Page 3 - thoughts by Karen Mains

End-of-the-Garden Chopped Salad

Monday, November 21, 2011 by Karen Mains

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:

Since August, David has been notifying me I have an outstanding check that hasn’t been cashed by the recipient—a check for $150. Travel outside the country kept me from paying attention to this, so the husbandly notice continued through September and October.

Finally, I e-mailed my friend and reminded her of the check I had written, said that if she found it to tear it up, that I would write another check and send it her way. Unfortunately, something got lost in the e-mail translation between my instruction, the writing of a replacement check, this one for $200, and my putting it in the mail.

“David is right,” my friend e-mailed me back. “It got piled in a basket of files and mail that I meant to take to the office. Sorry.” She promptly cashed the first check, leaving me $57 in my bank account once the second check cleared. Oh well, it’s a good cause, I reminded myself. I probably should have given $350 right up front.

I had a salad to prepare for a celebratory potluck meal, a dinner for company, clothes at the cleaners, Thanksgiving meal coming, and I needed some traveling funds as I was leaving town for five days! To say I was a little short because of this lost-in-translation incident was an understatement.

What is at hand? I asked myself. First rule of thumb, right? On the counter in the kitchen was a bowl of green tomatoes, some scrawny green peppers, a few onions—all the remains of the vegetable garden I had cleared out last week in case I got around to finding that recipe for chow-chow (not to mention finding the time).

I bought one head of iceberg lettuce, chopped the last of the garden’s red-stem Swiss chard, fried the sliced green tomatoes and onions and a few plum tomatoes (kind of in-between-green-and-red) in melted butter and chicken broth, then diced radishes and any other greens I could find in the refrigerator to make a chopped “end-of-the-garden” salad. To top it off, I threw in the seasoned pumpkin seeds I’d salvaged from a pumpkin I baked in the oven and pureed for winter soups and holiday sweetbreads.

How often I find God’s provision in the things at hand; the ordinary common gifts that lie hidden in the dying vines and the weeds that have taken over the bean patch. I’ve often said to myself when short on funds, You don’t need money. You need good eyes and good ideas.

Americans throw away a good half of all the food they buy. This is outrageous! My $57 in the bank would feed a majority of families in the world (at two dollars a day) for 28 ½ days. How far can I go on less than 60 bucks in my bank account?

There is food in the freezer to make a company meal—use it. I have $14 in my wallet for my journey to San Francisco. What is at hand? Well, God is always at hand (He is always at hand). So there will be enough.

My makeshift chopped end-of-the-garden salad was quite good. I made a homemade balsamic vinaigrette to dress it. I think we’ll make this an early fall family tradition.
I’m already making out recipe cards headed:

FROM THE KITCHEN OF KAREN MAINS

End-of-the-Garden Salad

Ingredients:
Take whatever is at hand salvaged from the vegetable garden that you have harvested before the first frost (be bold—a good vinaigrette will blend the tastes).You are creating a new food tradition. Experiment for a few years!

One essential ingredient is wonder. Marvel at the bounty of the earth and then add gratitude that God is always at hand. These little gifts—good eyes and creativity—are evidence that He is always near.

Using what is at hand—I spy God!

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

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

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

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

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

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The Oil Lamps Burn Bright Beside the Path

Friday, November 18, 2011 by Karen Mains

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:

“Did you see the oil lamps beside the path?” I asked my husband after the Wednesday evening group had departed. David often just stays at the office and works late when I have listening groups at the house from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

“No, I didn’t notice them.”

H-m-m-m, I thought. Maybe I need to hang another couple of lamps by the corner of the driveway where people park their cars. Maybe another two by the old iron pot in the garden at the other side of our circle drive.

Hawthorne Lane, where we live, is dark at night. There are few street lamps. Consequently, the porch light fades into the darkening gardens when people come to visit, for dinner, or for meetings after the sun has set.

Instead of solar lights (one day maybe) or the expense and effort of installing a pole lamp (they say the ditch needs to be at least 4 feet deep to lay the electrical connections), I’ve opted for collecting old hanging kerosene oil lamps—the rustier the better. Admittedly, this is impractical in our modern age, but I love the smell of oil burning. Two of these lamps have hung outside all summer and fall, on low shepherd hooks designed for hanging plants. By now, they are properly corroded with lovely, flaking rust.

I designed the fall arrangement in our narrow hallway around the old glass oil lantern, and as I was pouring lamp oil through a funnel into the narrow hole, I thought about the lamps that had hung outside all summer with no need to light them since the days were so long.

So inside they came. Could I even get them open? Could I unscrew the little caps to the base of the lamps so I could pour in the oil? Or had they become so rusted that it would be impossible to even use they way I intended to use them?

With a little pressure, the levers pressed down lifting the glass lantern up from the base and away from the wick. Sure enough, there were wicks in each lamp (how in the world would I replace them when these were burnt away?—a problem to figure out when the time came). A rubberized cloth turned the caps. I poured oil and filled the lamps. A lighter reached to the wicks, they flamed, I lowered the glass, adjusted the fire and carried the lamps to the hooks beside my front walk path.

What a lovely greeting for friends and family! I thought. How warm and welcoming as people approach our front door in the night.

But—David hadn’t even seen them. What a letdown. How many lamps would I have to collect and fill and find before people who came to our front door would see them and be warmed by their soft, non-electric-light glare?

I’ve just finished reading through the Old Testament, a long spring and summer spent in the minor and major prophets. What a relief to reach the New Testament where it looks as though I will approach the Christmas season spending time in the Gospels with the life of Christ.

This morning’s reading was from Matthew 4:15:

“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those who sat I the region
and shadow of death light has dawned.”

In his great kindness, God has lightened the world to that Great Light (for which we all long, knowing it or not) with little oil lamps shining here and there along the way. For some, to gaze at that One who has dawned, is forever dawning and who will eternally and radiantly dawn would be like staring at a nuclear blast. The lamps are lit, leading the way through the gathering dusk, with the days shortening and winter gloom coming.

But, in order to see, we must stop and notice, pay attention, look and consider and let ourselves feel the small rays of warmth.

Did you see the oil lamps beside the path?

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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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Using What Is at Hand

Thursday, November 17, 2011 by Karen Mains

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 rented our guest room out to a Wheaton College professor who needed space for this term of school. That meant David and I shared our small bathroom with one sink, a door at either end (that opens into the bathroom), no cabinet space for his toiletries, and really no room for two bodies—no matter how familiar they had grown through the years—at one time.

Since August we have put up with this bumping and shuffling and nudging around each other. I try to get dressed first thing in the morning before my husband is up, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen! And to think, when the kids were small and filling the other four bedrooms, and the two other baths (one is now out of commission, in case you’ve been counting), we did this shuffling act for over ten years.

When the first kid moved on to college then onto marriage, I began to shift David’s clothes to that walk-in closet, and his toiletries to that bathroom. As I recall, he was insulted that I would move him out of our bedroom. What was he thinking?

Obviously, in one day, my husband was perfectly acclimatized to the superiority of this plan, but now, here we were bumping around each other in “my” bathroom.

This morning, for some reason at almost the same instant, we realized David’s new shower, sink, bathroom cabinet and nice fresh thick towels we had put in the laundry room last summer in case of overflow guests (grandkids or friends of our adult kids) who needed to stay with us. The basement has been redecorated and the spare room down there is perfect for this purpose.

This definitely was a DUH! moment. The last roomer had just moved out in October and we simply had been too busy to think about it since he left. What is wrong with us?

So early this morning, I scrubbed the sink and the cabinet. I’ll vacuum the floor, well, tomorrow. I folded the thick new brown towels and placed some on the little shelf outside the shower with clean ones hanging on the rack I put up when the shower went in.

One of the life principles I’ve been learning in these recent (economically challenged) years is that when I need anything I must first ask: Isn’t there something around here I can use? Surely there must be something I can find that will work.

So since we had discovered a spare bathroom at hand, I kept at it for another hour. I hauled those beautifully framed series of prints of a penitent kneeling and imploring God. We call this series “Help.” It is an appropriate title.

I’ve been emptying the spare room, ditching furniture that is no good, will roll up the area carpet and have it cleaned, spread cement paint on the bare floor, and get these prints dusted and wiped, with the glass sprayed clean, will be perfect over the holes in the rough-sawn cedar siding where one son’s aquariums fit into the wall. What I needed was just at hand.

And that old spindle crib? If I take the headboard and footboard and hang them in the corner where the overhang from the stairs slants, it will make a perfect niche for a daybed. I just have to haul them out of the attic, clean them and polish them. They’ll look terrific! Something else just at hand.

I’d brought the ferns from the pots in the garden into the garage and my list said that I was to bring them into the house today. Suddenly, I remembered the photographic trays my son had used in a class in college. They were out in this morning’s rain—all cleaned of the smudge and dust—I had put them outside to hose them down. They would make perfect catch-basins for the large ferns. I also hauled them and the ferns down to the laundry room, hanging two of the plants from the laundry bar where they could drip onto the trays. It looked quite nice. What is at hand that I can use for what I need?

I often think that God is also at hand whenever we are needy, whenever help is wanted. We just don’t stop to think, What is it God is trying to do for good to me and mine in this moment, at this instant, in this place and time?

When I stop to consider, to pay attention, to pause and think and be still, I discover amazing things—like a spare bathroom in the basement I had forgotten we had.

I spy God!

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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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Shopping for Teenagers

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by Karen Mains

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:

Is there anything harder than shopping for teenagers? They have a concept of style, but their personal taste lends more toward the faddish and has as yet not been developed. What dominates their choices is more a matter of “What is everyone else wearing?” than “What looks best on me with my coloration and with my particular figure?”

Shopping with my daughter, Melissa (she is now in mid-life, though I stubbornly continue to think of my adult children as “the kids”), was so frustrating that I finally just gave her the money, dropped her off at the shopping center and picked her up several hours later. I figured that was the best way for her to learn about worked and what didn’t work for her personally, how much she could squeeze out of her clothing allotment, and which sale prices for which cheap clothes that didn’t last were not worth the discounts.

This saved arguments, and we both, mother and daughter, were happy. Melissa has developed a great instinct for color and pattern combinations. I’d like to think it had something to do with the shopping choices she had the freedom to make when she was a teen.

Melissa now says the same thing about her daughter, my granddaughter Joscelyn: “Josie is such a picky shopper. I just can’t get things for her on sale if she isn’t along.” Josie, like teenagers these days, spends a lot of “recreational” time with her friends in the nearby mall.

I was reminded of all this when we visited our oldest granddaughter, Caitlyn, at Indiana Wesleyan University. Caitlyn has grown up in the warmth of Arizona and this is her first winter here in the Midwest. She has expressed trepidation about being warm enough in the cold months—and well she should. Moreover, a soccer star with a sports scholarship, she came away to college with the least amount of clothes I think I’ve ever seen an American 18-year-old possess. Plenty of sports outfits, sports shoes and sports sweatshirts, but where are the darling little Forever 21 styles I happen to love myself?

More important, where are the boots, scarves, jackets, sweaters, thermal stockings, gloves and tights that help us Midwesterners survive one frigid day after another?

So my husband and I took Caitlyn shopping. We drove a half-hour to Muncie, Indiana, which looked big enough on my map to have some of the chains I am familiar enough with to know what kind of price levels we would be able to afford.

Payless Shoes, which had a two-for-one sale going on, is where we began. Caitlyn—hesitant about spending our money, hesitant about what kind of boots you needed for this weather (since we’ve had a surprisingly warm and lingeringly pleasant fall)—agonized over her choices. We finally ended up with fur-lined grey moccasins, knee-high felt boots, and some what I used to call mukluks (from their Alaskan Eskimo origins) in black. Then, stockings and scarves. Then Macy’s (where I remembered from the prices why I don’t shop at Macy’s). Then Target.

I came home, called Melissa and made plans to jointly give Caitlyn a gift card so she could go shopping at Forever 21 with her style-maven younger cousin, Joscelyn. With much hesitation, I picked up a warm sweater in her size and a lovely pair of black leather dress boots. If she doesn’t like them, I’m only out $2 for the sweater (on clearance at the nearest resale shop) and $6 for the boots.

The interesting thing about this shopping spree is that I had enough money! David and I were in Europe for 12 days and I simply forgot to record my Social Security check for the month of September. I had an extra $643 in my account! It felt so good—so deeply soul-satisfyingly good—to be able to say, “Go ahead, Caitlyn. Get what you want. I have enough money.” Is there anything a grandmother loves to do better than spend money on her grandchildren?

Thank you, God. Once again, I spy You!

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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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Greens by the Side of the Road

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 by Karen Mains

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:

Last year when I went to fill the mailbox barrel and the garden pots by the front door, the weather had already turned cold in October here in Chicago, and everything was frozen solid. I found myself hauling soup pots of boiling water, heated on the stove, across Hawthorne Lane and pouring it in the barrels to thaw the black soil. That worked fine. After a few trips across the street, the earth was sodden enough for me to fill it with Scotch pine limbs, red dogwood branches, and the stems of the Hobby Lobby fake poinsettias I add for Christmas color.

This year it is November and we have had no hard cold snap as yet. With no freezing frost to end their leafing cycle, the yellow maples are stubbornly hanging onto their leaves. Yesterday, it was 60 degrees in some neighborhoods in Chicago! I am rushing to get all the outdoor tasks done before that cold freeze hits. Clerks in stores, our friends who run the Tower Laundry, all say something to this effect: “Beautiful day, isn’t it? Can you believe it’s November?” And then, all add the invariable aside, “But we know the cold weather is coming, don’t we?” According to forecasters, Chicago is in for a really cold, really hard winter.

So when David and I drove to church Sunday morning, my eye (a gatherer’s eye) noticed the pile of branches set out by the side of the road so the city could pick up the prunings, as well as the mounds of leaves that had been dutifully gathered in huge mounds when home owners raked their back yards and gardens. Signs notify all residents:

LEAF PICKUP BEGINS IN THIS AREA NOVEMBER 7.

So Sunday night, there I was, clipping as many of the evergreen cuttings as I could fit into the back of our Mazda. Then, on Monday morning, while driving to work, I spied another pile of evergreen branches and stopped to fill another load into the back of my car. Hm-m-m-m, I thought. Need to remember to go scouting around next fall when the leaf-collection signs go up. People are trimming their trees as well.

I have enough greens to fill all the pots by the front door and two barrels—one by the mailbox and one by the side of the driveway. I usually buy a box of greens from the local nursery wholesaler. These gifts by the roadside will save me a couple hundred dollars.

It is true that one person’s waste can fill another person’s need. But I give thanks as I think about Thanksgiving for these roadside gifts given to those of us who either don’t have the funds or need to spend the money for other charities.

Thank you Lord for yard refuse, dumped beside the street. Thank you that I saw the piles and had the time to gather my Christmas decorations. (And please me to get everything arranged before the coming hard freeze!)

I spy God!

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

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

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Fugues, Funks, and Fogs

Monday, November 14, 2011 by Karen Mains

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:

Sometimes we humans move in a kind of fugue state—not a loss of memory, but a loss of motivation—a kind of ennui of function. We know there is a lot that needs to get done, but just thinking of where to begin causes us to descend into the molasses that is in our minds.

Traveling overseas, then coming home, usually leaves me in this kind of funk. It’s not depression. It’s not discouragement. It’s a weird intercontinental displacement, which some people call “jet-lagging.” So, I accept it partly. This too will pass (although the to-do list is getting longer and longer). But, I also pray that God will restore the initiative in my spirit and the organizational capacity in my mind, so I can get the work done that I need to do.

After coming back from Africa (after almost a month out of the States), where we are working at building a micro-enterprise that specializes in African bags, I immediately went into this post-trip fog.

However, little “angels” were sent my way to assist me. Linda Scharaga has been popping into our office to volunteer when she has some extra time. This has been of inestimable value. Retired from teaching high-school home economics, Linda loves to pick up the domestic chores that are neglected. I gave her a bunch of those little sewing tasks that have been sitting in drawers, waiting for the day “when I would have enough time.”

The half-curtain in the guest room hung about eight inches off the floor. Too short, it looked like a child wearing cast-off clothes. We always have someone in our guest room. Right now a Wheaton College professor is renting a room for the school term. I had made the curtains myself from a rough muslin fabric and had even found a remnant of checked cotton that would be perfect for a ruffle. That had sat in a drawer for about eight years. It’s embarrassing to admit (I admit).

I had also found a couple yards of end-of-bolt fabric on a clearance table to hide the rod above the window that my writing desk faces. The study had undergone a purge last spring—every drawer, every shelf in the bookcase had been cleansed and ordered. I bought a shade that cuts the southern exposure so I can see my computer screen when the sun shines. I had two small chairs (unearthed at a Goodwill store for $2.50 each) upholstered, had my desk chair recovered in a fabulous remnant and my upholsterer made me a matching pillow that fits my back perfectly, but I just couldn’t finish the raw edges of the fabric to tie around the rod—just to soften the top of the window.

Linda took the curtains and the ruffle fabric, took the fabric for the rod, also took a summer skirt that had torn at the waist line, took the “by-the-way” vintage-print cotton I had once used to tie back the curtains in our Oak Park, Illinois house (we lived there from 1969-1978) and cut and hemmed them into charming tea towels.

There is nothing like a helping hand to lift you out of fugues, funks and fogs. This kind of practical care, this kind of tangible effort always touches me in the deepest of ways. I feel God’s loving interest through the kindness of friends and strangers (and loving volunteers).

I spy God!

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

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

(GHS-076)

Think on This in These Economic Times

Friday, November 4, 2011 by Karen Mains

I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet our heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are?

Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life? And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin; yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these.

Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you have so little faith?
—Matthew 6:25-30

Whenever I begin to stew about what I don’t know or can’t see or if something will or will not happen, I turn to this Scripture. I take a deep breath of assent and give the worry to God. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. So, in these troubled economic times, if you are concerned and personally struggling, think on this. Take hope. Be at peace.

I spy God!

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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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A Good Morning Last Week

Thursday, November 3, 2011 by Karen Mains

Because my feet were hurting due to split heels and what I think is Morton’s neuroma acting up (my fault—I wore ill-fitting shoes for one day and paid for it), I spent the whole afternoon reading down through the pile of periodicals that had accumulated while I was out of country for almost a month. I used to spend days reading, one book after another. Where did those days go? I need to do that more.
David helped me change the bedclothes from the spring/summer set to the fall/winter set. I HATE to crawl into a cold bed, and my daughter gave us the most luxurious-feeling velour sheets, which both David and I love. Seasonal changes, however, require stripping the mattress, lifting the top mattress off the bed, removing the white percale bed skirt and pinning it in place on the box-spring mattress, then turning the top mattress over to reduce wear and tear. The heavy comforter comes out of the box. The summer pillows are put away. And, the winter throw-pillows are taken out of their plastic covers. There! I have a cozy winter bedroom. “Is it worth it?” you might ask. Try crawling into velour sheets and a thick comforter some cold night or some sunny winter afternoon. I think you will agree that a safe and cozy bed and a good night’s sleep is a gift from God. Not everyone has this.
I made bagel chips from the free day-old bagels that often turn up at the St. Vincent de Paul resale shop I frequent about once a week. The Cuisinart slices them, and I bake them at a low oven temperature after they have been sprayed with oil and sprinkled with herbs, garlic salt and some dried parmesan topping. Yum!
I cleaned the hatbox that stores all the accumulated travel equipment I toss into it. Packets of in-flight earplugs, wooly stockings and eye shades (which international airlines no longer distribute to economy-seat passengers), extra bottles of hotel creams and shampoos, cans of mosquito sprays, a travel iron (which I have used infrequently), and electrical converters for overseas travel. This task wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it felt good having it done.

How many absolutely happy mornings (or days) do we spend in a lifetime? Not enough. Mundane events? Oh, perhaps. But, let’s turn to Walt Whitman again, the poet who always spies the magnificent in the mundane.

And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present,
.............and can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may
.............be turned to beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful
.............than death,
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and
.............events are compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles,
.............each as profound as any.

There is artistry in the commonplace—reading for a morning, changing the seasonal bedding, making bagel chips, cleaning the travel hatbox—we just don’t see it; “perfect miracles, each as profound as any.”

I spy God!

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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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A Partial List of Silly Things Noted

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by Karen Mains

“My mouth shall recount your mighty acts and saving deeds all day long; though I cannot know the number of them.” —Psalm 71:15.

It is my personal theory that when we dwell in heaven, one of the delightful activities that will come our way will be to look back at our days on Earth and see all the uncounted, unsuspected ways God intervened on our behalf, performing mighty acts and saving deeds all our lives long—about which we were totally unaware.

People often ask me, “But how do I know if it’s God or not?”

My response invariably is, “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ve probably overlooked His good favors for most of your living—none of us have any idea how much He has done for us—that if you give Him credit for some good thing for which He is not responsible, you still will be woefully behind in your gratitude and praise-giving.”

Here is a silly list from yesterday—my frail and feeble attempt to pay attention to some of the things God has done for me and to recount them for myself and for others.

1. I wrote the monthly donor letter for Mainstay Ministries in four hours. The idea for a theme, the quotes I needed, the Scripture AND the photos were all at hand. I didn’t have to think hard, research widely, hunt and find. Everything I needed was at hand.

2. Photos from the Africa trip that I took in October came to me on a CD in time to put them in blogs, the donor letter, on the Global Bag Project website, and on Facebook pages. A perfect example of divine brinkmanship!

3. The garbage service picked up the single bed-frame AND THE OLD MATTRESS we needed to discard in order to start working on the décor for the spare room in the basement.

4. I found my car keys—a regular and unending displacement in my life. At least when I can’t find the keys, at last I’ve learned to pray first and hunt last.

5. David discovered that because I was overseas, I hadn’t recorded my automated Social Security bank deposit for the month of September. I have more money in my checking account than I thought!

6. With a combination of sleeping pills, ear plugs, winter blankets, and a closed bedroom door (and with my husband finally realizing—after 50 years of marriage—that anything that wakes me up gets me up), I am getting eight to ten hours of sleep per night. For decades, I’ve functioned on four to six hours of sleep, seven on rare occasions. This is a true accomplishment. I’m hoping my brain will get into the sleep habit, and I will be able to discard the pills.

7. I found the new humidifier I forgot I’d purchased last winter. It holds enough water that I don’t have to refill it every other day. I threw away the old humidifier I had bought secondhand. This may not seem like God, but I had completely forgotten this purchase. It could have sat in the guest-room closet all winter, but I was getting the closet ready for the Wheaton College professor who will be living with us this season, and voila! there it was—new and clean and shining.

8. A retiree who was a high-school Home Economics teacher (Domestic Arts, I believe it is these days) volunteers in our office every Thursday. Because of her professional background, she is a whiz with the copier, the computer, with details and with just pitching in. She test-washed the new wraparound East Africa kanga-cloth skirt and found it washed and hung dry wonderfully. She suggested the design of its own traveling bag—we are the Global Bag Project, after all. And yesterday, she came home with me, took away the fabric I have had for a year to make a drape for the rod in my writing study, measured the half-curtain in the guest room and took the fabric to make a ruffle so that it reaches the floor (I’ve had that fabric for at least ten years), and also took the vintage tea-towel fabric to make into tea towels (not to mention the new summer skirt that needed repair at the waistline). I feel like God has just provided me with a personal assistant.

How can I prove that any of these things were part of God’s “mighty acts and saving deeds”? I can’t. I just assume these are a partial list of the incidental incidents out of my life that smooth the going for me. But then, who can prove that they aren’t? Can you?

I spy God!

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

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

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Reading Walt Whitman—Finally!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by Karen Mains

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 was a literature major in college and I was supposed to have read Walt Whitman. Some consider him the greatest American poet of the nineteenth century. Yes, I’ve read “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and some lines from “Song of Myself.” But, sad to say, I have fully neglected the body of Whitman’s literature.

One evening last week—I don’t really know why—I picked up my husband’s Classics Club volume of Selected Poems by Walt Whitman. The gems to quote are limitless:

“All truths wait in all things,/ They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,/ They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,/ The insignificant is as big to me as any,/ (What is less or more than a touch?)”

The more I read, the more I kept thinking, Why have I not read this before?

Whitman is a Master of the moment. He is a sacred sensualist, seeing the sublime in all things.

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,/ And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,/ And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,/And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,/ And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.”

I think I need to go back and start again reading Whitman from the beginning. I need to underline and highlight and write out the phrases that thrill me. I used to know the meaning of the poet’s words:

“Here such a beauty is that teareth me apart./ O, Lord, I fear you’ve made the world to beautiful this year.” —Edna St. Vincent Millay

In my quest to learn how to capture the moments again, I need to spend more time with the poets, for that is their specialty and that is why we have such trouble understanding them.

Those who dwell at the ends of the earth will tremble at your marvelous signs,
       You make the dawn and the dusk to sing for joy.
You visit the earth and water it abundantly; you make it very plenteous,
        the river of God is full of water.
You prepare the grain, for so you provide for the earth.
You drench the furrows and smooth out the ridges, with heavy rain you
         soften the ground and bless its increase.
You crown the year with your goodness, and your paths overflow with plenty.”
                                                                                                           —Psalm 65

Poets and psalmists all proclaim that the world is full of the works of God, but I must be in it and attentive to it all in order to know it.

I spy God!

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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 Naked Now

Monday, October 31, 2011 by Karen Mains

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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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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Walking Business Plan

Friday, October 28, 2011 by Karen Mains

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!

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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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Heshima Encounter

Thursday, October 27, 2011 by Karen Mains

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!

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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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New Energy

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 by Karen Mains

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 microenterprise 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!

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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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Synergies Within Synergies

Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by Karen Mains

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!

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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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Travel Anxiety

Monday, October 24, 2011 by Karen Mains

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!

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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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Any Help to Do God’s Work in the World

Friday, October 7, 2011 by Karen Mains

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 nametags). 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!

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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.

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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Any Unexpected Evidence of His Care

Thursday, October 6, 2011 by Karen Mains

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

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

(GHS-064)

Looking for God

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 by Karen Mains

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

(GHS-063)

What Is Learned With Pleasure Is Learned Full Measure

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by Karen Mains

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!”

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

(GHS-062)

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