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Trust in him at all times; [ye] people, pour out your heart before him: God [is] a refuge for us. Selah
Psalm 62:8

Hi, God.

I’m trying to do what You said to do with my heart–pour it out before You–but I kinda have a problem. See, I tip it over to pour it out, and nothing comes out. I think it’s dried up and caked in there, maybe a little like spices do when they’ve been sitting in the cupboard too long and gotten a little moisture in them. And, well, I’m not really sure what to do now because I can’t really pour it out, see?

I took my heart to someone I thought might care to see this strange phenomena that is going on in my heart, but . . . well, she was ready to pour out her heart at the moment and mine wasn’t exactly pour-able. Actually, it wasn’t really like she poured out her heart. It was more like just shaking some of its seasoning out to flavor my life. And I really was glad for it. It’s fun to hear her adventures.

I called another friend today. Wow! Was she ever busy! I really wasn’t expecting that she’d be able to scrape free the caked stuff in my heart. I was hoping that I’d hear a little of how she was doing. I think she needed a little encouragement, and it was really nice to hear a few sound-bites of her life. The call made me smile. I hope it made her smile, too.

Another friend was a bit confused by it all. She was a little panicky, too, as though I was panicky about what in the world this stuff was and was hoping that she would fix it. She really didn’t listen but kept suggesting recipes that I could sprinkle it into. Not quite what I think I’m supposed to do with it . . . hm.

I took my heart to another friend. As I showed her the dried-up stuff that used to be my heart, she listened and tried to understand; but she really didn’t know what to do with it any more than I did. And, frankly, I’m a bit tired of talking about it all. That’s part of the dried-up-ness. It’s like “what’s the use?” Ya know?

Another friend was better able than I to “pour out” her heart. I suspect that I didn’t know what to do with her heart any more than my other friend knew what to do with mine. But somehow the act of listening and trying to understand produced a little moisture. I think the shared moisture helped, but it didn’t last long. I’m dry and caked again.

So, here’s my heart. I was bringing it to You all along; I just had some stops along the way. I’m not sure what to do with it, it’s so dry. It doesn’t want to laugh or cry but it wants to do both; it’s both frustrated and content somehow; it’s tired but doesn’t want to go to bed; concerned but not worried. What do You make of such a heart? Shouldn’t it be crying out to You right now?

Hm. It shouldn’t, huh? This is normal? You say that this is what happens sometimes to hearts that have been working hard and pouring themselves out and opening themselves up to face the elements? So. I guess this means You know what to do with it, then? Whew! What a relief! I was getting a little tired of trying to figure it out. Make something good with it, ok?

I’m going to bed.

=)

“If we cannot believe God when circumstances seem be against us, we do not believe Him at all.” – Charles Spurgeon
qtd in NBBC Alumni Update: January 28, 2008 

I’ve been studying the life of Job lately. (Actually, the whole church was, and the children’s class got behind: we’re still studying that book along with the Psalms that the rest of the church is studying. We’re having a great time figuring out what each of the characters in Job is saying and getting quite an education on the behavior of people discussing things!)

If anyone had a hard time with circumstances, Job was the one. And he had so many questions for God. Questions I find that I have–sometimes even without knowing I’m wondering them.

“God, why are you punishing me? I’ve been doing my best to serve you!”

“God, if things are really truly ok between us, why these circumstances?”

“How is it considered punishment when it happens to others but not to me? It appears the same!”

“How can you still be ok with me when everyone else seems not to be? and when my world seems to be falling apart? and when I can’t tell up from down?”

 Yet, before we begin the series of discussions between Job and his friends, we know the answers to some of the questions. As I say to my kids, God was really bragging on Job.

God: “Satan, see Job down there? He’s my friend. He’s such a great guy!”

Satan: “Yeah, he’s just your friend because you’ve given him everything he wants and needs and even some things he didn’t know he wanted or needed. Take all that away, and you’ll lose his friendship.”

So God let it be tested. And He had something more to brag about when Satan returned from carrying out the terrible deed of stripping from Job everything that he had.

 God: “See, I told you he was my friend! You took away everything, and he’s still my friend! What a great guy!”

Satan: “Yeah, but he’s still healthy. Make him sick, put him into some real, physical pain, and he will start to curse you.”

So God allowed that, too. And still Job didn’t stop being God’s friend. And then (as an added “bonus”) Job’s friends misunderstood him. And they added misunderstanding to misunderstanding. And Job didn’t stop being God’s friend.

But He began to wonder if God was still his friend.

And I guess that when I’m under the circumstances, I begin to wonder that, too. I’m looking forward to the end of the book, looking forward to seeing how God answers some of these questions.

My Grandma (the one I live with) has a wonderful theory about cinnamon: she heard somewhere that it is very beneficial to our health, so she tries to find things that contain cinnamon to eat or drink or else she adds a little extra cinnamon to thing that already have cinnamon in them. It’s a joke at our house that we can eat sweet things (such as pie or cookies or candy) because they have cinnamon in them and cinnamon is good for us.

One of the things that cinnamon is supposed to do for us it to stop the sniffles. My first reaction to this news was one of slight disbelief; but if Grandma’s theory is correct, I have the “cure for the common sniffles”: snickerdoodles, lots and lots of snickerdoodles! Snickerdoodles are such fun cookies! Even the name sounds fun. And making them is fun: take small balls of dough (containing cinnamon, of course), roll them around in a cinnamon and sugar mixture to coat them really well, and then put them in the oven to bake. When they come out and are done to perfection, these cookies are a little crunchy on the outside and a little soft on the inside. So good! They REALLY keep me coming back for more. And if Grandma’s theory is correct, they will keep away the sniffles, too. Grandma has tried taking extra cinnamon when she has the sniffles, and she has found that it works. Why not give cinnamon cookies a try when the common cold comes your way? (I know, the sugar content would probably conflict with the medicinal properties of the cinnamon, but still . . . )

There are few things more annoying that getting the sniffles: being in the middle of something and suddenly needing to dive for the box of tissues does not help productivity very much. Looking at life, it seems that sniffles plague us more than just in the cold season. O. Henry, the famous short-story writer, made this comment about life in his story “The Gift of the Magi” when his female character collapses into tears over something: “Which [action] instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.” I agree that life seems to bring sniffles up an awful lot; sometimes even when we are laughing, we are hiding a sniffle or two. Not that we spend our lives blubbering about the hard lot we have been given; no, we try to face things as bravely as we can, knowing that life is not fair and that we should not expect it to be. Still, we can’t really help the sniffles.

But what is there for solving the sniffles of everyday life? If–as O. Henry suggests–sniffles lead the statistics of our lives, eating cinnamon cookies for such a frequent amount of sniffles will add weight problems to the woes of the heart. Is there a balm for them?

There is. It’s an unlikely one–as unlikely as eating cinnamon for common sniffles. But it gives promise of truly working.

A King.

Now THAT sounds preposterous. Any American can tell you that a king is not necessary for a nation to work properly. And gone are the days of Britain’s autocratic kings. Who needs a king? Not us. We don’t need a dictator to run our lives, and we don’t need a figurehead to take all the credit. So the words of this Christmas carol have a hard time making sense to us.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders of His love.

~Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts is not describing a weak figurehead king here. His king has power–power to bring about changes. Look at the things He can do: send His blessings on everyone, reverse the effects of the curse, rule the entire world (notice there’s no mention of bureaucracy here–He is the One ruling, not His government), and prove His love to the world through the way He treats the nations. That’s power! And, to be honest, sometimes we long for that power to be seen in our lives. Having the curse reversed would be wonderful; and if blessings are being served out, pass me a generous helping! Also, I agree that it would be nice for the world to be full of love rather than hatred. Maybe I do need a king. I certainly wish for someone sometimes who will step in and make the decisions that seem impossible for me to make, someone who will pull out the necessary resources when mine are running dry, someone who has influence over others when I am getting a raw deal or do not know how to communicate with them. Yes, a king would be nice. A king looking out for my interests would definitely cure the sniffles.

But does it have to be a king? Giving someone else the reins of power is more than a little disconcerting! Put this thought in everyday shoes: we want advice from people, but we hate it when they step in to try to run our lives–we want to make the ultimate decisions (esp. since we are responsible to live with those decisions once they’re made); we want others to listen to our troubles, but we are terrified of what they might do about those problems–we want their help and we don’t want their intereference all at the same time. We have a relative amount of control over our own lives; we know what we are thinking before we do it; we know how we hope that things turn out. We don’t know these things about others. We have no control over them, well, very little. We may do our best to manipulate others or dominate them in order to get what we think we want, but those who refuse to be dominated or manipulated scare us. In our experience, a loss of personal control can lead to MORE sniffling rather than less. Is it worth giving up control just to have what a king can do for us? ummmm . . . pass the Kleenex, please!

But the price is joy.

And we don’t really have much of it. We find our hearts getting hardened and numb, and we walk through life in a half-fog, just trying to survive. We are more than fully aware of the curse, seeing its blight on our lives everywhere we look, especially when we look inside. It’s scary to realize the evil we are capable of and overwhelming to see the wounds we suffer from. And the worst part is knowing that really there’s little we can do about the problems within us anymore than we can control the circumstances around us. Our small measure of control is just that: small. Maybe we do need a king after all. We don’t want one, but we need one. We need one badly.

And to have Him, we are going to have to trust Him. Even though we don’t know what He’s going to do, even though we can’t control Him, we are going to have to open our hearts to allow Him to come in. As Watts wrote, we must “prepare Him room” in our hearts. We can’t keep Him relegated to the stable of our hearts, we have to allow Him to have the throne if He is going to do us the good we so long for Him to do. Watts was writing this song not about the first coming of Jesus–when He came as a baby to be born obscurely, live humbly, and die sacrificially–but about the second coming when He will come to rule the world and to make all things right. The Bible contains many prophesies of what He will do when He rules. All wonderful, all badly longed for, all in the future. But His rule in our hearts does not have to wait that long: it can begin now. And what He wil do for the world someday He promises to do within our hearts today: weed out the thorns and weeds of sin, heal the wounds, make us new. We find it easier to trust someone when we know towards what goal he is heading; has the King not showed us enough of His goal to inspire our trust?

Interesting thing about snickerdoodles: they get hard after a while. As they sit in the cookie jar, the moisture leaves them and they lose their softness. They’re still tasty, but not quite as addicting. Unless they’re dunked in milk. Dipped and held there until the milk has soaked into them through and through. Then they’re delicious. A joyful taste if ever there was one. Preparing our hard hearts for receiving the King is as simple as milk and cookies: it involves soaking in Him, bringing our hearts to His moisture and soaking in it until our hearts are saturated with it. Just soaking.

Happy soaking this holiday season!

It’s morning. I can tell it by the amount of light in the room. I can tell it by the way my body feels. I can tell it by the sounds coming from outside and from other parts of the house. But I can’t get up. Traces of a dream linger in my fuzzy consciousness, blurring the line between reality and unreality, dreams of going somewhere I can’t reach, struggling to be someone I can’t be, stuck between crushing stresses–not pleasant dreams at all. But I can’t wake up either. I dread the reality of the expectations and needs of my day: they resemble my dreams more than a little–trying hard to meet needs I can’t meet, be someone I can’t be, stuck between crushing forces I don’t belong between. At this point in the morning, it’s sometimes hard to tell which is the dream and which the reality. And sometimes it’s hard to tell which is worse.

So there I lie, eyes tightly closed, curled up into a little warm ball to shut out the morning, knowing that all that precious time is slipping away and making things worse by making life more hurried. And as consciousness begins to drown out my dreams, I realize that I am praying: “God, please! Please, I can’t do this! I can’t, I just can’t. It’s not possible. I’m too small, I’m too . . . I’m not . . . I don’t have . . . I just can’t face today, God. Please help me. Where is Your strength? Aren’t You going to help me? Please, I can’t do this.” The track plays over and over again as I lie there waiting for something–a divine power-surge, perhaps? Finally there comes, not an adrenaline rush, but a tiny modicum of readiness, and I plunge head-first into the icy water of the day. My morning has begun.

I have been pondering and dreading this post all day. Pondering it because I knew that it was ready to be written. Dreading it because, as much as I have wanted to write it, I also do not want to write it. I have too many questions about the subject matter. It seems improbable and impossible. I don’t want to type. I don’t want to ponder. And I apologize for the rambling that is sure to result from pondering of this type (pun not originally intended–this is what happens when I post and ponder at night).

I think I’ll go get a cookie. A Mint Meltaway. This Christmas season is the first time I have ever had one of Grandma’s Mint Meltaway cookies. I am currently living with my Mom’s mother, and this means I benefit from her wonderful culinary abilities. Mint Meltaways are her favorite Christmas cookie, and I now understand why. They are small short-bread-like cookies, firm and buttery, but not too crunchy. On the top, Grandma spreads a generous layer of icing–icing the pink color of peppermint candy when it is mixed in ice-cream and starting to dissolve. And the icing itself contains pieces of crushed peppermint sticks. The combination is fresh and invigorating and . . . addicting. The funny thing about this addiction is that rather than wanting these cookies in great quantities, I find I crave them one at a time, but frequently. Leave out a plate of these cookies, and I will snatch one as I walk past then snitch another on my return trip. This cookie is the most cheerful cookie I have ever met. It is excited to meet the day; even melting away in someone’s mouth is a great adventure to this little treat.

That little cookie is everything I don’t want to be in the morning . . . or at other times during the day. I do not want to view life as a great adventure–adventures are unpleasant and uncomfortable long before they sound great in storybooks. I do not want to be excited about being where I feel so inadequate or so unwanted or so helpless (depending on the day and the moment, of course). I want my life to be perfect, I know it is not going to be, so I will not be cheerful about it. I will curl up in a little ball somewhere inside myself, if possible, and beg God to end the storm.

To be perfectly honest, I know that I should be able to view life as cheerfully as the little Mint Meltaway seems to. I know that the Bible commands it of me. But, in the spirit of honesty, I confess that I think this command impossible and unreasonable. Unreasonable because it is impossible. Impossible because I cannot do it. I have tried. I do not want to try anymore. It takes too much energy, energy I need to conserve if I am to survive the challenges life sends me. I have lived long enough to know that life is one big bundle of sorrows. It is not a video game where you can fall down many times and come away with a body un-bruised. Its sorrows are real, and they cut deep into our souls. Some of them burrow so deeply into us that we do not realize they exist until something brushes them, sending throbs of pain throughout our whole beings. Life is real, life is hard, life is pain. (To quote from the movie The Princess Bride: “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling you something.”)

And sometimes the “Christmas spirit” seems to ask that we forget the pain of life in order to have beautiful moments that will be remembered for years to come. And sometimes Christmas brings with it the most painful moments in the entire year. In spite of all its “Christmas cheer,” Christmas can be a very difficult time. And the rejoicing of the people recorded in the Bible seems far removed from the real life struggles of the present moment. “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly,” one of my favorite Christmas carols has presented this seeming unreality to me this Chrismas in glaring words.

Infant holy, Infant lowly,
For His bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing, little knowing
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.
Swift are winging, angels singing,
Noels ringing, tidings bringing:
Christ the Babe is Lord of all,
Christ the Babe is Lord of all.

Flocks were sleeping, shepherds keeping
Vigil till the morning new
Saw the glory, heard the story,
Tidings of a gospel true.
Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,
Praises voicing, greet the morrow:
Christ the Babe was born for you.
Christ the Babe was born for you.

~ Polish carol; tr. Edith M. G. Reed

It’s the end of the second verse that really catches at the tatters of my heart: “Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,/ Praises voicing, greet the morrow”! I’m supposed to wake up and greet the morning with praises, rejoicing and somehow free from sorrow? Right! Like that’s going to happen! But that’s what the song says; in plain English it tells me that I am supposed to meet the morning as the shepherds did in Luke 2: “and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told unto them.” How could such a thing be possible?

Central to this issue is the word “sorrow.” At least the song does not ignore its place of importance in our lives. To rejoice as the shepherds did, we have to somehow be free from sorrow. And how, pray tell, is this supposed to happen? What magic potion is supposed to free me from sorrow, giving me the ability to greet the morning with eagerness and joy rather than dread and fear?

I’ve been pondering this for many days, almost two weeks since our church’s Christmas program in which my quartet sang this piece. A punctuation mark may hold the inconceivable answer. A colon. Observe with me: ” Thus rejoicing, free from sorrow,/ Praises voicing, greet the morrow:/ Christ the Babe was born for you.” There is a colon between the injunction to greet the morning with sorrow-free rejoicing and the next statement. A colon alerts the reader to either a list or an explanation. Since the last line of the song is very clearly not a list, we must take the colon to mean that an explanation will follow. How can we manage this impossible feat of cheerfulness in the face of a cold and sorrowful world? We can manage it by knowing that we have been given a gift. And by knowing that the gift truly is ours to open and own and cherish and keep.

But is it possible that a gift can outweigh sadness enough to make me able to greet rather than rue the morning? I’ve been wondering this, and I have come up with some examples from real life of outlook-changing gifts. I will try to briefly cite some: 1) What child does not look forward to Christmas and to the day after Christmas? Those days involve getting gifts and then playing with those gifts. The anticipation and excitement can last for days, especially as the novelty of the gifts continues: “tomorrow I get to . . . ride my bike . . . play with my new game . . . .” 2) How much easier it is to get up and face a long-awaited day off from work than to face the demands of the workplace! 3) Facing strangers and acquaintances at a party is much easier to do when I know that I have a companion with me who enjoys my company. 4) Last February, my dad was in critical condition with a blood clot in his lung and another in his leg. A friend of mine paid for me to fly out for a week to be with him. Being with him was wonderful–I was getting first-hand knowledge of what was going on, and I was watching him mend. But as the week drew to a close, I dreaded going home; a week seemed like far too little. And so I called another friend, a friend who had also offered to help me out with my ticket if I needed her help. I asked this friend if she would pay for an extension to my ticket for another week. Getting that extension to my ticket, having that extra week made life much easier to face. I could hardly believe it was happening to me, truly being given to me like that. I went from dreading the morning to relaxing in the morning. That gift made all the difference between sorrow and rejoicing.

What is this gift that made the difference for the shepherds? “Christ the babe was born for you.” There is a gift. It has your name on it. Mine, too. As simple as that.

Maybe it is possible that the knowledge of the great gift we have received will enable us to face the day and the sorrows it holds with rejoicing and excitement. Maybe it will make the difference between trumped-up cheerfulness and true joy. A small, cheerful little voice inside me is eager to find out if such knowledge and such a gift does have that kind of power. Part of me wants to be that joyful, that refreshed, that refreshing. “Try it,” the little hopeful voice inside suggests. “Try it and see if it truly works.”

So I am trying it, trying to accept that Christ’s gift for me has my name on it, wondering if it will produce in me the same rejoicing that it produced in the shepherds. Will you dare to test it out with me this Christmas season? If it works (and it HAS to!), it promises to be even more refreshing than a Mint Meltaway cookie. And it promises to last longer, too. The Mint Meltaway cookies don’t last long around my house.

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light–
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary–
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wond’ring love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming,
But, in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in–
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

~Phillips Brooks
I could almost picture it: the tiny town of Bethlehem asleep that night. All was dark and still, countless snores in the humble buildings that night punctuated the silence. Maybe a dog barked or a wolf howled. There were no cars, no public transportations systems running all night. No street lights kept the town perpetually lit with a dingy glow. No furnaces heated the houses; the sleepers piled the blankets on and settled in for another night like any other. Why should this one be any different? As I listened to the instrumental arrangement by Linda McKechnie of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” with a Debussy piece (it’s on one of my favorite CD’s–Hymnworks Christmas), I ran the words through my head, cherishing the stillness.

“The hopes and fears of all the years/ Are met in thee tonight,” arrested my attention. Somehow I had never noticed the combination of those words in that song before. Hope and fear seem so very distantly removed from each other–one is sunshine, the other dismay; one we want, the other we spend our lives running from; one we dream about, the other we feel stuck with. Right? Still, it’s set me to wondering how closely the two are tied.

Thinking about sugar cookies puts it into perspective for me. My grandmothers love to bake cookies, but for me, baking cookies is a daunting task. And no cookies are more fearsome to me than sugar cookies. They take so much work! Rolling out the dough, cutting the shapes, keeping an eye on them in the oven, and finally decorating them–thoughts of the process exhaust me even now (or is it the lateness of the hour at which i type?)! So when my aunt suggested that we make sugar cookies last Christmas, I cringed inwardly. But I do enjoy working at projects and was ready to literally roll up my sleeves and tackle the project. The dough had already been made: all that remained was the task of producing pleasant-looking shapes. I hadn’t made sugar cookies for a very long time, but I had the basic idea, so I dove in. And that’s when I discovered what I had feared: the dough would not cooperate with me. It knew I was more afraid of it than it was of me. Mom came in to see me wrestling with it and took over–first to demonstrate that flour was the answer, then to become part of the assembly line. Eventually the dough was obeying even my commands, and the production was going. My aunt and my sister took charge of the decorating, and soon we had containers of beautiful sugar cookies.

Hope and fear join hands in the process of making sugar cookies. We make them because we hope that they will be fun to make; we hope they will taste good; we hope they will look beautiful; we hope that people will be pleased with them. But we fear at the same time . . . at least, I do. I fear that they will look ugly, that they will taste awful, that no one will like them, and–worst of all–that they will not be worth the trouble it takes to make them! Yes, I am exaggerating a little with that “fear” stuff. But looking at sugar-cookie-making helps me to understand how hopes and fears can be twins.

Basically, every hope is also a fear: we want something, and we are vulnerable to pain if that hope is disappointed. So we live lives of hope and fear. We fear disappointment. We fear loss. We fear rejection. We fear pain. We fear failure. We fear inadequacy. We fear evil. We fear disaster. We fear insignificance. We fear helplessness. We fear the future. We fear uncertainty. We fear destiny. We fear the unknown. We fear . . . we fear . . . we even begin to fear hope sometimes. It’s hard to figure out sometimes which hurts more: the hoping or the fearing. And so we all cope with it in various ways. Every religion must deal with these two things. The religion of Buddhism is built around banishing this fear stuff by banishing hope altogether. Sometimes I try that, too: don’t hope–it hurts too much!

At first this song seems to make an outlandish claim–that all the hopes and fears of the ages could meet in that one town on that one night. But upon examining that claim further, I think I can see how it is true. In coming to God, I come with a multitude of hopes and fears. I hope to be accepted; I fear the rejection I know I deserve (and so does everyone else because we know how much trouble we carry around in our heart of hearts). I hope for success; I fear the failures I carry around with me. The unknown terrifies me: it could bring good, but so often it brings bad. I fear my own helplessness to handle all that life throws my way or I fear a time when I may be helpless. And in facing the God of the universe I can’t help but wonder “will He notice me? will I be valuable to Him?” Put your own fears there, and you will find that every hope and every fear is met at the manger in Bethlehem. The account in Luke tells us that “all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.” We wonder, too.

The little town that night housed a tiny infant as human as they come–probably as ugly as any other newborn is. As I come to the manger this Christmas, I wonder with Proclus, a character in “The Star” (an Adventures in Odyssey episode by Focus on the Family), “Are you the Hope of the World, little one?” Could this little child be the hope for ALL my fears? Because I certainly need some hope. I need more than just a set of directions to follow: I need someone who knows how to make the cookies of my life turn out better than I can ever hope to make them by myself. I need Him, Emmanuel–God with us.

“Dissonance is a passing thing. Dissonance drives us to the next chord.”

~Brett Habing
Northland Baptist Bible College Concert Choir director
(aack! I have no date for this quotation! I do know that it must have been said in the spring semester of 2001)

Some old thoughts that it’s time to post now:

You met me, and we talked. You started to see that here was a shoulder for you, an ear for you. And maybe some of the things I said made good sense. But it wasn’t enough. It never is. At some point, marginal utility began to decrease. Somewhere in our friendship journey, you began to realize I can’t solve all of your problems–not that you really expected me to, but we all do to some extent. I don’t have that magic wand I need to grant the deepest wishes of your heart. My status went from “fairy godmother” to “normal human” and might be proceeding on to “annoying nag” (if it hasn’t gotten there yet) or “basketcase” or “mindless drudge” or . . . *shudder* “nemesis.” You got tired of me. And you met someone else. Someone else with a shoulder and an ear.

Maybe that’s all part of moving on. Yes, I’m sure it is. I know it is because I’ve done it, too. But no one is ever enough. No one has the magic wand. Magic went out of the world with the elves, Tolkien says. Magic never existed, logic says. Only God works miracles, the Bible says. And somehow I want to move past trying to find my “fairy godmother” and figure out what this thing called friendship really is. Because I have had friends–a special few–who have shed their Superman costumes and become mere humans, but they didn’t leave. They didn’t take their shoulders and go home since I stopped seeming to need them. In fact, they remained themselves. They stayed. When I went back, tired of looking for fairy godmothers, they were still there. I’m wondering now how they did it. How they managed to stay the same and treat me the same all that time. That’s how I want to be. I want to learn that skill because somehow we moved from being merely ears and shoulders to being friends.

I have no wand. I’m sorry. I fervently wish I did. I have no solutions manual. I’m sorry. I almost wish I did (but solutions manuals are not half as much fun as magic wands would be, and solutions manuals are very real and must be dealt with periodically, and no one really seems to like to deal with them very much, esp. since you’re usually only allowed to look at the solutions AFTER the problems have been figured out!). I just have the same things I’ve always had: a shoulder and an ear and an offer of friendship.
And right now you’re getting tired of me always being there, never leaving. You might be feeling like there’s more of me in your life than there is of you anymore. I’m so sorry. I don’t want that! I don’t want another me–there’s more than enough of me as it is. I spend time with you because I enjoy your company. I ask how you’re doing because I care. I ask what you’re doing and thinking about things because what you do and think matters to me, makes a difference in my life, helps me understand who YOU are, not who I want you to be. I don’t want you to be anything else but you. I don’t want you to stop being you–EVER!!!!! I don’t want you to like music just because I like it. I don’t want you to laugh at things just because I laugh at them. I don’t want you to say things just because you think that’s what I want to hear. I want to hear you. And yeah, I ask questions trying to help you refine what it is you really think and maybe to find out what else could be thought. And yeah, I sound like a broken record as I continually point you to the only answer I know and to the One Who knows the answers to the things we are really asking. And yeah, I’m tired and sad that I’ve cramped your style so very badly. I’m sorry.

But I know Someone (yeah, you knew it would get around to Him) Who dares to assert that He IS enough. He has said it so many times and in so many ways that a lifetime is not sufficient to catalogue them all. And, I confess, I would rather you had a magic wand to solve all my troubles because He seems to insist that I go through them much more often than I want to and usually when I am not feeling at all brave nor energetic. Still He insists. And I find that I want to be near Him–but sometimes I am afraid that He will think I’m around too much or too nosey or too demanding or too childish . . . . Then I get up close enough to touch Him and find that He hasn’t changed and seems to like me for exactly who I am (whoever that may be!). And more than I want to be your friend, more than I want you to be my friend, I want you to be near Him and know His friendship–that safe, gentle, fun friendship that is always glad to see you and accepts you for who you are–that friendship that makes it easy for you to be yourself in that place. I want to know His friendship that way, and I want you to know it, too.

From: elijah@brookside.net
To: undisclosed recipients
Subject: news update (or not so news)

Dear praying friends,

Thank you for keeping my whereabouts a secret all these months. You have put up with the inconvenience of having no return address at which to contact me; and for those of you who had been getting my e-mail updates, I have a special thank you for your patience and puttin gup with my bad spallings and infrequent contact. The internet connection at the particular brook where God has chosen for me to reside has been patchy at best. Some days I have spent all day typing a letter only to have the computer freeze up before I could hit “send.” The fact that any lights in the wilderness would be suspect also limits the times I have to work on my correspondence: a computer screen emits more light than a low campfire does!

I greatly appreciate your prayers. I realize that by now many of you must have my letters memorized: nothing much changes for me in this desert place where God has placed me. I try to make my life a bit more exciting by relating the incidents I have had with the ravens (whom I have finally named–thank you to all those who sent in suggestions). But basically my prayer letters have all boiled down to the same things: I’m here at a brook being fed by ravens; Jezebel and Ahab are still looking for me to kill me; and there’s still going to be no rain. I wish with all my heart that my message could be different, but it’s not going to change.

However, even though the major things have not changed, the smaller details of my life have been adjusting. First, as the famine is getting worse, I have been noticing that my brook is shrinking–almost by the day, it seems. Also, the ravens–Hustle and Bustle and Sneeze, I’ve named them (if you want to know how I finally settled on those names, you’ll have to ask me sometime when this is all over. You can try to e-mail me, and I will send you the story if I can . . . you know the drill: running for one’s life makes leisure time a tad sporadic–kinda like my internet connection). Anyway, the ravens have been becoming a bit edgy lately, too. One of them even began trying to share my meal with me the other day. He flew off when I threw the meat on the fire–guess he wasn’t too keen on sampling my culinary skills. Now that I think of it, that was the night I set off the fire alarm. Guess he has a bit more than just a bird-brain after all.

I am writing to let you know that nothing has changed. And perhaps I am writing to tell you that life really isn’t any easier when you’re a prophet than it is when you’re not one. I know that each morning you get up and wonder when the rain will come and where the food will come from until then. I just want you to know that I understand the pressure you are facing and that I don’t have the answers right now any more than you do. So, as you are continuing to wait and wonder with me, take courage that God is looking out for you as He is for me–and be glad you’re not wrestling Sneeze for your breakfast.

We may not know what to do next when the brooks dry up, but I am hanging onto the fact that God does. But waiting till He shows the next step is still a challenge–even for me.

Hang in there!
Elijah

everthing was going fine until reality hit–literally. or maybe he was the one hitting reality–hard. suddenly the smooth exhilaration, the feeling of the wind on his face and the speed of motion end abruptly with his bicycle skidding to a halt on the rocks, grinding his elbow, knee, hands into the gravel. and suddenly bicycles are not exciting anymore. or maybe they’re too exciting. and everything is swallowed up in pain and anguish and humiliation. and all he wants to do is to go home. he wants mom to make everything all better.

everything was fun until it wasn’t. then suddenly the slumber party took a turn for the worse. someone suggests a game that involves humiliating each other, and, fearful for herself as well as for the humiliation of others, she finds herself wanting out. now. dares she call home this late at night? will dad still be up? will he come get her? maybe she’s just being stupid. after all, no one else seems to object to being made fun of. but all she wants is home. at home it will be easier to sort things out. and at home it won’t matter if she was being stupid or not.

Home. It’s not a reasoning thing. If we reasoned it out we would realize that Mom and bandaids can’t really stem the throbbing and hurting. If we reasoned it out we would realize that it’s just for one night, and eventually it will go away and be only dim memory. But for that moment–that long, unreasoning moment–we want home. “Just let me go home!” our whole being cries.

We grow up. Bandaids no longer work their magic. Mom and Dad are no longer the cure-all. We begin to see that sometimes there are things bigger than anything they can cure. But that cry doesn’t go away. Sometimes even at home I have felt it screaming out inside of me: “I want to go hooooome!” It’s as though the bigger we grow the larger the longing becomes. Even after we no longer cry from scraped knees. Even after we learn how to handle the peer pressure. We still want HOME. A home that will cure the big problems of reality when we hit it in the real world. The presence of that cry indicates that somewhere there is a real home that will satisfy that very real and ever bigger longing. As thirst testifies to the existence of water, our longings testify to the existence of HOME.

tonight, I want to go home. i have that unreasoning sick-to-my-stomach feel like you get when something is really really hurting but you don’t exactly know what. maybe everything hurts and your stomach is having sympathy pains–stomachs are very sympathetic organs, you know! i wish I could go back to my parents’ house right now. i’d give almost anything to curl up next to Mom and feel her arms around me and know that in this place at this moment everything is fine.

But even though that’s home to me. Even though it would feel wonderful just to be with her right now, it’s not enough to fix the “owies” or “booboos” of life. There’s only one home that can do that. Ultimately it’s Heaven where God the Father will, like a mom or dad that’s just bandaged up a wound, take a heavenly tissue (guarenteed not to rip) and wipe away the tears from our faces. But John 15 dares to say that Jesus Christ–God Himself in full humanity–will make His home in us. I don’t really understand how it all works. And it seems too good to be true.

Maybe I’m already home.

Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.

by Langston Hughes

I stand still staring
At you. They call you
My reflection. They say you
Show me myself. Is it true?
I wait here wondering:
Do you move as I do
Or do I move to match you?
Do you mirror me or are you my cue?
I linger now longing
To be free from this view.
It was fun when novelty was new,
But now I’ve lost who is who
Am I me or am I you?

I’m currently reading Isaac Asimov’s I, ROBOT (the book upon which Will Smith’s sci-fi thriller was loosely based). It’s a frame-tale of robot stories held together by the reminisces of aging robot psychologist Susan Calvin. I do find it funny to read of things that have dates on them such as 2008 and to think of all that Asimov predicted that hasn’t happened–nor is likely to happen. Still, I have to applaud him for his ability to weave a story and for the fact that many of the ideas he came up with still exist in modern science fiction: “positronic brains,” for example, are still part of many sci-fi stories, movies, and television shows.

The stories he tells are easy to connect with. I am moved as I read about Robbie, an early nurserymaid robot that could not talk but served his young charge Gloria with a dedication that looked more like love and friendship than enforced servitude. Speedy amuses me as he responds to situations he can’t handle by quoting snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan operas–now there’s a robot I could like! (maybe I should try his technique!) Then there’s QT-1, or “Cutie” for short, the robot whose dedication to reason begins where Descartes began (”I think, therefore I am”) and develops an entire religious cult based on false presuppositions. Wow! What a comment on pre-suppositions and the way we interpret facts through their lenses (reminds me of my college class with Mr. Janke in which we examined presuppositions and the way that they make us see the facts!). I love the two scientists that end up field-testing the newest robot models and finding themselves the victims of the major quirks each robot has–they make me laugh! But Herbie is the one that I pity the most: Herbie the mind-reading robot.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS A RESPONSE TO THE STORY AND WILL UNDOUBTEDLY GIVE AWAY ITS MORE SURPRISING ASPECTS. SHOULD YOU WISH TO READ THE STORY UN-SPOILED, STOP READING NOW, GET A COPY OF I, ROBOT AND READ “LIAR” BEFORE CONTINUING TO READ THIS POST!!!

The First Law of Robotics ingrained into each robot states “a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow him to come to harm.” But what is the definition of “harm”? Such a small word! Since Herbie can read minds, he can see the things that will hurt the humans around him at an emotional level, so he does his best to protect them from being hurt. The clues are all there, and as I read, I begin to piece together what he is doing: telling them what they want to hear. The trouble is that they do not want to hear the truth in its entirety, and when two people with conflicting desires about the truth of one item are asking him for an answer, he can say nothing without hurting one or the other. Caught, stuck, pinned between conflicting desires of humanity, he lies to them. He is betrayed by his very purpose–serving humanity–and by his very attempts to protect the humans around him. And I can empathize. There come times when I know that I can’t win. No, I do not lie; I try so very hard to recognize the truth and to speak it in the right time and the right way. But which is better: to speak what I know will hurt when I could swallow it even though it’s true? or to swallow it even if it hurts? Perhaps I am setting up a false dilemma. All I know is that I saw myself in Herbie’s pretending that he could not do math well so as to allow the brilliant human mathematician to continue to believe in his own superiority; I saw myself in Herbie’s willingness to be the confidante of the humans around him; and I see myself caught in the same net he was caught in.

My empathy raises a very good question, a question I have had without knowing exactly how to name it: how are we to be “harmless as doves” to those around us? Each day, with each action, I have the potential to hurt someone around me. Sometimes an action that helps one person seems to mortally wound another. As a Christian, how am I to navigate these waters? How can I lead my life as the person I am to be when who I am might stifle who another person is?

I guess the obvious answer is that I was not put here on this earth to please everyone, just One–Jesus Christ my Maker, Master, and Savior. But how am I to judge success at this task without seeing it through the eyes of others? I guess I am seeing that, as Donovan and Powell (the field-test scientists) learned, field tests don’t usually go the way that the laboratory tests did–things look different in real life than they do in theory. I guess I can see myself in other robots, too: like Speedy, I don’t know how to function when duty and self-preservation balance each other out, neither being more important than the other (maybe I ought to start quoting English comic opera more often!); like Dave I short out under pressure and revert to something a little less stressful (like typing on the computer at odd hours of the night–*sheepish grin*); and like Herbie I can’t handle the thought of hurting those around me–and someone is always getting hurt.

Robbie had it easy: he lived to please just one person, and it worked out just fine for him. Cutie reasoned through the facts and came to some very wrong conclusions, then just lived by the rules and procedures, quite willing to not have to understand their purpose; he lived quite happily, blissfully ignorant. But God has not called me to live ignorantly; He has called me to the truth. So, how am I to fulfil my function in this crazy world of danger, duty, unexpected dilemmas, and fragile humans? Is it an impossibility?

We talk about one side of a coin or another, but I rarely think about the coin itself–the coin that manages to be both at the same time (it is the coin, after all!). A link from a link from an e-mail from a friend (if that’s not complicated, I don’t know what is) speaks quite eloquently to the difficulty of living life as the coin itself: keeping one’s eyes open to the truth yet keeping one’s heart open to others (and to God). I have felt that same difficulty myself, and Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest comments on the difficulty of being that coin when he says, “Jesus Christ never trusted human nature, yet He was never cynical, never suspicious, because He trusted absolutely in what He could do for human nature” (Utmost June 24th). In another place, he reiterates that Christ trusted in the transforming power of God’s grace in a life. I suppose that it is this grace which helps us to be a coin and not just one side of it. But I know that I do not really know how it works. I am cynical and suspicious sometimes; I am clueless and naive at other times. But I truly have seen God’s power in my life bringing those sides into better balance. Maybe someday . . .

A friend of mine who writes poetry managed to put into words the indescribable–how it feels to know a certain type of pain and the hope of not forgetting. I couldn’t have said it better.

poem