Just Brilliant

What percentage of your days would you describe as stellar? I am talking about the days that went so well you don’t even feel like you need sleep at the end of them. I am referring to that span of time where everything felt choreographed to happy music and you just did a brilliant job.

As a stay-at-home teacher-mom, I can tell you that a lot of my days feel like I am stumbling over rocks instead of dancing on the beach. We have our brilliant moments at our house, where everybody likes the food, joins in to the conversation and laughs at the same things. “Ahh, this is wonderful!” I think. Then somebody gets their feelings hurt and I step out of the brilliance and deal with the earthbound problem of an unkind joke or an oversensitive person who can’t laugh at themselves. It would be more fun if the high spot wasn’t so slippery.

That’s life. It’s up and down and in and out and flat on my face crying for mercy and standing in awe with hands raised in worship. Remember Joshua? It happened to him too, and to pretty much every other person, ever.

Here I go making a lot of general statements. We crave excitement. We love the spotlight. We are important. We want to feel good about our lives. We need a lot of money to do the things that make us feel happy. We pine to go back to the beach the week after we got home. We want noble work.

We know we are made for brilliance. This makes it a little difficult to accept the very muddy world we live in, where the sparkle keeps rubbing off.

I asked Gabe how many ordinary sick people come through the ER doors for every spectacular chance to save a trauma victim. His conservative estimate was one hundred. Just routine broken arms, flus, addicts looking for a high, and then one person who is dying and truly needs the training and skills of the ER staff to pull him back into life. All the other people need them too, but they aren’t as exciting.

School teachers work this way too. For every child who really wants to learn and gets excited about a new lesson, there are a few others who have to be coaxed along in the very same lesson. They don’t get to quit just because it feels like they are sliding backwards instead of gaining ground some days.

Anybody who ever came home flying high from Bible school or a missions trip knows how hard it can be to be kind to the commoners at home. They are so exasperatingly stuck in their own ruts and so mundanely humdrum and their needs are so silly.

Even newly-weds who vow they will never become dull and prosaic toward each other find themselves, at some point, working hard at their marriage to keep it fresh. According to research, the constant euphoria of the honeymoon would literally frizzle the life out of a body if sustained for years at a time.

Apparently brilliance isn’t sustainable this side of heaven. It isn’t the goal we should be working toward. Instead we need to lean hard toward faithfulness. The assignments in our lives will be really boring in some ways and nobody may even notice that we deserve a star for our chart. We act like little children, pulling the covers up over our bed in a slip-shod fashion, then begging for a piece of candy as a reward for our hard work. Really, the only reason we made the bed at all was for the candy.

Faithfulness does the steady, hard work because God is pleased by the heart that bows to His plan. We wouldn’t see any need to get up and keep on going if the crowns were handed out now. The brilliance is coming; we even get to see little bits of it now. It really is coming, but not just yet.

Joshua’s promises had a condition. Look at chapter 1:7-9.

⁷“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. ⁸Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. ⁹Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid;do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

It was pretty important that he follow his instructions, wasn’t it? I don’t know what yours are for this day, but they are right in front of you. Mine? I go to cook cereal and brew coffee. I will leave the tiara behind. Join me?

“Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho”

Most people have heard the children’s song and it is what pops into our minds immediately when we think of Joshua.

Listening to the record of Joshua recently, I noticed how much of his life was up and down. There were astonishing high points and some seriously discouraging lows. This was the Commander of the host of Israel! The one who led them into their promised land also took the time to write a book of how it happened and he was quite honest about the process.

He was commissioned by God to lead and given amazing promises. If you were told by God that you will inherit every place you set your foot upon, and then told, “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened,” at least three times in a row, wouldn’t you assume there may be some hard times ahead?
He was assured by the people that they would obey his command “just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you. Only be strong and courageous.” If you knew that your incredible predecessor had died with only a glimpse of his fondest wish because of the sin of frustration with his disobedient people, how reassured would you feel by this?
The spying mission on Jericho, the enemy city, was successful although a bit hair-raising.
The whole camp crossed the Jordan by a miraculous dry route right through the river. If you were told to get stones out of the river bed to set up as a memorial on the bank, wouldn’t you assume that this miraculous river crossing wasn’t going to be happening on a daily basis?
He made flint knives as he was commanded and had all the males circumcised to shake off the reproach of Egypt. Now all his fighting men were lying around the camp, moaning as they recuperated. Can’t you see yourself, keeping a close lookout in case any of the heathen decide to use the chance to create some havoc while your men were weak?
Weeks after all the amazing promises, they were still in camp, observing Passover. And then the manna stopped falling from heaven and they were on their own to find food in the land. There was plenty. It wasn’t that big a deal, just daily food for maybe 2 million people or so.
Joshua got to meet the Commander of the Army of the Lord, made visible to reassure him of God’s presence. It was a pinnacle in his life, with Joshua worshipping flat on his face.
Finally they got to march around Jericho. No fighting, just a long queue of silent walkers for six days and then again six times on the seventh day before anybody was allowed to shout. It was a glorious victory! Every other enemy in the land felt his heart melt in dread. This- This is what commanders want! Victory!
Flushed with success, Joshua’s advisors suggested they just send a small detachment of soldiers to take the next small city, Ai. “We got this, Joshua!” Unfortunately God could not prosper the mission because already there was disobedience stinking in a hidey hole under a tent in the camp. The attempt on Ai turned into a disgraceful rout by the enemy as the casualties piled up and now all the hearts of his own loyal people melted while the enemies perked up. Wouldn’t you weep and wail WHY? And then you find out you have to kill Achan and all his household.
The next big development was the alliance with the deceitful Gibeonites who really turned out to be near neighbors who were going to prove a pain in the neck for Joshua. If this were your strategic mistake, wouldn’t you just want to keep kicking yourself for a few weeks at least?
At last came the day that the sun didn’t set and gave them another span of daylight to finish the fight with the five combined armies of the Amorites, the day that God joined in by throwing large stones from heaven. At last another glorious victory!

I will stop there, the highs and lows of the first half of the record Joshua kept from those days. I just want to make a point here and I think it’s fairly obvious. Life is not one continuous rarified high point on the mountain top. It isn’t even supposed to be. As a teenager I always dreaded someone picking that song “living on the mountain, underneath a cloudless sky…drinking at the fountain… feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply… for I am dwelling in Beulah land.” I couldn’t sing it honestly and the theology is all skewed but I wouldn’t have minded living on the mountain top (Bible school or volunteer work in a short term mission team).

So what if the graph of your life seems to have a steady up and down trend? Joshua was a great man, not because he saw the whole story of his life ahead of time and decided it was worth going for it. Joshua was faithful. He dusted himself and a whole multitude off and kept on doing what he was supposed to do over and over and in the end it became a pretty amazing story.

Underwriting his entire story is that phrase from the Lord, “I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” If this were you, wouldn’t it give you backbone to get up when you mess up? Maybe it would help you not to look around at the frightful array of the enemy and just look up and keep swinging your sword. This might be the day God gives you extra sunlight or chunks your enemy on the head with rocks or this might be the ordinary day you just keep walking through, doing the next thing.

… I know this is a bit of a dangling post but it’s Sunday morning and I will try to finish what I started tomorrow.

The Farmer’s Wife Says, “Enough”

The farmer’s wife wanted to make noodles: long, straight, eggy noodles. But she found that her kitchen was too small for the long noodles and she was exasperated as she went in search of the farmer. “Dear,” he sighed, running his calloused hands through the sparse hair on the back of his head, “you know we don’t have the funds to enlarge the kitchen.”

“It’s the whole house,” she shrilled. “I can hardly move in the bedroom either, and you know how it is when your cousin comes over with his wife and ten children! People sitting on the floor!”

“I will go see Neighbor Wiseman today,” he promised wearily. Neighbor Wiseman was old enough to have seen most any trouble you could bring to him, so old that he usually suggested startlingly simple solutions. There was nothing complicated or expensive about his advice and the farmer trusted him. After unloading his problem he waited patiently while Neighbor Wiseman stared at the clouds.

“Errhrmm,” Wiseman cleared his throat and looked around vaguely for the farmer. “What you need to do is bring the chickens inside.” The farmer was a little surprised but he remembered how well he had been served by Neighbor Wiseman’s insights in the past.

The chickens pecked under the table, messed a few times, even laid surprise eggs, but his wife was still unhappy. The old man kept suggesting that they bring more animals inside until there was a goat eating the curtains, a dog napping on the bed, and a cow parked smack in the doorway looking out over the porch.

The farmer had to crawl out of a window to get out. “This is terrible advice! Our house is too small for all these animals and it is not helping!”

Neighbor Wiseman smiled and suggested one more change, “Ask your cousin and his family over for dinner.”

“We would love to,” the farmer said, “but they wouldn’t even be able to get inside the door!”

“You are ready to take out the animals,” Wiseman observed sagely. So they did. They pushed that lazy cow off the porch, banished the curtain-eating goat, woke the annoying dog, and shooed the constantly scratching chickens out to the yard. The farmer’s wife looked around her home and and smiled.

“I never knew how big our house is! And look at all these eggs!” Singing a cheerful little ditty, she got out her mixing bowl and some flour and started to make noodles.

7e25648551c0d82c67fb7640e1372bfe

So that is my paraphrase of a story I read with Olivia. It spoke to me in an every-day-ish way. I am currently the farmer’s wife sorting out the superfluous things that are crowding my house. It is one of my February goals, along with writing every day, so you can be quite sure you will hear more about it.

I have now removed several cattle from the boys’ bedroom and the traces of an annoying dog who spent time in the school room. Yesterday the flock of chickens in my reading room went to their proper roosts and now it is a restful room again.

Today? I will probably just make noodles.

Retrospection, Anticipation

I dislike clunky titles, but that is what I am writing of: retrospection of the year past, grey, smudgy, tired and finished. Oh yes, muddy too, here in south central PA. The new year coming, hopefully with snow to cover the homeliness of winter, people getting married, long-anticipated babies due, students hoping to graduate with honors and others making sure they wear red undies on New Year’s Eve to give them better chances of finding true love in the next year. Do you notice that the things we anticipate are all good, happy, peace and prosperity?

I hate bad news, funerals, ugliness and mean-spirited gossip. I unfollow people who habitually depress me on Facebook. It verges on simple “head in the sand”. A few years ago when there was genocide in Rwanda, I avoided the news like the plague. I couldn’t deal with it. This year I forced myself to look at the excruciating realities that are everyday life for so many people. I committed to carrying the burdens of others where I can. Sometimes I really don’t even like the world we live in.

Recently the boys and I watched Inside Einstein’s Mind on PBS, a documentary that explores his thought processes as Einstein worked for years on his theory of relativity and his elegant mathematical equation explaining how the universe works. Physicists have not ever come up with a better explanation for spacetime. It boggles my mind that time bends with gravity and velocity, but what really intrigues me is the time travel dreamers. I know it’s nonsense, that we can’t get this year over again, etc. etc. I don’t want to. Well, I wouldn’t mind going back to November and planting a whole bunch of lettuce, seeing as it would still be growing this oddly warm year.

But if we could travel in time, where would we go? I like things safe and peaceful. I ask myself, which century? Is there even a decade untroubled by strife and sorrow, by epidemics and evil? Is there any utopia, a selfless paradise, anywhere? In the history of the whole world? There are lots of spaces in history I would like to visit, but to live in that era my whole life? I don’t think so. I am not trying to be depressing, but jumping ahead in time doesn’t look too appealing either.

The fact of the matter is that I know in my soul I am made for a different home.”But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13) That is just being realistic. “You are here for such a time as this” was not just for Esther in ancient Persia. It is for me and for you. This little stretch of time, bend as it will with gravity, is still our time and the only time we are given.

I have been reading the Revelation of John over and over in the last month. It is about as fantastic writing as anything I have ever attempted to understand. I believe it; I read a chapter again; I feel awed by the One who is Faithful and True. My inability to really get it does not hamper my faith that it is for real. For years if I didn’t understand something, I couldn’t believe it. Stumbling in mazes of doubt, I implored God for faith. Slowly, slowly, I learned to anchor my soul on eternal truths because He was trustworthy and if He said it, it was true. So here is what I got out of Revelation for the new year, a safe place to build upon in the slippery shiftiness of time.

“I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’

“And He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new… Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’.”

Revelation 21:3-5, ESV

He is with us, present day. He will be with us, future forever. The best is yet to come, my friends!

the-with-us-god

We Have to Look

Is there anyone else out there who can hardly bear to read the international news these days? Something about the plight of homelessness in winter strikes me as unbearable hardship. Add to that the loss of loved ones, the gouging of life savings by unprincipled men taking advantage of desperate people, the mud and the trekking in the cold and the uncertainty of when life will ever get better and it is just more than I can stand. I look at the photos of refugees huddled around small fires built out of bits of scrounged trash, the chapped lips, the bloodshot eyes with a film of hopelessness and I can’t stand it, but I can’t look away. Because it could be me. By some accident of grace (is there such a thing?) it isn’t me, but it could be.

All last week Gabe and I were fighting off a cold/cough that kept sitting hard on our chests every morning with that ugly feeling that it was settling in to stay for a while. We fought it with all the stuff in our cupboard: the Vicks rub, the eucylyptus oil, the Emergen-C, the echinacea by the handful, the Immunotea with raw honey, the elderberry syrup, the grapefruit seed crush to gargle for sore throat. And we won. It never did get a chance to settle in. Every time I fixed another cup of soothing tea, I thought of those refugees shuffling miserably through the mud, wiping a runny nose on a coat sleeve, hoping for asylum only to come up against a barbed wire fence. No comfort and no hope. I can’t stand it , but I can’t look away.

I keep reading opinion bits here and there on the interweb about short term missions and how ineffective they are. “It should have been sold and given to the poor,” Judas said about the priceless ointment Mary used to bathe Jesus’ feet. That is what some folks say about youth group missions trips. All that money spent on tickets for 6 weeks in a foreign country. It’s a waste. You could feed hundreds of people with that money. It’s not a good use of funds. They go, take a bunch of pictures of themselves being the angel of mercy to post on their social media, and they go home again and feel good about having done their bit, and then they buy the next generation phone. I suppose there is some truth to that, and the funds may be wasted sometimes.

But. What if that youth can never be the same? What if she is impacted profoundly by the dignity of a lady singing as she bends to her twig broom, sweeping her packed-dirt courtyard outside of her mud hut.. what if she thinks about this countless times when she wants to grouse about the state of her kitchen floor? What about the pastor who is spending his entire life in evangelism, living by faith, cheerfully serving the youth team cooked spaghetti noodles and fruit compote and they bless the food and are truly grateful… what if she remembers this when she serves bread and soup to her visitors and she doesn’t apologize because hospitality is not just food and she learned this in a village in Ukraine? What if she thinks about the mile walk to the well for water and the small amounts allocated to washing and general cleanliness because it is just really far to that well… and she cannot find judgement in her heart for the dirty begger standing by the intersection because without easy access to water, who can be clean? What if she met someone who literally never had a chance and she learned to care about the family that is all across the world? What if she learned an entirely new and perfectly acceptable way to peel a banana and got thoroughly embarrassed by her own condescending ideas of how things ought to be done? What if that short term missions trip changed the way she lived her whole life, made her see how much she has been freely given? What if she could never just not look because the people are all God’s people?

I don’t even know what this post is about. You are allowed to do that on a blog, I have heard. Maybe it’s about investing in a plane ticket, or exposure to the miseries and inequities in the world, about stripping away the insulation that keeps us self-centered and absorbed in our entitlement to more and better stuff. Maybe it is just plumb stream of consciousness. But we have to look. We have to see around us. What can we even do about it? As much as I would like to be there at the barbed wire, handing out hot coffee to the refugees, I am here and my children want popcorn.

Still. What if we all look at the brokenness and let it settle on us and know that there is only one solution, so we lift it up with groaning and pleading. What if all our collective whispers and petitions rise and God moves to change the affairs of nations? What if we don’t look away and we see what is coming with eyes of faith, so that we start investing in a better place “where righteousness dwells” instead of busily attempting to make heaven on earth?

As hard as it is, I really think we have to look.

Tyranny of the Urgent

So August is over and I have to admit to being a little relieved. August yells too much.

Everything yells. Back to School! Get on board! Buy your supplies! Come on, get excited! And yet.

The garden yells. I am ready! Eat me before I rot! Pick me! Pickle me! Can me! I am going to fall off and waste away if you don’t!

My flowers yell. Water! Then they subside into wilting gasps. Water please. Please. Please…. And even with loving ministrations that only forget them once in a while, they fade away.

My house yells. I have dirt everywhere! There’s fly poop on the windows! There are spider webs in the curtains! There is fur on the fans!

There are picnics and family reunions and a frenzy of things to do. Now! While the weather is nice!

The insects even yell. Have you heard them? Its like they have to get in all their decibels really quickly before the Long Cold.

My children yell in sheer barefoot delight, and that is the only yelling I don’t find wearing. As long as it is outside.

It’s just too much yelling. I find it hard to stay serene with so much racket. My diary reads like a sprint through August. I am not sure whose fault it is, but it’s time to slow down a little before I have heat stroke. How about you?

My friend has a wedding anniversary in August. They have been married 25 years, I think she said, and hardly ever can they manage to celebrate until later when life slows down, and how her mother consented to an August wedding, she has no idea.

Still. There was a day when I was doing bushels of tomatoes and it felt so surreal because I knew my sister-in-law was at her mom’s bedside in the hospital, watching her suffer in acute pain while she waited for a diagnoses. Cancer.

Sometimes something yells so loudly that all the rest seems relatively quiet.

I do have some defenses when life gets so urgent. I fix my coffee exactly how I like it, and ~~if I am fortunate~~ if I got up early enough, I get to drink the whole cup in quietness while I shore up my soul for the day. Some days I have to reheat a couple times, and it is still in the cup at lunchtime. I just try not to think about it.

I go on walks by myself whenever I can. Even a half hour is rejuvenating. Sometimes it is the only time in a day that I can think an entire thought to myself and I spend the first 15 minutes just trying to get used to the sensation.

I stop what I am doing every day after lunch and read my little people a story. I need it as much as they do. Sometimes I even fall asleep. One day I woke up at 4 o’clock and felt oddly gratified that nothing yelled that entire time. That was the day Gabe took the boys along to Ag Progress.

We are not supposed to let the urgent dominate and squish out the really important things. I struggle with that. We had a speaker at church recently who talked about about redeeming the time. It comes down to priorities and soul care, first of all. Everything else flows or gets stopped up there. He suggested that the best question is: What does God want me to do right now?

It might not be the house or the tomatoes. What is going to keep my head above water, cleaning the ceiling fan or taking a breather to quiet my heart? Being a self-confessed Martha, I know what yells loudest, and I know what He wants me to do right now, too.

Here’s to a Serene September!

Meandering Thoughts

Consider yourself warned. With a title like that, this post is going to toddle any which way.

I will start by telling you about my birthday, a day my husband only had a four hour shift. We planned to make a double celebration at the park, one facet being birthday cake and the other being all kinds of junk food for the children’s end-of-school party. They only get cheesy balls, cream soda, and gummy sharks after a Tremendous Effort: an entire term of studying culminated in a wonderful bash of cheetle fingers and sticky pop.

We had loaded our trailer with bikes and fishing gear and chairs. I had my new book, the one I bought as a present to the teacher of the children. And I had their year-end presents, always books. Fresh ones, of course. It is the highlight of our year. I put a lot of time into choosing stories they will enjoy. Maybe sometime I can post the list of this year’s picks. They were an exceptional success, according to the boys.

Gabe and the boys fished for hours. I am astounded at the patience that surrounds the art of fishing. While they stayed at one spot, the girls and I went on a walk, then we went to the bathroom. Twice. I took pictures. We rifled through the picnic basket for more snacks. The girls biked and colored and found wild flowers. And the guys just. Fished. Then Rita got into it as well. Gregory was immersed in his book, only surfacing every 10 minutes to ask about when we are going to eat the cake. As long as there are written words and sugary carbs in his life, he is perfectly contented.

I slipped away by myself for a meditating sort of walk, which was lovely. The trees were madly abloom, and riotous with birdsong. I started out feeling kind of complicated. It is bewildering to find that the years between 28 and 38, which feels like very little time at all, have slipped away. How did this happen? This amazingly convoluted life with its intricacies of relationships and making a living and keeping life graceful? Part of being a wife/mother is losing yourself for the sake of other people, and in the shuffle of it all it is easy to become impoverished in soul.

I struggle with the term “me-time” for various reasons, but it is an undeniable fact that life flows much more sweetly when I maintain a quiet heart, whatever it takes to do that. Lakeside reading helps. 🙂

As I was walking, I noticed the Baltimore orioles swaying and drinking nectar out of the blooming trees, then flying to the tip-top to sing their hearts out. There were cardinals doing their dip-dip-dip flight beside the path and bluebirds flashing brilliant blue from bush to bush. I saw herons flapping along and Canada geese bossing everybody who got close. Every one of them was going about the business of family making. The longer I thought about how they just catch their bugs and find the right twigs to reinforce the nest and stand guard over their babies, the more I got the parallels. It appears to be a charmed life, very uncomplicated. I doubt any mother bird goes to bed cogitating about how she got to be 38. She is just grateful to still be alive, wouldn’t you say, as she busily sorts the worms into the right beaks. Gabe thought I may have taken the allegory a little far, but Jesus did tell us to consider the fowls of the air. So I did. 🙂 And it didn’t feel so complicated anymore. Bird-brained. I suggest we begin to use that term for blithesome trust.

I have spent so much time outside in the sun this week that my skin feels crackly. Today I planted ornamentals in the pots on the deck and herbs in my plot in the garden. The baby basil was so little that I will have to coddle it, but it smelled amazing. I can taste Caprese salad already. To my annoyance, the dog deliberately plodded over my parsley plants, but it looks like it will survive. If not, there is a pot of it on the deck, as well as one of mint, lemon balm and yarrow. This is the first year I had the bright idea to fill out my planters with bits of perennials that I already have in my flower beds. I dug out hosta plugs and used the ivy I had kept in the house over winter. All winter my mom babied our geraniums from last year in her sunny windows, so I only needed a few things to round out the containers. Whenever the children get bored this summer I will automatically say, “Go water the plants on the deck.”

They have been swimming in the pond for a week now, these brave little tykes of mine. “It’s not cold! Come on! Join us!” they say. I politely decline and sit on the bank. There are too many fish in there, and too much squishy mud on the bottom.

Yesterday Gabe brought home a beautiful bouquet of cut flowers for an early Mother’s Day, since he is obliged to work tomorrow. The children have industriously followed his lead. Rita practically climbed a tree to break off dogwood branches. She brought me so many that I had to use the juice pitcher for a vase. Gregory found a scarlet trillium and a white one, as well as some pink mallows and other wildflowers that I can’t name. I have lilacs in our bedroom, tulips here and there, a huge jar full of yellow daisies, also gathered by Rita in the woods. I read this progressive article about Mother’s Day, where it was suggested that flowers may not be the most appropriate expression of esteem for a mother. “Here, let me just cut off the reproductive parts of lots of plants and give them to you,” the author stated sarcastically. I am still rolling my inner eyes, but if she prefers chocolate she can have it.

Let me show you what our ornamental tree looks like right now. And of course, that dreamy garden shed that my husband designed and built.

And now.

I have a trivia question for you. Take a guess as to how many things you carry in your purse/hand bag/diaper bag/Thirty-one tote if that is how you roll. Then count and see how many items you actually had. I promise I will show you the contents of mine just for fun.

To My Friend with the Sweet Smile

You are a very brave person. Life has not been easy for you. In fact, you have faced staggering personal losses. There is often a lingering feeling of abandonment in the face of it all. You don’t understand the how and the why, and privately you ask God because it would be really nice to know.

And yet. Every morning you get up, and you choose to hope and to believe that the best is yet to come. You arm yourself with the fact that Love, though it is inscrutable, is there, holding you, healing you. Then you go out and face the day, smiling. You do things for other people that you have no obligation to do. You choose not to wallow in your right to be miserable, and so you bring cheer and comfort to others.

That smile. I love to see it on your face. But I know that it comes with a very steep price. You show us the reality that things which die will live again, that seeds may be buried in dirt, but they swell with promise and come up alive.

This day I want to honor you and to tell you that I know you are brave. May the sun shine warm on your face today.

If a Butterfly Flaps its Wings

The boys and I had one of those conversations at the lunch table today. So, if a butterfly flaps its wings, could the result be a tornado on the other side of the world? I have always felt like this sort of stuff is over my head. Alex’s seventh grade science is dealing with the variables that cause weather and life to be unpredictable beyond a certain point.

Months ago I picked up some of Madeleine L’Engle’s books at a library sale and today I was proofreading “A Swiftly Tilting Planet.” I am not quite done with it, but what I got so far is the main character time traveling to mend “Might Have Beens” in the past where people made catastrophic mistakes that snowballed through the ages. I suppose it is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one makes bad choices, the evil and woe that affects entire generations. I am not sure the book will go on the shelf, because I don’t really respect the author’s use of a unicorn to time travel, but it has given me a lot to think about. Sure, God is not limited to time, but the way I see it, He uses redemption to clear up horrible mistakes. We don’t have the luxuries of “do-overs”, no matter how earnestly we wish we did.

On the same subject, did you ever wonder what significance you really hold in the world? The little dot that is you in the Universe; the blip that is your life? Does it really matter whether you flap your wings or not? I read a wonderful article on Desiring God that I think you will enjoy too. God’s Glory in Your Extraordinary Story starts like this:

“Statistically speaking, you should not exist.

Think about it for a moment. How unlikely was it that your parents ever met? And even when they came together, you were just a bad mood or argument or headache or television show or phone call away from never being conceived.

Take a generational step back, and ponder your grandparents’ stories. What were the twists and turns and near misses in their experiences and relationships — any of which, had there been even a minor change, would have resulted in your non-being?”

…………………

“And your extraordinary life is continually shaping, and being shaped by, many other lives, human and non-human, as you move through time. In ways both witting and unwitting, your words and actions are influencing the course of other lives. Your choice of a parking spot or your seat on a plane could have a life-altering affect on someone else. Your choice of church, school, and workplace certainly will…” -Jon Bloom

It helped to cement in my heart again that the choices I make today, the words I say, the little, seemingly inconsequential things in life… all make ripples that effect others. It seems a little scary, but I truly believe that all are divinely ordered and organized to fulfill God’s purposes. I stand amazed. (I also like that all three of these separate “conversations” occurred almost simultaneously. 🙂 )

Then Came the Morning

They all walked away, with nothing to say,
They’d just lost their dearest friend.
All that He said, now He was dead,
So this was the way it would end.
The dreams they had dreamed were not what they’d seemed,
Now that He was dead and gone.
The garden, the jail, the hammer, the nail,
How could a night be so long.

Then came the morning, night turned into day;
The stone was rolled away, hope rose with the dawn.
Then came the morning, shadows vanished before the sun,
Death had lost and life had won, for morning had come.

The angel, the star, the kings from afar,
The wedding, the water, the wine.
Now it was done, they’d taken her son,
Wasted before his time.
She knew it was true, she’d watched him die too,
She’d heard them call Him just a man,
But deep in her heart, she knew from the start,
Somehow her Son would live again.

Then came the morning, night turned into day;
The stone was rolled away, hope rose with the dawn.
Then came the morning, shadows vanished before the sun,
Death had lost and life had won, for morning had come.

Then came the morning, shadows vanished before the sun,
Death had lost and life had won, for morning had come.

Morning had come.

-Bill Gaither

The Heritage Bible School Chorus shared at church this morning, and this particular song really blessed me. I had never heard it… haven’t listened to a lot of Gaither’s music, obviously. If you want to hear it, it’s on Youtube. My scrambled thoughts on the song go something like this:

The longest darkness is temporary.
Anguished questions will all be answered some glorious day.
Fearful things will not conquer.
Even though being pressed on every side, we are not abandoned.
The Best is yet to come.

These are not just nice ideas. I have witnessed them first hand, felt them, know them. Even nature teaches us.

Friends, there are roots under that frozen ground, sap in them ready to rise at the first opportunity. There are streams gurgling under the ice. The earth is tilting us Northern Hemisphere folks gradually into more direct sun rays. Great Faithfulness is at work all around us, and His bottom line is this: Death has lost and life has won!