There Is always Hope...

      I sort of knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.  But not totally.
      Sometimes it's easier for me to figure out who or what  I don't want to be as opposed to the other...
      Right now I'm working my way through an Old Testament book that I've avoided for almost 60 years, if that tells you anything. And I have to say that I now know without a shadow of a doubt I would not want to be in Ezekiel's shoes...er, sandals.
       Years ago, when I had the privilege of sitting in on an international Bible class, I remember vividly a lesson on Abraham and Isaac. How God promised Abraham a son. How Abraham waited quite a while for that promise to be fulfilled.  And how, after the long-awaited son had been given, one day God told Abraham to sacrifice that son.
       I remember to this day when  the teacher stopped in the narrative and asked the students to put themselves in Abraham's place.  Then she asked them how they would have responded to God's request.  One student from S. Korea looked at the text, looked at the teacher, looked at the text again and blurted out, "I would say, 'God, You are crazy!"
     I can only imagine what he would say to many of the passages in Ezekiel...ha!
     How do you read a book like Ezekiel... or is it even really meant to be read?  Maybe someone else  just slipped  it into the canon of Scripture when no one else was looking?
     I can't say I understand the book totally (and I'm only up to chapter 20...).  But I can say that using a modified form of Kay Arthur's study method (which I am sure is not unique to her) has helped a bunch.  For the first time, the book actually makes sense to me.

     This  study method centers around answering who, what, when, where, why, and how and also encourages the student to color code key words and repetitive phrases. I don't try to answer every question on every chapter. And sometimes I don't find the "when" information that helpful.  This time, however, I did.
     For one thing, Ezekiel's messages were delivered over a 20 year span. Reading it chapter by chapter over a period of days is like cramming a 100 course meal into a 30 minute lunch; it can lead not only to spiritual indigestion but can  also give a mistaken impression of Ezekiel as the 24/7 gloom and doom CNN prophet of the ancient world.
    Second, the list of impending judgments in Ezekiel is pretty severe.  But early on God tells Ezekiel to lie on his side fora little over 400 days - one day for every year of Israel and Judah's apostasy.  When I started reading the "woe-unto-you" messages, I found myself thinking, "Wow. God is really pretty harsh here!"  Then  as I read farther into the catalog of Israel's sins, it suddenly hit me, "Wait a minute!  Is he saying that these people engaged in wholesale murder, witchcraft, idolatry, and child sacrifice off and on for 4 centuries???"  Okay... I'm saying that if I knew my neighbors were putting their firstborn through the fire, I wouldn't wait 4 seconds to do something, let alone 400 years.
   So then I had something new to think about: the long-suffering patience  of God toward His people.
   As I continued to read in Ezekiel, I realized that God, through the prophet, is laying out a case against His own people and that "case" involves  enumerating their sins which involved a cycle of sorts.  The cycle went like this:  God would reveal Himself to them and the people would obey.  Then as they became prosperous, they would begin to rebel, wanting to be like the pagan neighbors surrounding them.  This would break God's heart and endanger the people as they relied on  false allies (instead of God) and adopted cruel "worship" techniques as well as a sort of "anything goes" type of mentality.  So God would send or allow national trauma to come their way, often in the form of rotten kings who would exploit the people for their own purposes.
     These difficult times would lead the people to repent and cry out to God for help.  He would always hear and rescue them.  But then the cycle would start again: prosperity to arrogance to blatant national sins to judgment.  Now, after 400 years of putting up roadblocks periodically to turn the people back to Himself, God has obviously had it.  Israel is headed for judgment on an unprecedented scale.
    And yet, through Ezekiel, God is still trying to reach them, still trying to warn them.
   Understanding this time frame - the long record of sin in their history as a nation and the decades of warning and prophecy that God gave them through Ezekiel - all this gave me a different perspective on this prophetic book.
     But there is one more thing about the timing of these messages that is so typical of most, if not all, of the prophets and that is future hope.  This message encompasses the past, the present, and the near future of Israel and none of that looks very good.
     Yet in the midst of the litany of sins committed by the people and the judgments they are in the process of bringing on their own heads, there is a word of hope and that is that these judgments will not be in vain.  Their suffering will not be wasted.  The ones who survive the harrowing times that are coming - those will eventually  be regathered into their land. Because of their afflictions, they will seek God, abhor idolatry,  and experience His blessings once again without straying.  Beyond that, there is an even greater time coming when dry bones will live and the people as a whole will experience a heart transplant, God's heart for theirs, His ways for theirs...
     To have a new heart, one that instinctively wants to love God with every fiber of it's being and one that  also desires to love others as himself, that's no small thing.  What a promise!
      Maybe their past was not so good... (Can we say understatement?)  And maybe the present is pretty bleak... And maybe things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better...
     But when God promises "better", no one can beat it.
    The God of Abraham, Isaac, and, yes, also Ezekiel, is not crazy except perhaps in His patience and overwhelming love for us.  He is just, yes. And He allows us to make our own beds and then lie in them, as we say in the South.  But He never leaves us in the painful  past or the frightening  present, always He points us to a future day... of hope... with Him.
   

   

Looking back...

      Somehow  I learned how to read.
      I don't think I was always in the Bluebird Reading circle.  Somehow, I think I ended up in the Happy Squirrels reading circle in second grade, which was not a stellar year for me as I recall.  But I still learned how to read.  And do cursive.
      I don't think I ever liked my school clothes.  I mostly wore hand-me-downs from my older sister and, therefore,  was seldom an icon of elementary high fashion.  If my jeans were patched, it was because they really needed to be.  But I don't remember being scarred by any of that.
     I really didn't like saddle oxfords.  In first grade, my assigned hallway and bathroom "buddie" would kick me with hers when no one was looking.  To this day I have no idea why we didn't like each other.  I just know saddle oxfords are not the thing to be kicking people with.  After I figured out she could kick faster and harder than I could, I asked to be assigned another hallway buddie and that took care of that.  Today, I guess my parents would sue the school and demand that the school provide counseling.  And maybe people would watch me for the next ten years or so to see if I was going to retaliate for being bullied by  bringing a gun to school or not... Sadly...
     I don't remember scintillating reading/workbook material in the elementary grades.  As I recall, Spot was pretty slow off the mark and Jane wasn't in the running for Wittiest Girl in the yearbook line up.  I do remember spending about an hour a day two or three times a week practicing writing in third grade, usually at the end of the day when the teacher was a bit frazzled.  When she told us to sit and write, we did.
    And I recall waiting with baited breath for the day when I could use skinny pencils with real erasers instead of the fat ones without.
   I also recall being assigned a memory verse to work on each week - the teacher gave it to us on Monday and we had to recite it on Friday. By second grade, I had already decided that the Bible was too wordy.  One verse in particular gave me fits because it was "too" long; as a result, I totally disliked it.  In my college days, it would come back to me and be my favorite verse for those tumultuous years.  It was Matthew 6:33 "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you."
   A hundred years ago, when I was in junior high and high school, my parents could not check on my grades with  the click of a mouse. This probably saved my life several times over. Seriously:)
   But the main thing I recall learning, along with science, math, history, language, etc was that the world did not revolve around me.  If my grades were slipping, my parents dealt with me and not the teacher. My grades never slipped for long.  Somehow, in spite of lost reading notebooks and a sour attitude toward math in the seventh grade, I graduated from high school and college with honors.  I guess my parents and teachers also knew how to correct "sour attitudes..."
   In fact, when I made the mistake of complaining about a junior high teacher being "forgetful" and "stupid", my mother made me cut a piece of paper up into 130 tiny squares.  Then she explained to me that my teacher dealt with this many kids every single day and that if she occasionally forgot something, it was small wonder.  Then she lectured me about respect. And then she made me pick up the pieces and throw them in the trash.  I never called a teacher stupid again after that. (Although we did imitate our college professors once I left home.. .Actually great fun... :)
    I don't know if the educational system was "better" back in the 1960's - I just know that, for me at least, it worked.
    Somehow, I learned the things that I needed to know.  And that didn't include just math, history, science, and language...
    And perhaps the most important thing I learned was that the educational system (and indeed the world) did not revolve around me.

Would you consider?

      When I was about 12, I went to the Gulf of Mexico with my youth group. I had never been to the Gulf or to any large body of water and I was thrilled. Before long I was sitting near the shallow water, making a sand castle, thinking I was really cool stuff in my cute bathing suit, so far away from home.  Can we say, "Big adventure????"
      The water began to lap up closer to my creation but I just sat there, unconcerned, still building my sand castle.  As I concentrated on my work, a small wave came towards me.  I saw it but didn't think much about it.  Until it "slapped" at me and, to my surprise, I instinctively slapped back at it -not kidding!  My hand of course, sliced right through the water and the next wave plowed right into me, turning me tip over whatever as they say,  landing me right on my soggy posterior.  Needless to say, my sand castle was no more.... It was one of those  memorable looking-over-the-shoulder moments to see if anyone was watching....:)
     I'm pretty sure that my science teacher had tried to educate me about the density and power of water but what he obviously had not accomplished in an entire 9 month period of classes, nature accomplished in about 30 seconds.  Suddenly, I understood the power of water a whole lot better than I ever had before!  I lost my sand castle but I gained a healthy respect for waves, large and small, that has never left me!

     The same with ice.  I understood the scientific principles behind "bridge may ice over" etc.  Everybody knows cold air flows under a bridge.  If the air is cold enough and precipitation is falling, regular roads may be just wet while the bridge may be as slick as axle grease...  I "got that" or so I thought.  Until one evening, when it was raining and the temperature was hovering around 31 degrees and I was driving home from church, radio on, heater on, happy as a clam in the drizzle. And then, voila!  Suddenly I was putting on a show for the people in the car behind me, sliding toward a bridge railing and then pirouetting gracefully towards the next railing, which I also hit, and then finally coming to a rest that would have made the makers of the Disney film, Cars, envious - basically ending up backwards in the median.
      I can still remember reaching down to the floorboard to find my glasses and rubbing my forehead where I had hit the ceiling. I also remember the open-mouthed expressions of wonder on the faces of the people in the car behind me as they slowly, gingerly passed me.  And I remember vividly, a few hours later, telling my brother about the wreck.  He was all sympathy until he broached the "$64.00 question":  Cathy, were you wearing your seat belt?
      Let's just say that my brother is big on safety and before that accident, I, um... wasn't.  He had reminded me from time to time to wear my seat belt and had also patiently explained why it was best to do so. But I was too smart to worry about things like that!  For me, the seat belts were too restrictive. (i.e., wrinkled up my  cute dresses...)  The signs on the bridge about icing over in cold weather  were just fodder for my sparkling wit.    Bridge may ice over...  Duhhhh...  Tell me something I don't know... Ha!

     After I proved that, yes, bridges can ice over when wet, my wit sort of went missing. And when Glen asked me if I been wearing my seat belt, I wasn't so cocky as I answered, "No, I'm afraid I wasn't."  The next thing out of my brother's mouth was, "I'll talk to you later." Click! I knew he was upset and that was his way of not "unloading" on me for ignoring his sound advice and putting myself in danger.
    However, again there was an upside to that little adventure on ice.  I mean, just think!!!   I learned the power of combining a moving car with traction-less ice and I got a wild ride into the bargain!  Awesome!   (Not.... )
    My point is this: if we need to understand the nature of wind, fire, flood, and, um, ice (not to mention lightening... ha!), don't we also need to understand the nature of God who made them all?   If you don't believe in God, then the answer to this question is clearly "no". But if you profess to believe in God, then shouldn't it be a priority to know Him  as He really is and not just as we want Him to be or think Him to be?
    When I read in the Tanakh (the Old Testament), I see over and over that God let His chosen people beat their heads up against difficult, even tragic circumstances because they kept thinking they had Him all figured out when they didn't.  Over and over, He worked to reveal Himself to them and over and over, they kept veering off after false gods.  Finally, He just took  His hands off them and said, "Okay, follow the desire of your heart, trust in your own intellect and see where it gets you.  After you've done it your way and found yourself sliding on thin ice and hitting a wall, after you've suffered, after you've followed the trail of your desire to it's broken end, you will look up. I will be there. I will gather you to Myself. And finally, you will know Me."
     I am 100% sincere when I say that I'm so glad the God of the universe loves  us and wants us to know Him personally.   I'm equally sincere when I say that I don't want to be so hardheaded that He has to take His hands off my life and let me learn the hard way. Yet I know I can be.
     Right now it seems to me that our approach as a modern  nation to God is so cavalier that it's scary.  I don't mean that lightly.  We take our theology from television, from talk show hosts, from subjective accounts of spiritual adventures and even from our own wishful thinking.  God will never do such and such...    The Bible is outdated....   Oprah says.... This scientist swears that he experienced...   I mean, God loves everybody...
     God does love everybody, no question.  But above all, He wants us to know Him, depend on Him, and base our lives on solid truth. Truth matters more than we, in this day and age, seem to realize.  The truth is that when a twelve year old girl gets in a contest with an ocean wave, the wave will win! (I truly  thought I understood water  because I had messed around in a kiddie pool and dog paddled around in a pond!)   I needed to learn to respect water (and ice!), not for what I thought it was like, but for what it really is.  If this is true about the elements of nature, how much more true is it about the nature of our creator, the One with whom we will all eventually have to do?
     Jesus said,  "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock, 
     and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and burst against that house and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.

      And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand.
      And the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house, and it fell, and great was its fall.  
      Matthew 7:24 - 27.
     
     Sometimes when I pray, I just stop and ask God to help me know the truth, to protect me from deception, to enable me to really know Him as He is, not as I think He is.  It's good prayer, one He's never failed to answer.

    If you haven't prayed that prayer lately (or ever), would you consider giving it a try?
     Just sayin'
   

Grace? Or Just Mind Games?

I hope your Christmas was good. Frankly, ours was a mess.

We had Boness stay with us over Christmas.  It was his first experience at seeing lightening strike up close and personal. (A first for us also....).  Basically at about 11 a.m. on Christmas morning, when I mistakenly thought my biggest problem was getting the ham warmed up, the deviled eggs finished, and the green beans ready to take to my sister-in-law's house for Christmas lunch, I found out I was wrong.  Priorities changed...

While I was sitting at the kitchen table, wondering if I had the right amount of salt and pepper in the egg mixture, lightening was about to hit the house right behind us.   We share a utility pole with that house and why our house didn't catch on fire as Butch's did, we have no idea.  

We never heard any rumblings or warnings of what was to come. We never even saw a flash of light. My sister-in-law who  lives just up the hill from us saw lightening at ground level on both sides of her house and heard a weird rumbling  but as far as we knew, one minute everything was fine and the next there was a huge explosion which shook our house momentarily, caused light bulbs to explode inside the house, and took out half our power.   The next thing we knew, smoke was billowing from Butch's house and then, before the fire trucks could get there, flames were shooting up over 8 feet above the roof.  It was a scary time.

God protected all of us.  (Windows cracked two houses down from Butch on the side away from our house. Also, neighbors on our street, three houses down, had light fixtures blown from the ceiling. All in all, we think as many as six houses, in an L-shaped pattern, were affected by the lightening strike).

These are some things that keep running through our minds as we process all this:

1.  Butch is elderly and has chronic health problems which are affecting his personality.  He probably shouldn't be living by himself.  There is a glass shop across from us and its owner,  Jason,  is the only neighbor who has regular contact with Butch now.  Also, Jason has contact numbers for some of Butch's family.  Although Jason runs the glass shop, he's often off-site putting in wind shields, etc and is almost never at the shop on weekends and holidays.  He just ran by the shop  Christmas morning for whatever reason and his visit just happened to coincide with the lightening strike.  He was able to contact Butch's family immediately and found out that Butch had recently been re-admitted to the hospital. This hospital visit not only saved Butch's life but the knowledge of his whereabouts  kept Phil, David, and Jason from having to run into the house to rescue Butch, something they were ready to do.  Being in the hospital is not something we normally think of as a good thing but in this case, it was.

2.  Our kitchen is small and I had been sitting directly under two light bulbs that shattered. Seconds before the strike happened, I decided to put the mustard in the fridge, stood up, opened the door, and leaned toward the lower shelf in the fridge.  Phil said that when I opened the door, he could see the refrigerator light was dark so the strike must have happened at the exact moment that I opened the door.  This was sort of important because the glass hit my back; otherwise, it would have rained down on my face and head.  As it was, I had on a thick sweatshirt and although I felt the glass pelting me, I didn't get a single cut.  Even now, I can't remember opening the refrigerator; I just remember putting my hands over my head, screaming and running into the next room where I suddenly realized that Phil was yelling at me, trying to find out if I was okay.  Even at that point, neither of us knew what had happened.  He thought the refrigerator light had blown up, cutting my face.  It was, for a few seconds, chaotic.  But the bottom line is that we were right there and neither of us got hurt.

3.  Boness was here on his computer in the spare room. He had his laptop plugged into the wall.  It ruined his charger and burned out his overhead light.  But the ceiling light didn't explode, he didn't get hurt, and his laptop still works, amazingly enough.  

4.  David was in the library with his headphones on, playing video games. He felt the room shake, thought, "Okay, I should be fried...", and turned off his electronics. Although electricity apparently arced through half our house, taking the power down with it, it did not touch the library.

5.  It destroyed our phone box outside and scorched a small area on our metal fuse box, destroying one fuse completely, but nothing caught fire.  And the only fluorescent that shattered was in our bedroom, a room we didn't stay in because our first thoughts were to check and see that the outside of the house was not on fire.  So any mercury that would have been released from it would have dissipated before we actually got into the room to clean it up.

6.  And, hard as it is to believe, the strike fried our surge protector on our computer (literally melted the inside wires) but our computer works.

Phil and I are both still processing this as I've said and probably will be turning it over in our minds for some time to come.

As I said, my biggest concern at 11 a.m. was getting the food finished asap.  We had decided to move the family meal up from 1 p.m. to 11 a.m. so that Phil's older sister, Mary Ann, could make it back to Hot Springs afterwards before the ice and sleet came.   We thought we had things all figured out and were erring on the side of caution!  In retrospect, the cautious thing would have been to have  ditched the green beans and then  booked it  to Linda's house at 10:45, Christmas meal be hanged!

If we had known to ask God to protect us from a lightening strike, we would have asked!  But it never occurred to us to do so because we didn't even know there was any danger of that happening.   We were asking God for travel protection for Mary Ann, not knowing that within thirty minutes there would be four emergency vehicles blocking our street, lights flashing, and that  after an hour, some of us would be carrying wrapped presents and plates of food in the wind and the rain to the nearest street corner where Mary Ann had her jeep, ready to take us to Linda's house.

As I've thought about this, I've wondered: should I be afraid of next Tuesday?:)  As I blogged earlier, someone set off a pipe bomb last week, on Tuesday, a couple of houses away from us. Now this Tuesday, the house behind us gets a direct lightening strike.   I'm kind of half-kidding about being afraid of Tuesdays but I can honestly see why people can get caught up in superstition.   We won't be covering  ourselves in lucky rabbit's feet for the New Year but we will be asking for protection for our neighborhood as people break out the fireworks (and in some cases, possibly gunpowder) in this area this upcoming Tuesday.

I've also wondered: if I had known the lightening strike was going to happen (ditto for the pipe bomb...)  and I had asked for God to stay His hand and prevent the bolt from ever touching earth (ditto the pipe bomb..:), would God have granted it?  I don't know.  I do know this: His power and goodness are not dependent on what happens to us personally. He's good because that's His nature. And someday we will stand in the presence of that goodness, all doubt removed.

But still, in the stress of the moment, questions arise.  When Phil told me point blank that it had to be God who caused me to decide, just at that precise moment on Christmas morning, to put the mustard jar into the fridge, is that the case?  Does God work through such simple things as putting up mustard jars?  Can I say, like a prophet of old,  God told me to put the mustard jar up!!  No, I really can't.    And I can't really argue with those who would say,  "Are you kidding me?  Lightening set the house behind you on fire and messed up the fixtures in your house and you think God was in all that???  If He was there, why didn't He prevent the lightening strike in the first place??  

I know (some) of the theology as to why bad things happen to Christ-followers, the primary one being that we live in a fallen world where lightening strikes, Godly young men slip and fall while hiking, and crazed individuals go into elementary schools and shoot up innocent children. But the question remains:  if He plans to bring good out of the bad that touches His children, why does He allow the bad in the first place?  Or maybe even more to the point, am I kidding myself? Am I clutching at straws to prove God was with us when... really He wasn't? Am I babbling about mustard jars and fridges when the lightening strike alone proves it was all just a freak of nature thing?

Basically, I'm asking if we're playing games when we say, "The tornado blew the house over the county line but God is good because Grandma made it out alive..."  I know many would say, "If God is so good, why doesn't He get rid of tornadoes altogether?"

I think it's a valid question.

I ran across a quote many years ago, after my mom and dad passed away from cancer, that goes like this:   a grace applied within a grace denied (John Piper).   What it means is this:  sometimes God doesn't "gift" us  with the big things but within that large grace gift denied, He gives us smaller things. Piper puts it this way.  Suppose we are getting ready to go on a road trip and we ask that our trip will go well. But along the way our car breaks down, our request for a smooth trip is denied. We don't get the larger blessing. But what if God brings along a total stranger with a tow truck to help us?  That is a "gift", a matter of grace given and received, only on a smaller scale.

Going back to the Christmas day lightening strike we can see that God gave us  multiple "smaller graces" which, in retrospect, seem not so small at all. Preserving David and Boness from harm while they were on electronics.  Preserving me from being cut in the midst of falling glass.  Preserving Phil who was in the kitchen but never felt any glass falling or even realized the bulbs were broken. Preserving Butch's life and also, once again, protecting Jason, Phil, and David by giving them crucial information that kept them from having to run into the house.  Even preserving all our major appliances - we don't even think we'll have to make an insurance claim.  Granted, we'd rather not have the trauma of a nearby explosion at all.  But still, we know we received grace  in time of trouble.

 As for Austen's family,  I can't speak for them  - and I don't have to.  They are maintaining an awesome testimony to God's grace even in the midst of their grief. They may not use the term, a grace applied within a grace denied - and their loss is huge -  but they are living the truth of that phrase.  If you haven't gone to the FB page, Prayers for Austen Elders, you might want to check it out. It's very encouraging.

 And I clearly can't speak for the residents of Newtown, CT. At all.

But I can say for us that in the midst of a larger grace denied, we personally received multiple "smaller" graces applied that in the long run add up to so  much more than we could ever hope to deserve.

Truly, it's all grace.

And  we are thankful.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad Christmas after all....

---

Glorious Impossible

    Life is full of ironies.
    This past Tuesday night, my husband and I were watching the Charlie Brown Christmas video.  At 10:30, we had reached the place in the video where Linus takes center stage with his blanket and starts to explain what Christmas is all about.
    Just at that moment, an explosion went off in our neighborhood. We didn't know where it came from but we knew it was near.  It was too loud to be a shotgun and it literally came out of nowhere, without warning.  It wasn't a tree crashing due to high winds. Andi t wasn't thunder, as much as we wanted it to be one of those two explanations.
    My husband went outside but couldn't see any problems.
    When the explosion occurred, the first words out of my mouth were, "I'm scared! Should we get on  the floor?"
    We never finished the video and in fact, we almost didn't go to sleep that night.  Basically, we sat and listened for we weren't sure what - another explosion?  Emergency sirens?  We didn't know.
    When things remained calm, we finally went into a fitful sleep, the Charlie Brown video forgotten.
     The next day a neighbor, when asked, admitted that one of their friends had set off a firecracker in a culvert.  This comforted me but it turned out to probably not be true.   That evening when I told my husband the firecracker explanation, he  just looked at me and said  there was no way.  He said it just about had to be someone putting gun powder in a pipe, i.e, a pipe bomb.
    As I had  walked around our little area Wed. afternoon, trying to find out what the explosion could have been and exactly where it came from, I not only heard the "fire cracker" story but also got a glimpse into the troubled lives of some of those who live near us.  I know their heartache and sometimes scary worlds are just around the corner from mine but when things are quiet, it's easy to pretend that they aren't, if that makes sense.
   I really felt fear come over me last Tuesday night and finding out that the explosion was only a couple of houses away from ours didn't make the fear any better.  Nor did finding out that the people who set the "fire cracker" off are known in the neighborhood for struggling with addictions as well as  domestic abuse.
   How can a world of heartache like that exist just a little beyond the threshold of my own world?  And how can it so easily impinge on my own world of Christmas cookies, music, and Charlie Brown videos?
   And perhaps more to the point,  how do I cope with such knowledge?
   I've decided that I  really can't. It's too deep for me, too scary. Bottom line:  I can't assuage  my neighbor's heartache any more than I can  guarantee that their own troubles won't ever impinge on our lives again.   Simply put, I don't have any quick solutions for them or life warranties for me.  Even if I moved away from them, I still wouldn't have any guarantees.
 
  This morning, as our pastor addressed the children in the congregation, he talked about making time for Jesus during this hectic season. Another irony. This season is, theoretically, all about Him.  Yet in our hurried schedules to shop, bake, fight traffic, shop some more,  clean house,  and then do it all over again, it's sometimes hard to find space for Jesus, for time alone with Him.  This too is a scary thought. What if Christmas comes and goes and I never even sit at His feet? Not once?  Is it that easy to shut out the Son of God?

   When the pastor addresses the children, he usually shows a short video clip to get their attention.  This morning, to our surprise, the video clip was from Charlie Brown's Christmas Story.  I'm seriously telling you that the pastor started the video exactly  where we stopped it last Tuesday when the explosion occurred.

   Phil and I  looked at each other in disbelief.  I mean, it's not every Sunday that you go to church and see Linus, in living color, holding his blanket and calmly reciting the  Christmas story...

   For me, the irony of seeing Linus pick up exactly where he left off (!) last Tuesday night at our house - well, that was no coincidence.  It doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with me - seeing "the rest of the story" this morning  was a God thing for us.  It was a reminder that no matter what danger or heartache exists around us (and often within us) that the Christmas story goes on.

   Christ didn't come to a world of jauntily clad snowmen,bright carolers out in the snow, stunningly lit Christmas trees, and calm, silent nights.

   He came to a world that was full of violence and pain, to an oppressed people living under the iron rod of ancient Rome. He was born in a stable (or some say, a cave) and I can't imagine that. I gave birth to our son in a birthing room, well-lit, with all the accouterments of home mixed with all the advances of medical science.

   If I find it frightening to live in a well-lit house just a fourth of a block away from someone experimenting with gun power, would I feel any safer huddled  in a  stable in a world where a king could, with just a snap of his fingers, give the order to exterminate all children under the age of 2 years old?

  The world has never been a "safe" place.  It just hasn't.  The human heart has always had a deep reservoir for pain and pain often, ironically, drives us to inflict more pain. On ourselves. On each other. On our neighborhoods.   On our world.

   Jesus came because He knew our good would never be enough to outstrip our anguish and/or outweigh our capacity for evil.  Or our capacity to fear, for that matter.

   He made Himself vulnerable for us. And the announcement of his birth, ironically,  was first made to  the lowest of society, outcasts, shepherds staying up all night on a forsaken hillside, probably just wishing the long night would be over so they could go home and get warm.  Maybe discussing politics and how much they hated and feared the Romans. Maybe wondering if the political zealots of that day would wind up getting them all killed (which they would).  Maybe saying how they wished Herod would kick the bucket so that life would be less scary, better somehow.

  " And then suddenly, an angel of the Lord stood before them... and the glory of the Lord shone around them..."*
   I bet the glory of the Lord lit up the whole night sky a zillion  times  more than the street lights in our neighborhood do.
   I bet those shepherds had mouths hanging open and knees that were buckling.
   I bet all thought of politics and warm beds (and broken neighbors who do crazy things late at night) just flew right out of their minds.

   Why?  Because God had shown up.
   In the form of a baby.

    "And the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people..."**

     Do not be afraid...
     For I bring you good news...
     of a great joy...
     For all peoples...

    This is the answer to my neighbor's craziness and to my own fear.
    God with us.
    Immanuel.

   

   

 

 
   * Luke 2: 9
   **Luke 2: 10

Raindrops on shoppers and Roses on kittens.. or something like that.

   There are some things that I don't like... but maybe I do... sort of.

   I think I don't like the goofy letters and numbers that pop up, asking you to copy them in order to prove you are not a robot as you try to post comments on a blog. I am not a robot and I prove it when I occasionally say choice words as I type, retype, and type yet again, trying to decipher these weird code words that are often indecipherable.  Then it hit me...these security password thingys are really an attempt at leveling the playing field. When a young person (such as our son) tries (and fails) to decipher a particularly crazy code word, he knows how I feel all the time when faced with technology.  This is a good thing!  (I think...)
   I think I don't like the hustle and bustle of last minute Christmas shopping.  But I must.. because I do it every year...  Yesterday, standing in front of a display case, list in hand, desired gift item in sight - I suddenly had no clue what to do.  The same basic item put out by two different companies.  So.. which one was better?  I didn't know so I made a new friend.  Like Buddie the Elf, I turned to the total stranger next to me and asked for her advice. She was very helpful, explained why one product was better than the other and seemed glad to help.  Maybe talking to total strangers in Wal Greens is my favorite... Who knew?
    I think I don't like the fact that we live in a "neighborhood in transition" where new neighbors occasionally turn out to be drug dealers. However,  I hear others complain about how no one is ever friendly in their neighborhood and no one ever bonds with each other.  Well, let me tell you: that is  not the case in our neck of the woods...  There's nothing like having a crack house or a meth house in the area to bring the rest of the  neighbors together.  Plus, all the interesting things that you have a front row seat to - like the biggest drug family in the 'hood busting it to mow the policeman's yard next door all summer long.. without being asked... just from the goodness of their hearts.:)   (It didn't work btw. The owner still got busted and spent some time in jail...)
     Another thing I think I don't like is pain and/or prolonged suffering.  And I don't. Of all the things I've listed here, this is by far the most serious.   But still, I have to admit that the sweetest people I have met are long-suffering Christians who have a walk with God that I envy. As I think of one who struggles to breathe and talk above a whisper, I have to admit that I was blessed more by 30 minutes of conversation with her than a whole day's conversation with most anybody else that I know.  I shouldn't have been surprised by that.  Years ago I had a friend who had been in a motorized wheel chair for 10 years. Before that it was a regular wheel chair. Before that it was a walker.  Basically she had been sick for 30 years.  But when I walked into her room one evening and she told me calmly that she knew Jesus had been standing at the foot of her bed, I didn't doubt it for a minute.  I knew she lived close to Him and that He, in turn, lived close to her.  In fact, from that friendship I realized that if you really want to be close to Jesus, you need to go where He goes. I don't know all of His favorite places but I know one... and that is anywhere His saints are in need.
    The list could go on and on but I'm sure you get the picture.
    I hope that the things you don't like also turn out to have a silver lining or at least a sliver of one!
    And that this Christmas you have the privilege of going to one of His favorite places, wherever that may be.
   

For those, like me, who wonder...

     There are some weeks when you just have to crawl into your Bible, look up into the face of God and ... cry.  For me, this was one of those weeks.  Following the story of a young man about the same age as my son, who fell off a cliff while hiking, miraculously surviving  only to have two massive strokes a few days later, I found myself asking, "Why?"  I've heard people say that you should never ask why. But then someone pointed out to me that Jesus Himself said, "My God, My God, why..." as He hung on the cross.
     Still, I sometimes feel guilty when I just don't "get it" and I can't help but cry out, seeking, sometimes demanding answers.  I know I shouldn't demand but sometimes I do.
    Then the school shooting in Connecticut.  When I saw the words "school shooting" scroll across the net news, it sort of hit me the way a headline about a traffic pileup does as in, "I'm so sorry!" but not  as in,  "I'm so shocked!"  That in itself bothered me greatly.  When did I cease to be shocked at the thought of someone walking into a school and shooting people?  I don't know but I know this: somewhere along the way our collective innocence as a nation is dying.
     It wasn't until I realized that the school was an elementary that my attention was fully arrested and finally the words, "What???? How can that be???" fell from my lips.    Because as  everyone knows, school shootings happen in the junior highs, the high schools, and the colleges - not in elementary schools.  At least, not here in America.  However, it was true and once again  a new barrier had been broken - someone had wantonly killed a bunch of kindergarten kids. Once again I found myself asking, "Why?"
    I loved going to church this morning and the pastor's sermon was so timely.   I had seen posts on FB urging people to pray that God would give pastors all across our nation the right words to convey the love of God today  in the face of the tragedy just two days past.  I believe God did that for my pastor but I don't know that I was able to completely accept it.  His message was that joy comes from knowing Christ and having the confidence that He gives us, the hope that He gives us, in the midst of confusing, often mind-blowing circumstances.  I really listened and in my heart, I'm still listening, still processing, still thinking. Asking myself yet another question: do I have joy even on a good day?
   Towards the end of the sermon, the pastor ran a video interview with one of our members. I knew the bare bones of her story.  A young couple, dedicated to God's service.  The husband appears to have the flu and then suddenly, he is convulsing or having a stroke - I wasn't sure which. And then he's on life support.  And my Sunday School class prayed. And the updates came. The young husband is  off life support!  He's going into rehab! He has to make more progress or the insurance companies will quit paying for rehab. Pray!!  And we did.. And then the last thing I heard was that all progress had stopped and this young man had been transferred to another facility.
   It's one thing to hear updates like that and it's another to see the young wife, smiling and then crying, speaking about hope while her husband is shown going through rehab with eyes that seem unresponsive and wooden steps that are possible only through wearing braces, through the aid of machines and through the physical assist of a therapist.
   And there is his wife, joy and suffering written on her sweet face, tears mingled with smiles.  And then her last word, holding both hands together, palms open, still smiling, saying that when she surrendered to be a missionary she felt the only way to approach God was with both hands held open, willing to receive whatever He gave or allowed, willing to go wherever He led.  Her point was that even now, four years into her marriage, blindsided by inexplicable suffering, she still feels the only way to respond to God is with open hands, open hearts.
   And I agree with that but as I was leaving to drive to the food bank where we get to serve sometimes, I found myself crying once again.  For Austen Elder's family.  For the families of Sandy Hook elementary.  For Brian and his sweet wife. And specifically I found myself brokenly saying, "God, you can restore Brian's mobility. You can restore his mind. Nothing is impossible for You. Please do a miracle in Brian's life."
   And then I got to the Outreach Center where I wasn't needed to help serve just yet. Someone suggested that I might want to go to the prayer room and so I did.  But when I got in there I thought, "I can't pray.  I don't know what to pray.  I don't want to pray; I've already prayed all I have the heart and mind to say."
   But I knew I was supposed to so I found a Bible in the prayer room and opened it to the middle thinking maybe the Psalms would help.  Instead, the Bible opened to the book of Job and I found myself thinking,    "Great. The most depressing book in the Bible. Just what I need..."
    But I started reading and I saw these words:  "Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth?  Do you observe the calving of the deer?  Can you count the months they fulfill, or do you know the time they give birth?..."  (Job 39:1-2)
   I am familiar with this passage and I knew that this word to Job from God begins with an even bigger question:  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"  (Job  38:4)   I started crying again and brokenly whispered, "No, Lord, I don't know how you formed the mountain goats and established their life cycle... No, Lord, I wasn't there when You formed the earth... No, Lord, I don't know how You laid the foundations of the earth..."
    In the past, I've never really liked God's answer to Job. Part of me wondered if it wasn't a cop out, that instead of answering Job's questions, God just sort of pulled rank.  Today I understood. When your heart is broken, explanations don't really help.  Even if God sat down and explained all the ins and outs of why these tragedies have happened and how He is going to bring good out of all of them, I would still hurt.
    What I needed to hear today was: joy is possible even in the midst of heartache... because of Jesus. He truly is the reason for the season.    And the other thing I needed today was for God to basically take my face in His hands and say, "Look at me, my child!  I created the world. I have done things you can't understand. I'm still doing things you can't understand.  Can you look up and trust my heart of love  until the day when you can understand, when everything will be made clear?"
    And thinking of Austen's mother, who has valiantly witnessed in t.v. interviews this week as she prepared to take her son off life support; thinking of  Emilie's dad who said that his prayers and love went out to the family of the one who killed his daughter; thinking of Brian's wife who smiled through her tears and held both palms face up while saying the only way to approach God is with open hands... thinking of these examples, I said, "Yes, Lord, I can look up and trust until the time comes when You will explain it all."
  As I've looked at the examples set before me of joy mingled with sorrow, faith shining through tears, I find myself thinking of the song,
  May the ones who come behind us find us faithful...
   Only for me right now, the song reads,  "May the ones who come behind me find me faithful... following the examples of those who have gone before me..."