The Fisherman and the Shepherd

What is it?

How does it behave?

What kinds of things does it say?

What’s at the bottom of it? Love, that is.

And how do I do anything-simple things- with all my heart and soul, mind and strength? I’m just not that focused.

I’m distractable.

My heart’s like a tossed salad.

And usually around 2:30 in the afternoon, my mind’s like a casserole. Noodle.

Love? 

I know. 

God tells me everything I need to know about it. He really does, and I can read 1 Corinthians 13 like a recipe; but I need more than that.

“I need more than Your, ‘Love is…’ definition that was read at my wedding decades ago.” He nods because He knows it’s true and, maybe, because He knows something more-something that the kind of love He’s talking about needs if it’s going to be possible.

“What is it?” I’m not asking about love, but about what I need to do it the way He says. It’s beyond me. Really beyond me.

“What is it?” I ask again what I need to love the way He commands, and loves.

He begins to tell me about when, after He rose from the grave, He watched His disciples casting their net and drawing it up empty. He tells me how He called out to them, “Cast your net to the other side of the boat,” and that when it filled with fish, Peter jumped overboard and swam to shore because He knew it was Jesus.  He tells me that He was waiting, with fish cooking on the fire, to feed His fishermen and then to invite Peter to walk with Him.

 “Do you love Me?” He asked Peter.

I want Jesus to ask me as many times as my heart needs, "Do you love me?” I want him to bring me to the bottom of the question.

"What's at the bottom?"

"I am." His answer tells me what I need to love the way He commands.

Grace.

He is; so I may be what only He is.

Grace.

He loves; so that I may love as only He loves.

Grace.

He does; so that I may do what only He can do.

What is it? What do I need to love the way He commands?

His grace. 

He is what I’m not, and makes me what He is. 

That’s what I need to love as He commands.

"Do you love me?" His voice is tender low. He's fishing.

"I love you." I answer as Peter did.

I want Him to keep casting the question to the bottom of my heart.

“Do you love Me?” He casts.

“I love You.” I want Him to fill my heart as full of love as He filled the fishermen’s net with fish.

“Do you love Me?” He’s filling my heart.

“I love You.”

I want to wonder at the fullness of my heart, as the fishermen wondered at the fullness of their net. The net wasn’t broken; and I wonder if a heart full of love for Jesus is a heart that won’t be broken.

I hear the second commandment when He says, “Tend My sheep,” and “Feed My sheep.” I hear it, “Love your neighbaah as yourself.”

Peter didn’t say the likes of what I’ve heard said, “How can I love my neighbor as myself when there’s so much I don’t love about myself?” Surely by then he knew the order of it-the grace.

In The Shepherd's heart there is a fisher of men, and in the fisherman’s heart there is a shepherd of sheep.

That’s what it is.

That’s what I need.

That’s His love. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

Weave Me Holy

His thoughts, He laces them under, pulls them over, and laces them back under the thoughts which thread across my heart. 

Light laces across leaves overhead, breeze pulls over them and leafy shadows two-step a rhythm, gentle across the lawn. 

Me? I'm waiting for the breakfast egg casserole I slid into the oven this morning. I'll pull it out in thirty-five minutes. In the meantime, somehow over the years I've learned to balance a cupful of coffee, a dog biscuit and brush in my right hand; my Bible, journal, and iPhone in my left, and to open the patio door with my pinky finger and knee. 

I write down my thoughts. They shift to prayer sifted by the Light till I glimpse His thoughts.

His thoughts are as fine strands of pure gold and purple. 

Mine are woolly rough. 

He is King with royal heart, and Servant weaving the thoughts of His heart through the thoughts of mine.

I am sheep; and this is how I picture the weave.

Sometimes I forget that God's primary goal isn't to change my circumstances to make me happy, but is to change me to make me holy.

So He weaves; and I feel the tension pull at the rough and thready warp. It's as if my heart's been pre-strung on some loom in preparation for weaving. 

I don't wonder what He's weaving, not really. What I wonder is what it'll look like. 

How will my heart wear His holy? 

What will the fabric of my life look like as my thoughts are taken up by His? 

When they're strengthened? 

Filled in? 

 

Interlaced with His heart?

"Renew my mind," I pray as He weaves. 

"Do not be conformed to this world" He keeps weaving, "but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

"Then transform me, Lord!" I know I need the Weaver's grace to do it-because I can't.

I tend to let the thoughts of others pull mine too hard.Yeah, I'm a people-pleaser in rehab. I've come a long way and am learning to think things like, "I'm not responsible for others' choices," and "As for me, I will serve the Lord-" and mean it because there's this thing I'm hearing in my heart which sounds like rejoicing.

"Are You humming joy as You interlace my heart with Yours?" I know this is what I'm hearing.

"Mm-hmm," He replies happily.

I begin to hum, too. I can't help it. When He weaves, He strums the strings of my heart as He'd strum a harp, and I suspect that the loom-whatever my heart is tied to-will vibrate till He lifts me from it, transformed.

Strands of pure gold runs through sheep wool, and He keeps weaving and humming things like,

"I direct the ways which your heart plans," from Proverbs 16:9.

Purple strands take up wooly thoughts like that.

I turn there in my Bible, and read the words. 

"Ah, Lord! This is Your journal!" Isn't reading His holy word, reading holy journalings? Holy script, from Holy Spirit, from holy heart?

 

It must be. I'm certain, it is.

I weave my pen; loop my letters over the pages of my own journal.

I read in the next verse about what is on the lips of my King- about the purity of what comes from His mouth. About His honesty.

"Righteous lips are My delight, and I love him who speaks what is right." It's written in Proverbs 9:13, and the weft of His own thoughts weave across the warp of mine

I lift my pen to my own journal page, "May I speak what is right."

I'm thinking that Proverbs 16:9 isn't only about the redirection of the plans of my heart, but it's also about the sovereign establishment of my steps toward the fulfillment of the plans of my heart.

If I'm being transformed by the renewing of my mind-and I am-then my heart will rejoice in the heart of my God. The plans of my heart will reflect that. 

He's weaving me as He wove me to be. Only God can interlace time like that. 

He's humming joy and I'm learning to hum it, too.

He's changing me.

He's changing the way I step through life's circumstances, and changing the sound I make as I do it.

"Your heart's just dancing across mine!" I feel it.

His fine gold and purple twirl through my wool as we trip the light together in some wonderful two-step.

In sync with Him and His hum, this is how He weaves holy. 

Breakfast is ready.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

A To-Do- List with no Pressure

I'm a list writer, and sometimes list writers like me write too many things on their lists because there are places to go, people to see, things to do and we get excited till enthusiasm shimmies down the pen and jigs another jot.

Thing is, my enthusiasm often outruns my energy, tends to bully priorities, and requires daily taming.

I try to limit the space I have to make my lists on. So I have a lot of 4" x 4" post-it notes, but I can write pretty small. I can fit a lot on a post-it note. I also know that what I write on a list doesn't hold the power of the last word about what I'll be doing today.

I down-sized to a tiny bitty 2" x 3.5" notebook, about the size of a band-aide. It helps, but doesn't mend. Not really. The real mend isn't writing a smaller list, and it's not even limiting what I fit into my day. No, the real mend is in listening to what's already been written. It's in listening to the list written for this day before it yet was. 

"And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them" (Psalm 139:16).

Ironically, I write my lists during my morning prayer time. I do this because my mind wanders to things I want to be sure I don't forget, like the fact I'm all out of bleach, and that I want to remember to text so-and-so, and I've got a graduation party to plan and I'm missing ingredients I need for dinner tonight. 

I jot these thoughts down. 

Putting them on paper gets them off my mind. Usually. But some times not. 

Sometimes I'm antsy and quickly press past prayer till I say something like, "I don't have the patience to pray," and I want to grab my list and run. 

But I can't. Yeah, there's this wild streak in me, but I've been trained by years of prayer and I just can't, won't, leave my Master's word for the sake of my list any more than a well-trained wild Mustang would run from the cowboy who loves her. 

I glance at the list, and then, "Can I see it?" It's God.

I show Him the one I scratched out on a paper scrap beside my Bible, and ask Him about it. 

Then it happens-I start listening. 

"Does this need to be done today?" He points to some chicken scratch off-center and oddly angled in the upper hand corner of the pink post-it. I scratch it off because it's nothing that needs to be done today. 

"And what about that? And that?" And He prioritizes the list, and I check things off not because they're done, but because they don't need to be done. Not today.

Somehow He uses this process to draw me back into prayer with stillness this time.

"You press me into prayer, not past it." The realization wakens me to His grace. 

My definition of grace, learned long ago, is that He has already done what is being done. I look at the list He's prioritized. I read what He's written about how He's already fashioned this day for me and say, "You've already made the list for today." That's grace.

The grace is that when He looks at my list, He doesn't say, "Ooh, girl, give yourself some grace!" No. He looks at my list and says, "Enter into the grace I give you." 

The grace is that He doesn't look at my list, shake His head, and tell me to write a new one, saying, "Now, on this list only write down what you figure you are able to do undistractedly and wholeheartedly today." 

List makers like me may have received that kind of instruction before, like that's supposed to help? Write another list 'cause this one's got too much on it? I'm trying to pray, here!

Martin Luther once said, "I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." 

I say, "Amen!"

"So," says the One who just prioritized my to-do list "do you really need a list? Are you afraid you'll forget something important? Let something slip?"

"Yeah, I am." I confess it. It's true. "And," I continue, "my to-do list gives me a sense of direction. Security. And when I check things off of my list, I feel accomplished." 

A little shyly, I whisper, "Did I show You the notepad I made yesterday?

He crosses His arms, half smiles a friendly knowing, "And when you accomplish something not on your list?"

"Yeah," He knows me, "I write in down just so I can check it off." There it is.

"What does it mean to you that I've already written about your day, today?" It's a fair question and maybe my answer should roll right off my tongue, but it doesn't. 

I chance a guess, "That I don't need to make another list in my life?"

I'm certain I hear Him chuckle amused. "Make as many lists as you want, if putting your thoughts on paper gets them off your mind."

I know what He's saying. He knows my mind wonders, and He knows I long to be attentive in prayer.

"Listen to Me," He says, "and you will attend to what I've already written."

I hear what He says, and it sounds like, "Listen to Me. I am you're living list."

What's this I feel? Do I dare feel that I gain employment by the grace of what God has accomplished?" 

He answers my thought, "I work in you both to will and to do for My good pleasure." 

"My employment comes from Your grace." I dare say it clearly.

"Rest assured," He says, "I will take care of what matters to Me."
I'm pressed into grace; and pressure is released. I feel it. 

"What matters to You, is of greatest matter to me!" I say it and realize this is His grace. 

Isn't God the fulfillment of His own grace, for His own sake? 

Doesn't He extend this grace to me, and this for His sake as well?

Maybe no one needs to hear me say, "I know how you feel! I'm buried in busyness too! I'm going to work on another to-do list, 'cause this one's got too much on it!"

Maybe, instead, "I know how you feel. I've been there too. Starting today, the only thing I'm writing on my to-do list is, 'Listen.'" 

I'm listening, and what I'm hearing fills me with gratefulness. 

This is my God! He gave me this life! He's filled my day!

Grace is depressurizing.

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

When Whatever "IT" is, is More than I can Do

It is what it is. A bowl of bells a bit shriveled and discolored, but, hey, you should'a seen the other guys! They make these look like champions. 

I take their picture-validate them-while thinking that it's nice to be validated especially when imperfections are obvious even after being photo-shopped. 

Yeah, I photo-shopped this motley bunch. I brought out their colors, their best features, as I said a little prayer of gratefulness to the One who does the same for me, "Thank You for planting me in You, for picking the fruit I bear, and making it beautiful." 

That's all; because isn't it nice to be given a position-a place to grow-and then to have the fruit you bear picked? Even when it's not perfect?

It is. And I'm grateful that the fruit in my life isn't under God's scrutiny as if He's going to toss it away because it's discolored, or small, or even a little saggy.

I'm grateful He remembers than inside is His seed. 

His seed is carried inside the fruit I bear as a branch grafted into Him and, His seed is what counts. 

I don't know, but maybe when the fruit I bear is rejected by others because it doesn't look like what it's "supposed" to look like-maybe that's when I'm most grateful that I don't carry the burden of giving myself grace but that I may bear forth the glory of receiving the grace God gives. 

Seems to me that nothing validates like His grace. 

Seems His grace, that part of God which says, "I will do it" because whatever it is, it's more than I can do, is what redeems the unsightly mess of fruit I bear. 

I bear patience, and often it's a little shriveled up. 

I bear joy and most of the time it looks like one of those misfired 4th of July fireworks that fizzle. 

Love? 

Peace? 

None of it measures up, but isn't that the point? Isn't that what grace is for? Doesn't God alone give grace, to be received by Him alone? 

I think so. 

I know I can't begin to give myself God's grace, so I receive it. 

He gives it and His grace validates that He is the vine, His is the seed, and if He picks my fruit and opens it and scoops the seeds right out from my inner-self and then plants them-

"Ah, my Lord and my God! Your validation is everything all alive and green and growing right within me!"

I take a picture of the basil growing beside the bell peppers. It's a good year for basil. I snip it, lay it over the bell peppers in the blue ceramic colander and move over to the chives. I bring a fragrant bouquet of what grace smells like to me right now and place it on cutting board.

"Thank You for Your grace." His fragrant grace validates the fruit I bear.

I open the bell peppers and the seeds promise more grace.  

Any other grace isn't enough. Only grace so green alive-full-that it's fragrance spills all over me when I brush against it. 

This is the grace offered, and the only reason I can think of is because my loving God knows I need it and that I can never give enough of it to myself. I know because I've tried to give myself grace but it's always a little weak, lacks fragrance, and if I'm honest I'd say that the best of it lasts about as long as basil snipped from the plant till what I'd liked to have claimed as a grace I gave to myself begins to wilt into more of a pardon. 

Grace doesn't wilt. 

Grace remains fragrant, and it's got the fragrance of freedom all over it.

I bend over the cutting board, scoop up a handful of basil and chives, and inhale the kind of spice that smells like freedom, blown in on Spirit wind for the likes of the born-again.

I read about that this morning. "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).

Yeah, that's it. 

That's the spice I hunger for. 

The fragrance of freedom blows on Spirit wind. 

It's grace, the freedom to move with the Spirit. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

White Sauce and Other Things to Serve with Love

Bible, journal, and The New York Times Cook Book.

I haven't watched Sesame Street since I was a child, but wasn't there a game called something like "One of these things is not like the other?" Surely it would be the cook book. Yet, this morning it belongs. It really does. I know many women are on their knees asking questions like, "How do I pray for my husband? How do I pray for my children?" I'm on my knees asking, "What do I do with the chicken thawing on my kitchen counter?"

Thing is, I'm about as seasoned as a roast in a crock pot when it comes to praying for my husband and children. It's not hard. I used to think it was, and I would have gotten on the wagon and read all the Christian how-to books that my friends were reading except there was something that didn't make sense to me about that. Something didn't sit right in my spirit. Now I know what it was.

The Bible is to prayer what the New York Times Cookbook is to food.

Scripture is full of how to pray and what to pray for my husband and children. It's as basic as Bechamel, the white sauce which The New York Times Cook Book says is the basis for countless dishes.

I didn't know about Bechamel Sauce back then, but I did know that the Bible must have the key ingredients for something as basic as how to pray for my household. The inside covers of my Bible look like well-used recipe cards titled Children and Husband.

Praying for my husband is easy.

Praying for my children is easy. 

God makes it easy.

It's no different than praying for friends and other things.

God tells me, word for word, how to pray and what to pray for them. If I prayed nothing other than what is written in His word for my husband and for my children, that would be enough.

The trickier part-the part which needs to be learned and taught-is more than flour, butter, and milk.

It's the part which might read something like, "Heat the butter, add the vegetables and cook five minutes. Add the water, wine and seasonings and simmer five minutes. Wrap the salmon in cheesecloth and place in the boiling liquid. Remove the salmon carefully, unwrap and serve with Bechamel Sauce."  It's called Poached Salmon Steak-for real. Page 246 in The New York Times Cook Book. 

To me, right now, God calls it, "Teach the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste,  homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed."

"What do I serve this with?" I can't help ask the Lord.

"Fruit." He takes me seriously; with a holy smirk.

When I stand in line at the grocery checkout, I read the covers of the magazines in the racks, and no wonder the average woman feels too busy and stressed to put dinner on the table. Nearly every headline tells us that we are! I get stressed just reading about how I should be stressed.

We must be stressed if nearly every magazine tells us how to handle stress.

We must be too busy to enjoy taking our time in the kitchen if nearly every recipe on the rack tells us how to make dinner in 20 minutes. I'm not ready to whip out the cheesecloth, but still.

Stress releases adrenaline, and isn't the release of adrenaline the body's response when it feels the need to run? To flee fast and fight hard?

It is, and God has a few things to say about this.

He says, "Come to Me, and I will give you rest."

He says, "'In quietness and confidence is your strength.' But," He continues, "you would not, and you said, 'No, for we will flee on horses...'" (Isaiah 30:15).

He also says, "Perfect love casts out all fear."

That's it.

Perfect love.

Here it is. The simplest counsel-basic. God's love.

And I'm thinking, "Here it is. The simplest counsel which is too hard-impossible-to follow except when following-worshiping-the One who gives it."

His word supplies my next thought, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

He visits like this.

I come to Him with a suitcase for a heart and He helps me unpack.

He rummages through the things I used to put on, and tosses them over His shoulder into oblivion, saying, "These don't fit you anymore!" Then He unfolds what I folded into my heart long ago, "Take off the old man, and put on the new."

His word, it still fits.

He brings into my thoughts what's packed in my heart. And this is how He changes-renews-my mind.

Fear doesn't fit me. Stress pinches here, tucks there and fits ill.

I've grown, increased, and these days fear is too small. So is stress. I still try to put them on. It's an old habit. But I find I'm more comfortable in His righteousness.

His love fits.

I'm reminded this morning that the question we should be asking isn't how do I pray for my husband and my children, but how do I love my husband and my children.

I've never before brought a cookbook into prayer time. I've planned meals and written grocery lists while praying, but that's different. That's just making notes for later so that I can stay focused on now.

But this-this cookbook? It's 713 pages, and half of them have fallen out. The spine is fragile. The binding glue is flaking. It belonged to my mother, was published in 1961 and not a single recipe has the words "quick," or "simple" or  "fix it and forget it" in the title.

I can't remember the last time I followed a dinner recipe, but after 27 years cooking for my husband and children I've run out of ideas.

Creative juices are bone dry in my kitchen, lately.

Chicken thaws on the counter.

I rummaged through a stack of old cookbooks, found this gem, and now it lays open in the Poultry section, next to Titus 2 because last night's meal was the leftover of pathetic and I'm middle aged.

What does this have to do with anything? One word. I looked it up the other day and was comforted to read that though my senses are in overdrive and my nose wrinkles, lately, at certain cooking smells which I used to call fragrances, I'm not losing my mind.

In the early years, I made my own pasta, stopped just short of grinding my own wheat, and didn't have but a few odd cans of food in my pantry because I cooked fresh.

In the middle years, I bought Kraft Macaroni and Cheese-well, not for dinner-but I've cooked my share of the "slap it together and serve it up in 20 minutes " kind of meals.

Now? I'm on page 194 in the poultry chapter.

Thing is, I'm married to a meat eater. We're like Jack Sprat and his wife. I need divine inspiration because without it, poor Jack Sprat's plate is near to empty and I'm asking God how to love my husband in this season when he lovingly asks me nearly every evening if he can pick up dinner on the way home so that I don't have to cook and, I suspect, so that he can eat well.

"Lord?" I bend over the chicken recipe.

"I cooked fish on a beach."

"And the Father commissioned an angel to cook raisin cakes for Isaiah," I offer.

Then I remember another little cookbook in the pile I rummaged through earlier. "I cooked Abigail's Fig Cake back in the day when I sweetened only with honey."

"Ha! You did!" He exclaims, and then reminds me of when I concocted Healthy Brownies. I scribbled that recipe on page 246 of Deep In The Heart, recipes from "families...friends...and fellow Texans." I marked the page with a pink paperclip and I recall substituting 1 cup of honey for the 2 cups of sugar, and adding dried berries instead of chocolate chips and baking it just above raw, just below done. Gooey.

Then, "Ah, Lord." I pause tender.

"Hmm?" He waits.

"You served bread and wine-supper-the night You were betrayed."

Love serves.

I know what I'm going to do with the chicken.



written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig