Archives for August 2015

Tick tock … tick tock … tick tock … tick tock.

I picked up the old gingerbread clock from Winfield Antique Shop and set it on the stand at the foot of the stairs, from where I can hear it ticking and chiming during those moments in the night when I am awake. The cost of the repair by the Tick Tock Clock man who collects repair items then fixes them in his studio in Schaumburg, IL, was $300. I think this is outrageous, but there seem to be so few clock-repair experts around, I have to settle and pay up the ante.

This clock has a sentimental history of sorts. It is not the chiming clock my father and mother gave me for my 30th birthday; that one was stolen in a robbery where some kids on drugs forced a back window, climbed through it, took a pillowcase off the bed, filled it with articles and left. They didn’t get much—some cheap costume jewelry, a computer, a broken television set and the gingerbread clock my parents had given me.

Since my father died, the clock and its chime marking the hour took on deeper sentimental meaning for me. A robbery of any sort is a personal violation, but the fact that some young punks, desperate to feed their habit, would force their way into our house and steal my father’s clock was an affront on another level altogether.

We didn’t replace the clock, of course. Living on a ministerial salary meant that we were grateful for enough to pay the mortgage, pay for the living expenses incurred by four children (and various live-ins), and put food on the table and gas in the car. I missed the sound of its gentle chime and the tick tock … tick tock … tick tock … tick tock heartbeat in the middle of the night.

When I am launching a major writing project, I have to have housekeeping help, so sometime after this robbery I hired a Wheaton College student to give me a hand. We became friends and somewhere in the middle of one of our many conversations, she mentioned that her father repaired old clocks. “Oh, I used to have a beautiful mantle clock…” I sighed, then told her what had happened. When Becky graduated from college, she gave me a gift from her father’s shop—the gingerbread mantelpiece clock that now sits on a table at the bottom of our stairway. This is the one I paid $300 to have cleaned, repaired and adjusted.

Actually, I haven’t had the clock looked at in the whole twenty years I have owned it. If I would amortize a yearly fixer’s fee over those years ($300 divided by 20), the yearly cost to keep the clock in tiptop condition would have been $15 a year. Maybe $300 is not so out-of-line after all.

Tick tock … tick tock … tick tock … tick tock. I hear the clock in the middle of the night. The chimes softly strike three—bong … bong … bong. I am comforted. Why is this? Am I content because this is evidence that a symbol of my father’s love is in the house again and softly working, the hands moving forward, round and round, always on time if and when we remember to wind the clock? Or do I just need the reminder that I am not alone in my wakefulness?

The Tick Tock Clock man left me lengthy voicemail instructions when he phoned to say the repair was done and the clock had been returned to the Winfield Antique shop. “Make sure that the surface where the clocks sits is level—both front to back and side to side. If you don’t have a level, you’ll have to buy one, but maybe you already have one. This is the most important thing. If it’s not level, you’ll have to make a shim so it doesn’t rock—like we do here on the shelves. Never move the hands backward to set the clock, only forward, then only on the half hour, letting the clock chime. Wind the clock two times a week on Wednesdays and Sundays, turn the key in both winding holes. If you follow these rules, everything should be OK. Been nice servicing you. Call me if you have any questions.”

So my clock is running happily, a reminder of a father’s love, a friend’s compassion and the fact that the Clock Maker of all clock makers has rules for chiming and ticking that if we follow, everything should be OK. Tick tock … tick tock … tick tock … tick tock.

 

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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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Last week I fought the blues. This is a rare disposition for me, but the old self-pitying serenade had begun to hum in my soul. The downstairs carpeting struck me with its dreary tattered state; tallying the years, I realized it had been laid in the living room, the small listening study, up the stairs and down the hallway some 38 years ago. I was in one of those ventilating prayer times with God—you know, the times when we tell Him off and clear the air. You’re taking care of everyone else, and I’m taking care of everyone else, but who is taking care of me?

The summer has been long with a pile of grief, too much to do and too little help. The former yardman from the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, is a migratory worker who lived with us during the growing season for four years. He worked for clients up our lane, but mowed our lawn weekly and gave me one or two hours in return for a rent-free room. Then when he had extra time and I had extra money, he would fit in several more hours. Last fall and this spring, the yard was a peon of praise to the Creator God who initiates all growing things. Our friend did not come back this spring due to bone scraping bone in his spine and a sudden cancer that put his wife in and out of treatment. But he thought he could come for three weeks. My heart leapt. This man is a Master Gardener; one hour of his time was worth three to four hours of another person’s time (mine in particular). He knew our yard, knew my preferences, had enough English to understand me. Suddenly, the burden of too much to do began to fall away from my shoulders.

However, we received a phone call that he could not come after all. My heart sank. All I could see were weeds and unwelcome wildness. Dark shadows began to creep into my thoughts. This summer has been one of unremitting pain due to the suffering of someone we love. David and I have worked to provide shelter, listening ears, good moments, decent meals, interesting conversation with guests and friends, good plans for the future.

When sadness descends it colors everything; food doesn’t taste good, my body felt tired. Pushing a vacuum cleaner, tackling an overgrown garden bed, hanging sheets on the line felt like exhausting work.

I’m just tired, I thought to myself, knowing how dangerous deep fatigue can be. I’m weary to my bones. OK—time for some physical analysis. Perhaps this is the result of the thyroidectomy I underwent last July. Perhaps I do have cancer still circulating through my system. When do I go to the doctor? And just then, just in this moment of turning my attention toward my own physical and emotional depletion, a little thought nudged my mind: Don’t you feel a lot like you did when you were diagnosed with anemia? Why don’t you add an iron tablet to the iodine supplement you take in the morning?

So I did. Immediately I felt great, strong and healthy, able to walk in the morning, dig in the garden in odd moments. My spirits lifted, and I was thankful and grateful for all that God is doing in my life and the lives of those I love. I even began to sleep better. How strange—a little black ferrous-sulfate pill vanquishes sadness.

Anemia can come on during times of great stress. Sometimes the things that are wrong with us are due to physical depletions as well as to spiritual, emotional and psychological exhaustions. I’m taking my little black pills this week, then will go off of them, and if the symptoms return, I’ll have blood-work done just to make sure the anemia has returned. The Mayo Clinic Web site warns against self-medicating with supplements without a doctor’s opinion. Too much iron can damage the liver.

However, that does not cancel the truth just won: Sometimes we need to pay attention to that inner diagnostician.

 

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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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What is it about peaches?
Ripe at the rare-right moment,
Plucked in the fullness of taste.
Tartness at the tongue-tip and smoothness on the palate,
Wine orange fuscia slices with velvet golden rinds;
Soft, satisfying, saliva-seducing;
Nourishing, nurturing, nature’s juices dripping.
Praises be for the peach perfect,
Plucked in the fullness of perfection,
Glorying God in its it-ness, its being-ness,
Exulting in its is-ness.

Note: Last year my daughter and son-in-law stood in the long line that formed early to await the arrival in Crystal Lake, IL, of the peach truck from Georgia. She bought two boxes, about half a bushel of fruit. When she discovered that the peaches were so delicious, she went back in two weeks to stand in the long line that formed early to await the arrival of the Georgia peach truck in the nearby town of McHenry. Once the boxes are gone and the truck is empty, there are no more peaches.

What can I say? We never buy peaches picked from the tree yesterday morning. Everything in our stores, even in the farmer’s markets, seem to be plucked early in order to ripen in the transit from the groves to the grocery.

I open the box, marveling that in the long transit, there is not one bruise on one peach! The box has to be unpacked, however—right away. So I set the peaches in rows on the wooden counter in my kitchen making sure that no sides touch—a sure way to spread spoiling. We eat from the counter, slices in bowls with cream, or plain like apples, but with juice running down our mouths and chins from each bite.

Then, when my instinct tells me the peaches cannot last one more day without stepping over the just perfect rare-right line, I dip what is left in boiling water, cool them in ice water and peel the skins, which practically slide from the fruit. A bowl of white grape juice with a little lemon becomes the sauce in which I mix this extraordinary mix of sliced color and ripeness and miracle. Plastic refrigerator bags are filled, the air pressed out, edges sealed, then I stack them flat on a cookie sheet to freeze so that we will enjoy peach perfection through the winter, lest we forget how perfect rare-right moments can be.

Gerard Manley Hopkins believed that every created thing brings glory to the Creator when it becomes perfectly what it was created to be. So praises be for the peach perfect.

 

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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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The headline of an article in This Week magazine asked the question: “France: should abandoned churches become mosques?”

The first paragraph sets the tone of the dilemma:

“We French must save our churches from being usurped by Islam,” says Denis Tillinac in Valeurs Actuelles. The head of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, recently proposed solving his overcrowding problems by converting empty churches into mosques. “It’s the same God,” he said in a radio interview. “The rites are similar, fraternal.”

According to Tillinac, such a claim is “scandalous denial of reality.” France’s beautiful chapels aren’t just religious structures, but part of French patrimony. “The tens of thousands of steeples sown on our soil by our ancestor’s piety embody the deep memory of our country. I’m not the only one who finds the idea of converting churches into mosques gravely offensive. Polls show that 67 percent of voters also oppose Boubakeur’s plan.”

I recently read a survey that in the States, some 4,000 churches close their doors each year. This number is counterweighted by the fact that only some 1,000 churches are planted each year, meaning that we are playing a losing-sum game.

I wonder what Americans will do when Muslim communities begin to convert both simple and majestic structures, once formerly dedicated to the nurture and advancement of Christian faith, into mosques?

Is anyone concerned that people of faith, in large numbers, are not leaving their faith but are stopping attending church on Sundays? Every year in the U.S., some 2.7 million church members fall into inactivity. Near the beginning of the 20th century (1900), there was a ratio of 27 churches per 10,000 people, as compared to the close of the 20th century (2000), where we have 11 churches per 10,000 people in America.

In France, only six percent of French people attend Mass every Sunday, and rural churches are falling into ruin. Churches in France that stand empty are maintained at state expense, thanks to a law saying religious structures built before 1905 are state property, while those built after must be paid for by the congregation. Here, old churches that no longer house congregations are turned into private homes, community centers, restaurants and dance studios. How will we feel when, due to a growing Muslim population, they begin to be converted to mosques?

I’m still thinking about this one. It seems all the fuss about the upcoming presidential elections are not what any of us should be really concerned about. What we need to be considering is if the church will be still standing in the days ahead.

 

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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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In August, I am taking as many Burton descendants from my extended family as possible to the Iowa State Fair, which is supposed to be the best State Fair in the country. To get ready for it, I am now listening to Alabama, the country-music group my sister recommended would be most suitable for the older (and wiser) age set in our family. Right now, “Oh, Play Me Mountain Music” is resounding through the Mainstay offices! “Oh, play me some mountain music, like Grandma and Grandpa used to play.” The younger set is attending the Carrie Underwood concert. Because I am mostly unfamiliar with popular music, my son Joel burned me some discs so that I would not be totally unexposed.

Actually, the purpose of this trip is to evoke the memories and meanings of the former Burton clan, who by the time I was a child had migrated from the hills of Kentucky to Oklahoma to Indiana to Des Moines, Iowa.

My brother, Craig Burton, is now the chaplain of a retirement village in Des Moines and has located the little country church cemetery where many of the gravestones bear the name of some of our ancestors. He’s decided he wants to be buried there and has bought two grave plots even though the caretakers (whom he had a little trouble hunting down) have notified him he’d have to dig his own grave (!). I told my brother I’m not helping with this one.

One of the women in the memoir writing class I’m teaching recommended the book Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. The author’s desire has been to capture and record that life before there was no one longer alive who remembered it. This goal is admirably captured for her readers.

I am trying to do the same—to expose my adult children and some of my grandchildren to a way of life different that what they have known or what they will ever know. I want them to see my grandfather’s little house that my parents and my sister and brother returned to each summer in August. We’re planning a trip to the Dairy Queen that still stands on the corner of the block. My brother captured some of the spirit of this book in an article he wrote for the newsletter of his retirement center. It’s titled “Wise Adages From Rural Iowa During the Great Depression” and he lists a compendium of sayings taken from the book Little Heathens.

To quote one paragraph that examines one of the regionalisms:

“Why do we always get the hind tits?” Here’s an expression that was sometimes used by young people expressing their dismay over being treated unfairly. For instance, having to go to bed earlier than the big kids, getting a smaller piece of dessert, having to do the dishes, etc. Here’s where the saying comes from: animals that bear multiple litters of young, such as dogs, cats, and pigs, have two rows of mammary glands. The forward teats are larger and produce more milk than the hind teats. The runts would often get the hind teats, and this is where the expression came from. By the way, I never heard this expression growing up in the Chicago area.

Perhaps you can sense why my brother is loved by those to whom he ministers; his humor is a stand-out quality.

This Iowa State Fair is an opportunity for us to mark our lives, to revisit the Burton places again. (Alabama in the background as I write: “Singing: song/ song of the South/sweet potato pie/ and shut my mouth…”) Going back to places we have been is always evocative, but I am at the time of my life when I am marking the byways of my life—setting stacked stones here and there—re-reading journals and my own writing (“You know,” I said to David recently about one of my books, “this is pretty good!”). I was really surprised. I want to share some of these stories with my adult children and grandchildren before we are out of time and these memories (and the people who hold them) will die.

Going back and re-doing a trail is often necessary if we are to go forward well. The Iowa State Fair is a good place to start.

 

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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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This limestone pyramid in a wooded spot is another kind of stacked stones. To my eye it is lovely in its simplicity and has caused me to be watchful for an old pile of discarded limestone by the roadside somewhere that I can bring home to build my own pyramid! Silly woman that I am.

This past month I’ve been reviewing my blogs and discovered that I had totally forgotten about most of the incidents I’d chosen to record—how my leaking faucet got fixed; how pumpkin vines grew out of the kitchen garbage I dug into the soil; how Farage, our Muslim driver in Kenya, kept saying, “I am here for you” and what deeper meaning that took on for me; about the guests who came for dinner and stayed for 17 days.

How recklessly we throw away the meaning of our lives when we fail to take time to record them—in some way. I make lists in my prayer journal of prayer requests, then notate the columns in my 8.5×11″ spiral-bound notebook when answers come. The next morning I record all the ways I have seen God work in my life the previous day, but there are so many answers, I forget. When I go back and review my journal, I am reminded. For instance, this has been the summer of rebates, coupons and not-quite-depleted gift cards. I remembered that my daughter, Melissa, had given me a Mother’s Day card to spend at Barnes & Noble. I had enough left on the card to buy four books! Menards offered an 11% storewide rebate during the spring season. And I have received three credit-in-store receipts of $29.56, $18.11 and $14.59. At Savers, a resale big-box store, the woman behind me at the checkout counter gave me a 50%-off coupon, which reduced my $27.00 purchase to $13.50.

Because I thank God for these provisions and record them in my lists, I remember the bounteous and delightful way He provides for me daily.

People say to me, “I’m blogging, but I don’t think anyone is reading my blog.” For me, that is not the point, because I am blogging also and have several files of wonderful, painful and wry observations about life and my place in the world. These are fresh, of-the-moment blogservations that provide an incredible record and without blogging would have passed into old-age amnesia. Blogging is different than journaling. The work is more refined because we think there might just be one or two people who could find it helpful. Journals—we hope our progeny will have the sense to burn them.

Like the limestone pyramid in a wooded spot, these records are the beautiful, simple and organic stacked stones of our daily lives. How are you keeping the memory of the life you have lived and of how God has intervened in it?

 

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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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I loved these stacked stones on top of a grapevine fence post. Stacked stones along trails are markers that call attention to hikers. “Stop here!” they call to the hiker. “Agreed-on meeting place!” “Cutoff shortcut!” Notice the nest of an unusual bird … the wild animal lair hidden in the cliff! … the magnificent rock formation!

Scripture talks about stacked stones that were memory rocks to remind future generations as to how God had done remarkable works (miracles really) in specific geographic locations. Cairns is another name for stacked stones. According to Wikipedia, they can be found all over the world, “in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, as well as in barren deserts and tundra. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose conical rock piles to delicately balanced sculptures and elaborate feats of megalithic engineering.”

I have 40 years of journals in which, almost daily, I’ve recorded the specific ways God has worked in my life and in the lives of my family. Forty years times some estimated 350 days (I miss a few every now and then) equals 14,000 entries—small memorials in my journals of how God has been present. These days—because I am beginning to write again—I’m going back through my journals, the blogs I’ve written, my Soulish Food newsletter—and I’m reminding myself of how active God has been daily in His loving care for me.

Of all the spiritual practices in my life, this prayer journal-keeping has been one of the most effective. The current journal, begun on January 23, 2015, while re-reading just a few pages, reminds me of the delightful day in the city I spent with my granddaughter, Joscelyn. She introduced me to the French Market beneath the Ogilvie train station (totally unknown to this native Chicagoan), where we bought six madeleines to munch on our walk to the Art Institute. I’m teaching Josie how to “read” the paintings—first you start by standing for a while and quietly viewing what is in front of you. Then you ask: What is this work of art trying to say? I grabbed an iPhone shot of Josie in front of the recently restored Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. We ate lunch at Piano Terza, which overlooks the gorgeous Millennium Park. Then since Josie’s parents were not at home and I was grandparent-sitting, we took the Metra to the Crystal Lake station and picked up the truck to drive home to Turtle Creek Acres.

My prayer journal does not consist of paragraphs, but is a basic note-taking arrangement of headers and lists. I write enough paragraphs in my writer’s life; to do more would bog me down. This listing approach was the easiest formula for me to keep a 40-year-old spiritual discipline going. However, the point is that I might never have remembered the details of this delightful day with Joscelyn had I not made that list, under the heading of “Thanks for…”, if I had not entered it on January 27, 2015 in my prayer journal. Of course, I would have recalled the delightful general events, but not the details, such as the fact that Josie and I walked 11,730 steps on our little outing.

These red journals are my stacked stones. I wonder: How are you stacking memory stones in your life?

 

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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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