I am currently taking a "Sabbath" from my blog... I will return to it on November 1, 2019.

Stay in God's grip!
​Todd

The shoreline can often be a place of great beauty, mystery, and unfortunately, storms.

As I wake up this morning, I'm reminded of the appearance of Jesus along the shoreline. The disciples did not recognize him, as he yelled out to them on the boat and asked if they had any fish?

He instructs them to throw out their nets, and they draw in so much fish that they can hardly pull the nets in. He then eats with them, and they suddenly realize it is Jesus.

Sometimes I wonder what it was like to have been in such a close relationship with Jesus, and then there are these moments when even those who had been closest to him do not recognize him when he appears.  It is a reminder to me that for those who see God as very real and present, can have moments in their life when they fail to recognize that God is right beside them.  I think that we all know a little something about this.

Knowing that God is present is sometimes hard to notice simply because we are so focused on what is before us, rather than God who surrounds us.  So much of the time it is when we take the time to reflect that we discover God was there all the time.

Still though, it can be trying.  

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

The morning began with thunder rattling my bedroom window, and the sound of rain upon the roof of our home.  I leaned over to look at my phone, read a few emails from work, and then received word that a patient of mine had just died.  I quickly moved from the bed to the shower, pouring a cup of coffee and headed out the door to meet a coworker at the death, and to provide support for the family.

The rain poured and I placed the windshield wipers on their fastest setting and I still struggled to see the road as water was displaced by passing cars and the monsoon that seemed to have settled over me.

Forty minutes later I was parking at the home where the woman lived, and I was soon face to face with her daughter.  We greeted one another and I told her how sorry I was that her mother had died, and expressed appreciation for allowing us to care for her mother.  

With her thick Spanish accent, the patient had requested that I call her, "Mama."  Many times I would greet her with the name, "Mama," and she would take my hand and kiss it.   While she struggled to remember names, including her own, there was still a connection that overcame illness and our differences.  Initially she could still make the sign of the cross, and later I would help her when her mind forgot.  I remember praying the "Lord's prayer," with her, and her love for chocolate milk.

A picture of she and her husband sat beside her bed, and often I looked at it and wondered what she was like, "in her prime."  This morning her daughter and I viewed a motionless face, finally resting,  free from confusion and the struggles that she had faced for the last few years.  

"She will finally have all her words again," her daughter shared.  We stood beside her and offered prayer.  We prayed that God was welcoming her, and that she was finally healed from all the struggles that this world seemed to have offered her.  

Again I am reminded that healing takes place in unexpected ways.  That death is not always something to fear, or for that matter, unwelcomed.  It was the mark of a journey completed.

I watched as the funeral director loaded her into a parked van outside, and listened as a daughter said one last "good bye, mom," as they drove away.

As they pulled away I realized the rain had stopped, and that the sun was beginning to appear.  Her daughter looked at me and said, "It's going to be a sunny day."

It was in that moment that I realized that we had emptied ourselves and allowed for God to fill the moment with new meaning, and focus.  While the pain of the loss was very real and present, there existed the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness.  We were both participating in the care of God who came, not to the powerful, but the powerless.  God created us in a way not to make us different, but the same.  Not to take our pain away in moments like this, but to share in it.

Each day we are invited to participate with our brothers and sisters to open our hearts to each other, and to create relationships.  In doing so, we are the walking illustrations of God's love for us and one another.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

Most people know that I just simply like to write.  I was that kid in high school that loved the exercise where the teacher told you to put your pencil on the paper and just begin to write about what comes to your mind.  I can remember starting out, "So the teacher wants us to put our thoughts on paper without thinking about what to write.  Well, I think..."

Five minutes later, and often several pages later, I had discussed everything from my trip on the bus that morning, to what I thought about the girl sitting next to me in class, to wondering if it would matter if I drew a single line across the page, noting that I was someone deep in thought?

Now days I realize that this is often how I approach my prayer time with God.  You know, the first intention is to be in a conversation with God, giving thanks for the day, and perhaps the Astros win the other night, even though it was one minute till midnight and I had to be up just six hours later.  I then turn to the list of things that I need to get done today.  Watching the clock to make sure that I get on the road in time to catch the last traffic jam.  

But then there are those intimate things that seem to cause my sleep to be interrupted at night.  Finances, health, kids, grandkids, parents, an upcoming trip, an examination next month, and asking myself, "Why is it that these things bother me so much in the middle of the night when I have all day to think about these things, Lord?"

The last few weeks I have heard a verse from John 14 spoken to me and I have also shared it, "Do not let your heart be troubled."

Funny how that all seems to work.  Or in some cases, it simply doesn't.

Sometimes I wish that I could write my way through all of these things, then turn the page to discover that the world is a peaceful place, and that we all lived "happily ever after."  Having read the Bible in its entirety, I can certainly relate to the Psalmist, the dear Disciples, and a few other people who lived through times where they simply felt that they needed to write their way through the experience.

"Do not let your heart be troubled," inspires, comforts, and reminds us of those who have "been there, done that... and survived."  

The words of Jesus, encapsulated by listeners and challenged by readers, leads us to a better understanding of what our faith is to be about, and reminds us that in the course of our daily lives to take time to love ourselves and one another.  To affirm, and be careful to pull planks of wood from our own eyes before we comment on the minute specks in the eyes of others.  To remember that we are to seek joy in all things, while battling to survive depression and grief.  To not let our hearts be troubled challenges us when an innocent black woman is shot through a window of her own home by a man sworn to protect society, and our soldiers are on foreign soil for questionable reasons.  When we are reminded that God sent Jesus into the world to save the world, not condemn the world, it is then when we struggle to understand how it is that Jesus came so that ALL might have life.

We are simply challenged.  To talk with God and to communicate with others.  To lay down, not necessarily our life, but our phones, so that we can look at our neighbor in the eyes and listen when they began to open their hearts to us.

As I write this morning, I hope that my words eventually lead me, and others, to a place where peace, forgiveness and love can soon appear between the lines, commas, and periods.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

One of the things I enjoy taking photos of are shadows. Do you realize even the smallest speck of sand casts a shadow?

It's true. Shadows cause the writer of Peter Pan to make an introduction to a family that begins a tale that many of us know when Peter loses his shadow and goes on a quest to find it.  I can remember as a child attempting to step on my own shadow.

We used to make forms with our hands on tent walls using a flashlight for hours when camping.
One of my favorite theologians, D. Elton Trueblood writes, "man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."

For each of us, we recognize our own shadow, but did you also realize that no matter who we are, all of God's creation casts the same colored shadow. To me, it is a significant reminder that in this world this similarity is a common place to begin.

Each shadow represents a child of God, who seeks truly the same thing. Happiness, good health, hope, family, and so many other things. Each shadow represents a common thread.

While in the light we all seem to focus on what something appears to look like, and prompts us to judge, segregate, and divide, a shadow prevents us from doing that.

Each of us casts a shadow, and we ALL have been created to live and serve a wonderful loving and caring God. Isn't it amazing that the first thing God created was light!

While you enjoy the light of day, what do the shadows around any of us represent? Be happy, and love one another, beginning with our shadows!

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

This morning I pulled down several journals from a bookshelf and began to look back in time.  It's interesting to look at life in retrospect and see God's presence, but yet, at the time, not realizing what is going on.  I literally have volumes of journals that I have written over the years.  I have discovered that in times of change or struggle in my life, I turned to empty pages and wrote about what I was feeling and experiencing.

In August of 1989 I was in my second year of living in Wyoming where I was working.  It was the farthest distance and longest time I had been away from my "Indiana Home."  I realized as I turned the pages and looked at the entry dates, that I was the same age as my daughter is now.  I stopped and had to wonder how different we are, but yet, the same in many ways.

My job didn't allow much time for "church."  I traveled most every week at that time, and my home was more of a place where I stored things, rather than a place where I lived.  Some weeks I remember getting home on a Friday, dropping my clothes off to be laundered, taking care of what I could on Saturday, and by Sunday night I was packing my bags again to leave on Monday morning.  Church was "something" I would squeeze in when I could.   I can't remember the number of times that I received a "Visitor Card," when I showed up at church.

I was a restless young man.  I realize that the wide, open spaces of Wyoming was exactly the place where I needed to be.  I remember one day I traveled nearly three hours and didn't pass one single vehicle on the road.  I stopped in the middle of the roadway one evening when I crested a pass and looked across to see the wind swirling snow into the sunset among mountainous peaks, causing an amazing display of light being cast everywhere.  A rainbow was created by the snow that went from the ground straight into the sky.  Thirty years later I can still remember the encounter.

This morning I was reminded from an entry from August of 1989 that, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for," from Hebrews 11.  My next note to myself, "Hope is the driving force."

I'm pretty sure that this entry was made while waiting on a plane in Denver that day, as I noted in my journal that the night before I had dinner with a marketing group that did work with the company where I was employed.  This is where the "God thing," the term we used in seminary to explain away things that we couldn't seem to understand, seemed to take hold.  The effects of faith on us invites us to see beyond our current situation.

I continued writing, "The key to living a faithful life means that we must act as if God is present in every moment that we live."

I must have stopped and walked to a window that looked out upon the mountains in the distance because my next line is, "Even the mountains in the distance seem to reflect this.  They are the result of God's power.  The entire universe was formed at God's command.  Faith in retrospect.  It is the reminder of the power of faith in our life.  Each of us must be found faithful."

Funny thing about faith.  When God promises us something, whether we believe it or not, it will always be part of our journey.  

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

Yesterday seemed to be a day filled with expressions of love.

The funny thing about love is that it just exists.  A patient of mine who has lost her ability to find her words over the last few months, stared at me yesterday morning as I read Psalms to her, and offered prayer.  As I spoke to her I reminded her of the years that she cared for others in the hospital where she had worked as a nurse.  She continued to stare and listen.  I then said to her, "I can't imagine what it must be like to have lost your words and your ability to to speak."

With those words, her eyes began to well up, and tears began to flow.  It seems as if I had discovered how she was feeling about her condition, and touched the woundedness that she was feeling.  I asked if I could give her a hug, and with all her strength, she opened her hands and arms enough to allow me to hug her.  As I did, I could feel her tears touching my face.

In that moment, I had discovered her pain, while also understanding more fully the reason that Jesus asked that we, "Love one another."

Later in the day I spent time with a couple who have been together for nearly 60 years, but who "finally decided to marry," three years ago.  The woman shared,  "I can't say married life has been all that great.  He had something happen to him just a few months after we married.  He couldn't remember my name, or anyone else for that matter.  I still tell him I love him, even though he only knows of me as a stranger who sits here with him every day."

"I want him to know that he is loved each day," she continued.

What is it about God's love that connects us?  Made from the same dirt, each bearing God's breath, we are uniquely made but have a common need for love.  It is the very thing that we long for, but yet find it so difficult to understand at times.

While Jesus reminds us that we are to love one another as he has, I am reminded that this is our invitation to love others, but not our responsibility to make others love us. Receiving the love from others is something that just does not always happen, and that is where I feel that we struggle.  The act of God sending Jesus so that we may have a better understanding of what unconditional love looks like is the reminder that we need to have those who simply love around us as examples.

Each of us can be instruments of God's love.  It doesn't have to be an outpouring of Hallmark moments.  Sometimes it is simply listening, the touch of a hand, or taking the time to look someone in the eye.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

"My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

​I love poetry. Some people just know how to capture a moment, or a feeling, and to touch the soul of those who read their words.

We are all walking illustrations of God's expression. Each of us are the emotions, web and flow; all are gestures of who God is.

While in college a professor once told me that when I write I need to be kind to the reader. "Write so that the reader doesn't have to struggle to understand what you are saying."

Obviously, he had never read scripture!  There are just some things about this world that can be confusing at times.

I try to wait to look at the newspaper, or listen to news headlines until I at least have my first cup of coffee. With some of the things in the world today I have to be somewhat alert to try to even comprehend the actions of others.

It's both confusing and heartbreaking at times. In Ephesians the writer proclaims that we are God's workmanship. The word in Greek is "poemia." We get the English word, "poem" from this word.

Whenever I read this scripture, in my head I refer to humanity as God's poem, created by God, to do God's will.  Each of us are special. Connected by words in a line, and together serve as an illustration for others and one another, of God's creativity, but also beauty.

We are sonnets and periscopes, strings of prose, that create an image that others may see as the image and Spirit of the Creator.

There is beauty, and a promise... live your life in hope, and realize that each of us are part of a living illustration of who God is.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019

Someone recently asked me what I missed most about living in the midwest?  I have lived along the Gulf now for twenty years, or as the folks around here would say, "Since Tropical Storm Allison."  When you have lived along the Gulf this long, you learn that most every story that focuses on a particular time period starts with the name of storm.

I told the woman that I missed fall the most.  "What?  Not the snow?"

I smiled and laughed as I told her that, "If I never have to shovel snow again, it will be too soon!"

Truth be told, I loved the snow at times as well.  There is just something about the season of fall though, that seems to draw my mind to a different season, or feeling.  I loved how the air seemed to surrender the heat of summer.  The leaves, now bright crimson and burnt orange flowed over the hillsides, and soon, covered the forest floor, as sunlight would find it's way through empty branches to illuminate the pathway ahead.

It's interesting how different seasons promote different memories. Although I miss those moments, for me now as an adult, the thought of fall is quickly a reminder that winter will soon follow. 

Aging is a process that we all encounter.

We are Ecclesiastical people. Our lives are marked by seasons, or chapters. Each one is important, no matter how long or short it may be.

Our ability to maneuver through seasons, or situations in our lives, mark both our successes and challenges.  There are years of education, our working years, and simply the journeys that bring us people who will present for all the times of our life.  Each chapter involves life and death.

Choosing to end one chapter and beginning the next can be marked by many things. I can remember ten years ago after a serious illness, losing my job, and everything that I "knew" that represented my life, I found myself asking someone, "Who am I now?  Everything that I once knew as 'me' is now gone."

It's funny how roles can determine our importance.  What I discovered in that chapter of my life was that I was being re-created in a different way.  I'm not sure I would be as good of a hospice chaplain, or pastor, had I not experienced that year off illness and closures that seemed to invite me to question my faith.  In many ways, my darkest days made it possible for me to walk today in the valley of the shadow of death with others.

Being Ecclesiastical people is the invitation to allow for seasons.  To celebrate chapters, and to welcome change.  Trees are reminders that seasons are important to each of us.  I don't believe the tree is too concerned about the winter, because even in winter the tree is awaiting for the next chance to bud out in the spring. 

God is always like that. When a season ends for us, God has the next chapter ready to be written.  To everything there is a season.

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2019