Happy 100th birthday to a what?

Several times a day, graffiti-marked trains rumble through the middle of my town, carrying farm produce and high-tech goods like cars. For hundreds of feet, the tracks edge our nearly-two-mile-long nature preserves walking trail. For most of that length, a grassy greenbelt separates rails from trail. They almost merge, however, near a hundred-year-old landmark. The date 1912 is still visible at the top of one cement culvert set under the tracks. A couple times during our walks, we were startled by deer bounding up the steep sides next to the culvert on their way to the grassy part of the wildlife area.

A hundred years this year! It’s hard to think back to life in 1912. Nine years earlier the Wright Brothers celebrated a wobbly “flight” of 120 feet in their great invention, the “airplane.” In 1912 several wars were going on (no surprise), notably one in the Balkans. Women were campaigning for the right to vote. Henry Ford was sketching plans for automobile assembly lines. The electric refrigerator was a year away from the market. It would sell for $900—about $14,000 in today’s money. Some Victrolas (wind-up phonographs) cost as much, limiting their market to the wealthy. The average person earned $1,033 a year. Gas was seven cents a gallon. Oh, and a new car cost about $941.

Thinking about history comes naturally as one year ends and another begins. So does thinking about the future—and how much time we have left to live on this earth. Believe it or not, in 1991 a New York inventor received patent 5,031,161 for a “life expectancy timepiece.” His “watch” tells people how much time they probably have left in this world. It’s based on actuarial tables like those used by insurance companies to guess at life expectancy based on age, health, and lifestyle factors (smoking, drinking, stress). He remarked that his watch “is to make people realize how precious time is, that each day is just here and you can’t get it back.”

I don’t know anything about this man’s faith walk, but he seems to echo the wise words of a man who lived to be 120, about a third longer than most folks. His name was Moses and in the only chapter in Psalms attributed to him, he puts out the facts about how short life really is. From him we have these words of timeless counsel: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

In our lifespan, we may support a lot of emotional loads (as opposed to the weight bearing of the 1912 culvert). We may be a place of shelter or transition for family or friends (recalling the culvert’s role with deer). But maybe the better analogy from it is this: are we supporting the things that really matter for eternity? For which we will give account to God?

That Perfect Gift

I just got back from buying unsliced french bread and bandages at the grocery store (no, the purchases weren't related). To be more truthful, I just escaped mayhem at our shopping center, dodging between preoccupied, frustrated people in the last hours of Christmas eve. Craziness! Soon...we'll be past the advertisements that urge us to keep buying. Earlier today when I logged on to my computer, the "home page" of my internet server boasted, "It's not too late to find the perfect gift." I had no interest in going to the link, but the phrase was pregnant with meaning (and that's pun intended).

After reading the internet's teaser headline, I thought of another "perfect gift" that someone opened before it was too late. I write of it in my devotional, Heaven,The Greatest Home Makeover. In our small town daily newspaper, survivors can buy space for detailed obituaries about someone who died. Some spend lots of money listing memberships, honors, and survivors, right down to their favorite dog. But one day I read a special one in which the family shared its admiration for the deceased person's amazing, self-taught mechanical how-to. Then they added (and for me, this was the best part!) that two weeks before his death (from diabetes complications, as I recall), he "received Christ as his Lord and Savior and was baptized along with his son. God had been patient, waiting all these years for the Spirit to move in his heart, time and again returning him from death's door."

We won't always have chance after chance after chance to receive God's gift of eternal life through Jesus. I think about that a lot when the holidays come and, for one thing, traffic fatalities related to drinking rise. (For those who don't know, my family was almost killed by a drinking driver in 1997.)

If you're reading this and haven't yet received God's gift, why wait? If you've been praying for years for a loved one to make that decision, don't quit. George Mueller prayed for decadesfor two of his friends to come to Christ. By the time he was buried, both made that life-changing decision.

The internet headline, despite its materialistic intentions, is spiritually right. It's not too late to find the just-right gift. It's been waiting for you all along. The perfect gift is a Person, not a package: "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift" (2 Cor. 9:15).

P.S. The photo is of decorations on our Christmas tree. Next to the cross is a note telling of our treasured gift this year: a donation on our behalf to an organization that helps the poor and hungry.

Fullness of time

The term “fullness of time” came to mind as I admired the amaryllis blooming in brilliant orange quadruplets this morning on our kitchen table. Three weeks ago, it looked like a withered turnip. After weeks of winter fog and cold, we’re enjoying the display.

It’s appropriate that these fast-growing bulbs are popular for indoor blooming during Christmas. At the time of Jesus’ birth, the world was socked in by centuries of hopelessness. The long-ago prophecies of Someone to change that seemed to diminish with each turn of the seasons. Then it came—not as people thought, in the form of a warrior-king born in a palace, but in a baby born to a teenager in desperate poverty far from home.

Here’s the phrase in scripture: “But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4). Every one of scripture’s prophecies was fulfilled with Christ. By one person’s estimate, using just 48 prophecies, the mathematical probability of all of them being fulfilled in one person is 10 to the 57th power. That’s 10 with 57 zeroes after it.

As the buy-buy-buy ads spill out of your newspaper or prance across your television screen, remember that they’ve got it all wrong. Christmas is not about indulging one another, but marveling that God indulged us with the greatest gift of all, a way to be reconciled to Him forever.

And maybe that’s another reason the amaryllis bloom has a trumpet shape, as a special reminder of the eternal view: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).If the birth of Jesus can overrule a probability of one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,-000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—let’s celebrate, the Christ-coming past and the Christ-return-future!

Page stains

When the basket of bananas on our table got past their prime, I faced a decision: banana bread, or banana bread? Pulling out my baking supplies, I got out my favorite recipe book and turned to the page with a tried-and-true recipe. In fact, it bears permanent pureed banana and canola oil stains. Dump in this, stir in that--soon the loaf was in the oven.

My “food-autographed” cookbook reminded me of a story I once heard about some parents who had an out-of-town emergency and had to leave their kids with a trusted sitter—one old enough to cook and run the household.When they returned, the kids raved about how their sitter cooked all their favorite foods.The mother took the sitter aside and asked, “How did you know what were their favorite foods?”

“I just looked through your cookbook,” the sitter said. “I cooked whatever was on the pages with a lots splatters and stains.”

Sometimes when I go to a memorial service, the minister will hold up the Bible that belonged to the person who died. What a joy when they can say, “So-and-so really loved God’s Word. If you looked through their Bible, it’s full of underlining, stars, notes, and even family names by verses.”

As a youngster, I had this mistaken idea that writing in one’s Bible was akin to sacrilege. After all, wasn’t it the “holy” Bible? Then, as a young adult, I came under the influence of godly older women who cherished their well-used, well-marked Bibles. That took care of the silly notion that it was a sin to mark up one’s Bible! Now, in a few places, the thin pages of my Bible probably suggest some wet stuff falling. Sometimes I’ll find myself so gripped by a passage that my eyes “sweat” (as one friend puts it). But those wrinkled dots on a page are reminders that God is real and that He takes notes of those tears. My deepest emotions (even the wet ones) matter to Him. Sometimes there may be no solution to my concerns on this side of eternity. Sometimes, there is--as the Israelites discovered in the seemingly impossible dream of returning to their homeland after the Babylonian captivity: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:5).

Splatters and stains in your Bible? They’re a good thing, a reminder that the Bible is tried and true.

The Test of the Scary Black Notes

I read The Great Church Christmas Orchestra Recruitment Letter and said, “I can do this.” When the music arrived, I said, “Can I really do this?” To understand my reaction, you need to know that I play the violin “somewhat.” On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a squawky beginner and 10 fairly proficient, I consider myself about a 2.7. The number usually suffers when I’m handed music parts that have notes so high I’m almost scratching my chin, or that include 32nd notes in seven flats played at warp speed. And that’s what happened. Admittedly, 95% of the music was at my skill level. But it was the 5% at the musical prodigy level that made me wonder if I even qualified for my preferred perch of last chair, second violin.

To be honest, that’s been my story ever since I picked up a violin in seventh grade. I despaired of sounding any better than a cat in heat. The other way to get better was to try and try—and keep practicing. By the time I was a high school senior, I sat as first chair of the high school orchestra. Then I toted my violin to college and discovered the bar for excellence was raised by students with years of private lessons behind them. Again, the only option was to keep trying and practicing. And I did get better. Then came non-music jobs, marriage, motherhood and a host of other commitments, and my violin took a long nap in its case. My skills went downhill.

But the other day as I practiced those jet-travel (high & fast)sections of the program music, I realized that’s a picture of how God “grows” us into the people of faith and trust that He planned for us to be. Whatever the means—be it a challenging job, stretching college course, or a difficult relationship—we have two choices. We can bail out, fearing failure, or push on, trusting God to get us through it and develop our character in the process.

Robert McGee addresses this in his book The Search for Significance. The thrust of the book is helping people identify negative outlooks and habits and replace them with a Biblically-based foundation of God’s view of them. One of the common false beliefs he discusses is this: “I am what I am; I cannot change. I am hopeless.” Such a perspective is typical of those who feel they’ll never be successful in life, who blame their failures on being undisciplined, who can’t trust God, who say “That’s just the way I am,” and who claim they just can’t overcome a particular sin.

Such negative attitudes crash right up against this truth--to borrow from the famed “Four Spiritual Laws,” that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives, one connected to new life in Jesus Christ. Trusting Him is not mere "fire insurance" (to avoid hell), but a remodeling process. To bring the analogy back to music practice, moving forward with God’s program is a learning and re-training process. It’s loosening up unyielding thought patterns (and, with violin, my age-stiffened fingers).

I won’t claim to now play the pieces perfectly, but I’ll give it my best effort come performance time. I’ll remember God’s promise of help: “I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). And I’m counting on His right hand helping my struggling left hand with all those busy notes! After all, the main purpose of this is to bring praise to Jesus, and His coming to earth as a baby to be our Savior.

Upon this rock

They’re called “cairns” from a Scottish word for heaps of stones used for landmarks or memorials. I live tens of thousands of miles away from Scotland, but last spring some wag in our area started heaping cairns from roadside rocks. When you’re used to seeing the typical debris of cans, papers, plastic bottles and the occasional remains of a deceased tire—well, they added entertainment to highway travel. Rocks are not normally conducive to stacking, so I wondered if some super-glue was sandwiched between the stones to help them endure the air whapped off passing cars. I never stopped to find out.

I thought of the cairns again upon hearing that evangelist Billy Graham, now 93, was hospitalized with pneumonia. Even through frail from aging and Parkinson’s disease, the man who has preached in 185 nations had just finished his 30th book, Nearing Home: Life, Faith and Finishing Well. His message and presence have unmistakably marked our world for Christ. Presidents and other world leaders have confided in him. Yet he would consider himself just another old rock in the stack. Those he influenced would be stacked on top of him.

And below him? We could go down a lot of rocks, but I’ve always been moved by the part dating to the mid-1800s. A young man from Boston named Edward Kimball decided to teach a Sunday school class to influence teenagers for Christ. One of them, who worked in his uncle’s shoe store, was quite a handful, prone to profanity and anger. Through Kimball’s influence, that teenager eventually chose to become a Christian. His name was Dwight Moody, and his name became better known as he began holding evangelistic meetings. Moody’s meetings, and personal counseling with Moody, helped a student named J. Wilbur Chapman be certain of his salvation. Chapman became a friend and co-worker with Moody.

A baseball player named Billy Sunday came into the picture, converted at street corner meetings and for a brief time an assistant for Chapman’s meetings. Sunday began holding his own evangelistic meetings and started a men’s prayer and fellowship group in Charlotte, N.C.. In 1934, the group invited an evangelist named Mordecai Ham to preach at meetings. A gangly young man named Billy Graham went forward one night to receive Christ. So did another young man, to make a deeper commitment to Christ. His name was Grady Wilson. Their names would eventually be linked as evangelists known throughout the world.

The bottom rock of Graham's story wasn’t even Ed Kimball. Someone had led Kimball to faith in Christ. That person had someone else lead him or her, and...and.... The Bible tells us about the true bottom rock. While others were having heated discussions about who Jesus Christ really was—human or divine, Peter pounded his faith-stake in the ground by declaring, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Of this rock-solid declaration, Jesus replied, “On this rock I will build my church” (v. 18).

Not a flimsy cairn pile, vulnerable to the weather. A solid rock. Unmovable.

Flexibility

Watching our flexible feline groom himself in positions that would cause me to scream in pain got me thinking about human flexibility tests. I used to be able to do the “back-scratch” position (one arm up the back, the other over the shoulder—hands should meet). Now, two frustrating inches keep my fingers from touching. Well, I may not be built of rubber bands any more, but at least I can get the senior discount.

Other things crossed my mind as Augie twisted himself about to get every possible streak of fur licked down. How did he learn to do that? He was still a kitten when rescued from a public park, where he was abandoned and left for coyote dessert. Did his mother have time to teach him Grooming 101? I also made a connection to something I’d read recently in Richard Foster’s newest book, Sanctuary of the Soul (IVP). I’d read his best-seller Celebration of Discipline decades ago, but never knew about his early life.

In this book’s introduction, he said as a college student he was frustrated because of his “poor academic training and a less-than-stellar intellect.” He said he had to study harder than many others to succeed in college. On top of that, he had two part-time jobs to pay for food and his books. He worked from four to six every morning steam-cleaning machinery at a cannery. Then he went to the dining commons to wash dishes before his first class at 8 a.m. He washed dishes again at lunch and supper—this allowing him to eat in the dining commons. Both of his parents had died, so he and his two brothers lived on whatever they could scrape together. Oh, in addition to college and part-time jobs, he was in a ministry where he and others spoke at different churches every weekend.It was out of this frustration of being overwhelmed that he had his first encounter with the still, quiet voice of God. God seemed to be telling him that having all his desires satisfied was not the route to true satisfaction. Instead, this had to come from just being with God.

Probably a lot of us have had times when we felt all twisted and out of sync, like those people whose extreme limb-contortions give them fifteen minutes of fame in some world records book. But God knows, and that time of pressure is probably what He has permitted to help “grow” our character. Many people quote Isaiah 40:31 in times of trouble: “They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” However, the Hebrew-to-English translation makes some people think it’s a passive situation--God taking over while we wait. Instead, the primitive linguistic root of “wait,” qavah, means “to bind together by twisting.” I’ve heard this rewording: They that twist their weakness around God’s strength will know His renewing strength. I can understand that. I think we’re all prone to want things easy. We don’t like being bent and pulled out of our emotional or spiritual comfort zones. But growth in character doesn’t happen any other way.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go try and touch my toes.

Thirsty

Close to the middle of this photo are deer drinking in the river.

“I see some deer,” my husband exclaimed as he pulled our car off the canyon road. We were about 80 miles from home, enjoying the autumn colors on a lesser-traveled road. Climbing over a guard rail, we stood on a ledge hundreds of feet away from four deer drinking the chilly river water. They soon detected human presence, and bounded back up the hill into their hiding places.

The opening words to Psalm 42 came to mind: “As the deer pants for streams of waters, so my soul pants for you, O God.” I recalled explaining that psalm to a group of women years ago. One, her face chiseled by her hard life before she came to Christ, said, “I can relate to thirsting for God.”

The Hebrew word that we translate “pant” is arag and this is its only use in the Bible. It also means “to long for.” I can understand the thirst and panting that compels an animal to find water. I once had two fawns in my house (aka long-legged young teens) who became substitute paper carriers for a huge route serving more than a hundred customers. Of course, it was summer’s most blistering week and Mom had to come along as driver. I made sure we all filled our water bottles before going to the paper drop-off point, where we sat in the meager shade outside the car. Unfortunately, that was next to the locked-up swimming pool of a manufactured home community. I shot a mom’s glance that said, “Don’t even think about climbing the fence for a few cannonballs while we wait.”

After an hour, the water bottles were drained and my fawns were gasping, “I’m d-y-i-n-g” (which made me think of a cowboy song that includes a lot of yippee-yi-yoos). Finally, I decided to drive us home to refill the water bottles and call the newspaper about our tardy delivery. “Sorry, the press broke down,” the harried circulation assistant said. “I don’t know when your bundles will be delivered. You’ll just have to stay at the dropoff point.” So back we went to wait. My two fawns were about to drop out of this. Yes, the papers did eventually come and we sweated through the route in record time. Home again, they collapsed with more long drinks of water...while I had to figure out dinner. (How about ice cube soup?)

Whether a blistering summer afternoon, or a chilly autumn morning, thirst is a normal part of our creation. It’s also a symbol of our longing to be refreshed and satisfied by the One who created us. That’s why, as we drove away from watching the deer, I thought of other scriptures that speak of spiritual thirst:
“He satisfies the thirsty.” (Psalm 107:9)
“Come, all you who are thirsty.” (Isaiah 55:1)
“If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37)
“Whoever is thirsty, let him come.” (Revelation 22:17)

We hear so much today about the “WWW,” the world-wide web. It precedes the internet addresses of sites like mine. But we also need to be life-long students of the Bible’s “world-wide word webs,” discovering how even single words in this God-inspired book are interconnected in amazing ways. When we arag after God—longing for, even panting for Him--He promises to satisfy that thirst in the deepest part of who we are.

Hearing the Quiet Wind

“Can you hear me now?” One cell phone company’s advertising slogan has gotten to me! But instead of reception maps, I’m thinking more of how sensitive I am to hearing the quiet voice of God.

I’m afraid I’m a lot like the prophet Elijah, thinking God needs to amp the volume to get my attention. After Elijah’s headline showdown with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, he ran for his life from a nasty Queen Jezebel and ended up in the wilderness. Now, that’s a place where modern-day cell phone reception would be iffy! But it was no problem for God. He grabbed Elijah’s attention with the big stuff: a ferocious wind, a shattering earthquake, and a horrific fire. But when God finally spoke, it was in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12).

Whooooooooooooooooooooo.

I thought of that when my husband and I traveled about a hundred miles to see a 90-year-old friend, who recently moved to be nearer her son. Our route included passing through an area notorious for unending wind. At the top of the hill, dozens of ghost-white, 400-feet-high wind turbines came into view, their propellers turning steadily in the unseen wind. I learned that nearly fifty are spread out over 5,400 acres in this area. One claim is that the electricity they generate could power 28,000 average homes for a year. And while the props emit a whine, there’s also the mystery of the silence of wind.

Whooooooooooooooooooooooo.

But I had thoughts other than energy conservation. One was a bit silly. What if the comical Don Quixote of Cervantes’ ancient satire had come upon these instead of windmills, whom he thought to be ferocious giants? Maybe like an ant encountering an elephant?

My other thought was of the Bible’s use of wind as a symbol. Jesus noted that the wind blows where it wishes and we hear it blowing, but we don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going. He said the Holy Spirit is like that in the new birth of salvation (John 3:8). It’s also how God’s Spirit still speaks to us-—in that still, small voice that says “do this.” In writing about the “whispers of God” in Sanctuary of the Soul (IVP Books, 2011, p. 84), Richard Foster says he once sensed a distinct pull to call someone. It turned out that the person had deep and pressing needs, making his surprise phone call very timely. Foster added that the “whisper” will often be to do ordinary things, like taking a bouquet to someone who’s “out of sorts,” shoveling a disabled neighbor’s snow, or rising before a spouse to fix them morning coffee. Foster remarked: “We should not be surprised when the whisper of God leads us into simple acts of service and kindness.”

Before I’d even read this in Foster’s book, for several days that “still, small voice” was telling me to take flowers and a note to a friend who has faced many challenges in the aftermath of her parents’ year-apart deaths. Finally, I arranged a bouquet from the best of my fading roses and took it along with the note to her home. It appeared that nobody was home, so I left them by her door. A few hours later she called and expressed her gratitude and sharing prayer needs. She added, “I really wanted someone to bring me flowers today.”

Whoooooooooooooooooooooo.

Is a spirit-directed wind blowing in your heart?

Where's the GBH?

“Shhh!” my husband whispered as we neared the swamp in our town’s riverfront trail system. “Look by the peninsula on the left.” I squinted to find the hump-shouldered outline of the huge gray bird amidst the dying foliage of autumn. Aware of our presence, it turned its S-shaped neck and waded out of view.I remembered previous times we came upon Great Blue Herons (GBH) in this swamp. One time, a pair startled us as they burst out of the cattails, whapping their six-foot-wide wingspans to lift four to eight pounds of body weight. They’re quite obvious aloft, but silent and nearly invisible as they troll the shallow waters for small fish to eat.

I thought of how we often fail to see God in the swamplands of life. When we end up in a place of disappointment or fear, we may feel He doesn’t notice us. That’s why one of the names of God, “El Roi,” meaning “The God Who Sees Me,” is especially poignant. We’re introduced to that aspect of His character through the Genesis 16 account of Hagar, Sarai’s maidservant. Pregnant with Abram’s child because of barren Sarai’s insistence on a surrogate, Hagar ran away when she couldn’t take Sarai’s jealousy and anger any more, collapsing by a little desert spring. Without hope, without direction, the desperate woman learned that Someone saw her troubles—God Himself. He told her to go back to Sarai and encouraged her with the revelation that the son in her womb would have a significant place in history. An ordinary water hole became a holy place. Thus she named it after her God-visit, Beer Lahai Roi, “Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.”

I find this story of great comfort. If God cares enough to intervene in a domestic dispute (albeit one with significant historical ramifications), surely He is aware of everything that goes on in my life. For many years, 2 Chronicles 16:9 has been a beacon of hope when I felt ignored and insignificant: “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him” (KJV). It’s been a part of my memory bank so long that I can’t even recall the circumstances that put its truth into my life. But it’s there, a solid proclamation of God’s watch-care. Nothing can camouflage my actions or needs. He has seen it all, even before I was born and still in process in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:15).

So where’s the GBH? Alone in his swampy disguise, known to God. And where am I in my deepest need, my most frustrating situation, or a place where God seems excluded? Right in the focus of God’s perfect telescope, its cross-hairs in the shape of a Cross.

Guard cats and fear alarms

Because it had a likeness of our black-and-gray tabby, named Augie, our neighbor couldn’t resist buying me this sign for the window: “Beware: Guard cat on duty.” Ha! The only thing he guards is his food dish. Whenever he comes inside, he pads over to his water and food dishes and sits about eighteen inches away from them like, Read my mind. Thus I was a bit amused the other day when I answered the door to a muscular fireman and his petite woman assistant. I was expecting them for a smoke alarm program the fire department is conducting. But I wasn’t prepared for his opening remark: “Do you have a cat? Would you please put him out? We’re allergic to cats.”

Dutifully I scooped the lazy lug from his sleeping corner and deposited him in the chilly shock of “outside.” They proceeded with their ten-minute smoke alarm business. When they got ready to leave, Augie was waiting on the front porch, eager to get back to the warm indoors. The sight of him alarmed (no pun intended) the woman assistant, who again pleaded “allergy!” So once again I had to remove the cat, this time from the porch. Funny, there were no allergy flare-ups while they were in our home (which has eleven years' worth of cat dander in it). And our overweight, geriatric feline is the antithesis of vicious, with the rare exception of guarding the back yard from Pancho Villa and Ho Chi Minh (my nicknames for the local desperado cats who dare to invade his home turf). They haven’t been around much since I threw a rotten tomato in their yowling direction.

Our cat’s wimpy representation of the idea of “guarding” helped me appreciate even more the spiritual concept of “guard.” Even a thousand burly firemen (not the “allergic” ones) can’t come close to the “guarding” we’re promised in Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (KJV). One of the key words in this passage is “keep” (more accurately, “guard” in NIV, NASB, ESV, and the New King James). The Amplified version puts it: “shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

The translation makes a difference. “Keep” has a passive sense, like putting a keepsake in a cedar chest. “Guard” implies deliberate, powerful action. The original Greek, phroureo, was a military term and referred to guarding in a garrison. Of this, Greek scholar W.E. Vine remarked that it described not just protection but “inward garrison as by the Holy Spirit.” One Bible scholar said it’s the peace of “holy repose” that floods the believer’s soul when he leans hard on God. It’s being able to say, “The news or situation is bad, but God is bigger than this and I will trust Him.” Or, as Frances Ridley Havergal wrote in the refrain to the beloved hymn “Like a River Glorious”:
Stayed upon Jehovah,
Hearts are fully blessed;
Finding, as He promised,
Perfect peace and rest.
Remember that, next time your “fear alarm” goes off. Your Holy Guard stands ready.

A vine at a time

Last week, I “retired” our tomato plants. About the middle of October, I realize that few of those tight green marbles will ripen as we inch toward the first frost. We have only five tomato plants, but they may as well be fifteen. Clipping a branch at a time, I save out the tomatoes with a yellow blush of potential. These I wash and put in a covered box with a red apple, whose off-gassing helps them ripen. Finally, I yank out the main stems that seem to be super-glued into the soil. Goodbye, a couple hours. It’s the down side to having fresh tomatoes the last part of the summer. It’s not my favorite chore, but I get through it.

In the midst of this chore, I thought of tough things in life that loom much more tangled and messy than my autumn tomato patch. One story I’ve often shared with people needing encouragement comes from the life of Dr. A.B. Simpson (1843-1919), a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Think back a hundred-plus years, before cars, air travel, phones or the internet. Dr. Simpson was preaching in Ireland when he posed the question, “What is it to abide in Jesus?” Then he gave this answer: “It is to keep on saying, minute by minute, ‘For this I have Jesus.’”

That phrase of trust lodged in the heart of the event’s pianist, a young woman whose family lived across the Irish Sea. During the service she received a telegram asking her to come home immediately because her mother was dying. “I have never traveled alone,” she told him. “But for this I have Jesus. I must make a long journey to the south of England. For this and all else that goes with it, I have Jesus.” As it turned out, in those days of slow travel, she arrived home ten minutes after her mother died. Her family was so distraught that responsibility for the funeral service and legal details fell to her. She later told how she kept claiming, “For this I have Jesus,” as she had to do things she couldn’t have done in her own strength.

The message from Simpson’s sermon is echoed in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (KJV). Or, as the Greek-to-English translation is clarified in the Amplified Bible: “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me—I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who enfuses inner strength into me, [that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency]." My copy of the Amplified version was once my late mother’s, given her in 1962 by a godly aunt. Fifty years later, as I read the same words that my mother had underlined in red, I sense how she embraced this truth for her own overwhelming life challenges. They ranged from being the firstborn of nine in a family that knew profound poverty, to her life-long battle with asthma, to her final, hard-fought battle with cancer.

“For this”—for the intimidating, scary, impossible things of life—“I have Jesus.” The best part is that besides coming alongside in our challenges, He sees the eventual spiritual outcome. Leaning on Him, stretching with Him, and depending on Him are all part of growing in the faith. “For this,” there is a purpose.

I just checked the tomatoes in my “ripening box,” and a few are turning red. There’s another parable here, about God at work in the dark places, but I think Simpson’s hopeful counsel suffices for today.

Sniffing out Truth

Dogs! Take them on a walk and they only want to sniff the bushes that gazillion other dogs have “marked.” Pictured at right is “Molly,” a neighbor’s dog whom I take care of when they’re away, and incurable shrub-sniffer.

It’s hard to think deep thoughts when you’re trying to keep up with a dog that wants to check every bush on the block in record time, but I tried. While Molly kept her nose in greens, I kept mine on the sky (with the exception of times I needed to whip out the plastic bag for her “deposits”). And it struck me: a lot of people spend their lives sniffing out the bad stuff instead of embracing the beauty around them.Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it so well: “Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”

The “bush” reference is to Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 3. Like Moses plodding through shepherd duties, I tend to grind out the days by getting through my to-do lists. (Nothing against to-do lists—they both remind and motivate to do what’s needed.) But two books given me this past week by spiritually-sensitive friends have reminded me to look for those common bushes, afire with God.

One was by Ann Voskamp, who as a farm wife and mother of six home-schooled children knows the distracting tyranny of having too much to do. But in One Thousand Gifts (Zondervan), she traces her journey of finding splendor—no, God-joy, in the ordinary. She calls this eucharisteo, the practicing of giving thanks in all things. Her book is the chronicle of that: thanks for the rainbow hues in soap bubbles, of the glory of a harvest moon, even “ugly-beautiful” like mismatched socks.

Author Ruth Meyers encourages focused praise through 31 Days of Praise: Enjoying God Anew (Multnomah). Her month of scripture-based praise-prayers targeted some course-corrections needed in my own prayer life. Touching where we all live, she invites us to thank God for our weaknesses (and His power to remove or change these), for His power at work in untangling the “snarls in my soul,” and for what He’s doing through the people in our lives who cause more pain than joy. Meyers said that as she follows the psalmists’ example of praising God, “sooner or later (often sooner) the Lord releases me from being a slave to my distressing emotions” (p. 29).

She also included a heart-stirring, one-line prayer from the writings of missionary Amy Carmichael (whose Dohnavur Fellowship in India rescued hundreds from temple prostitution): “O Lord Jesus, my Beloved, may I be a joy to thee.” You can’t pray that and say, “I don’t have any purpose in life.” Our purpose is to bring joy to the One who created us. Praise is one avenue, and living day-by-day for His glory through vocation and relationships is another.

So back to Molly the dog. Yes, life stinks at times (like those “marked” bushes along the street). But God invites us to look up, to His glory, and declare it through the praise of our lips and the praise of our lives. And, in so doing, to realize that we stand on holy ground.

Navel-grazing

I’d just sent my husband off to his substitute-teaching job after one of his favorite breakfasts. I was virtuous and made him waffles with bits of bacon in them. Before going to the computer for my “work,” I took some time after washing dishes to glance at headlines in the morning paper. On the rug in front of me, Augie our cat began his morning routine, licking his already-overgroomed belly. Parts are so bare they look shaved. I thought of the cliché “navel-gazing,” except in his case it’s “navel-grazing.”

“Navel-gazing,” which gives a word picture of constantly inspecting one’s belly button, has come to mean excessive introspection, self-absorption, self-analysis or focus on a single issue. In other words, people start singing a one-note solo, often a pity-party song.

I was thinking about that when I read this headline: “Hit-run victim helped men at homeless shelter.” My momentary sadness deepened when I learned the victim was born with cerebral palsy and was driving his motorized wheelchair when hit by a suspected drunk driver. Tonight, as I do the first Wednesday of every month, I will speak to convicted drunk drivers at an “educational panel” required as part of their sentencing. Two others also speak out about the dangers and prevalence of this serious problem, of which the audience members, because of their arrests, are now a documented part. They’re surprised by the statistics that 12,000 a year die on American roads because of impaired driving. That’s 1,000 a month, about one every 45 minutes. And just as many people grieve their deaths as those who lose a loved one in other tragic circumstances, like war. Most important, drunk-driving deaths are 100% preventable: by not drinking and driving.

Why am I there, since I don’t drink alcohol? Because my family was almost killed by a drinking driver in 1997. Alcohol so impaired his driving abilities that he crossed the center line at too high a speed and smashed into our car. We were about 250 miles from home, headed home from a vacation.Though injured, we survived. But that incident, like the deaths of my parents six months apart when I was 30 and still single, became a defining incident in who I am. Yes, I grieved those losses for a season, but I moved on. I knew I needed to transform the pain into something good instead of prolonging a pity party. In other words, moving past navel-gazing.

Back to the 57-year-old man with cerebral palsy. Despite his disability, he graduated from a university with a major in business and later got a master’s degree in psychology. He was an advocate of handicap-accessible streets and volunteered at several charities, including a shelter for homeless men. For that he received a distinguished award for community service. In an interview after that honor, he said, “I have two choices. I could stay home and be bitter and think ‘poor handicapped me, wah wah,’ or go out and help people and think positively.” Upon reading that, I put down the paper and said “Wow!” That’s a message able-bodied people need. He didn’t spend his life navel-gazing (or even navel-grazing--massaging a certain area of his life to get more sympathy). He pursued compassion and excellence to the limits of his abilities.

I can’t do much about my cat’s excessive grooming. Because he seems healthy otherwise, we’ve decided it’s not that big a deal. We did switch to a gluten-free cat food (more expensive, of course!) upon hearing that it sometimes helps aging cats who overgroom. In a way, I’m glad he has that somewhat-bare belly. For when he does his feline acrobatics to groom, God usually sends me a message: to check where I might be navel-gazing and turn my eyes instead to how He helps me through difficult times. The Bible is full of reminders of that, and one came as I read my Bible just after reading about drunk-driving victim.
But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.
My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure (Psalm 71:14-15).

The prickly and the pruned

Besides born-to-bite dogs (see last week’s blog), I encounter many thought-provoking sights during my morning walks. One day I took along my camera to photograph two very different roses just a block apart. One is part of a neglected bed of about four rose bushes. A confusion of spindly canes spill out of the weed-choked soil, bearing few blooms. Another yard has weed-free, pruned, cared-for roses with brilliant flowers.

Their contrasting conditions reminded me of John 15, which records Jesus calling Himself the true vine and His Father the vinedresser. Verse 2: “Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Roses aren’t grapevines, but they have commonalities. Both can go wild and get diseased, limiting their fruitfulness. That’s why, in my rose bed, every year I lop off dead or diseased branches, prune off suckers and encourage a “shape” that maximizes strength and access to the sun. The point of it all is to help the branches “abide” in the main stalk, drawing life and nourishment from the soil and water. The spiritual analogy, of course, is that we allow God to prune away the suckers and disease of wrong "me-centered" attitudes and habits that impair abiding in Him.

One of Max Lucado's insightful books is titled It’s Not About Me. In the book's acknowledgements, he told of having a quick visit with an old friend over lunch. Lucado asked him, “What has God been teaching you this year?” The friend responded, “He’s been teaching me that: It’s not about me.” Lucado’s book explores that concept, lifting up the glory of God as a reminder that it’s all about Him.

“Abide in me,” Jesus said, “and I in you.” He is the “main branch” to whom we must remain attached to know true life. The Greek verb (meno) that we usually translate “abide” suggests a continuing, nourishing attachment. No matter if you’re a rose vine or grape vine, you can’t attach and detach at your convenience, like the pump at a gas station. It’s an all-out commitment. And here’s another beauty from that passage. Meno, the verb form of “abide,” has a cousin in the noun form, mone. Know where that’s found? In the incredibly comforting message Jesus left us about heaven in John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many mone" (most accurately, “dwelling places,” not the misleading idea of "mansions" as some of us grew up reading)." The nature of our residence in Heaven will be intimate connection with the Savior. How that will happen, I’m not sure—but God does.

For now, I see the Creator in carefully-tended roses that help declare the glory of God. And I’m reminded that God loves me so much that He won’t leave me the unruly way I am. He knows how and where I need to be pruned--to abide in Him, and to bring Him the glory.

Sound (grrr)-bite

It happened here....
So much for healthy habits, like walking three-quarters of a mile to the nearest grocery store to buy fresh green beans. Half a block from the store, as I passed a group of apartments with dead grass and junk outside, I remember thinking, What a messy yard. Just then, a resident opened a door and his dog zoomed out, zipped through the hedge, and headed straight for my legs. In seconds the dog had bitten both my calves before his owner grabbed him. When I lifted my pant legs and saw the blood, I knew I had a problem. I remember saying, “I need to wash my wounds.” The residents offered me the garden hose. Eventually, because I pressed the point, they brought out dish soap, some tissue and a bandage. And then I walked home, with lots of time those eight or so blocks to think! I had done nothing to provoke the attack (my thoughts about the unkempt yard never left my brain). I was walking on the public sidewalk at a normal pace. Yet it happened.

Sometimes life is like that. We’re doing what we should, then kaboom, we’re attacked spiritually, emotionally or physically. Even back in the apostle Peter’s time, people were wrestling with this age-old question of why suffering was part of their lives. If they were following Christ, shouldn’t they get a break from life’s tough stuff? The answer is simple: No, because we live in a fallen world.

“Be self-controlled and alert,” Peter counseled the Christians. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). I’d paraphrase that now: Your enemy the devil is like a vicious dog that specializes in surprise attacks on your calves!

The venerable Bible teacher William MacDonald noted that Satan has different poses. Sometimes he’s on the destructive offensive, like a roaring lion. Having a drinking driver smash into your car (what my family lived through in 1997) is lion-stuff. Other times he’s sneaky as a snake, luring people into negative lifestyle choices like financial irresponsibility or immorality. He also disguises himself as an “angel of light,” who tries to deceive people spiritually. He enjoys hearing people whine, “I deserve better. God isn’t fair to me.” Excuse me? Who isn’t fair? Peter’s advice: “Resist him, standing firm in the faith.” The reason? You’re not the only one under spiritual attack around the world. In some parts of the globe today, it’s bad, really bad for believers.

As for my encounter with an out-of-control dog, I dutifully reported the incident to the Humane Society and had my bites checked at a walk-in clinic. They seem to be healing and so far I’m not foaming at the mouth from rabies. But trust me, I’ve altered my walking route to the grocery store. Hopefully, the opposite side of the street will be safer!

4-H and Weeds

My husband and I recently visited the county fair, browsing exhibits of food, crafts and animals. My favorite: enormous pigs, asleep and crammed into tiny cages like giant packaged sausages (which some of them may become!). In the 4-H crafts building, I noticed an adult mentor conversing with a young 4-H member about her project. The expression on the young person’s face indicated her openness about “doing it better.”

Seeing them reminded me of one of the first verses in Proverbs I memorized as a youngster: “Hear counsel and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.” Or, in today’s language: “Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise” (Proverbs 19:20).

As I grew up, I experienced the truth of that verse when godly adults loved me enough to have the courage to offer “advice” and “instruction” about changes needed in my attitudes and behavior. Some of their counsel was like the four “H’s” of the 4-H program, reflected in other verses of Proverbs:
Head (thought life): “The Lord detests the thoughts of the wicked, but those of the pure are pleasing to him” (Proverbs 15:26).
Heart (values): “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
Hands (work ethic): “From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things as surely as the work of his hands rewards him” (Proverbs 12:14).
Health (the physical-emotional link): “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Proverbs 16:24).

So what does weeding have to do with all this? Home from the fair, as clouds moved over the sun to temper an already-hot day, I decided to weed our large rose bed. Kneeling between those thorny bushes with hand tools, I stabbed and pulled, filling a large bin. I found myself comparing weeding to growing in our spiritual walk. Sometimes we’re blind to our spiritual “weeds” until someone who’s more spiritually mature comes along and says, “This doesn’t belong in your life. You need to root it out.”

By the way, the roosters over in the fair’s chicken barn were quite a sight, too. One was strutting all over his three-foot cage and crowing. Talk about pride! And of course there’s a proverb for that: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

Web message (spider type)

I was on my way to refill an empty finch feeder when I found the way blocked by an exquisite orb web. I stopped to admire its delicate, intricate artistry and thought of several things. One was the fun, yet profound, children’s story, Charlotte’s Web. It tells of a barn spider who, in an effort to save a personable pig named Wilbur from being slaughtered, begins weaving words into her webs extolling his virtues. The words bring admirers from miles around, and Wilbur is eventually shown off at the local fair.

The first words that saved Wilbur were “some pig,” “terrific,” and “radiant.” The last word, spun at the fair as the spider was dying (having laid her sac of eggs), was “humble.”

I also knew the Bible had a couple references to spiders, both translated from the Hebrew akkabish, used of the many common spiders of the Holy Land.* In Job 8:14, one of Job’s misguided “comforters,” Bildad, describes those who forget God as having spiritual confidence as fragile as a spider’s web. In Isaiah 59:5-6, the prophet describes the activities of sinful Israelites as useless as a spider’s web. They’re so frail that they can’t even be used as clothing. Not exactly encouraging images!

But if you read about how spiders make webs, you’ll come away with profound appreciation for the God as creator of even spiders. For one, spider silk cannot be dissolved in water and is one of the strongest known natural fibers. Most important, a web is built one strand at a time with admirable determination and endurance. If a spider gives up, there is no web to catch prey for food. I’m reminded of Peter’s second letter, in which he encourages believers to keep building on to the basic foundation of faith. From that main, anchoring thread, we’re to make every effort to live out behaviors that honor God.

Wilbur was “some pig,” “terrific,” and “radiant.” God wants our webs to spell out “goodness,” “knowledge,” “self-control,” “perseverance,” “godliness,” “brotherly kindness,” and “love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). If all these qualities are evident in our Christian walk, we’re not to boast about them. Instead, we’re to be, as that last word for Wilbur, “humble.”

What of my garden web? I crawled w-a-y under it to get to my bird feeder, not wanting to disturb it. I hoped the spider would catch lots of the aphids that had homesteaded in my rhododendrons. And I thanked God that, on this ordinary summer morning, He reminded me of His creative power and purpose.

*(The King James version also uses “spider” in Proverbs 30:28: “The spider taketh hold with her hands and is in king’s palaces.” However, the original Hebrew word is semamith, for which concordances give "poisonous lizard" as a primary meaning. Thus (NASB): “The lizard you may grasp with the hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.”)

Home-made Hymnal

I was having what might be called an “emotionally-fragile day.” My daughter was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean en route to her life’s new chapter in China. Oh, I missed her already. I was also troubled by an insensitive E-mail I’d gotten from someone. But life had to go on, which included buying groceries the other side of the river that divides the town where I live.

Mindful that my emotions could make me a distracted driver, I was on high alert for traffic issues. Just before the river bridge, as I looked ahead to a certain crosswalk where people often barge across the street without caution, a tune suddenly flooded my mind. Then came snatches of words, “There is a river that never shall run dry.” God had sent the reminder of a spiritual river that flows from deep within, no matter my outward circumstances.

Back home, I searched the hymnals kept on the piano for this song, but couldn’t find it. Then I remembered another source: my home-made hymnal. Years ago, as my learning curve of hymns and Gospel songs steepened, I had started a simple Bible-size three-ring notebook with the lyrics to my favorites. There, in the “T” section, between “Take Time to Be Holy” and “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” was “There is a River.” I sang the lyrics, remembering how they tell the story of the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well. And I realized, once again, that God had brought out of a deep pocket of memory something I needed for the moment: a reminder of the vast supply of His water—His comfort, His love.

Do you have favorite hymns? Have you considered gathering them into your “personal hymnal”? It doesn’t need to be fancy. Mine are hand-written or cut out from song sheets and pasted onto a page. But they’re there, accessible on paper, when I can’t always pull them out of my memory.

On Bravehearts

This week my daughter and her husband (left in the photo) stepped into a profound list of “firsts” as they begin a new chapter of life in China. He will teach English at a large city university, and she will—well, we’re not sure. We’re hoping her extensive music skills will find an outlet.

My memory went back over other firsts in her life. Her first breath (a girl!), those first steps, first day of pre-school…I’ll skip the many childhood firsts and get on to the first day of being a licensed driver, first day away at college, first day away at grad school, and her first day as a bride and wife.

Now--oh, the places she will see and the people she will meet.

As she acclimates to new surroundings and especially a new culture, I think back to times my comfort zones were stretched. Though I did go outside the U.S. borders a few times, most of my changes were within the U.S. and didn’t involve a strange language, “what’s that?”-food choices, masses and masses of people, and less-than-ideal sanitation. But when my parents died and I was on my own 2,000 miles from my “roots,” I did struggle with feeling I didn’t fit in…until some scriptures grabbed my heart.

One was Psalm 37:3: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.” Three verbs stood out: trust, do, enjoy. I chose to trust that even in the negatives, God wouldn’t leave me. I had to take the initiative to do good in the tasks and relationships that unfolded. Then, in a pastoral image, I was to enjoy this place where the Shepherd had led me to graze.

A few pages later, in Psalm 68, came another reminder of God’s love to those with missing links in their earthly families. Mindful of the dangers of self-pity (“the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land,” v. 6), I connected as soon as possible with a church and volunteered in its ministries. I was there only a year before moving away, but because of those connections, thirty years later I am still in touch with one precious couple from there.

One more Bible passage, Jeremiah 29, spoke to me about accepting God’s plan about living in a new place. The circumstances surrounding this passage were a bit different than mine, as the Jews’ move to exile in Babylon came about as a result of punishment, not a step of faith. I cannot begin to imagine what it was like to travel by foot or pack animal, under the uncaring prods of enemy soldiers, over the deserts to the land of their conquerors. But once there, God didn’t want them to give up. The prophet Jeremiah gave them God’s instructions: to accept this foreign land as their home for now. Family, farming and commercial life were to go on, and they were to seek the peace and prosperity of this adopted homeland (v. 8).

Many may not realize that Jeremiah’s letter was the context of the golden words of hope in verse 11: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Many also forget that this promise is immediately followed in verse 12 by the obedience of prayer: “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Prayer has covered this move for my daughter and her husband. I believe they will “trust, do, and enjoy” in this land away from their homeland. And even when I can’t hug them in person, I’ll be hugging them in my heart as they encounter many, many “firsts.”

Attitude check-up

My son drives a car that’s pushing 200,000 miles on the odometer—and I feel a bit like that when I go to the doctor for my annual checkup, as I did a few days ago. The good news is that I’m still “good for the road,” despite the inevitable maladies of aging.

As I came home from being prodded and poked and peered into, I thought of another “checkup” I need from time to time. This one concerns attitudes of “sluggard-ness,” and it gets its exam questions straight out of the book of Proverbs. Among its probing questions:
Do I trust God or cling to unfounded fears? A sluggard fears what is unlikely to happen: “There is a lion outside....I will be murdered in the streets” (Prov. 22:13).
Do I embrace or resist life’s challenges? The sluggard would rather stay in bed than face life: “As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed” (Prov. 26:14). He wants an easy life on his own terms, as in this image of needing someone to feed him: “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he will not even bring it back to his mouth” (Prov. 19:24).
Am I a “doer” or a “quitter”? The sluggard, says Proverbs 6:10, would rather sleep life away, either literally or by doing nothing. In contrast are the ants (vv. 6-8), which shoulder on in gathering food. Proverbs 20:4 says the sluggard doesn’t plow when it’s time to plow. By procrastinating, he doesn’t reap a crop when others do.
Do I seek solutions or get stuck in problems? The sluggard sees only problems. His way is blocked with thorns (Proverbs 15:19), meaning he gives up too easily.
Am I a learner or a know-it-all? Proverbs 26:16 nails the difference: “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.”
Do I take care of what God has given me? The includes material possessions as well as abilities and opportunities. Proverbs 24:30-31 says the sluggard’s home and fields are broken down and full of weeds because he doesn’t take care of them. Proverbs 12:27 says if the sluggard goes hunting, he doesn’t dress and roast his game. He lets it rot.

Proverbs 13:4 says “the sluggard craves and gets nothing.” What an utterly sad verse! Thankfully, there’s a second part, a positive opposite: “but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” Even though I don’t have the energy of my “younger” self, I can still set daily goals that seek to bring honor to God. Unlike the “real” garden slug, who leaves a slimy trail, I can leave, with God’s help, something positive behind.

Heaven's wonder bread

When my children were home, they both savored being able to eat the crusty heel off the freshly-baked loaf of bread. Hmm, good, with homemade raspberry jam. I remembered that the other day when I baked bread for dinner. I also thought of what Jesus, who called Himself the Bread of Life, did by the Sea of Galilee long ago when surrounded by thousands of famished people. Some had walked two hours from home to hear Him and to seek healing.

Actually, the New Testament records two separate occasions when He fed multitudes. But His feeding of 5,000 is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. For several reasons, it’s become my favorite miracle. These are the teachings it fed into my life:

*If God wants you to do something for Him, He will put it right in front of you. Jesus didn’t have to look far to see 5,000 men plus women and children needing Him. My circles of relationships include many with baffling and frustrating needs, some of which He wants me to tend on His behalf.

*If you feel inadequate, you’re probably qualified. The disciples wanted to send the crowd away because they didn’t feel they could handle it. Similarly, the expectations of schooling, job, relationships and ministry always look bigger than we think we can handle. When God allowed overwhelming challenges into my life, I didn’t feel that I was the best candidate for His work. I wanted to echo Moses and Jeremiah, “Who me? I’m just a nobody.” But God wanted me to learn that He would help me do what I considered impossible.

*If the task is impossible, it’s just the right size for God. Andrew was the math whiz of Jesus’ followers, and he just knew that five loaves and two fishes wouldn’t even give everybody a crumb. When I left the comfort zone of my first job for mission service, I wondered how I would ever survive on what the mission considered “just enough.” Yet I always had “just enough,” and never had to dip into my personal savings, which eventually paid for a year at Bible college. I even had “fragments” to share with others.

*If God has a task for you, He has a method to get it done. Jesus didn’t randomly throw crumbs and fish bits at the crowd. He had them sit in orderly picnic groups. As the baskets were passed, the miracle of multiplication took place. I saw that happen every time I wrote a book. Yes, I had done my research and had files of loosely organized notes. But the raw form of a book emerged only through prayer-saturated seat-in-chair, one page at a time.

*If God is in it, He will get the glory. The little boy who gave up his lunch didn’t get paraded around the hills as the hero of the day. All eyes were on Jesus. That’s the way it should be. Years ago I had the privilege of hearing Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom. The church was packed for the visit of this simple Dutch lady. I’ve been to “speaker training” and learned that speakers should “power dress” and begin with “power stories” to reach an audience. Corrie did none of that. She just came in her cotton dress and spoke about the Bible, God’s care, and the love of Jesus. And when the applause came, she pointed to the ceiling—that is, to Heaven, to give God the glory.

There’s another detail from this feeding miracle worth considering. It took place right after Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist was beheaded. Matthew 13:14 says that Jesus, upon hearing this horrific news, “withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.” In His humanity, He sought aloneness to grieve. I think God is telling us that when we go through a traumatic time, it’s okay to pull back briefly to heal. But that’s not to be a permanent condition. In Jesus’ case, word of mouth quickly moved the crowd to His new location, and He resumed His role as Teacher, Healer and Savior—the Bread of Life.

The bread I bake from scratch needs to be eaten up within a few days or it will mold. Spiritual riches left unshared by excuses like “I can’t do it” also go stale. Feel you have too little? Remember, Jesus multiplied crumbs.

Arthritically-correct Hymns

Some of the old, standby (pun intended) hymns just aren’t what they used to be for me. I blame a broken ankle that healed into a weather prediction station. Along with an aging back, both have become hangouts for a nemesis named Arthur-ritis. At my church, we start out upright and at full attention when worship begins with hymns and choruses. But by the time we’re into some chorus’s 18th refrain, sometimes I’m ready to refrain from standing and fold my posterior into a pew.

I do so with great guilt, no thanks to the tradition of hymns built off stalwart verses like “Stand firm” (2 Thess. 2:15). For those of us with lesser endurance who “sit firm,” I propose some arthritically-correct hymns:
1.“On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Sit and Cast a Wishful Eye.” Outdoor worship? Just give me a lawn chair and warm blanket
2.“Sit Down, Sit Down for Jesus.” Even when I'm good to stand for a while, I might be next to a truly needy sit-downer who needs a friend at his or her level.
3.“I Sit Amazed in the Presence.” That sure fits the morning devotional time—good, quiet, seat-in-chair-with-Bible moments.
4.“On Christ the Solid Rock I Sit.” It worked for the house built on a rock. The one on sand should have had flood insurance.
5.“Sitting on the Promises.” That’s better than pacing around and wringing your hands in worry.
6.“Lord, Lift Me Up and Let Me Sit.” Though I may not see the words on the overhead through the six-foot-four, 280-pound guy in front, I can still feel spiritually lifted.
7.“Sit down and Bless the Lord.” We do this anyway before passing the chicken and veggies.

To be honest, the “arthritically correct” hymns just don’t sound right. But I’ll be happy to belt out the originals, as long as I have permission to eventually obey gravity’s pull on my aging body.

Winners and losers

I don’t remember this shirt, I said to myself as I hung up the wash the other day. My husband likes to shop for his own clothes, especially at clearance racks or thrift stores, so sometimes surprises show up. You’d think I would have noticed him wearing it, although he does have a lot of gray logo shirts. But this one was philosophical: “Winners train, losers complain.”

Immediately I thought of Paul’s counsel to his spiritual son Timothy: “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7b-8). Some may have grown up with this translation choice: “exercise thyself rather into godliness.” The original text uses a Greek word, gumnazo, referring to the early Greek exercise or games in which participants wore their “birthday suits” (gumnos=naked). Try NOT to think of that next time you go by a modern gym!

Perhaps another way of saying this could be: “Get down to nothing between you and God. Strip away all pretense, all excuses, all fears, all whininess, all doubts, all barriers. Seek after the prize that God has for you and for you alone.” Hebrews 12:1 says similar things: “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

The respected Bible teacher William McDonald remarked that the weights represent sin in any form, but especially the sin of unbelief. Instead, we need complete trust in God’s promises and complete confidence that the life of faith will emerge victorious. The race isn’t an easy sprint, he said, and neither is the Christian life of faith. But God calls us to press on with perseverance through our trials and temptations to grow into all He intends us to be and have. (Believer’s Bible Commentary, Nelson, 1995, p. 2202).

In other words, winners train, losers complain.

Red-ripe jewels

It’s raspberry-picking time at the small “patch” in our back yard, meaning every couple days I pick the ripest red jewels and store them in the refrigerator. It takes several days to get the six cups I need to make freezer jam. But oh, how yummy.

I’m a raspberry-picker from w-a-y back as it was my first paid “job” in grade school. One of my dad’s co-workers also had a large berry farm, and was open to having youth come pick. Though I was only about nine, I picked alongside my teenage sister, earning enough to buy my school supplies. Long, hot, dusty days? You know it. But I preferred raspberries over the thorny blackberries we picked at another place.

The other day as I sat on an upended bucket, plying through leaves in search of hidden berries, I thought of how Proverbs 4:2 speaks of seeking wisdom from God: “Search for it as for hidden treasure.”

Like berries, scriptures don’t “ripen” in personal meaning all at once. A passage that seemed “not me” at one point in my life may come alive at a different time. Or, a verse in one chapter may blink like a neon light when I go through a certain hard time. Later on, another part of that chapter will be a guiding light. The other morning, for example, I was reading Psalm 56. In previous times of thinking on this psalm, I’d highlighted verse 8, about God taking special note of our tears. This time, the word “trust” jumped out at me
When I am afraid, I will trust in you. (v. 3)
In God I trust; I will not be afraid. (vs. 4, 11)
David wrote this psalm about being caught between two life-threatening negatives: the murderous rampage of King Saul, and the bloodthirstiness of the Philistines, Israel’s enemy. I’m certainly not running around with my trusty sword and shield, hiding in caves. But I do face invisible enemies of circumstances and relationships beyond my ability to solve or even appease. They’re God-size problems.

That’s probably why “trust” jumped out of this psalm. That word was the treasure with the sweetness of God’s mercy infused in it, ready for “picking” at just this time of need in my life.

Praying for college students

The store ads are full of things for college-bound students. It's been about a decade since I went through that--looking for extra-long twin sheets, making new patchwork bedspreads, and assembling a "first aid" kit in a plastic shoe box. And etc. etc. etc. Lots of etc.

The child-to-college transition hit me twice as hard because my son and daughter, 19 months apart, both left town the same year for a state college four hours' drive away. You can be sure I prayed for them! After a few months, I realized Paul's prayer in the first chapter of Colossians provided me with a Biblical outline for specific ways to uphold their needs. This prayer guide spreads the requests over two weeks.

TO BE FILLED WITH A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD’S WILL (v. 9)
1. To find a Bible-teaching church at which to worship and to connect with campus ministries so their faith will grow.
2. To acquire a biblical world view and to reject temptation.
3. To identify sinful prejudice but to refuse the pull to condone perversion.
4. To discern God’s will for vocation and courtship. For future mates, for purity in thought and body and a growing faith.

TO BE FRUITFUL (v. 10)
5. To walk worthy of Jesus and to be a testimony among non-Christians and weak believers, “walking the talk” without apology.
6. To witness to a God of order and beauty in how they groom and dress, plus in how they keep and decorate ther rooms or living quarters.
7. To honor God’s gift of time through prudent management instead of procrastination.
8. To demonstrate Christ’s love through acts of kindness, goodness, and generosity, rather than focusing only on themselves.

TO BE FORTIFIED (v. 11)
9. To know God’s power in their lives and to articulate biblical standards of truth when they encounter controversy in class work or relationships.
10. To endure when faced with course work demands, financial challenges, or health issues.
11. To show patience, particularly with difficult roommates, college registration lines, upsets and delays.

TO BE FREE OF WORLDLY NEGATIVES (vv. 12-14)
12. To cultivate a thankful spirit when their peers set a tone of grumbling.
13. To dwell on the spiritual blessings of their inheritance in Christ.
14. To reject the darkness and see their God-ordained role in bringing the light of Christ to their campus.

Both have now graduated, are working, married, and active in church. They have good reputations, and that gladdens my heart. To borrow from 3 John 4: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth."

A Tale of Three Women

Last week, I shared about the "Strong Woman vs. Woman of Strength" poem that has spread widely on the internet. Here are my own thoughts, but comparing three women. I don't think any of us are entirely one "type" of woman, but writing these out helped me evaluate my own failings in the life-long quest of seeking to have a heart after God. I'd welcome your feedback.

The World's Wonder Woman finds value in being admired.
The Weak Woman values being pitied.
The Wise Woman takes her value from being loved by the Father (1 John 4:9).

The World's Wonder Woman acquires things for status.
The Weak Woman hoards things for security.
The Wise Woman receives things for the eventual blessing of sharing (Proverbs 11:25).

The World's Wonder Woman wants to control the future.
The Weak Woman fears the future.
The Wise Woman trusts God with the future, depending on Him to be a refuge, strength, and help in trouble (Prsalm 46:1).

The World's Wonder Woman manipulates people for her gain.
The Weak Woman wants people to meet her neediness.
The Wise Woman gives of herself to others (Proverbs 31:20).

The World's Wonder Woman resists adversity.
The Weak Woman whines about her adversity.
The Wise Woman looks to God in adversity, giving thanks in all circumstances as helping her grow spiritually (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

The World's Wonder Woman drops people who offend or oppose her.
The Weak Woman broods over people who offend or oppose her.
The Wise Woman loves people who offend or oppose her, seeking to show that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).

The World's Wonder Woman hurtles toward her goals.
The Weak Woman gives up on her goals.
The Wise Woman seeks God's counsel for her goals, then presses on: "I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me" (Philippians 3:12).

The World's Wonder Woman considers time a commodity in her planner.
The Weak Woman fritters away time.
The Wise Woman invests her time in serving God and gaining a heart of wisdom (Psalms 90:12).
-- (c) 2011 Jeanne Zornes

Strong people or people of strength?

It was not an easy memorial service to attend—not that any are. My friend Karen, diagnosed about two months earlier with pancreatic cancer, had died at age 58. But as remembrances filled the hour, a pastor told how he’d asked her if she had any regrets to settle before her death. Her answer: none. If any, it would be missing her son’s wedding by a month.

As I listened, I thought of my own father’s memorial and the unusual verse that his pastor had used for the meditation: “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth” (Ecclesiastes 7:1). At the time, my hurt was so deep I didn’t know if I’d ever heal. My father had died just six months after my mother. He was 63, she was 59. I was 31 and still single.

Now, I see the wisdom of that statement. Our death is a statement, for good or for bad, of how seriously we have taken the gift of life. Karen invested for eternity in children she taught in a Christian pre-school and in her now-young-adult children, both serving God.

One of her teaching colleagues read a free-verse poem about “strong women” versus “women of strength,” found among papers in Karen’s Bible. I had received the same writing from someone via E-mail some years ago. As I heard it again, I realized it set the bar high for any of us who want to be women (or men) of godly strength.

In searching for it on the internet, I realized it is a copyrighted poem, so I will not quote it here. However, this site names the author and copyright date: http://www.motivateus.com/stories/strongwoman.htm

I think the strongest stanza is the last. It reminds us that when life throws us to the ground (and surely this happens when a loved one dies) we’ll never be “strong enough,” for it’s in going through those experiences with the help and love of God that we develop holy strength.

The Ecclesiastes verse comparing a good name to a fine perfume has its fuller explanation in 2 Cor. 2:14: “But thanks be to God, who...through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.” It’s not just our good name, but how we honor the name of our holy and merciful God. And when a funeral brings us back to the basics—of trust in God for eternal life, which truly makes the day of death the best of all (for it’s the first day of eternal life)—then it is a good thing.

Next time, my own comparative list of characteristics of a woman of strength.

Beyond first steps

Photo: Symbols of babyhood--a bonnet and chunky books.
A few weeks ago, the media reported that an 18-year-old from the Philippines was now the record-holder as the “World’s Smallest Man.” This person quit growing at age one year and is only twenty-two inches tall. He has difficulties speaking, easily falls, and must stay home under his mother’s protective care.His family hoped his notoriety of getting in the Guinness Book of Records would help them find medical care for him.

Hormonal anomalies are certainly to blame for this poor young man’s problems. But his situation got me thinking. What if our physical appearance matched our spiritual and emotional maturity?

Both physical and spiritual “growing up” depend on good food and healthy relationships. On the spiritual side, the “food,” of course, is God’s Word—not just head knowledge, but changed-heart results. The apostle Peter said that new believers need “pure spiritual milk” to grow up in their salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Peter also gave us a progressive list of spiritual growth, beginning with faith, then adding knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love (2 Peter 1:5-7). Those latter qualities are honed through social relationships.

I thank God that I had people in my life who cared deeply that I grow spiritually. They helped me develop social skills, challenged me to discover more about myself through volunteering, encouraged me to persevere in difficulties, and prayed for me and with me in life’s tough places.

“Not failure, but low aim, is a sin,” wrote Dr. Benjamin Mays, an American minister and social activist. The rest of his quote goes like this: “The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disgrace to not reach the stars, but it is a disgrace not to have stars to reach for.”

James said the person “who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (4:17). We may have failures along the way, but God says to get up, dust yourself off, and try again. You don’t need to stay stunted, afraid of falling.

God cares about this whole spiritual-growing-up process: “The Lord delights in the way of the man whose steps he has made firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand” (Psalm 37:23-24).

Table talk

At right, my mother's Bauer pottery turkey platter for her hungry brother. Read on....
The dining room of my childhood home in South Gate, Calif.,wasn’t large—just big enough for a standard table seating four (six, crammed). I began eating there in a high chair, then a booster seat my parents made by tacking plastic onto a five-inch high wooden box. But oh, the memories and ministry in that little room.

My May 27 blog (“I don’t live there any more”), which featured a photo of that old childhood home, brought a response from a cousin, Janet. Fifty four years ago, she wrote, she was a lonely 19-year-old bride living in Long Beach, Calif. Her soldier husband was on duty and couldn’t be home with her on Christmas Day.

“I was so happy when your Mother called to wish me a Merry Christmas,” Janet recalled. “Soon after, the doorbell rang, and there was your Dad, ready to take me to their home, shown in your blog. She had prepared a nice dinner and it was such a warm, wonderful atmosphere. They truly showed love in action. They were such special people and I will never forget their kindness toward me.”

Those who know the map of Southern California knows it’s a bit of a drive between South Gate and Long Beach and the freeways are no fun. I had never heard this story about my parents before, and was grateful for this vignette of their giving hearts. Both died in 1978, aged 59 and 63.

Janet wasn’t the only relative invited to dinner. One of my mother’s six brothers (she was the oldest of nine) came as a skinny, hungry kid who’d just joined the military. Knowing his appetite, Mom tongue-in-cheek offered him the big turkey platter as his plate, and he gladly used it!

I remember something else at that table: how my dad often opened his big black leather Bible, and read a psalm. From what I could glean of my ancestry, there wasn’t much spiritual emphasis in his family of origin. But Dad had made a commitment to Christ, and besides becoming a faithful church-goer, wanted to be a spiritual leader for his family.

I still have his little King James Bible that he passed on to me when I was a little girl for my “Sunday school Bible.” The front fly-leaf has this inscription, presumably by his pastor or Sunday school teacher. The person marked it December 25, 1935, in Missoula, Montana, when he would have been 19 years old: “This marked copy of God’s sure Word is given you as a prize for your faithful attendance at Church School. Another prize is promised you in His book for faithfulness to God: ‘Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life’ (Rev. 2:10).”

The Bible has numerous verses underlined in red pencil. This suggested to me that this person truly cared about his or her students and also loved God’s word. Three verses are underlined on two adjoining pages of 1 Peter: two about Christ’s death for our sins (2:24 and 8:18) and one about temptation (5:8).
Coincidentally, a verse that spoke to my parents’ ministry of hospitality is also on those two pages: “Use hospitality one to another without grudging” (4:9).

My parents’ willingness to put out an extra plate (or turkey platter!) spoke volumes about their giving hearts—and their faith. And I am grateful for that legacy.