Making an Invisible God Visible

It's a quote from Kay Warren's book, Dangerous Surrender (a great read).


It's Sumer's heart cry for the orphans in Ethiopia. It's my heart cry for people all around the world, even for my very own children.


We were at the beach and Stephen found a sand dollar on Shell Island. It was perfectly intact, not broken at all. It was something to be treasured. I remembered my dad finding those for me when I was a kid. They really are beautiful.


We brought the shells and the sand dollar back to the room and a certain sibling broke the sand dollar. They are delicate. Stephen was devastated to say the least and those of you that know Stephen well know that he doesn't just snap out of it quickly. As we were driving to dinner and the subject of the broken sand dollar came up yet again, I told everyone that we would just pray that we would find a sand dollar the next day. To which a frustrated Stephen said, "I've prayed about a lot of things and God doesn't answer." (Don't you just feel that way sometimes?) I prayed that we would indeed find a sand dollar the next day. As we were taking the boat to Shell Island, I was pleading with the Lord that He would answer Stephen's prayer. My cynical side thought, "it's just a sand dollar, what's the big deal? Does God really care about sand dollars?" You know what, I think He does. I think He wants to make Himself visible. I think He does it all the time and we just ignore it or pass it up as coincidence.


Within 5-10 minutes, Stephen had found a sand dollar. I was praising the Lord! He set it down by our bag, but then the bag got moved by a different sibling than the previous sand dollar fiasco. Do you know how hard it is to remember where exactly that bag was on the beach so that you can locate the sand dollar? It's hard, let me just say. We never did find that stack of shells. I started praying fervently that we would find another sand dollar and we did...we found several more and a shark tooth. You know why, because He did exceeding abudantly above all that we could ask or think. He does it all the time.


He makes Himself visible to us. Don't miss Him! And when you see Him, give Him the glory. He is worthy!


This is my centerpiece on my kitchen table. An African bowl with five sanddollars. It reminds me to pray for Africa...that they would see God for who He really is and the sand dollars remind me to praise Him that He alone is God and He hears our prayers even when we pray for a sand dollar!

Most of you know that I'm working two part time jobs and whew, it's crazy. That's a blog post for another day.

We had wanted to go to the beach, but decided to scrap it once the oil spill happened and then it seemed like it was taking forever for the oil to hit the beach, so I kept thinking maybe we can squeeze in a quick trip to the beach. My hubby is awesome and reworked his schedule so that we could get away for a few days.

We were going to go to his hometown, Pensacola Beach, but then they did find some tar balls on the beach and I just wasn't that excited about getting in the water if there was a possiblity of oil in it. And so we canceled our reservations and went to Panama City Beach.

It was beautiful and wonderful and relaxing. The sound of the ocean and the beauty of the water brings renewal and refreshment to my weary self. Eating outside breathing that fresh beach air...I love it! The white sand, oh how I love the white sand at the Gulf beaches. The water was 82 degrees warm...wonderful! The waves were fairly calm and there were very few jellyfish. I got sunburnt, we all had sand in our bathing suits when we returned to the hotel, but it's a wonderful place to be. Africa and the beach...probably my two favorite spots in the world.

I usually come home from Africa and say to Derek, "Let's just sell everything and move to Africa." On the last day of our short beach trip, I said, "Let's just sell everything and move to the beach." But the Lord is not calling us to move to either place, so we'll just be content in our sweet state of Tennessee.

Oh Happy Day!

Elizabeth and my dad were both baptized on Sunday! My dad decided a couple of years ago that he wanted to rededicate his life and he waited to get baptized with his only granddaughter. It was a very special day. I almost put a baptismal robe on and joined in on the fun! :-)

The pictures tell the story better than I could ever put into words. Thank you to PT for making it a special day for dad and Elizabeth!

Elizabeth's best friend MC stood by the baptismal with me and watched Elizabeth get baptized.


Telling everyone he loves Jesus!


And he's down...

And he almost went down a second time....Tom had to use lots of arm muscle to pull dad out of the water! :-)


Elizabeth was next. She wasn't nervous until she either saw all the people in the worship center or thought PT wasn't going to get Papa out of the water...not sure which one. I think PT could tell that she was getting nervous and didn't linger...down she went and back up again with her feet coming out of the water (she was completely immersed at one point for you sticklers!)

And what a day that will be when my Jesus we will see!! We serve an awesome God!