What Do You Call Forgiveness?

Today I read prayers, composed by the Kalahari Bushmen--written long before missionaries ever found their tribes.

(You are the master)
Lord, Lord, you are the Lord.
You created all things.
You are the master of the forest.
You are the master of the animals.
You are our master, and we are your servants.
You are the master of life and death.
You rule, we obey.

(For protection against snakes)
When the foot in the night stumbles,
Let the obstacle not rear up and bite.
There are many branches strewn across our path
Which threaten no harm to the clumsy foot,
Protect against those sharp-toothed branches
That spring to life and kill.

(On a journey)
Keep us safe from every ill,
Every mishap, every pain.
Let no men or animals attack us.
Lord, bring us safely home.

But my own prayer on reading these was not as confident as the prayers of these Bushmen, whose prayers I've been taught to disdain as the prayers of the unsaved.
Lord, I don't pretend to understand the full mystery of the way you as Son of God instate the conditions of forgiveness, but something feels shallow in my belief if I am to espouse the idea that You would look upon such a prayer and shrug and say, "Sorry.  Too bad no one came along to tell you My story.  I could have done something for you then, but as it stands I can do nothing with your request for a safe trip home, for safety from the snake, and I cannot esteem your obedience..." 
We (those blessed to hear Your story from our cradles) can comfort ourselves by thinking, well such prayers brought missionaries...but what of the ones who prayed these before the missionaries ever arrived?  It seems to me that to believe them collateral damage is to believe You a slave to time and chance, and that simply cannot be! You may allow that man's free will should limit Your power, but to allow time and chance to rule Your eternal availability is something else entirely, is it not?  I would rather believe that I've walked under faulty teaching than to believe that You are so happily treacherous and cavalier with destiny.  I know You are God and can do what You like, but doesn't that maybe mean that You could choose to do good though my eye might see evil?
And so, I wondered if I thus blasphemed myself right out of my own right-standing--ever to have a hip out of joint, at best.

But later, I read something else in a book called Christy.   It's a semi-biographical novel about a young woman who, in 1912, left a cosmopolitan world to enter remote mountain life as a mission-school teacher.  In the story, she is asked to prepare a newborn's corpse for burial as no other mission employee is available.  She discovers that the mother unintentionally killed her child, never realizing her own hand dealt the death.  The baby, according to the mother, was "liver-growed" which meant that while one infant hand could cross the body and touch the foot from one side, it could not from the other side. Even to the "modern mind" of 1912, this pointed to profound internal organ issues; but to the mountain woman it was something else entirely.

"What do you do then?" I asked.
"You got to force the hand and heel to tech.  When I pulled, the baby hollered and went as limp and white as a new-washed rag doll. Never could do nothin' with her after that.  Give her tea all night long, but nothin' holped.  Jest afore the sunball come up, we heerd the death tick in the wall.  Jest quit breathin' then, she did."
The woman had started crying quietly, wiping her eyes with the edge of her apron.  She led us inside the house and pointed to the little waxen body lying in the middle of a large bed, a white cloth over the tiny face.
The horror of this sickened me.  The baby must have had cruel internal injuries.  Yet Opal McHone had wanted this baby daughter.  She was not a callous, indifferent mother but had acted out of love, love mired by her ignorance and by the superstition handed down to her.
At that time, for the first time in my life, I knew grief.  I had had childish disappointments, yes.  Hurt pride, often.  A sense of loss, sometimes.  But compared to what I was feeling now, these had been superficial emotions because they were so self-centered.  On my tongue now was the first bitter taste of a grief not my own.  My heart was mirroring back from the world's pain just one episode from all the endless woes and infamies caused by the not-knowing and the not-caring.  Opal McHone had not known what she did.  And I had to understand and to forgive her on that basis, otherwise I could be no comfort to her at all.

I read the prayerbook intending to pray and found I couldn't; I read the novel just for fun and found myself praying for You linked them in my mind. 
Don't be afraid to ask questions if they are soul questions and not just some argument springing from an idle mind or a secret lack of courage.  Now, here is better question to ask yourself:  is it likely that a 19-year-old girl completely out of her element in the throes of her first exposure to profound and permanent loss, loss due to ignorance--that even this young girl should have more compassionate wisdom at her disposal than I am able to generate?
"...Opal McHone had not known what she did.  And I had to understand and forgive her on that basis, otherwise I could be no comfort to her at all..." 
If it is all about happening by chance to know the the right things at the right time or else suffer eternal torment, then where in the world does charity find a resting place?  It is a thing to think about...

 SO here is my prayer, from Romans 2, help me to understand the mystery:

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts  accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Your law, O God, is that I love You with all my heart and my soul and my mind, and love my neighbor as myself.  Whatever You would have me know of the mysteries of our salvation, may I never be the cause for Your name to be blasphemed. Amen.

Reality Check: Who Do You Worship?

Lately, a few in my prayer circle are being hurt by those closest to them. We are all "broken vessels" as the saying goes, but sometimes it is good to look at the vessel that was broken by forces without, not within...so as to renew our faith, hope and charity.

The Resurrection
1 Saturday evening, when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome went out and purchased burial spices so they could anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on Sunday morning, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb. 3 On the way they were asking each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled aside.
--Their greatest perceived problem was borne of weak faith melded to great devotion. They were loving their fallen prophet even to the end as they perceived it, even to the last rites of burial. Rather than simply appearing in the upper room and completely side-stepping their point of greatest concern (how do we get past this great stone to do him this service?), He used that distress as a gateway for the first miracle given for their loving discovery. This is the friend-respect in the heart of the One we worship.

5 When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side. The women were shocked, 6 but the angel said, “Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Look, this is where they laid his body.
--a young man fled naked from the scene of Jesus' arrest, leaving behind the linen cloth he wore, fleeing his very garment as it was clutched in the grasping hands of those who sought to capture anyone who did not forsake Jesus quickly enough. (Mark 14:51-52) But in this place, a young man sits robed in white to profess the glorious state of things as they are now. These women who began their morning distressed over how to accomplish their God-given assignment to perform decent Hebrew burial now find shock and alarm layered over the already heaped-up gloom..and maybe guilt. (Could we have done more to convince Him not to enter Jerusalem this Passover?) Reassurance and detailed information come immediately at their moment of greatest need through this specifically-assigned messenger. This is the comforting hand of the One we worship.

7 Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you before he died.”
8 The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.
--"...including Peter..." An assignment: to bring the most tender and intimate level of His forgiveness, to bring his invitation to follow where His Resurrected Self now goes. Meditating on the honor of such a task is breath-taking. The trust He has in our fulfilling it is mind-boggling. This is the priority of the One we worship. "You will see Him there, just as He told you before He died." This is the trustworthy transparency of the One we worship.

[Shorter Ending of Mark]
Then they briefly reported all this to Peter and his companions. Afterward Jesus himself sent them out from east to west with the sacred and unfailing message of salvation that gives eternal life. Amen.
(New Living Translation) Mark 16:1-8
--"Afterward Jesus Himself sent them out from east to west..." What we may expect from the on-going story of that state of worship: personal interaction with the One, and not just with His messengers. And, for our task: to take again that messenger bag, now no longer filled with letters of good news addressed merely to a specific few. Rather, the bag holds letters of invitation sent to so many that only cardinal directions can categorize the finding of them. This is the heart-longing of the One we worship. This is the kinship offered.

Holy Father, we wish to be strong as one clinging to a rock when the rushing flood waters buffet us, when time and chance and people who do us harm would utterly mar the "image of God" aspect of humanity around us; so grant us grace and revelation, Lord, that we may always love others according to the example of the Worthy One, and not simply to love this One according to the example of others...Amen.

When God Dreams...

As a dream when [one] awaketh; [so], O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image. Psalm 73:20.

This Psalm has swelled in significance for me as our era of feeling called to "measure" the church continues. It came to us in our own dreams, and fulfilled itself in the last couple of years. For years before that call, we were happily settled into a church home, and even if we moved we generally found a new one with relative ease. Not so the last couple of years. And while we are currently at a church that a good 10,000 feel drawn to attend, we still have a sense of unrest here. We also know You told us to sit in attendance here for a while, but I don't think it is for the same reason You sent us to our churches of old.

For instance, I read the following quote in the book, Crazy Love, "God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love. In our culture, even if a pastor doesn't actually love people, he still can be considered successful as long as he is a gifted speaker, makes his congregation laugh, or prays for 'all those poor, suffering people in the world' every Sunday."

It's not that I don't believe my pastor loves...it's that I have no clue about his love. I have his words, but no experience, no personal certainty as I watch his life. At best, I have only a hope that he loves in some way hidden to me. After all, what can I know about a man who speaks to me in the midst of a sea of 10,000 others? What does he know about me?

If one is to believe the modern church, a pastor and a congregant don't need that kind of one-to-one life visibility. There's an hierarchy in place. The pastor will demonstrate how he "loves" to those in his inner circle even as I will do with mine. But is this really Your preference for the Church? Or...could we be seeing the fruits of a subtle planting of nonspiritual ideology, a methodology that speaks a risky message into our subconscious. What message? Only this: the Church of God is so large after 2000 years of growing, and that added to the tens of thousands of angels gathered around the throne, that we would be foolish to expect You to take a "personal" interest in US as individuals or to reveal Yourself to us! If I am really good, maybe some heavenly version of mid-level management will take an interest in me, but to expect anything different is surely prideful.

When I pause to consider that message, I realize I profess to believe something very different. In fact, I do not believe my God is so small that He must operate under the same limits that govern a lead pastor in a church of thousands. But in practice, I live as if that distance is spiritual truth. Didn't Jesus pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"? Does that go so far as to mean relationship with the shepherd on earth should reflect relationship with the shepherd in heaven? But because the opposing ideology is so backdoor in its presentation, how many of us stop to realize that IT is now sitting, drinking coffee at our kitchen table? And not only is IT sitting there, but IT brought along ITS companion ideology: Complacency.

For me, all this personal reflection brings Psalm 73 back in bold relief.
How easily I relate to the Psalmist as he says:
But as for me, I came so close to the edge of the cliff!
My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone.

Bitterness constitute the edge of that cliff for me. I look over it every time I acknowledge a truth like this one: I learn more through 15 minutes of conversation about the "love" of a young social worker at a Christian homeless shelter than I know about the "love" of the man I've called lead pastor for the last two years.

What happens when this situation persists? Because none of us really have a clue about each other's "love" meter, laziness tempts us. And, because all of us feel virtually invisible to the pastors "called" to speak into our lives weekly, self-protection tempts us. We are quickly positioned to be cast in the worst possible roles that appear in Psalm 73. These are the ones I mean:



They seem to live such a painless life;
their bodies are so healthy and strong.

They aren't troubled like other people
or plagued with problems like everyone else.

They wear pride like a jeweled necklace,
and their clothing is woven of cruelty.

These fat cats have everything
their hearts could ever wish for!

They boast against the very heavens,
and their words strut throughout the earth.

If we're honest, even if we don't live by these traits, don't we often see them as close to our real aspirations? Don't we calculate by them even in our very churches! How many invest the effort to be certain that their clothing isn't woven in the cruelty of a sweat shop? How many have everything we could ever wish for without even realizing it, simply because we aren't aware what classifies as "suffering" on the global median? How many of us use social media to make our words strut throughout the earth?

If God favors us, we are aware of a strata of human existence who "live" the verses that follow those listed above:
And so the people are dismayed and confused,
drinking in all their (the ones previously described) words.

If God favors us, we listen respectfully and hold up the praying-arms of the least of His brethren when they cry the next verse:
"Does God realize what is going on?" they ask.
"Is the Most High even aware of what is happening?"

And, most of all, if God favors us, we leave the ranks of that church in Revelation that doesn't even recognize its own poverty and makes the Son of God gag. We understand who wears this verse from our chosen Psalm:

Look at these arrogant people-
enjoying a life of ease while their riches multiply.

Conviction should strike our hearts when we realize how few are living favored lives by this measure. So how do we answer the problem? Again, those new-church concepts of mass and inertia plant subtle hopelessness patterns across our hearts. Do I stop attending church entirely? Do I realize You spoke strange things about this "modern problem" in ancient times? Do I realize even I might be called for a "sign and a wonder" in this world where You would love for ALL to be saved?

How do I respond when I see my own country's church sadly confirming Your words as they came through Hosea: "When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me." Do I embrace that more-convenient posture of shame that my church and its leaders would have me to do, all for having had the audacity to pause and meditate on this prophecy? Or, do I move into it more deeply.

Do I move on to hear You speak yet again, now through Malachi, when You ask pointblank: would your governor/government be satisfied with the quality and quantity of what you offer Me?

And because the answer is obviously no, do I perceive You marking me with that strange call when You, again through Malachi, search for a strange apostle: "Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar! I am not pleased with you...nor will I accept an offering from you."

Is this lifeless sanctuary the place where we are left to sit guarding the locks?
Thankfully, no. Our Psalm reminds us to exit this place of difficult commissioning when the opportunity arises. We are not without hope. But "visioneering" must define church differently once our eyes are so opened. I see three things next in this Psalm that are like the compass, the map and the canteen graciously given in answer to our cry of: "Alright! I admit it. I'm totally lost in this forest, and I've been lost here for awhile!"

One grace in the church of my dreams is hidden in this verse:
Then one day I went into your sanctuary, O God,
and I thought about the destiny of the wicked.

I will search and I will build until this is true for me: entering Your sanctuary brings thoughts larger than helplessness and hopelessness, ones that inspire me to think with my own mind about the truths of destiny.

The second grace is hid in this verse:
Then I realized how bitter I had become,
how pained I had been by all I had seen.

I will search and build until time spent in Your sanctuary clarifies my perception of myself and my drifting away as measured by what matters to You.


And the third grace is found in this:
I was so foolish and ignorant-
I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.
Yet I still belong to you;
you are holding my right hand.

I will search and build until I find a sanctuary where it is on earth as it is in heaven in all the ways that You make available: a place where I can be known for the senseless animal I am, nevertheless, my hand is faithfully held by one who teaches me to love by first loving me.

Where Are You 'Under the Sun'?

I'm posting a little puzzle here. I want you to read the following, and then I'll share some of the details that prompted my quoting it. Hopefully, it will be as much of a jaw-dropper to you as it was to me.

Prayer is attractive enough when it is considered in a context of...sunny, joyous country churches. And as a matter of fact, the Church means all this. It is a class religion, the cult of a special society and group, not even of a whole nation, but of the ruling minority in a nation. That is the principal basis for its rather strong coherence up to now. There is certainly not much doctrinal unity, much less a mystical bond between people many of whom have even ceased to believe in the Sacraments. The thing that holds them together is the powerful attraction of their social traditions, and the stubborn tenacity with which they cling to certain social standards and customs, more or less for their own sake. The Church depends, for its existence, almost entirely on the solidarity and conservatism of the ruling class. Its strength is not in anything supernatural, but in the strong social and racial instincts which bind the members of this caste together; and these cling to their Church the way they cling to...a big, vague, sweet complex of subjective dispositions regarding the countryside, baseball, apple-pie, 4th of July parades and fireworks...and all those other things the mere thought of which produces a kind of a warm and inexplicable ache in the national heart.
I got mixed up in all this...and it was strong enough in me to blur and naturalize all that might have been supernatural in my attraction to pray and to love God. And consequently the grace that was given me was stifled, not at once, but gradually. As long as I lived in this peaceful hothouse atmosphere...I was pious, perhaps sincerely. But as soon as the frail walls of this illusion broke down again--...and I saw that underneath their sentimentality, these were just as brutal as the others--I made no further effort to keep up what seemed to me to be a more or less manifest pretense...
...It is a terrible thing to think of the grace that is wasted in this world...

First, I should admit to modifying the foregoing quote in one part--the imagery series that spoke of apple pies and holiday parades. The original would have given away the fact that it was not written about our time or our people, even though I say it IS written for our time and for our people. No, the original spoke of castles and games of cricket and pipe-smoking. The Church mentioned was the Church of England and the text referred to the state of affairs as the author saw it in the 1920's--reaching back nearly 100 years ago. These are the reflections of Thomas Merton, a protestant turned Trappist monk, in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. I don't know about you, but I find it rather ironic that the very church from which our forefathers sought religious freedom, braving much hardship for that cause--this is the very church we today take for a model in so many ways, if Merton's observations be at all accurate.

Before we can even begin to hope to make beneficial choices about our faith-walk we must first throw off the lie that we are facing pertinent issues...the issues are not the issue. The issues change like a suit of clothing, but the body that gives them shape while being worn, that body must be recognized as ever the same old body. And the health of that body can not be changed by donning an ever more trendy and glamorous costume. Health is best assessed by standing naked before a mirror under a strong light and making careful examination of what we see.

Life Is Like a Box of Baseball Cards

Often when my husband and sons peruse old boxes of baseball cards in the storage nooks of our house, a conversation evolves about their value. Invariably, my husband makes the comment, "They're only worth what someone will pay for them." This morning in my prayer time, I enlarged that idea to encompass a box of faith, a box of sacrifice, a box of redemption. What will one person pay for it?

The price is self-awareness in its meanest state. Be a "beneficiary of God's grace" I read recently. A beneficiary generally receives something good; but a beneficiary also often pays a price...a cost, like an insurance premium over time or the loss of the loved one who left an inheritance. Rarely but in old fiction is someone the completely oblivious beneficiary to a secret fortune.

What is God's box of baseball cards worth? The stone on the balance weighs our courage, our courage to face ourselves in all our raw beauty and treachery. It's why, I think, the first thing on the laundry-list of sins that lead to the "second death" of Revelation 21 is cowardliness, followed closely by unbelief. It's why the deepest love is closer to death than it is to affection, as my pastor stated last Sunday. The deepest love costs you yourself. Jesus said, before you take up your own cross, count the cost.

God has a box of cards, with a cross on every one. Each of us offers what we can in terms of that courage of self-awareness, that is if we seek a card at all. My hope, my prayer is that through this life I've been given, I'll up the value of those cards again where it has fallen.

Defining Your Mission

Shame on the minister last Sunday for preaching a sermon about extending your family's sense of corporate purpose, becoming missional in a larger way than just the idolization of the family unit. How dare he preach this during little league! (chuckle)

But he struck a chord with me, and on the drive home, I broached the subject with the family. We're not as missional as we've been in the past: singing in church choirs, serving on committees, doing youth group events, attending retreats, etc. The only retreating we've done is into our family shell, I admonished. We should get more missional. More outward focused.

Husband's response, "I'm just not feeling it."
Kids' response. "What? Hey, can we go to the batting cages this afternoon if it stops raining?"

Sigh.

But in time, I began to consider broadening my definition of being missional. Another significant point in our family's corporate life lately has been exploring this concept of our response to big-business as it relates to providing our food. We've decided we want to commit ourselves to supporting the part of the food industry that offers healthy meats and vegetables. The part that is still free, though small. The part that strives nobly to stay in business despite big business trying to put them out of business! Suddenly I realized, this could be our mission-call!

Now missional is defined (by Wikipedia anyway) as follows:
"...a local church is missional when it intentionally pursues God’s mission for His glory among all peoples by following His patterns and His ways of expanding His kingdom."

So I'm thinking if we are counted as Christ's friends when we give meat to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, etc. then we're sort of being missional with this thing . If we're told to be stewards of the earth, we're sort of being missional. (I know it's a stretch, but I'm consoling myself that this at least starts our family toward some purpose beyond its own bloating!)

The next step, however, is twofold. The first part involves consistency. I admonished on this point, too, as my husband and I drove home from the grocery store, plastic bags of quickly-purchased sale steaks in the back seat as we raced to do some impromptu barbecuing.

"We've got to get more consistent with this goal of only purchasing local, healthy-grown meat!" said I.

"If you looked up consistent in one dictionary, and then looked it up in another one. Do you think the definitions would be basically the same?" he responded.

I decided a matriarch can't afford a sense of humor. It is her Achilles' heel.

And of course there's step two: look for the good in the "failures" of life. For instance, I read all the time how crucial it is for a family to sit down at the table and eat dinner together. It is about the only insurance that children will grow up sane and well-adjusted. It's also the only insurance that your children will even remember they have families and come back as adults to occasionally visit.

Our family only does this on major holidays. Instead, we watch the news--or maybe Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader--every single night as we eat. Sometimes, I try to move us all to the table, but mostly some of us eat at the table and others on the couch nearby for a better view of the TV. One thing, though, I can say. Our children know our opinion (and we know theirs) on just about every current event. Our mouths stuffed with food, we comment and they question on everything from foreign affairs to the weather. Our way wouldn't make a cover-story headline in Redbook magazine, but I take comfort in this final analysis of our dinner hour habits.

As I pick muddy radishes from our backyard garden while my youngest walks the "balance beam" of timbers surrounding it, I remind myself small steps are still steps. And, big steps take planning. Much failure to accomplish goals spring from lack of patience through the small steps. And, maybe from forgetfulness.

I hope we remember that we're planning to split a grass-fed cow with the neighbors this summer.

What Do You Call Righteous Judgment?

A lot of dung-slinging is going on in society today in the name of righteous judgment. A lot of criticism is floating around in the name of defining justice. (Does it mean giving a pittance to the poor man, but stopping short of detailing why he is poor in the first place?) Most troublesome of all, how do you tell someone you think they're dead wrong when they believe they have all righteous wrath on their side? This is a heavy cloud of many layers over our world today.

And yet, You've been showing me that You have the work of a judge--particularly in the context of prophetic warning--ahead of me. You're working on teaching me how to go about it Your way. I look at the dream I had about warning people of an earthquake, but since they didn't "feel" it in the permanent, main complex of their lives, they did not take the warning seriously. (My husband, too, has had this dream of being sent to warn those who did not want to hear him when he dreamed he was rescuing people off the tail of an airplane. He cried out that it was about to explode; but the first class passengers were taking their time, gathering their belongings, leaving nothing behind, until finally he had to leave them because the fireball erupted at their end of the plane and started flying back toward him. He jumped to the escape slide in time to at least save himself.) What do you do with these calls to warn and rescue?

The first thing I find You're doing with me is to refine my definition of rescuer. I muddy that definition too much with being an enabler of irresponsibility in others. In visiting with a friend, I was able to define for myself a pattern I tend to follow: when I see something before me that I'm fit to do and do well, I rush in and begin to build things that others could help with, even learn from, but because it's easier for me to do them myself, I ignore opportunities to motivate others to do grow, at least in those domains that call for rescue work. So I weaken those around me who should help me and broaden the boundary of my own workload until I make myself so ill and utterly burned out on the assignment that I collapse and have to leave it entirely to recouperate. But this year I've been learning some new ways.

I've been subbing this year, not teaching, just subbing. I've subbed primarily for a woman who is a band director and had some sudden emergency health situations arise in her family that called her out of the workplace pretty frequently. In this subbing assignment, I've had to limit myself. I was not in charge for more than a day or two at a time. I had clear-cut boundaries as to how I could use my skills. I could help kids learn the music in their folders, but I could not choose which kids to help nor choose the music they'd play, etc. So I learned how to walk inside a fence.

As always, a test came after the training. I was offered a specific salaried job, one that fit a skill set I knew I had. Should I take it? This particular job was one the rescuer in me would have lapped up like honey, but fools rush in... So I came to You for an answer, and the answer You gave me at least initially was "No, don't take it." You used supernatural means to tell me; You used natural means, but You made it very clear what Your advice was at this juncture. I could obey or not, but I couldn't say You left me guessing. I backed away from it.

Not until then did I even realize it was the test, nor even the depths of the lesson I'd been learning, but now that I've passed that test, You're showing me how it fits with the larger picture of what You're preparing in me on these other fronts--those of giving appropriate warning where it is needed. I know this is Your next "lesson" because You brought back another dream of portent that made no sense, until now.

In that dream, I was standing beside a fence that was broken, and at the breach stood a very foolish, spotted horse. It was making the breach larger, trying to get out of the fenced area. This horse's motive for destroying the fence was not spite or meanness; it destroyed purely out of ignorance and misplaced curiosity. But it was not a horse that would listen to reason. The only course of action fitting to keep that horse safely inside the fence was to repair the fence itself. Suddenly, I had a tool in my right hand and wire in my left. I repaired the fence with these. When the horse saw the fence repaired, it trotted away back toward the barn. I remember this dream vividly now. Though I had it long ago, still You brought it back. I felt You telling me that this test was a way of proving myself, demonstrate that I'd stay inside a fence myself before I would be fit to mend anyone else's broken fences, before I'd be fit to address anyone else's unintentional transgressions. The offer of a job I'd be good at was the offer of a breach in the fence. My refusing to go through it showed I respected the fence You set for me whether I "had" to remain within its bounds or not.

The next day after I'd come through this test, I reached for my devotional reading and found this:

Mat 7:1 "JUDGE not, that you be not judged.
Mat 7:2 "For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.
Mat 7:3 "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
Mat 7:4 "Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me remove the speck from your eye'; and look, a plank is in your own eye?
Mat 7:5 "Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

This text was analyzed further than many writers take it in the devotional I read. Most stop at berating the reader for having an eyeful of un-addressed plank--which when you think about it is rather ironic--but this devotional went on to say that when a person reaches that point of seeing clearly to judge others as verse 5 describes, the act looks quite different from what we usually call judging. It comes more from the position of being an encourager than anything else. "I see a speck in your eye, and if you have the courage and humility to accept that it is there, you might become hopeless, but don't be discouraged. I had a plank in my own eye, and look at me now! You can deal with this if I could deal with that." It is a very different approach to judging than we usually see. Who equates a judge with being a cheerleader? I don't know which is the chicken and which the egg--the man who can't hear he is wrong or the man who does a poor job of talking to him about it.

Now that I'm in the middle of this unit of study, where do I go from here? I can't say I know exactly, but I do know metaphorically. In the dream, tools were put in my hands to repair a broken fence in a world where everyone else seems to be beating up senseless horses. That's where I'm headed now.

The Unexamined Life...

...only in this case, the reference does not lead to the more common corrective axiom. Oswald Chambers claims that good can be the enemy of the best, so dare I pause in this busy life to take this challenge: how much good do I do just to have my life "examined" by others and marked as well-lived? How hard do I work to earn the recognition of a few carefully screened peers? Do I deceive myself, thinking I have noble aims when I strive to be "made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some..." when really I'm simply working to "save" a self-image? How often is this the case? To consider such a thing is a daunting form of self-examination; nevertheless, it is the lonely, barren road that You've called me to spend a season traveling.

And Your teaching methods--they are so mysterious and unlike much of what I've been taught to call education; yet I must admit, they are masterful in their effectiveness. I remember that when I was a child, I told my mother I would grow up to be famous, and she laughed at me, and I was offended. Now, I am grown and living as my own opposite, but still living for the same dying motive that drove me as a child. I see myself resonate with the characted in "Good Will Hunting" who seeks the antithesis of fame, desires an annonymous life and calls it noble, but for all the wrong reasons: more for control than for humility. Mostly he just wants to manage what set of humanity has the power--or even enough information--to judge his life's value. I learned I'm like him.

And so You isolated me. For my own good You locked me up with You and You alone. Starting almost a year ago, You set me apart. In fact, I dreamed You put me in a rocky pit that was mysteriously full of light where I sat in its dry depths, though darkness was above at the mouth of the well all was light below. I can tell You now, tell You what You were trying to draw out from my soul with that dream. I am "there" now and ready to answer the question, the final examination for this "class" You had me take.

The exam is one question: What is this pit that has light at its depth but not at its mouth? This pit of invisibility does indeed have light at its depth when all the visible world above is dark, and its light is its hidden beauty. Shall I cite my resources? In the words of the celebrated:

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there."--Indira Gandhi

"Don't mistake anonymous for unnecessary."--Charles Swindoll

And the motherlode:

"In fact, some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary. And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect from the eyes of others those parts that should not be seen, while other parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together in such a way that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other equally--I Cor. 12:22-25

So often You teach me according to this same pattern: it starts with a mysterious hook in a dream or a quirky life redundnacy that poses a seemingly absurd question. Then comes the long trial of faith where none of the life-pieces fit together with any rational, emotional or spiritual meaning. Finally comes the unveiling of rightness and holy logic. I arrive yet again at the breath-taking wisdom and depth of purpose that keep me on my knees in this relationship of Ours. I am ever cycling through Your teaching like I march through the seasons of this world-age.

At last, I have arrived at that time for resting peacefully under the snow; but soon this soil will break open in the warmth of another spring. What have I learned? The richest soil--and the soil You most applaud in parable--is the soil best hidden by the abundance of life that blankets it...

The Hem of His Robe...

...an aside from the series started by the last blog--for the sake of record-keeping. What is my latest "assignment"from God? Hems. I read of the border of the garment of the priests being a thing they "enlarged" all to make much of themselves before the people. It captured my attention in a new way during that session of Bible-reading. A few more references to hems gave the topic even more significance, until I recognized You were specifically directing my attention toward it. But I was busy and did not make a study of it while a few days passed. Then in the midst of a homeschooling session, my youngest came to me with his language workbook and asked, "Mom, is hem a noun or a verb? What does it mean?" He had to mark its function in a sentence--the moment was a palpably leading question to the spiritual student in me even as it was a functional one to the natural teacher in me. I went ahead and prioritized a Biblical study of hems and hemlines.

Here is what I found in an online concordance, from Blue Letter Bible's website from Vine's:
the extremity or prominent part of a thing, an edge. It could also be a tassel that Jews attached to their mantles to remind them of the law.

It is also one of those areas that is full spectrum in its potential meaning--as is so much of the truly prophetic message that comes from You. Your leadings are so awe-inspiring in that they ever respect the potentiality of free will, for it can be "good" in the sense that both the bleeding woman and others were healed if they so much as touched the border of Your garment. But it is also an example image used by You in Your list of woes for the scribes and Pharisees, as their enlarged fringed hemlines were in truth a sign of pretense that--along with other indicators--proved their works to be motivated by a worldly drive to receive the praise of men.

I also think of that dream I had about standing before You, and You fastened a mantle upon me, and all over the back of it were hands reaching upward out of its fabric. And when You had it fastened about my neck, I took off into the air in flight. And the mantle was miraculous in that its hem never left the ground, but rather expanded to fill all the sky behind and below me with those hands reaching up toward Your domain. Is it time for that dream to find some sort of human world realization? Help me understand Your leading, O God.

My Mother's Poem

Not long ago, we began going through old memorabilia, and I found an old journal of mine--one so old that it had a demin cover and gnomes sat ruminating on every page. A friend of mine gave it to me when I was 15, and I periodically wrote in it through my freshman year in college. It was as much a part of vague memory as any other thing neglected for 25 years. Then, suddenly it is in my hands, solid and available for review. Strange, how lately I keep coming across both items and people (a la Facebook) from days long gone. But one unexpected and soul-stirring renewal wasn't due to Facebook. It couldn't be because Facebook only brings the living back across our paths. This was a "visit" from someone who died 13 years ago. This renewed contact was through the journal, through a note stuck inadvertently inside its back cover. It was a poem written on a piece of clean, uncreased cardstock--stationary engraved simply with the name: Patricia Reeves. Patricia Reeves was...is...my mother. She wrote this poem and apparently gave it to me at a time of life when it was relatively meaningless to me, so much so that I didn't even commit its existence to memory. Now, as I look at it again with today's eyes, it becomes something invaluable.

Borne along in no-man's land,
She gave her name in answer to "I am"
Oblivious of her own needs,
She echoes others latent and dormant cries
For freedom from mediocrity...
Then echoes this claim for herself...
Thus she became enigmatic,
And beckoned others to follow her
To their goals...
But the victory was short lived.
For in their victory, it was she they embraced
And in winning...
She lost.
And she stood near those who would speak for her,
Laugh for her, sob for her...
Until each one...disappeared.

The words, scribed carefully and cleanly across the creamy page. I wish I had more to work with in understanding them. Was it me she was seeing, the me of today, of tomorrow? Like in so much prophetic poetry, who can tell whether the story has a happy ending? It is a subjective thing.

In Saving Private Ryan, Ryan was asked to live well, to do so as an act of service for the sacrificial deaths offered for his rescue. How strange, though, when the commission for a future well-lived, commissioned by those now beyond the grave, comes personally and not just through a fable, a war story. Help me, God, to become the best of what my mother saw in me...

Blessings and Cursings for the Scapegoat and His Mother

It is tax time again, and the battle rages once more between my ex and me over things financial. Funny how when we lived under the "law" of custody requirements in our divorce agreement we got along alright, but now that we are two years into our son's being an "adult" but not yet financially independent, suddenly a war rages where there was no war for a decade before. Now the struggle flares again and again: Who pays what for college? Who gets to claim him on taxes?

I could limp through a one-sided story, justifying why we think we've been in the right all the way through, but M.'s biological father could do likewise, and probably does with great rage. Instead, I stand here looking at the gates of Your throne room after a long sleepless night knowing strange prayers shroud Your pavilion--prayers filled with blessing and cursing over my name. Some are the prayers of people who are finding me again after many years of silence, people from long-ago and who are forgiving me for my childish pride in the days before You really began to work on me, these prayers float alongside prayers of people from long ago whose curses have only grown to rankle more vigorously, seeking to tap You in Your role as avenger against me. (And I remember reading in a Psalm about how You put down the avenger, and I wondered what that meant that You might choose not to avenge. I begin to understand.)

I wonder, do the angels stand by and debate and consider: just what action do we take in honor of Your name regarding the things that have to do with this woman? So many blessings, so many cursings and in the middle of it all a son who has indeed been the stronghold I felt called to bless him to be in that dream long ago; but now not only is he a stronghold, he is also a scapegoat as his father's curse toward me lands squarely on the head of our son instead. That same son goes willingly and of his own design into a time of wilderness wandering regarding his relationship with that father. All ties are cut between them for now. College support is suddenly left completely to us on our side of the child's "family" equation. For years, the balancing of that equation has challenged the boy, molded him, ultimately worked for his benefit in many ways. But never has the rift run so deep. What comes next? What does it all represent of Your heart, God? What is the bright hope and the future You have planned for my son and his father? I know it is there waiting to be uncovered.

You look at me as the clamour of blessings and cursings make the very air both sparkle and twitch. You look at me, and so do the angels. "What would be your prayer to throw into the mix?" You ask.

"I don't think it prudent to throw my own righteousness into this melee. If my 'circumcision' these last weeks has taught me anything, I have learned that I can not stand on my own achievements nor my own wisdom. In the height of my potency, I am cut down. In the fullness of good-will, hatred blossoms. Well-tended grape vines produce sour grapes nonetheless. I only dare hide in Your Son's skirts when He longs to be as a mother over Jerusalem."

The Great Physician nods and adds, "That is your prayer for yourself then, but all these prayers are from others cast up here in regarding you. If you were to make a responding prayer to them, what would it be?"

This is what has kept my sleep restless this night. Funny how once you come to believe that your prayers are deeply powerful and (though sometimes slow in the manifestation) profoundly effective you become more careful and sober in what you ask, seeking to pray the very heart of God into being rather than praying according to your own fancy. For me to hear the question "What would you pray?" is the equivalent of hearing: "What would I pray if I were praying through your voice?" So my prayer becomes more of a measure of my knowledge of Your heart and less a measure of my hope for some specific outcome in some specific situation. In time, my prayer was formulated.

"Whether they be lifting blessings or cursings on my name, my hope and prayer is that in the end of their season of seeking Your intervention in things of me--in the end I pray they live abundantly in a better knowledge of the heights and depths and breadth of Your love as their Lord and Savior. I pray that they might be ever nearer to seeing this world as but a shadow of the great hope that is eternity spent with Thee. If they bless me, may the blessings return double upon their heads, but if they curse me, well...may they learn to be sustained by Your love and learn the blessings of communing with You in suffering if they suffer because of me. I leave it to You to determine what to do with these cursings, which ones to use to shape me more into the image of Your Son and which ones are simply darts that should spatter against the shield You've set around me. Such knowledge is higher than I.

"And above all and over all, may my Lord and Savior be somehow glorified in every one of those prayers by the time You are finished answering them. That is how I would respond to the prayers flung to heaven with my name stamped somewhere in them."