Slow but Steady

Because the trail was so rocky, I was looking down while hiking in nearby hills one day. That’s when I spotted a huge black beetle on its own rocky “hike,” moving so fast that I wondered if it would be a blur on my photo.

As I later looked at this photo, I thought how it also pictures the Christian life. Becoming a Christian doesn’t guarantee that all life’s roads will be smooth and free of conflict. The very difficulties we resist, like a tough work or school environment, or living with a contrary or whiny person, may be part of God’s greater plan to shape our character.
In thinking about suffering, I’ve often returned to this quote: “If God’s net purpose in saving an individual is just to get him to heaven, He would probably take him to glory immediately. But God wants to prepare him for rulership in an infinite universe that demands character. Progress in sanctification, in the development of Godlike character and agape love, is impossible without tribulation and chastisement.”(1)
Yes, the Highway to Heaven is strewn with boulders, but we’re not to give up. One who knew that well was the apostle Peter. He saw the end result of getting through life’s rocks: “a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:9). Salvation is both a moment (of accepting Christ) and a process (of developing Christ-like character). It’s not absorbed like osmosis. It’s done by “giving all diligence” (v. 3), which comes from the Greek word spoude, suggesting earnestness, zeal, even haste. And what a list of Christ-like qualities Peter gives as a standard of excellence! From several Bible translations, here are deeper shades of meaning for his list in vv. 5-7:
*Virtue: excellence, resolution, Christian energy, good character.

*Knowledge: intelligence, spiritual understanding.

*Temperance: self-control, alert discipline.

*Patience: steadfastness, endurance, passionate patience.

*Godliness: piety, reverent wonder.

*Brotherly kindness: affection to one another, warm friendliness.

*Charity: Christ-like love--genuine, generous, and sacrificial.
I don’t know about you, but I’m still in process on all of these. I know that God loves me, but He also loves me too much to leave me in my old ways. Every unpleasant or difficult experience is a schoolroom for growing in these qualities. Like that beetle on a rocky trail, we’ll face unknown “rocks” that seem bigger than we can handle. But unlike the insect kingdom, we have the loving care and help of the Lord Jesus, who sees where we can go with Him—if we persist.

Next time you see a beetle, think about that. And thank God for lessons from His creation, even the creepy-crawly type.

(1) Paul Billheimer, Don’t Waste Your Sorrows (Fort Washington, Penn.: Christian Literature Crusade, and Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1977), p. 44.

Thorns

Our yard has more than a dozen rose bushes, beautiful this time of year—but ouch! Those thorns! About a block away, a neighbor has a minimal-upkeep yard with rocks and cactus plants. Beautiful when they bloom—but ouch! Their thorns!

“There was given to me a thorn in the flesh,” wrote the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:7). As much as he prayed about it, he was never healed of this unnamed issue. Instead, God used it as a way to teach him (and the rest of us) that “My grace is sufficient for you.” It’s an important truth for the folks who think that the more you pray about an issue, like a health or relationship problem, the more likely you’ll experience healing or have the problem removed. Yes, God hears our prayers, but He doesn’t always answer them the way we think He should. “Prayer-storming” the throne is like whipping up votes for a favorite cause. It’s not the way God works. Often He leaves us smack in the middle of our “thorns.” When we don’t see God’s perspective, we often whine, “Why has God left me?” or “Why has God let me down?” The truth is this: He can use thorns.

Several years ago a friend send me an E-mail forward that has probably gone around the world a few times. Titled “Thorns,” it’s a fiction about a young woman who miscarried after an auto accident. Full of gloom, she walked into a florist shop. Before she could make her selection, other customers came in for the “Thanksgiving Special.” She was incredulous when they left with boxes of thorny rose stems, no blooms. Each had a story of profound loss, even greater than that of the disillusioned mother.

Finally the clerk told of her own losses, and how she learned to be thankful for how the “thorns” of life helped her discover the beauty of God’s comfort. “Don’t resent the thorns,” the clerk said. The young woman took home her first bouquet of thorns, along with a card that said: “My God, I have never thanked You for my thorns. I have thanked you a thousand times for my roses, but never once for my thorns. Teach me the glory of the cross I bear; teach me the value of my thorns. Show me that I have climbed closer to You along the path of pain. Show me that through my tears, the colors of Your rainbow look much more brilliant.”

The essence of this quote comes from Moments on the Mount by George Matheson, a Scottish preacher and hymn-writer. His best known hymn, which includes some of those phrases, was “O Love, that will not let me go.” Matheson’s “thorn” was blindness. But he also had a phenomenal memory which enabled him to memorize sermons and minister to a congregation of 2,000 in Edinburgh.

It’s not lost on me that the friend who sent me this popular E-mail story had an excruciating thorn in her life. Cecilia spent decades in a wheelchair as a form of muscular dystrophy progressively froze her body. Before becoming a Christian, she was angry at God for her disease. After she yielded her life to Christ, there was a change to accepting her physical thorn and seeing what God could do through her. I remember her vibrant smile, her prayerful interest in others, and her desire to be a beacon for Christ in the building for special-needs people where she lived. She also volunteered in school reading programs, her wheelchair putting her eye contact at just the right level for grade school children.

One time I visited her, she confided, “I just feel it won’t be long for me here.” A few months later, suffering with a respiratory infection, she asked personal-care aides to leave her in her motorized wheelchair for the night, rather than putting her in bed. It was too hard to breathe. During the night she fell out of her chair, breaking many bones. A few days later, she went to be with the Lord she loved.

Have you despised your life thorns? Do you need a Thanksgiving Bouquet?

The Letter Sent in Time

Thirty-four Father’s Days have passed since my father died at age 63. Had he lived, he’d be nearing one hundred. And while I miss him still, the memories come with no regrets because of a letter I wrote just a few months before his sudden death. I turned my experience into an article that must have touched a raw nerve, for it’s been published about twenty times. I’ll condense it here, hoping the message will be something you need, too.

Tears poured down my cheeks as I prepared to write my dad that September morning. In five days he would sit alone on what would have been his 38th wedding anniversary. My mother had died three months earlier of cancer.

I reflected on Dad’s tender heart toward his wife and children. Mom had chronic asthma, which worsened in rainy, moldy Washington state, where they were married. Believing doctors' counsel that she’d do better in sunny southern California (this was late ‘40s, before the smog got bad), he left his job and moved to unknowns in Los Angeles, where I would be born. Although a college graduate, he sold kitchen pots door-to-door until he got work in his chemistry-related profession. Together they worked out frugal solutions to one-income living so that Mom, with her medical issues, wouldn’t have to work. He supported her art and sewing hobbies, even helping her tie quilts and mark hems. Together they served the church and para-church groups.

I remembered his tender heart when at seven I had rheumatic fever and was given a fifty-fifty chance of living. He carried me into church to save my strength. At my mother’s death bed, as she lay struggling to breathe, he read to her from Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” As we waited for death, he held her swollen hand until his head drooped in exhausted sleep.

I spent the summer after her June death with him, but he insisted I go forward with plans to start graduate school 2,400 miles away from the family home. I’ll never forget his hug, tears, and prayers as we said goodbyes beside my packed car.

I’d been reading through Paul’s letters in the New Testament. Over and over the apostle had expressed thanks: “I have not stopped given thanks for you” (Ephesians 1:16); “I thank God every time I remember you” (Philippians 1:3); “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you” (Colossians 1:3); “I thank God, whom I serve, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers” (2 Timothy 1:3).

If Paul could tell his spiritual children how thankful he was for them, why couldn’t I tell my dad how thankful I was for him? Many times, of course, I’d told Dad that I loved him. But now, more than ever, he needed that affirmation. He needed to know why. I found a card at the campus bookstore that said, “Even when you feel alone, God is there.” Inside that card, I poured out my heart, expressing my love for him. I affirmed him for specific ways he cared for Mother, my sister and me. I suggested God had lots more for him to do.

Dad never mentioned getting the card. When I called, he was too emotional to say much. I didn’t dare ask. Ten weeks later, just before Christmas, I got a phone call from my brother-in-law. Dad had died suddenly of a heart attack.

As the single daughter, it fell to me to move home and empty out the family home and handle probate. That had been Dad’s desire before I left; he’d put my name on accounts to facilitate that and showed me where his will was. As I began what would become nearly a year’s task, I wondered about that letter. I asked a close neighbor and friend if he’d ever mentioned a special letter. She said yes, and that it meant a lot to him.

I really wanted to find it, but where, in such a full and cluttered house? January passed, then February as slowly I sorted out his and Mom’s belongings. I found old birthday cards, my grade school papers, and letters ten and fifteen years old. But not that letter. Then in March I got to the closet where luggage was stored. In the pocket of the suitcase he used on a trip just before his death, there it was. He had kept it with him, even on a trip!

I opened it and re-read it. Though tears, I had that sense of “rightness” over my transparent message of appreciation and gratitude. And I thanked God for prompting me to send that note of love—in time.

Hooray for domestiques

I’m afraid “bike genes” got dropped from my DNA when I was being “created.” Though I rode a trusty old Schwinn with a pert basket to the grocery store when I was a single living in southern California, don’t ask me to do that now. Zooming downhill our main road to the nearest grocery wouldn’t be a problem, but uphill with groceries? Pant, pant, no.

Yes, I do have a bike. It has “spiritual” credentials, having come from a church group’s fund-raising yard sale. In tough shape. Went to a fix-it man who did his best to make it roadworthy. It’s probably a youth bike, but it’s a good bike for me, a short (ahem) mature woman who prefers a lower center of gravity. I’m not comfortable with bikes that sit you as high as a horse. But don’t take this one to the Tour de France.

I find beyond belief the endurance of professional bikers who churn their way through the nearly 2,000 miles of the Tour de France, marking its 99^th run June 30-July 22. In our town, it would just be another small story on the sports page, except a young man from my daughter’s high school graduating class has been in the race a few times. In fact, his father was the one who pieced the puzzle of broken bones when I fell and broke my ankle a few years ago. (His dad said to me, “You schmooshed it real good.”)

Though I’m not much of a devotee of bike races, I’ve learned something of the race culture that is a powerful spiritual analogy.  In Reflecting God (Beacon Hill, 2000) by Wes Tracy, we’re told the French team has a domestique who rides in front of France’s presumed leader. The word means “servant” and that’s exactly his role. He doesn’t ride to win, but to shield the top cyclist from wind, giving him the advantageous “draft.” Mile after weary mile he chugs on, knowing the fans will cheer for someone else.  The author adds:  “The one he has enabled to win the race is crowned—and that is enough for him.” For Christians, the analogy is this: “Holy service is all about becoming a domestique for Christ and our fellow travelers” (p.158).

Yes, those who volunteer in their churches are body-life domestiques. What would we do without faithful diaper-changers in the church nursery or those who don full body armor to take the junior highers on a retreat?

But in researching last week’s column about thorns and George Matheson, I encountered someone who was a spiritual domestique in every commendable way. This great Scottish preacher (1842-1906) became blind as an adult and never married. But he was able to have a fruitful ministry because one of his sisters learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to help him in his theological studies. When he became a pastor, she was his faithful co-worker, helping him with calling on people and other pastoral duties. In considering her willingness to serve her brother, I recalled something I’d just read in Charles Swindoll’s book, Hope Again (p.120): “Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.” Being others-centered for the cause of Christ is the way of a spiritual domestique.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go take (pant, pant) a bike ride. Maybe around the block. Hey, it’s a start.

Cheese from Heaven

“Did you see what I think I saw?” my husband asked one day as we drove around on errands. He stopped, backed up a few feet, opened the door, and leaned over. I expected him to wave a hooked stretch cord for securing loads—the ones notorious for popping off while you whiz down a highway. Most are missing a hook, but he gives his “finds” a second life by harvesting hooks from others found along the road. This time, however, the “find” wasn’t black. It was yellow, as in grated mozzarella cheese, a renegade that apparently jumped ship (or at least a grocery-laden pickup truck). The cheese was still cold and just had a tire-crunched corner.

Usually we try to find owners of lost things. My husband once turned into police a bank bag full of money lost on the street. We’ve tried to find owners of watches and cell phones. But who’d place an ad that said, “Found: Package of cheese. Call to identify”? We just thanked the One who rained down this cheesy manna, popped it in the freezer, and used it for months.

I believe God delights in pouring out “creative manna” for our needs, especially when we share the stories about these unexpected blessings and give Him the credit.

Recently our neighbors mentioned they wanted a used newspaper delivery tube. Theirs got misplaced when the house was painted. For weeks we watched at yard sales or thrift stores, but nothing had shown up. Then one night at dusk, my husband called me outside. I thought he had a romantic view of the moon in mind. Instead, he led me to another neighbor’s overflowing garbage can, perched on the sidewalk for disposal the next morning. Yes, a bright orange paper delivery box was peeking out the top.

This was just a week after I was trying to pull together a set of photos to illustrate my internet blog series on Heaven. One week’s essay compared the end of time to the beautiful view from a view home. Our home has no view deck. Instead, a leaning back fence hides someone’s derelict sheds full of junk and bad-mannered cats. I remembered the view from a friend’s lovely hillside home, but lacked the nerve to call her.

Meanwhile, I needed other photos for blog illustrations. One took me to the paint aisle of a local mega-mart. There I snapped the rainbow of paint samples for the essay about Heaven’s colors. On the way home, I decided to detour up to my friend’s neighborhood. Maybe, I thought, from the road I could photograph the corner of someone’s deck with the valley showing below. That way, I wouldn’t interfere with someone’s privacy. But no vantage seemed right. Just as I turned around to head home, my friend drove up behind me. Giving her a happy wave, I explained my mission. “Oh, just follow me home,” she said cheerfully. Of all times to be on her street and encounter her…

Coincidences? I don’t think so. I see God’s hand in the background, orchestrating the gifts and events that remind us of how He delights to supply our needs. Even ones we weren’t planning on, “pressed down, shaken together, and running over…poured into [our] lap” (Luke 6:38). Or just waiting on a street.