He delighted in me. He knew how He would make me, my hair and eye color, my physical weaknesses, my talents, whether or not I would marry, whether or not I would have children, which country I would live in, what economic bracket I would fall into, what family name I would bear.  He knew how much He loved me and He saw to it that Jesus accomplished what was needed to adopt me into His family. He planned just how He would reveal Himself to me, how He would lead me to faith in Jesus, how He would use me to advance His kingdom. This is surprising, humbling, and incomprehensible. This is Truth. How am I sharing it?

J.I. Packer writes in Knowing God: “Do I understand my adoption? Do I value it? Do I daily remind myself of my privilege as a child of God?...Do I treat God as my Father in heaven, loving, honoring and obeying him, seeking and welcoming his fellowship and trying in everything to please him, as a human parent would want his child to do?...Do I think of Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Lord, as my brother too??…Do I think daily how close he is to me, how completely he understands me, and how much as my kinsman-redeemer, he cares for me?”

John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, which he wrote while imprisoned for attending a church meeting that was not a Church of England gathering, also wrote letters to his children from prison. “It is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind the very beginnings of grace with their souls…. My dear children, call to mind the former days, and years of ancient times: remember also your songs in the night, and commune with your own hearts….Yea, look diligently, and leave no corner therein unsearched for that treasure hid, even the treasure of your first and second experience of the grace of God towards you.”

The first step to sharing the Light we have been given with others is to first of all, be grateful for it. To never forget the mercies of God to us as a body and individually. To look on our suffering and trials as God’s teaching ground—to pursue His Word and draw our strength and comfort from it. “Look over the excellent mercies of thy youth and education,” Richard Baxter the Puritan pastor and writer from the 17th Century writes. “The mercies of riper years or age, the mercies of thy prosperity and thy adversity, the mercies of thy several places and relations; are they not excellent? Canst thou not think of the several places thou hast lived in and remember that they have each had their several mercies?”

How often I forget these mercies and rely on myself, thinking how many good decisions I have made, not realizing as the great hymnwriter, Fanny Crosby, writes, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me.” Yet when by God’s grace I can keep my mind from wandering, I see well enough that my motivation for the good that I do comes solely and in relation to the times I am most grateful to God for His mercies and express that gratitude in pursuing Him with my whole heart. 

My random thoughts then come together and rest solidly on One Who holds me in His grip—Jesus Christ.