CAN & CAN'T

Okay, the illustrations are a bit corny (or maybe “canned humor”)—a CAN and a CANTaloupe, but I’ve been thinking lately of “Can People” and the “Can’t People.”

“Can People” specialize in Biblical obedience and courage. They’re energized by statements like this: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Author: Paul. “Office” when he wrote that: a miserable First Century prison. Hardly the poster child to illustrate the results of possibility thinking. He couldn’t name-it/claim-it to get out of jail.

But, definitely the poster child for enduring difficulties if those were part of God’s script for his life and ministry. He preceded his “can-do” statement with his thanks to the Philippian church for sending practical help—probably money via an encouraging friend named Epaphroditis.

As a young adult in my late twenties, wrestling with major life changes, I was drawn to Paul’s positivity as expressed in the book of Philippians. My gas tank for life’s journey was definitely empty. I’d spent nearly all my savings to attend Bible college for a year. It was a great experience. I made good friends, gained Bible study tools, and deepened my spiritual walk. But as my coursework ended, I had no job. No place to live. And my bank account was starting to gasp.

My heart said, “God. I can’t go forward. What am I to do?”

Then a miracle one-year job came my way. The housing office asked me to stay in the campus apartments for the summer to “supervise” the guests who came and went—with free housing as my “pay.” When summer ended, some other single women invited me to live in the basement of their rented house as that roommate was leaving. It was dark and dank, but it was housing.

Something else happened that summer. One of my professors had set the high bar of encouraging students to memorize extended passages of scripture. Memorizing selected Bible verses had been part of my spiritual practices. But a whole book? Why not?

I chose the book of Philippians. I knew Paul wrote it out of a discouraging personal situation of imprisonment. Yet I knew it was considered the epistle of joy. And I needed joy in my life! So, I plunged in, memorizing a few verses at a time. Because my summer housing was “dorm furniture,” my bed was the bottom part of a bunk. I still remember holding up my little palm-size New Testament with its backdrop of springs supporting the upper bunk. I’d read a phrase, close my eyes, and try to quote it. Over and over. Over and over.

At times I wondered why I had taken on such a task. But the maturity of that professor’s spiritual walk compelled me to give it a try. By summer’s end, when I had memorized dozens of verses, I realized this had been God’s discipline to chip away at my “can’t” attitudes. He drew nearer than ever before (4:4), taught me about the trait of gentleness (v. 5), worked on my tendency to worry (anxiety, v. 6), and put me through the school of being patient about unanswered prayer (v. 6). Word by word, verse by verse, that huge scripture memory project built up my faith.

Even today, as I read Philippians, I can remember the “sanctuary” of a steel bunk bed, holding up that little Testament and closing my eyes as I memorized each phrase.  As God’s Words filled my brain, He fine-tuned my heart, helping me drop the “T” in the “cants” of my spiritual life.

Puzzle-impaired?

We have a collection of small-fry puzzles for when our grandsons, 2 and 3, come to visit. Some are super-simple, with pieces exactly cut to the holes. Others (like the Elmo one below) require a little more discernment about corners and edges.  People who have problems fitting together the pieces of faith remind me of the “Elmo” puzzle.  Believe it or not, the Bible agrees with that. No, there’s no furry red creature from Sesame Street in scriptures, but there’s a Greek word, suniemi, for “understand,” which means:  "the assembling of individual facts into an organized whole, as collecting the pieces of a puzzle and putting them together.” That insight was shared by teacher-author Beth Moore in her book on the life of Paul, To live is Christ (Broadman, 2001, p.  194) as she discussed Paul’s explanation of the prophecy in Isaiah 6:9-10:



Go to this people and say, ‘’You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.” (Acts 28:26)
Paul was trying to point out that when Jesus came, even as the prophecies came together in His life and ministry, the Jews were so calloused that they wouldn’t “get it.”  Even though the prophetic pieces “fit” in Him, they just kept ignoring corner and side pieces and saying it was “impossible” that He was the one for whom they’d waited so long.

PUZZLING THEOLOGIES
You’ve probably run into, as I have, people whose spiritual  understanding is so messed up that they basically invent a new (and puzzling)religion. They think faith in God should result in a painless, wonderful life. But history and the Bible emphasize that “peace with God” doesn’t always mean earthly peace.  I’ve had my share of difficulties, tears, and hurt. But I trusted God to keep me going forward to what He had planned.  We don’t always see a tidy conclusion in this life.  I just got an E-mail from a friend with an overseas ministry area.  It includes a country where a Christian husband and dad has already served nine years in prison just for witnessing about Jesus.  Given the hostility of that area’s government, he may die there.  And he’s just one of thousands (millions?) who are suffering for their faith. Moore observes:
When we continue to resist what God has for us, we may cripple our ability to understand how the pieces of our puzzle fit together. We will continually single out our experiences rather than understand them as parts of the whole...Although we will not understand everything until we see Christ face-to-face, God often blesses us by letting many things make sense during our lifetimes. (p.195)

PUZZLES TO GROW ON
At this point, my little grandson Josiah, 3 1/2, does not like the Elmo puzzle (though he is quite friendly with our collection of “Elmo” children’s books). His spatial development isn’t mature enough to work this level of puzzle. Someday, though, his puzzle-ability may come to the level of optical art or mosaic scenes that end up on a card table for several weeks of “solving.”

I want to believe that will be true of me, too.  I have a lot of “puzzle pieces” of hardship and difficult people that just don’t make sense right now. But I know God sees the bigger picture, and in His wise way, the true picture will, in the end, make sense.  Or, to put it another way, in Heaven there may be a Room of Puzzles, all completed, and all splendid because God designed them!

Petunia surprise

 My need for petunia bedding plants and a store’s great price had brought me to this sale rack. But there was one problem: only one flat remained. It had no label and no buds to hint at the color of its eventual flowers. I bought it anyway, deciding this year I’d live with “Petunia Surprise.”

As I planted the tender starts, I was reminded of few principles from scripture.  One is that God knew this plant from its seed, just as He knows us from the very beginning. With our son and wife expecting their first baby (and our first grandchild) this summer, I think again of Psalm 139:13-16. We’re not randomly manufactured, but divinely “knit together” in the womb—“fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Another is that God has a plan for our lives. We are called to worship and serve Him—to bring Him glory, even as petunias in their “plant way” declare the amazing plan of their Creator.  The problem comes when our self-doubts and stubbornness avoid God’s opportunities.

Moses, rescued as a baby from slaughter, raised in a palace, when called to lead the Hebrews from slavery, handed God this story about being “incompetent”: “I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10). God never asked if Moses had passed Speech 101.

Gideon, called to defend his homeland, whimpered lack of social position: “My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15). God wasn’t looking for social pedigree.

The infamous “sluggard” of Proverbs said, “It’s too hard”: “There is a lion outside…I will be murdered in the streets!” (Prov. 22:13). Give him an A+ for imagination and an F- for trust.

Isaiah didn’t consider himself spiritual enough for a holy task: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). God’s remedy was one purging hot coal away.

 Jeremiah considered himself a weak link: “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child” (Jer. 1:6). Actually, he was a grown man with the spiritual fears of a child.

 Ezekiel was in exile, hundreds of miles away from his homeland. Plus, who’d want to listen to somebody preach negative sermons? God was in that assignment, too (Ezekiel 1-3).

God never intended us to sit in a pot of dirt and do nothing. Jesus said, “I chose you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16).  His desire is that we be “rooted and established in [God’s] love” (Eph. 3:17). Or, as the author of Hebrews said so eloquently in images of nature: “Land that drinks in the rain falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed, receives the blessing of God” (Heb. 6:7).

To take the analogy back to petunias, it’s blooming in the unique way that God has equipped us. Those discoveries will go on our whole lives as we grow in faith, love, and service.

“Petunia Surprise”? I’m looking forward to the glorious shots of color in my yard, courtesy the Creator.