Stevemidkiff's Blog

If only we could renew the romance of our childhood

If only we could recapture that sense of wonder

the world suddenly becomes as marvellous

as the prince’s palace in the fairy stories

and our life in Christ now

is life’s most sensational sensation

F W Boreham, Faces in the Fire

The four Israeli soldiers in the lower pic are the granddaughters
of the four women in the front of the line of the top pic

Their grandmothers were in a Nazi concentration camp.

The Samson principle is a passion of all Jews

It’s called

“Never Again”

Like Samson chained with eyes gouged out
He felt for the marble pillars that supported the roof over his enemies
and he brought it down on them

“Never Again”

The tyrants will be brought down & Israel will never bow again to demonic bullies

Oh, Lord God, grant us joys
The joy of not following
Any advice of the wicked,

O Lord,
Give us the peace
Of not standing
around with sinners,

And please God
Fill us with Your joy
Keep us from
joining in with scoffers.

Let us delight
in doing everything You want;
help us
To think constantly
about your Word day & night.

Help us
become like a tree
planted along the river
Of Your pure Word,
bearing fruit
each season without fail.

Let our leaf—
Our spiritual vitality—
never wither,
and in all we do,
let us know
the prosperity
that comes from You .

Deliver us, Lord,
from the fate of the wicked.

They are like worthless chaff,
scattered by the wind.

They will be condemned
at the time of judgment.
Sinners will have no place among the godly.

For we know that you, O LORD,
watch over the path of the godly,
but the path of the wicked
leads to destruction.

Let us walk the path of the godly, Lord

PSALMS 1 paraphrased

48,000 English words to explain a single, Hebrew word.

Oh! But, what a word!

Inexpressible: Hesed & the Mystery of God’s Lovingkindness

by Michael Card

Like all work,
the work of electronic communications
contains inherent poetry,
perhaps several inherent poetries:

the poetry of information,
the poetry of relationship,
the poetry of psychology.
the poetry of many disciplines,
the poetry of encouragement
the poetry of affirmation
the poetry of conflict,
the poetry of debate,
the poetry of acrimony.

From the book

Poetry At Work

We’ve been without my sisters presence for 58 years
but Marjorie’s beauty still lingers in our heart.

As lord Byron so aptly wrote:

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes & starry skies,

And all that’s best of dark & bright
Meets in her aspect & her eyes;

Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek & o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—

A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

Our loneliness is not a flaw.

We aren’t lonely because something is wrong with us.

We are lonely because something is right with us.

Our loneliness is the Triune God drawing us to Himself,

Our loneliness is God, our communal God in us, beckoning us to connect;

Our loneliness is God wooing us to Jesus

Leading us to know & to be known; to love & to be loved;

to befriend & to be befriended.

Loneliness urges the withdrawn self to engage.

It calls the private persona to become a real person.
It calls the impostor to get healthy by getting real.

Loneliness begins to fade when the image-conscious self-editor,
the retreater, the hider & the poser in us begins a transition
toward transparency.

But transparency can be fearsome & disorienting.

In the book, How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years,
the writer gets honest & writes that
the reason he writes books,
the reason he does comedy
the reason he does everything
is because he is deeply broken & is desperate for people to like him.

We have an insatiable hunger for “likes”

Our desire for positive taps is a longing God put in us

This is our thirst to be known & loved, to be exposed & not rejected.

But competing with this is our fear of being cast out,
Our fear of being excluded, diminished & forgotten by the people we let in.

We’re surrounded by the insensitive who expose us to
Their constant judgment, which adds to our isolation & fear

We have reasons to assume the world is not safe
We become social chameleons,
We blend into the colors & textures of whatever environments we inhabit.
We have a chameleon fig leaf self for each situation

We have our work self,
We have our party self,
We have our church self,
We have our at-home self,
We have our Internet self,
We have many other selves that we “put on” to self-protect.

Like the chameleon, we are in chronic adaptation mode,
We are tweaking our external colors & textures to blend in
We want to belong & ward off potential predators.

This destructive strategy appeals to our frail & fearful hearts.

We want to be vulnerable,
We want to love & be loved,
But we are afraid to risk and expose/extend our true selves.

CS Lewis noted:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Give a piece of your heart to another person,
and your heart may be wrung & possibly broken.
the only place outside of heaven where we can be
completely safe from all the dangers of love is hell”

How can we find healing for our ache of loneliness?
Where can we turn in our search for connection
Where can we find a safe space to know & be known?

It’s in Jesus’ & His true church
The church is not to be a social club for well-dressed posers;
The true church is a hospital for the sick & Jesus is the Chief Physician.
The true church is a detox center for addicts

The true church is not a place that retails therapy but pours out real therapy

Jesus’ real church is a purposeful, powerful, healing, safe hospital
for the sin-sick addict

The cure for addictions & we all have many is just turning
Number one: We turn to God
(Who alone can satisfy our every need & heals us)
Number two: we turn from idols
(addiction idols can never satisfy but multiplies our needs & destroys us)

The true church is not optional,
The true church is not shiny social club add-on to our lives.

The true church means joining our imperfect self to other imperfect selves
to form an imperfect community that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey
toward a better future together.

Our dream of community is discovered in Christ’s community,
His true church with all of its weaknesses & frailties,

Don’t be a destroyer of Christ’s community by dismissing the local church,
By dismissing it we become destroyers of Jesus’ first & foremost love.

Why are we so cynical of the local church.

We forget that the church at Corinth was narcissistic, arrogant, dysfunctional, litigious & sometimes adulterous, racist, and unjust.

But it received more redemptive attention & energy from Paul than any other
“New Testament” church.

It seems that as he beheld the wormy caterpillar that was Corinth,
he also envisioned the butterfly.
He seemed confident that He who began a good work in them
would be faithful to complete it.

How do we experience loneliness-slaying love in the midst of the imperfect,
messy community?

We’re to “Be kind because everyone you meet“
We’re to “ realize everyone is fighting a hard, hidden battle.”

As we limp toward transparency & community & friendship with our own
fears & insecurities, we recognize that we aren’t alone. We are all much afraid.

We all feel more insecure than confident,
We all feel more weak than strong,
We all feel more unlovable than lovely,
We all feel more irredeemable than redeemed.

When we see that we are not alone, we can reach out to one another.

Don’t underestimate the power of words.

While shaming words can take courage out of a soul,
encouraging & affirming words can put courage back in.

When you offer critique to another soul, do it gently.
When you offer encouragement to another soul, do it fiercely.

“But,” we groan,
there are some things that bother us about this community
there are people that we really don’t like.

But Moving toward people we don’t particularly like can give us our best opportunities to love.

Biblical love is neither a second hand emotion nor a sweet, old-fashioned notion.

Love is actually a battlefield designed to reshape us into the likeness of
the One who first loved us when we were not friends to him, but enemies.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We love, not in a sentimental sense, but in the gutsy, costly sense,
because He first loved us.

We do not have the resources in ourselves to extend such selfless love.
We are resourced by another, by Jesus Himself.

Emerson once wrote,

“The blessing of old friends is that you can afford to be stupid with them.”

With Jesus, we can afford to be stupid with Him because He has taken
our shame away by moving our judgment day from the future to the past.

His death, burial & resurrection have established us as His beloved Bride,
as those of whom he is not ashamed to call his sisters & brothers.

We are & forever will be the cherished & kept daughters & sons of His Father,
who is also our Father.

We are not a consumer good to Jesus, therefore we are not consumed.

We are his forever family—fully known & fully loved; completely exposed
and never rejected.

We can befriend others because this Jesus is our Friend

adapted from Scott Sauls

Honoring Mothers, is honoring our God who created them
to be the procreators of all human existence & experience.

Honoring our Father & Mother is the only profound directive with prominent blessing
attached instantly to its authoritative mandate.

For those who honor; God pronounces: that their days maybe long.
Long days, speaks not of a long life specifically,
but of a life that is effective, influential, impactful, efficient & impressive.

Who wouldn’t want that aura added to their life?
The solution is so simple; we just need to be Honoring our Father and Mother.

There are two categories of mothers in my heart experience.

There are mothers who are our biological mothers & there are mothers in deed.
Mothers in deed, are those who take the burden & joy of offspring in their hearts,
and embrace to their soul the needs of those God has brought into their life.

I have five Mothers I want to give honorable recognition too.

Marjorie Mae Midkiff July 19 1922 to March 1986

My Mother was an amazing woman who had 3 children by her 19th birthday.
That’s called starting early & she was a true over achiever.
I didn’t arrive until she was 27 & she made it clear to me that I was an accident.
I think that qualifies me as positively special & she made me always feel that way.

My Mom had incredible verbal skills & made her voice recognized in all public settings.
My mother had an intense love for everyone but was never shy about sharing the truth
in a direct, memorable, yet loving manner.

My Mom fought cancer with a stoic boldness. She had a double radical mastectomy
when I was 9 years old. It was intensely painfully for her and physically embracing was
never comfortable to her after that surgical procedure.

She was a very competent sales lady at the downtown Bon Marche for many years.
It was a rich joy for me to take the bus down from our home in the Roosevelt District
and she’d give me some quarters when I visited her work to buy a milkshake and fries
at the hamburger shop on the ground floor of the Bon.

After years of declining health my Mom stepped into eternity in a battle with colon cancer.

Marjorie Midkiff Miller 1942 to 1963

My sister Marjorie was 8 years older then me & was super organized. She worked at a
donut shop in Lake City & was very thrifty & seemed to know how to save every nickel.

She had rich red hair & was gorgeous inside & out. It was always a treat to visit her little
bungalow in Lake City. She would let me play with her collection of silver dollars which
she added to every payday. She was immensely generous & always gave me her extra
change & even a couple of silver dollars.

Marjorie was killed just as she was turning 21 in a tragic auto wreck on Stevens Pass.
Her husband Larry hit the avalanche tunnels at the summit in a snowstorm on Thanksgiving.
The odd thing about it all is Larry was a heavy equipment operator & had assisted in building
those avalanche tunnels just a few years before he hit them.

Marjorie was due to have their first child in a few days after the car accident.
She had a room in their home on Harbor Island all prepared for this new bundle of love
in her womb.

I’ve always felt robbed that she would sneak into glory with her baby so abruptly.
I remember in my youth studying every red headed girl I saw to see if the beautiful
face of my sister would just come back. It was as if someone had stuck a pin in my
heart leaving a wound that would never heal.

Blanche Stickney Newton 1899 to 1981

Blanche Stickney Newton was my wonderful grandmother. Her memory is rich with
warm hugs & twice weekly visits to our home. The first thing she did, when she arrived,
was to sit at our piano & play hymns, singing with enthusiastic volume.
After that she would sit in my Mom’s vibrating therapeutic lounge chair & sing more hymns,
with a significant quiver in her vocals.

She always wanted me to pray along with her, which she did every time she visited.
It was a challenge to pray with her, because she was a boisterous prayer warrior,
who when I attempted to verbalize my prayers, would say; praise Jesus!!! so loud,
that it disrupted my simplistic thought train.

Needless to say she had a boiling hot intense love for Jesus. She served at the Bread of Life
mission for many decades & would faithfully gather food for their kitchen, play the piano for their meetings, lead the singing & even preach about her loving Savior from the pulpit.

She would have me come with her & got me to speak from the podium many times.
She would sit in rapt attention as I spoke yelling praise Jesus as I shared, even though
I’m confident that my novice offerings were ridiculous & boring.
I was the greatest to her, when in reality she was the true greatest of all time to me.

Amelia M. Stickney 1869 to 1947

Amelia M. Stickney is my great grandmother who lived near the corner of 228th and
the Bothell Everett Hwy.
My Great Grandfather built the house for her in 1904 on their homestead in Canyon Park.
The house is still standing amazingly which is a credit to his construction.
He had a sawmill where the Bank of America now stands on 228th

Amy Stickney 1901 to 1983

Amy Stickney was my great aunt and a English teacher at Bothell High School for over 30 years.
She taught English to my Mom & Dad in the 1930s. She also taught English to my sister
Nancy Stroud who graduated from BHS in 1957.

I was a lousy English student, so my Dad would drive me to Aunt Amy’s twice a week for
English & Lit tutoring.
Aunt Amy patiently instructed my rebellious brain dead soul week after week with compelling
tenacity.
Aunt Amy wrote a wonderful history of Bothell called Squak Slough.
Amy never married but after the death of her brother she accepted the responsibility
of raising his 5 orphaned children while continuing her teaching profession.
Aunt Amy had amazing chutzpah & an enthusiastic & entertaining motivator in my life.
She was a gifted mother in deed.

To these dear Mothers in my life I wish honor from my heart as they rest together in
pioneer cemetery in Bothell.

They now join hands in glory with God’s peace & joy as their crown.

As gold is the most precious among the metals, so is faith among the graces.

Faith cuts us off from the wild olive of nature & grafts us into Christ.

Faith is the vital artery of the soul: ‘The just shall live by his faith’

Hab. 2:4

Such as are destitute of faith may breathe, but they lack life.

Faith enlivens the graces; not a grace stirs till faith sets it working.

Faith is to the soul what the animal spirits are to the body,

exciting lively activity in it.

Faith excites repentance; it is like the fire to the still which makes it drop.

When we believe God’s love us, this makes us weep that we should sin against so good a God.

Faith is the mother of hope; first we believe the promise, then we hope for it.

Faith is the oil which feeds the lamp of hope.

Faith & hope are two turtle-dove graces; take away one & the other languishes.

If the sinews are cut, the body is lame; if this sinew of faith is cut, hope is lame.

Faith is the ground of patience; he who believes that God is his God,

Faith believes that all providences work for his good, patiently yields himself to the will of God.

Thus faith is a living principle.

And the life of a believer is nothing but a life of faith.

His prayer is the breathing of faith Jas. 5:15

His obedience is the result of faith Rom. 16:26

The godly by faith lives in Christ, as the beam lives in the sun:

We live; yet not us, but Christ lives in us’ Gal. 2:20

We by the power of faith see above reason, trade above the moon

2 Cor. 4:18

By faith our heart is finely quieted; we trusts ourselves & all our affairs to God

Psa. 112:7

As in a time of war, men get into a garrison & trust themselves & their treasures there, so ‘the name of the Lord is a strong tower’

Prov. 18:10 & we trusts all our worth in this garrison.

I know whom I have believed & am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day’

2 Tim. 1:12

God trusted Paul with his gospel & Paul trusted God with his soul.

Faith is a catholicon — a remedy against all troubles.

It is our sheet-anchor that we cast out into the sea of God’s mercy & we’re kept from sinking in despair. ‘

‘If only faith is firm, no ruin harms.’

Adapted from Thomas Watson

Long enough, God—You’ve ignored me long enough.

I’ve looked at the back of Your head long enough.

Long enough I’ve carried this ton of trouble,

lived with a stomach full of pain.

Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.

Take a good look at me, God, my God; I want to look life in the eye,

So no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face.

I’ve thrown myself headlong into Your arms—

I’m celebrating Your rescue.

I’m singing at the top of my lungs,

I’m so full of answered prayers.

Psalm 13:1-6 MSG