This, too, is my son in whom I am well pleased...

I still remember the Friday of my first official week as pastor of the fellowship I now serve. We had moved to town on a Tuesday night and the next few days I spent setting up house and office as well as meeting with the leaders of our small congregation. But now it was Friday, the first “normal” day as Pastor of what was then Chetek Full Gospel Tabernacle. I had rose early, showered, donned suit and tie and drove the three blocks to church. After putting the coffee on, I read my Bible and spent some time in prayer. I looked at the clock. It was 6:30 a.m. Now what do I do?

I had no meetings to go to. I was not yet part of any volunteer organization in Chetek. I had no people to meet with (besides it was way too early). Other than sermon prep for Sunday, what in the world do I do with the rest of my day?

Thinking about that moment seventeen and a half years later I long for such a simpler time. Since then I’ve collected an odd assortment of assignments and titles that would fill a manila folder to overflowing:
• President or Secretary of the Chetek Christian Ministerial Association
• Member of the Lions Club
• President of the Facilities Improvement Committee (a local citizens group
that helped lead a school referendum initiative)
• President or Vice President of the Chetek Youth Center Project
(our local youth center)
• President or Vice President of Kinship of Chetek (a youth mentoring group)
• Ministerial liaison to the Chetek Food Shelf (our local food bank)
• President of the Barron County chapter of the Salvation Army
• Board member of the Chetek Food Shelf
• Volunteer chaplain at the Barron County Justice Center
• President of The Well International (a ministry to the local Somali
refugee population)
• Member of the citizens’ Task Force committee exploring the possibility of
Weyerhaeuser and Chetek school districts merging
• Great Books leader at Roselawn Elementary School
• Odyssey of the Mind coach
• President or other officer of the Chetek Parent Teacher Organization
• Plus I read weekly at our local elementary school to the tune of about 3 ½
hours per week
• To say nothing of the various tasks any pastor of a small church is
called upon to do whether he feels it or not including serving as
youth leader, Sunday School teacher, VBS Director, camp counselor,
worship leader and Bible study facilitator.
In retrospect, I did not have the maturity nor experience to appreciate what a wonderful moment in time that was back in the Fall of 1991 when early one Friday morning I had nothing to do…nothing to do but tend to the Word of God and prayer, something that Scripture says (at least) is my main job description.

Over time, I went from being the “new guy” to the “everything-pastor”. It was intentional – mostly. I mean, I had an interest in many of these things at the time that I became associated with them and felt like I was honoring God by my involvement in them. But seasons change – and we with the seasons. And long after the passion subsides all that’s left is dogged adherence to your original commitment. Which is an honorable and altogether right course of action (say) in marriage but can be such a life-draining thing when it comes to volunteer associations. But my reluctance to break my word or my fear of letting others down often keeps me – as a pastor – at a place of interior clutter most often reflected in the chaos that abides in my office.

About a month ago, Linda and I attended the College of Prayer held in Menomonie. Dr. Ron Walborn of Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, New York was teaching on physical healing. He was following his notes that he had distributed to us earlier about the healing ministry of Jesus and then made this comment: “Oh, incidentally, Jesus had his Father’s approval before he performed any healings or miracles.” It was an aside; a throw-away comment. But it struck home. I had just finished taking the kids at The Focus (the youth church that meets in our building) through Mark 1. And there it was: Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit comes upon him and the Father pronounces his blessing on him: “You are my Son whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). Turn back to Matthew’s Gospel and find this: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Turn forward to Luke’s Gospel and the good doctor records it this way: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). Everything that he is known for – the wonderful teachings, the amazing healings, the awe-ful power encounters – all of it is found after the fact.

During the ministry time that followed, I knelt at my chair and tried to still myself before the Lord. One of the guys in my section came over and knelt beside me and began to pray for me. I shared with him how Dr. Walborn’s so-called ‘throw-away’ comment had hit me like a heat-seeking missile in search of acquisitioning a target. So he simply encouraged me to “pray into” that. Now, up until this moment I had not been feeling anything out of the ordinary. Many others in the room were expressing themselves freely but I was emotionally neutral. But as I began to pray, I had something of a vision – a vision that created an immediate emotional response in me.

It was my son, Charlie. Charlie is a great kid who is always willing to help me or Linda out at home. He has autism, a condition that only augments his natural shyness and makes him an enigma, at times, even to those who know him best. He doesn’t have a job description. While he helps out in the nursery when called upon, he doesn’t “do” anything at church. He has no assigned responsibilities. Like so many of the folks who make up the Refuge family, on Sundays he partakes of the shared worship experience and then goes home. So, here’s what I saw: it was simply a picture of Charlie walking up the steps of Refuge and the sight of him doing so moved me emotionally. And then I heard the words of the Father: “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy” (Mark 1, NLT). Charlie doesn’t do anything to gain my approval. He just has it because he is my son. And quite unexpectedly I found myself weeping with the realization that maybe this is the same way that the Father looks at me. I don’t have to do a thing to have his approval. I don’t have to rack up a score card to impress him. I have his approval already whether or not people get saved or healed or delivered – even though it is my desire to see these very things.

It is very hard for me to say no to anyone as my resume clearly shows. And in that picture of my son I saw how much I remain bound to the fear of man, that fear that is common to many pastors. The vision, however, only accentuates my hunger to be free of the fear so that I may only be about the things He calls me to. And in tending to those things I suspect I’ll experience a sense of freedom like I knew once on a certain Friday morning back in October 1991. Except this time I’ll not feel guilty about it but enjoy the sheer pleasure of knowing Him.

Afterdim

I consider myself a Pentecostal in that I have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit and, among other things, I have been graced with spiritual language.

I pastor what some would call a Pentecostal fellowship in that many of its members have had the same experience.

And yet, when I pray for someone to receive the filling of the Holy Spirit, nothing “happens.” No shaking. No rolling. No laughter. No “joy unspeakable and full of glory”. Not so much of a “she-came-in-a-Honda/see-my-bow-tie-tie-my-bow-tie.” Usually when I pray for people in this way, judging by appearances I’d say it was (almost) a non-event.

So what is it with me?

Tonight was a good case in point. I’ve been sharing from Mark 1 lately with the students from The Focus, our Wednesday night youth church. Our text tonight was Mark 1:9-11 which reads,

“At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God's Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.’”

All the gospel writers put this event at the beginning of their story. In Mark’s case, it’s in the opening lines. Before the miracles, before the healings, before Lazarus shuffles out from the tomb, before all the amazing things that make up the stories of Jesus’ life, he is baptized in water and in the Spirit. If he, though fully God, as a man required Spirit baptism, what keeps the rest of us from submitting to the same? If to be a Christian is to walk as Jesus did and do what Jesus does, it is impossible without the Holy Spirit coming upon us. This was my message in abbreviated form.

After sharing, we tied in to our internet feed with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, encouraged the kids to find a separate place in the sanctuary, dimmed the lights and asked them to turn to the One who longs to fill them afresh. After about twenty minutes or so, I made an invitation to any and all who were longing to be filled for the first time or in need of experiencing a fresh infilling, to come forward. Perhaps a quarter of those present did (and four of them were my own kids). I asked one of the youth leaders to join me and one by one we prayed over the perhaps 8 kids who were sitting in the provided chairs.

I sincerely was hoping that there would be some demonstration of the Spirit’s presence. Tongues. Tears. Joy. Laughter. Anything that would suggest that the Holy Spirit had come upon them but with the exception of one, it was the drill I have grown accustomed to in my ministry, which is to say nothing meeting the eye.

My theology prevents me from going home discouraged. After all, we seek Him not a feeling. And just because nothing seems to be going on doesn’t mean that nothing is going on. But every once in a while my faith needs a little bolstering. I mean, after all those first Christians prayed that God would stretch out his hand and show his stuff and the house they were in shook and they left boldly going where before they had been afraid to go.

I don’t think that’s asking too much. I don’t think I’m tasking the Lord when I ask him to show up if only to awaken the kids who didn’t seem so moved to sit in one of the chairs and in one case are fast asleep.

Maybe it’s me?

How Do You Actually Win a War on Terror?

“For we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs.” – J.R.R. Tolkien to his son, Christopher, May 1944, who was in the RAF and stationed in South Africa as quoted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien



Tomorrow the reigns of power will once again peacefully transition from one President to the next. One will enter Washington in the atmosphere of a conquering hero. The other will quietly slip out the back door and move into his new home in suburban Dallas and presumably begin to write his memoirs. For all the rhetoric of change that is common fare in American politics, certain things, however, will remain the same come tomorrow evening. Among them the ongoing “War on Terror” that was declared following the horrible events of September 11, 2001. Eight years later the battles of that war still rage and, in fact, are heating up in Afghanistan. When will it end? How do you actually win a “War on Terror”? Is it when every last bad guy is dead or incarcerated? Is it when we bring in Osama bin Laden dead or alive and declare ourselves winners? How do you know which cough is the last gasp of the Taliban in the end?

In 2003, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield announced with customary bravado that the coming invasion of Iraq would best be characterized as “shock and awe”. And it was. Though was anyone really surprised that we rolled over Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards as easily as we did? If this had been a movie, then certainly the falling of Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad a month later would have been an excellent backdrop for the credits to roll. But that was not the end of it. It wasn’t even the end of the beginning of it. How many lives have been affected since that time on all sides of the conflict? And are we even closer to its desired conclusion? And do we even know what that looks like?

I have no degrees in international relations. I know personally only two Muslims. But overcoming terror by inflicting terror savagely on those who would seek to hinder our peace-seeking efforts in both those countries seems like using a hammer to solve a problem that requires far more skill and expertise. And time. Hatred cannot be healed or overcome by the use of blunt force alone. You may indeed have the bigger hammer and subdue your foe – for the time being. But in time he will return with friends.

This is no criticism of our soldiers or their conduct in the current conflict. Good soldiers in every war do the best they can to fulfill their mission within the hostile circumstances that are forced upon them. But it seems to me what is needed most in the long run are boots on the ground. And not regulation issued ones either. Where are the sons of God in Iraq and Afghanistan right now? “Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). Where are those who are willing to go the extra mile, to give the shirt off their back, to love him who feels committed to kill the other? My guess is that they are there already but in numbers too small to be recognized at this safe distance between me and the war that rages half a world away.

The War on Terror as we are fighting it is un-winable because it assumes that ultimately we will kill all the bad guys and gone will be the threat they pose to our society. But for every father we take out, for every brother who is killed accidentally in the crossfire of urban warfare, for every mother or daughter who is terrorized, what’s to say that we haven’t bred already another generation of individuals who hate us and are prepared to seek the revenge they crave?

In The Kingdom (2007), director Peter Berg underscores this point in the closing scene of the movie. This fictional story is about FBI agents working together with Saudi Arabian military personnel to capture the man responsible for killing Americans living in a housing compound in Riyadh. At movie’s end, there is a flashback to one of the opening scenes of the story when lead investigator Ronald Fleury (played by Jaimee Fox) is comforting the widow of his best friend who was killed in the bombing. When we see it the first time, we don’t hear what he tells her. But this time we do. He’s asked by his colleague, “Tell me what you whispered to Janet, in the briefing…before we even got airborne. What’d you stay to her?” At the same time, we see the grandson of the terrorist who had perpetrated the bombing being asked the same question by his aunt. “What did your grandfather whisper in your ear before he died?” Chillingly, they answer the same way:

Ronald Fleury: I told her we were gonna kill 'em all.
15-Year-Old Grandson: Don't fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all.

The only weapons that are powerful enough to overcome such hate are sacrificial love and forgiveness. Only these things have the virility to absorb whatever bitterness may throw at them and transform it into real peace.

I’m sure I’m speaking nonsense to those who know Arab culture or who have a far better grasp of the history of that particular region of the world than I do. But it begs the question, are Jesus’ words about loving our enemies and praying for those who do us wrong only words we use around a camp fire while on retreat or the very means to overcoming evil, wherever it rears its ugly head, with good?

Jesus was the 12th Man

It’s Saturday night in the town in which I pastor, and only 11 people have showed up for our quarterly prayer gathering. Of the eleven, five are pastors, one is wife of one of the pastors present, one is the guy who leads the local prayer initiative accompanied by his wife, and one is an elder of one of the fellowships represented who is also serving as our worship leader tonight. That leaves two people who make up “the congregation.” And given we are meeting in the Lutheran church sanctuary whose parallel rows of pews stand at attention like soldiers on parade ground stretching into the distance, it makes our already small group feel even smaller. Understandably, a pall of disappointment hangs in the air. Certainly it makes the worship leader’s gesture of plugging into the amp and all the testing of mics a bit superfluous.

But Kirk, our prayer leader, opens as if there were a whole company of intercessors assembled instead of a platoon and we follow the predetermined program as planned. Earl, our worship leader, leads in song and then as arranged, one by one we each carry out our assignment for the evening. I lead in prayers of adoration. Pastor Mike from a neighboring community leads in prayer of confession. Pastor Dan leads us in thanksgiving and finally Pastor Norm, the grand old man, leads us in intercession for our community. Interspersed in all of this are songs and opportunities to pray spontaneously. And pray we do – fervently, joyfully, and expectantly. There are moments of silence – pauses – but never a lag in the flow of the evening. Early on a prophetic word is shared affirming us of God’s pleasure in our gathering together. All of this took perhaps two hours but it was the last 40 minutes of the gathering that made my night.

We had adored the Lord, confessed our sins, gave thanks to God and interceded for our communities and His church and now it was time to pray for each other. A hot seat was pulled out and one of the pastor’s wives sat in it confessing her need for deliverance from demonic oppression. Pastor Guy, the host pastor, placed the oil in my hands and we all circled around this woman of God and began to pray – some in English, some quietly in tongues – all of us pronouncing Christ’s authority in her life and commanding those things that were afflicting her to go to the feet of Christ to be dealt with as he saw fit. We proceeded to pray for a few more of our friends – one wanting wisdom, one seeking healing, another seeking healing for a friend of his. There we were eleven individuals from various fellowships but all from the Body of Christ ministering to one another as God has called us to do. Afterwards, as we stood in a circle around the vacated hot seat, Pastor Guy began to lead us in a spontaneous chorus of intercession. “Let the glory of the Lord rise among us!” followed by similar verses for God’s healing, blessing and favor upon the Church of Jesus in our area. It seemed to me at that moment that the joy of the Lord filled that place. And then Guy led us in the singing of “The Lord’s Prayer” as a benediction.

It was only eleven people among how many hundred believers in this area. And yet, Jesus – our 12th Man – had brought us victory – and we exited the building feeling confident that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6).

With fortune cookie comes egg roll

We take it as a given that God has spoken and he still speaks – whether it be in the heavens who daily pour forth speech (Psalm 19:2), the words of holy writ (2 Timothy 3:16), or through his Son, Jesus (Hebrews 1:2). What’s more, who among us have not “heard” God speak through the words of pastors, teachers, speakers, friends, our spouse, our children or our boss let alone through the medium of television, music, movies, or books? As for me all the above apply and I would add one more: From time to time, God has spoken – even prophetically - to me through a handful of the plethora of fortune cookies I have cracked open in my life.

Allow me to cite three examples of this occurrence:

On the night before my ordination in October 1995, Linda and I had left the kids with the folks and gone out to eat at our favorite restaurant before we were married, The Lotus, on Madison’s East side. Following dinner, we were reminiscing and such about how we used to frequent this Vietnamese-Chinese eatery back in our dating-days when I opened my cookie and read this:

You take a reverent attitude towards life and

are most capable in guiding others

I’m not making this up. I just copied it from the original copy that is taped to the wall behind my computer in the office of the fellowship I now pastor. I know we’re not to take stock in these things, but on the eve of one of the most important days of my life it was wonderfully comforting if not amusing.

I don’ recall when I received the next fortuitous message but it now lays atop my bedroom dresser and I cast my eyes upon it most days as I’m getting dressed:

You cannot fix the problems of those who don’t want them fixed

Obviously, it’s not much of a fortune. It’s more like home-spun wisdom – something Grandma Chang might say? - and yet time and again since opening that cookie it’s truth has been proved, especially to a pastor-type like myself who has the notion that he has can save the world single-handedly with just a little more effort. As most people who have been around the block in ministry know, it just ain’t so. There’s plenty of people with issues. But a lot of them want people like me to fix their life but the power to do that lies in other hands (mostly their own).

You will step on the soil of many countries

I don’t know where or when I found this one but the moment I read it there was – and still is – a definitive YES that went off in my heart. It is a great summary of one of my life’s dream: to be an ambassador for the Kingdom in places that make up the “uttermost parts of the earth.” I don’t feel called to go and plant churches or evangelize. No, I want to be a part of planting His flag in places that are off the beaten path. I want to worship in Rebat or pray in Baku or run the steppes of the Great Wall or encourage the saints who may be in hiding near Mosul. I don’t want to go and make a nuisance of myself or go simply to say that I did with the bravado I sometimes detect in the voices of those who are graced to travel so. I want to be sent as one on assignment, who has received a “come over here and help us” summons as Paul did to Macedonia.

Since receiving this fortune, I have not traveled outside this country at all. But, noteworthy to me, is that despite the fact that I pastor a fellowship in a county mostly white and fourth-generation Norwegian, German or Polish, individuals from the following countries have come into my orbit or visited our fellowship: Canada, Russia, Ecuador, Morocco, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Thailand, Uganda, Liberia and South Korea. Meanwhile, people from our fellowship have been sent out on assignments to Morocco, Turkey, China, Thailand, Egypt, Philippines, South Korea and Canada during the same time period. So maybe the prophetic word has as much to do about influencing those from these locales as it does to actually getting on a plane and flying there. I guess time will tell.

I know we’re not to go looking for God’s counsel in this manner. Neither here nor in this week’s horoscope, to say nothing of Madame Rositta and her crystal ball. His Word and His Spirit are more than sufficient to lead us in the way we are to go. But God being God can do what He pleases and for reasons that are all His own speak through something as insignificant as a fortune cookie after a night out at China Buffet.

Extravagant Love #2

At our fellowship, Monday nights are reserved for Prayer Appointments - 1 1/2 -2 hours of extended ministry time for those with hurts that are in need of Jesus' healing touch. As a rule, they are intimate settings with an individual and small group of prayer ministers. Here's a story that came out of one of those appointments a little over a year ago that is another testimony of God's incredibly extravagant love for broken and hurting people.

"He's smiling"

When he came in the door, it was his eyes that gave him away. They had that glazed-over look that one usually comes to associate with mental illness or an individual highly medicated for other medical reasons. He had hitched a ride with a kind, old lady from Rice Lake who had made a prayer appointment for herself. As she told us when she introduced him to our small team of prayer ministers, she figured as long as we were gathering to pray for her we could just as well pray for this troubled young man who needed it as well. Of course, it’s not how we do these things. I mean, when you go to see your doctor you can bring a friend along but he’s still going to insist seeing you one at a time. But, as she was his ride…a prayer appointment was sprung upon us, ready or not. We split our forces and went to work.

Call him Mephibosheth. When news arrived at Jonathan’s household that both Saul and his son Jonathan had been killed in battle with the Philistines, panic set in and in the ensuing frenzy, the nanny caring for young Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s toddler son, ran out of the house and accidentally dropped him resulting in an injury that left him permanently crippled (2 Samuel 9). Just like his namesake, this guy, too, as a kid had been dropped. But his scars were totally inward resulting in a certain crippling of his spirit. Mind you, he wasn’t forthcoming with this information let alone necessarily in touch with it. But as we gently probed, asking God to reveal the source of what had brought him to our place for ministry that night, his deep anger towards his parents – one of whom is now deceased – came out. Regardless of the severity of the schizophrenia that he has been diagnosed with, there was a poison in his soul that clearly needed to be lanced.

So, we went there with a bit of fear and trembling but trusting that Jesus would send the help we were silently pleading for. Believe me, I certainly did not feel like “the man of faith and power for the hour”. We were simply making it up as we went along. But be that as it may, in our weakness he began to minister to this dear man so desperately in need of freedom. We carefully took him through a time of recounting how his father had ‘dropped’ him as a kid and then, when he was ready, led him through a prayer of forgiveness for the wrongs his father had perpetrated on him. On impulse, where I had been sitting across from him, I sat next to him and laid my hand over his heart. His chest was tight and actually felt heavy, as if a great weight was laid across it. But as he relinquished the pain and the hurt that had accumulated within his heart, I could feel his chest become lighter. His body features were relaxing. His eyes welled up with tears.

I had a thought and I asked him, “Mephibosheth, I want you to imagine Jesus now sitting right across from you. What expression do you see on his face?” He could have said anything. Honestly, I half-expected him to say something like ‘He’s angry’ or ‘He’s scowling’ and I was already working on firm rebuke against a satanic message like this. It would be just like our adversary to confuse an already confused young man by placing a lying image before him. But instead he surprised me: “His face is solemn.” I ventured an interpretation: “I think it means he takes you seriously when you say your dad hurt you and caused you pain.” He seemed to take comfort in this.

And then we moved to what was clearly the more difficult lesion to tend – the one caused by his mother. Perhaps because she is still living and therefore the wound still open, it took us longer to move through the process of recognition and forgiveness of his mother. But once again, I sat next to him and laid my hand over his heart. Immediately, I noticed it was lighter there and with some encouragement he relinquished the pain he sincerely believed his mother has caused him. The tenseness that had been about his chest area was clearly gone. So I asked him to imagine that Jesus was sitting before him again. Now what do you see?

His response was totally spontaneous and without any coaching whatsoever from either me or my team-member. It came from what I believe was a true vision given to him for that moment:

“He’s smiling!” he blurted out in surprise and immediately began to weep profusely as the blackness that had been in him was evaporating under the ray of that smile.

He was not healed of his schizophrenia in our appointment. But I would venture to suggest that the curing of that condition wasn’t his first-need last night. Rather, Jesus wanted to heal his broken heart and I’d like to believe the cure has begun. When it was all over, I asked him what he was feeling or experiencing. “It’s like someone is loving me from the inside.” Sounds like the Jesus I know.

Extravagant Love #1

I once read somewhere that shortly following his conversion, Charles Wesley penned the words of the hymn, And Can It Be, That I Should Gain? with the chorus that Chris Tomlin has remixed into the chorus Amazing Love (and he even credits Wesley with the words):
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!

Each of us is a repository of God's incredibly extravagant love expressed to us in Jesus. Were it just his love that he displayed on the cross, that would be remarkable enough. But what continues to stagger me as how much he loves on us simply because he wants to. These accounts are simply from my life and from people I personally know whose lives continue to be touched by his amazing love.

I wrote the following story last spring immediately before Christine's Senior Prom:

The Dress

It's the spring of the year and though it feels like November out there, Easter is but a few days away. But it's not only Eastertide, more importantly to a certain population (if I can even say that) it's also Prom season - the time when all young women venture out into the wilds of the malls and outlet centers in search of that elusive oh-so-perfect dress. Well, preachers' daughters are no different from any other young women and so that it is how it was that last Saturday Linda and Christine (with sister Emma in tow) were at Oakwood Mall shopping for a gown. Linda was working on a $100 budget - which is like trying to find nice champagne on a beer budget. On impulse, when they arrived at the mall, she turned to Christine and said: "Let's pray before we go in and ask for God's favor so that we can find the dress for you." And so they didand made a b-line to Christine's favorite store (Deb's, if you must know).

Now due to Christine's height (or lack thereof) shopping for prom dresses usually is a bit of an ordeal. Everything is way too long or too narrow resulting in a lot of collateral stress. But on Saturday, upon entering Deb's, she went right to the rack and there, as if had been waiting for her, was a beautiful black gown. It fit perfectly. And the tag read $99. When they took it up to the register, the cashier said, "Oh, this one is on sale for 15% off." As Linda related to me later, at that her mouth dropped open and she looked at Christine whose mouth also had dropped open and they both started to laugh...and then cry...and then laugh again - all to the bemusement of this cashier. So not only did they find a beautiful dress they also had enough left over to accessorize. Isn't God good?

We all know that God knows our needs. He knows we need shelter and clothing and food and adequate transportation. But what I think is so awesome about our heavenly Father is that he also cares about our wants. In all the cosmos, with all the need that fills this planet - from the carnage in Darfur to the turmoil in Iraq - he still has more than enough compassion and love to satisfy the innate desire of an 18-year-old young woman to look beautiful for her prom.

Such extravagance makes me want to serve him all my day.