Elaine Marie Cooper Author

Historical Fiction That Grabs Your Heart and Feeds Your Soul

devotionals

“I’m Confused”

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I recently saw one of my favorite movies from the ‘80’s entitled “Moonstruck.” It’s the story of an Italian-American family and their often laughable, sometimes melancholic events that vacillate from dramatic to heartrending to comical. Throughout the movie, one feels the great love that is at the heart of this extended family.

One of my favorite scenes is near the end during the kitchen table finale. The adult daughter breaks up with one fiancée and then agrees to marry his brother instead. It is brilliantly written, and shows the changing condition of our lives from one moment to the next. In the midst of the situation, the elderly grandfather becomes confused and begins to weep. His son, Cosmo Castorini, looks at his dad. “What’s the matter, Pop?”

The old man rubs his moist eyes. “I’m confused.”

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It’s a sweet and funny moment—yet seems to express the sentiment of the hour in which we live: We’re confused.

 

Consider these recent occurrences:

 

–       A former male Olympian re-emerges as a female

–       A male singer at an airport dresses in a skirt, wears makeup and bright pink high heeled women’s shoes, and no one seems to bat an eye

–       A terrorist who has killed a child with a bomb is featured on the cover of a popular magazine

–       A best selling book featuring a woman in bondage is deemed a romance and turned into a successful movie

–       United States military chaplains are not allowed to express Christianity in their work

 

And we thought the grandfather from Moonstruck was confused.

We as a society have allowed confusion to reign when we ignore basic principles in God’s word. Life is really not all that confusing when we seek wisdom from our Creator.

“For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” 1 Corinthians 14:33 (ESV)

Does this mean we become haters and mockers of those who are confused? No. We are commanded to love but to be unafraid to stand for the truth. But until faith and trust softens the hearts and souls of non-believers, confusion will reign.

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

The answer to the confusion? Prayer. Pray for salvation for those who are confused and that the eyes of the spiritually blind will see.

It is only through the cross of Christ that reaches to heaven to forgive ALL of our sins—yours and mine—that hearts will be changed, and confusion turned to understanding and peace.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18

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Featured image of Confusion courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When God’s Plans Don’t Fit

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The four-year-old girl approached her mother in tears.  “Mommy, this new sheet won’t fit!”

The mom quickly explained to her distraught daughter that the small cloth bag she was holding was not the new sheets. The child’s new pink floral sheets were in the laundry being washed. What the little girl held was the bag they had come in from the store.

Her mom and I giggled at the child’s misunderstanding. Yet I began to see myself in the child’s view of what she was holding.

Often our lives seem a poor fit with our expectations. Who would have thought, when my own daughter was four, that at age twenty-four she would die of a brain tumor? That did not measure up with my expectations.

“Lord, this cancer doesn’t fit my plans!”

Like the four-year-old holding an empty bag that crushed her dreams for a beautiful new bed, I cried to my Father that this was the wrong choice. Yet God tenderly reassured me that he was preparing something greater—an eternity of benefit that in His perfect wisdom would reap untold blessings for many.

God in His infinite wisdom knew that life would reveal many trials that seem so wrong and out of place. That is why He said, “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, ‘ declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8 NIV

At such times, we lean on Him and bring our tears before Him. And like the four-year-old’s parent offered solace in her misunderstanding, Jesus sends His Holy Spirit for us to bring comfort and reassurance of His perfect provision.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter 1: 3-5 NIV

The story of my daughter's journey with cancer.
The story of my daughter’s journey with cancer.

The Joy of the Season

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Our best Christmas present in 1978 was our daughter, Bethany. She was only 7 pounds, 11 ounces, but our sweet newborn filled our home that year with immeasurable joy.

There was little else to celebrate that winter. Times were tough in the Cooper household and our personal economy had sunk deeper than the snowdrifts outside our door. Because of scarce resources, we had little in the way of gifts. But where the coins were limited, the creativity was limitless as our little tree took on festive yet simple decorations.

My mom visited and crocheted an ornament with the date spelled out in yarn. My husband, Steve, spent hours crafting a wooden truck for our two-year-old son.  My creative spouse spent more hours designing a wooden ornament that I still treasure to this day.  It was a memorable year in so many ways, with treasures abounding that money could not buy.

As I look back on that Christmas 36 years ago, I don’t regret the paucity of money nor the struggles we endured that taught us to be more compassionate Christians. What I do regret is that our sweet Bethany is no longer with us.

Bethanys Calendar Cover

Her life was a testimony of living life well, even when the years are few. In her twenty-four years, her life seemed to impact so many others who still can recall her smile, her laugh, her intelligence, and her compassion. Mostly, her legacy is one of faith fulfilled in living a Christian life that made a positive difference in the lives of others.

It was a life of joy despite circumstances that seemed to whisk her away to heaven far sooner than any of us wanted.  The joy in remembering Bethany reminds me that joy is not about the ever-changing circumstances that make us happy or sad. It is the realization that there is a promise for life eternal with God’s Son, whose birth we celebrate each Christmas.

That is truly the Joy of the season.

Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. 2 Corinthians 8:2 NIV