Author: Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I am a 50-something Texan with a feisty cat and a supportive husband of 25+ years. With a Master's degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing, I have taught creative writing at Texas Tech, won awards for my writing and been blessed to be mentored by Horn Professor and poet Dr. Walt McDonald. I earn a living by helping my husband's family run a health food store, but my avocation is writing. I hope you enjoy reading about some of my triumphs and tragedies as I continue to work on figuring out what life is all about and on growing my ability to share my writing. May your own journey be a blessed one.

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Historically Speaking

Posted on July 14, 2012July 14, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Have you ever read the New Testament in the order in which the scholars believe it was actually written? If you have, then you started with the letter of James, which was probably written somewhere between the year 45 to 50, no more than two decades after Christ’s death and resurrection. It is believed that the James who wrote the letter is most likely the half-brother of Christ.

James is most likely writing to a group of Jewish Christians. The Council of Jerusalem, in which Paul and Peter came to an understanding that Gentile Christians did not have to be circumcised in order to follow the path of Christ, did not take place until the year 50. The worst of Christian persecution had not yet begun. Here was a religion based on the sayings held dear by its followers, with no cannon of books to follow and only a handful of rugged disciples determined to keep the name of Jesus alive.

As you approach James, knowing that the letter addresses the earliest Christian audience we have access to, you feel like you have been given a rare privilege. You soon discover that the early Christians, being human like the rest of us, had many of the same concerns we have today.

Concerns of the Christians in James:

Trials being an opportunity to increase endurance. Recognize how endurance, like that which was called upon for the prophets, is in itself a blessing.
The importance of watching what we say; how an unbridled tongue is a sign of a false religion.
The great leveler that is sin: we are all the same; even one slip-up in the law is the same as defiling the whole of the law; failing to do what is right is just as bad as doing what is wrong.
An active faith is a faith that has works. Without works, a person’s faith is a dead faith. Those works include taking care of orphans and widows.
The progression of all that we do wrong begins with lust, which leads us to put pleasure before God, which leads to sin, which ultimately leads to death.
The importance of prayer to maintain one’s faith.

If you are interested in reading the New Testament in the order in which it was likely written, according to my Ryrie Study Bible, you’ll read in this order:

James (A.D. 45-49)

Galatians (49)

1 and 2 Thessalonians (51)

Mark (50s or 60s)

Matthew (50s or 60s)

1 Corinthians (55)

2 Corinthians (56)

Romans (57-58)

Luke (60)

Acts (61)

Colossians, Ephesians (61)

Philippians, Philemon (63)

1 Peter (63-64)

1 Timothy (63-66)

Titus (63-66)

Hebrews (64-68)

2 Peter (66)

2 Timothy (67)

Jude (70-80)

John (85-90)

1, 2, 3 John (90)

Revelation (90s)

Christian Living, Faith

The Trouble With Masks

Posted on July 6, 2012July 6, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

We all need a little bit of protection now and again. For example, if my sister figures out I posted this picture of her all geared up for some winter horseback riding, I will need some full body armor. But I wonder how often the protections we put on daily, those invisible masks and personality traits that we have used to wall ourselves away from the potential hurts of this world, actually keep us from truly reaching out to others as God intended us to do? After all, He is more interested in us showing love to others than in keeping our sense of pride in tact.

Actually, God is quite against pride, a fact I seem to often forget. Pride keeps me from saying “I love you” to people who may need most to hear it. It keeps me from sharing my doubts with others when realizing that we all have similar questions about this world and our places in it might have been just what somebody else needed to hear. Pride lets me fall into the trap of thinking that I am doing a pretty good job in my Christian walk, blinding me to my own sin and making me judgmental about the sin it is so easy to see in others. I believe Jesus said something about a log and a toothpick.

I learned the value of stripping away masks when I began my yoga class several years ago. Having never been an athletic person, I pre-determined that I was going to be the worst student in the class and that THAT WAS GOING TO BE OK. Approaching my exercise in this way freed me to concentrate on what was most important for my yoga, which was paying attention to what my own body was telling me as I tried the exercises. This decision to strip away my masks also allowed me to share when it was asked of me in a way that would benefit both me and my sharing partner. I have become a more open person in all aspects of my life, just because I decided to be myself in an otherwise intimidating exercise class.

As for the protection part of masks, Paul gives us directions for a far superior form of protection, available to us through the grace of God. In Ephesians 6, he writes that we should put on the full armor of God:

14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Our enemy isn’t really each other, after all. We are all in this same struggle together, and none of us escape the ultimate destiny of every human existence. Instead of masks that cut us off from each other, we should be banding together against our true enemy, the evil one who would keep us from the Ultimate One.

No mask is worth keeping someone else from the love of Christ. Next time your pride or insecurities tempt you to put one on, think about that. Loving others may mean looking a bit silly sometimes, but the ultimate goal of salvation far outweighs any indignities we might suffer.

Christian Living, Faith, Living

You Want To Know These Three Important Questions For Your Life

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Mitzi sleeping — We can ALL be this relaxed. Read how.

I have been doing a much better job lately of living day-to-day. This approach to life, realizing that what I really have is only this moment, taking to heart Jesus’ admonition to take care of this day because each day has enough trouble of its own, is really a great leap forward for a compulsive worrier such as myself. It is a very freeing way to approach life when you don’t bog yourself down with the “what ifs” that plague the anxiety-ridden.

As God so often works, I happened to read a really great passage in C.S. Lewis’ Scewtape Letters this week that will help me live each moment in an even more Godly way. After all, it’s easy to live-in-the-moment and fall into the trap of living for the moment, plunging yourself solely into the pleasures and challenges of this life instead of contemplating the next one.

What C.S. Lewis proposes is that each person has three questions to ask of herself before doing anything:

Is it righteous?
Is it prudent?
Is it practical?

We need to be sure that we define these questions according to the Bible. The first word, righteous, means “acting in accord with divine or moral law; free from guilt or sin” according to Webster’s Dictionary. If we want the Bible’s definition, we need only turn to the Sermon on the Mount, starting in Matthew 5, to learn about this word from every angle. Jesus simplified righteousness the most when He summed up the law with two edicts: loving God first and most and loving and treating everyone else as we ourselves want to be loved and treated. So, when I ask myself, is this righteous, I know I have to begin my thinking in the realm of love that IS God.

Something that is prudent is “marked by wisdom or judiciousness” (Webster’s). We know from the Proverbs that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. We also know that we can only gain wisdom of God through daily study of His word, daily time with Him in prayer, and concsious knowledge on our part that we really don’t know anything at all when compared with God’s wisdom. So, is our action wise according to the dictates laid out by God, according to His goals for a Christian’s life?

Practical things are “manifested in action, not theoretical or ideal.” They are “capable of being put to use or account/ useful” (Webster’s). It can be so easy to get caught up in our own thoughts all the time, wondering or complaining about how things should be instead of taking care of how things are. But, practical actions are more likely to point outward, to think of others instead of just the self. It’s all very easy to say to ourselves that we love other people. It is another thing altogether to serve food in a soup kitchen or volunteer for a community group or bake dinner for the older neighbor who lives next door. Again, Jesus helped define what was practical during His ministry, often to the shock of the “more religious” Pharisees, who could not see the holiness of some of His actions because they could not see past their own rigidly-defined religion. For example, they did not understand how unclean things like utensils used to eat on the outside do not make a person unclean on the inside.

It’s often been said to count to ten before speaking when you are angry. I like this idea of taking time to ask myself three questions before I take an action or say something I may otherwise regret. I especially love the way that God works for the good the things that happen in our lives. Just as I am learning to live without worry, God gives me something positive to think about to make my “moment-living” even more productive from a Christian perspective. Thank you, Jesus!

Christian Living, Faith, Love

Symbiot Or Parasite?

Posted on June 22, 2012June 22, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Standing proudly outside my back window is a visual lesson even a non-botanist such as myself can understand. Twining around one stalky plant with large leaves and seasonal flowers is a vine-like weed that can take over your backyard if you let it. (I told you I was no botanist.)

In biology, we learned that two living things so entwined have a win-lose or win-win situation. In other words, my backyard plants are either in a parasitic or symbiotic relationship. Parasites live off their hosts at the host’s peril. In a symbiotic situation, both parties benefit from the intertwined relationship.

As I spent my twenty minutes on my stepper looking out at this situation, I pondered what lessons I could learn about my own life from this picture of nature. I am, after all, entwined with God much like my two plants. But is that relationship symbiotic, or am I just a parasite, taking from God without giving anything back?

How do I increase my own value to God? How did I do it this week? Some of the quick answers that came to me were the too few times I expressed love to others through my words and actions during this week. Also, I have spent time praising God in my prayers this week.

Knowing that loving and helping others, especially strangers, is a sure way to please God is a pretty easy answer to the symbiotic question. Studying the prayers of the Bible, especially the Psalms, also lets us know that God relishes our praise. He may not need it, but He gets something from it. Why, after all, did He create us in the first place, then give us the free will to choose to worship Him?

I know that I am only saved by grace and not through any action that I take other than the action of accepting that grace, but I certainly don’t want to live my days being a parasite to God. I would much rather have a symbiotic relationship.

So, thank you, God, for creating a world so beautiful and reflective of Your wonder, that is even awesome at its most terrifying and destructive moments, and that always manages to offer us glimpses of Your peace. May we believers live in ways that somehow reflect that wonder.

Christianity, Faith

Illuminations

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I was privileged to see some actual illuminated prayer book pages from the 1450s in person recently, the only thing between me and the fragile texts a thin pane of glass. I have seen pictures of these types of things in history books and on television, of course. I’ve read about the meticulous care that went into their production, about the years of toil a scribe put into producing page after painstakingly-created page of the Holy Word, working on fine details only by daylight or dim candlelight.

But nothing prepares you for seeing these pages in person. The details are so fine, the colors so vibrant, even after hundreds of years, that you know you are viewing the work of a true artist. Besides the steady, consistent typeface that some unknown scribe was able to achieve, using a quill trimmed by his own hand and ink produced from fruits and other natural elements, the illuminations were equally beautiful.

Coming from an age of technology where many of us have such atrocious penmanship that we often cannot read notes we have written to ourselves, I was especially struck by the dedication and love that went into producing the pages in front of me. Not only would the words bring me closer to God, I thought, the beauty these pages reflect could not help but do the same.

This experience made me wonder at just how much time I take to really soak in and appreciate the pages of my own, mass-produced Bible pages. Being human, and even a human who loves words in and of themselves, I am still moved even beyond words when multiple senses are involved in any experience. Music can make a moment something more; ask any filmmaker. A page illuminated by a loving hand appeals to the eyes in addition to the words penetrating our brains.

How often do I read a passage in the Word while something else is going on in the back of my brain, like what I need to do that day or whatever the latest thing is that I am worrying about? How is it that I don’t appreciate the tender work that happened for centuries by anonymous believers to ensure that the word of God was not lost or forgotten?

So, I am determined to figure out a way to read God’s word as if it is one of those illuminated pages from centuries past, whether that be creating pictures in my own mind that reflect what the words on the page are saying to me or playing inspirational music as I study. I will seek Him in the quiet places as I have been instructed to do. I will do my best to be still and know that He is God.

I’m sure that this last was the place inside where the anonymous scribe dwelled in order to lovingly create the beauty on the illuminated page that so wonderfully reflects the awesomeness of God.

Christian Living, Faith, Love

Just Listening

Posted on June 8, 2012June 8, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

It’s funny how things in life seem to happen in bunches. Thomas Pynchon wrote about this phenomenon in The Crying of Lot 49, the way that, once your mind is drawn to the attention of a certain idea or symbol, you suddenly seem to run into that very thing all the time. Pynchon’s point is that the idea or thing was really around you all along. You just didn’t bring it into your perception of reality until you actually acknowledged it.

When I seek to learn about and better understand God, this very same phenomenon seems to happen for me. Truths that were always right in front of me but never really seen by me suddenly become glaringly visible. Some people like to claim God is speaking with them when this type of thing happens, and who am I to disagree? However, since God is there for us all the time, I like to think it is more a factor of my finally listening.

Case in point:

Sunday service this last week focused on the uncomfortable subject of materialism. The pastor used as part of his text the parable from the twelfth chapter of Luke in which a man with abundance makes plans to build larger storehouses for his stuff, not realizing that he would die that very night. Jesus concludes in verse 21: “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Now, just a few days before that sermon, I had gotten a compulsion to gather up some like-new stuffed animals from around my house and give them to a friend of mine who volunteers with an organization that, among many other things, puts together kits for hospitals to hand out to sexual assault victims, who have to leave all their personal effects with the police as evidence. My stuffed toys were for the growing number of children the hospitals are seeing as victims of assault.

In the class following the sermon, the subject of materialism remained the topic. I was able to share the need for these kits as part of the natural discussion of the class, for which I was glad. Until my friend had told me about this program, I had never thought about that as a need before. And I was pretty sure several of the people in the room hadn’t thought of this need before I mentioned it either.

On Monday, as I sat doing my daily Bible reading, which just happens to have me in the book of Psalms at the moment, I happened upon this verse–

Psalm 49:20–a man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

I sat up straighter in my chair. Luke 12:21 loomed in the back of my brain–“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.” The “understanding” of the Psalms surely means the same as being “rich toward God.” My ears were being called upon to listen.

What was I going to do about it?

One of the first things I did was to keep listening and reflecting as I continued in the Psalms. These were the other truths I heard:

Psalm 51:5-6–Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. / Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

Psalm 51:10-12–Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Psalm 51:17– The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Living in the most materialistic country in the world, in a world where just having clean water, a roof over my head, and some money in the bank makes me rich compared to the majority of the planet’s population, it is a daily struggle to make sure God comes before everything else. Too many times I fail. But, if I listen, I know that God will provide me with the steadfast spirit and contrite heart that will bring me closer to Him and make it so much easier to give, storing up my true treasures in heaven, the only home we’ll ever have forever.

Faith, Love

Do You Get As Good As You Give?

Posted on May 30, 2012May 30, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

The old saying, “give as good as you get,” isn’t exactly a Christian one. It implies taking retribution into our own hands, not allowing God to be the one who metes out justice. Secondly, it is the complete opposite of the Golden Rule, totally denying the thing that matters most, which is love. “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love,” Paul tells us. “But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

But I was reminded today not only of the importance of giving love to others, but of being a good receiver of love as well. For some of us, it is harder to be a receiver than a giver. Whether we are like Martha, so caught up in the details of the thing that we forget the main reason we gathered in the first place, or are just so addicted to control that we don’t think anything can be done right unless we are on top of it, we fail to open our arms and release that control long enough to receive the help or encouragement or compliments that other people are trying to give us.

My reminder today came in the form of taking the time to actually stick around after my exercise class to talk to the other people who had come to class. Before class, I had had an up and down day. By the time class came around, I was mostly on the down side of things. When class was over, I was my usual tired, sweaty self. But, then the magic began to happen.

First, I saw a person who used to be on the same workout schedule as me but that I had not seen for some time. When she asked how I had been, I decided to share a little more than just the usual, “OK.” Then, another classmate took up the conversation with me and asked me to sit down. I started to listen more than talk as this person filled me in on some of the challenges she had faced throughout her life, recurring dental problems that were really crazy. As I continued to listen more than I talked, I was impressed by her upbeat attitude despite her extraordinary challenges. By the time I left the workout center, I was feeling more upbeat just because I had had the chance to listen to what this woman had had to say and how positive she was about the challenges she was facing.

The only thing I wish I had done was take a moment to thank my workout “friend” for sharing. I hope that she received as much from giving as I did from receiving.

God has so much He is willing to give to us. How often do we fail to receive, even from Him? David is a perfect example of one who understood the importance of being a good receiver. Over and over in his psalms, he implores God to bless him with forgiveness, escape from his enemies, or just peace. He thanks God in advance for the gifts David is sure God will give, even to those who don’t deserve it, especially since none of us deserve it. And David is bountiful in his praise of God, exhalting God’s goodness and power and love for us.

If we could only see ourselves through God’s eyes, the bare truth of all our sin and all the love He has for us anyway, how much better would we be at extending love to everyone else around us? None of us are free of mistakes. We all deserve the same chance to repent, to build our faith, to give and receive love that we give ourselves all the time. Why can’t we just extend it to everyone else?

Maybe it begins with being more open to receiving the love that is offered to us, especially the love that God offers. The better we are at receiving, the better we’re going to get at giving love, not just to God, but especially to those around us. What a wonderful way to shine His light!

Christian Living, Faith

Stuck in the Mire?

Posted on May 24, 2012May 24, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Have you ever had just a blah kind of day, where your mind and body both felt just out of whack or irritated, and you just couldn’t put your finger on the exact cause?

Have you ever considered that the exact cause might just be your own unconfessed sin before God? Sometimes, we get in such an easy habit of beginning or ending our prayers with a blanket “forgive us our sins,” that we forget the awesome power that can be gained from picking apart our sins before God. He knows what they are already, of course. But do we?

I started thinking about how not getting specific with God gets me stuck in the mire as I have been reading the Psalms. In these wonderful poetic prayers, the various authors pour out their sentiments to God in imagery, metaphor, and splendid detail. The more I read these prayers, the more I am struck by how helpful it is to be specific when you are talking to God.

In a world where there is often 26 hours of things to do in each 24 hour day, we often let getting specific fall between the cracks of all the materialistic things we have convinced ourselves need to be done for our existence not to fall apart. But God has all the time in the world to listen to us, no matter how long we speak. So should we.

In Psalm 32, David gives an apt description of what it feels like to be trapped in our sins: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your [God’s] hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’–and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (3-5).

David, who lived in a time without the guarantee of Jesus as intecessor, had many reasons to hide his sin from God, even though God already knew the sin. Essentially, by not confessing to God, David was only denying the truth to himself, and this denial effectively shut him off from God! How much simpler it should be for those of us who have the Great Intecessor to go freely to God to admit to ourselves the sins we have committed against Him. After all, we have all assurance through the grace of Christ that God will forgive us, whereas David did not.

Are your bones wasting away? It shouldn’t be that way for those who believe. “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered,” David begins the psalm (32:1). “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit” (32:2). The person David is describing is every Christian. We all have the right through grace to claim this state of being.

But we have to be honest with ourselves. There is no lying to God, of course, though we say those lies anyway, the things we want to believe about ourselves even though the tiny voice at the back of our mind is telling us we are wrong. Oh, to be the spirit with no deceit before the Father!

What we lose when we don’t confess our specific sins is the chance to grab what David prized most in his relationship with God, and that is the ability to feel the full joy of God, to grasp God’s righteousness, and to praise Him in full understanding of the depth and breadth of God’s goodness. David finishes Psalms 32 with just such a declaration: “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!” (11).

There is no way to get there without first stripping ourselves bare before the One who already knows. By acknowledging to Him where we have fallen, we effectively admit it to ourselves, casting off the heavy hand upon us and freeing ourselves to truly rejoice!

Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

Do You Live Like You Believe It?

Posted on May 20, 2012May 20, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This little pool of water may not seem like much, but at different points in time, it has actually served as the site where some were baptized into the family of Jesus. We all remember the moment when we ourselves were baptized and those fledgling years of our Christianity when everything was just a little brighter, when our zest for God fairly glowed.

But life has a way of catching up to us. If the race we are running were an easy one, it would really not be worth the effort of putting one foot in front of another. The glow of our early years of Christian faith can begin to tarnish with the cares of this world. We start to hold on to what is right in front of us instead of offering up the cares of this world to the Ruler of the next one. We let worry creep in, no matter what Christ told us about worrying, no matter that the Creator of everything knows the number of hairs on our very heads. We cling to treasures on this earth under the auspices of security, like the rich young man unable to sell all and follow the Son of Man.

Many years ago, my father-in-law asked a series of questions to a younger person he was counseling. This person was facing several family crises, depression, and budget woes. Knowing that she believed in Christ, my father-in-law began by asking her about her belief. When she strongly proclaimed her faith in God, my father-in-law asked her to consider if she were living like she believed Christ died for her and rose again.

How about you? How about me? What does it mean to live like I believe it? In the past several years, it has come to mean my spending more time doing and less time wringing my hands wondering if where I am and what I am up to is what God wants from me. I don’t mean that I have quit praying to God about His purpose for my life, or that I have quit aligning my actions to the principles of the Bible as best as I can. What I have started to do is to give my actions over into God’s hands, where they have really been all along. Now, however, my mind is recognizing God’s authority. If He wants me somewhere else or doing something else, I have to live like I believe and step forward in the faith that He will get me where He wants me to be.

This process is not easy, like all growing pains, but through the gift of the Spirit that God has granted us believers, we can make it through life’s challenges aided by the One and Only, proof positive that “His burden is light.” Living like we believe involves prayer time, worship time, helping others, and doing instead of worrying. The more I can live like I believe, the more God’s light will shine through me. And what more could any of us want than that?

Christian Living, Faith, Living

Every Moment Blessings

Posted on May 17, 2012May 17, 2012 by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

This past Mother’s Day weekend, I got a real opportunity to stop and smell the roses. Well, since I was on some acreage in Shep, Texas, (which is outside of Abilene, for those who don’t know) it was more like the opportunity to smell the cacti flowers and wildflowers I couldn’t identify.

Still, roses or Indian brush, the ability to be out in nature among bright blue skies, fluffly, white clouds overhead, only the sounds of our feet crunching in the dry grass and the insects buzzing, was a rare opportunity that I truly relished. Even though the creek on the property where we were walking was still quite dry, it still offered tranquil moments as it gurgled. With the family gathered around me, it was truly a wonderful day.

God’s blessings sneak up on us just like my lazy Sunday. I didn’t really plan to get to walk around on land that once was the site of a Butterfield Stage route stop, viewing carvings in rock from the late 1800s where travelers literally left a mark on their ways further West. Looking at dead trees lying crumpled in pieces, wild grasses re-claiming them, at fully-canopied trees reaching out over the water, casting shadows that promised a cool breeze away from the bright sun, my whole world was condensed into each, full breath. For that moment, at least, all was peace.

How often am I too busy to take those full breaths in my day-to-day life? And yet, God’s blessings are there for me to notice and enjoy every day–in the smile of a stranger, in the good news from the doctor, in the door being held open for me, in the call from a good friend. Sometimes, those blessings are more like the ability to remain standing when life presents you with some devastating news or the near-miss in your car that keeps you out of an accident.

Regardless, God’s blessings come so hard and fast that we really should take time each day to stop and count them. Some people do this through a thankfulness journal at the end of each day. Others do it through prayer. But what if we faced each day living every moment in full awareness of God’s current blessing? Would we be cocooned like I felt on that homestead in Winters, regardless of the challenges of day-to-day living? Think about what wonderful things we might accomplish for Him surrounded by such awareness.

This state of being is easier said than done, but anything worth doing takes great effort. And, of course, we can be assured that God will help us in the doing as well. Just another every moment blessing!