Taking My Father's Hand

"Victoria, would you take my hand?"  I asked my two year old daughter as we walked down the stairs together.

Victoria looked over at my offered hand doubtfully.  I wash my hands regularly, so it wasn't dirty, but she still didn't seem too sure of it.  She was walking with her arms crossed, her hand tucked into her armpits.  "No, Dad," she told me after a moment's thought.  "My hands are full."

I suppose my face looked a little sad.  I'm old enough that I don't have to hold hands with anyone for safety reasons, but there are still some people that I enjoy holding hands with and Victoria happens to fall on that list.

Of course, she was right too -- her hands were full, of herself.  It was more that she didn't want to take my hand than that she couldn't.

It makes me think of my relationship with my heavenly Father.  Most of the time, I am content -- even happy -- if He wants to tag-along with me and watch me do my activities during the day.  As long as things are going OK, I don't even think too much about Him, much less pray for His help and guidance.

On the other hand, when trouble comes,  find myself reaching out, clutching for His hand and asking for His help.  The reality is that I need Him far more than I am willing to admit.

All too often I pray, "God please go with me today."  While that sounds fine, I would reach the point where I learn to place my hand in His and tell Him, "Father, I don't know where we're going today, but I will follow wherever you lead."

Honesty

"Oh my," I said to the older woman sitting across from me.  "Your A1C test is really climbing up.  It is up two percent since your last visit.  Are you watching your diet?"

"No, not really," she told me.  "But I do take my pills."

"Oh," I said.  Most of my patients at least act like they are trying to follow their diet, even if they are doing nothing of the sort when they aren't in my office.

She laughed.  "I'll be honest with you.  I'm just not very good at avoiding carbs and I have a real weakness for sweets."

I looked back at my computer, wondering what to do to help her.  Honesty is a start.  If you don't realize that you have problem areas and weaknesses, you will never over come them.

At the same time, admitting failure is not enough.  Confessing sin is only the beginning of repentance. 

There is a reason why there aren't just erasers on pencils, there are pencil points too.  Having erased, we must lift our pencils and write again.

The goal should never be to live in a knowledge of weakness, but to build from that to eventual strength.  Each one of us can move from moments of defeat to lives of triumph.  This won't happen on our own and it won't happen without effort, but by God's grace and with His strength we can make the effort and begin again.

There is a victory to be had in all areas.  Even victory for those with weak wills over the scourge of carbohydrates.

What's on the Menue?

"Mom," Anna asked one day.  "Can I make a meal this weekend?"

That's the sort of question that does not take a whole lot of time to answer for most mothers I know.  The answer is clearly, "Yes."

Anna sat down and came up with a meal plan.  She had all the course laid out, from a Main Dish to the vegetable.  Then, she wrote it up very carefully and posted it on the refrigerator with grand ceremony, quite pleased with herself.

As I read the "Menue," I had to smile a bit.  Anna is a good speller in school, but somehow that didn't quite carry over to all of the items on her list.

I was still pretty pleased and happy with her effort.

It seems to me that when we are happy with a message, we are a lot less likely to pick holes in the style of the message's delivery or shoot the messenger.  When we don't like the message, a flame retardant suit is not sufficient to ward off the flames that follow.

I am reminded of the prophets in the days of the Old Testament.  They were given very hard prophecies for the people to hear, calls to repentance and for the people to turn to God.  The people often hated these communications and persecuted the prophets and even killed them in return.

This is human nature.

It shouldn't be that way.  When someone delivers a message and we find ourselves dissecting the poor grammar of the message, or the stain on the messenger's shirt, we need to ask ourselves what truth is in the message that is speaking to us.

Only with that attitude can we benefit from the message and learn from it.  Only then can we move beyond reading the "Menue" to eating the meal.

A Flat E

Last week we had our piano tuned.  It really needed it too.  It had gone a year since its last tuning and had travelled 530 miles in the back of a moving truck.  I suppose it's not surprising that at times you couldn't tell for sure if you were playing Fur Elise or the theme from Phantom of the Opera.

OK.  It wasn't quite that bad, but it definitely needed tuning.

So, in the course of human events, we contacted a piano tuner who came and opened the back of the piano.  He turned various little screws attached to the strings and eventually finished his work and called it good.  On closing the back of our Baldwin, he assembled his tools and drove on to tune another piano in need.

All was well.  At least it was well until our children began to practice their pieces that evening at which point we discovered that the high 'E' an octave above Middle C was seriously flat.  It wasn't flat enough to be an E flat, but it was off enough that the sound was quite jarring.

All the other notes were perfect, but it is amazing how many songs have an E in them.

Of course, all was not lost.  A quick call to the tuner and a day or two later even that E was back in tune.

As I played a few pieces before the final tuning was complete, I was struck by how much of a difference having a single note off makes.  It isn't enough that you can't recognize pieces, but it is enough that you can tell something is wrong.

It strikes me that this is what having a life without Jesus is like.  It may feel almost perfect in every respect and still there is something that rings untrue, a chord which falls flat.

Humans hear the discordance, but instead of fixing the note that is absent, they try to tune all of the other notes to try to make the discordant note sound OK.  People hide the flat 'E' amongst a bunch of other flat notes and everything is still just not right.

In the end there is only one thing that can fix a life that is out of tune -- Jesus presence within it.  As the notes come into tune, finally, the melody of life will become beautiful.

Focusing on the Right Thing

"Time for some coffee," I though as I poured water into the back of our Keurig. 

It was breakfast time and I stepped away and began making a couple of slices of toast.  For some reason or other, this is my typical breakfast -- one cup of coffee and two slices of toast.

I heard the Keurig kick on and could smell the aroma of coffee coming from it.  It seemed to smell extra good this morning.

I finished buttering my toast and stepped over to the coffee maker to claim my mug.  My coffee cup stood forlornly beside the Keurig, while around it stretched a small pond of coffee. 

I'd forgotten to put my mug into the Keurig and so my beautiful coffee had gone everywhere except into my cup.

I suppose the issue is that I was distracted.  I was thinking about toast and butter and jelly.  I was thinking about all of the patients I would be taking care of later that day.  The one thing I wasn't focused on was actually making coffee.

I think all of us have mental lapses at times.  They aren't intended, but if we were just paying a little more attention to the activity at hand, they wouldn't happen either.

In the Gospels, the story is told of Jesus walking on the water in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.  The Apostle Peter saw Jesus and asked if he too could walk on the water.  Jesus told him to come and so he stepped out of the boat -- a very brave thing to do. 

Matthew tells us of Peter, "But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, 'Lord save me.'"  Of course, Jesus stretched out His hand and helped him into the boat.

The lesson is clear.  Every one of us is focusing on something, just some times it isn't the thing we really should be concentrating on.  Peter was paying far too much attention to the wind and the waves and not nearly enough to the Savior who walking to him across the water.  I'm not very much different.

More than anything else, our focus needs to be on Jesus.  With our eyes on Him we can weather any storm -- even the clean up process of a whole cup of coffee all over a kitchen counter.

A New Year

Today is Christmas Day.  That means that in one week it will be New Year's Day.  It always seems to work that way, even in Leap Year.  I guess the beauty of calendars and math and all that.

I suppose the emphasis in the phrase "New Year's Day" is on the word "new."  A year is the way we mark how long it takes this earth to orbit all the way around the sun (that is if you belong to the Copernicus view of things) and a day is how long it takes the earth to spin all the way around on its axis (assuming, once again, that you don't subscribe to the whole flat earth thing).  Depending on one's age, we have seen a few or, many days and years go by.

It is the new part that speaks to us.  A blank sheet of paper is an opportunity.  It could be a letter, or an essay, or just some doodles, but it is fresh potential, just waiting to be written on.

A field of freshly fallen snow is a blank slate.  Later, animals will track across it and children will heap the snow up to make fortresses, snow angels, and snow men, but till then, it is only potential.

So it is with 2018. 

2018 is potential for both good and evil, blessing and cursing.  What will I do with it?  I don't know.

What I do know is that life is not lived by the year or even by the day.  Life is lived by the moment.

The only way to be satisfied at the end of 2018 is to be certain that everyone of its 365 days worth of moments is lived for God.

Let there be light!

"And now," our guide told us.  "I'm going to shut off the lights."

I've never really figured out why guides on tours of caverns like to shut off the lights.  It is actually a lot harder to see the Stalactites and Stalagmites and frankly anything about the cave with the lights out, but at this point, Jill did exactly what she said she was going to do. 

"This," she said dramatically.  "Is total darkness!  We are deep in the earth and there is no light except what comes from the electric lights.  Does anyone know what would happen if you spent thirty days in total darkness?"

No one hazarded a guess.  I thought about mentioning that you would come out all pasty white, but I didn't think that was what she was looking for.

"You would go blind!"  Jill said.

"Oh," everyone gasped.  Apparently she had heard that without light the part of your brain that controls your vision would just turn off, never to be turned on again.  A high price to pay for living in a cave and not paying your electric bill.

This didn't seem right to me and so later on I did a little research.  I found out that this simply isn't true.  People don't go blind just from being in the dark, even total darkness.

What is true is that if you spend a long time in total darkness your eyes will get really sensitive to the light.  When you leave a cave after being in the dark for a very long time the light will really hurt your eyes.

I think about the time when Jesus came to earth.  Truly, it was a time of deep darkness -- one could almost say total darkness.  Into that darkness came the Light of Life.

The sad thing is that men and women in Jesus day did not love the light.

"And this is the judgment:  the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil."

Nothing has changed today.  People do not love the light.  It hurts their eyes.  It exposes their dirtiness and the areas where they don't measure up.  They would rather stay in the cave in the dark.

At the same time, we need the light.  We were made for light.  We need it for Vitamin D.  We need it to see and regain our focus.

That is why, God wants to reach down into the life of each one struggling with darkness and say one simple phrase, "Let there be Light!"

The Language of Elliot

"Gurrrtl Mummit," Elliot said, making some very odd guttural sounds in his throat as he did so.  "Does anyone know what that means?"

"It means you have something stuck in your throat?"  I hazarded.

"No, Dad," Elliot said.  "It means 'Hooray Christmas!' in Elliot language."

"Oh," I said.  It is a bit strange to live in a household where there is a special language that is spoken and happens to be the only place in the world where that tongue is spoken.  Maybe Elliot can marry a Wycliffe Bible translator some day who can learn to speak it as well.  I have a feeling that by that time he will have moved on to something else.

At the same time, I don't know of the benefit of a language spoken by only one person.  To me, the whole point of language is for communication.  Compared to languages like English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, Elliot, the language, is tiny and fairly useless, except to aggravate siblings.

Fortunately, Elliot speaks English too.  His parents and other random people can speak to him in something other than Elliot-talk.  This is awfully handy, as there are probably fifteen other languages I would probably rather learn to speak than Elliot.

As I think about it, every person on this planet is important to Jesus and every one of them needs to know the blessing of His life and sacrifice.  This is true if they speak English, or a dialect spoken only by 862 members of a tribe in the Amazonian rain forest.

Languages are for communication and there is nothing more important than sharing the message of God's love with others.

Even in the weird guttural language of my seven year old son.

Christmas Music

It is the time of year when stores across this great land of ours break out CDs of Christmas Music.  Or maybe, being the 21st century, they have something connected to a Pandora or Apple Christmas Channel.  Regardless, you have but to walk into a shopping mall or store of just about any kind to hear a type of music that you don't commonly hear in July.

(That's probably for the best).

As weird as it is, I actually like a lot of Christmas music.  I just don't like the type that is played in shopping malls this time of year.

So many of the songs played at this time of year are experiential.  They talk about things that the song writer feels at this time of year.  Building snowmen, riding in sleighs, and eating "Christmas foods" (like chestnuts) are all common themes.  Some song writers delve into the things they are missing -- family, snow, or just simply "a man friend."  All of those themes feel more than a little shallow to me.

It probably is clear that I like older Christmas songs.  I like Christmas songs that speak of Christ's birth  and what that means.

The Messiah is even dusted off this time of year and performances are given in a variety of venues.  For anyone who doesn't know, The Messiah is an oratorio composed by George Frederic Handel in 1741 with the libretto being passages from the Bible that speak of Jesus and His work.  The first part deals with prophecies of His birth as well as the birth itself, while the second and third parts speak of his death and second coming.  It always seems as though those second and third parts get short changed in the shortened versions that are performed this time of year.

(Just so long as they get the Hallelujah Chorus in).

Christmas songs are emblematic of our societal problems.  Whether it is cutting Jesus out of the season entirely or, just keeping Him an infant and ignoring His death and suffering, our culture wants to marginalize the Savior of the World.

Who can be surprised at the darkness we see around us, when we have hidden the Light of the World?

I pray that this year we would hear the whole of the Messiah.  Not that we listen to the three hour oratorio, but that we read the Bible and try to understand who this Jesus really is. 

Knowing Him makes all the difference between living a shallow existence and living with purpose.

Clear Vision

The lady siting across from sighed a little.  "I hope this is that last surgery," she said.

"I would think so," I said.

"The eye doctor's don't really give me hope of regaining vision in my eye," she said.  "After all of these surgeries, they just are trying to save the eye itself."

"That has to be hard," I said.

"You know," she said.  "I did get a little tearful when they told me that.  But last time I was here, you prayed with me and I have a lot of other people praying too and my God is big enough to heal my eye -- or to take care of me if it isn't healed too."

I was silent and she continued.  "I was reading about Fannie Crosby and how she lost her vision at a really young age and went on to write songs like "Blessed Assurance."  I thought to myself that she was able to bless people even though she was blind.  I need to think about how I can bless people around me and not focus on how well my eyes see, or don't see."

I was challenged by this little encounter.

The question really isn't whether God is big enough to take care of the things I face.  Of course He is.  The question is really about focus.

The days in which I focus on the things I lack are filled with discouragement.  The days I don't focus so much on myself, but rather look for ways that I can help others and "be Jesus" to them are filled with blessing.

I want to walk each day with this knowledge firmly in my mind. 

This lady, with only one good eye, had far clearer vision than most of us with a working pair.  Truly, she blessed me that day.

Thanksgiving

"Dad," Vince asked me the other day.  "Why is Thanksgiving in November?"

It's a good question.  Most of it has to do with Presidential edicts which initially (under Abraham Lincoln) established Thanksgiving Day as the last Thursday in November and later, under FDR switched it to the fourth Thursday in November.  The "first Thanksgiving" in Plymouth, Massachusetts was actually held in October, not November at all.

But of course, the Pilgrims didn't do Black Friday Sales either.

Regardless, the point of Thanksgiving is held in the word "thankful" and not in the timing of this holiday.  It is a time to count blessings and remember how grateful we are for the good of the last year. 

November is the time where harvest is in.  Most of us aren't farmers any more, but it is the time of year when those who make their living from the ground know whether it was a good year, an average year, or a year in which they will have their crop insurance agent on speed dial.

I'm not sure how good the harvest was this last year -- it probably depended on which part of the country you live in, but I trust that all of us can be grateful, even if it was not as plentiful as we'd like.

God is good.  He is just as good in times of want as in times of plenty.  The question is simply whether or not we can see His goodness when times are rough.

It is clear when we read of the First Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony that the men and women who held this feast suffered much through their first year.  They had eked out a meager existence in this new land.  More than one third of their population had died that first year.  There were more new graves in the colony than there were pies at the Thanksgiving meal.  None of them knew if they would make it through the next year. They still knew that God was good.

A grateful heart thanks God for who He is, not just for what He has done.

This Thanksgiving I pray that we will spend time, not just in counting blessings, but in putting our hearts into a state of gratefulness.  Let us not focus so much on what we have been given but more on who is doing the giving.

This is the only way we can take Thanksgiving out of the fourth Thursday in November and pull it into the rest of the year.

Kidney Stones

The older man sitting across from me shrugged.  "I guess it passed some time on Sunday," he said.  "I've had them before, but I can't say I ever look forward to the experience."

I glanced down at the papers I had printed off.  "Looks like it was a 4 mm kidney stone," I said.  "Pretty amazing that something that small could cause so much pain."

"I hope it's awhile before I have to go through that again,"  he said.

Kidney stone pain is one of the more uncomfortable things a person can experience.  As I thought about it, I wondered what the difference was between labor pain and kidney stone pain.  Is one more intense than the other?

I have experienced neither one of these glorious things personally, although I've helped plenty of mothers in labor and seen other folks who felt like they were passing a bowling ball through their ureters.  Google wasn't my friend either and didn't seem to have any conclusive answer as to which pain is worse.

Peppers have a Scoville Scale to rate their spiciness, but the closest thing we have to a pain scale is the one where nurses ask you to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten.  Not very useful when a lot of folks out there wish that this scale went to eleven.

Clearly the biggest difference between kidney stone pain and labor pain is in the end result.  No one ever keeps their kidney stones, names them, or is happy at their passing -- except that it results in relief of pain.  On the other hand, labor ends in a crying baby and announcements far and wide about the new life that has entered the world.

It seems to me that this is a perfect metaphor for the differences in how a nihilist and a Christian experience pain in their lives.  The nihilist believes that suffering has no purpose.  It is to be avoided at all cost and demonstrates only that the Universe is a cold, unfeeling place.

On the other hand, the Bible tells us that "...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5)

Everyone will experience pain at some point.  The question is whether suffering proves to us that there is a heartless Universe or a Loving God behind the things we experience.

For me, it is clear that there is a Master plan at work in my life, even when I don't know all of the details of it.  God loves me and that's enough to see me through whatever pain I may face -- even kidney stones.

Autumn

Autumn is here.  There have been hundreds (maybe thousands) of poets who have written odes to its splashes of crimson and brilliant yellow leaves.  Every aspect of Fall has probably been explored in one way or another.

It doesn't change the fact that it is beautiful.

Looking out of the windows of our home, I see the colors of the woods that surround us.  I can see clearly that there is loveliness in every season and Fall is no exception. 

This is God's plan.

After having lived through forty-three Autumns (I can only remember about thirty-nine of them), I know something else.  This season won't last.

The reds and yellows of the leaves will soon be replaced by bare branches and mounds of brown leaves in my yard that someone (hopefully my children) will need to rake into piles.  Autumn's beauty is only for a season.

This too is part of God's plan.

I am afraid that all too often I miss the beauty of the season I am in.  In my mind I think it will be around for longer, or I am just looking forward to the next season.  It's awfully easy in the middle of winter to wish for spring, but the most joyful people are those who can enjoy the season they are living in at present.

This is true for more than just the weather and the leaves.  Most of life is characterized by seasons.  There are seasons of school and having children and eventually, maybe even having grandchildren.  The most important thing is to treasure today and see the beauty of the present rather than wish for what tomorrow holds.

It will arrive far sooner than we like.