Category Archives: My_Thoughts

>We All Are Clay Vases

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Katie Lloyd Photography*





The church building’s doors were wide opened, and as we got in,  people came to us and gave us a warm welcome. Some faces we only get to see once a year, so we hugged hard;  some other faces were new, and touched our lives profoundly.


My little one held my hand hard and her eyes were all filled with tears as she saw in the row in front of us a beautiful family,  a family that taught me more than all the words that were spoken from the pulpit. Six biological children and one little adopted girl (from about 2 years old to 10); only one of the children had both arms; most had none. 


Seeing them broke my heart to pieces. You know how I have been reading about suffering, affliction, trials; how I have been memorizing the Word and mediating on James’ and Paul’s words to the church (in the epistle to the Philippians) concerning affliction. But suddenly, I had a living epistle in front of me.  A father kneeling low to hug his son and whisper with him the Catechism; a little boy holding the  hymn book with his only minuscule arm for his sister who had no arms. Mom was holding her precious Chinese girl (of about 2 years old) as she praised God, and kissed her lips. Smiles were exchanged between all the family members at all times. It was clear that even though they could not hug each other, they had learned to love with their eyes, in a deep and beautiful way. After the Lord’s Supper, mom and dad sat together, he whispered something to his wife’s ear and they smiled with their eyes closed and tenderly he embraced her.


As the church service was dismissed, they turned to us and gave us a warm welcome. What a beautiful smile this young mom had, and it surprised me that after crossing a few words she said she was sorry that they had to leave to some other state in the middle of the week, because they would have loved to host us for dinner! 


We all are clay vases, all different, all made with different purposes. Some are strong, some are weak, some are fragile, and some others, some that may seem to be broken and the world might despise are full of fresh water. These vases are chosen by God to teach us a lesson. I pray I  will not miss learning it.


Today I am grateful for the Maker of vases that can hold His grace. 




Becky 






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*Thanks to Katie Lloyd for granting me permission to use her image. 
You can always buy her prints here.

>The Sovereignty of God in Our Marriages -and my sin-

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>I enjoy the long conversations my sister and I have on Skype. She is a godly woman and  a great teacher to me. I am so grateful for her life.

I want to invite you to be part of a recent conversation we had about God’s Sovereignty in our marriages and our sin. Yes, it is Friday, so get a cup of coffee and join us.

We know God is Sovereign, if we don’t believe that, then we are in big trouble; because the True God is Sovereign indeed!

Now, why is it so hard at times to live our lives under the sun trusting that HE IS INDEED SOVEREIGN? If we believe that God is sovereign (and He is indeed) then He is sovereign over our marriage life too.

What does this mean? It means, dear sister, that all the struggles you and I have to face in our marriages are allowed by God. He is the one who is permitting them to happen.  I am blessed to have a godly husband, but that doesn’t mean that we never have struggles. We (my sister and I) have talked lately on how we often miss the mark when struggles and differences in our marriage come to our lives. Instead of seeing them as instruments of God to sanctify us, we stop seeing Him all Sovereign and start to fight on our own flesh. At this point we are already sinning.

If we are mature Christians we should start dealing with the difficulties in our marriages from a different perspective.

First, let us recognize that God is Sovereign and that all these struggles are allowed by God only to deal with us, to sanctify us, and that at the end they will be good for us. Isn’t He, our Heavenly Father, the one who knows what’s best  for His children?

Secondly, just think how different things would be if in the very moment a struggle arises, we would take a second  before we say any word to see God’s hand allowing it.  What if we would recognize that this struggle is just another opportunity God is giving US to deal with a sin in our own heart?  What if we would stop seeing our husband’s sin and start seeing our own sin in the middle of the struggle?  I am sure we’ll start growing more in His grace.

Any thoughts of yours?

>What this Blog is Not About

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>After almost two years of blogging I can say how beautiful it has been to make new friends and keep in touch with old ones. I have also discovered that some words are noble indeed and deserve to be published, that taking pictures is fun and helps me capture beautiful moments that otherwise would be lost. I have learned that coffee goes really well with a keyboard and I have discovered the joy of writing, sharing and  reaching.

Today I just want to say what this blog is not.

It is not a place to find the Word of God. Please do not read it, never, if you read this instead of God’s Word!

It is not a place to look for words that will make you feel better. My goal is not to make you ponder about yourself, your own emotions. The world is full of that. Full of emptiness, of selfishness. Always trying to find an easy way out from the guilt that sin brings.

I am not pursuing a New Age type of Christianity or Contemplative Spirituality. I believe in meditation, but only on God’s word and the way God commands it. I believe that the waiting and the being still should flow from my relationship with God. Waiting must be always under His sovereign Providence. God’s word is the only Truth. Jesus is the only Way and salvation is by grace. I am Reformed in my Theology and that is my stand.

It is not a place to find yourself. The only safe way to look inside yourself is to examine your walking with the Lord in the light of the Scriptures.

“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”
2 Corinthians 13:5

My prayer is that my words will bring grace to you, but I also pray that His perfect, all-sufficient Word brings life to you, and that His Word will be all-sufficient for you!

This I pray, Daily On My Way to Heaven.

Are you memorizing the Scriptures or are planning to start soon? Then enter my giveaway.

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>New Year’s Name, "Living in the Sacred"

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I did this last year for the first time; I gave the year a name. I walked through 365 days thinking of the name of the year, its theme, “Yes, I am Listening”, and how much I learned from it! How many times I came into my prayer closet asking my God to help me. In order to listen I had to learn, to practice being quiet; in order to say yes to others, I had to say no to my own desires more than often.

This year again, after praying and thinking, and talking with my husband; I have decided to do it again. This practice has worked for me much better than writing “New Year’s Resolutions”.  So here it is, my new year ‘s name (or theme):

Living in the Sacred

The last chapter on the book The Holiness of God by RC Sproul was decisive for me into choosing this theme (actually the whole book was!) I need to live purposely, knowing that  because of Jesus, I live in Holy Space and Holy Time, every day, every moment; I am living naked before a Holy God.

C.S Lewis said,

“Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?”

I want to live fully aware of this truth. Whatever I do, I want to do it for Him, because of Him, to bring glory to Him. I want to meet Him in my daily journey through continuous prayer; I long to live praying without ceasing (I Thessalonian 5:17)

This is a year in which we are expecting many big changes in our family, changes that will certainly make us grow. The only way I will be able to walk through them glorifying God and not being anxious is knowing that I am living in the Sacred. He has written our life’s story. He is the Author. He holds me and my family in His hand. Our times are indeed in His hand. I don’t want to miss this awareness.

Living in the Sacred, means living before God in prayer.

J.R Miller says,

“Think what it would mean to have every word that passes our lips winged and blessed with prayer—always to breathe a little prayer before we speak, as we speak. This would put heavenly sweetness into all our speech! It would make all our words kindly, loving, inspiring words—words that would edify and minister grace to those who hear.”

“Think of a woman amid her household cares—taking everything to God for His blessing, for His approval, for His direction. These are not by any means impossible suppositions. Indeed, this is the way a Christian is to live, should always live—doing all in the name of the Lord Jesus!”

This is what I long for this year; to Live in the Sacred; to live breathing out prayers.

May God help me.

Living in the Sacred… What it means? A Reflection on Psalm 63, A desire to be in the Holy Place.

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Related Posts Around the Corner:

>The Holiness of God – Chapter Eleven-

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Yes, the turkey and some baking is awaiting for me; but I do not want to miss this last post on this last chapter of this wonderful book, The Holiness of God, by R.C Sproul, so while every one is still in bed, I will type.

The title of this chapter is, Holy Space and Holy Time; and it opens with a wonderful quote from C.S Lewis,

“Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?”

For me this is a very important chapter because it brings down to today, down to this moment, down to the place where I meet my God, His Holiness.

This is where we are as Christians, as believers, as seekers of His face; we are in a daily quest to be more like Him, to love Him more, to find Him more in every minute that frames our life.

“We seek a threshold that will lead us over the border from the profane to the sacred. It is a quest for sacred space, for ground that is holy ground”

We want that. We don’t want to be trapped in the moment, in the running, in the to-do list, we want to walk beyond to the transcendent because we know our God is transcendent; because we know that what we do here, today, right this moment has a transcendent consequence.

But I live here, I live in squares in a calendar, in hours made of 60 minutes, and here, in between this keyboard and baking muffins, and kissing the forehead of my children, in between teaching Spanish and the life of Leonardo DaVinci; and snapping pictures here and there; in between making beds and making love with my husband, I live in Holy Space and Holy Time, because God has come to meet me here, where I do my life.

Sproul reminds us that the “holy space Moses occupied was made holy by God’s presence” , and isn’t my home a holy space too? And it is holy not because we, this family which I love so much, is sinless, NO! it is because God has come to us. He has reached us. His presence abides in us; among us.

“Our contact with the holy is not merely an encounter with a different dimension of reality; it is meeting with Absolute Reality. Christianity is not about  involvement with religious experience as a tangent. It involves a meeting with a holy God, who forms the center, or core, of human existence. The Christian faith is theocentric. God is not at the edge of Christians’ lives but at the very center. God defines our entire life and worldview”

Am I a Christian? Do I live meeting with a holy God every day all day?

I am planning to make a nice turkey for our family and their favorite cookies will soon be in the oven; is God there? I slice an apple, and chop some chocolate; I pray to my God. I give thanks for His goodness. He is here, in the moment, in this place, my kitchen.

I wash the dishes again, and again and again… I can complain and be ungrateful, or I can pray I find in that moment, a sacred moment.

Dr. Sproul reminds us also of two holy times that frame our lives as Christians; the Sabbath and Lord’s Supper.

“Each Sabbath day, believers observe sacred time in the context of worship. It is the keeping holy of the Sabbath day that marks the regular sacred time for the Christian. The worship service is a marking of a special liturgical time. Because of the reality of the Incarnation, history itself becomes sacred for the Christian. We mark our calendars with reference to time that is B.C or A.D. We have a theology of history because we realize that there is a holy purpose to history, even our salvation”

And the our pretty wall calendar is coming to an end; and a new one is in the mail. We filled squares, we have filled until today, 357 more days under His sun. We have walked in history. We have been part of that Sacred History that He wrote. And we like to talk about new purposes for the next year… what about today? Why not right this moment?

Why not just live in Holy space and Holy time every day? Acknowledging His presence with in us, among us.

Sabbath comes not at the end of the week, but at the beginning of the week to remind us that the day we’ll stop breathing under His sun, rest will not be the last thing we do,  but the first thing of our new life not under His sun, but under His glory which shines brighter than the sun!

The second is the Lord’s Supper; Sproul reminds us that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper involves Sacred time in three distinct ways:

“First, it looks to the past, instructing believers to remember and to show forth Christ’s death by this observance. Second, it focuses on the present moment of celebration, in which Christ meets with His people to nurture them and strengthen them in their sanctification. Third, it looks to the future, to the certain hope of their reunion with Christ in Heaven, where thy will participate in the banquet feast of the Lamb and His bride”

I have a day ahead of me, I want to live it in sacred space and sacred time; I want Him to be my all in all every minute, every tic-tac; here this place, this home is sacred because He has come. I don’t want to miss Him.

“In sacred space and sacred time Christians find the presence of the Holy. The bars that seek to shut out the transcendent are shattered, and the present time becomes defined by the intrusion of the holy. When we erect barriers to these intrusions, dikes to keep them from flooding our souls, we exchange the holy for the profane and rob both God of His glory and ourselves of His grace”

May our lives be flooded with His Holy presence.

Thanks to Tim Challies, who has put together this reading group, and thanks to you who read along! I look forward to the next book!

Image from my photography blog, have you visited it?

This post is linked to Fields of Faith, because I have found that my field of faith is here, today!

>The Holiness of God – Chapter Ten- and Christmas-

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“When I consider your heavens, 

the work of your fingers, 
the moon and the stars, 
which you have set in place, 
what is the man that you are mindful of him, 
the son of man that you care for him? 
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 
and crowned him with glory and honor” 
Psalm 8:3- 5 ESV

The chapter is entitled, Looking Beyond Shadows, and the Bible verse above is the starting point.  I have never thought what Dr. Sproul points out to us here, listen to him:

“These {Psalm 8: 3-5} were not the sentiments of a professional astronomer or a primitive astrologer. They were the reflections of an ordinary person who was contemplating his small place in a vast universe. The psalmist had no concept of an expanding universe that contained billions of stars and innumerable galaxies. He had no thoughts of exploding novae or of spiral nebulae. He had never heard of the Big-Bang cosmology. From his vantage point in space and time, the sky appeared to be a doomed canopy whose luminaries were perhaps only a few miles high in the sky”



I can not but put together this chapter with all the meditations I have been reading concerning the Incarnation of our Lord. 


This is what we should ponder about this season… “What is man that you are so mindful of Him?”

“With the meager resources the psalmist had when ge gazed into the night sky of Palestine, he was overwhelmed by the weighty sense of contrast between the magnificence of the heavens and the reality obscurity and insignificance of his own life. By considering the start, he was forced to ask the ultimate question: ‘What is man that you are mindful of Him?'”

This is where I see the connection… Why did You, O Lord, choose to come to rescue us… me?

Maybe I am starting to understand…

“Perhaps the psalmist was able to perceive something to which we have become almost completely blind. Perhaps it was because the psalmist could see past the stars and the moon to the ONe who set them in the heavens in the first place”

Yes, O Lord, help me see beyond the shadows; through the stars and the ordinary; Help me see you!

These words I read and re-read, these words say s much about me.

“We are creatures who prefer life in the cave to the full light of the blazing sun. The glory of God is all around us. We cannot miss it. However, we not only fail to stop and smell the flowers, but we also fail to notice the glory of the flowers’ Maker.


Indeed the featured presentation in te theater of divine majesty in which we walk daily is God’s glory. The Psalmist declares that the sky and all of nature sing out God’s glory and majesty”

This is the Holy One who was indeed mindful of his creatures and came to them. The creature became creature. The Holy One came in flesh.

But we cannot see beyond shadows if we haven’t been  regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We are not able to see beyond the beauty of the world around us, we are not be able to see  beyond the stars or Christmas lights; we are not able to hear beyond Christmas carols or the beautiful sound of ocean waves crashing against huge rocks; we are not able to see His holiness, His Glory beyond shadows if we have not been born of the spirit. If our eyes have not be opened to see and our ears have not been opened to hear. We desperately need Him.

“Shadows in a cave are given to change. They dance and flicker with ever-changing shape and brightness. To contemplate the truly holy and to go beyond the surface of creaturely things, we need to get out of our self- made cave and walk in the glorious light of God’s holiness”

Walking out from shadows…

Thanks to Tim Challies for choosing this book.