Archives for August 2013

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:

Jeremy and Angela cashed in a retirement fund. Concerned about hospital bills and extra expenses and not being able to work, they thought they should have some cash on hand for an emergency and home-improvement fund. The downstairs study has been turned into a room where Jeremy can recover after returning from the hospital, and since he needs to have a bathroom that he can exclusively use as his own (since his immune system will be compromised), the first-floor washroom is being divided into two units.

So, Jeremy paid us back some small loans. This was nice since we are also cash-short.

During the third week of July, while Jeremy was still in the hospital and Angela was tied up managing all she has been managing (also while my son-in-law had scheduled an outing to a week long dad-and-son camp), Joel Mains was in the midst of a house move. We had had fair warning, but since I am 70 and David is almost 77 (and feeling really lousy with a head cold), we thought we had better put contingency plans in place.

Melissa paid for a moving crew who had helped her to lug all the larger furniture pieces—the bed, the couches, the cabinets and the refrigerator into PODS Joel had rented to store his things until two weeks had passed and he could close on the new home.

David thought that we needed some more assistance. Jeremy was in the hospital; Doug and Ayden were at camp. Our other grandchild, Josie, was getting cram-tutoring so she could make the deadlines for her online courses. So, David arranged for the Ayers boys (actually one Ayers teen and an older high-school friend) to spend several hours over two days passing boxes in a fire-bucket line to the PODS, hauling miscellaneous stuff to the storage locker, and just lending a hand (four hands actually) in the general commotion that comes from breaking down the belongings in any American home.

“What did Dad pay those guys with?” Joel asked after he had relocated himself into our house. I didn’t know how much he had paid, but I know he used Jeremy’s loan repayment (the brother who was fighting cancer and not available to pitch in on this move). “Dad shouldn’t pay for that. When I close on the house, I’ll have some money and I can pay him back.”

This, I am s’re, David will not want to accept. Joel can pay for extra help when we move him into the new home. Right now, it’s simply money that is all in the family.

It’s amazing, isn’t it, how God times His provision to perfectly fit our need. One gives; another receives. One is in need; someone else is in want. I have reserves; you may have dearth. My excess serves your lack. Your experience informs my naïveté. It’s all in the family.

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

My daughter, Melissa, and her family moved last August into a renovated barn—and it is a big, big place. One morning coming home from a run to the bank, I popped into my nearby resale shop, St. Vincent de Paul’s, in downtown West Chicago.

I have been looking for a used blender for an immigrant friend who once mentioned at my house that she “didn’t have one of those,” pointing to my Cuisinart food processor.

I found, instead, two gorgeous wing back chairs in almost perfect condition, upholstered in an outrageous fabric (cream oversize chrysanthemums on a rust background) that would look wondrous (I thought) in the hallway outside the barn house’s master bedroom. (The hallways are so wide in this former dairy barn that we are able to make little sitting rooms out of them.) Melissa had set up some cream-colored bookcases in this spot.

Luckily, these days, we can take smartphone camera shots of resale finds. I e-mailed a photo to my daughter with the text, “What about these?” She texted back, “Pick them up. I’ll pay you later and bring the truck down tomorrow to pick them up.” The chairs, from a well-known high-end furniture store, were $45 each.

When Melissa came back to look at the chairs, she also spotted a gorgeous, old cream-colored pedestal coffee table with a round glass top and quirky molding around its edges. It was a stunner that I had overlooked. This cost $45. But I spotted the matching ceramic lamps ($4.95 each), and we grabbed those as well.

After four days spent moving our son Joel into two PODS, one storage locker and our house (his closing on the new home is not until two weeks after the closing on his the old one), we spent the fifth morning frantically breaking down wooden work, hanging a banister on the basement steps, shoving the last of the boxes into the van, vacuuming the final room and broom-sweeping the garage clean. We finished exactly at 8:55 a.m., with a closing scheduled to take place in five minutes.

Since I was in the moving mode and filthy from that morning’s work, I decided to make the hour run up to my daughter’s and push furniture around for her as well. Joel, being off work and having nothing to do after the frantic preparations of changing homes, came along.

We pushed a Chinese chest handed down from David’s mother into place across the room, pulled a carved Edwardian chair from its storage place for the living-room area, found the throw rungs I had passed along to Melissa that looked perfect in the hallway across from the master bedroom, arranged a collection of Roseville and Weller American pottery in the shelves of the cream-colored bookcases, took old oriental carved stands for either side and put the resale lamps on them, then finished the grouping with the wildly patterned wing back chair on either side. It looked terrific.

I did dishes in the kitchen, wiped the dining-room table, and we set it with place-mats and napkins. (Nothing will fill with mess faster than an empty dining-room table.)

When you are going through the long arduous endurance run of fighting and overcoming cancer, sometimes God gives gifts along the way that we can overlook because of our grief and fatigue. But we must not overlook them. The sun still shines. The birds still exult. Flowers bloom. People laugh. Children splash in pools. We still lay ourselves down to rest.

And perfect, affordable, in-good-condition resale chairs still appear in secondhand shops. The pain of our lives God uses, but He still give us joy and delight and gifts along the way to make the sorrow and the suffering bearable.

Praises be to the One who is not so mighty that He doesn’t delight in small things.

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

So what do you do with piles of refuse, neatly organized from a deconstruction project but now sitting smack in the driveway so the car can’t be parked in the garage?

I called Waste Management, where a young woman informed me that we could put out garbage sacks no larger than ones that held 32 gallons with some of the refuse. David and I had taken a good month to dispose of waterlogged carpeting from a huge storm that swamped the drainage systems in our basement. So we filled three 32-gallon sized black garbage bags, looked at the ugly remaining piles and thought to ourselves, This is going to take awhile.

One morning, however, in between hospital visits, I woke up thinking about our friend Tim Ayers.

He and his wife, Donna, hold a huge bonfire at the end of the summer, and they invite all their neighbors and friends. In fact, Tim and his two high-school sons had cleared out another pile of last year’s storm refuse earlier in the summer. Tim had a truck and two strapping offspring. Maybe he would want the wood to our tear down. This morning, when I woke, all the discarded wood (which had been nicely sawed into manageable portions) was gone. David had called and said, “If you want it, just take it.” And they did.

With some careful calculations, we figured we could sledge hammer the moldering particle panels into smaller sections, roll the screen into a garbage-sized panels, keep filling three or four 32 gallon garbage bags. “Probably,” I announced, “by the end of September we’ll be rid of these piles.”

“Oh, no,” said David, he of the confident character and the past roller of sodden carpeting. “We’ll get rid of it all by the end of August.”

So I thank the Lord this morning for friends who have pickup trucks, strapping sons and yearly end-of-summer bonfires.

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

The church we have been attending is small, meets in a neighborhood school, but puts a high value on interacting in the community. In fact, one Sunday a month is set aside as “Serve Sunday.” Kindly, they had scheduled to help us on July 14th.

The week before this had been a brutal week—with Jeremy in the hospital we nevertheless had to meet 16 folks up at the Stratford Theatre Festival in Ontario, Canada. This is an annual trek David and I (and for many years, our family) have made up north. We love the total immersion in Shakespeare and musical and little interested theatre pieces. By rights we would like to have stayed home—but houseguests had arrived from Canada and were driving up with us—and a friend or two suggested that maybe this would be a good break from the stress of our son’s battle against lymphoma.

So we went. Our friends were right: The diversion was helpful, even though I thought about Jeremy and his wife Angela and their three little kids most of time (during Fiddler on the Roof, during Romeo and Juliet, during Waiting for Godot, during The Three Musketeers, Blithe Spirit, as well as the rock opera, Tommy).

Believe me, when the next weekend rolled around—after a 36-hour hospital watch with Jeremy—I kept thinking, how can I possibly get things organized for 5-25 people for this coming Serve Sunday? Finally, I just prayed, Father, help this day to organize itself. Too tired to do any prep work.

I went to bed that night, took two sleeping pills, and woke up early to be ready for the first crew who had made plans to arrive at 8 o’clock to organize the tear down of our rickety and wretched screened-in porch.

God did such a good job that my husband complimented me on my organization abilities! Here’s a list of what was accomplished by about 20 eager (and mostly young) people.

1. The porch was torn down without injury to life or limb of the wreckers.
2. The job boss for this project figured out how to do this without needing to dig out a stand of very large hosta or taking out an arbor.
3. Crews sorted wood into piles and either pulled nails or hammered them down; old screens were shoved together and the shingles placed in another section of the garage. This left us with clutter, but it was organized.
4. The stones in a garden path were lifted, the soil rototilled and then the stones were reset.
5. Grey bricks, which have been sitting in a pile since we bought the house in 1977, were laid down as edging for the hostas at the far west side garden.
6. A team screwed together rough wooden shelving braces and made a huge trellis for the clematis vines (my design).
7. Another team deadheaded spent flower heads.
8. A twosome painted the mailbox across the road and reset screws that had gone missing.
9. One little boy, tagging after his mom, picked the yellow cherry tomatoes.
10. Two large gardens were weeded; the spent irises were deadheaded and trimmed back.
11. One outdoor back door lamp was replaced.
12. One of the three upstairs bathrooms that had been out of commission for a couple years was made functional again.

This all happened within a two-hour period. In God’s timing this Sunday was a perfect Sunday, and the Master Planner hardly needed my help at all.

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