Confessions of a Blue-zilla

 Hydrangeas top the list of my favorite flowers, probably thanks in part to growing up with a hydrangea bush outside my childhood bedroom window.  Though largely neglected, every year it filled with huge pompoms of blue or purple blooms.  Orphaned by the time I married in my mid-thirties, I opted for a simple, low-cost wedding.  I wore a simple home-made gown and borrowed veil, and carried one white rose nestled in hydrangea, picked from someone’s yard.  For this frugal bride, there was no “bride-zilla” trauma to find the just-perfect designer gown and florist’s bouquet.

I still like blue. Our bedroom and quilt are blue. So are my kitchen and favorite recliner. I wear a lot of blue. And I have several hydrangea bushes in our back yard, including one that this year produced this amazing bloom. 

I'm prejudiced, but I think blue is one of God's best colors.  He brushed the sky and oceans blue. When He gave plans for the furnishings of the tabernacle, He assigned blue and its spectrum neighbor purple for their colors. In our culture, blue has come to symbolize loyalty, hence the term “true-blue,” meaning “staunch, unwavering in one’s faith or beliefs, unchanging, loyal.” I actually thought about that symbolism  in deciding on what to put in my garden-fresh bouquet.  What better trait than “loyal” to have in marriage?

Not that I have been perfect.  I take comfort in knowing that Peter, after three years of intimate follow-ship with Christ, lost it at the worst time.  As Jesus awaited the trials that would lead to his death, Peter cowered in the shadows, denying any relationship with his Lord. Paint him yellow. But Jesus didn’t write him off.  After Jesus’ resurrection, He came to His disciples at the Sea of Galilee, providing them with a huge haul of fish from which they could fix lunch. “Simon Peter,” Jesus asked repeatedly, “Do you love me?”  Simon squirmed around the more intimate, true-blue meaning of Jesus’ choice for the Greek word “love.”  Could he, the cowardly one, ever be worthy of His Savior again? Yet through this exchange (recorded in John 21), Jesus indicated He wasn’t giving up on Peter. 

 This same Peter wrote a struggling church, "If you are struggling according to God's will, keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who made you, for he will never fail you” (1 Peter 4:19 TLB).  In other words, stay true-blue to Jesus.  He will never fail you.

As though an illustration of this concept, the “blue” in hydrangeas comes from an acid soil environment.  The pink and purple varieties rise from a more alkaline soil. Similarly, those “acid” times for our faith have the potential to “true-blue” our faith.  As fellow disciple James put it, “Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy.  For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything” (James 1:2-4 TLB).

There are other blue flowers—periwinkle, lupine, lobelia and columbine come to mind—but I will always be partial to hydrangea. Any serious Christ-follower will have those “acid” testing times. But to bloom forth with brilliance is the right and true-blue response we need in living out our love for Christ.

Oh, those robber robins!

 

Robins were not my dad’s favorite birds, at least when they tried to harvest the crop off his small blueberry patch. He had planted about six bushes by his work shed, and as they matured, the plump, tasty berries became a banquet hall for the local bird population. Finally, he caged the entire patch with chicken wire, an enclosure that was six feet tall with a door so we could still go in and pick them. Sometimes, however, a little gap at the bottom of the enclosure was all it took for an enterprising robin to sneak in and feast away.

Despite the haul of bandit birds, we picked enough to freeze for our enjoyment through the year. My memories of fresh-picked blueberries resulted in planting a few bushes at the back of our garage. And guess what.  The robins found them. Although these berries lacked the size and flavor of those from my childhood,  the bushes still brought the enjoyment of summer’s “blue gold."

I couldn’t build a wire cage for them, so draped them instead with bird-deterring netting. The robins still found a way in, but I settled for a less-than-perfect system.

My “berry guard” system got me thinking about spiritual guards.  Psalm 91 speaks of God guarding us when surrounded by evil. But the scripture I cherish most about “guarding” is from Philippians, written by a weary apostle who was “guarded” by hardened Roman soldiers as he served out an indefinite sentence for preaching Christ.

“Rejoice!” Paul wrote, likely as chains clanged from his wrists. “Be gentle!  Pray about everything! Be thankful! Tell God your needs!”  And then:

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

One of the misconceptions about being a Christian that I had to work through in my early faith walk was that all would be hunky-dory once I crossed the line to say “Jesus is my Savior.”  Some problems will fade as our values and priorities change to good. But we live in a fallen world, and problems will come. Instead of robins after blueberries, those pesky crows and vultures of “fallen-ness” will attack when we least expect.

What are we to do? Rejoice! Be gentle! Pray! Be thankful! Tell God your needs! So doing will “guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” And the sweetness of knowing the Savior—far sweeter than the plumpest blueberry, for sure!—will help feed a Christ-hungry world.

The buzz on "busy"





A busy bee got my attention one day when I looked out my office window at the blooming rhododendrons.  As he floated from one blossom to another, I thought of a children’s book I’ve been reading my grandson Josiah. It follows a diligent bee who says “no” to farm animals inviting him to play with them. “I’ve got work to do,” he says, buzzing to the next flower. The bee finished his work by the last page when he rewarded the farmer with honey—and the book’s electronic cell rewarded the reader with a happy “buzz.” Toddlers love those surprises in their books!

“I’ve got work to do” often comes out of my mouth. The work ethic modeled for me in childhood continued into my working life as a reporter with its stressful deadlines requiring focus and productivity. I still remember the loud clatter of old-fashioned typewriters in the newsroom, the mechanical version of buzzing bees. Now, juggling housework, writing, and care of others keeps me buzzing from project to project.

 Sometimes I think about how busy the Bible’s Martha felt, especially when Jesus dropped in for a visit. What a privilege to have Him come.  But she didn’t have a microwave to zap Him and His companions a ready-made meal, or an “app” to have one delivered from the pizza parlor. In those days, everything about homemaking was labor-intensive. I “get” her desire to serve a meal worthy of this amazing Person.  But I also understand Jesus’ admonition, “Only one thing is needed,” to mean that a simple meal, not a showcase menu, was okay. Yes, she got a bit snippy toward Mary, who wasn’t helping. But stomachs would have rumbled if they’d both sat at Jesus’ feet.

We need the balance of Martha and Mary in our spiritual personalities. In his book The Attentive Life (IVP, 2008), former Graham team evangelist Leighton Ford explained how some of us lean toward the mundane things of life, and some toward the so-called “spiritual,” but both traits are necessary. As an example, he quoted Mother Teresa, talking of the work of the Sisters of Mercy in caring for the dying poor in India: “Do not think of us as social workers,” she said, alluding to the “Martha” side.  “We are contemplatives in the midst of life. We pray the work” (p. 107).

Like Martha, we need to be diligent about serving God (akin to the bee making honey). James 4:17 says we sin when we know what we ought to do, and don’t do it. But we also need the “Mary” side that savors the spiritual nectar in God’s Word, “sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb” (Psalm 19:10).

Rest assured

Pictures of contentment, these horses reminded me that life is a rhythm of activity and rest. God’s plan is a balanced life of service and renewal that brings Him glory. It’s the sense of “rightness” conveyed by Isaiah 30:15:
            In repentance and rest is your salvation,
            In quietness and trust is your strength.
This verse is one you might find on a plaque in a religious gift shop. But be careful of scripture plucked out of context. It’s embedded in a chapter full of reprimands for national obstinacy. With vicious northern empires chewing away at their borders, the Jews decided God’s protection wasn’t enough. So they decided to form an alliance with a heathen nation to the south, Egypt. Time would prove the folly of that treaty.

“Return to me for safety,” God was telling them through the prophet Isaiah. “Rest in me. Quietly trust me instead of making a frenzied alliance with Egypt.”

Of course, they didn’t, and in 606 B.C. the nation was overwhelmed by the Babylonian powerhouse. Yet 2,600 years later, the principle still speaks. We’re prone to fall on our faces in failure when we rely on something other than God. For some, it’s technology, fame, beauty, or wealth. In the end, all these fail.

So what do “repentance, rest, quietness, and trust” look like in real life?  Longtime Billy Graham evangelist Leighton Ford, in his book The Attentive Life (IVP, 2008) offered one idea. When he suffered a heart attack, his son-in-law brought those words to his attention. Ford began praying those words in his morning walk and wrote them daily in his journal. “They became a reminder to slow down,” he wrote, “to savor the goodness of the Lord each moment, to remind myself that I did not have to ‘do it now’ every time a new thought came, to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life and soul” (p. 174).

If your life has gotten so busy that there’s little space for spiritual rest, you too may need to absorb the truths of this verse. Don’t worry about finding it somewhere on a plaque. Write it on an index card and post it where you can see it, like the bathroom mirror, car dash, or a corner of your laptop. “Rest” assured: the reminder will be helpful.

Firestorm!

The temperature had reached 108 degrees F. that afternoon of June 28, so I watched smoke clouds on the horizon with concern.  We live in an arid area, prone to wildfires. I hoped firefighters could knock it down quickly. They couldn’t. Erratic winds pushed a firestorm several miles over parched lands, into the edge of my town.  By early evening,, the radio was broadcasting emergency evacuation alerts affecting thousands. Seeing the encroaching orange glow, I quickly filled two boxes with “must-keep” documents and address books.  I slipped in my Bible. Should I take my violin? It was my father’s. I decided not to.  I handed my husband an overnight bag for a few changes of clothes and filled another for myself.  Would we have to flee in minutes? The border for “Level 2 evacuation” (“be ready to leave on a moment’s notice”) was about one-fourth mile away.  Would it soon change to Level 3 (“get out immediately”) and include us?  I looked around our small, cozy home of 34 years.  We decided to wait and listen to radio-announced evacuations.

 

By morning, we were still in our home. But from the end of our  block we could see blackened hillsides less than half a mile away. We’d later learn that 28 homes were destroyed.  We knew some of their owners, two of them retired teachers who'd taught our now-adult children. A mile away the other direction, flying embers had ignited industrial buildings related to the valley’s fruit processing industry. Acrid smoke boiled for a day.

Living through a “natural disaster” (and emerging unscathed except for the physical letdown when it’s over) made me think again about the big questions of suffering.  This nugget from the Old Testament prophetic book called “Lamentations” (so appropriately named) came to mind: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is his faithfulness”  (Lamentations 3:22). The author of this book (possibly Jeremiah) had watched enemies press in on his native land.  Eventually they’d come to the bloody “last call” of foreign invasion. Did God know? Didn’t He care?  Of course He does. His compassions fail not.

 I pray for that assurance for the stunned fire victims.  I pray it for people I care about who are going through some of life’s spiritual “firestorms.” The day a doctor sits down after tests and says, “I wish I had better news.” Those caring for a loved one they’re losing to dementia or Alzheimer’s.  Dying parents.  Overwhelmed adult children. Wayward adult children.  The devastation of drug addiction or arrest for crime.

The morning after the firestorm, a rainstorm helped wash away the smoke-laden valley air.  As I watched the ten-minute downpour, I remembered, “New every morning.”  It doesn’t say, “Everything is made okay every morning.” It says God’s compassions are new every morning. They’re ours to claim as we walk through the ashes of life, holding His hand.