Does it matter if we’ve seen their gravesites in person?
Does it matter if we know his name?
Does it matter if she or he was killed a hundred years ago or just yesterday?
Does it matter if it’s brand new out of the box or has seen years of trials and hardships and challenge and war and every kind of effort to destroy it?
The United States of America is your country. It has offered you opportunity whether said opportunity was easily accessed or hard-won. It has protected you from those who would imprison you for disagreeing with them. It has given you freedom. That freedom was protected by people you don’t know doing a job you didn’t have to do. Be grateful. Acknowledge the goodness in fighting an enemy seeking to destroy. Give them honor.
First of all, I apologize to the driver of the burnt orange car the color of the Boston Baked Beans candy I like so well. My leisurely speed of 72 mph down Highway 10 near the Soo Line Trail was clearly too slow. I wish you clear roads in the summer, iceless roads in the winter, and short jail time when you cause an accident.
Secondly, to the engineers who erected the cement divider nearly as high as my window and to the astute highway department who posted the sign “vision may be limited” on the curve out of Elk River: What were you thinking??
Third, to the person whose distraction nearly caused them to take the left fork to Duluth rather than to Minneapolis, I say, “Keep your head in the game. You’re in the city. There’s actually traffic here and it’s fast.” Oh wait. Never mind. That was me.
And that was just the trip home. I was away briefly to a dear spot. Said spot’s water hadn’t been turned on for the summer yet. The electricity was, though, for which I was grateful; having worn what amounted to a miner’s helmet a few nights last year during some work which required it be shut off. It was fine, perhaps a bit quiet. It was not quiet when those near and dear to us discovered our plight and laughed rather more heartily than necessary as far as I was concerned. But I digress.
My brother knows all things house-related and I, well I can paint if it’s not in an important area. He was down the road in his own cabin, but he was very busy. I would turn on the water myself. I had done it before with him on the other end of the phone line coaching me, and had written it all down. There was around an hour of daylight left, and I felt only slightly hurried. I pried up the part of the floor reserved for such descent as I was about to make, lowered myself through it to the cold dirt underneath and with the lantern in one hand, crawled on my stomach in great GI Joe form if I do say so myself to turn the levers under the sink. They had already been turned. Out I crawled again, pushing from my imagination thoughts of small, furry, scampering things and slithering … okay I can’t even finish writing this. You get the idea.
I went to the sinks to turn the knobs all the way on to let out the air. They were already turned to on. I checked the list, and moved to unscrew the aerators on each faucet. They were already off. It was at this point I astutely realized someone had been here before me and already done these things. All that was left was to drain the hot water tank, put in the filters and put the pink stuff around them so they wouldn’t leak. I didn’t see any filters nor the pink stuff. So you know what this independent woman did, don’t you? That’s right. She texted her brother who came over and confirmed there were no filters and that it was too late to buy them.
It’s not so bad to be without water. We didn’t have running water there all during my formative years. The outhouse hasn’t moved anywhere. I did notice there was a dead mouse in the anti-freeze in the toilet. I respectfully closed the lid. I would give him privacy to lie in state.
I closed the doors to the bedrooms to preserve what heat I could through the night, lit a fire in the fireplace, watched one of the last nights of David Letterman, and slept on the couch.
Why, you ask? Why even leave the comfort and peace of my home for such a drive for such an overnight?
This.
Even this.
And for peace of mind and reflection, this.
Because, after all, some things are worth the trouble.
The hallway was a sea of papers thrown every which way as a final act of celebration, defiance, or peer pressure. He reached down and picked up one of the stray papers on the floor. It was crumpled and had two shoe prints on it, one nearly smack in the middle and one leading off its right hand corner. It was comical, really – this annual act of chaos, for what was school if not ordered and organized?
He thought back through the years. He recalled the early years of preschool and kindergarten where he made friends, said goodbye for the day with high fives, and happily absorbed first things like making paper costumes for holidays and counting to one hundred. Memories of home school years with his sisters were a collage of songs about fractions, and reading assignments in the tree house, and timed tests, and the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog typing lessons. He thought of the Middle School years when all around him tried to fit in while feeling out-of-place. And here he was – in the High School hallway he’d walked through countless times. He looked around. The halls were quiet now. Everyone had rushed outside to linger over last goodbyes for the year and then jump into summer with both feet.
What was it really, this routine of sitting and listening and reading and writing and studying and testing? What was the working out problems on a sheet of paper? What was the rehearsing of lines and notes? He stared off in the distance, turning it over in his mind. The future could hold more of the same if he chose, and he did. But not the same. Sitting in a class was a small part of learning. It provided building blocks. But how to use those blocks – that was the real assignment. And how to live his life – that was the true test.
He was on his own now. He would decide what to study just as he would decide what paths to take and which to leave untraveled. The shoe print smack in the middle of the paper? It wasn’t his. But the other one, the one beginning its own trail? A shadow of a smile crossed his face. If it wasn’t his now, it would be.
Photo: Joe Mabel [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
Ladies and Gentlemen: We have a title! You will recall how I was bemoaning – wait, I’m not sure that’s the right word – puzzled? No. Frustrated? Mmm, no. It’s that state of being where you know something isn’t right, but are having trouble knowing how to fix it. What is that? Well, whatever it is, it’s fixed!
And, Rhonda Jensen, you have earned yourself a free, autographed copy of my new book fresh off the presses (when those presses print it 🙂 ) for your terrific suggestion! Yes, indeed. My publisher agreed to use the title, Mrs. Covington’s Sunday School Dropouts.
I’m looking forward to August when it will be published! To whet your reading appetites, I will tell you that each chapter begins with something the main character has said to her students. Here’s a sample:
Peter said, ‘Lord, you know that I love you.’ and then Jesus said, ‘Take care of my sheep.’ Peter knew sheep were stupid and stubborn and could smell up the sheep pen, so he knew Jesus wasn’t saying this just because it had a pretty ring to it. No, Brandon, no one ever, ever adequately anticipates the clean up.
And so begins the clean up…
So Hallelujah and pass the coffee! I’m doing a little happy dance here in the hobbit-sized study where I write. I hope your day holds something as exciting for you as a new book title is for me!
There was a man who was born under intriguing circumstances and for most of his years lived a common life with uncommon insight and passion. Then he began more widely sharing his teaching with anyone who would listen. Word spread, and people began traveling for miles just in order to hear what he had to say. Some of them did so simply so they could say they’d seen the current newsmaker. Some of them were more than curious, and followed him from place to place. For more than a few it got to be too much and they returned home to the comfortable and familiar. There were those, however, who took his words to heart. Those lives, the lives of those who took his words to heart, were changed whether they tramped up and down a few miles of the middle east with him; or lived out their lives in cities or towns or the countryside; or became international travelers.
And then there were those who heard him and hated him. They didn’t just hate his teaching. They hated him. They hated him enough to put him through a mockery of a trial and crucify him. They hated him enough to hunt down people who had followed him and continued to share about him even after he’d been killed, in part, as a result of mob hysteria and a powerful nation. Curious, isn’t it, how hate can travel not just miles but years?
But the truth remains: He died for you. For your redemption from the horrors of hell. For your free welcome to heaven. Your choice.
This Friday is Good Friday, the day we remember Jesus’ crucifixion. And Sunday? Maybe you can look that one up yourself.
Image: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. By AntanO (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACross_in_sunset.jpg
Last week someone asked me if we had a curfew for our children. I don’t usually think in terms of curfews; I think in terms of “when do you think you’ll be home?” kinds of questions to which I then occasionally provide the person with whom I am conversing an answer that might satisfy us both. Sometimes. I do, however, know how to text.
I learned how to text when my brother was going through colon cancer and everything else that went with it at the time. He was a pro; I, a novice. I can still see myself trying to text “Hallelujah” to him in response to some good news. I couldn’t get past the auto-correct or spelling help or whatever it is that kept my message at “Hipps”. This particular message came as I was waiting for a moms’ prayer group to start, and none of the other women there was any help at all. To acknowledge that I was the most tech savvy among them at the time is really saying something, though the entire group would rather not acknowledge what.
Texting has now become a way of life for me in communicating with people under, oh let’s just say 30. I’m not sure how great it is for kids to have parents able to communicate any time of the day or night. Phone calls, at least, have a built-in limit in that unwritten rules suggest a ringing phone during some hours isn’t the best idea. Ditto multiple phone calls in a row.
My youngest is probably the most affected by my new skill. In fact, I’ve gotten a little lackadaisical with it to the point that now, if he is without a vehicle from our vast collection of cars (often), and I’ve driven to wherever he needs to be picked up, I just hit some buttons to let him know I’ve arrived. Instead of “here”, he gets messages like “cabbage”, “common”, “gig”, or the like thanks to the phone making assumptions from a few taps on the same key.
However, I am grateful for a way to kindly suggest that it is getting rather late for him to be out. Here is an exchange from earlier this year:
Me: “Tell me where you are or I will find it necessary to take the red velvet brownies hostage.”
Son: “Ohhh nnno!! We are heading back home”
M: “Too late. I’ve already cut off one of its fingers.”
S: “Okay..that is mean! Leave the brownies alone!!”
M: “You weren’t here to protect and defend. One is whimpering quietly in the corner.”
and so on and so forth.
Texting isn’t only for kids, perverts, and politicians, you know. And you thought you needed to set a curfew.
God’s kindness is beyond what we ask or imagine. We ask for some small thing that we think we need or want and He gives us that and something better besides. We ask for help and we find it in surprising places. We ask for healing and are provided with healing of all kinds, some of which we don’t understand.
We learn this when we are small and in our innocence ask for something which might amuse an adult, but to which our God bends His ear and listens with understanding. Years pass, our requests continue, varying with age and spiritual maturity and the winds of life.
Do we notice how often this happens? Or do we fret, ask, and forget when the answer blesses our path?
We learn that wherever we are and whoever we become, sometimes good, sometimes bad, our Creator is there. He’s there.
There’s a lot we see in this world, whether looking through a telescope into the heavens or peering through a microscope at a tiny cell, that we don’t understand. Some of us have an amazing capacity for remembering facts and drawing conclusions, or are gifted with an intuitive understanding of parts of nature or of people, or possess a spiritual sensitivity to see or hear or think things others just don’t. But it all pales in comparison to a Creator so astoundingly intelligent and brave and creative and faithful and loving we just don’t really get it. We just can’t. And into our weak understanding, He answers our requests with such kindness, such gentle loving, such goodness, all we can do is be amazed. And grateful.
There’s a favorite place with piney scent and water lapping on the shore;
The strum of a guitar or a sweet and gooey s’more;
Voices low and secrets shared and laughter in the air;
And firm and solid knowledge of Jesus with us there.
– CJP
“He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure. His every thought is allied with power…”. So says James Allen in his wonderful work, As A Man Thinketh. That would be great, wouldn’t it? To conquer doubt and fear instead of them conquering us. Said and done are two different things, and you know which is easier. So much of what we do in life has to do with what we think: whether we think it’s worth the effort, if we believe we can, if we’re willing to look failure in the face and keep going. I do know this – that faith is like having a shot of confidence directly to the heart. Of course we doubt. Of course we fear. Despite our sometime claims to the contrary, each one of us is acquainted with our personal faults and failures; and because of this we know that we aren’t up for whatever mountain is in front of us. It’s okay, because faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen, and there’s more at work in this tired world than we can imagine. So today, I invite you to stand up to those old discouragers, doubt and fear. They’re invisible anyway. And you, my friend, are more powerful than you think.
Quote: As A Man Thinketh by James Allen, Fleming H. Revell Co.; Hebrews 11:1; Photo: pixabay-CC0-Public-Domain.jpg
She shook the snow from her foot. Stepping into a rather large slush pile on the curb wasn’t a good omen for this meeting. Why was she even going? One, she didn’t even know the guy. Two, a random drawing at the local coffee shop probably wasn’t the best way to meet someone. Three, where was her best friend who had talked her into it in the first place? Half-way across the state by now, she guessed – making a trip home to surprise her family on Valentine’s Day. Who surprises her family on a day meant for love?! Well, okay. Maybe that wasn’t quite what she meant. But any sane person would know what she meant without her having to clearly articulate it.
She pulled the paper heart out of her coat pocket and squinted at the address. It was just the next block. When the barista had given them each a pink paper heart with their lattes and told them to write their name on it, it had seemed harmless. She had noticed he told his male customers to write their name and also the name of a local diner or restaurant, time, and date. Later, another barista had passed around a glass canister for each to drop in the pink paper. As they left, they were given a heart with a name, restaurant address, date, and time. Her friend’s poor guy would be stood up. If she was any kind of smart, hers would be, too. Still, underneath it all she believed everyone should agree with her assessment: Valentine’s is a day when corny is cool.
She stuffed the heart back into her coat pocket, pulled off a glove to run her fingers through her hair, and stole a glance at herself in the window of a shop she passed. One more building and she would be there. She stopped. What was she thinking? She would just go home. No harm, no foul. As she turned around, she bumped into a man. Mid-twenties, she guessed. Dark hair. Athletic build. Tennis shoes with a small rip on the right side.
An ‘excuse me, maybe you should look where you’re going’ nearly escaped her lips. It didn’t. He looked up from what he’d been reading. In his hand was a pink paper heart.
