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.