RICH WITH PRACTICALLY NOTHING

A mechanic pulled up next to me just when my car broke down.

A friend walked into the garage just when I needed a ride.

A visitor picked up some medications for me just when I ran out.

Are these all coincidences?

I don’t think so.

But you may think otherwise.

We can see such opportunities as serendipity, or as karma, or as God’s favor.

 The Psalmist tells us that our own efforts only go so far, and that we do need God’s favor and help:

“Unless the Lord builds the city, the workmen labor in vain.  Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.”

It’s humbling.

We Americans love our independence.  We love action.

We have to be intentional about trust in God.  But if we do.  Even if we only give him a little bit of faith.

He multiplies it.

2 becomes 4.

4 becomes 8, or 16, or 48.

And 2 fish become 5,000.

Prayer:

“Jesus, when my faith is small, don’t let me forget what you can do with practically nothing.”

(Prayer quoted from Cynthia Ruchti in Mornings with Jesus.)

A Series of FORTUNATE Events

My car shook with a “clunk clunk” sound in the middle of afternoon traffic on Highway 183 South. But following me in her car was my co-worker, Cynthia.  I managed to pull over and park, and minutes later Cynthia pulled up next to me.  Just as I lifted the hood and was wondering whether to call for a tow, a man in a truck pulled up and offered to help.  He spoke very knowledgeably and as I walked over to him I saw that the insignia on his shirt read Arbor Car Wash and Lube.  As it turned out, amazingly, all I had to do was drive a few feet to the Arbor garage parking lot to get my car checked.  Within a few minutes, a kind mechanic at that shop had run a diagnostic and told me the error codes.  No charge.  Soon I was on my way and Cynthia continued on to do her errand.

The second fortunate event was the next morning when I pulled into the Firestone Station to have my car serviced.  I was there the first thing early, and the service manager offered to do a free routine check and to use the information given me by the other mechanic to diagnose the car – saving me $100.  As I waited in the customer lounge, I was shocked to see my good friend Elizabeth, whom I had not seen in years, walk in the door.  We embraced with enthusiasm, and then spent the next 45 minutes pleasantly catching up and encouraging one another in the Lord.   When her car was ready but mine was not, she offered to drive me home.

Back at home, I made some breakfast and had only taken a few bites when my office manager, Karen, pulled up in front of my house.  She had kindly offered to take me to work.  I thought I might as well get some hours in at the office, and then  later call someone else to take me back to my car.

That’s when the third fortunate event occurred.  As we drove toward Hwy 183 North, we had not gone more than a couple miles when my cell phone rang.  It was the Firestone manager, and my car was ready for pick up.  So quickly!  Then just up ahead  of us, I caught a glimpse of the Firestone Station, so I quickly shouted to Karen, “Turn right here, turn here!”  She was able, instead of veering left onto the entrance ramp of Highway 183, to make a quick right turn, and drop me right back at the door of the Firestone Station. 

This was a bit too much for me.  I was dazzled by the split-second orchestration of each event since the previous day.  It was as if an invisible hand had moved the chess pieces of all our lives around in perfect harmony – meeting my needs perfectly and even blessing a few others along the way.  I hadn’t prayed, except a quick “Help me” when my car started to shake, yet it was as if God was right there in the midst of us.

I did have to spend a significant sum for the repair, which I had not been anticipating, but I got in my full day of work on both days – didn’t miss a beat.  And I suspect that the God who orchestrated all of these fortunate events, will also be able to handle my repair bill.

For Holocaust Remembrance Day – MY VISIT TO DACHAU

In 1975 I was travelling in Germany, and I went to visit Dachau Concentration Camp.  Back in those days no one said stupid things about the Holocaust having been a media invention.  We knew it had been shockingly real – our parents had fought a war not only to protect our nation but to liberate peoples being conquered and exterminated by the Nazis.

So, I went out of curiosity, but the type of curiosity mingled with deep reverence and even dread.  It’s somewhat near the feeling you have when you attend a funeral.  Unpleasant, but important.

There was still barbed wire around the compound, and the heavy iron-grilled gate was still in place, although of course it was open and we could enter and leave at will.  Still, there was a slightly creepy sense upon entering – knowing the stories of horror told by many of the survivors of this and similar camps.  One building had been made into a museum, and there were long hallways of pictures, and they included the entire history of the rise of Nazism, Hitler, the camps, the war, and finally the liberation.  People filed silently and somberly along these hallways, reading, staring, riveted by an invisible force that wouldn’t let them look away, drawn like moths toward a dangerous flame. Disturbing. It’s the kind of experience where you ask yourself: “Why am I doing this to myself?”  But you already know the answer.

The pictures were all within arm’s reach – this was no ordinary museum. The most unexpected – shocking – part of this for me was that in every picture where Hitler was depicted, his face had been gouged out, smudged and spit upon.  You could feel the hatred, disgust and despair emanating from those eviscerated photos.

Outside this building we could enter one other building that was still standing.  This was one of the many barracks.  It was a long rather thin wooden structure, unadorned with any decoration or color that would lift the mind or spirit.  Inside were row upon row of plain wooden bunks, hundreds of them.  There was no privacy, no personal space, no comfort, no hint of individuality.  It was depressing just to stand there.  I quickly left.

The last part of the experience was the only redemption.  At the back of the lot, three small open-air chapels had been built, one each for Protestant, Catholic, and Jew.  This was a place to stand and reflect that this evil era had come to an end, and that good had triumphed.  It was a place to be grateful to God.

It's Nobody's Fault! -- thoughts on aging

Are you caring for an aging parent?  Perhaps you did care for them and now they have passed away.  There are many lessons to be gleaned through such a gargantuan task.  If you are currently involved in this task, you are likely too busy to read this!  If so, just read the four headings. J

This morning my thoughts turned to the last seven years of my mother’s life, those years of caring for my mother – how she changed, and how I changed as I helped her and walked with her through that tumultuous time.  My insights crystallized into four statements about the changes and difficulties of aging and dying:

1)       It’s no one’s fault. 

As I helped Mom with the normal everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning, paying bills, and as we had to face monumental changes together – moving, leaving things and people behind, giving stuff away, switching the parent-child role – she would get angry a lot.  And she was angry at me.  I comforted myself and felt “guided” through all this by clinging to the thought, “These difficulties, sadnesses, and griefs are because of aging, and it’s no one’s fault.”

2)      You can’t fix it.

My default mode is fixing things and making them better.  The changes of aging can’t be fixed.  They can only be endured and lived through together.  It was a radically different kind of living for me – to make gargantuan efforts without being able to “fix” Mom, or fix her life for her, or make all this go away.  It was valuable to experience this in a “head on” sort of way, because, truth be told, there are lots of things I had been trying to fix in my life that were not in my power to fix.

3)      It’s not going to have a happy ending.

Watching someone age, and knowing that someday they are going to die, is the ultimate downer.  The thought could have presented itself, “If it’s not going to have a happy ending, why try?”  Most people are tempted to quit when the obstacles are too high and the outcome is anything but assured.  In fact, it is downright heroic and even mystifying when someone presses on in the face of unbeatable odds.  In To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus tells Scout that defending Tom is something he has to do even though he probably won’t win, I am admiring yet confused.  But now that I have gone through it myself, I understand -- there are a few things in this life that are worthy in themselves, regardless of “success."

4)      It’s all going to be OK.

It’s not really explainable, but love makes it all OK.  Love, and God, and eternity.  Knowing that I had given my all for Mom, that I had truly loved her as a daughter should, gave me a sense of rightness and completeness that nothing else in my life has done (other than raising my children).  And that love has an “outside of this world” component.  There was a sense of God walking with us.  This made it far better for me than if I had walked with her toward death and knew there was nothing else.  That would have been senseless, purposeless.  But with God, everything, even aging and death, seemed to have purpose – even if that purpose didn’t fit into my puny brain at the moment.  After she passed away, I was laid low with heavy grief for a while, but I glimpsed her life in that Great Beyond, and I knew she was now OK and happy --- more complete and happy than she ever was or ever could have been in this fallen world.  Amen!  

“All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.”

HELP FOR THE "IDEA MAN"

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is 

   the purpose of the Lord that will be established.”

I find this to be the case in my life.  I am constantly coming up with new ideas.  I have planned and designed schools, written K-12 curricula, written business plans, written several books, and much, much more.  It seems every few days I have a new idea.  On paper.

But the frustration of this creativity is that very little of it gets put into actual practice.  Should I be discouraged?  Give up having ideas?  Give up planning?  I don’t think that is the best answer.

I think the answer to this is that God has given me rivers of creativity, but only He can direct the river.  He is the one who has the big picture.  Rivers that overflow their banks and have no limits are just called floods.  They don’t do any good for anyone.

But when God directs ideas, He causes them to be actually put into practice and to last.  That’s the promise that they “will be established.”  And there’s a BIG difference between ideas in your head, or on paper, and those ideas that become houses where people live, businesses where people work, crops that people eat, and so on.

When King David had ambition to build a great temple for God’s glory, God stopped him in his tracks.  He didn’t say to him: “Forget it, David, you’re just full of hot air.  That idea won’t fly.”  Instead he said: “That’s an excellent idea, but you are thinking too small.  You want to put together bricks and mortar – which will only last a few decades.  Instead, I will build you a house, and it will last forever.”

Think of it – a house that will last forever.  That kind of house is not made of humble materials like stone or wood, but of something only God can create – human beings.  And specifically, that One Human Being who was both God and man and whose kingdom will have no end.

Now, THAT’S the big picture.

So, when I tell God,  “Hey, I’ve got this great idea,” He doesn’t laugh at me, although I’m sure He must chuckle to himself sometimes.  But He says, “Daughter, that’s a very good idea, but turn it over to me.  I will take the very best of your ideas, which I have put into your heart, and I will bring others alongside to complete them. And even better, you will not be the one to create your own legacy, but I will create a legacy through you which will last.”

It takes patience and faith to let God create a legacy through you.  I don’t get to see it right now.  I only vaguely have the assurance that there is something out there, something not yet complete, and I will get to see it all someday.

In the meantime … back to the old drawing board … now what was that idea I woke up thinking about…

WHEN A GREAT MAN PASSES ------------------------- Billy Graham 2018 and George Whitefield 1770

When a great man passes away, the world sits up and takes notice.  It may be that they never paid much attention to what he said.  It is likely that they have never met him.  And yet on the day he dies, many are willing to listen and learn about him.  Today is such a day.

Billy Graham was a great man by the world’s standards.  The qualities that made him great will be discussed for years to come.  But today as news media across America and around the world share the facts of his life and death, what we feel is the sheer impact of the man.

In the 1700s God had raised up another such powerful preacher, George Whitefield.  He was 200 years before my time, yet this poem which was written about him by Phyllis Wheatley shares the same emotion I think many are feeling at Billy Graham’s passing – impact.

Hail, happy saint! On thine immortal throne,

Possessed of glory, life, and bliss unknown:

We hear no more the music of thy tongue;

Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.

Thy sermons in unequalled accents flowed,

And every bosom with devotion glowed.

Thou didst, in strains of eloquence refined,

Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind.

Unhappy, we the setting sun deplore,

So glorious once, but ah! It shines no more….

Thy prayers, great saint, and thine incessant cries,

Have pierced the bosom of thy native skies.

Thou, moon, hast seen, and all the stars of light,

How he has wrestled with his God by night.

He prayed that grace in every heart might dwell;

He longed to see America excel.

He charged its youth that every grace divine

Should with full luster in their conduct shine,

That Savior, which his soul did first receive,

The greatest gift that even a God can give,

He freely offered to the numerous throng

That on his lips with list’ning pleasure hung.

“Take Him, ye wretched, for your only good,

Take Him, ye starving sinners, for your food,

Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream,

Ye preachers, take him for your joyful theme,

Take him, my dear Americans,” he said,

“Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid;

Take Him, ye Africans, he longs for you;

Impartial Savior, is his title due.

Washed in the fountain of redeeming blood,

You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.” …

MY STORY - In Honor of Billy Graham’s Homegoing

I was fourteen years old.  I’d had a rough life up to that point.  Divorce had shattered my family, and my dad had kept things stirred up with custody battles.  Mom was depressed, and so my sister and I often felt as if we were the parents.  Life at school wasn’t much better for me.  Except for academic success, the school scene was empty and lonely.

Then came a moment of decision and change that I had never anticipated.  I was at a movie created by the Rev. Billy Graham’s organization, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).   Titled “The Restless Ones,” it showed the empty lives of a group of teenagers and how everything turned around when they decided to follow Christ.  I was a church-goer, but I didn’t know that I was supposed to personally make a decision.  After the movie, the BGEA-trained counselors gave an altar-call, and –shaking all over—I went forward to give my life to Christ.

After that, I was spiritually sensitive to understand the Bible, to know how to pray, and to have wisdom for decision-making.  I prayed about how to deal with my difficult parent situation, how to act in relationships, and where to go to college.  God directed me – often in very specific ways – again and again.  He also gave me courage to move across the country at age eighteen, and later to marry and start a family.  When I became a parent, I sought God for how to raise my children, and I led them in the sinner’s prayer, as I had been led by the Rev. Billy Graham all those years ago. 

Today my family are all members of Christ’s own family because of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham.  This day heaven is overflowing with people who have the same testimony as I do – we are in God’s kingdom because of this man’s obedience to the gospel.

Thank you, Billy Graham.  Thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving us such a servant of yours to show us the way.

If you want to get right with God and know that you are some day going to heaven, you can pray right now, right where you are:  “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  I John 1:9

In Honor of Black History Month (2)

Phillis Wheatley, an African-American poet and educated slave in the 18^th century, was surrounded by many white Abolitionists who opposed the tyranny of slavery.  Lydia Huntley Sigourney, an educated woman of the 19^th century, was one of these.  Lydia expressed her opposition in her poetry.  She showed strength against opposition in her personal life as well, for her husband opposed her writing.  She then published in secret under a pseudonym, helping to support her family financially.

To the First Slave Ship

by Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791 – 1865)

‘First of that train which cursed the wave,
And from the rifled cabin bore

Inheritor of wo, --the slave
To bless his palm-tree’s shade no more.

Dire engine! –o’er the troubled main
Borne on in unresisted state, --

Know’st thou within thy dark domain
The secrets of thy prison’d freight? –

Hear’st thou their moans whom hope hath fled? –
Wild cries, in agonizing starts? –

Know’st thou thy humid sails are spread
With ceaseless sighs from broken hearts? –

The fetter’d chieftain’s burning tear, --
The parted lover’s mute despair, --

The childless mother’s pang severe, --
The orphan’s misery, are there.

Ah!—could’st thou from the scroll of fate
The annal read of future years,

Stripes,--tortures,--unrelenting hate,
And death-gasps drown’d in slavery’s tears.

Down,--down,--beneath the cleaving main
Thou fain would’st plunge where monsters lie,

Rather than ope the gates of pain
For time and for Eternity,--

Oh, Afric!—what has been thy crime?—
That thus like Eden’s fratricide,

A mark is set upon thy clime,
And every brother shuns thy side,--

Yet are thy wrongs, thou long-distrest!—
Thy burdens, by the world unweigh’d,

Safe in that Unforgetful Breast
Where all the sins of earth are laid –

Poor outcast slave! –Our guilty land
Should tremble while she drinks thy tears,

Or sees in vengeful silence stand
The beacon of thy shorten’d years;--

Should shrink to hear her sons proclaim
The sacred truth that heaven’s just,--

Shrink even at her Judge’s name,--
“Jehovah, --Saviour of the opprest.”

The Sun upon thy forehead frown’d
But Man more cruel far than he,

Dark fetters on they spirit bound:--
Look to the mansions of the free!

Look to that realm where chains unbind,--
Where the pale tyrant drops his rod,

And where the patient sufferers find
A friend,--a father in their God.

In Honor of Black History Month

Would you be shocked to hear an educated woman, stolen from Africa in her youth and sold into slavery, thank God for bringing her to America?  I was.  But that is the subject of a poem by Phillis Wheatley that I read today in a volume of poetry given me by my dear daughter Laura.

On Being Brought From Africa to America

by Phillis Wheatley (1753? – 1784)

‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too:

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their color is a diabolic dye.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Since I value my salvation so dearly, why should I be surprised that another person would thank God for circumstances that brought her to her own?  Because I live in the 21^st century in a culture that prefers political correctness to the Christian gospel.

Phillis Wheatly was educated along with the children of her master and learned not only English, but Latin and Greek as well.  She was the first published African-American woman poet.

Hard to Live With!

I encourage you to see your own creative endeavors 
as valuable in and of themselves.

Creative people can be difficult to live with.

I love to crochet in different stitches, patterns and color combinations that I create.  So I volunteered to make baby blankets for a local hospital.  The free yarn was provided in every color imaginable, and I was in crochet-heaven.  That is until the volunteer director started imposing dimension, style, and color rules on our creations.

After several months of trying to comply, I lost interest and quit.

Typical temperamental artist, right?  When my creative freedom was limited, it became work.  When it became unpaid work, I lost interest.  But why?

Free creative expression engenders its own energy, which fuels further creative expression. 

Is this selfish?  My way or the highway?

My original purpose was to express myself creatively – as a counterbalance to my day job. This creativity put a spark of energy back into my life. 

Creative expression, -- in and for itself – is a positive good for the person and for his society.  If every creative endeavor becomes subservient to business goals, political goals, or even religious goals, then it ceases to be creative.  Then the creative person feels stifled and frustrated and in the long run his society is deprived.  A people who have ceased to value true and free creative expression are a people with a shriveled and dying culture.

But we will not dwell on that.  This blog is about encouragement!

I encourage you to see your own creative endeavors as valuable in and of themselves.  

Do not always measure them by how much money they bring you, or even by how much they seem to help someone else in the short term.  Be “selfish” in a very wise way.  Value creativity and it will feed your soul.  If your soul is nourished, you will be better able – in the long term – to both support yourself and to help others.

My mother used to tell me, while watching me race around raising four young children:

“Someday, when you have more leisure, you are going to write.”  

I’m sure I rolled my eyes at her!  My life circumstances had so squelched my creative energy that I didn’t even believe it existed.

But -- oh the wisdom of mothers -- she was right!