Amy Boucher Pye

Category: Five Minute Friday

  • Five Minute Friday: Seasons of hospitality

    A table bursting with items for afternoon tea, including jams, cream, cake, and scones.
    My friend whipped up afternoon tea for us this week. She’s a star.

    My heart warmed when I saw that today’s prompt for Five-Minute Friday was “hospitality.” I’ve written a few posts on the topic in the past, which you can find here.

    Being an American in London, I’ve been able to host many a traveler passing through our wonderful capital city. Until some things happened in my family, and we had to pull up the drawbridge for a time. I felt bad when I could tell people were gently inquiring – without asking formally – if they could come and stay, and I didn’t respond with an invitation. And a couple of times I had to flat-out say “no” to the request.

    But that was the right answer for that season, and after the tough thing of saying no, I felt relief. After all, exercising boundaries is healthy and good, even if hard. And when I intimated some of the challenges we faced, the people understood.

    That season reinforced the notion of loving oneself as well as one’s neighbor, in Jesus’ great commandment. We often focus so much on the latter part of that command that we forget we need to extend hospitality to ourselves too. And, if we have them, to our children – a point that Leslie Verner makes in her lovely book Invited. After all, parents are only really hosting their children for a couple of decades before launching them out into the world.

    What’s your approach to hospitality? Have you experienced seasons of openness and seasons of huddling together?

    I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

  • Five Minute Friday: When God felt distant

    The word distant on a landscape of mountains in the dark.

    Some years ago I thought I was listening to God when I decided to move halfway across the country to work for a different organization. Caught up in the delight of hearing God’s voice, I went overboard in my enthusiasm. I didn’t test out what I was hearing. I got it all wrong, and I was devastated. If that’s what hearing God lands me, I’m not going to speak to him, I thought, pain reverberating through my stomach.

    But where else could I go? After months of feeling distant from God, I tiptoed my way back to him. Tentative. Heart worried and weary. Are you there, God?

    Silence.

    I was too afraid to hear that still, small voice. He was there, but I was fearful. And so I started off slowly and carefully. I began again to pray. I wasn’t looking for a direct line to God any more, but I didn’t want the feeling of distance to define my relationship with him.

    Slowly, slowly, I started to trust again. I opened my eyes to other ways of God speaking to me – through his Spirit, through the beauty of creation, through the Bible.

    And I realized that he had never been the distant one.

    That had been me.

    He was right there with me the whole time.

    I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

  • Five Minute Friday: How to influence someone (as Oswald Chambers would)

    Oswald and Biddy with their daughter Kathleen. From https://utmost.org/oswald-chambers-bio/

    As I read more of Oswald Chambers’ works, he the Scottish Baptist minister who died a hundred years ago at the age of forty-one, I appreciate increasingly one of his often-repeated insights – don’t interfere in what God is doing in the life of another. Instead, trust that God through his Holy Spirit will work in that person’s life. God’s influence will be so much stronger than our moral bludgeoning of them.

    As Oswald says:

    Our Lord’s counsel to His disciples is, “Be as the lily and the star.” When a man is born from above he is inclined to become a moral policeman, one who unconsciously presents himself as better than others, an intolerable spiritual prig. Who are those who influence us most? Those who “buttonhole” us, or those who live their lives as the stars in the heaven and the lily of the field, perfectly simple and unaffected? These are the lives that mould us, our mothers and wives and friends who are of that order, and that is the order the Holy Spirit produces. If you want to be of use, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every moment you live; the condition is believing on Him.*

    I find this challenging, for I can be quick to make pronouncements or reach conclusions about another’s actions or beliefs. But I don’t have the whole story. I can’t see into their heart like God can. Instead, I’ll be a better influence if I’m right with Christ, as it were; if I am pouring myself out in intercession for that person, asking God to work his ways with them.

    What do you think of this exercise of influence?

    I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

    I contributed a chapter in Utmost Ongoing about the influence of Oswald and Biddy Chambers, which you can buy in the UK and US. (affiliate link)

    * Oswald Chambers, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, found in The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2000), p. 1459. I’ve slightly updated the language.

  • Five Minute Friday: A Better Use of Words

    Handwritten stencil of the word 'better'

    “You’d better get your homework done!”

    “She’s better than you.”

    “I’m going to be the better person here and let that comment slide…”

    Better. It’s a strange word when you stare at it too long. And it can so easily have negative connotations – threats, negative comparisons, and so on. The Israelites used it in their grumbling:

    “Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians”? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’” (Exodus 14:12)

    “Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:3)

    But better, as with so many words, can be used for praise, too. It’s not only negative. I love these verses from the Psalms that can fill our mind with worship and song:

    “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you” (Psalm 63:3).

    “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Psalm 84:10).

    When you speak today, what words will you utter, and for what use?

    (I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.)

  • Five Minute Friday: What’s Your Potential?

    “She hasn’t reached her full potential.”

    Are there more damning words?

    As I think about potential, I find I’m reeling a bit from my team’s second loss of the season last night. The Minnesota Vikings were lauded as the ones to watch, the ones with all of the potential to win, but the reality doesn’t seem to be meeting those grand hopes. Their record of one win, two losses, and a dreaded tie leaves me uncertain.

    But more important than a football team’s status, what about the effect of those words spoken over us, either by friends or loved ones or observers? Someone’s negative assessment can leave us feeling deflated and unwilling to put ourselves out there again. We can begin to question whether we have anything to contribute.

    The antidote is not to listen to all of those voices, but to turn, again, to the Audience of One. When we hear His words of love and affirmation, we know that we are fully loved. Whispers of potential fade away when we know our worth is rooted in Him.

    I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

  • Five Minute Friday: Longing to be complete

    Photo: Oliver Tacke, flickr

    Is anything ever really finished, complete?

    We work on decreasing our bursting inbox, and even though we may reach that vaunted zero status, what happens? People start replying to those emails. In droves. Meaning we have even more emails to reply to. (When was the last time I reached zero status? I don’t rightly recall.)

    Or we get the house clean and decluttered. Dust removed, piles of papers sorted, toys put away, given away, thrown away. Then someone slops on the carpet or doesn’t clean up their toast crumbs, and boom, the house is messy again. (When was the last time the vicarage was fully clean? I don’t rightly recall.)

    Or, here’s a favorite, we get fully caught up on our admin. The taxes are done! The accounts fully up to date! Insurance of every kind has been renewed. Appointments for all sorts of anything have been made. (When was the last time we got all the admin done? I don’t rightly recall.)

    Life in all its pieces can feel overwhelming at times. I suppose I cram so much in, whether it be family times and travel, or work projects, that these life maintenance sorts of things can get easily edged out. Along with the fact that I don’t enjoy many of these tasks.

    A bigger issue is that on this side of heaven, life will never be complete. We’ll never reach perfection – there will always be something else to do. But our longings remind us of the perfection that awaits us when we join God in glory. When the taxes will no longer be an issue and everything will be clean and shiny.

    Until then, we experience moments of transcendence through the love of God with us moment by moment. And that is enough.

    I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

  • Five Minute Friday: An abundance of rest and restoration

    Walking by our local brook, including this view, brings me joy and restoration.

    Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday, restore, resonates with me strongly. As regular readers here will know, #MyOneWord this year is replenish. A time for filling up the stores that have been depleted from writing two books, completing an MA in Christian spirituality, and facing some other challenges. Yet as I talked with my weekly writing buddies yesterday, they reminded me (lovingly) that I have more replenishing to embrace. That although we’re halfway through 2018, I’m still doing a whole lot with my “regular” writing/speaking load. And that when 2018 ends, I won’t magically have reached a place of restoration. I’m a work in progress, and can look forward to the gift of filling up beyond this calendar year.

    To cite one area of specificity, I’m realizing that replenishing has meant we’ve enacted a more limited approach to hospitality this year than previously. We love having visitors from foreign climes, but with my energy stores it’s just felt too much. Acknowledging that this is a season and that I’m not a failure because of needing boundaries is a good thing, although hard at times too.

    How do you embrace the need to replenish and restore?

    You can read another of my #fiveminutefriday articles on the theme of replenish here. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here. It’s a wonderful community!

  • Five Minute Friday: A Buzzing Fly

    Photo: Julien Belli, Flickr

    In England, for reasons I’m not completely aware, windows do not come with screens to keep out insects. So often in the summertime, when I’m sitting in my study by the window, a fly or a bee will come in, uninvited. Their buzz will distract me, and I may silently, or even verbally, tell them to be gone. Sometimes they actually obey. Sometimes, not.

    In our fallen world, we encounter pests of many kinds, for things in creation are not as God made them to be. Including stalkers, which was a topic of conversation during my weekly video chat with two other writers. I shared about how once I had a mild experience of someone who disagreed with something I wrote (I think she took exception with my spelling of, “A Cuppa and a Slice of Pye.”) She contacted me every which way she could for several weeks. I never felt in any danger, but rather likened the feeling to having a gnat near me. Annoying and distracting, yes, but not overwhelming. After a couple of weeks, she left.

    What distractions or irritants face you today, as a buzzing fly? Can God give you the forbearance to endure them?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

    I share more of my story of finding myself in this wild world of the United Kingdom in  my book Finding Myself in Britain. You can find out more here.

  • Five Minute Friday: Inclusion and embrace

    The royal wedding is just over a week away, when an American will again enter the royal family – this time, I trust, with a strong welcome. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem to be representing both cultures in their celebration. For instance, the invitations were printed on English card with American ink. Their wedding cake is being made by a Californian who lives in London. A gospel choir will be singing at the wedding. I wonder how many more American influences we’ll see?

    I see the blending of the cultures giving a richness and depth, as Nicholas and I have experienced in our own lives. At times it’s difficult – such as when Thanksgiving is just another day here – but with some intentionality, both cultures can be honored and embraced.

    Have you included a cultural practice from another land into your life?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.

    If you’d like to read more of my adventures in the UK, I’ve written Finding Myself in Britain. It even won two awards!

  • Five Minute Friday: Which Way to Turn?

    Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’ (Isaiah 30:21)

    For years I’ve loved this verse out of Isaiah. I should put some more time into studying its background and historical context, for I fear that in the years I’ve clung to it, I may have taken it out of context. Easily done. With that proviso, here’s the freedom I see in it.

    So often Christians think of “God’s will for our life” in a strict sense of one way forward. One right choice. One person to marry or one career to choose or one best friend to make. But living like that is so constricting, and eliminates our freedom and creativity. Does a good parent make all of the choices for their child? No! They delight in seeing the child find their own way (with their loving guidance, of course) and express their own passions and interests as they step forward in life.

    Which brings us to this verse. When I learned it, the NIV said, if I’m remembering right, “When you turn to the right or to the left,” which I took to mean, when you make the considered and informed decision to go this way or that, the Lord will continue to direct your path. The entails us walking and moving forward and making decisions – not waiting for him to tell us what to do or which way to go. The key is to turn to the Lord for wisdom, for we see in the preceding verses that the Lord will be gracious when we cry for help: “As soon as he hears, he will answer you” (v. 19)  And although we face hard times, we will gain understanding and wisdom (v. 20).

    I hope I’m not slaughtering the interpretation and application of this passage from Scripture – do chime in with your wisdom and let me know what you think.

    Over to you – how you sense God’s freedom in how you live your life, whether you turn to the left or to the right?

    This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up. You can find today’s prompt here.