Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Let God Surprise You!

We all love receiving more than we expected, don’t we?

Like when you order a product online, and to your surprise the company throws in some extra goodies or samples as a bonus.

Or perhaps it’s your birthday, and your family outdoes themselves with a party, special gifts, and a scrumptious meal.

It makes us feel valued to be the recipients of these unexpected blessings.

God certainly knows this. That’s why He often seems to enjoy outdoing Himself, showing up in a big way in answer to prayer or simply to demonstrate His power and majesty.

This is how Paul describes God’s “above and beyond” abilities in Ephesians 3:20:

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (NKJV)

The term Paul uses to express God’s ability to work beyond what we pray for, think, or even dream about is variously translated “superabundantly more” (AMP), “infinitely more” (NLT), “immeasurably more” (NIV), and “far more abundantly beyond all” (NASB).

However you phrase it, it says a lot about God’s character, His generosity, and his abounding love for His children.

Take the example of Hannah in the Old Testament. She certainly found out that God often does more than we could expect.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Reap What Jesus Sowed

If you’re a gardener, you know the joy of harvesting fruits or vegetables that you’ve grown yourself.

You get to savour the fresh, delicious taste of home-grown produce. You’re quite literally enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Is there anything more satisfying?

How about reaping the benefits of what someone else has grown?

Perhaps you have a neighbour who gives you the excess from their own vegetable garden?

Or better yet, maybe you were as fortunate as a friend of mine. She and her family moved away from the big city a few years ago and bought a house in the suburbs, which sat on a large lot.

The previous owners of the house were botanists, so they had packed the property with beautiful and unusual perennials and shrubs. They’d also planted a number of fruit trees.

My friend and her family moved in mid-year, and didn’t need to do a lick of work in the mini-orchard in their new backyard. All they had to do was sit back and enjoy it, harvesting the fruit from trees that someone else had planted.

This reminds me of a verse from the Old Testament. Moses was telling the children of Israel that God would one day bring them into the Promised Land. Here’s how he described it:

“… a land with great and splendid cities that you did not build, with houses full of every good thing with which you did not fill them, with wells that you did not dig, and with vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant...” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

To me, this is a picture of what Christ has done for us.

In the old law-based covenant you reaped what you sowed, but in the new grace-based covenant we reap what Christ has sown.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Have Faith and Bring Your Umbrella!

If you’re a gardener, you know that when you plant seeds in the ground, you can expect results.

Not every seed will germinate, but a great many will. So you need to make preparations beforehand.

For instance, if you’ve planted seeds of climbing plants, you’ll need to provide something for them to cling to as they grow upward. Even if your pea or bean seeds haven’t germinated yet, you still might prepare some trellises or stakes for their eventual growth.

You wouldn’t think of not getting ready for the emergence of your seedlings and adult plants, would you? You have faith that they’re on the way.

Isn’t it funny, then, that when we pray and ask God for things, we often don’t really expect we’ll see any results?

We sometimes seem astonished when we receive a positive answer to our petitions. And it’s rare that we actually have enough faith to make preparations beforehand for answered prayer.

The early church fell victim to this lack of faith as well.

Acts 12 tells us of the time when the apostle Peter was seized and imprisoned, facing probable execution by Herod Agrippa.

The church, however, was earnestly praying to God for Peter’s safety and protection…

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Beauty of Redeemed Brokenness

What’s your favourite flower?

Even though I certainly love roses, the tulip holds a special place in my heart. It’s not as showy or fragrant as a rose, but it brings such joy in spring after a long winter.

Among the many types of tulips, I especially like the variegated ones (with multicoloured petals).

But did you know that the dramatic colour combinations of variegated tulips are caused by a virus?

Gardeners had long noticed that tulip petals occasionally “broke” into unusual patterns. But it wasn’t until the late 1500s that botanists realized that the beautiful mixed colouring arising spontaneously in some tulips was actually the result of a disease.

While the tulip-breaking virus causes lovely variegated colouring, it also weakens the tulip bulb, eventually leading to the death of its genetic line.

So how is it that we can still enjoy variegated tulips today? Why didn’t they all die out?

Fortunately, botanists centuries ago learned to graft healthy tulip bulbs onto the diseased or “broken” ones, preserving their lineage. Today, we can enjoy countless cultivars in a dizzying array of colours and patterns.

Doesn’t this remind you of what God does for us?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Spring Is On Its Way

A beautiful red cardinal has been singing heartily outside my window the past week, as though spring had already arrived.

The robins, now back from wintering in the south, can hardly get a word in edgewise.

A hawk in the nearby park has been gathering twigs for its nest.

And yet a couple days ago we had some snow flurries. This is Canada, after all, and it’s only April. It’s often still chilly enough outside to need a coat.

Doesn’t seem like spring to me.

Do the birds know something I don’t?

In fact, they do. They sense the lengthening of the days and the increased hours of sunlight, things that have escaped my notice.

They know that spring is on its way, even if I haven’t put away my winter coat just yet.

In the same way, God knows a thing or two that we don’t.

He knows when a turnaround in our situation is on its way, even if we can’t see any evidence of a change in the offing.

He knows that our “spring” is coming.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

The Missing Epitaph

What would you like written on your tombstone?

Maybe you’ve already given some thought as to what your epitaph should be. Perhaps you’d like a mention of your accomplishments or family ties.

You might even hope that something humorous be inscribed on your gravestone, as in the following examples:

“I told you I was sick.” (Written on the gravestone of William H. Hahn, Jr., of Princeton, New Jersey.)
“Here lies Lester Moore, Four slugs from a 44, No Les, No more.” (An actual epitaph in the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Arizona.)
“There goes the neighborhood.” (Epitaph of self-deprecating comedian Rodney Dangerfield.)
“Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake. Stepped on the gas instead of the brake.” (On the tombstone of an accident victim in Unionville, Pennsylvania.)
“Here lies John Yeast. Pardon me for not rising.” (This cheeky epitaph is on a grave in Ruidoso, New Mexico.)

What was written on Christ’s tombstone? Any guesses?

Absolutely nothing.

Why?

Because He didn’t stay in the tomb for very long and isn’t there now.

Jesus was only a temporary resident in the dark chamber in which He lay.

Unlike John Yeast, Jesus did rise.

Three days after His crucifixion, He came to life again and walked out of that tomb, never to return.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Past Doesn’t Determine Your Future

If you’ve ever invested in stocks or mutual funds, you’ll probably have come across a disclaimer like this:

“Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.”

This phrase is meant to warn us and give us pause before we press the “Buy” button. We shouldn’t assume that an investment will continue to succeed in the future just because it’s done so in the past.

But there’s a secondary meaning that can be read into that disclaimer, too.

We shouldn’t discount or overlook an investment opportunity simply because it has performed poorly recently. It could well turn around and gain ground.

It’s this last meaning of the disclaimer that we see exemplified in several characters in the Bible. It applies to our own lives as well:

Past failures in our lives don’t mean that God can’t still use us.

They’re not a reliable indicator of our future results or success.

Our way of thinking often involves something called “recency bias”: the idea that the way things have been going recently are the way they’ll continue to go in the future. If we’ve failed once, we assume that we’ll continue to underperform and disappoint.

But when God is working in our lives, He changes the equation.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

What is Your “Job One”?

Sometimes we need a reminder of what we’re really here for, don’t we?

Many companies know this. Their employees can get so focussed on the little details of their tasks that they lose sight of what their main goal is.

That’s why for many years the auto manufacturer Ford put a large sign on the walls of its factories:

“Quality is Job One.”

An employee might have been helping to assemble the engine, working on the upholstery of the seats, or perfecting the paint finish on the vehicle.

But no matter what their specific task, the sign reminded the workers that their overarching goal was to produce a quality product.

Perhaps we as Christians sometimes need to be reminded what our primary function here on earth is?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Write This Out 100 Times

When you misbehaved in school, did your teacher make you write out lines on the blackboard a hundred times?

Maybe you recall having to write lines such as these over and over:

“I will not talk in class.”

“I will not run in the corridors.”

Or this famous blackboard gag from the TV show “The Simpsons”:

“I will not waste chalk” (while wasting chalk to write it).

Of course, our teachers made us do this as punishment, but there may have been method in their madness.

Science has found that writing things down—specifically by hand—significantly improves memory retention. When we write by hand, the information is “baked” into our neural pathways better than if we type the same information. And the more often we write a certain thing down, the more likely we are to remember it long-term.

I wonder if we can use these findings to help us remember God’s Word better?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Do You Abhor a Vacuum?

Aristotle said that “nature abhors a vacuum.”

So do I, frankly. Perhaps I should simply stop vacuuming? After all, who am I to argue with Aristotle?

Seriously, though, what that phrase suggests is that empty spaces are unnatural, and somehow or other nature will seek to fill them.

I encountered a dramatic example of this truism through a friend of my late father.

This friend had developed a disorder called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Macular degeneration had left voids or blank spots in his field of vision. The brain finds these empty spaces to be disturbing, so in Charles Bonnet Syndrome it fills in the blank areas with patterns or random images from its memory bank.

The result was that my father’s friend would “see” people or animals that weren’t actually there. His wife would have to tell him that, no, there wasn’t really a stranger sitting on their couch, or a cow in their backyard. The hallucinations he experienced were just his brain attempting to paper over the upsetting voids in his visual field.

It seems that human nature abhors a vacuum, too.

We all have voids or empty spaces in our lives that we seek to fill: areas of dissatisfaction, lack of love, or absence of validation. These blank areas make us uneasy, so we try to fill them up.

The problem is that we often choose things to fill our voids that don’t truly satisfy us in the end: alcohol, sex, money, shopping, busyness, or worldly acclaim. Despite all our efforts to paper over our pain, we can still find ourselves as empty as we were before.

What’s the solution? How do we find a lasting source of love and validation?

We need to fill the empty spaces in our lives by inviting God into them.

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