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February 6, 2024

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The golden nugget that is our earth

Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they fine it.  Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.  Job 28:1, 2

 God created this earth and placed in it everything we need, including great natural resources and treasures.  At the same time, God loves to create parables and show mysteries through them.  Jesus told us that parables teach valuable lessons to the wise, but hide those lessons from the unworthy.

Ro 1:19, 20 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

Even our physical earth is a parable.   The fact that we must mine the precious metals out of stone shows us that there are precious treasures to be mined from this life.  Henry David Thoreau wrote: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”  There is so much to learn from this life we have.  We can suck out all the marrow of life, but sometimes it takes years to wear away the rock before the gold can shine through.

I admire my grandparents and my parents.  Because they have lived long, I can look back and see that in their younger years, they had their issues, but as they traveled through their life’s journey, somehow the rock wore away.  They changed and gained so much from living their journey.  Their lives were not easy.  I think that no one born on earth has an easy journey.  Thinking back to world events during my grandparents’ lives, they experienced World War I, followed immediately by the epidemic of the Spanish flu, then the Great Depression years and the years leading up to and through World War II.  My parents were then directly involved in World War II, even marrying just as my dad was about to be sent overseas.  World War II was followed by years of young children and financial struggles.  Once they found a little more ease and prosperity, the sixties with all of its turmoil exploded in front of their faces: the Vietnam war, upheavals throughout the country as blacks struggled to find true equality, assassinations of prominent figures including President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.   All of this immersed in a changing culture of rock music, drugs, “free love,” and demonstrations.

All of these things changed them.  As they traveled through their life’s journey, they changed and gained so much from experiencing these manifold trials.  They found confidence and peace.  They overcame impatience and anger.  They increased their love and kindness.  They learned to trust.  Through it all, they learned to pray and depend on their faith in God.  I remember my dad’s impatience and worry when I was young.  Now he is 102 years old and he doesn’t talk much any more, but when several of us gather together with him, he looks around the room and begins to cry and he says, “I love you all so much.”  Both his and my mom’s hardships turned to gold because they learned and grew from their experience here on earth.  Dad’s most recent gems were: “My wife in heaven is happy.  Pretty soon I’m going to be with her and we will be happy together.”  Then, “I’ve been praying for a long time now because I want us all to be happy with Him.”  And, “there’s lots of things to pray for.”

What golden nuggets of wisdom are we mining from our life on this ball of rock that we call Earth?  We should “suck the marrow” out of each experience.  Our exquisitely loving God and Father can only allow things into our lives that will somehow teach us something that will help us get closer to Him.  Sometimes that is a hard pill to swallow because life can be a very rocky road indeed.  Even so, let it bring out of us its golden fruit so that one day we too can say, “I’ve been praying for a long time because I want us all to be happy with Him.  There are lots of things to pray for.”

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August 2, 2023

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Thinking of others before ourselves

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself; (Romans 15:1 – 3a)

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.  (Philippians 2:3)

In the quiet of the morning, in the peace of bird songs and silence, we can hear God’s voice simply.  Sometimes the riotous voice of twenty first century life surrounds us with its clamoring desire to be heard and noticed.  It wants constant attention.  Even Jesus went away at times to talk to God.  He knew the reality of these boisterous and needy voices.

Everyone we meet has such incredible needs.  Every. Single. Person. When you think about it, most of those needs have not been met, ever.  People either don’t pray or don’t know how to pray or don’t know that God is even listening or answering prayer.  Some are not ready to hear the answer.

This situation in our world is the result of so much selfishness.  Sure, some people are trying to live unselfish lives.  They are generous with both their time and money.  They are doing their best.  However, imagine a world where each citizen is living the Scriptures above.  Each one is esteeming others greater than him/herself.  Each one is listening to God’s voice as to how he or she can please others, that is, every and every person he/she comes into contact with.

That is how heaven functions.  People think of others first.  People esteem others greater than themselves.  They are like Jesus, not pleasing themselves, but searching how to please those that they are with.  That is heaven.  In heaven, needs are met.  Everything and everyone works together.  We have an expression on earth: “as a well-oiled machine.”  Imagine such an environment where every single person is thinking of others.  Every single person is putting others first.  Everyone and everything would work “as a well-oiled machine.”

We can have heaven on earth.  The kingdom of heaven is not somewhere outside of us in a far off place.  The kingdom of heaven is within.  We can make it happen in our little circles of life, the ripples of which will spread outward in all directions.  Sometimes, we may have to take time in the morning to fill ourselves with God in the quiet of the day, before the voices begin to clamor for our attention.  We may have to go to a quiet place to find that inner peace for ourselves so that we can give it to others.  We can create heaven on earth.  It starts with the peace that we have in our souls because we know God.

For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will extend peace to her life a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. (Isaiah 66:12a)

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December 31, 2021

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A fabulous hope

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As we close out this troubled year of 2021, I am also finishing up reading along with the Daily Audio Bible.  Reading through the Bible in one year is such an amazing experience.  It shows you God’s plan from start to finish.  The Bible starts off with God’s creation of a spectacularly beautiful paradise inhabited by a perfect but untested human being.  We know the story well.  From the moment Adam and Eve made that fateful choice through all of the stories of ancient times and the prophets, there seems to be nothing but trouble with just a few interludes of repentance and hope.  There is of course the awesome life of Jesus and the hope that He brought to our world, but even his flawless life is followed by much rejection and further predictions of judgment.  As one reads through chapter after chapter of trouble and judgments, it is sometimes difficult to carry on with the readings.  It’s helpful that each day’s readings end with something from the Psalms and Proverbs.

Then, as you approach the final days of the year in your Bible reading, you finally reach Revelation 21.  Here we are once again with two chapters showing God’s kingdom, the ultimate in beauty.  It becomes so clear to the reader that throughout history, God has constantly, without ever once losing His focus or momentum, been working towards this magnificent grande finale.  It’s incredibly amazing to end the year with such a hope, even as we see so much trouble in the world.  We can see that God begins His Book with a fabulous garden and yet He ends it with an even more glorious earth.  The magnificent man who at the start was beautiful, yet untested, has somehow produced many who have been tested and used their freewill to choose righteousness and the true life of the spirit over the naturally attractive life in the flesh.

It seems to me that this Book, God’s Bible, is really an invitation.  By living it, we can each accept our part in bringing in this new and more glorious creation.  Like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes, we can help our world rise above its troubled past (and present) simply by loving God our Father and putting His Word into practice in our lives.  It is clear that God’s heart is to save as many as He can and to restore this world, not just to its former beauty, but also to go far beyond even that, to make it a place where He Himself with all of His glory can feel comfortable to dwell.

Let’s not allow ourselves to be dragged down by the depression of our worldly circumstances or of the world and its circumstances.  We have a dazzling hope and whatever happens in 2022 can help us fan the flames of that hope and let it grow.

Best wishes for a beautiful, prayerful and hope filled new year!

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August 20, 2021

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Why, Lord?

Recently, some difficult things have come into my life, as they do in all of our lives. The most recent event was the sudden death yesterday of my cousin’s 13 year old granddaughter in a mountain bike accident. The whole family is devastated as she was dearly beloved and had such a promising life ahead of her. Those closest to her immediate family are completely distraught.

With this tragic news and with so much difficult news all around the globe these days, I find myself feeling the questions of so many. “Why, God?” Why is this happening to us? Some may be angry at God for allowing hardship, but others may sincerely and deeply want to know why. When I ask God why He has allowed things in my own life, He often gives me an answer if I am sincere in my question. When we consider the difficulties of others, we cannot know the reason for each specific situation. It’s not ours to know, but overall there are some basic answers for all of us.

Since the days of Adam, we have all been placed in situations where we have to choose – good or evil? Adam and Eve chose and so it has gone on down through the generations. It is part of our free will. We often find ourselves in the middle, in a valley of decision. Sometimes we literally choose a good or evil object or situation, but other times the choice is in our attitude towards the situations we find ourselves in or towards the events that happen to us. Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and they seed may live:” God always wants us to choose the good and high road. Even in our grief, we can choose to love God, to continue on in faith and to know that somehow the things that He allows will draw us closer to Him.

Jeremiah 30:3 says, “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” To me, those are some of the most beautiful words in the Bible. Everything God is allowing to happen in our lives, as difficult as it is, is drawing us closer to Him in some way. We may never be able to see those ways, but thankfully God has a higher perspective than we do.

I cannot begin to fathom the grief of my cousin’s son and his wife at the loss of their daughter. However, my faith says that somehow their daughter is okay. She is in God’s hands. Their grief will lead them on a long road and they will always miss her, but hopefully, in their grief, they will find God and when they do, they will also find His comfort and love. I don’t know why we as humans so often need tragedy to drive us into God’s arms. We often just live life and enjoy the pleasures of this earth and forget who gave them to us. Difficult circumstances and tragedy jolt us out of our everyday living and open our eyes to the greater purpose of life.

It sounds selfish of God to want us to love Him above all else, but that’s just our earthly point of view. I believe that His love is entirely selfless. He knows that when we love Him, He can lead us and draw us ever closer to Him and then one day, when we have continued to overcome up to our last breath here on earth, we can join Him in His heavens and be eternally useful to Him.

Today, I’m praying for my cousin’s family and for others who face unimaginable circumstances. Lord, let them find you through their tears and lead them to a higher place, Lord. Send them comfort and love and most of all, let them eventually find a greater love for you. And God, take care of Lily and keep her until someday (not too soon please) her family can join her.

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November 6, 2020

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How can this guy be best friends with everybody?!

No one alive today needs someone to tell them that these are really difficult days to be alive on planet Earth. For most of the world it has been about eight or nine months (ten if you’re in China) since we last felt normal. We don’t know when or if normalcy will return. Many of us have lost loved ones, jobs, and/or the companionship of friends and family. We’re collectively lonely. Everywhere.

Personally, I miss my children and wonder when they will be able to come for a visit again. It’s not easy for them to come since they live quite a few hours away by airplane. Of course, we have the facetime chats, which are greatly appreciated, but it’s just not the same. Normally, when they visit, we would be heading to the local coffee shop for a cup of tea and a chat, or perhaps heading out for a drive in the northwest hills of our state (with more tea and more chatting).

With so many ideas of COVID-19 and loneliness and election craziness running through my head this morning, I thought, “Lord, we need you to be close more than ever.” Right away, I realized the error of my ways. The Lord is always close to us. It’s us that need to be close to him. It sounds a little trite to say it, but yes, we need him. Obviously.

We need more than a distant, two dimensional “facetime” chat with him. He’s real. We need to sit down and have a cup of tea and a chat with him. There are so many issues we need help with. He can give us the patience to wait out the vote counting process, the faith to accept whatever the election result, the love to fill our loneliness, and the strength to bear up through these difficult days.

He’s not a boring God. He’s very personal. If we like gardening, so does he. If we enjoy reading or writing, he loves it too. If we love a long bike ride on a Sunday afternoon, he’s always up for it. Sewing? Knitting? Yup! He’s great at it. He would love to come along, no matter what we’re doing, and fill our hearts and minds with inspiration and ideas about living a complete and whole human life.

Take him to work and he’ll give us ideas on how to do things better and be more efficient. He can show us answers to problems that we have not been able to resolve. If we’re going out for a walk or to work out at the gym, he’s already dressed and raring to go. He can’t wait to help. Getting ready to cook dinner? He has the perfect choice and is always careful not to let food spoil or go to waste. It’s going to be tasty and healthy with a bit of a treat now and then. He really is our best and most loyal friend.

Try it! He never disappoints! How can this guy be best friends with everybody? Well, he’s God! 🙂

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June 29, 2020

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Fighting the good fight

In the battle of life, we should never, ever give up.  Life has seemed like a battle lately for many, perhaps even for the whole world.  During a physical battle in World War I, an important French general, General Ferdinand Foch, is famous for having possibly said:

“My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.”

I love that attitude.  Whether he said these actual words or not is not important, but in his life he made it a priority to maintain a constant positive attitude.  He did not let the confusion of the battle or the situation overcome him.  He stayed focused and in control.  He did actually say the following:

“A lost battle,” he proclaimed, “is a battle which one believes lost. A battle won is a battle we will not acknowledge to be lost.”

Hang in there.  We should not be attacking one another.  We are not the enemy.  The enemy is the hateful thoughts, selfish attitudes and angry feelings that we harbor.  We should attack whatever demons are hiding in our closets that are holding us hostage.  When we feel as if our center is giving way, our right is in retreat, we should remember General Foch.  The situation is excellent.  Time to attack.  Attack the negativity with positivity.  It will soon disappear.  With the help of God, we can overcome.  With such confidence, we are well able to gain the victory.

DO NOT GIVE UP!

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March 16, 2019

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Youth Activism for a New Generation

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SAVE OUR EARTH!

On the Ides of March this year, young people around the world held climate strikes to protest what is happening to our environment on our beautiful planet.  It’s wonderful that today’s young people want to step up and do something to improve our beloved earth.  Certainly, our weary earth could use a little support together with some positive changes.  Along with the protests, I heard a few short clips of young people talking about why they were protesting.  Some of them said that climate change is the biggest current threat to human life.  One young lady was lamenting the condition of the world and her future.  She laid the blame on older generations and she said something to the tune of “We just want a world like you had.”

Her words struck me as (at best) uninformed.  Really?  You want the world that we had?  We had the Cuyahoga River filled with so much debris and pollution that it caught on fire.  We had so much air pollution that the skies over Detroit and many other major cities were red.  What we did not have was recycling programs or trash to energy plants.  We had Three Mile Island and superfund sites.  In our youth, we had rampant discrimination against blacks and lynchings.  We had Emmett Till, the Mississippi Burning civil rights murders, and the Birmingham Baptist Church murders.  Then we had the civil rights demonstrations where people were tear gassed and water cannoned.  We had the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X.

We should never desire to go back in time or wish that we could have something other than our current situation.  Our generation made it possible for the new generation to worry about single use plastic bags, bottles, cups and boxes.  Our generation created recycling programs and trash to energy plants and closed down many nuclear power plants.  We demonstrated for civil rights and against the Vietnam War.  Although some of us embraced chemical fertilizers and GMO crops, others of us began organic gardening, seed saving and the Environmental Protection agency.  So, quit blaming the preceding generations.  Now it’s time for you to step up to the plate.

Your generation has awesome ideas.  Put all of your boundless energy to a positive use.  Many of your generation are creating ways to clean up the oceans, end the use of plastic bags in grocery stores.  Do some research.  Find out what the problems really are and create solutions that will not only work, but also add something positive to our earth.  Remember that you too will leave a legacy.  Leave one that you will feel proud of one day, and when your children reach their age of maturity, don’t let them tell you that they wish that they could have what you had.  Remind them that you had issues too and that you dealt with those issues and that they should not look back, but look forward and use their energy to solve the problems of their day.

Check out Regeneration International, a group that is not just going organic but is trying to leave the earth BETTER than it was before.  (https://regenerationinternational.org/)  We don’t have to continue to hack down our forests and destroy the earth with mountains of chemical fertilizers.  We can improve.  We can go one step further than previous generations.  You can.  You can do it, but don’t waste your precious energy blaming generations before you. They did their best.  They didn’t know what you now know about plastics.  Create something better.  It’s all inside you.  Let it grow.

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March 4, 2018

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Time Passages

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I love the title of Al Stewart’s song, Time Passages.  It describes so well the amazing gift of time that we have on this earth.

My dear mother passed away in early January.  A parent’s passing is always a defining moment in a person’s life.  My mother was blessed with time.  She was 96 when her time came to pass on.  Although she had been afflicted with some type of dementia for several years, she was still cute, sweet and at times downright funny.

However, it wasn’t always so.  Helping to write her obituary, I realized a lot of things about my mom and ever since her passing, there have been conversations with siblings about her life and reflections on what she accomplished in life.  One single life on this earth is so complex and so precious.  Each life has a myriad of experiences to go through and so much to learn from those experiences, taking each lesson learned on into the next experiences.

Mom had a lot of challenges in her life.  She had a fairly controlling mother, eight children and not much money.  She lived through the depression years, World War II and the shocking 60’s when all societal rules seemed to fly out the window.  She spent hours dealing with her own mother when she herself had small children to take care of as well and later, when her father and her mother-in-law were old and needy, she spent all of her days caring for them and taking care of those needs.

My mother was an overcomer.  She met all of those challenges with grace and dignity.  Sometimes she had reactions as anyone would, but she did what she needed to do without complaint.  As we were writing our mother’s obituary, we realized that we couldn’t make it so flowery that she would seem to be a saint from the moment of her birth.  It wasn’t that way.  It never is, right?  Isn’t it more real, more adventurous, and more challenging to have a life long parade of situations that, through the passage of time, shape our nature?

Mom always had her own personality, but her character developed as she aged.  She became more patient, a better listener, more concerned with others.  As those qualities increased, others decreased: less anger and less worry.

Enhancing the positive qualities and diminishing the negative ones is what this life’s journey is all about.  We are all born with issues and we all encounter troubles along the adventurous road of life, but what an exquisite testimony there is when one of God’s children is at the end of their journey here, giving those who knew them the opportunity to look back at all the hardships along their route and to witness firsthand the growth of God’s life in that person.  What a solid evidence, sure and positive, that we can do the same in our lives.  Our situations may be different, but we have the same potential that they did.

When we witness a wonderful life, we don’t have to stand far off and feel dismal about our own existence.  This person was an ordinary person, just as we are, and he or she began his/her life with the similar challenges and similar skepticism about the possibilities of ever changing them.  Because we, like them, are born into the human condition, we too can allow our circumstances to mold our character and improve those things that require either a bit of touch up or a major overhaul.  We too can experience time passages and watch God’s handiwork in our lives.  Day by day, step by step, we come up a little higher and when time has finished its passages in our lives, hopefully others will say of us that we were overcomers and will, in their time, find inspiration to do the same in their lives.

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December 10, 2017

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Verses and a verse: Courage

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**Sandinista Avioncitos

The little airplanes of the heart

with their brave little propellers

What can they do

against the winds of darkness

even as butterflies are beaten back

by hurricanes

yet do not die

They lie in wait wherever

they can hide and hang

their fine wings folded

and when the killer-wind dies

they flutter forth again

into the new-blown light

live as leaves

–Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

These are difficult days that we are experiencing.  Sometimes, it feels as if we are buffeted by the winds of the hurricanes that have recently traversed our world or by the flames that scorch our west coast.  We need to take heart in the Scriptures that uphold the righteousness that God has planted in us.  We need to surely know that righteous lives soften the paths that others must follow in the future.

Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

** Although this title seems negative to me because of the reference to Sandinistas, I have chosen to leave it in so that the poem can be properly identified.  The poem itself is very sweet.

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May 27, 2016

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Memorial Day Freedom

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Memorial Day. In memory of those soldiers who died in the service of their country.  There is a boulevard in my small town called Memorial Boulevard.  Along this boulevard are several memorial statues dedicated to city soldiers who lost their lives in various American wars.  There are also oak trees planted along this boulevard and next to each oak there is a marker with the name of a city soldier lost in World War I.  There are about thirty such markers, a huge toll for such a small town at the time.  It has been nearly a hundred years since they died on foreign soil fighting for freedom.

So, what freedom did they fight for?  One hundred years ago, the average citizen had less freedom than modern young people in regards to his or her family.  It seems as if young people had certain obligations towards their families that young people today don’t have.  To a large degree, today’s youth can choose the career of their dreams, move to the location they desire and marry whom they choose.  They can make a life for themselves, but is that freedom?  At the same time, we have lost other kinds of freedom that people one hundred years ago took for granted.  Today, we owe much to our government.  More and more, our government decides what is appropriate.  We have lost the right to pray in our schools, to put the Ten Commandments in public places and even to display a creche at Christmas time on the town green.  The people of one hundred years ago would be surprised at what we can no longer do.  Are we now “free?”

What makes a person free?  We would all agree that a  person who is addicted to alcohol, smoking or to internet porn is not free.  He/she is a prisoner to that habit.  Just as an addict is not free from his addiction, I am not free if I freeze in fear each time I face a large crowd in a public speaking situation.  I am a prisoner of that fear.  Or perhaps each time I open a package of cookies, I eat the entire thing.  I am a prisoner to that craving.  Both situations create a negative result for me.

So, on this Memorial Day, as we honor those who died to preserve our freedom, what makes us free?  Freedom in regards to our family or our government increases or decreases and yet still we find ourselves not one hundred percent free.  The only real freedom we can enjoy is freedom inside of ourselves, in our souls.  Only the truth can make us truly free.  If we live that truth and free ourselves from those things that hold us prisoner, then we are free indeed with a freedom that no one can take away.

We are truly grateful for those soldiers who nobly fought and died to preserve our natural freedom.  It gave us the opportunity to find and live our spiritual freedom.  Thank you to those thirty young men who died one hundred years ago.  Thank you to the men and women who have died before then and since that time.  The most deeply felt thank you must be reserved for Jesus who most nobly fought and most lovingly died that we each might find our true freedom.  Thank you Jesus.  We remember you this Memorial Day weekend.