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!

They're a Different Breed!

The Problem With Creativity

Some people seem to ooze creativity.  They paint in a studio, or they create art from beautiful photos they snap.  Maybe they publish books, or compose and record music.  They seem to be a different “breed” with a gene the rest of us mortals are missing.

But I don’t believe that is so.  I believe that when God “created man in his own image,” that meant he endowed him with the ability to be creative, as He is creative.  Our God is also called Creator because He created ALL things.  “The world was made through him, and without him was not anything made that has been made.”  So why do we see such differences in people regarding creativity?

The ability to create, as well as every other human trait, is found in varying intensity and with differing expression.  People have different personalities as well as different levels of creativity, and this causes some to pursue creative expression as though they would die without it, while others dabble in creative pursuits as a hobby.  In addition,  people are born into varying circumstances with widely different opportunities.  Some are children of wealth with higher education, and an independent means of support. Others must eke out a living through daily physical labor, with little time or energy left for anything but survival.

Considering all these variables, it is no wonder we see such a distinction between persons who pursue a highly creative life and those who do not.

Despite my previous statement that all people are born with creative capacity, I am going to talk about “creative people” as those who actively pursue the shaping of things or ideas into new forms with 50% or more of their time and effort.  These people can encounter some very particular problems in life.  One of these is the insistence on being independent.

Everyone in the sphere of business, religion, politics and other earthly pursuits knows that collaboration is the key to success and progress.  Synergy is the fact that the whole is more than the sum of its parts in any group effort.  In politics you must go along to get along.  In the church,  a group of members is a faith community – with webs of positive interactions and interdependencies.  This is normal and beneficial.

The creative person marches to the beat of an entirely different drummer.

This is important to understand if you yourself are highly creative, or if you are the teacher or mentor of others.

What is this “problem” of creativity?  If you think about it for a moment, it makes perfect sense that in order to create something, you must first deconstruct and then reassemble your chosen medium in a way that no one has ever thought of before.  No one else can tell you how to do this.  It comes from within yourself and is accompanied by an independent, almost arrogant, sense that 

“This is the right way.  Do this.” 

For example, when a poet works with words, he “uses” various words, sounds and meanings – rearranging them in a new way which strikes a chord in the human heart that is fresh.  It would not be a new creation, but rather a tired copy, if the poet used only clichés from what others had done, or if he was directed and censored by another.

It is obvious, then, why highly creative people are often seen as stubborn, arrogant, opinionated, fiercely independent, and even unbendable.  This quality goes with the territory of creating something that never previously existed.

Edison, Einstein, and Van Gogh may have been impossible 

to live with -- but where would we be without them!

And the Angel said ...

“When EF Hutton talks, people listen.”

Remember that old commercial?  If you want to express what it means for a person to have authority, the most direct and effective way is to say “People listen.”

And so, if an Angel showed up at your house today, and said he was sent from God to tell you something, you would listen.  Right?

And yet, even in the presence of an Angel of God, people have a choice – to believe or not to believe.

The Christmas back story about Zechariah and Mary and their separate encounters with the angel Gabriel is very revealing.  Same angel.  Same power. Same fearsome presence.  One believed what he said; one did not.

Both of these people were told about a baby that was going to be born.  Both of them were standing in humanly impossible situations for that to happen.  Both of them were told that God had favored and listened to them; both were told the name of the baby and his future destiny.  Two parents.  Two incredibly powerful destinies predicted for their children.  Two very different responses.

Now, if you don’t believe that angels exist, you will have discounted this story, but to do so you will have to call a lot of people liars.  Mary is a liar.  Zechariah is a liar. All the worshipers in the temple courtyard at the time Zechariah came out and could no longer speak – are liars.  Elizabeth is a liar.  All their neighbors who knew her to be old and childless are liars.  And Luke the doctor, who researched and interviewed witnesses and wrote it all down, he’s a liar, too.

But NEVERTHELESS, everything that the Angel Gabriel said came true!

Today, Christmas Eve, I just read again the powerful words of this Archangel who stands in the presence of God, and I am gripped with awe just as both Mary and Zechariah were so long ago.  Will you listen with me?

An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.  When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear.  But the angel said to him: "Do not be afraid, Zechariah your prayer has been heard.  Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.  He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.  He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb.  He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.  And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this?  I am an old man and my wife is well along in years. The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.  And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.  And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

The No Name Storm

Anyone who has lived in Florida very long has heard of the No Name Storm.  Strange name for a storm, right? 

This is my journal of that night, written after the fact.  Obviously, I survived.*

March, 1993. 

2 a.m.

            “Get up!” yells my dad to his sleeping household – his twelve-year-old granddaughter, her friend, his 75 year old wife, and myself.  My waking brain hears ominous sounds of water lapping and of wind against the window panes.  This is not good.  We live on the Gulf side of western Florida, and right alongside a canal jutting from the bay, but we never hear water lapping.

            As we stumble out of bed and realize we are sloshing through two inches of water in the living room, our situation begins to dawn on us.  Always survivor-ready, Dad has already gone out to the garage to shut off the electricity.  We don’t have power anyway, but he had realized before any of us that if the water kept rising, we might be electrocuted.

3 a.m.

            The water keeps rising and we are trapped inside the house.  It is pitch dark, but Dad found the flashlights and handed one to each of us.  It is eerie shining lights around the inside of our home with reflections off the rising waters dancing on the walls and ceiling.  Unreal.  Could a horror film be any scarier than this?  The water is up to our knees, which, of course, means it is nearly waist-high on my daughter.

4 a.m.

            Quick-thinking Dad has gone for the life-jackets stored in the garage.  Suddenly I hear him cursing under his breath and I go to investigate.  The back door which links to the garage has now been jammed shut by a floating refrigerator.  He shoulders it open with quite a bit of difficulty – he is strong but he’s also76 years old.  I see him squeeze through the opening and out into the completely dark garage.  In a few minutes he comes back with life vests for each of us, which we gratefully and quickly put on.

5 a.m.

            The wind is howling now.  It must be a hurricane or tornado or something.  Last night when we went to bed, there was nothing about this on the news.  Weird.  We’ve been through so many hurricane scares before, living here on the Gulf, but this is March, for pete’s sake!  And we always have some kind of warning so we can decide whether to put all our stuff on a high shelf, or whether to evacuate.  This time – nothing.  But the water has risen even higher and now the waves are pounding against the four glass doors which connect the house to what Dad calls the Florida Room—a screened-in porch.  Oh my gosh!  The storm is so loud it sounds like it’s ripping the house apart.  Oh no!  There goes the Florida Room!

6 a.m.

I’m really scared.  I try to be brave for my daughter and her friend, but it’s hard to think straight with all this water and eerie darkness and noise.  Dad is standing by the kitchen sink, almost waist-deep in the water, and he’s peeling and eating grapefruit!  My step-mom, Anne, and I are perched up on the kitchen counter which is just above the water level.  “You better eat something, too,” Dad says rather nonchalantly.  But then he adds, a bit more ominously, “You might need your strength for later.”

7 a.m.

            The water has continued to rise, the Florida Room is gone, the wind howls, everything is floating around in the water, and it is still dark outside.  Fortunately, my daughter has found something to entertain her.  She and her friend are sitting in Dad and Anne’s two big recliners – and the chairs are floating!  They think this is pretty funny.  I’m glad she is occupied and not thinking the worst, because my mind has turned toward fears of drowning in here.  No one knows we’re in here or how desperate our situation is, and I keep looking up at that ceiling.  Normally a ceiling is not scary, but with the room full of rising water, it feels like the lid on a box of death.

            I’m thinking of taking my daughter and going outside onto the roof.  At least there we will not be trapped.  My Dad, speaking in a way I have never heard before, tells me not to do it.  I’m 33 years old and responsible for the life of my child – I have to do what seems best for her survival.  I persist in saying I’m going out.  Dad looks at me straight in the eye and says, “If you try to take that child out of the house, I will knock you out.”  I know he means it.

9 a.m.

            The water has finally stopped rising.  Dad said that it would stop as soon as it was high tide.  He has lived here in Florida for decades and he knows the tide chart and the ways of the ocean.  His knowledge and calm thinking in a crisis did him well in this unpredictable storm surge.  Why weren’t we warned?  Well, we are all a little bit calmer and more confident now that it is daylight and things are not getting any worse.  Good thing I didn’t go outside – I would have been blown right off of the roof.

            Looking out the living room windows, which face away from the Gulf and toward the neighborhood, we encounter a freaky sight.  No streets, no mailboxes, no cars -- and houses that are sticking out of the sea.  Nothing moves.  We don’t know how we will get out.  Dad says if he can find the row boat or pontoon – if they haven’t floated away – he could take a couple of us at a time and paddle us down the “street” until he reaches dry land again.  But our boats aren’t there.

12 noon

            Rescue at last!  A man in a motorboat has found us.  He helped us into the boat and whisked us down the river-street all the way back out to Highway 19.  On the other side of the highway is dry land.  We climb out of his boat, gratefully give him hugs and high-fives, and head across the highway on foot to the nearest store.  Things are not much better on the “dry” side of the highway.  There is no power.  There are no cars.  So we don’t know where we will stay, or how we would even get there.  And thousands of others have the same problem.

            Dad "pulls a rabbit out of the hat," when he walks to the nearest motel and talks another family into letting us double up in a room with them for a few hours.  Then he works his magic again and walks around until he finds someone willing to lend him a tiny, ramshackle vehicle that we all five pile into.  Now that we have wheels, we can make progress.  Dad also knows someone with an RV that will sleep four, which he agrees to rent us for as long as we need it.  We have no idea, on that day, that we will need it for a very long time.

            Finally we drive my daughter’s friend back to her mother’s house.  Her mother must be worried to death about her by now.  But we find her mother, without a care, sitting in a clean, dry living room and watching TV.

            “What storm,” she says, as we all stand agape.

*(This story is based on something that happened in my family, but the "I" in the story is not Lorraine.)

Hurricanes and Healing

I once read that a family crisis can be like a hurricane. Sometimes the winds blow and the rain beats down and then it all blows over. But sometimes the wind and rain ravage everything and leave only a path of destruction behind. We've seen some pictures of that kind of destruction this week in Texas.

Recovery from this hurricane damage, we are told, is going to be a marathon not a sprint. It's the same with recovery from family crisis. The main difference is that the scars are invisible -- on the inside of each family member's heart.

And just as with a hurricane, after a family has suffered through domestic violence, death, or divorce there are the desperate immediate needs, but then months and years later there is still need for healing.

If you have gone through a crisis that split your family, be gentle with yourself, and remember the self-care that will be needed emotionally and spiritually in times to come. It's a marathon, but you can do this!

And if you have friends who have experienced family devastation, like a hurricane, check in with them from time to time to see how their healing process is going. <3 span="">