Doors of Understanding

For the last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about doors. It’s funny because the slogan for the Modern Languages and Cultures Department where I work is: “Languages Open Doors.” So the topic of doors is always fresh in my mind as I daily walk the hallways of our building and see the pictures of doors and the slogan posted on the bulletin board at a rather prominent place.

I happen to believe that languages do open many doors…at least that has been true to me ever since I learned English in my early twenty’s. For the last few days, however, I’ve been mostly focused on a different language that opens not many doors, but the door to all other doors: the language of prayer.

After an eventful week that began with my heart caught up into a relentless whirlpool of stress and fear that I thought impossible to escape, constant prayer has opened the door into a much more manageable course on a smoother current. But the thing is that prayer is not so much the key, but rather it is the language that helps me get more of an understanding of the heart of The One Who actually opens the door. By praying without ceasing, the Lord reveals Himself to me and allows me a glimpse into who He is and how He operates…into the quiet waters of His presence…so I can enjoy the peace that transcends all understanding.

Christ opens the doors…not me. It is His plan…not mine. The doors as well as the plan belong to Him, and Him alone. But prayer brings me closer to Him, which in turns opens the door of understanding. There is no door that will shut when He has opened it; or open when He has shut it. I just place myself in His hands and let Him open them and close them as we walk together.

To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of the One who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What He opens, no one will shut; and what He shuts, no one will open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Revelation 3: 7-8

May we learn the language of prayer as we allow the Lord to open and close all the necessary doors so we can follow His Path.

Stay in the Present!

Change is not an easy thing. Depending on your level of tolerance for uncertainty and on your ability to adapt, change can be actually terrifying. Particularly for people who seek stability and enjoy control (ME) seasons of change can be utterly stressful and anxiety ridden.

As my family is entering one of those dreaded seasons of great change, I’m reminded of the importance of keeping my eyes on the One Who Remains the Same! 

In order to do that, I need to meditate on the reason I experience fear when change falls upon my horizon. And the reason is quite simple. Fear rears its head when experiencing change because change is distracting and it makes me turn my eyes away from the Lord, away from His presence in the present and causes me to look/focus on the future. 

The Lord is the stability that I seek. He is the only one who can provide it. So when I turn my eyes away from Him, it is no wonder things begin to fall apart.  The thing is that He provides that peace that comes from the stability of His presence usually as we remain focused on this other detail: the present. 

Jesus tells us not to worry about anything and not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will carry its own problems, which added onto today’s become a burden impossible to bear. (Matthew 6: 34)
He wants us to rely on Him, for He is today. Christ is the Lord of all. Past, present and future belong to Him… but He wants us to stay focused on the present. Even though He is the One Who Was, Who Is and Who Is to Come (Revelation 1: 8)…His name is The Great I AM not the great I will (Exodus 3: 14). The implication of the present resides in His very name!

Therefore, when everything around me begins to shift and shake, and fear threatens to overpower me, I must drop it all, go to the One Who Never Changes and ask Him to help me not get ahead of myself...ask Him to help me stay centered on today. One day at a time, becomes then, a God-given philosophy worth practicing.

My prayer for all who are going through change right now…including myself…is that God may reveal Himself to us with every step we take, bringing us the comfort of His presence in the present and giving us the strength to not fear His plan, for His plan is perfect, even when we don’t understand it.

As He Has Purposed

Trials and hardship are like spring time for trust. Plain and simple…it is during seasons of pain that our trust in the Lord blossoms best.

Not so much while everything is going according to our plan…not really…it is mostly when the earth under our feet quakes, and we lose our footing, that we remember we have an Almighty Father who can rescue us from our fall. The thing is that Our Heavenly Father is always here with us…in the good times as well as in the bad times…however, we tend to forget about His presence when we cruise through life on a smooth road, with the top down in a bright sunny day.

In the seasons of extravagant bliss and lush abundance we think we are the ones behind the wheel of that convertible. And, although we acknowledge our blessings and enjoy the bounty in gratitude…we often take credit and toy with the thought that perhaps, there was something, even if so small, that we did that turned on the sun that warms our skins or that produced the ripe fruits that delight our taste.

In reality, however, neither in hardship nor in comfort there is much we can control. There is only One God who is Sovereign above all:

I am the Lord, and there is no other;

apart from me there is no God.

I will strengthen you,

though you have not acknowledged me,

so that from the rising of the sun

to the place of its setting

people may know there is none besides me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other.

I form the light and create darkness,

I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the Lord, do all these things. Isaiah 45: 5-7

He is clear, both the prosperity as well as the disaster belong to Him and He can turn it all into good for His glory. He is the Divine Designer, the Maker, the Potter…the Architect of all the days of our lives. Our path is in His hand and our plan fulfills His purpose,

The Lord Almighty has sworn,

“Surely, as I have planned, so it will be,

and as I have purposed, so it will happen. 

Isaiah 14: 24

Our job is to remain in constant communication through prayer, so the wisdom of His design flows through us and the Light of His Spirit guides our every step. No matter what happens, we hang on to His hand and let Him be at the wheel…as the driver…as we call out for His presence to be evident in the bumpy rides as well as in the smooth cruise.

May we let go and be able to enjoy the ride…the ride of our lives!

Happy Birthday Grant

“How can you love so much, someone you just met?” I remember hearing this question a long time ago in a movie. The question popped into my mind a couple of years later when I held Grant in my arms just seconds after he was born.

Where does the love you feel for your newborn come from?

The feeling lives in my heart completely untouched, pure…intact.

Today, fourteen years ago since that moment when I first saw my son, I still don’t comprehend the depth of the feeling or understand how it emerges, but I do know it is God’s way to illustrate, even if just faintly, the kind of love He feels for us…His children…His beloved.

It has no explanation. Love just is…like God, for He is Love…unique and unexplainable. So it is the love a mother has for her child…never ending.

As Grant celebrates his birthday today, I am reminded of the gift that He is to my life…unmeasurable…and I praise God for He has allowed me the privilege of coming one step closer to imagining what love really is…unfathomable.



Happy Birthday to Grant…and happy anniversary to me, of the day I began to get what love really is.

The Gift of a Season

Thinking about the dance of the seasons and the gifted nature of the child of God I can’t help but notice that the seasons are, indeed, gifts as well.

The seasons of our lives, just as the seasons of the earth, are intended for a divine purpose. Our God, the God of Order has designed them to create a perfect balance that meets every need of the body and of the soul.

Each turn of the Earth brings about a change that in time evolves into an element of nature that provides a unique particle of life. Even winter has its purpose:

As the rain and the snow

come down from heaven,

and do not return to it

without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater… (Isaiah 55: 10)

Therefore, the winter seasons of our lives have a purpose as well. I believe that journeying through a winter time has the purpose of refocusing. As it gathers us inside a shelter and shuts us out from the world outside, winter is destined to isolate us from the distractions when our hearts have wandered and we need to be redirected toward home. We hunker down and travel through the trial, but we also move closer to Him as we fix our eyes on the One who makes sense of it all.

That’s where and how we find the gift in the harshest of seasons…we find it when we realize that the snow that gently falls and piles up, keeping us trapped in our own deception in time becomes the much needed water that eventually makes our spirit resurface to a field filled with new blooms…the blooms of hope that will open up into the blossoms of trust:

But I trust in you, Lord;

I say, “You are my God.”

My times are in your hands… (Psalm 31: 14-15a)

But Even If He Does Not...

Recently, I heard a Bible teacher on the radio say: “Faith does not demand a miracle.” Don’t ask me the teacher’s name, but he was talking about one of those passages in the Bible that really are seminal when dealing with trusting God. It was the moment when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were about to be thrown into the blazing furnace because of their refusal to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar’s statue:

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3: 16-18

The part that prompted the expression, “Faith does not demand a miracle” was when the young men said “But even if He does not…”

I had to get out of the car before the teacher could fully make his point, but to me, the expression means that trusting God´s promises doesn´t mean demanding the outcome we expect or want.

As I contemplate the fact that for as long as we are on this world, it is inevitable to travel through different seasons in our lives, this phrase made me think about how I live out my faith and trust in Christ. It made me ask myself: Do I demand the miracle?

I think I do…

I expect the outcome to be what I want, and I forget that God is in charge, not me. I forget that when in the midst of a season of trial, my job is to trust God´s promises, not to try to manipulate the situation so my level of comfort is unchanged. When facing the blazing furnace, my job is to remain faithful, with a heart that belongs to God and a pair of eyes that stay fixed on His presence…no matter what the outcome is…even if He does not give me the solution I want…even if I don’t get the miracle I hoped for.

I believe that is the state of true contentment: having a faith that does not demand a miracle, but a faith that expects God to be who He says He is and to do what He says He can do.

The First Step

Not all seasons are the same. In nature, they are completely distinct. My very favorite, summer, is a season of warmth and growth. Over a powerful green canvas, God paints magnificent pictures full of color and life. Then in comes autumn and even if for a brief moment, the colors explode covering the canvas with pure awe. Shortly after, winter enters turning the canvas blank again…bare and white…as if God had taken an eraser to wipe off the lively pictures of the previous seasons, in preparation for a new master piece: spring!

The seasons in our lives are just as different. Joy, sadness, silliness, contentment, loss, loneliness, depression, impatience, insecurity, fear, love…are all colors on our canvas that the Divine Painter mixes in perfect mastery to create the moments that constitute our lives…the seasons of our lives.

In the seasons of trial, trouble, hardship and tribulation, the darkest shades dominate the palette. As in the short days of winter, gloom quickly falls upon in the seeming absence of light. It is very common during this season to fall into a deep ocean of despair where the clutches of fear grab us and push our heads under water. We drown in the current of panic, losing sight of the horizon. We uselessly toss and flap our arms hoping to push ourselves up, but the waves of worry overpower us.

The greatest temptation is to give in to hopelessness.

However, there is another temptation which can yield just as damaging results as hopelessness: the illusion of self-sufficiency.

Sometimes, some of us resist falling into the trap of believing that all is lost by falling into the trap of thinking we can solve it all…that we are in control. We manipulate, concoct and strategize. We spend so much of our time thinking the situation through, searching for answers, steps, procedures, processes that will take us out unharmed, back to the shore, that we lose sight of the truth. And the truth is that we invest endless hours trying to fix things, but often none of those long hours are spent in seeking the Lord. We get so caught up into our plan that we forget it is God’s plan. We get so busy designing venues and possibilities that we forget it is God’s design. We become so self-absorbed into our own little world that we forget we belong to the family of God and He is in control.

Today, regardless of what season of our lives we might be stepping into, let us remember that the first step should always be prayer. Let us forget about everything else, and first, let’s get down on our knees to contact He who knows what each of our days will bring. Let’s seek Him first…and may the only thing we try to fix be our eyes upon His face.