Friends,

I know we’re all facing so much right now and as I said the other night amongst some of you, we’re in a bit of a pressure cooker - all the feelings, thoughts, circumstances are exponentially bigger ... but the same is true to the really wonderful things. The pressure cooker of goodness is exponentially greater as well:

The ways he is providing for us, the goodness in giving us family moments, the joy our kids have in days upon days to be at home, technology, health (even if we are slightly more at risk, we are living in a time of wonderful medicines, amazon prime, good sanitizer, which all are gifts from God to help you stay healthy. etc...).  God is close, joy is near, provisions are abundant, laughter is contagious, learning is around every corner!

Let the goodness of God in this time pressure cook in you:
delight in serving your family
respect for your husband
joy to be with those God has given to you
hope for tomorrow
desire to try (and possibly fail many times in the process) new things,
constant prayers that flow from our mouths,
joy in the Word,
life from music and movies that shape the heart and mind,
boisterous "Yes's" or "Great!" or "Amazing" or "let's try!", and
patience to let children make their own lunches so they grow in resourcefulness!

In order to be women who are able to see God's goodness and walk forward with thankful hearts, we have to start somewhere and that somewhere is going to God's word and doing what it says. 

In a morning briefing that came through my email this week from the NYT, the word 'duty' was used and I was delighted.  Many don't want to touch this word with a ten foot pole, but I quite love it.  I love that God has said, "Do this Brady and I promise to use it and in the doing of the things I command, we will commune, you will be changed, scripture will be made alive...".  What also stood out was that I've seen a lot of conversation around permission to not do your duty as Christian women during this time and yet, it's applauded when doctors and nurses do theirs.  Why do we applaud them and not apply it to ourselves by striving to be women who also go forth with courage and faith in the duties and callings that God has given to us through his word?  

We live in a time where many say that our feelings dictate what we do or don't do.  But biblically, while our feelings matter A LOT, they are always be rooted in what scripture says.  We DO, because we believe and have faith that God's word is true and that our actions will pull our feelings along (or maybe not but we still have to do the thing it says).  We should not wait to act obediently until we feel it or want it but rather in the doing, in being obedient to all the things we find in the word, God will do amazing things in us (and our families!). 

A case in point to help show how obedience to God's word is played out: Corrie Ten Boom recalls in her book, The Hiding Place, when she was reminded by her sister to 'thank God for their concentration camp dorm room that was infested with fleas just as their Bible reading from that morning had told them to do'. Corrie didn't 'feel like' thanking God for the fleas jumping on the pillow she was about to lay her head down on. But she did. She obeyed: Thank you God for the beds we have to sleep in and...the fleas.  Later, they found out that it was because of the fleas, which we know God placed there as the king of the fleas, so they could openly read their hidden bibles to the women in the room each night without fear of a guards entering because, well, they feared the fleas.  They again, thanked God that he went before them, using fleas, to allow them to read the scriptures daily. 

What if Corrie and her sister had not thanked God for the fleas in the first place?  I bet their attitudes would have looked a lot like the other women's attitudes as they faced death - hopeless, joyless, gloomy - and probably would not have had as much positive influence on them as they did.  But instead, Corrie and her sister thanked God, went about their grueling work with a posture of thankfulness.  As they read the word to other women each night and did what it told them to do, their obedience and the work of the Spirit bore unimaginable fruit in one of the darkest places known to mankind.

Let’s be like Corrie and do what the word says in order to be women who radiate joy and hope regardless of our circumstances.  We will see wonderful fruit come from our obedience instead of going about our day-to-day tasks with a half-hearted attitude missing opportunities for God to display his provision and grace and kindness toward us.  Let's approach the things we don't feel like doing with hope and a belief that God will change our feelings as we obey and ask God to help us walk faithfully in obedience to his word (reference Ps. 1:2 and 1 John 5:2-5 which say to delight in the law of the Lord and to keep his commandments which are not burdensome).

C.S. Lewis helps connect the dots between faith, trust, obedience, and the eternal fruit that comes out of it.  In Mere Christianity he says, “To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

Back to the NYT article again: if the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff can fulfill the duty made clear to them based upon the occupations they work in (thank you God for their faithfulness right now!), without knowing the future and with anxious hearts and fear looming all around them...how much more can we, as Christian women/moms, who have hope and know what to do with anxiety and know where to cast our fears, be dutiful in the things God is calling us to (like making beds, email writing, paying bills, cooking dinner, reading stories, etc…)?

Women, let's let God's word pressure cook in us a joyfully obedience to ALL that it says.  Don't obey the word begrudgingly as if it offers no hope.  It should not be a burden to obey it and if it is, your faith is probably in the wrong thing, not in God himself, whom you are serving.  God will do great things through our obedience...both in us personally, in future generations, and on into eternity.   

Go to the word. 
Read what it says. 
And then do it (with joy because we're thankful God has graciously told us what to do as his children!).