Stop and Feel the Roses

Do you ever think about what a boring place this world would be without texture?

I have pondered it lately due, in no small part, to a proclivity to nausea throughout the last several months (if you'received wondering why, read about the reason here). This seems especially relevant in the area of food.

Think of your favorite food for a moment. You can probably smell it, taste it, see it laid out in front of you, and feel it in your mouth. That "feel" may be the last thing I think of when it comes to food, but for some foods I avoid, I find that that is the primary reason for my dislike. It may looks nice, smell nice, and taste nice, but if that texture is too slimy, or grainy, or lumpy, it can completely overwhelm a dish's other positive attributes.

And textures in food are just a beginning!

I have a sweater I love, except that it itches when I wear it. My favorite around-the-house clothes look awful, but they feel so nice. When I bought sheets for our bed recently, I spent more time with my hand in among the cloth than I did picking a color.

Or the beauty of the outdoors? Imagine the green and brown of a tree - but without the fifty shades of each that textures give. It would look like a child's drawing: good enough for the refrigerator door, but a sorry excuse for a sweeping panoramic or idyllic pastoral.

And that is just a tree! There is the wonderful spiny texture of grass, the velvety curves of flowers, the soft bounce of clouds, the sweeping curve of sky, and the breath-taking undulations of a world covered in snow.

All that, and I haven't even touched on colors!

What a world of beauty and wonder we inhabit (yes, even those of us in a Midwestern winter)! There is a God I know, and I get my delight of texture from Him. How do I know? Because He did not have to make a world of textures. But He did. He made them, which tells me that He likes them, too.

So, take a moment, please, to stop and feel the roses.

Lemonade

Before you read today's post, I would like you to watch this video.

I appreciate how Chris Rice takes an old adage, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade," and turns it into a song of appreciation for all that God gives. As another year swings around, I am reminded of our daily blessings - blessings far more abundant than I have any right to expect. Gift after gift rolls to mind with only a few minutes' contemplation.

But, beyond the goodness of a lemonade-giving God, I am not even drinking it alone. I get to share a glass with a man who also thanks God for it as he drinks deeply of our life together.

And God isn't even finished yet.

We are announcing that we are going to need another straw!

Christmas Lights

Hooray for Christmas decorations!

They are undoubtedly my favorite of all my home decor items. I love to decorate for Christmas!

But, of all the Christmas paraphernalia, mini white Christmas lights are my favorite.

After decorating this year, I had to sheepishly ask my husband to help me move the piano so I could plug in another extension cord, so I could spread out the five strings of white lights that I currently had on a single extension cord. I know, not the best idea to be loading them all on one like that, and, yes, I got that incredulous, husbandly look that says, "My wife may be losing it," but they are so pretty! I have them twisted into a wreath and twining through a rustic basket of pinecones and peeking through lettering in a little tin box that reads, "Peace on Earth." They're peaceful and bright and cheerful and cozy.

They wouldn't be nearly as nice in the middle of the summer.

The weather pulls us outside then, and the sun shines brightly through the windows nearly all our waking hours.

But in the winter, oh ho!, the winter is perfect for decorating with light. As we cuddle in for a dark, Midwestern evening, those little points of light are enough to gently brighten an entire room.

I don't think it's an accident that we use lights to make our homes ready to celebrate the nativity of our Lord. John 1:4 says that the life He brought was light. Light shines best in the dark. What a dark world He came to save:

the people were oppressed, conquered by a ruthless, godless emperor; that nation was stretching its tentacles of control into every corner of the known world, creating one world empire, and allowing no place to hide; taxes were oppressive; infants were slaughtered at a whim; regional rulers were suspicious and groped for power; pleasure was king, and those who refrained were eyed suspiciously; human life was cheap.

It sounds a bit like a world I know today.

Maybe all these crises and issues of the last century are not as original as we think.

Maybe all our panic over controversies and emergencies should be put on pause to give us a little time to reflect on His light.

For surely, the light that pierced the darkness in that stable in the shadows of Bethlehem in the depths of Israel in the blackness of the Roman Empire still shines brightly today. Indeed, it is multiplied exponentially in the Spirit-filled Church He left behind on earth!

John 1:5 says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Another way to read this is "the darkness has not understood it." We should be the most misunderstood people on the face of the earth. In a world of deep despair, self-gratification, and false worship, Christianity does not make sense. We die to live, lose to gain, glory in suffering, have peace in chaos, and hope in an unseen reward. 

We look like madmen, yet we claim to have the cure for what is wrong with the world:

Wholeness for the broken;

Healing for the sick;

Light for the darkness.

Of Feasting and Fasting

All too often, I hear myself telling God about how things look like they are going to be tight, that I don't know if things will stretch far enough, that He is going to have to cover a need if He wants me to do X. Then, I stop, look around the house, and sheepishly take my worries back as I start to thank Him for everything He has already provided. I mean, really. We have a home. Food in the fridge and in the pantry. A washer and dryer. Furniture to sit on; a bed to sleep on. Indoor plumbing. Safe drinking water. Central air and heating.

How rich are we?

I once heard someone say something along the lines of, "If you only had tomorrow the things you thanked God for today, what would you have left?"

Yeah, I started listing everything.

You've all heard the lecture about taking our lifestyles for granted when so many have so little. I don't mean to add this post to the ranks of white-middle-class-guilt-inducing literature. We don't have to feel guilty. But we should definitely feel grateful. And then we should act gratefully.

If we're grateful, then we're not entitled.

If we're not entitled, then we can give it up (or give it away).

But we don't like to give things up. Think, for example, of the last time you heard fasting mentioned as something a modern American should do. Can you think of a time? Even a time in church?

I used to fast more often. I would take a day a week, even, when I had something that needed some extra praying. It was a strange experience, almost enjoyable, once I stopped thinking about all the things I couldn't eat and just started using that time to focus on my prayer. (I did not know how all-pervasive food was to my thought life until I started doing this. It was unnerving.) The experience was freeing, in a sense, from my normal concerns; it proved to me that I could ignore this urge for a while, that it was not my master.

This month, I've been fasting from desserts and other highly-sugared edibles. Why? Well, the short answer is, "Because I didn't want to."

Note: The moment you tell God that you are not willing to give something up, know that that item is going, and going soon.

Thankfully, He brought me to the point of giving up my sweets through gently working in my soul, rather than creating a medical crisis necessitating such actions. He could have done it that way, but maybe He knew I would whine a lot less if He brought me to it this way.

Today, I have eight days left in the month. I have passed on birthday cake and s'mores. I have resisted doughnut holes and caramel cake. I've looked the other way while Preston ate ice cream or as I walked through the checkout aisle in the grocery store. And, yes, I have set a few select items by in the cupboard or freezer until October 1.

But I have been free.

I have had (almost) a month when I could say no to that sweet something calling my name. I have walked away from dessert and realized that I didn't feel hugely disappointed or like I had missed out greatly. I have not worshiped a brownie in weeks by putting enjoying it ahead of my health or my goals or of God's desires for my life.

I conceived of the goal as a weight-loss maneuver, but it has become a spiritual journey.

Oh, the temptation is there: if not to eat something sweet, then at least to fantasize about what I will eat as soon as the thirty days are past. But to know that God has given us these foods, that they are good, and that they are not my master, that is the real treasure; and, oh, it is sweet.

Glorify

One morning, I was out for my jog, praying as I slogged along – that’s what I do while I jog to keep my mind off how miserable and sweaty and miserable I am – and I used the phrase “Father, I glorify You.” I stopped (mentally, not physically) and thought, “How do I glorify God? What does that even mean?” I turned the question over in my mind a while, but nothing happened to clarify the issue for me. I brought up the topic again on later jogs but each time to no avail.

Honestly, I had really forgotten about my thoughtful wanderings until something happened this past weekend that brought them blasting back to the forefront of my attention.

My sister got married last Saturday, and she gave me the honor of standing as one of their official witnesses to their marriage. (I just about signed the marriage certificate with my maiden name but caught myself just in time!) It was the morning of the wedding, and we were all together in a friend’s home getting ourselves ready, getting her ready, laughing and chatting and fighting nerves and watching the weather and doing all those sorts of things that women do on days like those. I had brought a steamer (a good investment when in lots of weddings, especially since I had found it at a garage sale – hooray for bargains!), and so the task had fallen to me to make sure the last stubborn wrinkles were erased from her dress.

I had my head under a layer of tulle, my hands busy coaxing a few last creases from the satiny under-layer, my mind filled with thoughts of how I would next do my hair and my makeup and how I would make sure the curls in the back looked ok even though I didn’t have a real good mirror and how I needed to hurry because I didn’t want to be that bridesmaid that was late and kept everyone waiting for pictures while I preened and how I was running short of time. (I tell you all this so you know that I really wasn’t looking for spiritual revelations or paying any particular attention to spirituality of any sort; I’m really just a normal person.) In the midst of all that mental clutter, with my head under the skirt of a wedding dress and with my sister sitting a few yards away getting her hair done, the word “Glorify” whispered through my mind.

And it made so much sense.

She was the bride, and we were all there to make sure that she was ready to meet her groom in another hour. She was the point. She was the one who needed to look really good. The rest of us were just there to draw his eyes to her. We were glorifying my sister.

Don’t you see, silly girl? That is what it looks like to glorify God.

He is the point.

Make Him look good.

Use your life, forget about how you look to others, and start worrying about how you make Him look to others.

Glorify Him.

By Definition

“When words lose their meanings, people lose their lives.”

In a sense, I feel I have already lived too long when I can say that I have seen one of the oldest words in human history lose its meaning here in this fair country.

This has not been a win-lose equation. This is no zero-sum game. We have all lost.

Oh, my brothers and sisters, we have had the seven years of plenty. Are you ready for the seven of famine?

When wickedness feels threatened, it will either flee or attack. With this ruling, it is done with fleeing; but it will not be finished feeling threatened.

Choose this day whom you will serve. Then stand therefore.

Do not think that this is a clash of preferences, of cultures, of demographics, or even of individuals. Our struggle is against powers and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Do not believe that this is a new problem, that we are the first to encounter such straits.

Our international family has lived – and yes, grown – under such circumstances for two thousand years. America and representation and liberty have not been the norm for this family. Think rather of North Korea, of China, of ISIS, of Hitler, and you will come to know what to expect.

Expect trouble.

Expect pastors in prison for standing by their convictions.

Expect parents losing their children for teaching them Biblical morality.

Expect friends to desert you, to slander and to vilify you.

Expect religious organizations – including schools and hospitals – to be sued into nonexistence when they want to hire according to their beliefs.

Expect all this to be only the beginning.

Expect to be hated. He said we would be. After all, He was hated.

But He has overcome.

So take heart.

Live your salvation.

Have faith.

Act righteously.

Speak truth.

Welcome the Spirit who lives in you.

Abide in His Word.

Refuse to panic.

Be the embodiment of love.

Walk in peace.

Pray.

And having done all, stand.

Did God? Or Did I?

Last weekend has left me pondering the supremacy of God in tension with the free will of humanity.

Two tragic deaths occurred within hours of each other. On Thursday night, friends lost their infant son. He was born with a rare heart condition but lived long enough for the natural familial love to grow stronger through enjoying daily interactions and reveling in his personality. On Friday morning, my husband and I were driving to a church event and came upon the detour caused by a crash which resulted in the death of a husband and father from our church. A semi-driver had failed to notice the intersection.

How does faith meet with real life when we desperately desire to discover that it has all been a bad dream?

I know that God allows choice. He started with Adam and Eve and hasn't changed since then. We know what they chose. Is that what God wanted? Or did He give them the choice in spite of what they would do with their freedom? Was their disobedience and His plan for buying humanity back His original plan, or was it some sort of beautiful patch-up job?

But I also know that God had every day of every life numbered before a person draws breath. That means that, should someone hold a gun to my head, I can rest easy because, if it is not in God's plan that I die that day, there is nothing that person could do to kill me; yet, if God's story for my present life
closes at that point, nothing anyone does can change it.

So which is it?

Did God's plan make allowance for disease and human error and plain evil, knowing all the while that He could still work beauty?

Or were these tragedies part of His will from the get-go since no one can change what He has done?

And what about moral failure? Surely this is another sort of death, as Adam and Eve discovered. Surely God's plan couldn't actually include sin in the life of His child!

I know that I am not the first to ask these question. I will certainly not be the last. Yet knowing that I am not alone in the confusion provides poor comfort.

These morose mental musings of mine received an abrupt shaking on Monday morning, when a text surprised me. Our fourth nephew had decided to make an early entrance, and the joy of a new life appeared as a beacon, as if this new development promised that a turn for the better had taken place.

His safe and unexpected arrival jolted me enough that I could grab some perspective: there's more going on in all of this.

Whatever combination of God's plan and human action occurred this past weekend, the result is that two are in heaven, and God is making their stories beautiful. They have life like never before, joy beyond our imaginings. They receive His rest as they await their bodily resurrection.

When God's child fails - and every one of us will until we are finally and fully freed from sin through the first death - there is another (sort of) resurrection that can occur. With the admission of guilt and the plea for forgiveness comes a continuing of the new life that breathes into us from the time of salvation to our physical death. We are not saved again, but we are reminded of our death to sin and our being raised to new life in Christ. We begin again, much like beginning a new life, continuing to trust in His plans for us.

And they are good plans.

I know that, whatever the God-ordained combination might be of my working and His planning, His eyes never widen in alarm over my decisions, and He works my decisions into His will. It doesn't matter that I can't understand it all. (That's why He is God and I am not!) What matters is my response: trust? or panic?

And much like the birth of our little nephew this Monday morning, hope is born in my heart with every reminder of God's overwhelming love for me, of His gift of more grace than I know what to do with, of my freedom from striving and guilt.
And it comes unexpectedly.
And it comes beautifully.