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Nancy Parker Brummett

Nancy Parker Brummett

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Ann Voscamp

The Glory Walk

August 15, 2022 by Nancy 17 Comments

In her recent book Waymaker author Ann Voscamp calls the times she goes out to walk in nature her “glory walks,” meaning it’s when she can just bask in the natural beauty of God’s creation and absorb it into her soul. My early morning walks this summer have been just that, so I’m savoring these late summer mornings before the temperature drops and the wind howls.

I usually come home from a glory walk having developed a new perspective, sorted out a problem, or gleaned new insight into life’s mysteries. One day recently I spied two tiny baby rabbits nibbling grass beside the sidewalk. When my big, scary black shadow covered them, their mother scurried out of the brush and herded them back to safety. I wouldn’t have hurt them for the world, but she didn’t know that. That morning as I walked I prayed for all the young moms in our family and church trying to protect their offspring from the evils of our current culture. Not a prayer that would have come to mind without my walk, but a needed one.

This morning’s walk was different—a new route and an additional kind of glory. After a too-early appointment for a bone density scan, I decided to walk around the big lake in a city park in our town. The city’s done a wonderful job of maintaining the park, but still it is in a sketchier part of town than I usually navigate alone so I pulled up to the lake, locked the car, and set out with a bit of trepidation.

I didn’t walk far before my fears were forgotten. The lake was glistening in the sun, the geese were plentiful, and the mountain peaks were glorious. I passed other walkers with dogs and exchanged pleasantries. As I passed by a bench where a young man was sitting near an elderly woman in a wheelchair I heard him remark, “See grandma, all these people are walking to stay fit.” I paused and turned toward them. “That reminds me of a sign I just saw in my doctor’s office,” I said. “It read, ‘I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape!’” That gave them both a good laugh and I was glad I could brighten their morning.

As I made my way toward the far side of the lake I passed a few homeless people, including a young man trying to teach himself to jump rope with a long piece of black cable. I called out a “good for you!” as I passed.

Suddenly this was beginning to feel more like a pilgrimage than a glory walk, so I wasn’t surprised when on the far side of the lake I encountered a group of young Black men and women playing by the shore with an older dog and a passel of puppies. One young man with dreadlocks to his waist was holding two of the cutest puppies I’ve seen in a long time. I might have nodded and walked on, but then I’m reading Senator Tim Scott’s new book America, A Redemption Story. In it he says if we are ever going to heal the racial or political divides in this country, we can’t depend on the government to do it. We each have to do some small thing to make a difference each and every day.

That message speaks to my heart, so rather than nod and pass by, believing they would have no interest in talking to an old white woman, I approached the group and began fawning over and petting the puppies. After a few minutes I excused myself and said, “I can’t stay or I’ll be begging to take one of those puppies home, and neither my cat nor my husband would be happy about that!” We all laughed and waved as I walked away.

Who’s next, Lord? I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Ahead of me I saw a large Black man standing under a canopy of oak trees to the right of the sidewalk. As I approached I heard him call out, “Come and get it, I ain’t comin’ to you!” Assuming he was calling a dog, I stopped to see if I could spot the pooch. Soon I realized he was holding an open bag of peanuts, and he was addressing six or eight squirrels who were leaping about on the grass in front of him. Another day I might not have approached him, but emboldened by Scott’s book and my experience with the puppy posse, I struck up a conversation by saying something obvious like, “Oh, you’re feeding the squirrels!”

“Yes’m,” he replied. “They know I’m comin’ every day and they wait here for me.” We chatted a bit and as I started to walk away he called out, “Mam, will you pray for me? My name’s Charles and I’m goin’ through some trials. Will you pray for me?”

“I will, Charles. I promise!” I called back to him. I don’t know why he pegged me as a woman who prayed, but for the rest of the walk to my car I asked the Lord to bless Charles, a modern-day St. Francis of Assisi. “Lord, I don’t know what trials Charles is facing, but you do. Be with him today, Lord. Protect him and give him your peace.”

As with most glory walks, at the end of this one I felt blessed and changed. Faith is greater than fear. To God be the glory!

Filed Under: Back Porch Break Tagged With: Ann Voscamp, Faith, glory, Prayer, Tim Scott, walk

Thankful Living

November 22, 2017 by Nancy 12 Comments

Thankful Living 1Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.—Psalm 100:4-5

We live in a society that makes it easier to grumble than to be grateful. We have to move someplace we never really wanted to live, and so we grumble. We are disappointed that the political candidate we support isn’t elected, and so we grumble. Daily aggravations can produce grumbling as well: scheduled visits are cancelled, we have to wait for a doctor’s appointment, we look forward to a meal only to be faced with a surly server. All these things and more give us opportunities to grumble.

We even feel justified in our grumbling, don’t we? If we come from the misguided assumption that life should be fair, then grumbling is a given. But what if we change our assumption and our thinking? What if we begin to look, each and every day, not for reasons to grumble, but for reasons to be grateful? What if we could establish a habit of thankful living?

Ann Voscamp wrote a book titled One Thousand Gifts which began as a challenge from a friend to write down 1,000 blessings in her life. Ann’s list far exceeded 1,000 blessings once she opened her eyes to all that was around her. Can we do it? Can we begin to look for opportunities to be grateful rather than opportunities to grumble? Certainly keeping our eyes on God is a good place to start. Ann wrote in her blog, “We will give thanks to God not because of how we feel, but because of who He is.” Let us give thanks.Thankful Living2

Can we do it? Can we even convert a life of habitual grumbling into a life of thankful living? With God’s help, and by keeping our focus on Him, we can. Certainly not all of us are grumblers, but all of us can be more aware of the blessings that are ours.

The older we grow, the more blessings we have in our blessings accounts. We enter into a life of thankful living when we spend more time remembering our blessings than fretting about what we don’t have now. For example, those of us blessed to be parents and grandparents can easily find ourselves wishing we could spend more time with those we love, but just the very existence of those people in our families is a blessing, isn’t it?

A woman having breakfast with her husband at a restaurant entered into a discussion with their waitress and found out the waitress was excited about leaving to visit her grandchildren the next day. “How old are they?” the woman asked. “They are six and eight,” the waitress replied. “How long has it been since you’ve seen them?” the woman inquired. “Oh, I’ve never seen them,” the waitress answered. Certainly that puts having to go weeks or months without seeing those we love into perspective, doesn’t it?

Pumpkin in the SnowPaul wrote his letter to the Christians in Philippi, the Book of Philippians in the Bible, while he was in prison in Rome. Certainly Paul had much to grumble about. He was falsely accused and unfairly imprisoned. Yet the Book of Philippians is known as the book of joy! In spite of his circumstances, Paul was able to write a message of joy because of the certainty of his faith in Jesus Christ. His joy and gratitude were based on the eternity he knew was waiting for him, not on the prison cell around him.

We can have the same attitude of gratitude that sustained Paul. We can experience the joy of thankful living by focusing on all that God has done for us—and on our eternal life to come. As Thanksgiving comes this year, let us say along with Paul, “I thank my God” (Philippians 1:3).

(Excerpted in part from The Hope of Glory, Volume Two, publication date TBD.)

Filed Under: Take My Hand Again Tagged With: Ann Voscamp, Gratitude, Paul, Philippians, Thankful Living, Thanksgiving

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