Author: eternalwaitofglory

Clay Cannons

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I read an article about an old man who took to throwing bricks at cars that sped through a cross walk.   After the brick hit their cars, the drivers slowed but then sped on without stopping.  The police arrested the old man and then released him without charging him.  The people rejoiced.  The old man served justice in the form of a clay cannon.

I followed the story and remember that the man tried to take legal measures to bring safety to his neighborhood and failed.  He took justice into his own hands.  Confucian respect for old age and the government’s fear of a mob shrouded the old man in a strong layer of protection.  So, breaking the law achieved justice and everyone knew it.

Living in a country where breaking the law is a way to justice blows my mind.  The absurdity of it all!  Growing up in a country where the symbol of the court is a blindfolded woman holding a scale means that I am ill-equipped to deal with how unfair life is in Asia.  I desire almost daily to take justice into my own hands because it’s just not happening like it should.

And, it’s not.  I still don’t know what to do with all the injustice I see every day.  I get angry, I grieve, I feel powerless.  I have it good.  I really don’t experience my fair share of it.  I’m usually treated with kid gloves being a respected foreigner.

I long for that day, though, I long for that day when justice will prevail.  I long for that day when old men need not launch clay cannons at cars to keep their grandkids safe.

The Inevitable Fall

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I hate falling.  All of the sudden I’m looking at the world from the sidewalk in pain and embarrassment.  I hurt!  Everything I held I rediscover in new and unexpected locations.  I snatch my pride from the pavement along with my possessions.  Did anyone see?  I sure hope not!

Thankfully I don’t fall that much anymore but each fall I do take is more painful.  My kids fall all the time.  The degree of their surprise increases with their age.  Now they even blame their nearest sibling to cover the slip as if they can’t believe their coordination could fail them so miserably!  It can’t be me so it must be you!

It’s not like falling down is a moral failure or a reflection of intelligence so why is it so stinkin’ embarrassing!?  I guess if someone falls because they’re drunk it does say a whole lot of something.  But most of the time its a misjudged distance or wet polished granite in high traffic areas, which I could write a lengthy blog about.

Why do I still get so supremely shocked when I fall and knock my soul against the pavement of life?  It’s not like God doesn’t tell us it’ll happen.  He does!  Why when I find myself looking up at the world from a different perspective do I rush to gather my wits and my pride and look around to see if someone noticed?  Why am I surprised?  He is not surprised.

The promises in Psalms comfort me.  I have a hand to hold.  I will not be hurled headlong.  The wise will rise up over and over and over.  I know I hold the hand.  I hope I’m wise!

If childishness is blaming the nearest sibling for my fall, maybe becoming childlike means falling and getting up without such surprise and embarrassment?  I really don’t want to practice this principle but it seems falling is inevitable.

Raising a Captive

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Sometimes I think strange “what if” thoughts.   Ideas like if my daughter got captured by an invading army and hauled away to a distant country as an orphan…how would she deal with that?  Sounds like the start of a great Christian historical fiction novel that ends with the boy getting a girl and a ride off into the sunset on a camel.

Who’s to say captivity might not be in the future for my sons either?  The last time we read the story of Joseph an eerie quiet descended on their bedroom as they paid close attention.  I strongly suspect that one, maybe both, of my sons identify way too much with a desire to sell their brother to a band of traders on their way to Africa.

But seriously, what would a girl have to know to be an Esther or what does a boy need to know to be a Joseph?  Or a Daniel?  Or a Nehemiah?  What did their mothers teach them?  What can I pass on to my kids that would give them what they needed to thrive in captivity…real captivity?

So, lately, I’m thinking more and more about whether I know enough of God.  Do I know the true God…the God who allows captivity and works in captivity?  What do I need to know about Him to thrive even in captivity myself?

The things that come to mind comprise the following:  It’s never all lost.  God is always working.  God is not limited to only work in leaders that profess the same faith I do.  God is surprising.  God allows captivity but doesn’t expect me to obey the laws of my captors when they are against His law.  God makes a way when I go before the ones in power with a request close to His heart.  God isn’t bound to spare my life yet He loves me still.  God expects me to serve Him wholeheartedly in my work even if its the lowest of the low.

Right now the lowest of the low is really not that low.  For that I am thankful but there’s still a lot of room to live my life wholeheartedly for Him alone.

The Jump

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A thrillingly daring jump from a swing resulted in one of my more embarrassing childhood moments.  The jump culminated in triumph yet my shorts did not accompany me in my victory.  I looked up and saw them hanging from the swing!  Nothing shocks the mind quite like realizing one’s exposed their undergarments.  I clutched my torn shorts around my waist for the mile walk home.

Exposure evokes two responses.  Well, probably not only two but today I’m reminded of just two.  Fear and hope.  Either I know I’m doing wrong and I hide from and fear exposure.  Or, I practice truth and I seek, actually seek, exposure.  “Why, oh why would I want to be exposed?” my soul screams out as visions of annual check ups complete with fluorescent lighting flash through my mind.

But something resonates with John’s words.  For meaning.  I love the word my Bible uses…wrought.   Something beautiful created with skill and diligence and forethought in the depth of a skilled craftsman’s workshop.  Wrought in God.  To see my life’s work emerge from the mist of the everyday as having been wrought in God.

Ok!  Now I actually want to be exposed!  I want the sharp light of God and I want to see how He’s creating something beautiful and with purpose because it sure is hard for me to see sometimes.  Meaning!  My life wrought in Him?  Sounds like something I need to know on those days that feel more like a wet lump of clay spinning on an untended potter’s wheel.

It feels good to be inspired to come before God like this.  To be exposed in my misdeeds feels a little more frightening.  But, a close read makes me think John is talking about God exposing my misdeeds and my deeds–the whole package–when He shines the light on my life.  Somehow, He takes it all and wroughts something with purpose.  I don’t know how but I’m willing to come.

Giving, Receiving, Sharing

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My daughter cried calling me to her bedside.  Pain.  I needed to do something and NOW!  She fully expected me to take it away immediately.  I could not and we both cuddled our broken hearts together.

So many times I hear heartbreaking stories of betrayal, abuse, disappointment and sadness over a cup of coffee and I struggle.  I want to take it—take the pain away—but I can’t.  They can’t give it either.  It’s their pain.

The community of The Giver  has one “Receiver of Memory”.   (see Eliminating Pain, my previous post on The Giver)  The community names the new Receiver of Memory and he goes to his mentor and asks what to call him.  “The Giver,” he answers.  So transpires days of Giving and Receiving memory.  The Giver gives memories and, once he gives them, he loses them.  The Receiver accepts the memories which become increasingly unbearable to hold alone.  Telling of emotion becomes actually feeling emotion.  True relationship between the Giver and the Receiver reveals all others as sorry manufactured counterfeits.  The status quo becomes unsustainable.

I want a Receiver of Memory!  Being free of painful memories would be so nice!  To share that deep pain and…poof… it’s gone!   But pain leads to wisdom.  So wisdom goes with the pain.  Do I want that cost?  To become increasingly foolish as I’m increasingly pain-free?

My daughter’s heart cry that I take her pain is impossible but can I share it?  Bear the weight of it together?  What about the friend in deep pain.  I can’t take it.  Can I share it?  For so long I felt discouraged at my helplessness in the face of deep pain.  I’m beginning to experience the freedom of sharing.

I love the ending of the Giver.  Spoiler Alert!  The Receiver escapes and in the final moments approaches a family by a fireplace.  Music is heard in the distance,the evidence that his old mentor is blasting the status quo and sharing his pain and also his most beloved memory, music.

Descending to Realism

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Idealistic.  13 years ago I puzzled over what our premarital counselor revealed to us.  We idealized marriage and each other.  I vaguely connected that idealism and marriage didn’t mix.  That idealism would be some kind of obstacle to be hurdled in our marriage.  Idealism sounded good though.  The way our counselor approached it started 13 years of occasional yet persistent head scratching.

Pessimistic.  The opposite of idealistic?  Who would get married?  Why would anyone get married if they sincerely had such low hope of success?  I’ve never seriously thought our marriage would end in divorce even on the lowest days.  Is that pride?  To think we’ll escape?  Or is it idealism?

Realistic.  Living in what is.  Recognizing what is true–the true state of myself and my husband.  It’s quite the comedown from idealism but not nearly so depressing as pessimism.  Realism is the path I’m on now.  Who am I…really?  Who is he…really?  Who is God in all of this reality?

Releasing idealism feels like a denial of what God desired in marriage.  But, even that seems to be imprisoned in idealism.  What did God really say about marriage?  Not nearly as much as I’d like Him to say, that’s for sure!  Respect, love, sacrifice, honor, submit, multiply, cherish, nurture, unify.

My most recent ponderings on marriage come from a 30-something single guy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Marriage is a “yes” to God’s earth.  A “yes” to living in the present world God created and the present world that is fallen.  In marriage we worship God in His humanity and His deity.  In marriage we need not hide anything from God.  We steal nothing from “behind His back”.  He is spiritual and physical.

There’s much I’d like to cover.  There’s much my husband would like to cover.  The path for us is choosing to trust God by laying everything before Him together.  It doesn’t always happen.  Reality.

Watching the10K

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Watching the 10,000 meter Olympic race becomes a teachable moment when watched with your mom.  My kids learned this Saturday morning.  After 2 laps they all stirred having decided the Japanese team would win for sure.  Then transpired a long conversation, 20 laps long, of race strategy.   “Don’t be too sure”, I urged.  I threw out definitions of pacing.  The kids stuck around just to prove me wrong.  The Japanese would win.

The Japanese women finished near the back with looks of agony and streaming sweat.  The first place finisher blazed across the finish line with a huge smile having cruised to a strong lead in the last 5 laps.  A 10,000 meter race elicited shouts and exclamations from the kids.

Sticking around gave me 20 laps to verbally ruminate on the spiritual analogies of racing, cheating, finishing, pacing.  That’s what mom’s do, beat a lesson to death, and so I did that because that’s what I’m supposed to do.

Towards the end of the beating I realized I needed to see the 10k for myself.  For my walk with my Lord.  My race.  The reminder to give it my all and plan for a whole lot of laps.  I needed to feed my desire to finish strong and blaze across the line.

Clouds and Sunbeams

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Worship slides seem to attract background pictures of clouds, sunsets, rain, and nature.  It seems these images lead God’s people into worship.  But sometimes they seem so otherworldly!  So warm and fuzzy!

Sometime I want to shake it up and sing “Amazing Grace” to a background of a slave ship with its cargo shackeled to the dark and putrid galley.  That is the slavery sin the author received grace to atone.  That is how lost he was, how lost I am.  My sin receives the same grace.  Do I know it’s amazing?

What about “It is Well with My Soul” with a background of sinking ship and children being lost in the ocean.  That is the author’s experience.  His children–all of them–lost in the ocean.  His wife attempted to throw herself in the sea when she realized they all, every single one of her 4 daughters, died.  She waited days for her husband in England to come and comfort her.  He wrote the lines as he passed the place where they drowned.  “It is Well with My Soul” takes on some bite it doesn’t have when I gaze at a sunset while I sing.  Is it well with my soul?  Do I know God like that?

I need to worship to lift my gaze to the Lord.  I just wonder if lifting my eyes doesn’t really mean looking at white clouds and sunsets but at where God’s grace and sovereignty intersect with my messy life.

What pictures would you put in the background of your favorite lyrics?  Why?

Eliminating Pain

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The fear of pain leads to a joyless existence.  Hmmm.  I recently read a little literature named The Giver by Lois Lowry.  If I attended a class on literature and needed to state one theme, well, there one is.  Fear of pain leads to a joyless existence.

To eliminate pain the community in The Giver lives by loads of rules in a very controlled and contrived life.  Love causes pain so families come together by committee instead of birth or romantic love.  Death causes pain so the old do not die but instead get secretly killed off.  Accidents cause pain so a multitude of rules govern every aspect of life.  In the absence of love, death, and pain life is grey, false, cold, and deceptively harmonious.

As one who struggles with fear, seeing such a bleak portrayal of fear’s destination shook me.  Things like escalators+children+crocs+developing nations=raw fear.  Pools+polished granite+kids=terror.  I see my daughter catching my fear like the contagious disease that it is and wonder if she will ever have much fun on an escalator again!  I name myself “Joy Stealer!”

Be safe!  As if I could do much to control most dangers.  Be safe is the popular replacement for goodbye in America these days.  My brother observed this for me.  Be safe!  Safety means avoiding pain.  Avoiding pain means making rules.  Making rules does take away some of the pain but it takes a free side of joy along with it.  Good and bad go together on the path to eliminate pain.  Grey is the color of safe.

Polished granite and water present real risks in this country I live in so I’m struggling through the difference between fear and appropriate caution.  What does it look like to nurture a child well in a world of unavoidable pain?  To raise a child and raise myself to take appropriate risks instead of play it grey?  To not be controlled by my fear or control others with my fear?  Fear and faith are incompatible.

The next theme I’m intrigued by in The Giver is sharing pain in community.  Bearing the weight of the wait means bearing the pain too.  And, the theme after that is the role of music and art in life.  Bearing the weight of the wait means a strangely joyful existence is promised us Followers.

So, I’m being bossy now, read The Giver!

Becoming Childlike

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Come to Christ as a child.  Humble yourself like a child.  The kingdom of heaven belongs to those that are like children.  At the behest of a speaker, I’ve pondered the contrast of childish and childlike for almost 2 years now.  I’m pretty sure I recognize childishness.  3 kids roam around my house and occasionally bump into each other “on accident” causing all kinds of clamor.   They seem to do a lot “on accident.”  The kids don’t hold the monopoly on childishness in our home.  But childlike.  I scratch my head.  How do I humble myself to become childlike again?  Was I ever childlike?

Walking into the dark smelly parking garage yesterday I imagined what would need to happen to me to become childlike.  Smoother skin.  Softer hair.  Smaller.  Weaker.  Pailer.   More vulnerable.  Easily awestruck.  Easily hurt.  Naive.  Hopeful.  Dependant.  Secure.  Lacking in tact.  Without guile.  Curious.  Innocent to the ways of the world.  Parts of it sound like a particularly painful spa experience.  The other parts sound…well…impossible.

Stripping away seemed the common theme.  Sloughing off the scars of my sin and others sins against me.  Scraping away things I know that I should not know.  Carving out the abscesses cultivated from unforgiveness.  Releasing the security I make for myself and giving it up in the security of Another.  Wiping the expressions of contempt out of my heart.  Childlike.

Occasionally one of our kids will ask a stumper of a question and then lean across the table and look up at us fully expecting that we know all about jet propulsion and can explain it to him on the spot.  It strikes my heart that I don’t inquire of the Lord the same way.  I don’t tend to ask Him a stumper and then wait around fully expecting Him to know the answer much less give it to me.

Maybe that’s my way to childlike today…to ask God a stumper and look to him wide-eyed with curiosity fully expecting Him to hear, know, and reveal.