September 11th.
Let’s use today’s date as a prayer prompt for our leaders, and as a reminder to pray for those of every tribe and nation around the world:
Heavenly Father,
Thank you that you hold the king’s heart in your hand. We lift up our elected officials today, as well as leaders around the globe. Bless them with your good counsel, and direct their hearts – their thoughts, emotions, and decisions – like a watercourse, making them go wherever you please. (Proverbs 21:1)
Amen.
There’s nothing like having a house full of recent college graduates to upgrade the family fun. They know all of the best games and – as promised – here’s a quick “how to” on one that we played during our Staycation last month. I imagine it’s known by many names, but we called the game “Salad Bowl.”
For starters, divide your group into two teams. Give everyone three slips of paper and have them write down one or two words on each. Almost any noun will do; our collection included patience (as in the virtue), Lawless (as in the movie), and Donald Trump (as in). Once everyone has written their words, fold em up and put them all in a – you guessed it – salad bowl.
(Note: When picking your words, it helps to be a little bit crafty or off-beat. I learned this lesson the hard way when I picked Sewanee. That’s where Robbie goes to school, and since he would be leaving the following week, I guess I was already missing him. It’s a good school, but a bad word choice, since Round One involves giving verbal clues so your team. All anyone had to say was, “Robbie’s college!” and they got it. Lame.)
So for Round One, everyone gets 30 seconds to pull words out of the bowl and try to explain them to their teammates, using any verbal clues you want. (Think “Catch Phrase,” without the beeping.) You go through all the words, alternating teams every 30 seconds, until all the words have been guessed.
Tally how many words each team got, record that score, and then put all the words back in the bowl.
Round two is a little trickier. You still alternate the guesses in 30-second intervals, getting as many words as you can in that time, but instead of giving long-winded clues or explanations about the word (“This is what happens when you have to wait for a really long time for something to happen…”) you pick just ONE WORD as a prompt. For instance, if you were trying to get your team to guess the word patience, you might simply say, “Virtue.”
(Since everyone is already somewhat familiar with the words, it’s not as random as it sounds.)
(Unless you are old like I am, in which case you don’t remember any of the words from Round One and you just sit there shouting out whatever occurs.)
Go through all of the words again, giving the one-word clues, until they’ve all been picked. Tally how many each team got, add that to the Round One score, and put the words back in the bowl.
Round Three is basically charades. You go through all the words again, with each player having 30 seconds to get his teammates to guess as many as they can. (Talented actors may want to tighten the interval to 20 seconds.) This is where the game can get interesting: Donald Trump was easy (the hair); patience less so. I stood there, doing nothing, expecting people to guess the word. I mean, they were waiting, right? Hello? Patience?
(Maybe I just had a bad team.)
Anyhow, you can end the game after Round Three, awarding the win to whichever team guessed the most words right after all three rounds. Or, you can move on to Round Four and add the sheet.
We recommend the sheet.
With the sheet in play, you put all of the words back into the bowl and pass it to a team member who is – you guessed it again – under a bed sheet. The person goes through as many words as possible, acting out the motions under the sheet. No words or encouraging noises allowed. No discouraging noises, either.
(My team got “patience” this time. Nothing like doing nothing to garner the “best actor” award, when you’re under a sheet. And I am pretty sure we won, by a margin of one.)
So…that’s Salad Bowl. It’s a game for all ages, as evidenced by the York family of Atlanta, Georgia. Special thanks to Kelly York for cluing us in to the world of possibilities that can open up in Round Four after her 82-year-old grandmother went under the sheet during their family vacay and pretended to be “Obama.”
Classic.
I don’t know about you, but there are times when it’s not that hard to trust God with my head (like, deep down, I know he has everything under control), but my heart can still go bouncing all over the place.
In an effort to get it to behave, I looked up a bunch of verses about trust this week. It will come as no surprise that a lack of trust opens the door to nasty things like fear, anxiety and sleeplessness, whereas when we stake our trust in God – in his character and his promises – we welcome a host of blessings (think peace, security, prosperity, steadfastness, and joy, for starters) into our lives.
I wanted to find us a really good verse to pray today, and I managed to narrow the list of favs down to about 20. Then 15. Then 6. And I finally picked Isaiah 26:3. I chose this one because it starts with the mind and yields results in the heart. It gives peace a chance to take root.
If Isaiah doesn’t hit just the right note with you, do what I did. Grab a concordance and check out the listings under the words “trust,” “trusts,” and “trusting.” Just be sure to pour yourself a big cup of coffee first and prepare to settle in, because it’s easy to get lost in the offerings. They are that good.
Heavenly Father,
Thank you for your promise to keep us in perfect peace when our minds are steadfast, because we trust in you. Give ____ a steadfast mind today – one that stays fixed on who you are: Your limitless power, your incredible faithfulness, and your everlasting love. (Isaiah 26:3, NIV and NLT, with character traits added).
Amen.
P.S. The runner up is Romans 15:13 (yes, Romans again!), which I am praying for you this week: May the God of peace fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
If you’re a mom (and especially if you’re a mom with an empty or mostly empty nest), you know that there’s nothing better than having all of your chicks in one coop. You love it when “the gang’s all here,” and you’ll do just about anything to make it happen.
For instance, I have one friend who rents a big beach house on some island every year and lets her adult children know that, if they “want” to come, she’ll cover their flight. (Um, that would be a yes.) Another pal keeps a family bucket list in a notebook, with a bunch of must-do’s like “learn to ride a horse” and “get scuba certified” as a way to keep everyone focused, engaged, and (this part is key) participating. And then there are moms like my grandmother. I am pretty sure she faked her own death-watch more than a couple of times, just so we’d come visit, all at once.
From a mom’s perspective, no cost is too high, no scheme too desperate. Which is how I found myself at a local tee shirt shop, having eight matching shirts printed up with the words, “Paddle Hard.”
Paddle Hard has been a family motto of sorts for several years. Robbie likes it because of surfing. I like it because it reminds me of Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart…” And when I got everyone to agree to give me 30 hours of their summer for a “staycation” (two weddings in one year pretty much kills any normal vacation), I decided to co-opt the motto for our staycay theme.
As with most of my grand ideas, there were plenty of holes in this one. Like, who knew you couldn’t put a period in a hashtag? (Well, my kids knew. But why don’t they post this sort of rule someplace where mothers can see it? Like, before they try to be all hip and put it on a tee shirt?)
Anyhow.
The first item on our agenda (because what’s family fun without a typewritten plan, with copies for everyone?) was paddle boarding (because theme). Robbie hadn’t even finished telling us which way to hold the paddle (you’d think that’s a duh, but trust me) when Khaki the lab decided – like, suddenly – to shed her “mostly dead” persona and get with the program.
Khaki is 12 years old, riddled with tumors, and pretty much doesn’t move (unless you count the 27 steps from our couch to her food bowl). She has no idea how to paddle hard…but she wanted to. And her enthusiasm was contagious. Pretty soon everyone was on the water. They even lined up, with minimal groaning, so that I could get in the photo:
We had a wonderful 29.5 hours of good food, good laughter (I’ll share the how-to’s for our favorite game next week), and good conversation about what it means to paddle hard in life – in your relationships, your work, and your time with God. Plus, Khaki survived, which was a definite plus.
Feel free to borrow our motto for your next family gathering. You can even make everyone a handy scripture card, like I did, for when you pass out the agendas.
Or not.
(I thought folks might want to memorize the verse, but from what I can tell, nobody got much farther than “Paddle hard.” But hey. A mom’s gotta try.)
Well I’ve moved into Romans. It’s not my favorite book of the Bible, mostly because it contains a lot of heady stuff and you have Paul writing things like, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”
Come again?
But anyway, here I am, and if you’re with me on the two-year Bible reading plan, maybe you’re here too. And maybe you found yourself breezing right on through the second half of Romans 1 this week like I did, thinking it wasn’t really for you. An easy assumption to make. I mean, Paul basically opens with a whole section about God’s wrath, starting out with warnings about general wickedness before transitioning into big-ticket items like idolatry and sexual perversion. (Interesting that he lumps “disobedience to your parents” in with murder, depravity, deceit, and ruthlessness…but that’s a blog for another day. Or maybe it’s a verse you want to write out and put on your kid’s pillow tonight.)
(Just kidding.)
So, there I was, skimming along through Paul’s litany of sin (and feeling pretty good since I wasn’t one of “those perverts”) when – kind of like what I imagine it must feel like to get hit in the head with a hammer (which has never happened to me) or with a soccer ball while you watched your kid’s game (which has) – a verse practically jumped up and bit me. Romans 1:21 says, Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Ouch.
I know God, but how many times have I failed to give him the credit or glory he deserves? How often have I neglected to thank him for what he is doing (or what he has already done)? And how easy it has been, during those times, to slip into futile thinking:
This circumstance will never change.
It’s all up to me – and I don’t have what it takes.
This whole relationship/job/situation is hopeless…I’m just so tired…What if I fail?
And where is God, anyway?
I’ve lost count of the times thoughts like these have pitched their tents in my head. And each time they do, I can almost feel my heart grow a little darker.
Hold that thought because, on a happier note (thank goodness!), today is 8/28. I’ve paid attention to this date for years, ever since my friend Lisa (whose birthday it is) told me that she loved her birthday, since it always reminded her of Romans 8:28.
If you know only one line from the whole book of Romans, chances are it’s that one: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. People love Romans 8:28. And it’s easy to see why. Who wouldn’t want to stake their hope in the fact that, regardless of how bad things might look right now, God is at work, and his plan is to make everything turn out for our good?
Lisa believes that. Coming from her, it’s a belief that carries some solid weight, ‘cuz it’s born of experience, as well as faith. Three years ago, Lisa was a 48-year-old marathon runner and a successful attorney who racked up the victories on the pavement and in the courtroom. She was also a loving wife and the mother of two almost-grown boys. And then the stroke happened.
It was massive, and what followed was a horrific brain bleed that had doctors bracing her family for the worst. But if Romans 8:28 was ever going to be proved true in Lisa’s life, the time was then, and God did a miracle. Against all odds, Lisa lived. And against all odds (and after an incredibly challenging journey that has involved all of the stuff you hope never, ever happens to someone you love), she walked into her own birthday party this year.
And it was quite a celebration. Not in the way you might think – there were no balloons or dancing cows or whatever it is that people feel like they need nowadays. It was just a handful of Lisa’s friends, gathered on someone’s screened porch for a casual supper, talking and laughing the way that girls do. And, during the course of conversation, Lisa made a profound admission:
“I try to find one thing each day to be thankful for,” she said. “I think about that thing, and I thank God.”
Wow. Romans 1:21 wasn’t even on Lisa’s radar, but in that one simple statement, she gave me hope. She turned the equation inside out, offering the antidote to a darkened heart. It’s gratitude, and a readiness to shine the spotlight on God. When we acknowledge his provision – living out verses like Romans 8:28, trusting in his power and his love even when we can’t see how he will work – the futile thoughts don’t have a chance to take root. And even if it’s just one thing to be thankful for each day, it’s a start.
So thank you, Lisa. Thank you for being a woman of faith, for reorienting my perspective, and for giving me a reason to be grateful (even for the tricky parts in Romans). Happy birthday!
