Posted on by Lori Cartmell

God With Us

Image by Dorothée QUENNESSON from Pixabay

I’m so pleased to share with you another guest post by my friend Veronica Gerber. I know you’ll be blessed by her wisdom!

What’s in a name?

So it’s Christmas time again … when we remember Jesus’ birth:

“For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Do you have a favourite way of addressing God or thinking of Jesus?

I’m quite partial to Emmanuel which means “God with us” … ever alongside those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. It’s all too easy to lose sight, so to speak, of Jesus being with us in the day-to-day, especially during the hustle and bustle of Christmas, wouldn’t you say?

“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us.” (Matthew 1:23)

C.S. Lewis has written about God’s plan, “The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of a spear—a Jewish girl at her prayers.”

Today as I read the accounts of Jesus’ birth I tremble to think of the fate of the world resting on the responses of two rural teenagers long ago. How many times did Mary review the angel’s words? How many times did Joseph second-guess his own encounter with an angel—“Was it just a dream?”—as he endured the hot shame of living among villagers who could plainly see the changing shape of his fiancée?

Mary, the virgin, whose parenthood was unplanned, had a commendable response to the angel. She heard the angel out, pondered the repercussions, and nonetheless replied:

“I am the Lord’s servant.
May it be to me as you have said.”

Often a work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain … as is the joy and travail of giving birth. In Mary’s matter-of-fact response, she embraced both. She was the first person to accept Jesus on his own terms, regardless of the personal cost. An ordinary beginning, an extraordinary journey.

It makes me wonder what work of God hinges on me at my prayers? And on you and your prayers?

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Supercharge Your Prayers

Fertilized vs. unfertilized rows of maize. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

If you’re a gardener, you might sometimes look at your plants and decide that they’re missing something.

They need more “oomph.”

That’s where fertilizer comes in.

It can supercharge your flowers and vegetable plants by providing them with nutrients, such as nitrogen, that might be lacking in the soil.

With the addition of fertilizer, your plants can grow to their full potential and become as fruitful as they were meant to be.

Similarly, our prayers sometimes need more oomph, too.

But how do we give them that? How do we go about supercharging our prayers?

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

All in Good Time

Image by Finn Bjurvoll Hansen from Pixabay

They say cooking is an art, but baking is a science.

Part of what makes baking scientific is that it often calls for exact timing.

When you cook a roast or a turkey in the oven, the estimated cooking time can vary. The meat will be in the oven for several hours, and the recipe might give you as much as a half-hour window to start checking for doneness.

But when you’re baking cookies, the recipe will sometimes only give you a two-minute span to remove them from the oven. You have to be on your toes so you don’t miss this window, but at least you have a greater degree of certainty as to when the baking process will be over.

We humans crave certainty, don’t we? And that’s especially true when we’re going through difficult things in our personal lives.

Wouldn’t you love it if God told us exactly when our time of suffering would end?

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Plant the Seeds of Your Dreams

Vintage seed packets. Photo by Douglas Coulter on Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

If you’re a gardener, you probably have a stash of seeds tucked away.

I certainly do. I have a special bin in a cupboard where I store all my seed packets:

Envelopes containing seeds I’ve harvested over the years from plants in my garden. Seeds that friends have collected from their own gardens and then passed on to me, along with handwritten notes about the plants.

Packets of seeds I’ve bought the Botanic Garden’s seed fairs that look intriguing: seeds of rare plants, unusual colours of better known plants, or hard-to-find heirloom varieties of vegetables or flowers.

I have a veritable treasure trove of seeds in my cupboard!

There’s only one problem:

Those seeds are doing me absolutely no good sitting in a bin on a shelf.

I may take the packets out from time to time and look rapturously at the photos on the front. I might imagine how nice it would be to grow such gorgeous flowers or unusual veggies.

But until I put those seeds in the ground, all they are is wishful thinking and pretty pictures.

If I don’t take a step of faith and plant my seeds, I’ll never get a harvest.

Similarly, we sometimes leave our dreams and desires on a shelf, so to speak.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

God, the Ultimate Multi-tasker

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Multi-tasking has been described as the art of messing up several things at once.

Like trying to apply makeup and drive on the freeway at the same time. Or using power tools while texting.

Much of the time when we try to do several things at once, we wind up doing each of them poorly.

God, on the other hand, is a master at multi-tasking, and He does everything perfectly.

When we think God is doing one thing in our lives, He’s actually doing many things at once. And much of what God is accomplishing is completely off our radar screens.

As theologian John Piper says, “In EVERY situation and EVERY circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.” And, “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of 3 of them.” (I invite you to read Piper’s excellent post on this topic.)

Take Joseph in the Old Testament, for example.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Easier to Destroy Than Create

Image by Thanks for your Like • donations welcome from Pixabay

It’s a truism that it’s easier to destroy than to create.

I saw this in action recently in my own neighbourhood.

A two-storey house had been damaged internally by fire, although it looked salvageable from the outside. Nonetheless, the owners and insurers agreed that it should be demolished and a new house built in its stead.

I imagine the original house had taken months to build. It probably involved scores of people in its construction: contractors, carpenters, bricklayers, roofers, electricians, plumbers, and the like.

But it only took one man with one large backhoe a few hours to raze that building to the ground.

It was shocking how quickly the structure was destroyed. What could have lasted for decades was levelled in the space of a morning.

A cautionary tale, don’t you think?

If we’re not careful, we can see the same thing happen in our own lives.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Precedented Times Are Coming

Image by Bruno del Rio Vila from Pixabay

Aren’t you a bit tired of living in “unprecedented times”?

You’re not alone. I saw a slogan on a T-shirt the other day which read, “I miss precedented times.”

We’re all longing to go back to our normal, predictable lives, the way they used to be.

But even when we’re able to return to a semblance of our pre-pandemic existence, we still aren’t guaranteed a life without injustices, sorrows and unwelcome surprises.

Jesus told us that “in this world, you will have trouble.” And ain’t that the truth!

Even so, we can have hope that with God, we can still live in “precedented times.” How so?

When you read the Bible, you find there are precedents to receiving healing, restoration, wholeness and joy, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Date Night With God

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

If you’re married, do you have a “date night” with your spouse?

Some people set aside time each week when they get together with their spouse, just the two of them, and do something special.

Life is so busy these days that we sometimes have to actually schedule time to spend with our spouse. We have to juggle work, raising children, community involvements, caring for aging parents, hobbies, and so on.

There are so many demands on our time that we often have difficulty making sure we’re giving enough attention to the person most important to us.

And besides, we know that our spouse is aware of our love for them. So we let things slide and don’t make the relationship a priority.

In this way, however, the bond between you starts to suffer. Without regular conversations and one-on-one time, a distance can start to grow in the relationship.

It’s the same with our relationship with God: we’re so busy with family and work commitments that we sometimes fail to fit Him in to our schedules.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Your Heavenly Pinch Hitter

Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay

Do you ever feel a bit shaky when you’re “up at bat” in life?

Sometimes we face daunting challenges, and don’t feel we’re capable of facing them on our own. We feel like we need a bit of help, someone who can take over for us when we’re at our weakest.

Someone like a pinch hitter.

In baseball, a pinch hitter acts as substitute who bats for a teammate. The pinch hitter might step in because the original player is injured, or when the one next up at bat is a less effective hitter, such as when a pitcher is worn out after six or seven innings pitching.

The manager might decide that the substitute has a better chance of helping their team to score, or may send in the pinch hitter to execute a specific play. In many cases, the pinch hitter will be called upon at a critical moment in the game.

Sounds like a handy person to have around, doesn’t it?

Did you know that believers have a heavenly “pinch hitter”?

This teammate who comes to your aid is the Holy Spirit Himself.

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Call G-O-D For Help

Image by nir_design from Pixabay

Sometimes in life we just need a friendly ear, don’t we?

911 dispatchers have certainly found this out.

People call the emergency line for the darnedest of reasons, either to vent about some minor injustice or just to get some advice.

Like the fellow who called 911 to ask what last night’s sports scores were.

Or the little girl who needed help with her math homework.

One guy called 999, the UK version of 911, at 4am on a Saturday morning to ask, “Where is the best place to get a bacon sandwich right now?”

A Halton, Ontario, boy recently called the emergency line in an outrage when his Mom changed the password to his Xbox.

Some have been known to dial 911 when their pizza delivery wasn’t ready on time.

We get consumed with anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, or anger and think, “There must be someone I can call about this!”

Needless to say, 911 should be reserved for actual emergencies only, please.

But sometimes we just need someone to talk to, even if it’s about random things.

It’s good to know that no matter how big or small your concerns, God is interested in hearing from you.

Read more