My Letter

     A member of our prodigals prayer group asked us if we were willing to send letters to her grandson in prison. Naturally, I will not give his name or any details. Several of the other ladies have already written him, but I did not ask them what they wrote or what verses they included. I decided to go with my gut, be real, tell our family story, and the scriptures that intersected with those events which helped us most. This is my letter.

Hi,

    I’m a member of your Grandma’s prayer group and remember you from church many years ago, Connie Lamb. My sister and her husband own Flathead Woodwind and Brass from back when you played trumpet. This is not the first time I’ve written to someone in prison, we used to house homeless boys for a while and some of their friends were in prison, but it has been nearly 20 years since then. I have been trying to think of what to say to encourage you. There are some verses in John 6 the Lord used to encourage us when we wondered if our youngest son would be with the rest of our family in heaven.   

     I’m sure your Grandma already told you about the remarkable thing God did for us when we took him to Rimrock for addiction treatment in 2016. Tracy wasn’t required to go, and was so nervous about going I wasn’t sure he would make it to Billings. As he sat by the roadside smoking, he said, “I will never believe in God because I can’t see Him and He can’t see me.” I prayed that God would show him that He was real and that He was good. At that very moment, a car pulled up behind us on the shoulder of the highway. The driver, Ryan, said he was on his way to Helena for an important meeting at work when the Lord told him to turn around and go talk to us. He said he argued with God about it for a few minutes before turning around, yet he arrived in the exact instant Tracy said God couldn’t see him. Ryan encouraged and prayed with us, but the main thing was, God showed all of us He was real. He was good. And he heard us. Back in the car Tracy said, “I will never doubt God again because of what He did for me today.” And I realized, God was reaching for my son and He could not fail to get whatever He was reaching for.

    Just in case I still had doubts, when we got home from Billings there was a letter from my Dad stuck in one of the many cards charities sent him, and the verse on the card happened to be John 6:37 “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never turn away.” The next day’s sermon at church happened to be on the same part of John 6. I now call those verses God’s cement. They were, and still are, encouraging to me, and I have shared them with many others. Jn 6:44 says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up on the last day. 45b says, “Everyone who has heard the Father and learns from him comes to me.”  So here’s the deal, no one naturally wants to come to God, He has to draw them. When He is drawing, (trekkie reference) Resistance is futile. There is no long gap between God’s drawing and being raised up at the last day where God wonders if salvation is going to stick. Not only does He always reach what He’s aiming for, He never lets it go. 

    Tracy died March 22, 2022 of fentanyl, though he had been off drugs for six years. Alcohol was the addiction that kept pulling him back. But the Lord gave him five years of success and sobriety before he reached his appointed time, so Trace could regain his self-respect and the respect of others. God even used the tragedy of fentanyl to get a drug dealer of 40 years off the streets of Helena. He is in Bozeman awaiting transport to Deer Lodge for his 38 year sentence. But the best part is, we have no doubt whatsoever that Tracy is in heaven and we will have all of eternity to spend with him.

    I don’t know if these verses will help you, I just know they helped us. They cemented us to hope when we faced the hardest loss of our lives. You are probably already in the hardest loss of your life, your freedom. But nothing is ever wasted in, what I call, the beautiful economy of God, and I know He won’t waste what you are going through now, and He will never let you go.

 

                                                                                  Connie

Being 5

    Monday was Grandma day with my five year old granddaughter, Jules. For our one on one time, I had found a Thanksgiving themed project we could color, cut into squares, and play as a matching game. I printed two identical sheets, but held off coloring mine until I knew if she wanted to do both. For newly turned five, she is very good at coloring. To my delight, she is also starting to use big words like "basically" and expressions like "last, but not least", and she uses them correctly. Jules told me I could color my paper, but needed to use the same colors she did. Then she told me to stay in the lines, so it would look pretty. Sometimes, by the time she found the right color for me to use, she decided to do that part herself--so it would look pretty. 

    However, I atoned for my presumed lack of coloring ability by scoring some points for my superior skills at using scissors. We played a couple rounds of the matching game before moving on to play dough. If I was a big kid, I might have resented all the unasked for advice from a coloring expert who is only five. But I am not a big kid, I am a Grandma, and when it is Jules turn for Grandma day . . . I am five, too.

Gifted?

     In our study of Revelation chapter 5 this week, we were asked which part of the song in verses 9 and 10 meant the most to us, and why. 

   And they sang a new song, saying, "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seal, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on earth."  

   There is a lot of good stuff in those verses, but the truth that has always blown me away in this passage, is that Jesus bought us for a love gift to his Father. I feel more like a white elephant gift, as in "I see . . . it's a Connie . . . thanks, Son." When I answered the question, almost apologetically, I felt another poem coming on. It is not like my group is asking me to write poems or share them. I feel like one of those desperate souls in youth group, carrying a guitar everywhere, just in case someone asked them to play. And no one did. They knew better. Then again, if poetry is a gift God has given me to help process life, and I want to get the maximum out of this study, perhaps I should not feel guilty for regifting what I received.

Gifted

 

You would not understand

the reason for this

by looking at me, 

or talking to me,

or spending any amount

of time with me,

but I have been purchased by Christ.

At such a high price, too,

His own life's blood.

 

I had gotten myself,

both by nature and desire,

into such a mire of sin 

I was never going to get out.

Then along came Jesus, the Lamb,

who looked at me, loved me,

and for some inexplicable reason,

decided to buy me as a present

for his Father.

Imagine that, me, a present for God.

I understand there will be lots of

us presents under God's tree.

And the tree does not remain

the cross where the Lamb bought us.

When the Father removes

the wrappings of this world

from his gifts, we rest beneath

the Tree of Life.

11/17/24

Property Wrongs

     When I still worked in health care I had some training on abuse, particularly against spouse and children, but there are many other kinds. We learned that abusers are not people with uncontrollable anger issues. Abusers can control their anger at work, with friends, with the cops. That is why, when abuse is disclosed, there are so many people rallying to the support of the accused. They never witnessed any anger episodes. But the real reason people abuse those they supposedly love, is ownership. They feel their family/pet/partner is their property and they have a right to use whatever means possible to control their own possessions. Those who are not abusive recognize this is wrong. People are not property.

    And as I recently pointed out, property rights were the reason the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision said a slave whose owner moves to a state without slavery is not eligible to be freed because, no matter where he resides, a slave is still the property of his owner. Eleven years later, slavery was abolished and the Supreme Court's ruling became a moot point. But it remains black mark in American history because, despite the cultural acceptance of slavery in the southern states, it was wrong. People are not property.

    This brings us back to abortion. Despite tolerance of abortion in much of our culture and the fanatic propaganda of Planned Parenthood, the assumption is the same ol' same ol'--the unborn child is the property of the mother. Though only nine months of what could reasonably be 90 years of life independent of its mother, though the child has different DNA, fingerprints and many other distinctions, the current catchphrase of pro-choice is "My body, my choice." But it is not the mother's body that gets torn apart, it is the baby's body, and they are given no choice in the decision. In the name of reproductive health care, we destroy the health of the reproduced. Legal or not, this has always been wrong. People are not property.

 

 

 

 

 

The Throne Room

    This week's lesson in our Revelation study is chapter four, the throne room of God. I did a brief study of this same passage over the summer and have to admit, it made me feel further from God, instead of closer to Him. I have no experience with kings or throne rooms outside of history books and pictures. I am a writer, but I am not a fiction writer. I do not visualize things well from written descriptions. The way I process a concept is to frame it in words, especially poetry. This is my personal, poetic peek at Revelation four.

 

 

The Throne Room

 

John took me with him 

on his journey of words.

I saw, but could not comprehend

the gem-like rainbow throne

and King who sat upon it.

 

Those around Him,

both creatures and men,

flew and fell

and saw and spoke

in worship--Holy, holy, holy.

 

I had no place 

amidst such splendor,

so different from my earthly life.

Yet now that I have seen it,

I cannot look away.

 

For long ago, that very King

called my name 

and sent His Son

to make me His child,

to make me holy. 

The next time I fly

 to the throne room, 

John will already be there,

like him, I will fall down in worship, 

and see and speak--and stay.

11/11/24

 

 

 

 

To Save the Babies

    Many of the things I voted for in yesterday's election passed. Despite millions of dollars worth of ads condemning Zinke for wasting thousands of dollars, he won. And despite the Tester campaign mass shooting our TVs, phones, and mailboxes with anti-Sheehy ads, Sheehy won. All the votes are not yet counted, but there are not enough still outstanding to change the outcome. Associated Press news, which has spent much of the last few months declaring Kamala ahead in all their campaign coverage, declared Trump had won the presidency, as if they had known it all along. Constitutional initiatives that would change the way Montana handles elections both failed. I did not have strong convictions about those, but definitely lean toward the if it ain't broke don't fix it camp.

    Sadly, the one initiative that did pass, CI 128, Planned Parenthood's plot to restore a great wrong we were finally starting to fix, reopened hunting season on unborn babies. Any size. Any sex. Year round. Montana would not allow such reckless slaughter of our wildlife, but the permit to kill babies is now enshrined in our constitution. I had prayed for the Lord to save the babies. He did not answer in the way I thought, but He did answer in the way He spoke into my thoughts, There is more than one way to save babies. My mind immediately went back to the memory of waiting in the E.R., nine months to the day after Tracy died, while the staff checked out Reed's heart problem. I was not for one minute worried that I would lose my husband that day, the calm, competent atmosphere in the room revealed everything was under control. But I could not resist sending one last "if only" to the Lord--But you could have saved Tracy. And the Lord said, I did. He was right, of course, in all the ways that mattered most to me, He had saved Tracy. Not his by extending his transient, earthly life, but by transporting his eternal soul to heaven.

    I think that is what God means about saving babies. He is taking them to heaven. The choice is between life in the perfection of heaven versus life with a mother who wanted neither the responsibility of her baby nor the inconvenience of her pregnancy. However mysteriously God's perfect sovereignty intertwines with the mother's sinful decision, the outcome is with the Lord. The saint within me both mourns and rejoices for the babies. The mom within me grieves for those women who felt this was their only choice. The sinner within me is gratified knowing that all those who orchestrated this tragedy will answer to God for it. God's purposes have never depended on an election, our cooperation, and certainly not, our constitution. Yet He will use this tragic injustice, as He does all things, for the glory of Christ. State law may no longer protect these little ones, but God has never stopped.