The Thorn

     I have often wondered how believers made it through life before the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It must have been lonely. The way I usually receive guidance from the Spirit is by quiet impressions in my heart during my daily Bible study. He illuminates the parts I need to pay attention to in the way a blind person taps their white cane to know what lies ahead and which way to go. Today He was not quiet. This morning on my way to work I was listening to James McDonald on the radio. That's about the only time I hear him, 15 minutes, twice a week, on my way to work. Today he talked about humility and how God had given Paul a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being arrogant about the great revelations God had given him.  I laughingly told the Lord, "I've had migraines for all these years, and I'm still arrogant." Moments later the thought came clearly into my mind, "That is not your thorn in the flesh, your thorn is your mom."
     I knew it was the Spirit's voice in the same way I knew He was right. I just knew. That motherless child void within me has kept me small inside, at times, even broken. And it is that brokenness that has made me merciful to other broken people. It is that depth of sorrow that keeps me from settling for a shallow life. In that moment of mutual consolation, I found myself saying, "It's okay, I understand.", accepting the thorn.

Ducks in a Row

     I am one of those organized people who like to have their ducks in a row or, in my case, lambs in a line. I like to plan ahead, make lists so I can cross things off, buy birthday gifts weeks ahead of time, never have to run to the store for toilet tissue, etc.  This year I have to be even more ducky than usual because I am having a knee replacement December 10th and need to have all my Christmas preparations finished by then. I have most of our presents bought and wrapped, including stocking stuffers. The ones for Britten and Luke, who will not be here for Christmas, were ready for them to take home by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. Christmas cards, stamps and stationery are waiting for the annual Christmas letter which I inflict on my friends and family. And today I decorated the house for Christmas--minus tree. This is a little early for me but, of course, I am months behind retailers and many of our neighbors already have their lights up.  A week before Thanksgiving I saw red and blue lights out our front window, I thought a cop car was parked in the street; it turned out to be our neighbor's Christmas lights lining the fence.
     But I have discovered God is not at all interested in my ducks being in a row.  Years ago, when I was asked to be a BSF leader, I had it all planned out.  First, my husband would get the better paying job he was pursuing, then I would be able to quit my job at the hospital and we could afford Christian school without my income. Phase three would be accepting the role of group leader. There are many leaders capable of working, leading and taking care of their families at the same time, but I knew I was not one of those. I would have to make a choice. This was the third time I had been asked to consider leadership and apparently, the Spirit uses a "three strikes--you're in" rule because He was hammering confirmation into my heart and, though I knew God equips those He calls, it still felt like the clammy hand of death on my shoulder.  God's plan was that I first, accept the leadership position, then quit my job. Phase three was Reed getting his better paying job.  One of us had our ducks backwards.
     The problem with being terminally organized is that it is easy to transfer living by faith in God to faith in the Plan. It is also presumptuous to assume that God's plan for the future will coincide with ours.  We have just begun studying the life of Abraham in Bible study, and I can imagine the following conversation:

Abraham:  Pack up the camels Sarah, we're going camping.
Sarah:  Where?
Abraham:  Don't know yet.
Sarah:  How long?
Abraham:  For the rest of our lives.

     No Holiday Inn, no Walmart, didn't even know where to gas up the camels, much less put them in a row.  They went. Yes, they brought supplies, Sarah probably made a list, but God was their GPS. He had the plan.  I try to remember that as I rush about, herding ducks. Faith should not be the last thing on my list. It is not the back up plan.  It is the place we are to camp for the rest of our lives. 
    

 

Cowboys and Angels

     "There's a want and there's a need.
      There's a history between
      Girls like her and guys like me.
      Cowboys and angels, cowboys and angels."

      This is a new song on country stations called "Cowboys and Angels".  It's lyrics strike a chord with me because it somewhat describes my relationship with Reed. As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm no angel, but Reed is somewhat of a cowboy.  Reed was never a cowboy in the horse riding, Stetson wearing sense of the word, but he is a cowboy in the independent, unrefined sense.  No offense to his mother but, when I started dating Reed, he was only green broke.  On our first date, he said, "I don't know nothing about how to treat girls, so you're going to have to teach me."  I accepted that challenge.  It's not that he hadn't been exposed to good manners, it's just that he never particularly noticed them.  Even then, Reed was very well read, but he has yet to notice nuances like spelling and punctuation. How people dress and polite social manners are also nuances cowboys do not bother with.
      I am usually well, if inexpensively, dressed and have a good grasp of manners--Montana style, so we were considered somewhat of an odd couple when we started dating. Which explains an odd conversation I had with an acquaintance at Bible college.
    She said, "But Connie, you're such a lady and Reed's such a . . .a. . ."
    I finally took pity on her and suggested, "country boy?".
    "Yes, that's it."
     Cowboys have rough edges and rough hands. They live by their own code, but it is, for the most part, an honorable one. They can patch up animals, machinery and themselves with equal competence. They don't use lots of words but, the few they use, matter.  Somehow, those rough bundles of baling wire manage to snag women who are as unlike them as silk from burlap and both discover they fit together like vel and cro.
     It doesn't matter to me that there is more culture in my yogurt than in my cowboy,  I'm angel enough to know a good man when I see one.

Labor Day

    This year as we went around the Thanksgiving table sharing what we were most thankful for, I was thankful for Labor Day.  That was unusual because Labor Day is one of those holidays I've never paid attention to. The only reason I like Labor Day is that I get paid time-and-a half to work, while not missing out on anything special at home. Labor Day celebrates the spirit of  American laborers with a day of laziness and drinking beer.  To me, it is the American equivalent of the English bank holiday, meaning: nothing special is going on, we just want a day off.  Also, I don't like Labor Day's association with labor unions, which I believe were once a necessary evil back when workers were routinely exploited, and an unnecessary evil now.
     Doing actual labor on Labor Day is nothing unusual in our family (see Raising the Roof), but what made this year special was that all of our children gathered at our daughter's place in Butte to help reshingle her roof.  Watching our children working and laughing together and sharing the family stories was the reward equivalent of receiving the Nobel prize for parenting. In spite of us, our children had become the friends we always hoped they would be.
    Then, to cap off an already rewarding day, Tracy announced that he had proposed to his girlfriend, and would be adding to our family another daughter and a two year old granddaughter. This was an amazing development since Tracy's girlfriends tended to disappear like objectivity on CNN as soon as they used the "F" word--future. Fortunately, when a heart is too full, it only throws up praise. That was why this year Labor Day turned out not be a turkey and, instead, became the center of my Thanksgiving feast.

Twilight for Twinkies

     Due to the tendency of union leaders to kill the goose that lays the golden, cream-filled egg, we may be facing a crisis unprecedented in my lifetime--the twilight of the Twinkie, the demise of the Ding Dong. Frankly, the fading of the fruit pie would not have a significant impact on my adult life, eating Hostess snacks is merely another memory of the childhood I have left behind, along with jumping rope and playing tag. These much maligned munchies are condemned for their preservatives and blamed for childhood obesity, the problem with that argument is that kids of my generation ate them on a semi-regular basis and we did not become obese.  When I was in school, each class had one, maybe two, fat kids. It was an unofficial, but long term position, like having a smart boy, a smart girl, a small kid, a class clown, a spoiled brat, a rich kid and a bully.
     The reason we could eat sugar-filled, fat-saturated snacks without building big behinds, is that we did not leave behind skipping rope and playing tag.  The caloric intake is not the problem, the caloric output is.  Back then the homes were small, the kids numerous, and the moms shooed us outside where we would be safe--from them.  Being confined to the house meant you were sick, had just been spanked or were about to be spanked. Be it ever so toy filled, there's no place like house arrest. All the good things happened outside, and most of those required physical activity of some kind.  Back then Wii was "we"--neighborhood kids, playing together like a pack of juvenile jackals. Yes, we were destructive, but that is why we had to run.  Running is good for you, so is climbing and hiding depending on the destructiveness of the game you have been playing.
     So don't dis the Ding Dongs. Calories are not the culprit and, I figure, all those preservatives will enable us baby boomers to live longer. Now it appears some other company will step in to fill our sweet dreams and rescue the Hostess workers from their own union, and the magical bond between their buns and ours will live on.

Cosmic Rays from Space

     I often wondered why, when God wanted to smite somebody, he used something ordinary like plague or hailstones instead of Cosmic Rays from Space. Zapping people seems a lot more spectacular, but God tends to use natural forces he has already created. Supernatural use of natural forces will cause a lot of the suffering in the tribulation as well. He also tends to punish us with the natural consequences of our sins. God had no problem creating everything, but he is economical in its usage. He actually invented recycling.
    It is this tendency of God not to reinvent the wheel that makes me believe that the days of creation were probably 24 hour days. Creation specifics are one of the many disputable areas in which Christians are free to disagree, it is not a teaching essential to salvation. But I believe God went out of his way to include the phrase "and there was evening and morning", with the days of creation to debunk the idea that "day" could mean an unspecified period of time. Both eons of daylight and eons of darkness would kill the plants and animals if they were anything like those we have now.  It's almost like God anticipated the theory of evolution.  "Day" probably means day.
     Likewise, I think "day" meant a 24 hour day even before the sun, moon and stars were created, because God tends to use the natural system he has already set up.  If his intention when he gave us the sun was to establish 24 hour days, he probably set that system up on day one. However, the disappointment that I will only see Cosmic Rays from Space in sci-fi movies, is worth the relief of not having to live looking over my shoulder, waiting to get zapped.
   

Bashing Black Friday

     I have to admit, I have already done some online peeking at the Black Friday sales.  I spend a significant part of Thanksgiving Day perusing the flyers, making a list, checking it twice, and planning the itinerary as if we were exploring space instead of parking spaces. Stories of Black Friday shoppers fighting and trampling their way to the holy holiday have given Black Friday sales a well deserved black eye. They are considered by some to be the epitome of ugly American greed. But greed is not what motivates me to leave my cozy bed at 5 a.m. on what is, for me, a work day, so that I can buy my family more extravagant gifts that I could ordinarily afford, it is love.
     Love--and thrift.  In the SILK (Single Income Lotsa Kids) days of my childhood, we lived on the cheap side of the thrift tracks. After graduation, I headed off to Bible college with faith, a student loan, and very little income. As a newlywed, I helped put a broke husband through aircraft fixing school (a modest investment on which I have lived for 33 years).  Then I was the overworked, underemployed mom of three children who were able attend Christian school on Reed's modest income.  I worked part time through some of those years, but my main contribution to the family finances was saving, not earning, money.  Our kids are grown and my husband is established in his profession so we have a more comfortable lifestyle, but I have not retired from my lifestyle as cheap financial officer. I consider thrift wise stewardship of the income God has given us.
     Greed is wanting, and buying, more than you need or can afford. Black Friday sales allow us to buy gifts that our loved ones want or need and still stay within our Christmas budget. My shopping-impaired husband even goes with me, after all, he is used to getting up to hunt in the wee hours of the morning. Finding these bargains was especially important as our children launched from home and needed--OUR stuff.  On one hand, I love getting a good deal, on the other hand, I love sleeping in, on the third hand, I love my children more, but on the second third hand, not enough to shop the dreaded discount stores like Walmart.  We mostly shop at hardware stores, and the hammer holding horde is neither as numerous nor bargain blood thirsty as the Walmart warriors.
     The last thing I want to do is recruit more shoppers to the sales, by all means stay home. Feel free to bash Black Friday consumerism, but don't look down on us stalwart stewards of our discount daily bread, we haven't had our beauty sleep.

If We Prayed It Like We Meant It

Our Father who's parked in heaven,
how often we use your name.
May our kingdom come, our will be done
on earth, if not in heaven.
Give us this day enough bread 

to last through retirement.
Forgive us our sins,

 but we will not forgive those

who sin against us.
You don't have to lead us into temptation, 

we can find our way to evil.
For ours is the whining 

and the wanting and the worry
forever and ever.

Amen

From the Reds to the Blues

    I was disappointed with the outcome of the recent election, of course.  I live in a little bastion of conservatism, most local radio talk shows are channeled to the right wing, the worst accusation in the campaign attack ads was--my opponent voted with Obama.  It gives us a skewed view of the national political climate, not as skewed as CNN, but skewed nonetheless. So I was sad Tuesday night, but not as sad as I was when "Billary" got elected for a second term.  We were studying the kings of Israel in BSF that year and I thought we had willingly reinstated Ahab and Jezebel.  The consolation was that they couldn't rule for decades like Israel's rotten kings.
     But I have learned something in the intervening years that helped me make it through election night, God is sovereign in the affairs of men.  He can use a leader who denies and detests him to work out his purpose just as well as one who loves and obeys him.  In fact, often God goes out of his way to choose an unbeliever to accomplish his will.  Pharoah's oppression didn't stop the Exodus.  Haman's plot to wipe out the Jews not only wiped out Haman, but many of their other enemies.  But my favorite example is Cyrus.  Cyrus was uniquely prophesied by name in Isaiah as one who would rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.  I don't think his name was written in scripture centuries in advance to convince Cyrus, he was an inclusive individual who liked to appease his subjects' god preferences. I think it was written to convince the Jews. I'm sure they were thinking, yes we want to build the temple, but why not choose some nice Jewish boy to lead us instead of this heathen?  For us it would be the equivalent of having a national Christian heritage day declared by Barak Obama.
     Yes, it is a great blessing to have godly leaders, but God is not the least bit frustrated by ungodly ones.  We are, but he is not. The Bible will not be found in the humor section of a bookstore, although there are some funny stories in it, but it does say that God laughs at our puny human plots against him. When God watches the schemes of our world's rebellious rulers, it is not only a reality show, but a sitcom. God thanks us for our cooperation in doing his will, but he does not need it.
     We are called to be people of hope.  I found hope in the record number of people who came out to vote, Americans are, at last, aware that our way of life is at stake.  I found hope that, after all the years of Republican leaders trying to impersonate Democrats, they are returning to their historic distinctives.  But mostly I found hope in the truth that no matter who is president, God is king.  All world leaders will give account to the king. And when those accounts are read, they will be the ones who are blue.