New Life'n

Two common words

I’m tired. 

I’m always trying to figure things out.  Always trying to improve, to do better.  You’d think you’d have something to show for all that always trying. 

There’s a fight in life, and to avoid it is to avoid living, but there’s something at the heart of the fight that changes it.  I remind myself of that by sitting and listening and catching a little inspiration that yes, people do this.  This lady did it.  And though there’s fight, the heart of it sounds and feels and looks nothing like figuring and trying and fighting. 

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Emily is doing that Unwrap the gift thing again.

Now you don't see it, now you do

And what you can’t see is important.  Something big and significant might be happening long before it’s visible.

Ever heard of the Longleaf Pine?  Some live for 500 years.  That long life leads to strength, weight, and resistance to rot and decay.  Two hundred years ago these trees became factories, bridges, homes and ship masts.  It’s been called “the tree that built America.”  The keel of the historic ship “Old Ironsides” is made from one Longleaf Pine. 

But for the first 5-15 years, you see almost nothing.  You’d never know the majesty that was to come.  It doesn’t even look like a tree – you see only a spiky grass bush on the ground.  You could walk past it, go home, have a kid, and walk past again when the kid was in middle school and you’d still be convinced it was a bush.  But during this time a deep taproot is growing that the tree will live on until it matures.  

When grass fires sweep the forest, other young trees are destroyed, but the Longleaf is designed to survive in its unimpressive bushy stage, continuing to grow its roots, waiting for the right time for a growth spurt.  When that moment comes the Longleaf Pine roars upward above the dangerous ground fire level.  Now it’s ready for long, strong, living.  It doesn’t matter how it looks for those first years; those years will be forgotten.

Longleaf forests need fire to thrive over other hardwood trees.  The fire wipes out the hardwoods, leaving great stands of Longleaf Pines.  The Southeast USA was dominated by Longleaf forests until 100 years ago – the forests disappeared because the wood was so useful in construction but took so long to grow that they weren’t replanted.  The thing that made it great also caused its demise.

Fire.  And time.  Lots of fire and lots of time.  Two things you’d rather avoid.  Who wants to live for years with the threat of everything being burned up and no visible results?  But if you knew what it could lead to, you might see fire and time as a friend instead of evidence of hopelessness.

Jesus served three years, had maybe a few hundred followers and was killed.  At the time, it didn’t look like much.  But the roots of a new life-changing reality for the whole world were permanently established.  Those roots began with Adam and Abraham and Moses and Israel and David and the prophets.

“The longer the preparation, the deeper the work.  The deeper the root, the firmer the plant when once it springs above the ground.  I do not believe that any deep work of God takes root without long preparation somewhere.” – J.O. Fraser

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You.  Really, he's all over the place. 

We’re noticing now how the whole earth is filled with birth, growth and death.  The previous post is HERE.

Solomon looked around and wrote what he saw

The mouth of a forbidden woman is a deep pit; he with whom the Lord is angry will fall into it – Proverbs 22.14

Well I never thought of THAT as a root of adultery – that God could be angry with you and so lets it happen.  A deep pit would be dark and hopeless-feeling and a tangled mess to get out of; maybe that’s the kind of trouble needed to bring about a turning to God that will result in the Lord NOT being angry with you.  Is it an accident that the very next verse talks about the rod of discipline driving folly from the heart of a child?

I want to be Ernie

Ernie is 91.  He has cancer.  He just found out last month.  He knows he doesn’t have much time left.  But he feels fine – it’s one of those painless but fast-growing ones.

Ernie’s been married to Lulu for 68 years.  Do you know how he’s spending his last days?  Taking care of Lulu – running errands, “whatever she wants me to do.”  Lulu’s fine, Ernie’s the one dying.  But he says he still falls in love with her more everyday.  He says he owes her – she’s been so loyal and followed him to Detroit 50 years ago even though she never wanted to leave Baltimore. 

You might remember that when you hear sometime this winter that the famous baseball announcer Ernie Harwell has died.

You keep score in baseball.  Keep score in marriage and you may win, but your marriage will lose.  Unless the score you keep is the debt of love you owe them.  That’s the score Ernie’s been keeping.  And he’s still trying to pay her back. 

The constant fight to keep it simple

Maybe it’s easy for you.  Not me.  I’m a Master Complicator.  MC’s try to see and solve everything at once (in their heads), and end up not seeing anything clearly.  It’s about as smart as trying to cram a couple dozen eggs into a 12-egg carton.

If you love to follow formulas you always come against something the formula won’t fit.  And if you hate formulas (like me) and refuse to let them into your life at all, you end up covered with egg-yolks.  But, while thrashing around in several areas (home, work, church, self – you know, everything) I stumbled onto this lifeline:

1.  Trust – that God knows, cares, is in total control.  That he’s working everything for good.  That he loves you.

2.  Don’t grumble – not outside, not inside.

3.  Be grateful.  Can you walk?  Talk?  Breathe?  Eat?  Any of those?  Anything else?

4.  Be obedient.  Do what you think you should do, based on the Bible.  Don’t do what seems to bother your conscience.

So for now, I’m just asking myself as I go thru the day – Am I trusting here?  Am I grumbling?  Am I grateful?  Am I doing what I know I should?  If I keep those 4 in line, I might stay in a good place for awhile, and be more useful.

My fall wreath that's not a wreath

Emily is doing Tuesdays unwrapped again, noticing the gifts that are easy to miss.

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I’m a guy -- I don’t do wreaths or dried cornhusks with pumpkins and gourds.  Or those cornucopia things.  But I love fall and it’s emotion.  I think the emotion is nostalgia – you can feel the dying of something and you reflect on the life and days and summer and times and events and change that came before.  Leaves seem the perfect picture of that. 

My fall wreath on the door is my computer screen.  Webshots helps you compile albums of photos of different themes that you can turn on and off as a screensaver.  I just turned on my fall album.  My favorite pictures are the ones I’ve taken over the years in my neighborhood.  They’re not professional quality and are taken with a cheap Nikon point and shoot -- I don’t even look at the screen as I take them.  But they’re mine and are personal and they help me feel the emotion of fall. 

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Five feet from our back door, in the patio chairs – don’t touch a thing, just behold from different angles and lighting.  The Crepe Myrtle blooms from the end of May into September.  It deserves a rest…

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The sun loves to help them wave goodbye…

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A few blocks from my house, this exact scene on the sidewalk – I think there was a wedding at the park gazebo the day before and a plastic rose was left behind…

Then the cadavers without the rose.  Doesn’t get much deader than this.  But unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces much fruit…

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And some results of the death of seeds, at the roadside stand two miles from our house…

How to read those Old Testament books you hate

OK, you don’t hate them – you just avoid them.  All those names and numbers and details about sacrifices and building materials…what are you supposed to get out of that? 

You read ninety verses in Numbers chapter 7 describing the same dedication offering by each of the twelve tribe leaders.  After the first two or three guys, you realize it’s repeating.  The silver plate, the silver basin, the flour and oil, the golden dish, the incense, the bull, the ram. the male goat, the oxen and rams, and more lambs and goats.  Oh, and don’t forget the exact weights and amounts and ages – that’s described, too.  You’re tempted to go, “Yeah -- whatever.”  Why not just tell it once and say they all brought the same thing?

I think at least one reason is this: Your God is very precise.  In all those lists of people with funny names, in the numbing intricacies of sin offerings, and in the fastidious instructions for building the tabernacle, God is not wishy-washy or vague.  Some things are important and require precision.  Unlike me, God does not have a “whatever” attitude.  So, sure, read quick and skim, but don’t miss this:

People, sin, and connecting with God, matter. 

The most joyous spot on earth

It’s an unlikely spot for such joy.  Noisy, lots of concrete, chaotic, confusing.  And the joy only goes maybe 20 seconds before it moves on to other locations.  But those brief eruptions happen all day, every day.  You’re probably within a few miles of this spot.  Mine’s about 45 minutes away; I was there again this week.

The curb at the arrival level at your airport. 

Little mini-reunions occur constantly with quick handshakes, man-hugs, real hugs, smiles and shouts.  You toss the bags in the back, slam the doors and you’re off.  The joy continues down the road in all directions, gradually diluted from that concentration back at that 100-yard stretch of concrete. 

It’s a spot where the problems of separation and distance and time are resolved all in one moment.  Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing: A blurry little peephole into heaven.

Born. Grow. Die.

Birth, growth and death – they’re all over the place.

Things are planted, conceived, sprout, born, grow, reproduce and die.  It’s the same with life with God.  We get the visible, physical world right in front of us all the time, and as we understand it we’re helped to understand eternal, spiritual things. 

In both the physical and spiritual there’s a time of preparation and a time of sowing seed.  The farmer can scatter the seed and take in the harvest, but he can’t make the seed sprout or grow.  You can plant and water and try to create conditions for growth, but the results are out of your hands.  You can pray for your kids, family members and friends, but you can’t make anyone be born again or grow and mature spiritually.

And you can’t just throw seed anywhere and expect it to sprout.  If the soil is too hard or rocky or weedy, then there’s no growth or fruit.  There needs to be preparation.  It’s the same in spiritual things where hard hearts need softening and attitudes made receptive to receive a new thing. 

And what you can’t see is important.  Roots support everything that grows later.  Something big and significant might be happening long before you can see it.

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This is more of The God Show.  You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”  We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.

Isn't it great you don't have to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did?

You have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes – 1 Kings 14.8

Kept his commandments?  Followed God with all his heart?  Did only what was right in God’s eyes?  What about adultery and murder and not confessing and repenting until caught and confronted?

In Ephesians God talks about your walk and your manner of life.  David’s sins were an aberration, not his manner of life.  You wouldn’t say they characterized the way he lived. 

If God doesn’t major on my aberrations in his opinion of me, I shouldn’t either in my opinion of myself.  Or in my opinions of others.  You're who God says you are, no more, no less.  But aberrations also can’t become a habit and lifestyle.  If David’s adultery and murder were repeated every few years, even though infrequent, you’d begin to picture it as a manner of life. 

Chronic sickness (or sin) is persistent, long lasting or recurrent.  Acute illness (or sin) is abrupt and serious, but of short duration.  God knows the difference.