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.

A stormy revelation

At right, an evening sky last summer after a violent rainstorm.

The predicted thunderstorm began as I got up at 4 a.m. the other morning—not my usual rising time, but I’d popped awake. Thanks to a hall nightlight, I didn’t trip over the “guard cat” who sleeps outside our bedroom door (he doesn’t want to miss anyone who might know how to open the refrigerator door and dish out cat food). After tending to his suddenly urgent nutritional needs, I settled in my rocker and opened my Bible to my bookmark in Psalms.

A sticky note indicated I would next read Psalm 29. How appropriate for that rainy morning, because Psalm 29 is the “Storm Song.” All through it are images of a horrific storm battering the land, all representing the might and power of God. The word “voice” is prominent and used seven times—seven rightly indicating “perfection” as the “voice of the Lord.”

As I savored the various images, I paused at verse 9. Another time that I studied this verse, I learned it’s a difficult passage to translate from Hebrew idioms. “Twists the oaks”(NIV) is “makes the deer give birth” in other translations. One explanation is that violent weather steps up animal birthing. “Strips the forests bare” is “discovereth the forests” in KJV. Now, that sent me to my Bible dictionaries. How can God, who created the forests, “discover” them? I learned the original Hebrew word is chasaph, which means “to make bare.” The word is used in Psalm 29:9 for violent weather and in Jeremiah 13:20 for exposing the private parts of someone’s body.

So, bottom line, rather than “dis”-cover, it means "un"-cover, as a violent wind might do in ripping branches off trees. The more modern “strips bare” is the better translation.

This little detour to search out chasaph also reminded me how language has changed in the past four hundred years. And it doesn’t even take four centuries for a language to bend and twist. I have friends who are missionary linguists in a tribal language of South America. They began their work in the 1970s, and forty years later are having to revise some of their work because the language has changed.

As Mark Twain once quipped, the difference between an almost-right word and the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Yes, big difference.

By the time 5 a.m. came, I had about five Bible study reference aids the size of the metropolitan phone book fanned around me—and the cat was scratching at the door. He had to get out and check his territory (I guess that’s what he does as I’m sure he doesn’t wind up at MacDonald’s for coffee and apple pie). And I ended my study grateful for the affirming last verse: “The Lord gives strength to his people.” Four o’clock in the morning is not my best time, but it turned out to be a good time as I dug a little deeper into a lesser-known psalm.

Hay Field Hope

At right: the only full photo I have of the home I lived in from fourth grade through adulthood, on a rare snowy day.
Imagine reading an honest “home for sale” ad: “Abused rental house. Oversized lot with knee-high grass. Interior damage from renter who used family bathroom to bathe goats for showing.” That describes the home my father bought in early 1957, after moving our family from southern California to western Washington. Though it had good “bones” as a brick home, it had suffered neglect. That helped bring the price down to something he could afford, if we lived frugally.

I still remember him attacking the hay-field of a front yard. This was before “weed-wackers” with their spinning cutting lines. All he had was his reel-style gas lawn mower. He’d chew into it a few inches, then retreat. Chew, retreat. My sister and I raked the mess into piles.

Looking back, I wonder how he did it. My mother, an asthmatic, couldn’t help much with the weeds. But Dad wasn’t afraid to take on a challenge when he had a vision of the end result. Eventually, my parents lived there more than twenty years. After their deaths, when I moved home to empty it out and settle the “estate,” the lawn-mowing fell to me. As I pushed that old machine around, I had renewed respect for my dad’s hard work.

I think there’s a lesson here for any of us in facing big challenges. I’m reminded of King David’s advice to his king-in-training son Solomon, charged with building a magnificent temple in Jerusalem. “Be strong and courageous,” David counseled, “and do the work” (1 Chronicles 18:20). David didn’t say, “Wish upon a star” or “Let blessings just drop in your waiting lap.” He said to link faith and deliberate action.

As I think over my life, I realize no goal came easy. Some quarters at college took all the grit I could muster. Then I had jobs that stretched my skills, endurance, and longsuffering. Marriage? More stretching. Pregnancy and childbirth? Well, don’t believe the tabloids that proclaim, “Woman gives birth to 24-pound baby while taking her afternoon nap.” And raising children? Think of paddling a canoe with somebody jumping on board.

God didn’t create us to sit around looking at the grass to be mowed. He also promises help for those intimidating tasks. David continued: “Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished.” And 1 Corinthians 3:16 says the temple is now us: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”

Got a long-neglected goal to achieve? A calling from God? What’s your excuse? Remember my dad, diligently hacking away at a suburban hay field because he knew this could be a home to be proud of. And it was.

Pepperoni fun

This week marks the release of a children’s story book titled Family Matters, which includes a fiction I wrote several years ago. I’m glad that my story, “The Big Pepperoni Problem,” will continue to reach kids with the message that being responsible is part of a Christian’s character. The story is about a boy who lost his soccer team pizza sale money in his messy room.

This story was originally published seven years ago in the now-defunct children’s magazine, My Friend. The partner book publishing wing, Pauline Books & Media, asked if they could include it along with other authors' stories in this collection.

Over the years I’ve had more than fifty children’s fiction stories published in twenty-plus Christian kid magazines across the denominational spectrum. One of them became a book about blended families, The Patchwork Family, now out of print but available through used book sellers. That book began as a submission to a contest sponsored by Pockets, a fine children’s magazine published by Upper Room ministries.

Stories for kids represent only about 5% of my writing, but some of my favorite pieces came as a result of letting my inner child come out. These include “Pinkytoes” (about helping), “Backwards Day” (respect), “The Great Garbage Bag Experiment” (friendship), and “Fried Octopus Brains” (comfort zones).

“The Big Pepperoni Problem” grew from the angst my children (along with their mother!) experienced when they faced school fund-raising projects (which included selling overpriced frozen pizzas and cookie dough). I could commiserate, remembering how I struggled to sell “season tickets” to my high school band and orchestra concerts. Nobody wanted to buy those!

The “Pepperoni” story does have an internet presence. Just search my name and the story title. If you do, hope you enjoy it.

I don't live there anymore

My husband pulled to the curb, turned off the motor, and let me just look for a minute. The house where I grew up in a western Washington town was still standing and well-maintained. I noticed an older woman at the kitchen window. I can almost imagine her worried whisper, “Honey, we’ve got strangers parked across the street staring at us. Think we ought to call the police?”

No, I was just wondering if the kitchen still had that very dated gray and blue checkered tile. If the beast of an oil furnace was still there, with a short clothesline across its sunken room for quick-dry laundry. If the hydrangea outside my bedroom window still bloomed. If the fixtures in the main bathroom were still that ghastly green. I wondered how she’d managed to arrange furniture around an awkwardly-placed corner fireplace.

But I didn’t live there any more. My last time in the house was 1979, the year after my parents died, when I emptied it and repainted the blue/pink/mint walls a neutral ivory in preparation for selling it.

My trip back to Memory Lane (actually, 13th Street) came as a result of attending a family funeral “back home”—that of my sister’s 101-year-old mother-in-law. Besides the home where I grew up, I also found the tiny rental where my family lived a few months after moving from southern California. I recalled how our front-loading washing machine galloped all over its laundry room during the spin cycle. Eventually, Mom planned her washing around times my dad was home to sit on it. As my husband drove between that house and the school I attended in third grade, he asked, “Your parents let you walk home alone this far?” How safety concerns have changed!

It was good to see the “old places” again. But one thing the trip “back home” reminded me of was how careful I need to be to not dwell on the past. I’ve experienced “stuckness” at times in my Christian walk, and I know it’s because I fail to turn problems and disappointments over to God, then seek a fresh start in His strength.

Something I read in a book by counselor Jan Silvious, Please Don’t Say You Need Me (Zondervan, 1989), applies so well to anybody’s spiritual walk. Silvious says her counselees often want to go over and over why they felt they were wronged, and get stuck there. Instead, she says, they need to “move on to forgiveness, healing, and the creation of a lifestyle” in which damaging perceptions and behaviors are left behind. The apostle Paul put it more succinctly in a verse I’ve claimed in moving away from hurts of the past: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). Jesus died to cover the past and to call me into a fresh and growing relationship with Him.

In other words, I don’t live in my “past life” any more. God doesn’t want me to stay stuck in old habits of blame and fear. He has new plans and joys for me if I’m willing to stretch out of comfort zones to discover them.

By the way, about twenty years ago on a family trip to Disneyland, we took a side trip to the suburb where I lived from infancy until third grade. The little two-bedroom was tidy, its front porch still painted brick red. But graffiti filled the neighborhood and my husband was nervous as I dashed out of the car for a quick photo in front of the house (that's photo at the top of this column). I’m thankful I don’t live there any more!

That date with destiny

Widespread mocking of Christians was the saddest result of the recent failed “end-of-world” prediction by an 89-year-old engineer-turned-preacher. The whole media-fueled ridicule reminded me of fears of crippling computer glitches when the century turned over to a new millennium a decade ago.

When I first heard of this person’s claim, I reviewed the Bible’s message about end times. Jesus’ disciples, too, wanted to know a date: “When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3). He answered in general terms: the coming of imposters, persecution, famines, earthquakes, betrayals, desecrations, deceptive messages of “He’s here,” and signs in the skies. He added that nobody, not even the angels, knows what date God has put on the universal calendar (v. 36). Those who “predict” are going against this very truth.

Instead of quitting our jobs, selling all, and waiting for the bullet train to eternity, we need to consider the counsel given another generation anxious for the world to end. It’s tucked into the letters Paul wrote believers in Thessalonica, who experienced so much persecution that they longed all the more for Heaven. Some were neglecting the daily tasks of going to work or maintaining a home, causing people to scorn Christians.

As that problem persisted, Paul wrote again against idleness. He reminded them that even as he preached among them, he worked day and night to pay for his own expenses (2 Thess. 3:9), probably following his trade as a tentmaker. He was also displeased that those who weren’t “busy” earning a living were becoming “busybodies” (v. 13).

There’s value in being reminded that Heaven has a clock that’s ticking down. Someday, the Lord will come again. For some, it will be like a dreaded pop quiz they didn’t prepare for--except infinitely agonizing. For others, it will a joyful time of fulfilled hope.

One of my dear friends prayed for years for her husband to become a Christian. Instead of badgering him, she treated him with respect and love. One day he agreed to come to church with her and there heard the message about Christ’s coming again. Matt. 24:40 especially pierced his heart: “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” He didn’t want to be the one left, and accepted Christ into his life. Some godly friends in their nineties lived in an assisted living center. On their door was a sign revealing their hope of Jesus’ return: “Perhaps today.”

Both have now died, but the message is the same: Perhaps today. Perhaps not. But keep on doing what God commands: “Warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:14-18).