when life goes wrong.

June 15, 2016June 15, 2016 by Kathleen Moulton

I am dedicating this post to memory of those killed in Orlando and the family who lost their son at Disney World. May God hold them close.

It’s been the little things in life that has helped make me strong. That’s because of my Christian faith, believing and knowing God is real, and the small ways he whispers his presence into all of our lives.

God is like that.

When he whispers, we pay closer attention.

It’s like last week when my local paper had a photo of a scarlet tanager and I thought, “I’d love to see one of those!” And a day later, I did.

And then the 6 quarts+ of strawberries I’ve picked out of my little 5×5 patch.

And the cardinals I have been coaxing to the feeders for so long.

Or my peony that would only give 2 or 3 blooms each year, and this spring, it was covered with over 70 blooms.

All around you are whispers from God. He wants you to know he is with you.

This doesn’t mean we don’t remember the hurt.

It means we remember the good.

truth for today.

August 24, 2015 by Kathleen Moulton

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

C. S. Lewis; A Grief Observed

6942405164_017e195f55 — Doha Sam / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Sometimes it feels like God is playing some kind of sick game with us.

Or we think he is testing us.

Or punishing us.

All of the above are normal feelings.

But the Bible says God’s ways are not like ours; his thoughts are not like ours.

In other words, God does not think the way we do but He has given us the capacity to trust Him.

God teaches us about ourselves and how much we need Him, but it’s more than that. He wants us to be comforted and that can only happen when we trust him.

Even in death, which seems like the absolute end, He is there.

Go ahead. Ask God if He is real.

He will show you.

God is real.

February 17, 2014February 15, 2014 by Kathleen Moulton

Have you thought about how we can choose hope, courage, kindness, and love?

These qualities are not by accident.

People acknowledge the need for a designer/inventor/creator when it comes to things we use everyday.

Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison …

So why is it so easy to say there is no designer/inventor/creator behind humanity, the stars, planets, and universe?

Did all of the inventions just “happen”?

The fact that humans are capable of hoping, showing courage, being kind, and loving, tells me we were designed with these (and other) attributes hard-wired inside of us.

There is an inventor behind it.

I hope you will believe in God. Because I know for sure, God has helped me endure tragedies, loss, and sadness.

Why wouldn’t he? He knows how I work and what I need.

Photo Credit: ✿ nicolas_gent ✿ / Foter / CC BY-ND

read.

October 23, 2013October 21, 2013 by Kathleen Moulton

Pain is everywhere. We can’t eradicate it. We can only live with it.

But how we live with it is what matters.

Sometimes, I just want to give into it. I want it to do it’s work and be done with it. Those are the times when I can’t … or I refuse … to take another breath. Just let me die.

It’s then when we see God. Not because he always reaches down and pulls us out of the despair, but because he gets down in it with us, and breathes that next breath into us. It comes in many ways. When we least expect it, something catches our eye, makes us smile, and we know God is really there.

“Ann Voskamp’s story is not happily ever after. As a child, her sister was crushed under a truck in front of her and her mother. Consequently, her mother checked herself into a psychiatric hospital and her father couldn’t find God. As an adult, she stood beside her brother-in-law as he buried his first two sons. Voskamp is a wife and mother who does not grin through the pain but battles to believe that in God is joy, and that there are as many gifts amid the grittiness of life as in the moments of celebration.”

http://www.onethousandgifts.com