Ministering Woman

I am a ministering woman.

I am like the tree planted by the rivers of water.

My roots hold firmly to the vine of the true Husbandman and the leaves of my branches never wither, but continually prosper.

My feet are beautiful in the eyes of my Master regardless of the ugliness of the

calluses and painful soreness of their bones due to the weight of the burdens

I carry to my Lord on behalf of those I minister to.

My hands hold the oil of healing and the ointment of deliverance.

These precious things were the gifts I received by my Savior for the times I

spent in the wilderness enduring rejection, ridicule, disappointment, lack,

sorrow and every kind of persecution.

As I submitted them, He collected my tears and my pain, received them onto

His Mercy Seat and burned them as an offering unto Himself.

What was left was a mixture of the best of me anointed by His Holy Spirit,

then this life-giving balm was placed in my alabaster box to break open and pour out onto those whom I daily encounter.

My eyes are mirrors that reflect the Holy One's face to others.

They see Him through my gentle smile and shared tears.

My eyes do not condemn regardless of the sin I view on the surface but look to

the condition of the heart of each one I minister to.

Like my Savior, I am not sent to administer judgment, but to minister the gift

of salvation and grace.

My mouth is filled with encouragement and life.

I lift up the countenance of those who listen with words of love that are as easy

to swallow as honey from the honeycomb.

When needed, the King give me words to speak that exhort or correct so that

restoration can come.

I am a ministering woman.

My heart is shed abroad with the love of God.

I listen to His quiet unction and with confidence in His ability to supply,

I go forward into the day bearing His equipping to be salt and light to a dying

world, eagerly believing in His miraculous power to do exceeding abundantly

above anything I could ever imagine.

I am a ministering woman.

I belong to the Most High God, Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

I belong to those He allows me to minister to, as the servant He prepared me to be.

I am a ministering woman.

I am a writer.

Sifting through the layers of me, I had to find what my true voice was. It took awhile to get rid of the bulls--t, the what I wanted to be's, the what I'd never be's, the too bad I'll always be's...and finally to the what I truly can be, before I heard a voice I almost didn't recognize. It started out faint and grew. It became louder, clearer and real to me. Then I did recognize it. It is my voice, it is me. It is my words, my experience, my failures, my successes, my doubts, my fears, my loves, my hates, my reality. I am now looking for the courage to share it.

--VW.

Grace is...

...unmerited favor, kindness, a gift. Living in grace gives us help we don't deserve; favor we cannot earn. Living in God's grace makes us able to endure life's difficulties and not give up. It's hard sometimes not to give up, but grace can reinforce our resolve. God can cover us with His wings of protection and grant us His favor, attention, consideration and enable us to get through the hardships of our lives. God's grace is sufficient.

...VW.

The Final Frontier

Walking through a mall with a friend recently, I noticed a group of 20-somethings huddled together as if unified toward a common goal...feverishly tapping on the latest technology...Blackberrys, iPhones, PDA's of every sort. I nudged my friend and asked her if she had ever seen anything like it. She, being 40-something like me, said she had...unfortunately. Her experience had been at her home watching her teen aged daughter and her friends. She said they were all sitting in her living room next to each other, television glaring, with the sound turned up high...looking down at their IM devices...texting...other people, of course. She said the "clicking" of their fingers on the keys of their phones was louder than the television. In some strange way, I told my friend, it sounded like a surreal experience...or at least something out of a Stephen King novel.

Truth be told, I am awe-struck by technology. Little gadgets that can send messages around the world in a blink of an eye, keep time in 40 different countries, navigate directions to a favorite pizza joint, access e-mail (which is a wonder in and of itself) and play 1200 favorite "iTunes" all available for just a few hundred dollars at any reputable retail store. But, I am something of a skeptic. I grew up with "snail mail"...didn't own a computer until I was 30 years old...grasped the concepts quickly, but with trepidation, and I miss getting real, honest-to-goodness letters in my mailbox every now and then. I'm not a techie, but I'm not a dinosaur either-I have a cool cell phone, too. But there is something scary to me about our world growing more "global" and our personal space bubbles getting bigger...all the time. How is it we can send e-mail, text messages, IMs and the like, in nano-seconds, but we are beginning to lose our conversational skills? When was the last time you called someone on the phone just to "talk"...or wrote a letter to someone special that didn't have emoticons included?

I don't know, it's just a thought...

We just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the moon landing which happened in July, 1969. It was the summer before my second grade school year and I remember sitting in amazement in front of an old Zenith television console in our living room as my family and I witnessed the great event. I remember how proud we all felt as the now late Walter Cronkite talked us through each task of the astronauts as they readied themselves for the landing. The American public at large knew "squat" about technology in those days. That kind of stuff was for scientists, military and "egg-heads" with horn-rimmed glasses. But we were astounded by the sheer symmetry of the lunar module, the astronauts' cool suits...the sounds that were being broadcast to us from space.
It was an amazing time. It was the beginning, at least to me, of our long lasting love of all things technical. We climbed uphill from there reaching technological heights that we have witnessed to this day.

My fear about our seeking more and better technology, however, is that somewhere along the way we became more isolated as people, more distant in our human relationships...less able to interact on a one-to-one basis. Our personal space, for all of our gadgets, has enlarged. We artificially communicate with techie toys, but we no longer interact with our words, our hands, our hearts...Could our human interaction be the frontier we must now explore?

I don't know...it's just a thought.