Grazing on Grace

A beautiful snowfall last night left us wakening to a winter wonderland. It came and went without notice, so like God wouldn’t you say? “When you help someone out… do it quietly and unobtrusively. This is how God, who conceived you in love, working quietly behind the scenes, helps you out.” (Matt 6:3-4, Message).


It doesn’t take much pawing beneath the surface to find something good on which to graze. This ram knows how to feed on God’s grace without a whole lot of ado. His wonder is all around and within us if we too scratch the surface. Happy Thanksgiving season indeed.

Sensing Grace at Thanksgiving

We’re continuing to sabbaticalize well here in the Lake District. Winter is arriving tonight with arctic blasts out of Siberia coming up and over the hills to the north; snowfall tonight.


Today I was focusing on putting away Money in the memorization bank--where thieves cannot break thru and steal. My working edge is in Matthew 6: 5-15:

“And when you come before God don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. The world is full of so called prayer warriors who are prayer ignorant. They’re full of formulas, programs, and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this:

Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are. Set the world right. Do what’s best—as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes.

When I was working on the part, “your focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace”, it was morning on my way over the fells to Ambleside and I took this picture, thinking to myself, “Lord, if I can’t sense your grace here in this moment where can I sense it?” it was a blessed being moment. Later in the day I passed these sheep around our local backyard tarn, Loughrigg. What a peaceful picture of His creatures keeping pace with the Spirit, feeding on what He has provided. Today, gratefully, the Lord has also been my shepherd.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving tomorrow. From the far side of the pond. Your brother and sister. Vance and Bethyl Joy

Clearing Space

         As I was slogging thru the cold, driving rain this morning from Neaum Crag over Loughrigg Fell to Ambleside, for my yoga class, I was listening to a podcast, “Pray-As-You-Go”. The theme was Jesus cleansing the temple--an old saw to be sure. But the comments to this passage caught me up short: “people will always be angry when Jesus clears a space to worship Him.” When he flogs away my profit or prestige motives within my inner temple, don’t I too want to kill Him? Don’t I do so over and over with weapons of mass distraction? I hit the “Jesus Delete” button on my consciousness. I resume life as a functional atheist. I put a Mafia-style bullet in the back of His head, and say, ‘nothing personal; just busyness.’

The word “therapist” derives from the ancient Greek, a hybrid word, “theo” and “rapiste”, God and janitor. Thus a therapist is God’s janitor. The ancient therapists pushed brooms, clearing space in the temple for people to worship their gods. I have been a therapist for others. Now it’s my turn to clean and clear, scrubbing space into stillness where I can meet with Jesus peaceably rather than homocidally.  Like this local tree was scrubbed clean in just a few days.  

My focal verses for this sabbatical year are from Isaiah 58:12-14: “if you watch your step on the Sabbath, not using my Holy Day for personal advantage; if you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God’s holy day as a celebration; if you refuse ‘business as usual,’ making money, running here and there—then you’ll be free to enjoy God. Oh I’ll make you ride high and soar above it all…” Yes. So let it be. For me and for thee.

Flooding & Homesick & Beautifully Blessed

                   Appreciation!     We’re thankful when we hear of you partnering with us – as you read our journey, remembering us, and praying for us. So many of the apostle Paul’s letters are mingled with his keen attachment to friends he rarely saw… and now we are personally experiencing relationships + physical distance.

                 Month 1:     Today we have been in the United Kingdom for one month. The orchestral symphony of His grace is deepening…with stretching and promising new scores. Take last Friday as an example – the rain was steady and intensifying. We drove into Ambleside for a few grocery items and to have dinner. As we sloshed through flooded areas, very deep puddles came over the tires… be vigilant and very cautious at all times (1 Peter 5:9) came to mind… 70 minutes later as we came home these same puddles were flooding … cars were stopped to the side. Vance entered the heaviest of the flood zones. As the water rose to cover our headlights, I prayed “Oh, Jesus, help us… Help us, Lord… You promise to help when we are in trouble.” As the car cleared the flooding areas, “thank you, Jesus. Thank You. You helped us.” Knowing and experiencing are quite different. Knowing God’s promise and leaning into His Words to become reality is where we are in our pursuit of Him through this “set apart” time of rest. Can’t say the rising flood of the river over our headlamps was restful at the time… but the truth that He hears and comes when we call on Him is fortifying our faith.

                     In the Way.    We are among fellow pilgrims who are venturing into headwaters of “trust and obey.” Not a new road and quite familiar to many who are followers of Jesus, the Christ. We’ve heard “partial obedience is 100% disobedience.” We know the distinct Hand of God in our moving from California and His timing in our doing so.

We’re letting thankfulness gain ground in our hearts as we agree with David from 1 Chronicles 29:11 “… we adore You as being in control of everything…” Nonetheless – this walk is, quite bluntly, hard. I’m so “homesick” at times – and now “I have no home.”  Not a news flash to me… I anticipated this… our son’s girlfriend, Shauna said “it’s so hard for you but you are going anyway!” I said “the point is obedience not whether it’s hard or not.” As I remain honest before the Lord, reality sets in, and I realize my heart-felt delight to be His daughter and part of the tenacious body of Jesus Christ.

 I’m learning Christ’s commands are inverted promises—when I obey the command, then the promised strength comes, not before.

I being in the way, the Lord led me (Genesis 24:27). We watch for His markings – like this exquisite perspective of the swan being enveloped by this tree’s submission to the season of change, the Fall. We go from glory to glory. The season of winter gloriously descended onto the green pastures today.

                          On the way. One of the marvelous markings on my life during my single years were walks along the cliffs of Laguna Beach, California with Molly – a friend who radiated the presence of God. Arms linked, I was Molly’s eyes -- describing the numerous details of the ocean, cliffs, sand, shells, people we passed. And, she was training my ears – “listen, Beth… do you hear the symphony in the music of the ocean? Can you hear the string instruments playing?” Never had I attuned my ears to hear what Molly heard. Molly, blind at age 22 with the onset of diabetes, sang her own written songs from the Song of Solomon, for our wedding nearly 29 years ago now. Her sights for Jesus always outshone her debilitating challenges. One of her friends shared, “you know, Molly, most people die and go to heaven, but you—you’re going piece by piece.” All of Molly joined Jesus this last week—and we know she’s singing “Glory! Glory! I’m home!” Now… we have two of our “saint-friends” in glory – Meg and Molly. I’m so thankful this world is not my home… I’m just a traveling through. My treasures are laid up…beyond the blue…” Both finished their course well! May I, too!

A Different Kind of Rainbow

I finished My Grandfather’s Blessings by Naomi Remmen, last night. What a blessed book. If she isn’t a believer, Jesus, she ought to be. Lead her, Spirit, to the Son; let her be one of the sheep from a different fold who come to know you, Father.


She tagged an incubus thought that I had yet to birth: “Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” P 338.

She augments with the idea that as we court relationship with Mystery our need for smaller certainties fades. This need for sure certainties is replaced with an ongoing sense of awe, wonder, and growing gratitude to the One whose ways are as far above our ways as the heavens are above the earth.

Another thought she gave me as a jewel when the sun hits it: “fear is the friction in all transitions.” One role I have had and will have again is that of emotional WD-40. A little squirt here and there acts as lock-ease for the soul in motion from one small certainty to something else.

And another little story of a boy who had found a rainbow trout washed up from the cresting river into what was then a shrinking draining ditch. The trout was struggling to survive. The boy was heartbroken. He picked the trout up and rushed it back into the river. He remembered later, on his dying bed as an old man, the shiver of rainbow delight as the trout realized once again it was part of the river. As he too was soon to be.

One final snippet. When the Concorde was traveling at Mach 2, 1,350 mph, it used multiple computers to keep it on course. When traveling at such a high speed human reaction time was far too slow a corrective. So one computer was constantly jiggling the other back on course. They made little whirring noises as they corrected each other back and forth. One attentive passenger, who had been given a tour of the cockpit on the Concorde’s maiden voyage, asked, “what per cent of the time is the plane off course?” The pilot replied, “about 99% of the time. However we will arrive in Paris from New York at our projected time, plus or minus 60 seconds.”

The feedback systems between computers aren’t frictioned with the need to be right. They accept correction without quarreling. Could two pilots correct each other thousands of times in one flight without overheating defensiveness and argumentation? Could I stand to be wrong 99% of the time without losing courage? Lord, give me the humility to be corrected, adjusted, tuned to your hovering Spirit, moment by moment. Let me recognize when that correction from You comes thru another, or a stubbed toe, or a closed door as readily as through a hunch, word of knowledge, or flashing insight.

Streaming Glories

Another glorious day. Fulfilled promises was a theme as I walked near Troutbeck, a little village outside Windermere. I’ve been working on scripture memory, as I’ve written in the past. One of the chapters I’d tucked away was Deuteronomy 8. One of the verses that made me smile always when I was repeating it, was: “I’m about to bring you into a good land, a land of brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams flowing out of the hills and into the valleys…” And another chapter, more famous, Psalm 23, “he makes me lie down in green pastures….” That’s because I’m so daggum stubborn that I won’t lie down on my own accord; so He has to make me. God be blessed, even as he blessed me with streaming trails of glory flowing among resting sheep.

Found in the Mist

             The Lord seems to be speaking to me lately, as I walk the fells, of humility and obscurity; letting that be okay. He uses just plain people, not hifaluting folks. So today the moors, the fog, the drizzle, the enveloping woods, grazing sheep, and swirling mist were all perfect. I folded right in and was lost from sight immediately, if not sooner.


Here in the Lakes you are surrounded by invincible evidence of a Living Artist at work. In the face of such autumn audacities towering over me, crunching underfoot, thundering beside me in the river and falls, misting my lips as I move through the patchy fog—how can I be other than grateful to be a tiny little part of His Story unfolding with each breath? I was reading a sermon by my friend, Gary Stubblefield, today. He spoke of plagiarism as being ingratitude & theft of intellectual property. The assertion of self sufficiency is cosmic ingratitude & theft of God’s claim on the entire universe. Humility is the opposite of self sufficiency. It’s a grateful fear of God, a jubilant reverence that revels in God’s stunning goodness toward us. It’s been a good day. No, scratch that. A glorious day.