For What It's Worth

February 8, 2012 Identity Theft of the Worst Kind

2012-02-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

If you are a victim of identity theft, what is your gut reaction? You get angry, right? You may be angry at yourself for being gullible or forgetful -- answering a phishing e-mail and supplying confidential information, or leaving a credit card on top of the gas pump -- but likely you are angry at the person who infiltrated your life for his or her own gain.

It would be reasonable to be angry in such a case. That kind of anger makes sense.

I'm angry this morning about a different kind of identity theft. The word "Christian" has been stolen out from under the Church and it pisses me off. And yes! Christians get pissed off, or they should. We are created in God's image, and God expresses emotions. He feels compassion. He is love, 1 John 4:8 tells us. And he gets angry.

If you look at scripture, God gets angrier at those who know him and disobey anyway than he does at those who are far away from him. Assuming you are a Christian reading this, that means that the God of the universe gets mad at YOU more often than he does at, say, a random evildoer getting his kicks.

This is not a comfortable thought.

But he is also angry when people masquerade as his people for the purpose of manipulating truth and spreading terror. One of the scariest passages in the Bible, to me anyway, is this:

John 7:15“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Powerful, effective people. Capable of persuading crowds, drawing followers. Performing miracles! I don't know about you, but I've never performed one. These folks apparently do it routinely. And Jesus says he's going to tell them that he never knew them. Sorry. No can do. Get out. Go to hell. Literally. I mean it....go. Now!

Jesus was speaking to Jews at the time, but certainly he could be speaking to Christians. "Among you," he might say, "among those who bear the label 'Christian,' are people who are working against me and my principles. I'm not talking about the ones who don't know any better, who are sincerely trying to please me and just happen to have their heads up their asses at the the moment (my paraphrase, obviously, of a hypothetical sermon). I'm talking about the ones who were recruited by Satan himself for nothing more than to do his own business: to steal, kill, and destroy."

People like Joseph Kony in Africa, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Well, hold on there, Ellen! We've always known that the Christian army is the only one in the world that shoots its wounded. Are you attacking a brother?

John Ocholo, a victim of the LRA's
practice of mutilating enemies.

Kony is no brother of mine. And if he's a brother of yours, you are no relation either. Kony claims to be a messenger of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, sent to follow the Ten Commandments. His methods? Take a band of followers, rape and then kill all the women in the village, kill all the men in the village, and either kill or steal the children to train them to be killers themselves.

Kony and the LRA has created such terror in Africa that experts believe the only solution is assassination. Kony is not the type to go quietly -- attempts to kill him have not ended well for the special ops soldiers sent to do the job. He and his army live on the move, hidden by the land, protected by the silence of those who fear them.

A village in Africa after the LRA's
"evangelistic" crusade.

So I'm angry. Angry at what he is doing. Angry that he calls himself a Christian, when he is just the opposite, a true anti-Christ ruling over his own little kingdom.

I'm also angry that instead of rallying behind whatever groups would work to end his reign of terror, noted radio commentator Rush Limbaugh committed the cardinal sin for the media. He went on the air and ran his mouth without even cursory research to support his venom, actually criticizing President Obama for sending 100 advisers to Africa to help combat the Lord's Resistance Army. He led listeners to believe that our president was trying to wipe out African Christians, thus proving his Muslim leanings. WTF? *

That's just wrong. And Rush knows it was wrong. But this was waaaay back in October, and he still hasn't retracted his statements as far as I can tell. A little two-step about being misinformed, but nothing along the lines of "I was wrong to imply that Obama is trying to kill Christians in Africa. I was wrong to use the tragic murder of women, men and children to further my own warped agenda. Please forgive me."

If he really wanted to make it right, he would apologize...publicly... to President Obama and the military personnel deployed to carry out orders against the LRA. And while he's at it, he should apologize to every Christian in the world who resents being lumped in with a rapist and murderer and kidnapper.

Being Christians, knowing that we require forgiveness ourselves on an appallingly regular bass, we'd forgive Rush.

Being smart, we'd find someone a bit more credible to listen to on the radio.

And if we are wise and good and deserving of the label Christian (literally, "Christ-like," so it's a real stretch for all of us) we will pray that God brings an end to the LRA very, very soon.

And that we will raise up as the kind of army of believers we are called to be: loving, compassionate, trustworthy, honorable, righteous...

Permission to reprint with acknowledgment of source.

*Wrong, This Feels! What did you think I meant? You were probably correct.

January 26, 2012 A Life Remembered

2012-01-26T04:11:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I was substitute teaching for a music class when the middle school science teacher came in, asking if I could sub for him the next couple of days. "You're Adam's mother, aren't you?" He'd seen my last name and said he remembered Adam fondly from his time playing baseball with his own son.

As he told me how friendly Adam had been back then, what a good ball player, I was inwardly waiting for the inevitable "so sorry for your loss" but it didn't come. So I asked how his son was doing. As a matter of fact, he'd just gotten married, was very happy.

Adam would be 27 as well, if he hadn't died following a car accident at the age of 16. Old enough to be married, raising his own little freckled and auburn-haired kids, playing catch in the front yard or throwing hoops in the driveway, spinning little girls around like airplanes just like he did his niece when she was a toddler.

Before he left, the teacher said, "He probably won't remember me, but if you think about it, tell Adam I said hello." He didn't know. So I told him, and he was, of course, sad to hear.

"Thank you, though!" I said. "It is so good to hear about Adam from other people."

Sometimes I wonder what he would be like today. Would he have fulfilled his dream of being a firefighter? I think so. As soon as he could talk, it's what he said he wanted to be when he grew up.

I so wish he had grown up, but I'm so thankful for the 16 wonderful years we had with him.

Yesterday, I stood before several science classes and promised an anecdote about their teacher. I told them about what he had said about Adam and encouraged them to be young men and women who would be remembered with such pleasant memories. Leave stories about their lives that would delight their parents one day to hear them.

To a student, the class transformed from boisterous, chatty middle schoolers to quiet, sympathetic ones. One asked if I had a photo of Adam with me, and I promised to bring in the one that sits on the dashboard of my car always. So I can see him often.

For a few months following Adam's death, I could call his phone number (this was back when it was cool to have an 800 number) and hear his voice. Now, I must get out family videos to watch him and hear him with his brother and sisters. I don't do this often, but it is a treat when I do. I freely admit, it is a treat accompanied by an alcoholic beverage.

If this bothers you, the thought of a mother sitting alone in a darkened room watching her son on the tv screen, crying and drinking a toast to his memory, please keep it to yourself. Unless of course you know what it is like to be Adam's mother for 16 years and then bury him. Otherwise, there's no frame of reference from which to comment. Even other grieving mothers know better than to say to one another, "I know what you're going through" because each loss is different, each acutely felt but each different.

The other evening I shared a girls' night out dinner with my sister-in-law and she happened to ask if it bothers me to hear the cousins talking about Adam. "Not at all!" I said. "I LOVE to hear about Adam, and to talk about him."

Painful? Of course. The only thing more painful would be if no one mentioned him. If no one remembered. His life was shorter than we would have hoped for, but we knew him. We enjoyed him. And we know that he will never be forgotten, because his was a life that is a pleasure to remember.

P.S. Another life that is a pleasure to look back at is that of my namesake niece Laura Ellen. Her birthday is today -- she's such a hard worker, such a loving mother. Although she lives several states away, I have so many happy memories of her life and wish her a very happy birthday today.

January 8, 2011 Revising One's Life

2012-01-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

My son Caleb turned me on to a website that lets writers upload their books at no cost and sell them. A few days later a friend to whom I mentioned the site shared an article about a woman who sold an astounding number of digital copies of her first novel there after being turned down by traditional publishers (who are now scrambling to get her to sign).

In 2006, I was toying with an idea for a novel when I came across a publisher's website that welcomed ideas for new books. CarePoint had found a niche -- group discussion workbooks. Immediately, I thought of what I would write, if I were writing such a thing. It would be for people who had been hurt by Christians. I even had a title come to mind: Baaad Sheep - When God's People Let You Down.

By the fall of 2007, Baaad Sheep was a reality. CarePoint had liked the idea and requested an outline. They'd liked the outline and sent a contract to sign. I'd holed up in my little shed/office in Lillington, North Carolina and done the research and the work. I can't begin to describe the incredible feeling of opening up a box of author's copies and seeing my name on the cover. Even if it was "just" a workbook, it was mine.

Last year, CarePoint closed its doors in order to pursue a completely different publishing venture about the same time we were preparing to move back to Florida. Then we were relocating my parents. Then I was busy with other things. I made a few anemic attempts to find another publisher for Baaad Sheep, but also heard - several times, from people I respected - that I might consider rewriting it as a "regular" book.

And then Caleb told me about smashwords.com. Currently, I'm incorporating the oral material I had recorded for introducing each of the ten weekly discussion group sessions and formatting everything so that smashwords' mysterious computer mechanisms will not say, "What the..?" when I try to upload it, spitting it back out and trying to wipe the bad taste off its mouth.

As I do this, I'm not re-reading every single word, but I'm re-reading a good bit of it. And I'm revising some of it. Have I really changed so much in five years? Apparently so. I say this not to justify any changes, but simply to say it has happened.

Have I changed any of my bottom-line convictions? No. I still believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God who came in the form of man to teach us, but even more importantly, to sacrifice himself once and for all time, for the sins of the world. I still believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

But where I once was more of black-and-white, I'm willing to blend those extreme ends of the spectrum at times and entertain more possibilities of gray. On absolutes, no. On disputable matters -- and there are so many of them, almost everything we fret about! -- yes. And probably not a minute too soon. I thought I was merciful before, but I need it more now in my old age (hey, the longer you live, the more opportunities to screw up) so I am better about dishing it out.

I'm not as church-focused as I once was. There is one verse in the whole of the Bible that cautions believers against neglecting regular corporate worship (and none that says anything about membership) and yet there are folks, lots of folks, who act as though going to church is the single most important part of their Christianity. I was right there with them for most of my life.

This morning, for example, we woke up to a fine Florida morning and I asked my husband if he wanted to go to church. We haven't found a church home since our move. We have visited around. There are still scads of them we haven't attended. He had something else he wanted to accomplish, and wanted me along. Would it have been "better" for me to demand that we go to church, or did I better honor my husband (and God) by providing pleasant companionship?

I was at first surprised in the last year or so at how many people I went to church with, say, 10-20 years ago are not attending church at all. They listen to tapes, watch television, read their Bibles, pray - in other words, they are still pursuing their walks with God. But not in church. I have heard it so often that I rather expect it now. It is as if a whole segment of my history has come to the same conclusion: it's not just about church. And if church was in competition with what God was wanting to do, God wasn't about to be the one that got left in the dust.

Issues, too, have needed tweaking. As I was re-formatting the manuscript today, I grimaced at some of what I'd written about divorce. The Bible says that God hates it, which I still find completely believable. God is the Creator, the giver of Life, Love personified. Divorce represents, in contrast, the death of love and relationship. But I would also have to acknowledge, at 54, that for some people I know and love, it has been healthier to go ahead and have the burial than try to live with a corpse. When a marriage has lost its meaning, I better understand why people can sincerely believe divorce to be the best option. Even the godliest option. And so I had some revision to do.

Perhaps the changes are much deeper and personal. I know that since writing Baaad Sheep, I have grown less codependent. I've grown in self-awareness and the ability to take care of my emotional needs. My writing may have reflected a tendency to look outward for affirmation and support, for nurture and affection. The older I've gotten, the less this is the case. I'm growing up!

All of that to say this: one of these days, a digital version of Baaad Sheep - When God's People Let You Down will be available at a ridiculously low price for purchase by (I hope) thousands and thousands of people with Kindles and other e-books. I think it will be a better version than the original.

Five years down the road, I could write it even better. And five years after that. Because I haven't "arrived" either as a woman, a writer, or....most importantly...a Christian. I may not believe in evolution as it pertains to Mother Earth, but I definitely believe in it for myself.

Some things are written on the fabric of the universe, unchangeable, immutable. I'm just figuring out that there are fewer things than I thought.

December 27, 2011 Fruit of the Loom

2011-12-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

My life is but a weaving between my God and me

I do not choose the colors he worketh steadily.

Oft times he chooseth sorrow and I in foolish pride

forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not til the loom is silent and shuttles cease to fly

will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why

the dark threads are as needful in the skillful weaver's hand

as the ones of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.

I was given that poem (author unknown) in a simple black frame some years ago from a long-ago high school boyfriend. We had maintained sparse contact over the years since he and his family moved out of the area but spent several hours one evening on the telephone catching up. There had been a time in both our lives when we were sure we would get married one day. There were other family members who were just as convinced.

Nice fellow. Handsome. Smart, funny. Good, solid family. Shared values. Mutual attraction, same interests and hobbies. He taught me to water ski; we refinished furniture together. Off and on for years, we would date, he'd break up with me, we'd date, he'd break up with me. Once, he called me long distance to propose, which may have been the proverbial straw. (To guys reading this who want to get an affirmative answer from their ladies: show up and do it in person. Just saying.)

The last time we broke up, I broke up with him and called him about a year later to tell him I was engaged. To someone else, a very different man then, a little older, a lot quieter. We went to the same church but had little in common --not that we really knew that then. We hardly knew each other! But we both had a gut-level knowing that we were meant to marry.

So when High School Boyfriend and I talked for hours, there was no wistful wishing we had taken the same road, but appreciation for the fact that our lives had progressed, apart, the ways in which they had. Married with kids, he had built a business and made it a priority to be the kind of dad he'd longed for growing up. Married with kids years ahead of him, ours were grown. I was a grandmother already. My husband and I had buried a son; High School had buried both parents.

There were times over the years, he told me, that he had grieved the loss of our relationship, but finally came to the conclusion that God had been at work through everything. He had focused on the tangled thread on the underside of the tapestry of his life and only glimpsed at the beauty of the intricately woven scene on the other side much later. Even the sorrow of lost loved ones -- whether lost through the choice of someone else through a break-up or divorce or door closed on a friendship...or the separation of death-- added, in the final analysis, to the final pattern. He had read a poem about it and said to look for a copy in the mail.

No one loses a friend or a love without wondering, from time to time, how life might be different now, but for things that happened or did not happen in the past. In the case of our high school romance, both the young man and I came to see that while we'd thought Plan A was (at the time) an excellent prospect, Plans B and C far surpassed it. Or maybe THIS is Plan A, and we came perilously close to missing it. Whatever. None of us is living the final version of our lives at any given point, anyway. There will be still many, many changes over time. Some will be sad, others will be ecstatic. We are each "in process" until our final breath.

The point is, as someone once said, don't "should on yourself." The shouldda, wouldda, coulddas of life will eat you alive, making it impossible to enjoy what you have now. We can relax and rely on one of the greatest promises of the Bible, found in Jeremiah 29:11-14a:

"For I know the plans I have for you,”

declares the LORD,

“plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future.

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me,

and I will listen to you.

You will seek me and find me

when you seek me with all your heart.

I will be found by you,”

declares the LORD.

Please note that it is the LORD who knows his plans -- not anyone else He is almost always annoyingly reticent to share his plans ahead of time. He asks us to trust him, to trust his love and his character, his sovereignty and his abilities, his mercy and his grace. It's not a bad arrangement: we trust the Creator of the universe to have a clue about what he's doing, we seek him rather than trying to run the show, and he delivers out of his own greatness. A good return on our investment of faith, wouldn't you agree?

I know -- life rarely resembles the Hallmark quality of the poem up there There is unspeakable and unspoken pain all along the way. A wife may suffer in silence for years before finding the courage to break away from an abusive husband. A child may grow up in anguish because of the neglect displayed. Betrayals and tragedies and addictions hold nothing of the perky hopefulness that poem conjures up.

But.

This life is just a breath. Two seconds, twenty seconds, hardly more, compared with eternity. And look at all the moments of joy and love we can cram into such a tiny slice of existence! Of course, there are hiccups and tears, no even flow of happiness. But we can trust that even then, laughter will work its way back to us again. We aren't stuck with this particular dark thread in the shuttle forever.

Randy with Randy III fishing

P.S. I am very grateful for the "thread" in my own tapestry that is my son-in-law Randall Keith Blanchard, Jr. Today is his birthday, and I don't even want to think about what our lives would be without him in ours. Happy birthday, Randy! We love you very much.

December 13, 2011 A Christmas Carol

2011-12-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday, I had the privilege of participating in a Christmas show produced by RubyLynn Productions with three performances held at the Pineapple Playhouse in Fort Pierce Dec. 2-4, and two at First United Methodist in Hobe Sound. The cast sang, danced, did skits -- both venues supported local causes. "We hope we've jump-started your Christmas," director Ruby Lynn Baker told audiences.

During part of the show, cast member Don Brown told the story of Silent Night's origin. I looked up the story on the internet and found several accounts with slightly different details, but Don's story was the first I'd heard, and so I choose that version of the truth:

A priest, Joseph Mohr, was unsure what to do. The organ in his Oberndorf, Austria church -- appropriately, the Church of St. Nicholas -- was damaged, and it was Christmas Eve, 1818! He was in a meditative state as he made his way home. New snow covered the countryside, and the beauty of the night brought to mind a poem he had written years before. If only there was music, what a fitting Christmas song! He went to Franz Gruber, asking that he write accompaniment. There may not be an organ to play, but Gruber was a gifted guitarist as well. Christmas Day, the church's little congregation heard the first performance of Stille Nacht, translated now as Silent Night.

Today, it doesn't matter whether or not Father Mohr was well-liked by his congregation, or whether or not he was a gifted priest. The words he penned have kept his thoughts alive for almost 200 years. It is sung in 44 languages, has been recorded by 300 artists. Bing Crosby's version sold over 10 million copies. Neither Father Mohr nor Franz Gruber could possibly know the tremendous impact their little song would create.

Perhaps you are guessing that I will turn this into a neat little Christmas present-feel good-story. I'd originally planned to segue from the story of one Christmas carol to cleverly (!) sharing about significant Carols in my life: Carol Creech, one of the few friends I remember from Cullowhee, North Carolina; Carol Bryan, dynamic Christian wife, mother, and mentor from my teenage years and beyond; fellow flutist Carol McNees Johnson whom I saw again this year and who invited me to Toastmasters -- what looks to be a great training organization I'm planning to become more involved with in the future.

Instead, I'm going to go another way altogether. It struck me, looking at the various accounts of Silent Night's origins, that the details do not always matter nearly as much as the outcome. "The devil is in the details," as they say (which, interestingly, was originally "God is in the details") and details are important. But as we see with Silent Night, whether the organ was damaged at all, or who sang it first, or if someone found the original and had it marketed years later...who cares, now that the entire world is familiar with the song?

How much time do we spend fretting over details that don't really matter? As we approach Christmas, is our time actually better spent stressing out over recipes and menus that will be soon digested and forgotten, or should we spend that time on activities with eternal significance...or, barring that high expectation, activities that will bring a smile to someone's face today?

Peace is a rare commodity in a household such as ours, and it saddens me that I am often one of the stumbling blocks to its presence. It is easy for women, especially, to become entrenched in the details of life, perhaps because we are so often judged by others based on those details. Numbers (age, weight, bra size, amount of time we exercise regularly, times we've failed in the past), degrees (level of education, level of housekeeping abilities, vicarious success - or not - through our kids and grandkids), emotions (perky today? PMS-ing? nurturing or not so much?). Details.

Proverbs 31 doesn't help, you know. Details surrounding the definition of a Good Wife ramble on and on for almost the entire chapter, each verse a potential stab to the heart of many a good woman who reads it and immediately recognizes how far she falls short of the ideal. Details can wound. Kill, even, the hopes and spirits of those of us still "in process" who haven't attained the full measure of our worth.

My Christmas wish for such women, who are striving each day to be the Perfect Wife or the Perfect Mother, or the Perfect Size, or the Perfect Christian, or the Perfect Whatever.....relax! It's not about you. It doesn't depend on you...and if it does, it shouldn't. Do your best, obviously. Develop your talents and skills and abilities, certainly, so that you are able to do what you do better. But know this: two hundred years from now, the details will not matter. You will not be around to know this then, of course, so learn it now.

The best we can be is to be the person God created us to be. He might have seen to it that I had different weaknesses, but we are all born with them. He might have arranged for my hopes and dreams to be fulfilled long ago, and yet hope is still, at 53, very much alive. Others may focus on the negative details they see all too prominently displayed in my life, but the God I trust and love, loves me just the way I am. The person I am now. The person I was yesterday. The person I will be tomorrow, and next year, and 10 years from now. That's a lot of details.

So I'm going to give that Christmas gift to myself as well. Peace is more important than plans. Relaxing in the joy of the season will matter, in the long run, much more than buying just the right gift or baking enough cookies.

All is calm, all is quiet....may that be true in our hearts this Christmas, and beyond. I am reminded of Robert Frost's wonderful poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Promises, like details, are important, but take some time this season to enjoy the woods...or the beach...or laughter with someone you love. Probably no one else will notice if you're a little late, but I'll bet they'll appreciate the added peace and joy you bring when finally you arrive.

November 28, 2011 The 2nd Tamar

2011-11-28T06:27:00.001-08:00

Last week, the Genesis-Tamar beguiled her former father-in-law into sleeping with her, thus getting pregnant and continuing her dead husband's line. For this, she was deemed "righteous" by Judah, the father of her twins. Not only that, she gets a mention in the gospel of Matthew in Jesus' lineage. The Bible doesn't tell us if her life was all that she had hoped for (after burying two husbands) but we'd like to think that she found joy once more, caring for her boys.

There's something special about mothers and sons. I've noticed the same thing with daddies and daughters. My first son, Caleb, is 34 today. We were a married couple for a year when Caleb was born; we were a family of three for less than two years when our first daughter came along. But those months with just Caleb were happy ones. Being a new, proud mother, I loved taking care of him.

The second Tamar's story has no happy endings, no chubby-faced sons bouncing on a mother's knees. In fact, I can't think of how Tamar Two's story could be much sadder.

Here is the context: King David has wives and assorted concubines, but still, he must have the wife of one of his mighty men. The heart wants what (and who) the heart wants. And too, from this spot in history, we know that David had to be married to Bathsheba in order for the wise King Solomon to be born - David's DNA + Bathsheba's DNA at that particular time = baby Solomon. It was, in some mysterious way I cannot fathom, God's perfect will for David and Bathsheba to meet and mate. Probably there was another path that didn't include adultery and murder (see 2 Samuel 11) but I may be wrong about that. I've been wrong before.

So. David and Bathsheba are married, bury a child, rejoice over the birth of Solomon. He also manages to battle the Ammonites and then, "in the course of time" (How much time? Scripture is vague on this point, as it is about so much.) one of his sons has a heart issue of his own.

Amnon was the son of David and Ahinoam, while Tamar and her brother Absalom were born to David and Maacah. Ahinoam and Maacah get little press, but their children provide quite a cautionary tale. It happened like this:

Amnon fell in love with Tamar. The Bible doesn't routinely describe its characters, but Tamar was beautiful. But get this:

Amnon became frustrated to the point of illness on account of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her. (2 Samuel 13:2, italics mine, of course - Bible do not use them, as you know)

We know right off that Amnon is a skunk, and that his so-called love for Tamar is only an infatuation, a physical attraction, lust - simple, and anything but pure. Real love, however misplaced it may appear to others, is still focused on bringing pleasure to the object of one's desire, of bringing him or her joy. Amnon's "love" is completely selfish.

The words for love used in this passage are the Hebrew aheb and ahab, but clearly, the Hebrews could have used another word for love, just as English could. There's love, and then there's love. We may love pizza, the Dolphins, Tim Tebow, the color blue, a favorite song, the way the water sparkles on a perfect Florida beach. We may love grandchildren, chocolate pecan pie, a friend's new hairdo, the fact that The Glades is back on tv. These loves are as different from what God intends for the crowning glory of his creation as...well, as Amnon was from Tamar.

Amnon is consumed by lust (I can't bring myself to use the word love in his case) for Tamar. He moans about it to his buddy and cousin Jonadab, equally maggot-like in character, who suggests a plan. Amnon should feign sickness, knowing that dear old dad will check on him (which actually surprises me...King David made visits to his kids when they were sick but didn't know what creeps they'd turned into?).

The oblivious David visits Amnon as planned. Amnon asks that Tamar come and minister to him, fix him some special bread, feed him herself. David thinks it's a fine plan. Perhaps he's touched, as any father would be, that his kids get along so well. Talk about clueless!

Tamar compliantly mixes the dough and cooks the bread before him. I assume they're making small talk during the process, catching up on family news -- when you've got that big a family, it would take time. The Bible doesn't say who else is hanging around, but it's clear that others are there, because when she finally offers him a plate, he won't eat and sends everyone else away.

"Amnon and Tamar" by Jan Steen (year, unknown)

"Bring it to me in the bedroom," he says, reminiscent of the wolf of Red Riding Hood fame. When she does, he grabs her and says...smooth talker that he isn't..."Come to bed with me." Or words to that effect. You get the idea that the writer of the story decided to make the X-rated circumstances as PG as possible.

Tamar, as you can imagine, is immediately upset, but shows her more excellent character. She doesn't knee him in the family jewels or scream for help. "Talk to Daddy," she says. "Don't bring shame on me or on the family or on Israel. I'm willing, if it will make you happy, but don't force me. Don't be a fool."

But he is what he is. He overpowers her, and rapes her. And this is how we know he didn't love her at all. Not only did he rape her, but this poster boy for bipolar suddenly discovers he hates Tamar, and tells her to leave.

Tamar, incredibly, is still concerned for Amnon's reputation more than her own. "No! If you send me away, that's even worse than what you've already done!" Tamar was quite a young woman, wasn't she?

And it just goes downhill from there. Absalom takes Tamar in, where she lives the rest of her life a desolate, sad, damaged girl. David gets wind of it and is "furious" but it's all bluff and bluster -- he does nothing. Absalom keeps quiet for the time being, but never forgives Amnon. Two years later, though, he orders his men to kill his half-brother.

David's first report is that all his sons have been killed, but the troll, Jonadab, tells David not to worry. "Only Amnon is dead. This has been Absalom's expressed intention ever since the day Amnon raped his sister Tamar."

Expressed intention. He'd talked about it. Jonadab was a cousin, closer to Amnon -- why hadn't he warned Amnon? Why hadn't David heard about it through the palace grapevine and dealt with it promptly?

Absalom flees, but it's not over yet. He makes a bid for the throne, breaks his father's heart, rapes David's concubines publicly, and is killed in battle. Tragic.

And you thought your family was dysfunctional. My mother commented recently that she never thought "our family" would be so messed up. And it's true, there are family members who won't speak to other family members. Division, divorce, personal devastation. Way too much drama. In fact, we've got just about everything within our extended family that King David had in his, or any other messed up family has in theirs. Because that's sort of the point: we are all messed up, to one degree or another. There are no perfect people. Ergo, there are no perfect families.

The best we can do is relish the happy times, like my son's birthday today, or Thanksgiving with so many of our loved ones last week, or getting to talk to my youngest grandson, or watching the other grandkids play together, or celebrating anniversaries this week: our 35th, our daughter Becky's 7th. We cling to all the joys we possibly can, wring out every drop of happiness we can manage in anticipation of the challenges we will face.

Jesus said that in this world, we would have tribulation. We will. If we haven't by now, we will eventually. We will fail others, and others will fail us. We will, most importantly, fail to live up to the standards God has provided. What makes the happiest families and the happiest people is the knowledge that nothing can happen that will turn true love to hate. The Amnons of the world don't understand that kind of love; they can't. They are not to be despised, but pitied.

Morals of the story: Fathers need to pay attention to their families, or things can get out of hand quickly. David was a man after God's heart, but he let down those closest to him. And if David did, it's a safe bet that we will too. But guess what? God used it all. He still uses it all.

I wonder what Tamar's reaction was when she learned that Absalom had avenged her? From the little we know of her, I'm guessing she wept. She was willing to marry a rapist and cover his sin for the sake of her family. I doubt his death brought either joy or closure. She lost her innocence, and two brothers, and must have lost respect for her father as well.

I told you it was a sad story. Perhaps God wanted it in the Bible to encourage us, much the same way people watch "Hoarders" on television....so we can say, with relief, "Well at least we're not that bad."

While we're sighing with appreciation that we manage to put the "fun" in "dysfunctional," we need to remember tat some families really do have it that bad, dealing with unmentionable tragedy every day. And they may live next door. May we be sensitive to others, grateful for what we have, and attentive to God's wisdom with everyone.

People. Sometimes you just shake your head and wonder what God thinking, and then someone comes along whose love and ability to bring you joy makes you shake your head for the opposite reason.

Caleb's one of those people for me....happy birthday, son!

November 20, 2011 A Tale of Two Tamars

2011-11-20T12:27:00.001-08:00

A young friend of mine texted me recently in anger. She was working on a Bible study, of all things, but she was fit to be tied. Who had stirred her up? None other than King David, the man scripture says was a "man after God's own heart" (1st Samuel 13:14). The author of most of the Book of Psalms. He's in the lineage of Jesus, the Messiah who is called "Son of David" (Matthew 22:41).

Or, if you prefer, the David sung about in one of my favorite pop tunes, Hallelujah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB67HO8tkQs

David was a wreck, no question. He made some very bad decisions along the road, but still, his heart was for God. This doesn't make me angry -- it gives me hope! I also make decisions every day that are far from pure and perfect.

To borrow something else from Shrek (the link above goes to Rufus Wainwright's cover of Hallelujah for that movie's soundtrack) people are like onions. We have layers. Think of our choices, our decisions, our behavior, as outer layers. Further down, beyond the selfishness and pride and lust and fear that often drives us and our decisions, can still beat a heart that truly loves God and wants to see his purposes fulfilled.

I'd like to think that I am a woman after God's heart, despite the fact that I am, quite often, worse than the king in question.

But I digress. I titled this "A Tale of Two Tamars." Tamar was one of David's daughters, and I'll get back to her in a minute. The other Tamar has just as interesting a story, but with a happier ending. Eventually.

It will help, while you're reading about Tamar and her father-in-law Judah, to take yourself out of the realm of westernized Christianity, and try to put yourself in the world of Tamar. Her story is in Genesis, before Moses and the Law, in the Middle East, not our Mideast. People often try to see scripture through the smeared glasses of the West, and that's unfair.

Judah is a big deal in the Bible. Jesus the Messiah is called the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). The very name for God's chosen people, the Jews, is a derivative of Judah, the son of Jacob and his wife Leah. Right off the bat, we come up against our cultural differences: Jacob had two wives, and his wives gave him their two maids to have children by! Instead of gasping in disbelief that God would work through such circumstances, we need to just get over ourselves. Different time. Different culture. Same God.

So. Tamar married Er, Judah's oldest son. Er died (gasp alert: Genesis 38:7 says "the Lord put him to death." WTF? Wrong This Feels!) Big Daddy Judah gives Tamar in marriage to his next son Onan. We don't know if Onan already had a wife (as if that would have married) but we do know that Onan made a name for himself by ejaculating onto the ground, rather than risk getting his sister-in-law-turned-bride pregnant (onanism is a synonym for masturbation or self-gratification).

See, in those days, if Tamar had had a baby, the baby would have inherited Er's property. In other words, Onan selfishly only wanted children that would enhance his own financial prospects, not those of the line of his dead brother. The Father of Self-Gratification. He didn't, however, live long enough to see his name in lights, or long enough to do much of anything. His actions were deemed "wicked in the Lord's sight" and he got the same divine retribution as did big brother Er.

Poor Tamar! If she was starting to feel like it was somehow her fault, we can sympathize. Judah was certainly thinking along those lines. Next in line for the young widow would have been Son #3, Shelah. Judah told Tamar to go back to her father's house and wait there for Shelah to grow up, hoping to avoid Shelah's untimely death as well.

The Bible says "after a long time" Judah's own wife died. Shelah was a man by then but Tamar hadn't been sent for. Hearing that Judah's time of grieving is over, she set off on a risky adventure.

This is where you have to set aside your own concept of righteousness and morality.

Picture it: Tamar poses as a prostitute, somehow knowing that Judah will approach her for, um, attention. She agrees to sleep with him for a young goat, and further demands several personal belongings to prove she has been with him and that he is, thus, obligated to her in this matter. He agrees, they have sex, he gives her the things, they go their seperate ways. She, back to widow's clothes at home with her family. He, to his own home.

A man of his word(!), Judah tries to send the goat to the girl, but his right-hand-man is unable to locate her. There ARE no prostitutes around those parts. Judah drops the matter, wanting to escape further embarrassment. She can keep the dang belongings. End of story.

Not quite.

A few months go by and he hears an ugly, troubling rumor. His former daughter-in-law Tamar has apparently been fooling around, bringing shame upon both families. A true sweetheart, Judah demands that she be brought to him in order to burn her to death. (And you think you;ve got in-law problems?)

I'm guessing that Tamar trembles as she delivers the coup de grace. This is one gutsy lady, going through all of this just to have a child, thereby honoring the memory of her first husband...and, no doubt, helping secure her own position in her society. "I am pregnant by the man who owns these," she announces, handing over the personal belongings Judah left in trust.

Get this.

Judah says," 'She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah.' And he did not sleep with her again" (Genesis 38:26). Tamar was not only blessed with one child, but two. Not only that, but the firstborn, Perez, is in the lineage of Jesus. In Matthew 1, Tamar herself is mentioned, only one of four women mentioned there.

Talk about a roundabout way to fulfill God's plan!

The other Tamar...well, I think I'll wait on her until next time. She didn't have a happy ending, and that's why my young friend was angry. This is Thanksgiving week...not a good week to get angry at God, in case you might agree with her. Always time for that later (but never a good idea).

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 13, 2011 Blazing Hearths

2011-11-13T09:08:00.001-08:00

My young friend Diane Byrne posted this quote on her Facebook page:

‎"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."

Vincent Van Gogh

I love that! It reminds me of another quote I copied and have kept within sight for over a decade:

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I've seen those words in the form of poetry, author unknown, but I prefer them as prose, words one might write to a best friend or close family member. Both quotes imply that while we encounter multitudes of people throughout our lives, only one or two (if we are truly blessed) will take the time and trouble to know us fully. Warts and all, as my mother would say.

Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney

My mother is a self-admitted romantic, a believer in true love. She grew up going to movies every Saturday at a time when Hollywood focused on boy-meets-girl and happily-ever-after endings. She sat in the darkened theater in Albemarle, North Carolina as a sort of university of romance, instructed by the likes of Olivia de Havilland and Spencer Tracy.

And one night, on her first date with a new teacher in town as he chaperoned a high school dance, they took to the floor and danced. Just like in the movies, the crowd parted as kids backed up to watch them in appreciation of their skills. Growing up in Chapel Hill, my dad says he had to learn to dance well to compete, as a high schooler, with college guys. It paid off that night, for sure.

They got married, and lived happily ever after, right? Well...I doubt that either one of them would tell you it's been all sunshine and flowers. They have had many challenges and heartaches. Recently settled into an assisted living facility, they are making new friends and getting involved with people they would have never met any other way or any other circumstances.

Where am I going with this? Just that we come into contact with so many people. Hundreds, thousands, of people who waltz through our lives for a few measures and then are gone. Some of them step on our feet. We step on theirs. Some insist on doing the watusi instead, making us look foolish. Some want us to lead, some want to lead us where we don't want to go. A few hang around for an entire song. Even fewer are there for the whole night, talking to us whether there is music or not.

We may remember with great affection someone we danced with only once, never to see again. We may regret declining to dance with someone else, or may regret dancing with another in the first place. A person can spin us around a few minutes and then retreat into the shadows, just out of sight, only to appear much later and share the best dance of all at the end of the evening.

Peasant Woman by a Hearth
by Vincent Van Gogh

In other words, my parents are meeting new friends at 78 and 80 who may or may not become close friends, over whose lives they may or may not have great influence. Their marriage of over 50 years is, in some ways, sweeter now than ever, simplified as it is by the absence of financial worries and the normal stresses of work and teenagers and life.

And I, at 53, so appreciate those few who have stopped to sit by the fire that is my heart's hearth and warm themselves for a time. Who have looked further into my soul than anyone else, and who love me still.

And P.S. Happy birthday on November 14 to my beautiful daughter Becky, whose presence in my life has been a delight for 30 years. I well remember turning 30, and I hope her 30th year is her best ever. I love you!

October 30, 2011 Occupying

2011-10-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it. I haven't studied the whole "Occupy Wall Street" movement in depth. I did listen to a Dave Ramsey show in which he invited OWS supporters to call in and explain their personal reasons for joining and frankly, I was unimpressed. Every caller was angry about something, but not a single one, even the more articulate angry people (AAP), could offer a suggestion as to resolving the issues that angered him. And I say "him" in the specific, rather than the sexist, sense as every caller I heard was male.

I gather than some people are supportive for that very reason, however: anger is good. It means people are thinking. It means people are asking Important Questions. It means people are doing something.

It just feels like a lot of what they are doing is throwing a tantrum, making a mess where they decide to camp, and messing with law enforcement. It grieved me to read that Scott Olsen, a soldier who served in Iraq, was injured in an OWS/police confrontation, but it grieved me even more that people were blaming the police! Whatever your politics, when the po-po says you've got to stop, you'd better stop, or be willing to sacrifice along the lines of Mohandas K. Gandhi's civil disobedience in India. (There are conflicting reports as to who threw what, but you don't want to see anyone hurt when it could so easily be avoided.)

Note: Gandhi did not throw things, or yell, or spit, or litter. He discouraged anything of the sort. The principal of ahimsa, or nonviolence, pulled the rug out from under Great Britain and achieved the unthinkable--complete independence for India. It was achieved, not by a group of loud, complaining radicals calling themselves Occupy Delhi, but by dedicated people willing to lay down their lives for a just cause.

I just don't think Gandhi would have been there with the Canadian-started OWS. I don't think they would have asked him to speak, because he would have fussed about their behavior. And that alone makes me uncomfortable.

Do we have serious problems in the financial sector of the United States? Absolutely. Is there unjustifiable polarization between the have's and the have not's? Again, yes. The Bible even has something to say about this, although I have yet to hear an OWS quote James 5 (NIV):

¹ Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. ²Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. ³ Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. ⁴ Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. ⁵ You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.⁶ You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

Them's fightin' words! Pretty strong stuff for those who use their wealth irresponsibly and immorally. Those words serve as a warning to all who oppress the less-fortunate -- justice will come eventually. If nothing else, there is the fact that no one, not Howard Hughes, not Bill Gates, not the Donald, not the sheik, no one, gets out of this place alive. We will all die, all face a final judgment. All debts against God will be paid, whether by standing before the throne and saying, "Well, yes, I was a monumental sinner and screw-up, but I think Jesus has something to say now..." at which point our Advocate takes over, reminding the Father that he already paid for the the sins in question....or by eternal suffering and separation from a loving God.

So there's THAT aspect of what-goes-around-comes-around for the screw-ups of Wall Street (and every other street, for that matter) to bear in mind, but there are also peaceful, workable solutions possible that don't involve littering city streets and engaging in violence toward law enforcement.

And the anger aspect? Aside from the fact that it is bad publicity, there is a time for anger according to this verse:

BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger (Ephesians 4:25, NASV).

We are made in God's image, and God gets angry. I won't list them, but God's wrath against the wicked, God's anger at unrighteousness, it's all there. Look it up. Jesus himself, whom I've never pictured as the anemic meek-and-mild character hung on many Sunday school walls, took a whip to the money-changers who defiled the temple. Sometimes, anger is the reasonable response.

OWS has every right to be angry. So do you. So do I. Our government has failed us in many ways. Financial gurus have created a culture of debt, but whose responsibility is it when we purchase on credit and wind up paying high interest on sums twice, thrice, the original amount we borrowed? That's no one's fault but our own.

OWS (and all the rest of us) have valid reasons for being angry. They have valid concerns -- I'm always skeptical of "demands," especially when the demander has no way to enforce them -- but there are better ways of affecting change than costing the New York Police Department millions of dollars in overtime, and creating a colossal mess in the process. If their motives were all that great and they were themselves obeying the laws of the land, they wouldn't require all that policing. Or, if they were like Gandhi, they would sit there silently and take whatever came. That would, at least, have more impact on the nation.

The question is: does OWS really want change? Or just attention?

October 2, 2011 Happy New Year!

2011-10-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Anyone who follows this blog know that it is unlikely I am three months early with anything. Not that I am habitually late with this blog, or anything. Habitually is a harsh word, in my opinion. I prefer "tendency," as in I have a tendency to veer off the self-prescribed two week period between blogs.

I refer not to New Year's Day, January 1, 2012, but the New Year 5772 on the Jewish calendar which fell on Thursday, September 29 on the "regular" calendar, the 1st of Tishri on the Jewish one. Also known as Rosh Hashana, the "head of the year," the differences go beyond the date. Rosh Hashana marks not only the beginning of the calendar year, but the beginning of the 10 days of repentance ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a time of celebration, of acknowledging God's kingship over one's life, but it is also a time of introspection and confession.

Typically, Americans spend New Year's Eve at parties or sitting up watching the ball drop in Times Square on television. The more spiritual segment of society might pass the night at a watch service, in prayer for the people partying their lives away. On New Year's Day in the South, at least, greens and black eyed peas (the food, not the band) are customary in many homes. Some people write a list of resolutions.

My personal, fairly ironclad New Year's tradition involves going to sleep at the normal hour on December 31 and waking up January 1. The past few years, I enjoyed a mimosa brunch with some of the folks at Lillington Presbyterian Church in North Carolina followed by a devotional. This year, I will probably have to pass, having moved back to Florida. More mimosas for everyone else!

I had the pleasure of attending an Ev Rosh Hashanah service last week. There were readings in Hebrew and English, Israeli-flavored worship dancing, singing, prayer, and the blowing of the shofar, or ram's horn. There is something about that lone, ancient sound that goes straight to the heart.

After the service, we ate the traditional challah bread with...bleh....grape juice. Did I mention this was a messianic synagogue's service? Perhaps that is the reason God's original fruit of the vine (wine!) was neglected. At any rate, prayers were said in thanksgiving for grain and vine, as well as for fruit. Apples with honey were included. I doubt anyone minded that the customary fish or ram's head was overlooked.

The following day, there was to be a service at a local river park, which I did not attend. Stones would be gathered representing a particular sin in one's life to be cast into the water, symbolic of God's promise in Micah 7:19 to cast our sins into the "sea of forgetfulness."

So with all this going on, I have been thinking about forgiveness, and the idea that we are fairly clueless about the scope and depth of God's forgiveness, perhaps because we have such trouble forgiving others and ourselves. Do we really believe, as the story goes, that when we have asked for God's forgiveness and then...still feeling guilty... ask again, he says, "What are you talking about?" Do we really believe that Jesus died not only to erase the eternal power of the sin nature we inherited at birth but also each and every sin that each and every person had ever and would ever commit? Do we really believe that forgiveness is not only available but freely given to all who ask for it? Could it possibly be that simple? That Jesus, knowing we were unable to live righteously, offered himself as a sacrifice for our collective sin/sins, once for all, and that it isn't so much our asking God to forgive us, but our own acceptance of what he has already done?

We all have regrets, things we should not have said or done or thought. Things we wanted to do enough to carry them out, fully realizing that they were wrong and potentially hurtful to others. Things that were contrary to God's Law, maybe even man's. While I can think of a multitude of things I have done that were wrong, I can think of a few things I was guilty of that have never been completely forgiven by those I hurt. Occasionally, past mistakes still haunt through the helpful "reminders" of others who can't, or won't, let go. It is a good reminder to me, when this happens, to check my own heart: Have I forgiven him, her? Is there anything between this person and me? We need to forgive if only because we need it ourselves so very often.

Maybe you, like me, have not been forgiven by someone you wronged, or who believes that you wronged them. That is not God's heart. God is love, and love "keeps no record of being wronged," according to 1 Corinthians 13 (New Living Translation). The blood of Jesus covers completely. The work of the Cross paid the price for whatever I've done or will do. Whatever you have done. Whatever, I would remind you gently, of whatever will be done to you as well.

May each of us, in the New Year of 5772 (or the New Year of 2012 in a few months) let the truth of God's forgiveness become more alive in our hearts. May we offer forgiveness more freely to those around us, conscious of the fact that we each have need of God's forgiveness on a daily basis. And may we stop beating ourselves up for past stupidity!

And stop allowing others to make us continue to pay for things even God has forgotten.

September 19, 2011 Does God Want Me To Be Happy?

2011-09-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

A year or so ago, that is the question a Bible study group addressed: Does God want us to be happy? We were fairly ruthless in our discussion. I shared a few personal situations in which I saw, with 20/20 hindsight, ways in which I had sacrificed righteousness for the "happiness" I longed for loved ones to experience. I had actually encouraged wrong behavior in a few instances, because I so wanted this child, or this relative, to be happy.

It backfired almost every time. The very happiness I wanted to encourage got lost along the way of bad choices and poor decisions. I doubt anyone remembers my support in those trying times with fondness, or even appreciation. More likely, the individuals concerned think, "I wish someone had just told me to stop, to go another direction. I wish it hadn't been so easy to take that path."

There are, absolutely, more important issues in the universe than me having a smile on my face, or you feeling particularly perky, but...and it is an important but...I believe that God does want us to be happy.

For one thing, joy ranks high on the lists found in the Bible. The fruit of the Spirit: love, JOY, peace... (Galatians 5:22). The kingdom of God is not meat or drink but righteousness, peace, and JOY....(Romans 14:17).

Christians are so smug about joy at times. "Joy, yes, but that's not the same thing as happiness," you might hear (and want to slap the speaker...in a good Christian manner, of course). "Joy is spiritual. Being happy is all about being human. It's fleshly."

Bleh.

God is the one who wondrously, awesomely created our flesh, remember. And he took the time and trouble and printing space to include some candid remarks about happiness:

For one year (a man) is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married (Deuteronomy 24:5)
To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness (Ecclesiastes 2:26)
Come and share your master's happiness! (Matthew 25:21)
May the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful (Psalm 68:3, italics mine)
A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit (Proverbs 15:13).

Is happiness to be the main goal in life? I think not. "God is love," St. John wrote, not "God is happiness" or even "God is joy." And yet, he is the source of the highest forms of happiness and the highest joys. Surely, we should never see happiness in a negative, less-than-spiritual light.

The greatest argument for God's desire that we be happy is that of his role of Father. What loving father does not want his children to be happy? As Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

^{Matthew 7:}⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! ¹² So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Even WE know how to make our kids happy. We are, unless it is taught out of us through neglect and terror, instinctively aware as we become parents ourselves, of our children's need for love, encouragement, training. We delight in taking our children on fun outings, or seeing their eyes glow on Christmas morning. We may not have the means to provide everything our children want, but most of us will bend over backward to bring a smile to our children's faces.

A friend of mine tells me that during a particularly trying time in the life of his family, his wife was not living at home. Taking on the role of both father and mother, he found a creative way to communicate how special his daughter was. If he saw that something was coming on television he thought especially worthwhile, he'd send his little girl to bed early, then wake her up during the night to watch the show with him.

That is cool on so many levels. It made her feel special. It gave them important together time. Maybe it wasn't something the parenting books of the day (or even our day) would have advised, but it worked wonders. When this little girl, now all grown up, thinks back to her happiest memories it is to those days, despite other troublesome factors.

A regular guy knew how to make his daughter happy during what might have been a traumatic, dismal period of her life. Her happiness was paramount to him. Think back to times your parents did something special for you just so that you would be happy.

I am hesitant to withhold that facet of being a parent from the best Father of all. He wants me to grow, to learn, to be holy...absolutely. But he also wants me to be happy. And he has the best ideas of all, about what that will require.

September 3, 2011 A Challenge to Look Within

2011-09-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting letter to the editor this morning in the St. Lucie Tribune. The writer begins:

For the 11 years I have lived in Florida the editorial page has been filled with letters from atheists and religious believers. It has taken me a lifetime to come to the conclusion that I'm an atheist. I also feel that I'm a good Christian. One may ask how is this possible? I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god, but I have lived by the teachings of Christ. I also believe in the Ten Commandments and believe that Christ was perhaps the greatest teacher who ever lived.

The writer goes on to point out evidence of the good life he has lived under the influence of Christ's teachings: he works with a charitable organization. He ministers to the poor. He closes his letter this way:

I realize that I open myself to a great deal of criticism, however, when you criticize me you will be criticizing one who lives his life based on the teachings of Christ.

Readers have already left a hefty collection of comments. My favorite was the one that says you can't obey the Ten Commandments without faith in God. That's hilarious! You can't obey them WITH faith in God. That's why Jesus came! NO ONE could obey God's perfect Law because none of us is perfect. Not the writer of the comment. Not the guy who wrote the letter to the editor. Not you. Not I. And if you don't believe me, believe these verses:

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?

Romans 3:10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one.

Other letters cheer the writer on for being an atheist or that he is more an agnostic. One rebuttal maintains that no one cares what he believes.

Jesus Christ cares. I'm sure of that.

There is a temptation to take up an offense for the Church, but dare we argue with a man who lives his life based on the teachings the Church cherishes? He opened up a dialogue by writing a public letter, welcoming, in effect, response. Opinion is opinion. One person has just as much right to express his than the next. I doubt that anything that was written online, or anything that might appear in the future in print, or anything I might say here, will change his mind, but there is a legitimate reason to try, however awkwardly some might try, however ruffled a few feathers may appear. But I would advise restraint, nevertheless, at least until a healthy amount of soul-searching and thought has gone on.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great leader and philosopher who inspired the masses of India to work for independence from Great Britain through civil disobedience, said to a church leader: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

We've already established, with the brief passages above, that this last is true. None of us is righteous; therefore we are unlike Christ, who holy and righteous. But perhaps Gandhi was not referring to our inability to fully obey God so much as our inability to fully love those around us.

The writer in the newspaper may well have been put off by the hypocrisy he sees in the Church, by the intolerance and lack of mercy, by the chasm between what Christians often say we believe and our actions. Perhaps there are personal reasons why he can't make “the leap of faith” as he calls it, to accept the death and resurrection of Jesus. One cannot possibly know the many people and events that have colored his thinking.

Dare we judge him, then? I think not. In Mark 9:40, Jesus said that whoever is not against us (i.e. Jesus and his followers) is for us. I'm taking the verse out of context, obviously, but the words are valid. Those who have not yet concluded that Jesus is Lord are not the enemy – especially those who, like the man who wrote the letter, are seekers of the truth. He is trying, as best he can, it sounds like, to live a good life, a productive life, a life of compassion. Why would anyone want to dismiss his efforts, or challenge him?

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that those who seek, will find. Instead of trying to convince this person that he is wrong, perhaps our time is better spent looking at our own hearts. If I say that I DO believe in God, that I DO follow Christ – not because he was a good teacher, but because he is God-in-the-flesh and therefore worthy of all obedience and worship – perhaps I need to ask myself if my life is reflecting it as well as this guy. Saying he doesn't believe, he apparently bears the fruit of belief in his life.

I say that I do. Is my fruit as evident? In some areas, I can honestly answer “yes.” In others? Not so much.

August 15, 2011 What Do You Want?

2011-08-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

When the grandkids whine...I mean mention...within my son-in-law's hearing, about wanting something, whether another cookie or a new xbox game, he generally answers one of two ways: “I want to win the lottery” or “I want a million dollars.” In Randy-speak, this translates to: Everyone wants something. Get over it. Be thankful for what you have. Stop whining.

Want. Need. Sometimes these things are different, sometimes they are the same. As physical beings, we have basic needs: food, air, shelter. We aren't just bodies or mammals, however. We are made in God's image, tripartite body, soul, and spirit. Our souls and spirits may be starving, even as they are housed within a healthy shell. Christians often fall into the trap of only taking care of the spiritual, while neglecting the physical, or the spiritual vs. the soul, but all three are from God and therefore all three deserve attention.

Our spiritual need is obvious. We need God. We need him to increase in our lives, while we decrease. God must have preeminence or he ceases to be, for us anyway, truly God. If we have established God is God and we are not, he will be committed to the remainder of our spiritual development. We don't really have to worry about that! His lessons will come, sometimes painfully, in order to complete our faith.

Soul-wise, though, what do you really want? Psalm 37:4 instructs us to “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This says to me that God is interested in what we want, so we should be too.

Let's be brutally honest for a minute about what we want. Is it fame? Fortune? Better friends? Any friends? Do we want a degree, some letters after our name, a title in front of it?

Proverbs 19:22 can be translated this way: What a man desires is unfailing love. I'm with Solomon on this one. Keep the cash. Forgo the fame. I want to drink love from a bottomless well, to slurp it up and have it run down by cheeks and stain my clothes. I want to jump into love, and I want to be that bottomless well for someone else.

I want to be loved – and not just to know that I am, to feel it. People feel loved in different ways; I'm well aware of what it takes to feel loved by another person. Someone once told me that it is a deep need within each heart to be pursued and desired by the object of one's pursuit and desire, and I agree. I want that in my life, and I want my children and grandchildren (eventually) to experience it in theirs.

Love and being in love are not necessarily the same things, and no, St. Paul and others didn't write a lot about that kind of love in the Bible, but that doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate. Being in love with someone who is in love with you is a gift, and it is what I want...not only for myself, but for everyone I cherish. It's one of the coolest things in the world to see my daughter and her husband interract playfully, easily, having fun, being best friends as well as committed marriage partners, knowing that their example will set a high standard for their son in terms of relationships.

God is love, John wrote in his first letter. Grammatically, this would mean that love is God – not accurate, however. But if God is all about love, then all of the loves he has provided for us have their places. The Greeks had separate words for them: eros, philia, agape, storge. Passion, friendship, unconditional, familial. English fails us in this regard - we love pizza, children, dogs, and our spouses with the same four letters.

If I had to choose only one kind of love....but I don't. I don't have to give up a girlfriend's deep affection for that of my soulmate. I don't have substitute the joy of holding a grandchild for devotion to God, or vice versa. The fact that all four kinds of love exist in a world God created for our enjoyment tells me that he has a plan for each.

Where love is concerned, I want it all. And I don't think that's asking too much.

July 22, 2011 A Reality Check

2011-07-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

My dad and I were on our way back to my parent's house in Siler City, North Carolina. I was driving my sister's car and popped in one of her CDs - the soundtrack from "Forrest Gump." My dad held the case and announced the names of the songs. I'm not sure why.

A familiar tune came on.There's something happening here...Classic anti-war song of the Viet Nam war era, instantly recognizable. My dad read, "For What it's Worth."

What? I thought. Apparently, songwriter Stephen Stills presented the song to a producer with the words, "I have this song here, for what it's worth" and the rest is history. The title's words appear nowhere in the song.

Since this blog bears the same name, I decided to look up the lyrics, and then, in a burst of narcissism, thought I'd keep scrolling through to see at what point my blog would appear if I googled "for what it's worth" rather than those words plus my name. Second page? Fifth?

Try 43rd. It was humiliating. To top it off, there are several OTHER blogs with the same name. And I thought I was an original. Reality check!

Of course, the REAL reality isn't based on what we google, or on what we read, or even on what other people tell us is the truth. It's certainly not based on how we feel at a certain moment. I'm sure you can relate to the fact that some moments are better than others.

Where should we go for reality? I submit to you that as created beings, we are much better off looking at the opinion of our Creator to get our best "reality checks." We can find them in the Bible, and when others let us down or put us down, we can always find encouragement (various translations):

Ephesians 2:10 - For we are God's masterpiece, created in the Messiah Jesus to do good works that God prepared long ago to be our way of life.
Isaiah 49:15 - "Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you."
Psalm 91:14 - Because you love me, I will rescue you. I will protect you because you know my name.

Some days I look in the mirror and see one thing. Some days I see something else. I haven't changed from one day to the next, but my perception has suffered (or been blessed) by events, words, hormones, and more. Every day our perceptions of ourselves can suffer from the opinions of others, from unkind words, from being ignored - whether real or imagined, these perceptions share some qualities. They are not Truth, and they are temporary.

God's word is eternal. God's word is truth. We don't always feel like reading it, or enjoy the words we find there, but always, always, we can turn to the pages of the Bible and find the ultimate reality check. God loves us. We are engraved on his hands, Isaiah wrote, not buried on the 43rd page of a search engine.

July 3, 2011 A Wrinkle in Time

2011-07-03T10:12:00.001-07:00

Maybe it's because we're currently obsessed with "Lost" (even though the frequent time travel is getting a little muddled in the currently watched Season Four) but I have been doing some Deep Thinking of late.

Maybe it's because I recently saw my 7th grade science teacher and was reminded of her steadfast belief in a parallel universe. She told us that not only was there a parallel science class there, peopled by parallels of herself and the class, but AT THAT VERY MOMENT our counterparts were discussing the fact that there is a parallel universe. Weird.

Maybe it's several surreal experiences recently, like driving by myself to meet my sister in Orlando (like no other place on earth) for a mini-vacay, or simply the old, old human tendency to think about the what-might-have-been-if's. If we hadn't moved to Florida when I was a child. If I'd married earlier, or later, or someone else. If I'd gotten help sooner with an abusive situation. If I hadn't helped our youngest son buy that blasted Ford Explorer. If I hadn't written that. If I'd gone back to school. If we hadn't moved away, or moved back, or sold our first house, or gone to another church, or saved more money along the way.

Deep Thoughts are cheap entertainment - you can spend hours analyzing decisions. second-guessing - but they are not always the best use of time. Recently, I woke up during the night with a thought that had me tossing and turning when sleep would have been far more beneficial:

Jesus is called the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the earth (Revelation 13:8). So why was the crucifixion necessary? Why, if the penalty had already been paid for sin, did Adam and Eve get booted out of the Garden? Why was the Law given, if the New Covenant had already been signed in blood?

There are different interpretations (google it, if you don't believe me), but a few thoughts that help me wrap my head around it are these:

1. God created Time and is thus outside of it.
2. It doesn't really matter.

We might not agree with God's handling of things. We might frequently find ourselves saying, "I don't understand." We might even (being full of pride) question God's character at times. It is a great comfort to me, however, to read Proverbs 19:21: "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails."

Obviously, we're talking about the Big Purpose, the Eternal Purpose, here. Some, perhaps all, of our decisions and actions are too inconsequential to even affect the Grand Scheme of Things. But it's comforting to me to realize that no matter what, God's will is done. Eventually.

I'm not important enough in the universe to really screw things up, in other words. I'm not the Oceanic Six, who believed the world would end if they didn't return to the island. If I really, really blow it, there will be consequences, but they will be largely my own, with little effect on, say, tribal conversions on Papua New Guinea.

Of course, the parallel Ellen will screw up simultaneously, proving that misery loves company. I wonder if she exercises more than I do, or if her set of stresses is less than mine or if everything is EXACTLY THE SAME, as my science teacher thought. I hope not. I'd like to think the Other Ellen makes better choices. And yes, sometimes it almost feels like I've traded places with her for a few minutes., taken a little vacation from reality.

A four-star hotel in Orlando for the night? Really?

June 16, 2011 A Writing Exercise, Just For Fun

2011-06-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A hot July afternoon. A father and son sat in the therapist's office, neither very comfortable with the high-priced décor and only just tolerating the presence of the counselor taking notes. At his suggestion the son, a rough looking man in his thirties, began.

“When I was just a boy, just three years old, my father left home. He had never been much of a parent or a provider, so about all he left in the rear view mirror of his rattle-trap truck was a guitar that had seen much better days and some empty bottles of rotgut whiskey. My mother had a tough time raising me alone – I wasn't the easiest kid to handle – but I think she was relieved when he left, even if she did hold on to a faded photograph of the son-of-a...excuse me, doc. Like I was saying, she had it tough, but I had it even tougher, not because I was the product of a single parent home, but because of the truly awful name my old man insisted on giving me when I was born.”

The therapist looked up from his notes. “You signed in with an initial only, Mr. Smith. What does the S stand for?

The younger Mr. Smith squirmed a little. “S will do for now. It's a...girl's name.” For a moment, there was complete silence in the room, punctuated only by the ticking of a handsome mantel clock on an equally handsome walnut bookshelf. “Maybe he thought it was just a joke on everybody, me especially. Maybe he was drunk at the time.”

“Probably was,” the elder Mr. Smith interrupted. The therapist pursed his lips.

“Anyway, it seems like I was fighting all my life, just to be taken halfway seriously. A woman would stifle a giggle and I would turn red from embarassment. I busted a few heads open. I grew up too fast, and I was always very short-tempered, I'll tell you that. And I promised myself, every time I looked in the mirror or heard someone call my name, or sometimes just yelling up at the sky after a fight, that if I ever caught up with my father again, I would...”

The therapist waited a few seconds, then said, “You would what, Mr. Smith?”

The son looked at his father. “I would kill him.”

The father grunted. “Like to see you try.”

“Gentlemen, please! That's why we're here. You were referred by the court to prevent more bloodshed. I can tell you've been in quite a brawl recently already. We're here to see if we can resolve your differences without further arrests. Mr. Smith, Mr. Grady Smith. Why don't you share now?”

The older man rubbed a scar on his cheek as if it still hurt, and ran his hand under his grizzled chin. “I was just sitting at a table inside my favorite watering hole, playing cards with some of my buddies. Five card stud, to be exact. This guy waltzes in like he owns the place, takes one look at me, introduces himself as my son after all these years, and threatens me! He got the first punch in, let the record show. I was just minding my own business.”

“Yeah, I hit you first, old man, but you drew a knife on me and cut off some of my ear – dang near took the whole thing off.”

“I would have, too, if you hadn't broken that chair with my face.”

The therapist looked through a little stack of neatly typed pages. “Apparently the scuffle eventually migrated out into the street while someone, the proprietor I assume, called 911. By the time law enforcement arrived, both of you had drawn weapons, you were apprehended, and – I take it because you were causing such a disturbance in the jail – my services were requested.”

The older man's eyes narrowed. “I wasn't through talking.” It was now the therapist's turn to squirm a little. He had seen evil on plenty of faces, but this was a man who had almost shot his son, to say nothing of branding him with a girlie name. What was he thinking? He nodded for the man to continue.

“When I laughed at you that day, I wasn't laughing at your name or at you at all, son. I was laughing with relief.”

The son was incredulous. “Relief? I was about to kill you.”

“This world is a rough place. A boy should have a father around to teach him things, and I was just a used up drunk even then. I knew I'd leave eventually, no matter how good a woman your mother was and no doubt, still is. I loved her, but I loved the bottle more. Still do. And you may not believe it, but I loved you, too, and I gave you a sissy name I thought would help. Either make you thick-skinned enough not to care or get you killed young, one way or the other. That name probably saved your life. Hate me if you must, but you fought a good fight, son. I kicked and bit and gouged you with my fingernails, and you just kept coming back for more and dishing out worse. I was relieved that you'd turned out to be the kind of man I'm proud to call my son, someone who doesn't take anything off anybody.”

“You're...you're proud of me?” the son said softly. “And I always thought you'd named me that out of spite.” He wiped a tear with his sleeve.

The father and son rose from their chairs and clumsily embraced. The younger son started chuckling through his tears and pulled away. “You know what? If I ever have a son, I'm going to be there for him. I'll give him a regular name, and just stick it out, however hard it gets. Having a girl's name worked alright for me, but there's no way I'm going to pass it on, just the same.”

The therapist sighed as he watched the two men leave, arms around each other, headed to celebrate at the nearest bar. He hadn't done anything to help expedite this happy family reunion, but he'd collect a nice fee, just the same.

(If the sad tale sounds familiar, watch this:
http://youtu.be/-1BJfDvSITY

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2011

June 6, 2011 Poetry

2011-06-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Dylan Thomas was a sickly child, a high school drop-out, an alcoholic, an adulterer. And yet, when we read his poetry, we find greatness. We may not understand his words, may not agree with them, but there is power there. He understood the power of words, and wielded that power with a beauty that transcended his frail and faulty humanity.

When I taught sixth grade at a small private school in Ft. Pierce, Florida, I assigned poems to the class for memorization. I don't know when memory work fell out of favor with the public school system, but it has, in my opinion, much merit. Memorizing a lengthy passage, whether the Bible or poetry or important speeches or a monologue to perform, adds auditory learning to visual learning. It trains brain cells made soggy from too much television and DVDs and video games.

One year, the class tackled Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. The school considered sixth graders upper elementary, and so at the end of the year they graduated along with the kindergarteners and seniors. It was fun, as the sole sixth grade teacher, to create a program that would show off the challenging curriculum used. I asked Ashley, a petite and very capable student, to recite Thomas' poem. Her flawless delivery (“Rage, RAGE, against the dying of the light.”) brought tears to the eyes of more than a few in the audience, I'm sure.

I've read much more fiction than non-fiction, and probably more non-fiction than poetry, but in the last few months, I have enjoyed poetry more than ever.. I read Garrison Keillor's Good Poems anthology cover to cover, dog-earring my favorites (and there were a lot of them). I have written poems, something I haven't done in years. I've corresponded with a friend who has written books and books of poetry, getting good feedback (i.e. both encouragement and suggestions for improvement). Last month, I attended a poetry reading at the local library and participated – the audience was invited to share some of their own work. What fun!

Poetry is important because of the emotion it conveys, emotion that remains fresh thousands of years after it was written (Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.)* That makes us laugh (I felt attached/To my old mouth/But it fell out //I wore it out)** or feel the stirrings of passion:

The Love Cook, by Ron Padgett

Let me cook you some dinner.
Sit down and take off your shoes
and socks and in fact the rest
of your clothes, have a daquiri,
turn on some music and dance
around the house, inside and out,
it’s night and the neighbors
are sleeping, those dolts, and
the stars are shining bright,
and I’ve got the burners lit
for you, you hungry thing.

* Psalm 23:4, attributed to King David of Judah
** from “My Mouth Fell Out” by Philip Parker, (c) 2007

May 23, 2011 Remembering a Special Day

2011-05-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

Twenty-seven years is a long time, any way you look at it. Well, I guess I should rephrase that. Twenty-seven years wouldn't seem especially lengthy for a civilization to rise to splendor and then fall in defeat. It wouldn't be enough time fly by rocket to the outer limits of the universe.

But a 27-year marriage is impressive. Baseball legend Pete Rose, 69, just ended a marriage that long (his second marriage) citing irreconcilable differences. On a happier note, Colin Firth recently received his first Oscar after 27 years of appearing on stage and film. Twenty-seven years of learning lines, getting into character, following direction, taking on less-than-ideal roles...and now, he has an Oscar on the mantle.

The year Pete Rose got married at 42 (for the second time) was the same year a 23-year-old Colin Firth landed his first film role. 1984 was also the year I gave birth to our fourth child.

Adam Rogers Gillette was born at home. If you want to see the house, it is there to see: 5203 Seagrape Drive in Indian River Estates, Fort Pierce, Florida. We had built a tiny home there, then doubled the size. In the new, spacious addition, Adam entered the world the evening of May 22, clean as a whistle. He was born with the sac of waters intact – something that doesn't usually happen in the hospital during physician-assisted deliveries – and looked as if he'd just had a bath. Which he had, in a way.

Surrounded by family and friends, he arrived after an intense (albeit brief) labor. That intensity stayed with him throughout his life, but we couldn't know that then. When I held him in my arms, I thought, “I am in love.” It is a feeling I never lost, not even when he grew to be an incredibly black-and-white, hot-and-cold thinker with a temper that could send me crying into my closet (it was a big closet). A smile and spontaneous hug made everything right with the world again, however. If he'd said something unkind, he would apologize. Whatever he had done to displease or disappoint, he was quick to resolve. And of course, I didn't lose that first love for him when he broke things, as all children do, because he never broke my heart.

Until he did.

We had 16 wonderful years with Adam, years of laughter and baseball, of wrestling with his big brother and rescuing whichever sister called on the talents of Super Adam first, of learning to play chess and getting in a fight at school (in his mother's class, no less), of being sweet on a girl for the first time and taking a road trip to see his sister, of flying his niece around the house like an airplane and embracing grandparents, of getting baptized, of graduating with his GED so that he could start college early, of finding the dream car that would cause his death.

But we can think about that later, can't we? A day after the 27th anniversary of his birth, I'd rather think about his magnificent red hair and freckles. The time, during a board game, that my mother picked up a card and asked ,”When do you feel the safest?” and Adam replied, as perhaps a 10-year-old, “When I'm with my dad.” The time he reduced the basketball ref to laughter by calling for a time-out just as his foot was about to land out-of-bounds, exactly as a big-league player might do. The way he'd dive for the ball, or jump for it, or roll for it, the way the baseball or the basketball or the soccer ball seemed to come alive under his power. I'd rather think about his little legs trying to keep up with the big boys playing in the street or yard outside, not the way his long legs stretched to the end of the hospital bed of the ICU.

In August this year –a short three months away – there will be time to think of his accident, the hospital, the funeral. These are memories that live just below the surface of every day, but dwelling on them would not only paralyze, but dishonor such a precious, excellent young man. It is his life that defines him, not his death. And such a grand life it was, from the very beginning.

I don't know if there are birthday celebrations in heaven. None are mentioned in the Bible, certainly, although there is celebrating when a lost child finds his way back. The marriage feast of the Lamb is planned for some time in the future (not, happily, this past weekend as had been predicted by some). But I would like to think that those who have gone on ahead still mark the start of their lives on earth. If that is the case, I can see Adam gathering everyone together on May 22 (as we count days): Grandma Polly, who he loved so much, and Papa George (for whom he was named), and his Uncle George he never met, and other assorted family members along with his Little League coach Johnny Steele and pitcher Chris Lewis, another special Adam from Fort Pierce – Adam Snyder – and fellow homeschooler, Ian Zook. And over there, Jesus and Mary are serving up riblet baskets even better than the ones Adam always ordered at Applebee's, and everyone agrees that it's been a wonderful day.

It really was a wonderful day.

May 11, 2011 The End is Near??

2011-05-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

We just moved to south Florida after spending five and a half years in North Carolina, also after spending a considerable amount of money (a) moving everything we owned in truck and trailer, (b) purchasing a house, and (c) setting up new accounts for everything under the sun.

We might have saved a bundle if only we had realized that everything under the sun is about to be destroyed in a worldwide earthquake on May 21.

What? You didn't know that either?

Seriously, I just heard about this. A Facebook friend posted a news clip out of the Greensboro area about Family Radio's proclamation via billboard there to the effect that May 21, 2011, Judgement Day will arrive. Family Radio is led by 80-something Harold Camping, author in 1992 of the book 1994? The book opined that 1994 would see Judgment Day, but when it didn't, he said his research "wasn't complete," thus the CYA addition of a question mark. NOW his research is complete. No question marks for this guy, no siree!

The so-called Christian group's proof comes from a half century of Camping's study of the Bible as well as the following signs:

the complete degradation of the Christian church
the devastating moral breakdown of society
the re-establishment of Israel in 1948
the emergence of the Gay Pride Movement
the complete disregard of the Bible in all of society today

Hmmm. I thought Jesus was going to present the Church, his Bride, to himself "in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless]" (Ephesians 5:27 Amplified Bible). Does Camping mean the supposed church? The so-called church, the name-only church? Does he mean in America, or worldwide? Cause the Church in other parts of the world reports incredible growth and revival, even modern-day miracles. That doesn't sound like "complete degradation" to me.

Nor do I see "devastating moral breakdown" across the board. Things are clearly not what they were in the United States of 1950, nor as they should be in a perfect world, but neither are they what occurred prior to the fall of Rome or during the Dark Ages. Standards are broken routinely, but there are standards in place to break, which means there is a fairly healthy societal appreciation of Right and Wrong.

And anyone who lives in, or has visited, the Bible Belt would call that item about the "complete disregard of the Bible" a bunch of hooey. People in those parts put scripture in their yards and on their cash registers. There is scripture everywhere you look.

The emergence of the Gay Pride Movement is powerful enough to draw an earthquake of apocalyptic dimensions? Which one -- the one in 1871 Germany or the American movement in 1969? Camping seems to be a bit ethnocentric, making the events in his own country the center of the universe. I don't recall any mention of New York City or San Francisco in the Bible. Jerusalem is the apple of God's eye.

Speaking of which, one can't argue with the significance of the re-establishment of Israel -- that is a clear, undeniable fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. So okay, 1 out of 5 makes sense, not very good odds for quitting jobs and leaving wives (it's happened in Camping's camp).

Even more indicative of delusion is Camping's definitive year for Creation: 11,013 BC. I believe in a Creator and so, by definition, am a creationist, but I'm skeptical of anyone's ability to pinpoint a specific year. Seems a bit arrogant. I'd feel better if he added that old stand-by, the question mark. I suppose this would become problematic in print. 11,013 BC? Maybe so, maybe not. Best guess. As far as I can tell. A little wriggle room, Harold, please.

True believers, says Camping, are given "spiritual eyesight" so that they may know the day and the hour of Christ's return to earth, despite the fact that Jesus said he would return at an hour and moment "when you do not anticipate it" (Luke 12:40). Camping has reinvented scripture to mean that UNbelievers don't know when Jesus will return, but true believers (i.e. those who agree with him) will be given, have been given, a divine head's up.

Huh? Isn't this conveniently overlooking Matthew 24:36's reminder to stay ready and look for signs but "of that [exact] day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father"?

In reading various news reports of Impending Doom, I had to chuckle at one fellow. Kevin Brown of New Jersey is a follower of Camping, yet owns a nutrition and wellness business. My mother, a heart patient who follows a strict diet, has always maintained that if she knew she were about to die, she'd eat cheesecake and sausage biscuits (not together, mind you). If you really believe the world is about to end, why suffer through a diet of vitamin supplements and tofu?

More honest (but sadder, really) is the couple in Orlando who is, this very minute, busy spending the last of their savings so that on May 21, "there will be no money left." Monday, May 23, those two queue up at Orange County Social Services.

Camping quotes the verse about the watchmen on the wall (e.g. his group, in context) blowing a trumpet to warn others (see Ezekiel 33, among other places), but there's no trumpet in his hand. Instead, he uses RV teams and billboards and the Internet to spread the word. He picks and chooses which King James Version words to use literally and which to change to suit him.

I get that. Totally. There are passages of the Bible I find particularly pesky, some I would much rather God hadn't included. But trumpets? What is cooler than that? Frankly, a good jazz accompaniment would go a long way toward improving public perception of Camping's movement.

And come May 22, when everyone and everything is still here...when churches all around the globe are filled with the praises of God's people...he could always start a band. He's already got RVs to haul equipment and a fan base.

Well...maybe not. I'm guessing Harold's gonna be wishing he'd used another question mark.

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April 28, 2011 God's Okay & We're on the Way

2011-04-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

In 1972, Thomas Harris published a book entitled I’m Okay, You’re Okay. I heard a speaker refer negatively to the basic precept presented in the book, actually pointing to the very life positions about which Harris wrote. “It’s not a matter of ‘I’m okay, you’re okay. It’s not a matter of ‘I’m okay, but you’re not’ or ‘you’re okay but I’m not’. In reality, it’s more like ‘I’m not okay…and you’re not okay’. But that’s okay!’”

We are all “in process,” all on life’s journey, all at different stages. We are moving, if not physically, along the timelines of our existence on Planet Earth. No one knows at what point he or she is on, how many years are left, how many lessons still required. Who am I to say you’re traveling too fast or too slow? Who are you to suggest I’m better off going east than west, or point out that my choice of luggage is out of date? We would be doing each other much better service as fellow human beings if we simply got out of each others’ way more often, or at least offered to carry some of the load.

None of us is “okay” in the sense that anyone has it all figured out. Perfection has only been lived out by Jesus – Buddha tried and failed, Mohammed tried and failed, saints and sinners from Adam to Zebulun have tried and failed. Some show better outward progress than others, but no on else hits the bulls-eye of God’s holiness every single second. It’s hard to argue with a book that’s sold a gazillion copies and been on the New York Times bestseller list, but people are not so easily put into such tidy boxes unless it’s the one colossal box that says “unfinished.”

I was thinking of some personal changes this week as we are packing up to move back to Florida. Packing is not a new concept, but this time it caught me off guard. As nearly as I can figure it, I have moved 25 times in the last 53 years, an average of moving every 2.12 years. That's a lot of packing.

Born in Anderson, South Carolina I moved at around age 3 to Cullowhee, North Carolina. From there my family headed south to Fort Pierce, Florida when I was 9. The bulk of packing and unpacking happened in St. Lucie County, from one home to another. I got married. We rented. We moved. We lived in the mountains, then in Albemarle, North Carolina while David worked on various projects. We built our first house. In between moves, we managed to have four children. Built a second house. Then came missionary training in Texas, the biggest move ever to India and back, temporary housing upon our return, another house built, another.

God has blessed recent moves in tremendous ways. We sold out in Florida when real estate was incredibly high in St. Lucie County. Next week we will buy when real estate is incredibly low there – tough for the local economy, but a smart time for anyone needing to buy (or wanting to get out of debt). In between we’ve had acreage, raised livestock, done the ranch thing. The last house we have been in (until next week) is big enough, we thought, that we could live comfortably here forever. Room for the live-in grandchildren to grow up in, plenty of breathing space, woods all around. Ten acres to do with whatever we chose over the years, over the rest of our lives.

Enter Plan B.

It began a year ago, when financial wisdom pointed to selling and downsizing. We put our house on the market, began looking for older homes in town. There were advantages – I could walk to work, we could get out from under a mortgage and credit card bills. We showed the house to several enthusiastic families, but no contracts were signed.

Then, what seemed to be twist in the road. In December, my husband David decided that we should return to Florida. This from a man who worked outside in the Florida heat trying not to get “bear caught,” who’d claimed he would never, ever live in Florida again! For him to make such an abrupt, radical change in his thinking…well, he interpreted this as divine leading. That decision made, we had a contract on our house within a matter of weeks.

Our move to North Carolina had meant (for me) giving up an excellent job, a great support system, but the hope of having time to write more and help raise grandchildren. Our move back to Florida means giving up an excellent job, a great support system, and the hope (again) of having time to write more and help raise grandchildren, but who can say what will happen in the next few years?

Obviously it’s not all about me. It may not be any about me. But one thing I do know – the Ellen returning to Florida is not the same one who moved to North Carolina. I’ve changed, grown up a little – a good thing to do when you’re approaching 50, then passing it.

What have I learned in the last five and a half years? That God uses surprising, sometimes baffling methods. That he uses whatever and whomever in our lives to guide us in his direction if we are open to his plans and purposes. For example, he has used some challenging circumstances to reveal a problem with co-dependency….something I would have denied and argued against vehemently in years past. Not I!

I’ve learned that being self-aware and taking care of me isn’t necessarily selfish. And I am delighted to find that after more than a decade, God is giving joy back into my life for more than just moments at a time. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m not complaining. I don’t know why he waited so long to send it. I don’t begin to understand his methodology, but I am loving it. A lot of things in life are overrated – joy is not one of them.

Could God have sent joy to me in Florida all these years, taught me the same lessons there, saving time, money, energy? Apparently not. Because God is faithful to lead us where he needs and wants us to be, to bring certain people into our lives, to use us in certain peoples’ lives along the way. That assumes, of course, that we have followed perfectly, and I am quite sure we have not. But I am confident that even if we had dug in our heels, stubbornly staying put when he was pointing northward, he would have used that too.

God uses our mistakes, our sins, our disastrous decisions. He uses the people who hurt us as well as the people who cheer us on. He is God. He never misses an opportunity to further his kingdom within us and all around us, never wastes an incident, is never surprised by a sudden turn of events.

Some people accuse Christians of making God in their own image, but there is nothing more foolish. God isn’t anything like I would make him! Isaiah 55:9 tells us that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are (God’s) ways higher than (our) ways and (his) thoughts than (our) thoughts” (NIV). I could fret or argue or turn away from God because he doesn’t act like the Santa Claus in the sky I really hoped for, someone who always answered my prayers the way I wanted and in the time frame I demanded, but to me, it is a tremendous comfort that God doesn’t do my bidding. This sometimes annoying, sometimes infuriating characteristic of God only cements my belief in his existence and sovereignty.

When David began talking about Florida, it was a little scary for me, I must admit. I have friends now in North Carolina to whom it will be painful to say good-bye. I have family here, as well as there; I fret about leaving them. I’ve had a great time here doing many things I enjoy. I’ve branched out, done more, been affirmed in many ways, learned important lessons about myself. And now, God is sending me somewhere to (perhaps) have those very lessons challenged, possibly misunderstood or rejected. The people who “knew me when” may or may not like the changes they observe.

To some, I may no longer be “okay.” I may not find some of their attitudes and behavior as “okay” as I once did. And that’s okay! I can trust God to work in this move as he has in all those other moves, to continue teaching and leading and guiding and directing and changing and growing me up into the woman he wants me to be. And that’s more than okay with me, because he alone is “able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” (Ephesians 3:20, NIV).

Now…if I could just remember where I packed my toothbrush.

P.S. For the last several years, Crossroads Church in Lillington, North Carolina has considered this blog to be part of their outreach. I want to thank Dr. Ken Dalton and the rest of church leadership for the opportunity to write "for them." Now, as we leave Crossroads and Lillington, the blog will continue (hopefully) but will probably go through some changes. But that's okay!

Permission to reprint with acknowledgement of source.

April 18, 2011 Acts of God

2011-04-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider— God has made the one as well as the other.

Ecclesiastes 7:14a (NASV)

April 16, 2011 will go down in North Carolina’s history as the day that tornados whipped across the state, chewing up buildings and trees in its path. Besides the tragic death of three boys in the care of a relative who did all the right things in Raleigh to insure their safety, the destruction of Lowe’s Home Improvement in Sanford around 3:00 p.m. that day is perhaps the most recognizable result. When news reports flash, the store’s wreckage is displayed prominently, the poster child, of sorts, for the storm’s destruction.

My husband David works…worked…at the store. It was unusual for him to be working April 16, the second weekend in a row. It had actually never happened before, that I can recall.

I was in the Emergency Room of Chatham County Hospital in Siler City with my mother engaged in our own particular drama when my cell phone rang at 3:22. Mama was out of the room having an x-ray taken. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Lowe’s is gone,” David’s voice said. He had borrowed a phone from a co-worker just long enough to tell me he was unhurt. About an hour later, he called from home to say his truck, though badly damaged, had been drivable. He was sopping wet but home safe. He kept replaying it all in his mind, he said, but there were no ill-effects.

In the meantime, I had texted our children and pastor about David’s escape from harm…actually everyone’s escape. From photos you would expect numerous deaths and injuries, but workers and customers walked out almost as easily as they had walked in. I’d been on my mother’s laptop, posting news on Facebook, looking for news. Power was out in Lillington, an hour away. Friends were chatting back and forth, announcing when power was restored, encouraging one another, praising God when storms passed with little damage.

It is common to hear tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes and the like referred to as “acts of God,” giving at least tacit acknowledgement to the fact that God exists and is capable of incomprehensible power. The Creator of the universes can do as he wills with that Creation, just as any potter can decide to rework the clay, or smash even the most beautiful vase. And God can do whatever he wants to do with either his earth or his earthlings.

God, however, mostly stays out of the intervention business, at least from all outward appearance. He does not step in routinely to stop tyrants or prevent birth defects or heal disease. When he does…and he does… it is so unusual that we call it a miracle.

I asked David what had gone through his mind as he waited for the tornado to pass. People had run into the store, warning everyone that it was approaching, giving them time to move away from the front windows, to seek better shelter. David had only enough time to lie down before he heard the telltale freight train sound of the funnel cloud. He closed his eyes, listening to the roof pull away from the walls, and then it was all over.

He didn’t see his life flash before his eyes. He was not conscious of a particular thought. Not even a prayer.

“I felt it would be okay,” he said. “I was surprised that there was so much devastation…I really thought it was just going to pass us over.” But his sense that he was going to be okay held true. Not a scratch.

We are two weeks away from closing on the sale of our house and moving back to Florida. The tornado could just as easily have plowed through our property as anyone else’s. There were over 20 fatalities related to the weekend storms; my husband’s name could just as easily have been on that list.

God received much credit and praise on April 16, communicated via text, phone, Facebook, and e-mail not only because David and others were spared, but because Harnett County did not see the level of devastation as surrounding counties. Indeed, God is worthy to be praised.

But I fall back to the thought that he is just as worthy to be praised when everything a family owns is pulled up into a whirlwind and disappears. When a marriage ends. When a job is lost. When madmen commit genocide. When terrorists do the unthinkable. When we watch as the monitor by a loved one’s bedside slows, then stops.

Our praise when all goes well is appropriate, but our praise when it all seems to be going to hell in a hand basket is even more so. Praise in the midst of trials and tribulation makes a statement to heaven’s throne room, to the enemy of our souls, and indeed, to the universe. God does not always act as we would act, does not always prevent that which we fear, does not always follow the shopping list of what passes for prayer much of the time.

But he is still God, and we will never be. We do not have to understand the why’s, as long as we know the character of who we worship, because we can always trust that he has the wisdom we lack, that he sees the end from the beginning, and that he “ works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, NIV).

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April 2, 2011 Meeting God Beyond

2011-04-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,there is a field.

I will meet you there.

When I bought someone a vibrantly colored print with the quotation shown above, I didn’t know who the poet was. According to Wikiquote: “Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi or مولانا جلال الدين محمد بلخى Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273) was a Persian philosopher, theologian, poet, teacher, and founder of the Mevlevi (or Mawlawi) order of Sufism; also known as Mevlana (Our Guide), Jalaluddin Rumi, or simply Rumi.”

Something about the words grabbed me, or I wouldn’t have been so drawn to it, even with the beautiful artwork. What does it mean, though, and should I be quoting a Muslim poet in the first place…now that I know who “Rumi” is? Aren’t there enough Christian mystics down through history?

Yes, but they don’t have the monopoly on wisdom. That belongs to the Bible, and I would argue that Rumi, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps as a sincere seeker of truth, stumbled upon biblical truth.

In Genesis we read the story of the Fall of Man. God creates man and woman, gives them work to do in the Garden of Eden, shows them one tree from which they may not eat. Regardless of attempts in the past to assign the blame of original sin to All Things Sexual, the tree is clearly named in scripture: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why would God not want Adam and Eve to partake of its fruit? Good and evil exist — wouldn’t God want them, and by extension us, to know the difference? Recognition of good and evil is essential to making correct and wise choices, isn’t it?

Apparently not. When God told his perfect couple living in his perfect garden to steer clear of the tree, he didn’t have restriction in mind, but freedom. Before they tasted the forbidden fruit, they had access to every other fruit in all of creation. Because they disobeyed the one little rule they were given, they lost it all. Instead of tending the trees in God’s garden, they had to toil under difficult circumstances and raise food for themselves.

Creation only makes sense when we begin not at Genesis 1:1, but at John 1:1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (NIV).

Jesus was. Before creation. Before time. The very name of God that was given to Moses to lead the Hebrews out of slavery is an enimga: I am that I am. I will be what I will be. I am. Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection were planned before the first star was hung in space, because an omnipotent Godhead saw the need for a perfect sacrifice for sin before breath — before spirit — was breathed into the very first sinners.

Adam and Eve’s disobedience was no surprise to God. He walked and talked with them in perfection, yet they had free wills, independence, without which their love and devotion would mean nothing. God knew they would use their independence wrongly, succomb to temptation. The kind of tree or fruit didn’t matter — it was simply the one thing about which they were told “No.”

However, God gets mileage out of everything; the tree he forbade offers an important lesson to us still. God never intended for us to decide right and wrong, good and evil, in our own strength and wisdom. He never intended for us to make up lists of the Do’s and Don’ts so prevalent today, especially within all flavors of religion. This is the path! Do this, and you will be saved! If you do this, you’ll burn in hell!

Instead, God’s intention is that I meet with him in Rumi’s field — the one he described, anyway. Back in that perfect, pre-sin garden. Just God and I. God of all wisdom and love and power, source of everything that can meet each of my many needs, needs he placed within me. Beyond what I think of as rightdoing and wrongdoing, beyond what I think about anything, really. Just God and I. There, the Holy Spirit can blow the cobwebs of my thoughts and experiences and what others have projected on me from my mind, can breathe life into every nook and cranny. There, he can teach me Truth…not what I think is truth, but Truth that is the very person of Jesus Christ.

The old hymn had it spot-on:

In The Garden

I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses And the voice I hear falling on my ear The Son of God discloses.

Refrain: And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice, Is so sweet the birds hush their singing, And the melody that He gave to me Within my heart is ringing. Refrain

I’d stay in the garden with Him Though the night around me be falling, But He bids me go; through the voice of woe His voice to me is calling. Refrain

---Words: Charles Austin Miles (1912)

In that field, that garden spot, he talks to me about the times I have done the right thing for the wrong reason. He talks to me about the times I have done the wrong thing, but was motivated by love. He can talk to me about being merciful to the people in my life who have hurt me out of their own ignorance, their own wrong motives, their own wrong attempts to be Right.

Proverbs 3:5 makes it clear that we are to “trust in the Lord with all (our) heart and lean not on (our) own understanding. Yet, so often we do the opposite, thinking ourselves mature and rational and wise, even spiritual. God beckons us to come play in a field, and we are too busy cataloguing all the reasons why we can’t.

March 21, 2011 The American Dream

2011-03-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today is my father’s 80th birthday. He spent the afternoon yesterday surrounded by family and friends, enjoying the spotlight, eating well, laughing, watching great-grandchildren play. There must be a wonderful sense of accomplishment just to reach the age of 80, to have raised children, watched grandchildren come along, be married to the same woman for all these years. He was never wealthy, but growing up, we always had enough and then some. His health is not what I would prefer, but he is alive. He can still beat anyone at Trivial Pursuit. He walks with God. He speaks French like a native Parisian. He loves (and tells, endlessly) corny jokes. If he is no longer able to travel the world or build furniture or have the kind of flower gardens I remember from my childhood, he still has the satisfaction of living, still, even with some health issues, a good life.

In 1931, the year of his birth, James Truslow Adams expressed the idea of the American Dream: "Life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth. The question that comes to mind is “better and richer and fuller than what, exactly?”

Should each generation expect one’s life to be better and richer and fuller than that of one’s parents? One’s grandparents’? In today’s texting terms, do we, as Americans, have a right to expect life to be BRF (better, richer and fuller) than the lives of anyone living anywhere else? Do parents have a responsibility to work to provide the BRFL to their children, or is the responsibility that of the government…or churches…or social agendas…or the kids themselves?

What does the Bible say about living the good life?

According to Proverbs 18:22, the man who finds a wife has it “good.” I knew a retired missionary who disliked the translation that said “he who finds a wife finds a good thing.” He felt it was disrespectful to women, who are not “things” at all. The problem was with the translation, not the sentiment. Biblically, marriage is a blessing, part of the full life God intended for his children. But not everyone is married. Not every marriage lasts. Surely those who are single can hope for a fulfilling life as well.

Solomon—who had a thousand wives but is, oddly, considered by many to be the wisest man ever to live—wrote in Ecclesiastes 5:18 that what is “good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him” (ESV). Note that he did not say anything about all those women! Apparently, quantity isn’t everything. The concept of work, though…that’s a key. A good life involves the joy of accomplishing a task, enjoying the fruit of one’s labors...not being handed everything on a silver platter or through a government direct-deposit check.

Peter wrote in his first letter (3:1)) that whoever “desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” Peter points to the personal responsibility aspect of happiness. If you want the good life, practice good behavior. Not a bad hook to hang one’s life hat on, as long as we realize that bad things happen even to the best of folks. When tragedy comes, however, those who have made it a lifestyle to live responsibly are better equipped to face the day than those who have chosen lives of selfishness.

The American Dream can easily leave us thinking that we are entitled to more, to better, to lives of ease. My father’s generation knows better, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression instilled by their own parents, participating in the second “war to end all wars.” Even so, Daddy and his peers tried, as all loving parents try, to offer their children better lives than their own. Every generation does this, not because of the American Dream, but because of love.

Good lives are possible because we have a good God, not a certain government or national identity or gender or ethnicity or career or spouse or parent. But I am so very thankful that I have the father I do.

Happy birthday, Daddy-Herb-Bobba Pendergraft with wishes for many, many more.

March 7, 2011 Not Just a Cinderella Story

2011-03-07T10:37:00.000-08:00

When Don Richardson and his family joined the Sawi tribe in what was then Dutch New Guinea, he tried sharing the gospel with them. He soon discovered that in their culture, Judas was considered the hero, not Jesus. As the Richardsons prayed for ways to communicate God’s truth in the face of such cultural bias, they came upon the tradition of the peace child.

From Wikipedia:

“Three tribal villages were in constant battle at this time. The Richardsons were considering leaving the area, so to keep them there, the Sawi people in the embattled villages came together and decided that they would make peace with their hated enemies. Ceremonies commenced that saw young children being exchanged between opposing villages. One man in particular ran toward his enemy's camp and literally gave his son to his hated foe. Observing this, Richardson wrote: ‘if a man would actually give his own son to his enemies, that man could be trusted!’ From this rare picture came the analogy of God's sacrifice of his own Son. The Sawi began to understand the teaching of the incarnation of Christ in the Gospel after Richardson explained God to them in this way.”

Richardson wrote “Peace Child” in the 70s, but recently came out with an updated version. He also wrote “Eternity in their Hearts” which also deals with the redemptive analogies, as he calls them, found throughout the world that tell a type of salvation story. Jesus used stories to teach truth. C.S. Lewis used fantasy and mythology to teach truth. Missionaries do well to find ways within a culture to point out eternal truth as well, by studying the stories that already exist there, that are well-known to the people.

What about in our culture? We are such a multi-cultural society today. Is there a redemptive analogy in America that transcends our differences? I think so, but you may think it’s a little silly. Silly in a Disney sort of way.

As a teenager, I spent a fair amount of time at the mountain cabin of my pastor and his wife, joining them for family vacations or as part of a larger group such a as a church retreat. One day, I was washing dishes alone in the open kitchen area as another visiting minister walked past. “Cinderellen!” he said with a smile.

The story of Cinderella didn’t start with Disney, however. In fact, there are over 350 versions of the story dating back as far as ancient Greece and Rome. Wherever the story takes place, however, in Germany with the Brothers Grimm (and it was grim, too, with birds pecking out the stepsisters’ eyes!) or in China, there is a young girl, beautiful but mistreated and abused who is rescued. There is an element of “happily ever after” which our own culture has latched onto so tightly.

But think about the marriage feast of the Lamb the Bible teaches. The New Jerusalem, the Bride without spot or blemish. Believers together forming the Body of Christ, the Bride of which Jesus Christ is the Head. Are we not toiling upon the earth today, sullied by sin, abused by enemies spiritual and physical until the truth of God’s love for us breaks through the sad, sad story?

The Father (King) sends the Son (prince) to find a bride (Cinderella) and bring her back, in time, to heaven (palace). The Holy Spirit isn’t given to exclamations of bibbidybobbidyboo but serves as the counterpart to the fairy godmother (in some stories, the spirit of the young girl’s dead mother helps her).

If that sounds blasphemous, lighten up! To me, it is only additional evidence of God’s purposes and plans, dropping folk tales and traditions throughout history and all over the earth so that eventually, someone will have a lightbulb moment and snap his fingers and say, “Oh! That’s what it was really about!” He will go to any and all means (obviously, or Jesus would not have had to die on the Cross) to win us back to himself.

I mean, if the shoe fits…

February 21, 2011 When Man's Laws Get in the Way of God's

2011-02-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine works for a company that has a military contract in one of those jobs containing a need-to-know clause…and I clearly do not need to know. Details are sketchy at best, but occasionally something pops up in the news that we’re able to discuss. Recently, events in Egypt prompted a conversation about Africa, Islam, and Christianity. My friend brought up the fact that in some African countries, it is against the law to proselytize. Christian missionaries know the law, agree to abide by it, and then enter the country to do exactly that. It had made an impression…a very negative impression. If anyone should abide by laws, it should be Christian missionaries!

I pointed out that the organization we had worked with many years ago took a more respectful approach. In countries that prohibited the preaching of the gospel, workers would enter the country and set up housekeeping, rather than an overt ministry. As they befriended nationals, questions would be asked and answered. In that way, they were able to stay under the radar while still sharing biblical truth.

Despite this approach, however, workers in the organization have been arrested. In fact, some of the staff we worked with in India had been arrested in Nepal and were required to periodically appear in court—as much a way of generating revenue from the seemingly endless fines as making a religious stand. They had shared the gospel in some way that had brought the law upon them, and they faced the consequences with neither regret nor self-righteous anger.

Religions are, by their very nature, intolerant. A devout Buddhist believes that Buddhism is The Way. A devout Hindu believes Krishna holds the answers to life. Animists, Muslims, Christians…if a person is sincerely convinced of the truth of a particular belief system, it is understandable that there would be no room for entertaining dialogue or discussion in which differing belief systems are placed on the same level playing field. But if we truly believe that our way is The Way, what is intimidating about listening while others share their own beliefs? At the worst, we are more convinced of our own beliefs in light of the error we hear. At best, our sharing sparks a desire in others to find out more about this Jesus person.

How does a committed Christian share the teachings of Jesus in a nation that outlaws them, or with people who are skeptical? In my friend’s case, the missionaries who chose to break the law of the land welcoming them across its borders were poor testimony to the gospel. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps they had such a genuine desire to see lives saved spiritually that they felt breaking man’s law was worth it for the sake of following God’s law of love. It is not for me to judge, even when I might have gone about things differently. Motivation is the key, and one person’s motivation can be completely different than another’s.

A conflicted young man confessed to me some years ago that he had contemplated suicide at one point. Only the fact that this would be a poor witness to his loved ones prevented him from following through. He felt it would have communicated that God was somehow powerless to help him in his situation. He didn’t believe that—he was mostly just tired of the struggle—but he didn’t want to be the reason others gave up on seeking the Lord.

The desire to be a “good witness” routinely offers certain guidelines and boundaries to our behavior. Missionaries faced with laws in other lands may well decide that breaking them would be a “poor witness.” Still, there are times when it may be more spiritual to “color outside the lines.” Some Christians would never consider entering a bar, or talking to a prostitute, or any number of other “worldly” activities…and yet, Jesus neither placed such restrictions on us nor lived by them himself. The religious people of his day repeatedly condemned him for being a friend of sinners, hanging out with the ungodly…yet without sin. Peter was told not to preach by those in charge, but went ahead boldly, aware that he was putting himself in harm’s way by doing so.

Personally, I believe that we should never try to put God into a box. We shouldn’t present God with our own agendas and demand that he make them work. Send me anywhere but there, Lord. I’ll follow you, but not to a place that isn’t safe and clean. I will show love to the non-believer, but only the ones that smell nice and belong to my own social strata. I would never do THAT…that couldn’t be the Holy Spirit! Get behind me, Satan.

Our agendas must be a constant source of entertainment in heaven. The best laid plans of mice and men will always go astray, while the Holy Spirit uses even our ridiculous ideas for his ultimate purposes. The “I would never do that”s and the “God would never tell me to go there”s don’t even register as blips on the screen of eternity. We are neither important nor powerful enough to foil his plans, even when we think we are doing it all for God.

Does that mean we should throw caution to the wind and do whatever we wish, trusting that God will work it all out eventually? Of course not. The laws of God are pure and righteous, and we are always on better, more solid, ground, when we obey them. However, when we substitute man’s laws for God’s and try to label them anew, we are in no better shape than when we blatantly disobey. And when we fail and fall and take wrong turns and go out of our way to do the wrong things for the right reasons and the right things for the wrong reasons and the wrong things for the wrong reasons…we really CAN trust God to make it right and to use our weaknesses and folly for his glory.

Permission to reprint with acknowledgement of source. ellenofgillette1@aol.com