Wither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me…” Psalm 139:7-9
A friend called on Friday. The pain in her voice pierced through the air between us. She felt lost in this moment. Lost in the agony seeping through our culture. Grieving the division she sees in the church, she has no words of comfort for others, simply a longing to protect the hurting.
I agonized with her. How do we seek peace in troubled time? Needing healing in our own hearts, how do we offer a peace that seems elusive amid the turmoil? The cup of solace I offered was pictures from our Lord’s life and the fact that peace is spiritual, not physical or soulish.
“My peace I give to you, not as the world gives,” said the master.
The shadow of Christ’s first century falls across my path. Jesus, walking the roads of Galilee, is in our modern world with our culture’s moneychangers, tax collectors, marketplaces, unhappy rich and poor men, the disenfranchised and angry. I want to imagine Him as retired from the world, preaching His Gospel to a few faithful, simple souls. In reality He chose to live among people of many nations and upon the main highways of the Roman Empire. And there, daily, Jesus pressed through crowds.
And when He saw the multitudes He went up on the mountain. Matthew 5:1. Our Lord sought refuge in God. My advice to my friend was to seek Our Lord’s words and offer Him silence so she could hear His voice. It is challenging to listen. To choose a tender heart, a heart submitted to God.
I am trying to listen and to hear what God is saying through others and through His word.
My writer’s passion is to teach His truth through story and humor. Story can bring light into the darkest souls. Jesus used story to reveal truth. It was the counsel I offered my friend. Listen to the hurting and their stories. Give them the opportunity to share and pray you will be given time to bring God’s love into their hurt, for God’s word transforms.
The racial and intellectual prejudice layered in my D.B. Burns series reveals hearts softening or hardening depending on their soil. Where am I planted? In what soil? Is it fertilized by God’s word?
As a writer I draw from bits and pieces from my past then cobble them together, praying they will change lives by changing hearts.
“Have bags will travel” should be Jeanette-Marie Mirich’s life’s theme. She moved twenty-two times before settling in her first home. An Oregonian by birth and who graduated with a B.S. degree in education from Portland State University, Jeanette has swum in the Ligurian Sea, collected shells and sea glass along the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean Oceans, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Mexico and the Andaman Sea. Her peripatetic lifestyle is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and her husband’s medical training.
Jeanette-Marie Mirich is the author of The D. B. Burns Mysteries, The Courtship of Harry’s Wife and The Last Roses.
On a trip home from North Carolina, Delilah Burns Morgan is stopped in her tracks by a deer she whacks into oblivion. Lyle Henderson, the man she loves but put off marrying, comes to her rescue. Life would be a bed of roses if, during a week of recovery at the Henderson family estate, a lascivious conversation hadn’t been overheard, the mystery of a dead girl is revealed, and someone using Lyle’s cabin in the woods as a rendezvous hadn’t altered their plans.
Then Delilah’s beloved god-daughter and best friend’s only child is kidnapped. With Josephine in tow, Delilah sets out to bring Savannah back home.
Roping in friends for help, Delilah’s neighborhood burgeons with former clandestine government officers setting up an op center and Lyle and her minister disappearing to follow leads.
An attempt to fricassee Delilah and a pompous businessman make Delilah and Lyle determined to unearth the villains and find Savannah before it’s too late.
