Archive by Author

We’ve a Story to Tell

19 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

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Author, Poet and ArtistWe had dinner with Bill’s sister, Judy, and her husband, Fred, the other night. We do that at least once a month. October was different, though, because this time the Wills’ daughter, Karen, and her husband, Brian Clements joined us, as did our son, Bill.

Karen and her husband, Brian, are going into the new adventure of being missionaries with Greater Europe Mission (GEM). They have two grown children and live in the Chicago area. Karen is a buyer of children’s books at their town library and Brian, until recently has worked for the Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Both are well-educated and skilled in various disciplines. Now they have been called to become missionaries to the world and they are raising their support. They love their new job, though Karen hopes to stay with the library part-time as long as the Lord allows.

The statistics state that only 2% of the people in Europe are Christians now, so it’s exciting to be this close to a small part of the action.

The organization was started by a World War II Navy chaplain, Robert P. Evans, in 1949 who was also part of the Billy Graham Youth for Christ movement.

Karen’s grandfather was a Military chaplain, too. Karen and Brian were teens when Brian’s dad was the pastor of the English-language church in Heidelberg. Fred and Judy worked tirelessly in many areas of the church. Brian and Karen were 14 when they met, and by then, they had both fully given their lives to Jesus. They married several years later in America. What a match!

Because Brian and Karen have been church leaders in their home area near Chicago for twenty-two years, have reared two successful children, and Brian has been to seminary, they also have a great deal to teach children and parents about how to link up with God and how to run a home. Besides that they are just plain dear and hard-working people. We love them and they love us.

Brian has been working informally with GEM for a year and will be helping tend to some of the business side of the organization. Naturally, he travels, but he also regularly uses Skype as well. He (and sometimes Karen) will be helping the team to teach four new-missionary conferences in Colorado Springs every year. In between conferences Brian will contribute his business experience as well as his ability to mentor newer, younger team-members.

In the European countries, every job applicant is required to speak English. Brian enjoyed working with the GEM team that successfully negotiated for an academy in Madrid where immigrants will be able to learn to speak it. They’ll have access to computers, but more to the point they’ll have a chance to meet our Lord Jesus. The hope is that someday they can move back to their own countries taking Christianity and their new life-empowerment with them. If you’re flying around on the Internet someday and have time, take a look at the GEM organization and the new ways in which they are trying to reach the people of the world.Here’s what our friend and blog-mistress, Onisha, had to say about this news.

“Gem Missions sounds like a wonderful opportunity to serve. For some reason, I feel like I have heard of them from someone else. I am sure Judy was glad to have Karen and her husband visit with them and will offer their support too. Europe is a fine mission field, especially with all the refugees flooding the countries.  I read one person who said American Christians should not complain about all the Muslims settling here, but should think of it as God sending the mission field to us. That really stuck with me.”

I agree with what Onisha has written and I’d like to add that our omniscient Father is seeing to it that they’ll learn the language that is quickly becoming a means of communication for everyone in the world.

We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations

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Forgive My Trespass

5 Oct

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistYesterday I took a walk in a different town. It wasn’t a good place for walking. The cars zoomed by and eventually the sidewalk ran out. I had a bit more time before I had to go back to where I had started, so I thought I’d keep going. I came to a shady neighborhood street and saw a sign. “Nursery, everything 70% off,” it said.

Two houses from the corner I came to a yard with a huge ear tree and a lot of plants in it.A giant pothos grew high into the ear tree’s branches, a giant staghorn fern swayed in a slight breeze. Beautiful pottery birdhouses swung from its branches.

It was a shady place on a hot day, and although I didn’t need any plants, I thought I’d walk around looking at things. I noticed that the grass in the backyard grew almost to the top of the chain-link fence. These people are probably elderly and just can’t keep up the property, I thought. A lot of people have antique and thrift stores to house their collections, maybe that’s what’s happening here.

I finished strolling about looking at the plants and flowers and was just ready to leave when a woman came out of the house.

“Are you looking for something?” said she. “This is private property.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought it was the nursery. It’s really beautiful.”

She didn’t seem to want to accept my apology, so I turned to go. She followed, talking about the plants and how hard it was to keep everything up. She showed me a long scar under her arm and said she’d had surgery.

I kept trying to leave without being rude. She followed. She pointed down the street. “The nursery is where the big recycle bin is.”

I could see that the recycle bin was as far as I had already walked. I looked at my watch. Sure enough it was time to head back. She didn’t follow past the parameters of her yard and she obviously didn’t forgive me. I put myself in her place, however, and I knew it would frighten me to see someone roaming around my front yard. I did have a brief thought that seeing another person for a minute might relieve loneliness for a while. I asked God to bless her big time.

I went back to the doctor’s office to meet Bill. While I sat waiting for him, I heard the receptionist make several phone calls to remind people of appointments. She didn’t talk too fast, she could pronounce all the words, she was polite and her voice was beautiful.

Somehow I thought about a time long ago when I was in a grocery store with my Grandmother, Marie Bowers. When we approached the check-out, I said, “That woman has beautiful eyes.”

“When you notice something nice about someone, you must tell them,” Grandmother said.

I went up to the receptionist, excused myself and said, “You have the most beautiful manner I ever heard.”

She all but grabbed me across the desk. “Oh thank you. You’ve made my day! I can’t remember the last time I had a compliment. Sometimes I put my arms around myself and say nice things, just so I can get some approval from somebody.” You can imagine how good that made me feel.  I like approval, too. I don’t like to trespass and not be forgiven for it. I had done something right and I was grateful for the camaraderie that sprang from following Grandmother’s advice.

(FYI, none of these pictures are of the yard I mistook for a nursery.}

Matthew 6:12

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Writing and Painting

21 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistWhen I started writing blogs for Old Things R-New and Rebekah Lyn Books, I was working on the novel, Go West and enjoying it immensely. Painting had taken a back seat and I thought I was over it. But people kept saying they liked my prints and the paintings on my walls and when I remembered how much I enjoyed splashing paint around. My fingers began to itch for a brush. The more I painted, the more I neglected the things I thought I ought to be doing. I wrote out several long talks with the Lord asking how I could find time to paint and to keep up with my writing goals, as well and he gave me some new ideas. Finally, my angel, and enabler Onisha and I sat at a table in the Target Starbucks and talked it over. I had also been writing paraphrases from the Bible and I wanted to illustrate them. Onisha suggested we serialize the novel and use it instead of blogs and she liked the idea of the Promise Posters too. So now, I’m painting and writing and I’m having a wonderful time. If you see any Go West illustrations or Promise Posters you’d like to buy, they will be available as framable art and note cards at www.creativeartworks.com. Come join me in my new big adventure.

Read more about DiVoran’s adventures  Writing and Painting

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Are We Allowed to Pray

14 Sep

My Take 

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and Artist

My beloved child in whom I am well pleased, when I look at you, I see my son, Jesus, who died that you might be made right with me.

You have been well schooled in the myth that unless you are sinless I will not hear your prayers. It is a sad thing when teachers take the words of the Pharisees in the Bible and twist them so that my own beloved children think they can’t communicate with me.

Every day dawns fresh for you my dear. Do not major on shortcomings, but major on the robe of righteousness that I have laid over you. When I look at you I see not what you used to be, but I see Jesus, my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Pray to your heart’s content. I hear, and I answer.

I Am Covered Over With the Robe of Righteousness

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Our Fifty-Eighth Wedding Anniversary

7 Sep

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and Artist

Bill and I were married at the Congregational Church in La Mesa, a small town on the California coast. Friends of Bill’s Mother’s had come through Albuquerque where I lived with my parents, and had invited me to ride back to California where they now lived, so I could visit Bill. He was stationed on the U.S.S Hector at the naval base in San Diego.  It seems now that when we decided to get married, so I could stay there with him, all we had to do was say, “We’re getting married,” and everything was done for us that could be done at such short notice.” In case you’re wondering, it wasn’t a “shot-gun” wedding. Even though we’d been engaged for a year, our mothers were shocked when we called them.  Since Bill was only nineteen and a parent had to sign for a boy under twenty-one, Bill’s mother sent her permission. I, as a girl of eighteen, did not need signed permission from my parents, but I did need a blood test.

Our dads were unable to be there because they were both on business trips – William Lites, Senior, for the Southern Baptist Convention and Ivan Bowers for the Atomic Energy Commission.  They worked hard to support their families and were both gone many hours and days throughout our teenage years.

Our mothers worked for the government at desk jobs in Albuquerque.  They worked hard too, but they had more regular hours and were able to come to the wedding.  My Mother, Dora Bowers, drove out with my Aunt Jenny, and my cousin, Kathy.  Bill’s mother, Agnes, and Bill’s younger sister, Judy, flew out on a  TWA Constellation from Albuquerque.

I had planned to wear my pink linen dress from the previous Easter for the wedding. It had only a tiny stain on the skirt, but Joan, the lady I was staying with, insisted on borrowing a wedding dress from her friend.  We were married by the Reverend Curtis Claire.  He chucked obey from the wedding service because he thought it was too old fashioned.

1 wedding

We had the weekend before Labor Day to get ready for the wedding. Our mothers and hosts booked the church, bought the cake, made the punch, took us grocery shopping, and helped us find a place to live, none of which either of us had ever done before.

We drove Aunt Jenny’s car away from the church. When we left Joan’s house after the reception, however, we had to get into Bill’s chopped and channeled 1932 five-window Ford Coupe and drive the ten miles on the San Diego Freeway to our new home. It was a bedsit in an old house, next to Balboa Park in a suburb of San Diego.  We had the tiniest yard you ever saw, with a pomegranate tree in it. We left the white vinyl couch made into a bed because we were at work all day and it wasn’t worth bothering to fold it up every morning and put it down every night.

Chop Car

On Bill’s first day off, we went to the San Diego Zoo. I don’t’ think I’d ever been to a zoo before. It was wonderful and I loved it. I got a job at a diner and rode the bus to work. We had a lot of fun, we both loved the movies and went to one every weekend in downtown San Diego. On quiet nights at home, with no T V, Bill worked on model airplanes and I read library books. On a misty night in January, we packed everything we owned into the second-hand Mercury Bill had traded the hot rod for. We drove over California mountains and across Arizona desert to Albuquerque where I stayed for eight months attending Beauty School while Bill went cruising to Japan swabbing decks all the way.

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He Was There All the Time

31 Aug

He Was There All the Time copy

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistSometimes I write down what I think the Holy Spirit is saying to me. It’s as if I were sending God a letter. At other times I sit and wait to hear what He says back. Yesterday I wrote out 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” That was, of course, exactly what I needed to hear.

After I had thought about it for twenty-four hours I felt like writing some more. I don’t pretend to have any answers, and I’m sure I make mistakes, but here’s what I wrote: (I write in second person because it makes the message more personal. Perhaps you do this too.)

Beloved, I felt God say, sometimes you recall hard things in your life that you wish had happened differently. You feel sorrow that you had to go through those experiences. You try to reconstruct ways in which outcomes would have been better if circumstances had been different. None of that does any good. Do you know why? It’s because I, The Father, set up those circumstances or, at least allowed them for my purposes.

My dear child, wouldn’t it make you angry to think I had set you up for hurt — that I deliberately ruined at least a part of your life?

More likely you think I wasn’t even there and that you caused everything yourself. It is so easy for you to come up with the wrong perceptions. It’s as if there were a part of your brain that insisted on lying to you. It’s a trickster, a devil, a demon, the flesh, the self, the carnal nature. It makes up stories about your life and then you cling to them. It says seek always, but do not find. It desperately needs intimacy with you in order to feed itself. It is false. Only I am true.

You have always had choices. Sometimes the choices you made were less than productive, but I didn’t leave you alone on dark paths of fear, bitterness, and greed. I went with you. I buffered the cold winds when I knew something would be too much for you. I worked always to bring you to my side

Could the same scary things have happened if you had made right and good choices? Yes and no. Every choice sent you down a different path so that every one of them had a potential for a different outcome.

Remember, dear one, your life in Me is a finely choreographed dance. You need to rehearse with me so that our steps will match. I have plans for good for you and not for evil. Remember, you need me and I need you. I have always loved you and I always will. Nothing you could ever do would change that.

“He Was There All the Time”

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Old Age is Not for Sissies

17 Aug

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistWhen the movie star, Bette Davis, became elderly, she had a pillow with these words embroidered on it. “Old age is not for sissies.” I admired that platitude and to this day, I try to live by it. Last week we met a woman in a rehab facility who is an example of courage in the face of aging.

In 1919 when World War 1 was ending, Helga was six years old, and it was almost Christmas. The teacher was busy planning a Christmas program so before school one day, Helga took an empty paper sack and smoothed it out so she could create a poem. It is a medium length poem about the birth of Christ. Helga recited every word by heart. She’s also a modern day, on- the-spot poet. Here’s the one she spoke for me.

“There’s a lady in a jacket of pink.

When she used to wash dishes, she stood by the sink.

Her blouse is full of flowers.

I hope the Lord gives you many happy hours.”

After the poem Helga invited us to sing along as she played on a battered harmonica

about twelve inches long with key of G holes on one side and key of C holes on the other. She sat in the seat of her walker and told stories of her childhood. She asked us to say the words from John 3:16 with her, which we did, and to sing, “You are My Sunshine,” while she accompanied us. Here’s a bit of her story:

“In 1913, I was born of German parents in a Hoboken cold-water, walk up flat. By the time Americans entered WW 1 in 1917 I was four years old, and I thought Germans were nice. Mama taught us that Jesus wanted us to love people, and that we should never put ourselves above anyone else. I was amazed when I learned during the war that we could be thrown in jail for speaking The Father Tongue. All along American Germans were persecuted as spies. When word came that the war was over, the streets filled with people. We hugged and sang. Folks in wagons and cars drove past waving or honking their horns. One wagon was pulled by a white horse and had a saloon woman sitting on the seat next to the driver. I knew she was from around the corner where we were never allowed to go. In the back of the wagon someone had stuck a dummy, head first, into a toilet bowl and everyone was saying it was the Kaiser.”

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Hoboken, New Jersey

 

Helga will be 103 in February of 2016. I wanted to ask what she believed had kept her going this long, but I thought I knew the answer. I had once asked another 103 year old woman and her husband, who was 105 what kept them strong. They said it was being a follower of Jesus. I believe it. The joy of the Lord is Helga’s strength, too. That makes Helga no sissie at all.

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More Thoughts on Church Music

10 Aug

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistWal  pardner, now that you have asked, I have a couple of  things to say about church music. Loved your blog, by the way, Onisha. Opening a dialogue may help.

The church we are now attending has a contemporary service and a traditional one. The traditional one is at 9:30, which is okay with us. It gives us time to get ready in a leisurely way and gets us out by 11:00. That’s when the contemporary service starts. We get the beautiful sanctuary, they get the big fellowship hall. I’m sorry to report that stained glass windows and real pews are pleasurable to me.

Stained glass png

They don’t seem to label the two services, so we first attended the 11:00 o’clock contemporary service. I, who have not yet lost my hearing, had to wear earplugs, not only for the music but for the service as well. Oh, by the way, in case anyone needs to know, I’ve used about all the earplugs on the market and I’ve found the white wax ones work best. I can still hear but it’s not painful. Soon all the children will start to turn deaf and then no one will need earplugs any more. There are only so many decibels the human body can stand without deafness setting in.

But I digress.  Our grandchildren’s parents used to invite us to Christmas specials at churches around their town, but they had to stop because even when we didn’t complain they could tell the service was just plain too loud for us. That was one pleasure forfeited, but the grandchildren are all grown up now and out on their own, so I suppose it’s not a huge loss.

I read that one of the churches in town is going to have a “Swing Low,” evening. I’ll bet that would be fun, but I’ve been fooled too often to think the volume will be something I can handle, so I have decided not to ask Bill to take me. That’s okay, as a young performer said in a contemporary service: if you want to hear hymns, listen to them on your iPod. Believe me, I do, I listen to them frequently and I sing along too. iPod,  iPhone, and You Tube are my go-to devices. Really, if we didn’t want to, we wouldn’t have to attend church at all. We could just use the T. V. and the Internet and send our tithe to them. A friend told me that their minister of youth made a teaching out of “why we don’t use hymns in the church anymore.” I wouldn’t have minded hearing his thinking on the subject, but I probably would have had to wear my earplugs in order to do it.

Believe it or not, loud sounds distress me in a way I can’t control. One time, I had to walk out of a church because the music gave me such a panicky feeling I felt driven out. It would be all right not to have instruments, as Onisha suggests, but perhaps it’s not so much the instruments that raise the decibels as it is the powerful microphones and speakers.

Any good rant has the phrase, when I was a child:  When I was a child and we had plays in school, we were taught to speak loudly enough so we could be heard all the way at the back of the room. I know from personal experience that it’s easier to use mikes, but at least everything didn’t have to shut down if the candles blew out.

The church we’re attending now seems to have some decent long-range plans for making more people on both sides happy. We’ve been going there for a couple of months now and haven’t heard the same music group twice. This church has a long history of highly valuing its music and musicians. Sometimes the young people come in and sing hymns for us, too. They seem to like them fine, even though they’re not particularly easy to sing if you aren’t used to them. Many younger people, learn real music in chorus and band. I’d love to hear the fruit of their labors reflected more in church services – and we are hearing that now, so I’m not complaining about what we currently get.

The church we’re attending has a small, but good band. They have an admittedly senior choir. They had a “younger person” play a gorgeous saxophone piece last week. The pianist is top-notch and well educated in music. She lives for it. During the week she may be seen popping into the library in a lovely dress on her way to a nursing home to play.

One good thing has happened with the hymns here, they’ve been jazzed a bit. Maybe the no-hymns group will like them better that way. I do. You could actually waltz to them now.

The church we were in before was so casual they even valued having me as part of the praise team because I could sing loudly and usually carry a tune. We had a keyboard, acoustic rhythm instruments (yes, tambourines – gasp!) and six or seven singers. We had one hymn a week. Other than that we sang the older choruses that had melodies and the songs that the minister of music wrote herself. We had no hypnotizing droning. Everyone could hear the music very well, but it wasn’t so loud that anyone would be deafened by it.

I dearly love the younger church set. I love their enthusiasm for church and what they are doing for the children in giving them pertinent and exciting activities.  Such grace, such variety, such hard work. Sorry if you feel that we older people are a burden because we won’t or can’t change. We’ll be gone before you know it. You’ll miss us, though. Is it possible that even God cannot deal with this problem? Now why would that be? I thought he could do anything.

Here’s an old one made new. I like it, how about you?

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Washing Dishes

27 Jul

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and ArtistI have almost always washed dishes, sometimes I had help, sometimes not. When I was a child, Mother called on me when the restaurant got too busy for her, Dad, and a waitress, if we had one, to handle. My brother washed dishes with me. Usually I washed and he dried. To amuse ourselves we bickered or stacked the dishes in the drainer as high as possible stopping just before they began to topple. We called it making castles. Our parents paid us 25¢ an hour. One day I was at my friend, Patricia Franklin’s house for supper. I loved the Franklins, a big catholic family with five boys and one girl. The girl, Patricia, was my best friend, and I had a crush on one of her brothers. He didn’t have a crush on me.

Usually, Patricia and I washed the dishes after supper when I was there. The Franklins 1obviously had other arrangements when I wasn’t. On this summer evening, when I went into the kitchen to start on the dishes, I figured somebody would follow. To my surprise, no one came. I washed all the dishes by myself and left them to dry piled majestically into a fine castle. I got a lot out of the experience. For one thing I was pleased that my skills were such that someone besides my own family needed me. For another, being so responsible make me feel like a grown-up. The third thing was that I felt I was expressing my regard for the family and they would all pleased with me. I don’t know whether that ever happened, because I’m not sure they knew they had a martyr in their midst. Of course, their being Catholic, I wouldn’t be even a minor martyr compared to the ones the had read about. But I felt good about myself, anyhow.

A restaurant customer once said I was the chief cook and bottle-washer. I couldn’t claim the first part-but the second part was true. I have been washing dishes for 70 years. Every country on this globe has people who can make the same claim (if they have dishes, and more to the point, if they have food).

Now there’s only Bill and me. Together we keep the kitchen moderately clean. I’m glad I have things like that to do. I heard a story once from a friend who visited a rehab center. She gave a talk and after refreshments, one of the elderly women took her plastic cup over to a sink where she slowly and lovingly washed and dried it. You see, she had no home to care for anymore. I’m glad I have jobs to do even now. I thank God for dishes and for everything that goes with them. Also I thank him for my electric dishwasher, even though one of us has to wash them by hand before we put them in or they won’t come out clean.

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A Third Option

13 Jul

My Take

DiVoran Lites

Author, Poet and Artist

Sometimes when we go to a doctor and we’re not sure the doctor knows what he’s talking about, we decide to get a second opinion. It’s the same with making a personal decision. We can study and work at making the right one, but we may not be able to come to a solution without asking for advice from a friend. That’s all right, there is safety in consulting together. But there is another way.

A general of the Israelite army, Joshua once said,

“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

It turned out that Joshua did serve the Lord in every possible way. Title of picture that comes with this one is Jericho. It’s the walls of Jericho and the trumpet players.

Jerico Small

One day, Joshua knew that his army was supposed to occupy the walled town of Jericho, but he wasn’t quite ready to make his move. Suddenly, he looked up and saw a big man standing in front of him with a gleaming sword in his hand. Joshua asked, “Are you on our side, or on the side of our enemies?”

“Neither, “ said the man. I am here as Prince of the Lord’s host. Take off your shoes for you are on holy ground.” Joshua took off his shoes and stood ready to listen to anything the Lord had to say.

In his commentary, Matthew Henry says this big man was the same one who came with three others to Sarah and Abraham to tell them they were going to have a baby in their ninetieth decade of life. It was actually Jesus who visited them and now he had come to see Joshua.

Jesus told Joshua that God had secured Jericho for the Israelites and he told him exactly how the army was to claim their victory. There was no need for Joshua to strategize or plan, no need for him to consult his officers. The Lord was in charge.

You may already know what happened at Jericho, but if you don’t, you can read all about God’s surprising action in the Holy Bible in Joshua Chapter 6.

Now, think about it. Could Joshua or any of his men have come up with the plan they saw worked out by the Lord? Never in a million years. And what if they had been able to imagine it? Do you think they would have had success carrying it out? Not at all. If you don’t know the story, please read it in your Bible in The Book of Joshua Chapter 6.

No one but God knew and no one but God had the power to carry out the plan. The answer he gave transcended anything a human could have thought up or accomplished. What an adventure for the humans involved!

Dear one, do you know that you and I can experience miracles every day. They may not be what we expect. Maybe they aren’t even what we think of as miracles, but if we are open to God working in our lives, we can experience surprise, synchronicity, and serendipity every day. All we have to do is forget plotting and planning, and forget asking advice from our friends. The more we practice hearing from God and following His leading, the more exciting our lives will be. Let’s do it, let’s ask for that third opinion.

Joshua, Chapters 5 and 6.

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