A Peaceful New Year!

For years we've invited you to join us as we "Rocked in" the New Year with Seekerville. We wanted a carnival-styled atmosphere, lots of food, laughter, a few site shut-downs because of the amount of traffic and it KILLED our embedded comments. Fried them. Totally. We had to switch to straight comments to keep from repeatedly crashing the blog.

This year is different, and it's different for a lot of reasons.
Peace is good.
Kindness is wonderful.
Faith is our cornerstone. 

So while we all (every one of us!) love to party and celebrate good times, sometimes it's good to quietly contemplate the beauty of Auld Lang Syne. The blessing of friendships old and new.

And that's what we decided to do this year. We want to share our stories with you, the kind that touch your heart and ours. And we welcome your stories in return. 

You can share them in the comments. 

Or send them to Ruthy's email:  loganherne@gmail.com  and if Ruthy remembers to check her email (eye-roll here) then she'll post it for you. That way it can be anonymous if you would prefer that.

We've got several lovely prizes to give away today.

We have delicious foods. Wonderful beverages. Cozy corners. So come on. Sit a while. Think about how we can work together to make 2020 the beautiful year God would like it to be. Maybe writer by writer and reader by reader we can truly make a difference.

Here's a story to get us started, from Seeker Pam Hillman:

On a cold night in Mississippi, my small church family gathered for Wednesday night services. We still enjoy testimony services. My niece shared something about her day and dovetailed it with a spiritual thought. Then my sister-in-law did the same thing. I’d dealt with a shady business issue that day and a short analogy came to mind, so I was about to stand and share more than my usual “I’m thankful for…” spiel.

Before I could, a visitor stood. Not a stranger to me, this young man has been in drug rehab more than once and is currently trying to hold on to his sobriety by a thread. He testified that his wife had told him just that morning that she wanted a divorce. With tears in his eyes, he said that God had been with him all day and he felt peace. He hadn’t turned to drugs or alcohol or anger. He'd turned to God and came to be with people who loved him and prayed for him and his family.

My little “tempest in a teapot” was nothing—nothing— to what he was/is going through. And, I daresay, his wife is going through a trial of her own. It hit me that I need to focus more on that peace in the small trials and the big trials instead of trying to fix things my own way, spinning and churning and letting my mind run wild.

Peace on earth, and good will to men. It’s not just a buzz phrase; it’s a life-giving phrase that will help and heal if we grab hold of Jesus and don’t let go.

And here's a story from Ruthy:

A year and a half ago I was in New York City. I loved traveling down to the city to see my boys, but Lower Manhattan and the Financial District weren't as pretty, as nice as they used to be. I happened to be there on the first nice day the city had seen since Christmas. It was April, and hotels were planting bloomed tulips in their planters, the city was filling planters with gorgeous blooms and pulling out all the flowers that rabbits or rodents had eaten that week. As a farmer, I empathized!

I started walking down Williams St. I saw smoke in front of me. On the sidewalk. Not billowing, but leaving a definite presence, puffing in cartoon-style clouds along a wrought iron fence, and people were sending dark...

VERY DARK....

looks in that direction. Disgusted looks. Looks of annoyance. And as I drew closer, I saw the problem. An elderly homeless man was on fire.

Not him, per se, but his nylon jacket. Clouds of smoke poured from his left-hand pocket and he seemed disconcerted. He stared down, not knowing what to do and my heart broke for him. I stopped in front of him. I said, "Hey, would you like a little help, sir?"

He wasn't real tall. Neither am I, but he was slouched down, the way homeless do, you know. So maybe you won't notice that their lives are dreadful and sad. He looked up at me with the prettiest blue eyes I've ever seen. "You're not from around here, are you?"

I shook my head and smiled. "I am not. I live on a farm in Western New York, actually. Let's figure out what's going on here. What's your name?"

"Mike."

"So, Mike, can we take the jacket off?"

He looked like that was a good idea and peeled off the jacket.

The pocket was on fire. He looked at it when I flipped it over and sighed. "I tried to save a butt. Must not have been out."

"It happens," I told him. (Did it? I thought. Really? I didn't know, because I've never encountered this situation before, but maybe when there's no money and no place to sleep or shower or do anything to keep yourself up, saving an almost gone cigarette butt is probably not that unusual.)

It took a couple of minutes but we got the fire out and I trimmed the burned edges from his coat with my fingers.

"You don't happen to have a needle and thread, do you?" he asked.

I didn't so I shook my head again. "I don't. So Mike, what brought you to Manhattan?"

Those eyes lit up. "Well, there was this woman..."

That struck a chord because I'm a romance author and a woman. "Isn't there always?"

He smiled. "She came here and I followed and when I get myself put back together, I'm going to find her. See if she'll have me. You never know."

He was right. Life's a constant turn of events and times and changes. "True words." I bought him some fruit from a nearby vendor. And I may have broken all those silly rules you hear and slipped him some cash because there but for the grace of God go I...

And he smiled again. A really nice smile. And then we said goodbye.

But as I walked down to the Seaport, all I could see were those nasty looks. The disparagement. The annoyance. And I realized that Mike wasn't the lucky one that day.

I was.

Because God put me at the right place and time to show another human being some tender loving care. And maybe make a tiny bit of difference in a difficult life.

Hey, a new story just in from Seeker Jan Drexler! 

Back in 1991, my husband and I lived near Dyess Air Force base in Abilene, Texas. Many of our church friends were crew members from the B1-B squadron stationed there, including the squadron commander. We learned a lot about military life – me from sharing Bible studies and childcare with the wives, my husband as he took part in Bible studies and other activities with the husbands.

We learned about the crew’s schedules during the Cold War years: The training flights that took our friends all over the world during their night shift. The constant work to keep physically fit. The long hours spent ready to fly a mission at a moment’s notice.

At a moment’s notice? Yes. Remember, this was the Cold War. The Berlin Wall still divided that great city. There was still an “Eastern Europe” and a “Western Europe.” A person could still be shot for trying to cross from one part of Germany to the other. The borders of the USSR were closed. The threat of nuclear war was still very, very real.

These men, our brothers in Christ, trained and prepared to be the front line if or when that threat became reality. These men were trained and prepared to strike first.

What kind of toll does that take on a person?

Then, the wonderfully unthinkable event happened: In November 1991, the Wall came down.

The next Sunday, the squadron commander stood up at the beginning of the service to address the congregation. With tears in his eyes, he spoke with overwhelming gratitude of the orders he was able to give his men that week. The orders were, “stand down.”

That’s when the historic event hit home. For the first time in forty-four years, bomber crews were no longer waiting and prepared to fly out at a moment’s notice. For the first time in forty-four years, a pilot could stay home with his family instead of spending his night in the ready room. For the first time in forty-four years, no fingers were poised over a button that would bring destruction to an entire country...to an entire world.

Peace on Earth? Sometimes, God grants us a taste that indescribable heavenly gift.

Faithfulness is a great way to kick off a new decade... and we'd like to reward your faithfulness (new or old to Seekerville) with some lovely prizes today. Leave a comment below about something in your life, your choice... and your name will automatically go into the prize bucket!

We have a copy of Ruthy's latest Love Inspired "A Hopeful Harvest"!

A copy of Mindy Obenhaus's upcoming new release "Her Rocky Mountain Hope"!

A copy of "Jesus Calling" by Sara Young...

A brand new edition of Janette Oke's "Love Comes Softly" that was supposed to have her signature in it but ... oddly... it does not! But it's still a wonderful story that inspired a new genre of TV and movies, so we'll celebrate that!

And Anne Bogel's book about characters and how to define them, from Baker Books.

From all of us here in Seekerville, we love spending time with you as we welcome a new year and a new decade into being. And may God bless us... Every one!