Order Cathy Messecar’s The Stained Glass Pickup, Glimpses of God’s Uncommon Wisdom at www.stainedglasspickup.com -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable, or order by mail at P. O. Box 232, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email me. Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/ or at www.amazon.com
What others are saying:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul." ---Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom
Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble. Proverbs 28:14
When a friend said they bought a house, a “fixer-upper,” I knew what she meant. The house needed repairs, some major and minor ones. Her house project made me think of people and how throughout life we need adjustments.
My husband is fond of saying he doesn’t want to be too perfect -- needs to “leave room for a little improvement.” Some lives need a little some a lot.
Companions are a whole lot easier to get along with when we realize we’re all works of art and everybody’s clay is still wet. In life, I can help people change the TV channel and that’s about it. As one writer said, we can’t be someone’s Holy Spirit.
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott tells about a woman whose husband made a habit of coming home drunk. Sometimes he’d pass out on their front lawn in the middle of the night, but the wife didn’t want their neighbors seeing his stupors.
Each time he passed out in the yard, the ashamed wife pulled him inside. Finally an elderly woman advised, “Honey, leave him where Jesus flang him.”
As tough as it is on family members, sometimes the wayward person needs to wake up in the ditch of the chaos they created. When one suffers the consequences of bad behavior, they may ask God to map the rest of their lives. When God grasps their steering wheel, he helps navigate to higher ground.
My late cousin Danny decided to recommit his life to God and make amends for quite a few years of poor choices. Later, he told me about his phone calls to friends and family to ask their forgiveness. He related some of their responses. “They were happy to hear from me, and about the good things in my life.” In his late 50’s Danny died in his sleep, peacefully—his house in order.
A new house needs upkeep; a neglected house may warrant an overhaul. God, the One who laid the foundations of the world, is the keeper of a plumb line that can align lives. Keep regular appointments with Him because we’re all fixer-uppers.
You may contact Cathy at www.stainedglasspickup.com
Friday, May 26, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
Worries and Tensions
Announcing the debut of The Stained Glass Pickup, Glimpses of God’s Uncommon Wisdom by Cathy Messecar –Leafwood Publishers / ACU Press
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom says about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at http://www.stainedglasspickup.com/ -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box 232, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email Cathy at writecat@consolidated.net Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Fears cast shadows on my childhood. After witnessing a boating accident and near drowning, I became afraid of water. Another fear arose when an Arkansas radio station warned citizens about wild dogs skirting my hometown. My vivid imagination became a curse.
Any Fido became suspect. In my mind, snarling, fang-flashing canines lurked behind each bush on my path to school. After no attacks occurred the six years I trekked to the school, reality became larger than my flight of imagination.
Several years ago, I taught a class on phobias. If fifty people listed all the worries that cause them hand wringing, the varied inventory would have a high tally.
God gave humans the emotion of fear as a protective measure, but unreasonable fears destroy from the inside out. The same day of my Bible class about fears, my husband and I delivered hay to a feed store in Tomball. We finished unloading in the dark, and the hay truck had to be jump started.
The generator had broken and drained the battery of power. That meant no headlights to guide us home. This was an old flatbed cabover truck. A cabover truck engine is beneath the seat of the truck, making the windshield nearly flush with the front bumper. Passengers stare straight down at the pavement from the windshield.
On the winding back roads, my husband turned off the headlights and drove by offset vision, a military technique he’d learned. He looked up at the black tree line against the slightly lighter sky and steered the truck.
He never left the pavement. My clutched hands never left the edge of the seat. Neck muscles tensed like petrified wood. The dark road mesmerized my eyes. Thirty minutes became a year. Horror reigned until we glided safely into our driveway.
Fears flee when trust in God is practiced. “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11).
Contemporary lyrics encourage “you raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be.”
Teaching a Bible class about fear is not the same as combating fear. When fears threaten, when tension mount, when generators fail and lights go out, don’t’ focus on the darkness, look up.
You may contact Cathy at http://www.stainedglasspickup.com/
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom says about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at http://www.stainedglasspickup.com/ -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box 232, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email Cathy at writecat@consolidated.net Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Fears cast shadows on my childhood. After witnessing a boating accident and near drowning, I became afraid of water. Another fear arose when an Arkansas radio station warned citizens about wild dogs skirting my hometown. My vivid imagination became a curse.
Any Fido became suspect. In my mind, snarling, fang-flashing canines lurked behind each bush on my path to school. After no attacks occurred the six years I trekked to the school, reality became larger than my flight of imagination.
Several years ago, I taught a class on phobias. If fifty people listed all the worries that cause them hand wringing, the varied inventory would have a high tally.
God gave humans the emotion of fear as a protective measure, but unreasonable fears destroy from the inside out. The same day of my Bible class about fears, my husband and I delivered hay to a feed store in Tomball. We finished unloading in the dark, and the hay truck had to be jump started.
The generator had broken and drained the battery of power. That meant no headlights to guide us home. This was an old flatbed cabover truck. A cabover truck engine is beneath the seat of the truck, making the windshield nearly flush with the front bumper. Passengers stare straight down at the pavement from the windshield.
On the winding back roads, my husband turned off the headlights and drove by offset vision, a military technique he’d learned. He looked up at the black tree line against the slightly lighter sky and steered the truck.
He never left the pavement. My clutched hands never left the edge of the seat. Neck muscles tensed like petrified wood. The dark road mesmerized my eyes. Thirty minutes became a year. Horror reigned until we glided safely into our driveway.
Fears flee when trust in God is practiced. “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11).
Contemporary lyrics encourage “you raise me up to walk on stormy seas. I am strong when I am on your shoulders. You raise me up to more than I can be.”
Teaching a Bible class about fear is not the same as combating fear. When fears threaten, when tension mount, when generators fail and lights go out, don’t’ focus on the darkness, look up.
You may contact Cathy at http://www.stainedglasspickup.com/
Friday, May 12, 2006
Myths of Motherhood
Announcing the debut of The Stained Glass Pickup, Glimpses of God’s Uncommon Wisdom by Cathy Messecar –Leafwood Publishers / ACU Press
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom say’s about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at www.stainedglasspickup.com -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email me. Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Myths of Mothering
Years ago, we brought our firstborn child home from the hospital near the end of September. Before bedtime, I swaddled Russell, a big kid (9 pounds, 1oz) like an apple in a dumpling. That first night in my care, he wore a long-sleeved footed sleeper with a new flannel blanket tucked securely around him. Just to be sure the cocooned infant didn’t catch a chill, I placed one more blanket over him. Throughout the night, he fretted between feedings.
His second day at home, his paternal grandmother, Nancy, a registered nurse, visited and I told her, “He’s been a bit fussy.”
She took one look at the layered Eskimo clothing which could have seen him through the Ice Age, and gently suggested, “I think he may be too warm.”
She unwound him like an Ace bandage. After the de-clothing, my son had on light pajamas and a whisper of a blanket, and he slept peacefully until his midnight feeding. Mothering doesn’t come naturally.
New mothers face many challenges such as throwing out the bath water without the baby. They need good coaches such as my mother-in-law, my mom, and my friend Louise Blake. Steven and Janet Bly list the myths of motherhood in How to be a Good Mom. One myth -- “mothering is easy.”
Become a mother and a permanent call button may as well be surgically implanted. Proverbs 31:28 says “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” One woman says her children just rise up and call. The journal of an honest mother will reveal tears, exhaustion, emotional lows and trampoline-high joys. Though not always an easy calling, mothering gives better rewards than frequent flyer miles. Just add an “s” and the “miles” of mothering add up to frequent “smiles.” Joy is embedded in parenting children.
Another myth the Bly’s target is that “mothering is always fun.” Columnist Michelle Cuthrell of Alaska had a list of ideals for the first six months of life with her new child. She presumed her routine would include morning devotional, healthy home-cooked meals, her clothing and hair — pristine, and all chores finished by noon. She also allotted a full night’s sleep for her and her husband, on leave from Iraq. The darling infant arrived and the plan went kaput. She wondered why anyone trusted them to take an innocent baby home from the hospital.
After three weeks of nothing in real life meshing with Fantasy Island Motherhood, Michelle Cuthrell wrote a new prospectus: “Love and provide for my baby; sleep when you can.”
Another myth is “a mother is repaid for all she does.” That is true of the hereafter, but for here and now, most mothers will settle for a smidgen of gratitude. Mothers are fever reducers, attitude adjustors, security guards, laundresses, referees, chefs and bottle washers. This weekend, give the chief laundress a break.
Gift suggestions for Mothers Day: Write a note to your mother; retell of interaction when she guided your tennis shoes onto the right path. Plan a one-on-one time to cherish her. Ask her to tell you stories from her girlhood. Or perhaps, you many need to gift your mother with forgiveness. Help mom with a long-delayed chore she has put off. Or plan a “don’t-lift-a-hand-day” for your mother. Allow her time to read, take a nap, garden or shop.
God’s good plan causes mothers to be recycled – recycled through the lives of the children they parent. This weekend, make time to thank the women influencers in your life.
You may contact Cathy at www.stainedglasspickup.com
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom say’s about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at www.stainedglasspickup.com -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email me. Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Myths of Mothering
Years ago, we brought our firstborn child home from the hospital near the end of September. Before bedtime, I swaddled Russell, a big kid (9 pounds, 1oz) like an apple in a dumpling. That first night in my care, he wore a long-sleeved footed sleeper with a new flannel blanket tucked securely around him. Just to be sure the cocooned infant didn’t catch a chill, I placed one more blanket over him. Throughout the night, he fretted between feedings.
His second day at home, his paternal grandmother, Nancy, a registered nurse, visited and I told her, “He’s been a bit fussy.”
She took one look at the layered Eskimo clothing which could have seen him through the Ice Age, and gently suggested, “I think he may be too warm.”
She unwound him like an Ace bandage. After the de-clothing, my son had on light pajamas and a whisper of a blanket, and he slept peacefully until his midnight feeding. Mothering doesn’t come naturally.
New mothers face many challenges such as throwing out the bath water without the baby. They need good coaches such as my mother-in-law, my mom, and my friend Louise Blake. Steven and Janet Bly list the myths of motherhood in How to be a Good Mom. One myth -- “mothering is easy.”
Become a mother and a permanent call button may as well be surgically implanted. Proverbs 31:28 says “Her children rise up and call her blessed.” One woman says her children just rise up and call. The journal of an honest mother will reveal tears, exhaustion, emotional lows and trampoline-high joys. Though not always an easy calling, mothering gives better rewards than frequent flyer miles. Just add an “s” and the “miles” of mothering add up to frequent “smiles.” Joy is embedded in parenting children.
Another myth the Bly’s target is that “mothering is always fun.” Columnist Michelle Cuthrell of Alaska had a list of ideals for the first six months of life with her new child. She presumed her routine would include morning devotional, healthy home-cooked meals, her clothing and hair — pristine, and all chores finished by noon. She also allotted a full night’s sleep for her and her husband, on leave from Iraq. The darling infant arrived and the plan went kaput. She wondered why anyone trusted them to take an innocent baby home from the hospital.
After three weeks of nothing in real life meshing with Fantasy Island Motherhood, Michelle Cuthrell wrote a new prospectus: “Love and provide for my baby; sleep when you can.”
Another myth is “a mother is repaid for all she does.” That is true of the hereafter, but for here and now, most mothers will settle for a smidgen of gratitude. Mothers are fever reducers, attitude adjustors, security guards, laundresses, referees, chefs and bottle washers. This weekend, give the chief laundress a break.
Gift suggestions for Mothers Day: Write a note to your mother; retell of interaction when she guided your tennis shoes onto the right path. Plan a one-on-one time to cherish her. Ask her to tell you stories from her girlhood. Or perhaps, you many need to gift your mother with forgiveness. Help mom with a long-delayed chore she has put off. Or plan a “don’t-lift-a-hand-day” for your mother. Allow her time to read, take a nap, garden or shop.
God’s good plan causes mothers to be recycled – recycled through the lives of the children they parent. This weekend, make time to thank the women influencers in your life.
You may contact Cathy at www.stainedglasspickup.com
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Pool of Mercy
Announcing the debut of The Stained Glass Pickup, Glimpses of God’s Uncommon Wisdom by Cathy Messecar –Leafwood Publishers / ACU Press
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom says about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at www.stainedglasspickup.com -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email me. Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Pool of Mercy
Imagine you’re holding your newborn son. Perfect in every way. No treasure rivals a healthy child. But a few weeks later, an uneasy feeling invades. Your son turns his head toward sounds, but his eyes don’t focus on anything—not even your face.
To the parents and blind son of John 9, blindness became as familiar as daily bread. The son never saw a minnow or the faint yellow of fresh butter. The parents never witnessed his wonder at seeing a puppy or a lightening bolt.
By adulthood, darkness underwrote his world. Light—he had no basis of comprehension besides descriptive words. Around Jerusalem, this tentative man was well-known. Locals could tell any newcomer, “Oh, he’s been around for years—blind since birth.”
One day, Jesus and his disciples passed near him. Jesus noticed the man and his disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”
Perhaps the sightless man overheard Jesus’ answer. “Neither . . . this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (9:3). Jesus continued, “Night is coming, when no man can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (9:4-5).
God—on display in a life. Jesus started the ball rolling, with mud balls. Instead of immediate creation of sight, Jesus mixed a Sabbath-mud-and-saliva placebo, and smeared it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam.”
Wherever the blind man was in Jerusalem, he obediently groped his way toward the pool. Did he encounter curious locals? Did hecklers ridicule his mud pack? Did brats jeer his stumbling walk or try to trip him? Did citizens pity him, thinking that both his mind and sight were now gone? Whatever he encountered, he pushed on to the pool of mercy.
When he reached the water, did he kneel and dip his hands in the water? Or with abandon splash into the pool, dipping his head beneath the surface? Did he rise, flinging locks, shaking off droplets, wiping watery dirt from his face and eyes?
With the soil of the earth washed away, his eyes opened. God met him there. Sweet sight. A spectrum of color. Adrenalin rush. Words and objects connected. For the first time, he had a live picture-dictionary of his vocabulary.
On that Sabbath, the blind man saw a mural—his parent’s faces, shimmering water, scowls from religious zealots, the synagogue. Yes, ugliness also treaded the boundaries of this healing. The Sabbath-Nazis aligned Jesus with sinners. Their anger stemmed from his claims to the title of Messiah and his so-called Sabbath offences.
In the first slew of questions from the religious leaders, the healed man couldn’t identify Jesus. He’d never seen him. After more questions later that day, still without a face-to-face meeting, the man declared Jesus was a prophet.
Then he met Jesus. The sweetest Sabbath sighting of all.
Afterwards, cranky religious leaders asked further arbitrary questions of the healed man. He confirmed Jesus’ deity with his notable evidence-reply, “I was blind but now I see!”
The old Hebrew-assignment is our spiritual calling today: “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness” Isaiah 42:6-7.
Is someone stumbling, groping for a path, looking for the Way? Invite them to God and his pool of mercy.
www.stainedglasspickup.com
Thom Lemmons, co-winner of the 2006 Christy award for Christian fiction King’s Ransom says about Cathy’s new book The Stained Glass Pickup:
"Cathy Messecar finds temples wherever she goes: in a chapel on a university campus, at her children's bedsides, in a church full of rustling Bible pages... or on a bale of hay, in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler, in the aisle of a grocery store. Like a long-ago Teacher walking the dusty roads of Galilee, she can spot the outlines of the sublime camouflaged by the ordinary. Her images will touch your imagination; her words will touch your heart; her visions of eternity will touch your soul."
Order today at www.stainedglasspickup.com -- a hard back gift book, $10.99 plus S & H, tax if applicable or by mail at P. O. Box, Montgomery, TX 77356 or email me. Outside United States order from http://www.leafwoodpublishers.com/
Pool of Mercy
Imagine you’re holding your newborn son. Perfect in every way. No treasure rivals a healthy child. But a few weeks later, an uneasy feeling invades. Your son turns his head toward sounds, but his eyes don’t focus on anything—not even your face.
To the parents and blind son of John 9, blindness became as familiar as daily bread. The son never saw a minnow or the faint yellow of fresh butter. The parents never witnessed his wonder at seeing a puppy or a lightening bolt.
By adulthood, darkness underwrote his world. Light—he had no basis of comprehension besides descriptive words. Around Jerusalem, this tentative man was well-known. Locals could tell any newcomer, “Oh, he’s been around for years—blind since birth.”
One day, Jesus and his disciples passed near him. Jesus noticed the man and his disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?”
Perhaps the sightless man overheard Jesus’ answer. “Neither . . . this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (9:3). Jesus continued, “Night is coming, when no man can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (9:4-5).
God—on display in a life. Jesus started the ball rolling, with mud balls. Instead of immediate creation of sight, Jesus mixed a Sabbath-mud-and-saliva placebo, and smeared it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam.”
Wherever the blind man was in Jerusalem, he obediently groped his way toward the pool. Did he encounter curious locals? Did hecklers ridicule his mud pack? Did brats jeer his stumbling walk or try to trip him? Did citizens pity him, thinking that both his mind and sight were now gone? Whatever he encountered, he pushed on to the pool of mercy.
When he reached the water, did he kneel and dip his hands in the water? Or with abandon splash into the pool, dipping his head beneath the surface? Did he rise, flinging locks, shaking off droplets, wiping watery dirt from his face and eyes?
With the soil of the earth washed away, his eyes opened. God met him there. Sweet sight. A spectrum of color. Adrenalin rush. Words and objects connected. For the first time, he had a live picture-dictionary of his vocabulary.
On that Sabbath, the blind man saw a mural—his parent’s faces, shimmering water, scowls from religious zealots, the synagogue. Yes, ugliness also treaded the boundaries of this healing. The Sabbath-Nazis aligned Jesus with sinners. Their anger stemmed from his claims to the title of Messiah and his so-called Sabbath offences.
In the first slew of questions from the religious leaders, the healed man couldn’t identify Jesus. He’d never seen him. After more questions later that day, still without a face-to-face meeting, the man declared Jesus was a prophet.
Then he met Jesus. The sweetest Sabbath sighting of all.
Afterwards, cranky religious leaders asked further arbitrary questions of the healed man. He confirmed Jesus’ deity with his notable evidence-reply, “I was blind but now I see!”
The old Hebrew-assignment is our spiritual calling today: “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness” Isaiah 42:6-7.
Is someone stumbling, groping for a path, looking for the Way? Invite them to God and his pool of mercy.
www.stainedglasspickup.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
