Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category
Hope for what’s broke
Posted on: February 29, 2012
The last month has been busy. I didn’t know it, but starting January 20th, God had my date book blocked out for at least two months with one word: Marie. She’s my cousin who lives here in town. OK, technically, she’s my cousin-in-love, since she’s my husband’s blood-relation, but it doesn’t matter to me; I love her as dearly as any of my own. Her health is failing, but worse, so is her mind, and it has become clear she cannot live alone anymore. After spending a week in the hospital, then 10 days at a rehab center, she has now been living with us for 3 weeks, and will remain so until we can figure out other options. I had no idea I was about to be thrust into such an exhausting, confusing muddle. One of the worst aspects to deal with is that she’s a hoarder. (If you’ve seen the show, think “Hoarders” Lite.) We are having to clean up her apartment, forcing her to part with a great deal. We don’t know yet if she will ever move back home, or will be going into a facility, but either way, this has to be done. Frankly, it feels like spending all day performing vivisection with a rusty razor blade.
It has me thinking a lot about sin. Hoarding is not a sin; it is a mental illness, a form of OCD. But all disease is a result of sin. Sin takes what was good, and twists it to evil. The knowledge of good and evil is a good thing. Adam and Eve possessed it from the very moment of their creation: to obey God was to do good, to disobey would be to do evil. This they knew. Satan convinced them that this knowledge wasn’t enough: they had to experience evil in order to truly “know” it. He lied, of course, in telling them that this would make them like God. God does not know evil by DOING evil; evil has no part in Him whatsoever. Sin – the experiencing of evil – made them UNlike God, forever shattering the image they were created in.
Sin continues to twist things. To admire the nice thing someone else owns, the talent someone else possesses – these are good; love rejoices in seeing the blessings others enjoy. Sin takes that admiration and twists it into covetousness and envy. For a man to admire a woman’s beauty as a creation of God is a good thing. Sin takes that admiration and turns it into lust. To see others walking in darkness and desire to provide light so that they may see is good. Sin, as my pastor, Brian Wiele put it, takes that desire to give light and turns it into a glaring, self-righteous halogen searchlight pointed six inches from their face, so that not only does it not light their way, but actually forces them to shut their eyes and turn away; no wonder Jesus had more and harsher words for the Pharisees than He did for the “sinners”!
Sin has effected Creation. Plants that were meant to feed us now produce thistles. Other plants and animals produce toxic chemicals. What would otherwise be harmless bacteria mutate to become deadly pathogens. Cells grow, but the “off” signal gets lost and we face cancer. Immune systems run amok and we have lupus, diabetes, and Celiac. Brain chemicals become imbalanced, producing all manner of mental illnesses, from my own bipolar to my cousin’s OCD. Defense mechanisms that normally function to protect us become the enemy attacking us from within.
My heart breaks daily as I watch my poor cousin’s struggle. Hoarders cannot distinguish relative value; everything is equally “special”. Hoarders cannot distinguish their “stuff” from their “selves”; to get rid of things is to part with pieces of themselves. The progress we have made has not led to her feeling “freed”. She has no sense of “relief”. No, she mourns the loss of every item she has had to part with. Every unoccupied moment of the day is spent either grieving what has gone, or dreading what is still to be lost. Getting rid of her “stuff” will create a safer environment for her, but it will not rid her of her disease. She remains as trapped as ever in its torturous jaws.
We are now into the season of Lent, that solemn time of reflection and repentance as we consider what Christ did and why He had to do it. As I’ve been going through all this with Marie, and mourning for all that she suffers because of the twisting Satan has done through sin in creating her disease, I’ve been pondering what it must have been like for Jesus to walk on earth among His beloved creations and experience in human form what it is like to live in this world twisted by sin. We are only told two times of His weeping – at Lazarus’ tomb, the symbol of the epitome of sin’s physical consequences, death, and at the entry to Jerusalem where He wept at their rejection of Him, the epitome of sin’s spiritual consequences, the refusal of God’s proffered grace. But although those are the only two times we are told outright that He wept, I am convinced that every moment of Jesus’ life here on earth must have been filled with heartache as He experienced His creation’s brokenness.
But that was why He came: to fix what is broken. Even though in Adam we chose to break our fellowship with God and one another, and to break the very world in which we had been placed, God chose not to turn away and to leave us to the awful consequences of those choices. Instead, He chose to suffer every consequence of sin in Himself on the cross so that this world’s brokenness wouldn’t be the end of the story. Sin doesn’t win. Brokenness won’t last. A Day is coming when all the harmful things we hold on to will be swept away – and we won’t mourn the loss!
Dash it all, that snow
Posted on: January 18, 2012
I hate snow. Really. The only way I enjoy snow is on a pretty picture post card. I spent 6 years in northern Utah, and 4 years in eastern Washington, and had snow enough to last me a lifetime. One of the things I like about being now in WESTERN Washington, at the bottom of Puget Sound, is that we can go entire winters without getting a single flake. Most years that we do get snow, we get a maybe an inch or two that lasts for a day or two, once or twice the whole winter. Then there are the other years.
We’ve had a bit of snow – a few inches – the last few days. Big, fat, fluffy flakes came down thick yesterday morning for some time, but had turned to rain in the afternoon so most main streets were pretty bare and parking lots were fields of slush puddles. Last night, however, a major storm moved in. We were warned to expect up 11-14 INCHES here in Olympia, with total growing less as you move toward Seattle, about 60 miles north. Travel advisories. School closures. State offices closed, workers telecommuting. Only idiots and the desperate would go out in something like this. (We don’t have as much snow equipment to handle it – plows, de-icers, etc. – like places that regularly get snow do, so it really is more of an issue. Besides the fact that the vast majority of western Washingtonians freak out at the mere thought of driving on s-s-s-s-s-now.) So, naturally, it was THIS morning that I had to have my cousin, Marie, up to Seattle by 9:30 for a crucial medical appointment. Idiot or desperate? Not sure there’s a difference! This is the story of our dash through the snow.
Before leaving, I prayed, “Lord, please get us there.” The drive to the side street to Marie’s apartment complex at 6:45 was a breeze, since main roads and the freeway had been plowed not too long before. The side road, and the drive through the complex, however, had not seen a plow since the whole thing began. Snow was easily already at least 8″ high. I followed a set of tracks someone had already driven through. Got Marie in the car. Tried to back out the way I’d come in…. and was stuck! Tried digging out the wheels, rocking it, etc. All the usual tricks for snow. Nothing. “Lord, you got me this far. Please don’t let it end here. Send someone to help.” In my rearview, I saw a figure, snow shovel in hand approaching down the drive!
I got out to greet him, and explained WHY I was out in that snow. Jay is a maintenance worker with the complex, and he promised he’d get me out, whatever it took. After working for 10 minutes, though, he had made little progress. “Lord, either let this work, or send someone else to help!” Another figure approached, this time a resident who’d heard the noise. Together, it took them another 20 minutes or more, but they did it. God bless them!!!! By 7:30, Marie and I were on the freeway headed north.
For the first nearly 20 miles, it was just snow driving, which is pretty easy. Visibility was good, no one was being stupid, things were fine. Then the snow on the road turned into thick, mushy slush, at least 6″ deep. If you’ve never driven on it, let me tell you that driving in that is MUCH, much harder than on just nice, dry snow. Mostly, you just try to choose one set of tracks and follow them. Sometimes, though, there aren’t any clear tracks through a patch. Then you lose traction, and you can be forced hither and yon following whichever way has the most “give” to it. Hit a place where one set of wheels has traction and the other one suddenly doesn’t…. and you can find yourself in a spin out. You don’t have to be going very fast! You’re in the spin before you know it. Oh, yeah. Spun all the way from the left of the freeway across two other lanes to bump the front left corner of the car into the center barrier, coming to a stop at a 45 degree angle backwards to the oncoming traffic, but with just a bit of the tail sticking into the lane. Amazing what prayers can go up in that time. I don’t coherently remember them, but I know they were going. No one hit us. Everyone went around us, except this one little car that stopped in that near lane. I waited for it to move so I could maneuver more to the side, maybe turn a 360 if aI got a gap, when he flipped on his lights. Oooh, highway patrol, I get it. I got out, took a look at my front end, and shrugged my shoulders. The cop looked back to the road, and there was no more traffic for a MILE behind us. He grinned, told me to just back up in a U-turn and be on my way then! The whole thing took less than a minute. “Thank you, thank you, thank you….” repeat repeat repeat
Roads got even nastier toward Seattle, but we made it. (more “Thank you s”) Got off onto city streets. Had to climb about 7 blocks of a stiff hill to get to the medical building – and had green lights at all the right places, and reds only where it wasn’t a problem to stop. 2 hours drive time, which is pretty good for what would normally have been about an hour fifteen. I dropped Marie off at the patient drop/pick up, got back in the car, had a mini-sob session, and went to park. When we were done with the appointment, I got a suggestion from the doctor for a different way to go when we left that didn’t involve going back DOWN that hill. This time, too, the lights were always with us, all the way to the freeway. (More “Thank you s”. He got a lot of those today.)
Roads outbound were even worse than they’d been, for the first 15 miles, with the last being about terrifying, with not one, but TWO, misses-by-inches of big pick-up trucks barreling past us, slewing this way and that in the slush. (I kept a smile on my face for Marie’s sake and was inwardly, um, “crying out” to the Lord, shall we say? Something like a white-eyed, pee your pants “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”) Then, for about 30 miles, we had bare, wet pavement with slush only down the middle and between lanes. Glorious! What a relief! Then the last 15 miles of the trip… Ever sit in one of those vibrating massage chairs at the fair? The kind that sorta make your teeth feel like they’re going to rattle out? Well, we hit slush again, but this time over FROZEN, chain-chewed-up ice! It wasn’t slick, but oh, my goodness, was it rough – and say goodbye to any sense of real control of where you were going! You just followed the ruts, no matter where they wandered. (I wonder if my prayers vibrated as much as our voices did if we tried to talk?) But we made it back to Olympia in about the same time it took the other way! I stopped at our house and picked up Rob and a snow shovel, unsure what we’d find back at Marie’s apartment complex, but Rob was able to pull in and back right out. (Yet another “Thank you!”) Got poor Marie back to her apartment and us back home. I think none of us are budging again until this snow is GONE!
Now, the fact that God got me to Marie’s didn’t mean He was obligated to get me back out. Even the fact that He sent people to HELP didn’t obligate Him to let it be successful. The fact that He got me out didn’t mean He was obligated to keep us from spinning out on the way. The fact that He kept us safe in that spin out didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to Seattle. The fact that He got us to Seattle didn’t mean He was obligated to get us to the medical building. The fact that He got us there, didn’t mean He had to …. You get the idea.
I know a lot of people who would talk about this trip and say something like, “It was just so obvious that God was with you!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He WAS with us – but He would have been just as much with us if at any of those points, things had gone another way! Some would say, “Wow! God really answered our prayers!” But I can’t say that. That is, yes, He DID answer our prayers – but He would have been answering our prayers just as much if had things gone differently, for, at heart, our prayers are essentially all “Thy will be done”, aren’t they? And it always is! I admit it’s easier to be thankful when things go all “cool” like they did this trip, but we should always be just as ready to accept the difficult as the easy from His hand.
All day I’ve had a rhyme going through my head that a friend taught me years ago. “Has He taught us to love Him and call on His name/And thus far has brought us – but to put us to shame?” It’s a rhetorical question, of course. No matter what happens to us, whether the trip goes well or we spin out, we get hit or we escape, His purposes are always good. He will never put us to shame.
Now (my snow-loving friends, forgive me) I hope He’ll take away this dashed snow….
“Pay” to pray? No way!
Posted on: January 13, 2012
- In: Christianity | freedom | prayer
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We get some odd ideas about God, don’t we?
My first pregnancy was pretty easy. My second was not. From early on in that pregnancy, I resented that fact. I was so mad at God about it that I basically sat and pouted about it for nine months, refusing to look at Him. When it came time for delivery, things got really, really bad. It was an induced labor done way too soon, and was terrible, awful, horrible, horrendous…. You get the idea. Worse than all the physical pain, though, was that I had this idea that because I’d spent the previous nine months in a tantrum, I had no “right” to ask God to help me through it. So I went it alone.
It was several months after the birth before I finally dared to look at Him. Honestly, I expected Him to be mad at me. I expected Him to resent my tantrum, my lack of trust. I pictured Him standing there with His arms crossed, one toe tapping impatiently, lips pursed to the side, eyebrows raised…… just waiting to chew me out as soon as I came crawling back. I figured He’d tell me the birth experience was payback for not walking right during the pregnancy. “It’s just as well you didn’t pray, kid. I sure wouldn’t have been listening, not after what you pulled!”
Of course, that’s not what happened. While I was sitting pouting, thinking I had my back to Him as He stood somewhere aways away, He was sitting right in front of me. Instead of arms crossed, His arms were held out to me wide open, just waiting for me to fall into His lap. His face was lit with a warm, sympathetic smile, and His eyes glowed with a loving gaze that still held a trace of a tear – and I realized that while He had been sad about my tantrum, it had never – NEVER – “offended” Him. He had never been mad back at me. And I saw that I had never been alone. I had cut myself off from FEELING His presence, yes, but nothing I could do could ever cut me off from His presence. He had still been the One carrying me through that awful time. Had I cried out to Him during that delivery, He wouldn’t have held His love hostage to a confession of my sin; He would have immediately rushed to reassure me of His love.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week after reading a prayer request that left me so, so sad. It’s not the first time that I’ve run across the sentiment, of course, but to see it in this particular situation just grieved me. It was written by a dad requesting prayer for his little girl who is very, very ill. The blog post basically stated that because God is holy and righteous, unless we have our act together, hands all clean and hearts all repentant, before we pray, He won’t listen to us. If we have unconfessed sin in our life, our prayers won’t work. This poor, sweet father whose heart is so burdened for his little one was worried that unless those praying for her were coming to God repentantly, confessing their sins, their prayers wouldn’t really ring “loud and clear” in His ears. So, so sad. What a misperception of God!
Imagine the most loving parent you possibly can – one who would do (and has done) absolutely anything for his child. Suppose the parent has told the child not to eat a cookie, but the child “sneaks” one anyway. Before the parent has chosen to scold the child about it, or the child’s conscience has moved him to confess it, suppose the child falls from a tree and breaks his leg. Imagine that parent listening to that child scream in pain and standing there saying, “Well, I’ll help you, of course, but FIRST there’s that matter of the cookie to take care of.”
Seems ludicrous to even think of it, yet that’s exactly how we picture God if we lay ourselves under the expectation that unless we have gotten ourselves all straightened out first, He’s going to put His fingers in His ears and sing “La la la Can’t hear you!” when we cry to Him in time of need. What bondage to believe that we have to essentially EARN the “right” to have our Father pay attention to us.
Christ died for us while we were sinners. God gave us His Son when we couldn’t have cared less. He extended His grace to us while we still hated Him. So, now that we have become His dearly beloved children, fellow heirs with His Son, indwelt by His Spirit – NOW we think He’s going to stand in a huff at us when we trip and fall short? NOW we think He holds it against us that we’re not perfect? Do we really think that in a time of dire need, He is going to withhold His help until we get our act all together, or use just the right words, or whatever? The God Who sends rain on the just and the unjust, Who instructed us to bless those who curse us, and do good to those who do us evil – now that we’re His children, He’s going to take an “I’ll only be nice to you if you do everything like you’re supposed to” position?
There is no sin which we have to take care of before He can hear our prayers because the things that we need to repent of and confess have already been covered by the Blood of the Lamb. God’s holiness and righteousness have been satisfied on the cross. Our acceptance by God is not conditional on how clean our hands are or how repentant we are. We are His children, beloved, warts and all. NOTHING – not even our failures, our not-yet-repentant hearts, or our not-yet-confessed sins – can separate us from His love. If we have “cookie” issues, He’ll deal with those because they aren’t good for us and distract us from the right path, but they’ll never be something He’ll hold against us and use as an excuse to withhold His love or His attention from us.
No matter what other issues we may have in our life, God will NEVER turn a deaf ear to the heart-cry of the children He gave His Son’s life for.
Name dropping
Posted on: January 5, 2012
I heard a sermon recently by a young pastor on the subject of waiting on the Lord. He had a lot of good things to say about how hard it can be to wait. He illustrated the theme by telling of a visit to the doctor some years back that had involved cooling his heels in the waiting room for an hour and a half. He then went on to describe in vivid, scathing detail what ensued in the visit – a disagreement with the doctor as to whether or not his elevated blood pressure was due to a medical condition or simply to his extreme anger at having had to wait so long. The pastor named the doctor, the city where he practiced, and stated that he was still practicing, “though I don’t know how”.
For a long time now, God has been “tenderizing” me over my own loose tongue when it comes to such name-dropping. Although name-dropping by public speakers bothers me because of the wider audience they have, it is no different than what most of us do with all too great a frequency in our own conversations. There is something in us that seems to delight in airing not just how we “done been wronged” but who in particular “done it”.
My high school years were hellish. For most of those years, I was under the leadership of a particular pastor, with occasional contact with a student ministry director at the college my siblings attended. Both, through commission and omission, influenced my life for the worse, missing what (to ME) seemed like obvious opportunities to have helped me. By God’s grace, I survived those years without killing myself or getting involved with the drugs my friends used. Once in college (in another state!), He turned my life around and set my feet on a new path. But the hurt from those earlier years didn’t just disappear. For many years after, when I told my story of God’s redemption, I included a full description of just what poor leaders those two men had been, and I named names.
Over time, however, God gave me some different perspective. He pointed out that I was still looking at those men’s actions as I had as a confused, hurting, immature teen – not as the adult I had become. I had accused both men of not caring, but on re-examining the issue, I realized that they did care, but were untrained and inexperienced in dealing with my type of situation. Did they make some really poor decisions, give some lame responses, take some inappropriate actions? Absolutely – just as I have myself in my own ministry and parenting. God showed me that what I was doing was, in fact, slander – speech for the purpose of defaming or unjustifiably attacking a person’s reputation. Yes, they did what they did – but those were not the ONLY things they did. On the whole, both men had successful ministries in their respective spheres. My stories unfairly ignored all the good they did for the sake of the particular “failures” involving me – and I wanted the rest of the world to condemn them for my sake. (Sounds ugly, but it’s the truth.) My slander of these men was just as wrong as the actions that I held against them!
[I wrote to both men and asked forgiveness for having spoken so, which may or may not have been the wisest thing to do, since, as far as I know, they had had no idea I held such a grudge against them in the first place. Writing made me feel better, but it may have been easier for them if I hadn’t! Anyway, I told them that they didn’t have to respond, I just wanted to get it off my chest, as it were. One wrote back anyway, and his gracious words of forgiveness, and humble request for the same for anything he had done to give rise to that hurt, are among the most treasured letters I’ve ever received. ]
Because of this experience from my own life, I do think about some questions now that I didn’t used to, whether the story is told for illumination, comparison, or just entertainment. Are you absolutely sure you have a godly perspective on this? If you’re honest, would you have to admit that you’re telling the story less for the benefit of the hearers and more to satisfy a sense of revenge, or just to make yourself look good by comparison? Are you sure you are judging justly? Do you truly believe that all of that person’s character or career should stand condemned because of what you hold against him? That is, if your story is all someone ever knows about Mr. X, will it be a fair representation? What if, unknown to you, the person now regrets what she did? How would you feel about having spread the story then? How do you think the person (or their family or friends) would feel to hear that story told about him? Even if the story isn’t slanderous, but simply puts the subject in an unflattering light, would you want to be talked about in that way? Could you tell the same story using a fictitious name, or “a friend of mine”, or “someone in our family”, instead?
I still trip up on this point far too often, but I’m trying to remember that if the name isn’t germane to the point of my story, rather than name-drop, I should just drop the name!
Peas and thank you, Glenn!
Posted on: January 1, 2012
Back in college, a friend and I had a conversation one day about ships and shoes and sealing wax and cabbages and ….. peas. I grew up with a dad who never met a food he didn’t like. Oh, he’d admit that some he liked better than others, but the concept of “not liking” a food was totally outside his comprehension. This meant that we kids were raised with the expectation that WE would like all foods….. sooner or later. “I’ve tried it a million times and I DON’T LIKE IT!!!” we would politely screech. “But maybe THIS TIME you will!” was his never-changing reply. No quarter given. Unless it sent you into anaphylactic shock, you were expected to eat it.
He wanted us kids to be adventurous eaters, welcoming all foods, as easy to please as he himself was. Admirable goal. However, the effect his method had on me was quite the opposite of what he intended. I reached adulthood a terribly picky eater, with sharply defined lists of Foods I Like (a not terribly long list) and Foods I Do NOT Like (a veeeery long list, indeed!). I could go to a potluck at church with tables brimming over with dishes of every variety, and barely find enough “safe” food to fill my plate. No anonymous casseroles for me, thank you! And that one looks like it might have something strange in it. I don’t recognize that vegetable. … You get the idea.
For some reason, my intense resentment against my dad’s insistence on liking everything, and on eating things which I already knew I didn’t like distilled itself most distinctly in a hatred of …. Little. Green. Peas. I hated them with a passion usually reserved for black mold, athlete’s foot, or lice. Early in my friendship with Glenn at Whitworth, he had revealed to me that he, too, found the tiny, round things repulsive. Nothing like a shared hatred to cement a growing camaraderie, right? So, imagine my surprise – no, shock – when one day I discovered him eating peas. Deliberately. On purpose. With willful, though not suicidal, intent. When I asked him for an explanation, he gave an intriguing reply. “I’m trying to get away from thinking about foods only in terms of what I ‘like’ or ‘don’t like’. I’m trying to just train myself to think, ‘Ok, this is just what peas taste like.’”
I confess that, at the time, I didn’t really get it, and I can’t say it had much impact on my eating habits. At least, not consciously. But over the last ten years or so, little by little, I have been breaking out of my food prison, and those wise words of my friend have come back to me many a time. In particular, I set myself the task of revisiting those foods that I was so sure I Did Not Like, to simply explore “What do those foods taste like, anyway?” You see, for most of them, it had been so long since I actually even tried them that I had no idea! The results have been pretty fun. Many of those previously-rejected foods I have discovered I now like. Even LOVE. Cherries, avocados, figs, kiwi, oh, my! Some foods I have confirmed the reason they were on my Do Not Like List in the first place. Even the smell of canned salmon still makes me ill. A host of other foods I have found that I can eat with equanimity by simply accepting that “this is what this food tastes like”. I even gave peas a chance, and found that, cooked right, they’re not bad. I’m still not the adventurous eater my dad was, and I don’t expect I ever will be. That’s ok. I’m me, not him. But at least now I when I go to a potluck, I’m not worried about starving! I’m gaining food freedom.
I’m finding a wider application of this principle as well. Not surprisingly, food isn’t the only area of life wherein I have been so busy consigning things to specific positive or negative categories based solely on my own bias that I haven’t had time to learn to simply appreciate them for what they are. People. Music. The way people dress. Decisions people make. By concentrating on evaluating these so that I can categorize them to a “Like” or “Do Not Like”, “approve” or “do not approve” I think I’ve missed out on a lot of life.
Obviously, some people I will immediately feel an attraction to, and some I will feel repulsed by, but the most important thing about someone shouldn’t be whether or not I like him, but who he IS. I have found that I can learn to appreciate many good characteristics of someone that I don’t feel any particular affinity for. I can even appreciate abilities of people I can’t stand when I look farther than just the fact that I don’t like them. And for those few who I do not like and are consistently obnoxious, accepting that that is simply the way they are frees me from feeling in any way “surprised” at their actions and stops them from being able to control me by jerking my emotional chain.
I know all the reasons many people are prejudiced against tattoos, and I’ll agree that there are a lot of really ugly tatts out there. For a lot of years, I had a reaction of “Ugh. I don’t like tattoos.” But in more recent years, I have learned to appreciate the beauty of the art that is in many of them, and more importantly, I have found that engaging someone in the “whys” of their ink can give me important insights into their life. If all I do is say, “I don’t like tattoos”, then I have shut the door. Tattoos are just art on PEOPLE. Ordinary people. I don’t want to give a tattoo the power to blind me to the person wearing it.
I don’t enjoy my son’s screaming mimi (Christian!) rock music – but if just say, “I don’t like it. It’s bad. It’s not really music.” I’ve shut the door on ever being able to learn to appreciate what it is about the music that my son LIKES. If I can accept the music as being what it is – “This is just what this music sounds like” – perhaps I can find a new way to relate to my son. (…OK, there’s gotta be another way!!)
I have enough to do in this life without wasting so much time worrying about other people’s business, and whether I “like” or “do not like” what they’ve done. In this new year ahead, I want to learn to just appreciate the experiences of life more and more, in and of themselves. Whether I “like” it or not, I want to taste the flavor of life in all its fullness!
Happy New Year! Peas, choy and loaves to all!
The End From the Beginnning
Posted on: December 25, 2011
How calm an image, mother and child,
Mary, oh, so meek and mild,
Jesus, chubby infant sweet
With pudgy baby hands and feet.
A soft glow the atmosphere seems to fill,
A scene to treasure, peaceful and still.
How unwillingly our eyes are turned
To a scene where angry crowds are churned.
No more the mother’s fond embrace;
Rough wooden beams her arms replace.
No swaddling clothes, so warm and soft;
Hard nails hold His naked body aloft.
No angels singing God’s praises are there;
Rather, taunts, jeers and curses fill the air.
Once worshipped by shepherds on bended knee,
Now hailed by soldiers with mockery.
The tender infant, now grown to a man,
Takes on the role that only He can.
Yet again the scene changes, and now behold
Another part of the story is told.
No cows lowing heard, nor shouts of the crowd;
A silence profound fills the sepulcher’s shroud
In the still air, no foul stench of fear or of death;
The burial spices give their sweet-scented breath.
Once laid in a manger, now laid in a tomb,
The death of Christ brings unto Death its own doom!
The grave cannot hold Him, however it tries.
He bursts its bonds, rises, ascends to the skies!
Only one scene is left to finish the story
When Christ, the Messiah, returns in His glory.
No more the sweet Babe of the Bethlehem stall,
But this time the King of Kings, Lord over all.
The end from the very beginning was known:
The manger was but one small step toward His throne.
Susie Aasen, 2005
A BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!!!
Permission to reprint given as long as the author’s name and source are included in the transmission.
Script writing
Posted on: December 21, 2011
Most people don’t believe in fairy tales. At least, they’d certainly tell you that they don’t. But lately I’ve been thinking about how often we do, in fact, have a script planned out for how our life is supposed to turn out. Some of us get pretty detailed in building our castles in the air. God’s supposed to get me into This University, where He’s supposed to find me a wife/husband who is blond, cute, and rich, then He’ll get me this job, in this city, paying this much, and then He’ll give us the correct number and gender of children at the correct timing. We will never fight, our kids will never rebel, we’ll never get seriously ill, we’ll never have money troubles, we’ll always have a great church, and we’ll reach the end of our life looking back and just marveling at how good God was to us.
Sounds ridiculous, huh? No one would really expect that, would they? Probably not – at least, not in so many words. But I’ll bet if we were really honest, we all have far more specific expectations than we might admit to, or even be aware of. Want to know the quickest way of finding out what we do actually expect? Have something go the other way!! When we find ourselves with that “Wait a minute! That’s not how it was supposed to be!” reaction, it’s a sure bet that we just hit an unrealized expectation. Our script just got edited.
Last Sunday’s sermon happened to tangentially bring up the Matthew passage where Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In context, He was speaking of material goods, those that may be stolen, eaten by moths or rusted, though in application we broaden the sense to non-material items of value. But hearing the passage this time, in conjunction with these other ponderings of late, I was struck anew by the reverse implications of the verse: we can tell what we treasure most by where we have most set our hearts.
We all pray “Thy will be done”, but if we look at our response to life’s events, I think we can gain insight into what we are truly treasuring. When things are going the way we want them to, of course, it can be difficult to tell if we’re treasuring God’s will being done or treasuring getting to have our way, but when things go off-script, and our dancing sugar plums explode, it becomes very clear where our heart is. If what we are actually valuing is having our own way, we are in trouble!
When God took away all the blessings He had given Job, Job’s wife told him to just go ahead and curse God and die. She must have thought that God had to be awfully mad at Job to do all those nasty things to him, and, if He was that mad, He was probably only waiting for one slight provocation more to squash him like a bug. Job cursing him? Yeah, that should do the trick! Get the suffering over with. If honoring God didn’t get Job the “right” outcome to the story, then forget the honoring God stuff! Her reaction to God’s actions prove that she saw God as capricious and vengeful, and that she had her heart set on having things her way. She didn’t understand God at all. But Job did! Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” I’m sure Job had had his own ideas of what the rest of his life was “supposed” to play out like, visions of his kids and grandkids and his growing financial empire. Yet Job acknowledged God’s right to do with and to him whatever He would. Job didn’t hold any idea that God OWED it to him to continue his future as his past had been. It wasn’t that Job wasn’t upset, or didn’t ask God about what was going on. He was, and he did. However, Job’s reaction to God’s actions prove that he saw God as infinitely Trustworthy, and that Job had his heart set on God having HIS way, whether or not he, Job, understood it. He understood God’s freedom to change the script!
When things in our life aren’t going according to script, we have the same choice as Job: to trust “though He slay me”, and be upheld through our trials, or to “curse God and die”, denying ourselves His fellowship and help. But we’ll only be ready to make Job’s choice if we have first set our hearts to treasure what Job did: the will of God. If our heart is set right, last-minute script changes won’t throw us for a loop, because we’ll remember that it’s HIS script, not ours, anyway.
If you must write a script, at least use a pencil, not a Sharpie! (Just remember, God’s eraser works on BOTH!)
The freedom to fail
Posted on: December 17, 2011
I’m back from our visit to our son, daughter-in-love and newest granddaughter. I’ll spare you all the panegyrics over how adorable she is; take them as read! Although our oldest daughter has had two kids, they live here in town, so although we got to see them much sooner after birth, and more frequently after, this visit was different because we spent four days in my son’s apartment. Much more intense! And boy, did it bring back memories of those first days of our own parenting adventure – the feeling of being in over our heads, in totally unfamiliar territory, with little confidence in our ability to parent this morsel of humanity. It’s been a few weeks shy of 27 years since then, and our adventure with our five kids has taken us to places we had no idea even existed. As is not uncommon, I find myself wishing I could go back and parent then with what I know now. I can’t do that, of course, but I want to share one thing that I wish I had learned a lot sooner. So here is a letter to my son and daughter-in-love, or anyone still in that journey:
Dear Phil and Brooke,
Welcome to the wonderful, crazy, scary world that is parenthood! You have no idea just what you’re in for now. Which is probably a good thing.
I have every confidence that you two are going to be great parents. You take your parenting role very seriously, giving thought to your course of action rather than simply acting on the impulse of the moment. Already you are recognizing the dying to self that good parenting requires. You are seeking the counsel of those with more experience, which is wise, but you are maintaining an independent judgment of the fitness of that counsel for your own situation, which is wiser still. Above all, you have hearts devoted to the Lord and are leaning on Him for wisdom, desiring to do what is right. Yes, you are going to be great parents.
You are also going to fail. There will be times when you put your desires above Evie’s needs. You will be impatient. You will speak in haste. You will choose the convenient over the constructive. You will ignore things you should correct and punish actions that were foolish but not disobedient. You will over-react. You will make bad decisions. In these and many other ways, you WILL fail. Welcome to parenthood!
That may not sound very encouraging, but if you can accept the inevitability of your own failures just as fully and as matter-of-factly as God does, you will have deprived the Enemy of his greatest weapons against you in the parenting venture – the fear of failure. As long as you are afraid of failure, you will be living in the Prison of Perfection – not the freedom Christ died to give you.
You see, the Enemy wants you to keep focusing on trying to be perfect. He’ll use the “if you parent ‘right’, then your kids will turn out ‘good’” lie. Sadly, even the Christian community has bought into this fallacy. You probably already read my post on the misuse of the Proverbs verse on “Train up a child”, so I won’t repeat the arguments here. I’ll just say this: There has only been ONE Perfect Parent in all of history, and HIS kids got kicked out of Eden! Trying to be the perfect parent won’t guarantee the outcome for your kids.
The Enemy says you should try to be perfect so you won’t disappoint God. But this is bogus as well. Isn’t it funny how we say that we know we’re not perfect, yet we get so upset with ourselves when confronted with the proof of it? We really do expect ourselves to be better than we are, and when our reality doesn’t meet those expectations, the result is disappointment. But God cannot be disappointed! God has no expectations other than reality. He knows even more clearly than we do just how sinful we are. Think of Jesus calmly telling Peter of the betrayal to come. There was no frostiness to His voice. No “how COULD you!” shaming tone. Jesus wasn’t shocked or disappointed at what Peter was about to do. SIN IS WHY JESUS WAS HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s HIS righteousness in us that He wants to see perfected – not our own. Our own self-improvement projects are all doomed to fail. HE’s the Professional!
Part of striving for perfection means that when we fail, we have to wear guilt like a hair shirt until we are rubbed raw and bleeding. The truth is that there’s no guilt TO wear, because Jesus already wore it. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation. Period. If God does not condemn us, how dare we condemn ourselves? We need to confess our sin to restore fellowship, but the forgiveness is already granted. Every action has its consequence, and so will our failures – but our failures don’t take God out of the equation. When Jesus told Peter, “You’re going to betray me”, He also told him, “…and when you turn back, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus was already looking beyond the failure to what use He was going to make out of it. When the Word promises that “in all things God works for the good of those that love Him” – “all things” includes our failures. Don’t ever give yourselves credit for being able to force Him into Eternal Plan B, as if you can somehow fail badly enough to screw up eternity. You can’t.
I don’t mean to sound like I think it doesn’t matter what you do as parents. Obviously, I want you to be the best and wisest and all that that you can be, and provide as little fodder for the therapists as possible. These are my grandkids we’re talking about you raising, after all. It is, however, especially for their sake that I hope it is the LORD you will take seriously, not yourselves. My grandkids don’t need your perfection; they won’t be perfect themselves. They need to see the God Who is bigger than their failures, and they’ll see Him best by seeing Him through you. Immerse yourselves in His mercy, grab onto His grace, frolic in His forgiveness, rest in His resourcefulness!
You’re going to be great parents, and you’re going to fail. And neither is what matters. You’re free to fail because HE NEVER WILL.
Timber-r-r-r-r-r
Posted on: December 5, 2011
The Pacific NW has been one of the timber capitals of the world since white settlers first came here. Harvest now is far below what it was in its heyday, but logging trucks still roam the freeways, lumber mills are on the endangered list but not extinct, and the ports still ship forests of poles overseas. Around these parts, when you say “log”, it creates a clear picture. Which is why Jesus’ words about “specks” in our brother’s eye and “logs” in our own evokes quite the visual image.
So, I have this friend named Moe. (OK, that’s not really his name, but in this kind of literature, it’s ok to pretend and make up names so readers won’t know who you’re talking about. At least, most of them won’t. Some may guess, I suppose, but I can’t help that, because I have to tell HIS story or the rest of what I say won’t make sense.) anyway… Moe has a job where he interfaces with the public a lot. I enjoy listening to him talk about some of the interesting encounters God has arranged for him. Moe actually prays before work and ASKS God to set up these things, and he talks about feelings of purpose in his being there for them. But when Moe talks about his boss, or his work schedule… that’s another story. Then he’s pretty much just any other employee griping about work.
So, the other day I was thinking about Moe and his attitudes. With the “wisdom” we’re always ‘blessed’ with when it comes to passing judgment on others, I was thinking that maybe I should just have a quiet word with him and point out how much more effective his witness might be if he took a more godly attitude. Yes, sir, I was in feeling very upright and spiritual. Gonna help set my brother straight, you bet. For his own good, absolutely. Well…
God sighed, chuckled, shook His head, and started up a little conversation. “So, my beloved child… you think Moe’s got a problem, do you?’
“Oh, yeah. You’ve shown it to me quite clearly.”
“Oh… I have, have I? Hmm. Be that as it may… Tell me what you think the issue is.”
“Well, you see, from the way Moe complains about his boss, it seems pretty obvious that he isn’t praying for him. After all, You told us to pray for our enemies, for those who persecute us, or do us harm, and to do good to those who do us evil, didn’t you?”
“You’re certainly right. I did.”
“Moe runs his boss down pretty freely when he’s with our group. I know all kinds of details about they guy – none to his credit. I don’t think that’s very respectful.”
“Quite possibly not. I’m glad you’ve noticed this. Now I have a question for you.”
“Umm… ok.” I always get nervous when God asks me questions.
“Your husband has a job, doesn’t he?”
Oh, good – an easy one to answer. “Yes, he does, and you know how thankful I am that he has one with all the uncertainties of these times!”
“And what’s the management like there?”
“Lord, YOU know – they’re awful. I mean, really, really awful. If there’s a bad decision to make, they’ll make it. If there’s a way to shaft the employees, they’ll…”
“You’re right. I DO know. So I have another question for you. How long since you prayed for them?”
Boy, He never hesitates with getting up close and personal, does He? “Um… well… er…. ah… recently? Sometime? Yes, that’s it. I’m sure I’ve prayed for them sometime!”
“Uh-huh. And how long since you badmouthed them to someone?”
“Can I plead the fifth?”
“No. That’s not in My constitution.”
“Oh, all right then. A couple of days ago when my cousin was here.”
“And before that?”
“At the grocery store. … Bible study. … Church. … On the chat loop. … In a letter. …. Can I stop now? I get the point.”
“OK. Let’s talk about what you think Moe’s other issue is. You were thinking of telling him he should think of his work differently?”
Whew. A chance to redeem myself! “Yeah. He gripes and complains about his work schedule as if You had nothing to do with it. Surely he understands that You are in charge of that, too. And no matter how grueling it is, he can trust that You’ll get him through it – or get him through the consequences of NOT getting through it!”
“Sounds reasonable. Now back to Rob’s job.”
Uh-oh. Turning it back on me again! Red alert! “What about it?”
“I hear they’re running the department pretty badly.”
Oh, good. I was on solid ground here. (I’m pretty slow sometimes!) “Boy, howdy, are they! It’s terrible! The workers are expected to keep up with all the new technologies and systems without any training. They’re cutting personnel and pay and increasing our benefit costs and there’s this ridiculous new building they have to work in that …”
He went for the jugular.
“Yeah, you know, I went on vacation to Bermuda for a few years and just got back and was horrified at what they’d done while I was gone! I mean, if I’d been around, I never would have let those kinds of things happen. It’s not as if I could ever have any purpose in those kinds of trials and frustrations, using them to conform Rob to the image of my Son or anything like that.”
Oh, boy. I walked right into that one, didn’t I? “Wait a minute! That’s not what I meant.”
“But that’s JUST what you’re accusing Joe of! Come on, doesn’t your complaining about all these things sound like you are accusing me of being asleep at the wheel?”
By now, I’m sure my face was blushing fire-engine red. “Well, now that you put it that way…. sure.”
“And am I the only one you’ve shared these complaints with?
“Ummmmm….. no.”
“No is right, kiddo! You’ve been as free in those complaints as in talking about the management. How long has it been since you read I Thess. 5:18? ‘Give thanks in all circumstances.'”
“Yesterday, actually. I was thinking …. of …. Moe.”
“But when you think of yourself, where did you find a footnote that said, ‘unless you don’t LIKE the circumstances’?”
“Um…. Hezekiah 3:11b?”
“Har har. There isn’t one and you know it. I said ALL and I mean ALL.”
“Well, like I said before, I’ve always been thankful that Rob has a job! Isn’t that enough?”
“Nope. Being thankful for A job isn’t the same as being thankful for THIS job. Don’t you believe that if I’d wanted him someplace else I could have arranged to move him any time I wanted??”
“Well…. yeah.”
“So, you’ve prayed for me to move him, and I’ve said ‘no’. What does that tell you?”
“That he’s where you want him to be?”
“You got it! And if he’s where I want him to be, is that something to complain about?”
Sigh. “No. … But …. well …. can’t I even talk about them at all? After all, they are hard things to deal with.”
“Sure you can talk about them. You just can’t complain about them. You can ask for prayer about them for you to have a godly response. You can even ask for Me to change them, as long as you’re ready to accept whatever answer I give. But I think you’ll find that the more you do what I’ve told you to do – praying for ‘enemies’ like the nefarious management and thanking Me in all circumstances – the less you’ll feel the need to even talk about them. …. Now, about Moe?”
By now, of course, I was feeling pretty low – lower than a snake’s bellybutton in a wagon rut, as the old saying goes. Moe’s issue? Ha! A speck of dust floating on the breeze. Mine? One big, ugly, so-big-you-coud-drive-a-bus-through, old-growth California redwood! Oh, yeah, it was definitely log harvesting time. “Wow, Lord, I’ve been really blind, huh?”
“Not the first time, dearheart. That’s why you need a Saviour, you know.”
“I’m sorry! Thank you for forgiving me for my own wrong attitudes, and for being self-righteous about Moe’s. And thanks for keeping me from having that talk with Moe! It would have been a sin against him to do it…. Not to mention making an even bigger slice of humble pie to eat.”
“Seeing better without that log in your eye?”
“Oh, yeah. But I have a feeling this isn’t the last of these logs you need to harvest.”
“It’s not, but we’ll deal with them as you’re ready. This is part of conforming YOU, you know. I’m happy to do it!”
So… anyone need some firewood?
Ever read Fox’s Book of Martyrs? I confess I haven’t. Not the whole thing, anyway – just enough excerpts to curdle my blood. I’ve also read a number of accounts of modern martyrs of the faith. There are more who have died for Christ’s sake in the last century than in all the time since Christ’s own death. With that in mind, I now turn to the plight of the poor American Christian who must endure the persecution of ….. The Annual Christmas War.
I expect to hear the first salvo any minute now: some Christian complaining because the world is disrespecting Christmas. “Why can’t the clerks say ‘Merry CHRISTMAS’ instead of “Happy Holidays’?!!!” “Why won’t schools sing songs about JESUS?!!!!” “Put CHRIST back in CHRISTMAS!!!!” “Why can’t we have a Nativity in the Capitol?!!!” “Don’t they know how stupid it sounds to call a Christmas tree a ‘holiday tree’?” It gets more strident with every December that passes. It makes me shake my head, it really does. It’s so senseless!
To complain about the world not keeping Christmas is to fault the world for not celebrating that which it has NO REASON to celebrate in the first place. The Bible makes plain that the world loves darkness instead of light (John 3:19), suppresses the truth by its wickedness (Ro. 1:18), is futile in its thinking and its heart is darkened (Ro. 1:21), is filled with every kind of wickedness and is a God-hater (Ro. 1:29, 30), it has rejected the truth and followed evil (Ro. 2:8). Those in the world walk totally and completely in the flesh, which is hostile to God, and does not – and CANNOT – submit to God’s law. The world stands already damned. (John 3:18) It has every reason in this world to hate, loathe, and detest Christ Himself, let alone give a fig about some “holy” day His followers have chosen to declare. The world can’t “put Christ back in Christmas”, because for them, He was never there.
Since the world can’t celebrate Christmas, those in the world who want to celebrate a form of Christmas substitute other versions created in man’s likeness. Stuffmas is the celebration of gifts. Since affluenza is the defining characteristic of American culture, it should be no surprise that this time of year is when it is seen in its most acute form. There’s the celebration of Santa Day, usually accompanied by Rudoph, Frosty, and the rest of the gang. The modern American Santa is the incarnation of works righteousness. Santa is a God-figure, or at least, God as many wish He would be: an all-seeing and all-knowing miracle worker, giving rewards to those who are “good” and punishment to those who are “bad” – but really, such a jovial and kindly old man that we know he couldn’t ever truly be angry, but will look on most offenses with a wink and a nod. Many in the world don’t mind celebrating Sweet Baby Jesus Day; after all, who doesn’t love babies, all helpless and innocent and inoffensive? For most who celebrate this day, the babe in the manger is eternally an infant, never growing up. Even for those who think about the fact that the baby became a man, they will acknowledge Him only as a “good man” or “wise teacher”. They cannot face the reality of Jesus as LORD. The plethora of “feel good” movies celebrating the “”True Meaning of Christmas Day” are all about generosity, sharing, caring, and giving of oneself, often self-righteously repudiating Stuffmas while occasionally embracing Sweet Baby Jesus Day. When stripped to their basic premise, however, all are making a statement about man’s essential goodness. That is, deep down, we’re all really good people, and would be warm, kind, generous, and loving if we just opened ourselves up and let our inner goodness shine. All four of these celebrations are pretty poor subsitutes for celebrating the birth of the Messiah; but they’re the best the world can do.
To complain about the world not keeping Christmas is to fault the world for not acting as if OUR holiday were the only one that mattered. America has never been as homogeneous as some would like to believe, but certainly by now no one should carry any illusions as to our uniformity. Christmas – even the world’s forms of it – is NOT the only holiday going on at this time of year, and especially for those in the marketplace, there is a vested interest in trying to appease all sides. Christmas-purists may be offended by a “Happy Holidays” greeting, but NON-celebrators feel no differently about “Merry Christmas!” – and if the former say, “Well, they shouldn’t be so sensitive; it doesn’t hurt them to hear ‘Merry Christmas'”, the reverse is just as true. Or maybe businesses should just rotate their greetings? “Merry Christmas!”, “Happy Hanukkah!”, “Happy Kwanzaa!”, “Happy Bodhi Day!”, “Happy Winter Solstice!”, “Happy Eid al-Adha!” and “Happy winter!” for the atheist. I really pity the poor clerks who are on the front lines, having to follow the manager’s directive because he is the one signing their paycheck, but getting huffed at by purists upset because they didn’t get the “Merry Christmas!” they wanted.
But even if those of general Christian tradition were the majority, would that make it right to insist that everyone do things ONLY our way? Having lived in an area of extreme religious influence, and myself being in the very definite minority, I can tell you that, sure, as the minority, you may choose not to make a fuss about it and just “live with it” if you see no way of changing things; it won’t kill you. But I can just as certainly tell you this: having their will imposed on you in that way will NEVER make you look favorably on them, will NEVER give you warm, fuzzy feelings about what they believe, and will NEVER make you want to be like them. Having our way at the expense of others…. doesn’t sound very much like Jesus, does it?
To complain about the world not keeping Christmas is to fault the world for not doing that which we ourselves are not commanded to do. The celebration of Christ’s birth is not sacred. That is, such a celebration is nowhere commanded – nor even hinted at – in Scripture. We therefore have the freedom in Christ to celebrate or not celebrate; celebrating doesn’t make us “holier” and not celebrating (and there are many Christians who do not!) does not make us “less spiritual”. The celebration of Christmas is entirely a man-created thing. Yes, Christ was born, and yes, without Him having been born He could not have lived and died and risen, but there is nothing that says we have to have a celebration of that birth. If there is nothing that says we have to celebrate the birth, there is most assuredly nothing that defines just what that celebration must look like! Thus, every culture that has been touched by Christianity has developed its own cultural traditions, every denomination has its own traditions – there is no right or wrong. We do not have any grounds on which to dictate to anyone else what they should or should not do to celebrate. If we have not that right even within the Body, which is celebrating true Christmas, why on earth should we feel it incumbent on ourselves to correct the WORLD which is not even celebrating Christmas at all?
To complain about the world not keeping Christmas is to waste our time, our energy, and our witness! The world can’t ruin our Christmas, but WE can; nothing the world does can stop us from celebrating Christmas, but every minute we spend huffing and grumbling about how someone else isn’t celebrating Christmas like we think they should is a minute we haven’t spent celebrating Christmas, either. I don’t think it hurts Jesus’ feelings that the world doesn’t join in the birthday party we hold in His honor – but I can’t help wonder if it doesn’t grieve Him that so many Christians, by their militancy about the subject, give the world so little cause to want to see what it is we’re celebrating! If we set ourselves to use every opportunity to speak to the reality of Christ and His power in our lives, His love for sinners, His forgiveness of sins, the cross as well as the crèche, keeping our cheer no matter what the perceived “offence”, having compassion for those who have so little to celebrate, I think our celebration of Christmas will present a winsome witness that will give real meaning to our “Merry Christmas!”
Let the world do what it will. We have the Christ!
the susie solution 