Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
The rooms at Kijiji Guest House where I am staying on the campus of Africa International University are a little odd. The shape of the two buildings, constructed of native stone in an octagonal shape, mean that none of the inside rooms are square. A courtyard inside each building is open to the sky; I can hear the rainfall that becomes torrential on the inside of the building before I can hear it on the outside. When referring to these lovely spaces, the locals on campus, the missionary community and professors, say the Guest Houses were built by volunteer teams simply dubbed “the Scots guys.”

I’m getting the idea that things disappear at Kijiji. One of my friends, whose husband is a professor here, stitched up beautiful quilts for all the rooms—what an undertaking. Can you imagine the impression they must have made on the guests who dragged in weary from travel. Returning from a Stateside visit herself, she discovered that new management had taken over and the quilts had all been sold! Yesterday, while talking with another manager (the quilt-selling managerial team did not work out), we wondered if it would be of help to her if our seamstresses from the Global Bag Project (who rent the domestic arts room just beyond Kijiji and through the garden) stitched up laundry bags with the appropriate room number on each.

Linette is a gracious lady and manages all the complicated comings and goings here with seeming ease. “Oh yes,” she said softly. “That would be very helpful. We used to have laundry bags, but I don’t know where they have gone.”

We are trying to create a synergy with the Kijiji Guest Houses: we’ll help them with some of their sewing needs if they will allow us to advertise Global Bag Project products in the rooms. Many tourists already drop past the sewing room and buy bags. We have just worked on setting Africa prices by inviting customers to answer, “What do you think is a fair price?” Their responses more than doubled the price our Project Coordinator had been charging.

However, we’ll have to remember to make it clear that it is not appropriate to pack away items from the guest rooms and to take them home and that our goal for the Global Bag Project women is to pay them a fair wage. So I am keeping it in mind that I, a Westerner from the United States, can come up with all sorts of ideas, but unless the idea originates on the ground here, not much is invested in the concept, which I may think is really great! Nor should I attempt to impose Western thinking and ways on systems that are working quite fine, thank you. The African is polite and has heard much of it all before. They smile, nod their heads and tell you, often, what it is they think you want to hear. This is a cultural nicety; it is politeness, not deceit. However, sometimes they do need advisement, such as the prices for the Global Bag Project products in the sewing room.

“What do you think is a fair price for this?” is not altogether a bad idea for many of our cross-cultural exchanges. Translated another way, we might ask, “What do you think? How would you do this? Why does this happen this way?”

I am ever a learner, for the most part, in another culture. Living in another culture is like the octagonal stone Guest Houses at Kijiji. None of the rooms are really square. Things disappear. I may be hearing only what I want to hear when people tell me what they think I want to know. I am tired of saying, “Pardon me, could you repeat that again?” My mind is weary with learning and interpreting. But I am only a learner here. Please, God, help me not to forget.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-165)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
It was April in Kenya, the season of the long rains; rain is falling all over the country, ending a severe suffering of dryness. It runs along the road in torrents (where does it all go?). My working trip extended to 18 days and water fell in drizzles and mists and deluges every single day. But the Kenyans do not complain. “We need the rain,” they say. “It is raining all over the country.” Drought brings incalculable suffering. The Maasai have brought their herds of cows into town; they are grazing by the roadsides and nudging the mounds of garbage in the slums seeking out edibles.

I once wrote about this in my book The Fragile Curtain:

“The great dog drought will stretch out upon Massailand. He will roll down upon the pampas of the Great Rift Valley, which incises Africa nearly west to east. He will rub his huge back on the concave floor that slopes up to the mountains: Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Meru, and Lengai.

“Then he will trot to the precious watering holes and lap them dry; he will drink and empty the seasonal rivers. His ribbed belly will plop upon the land, suffocating the vegetation. He will pant hot breath over Kenya and Tanzania, the historic grazing territory of the Maasai. Then he will sleep, a slumber not to be disturbed. He will not be wakened.

“Old dog drought is sleeping now in the East Horn of Africa.”

Some of the Westerners have been complaining about the days of rain (interspersed with bright cleansed blue skies and warming sun). The mud is everywhere; our shoes are caked; the slums with only dirt paths are miserable. But I am old enough at 69 and enough of a gardener to know that the torrents are a blessing. So I thank God, along with my Kenyan brothers and sisters, for this damp grace.

The drivers we hire clean their cars inside and out every day, but when we clamber into the back seat, we muddy the mats. It is impossible to keep shoes clean when walking on muddy red-clay paths. Several days ago we got caught in a squall running to the van. I was talking on a borrowed cell phone, ducking the puddles and trying to find firm footing as we left Heshima Ministries, which offers physical therapy to 16 severely disabled children and provides work for their mothers through Dignity Designs, a jewelry-making enterprise. It was impossible to stay dry; too much rain, too much red-clay mud, too many potholes. I finally gave up trying to be cautious and just trampled like a naughty child through the puddles. My shoes were soaked.

I accosted an African man on the path outside the dining room in the Kijiji Guest House area where we stay when in Kenya, “How do you keep the mud off your shoes? Yours are so clean and mine are so muddy.”

“Oh,” he said (the Africans are so accommodating to rude and obtrusive Americans). “We wipe our shoes like this.” Instead of wiping his feet from front to back on the grass he twisted his shoe side to side. Then he hit the back of the heel on the grass. “But the mud on your shoe is dry. It has to be wet mud.”

So I have been twisting my muddy shoes on the grass. They are almost as clean in this rainy seasons as those of my Kenyan friends.

But this muddy-shoe discussion did give me an idea. What if most Westerners, used to paved walks and roadways, are as clueless as I? What if Kijiji offered a shoe-cleaning service? Leave your muddy shoes outside the door at night, like some of the higher-end hotels, and charge something like 100 Kenyan shillings ($1.25 at today’s exchange). That’s not much for one pair of shoes, but in the rainy season, with a full guest house, it could add up as part of the never-ending search for multiple income streams. The shoes would appear by the door in the morning.

Linette, the Kijiji guest-room manager, thought this was a good idea. You see, the Kenyans have noticed the muddy shoes of the Westerner.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-164)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Yesterday, sitting in the sewing room, listening to the sounds of the sewing machine, my back to the women and my face toward the windows, (where from time to time I catch spotty Wi-Fi connections), I took my notebook and jotted down the fact that my grandmother, Nellie Branham, had been the top Singer Sewing Machine saleswoman in the whole Chicago area decades ago. I didn’t want to forget this in the hurly-burly of the unending cross-cultural work of translation. Even when people from different cultures are speaking the same language, English, the words are pronounced and accented differently and carry slightly different meaning. Pardon me, what did you say again? I must have asked this question a hundred times yesterday.

NOTE to MYSELF: Gram a seamstress. My beautifully made clothes. Flannel nightgowns for the entire family on Christmas. Then the thought: What would Gram have thought about me working with the seamstresses of the Global Bag Project?

I began making notes; the ideas flowed. Suddenly, I realized I was writing down the outline of a book. In fact, I had already been writing it in bits and pieces since the beginning of initial inquiries into the Bag Project idea in 2008. Now, the growing book ideas inside were notifying me that they were ready for my attention.

Back in the States, my sister, Valerie, and I had one of those phone conversations:
“You’re going to Kenya! We’re going to Kenya!” So she and my brother-in-law, Steve, arrived three days early before their commitments to Compassion International kicked in. We realized the sewing room needed a new ironing board and another iron. So David and Steve and Valerie headed off to the Nakumat (think “big-box store”) and returned home with a board and two bright-pink steam-irons. One of my favorite memories going forward will always be the joy and laughter in the Sewing Room as Valerie taught the women (one who works at home with a heavy charcoal iron) how to press using steam!

What would my grandmother, Nellie Branham, the top Singer Sewing Machine saleswoman, have thought about that? Wasn’t it she who taught me how to press a man’s shirt?—button panels first, then the collar inside and out, the yoke across the top next, the sleeve collars, the sleeves themselves, then the rest of the shirt.

It was a lovely morning in the sewing room where the Global Bag Project seamstresses
in the suburb of Karen, Kenya, outside Nairobi, down the garden path from the Kijiji Guest House, were doing their work, and I sitting at a sewing counter, my personal computer in front of me and my notebook in hand, was doing mine.

I think Gram Branham would have been pleased.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-163)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Sitting in the Global Bag Project sewing room in Kenya, I can hear the click-click-click of the treadle sewing machines. It is the rainy season; last night we conducted a Global Bag Project Kenya board meeting in the dark. The people here are used to these interruptions. Last night, I woke, flipped on the light to check the time, and realized that the generators to the Kijiji Guest House had been turned off.

The rain has been heavy—two days ago, after visiting a project for severely disabled children, I splashed through red-clay water puddles in the Logolo Slum. The rushing muddy ground flow covered my walking shoes, and the rain water soaked my hair. The deluge flooded little one-room shanties, making a nearly unbearable existence for many even more unbearable.

The machines in the sewing room have a different sound; the eight that have been recently purchased have a bass sound—chul-chul-chul—and the older machines, donated to the Project earlier, tap out a mechanistic alto—click-click-click. Again, as I take notes (the power just flashed off, flashed on) the seamstresses—those who work with the Global Bag Project and those who are being trained—keep on with their sewing, pumping their treadle machines, which were bought with power shortages in mind.

One of Hannah’s children is here in her school uniform—the girl is one of six siblings, which includes two sets of twins. Hannah, for obvious reasons, is a hard and steady worker. The Global Bag Project seeks to serve vulnerable women raising children without a man in the home. Because of GBP income, Hannah has been able to quit her salt-hauling job. Looking at Hannah’s little girl, bright-eyed and neat in her school uniform, I feel this spreading warmth beneath my breastbone. A gladness is in me that through selling bags, we have been able to help.

Two other children are here: a three-year old with a very runny nose, and his sister, who is perhaps six. Their mother is learning to sew. The little ones have been inordinately well-behaved, sitting patiently at the cutting table, heads resting on their hands and arms, but they now are growing restless. We obviously need a basket of toys, coloring books, sketching tablets; perhaps soft toys made from scraps for the children who come with mothers learning to sew with the hopes that they will be able to make income enough to feed their families, pay their rents, buy school uniforms and books to send their children to school.

The woman who is the sewing trainer and the women being trained talk softly; a low mumble of voices speaking Swahili floats in the room and the children have begun to run around the large cutting table (the power has just flashed off and on again). One of the sewers is humming under her breath. Every now and then, a joke is told (in Swahili) and the women giggle together.

A swooping rush of reality floods me; I am filled with a deep appreciation for the incarnational implications of the Gospel. Christ came among us; His flesh was handled, He heard and was heard, saw and was seen. It is one thing to know about the desperation of the world. It is another thing to walk among it, to get your shoes wet and muddy, to hear the stories, to look into the bright eyes of the children whose mothers are willing to grab at any small chance to do something, to make something of themselves.

We can’t see Him, but I know Christ is present. He is here among us as we work to create something—sewing projects—that give dignity and skills to women like Hannah.

When I walk through the slums, I feel such love. When we talk with our driver, Faragi, who is a Muslim, that love is in my heart. When I sit in the sewing room, with the sewing women click-clicking on their machines (or chul-chuling) this loveliness fills my being; this is a love that has been given to me. I know it is a gift coming from outside of my own emotional capabilities.

It is the rainy season in Kenya—but even when there is drought, the power comes and goes. The sewers are unfazed because they have treadle sewing machines, and I am experiencing love originating in a Source of Life that does not come and go. Christ is here. He is here.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-162)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
David and I have flown to Africa to visit the native land of the Global Bag Project. Since we will have intermittent internet connections during the next few weeks, I will have to suspend my blogging until I return.

Please pray that God will give us safety as we travel. Please also pray that we will be able to encourage all those who work in this important ministry. God has given us a very special gift of being able to make this trip. We desire to use this opportunity for His glory.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-161)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
David and I have gone up to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for some 39 years. Rather than have a cabin on a lake, or a vacation getaway, we have returned to this little stone town with its four theatres and amazing cultural life, inviting friends and family and acquaintances to come with us. Theatre in this environment, with the finest repertory company on the North American continent, has enriched our souls. Will Shakespeare is part of our family history.

On several occasions people have recommended the Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, a fictional account of a theatre company much like the Stratford Festival. “No one says its about the Festival,” said the friend who most recently recommended this series, no longer on television, “But it’s about the Festival. We laughed our heads off.”

Since Slings and Arrows had been recommended so frequently and so highly by people whose judgments we trust (most of whom have traveled to the Festival with us), I ordered the four-year series through Amazon.com. Last night after a wearying day, I sat down to view the first segment of the first DVD. I ended up watching one whole season and laughed all the way through it. It was outlandish; it was fascinating; it was filled with actor’s ego and performer’s angst. And at the same time, the story lines were unaccountably sweet. This first season is about the mounting of the play “Hamlet” and finally, when the young Hollywood star who has been brought in to boost the box-office receipts, reaches the deepest meaning of the lines he has memorized, I leaned into the television set, moved mightily by the power of the language and brushed away the tears that began to swell.

Remarkably, despite its wild display of human foibles, this quirky television series has captured some of the transcendency we often feel when we sit in the theatre and watch the dramatic presentations of the Bard.

Slings and Arrows is by no means a Christian production—far from it. So I am often left to puzzle how it is that non-church people capture those moments that open up before us all and in which the holy, in which the sacred reside. We’ve actually had conversations with Shakespeare Festival actors about this very thing. Something numinous, something transcendent occurs; they know it, they recognize it when it happens, but they struggle for the words to explain it. “Those are the moments in the life of the theatre that we wait for,” one lead actress explained. Her colleagues nodded their heads in agreement.

Perhaps, for the rest of us, less talented certainly in the dramatic arts, we also wait for moments when God comes near, when the veil of this life parts a little, and we know His presence in a way we don’t always know it, and we bow like Moses before the burning bush. We have taken off our shoes.

Thanks be given for a life filled with friends who recommend great things to read or see or places to go. Rich thinking and beautiful moments of being come from heeding their recommendations. Somehow, often despite us all, God is present.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-160)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Every day I try to read a little from literature that is richly written and that stirs my soul. These last months I’ve been slowly perusing and underlining the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Poetry has always been a difficult genre for me to understand, but the author is a master teacher and suddenly, as I study his writing and the samples he includes, this world of literature is opening to me. Poems are becoming comprehensible, astounding, soul-shaking and renewing.

I’m halfway through Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, for example, and I hear the thunder in the pages and have to close the volume. One can only stand so much ecstasy at a time. A new acquaintance loves and understands the work of Ranier Maria Rilke, so I have begun again to read the Duino Elegies; this is like reading another language, so I am going slowly, slowly, knowing that I can question my friend when I don’t understand (and there is much that I don’t understand).

This quote from Hirsch’s writing arrested me, and I’ve been asking myself the question in the days since I wrote it down in my prayer journal on April 3, 2012:

“The question poses itself as to how to keep alive the interior life in the face of our own and the world’s corruption.”

What a provocative inquiry. How do we (how do I) keep alive the interior life in the face of my own corruption as well as the world’s corruption?

I understand that God is often more a questioner than He is a forth-teller. So I am taking this disturbing question as something that has come my way because He wants me to chew on it.

First of all, what are my own corruptions? Where is the decay within me that pollutes the purity that an interior journey needs in order to sustain itself? I need to be still and let the Spirit whisper the answers to my heart.

Secondly, what are the corruptions of the world that compete with the maintenance of interiority? What is an interior life? Does everyone have an interior life? What must I give up? What must I clean out? What activities must I cease and what activities must I
establish in order to feed the soulish part of myself that is often starved by corruptions? How can I utilize the life that is given to me so that I can be fully alive?

Questions. Questions. Questions. There will be answers. The pathway lies ahead.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-159)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
One of the ways David and I recognize God’s intervention in our everyday lives is when He helps us do his work in the world. Much of that work for both of us is to give practical spiritual growth tools to Christians who desire to mature in their walk of faith.

For many years, I have slipped into a kind of prayer that is very, very different from the pleading, oh-help-me-God prayers of my younger years. It is a kind of silent prayer, a prayer without words, and I’ve actually found it very hard to communicate this in my writing. It is as though the prayer is going on all around me, and I just step into it.

However, recently, I’ve come across a couple of quotes in my reading that have (1) helped me to know that others are experiencing this kind of prayer and (2) various ways of expressing what I am experiencing.

This quote was copied out in my prayer journal on February 23, 2012. I haven’t attributed it to anyone, but I don’t think it originated with me. Perhaps it is from the Book of Common Prayer.

“You who pray in us, through us, with us, for us, and in spite of us. Amen. Alleluia.”

I have often felt as though I just open my soul to the prayer that is already going on and the prayer fills me, works in and through me. I am more passively active than actively passive. (See what I mean?—this is hard to explain.)

Richard Rohr, in his book The Naked Now, expresses it this way: “‘Prayer happened and I was there’ more than ‘I prayed today.’ All you know is that you are being led, being guided, being loved, being used, being prayed through—and you are no longer in the driver’s seat. ... You start knowing through, with, and in Somebody Else. Your little ‘I Am’ becomes ‘We Are.’ Please trust me on this. It might be the most important thing I am saying in this book.”

These are gifts to me, help to do God’s work in the world as I share with others, mentor a hungry few or teach and write. Sometime I will write something longer than a blog on this prayer experience, but I will also know that a divine hand was working in me, through me and around me enabling me to learn myself how to better pray so that I could help others.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-158)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Our house is surrounded by wooded patches of land, small stands of trees and brush that get scrubby and look ugly to my eye. Old wood has fallen, large branches clutter the ground. So last year I bought a good power saw to take to this debris this spring before the trees leafed out and made a difficult job even more difficult.

However, when I went to find the power saw in our garage, which had become messier and messier over the winter (sorry to say, most of it was my mess), I couldn’t find it. I hunted around under and behind the piles of stuff that needed storing in the attic. No power saw. Maybe I had carried it up myself to store in the attic over the winter. Nothing in that mess up there either.

Could it possibly be that someone had walked into our garage, seen the saw and taken it? A trail bike I bought for David some years ago had disappeared in exactly this way.

There certainly was no money this spring to buy a new saw. So, delayed in my intent, the trees in the wood patch leafed, and now, even with a rented saw, it would be a huge job (not to mention dangerous) to clamber into that briar patch of fallen timber and attempt to clean it out. I’d have to wait until the fall again.

On February 15, 2012, I wrote in my prayer journal under a section I titled “Lord, I Need Help With…” (I need help, it seems, with so many things) “power saw gone.” On March 4, 2012, I wrote in my prayer journal, “Where oh where has my power saw gone / Oh where, oh where can it be?”

I found the power saw on Saturday April 1, 2012. It was right where I had stacked it, in the garden tool corner, but there were so many baskets and boxes in front of it, I couldn’t locate it (let alone the imaginary thief who I thought might have absconded with it from the garage).

All this to remind myself how remarkable it is to keep a list of my prayer requests. (And how funny it seems that I found the saw that was not stolen on April 1 in the year 2012!) I don’t know, however, if this is an answered prayer or a joke on me because the garage was a mess due to my lack of storing Christmas stuff back in the attic due to the fact that I wanted to get the attic organized before storing the Christmas stuff back there.

Oh well—frail human that I am, deficient in the organizational genes, I didn’t lose the new power saw I bought last year. I just couldn’t find it! And my prayer journal is giving me kind of a funny record of my own debilities. This year, the power saw is going up in the newly organized, easy-access attic. (That way, I’ll know where to find it if I can’t find it again.)

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-157)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I couldn’t contain myself. I just had to brag a little to someone. So I punched in the number of my daughter Melissa’s cell: “Your son Ayden and his cousin Elias have been sitting in front of the Chagall stained-glass windows here at the Chicago Art Institute for 45 minutes. I just said to them, ‘Shall we go get lunch?’ Both boys protested, ‘Do we have to? Can’t we stay longer?’”

“I just had to call and tell somebody. I’m good. I’m really good.” Words like this can be spoken only to a daughter who loves you.

Still, as many time as I have taught people how to “read” great paintings, even I was impressed by the boys’ interest. As other viewers paused for a few moments to study “The America Windows” by Marc Chagall, then shuffled onto other galleries, my grandsons, ages 12 and 11, were still working on “reading” the work of art.

I had bought them both sketch-pads, good fine-line felt-tip pens and introduced the stained-glass work by pointing out the organization of the windows. There were three major windows, each divided into two panels, making six windows in all, each with a theme. Then all six panels were further divided into blocks, which contained all the painted and fired stained glass pieces.

I asked the boys to draw what they saw in the windows on their pads. After 45 minutes, Ayden was still working on the first panel. Elias was still engaged in capturing the architecture of the scheme.

We left, finally, to go down to the cafeteria for lunch with both boys saying, “Can we spend more time there?” The teacher in me says this is a really good time to stop—while eagerness is still active and before anything like boredom begins to set in.

As I sat on the floor with the boys, however, Ayden and I began to see things in the stained-glass that we hadn’t seen earlier. The first panel was about music. We found two more fiddles and discovered the artist’s signature, “Marc Chagall,” in the lower right-hand corner. We had reached the point in this viewing/“reading” exercise where the artwork tells us what it is, speaking forth its own life for any who care to look/read/listen.

All those people shuffling past saw next to nothing. They didn’t understand the contemplative principle: The longer you look, the more you see.

Simply, seeing takes time. We miss the work of God in the world and in our own lives because we don’t slow down, pen and paper in hand, and record the way He intervenes in our days.

I got so much out of this viewing exercise with my grandsons, that the next time I go to the Art Institute, I’m taking my own sketchbook and good fine-line felt-tip pen.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-156)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Elias and Ayden, my grandsons, ages 12 and 11, painted the new beehive this week. We are beginning a beekeeping enterprise together. The hive had to be painted this week because a bee brood has been ordered, and one day, I’m told, by the young man who has a year of beekeeping under his belt and who is walking us through this process, the phone will ring and a voice will say, “The broods are in. Can you pick up your brood today?” We need to have the boxes painted before this happens so that strong smell won’t bother the new habitation of bees.

Because the weather was cool on the Monday we planned to do our painting, we moved the hive down to the laundry room, bought outside latex white paint with a low VOX count, layered newspaper on the floor, donned Papa’s old painting T-shirts over our heads, gave each boy a brush and a small plastic tub of paint. They did a good job with minimal damage and took a break until the hives were dry enough to be ready for a second coat.

Some time was taken watching the “Starting Bee-Keeping” DVD I had ordered, but most of the time they just hung around outside watching the bees in my friend’s box, which he had moved to our yard while the weather was still cold and the bees were numb in their hibernation. Their talk was about bees (and nothing but bees). After lunch they asked, “Can we go out and watch the bees?” Their mothers reported they talked enthusiastically of bees upon returning home that evening.

I can’t tell you how happy this made me. I can remember the first time my father opened the hive he had purchased secondhand and moved to his retirement farm in Waterman, Illinois. He lifted a frame from the upmost super and the world of bees opened up to me; they crawled everywhere, flew about our heads and something sacred, rarified and wondrous awoke in my soul.

I’m sure this amazement with the bees in my backyard will moderate with the first bee stings, but for right now, it is most gratifying that my two grandsons love what I love.

How often do I wonder through the world and not love the things that God loves? I am innately neglectful, filled with my own little visions, occupied with the forceful habit of my lists, and taken by the ennui that forces me to look down instead of looking around.

Instead I would like to be like Celia in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!”

I want God to know that I love His bee scheme, His star scheme, His flowing rivers to the ocean scheme, His burgeoning growing plants scheme, His human soul-to-soul scheme, His all-things-created-beautiful scheme. I want to love what He loves.

“O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!” Perhaps we are learning this, the bees, the boys and me. Out of all whooping.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-155)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
My husband has decided that those of us on the Global Bag Project team—a microenterprise venture we are sponsoring to empower women living beneath the poverty line to make a living by sewing reusable African-cloth shopping bags—are not closers. We talk too much about what needs to be done without setting up the calendars, the timelines and the deadlines that hold people (us) accountable to finishing the tasks.

So at our last meeting Carla Boelkens, our Stateside Director, was encouraged to write a donor letter encouraging those who have previously bought Global Bag Project products to hold a home party—one of the main ways we tell the story, challenge people to help and earn income for our African coworkers by selling their bags.

Carla asked me and our in-house editor/designer to come up with a flyer reminding customers that a home party is a fun and satisfying way to meet with friends and to empower women overseas who are seeking to feed their families, pay their rent and get enough tuition together to send their children to school.

So I had that draft flyer on Carla’s desk when she came into the office on our Global Bag Project Tuesday. Her idea was to slip it into the African bags we mailed to customers ordering products through our website.

“Wouldn’t this work as the letter for the mailing also?” she asked. I looked at her. A volunteer had run labels and we were ready to imprint blank envelopes with our Global Bag Project return address. I re-read the flyer and realized we had created a two-for-one. Easy. Easy, easy, easy.

Carla marched into David’s office and announced, “Just want you to know. We have the letter for the mailing; the labels are done. We’re planning to stuff the letters on Thursday.” He was really impressed.

Sometimes, there is no point in telling anyone (especially bosses) why easy is easy when it is easy. It just is.

David and I leave for Kenya on April 11th; Carla comes a week later. Easter is next week. There’s all that spring cleanup to do. A gift before you, just left in your lap (or on the desk) is simply that—a gift. God walks with us in this collaboration called living life well. Not everything has to be hard or arduous. He, the Great Collaborator, loves to give us easy moments, easy walks along pleasant paths—not enough to spoil us or make us feel as though life owes us easiness—but just enough to help us understand: He is near, handing us the right tool, the right word, or the right illustration to make things a little simpler.

Here is a flyer. Use it as many ways as you please. The Global Bag Project was really My idea—you’ve done a whole lot of work on it. I’m really the One who got you into all this. Let Me make it a little easier for you.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-154)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
My friend Cathie Clark gave me two and a half hours last week (well, we spent a half-hour drinking tea and chatting—a well-earned rest) storing my Christmas stuff away in the attic.

That started me on a cleaning purge in which I’ve spent a couple hours every day since she gave me her helping hand. I’ve been pushing around boxes, whomping my head on the slanted roof rafters (over and over—why can’t I remember to watch out for the low-hanging eaves?), sorting and tossing.

I just have to push the shop-vac up the narrow, awkward collapsible stairs and store the 30 feet of really thick rope some way that it doesn’t trip up attic explorers in the semi-darkness. We now have a Summer Corner (with canning supplies and jars tucked behind that). Here are the lawn chairs, the stadium chairs, the picnic baskets, the barrel of wicker chargers that hold paper plates, the red sun umbrella. Also here are stored the summer wreaths—three for outside doors, two for the garden gates.

Nearby the summer accessories is the Christmas Side—boxed trees, ornaments, more wreaths, outside lights, inside decorations, a bin of miniature tree lights, old sleds (and a set of crutches), and a brown waste-sized sack that stores all the artificial berries and red-twig dogwood branches I stick in the pots with greens (like the ones I’ve just burnt).

We have a Spring Corner and a Fall Wall. All guests either living with us now or who have lived with us in the past and left a barrel or box behind (to be picked up later—how I wish that would happen!) are in the far, far corner. There is an archival spot, crowded by a trunk of old photos, one carton of what looks like my daughter’s high-school yearbooks, boxes of “Fingertip Consultants”—a program we developed to train pastors in creating meaningful worship services—and the spindle baby crib I used for all four children. All this to be cleaned at another time, but at least for now, it’s all pushed together.

Then at the front of the attic, by the tricky collapsible stairs, is stored one lamp bought on sale that matches the outside door lamps, to be hung when I get the money to pay an electrician. Here also are the rotating fans since we try not to air condition the house as long as possible; they are covered with cloths from a son’s journey to Mexico. That’s to keep out unnecessary dust.

I’ve thrown away junk; broken things, emptied cardboard boxes, taken the library of horseback riding to my grandson who is into horses, and washed the few remaining Fiesta dishes that had escaped my eldest son’s collecting eye. The floor has been broom-swept and swept again. Now I just have to push up the dry-vac and get that black plastic wand into all the corners and the spaces in the attic floor where debris has dropped onto the garage ceiling drywall.

It is a lot of work to clean out an attic. My knees ache from kneeling and scooting into the corners. Some of the heavier boxes I’ve pushed up the treacherous stairs with my head—that hasn’t helped the feeling that I’ve overused my leg joints. (I push things up the stairs with my head because I’m hanging onto the rickety rails and don’t want to wait a couple hours for help.) I think I’ll use those yellow yardsticks to make signs, i.e., This Is the Spring Corner—maybe with a literary quote—something from Emily Dickinson? Too much? This cleaning compulsion getting out of hand? At least I’ll have a way to remind myself of what’s where, not to mention sparing my adult children if I become disabled, disagreeable or disengaged.

Cleaning attics of the heart and soul is really what we need to do in order to be Easter-ready. Preparing the gardens for spring—raking up after winter, digging up weeds, transplanting when the nights are still cool and the roots can settle—these are all analogies by which we know how much work it can take to get the spiritual self ready to greet God. Dining with Him with dirty hands? Coming to the table with mud-caked boots? Having a mind so filled with junk and dirt and extraneous things that should have been discarded years back keeps a person from really concentrating on the conversation. Wearing inappropriate clothes that are either too tight, or too revealing, or spotted and torn and missing buttons—this is enough to make anyone wish they had taken time to put things right.

Who is ready for Easter? Who is not? We are standing, whether we recognize it or not, in the Spring Corner—look around.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-153)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
I have never lived through a spring like this year. We had the warmest March on record, with minimal snowfall this winter. Consequently, everything is blooming at once. The daffodils and the weeping willow and the forsythia bushes are being crowded out of their usual early-spring territory by normally later-blooming redbuds, flowering crabs and apple trees. Even the lilacs, which generally bloom in late May, are pushing to become part of the show. It is breathtaking and nothing, nothing is scant. Every tree, every bush, every flower is replete with verdancy.

There has never, in my whole life, been so much spring color all at once. It is glorious. The weather is mild, and I have intentionally put out of my mind the fact that some weather monster is probably waiting in some La Niña zone just to blast the memory of this spring from our consciousness with some infinitely nastier terror.

I am determined to enjoy this spring of 2012 that is like no other I have ever known and will probably never know again. Perhaps Heaven’s springs—however that works in that eternal dimension that is beyond time—are like this—everything blooming at once, vying for attention, being the best that its Creator endowed it to be, with no hurricanes to blow ashore, no tornadoes to tear up the ground and defrock the buds, no unseasonal rains to un-root trees in torrents of swelling water. Just spring, perfect, for an eon, then summer for an eon, then autumn—and winter that blows beautiful white and stunning but politely goes.

I bought red wheatberry seeds from the bins at Whole Foods next week. I planted these three weeks before Easter last year and had clear plastic cups, flat glass pie plates, and silver pots all over the house. The grass grew so profusely and so rapidly that I had to give it frequent haircuts so it wouldn’t droop and dangle for the Easter table centerpiece.

This week, my two grandsons and I washed small plastic garden pots in the dishwasher, filled them with potting soil, and shook wheatberry seeds on the top, covering each just a little with loose soil. They sit on the back patio in black photography trays, watered slightly with the hose—all 36 pots in all. The grass on the lawn is turning vibrant green and needs to be mowed. Will the winterberry seed do as well outside as it did inside?

Just to be safe, I also have more pots inside. As soon as I set the dining-room table tomorrow to wait for Easter, I’ll plant winterberry, wrap the pots in copper foil and plop them in the glass and crystal dishes I march down the table filled with house orchids and decorated emptied eggshells. Pink fat candles, salmon placemats and napkins, and pink water-glasses complete the look. If the winterberry doesn’t grow fast enough for Easter, but is just peeking through, small blades of green pointing upward, I’ll send the wrapped pots home with guests, give them as spring gifts to friends as the promise that even thought this spring may never be repeated again, the season of spiritual Resurrection is celebrated every year by the Church and by Christians who believe—all who understand the possibility of life, that it sprouts small green shoots in the heart every day, in every way, again and again.

It has been proven through the centuries that no storm can take that away from us.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-152)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
After church this Sunday, we took our youngest grandkids, Eliana, 4, and Nehemiah, 2, to visit David’s older brother who resides in an assisted-living-care center. We had received one of those early morning phone calls from our son saying, “Mon, Dad, is there any way you can take the kids to church with you this morning?”

Of course we could. Nehemiah loves “ecclesia” (church—he is being raised bilingually), and Eliana loves to dance when the musicians lead us in worship. For this Sunday, at least, they were perfect angels and left their Sunday School classes walking down the hall of the public school where our church meets, with their arms entwined around each other. Too cute for words.

Although they behaved, the retirement center was a little daunting. “I’m scared,” whispered Elle. Just too many old people, some of them acting a little different, and many of them pushing themselves in wheelchairs or being mobilized by someone else. It didn’t help, of course, that David’s brother, in the later stages of Alzheimer’s, sat at the dining table sleeping—or at least with his eyes closed—while the whole time his caregiver prodded him with bites of food—which he eventually ate.

Eliana and I took a stroll through the long hallways (made for running), explored the mechanics of the elevator (pushed the buttons), ran into a friend (chatted a bit), then discovered the cage of finches in the lobby. Altogether quite an interesting morning. To buy a little more time before our grand-angels turned into something quite different and so David could talk with Lucas, the full-time caregiver, we ordered hot chocolate (to be slurped from a spoon; an arduous process, but an action requiring concentration), applesauce and vanilla ice cream. Not quite a well-balanced meal but fine given the circumstances.

Lucas encouraged Doug to his feet and supported him while we moved out the doors into the brilliant spring sunshine and to our car. The walk was lined with huge planters filled with plastic colored Easter eggs, hardly unnoticeable to a four-year-old. “Aren’t they pretty, Eliana? Don’t touch those. They belong here. We’ll have some at Nina’s house for Easter.”

Our visit to the retirement care center was on a Sunday. On Monday the little grandkids dropped past with their father to play with the older grandsons, ages 12 and 11. The first words out of Eliana’s mouth were, “Where are the eggs?” I had forgotten (the boys and I were painting our beehive), but my granddaughter had not.

This makes me think: It is really easy to forget Easter. One of the reasons the season of Lent is so long is that it helps us to prepare and remember. Last week, rather come-lately, I began to count heads—which of the extended family would be in town? Would there be enough kids around to merit putting together an Easter egg hunt? How should I set the table? But more than all this planning, remembering Easter means making sure that my schedule is not so jammed I can’t meditate or chew deeply: Life again, the Resurrection of Christ, an event so meaningful it gives everything else meaning.

My Scripture reading in Matthew has brought me to that moment in Scripture when Christ says to His disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of man will be delivered up to be crucified” (Matthew 26:2). The disciples also had to be reminded of unfathomable realities.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I bought cheap colorful plastic eggs from the dollar store. I’ve cleared the winter greens from the pots that lead to our house. I’ve burned that mess along with windfall sticks and limbs in the fire pit. I’ve emptied the 10 bags ($10 total expenditure) of eggs into one big basket, and I think I’ll invite Eliana to come and help me fill the pots and hang spring ornaments on the branch I sprayed white for the basket by the front door. In February, I bought bird nests and more small decorative robin-blue eggs. Four years is age enough to lend a hand tucking Easter into all the corners.

I’ll set the table tomorrow morning (more than a week early), pull out the traditional Ukrainian-style eggs I’ve collected for over twenty years, find the laughing rabbit. A spring wreath for the front door made from weeping willow branches. The eggs wreaths purchased last spring from Goodwill for the kitchen doors.

I am getting ready for Easter, getting ready. But at the same time, in quiet moments, my heart is haunted. You know that after two days the Passover … the Son of man will be delivered to be crucified. I need a day just to think about this—maybe while I’m gardening tomorrow morning.

Outside the retirement center where my brother-in-law, age 77, is diminishing into a slow and inexorable decline, where he sleeps sitting up for lunch, is attended each moment of his day by a caregiver, and where the words are gone but he smiles when he notices us and where only one inevitable ending is possible, the tubs by the front door are filled with bright plastic eggs, and my granddaughter, age 4, dancing and curious, a little scared, but eager to explore, notices that Easter is coming and asks me when next she sees me, “Where are the eggs?”

Where are the eggs; where is the tomb; what is death and life; what is failing and dancing? When is Passover? Where the Cross? When is Resurrection?

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-151)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Cathie Clark is a friend who helps out in the Global Bag Project room and stretches her income, like we are all doing, by pinching pennies and surveying the sales at resale shops. But I don’t know anyone who has the spiritual gift of helps more than Cathie does.

So every so often, when David and I need a ride to the airport, we’ll give Cathie a call and if she can help, she cheerily provides rides to and pickups from O’Hare or Midway.
I am the type of person who hates to take this willingness of people for granted, so I am reluctant to overdo my requests. Yet there are times when we don’t want to take the money to hire a limo, or when none of our adult children can fit in another airport trip, when David has a conflict on his calendar or when our one family car is going in another direction than east toward the city.

I had to ask Cathie to pick me up early one Wednesday morning and then be ready to come past for me the next Saturday as I flew in from California arriving at O’Hare at midnight. This was a little hard for me to do, although Cathie never gives me the feeling that she is reluctant to provide this service. And David and I always try to cover her gas expenses.

As we were driving to O’Hare she actually said to me, “I love these airport rides.” Why in the world?, I wondered. “Oh it gives me an uninterrupted hour to chat with you,” she said.

Some of the best gifts in the world are really, really small, almost unnoticeable. Cathie is right. Instead of feeling hesitant about asking for a favor, I should be thinking, I will get to spend an uninterrupted hour with this friend. What a great gift!

Sometimes when people ask me to do certain things for them that I love to do, it affirms the gifts God has given to me to share. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are given to the body to be used for the body.

Next time I ask Cathie for a favor to drive me to the airport, I’ll try to think: This will give me an uninterrupted hour with this friend. Certainly this is one of God’s gifts to us all—time for friendship.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-150)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
My new acquaintance in California, Bryan, is a prize-winning chef. He is particularly renown for his pies, which have taken top awards in numerous cooking events. So when he invited me for dinner during my stay for the Medical Ambassadors International board of directors meeting, I said I would love to come but only if he would give me a cooking lesson in the kitchen at the same time we prepped for the meal.

“How would you feel about learning to make ravioli from scratch?” he asked. I felt great about that. So we embarked on an adventure creating Ravioli With Salmon Mixture accompanied by a side dish of fresh, red-stemmed chard cooked in a wok with fresh spinach. Oh, the Central Valley of California, which seems to have an overabundance of fresh produce in its markets no matter what time of the year I visit.

Bryan mixed the dough in front of me, and then grew politely impatient with my kneading techniques (which are limited, I admit). He coached me to the place where the concoction “was smooth like a baby’s bottom.” The kneaded dough was set aside in a bowl, covered with a cloth, and left to rest for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, we prepared the salmon mixture. Two fresh salmon steaks were gently deboned (a few little stickers here and there) with the help of small pincer pliers (kitchen use only, of course). Then with a sharp knife, we cut the salmon into bite-sized pieces. The best that I can remember, we gently mixed in two ounces of crème fraîche, eight ounces of clotted ricotta cheese, and added salt and pepper to taste, as well as half a bunch of fresh chopped cilantro.

Bryan started the sauce on the stove, two pints of cream (I’ll have to check the amount) with one-half jar of condensed chicken stock (I’ll have to look for the brand), then the ingredient, the piece resistance, kaffir limes leaves cut from a bush by the outside pool, chopped and stirred into the braising pan.

By this time, Bryan had hooked his pasta tool to his KitchenAid mixer and I was given a demonstration. Cuts of the dough (rested by now) were formed and folded into oblongs, then pressed several times through the pasta attachment. We laid long oblongs on the cutting board, pressed out circles, filled each with the salmon mixture, dabbed water on the edge of the lower circle of pasta to create a sticky surface, then pressed the top circle down tightly so it wouldn’t split in the boiling pan of water on the stove. In time, we had enough ravioli circlets with dough and mixture to spare. Bryan gingerly pushed them into the hot water while rotating the cream sauce with a turn of his fist.

I had washed and drained the fresh spinach while Bryan heated the wok, but when he instructed me to cut out the red stems from the Swiss chard, I protested. I love the color and grow Swiss chard because of that red; he felt it sometimes is bitter. We compromised. He kept some part of the stems to chop as color accent on the chard and spinach green.

In what seemed like minutes, we were at the table, grace had been given, and the food had been served up. It was exquisite—nothing (NOTHING) like fresh ingredients.

All I can remember about this is that what I kept saying was, “This is so much fun!” What I kept feeling was an intense, delighted, exquisite happiness.

Sometimes doing the things we love the most brings us closest to the God we hold dear. We have to remember that despite what we might think as insufferable humans who always default to negative positions, God is happy when His children are happy.

I need to remember to schedule in some completely happy moments doing things I love doing, not only the things I need to be doing.

1. The sewing machine has been refurbished. I even have a friend with the same-model machine who is a former home-economics teacher and who is willing to teach me how to use it. Get going. Be happy.

2. The spring in Chicago is early and warm. I lose myself in the garden. Get going. Be happy.

3. I love to read. Set a day aside just to read. Don’t go into the office. Be ecstatic.

4. Take those canvases waiting empty in the storerooms in the basement. Paint away.

Make your Maker glad. Make a list of all the things you love to do. Then do them.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-149)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 

In California recently I was staying at the home of our friends John and Madelle Payne, whose gracious hospitality always makes me renew my intent to be more hospitable and a better hostess myself.

They left me on Thursday morning alone (what a gift) and informed me who would pick me up to take me to the first planning meeting of that day. I read, and luxuriated in Scripture and wrote in my prayer journal and basically basked in the fact that I had a whole morning I could spend in bed. A rare treat in my life these days, although in the past, in the child-raising years, I claimed a good couple of days a month for bed days. My theory was that my body needed to restore itself due to all the clamor and chaos and demands of living in a home with one world-changing husband and four energetic and active offspring.

When I gathered my books and notes together, got dressed, and then made the bed, I realized I didn’t know where I had placed my cell phone. The battery was low and I needed to recharge it before I left the house that morning. In fact, I had just received a call from a friend, so I knew I had brought it with me from Chicago. Where had I put the silly thing (which is always eluding me somehow)? I looked under the bed, under my board of directors’ notebook, under my journal, patted down the covers, prodded with my fingers into the space between the frame and the mattress. No cell phone. Then I repeated the process again. I kept remembering that the battery was low. If I didn’t find it soon, I might not be able to hear a call signal.

Oh, no problem, I thought. I’d just use the Payne’s landline and call my cell. No landline. My lovely, relaxed morning was quickly descending into a whirling swirl of concern about finding the phone (which I would need as I traveled home and then onto Philadelphia). Surely, quietly, I heard that inner reminder. Stop fussing. You’ll find it when you find it. You are ruining this quiet hour with all this searching. Obediently, I stopped, sat myself down and resumed the contemplative posture that had been feeding my soul.

When my friend rang the doorbell, I greeted her with the rather obnoxious remark, “I need you to call my cell phone.” We went into the bedroom, she called, and we could actually hear the phone ring. We looked around the floor, patted the covers, and went so far as to unmake the bed. She called the number again, and aha!—this time we found the little slim-line phone that takes up so little space it can’t be felt when two women do a “body-search” on the bedding. It had slipped between the covers—taking a nap, I suppose.

Finding things is so much a part of my life. My husband rarely searches for his keys, never hunts, of course, for his purse, but I am always looking for something. Papers get lost on my desk (and if I am organized and file things away, I can’t remember where I hid them). So I really, really appreciate the analogy to the fact that if we are going to find the God who is always looking for us, we must meet him in that hunt by making an effort to identify His work in our lives, moment by moment, day by day, year after year.

Though I’ve kept a journal recording the daily interventions of the divine in my life for almost 40 years, writing these blogs have brought me to a richer realization than I’ve ever experienced before. Taking time to do more than just jot down reminders of God’s loving work on a list has made my God hunt journey even more full.

I lose things, like cell phones, between the covers, but I am a really good hunter. I know much of life is filled with finding things. Why would it be any different with finding God? I must set myself aside in order to see, in order to hear, in order to find. It takes some time, but this hunt is certainly one of the greatest pleasures of my whole life.

I spy God (again and again)!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-148)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
After participated in some 250 listening groups, most of which I have facilitated, I am absolutely convinced that it is time to write a book about the profound experience this has been in my life (and in the lives of the many who have also participated in the small-group process). However, I simply could not get the project started.

I have plenty to say, have a bibliography, have conducted interviews with many of the participants, have written white papers to send to those who are also intrigued by either learning more or starting listening groups, but I simply have not been able to capture that intriguing approach that draws the reader into the first chapter and through the pages, chapter by chapter, until the last words draw conclude so satisfactorily that the reader closes the book and puts it aside with a sigh, wishing there was just a little more.

I’ve had friends chide me that I’m not writing any books and publishing them—but I tell you—until those first sentences come as a gift, something wonderful that you the writer yourself would like to read—it’s a little like pushing a shovel into dry clay. The creative earth is just not ready no matter how many attempts you make to force the steel into the compacted cement-like soil.

Last week I took a handful of paperback books with me to read on the airplane and in the airports in the literal hours that it takes to travel from Illinois to California, then back again. One book by Brother David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness, had just bogged me down. I’d loved other works by this Catholic writer, but somehow, just did not get into the reading groove with this one. Perhaps that was because Steindl-Rast is a monk and makes a point of addressing the rational for the monastic experience to other monks in this book.

But determined not to leave half-read books lying around, I took it along with me as I traveled and found (surprisingly) that I was loving what I was reading. This must fit into some sort of principle: Give every dull book a second chance. It may not be the book’s fault. Listen to this:

“Once our heart is anchored in silence, we will be able to listen even while we are speaking. … Silence will make us hear appeals which noise drowns out: the sighs of devastated forests, the groans of lab monkeys with wired skulls, the sobs of mothers with babies at their emaciated breasts. We will begin to hear the truth that sets us free. As long as one creature in this world is oppressed and exploited, oppressor and victim alike lack freedom. Yet, ‘None so deaf as one who will not listen,’ as the proverb says.”

Somewhere in my re-reading of this book, I noted down the phrase listen with your fingertips, indicating a total absorption in the process of hearing something or someone, in which the whole body leans forward in rapt attention in order to fully hear.

Several mornings I realized that could be a wonderful title for a book on listening: I tried it out, Listen With Your Fingertips. It would also make a great opening paragraph and a first chapter.

And so in this way, from what seems like nowhere, the gift is given, “Some people feel like we listen with our ears; others insist that we listen even with our fingertips.” In a week, after months of struggle to begin a book, my creative self is aimed and pointed. I am ready to go.

But that is the point of Steindl-Rast’s writing: All the world around us is gift-given. It is we who must learn to listen.

It is we who must learn to see. “Look at the stars! Look, look up at the skies! O look…!” declares Gerard Manley Hopkins breathlessly in his poem The Starlit Night.

It is we who must make a practice of being alive in the world. “Most people’s glorious gates of perception creak on rusty hinges. How much of the splendor of life is wasted on us because we plod along half-blind, half-deaf, with all our senses throttled, and numbed by habituation. How much joy is lost on us. How many surprises we miss. It is as if Easter eggs had been hidden under every bush and we were too lazy to look for them.”

It is we who must hear the whisper of the title in our hearts and realize that at last, it is time to start.

I spy God!
 
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
(GHS-147)

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
 
 
 
Sue Higgins is a true intercessor. When she says she’ll pray for me, she does. Everyone needs a Sue Higgins in their life. So I try to stay connected as much as I can because I know I need Sue’s giftedness of covering her friends with her prayers.

Two weekends ago, I returned on a Saturday, after a long day of air travel from San Francisco to Chicago, arriving at 12:00 p.m. I spent Sunday at home, for turnaround time, then drove the car to O’Hare early on Monday morning to fly to Philadelphia where I was scheduled to be picked up by my husband and two grandsons, one 17 and the other 11, both of whom had studied a unit of American History this last term. David and I thought it would be an opportune way to reinforce their learning by visiting the historical sites around Philly and Washington, D.C.

A couple weeks before this trip, our friend, a former United Airlines employee, e-mailed me with the news that she suddenly discovered she had five “buddy” tickets that she had to use (or lose) before March 31st. Was I going anywhere that I could fly United and she could give me one or two of these passes? However, with the merger between United and Continental, none of the employees were sure of how this all worked anymore.

I’d already booked my tickets on American Airlines to Philadelphia, but a quick exercise in totaling figures revealed that even with a change fee and paying fuel and tax surcharges on the buddy pass, I would save a couple hundred dollars in applying this ticket to a May trip to California. So I called American, my friend booked my pass (still quite confused and nervous about the procedure) and I trusted that on Monday morning I would be able to get a standby seat on the flight to Pennsylvania.

While checking my e-mail in the interregnum between the California trip and the trip to Pennsylvania, I noticed on Sunday that Sue had written, “Praying for you as you travel today, that your flights will go smoothly and that you will arrive safely.”

I appreciated this notice, thinking that it was so like Sue to remember me, but didn’t realize how much I would appreciate it once I got traveling again.

Something about being tired after a few days of board meetings, after long journeys, and the anxiety of my former United employee friend about the booking process, left me vulnerable to the travel anxiety dobbie (you know dobbies, don’t you?—they’re the little anxious gremlins, green or grey, who creep into our vulnerabilities and cause inner panic and distress). The moment I parked my car at 6:00 a.m. in the remote Parking Lot F, caught the shuttle bus from booth 5, marking on my ticket that I was between row H and J, I began to be nervous about whether I would make it out of Chicago or have to play the “Going From Gate to Gate” game, to catch a seat on a plane headed east.

Nothing I could do would settle this churning concern. I couldn’t pray my way to calm. I seemed to be too tired to remind myself effectively of how many times God had been my traveling companion and really, all bookings are always in His hands.

Then I remembered, I remembered the e-mail notice that came a day too early but actually right on time. My friend Sue Higgins had prayed for me and something had prompted her to insert her prayer into my e-mail notices, and I relaxed and just let her prayers cover my weariness, the United/Continental merger, the small airplane at the gate and what looked like too-numerous passengers waiting to board. Sue had prayed. I was covered. I could just take a deep breath and relax. My prayers might be like wisps of trailing smoke this Monday morning, but Sue had prayed.

There were four of us listed for standby on the overhead screen; I got the last available seat. I was the only passenger at the gate after everyone else had boarded, but Sue had prayed, and the gate attendant finally called my name. I arrived in Philadelphia on time as scheduled to hear the enthusiastic reports of husband and grandsons about their previous day’s tour of the Gettysburg battleground.

In the “we believe” coterie of faith, when one is prayer-less, another is prayer-ful. When one is weary, another is rested. When one is filled with fear, anxiety and turmoil, another is calm, and at peace and at a place of profound faith. “Got you covered,” David will say to me sometimes when my pace has been more frantic than I know it should be. “Got you covered.”

The work of God is so evident to me in this collaborative community of faith. Sue Higgins sent me an e-mail one day early letting me know that she was praying for me as I traveled. And I gave up the silly trauma that can come from not knowing what is going to happen and thought, Sue’s already prayed for me. She’s got this covered.

I spy God!
 
 
 
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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, "Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains." In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.
 
 
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