Grandpappy Carrot

Go ahead and laugh. Of all the carrots I have seen in my life, this one easily takes the title of “Grandpappy Carrot.” It came from a friend who for years has shared  produce from his large garden with us. That includes many carrots with humorous knobs and strings.  But none quite matched this one for size and weirdness.  We sometimes joked that he must lace his soil with radioactive substances to get such alien specimens. Of course, that’s not the case.  He’s very much into “natural foods,” and this is sometimes what happens.

As I stood at the sink scrubbing the dirt off “Grandpappy,” I admit that my mind was elsewhere, praying for people who drag around buckets of anxieties and worries. The Bible's take on this:
Cast all your cares upon him, because he cares for you. (I Peter 5:7)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6-7)

Who of you by worrying can add a single day to your life? (Luke 23:25)

Worrying implies that God isn’t big enough to take us through our cares and trials. Often, chronic worriers think that by piling up prayers, and enlisting others to pray-pray-pray, they’ll win God to their way of thinking of how He should run the world. 

I like how Roy Hession, an evangelist of the last century, expressed it in his now-classic book on revival, The Calvary Road.  Using a journey analogy to express the goal of peace with God and concern for others, he names the sins (like the weird growths on my Grandpappy Carrot) that impair us along the way: “self-pity, self-seeking, self-indulgence in thought or deed, sensitiveness, touchiness, self-defense, self-consciousness, shyness, reserve, worry, fear, and so on.”(1)

Such behaviors should be alien to the life of a believer. When we decide to follow God, He takes us (like that misshapen carrot), ugly character bumps and all. But He doesn’t leave us like that. The very trials and tribulations that we resist are part of His paring knife to shape us into the character of Christ. He is lovingly, intimately concerned about all our concerns and worries.

As for my Grandpappy Carrot, anybody hungry for carrot salad? 

(1) Roy Hession, The Calvary Road (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1950), p. 54.

Paul's Think Tank: final instructions

Last of a series on Philippians 4:8.


An older neighbor who is battling renal failure and other
complications of diabetes gave us this orchid with a
note to "remember me by it." She gave specific
instructions of how to keep it blooming for years. I thought
this plant was the best way to finish illustrating
Paul's counsel to counter anxiety and worry  with thoughts of
God's love and wonderful future for believers!

When I was sick with pneumonia this spring, I was ready for any advice the doctor could give. He knew best: a powerful prescription and a strong cough syrup to better control my “cough-your-insides-out” hack. As I write this, a week after the worst of the illness, I’m grateful for the medical care available to me. As I’ve been thinking and writing about Philippians 4:8, I’ve come to see it as a “prescription” for the germs of anxiety and unbelief that can infect Christians and leave them miserable.

Paul knew the best medicine: to keep your eyes on Jesus. Paul suggested practicing this by rejoicing in all things, seeking to be gentle rather than troubled or harsh, and praying with thanksgiving. Then he added a second “medicine” for fear and anxiety: to get your eyes on the skies, thinking less about troubles and more about the praiseworthy attributes and works of God. And so the “think on” list--certainly not complete, but a good start for realigning our spiritual focus: true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy.

In considering what this looks like in real-life, I quickly thought of someone who has every reason to complain. A teenage diving accident broke her neck, leaving Joni Eareckson Tada paralyzed from the neck down. Today she’s known as a best-selling author, respected mouth-artist, and active advocate for the disabled. But fifty years of paralysis has taken its toll, and she suffers with chronic and often excruciating pain. In an interview with Today’s Christian Woman (Nov. 21, 2015), Joni was asked what helps when she’s in pain and unable to do anything about it.  Her answer: she asks her caregivers to pray for her, and she sings or quotes a scripture over and over in her head. She especially likes hymns because the tunes stick in her mind and heart through the day. At the time of the interview, the second stanza to “Be Still My Soul” especially helped her “think on” the right things:

Be still, my soul, Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul, the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Not until Heaven will we know a perfect world. But that doesn’t diminish God’s power or trustworthiness when life’s problems leave us frustrated, fearful, or anxious. Swedish hymnist Lina Sandell Berg, who helplessly watched her pastor-father drown when he fell off a boat in a storm, knew what it was like to trust God in unimaginably difficult circumstances. In one of her better-known children’s hymns, she expressed the challenge we all face: to trust God in whatever comes:

Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children server;
Unto them His grace He showeth, and their sorrows all He knoweth.

Reject anxiety. Think on these things.  Praise God for all that He is!

Think tank: "true"

Blue columbine grow in a little triangle flowerbed of perennials my son planted for me several years ago. Oh, his creative touch with lavender, lupine and other flowers bringing a dead corner to life every spring. Though columbine come in many colors, I’m glad he chose blue, my favorite hue. It’s soothing and also connected with loyalty or constancy, as in “true blue.”  Maybe that’s why I pay extra attention with I come across “true” in the Bible as in the sense of real, ideal, genuine, manifest, uncompromised.. John called Jesus “the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). Many passages in Revelation use “true” in describing God’s attributes. Then there’s Philippians 4:8, urging us to think about whatever is true.

It’s true that Paul wrote these words while a prisoner in Rome. But instead of complaining, he sought God’s true purposes in his situation and found the joy that throbs through this epistle. He gave struggling believers some “think tank” homework—to think  (meditate) on God’s praiseworthy attributes, starting with “true.” He knew it would change their outlooks and lives.

 

The “think tank” assignments follow Paul’s practical advice about surviving hard times: *Rejoice in the Lord always.  Long ago I had a car with a bumper sticker that said, “Praise the Lord Anyway!” One day a hefty teen guy was helping me carry out a big load of groceries. You guessed it: a glass jar rolled out and almost broke. Noticing my bumper sticker, he rolled his eyes and said, “Praise the Lord, anyway.”  I don’t think that’s quite what Paul had in mind! Instead, it is a mindset for life that says even when I can’t understand what’s happening, I rejoice in God who sees far ahead and helps me.

*Let your gentleness be evident to all.  I hope I’m not the lady who blusters about so much that people wish she wasn’t around. A “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4) has been on my “remember-to-practice” list for a long time. I’m glad Paul added, “The Lord is near.” He sees every speck of behavior, good or bad.

*Do not be anxious about anything. Oh, this one stings. Can’t I just be “concerned”? But carnal concern slops over into sinful anxiety quite easily.

*In everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Those with high anxiety are apt to be those who obey the “pray over problems” a lot.  They stay anxious because God doesn’t answer their prayers promptly enough or in the way they want. They forget the “thanksgiving” part, which would say, “God, this is big in my life. I don’t see a solution, but thank You that You already have a better answer in mind. Thank you that some day I’ll look back and see Your wisdom.  I praise you that it’s not all about me and my worry-prayers but about You being a wise, gracious and loving God.”

Living and praying God’s way, Paul said, results in true peace. It’s not that push-back-in- the-recliner for a sigh-filled “end of day,” but a spiritual peace that “transcends all understanding.” It will also “guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 7).  Now, that’s “beyond understanding.” 

Next: “honest”

The Worrier's Hymnal

You probably know, as I do, some chronic worriers. If they
 wrote a hymnbook, it might include songs like these:

THE GLOOM GOSPEL (sung to tune of “Rock of Ages”)

I’m a worrier, I think the worst,
I’m so anxious I could burst.
I dwell on the negatives,
All the awful life can give.
Yes, I know that it’s a sin,
But my worries always win.

EXPECTING THE WORST  (sung to tune of “God Will Take Care of You”)

Worry, worry, life is not fair,
I might be breathing polluted air.
Every new ache and pain gives me alarm.
Inflation might force me to move to a barn.

Chorus:

An-xi-ety is my way.
Anything bad might happen today.
Accidents, illness or robbed by a bum—
Worrying expects it to come.

Maybe you caught the irony, that the tunes to both bogus “hymns” are stalwart hymns of trust in God. “Rock of Ages,” begins the first, “cleft for me,/Let me hide myself in thee.” As for the second, there’s an interesting story about its composition in 1904 by a pastor’s wife, Civilla Martin. She was among the prolific hymn lyricists of her time, reportedly writing several hundred songs. Next to “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” this is her best known.

Civilla had some health issues, and one Sunday wasn’t well enough to accompany her pastor-husband to a preaching request several hours’ journey from their home.  He seriously considered cancelling it so he could stay home with her.  His young son persuaded him to go, saying, “Father, don’t you think that if God wants you to preach today, He will take care of Mother while you are away?” While he was away preaching, Civilla wrote the four stanzas that begin:

Be not dismayed whatever betide,/God will take care of you;
Beneath His wings of love abide,/God will take care of you.
Chorus: God will take care of you,/Through every day, o’er all the way;
He will take care of you,/God will take care of you.

 What specific Bible text inspired her isn’t known, though she may have been thinking of some verses in Philippians 4:

“Do not be anxious about anything” (4:6)
“My God will meet all your needs” (4:19)
Or, from 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you.”

Civilla knew the best cure for worry: a steady dose of trust in the God who “will take care of you.”  By the way, her husband, also a musician, wrote the tune to it.