Keep your Eye on the Bell

~ Barbara ~ 2 Comments

Nine-year-old Zoe surprised me when she said she wanted to attempt the rock-climbing wall. I watched her harness up, admiring my granddaughter’s adventurous spirit. Once secure, she started the climb but didn’t get far when she began to struggle. Flailing, she finally pushed off and eased the rope to let herself down. Her face wore defeat and her lower lip quivered as she listed all the reasons she didn’t make it to the top. The footings were uneven, the wall grazed her knee, she got confused where to step next and which rock to grasp. We stood back and watched others nimbly climb the wall and ring the bell at the top, proclaiming their success. I knew Zoe would try again.

This time she scaled the wall easily and grinned down at me when the bell rang out her victory. Once her feet were back on the ground, I asked her why she succeeded this time. “I didn’t look at the footings at all and I shook it off when I hit the wall,” Zoe said. Then she added the zinger, “I just kept looking up at the bell.” Zoe learned a lesson that day that extended beyond a rock-climbing wall.*

Obstacles, insecurities, and fear are glaringly visible and hard to ignore. But God offers us a way to move past them that requires simple action but determined willpower. Isaiah gives us the key in chapter 40, verse 26:

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens.

In essence he’s saying, take your eyes off your problem and look up at your Creator. Let your focus be on the Problem-Solver, not on the problem. This simple action will change your perspective, raise your spirit, and give you hope.

*Taken from I Was Broken, Too, Four Paths to Restore Hope by Barbara Higby, page 20.

Looking Up

~ Barbara ~ 2 Comments

We were grammar school kids walking home from school, chattering about those things young girls find important when, thwonk! Regina walked straight into a telephone pole, headfirst. When the stun wore off we asked, none too gently, “What in the world were you doing?” Regina often tripped and, apparently, on this day she was literally applying her mother’s advice to watch where she was going. While concentrating on her feet, careful of every step, Regina neglected to look up at the bigger picture.

We walk through life a lot like Regina. When tripped up by difficulties, we try harder and concentrate on every step and misstep. Though we avoid a rock and step over the cracks, we lose sight of where we’re headed and crash along the way. Nursing a headache, we turn even more introspective and increasingly focus on our worries and woes, which are many and varied.

Rising like telephone poles that block our path, we are hit with a scary diagnosis, rebellious child, or job insecurity. Troubles clamor for our attention and drain our energy. The search for a way out of our difficulties or a path around them exhausts us.

When the stun subsides, fear contends for our attention and presses in. Worries abound and we fixate on the what ifs. What if I can’t make my next payment? What if I never marry or have children? What if I don’t get this job? What if I do get this job? What if the rumors are true? Preoccupation with worry makes hope elusive at best. How can hope survive when our attention zeroes in on our problems? Could a change of focus renew our hope? Yes, it can, when we apply the “H” of hope:

Hold your Eyes Higher.

*From I Was Broken, Too, Four Paths to Restore Hope, by Barbara Higby, page 19-20.

Ascension Day: Moving Up

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Have you done your Ascension Day shopping? Bought a new outfit? Purchased gifts or planned a special dinner? Me either. But when I grasped the door handle of a restaurant in Lancaster last week I stilled, surprised and pleased to see the day being honored.

 In all my many years, I can’t recall seeing a sign announcing Ascension Day, let alone closing a business to celebrate it. I do remember going to church as a child but, sadly, today it is seldom mentioned, let alone honored.

We celebrate Christmas and Easter for their life-changing significance but, Ascension Day? We let it slip by even though it points to the most profound, life-changing event we will ever experience.

On that day in history, Jesus’ ascension fulfilled prophesy, but it  also pointed to the future. Those watching Jesus ascend heard these words of promise in Acts 1:

“This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven,
will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”

The Messiah was born. The Messiah was crucified. The Messiah will come back—the same way He left, on the clouds. Ascension Day commemorates Jesus’ return to His Father and His rightful place on His throne, but it is more than that it. Ascension Day celebrates the promise, the assurance, the certainty of His return. It points to our ascension, when we will join Him in the sky and He will bring us home.

The Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God…
We who are still alive… will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
Then we will be with the Lord forever. 

So encourage each other with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:16-18 NLT

Happy Ascension Day!

Graduation: Moving Up

~ Barbara ~ 4 Comments

We just returned from Tennessee for our grandson’s high school graduation. I was surprisingly stirred on several levels.

Graduation, from a school (or a feat of any kind), speaks of leaving the past and moving forward to something more, something better. The satisfaction of accomplishment collides with expectation and hope. I find it all quite emotional, beginning with the processional.

“Pomp and Circumstance” always moves me, and I must not be alone because it’s been played at graduations since 1905. The music is celebratory and triumphant. Like every grandparent in the arena, my eyes sought only one graduate in the processional.

The students’ addresses in Tennessee, 2025, echoed other graduation speeches I’ve heard, sprinkled with teen emotion. When they speak of the challenges they’ve survived, the lows and hard times, I kind of cringe. They have no idea! I don’t downplay the angst of the teen years, but I’m well aware that the hardships they’ll likely face as adults will be far heavier. But I digress, back to the second-best part of the graduation—the tassels!

I love the move of the tassel from the right to the left. I can’t even describe why. I just know it touches me. And then the tossing of the hats—the pure, uninhibited joy of it!

When I reflected on the ceremony and the emotion of it, I thought about the graduation in my future.

  • I thought about triumphant music accompanying Christ’s return.
  • I savored the realization that I was leaving behind all hardship and pain.
  • I imagined moving a metaphorical tassel to indicate absolute separation from my old life and entrance to my new life.
  • I saw hosts of “graduates” throwing down their crowns before the Lord of Lords.

The celebration of any graduation—high school, college, or beyond—is a mild foretaste of the joy that awaits us. (Even as I wrote this post, I couldn’t help smiling.)

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise… to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
I Thessalonians 4:16-18

Image by Gillian Callison from Pixabay