From Max Lucado’s Weekly Email: The Miracle of the Carpenter by Max Lucado Loretto Chapel took five years to complete. Modeled after the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, its delicate sanctuary contains an altar, a rose window, and a choir loft. The choir loft is the reason for wonder. Were you to stand in the newly built chapel in 1878, you might see the Sisters of Loretto looking forlornly at the balcony. Everything else was complete: the doors had been hung, the pews had been placed, the floor had been laid. Everything was finished. Even the choir loft. Except for one thing. No stairs. The chapel was too small to accommodate a conventional stairway. The best builders and designers in the region shook their heads when consulted. “Impossible,” they murmured. There simply wasn’t enough room. A ladder would serve the purpose, but mar the ambiance. The Sisters of Loretto, whose determination had led them from Kentucky to Santa Fe, now faced a challenge greater than their journey: a stairway that couldn’t be built. What they had dreamed of and what they could do were separated by fifteen impossible feet. So what did they do? The only thing they could do. They ascended the mountain. Not the high mountains near Santa Fe. No, they climbed even higher. They climbed the same mountain that Jesus climbed 1,800 years earlier in Bethsaida. They climbed the mountain of prayer. As the story goes, the nuns prayed for nine days. On the last day of the novena, a Mexican carpenter with a beard and a wind-burned face appeared at the convent. He explained that he had heard they needed a stairway to a chapel loft. He thought he could help. The mother superior had nothing to lose, so she gave him permission. He went to work with crude tools, painstaking patience, and uncanny skill. For eight months he worked. One morning the Sisters of Loretto entered the chapel to find their prayers had been answered. A masterpiece of carpentry spiraled from the floor to the loft. Two complete three-hundred-sixty-degree turns. Thirty-three steps held together with wooden pegs and no central support. The wood is said to be a variety of hard fir, one nonexistent in New Mexico! When the sisters turned to thank the craftsman, he was gone. He was never seen again. He never asked for money. He never asked for praise. He was a simple carpenter who did what no one else could do so singers could enter a choir loft and sing. See the stairway for yourself, if you like. Journey into the land of Enchantment. Step into this chapel of amazement and witness the fruit of prayer. Or, if you prefer, talk to the Master Carpenter yourself. He has already performed one impossible feat in your world. He, like the Santa Fe carpenter, built a stairway no one else could build. He, like the nameless craftsman, used material from another place. He, like the visitor to Loretto, came to span the gap between where you are and where you long to be. Each year of his life is a step. Thirty-three paces. Each step of the stair is an answered prayer. He built it so you can climb it. And sing. From In the Eye of the Storm Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1997) Max Lucado What an awesome reminder of how God works to answer our prayers. Like the angel who was delayed on his way to answer Daniel’s prayers, it probably took this man all those months to get to the chapel to be the answer to the nuns’ prayers. As long as we’re praying and being faithful to the vision God’s given, He can do some amazing (and uncanny) things – even when the solution seems impossible.
I receive a weekly email devotional by Max Lucado. This is the one I got this week. It was interesting because I led worship at a Presbyterian church where they say the Lord’s prayer. It made me think back to this devotional. And Max Lucado has such a great way of saying things! Enjoy while I go check on my coughing child! Happy Monday! The Kitchen: God’s Abundant Table by Max Lucado “Give us this day our daily bread…” Your first step into the house of God was not to the kitchen but to the living room, where you were reminded of your adoption. “OurFather who is in heaven.” You then studied the foundation of the house, where you pondered his permanence. “Our Father who is in heaven.” Next you entered the observatory and marveled at his handiwork: “Our Father who is in heaven.” In the chapel, you worshiped his holiness: “Hallowed be thy name.” In the throne room, you touched the lowered scepter and prayed the greatest prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” In the study, you submitted your desires to his and prayed, “Thy will be done.” And all of heaven was silent as you placed your prayer in the furnace, saying, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Proper prayer follows such a path, revealing God to us before revealing our needs to God. (You might reread that one.) The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change us, and by the time we reach God’s kitchen, we are changed people. Wasn’t our heart warmed when we called him Father? Weren’t our fears stilled when we contemplated his constancy? Weren’t we amazed as we stared at the heavens? Seeing his holiness caused us to confess our sin. Inviting his kingdom to come reminded us to stop building our own. Asking God for his will to be done placed our will in second place to his. And realizing that heaven pauses when we pray left us breathless in his presence. By the time we step into the kitchen, we’re renewed people! We’ve been comforted by our father, conformed by his nature, consumed by our creator, convicted by his character, constrained by his power, commissioned by our teacher, and compelled by his attention to our prayers. The prayer’s next three petitions encompass all of the concerns of our life. “This daily bread” addresses the present. “Forgive our sins” addresses the past. “Lead us not into temptation” speaks to the future. (The wonder of God’s wisdom: how he can reduce all our needs to three simple statements.) First he addresses our need for bread. The term means all of a person’s physical needs. Martin Luther defined bread as “Everything necessary for the preservation of this life, including food, a healthy body, house, home, wife and children.” This verse urges us to talk to God about the necessities of life. He may also give us the luxuries of life, but he certainly will grant the necessities. Any fear that God wouldn’t meet our needs was left in the observatory. Would he give the stars their glitter and not give us our food? Of course not. He has committed to care for us. We aren’t wrestling crumbs out of a reluctant hand, but rather confessing the bounty of a generous hand. The essence of the prayer is really an affirmation of the Father’s care. Our provision is his priority. From The Great House of God Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1997) Max Lucado
This was my weekly devotional from Max Lucado this morning (or actually, yesterday morning). I liked it a lot, so I thought I’d share it. :) Christ in Me by Max Lucado Like Mary, you and I are indwelt by Christ. Find that hard to believe? How much more did Mary? No one was more surprised by this miracle than she was. And no one more passive than she was. God did everything. Mary didn’t volunteer to help. (emphasis added) What did she have to offer? She offered no assistance. And she offered no resistance. Instead she said, “Behold, the bond- slave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Unlike Mary, we tend to assist God, assuming our part is as important as his. Or we resist, thinking we are too bad or too busy. Yet when we assist or resist, we miss God’s great grace. We miss out on the reason we were placed on earth-to be so pregnant with heaven’s child that he lives through us. To be so full of him that we could say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20) What would that be like? To have a child within is a miracle, but to have Christ within? To have my voice, but him speaking. My steps, but Christ leading. My heart, but his love beating in me, through me, with me. What’s it like to have Christ on the inside? To tap his strength when mine expires or feel the force of heaven’s fires raging, purging wrong desires. Could Christ become my self entire? So much him, so little me That in my eyes it’s him they see. What’s it like to a Mary be? No longer I, but Christ in me. From Next Door Savior Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2003) Max Lucado Very cool, no? I love that Mary didn’t try to “help” God accomplish His will. She let Him do what He said He would do. There are many times when I need to stop trying to help God and just let Him work. Otherwise my way just gets in the way. My other thought that I thought I’d share is that yesterday someone reminded me not to complain but to always be thankful. I didn’t react very well at the time, but it did make me think last night. While I am very thankful for what I have, and I do express that a lot, I also tend to complain a lot. So, in light of the new year, I think I’m going to make an effort to complain less. I’m also going to try and be thankful for what I don’t have (that was a thought that just hit me right now). Being thankful for what I don’t have is a little tougher, but when I don’t have what I want, or even what I think I need, doesn’t that give God a chance to do awesome things? Just a thought.