Archives for October 2011

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

In his book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, Richard Rohr writes: “It is living in the naked now, the ‘sacrament of the present moment,’ that will teach us how to actually experience our experiences whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us. Words by themselves will invariably divide the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. When you can be present, you will know the Real Presence. I promise you this is true.”

When I am totally, fully, completely living in the moment, in the now that is given to me, no matter the place or time, I find this to be true. God, the Real Presence of which Rohr writes, always meets me in that place. But work, the crowd of things to do, the lists that grow no matter how much I scratch things off them, the rush of responsibilities, the crashing crush of housekeeping, writing, traveling, strategizing, detailing, organizing, the labor of the office, keep me from being fully in the now and from meeting Him delightfully, satisfyingly, richly in that now.

I am working at not working so consecutively, so that I can concentrate on being (“when you can be present, you will know the Real Presence”). Even now, writing this blog, I have to remind myself to take a deep breath, to love the act of writing, to remember the moments where the sudden intake of my own breath indicated I was aware of the sublime. As the sign in my bathroom reminds me,

Life is not so much a matter of how many breaths you take
as it is a matter of how many moments take your breath away.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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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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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

While in Nairobi, we had dinner at the home of Lois and Mark Shaw. Mark is a professor on the campus, and Lois—well, Lois is a white-haired wonder woman! She is working on her Master of Divinity degree and heading up the development department at the university where she is in the middle of an $8 million capital campaign to raise funds for a new building and teaching center. In addition, Lois is also on the Board of Directors for Global Bag Project Kenya.

Pam Klein, my pastor’s wife and traveling companion, and I made our way in the dark across campus with the aid of a travel flashlight and stepped into the warmth of a company dinner. Also present were a young American couple from the Shaw’s home church in the States. John is finishing a degree at the school, and his wife, Charlotte, is using her expertise to help out Lois in the capital campaign.

Talk ranged far and satisfactorily wide, but we kept circling round to the Global Bag Project. John and Charlotte expressed interest in what we are doing. He has a concern to train churches do a better job collaborating with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that are working in other countries. The Global Bag Project would be a prime example of an NGO that needs appropriate church backing.

The evening came to an end, as all good evenings seem to do. Pam and I went plowing through our schedule, knowing that even though our hours were full and gratifying (and exhausting), we would spend the last two days of our Kenyan journey on safari in the Masai Mara. What a treat!

How surprised we were to land at the safari hotel and have John and Charlotte walk over to our table the first night at dinner. “I thought I recognized those voices,” Charlotte said. We made plans to go out on safari together the next morning, then have lunch.

“I just want to pick your brains about putting together a business plan for the Global Bag Project U.S.” So we did go on safari together. We did have lunch. We did do a great job of defining what the strategic role of the Global Bag Project would be. And, John also began to express some of the things that were on his heart for his future work. Altogether our time together provided a most profitable encounter. Couldn’t have planned things better myself, if I had thought to plan them.

As we were saying our goodbyes, I called out to John, “You will be hearing from me. You are my walking business plan, and I need to run past you what I write up from our lunch discussion.”

“Be glad to hear from you,” he called back as the Land Rover took off for the dirt landing-strip where the bush airplane made its safari link, picking up and disembarking guests at a circuit of resorts.

We have been praying about creating a business plan, but everything has felt like it was in so much flux still that I have been putting it off. (And, it is not the kind of writing I feel comfortable doing). Who would have thought that I would find answers to the vision of this non-profit in Kenya, while on safari, with a young interested couple from Virginia?

God is worldwide, isn’t He? And, everywhere, 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 micro-finance 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. They 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.

Share this Article

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

My pastor’s wife, Pam Klein, met me in Africa with a list of recommendations of places to visit given to her by a friend who is a missionary in Kenya but for these months is home in the States.

“Karen Bradley says we have to go to Dignity Designs,” a maker of hand-crafted African jewelry that supports a vital mission project. So we did. A phone call was made informing the director, Tracey Hagman, that we were stopping past, if that was okay with her. Little did we know what we would experience. In Gando, a small slum close to Africa International University, this American woman, whose husband is working in Africa, has started a community-based organization that rescues disabled children and works to rehabilitate them.

It was the end of the school day, and the children with their teachers, were cleaning up the school rooms, the play porch and the therapy rooms before leaving to go home.

In some ways, Kenya is a curse-based society. Kenyans often believe that disabilities are the result of a curse on the mother, and so these disabled children are abandoned, often left to die, kept out of sight and abused.

Tracey has established Heshima, which in Swahili means “dignity,” to find and rehabilitate these little ones. Occupational therapists, speech therapists and physical therapists lovingly and patiently give dignity to these children and their families.

To create work for the mothers of these children, Tracey launched Dignity Designs, a jewelry-making enterprise that provides income and margins. Heshima is in the midst of building a new center with enough money for the first phase of construction, which they anticipate relocating to in the next months. If you are interested, click here to check out their website.

Because I am on the board of Medical Ambassadors International, I was eager to visit the East Africa office, where we spent the next morning with Tirus and Winnie Githaka. The Githakas have a child with disabilities, and were in the middle of plans to enroll him in another school—way across Nairobi. Winnie began to talk about the “forgotten” children of Kenya, little ones with disabilities. “I have it in my heart to start a center for these children. It needs to be a safe place where there is occupational and physical therapy.”

We told her about Heshima, which we had just visited the day before—mentioned to Pam Klein, my traveling companion, by a missionary to Kenya who was home in the States.

Talk about unusual linkage and timing! Those crazy combinations of events and people God seems to delight in putting together. Those times we all too frequently tag as “circumstance” when it is really God working all things together for good on our behalf.

Tracey sent an e-mail to me today. It had landed by error in my electronic Junk Mail folder, but I found it, and forwarded it to Tirus and Winnie so they could connect.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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.

Share this Article

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

My pastor’s wife, Pam Klein, met me in Nairobi. Actually, she arrived late in the evening before I came dragging in at 6:30 the next morning!

Pam, her husband Jeff, and David and I have been meeting together regularly once a week for the last few months. But, I was unprepared for the energy this woman brought to our Global Bag Project!

Pam is a remarkable photographer. At home, in the States, we had just decided in a conference call with our Internet Marketing Group that we needed photos, photos, photos to flood the technology as part of our keyword-optimization strategy. Not only was Pam an excellent photographer, but she had a new camera and a fabulous eye.

After selling reusable kanga-cloth African bags for two years, we needed to develop new products, and Pam, with two daughters, an instinct for design, and a love of the retail approach of Anthropologie®, came sweeping into the sewing room on the campus of Africa International University with the idea of a wraparound, one-size-fits all skirt (with its own traveling bag, of course).

We had a couple hundred dollars to capitalize this idea and pay the women for their work, so we headed into the Somali market, bought yards and yards of mismatched African cloth, set them out on wooden chairs on the lawn of the guest house and took photos to show the sewers just what fabric would go with what fabric—combinations we though American consumers would like.

What had begun as a functional photo idea turned into a design photo-shoot as the two of us spent a morning being “silly crazy American ladies” (hanging bags on the wooden fence, using an ancient ladder as a prop for “animal-skin design” bags).

I wear down quickly if I have too many introduction conversations (Where are you from? Have you been to Africa before? How many children do you have? How long will you be here?) Pam, however, approached each person with delight, sincerity, and eagerness. This lifted a huge social load off me and allowed me to do what I do best—deepen relationships, identify people’s passions and competencies and find ways for them to use them, encourage idea-generation, and then act as a catalyst to give feet to other people’s concepts. I went to bed at night tired, but not depleted. Pam had carried most of the conversational load—and she was not weary from it. What a gift!

Pam’s amazing energy injected our journey with enthusiasm. I realized that Carla Boelkens, our Stateside GBP Director, and I have become worn-out from pushing this start-up micro-enterprise ball up the hill. And to have someone else join us with such a quantity of joy stimulated me and charged my own batteries.

At the end of our ten days in Kenya, the bag-makers had stitched together some prototype wraparound skirts, which we brought home to run informal surveys for the purpose of improving the product, discovering if American consumers would buy them (great enthusiasm so far), and what price point the market would bear.

Taking photos of Benta, an orphan and the youngest of the seamstresses, modeling the skirt, Pam jokingly asked for a little more attitude. “Like Tyra Banks,” Benta said, knowingly. Pam laughed, “Yes, exactly. Like Tyra Banks.”

When I prayed about this trip, I prayed that ten people would join us who have a heart for helping without hurting. The Lord answered my prayer. He gave me ten people in one woman—Pam Klein.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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.

Share this Article

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Having been part of the planting of an inner city church during 1968-1978, I am all too aware that well-meaning people can do a lot of damage. This has been comprehensively addressed by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in their excellent book (fast becoming the “bible” in the development world), When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor … And Yourself.

The goal for the well-meaning Westerner is to work to bring any project to a point of sustainability, where the project is not dependent upon outside expertise, money or presence. The world is littered with good ideas that died when the Westerner with expertise, benign intent, and money necessarily withdrew their support.

So, I went to Nairobi—my fourth trip—with this question in the back of my mind: How do we move Global Bag Project Kenya (GBPK) to a place of self-sustainability?

You can imagine my surprise when Mary Ogalo, the Kenyan GBP Project Manager, put on my schedule a meeting with her new board of directors, the president of which was scheduled to conduct a day-long workshop on how boards function.

You can imagine my delight when I realized that an incredible synergy was developing between the Kijiji Guest House, its curio shop, and the GBP sewing room, all on the campus of Africa International University. Guests arrive, drop into the curio shop, buy something made by the seamstresses, and are invited to stop at the sewing room, where a larger display of products are available, and guests can buy or order something else. Mary reported to her board, “We have not sold anything under $600 for the last few months.” (It isn’t a lot of money, but then, this is a microfinance project we’re talking about.)

So we began to brainstorm how we could increase this synergy (and the sales). The guest houses are round (like a little village—hence the Swahili name Kijiji), but their décor has been somewhat neglected due to lack of finances. A comfortable Guest House with good food provided in the Kijiji Café, an upgraded curio shop, with inducements (blanket bags on the bed made by GBP seamstresses, cards on nightstands mentioning the sewing project just across the garden plot, Africa gift bags to take home to children, and so on) could increase the GBPK sales right at that site!

I woke one morning with the thought, What if we bring in a team of people who fix up a room or two—shop in the secondhand markets, stop at the village markets, buy fabrics for the GBP seamstresses to turn into items—couldn’t we eventually upgrade the Kijiji Guest Houses so they would attract more guests (and more sales)? What if we put a sign outside the redecorated guest room door that read:

The décor of this room has been provided
by the Global Bag Project
for the comfort of all who rest here.

All of a sudden, synergies were swirling within synergies! And as if this creative thinking wasn’t enough, Mary Ogalo was notified that Global Bag Project Kenya had been awarded its NGO (non-government organization) status—a process that only took six months instead of the usual frustrating years!

I discovered while in Kenya that the Global Bag Project was actually in the initial phases of developing a sustainable model!

Sometimes God works on the behalf of our ideas in places far away from us despite our inadequacies and our hesitations. He has bright, experienced, competent servants who love Him and want to bring His goodness to those who suffer all over the world. With a little bit of encouragement, they can take an idea farther than we ever dreamed. And in time, they won’t need us at all. That’s sustainability.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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.

Share this Article

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

I should know better—I’ve traveled around the world countless times—but that old travel anxiety creeps up on me and the first time I notice it, I’m stewing in worry about whether or not I’ll get there on time, find the right counter in a country where I don’t know the language, lose my bags, lose my passport, lose my money, and on and on and on.

This September, David and I were in Italy doing survey work and site visits for a tour we hope to sponsor in 2013—a learn-before-you-go tour, using conference calls and the Internet as a tool for travel education, before the actual journey. After our 12 days together in Italy, however, David was going to fly home. And, my travel agent had booked me from Milan, Italy through Cairo, Egypt, arriving in Nairobi, Kenya about 3:55 in the morning.

Every time I thought about this transit, I could feel myself getting nervous—mostly because of the inconvenient time and the fact that I had never flown through Cairo before. This Cairo anxiety, however, was hidden over by a more pressing concern—keeping track of the monies for the Italy leg of the journey. I am bad at math and details and record-keeping (I mean I am really bad at them). Finally, after a few nights of restlessness, my husband, who is great at math and details and record-keeping, volunteered to take over the travel finances. What a relief!

It was then that I pinpointed the underlying Cairo anxiety and the fact that I was worrying ahead about transferring from Rome to Florence, from Florence to Cinque Terra, from Cinque Terra to Verona, from Verona to Milan and then on down to Africa—that transition by myself.

I’ve battled with this particular nagging demon in the past—worrying needlessly about where I am going if I don’t know exactly where I am going!

So, I simply exercised the spiritual practice I learned while journeying for weeks through Europe on my own back in 1993. “Dear Lord,” I prayed. “You are the Ticket Master, the Tour Guide, the Traveling Companion. I am putting this anxiety in your capable hands. I trust that you will take care of us, keep us from harm and from stupid mistakes, put helping folk in our way, and get us to where we need to go without mishap.”

I began to sleep eight, nine, ten hours at night—a minor miracle for me, because I never sleep that way. The pinched nerve in my shoulder, which has wakened me for over two years, went away. And, I enjoyed myself completely. At the slightest tinge of journey nervousness, I repeated my journey mantra, “Dear Lord. You are the Ticket Master, the Tour Guide, the Traveling Companion…”

God is not a God who is only with us when we are at home, in church or at work—in all the familiar places of our life—but, He is God who loves to travel with us when we are venturing into the unknown.

Not only had my pinched nerve spontaneously healed, I suspect I will never live with travel anxiety again. By the way, the transit through the Cairo airport was a dream. I used the five hours that I waited for the next flight to pray for the persecuted Christian church there. Peace along the way.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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.

Share this Article

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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

I recently flew home from a ten-day trip overseas with one week to put the final details together for an Advent Retreat of Silence for thirty-some women. So much needed to be done, and even though our staff was in a highly busy space themselves, they assisted me in putting the final touches on the Advent Retreat with willingness, without complaint, and with a spirit that brought great kindness and grace to my jet-lagging physiology.

Someone on the staff designed name cards (someone else found leftover name tags). Another individual pulled a list of alphabetized names together, showing who had paid and who was rooming with whom. A check was totaled and funds transferred so I could pay the retreat center. Handouts were copied and collated. Flyers were designed to list coming events. Every time I turned around, another task was done. I went to the Advent Retreat with everything organized, no last-minute panic, and with an hour or two to compose myself before the participants arrived. And yes, we all experienced a powerful time together waiting on God for the healing power of silence.

One of my tasks at Mainstay Ministries is to write or gather the ideas for our monthly fund appeal. Since I have been raising funds for nonprofit organizations since the age of 18, this frequently becomes a tiresome process for me. Some days I would give anything for someone to step into our organization, tap me on the shoulder and take this whole load off my back. If I were not so certain about God’s help to do His work in the world, I would give it up. But, so frequently, there is the right idea, and the right quote, and the right photograph just when I need it most. Thus, I am encouraged by the reality that this is a collaborative process, one in which I am not working all alone.

Other tasks, particularly the teaching tasks, are different for me. When I am putting together a teaching ministry, God frequently uses anything and everything to teach me. While developing a teaching program that used the metaphor of dance to show how to “step in time to God’s sacred rhythms,” it seemed as though all my spiritual reading, the conversations I had with friends, and the films, books, and magazine articles from popular culture gave me examples of this concept.

Even better, during this period of time I was the plenary speaker at a women’s conference where one of the workshops was being taught by a professor from a Christian college who was head of the dance minor. I attended, took copies of all her scriptural notes, and in a half-hour she had us all improvising worship dance. It was delightful!

I needed help to do God’s work in this world. Help arrived. 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 micro-finance 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. They 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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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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

We sent our son Joel (he is a director/producer/editor with our video team) overseas to India for two weeks on a video shoot for Gospel for Asia, a mission organization that calls out, trains, and sends national missionaries throughout Asia. During this time, David’s father died, and although his death was imminent and Joel had fortunately had a chance to say his last goodbyes, it was still a stressful moment for us all to handle wakes, funerals, family gatherings, grave site ceremonies, and the luncheon afterward.

On the morning of the funeral home visitation, I offered to take care of my grandson Elias John so my daughter-in-law Laurie could have a break from child-care and go to a beauty salon for an uninterrupted moment of private pampering. It wasn’t long after Laurie had left my house that I received a frantic cell phone call. “Karen, I’ve had an automobile accident. The car is totaled.”

You cannot imagine my anxiety or my dismay. I wasn’t exactly sure where Laurie was or in what condition. I was stuck at home with a two-year-old and didn’t have a car that morning, and my husband was in transit. I couldn’t reach him, nor could I get through the automated phone system at our ministry to a live voice—all I could do was leave urgent voice-mail messages. Frantically I dialed 9-1-1.

“My daughter-in-law has just called to say she’s had an accident. I can hear the sirens. And please listen to me very carefully. My daughter-in-law is a diabetic, and I don’t know what effect this trauma will have on her blood glucose level.”

“Hold on, lady,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “We’re going to patch you into our dispatcher. We’ll find her and talk you through this.”

And, indeed they did. In a little bit of time David got my frantic phone message, came hurtling home, drove up the street, found Laurie dazed but unhurt (with just an airbag scrape under her chin), and the occupants in the other vehicle unharmed. He brought her home, and we tucked her in on the couch in front of the fireplace.

In a few moments a police officer knocked politely at our front door. He gently inquired of Laurie about the circumstances of the accident. Then he said to her, “Now please understand. None of us sets out to do this, to get banged up on the highway. This was an accident. That is why it is called an ‘accident.’” This young man in his leather patrolman’s jacket must have been a grad student in sensitivity training school. My jaw dropped, and tears came to my eyes. I escorted him to our front door. When he was outside, he asked in a very soft voice, “Now is she going to be all right?”

Quietly my husband said, “Well the car is totaled, but another millisecond and the passenger truck would have rammed into the driver’s door; that could have been bad. Or, what if Elias had been in the back seat? The other drivers were using a truck to move furniture and holding a toddler on their lap, without a seat belt, in the front seat. What if the child had gone through the window?”

Laurie was safe. We weren’t going to have a hospital incident on top of a funeral, or worse—a funeral on top of a funeral. Undeniably, we were convinced that we were surrounded by unexpected evidences of God’s care.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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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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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

There are four categories where we train people to look for God in their everyday lives. Of course, the capacities of an infinite God to interact with finite humanity are limitless. These four categories, however, are a helpful place for people to begin. They are:

1. Any obvious answer to prayer
2. Any unexpected evidence of His care
3. Any help to do God’s work in the world
4. Any unusual linkage or timing

A few illustrations from my prayer journal may be helpful. Although I can go back through 30 years of recorded God Hunt sightings, these samples are taken from the last month of my journal to make the point that having practiced this game/discipline for so long, I never—never—go through a day without finding ways God has intervened in my life.

Any obvious answer to prayer. A genetic high-cholesterol level is something I’ve inherited from my lineage. My parents had high counts (when cholesterol was just beginning to be measured), as do my brother and sister. I have not been particularly careful about diet or exercise, but my brother is a dedicated runner, and in addition, he is healthily cautious about what he eats. Our levels are almost twin to each other. This is the sentence of genetically inherited high cholesterol. The counts can’t be controlled through exercise or by a change in diet. (Craig and I illustrate a case in point.)

Although I kept telling myself I needed to take this condition seriously, and I had been praying about the problem, it was my daughter who brought me to full attention. “Mother, you’re a walking heart attack waiting to happen!” she said, not too delicately. (My “bad” cholesterol count was 329, to be exact.)

At this time, a former employee contacted my husband, David, with news of a nutritional supplement that had almost miraculously reduced her symptoms from a complexity of distresses: fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other disabling conditions. I immediately was placed on the product—a high-soy, high-fiber cocktail of nutrients, scientifically combined, shaken with water or juice and consumed three times a day. In five months my cholesterol count had dropped by 100 points.

I would most certainly call this an obvious answer to prayer.

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 micro-finance 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. They 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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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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

What is the God Hunt? Simply defined, the God Hunt is choosing to recognize God anytime he intervenes in our everyday life. It is a tool my husband and I developed decades ago to teach our four children how to experience the presence of God in their everyday activities.

We firmly believe that it is a sin to make the Christian life boring or theoretical (it is neither). In developing spiritual disciplines, or in teaching holy truth, we attempt to apply this teaching model: What is learned with pleasure is learned full measure.

The God Hunt, because of its playful quality, has been used by hundreds of thousands of seekers worldwide, people who have desired to identify God in their everyday lives but have had difficulty in doing so. Good teachers encourage play. The German poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller wisely suggested that human beings are completely human only at play.

Scripture teaches that God is an active and communicative being, one who is present in his creation, ready to come to the aid of those who love him and eager to be in constant communion. Look at the biblical evidence. The men and women who discovered God were sheepherders, farmers, vinedressers, servant girls, slaves, fishermen, tax collectors, town whores, the sick and the dying, the wealthy, kings and commanders, religious dignitaries, the intelligentsia. No matter their status in life, they were all common folk, everyday people like you and me who had uncommon encounters. The Almighty intervened in their ordinary routines—in the desert, in the field, in the garden, by the seashore, along the river, in the town, at festivals and celebrations, during high holy days, on the Sabbath. He is where his people are, joining them in their daily lives.

Yet we moderns suffer from massive dissociative disorders—split from ourselves, divided from one another, alienated (even those of us who say we believe) from the God who loves us. Consequently we are filled with inexplicable longing to be unioned. We attempt to reason our way back to connection, but this kind of joining is best accomplished through the heart’s way of knowing, through the experience of finding and through acquaintance. The God Hunt, due to its playfulness, helps us find God in the ordinary events of living.

The God Hunt rules insist that participants take initiative to seek after the Almighty, that we humans exercise intention and look for him in the everyday, that we choose to seek him in the commonplace. Often, however, we play the game of finding God as though we were stumbling around in blind-man’s bluff. We go through the motions, bumbling and bumping, with a rag tied around our spiritual eyes, and we learn to ignore the nudges and pushes that are evidences of God participating in our everyday worlds. We become benumbed, anesthetized.

At the end of his remarkable book The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr., professor at Harvard, closes this posthumous dialogue between these two great minds with a quote that summarizes Lewis’s mature belief.

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake.”

Finding God incognito in the world is not a ho-hum proposition. It is delight. It is joy. It is wonder. It is a childlike wiggling anticipation that somewhere, any moment, just around the next corner, when you least expect it, the Divine is going to jump out, cry “Boo!” and you are going to respond, “Gotcha!” This is wondrous, is it not? The wonder of an “I spy!”

————————————————————————————–

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 micro-finance 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. They 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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