The Present
Seconds click by a tick at a time, hours a bit faster, years leap. Texas' morning on the porch with me lies buried in the folds of memory now, his bones crushed and turned to dust by earth and rock dug from our place here in the Texas hill country. Just another cat among thousands, but when their lives and the lives of the humans who loved them rub together, who can say but what a bit of eternity sparks into flame.
The Past
Having already lived eight of his nine lives, my cat Texas has survived into his dotage.
This morning he is keeping me company. Only his eyes follow me, back and forth, as I mop the front porch.
"Texas you’re Mommy’s precious baby boy, aren’t you."
He’s a chin-doddering old grandpa.
"Texas is the handsomest cat in the whole world, right?"
His coat is patchy and he walks with a limp.
"Texas loves his Mommy, so-o-o much, doesn’t him?"
I’m his meal ticket.
"Texas is my sweetie-comes."
He drools and he has bad breath.
For some, their love would long since have cooled for an object like Texas. But to me my pet seems less the old shoe to be cast aside- much more, my personal treasure.
"All I can say is Texas is one lucky cat to have you for a mom," my husband tells me when looks disparagingly at the raggedy old man. "He wouldn’t last a day on his own outside our fence: some coyote or fox would have him for dinner."
I lift my pet to eye level, careful of his dignity and fragility. "I double-dog dare them." Cuddling him a moment, I tug one ear and then the other. Gently, I put him down.
When he was kitten-size with out-sized paws and fluffy orange coat, Texas first lay hidden in a cave back of our property. My son found out his lair: we brought him in, sheltered and civilized him. He became part of our family.
From the beginning, the little scamp had power to call forth my most tender and protective feelings. When my son handed him over the kitten looked at me with large eyes that reflected a gamut of opposing creature responses: surprise, fear that almost instantaneously turned to trust, but mostly curiousity.
This morning I sense God’s presence and He tells me I have that same power over Him that bit of fluff had over me..
"There was a time when you also ran wild in the world, at the mercy of any predator on the prowl." He causes me to understand: "Just as you pitied a small, helpless creature of the woods, so I pitied you. I too took you under my wings and I became your refuge and your shelter."
Now I wouldn't be so foolish as to compare the earthly affections we humans feel for our pets to the illimitable love God has for His adopted children. But I do believe He drops tiny earthly beads of light affording just a glimpse of Heaven's rich borealis.
Unless Jesus returns in the meantime, or I go to Him, I too will grow old and feeble, like Texas. My chin will dribble and my fingers tremble at their task: my flesh will gradually weaken. But God’s love for me will never diminish, never grow old. When I have creases and dents, snaggles and snarls, Jesus assures me I will not lose my place in His heart. When I'm huddled under my blanket of old age and long for a touch of human kindness, He will make things better for me somehow: ease my path in ways I cannot now foresee. For when I peer into the lens of my latter years, it seems murky and foggy- and fearsome. But He promises. Nothing can stand in the way of His plans for the apple of His eye.
But I'm too serious, I drip with sentiment. So I'll return to the task at hand and rinse away the soapy gray of the boards I'm bending over. I must now take the spray nozzle to the porch floor, an act which would cause most cats to sprint for their lives. But Texas has his reasons not to get in a hurry.
To begin with, because I've never subjected his pumpkin-colored fluff to the indignity of violent wetting, he has little to fear from the spit of water needles. His life with our family began with a startled trust, and it appears it will finish with a more mellow version of that same sweet faith in the humans who took him in.
But more importantly: at his age moving too fast can be awfully painful.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Monday, March 04, 2013
Grace: Why I Need So Much
Because I seem to scratch and scrape for grace, for Him, hands dirt-dry from digging in it, nails caked with desperate need, sometimes just to feel anything at all, this minute when called upon to express my thoughts about grace it comes hard. In fact I feel like a hard-scrabble farmer, owner of thin-soiled, surface rock land and not a lot of it.
It's not supposed to be this way and so I know its me, not Him. He is a God of abundance, the God of overflowing cup and bread that spreads out bountiful so every last one is filled. To the scriptures, O woman, and to the knees. Plead the cause of the needy. There is plenty to go around, but fill those first in line who are hungriest: we must ask, seek, knock. Charles Spurgeon on prayer wrote we need new revelation of Christ often. Today, this minute, I do.
I'm in gospel of John, 16th chapter. Hearts are breaking heavy because He has spoken plain His going away plans. Later the scriptures show these disciples sleeping, for sorrow. The long aching, agonizing night is just around the bend in the garden but Jesus keeps His focus on the outcome, joy that outcomes come morning. He compares this sorrow to Woman in pangs of childbirth, her bringing forth in sorrow (pain: it hurts and it shocks the body to squeeze out a baby: bringing forth pries apart bones, and sometime tears flesh) but joy follows when a man child (or girl child) is born into the world. The agony Jesus faces, submits to, endures, the weight of sin that crushes out life, will itself give way to the weight of the cross and victory. The dagger of the cross strikes sin right in its vitals, where it lives so deep inside a person would think nothing could reach it, much less strike it a deadly blow. But for those who believe, whatever is placed under the power of that cross and His blood becomes grace.
For one who lived long barren of graces I find it better than sliced bread-with butter. In fact grace to me is a big slice of heaven. I was in the C word. Cult. No grace. Well. Smidgeons doled out doubtfully. While Jesus stood knocking plainly, rap soundings were muffled by the veil: faint and faraway to my ears.
It's not supposed to be this way and so I know its me, not Him. He is a God of abundance, the God of overflowing cup and bread that spreads out bountiful so every last one is filled. To the scriptures, O woman, and to the knees. Plead the cause of the needy. There is plenty to go around, but fill those first in line who are hungriest: we must ask, seek, knock. Charles Spurgeon on prayer wrote we need new revelation of Christ often. Today, this minute, I do.
I'm in gospel of John, 16th chapter. Hearts are breaking heavy because He has spoken plain His going away plans. Later the scriptures show these disciples sleeping, for sorrow. The long aching, agonizing night is just around the bend in the garden but Jesus keeps His focus on the outcome, joy that outcomes come morning. He compares this sorrow to Woman in pangs of childbirth, her bringing forth in sorrow (pain: it hurts and it shocks the body to squeeze out a baby: bringing forth pries apart bones, and sometime tears flesh) but joy follows when a man child (or girl child) is born into the world. The agony Jesus faces, submits to, endures, the weight of sin that crushes out life, will itself give way to the weight of the cross and victory. The dagger of the cross strikes sin right in its vitals, where it lives so deep inside a person would think nothing could reach it, much less strike it a deadly blow. But for those who believe, whatever is placed under the power of that cross and His blood becomes grace.
For one who lived long barren of graces I find it better than sliced bread-with butter. In fact grace to me is a big slice of heaven. I was in the C word. Cult. No grace. Well. Smidgeons doled out doubtfully. While Jesus stood knocking plainly, rap soundings were muffled by the veil: faint and faraway to my ears.
Saturday, February 02, 2013
This morning I am participating in a health insurance program for United Health Care. They are doing a projection study regarding patient needs for coming year: 2013.
Well-Med receives money according to the number of patients who show a proclivity or possibility for certain types of medical problems. Because of our age (I guess) our doctor ordered sonograms for me and my husband for screening the carotid artery. Although we pray neither of our tests will show blockage, we know this is more money matters than preventive medicine.
Neverthelss, the clinic waiting room is nicely appointed, not too crowded, comfortable chairs all around, good light from lots of glass, and time afforded for posting in my journal.
To start I page back to a list. Thanks to a book by author, poet, and responder to broken hearts, Ann Voskamp, "1,000 Gifts," I am now up to number 142: "this new journaling book, a gift from a friend named Aileen, an answer to prayer. Previously my gifts have been slightly scattered, like me.
Ann's life now brimming and over with thanksgiving for God gifts, she writes of a past dark with losses, and blank of grace, and how listing gifts as a response to a dare from a friend to write down on paper 1,000 gifts, a rare kind of glory has settled over and around her.
She took the challenge and for the first time, became her name: Ann which means grace. Ann's life transformation is affirmation that when we focus on the good and beauty of life all around us, rather than what we see as missing or lacking, or just plain grinding, simple as it sounds God opens doors to the infinity of Himself and that is truly the greatest gift of all.
Since Ann's published her book many have followed her example and taken the dare also. The long list of comments on her blog posts show multitudinous women whose hearts have been touched (and a few men) have been wooed by the prospect of their own lives being transformed as hers has been.
We are writing lists, going on treasure hunts: daily, searching the ground for its gifts. Ground can be scripture, or His creation, or prayer coupled with a life lived out, banked on Jesus' words. From His lips to our hearts.
Ann shares transparently. Her dark I would guess are not easy to think on, yet she has put them out there, up for grabs because she believes God was and is up to something.
As I began to look for gifts, I must admit my quest has been more intermittant, not near as faithful nor intense as Ann's, but I'm trying.
If a person is willing to listen to the Holy Spirit, I believe it will be revealed just how much or how often we allow a tape of negative thoughts to run: critical, judgmental, downer dialogues to play in our minds throughout the day. But when we intentionally change that, by oh so simply writing our gifts, our entire being goes on a trip, but not with drugs. The only drug required is a prescription for thanksgiving.
This gift-listing life-style is no Pollyanna project: bad things still happen. But trusting that God is up to good in our lives, the lives of those who are willing to put their trust in Him, is a challenge worth taking.
For example, in her writing, Ann describes the world as glass. It took me a bit of meditating on this before I was able to grasp her meaning. The natural around becomes not just a window of glass that we get to peek through at the Creator behind the scenes, but a whole world of tranparent revelation, an apocolypse of Him. I say its glass and His thumbprints swirl and whirl upon the surface. Not the pagan idea of God in everything, but the Christian where everything comes from hand of God. We see His doing in all of nature: even our fallen world cannot help but be full of His glory if only we have eyes to see.
As for me, I desire to write again, but much more based not on what I can do for Him but on what Christ can do in me, "Without Me, you can do nothing." The air I breathe, the Person is all and all is truly grace. May I be of the Word, that I might have fruit to my work.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Leaving Mine on the Table
We never know who we may bless when we open the book of our lives, today's page, leave it there, no apologies, just there and pray God will use it to bless another, some other, down in home, down in heart: to touch where they live: a gift.
This morning I am saying "Thank You" to someone who opened hers. I stopped by her table, not by accident, this Thursday morning and pushed her bread to my lips, swallowed, just as she did her bit at church communion washed down by the grapes, crushed.
I can't tell her, except through my prayer. From my lips to God's ear. Its me, hopeful, from God's mouth to her heart. Thank you, Ann. That over-used word in Christian circles, transparency. Ann of the glass world, you are glass and you ministered grace to me, allowing your suffering to mingle with His and pour on me. In me. That deepest place that only He can reach, to touch with a scepter of His healing.
It's what I want my life to do, to be, for other hurting humans, especially my sisters in Christ. But do I? Really?Am I willing to lay it down, lay it open, leave my bread he can change from the common to the holy, for another? The cross. Eucharist is up and down and it's side to side. We are all crosses. To take part in His sufferings, as He takes part in ours.
Today, my own heart knew its selfishness: empty, yawning, cavernous need to be a vessel of receiving, the fullness of Him, to once then again be emptied for another, to pour out in a never ending circle of streaming. He was faithful, is faithful, always.
Girlfriends, stranger, for anyone who stops by, take the Bread. Take the blood, wash in it. Wine of Life. Take it. His cloth is always spread for you, cup full. Ask. It becomes great joy to Him. To feed is His glory. May it also be yours.
This morning I am saying "Thank You" to someone who opened hers. I stopped by her table, not by accident, this Thursday morning and pushed her bread to my lips, swallowed, just as she did her bit at church communion washed down by the grapes, crushed.
I can't tell her, except through my prayer. From my lips to God's ear. Its me, hopeful, from God's mouth to her heart. Thank you, Ann. That over-used word in Christian circles, transparency. Ann of the glass world, you are glass and you ministered grace to me, allowing your suffering to mingle with His and pour on me. In me. That deepest place that only He can reach, to touch with a scepter of His healing.
It's what I want my life to do, to be, for other hurting humans, especially my sisters in Christ. But do I? Really?Am I willing to lay it down, lay it open, leave my bread he can change from the common to the holy, for another? The cross. Eucharist is up and down and it's side to side. We are all crosses. To take part in His sufferings, as He takes part in ours.
Today, my own heart knew its selfishness: empty, yawning, cavernous need to be a vessel of receiving, the fullness of Him, to once then again be emptied for another, to pour out in a never ending circle of streaming. He was faithful, is faithful, always.
Girlfriends, stranger, for anyone who stops by, take the Bread. Take the blood, wash in it. Wine of Life. Take it. His cloth is always spread for you, cup full. Ask. It becomes great joy to Him. To feed is His glory. May it also be yours.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Reply to comment online 'Washington Herald"
It's late and my eyelids are droopy. But having come thus far, I refuse to scratch my efforts to reply to the following comments made by 3 responders to a "Washington Herald" article about Franklin Graham's defense of his friend Sarah Palin. Since I didn't wish to subscribe to W.H.'s Disqus, or use my FB account profile, I decided to post here on my own blog.
Stated comments were as follows:
Thomas:
"That sleazeball isn't going to make her (Sarah Palin) look any better, not one bit!"
Daniel:
"The apple certainly fell a long way from the tree in the Graham clan. Poor choice of political ally for Franklin, his dad was much smarter in his choices."
Kika:
"I guess this sheeple herder guy wants to bring all fundamental Christians to her defense.
There is a lot of them out there. Especially the ones that believe dinosaurs walked the earth around 4000 years ago. " (always room for one more)
Me:
Before making derogatory remarks about Franklin Graham please try demonstrating a little true wisdom, diplomacy, and intelligence by doing your research. Going back several generations (read biographer John Pollock's,"A Foreign Devil in China" on the life of Nelson and Virginia Bell and writer Patricia Cornwell's account of the life of Ruth Bell Graham, for starters), members the Bell and Graham families have devoted their lives in service of humanity regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or any other criteria, such as religious belief's or affiliation of those they help.
Franklin is an awesome, 'regular' guy who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and pitch right in and serve with volunteers for the Christian aids organization, "Samaritans Purse" of which he is president and CEO.
Samaritan's Purse volunteers are first responders in crisis situations in some of the most remote and dangerous spots in the world. Neither is he ashamed of his faith in Jesus Christ who is first in his life. He is incredibly loyal to his friends, whether it makes him popular or not.
It is rare if ever you will hear from mainstream media regarding relief organizations like "Samaritan's Purse" and what they do, "Friendships," YWAM, or others like them that minister unselfishly to the poorest of the poor and those caught in extreme crises such as earthquakes, ethnic wars, hurricanes, sunamis, refugee camps, epidemics and you-name-it.
For Franklin and his entire family, I have the utmost respect and deepest regard. He would, by the way, not be ashamed to be called a shepherd (sheepherder guy), since his Lord and Master refers to Himself as, "The Good Shepherd." And that He is.
Stated comments were as follows:
Thomas:
"That sleazeball isn't going to make her (Sarah Palin) look any better, not one bit!"
Daniel:
"The apple certainly fell a long way from the tree in the Graham clan. Poor choice of political ally for Franklin, his dad was much smarter in his choices."
Kika:
"I guess this sheeple herder guy wants to bring all fundamental Christians to her defense.
There is a lot of them out there. Especially the ones that believe dinosaurs walked the earth around 4000 years ago. " (always room for one more)
Me:
Before making derogatory remarks about Franklin Graham please try demonstrating a little true wisdom, diplomacy, and intelligence by doing your research. Going back several generations (read biographer John Pollock's,"A Foreign Devil in China" on the life of Nelson and Virginia Bell and writer Patricia Cornwell's account of the life of Ruth Bell Graham, for starters), members the Bell and Graham families have devoted their lives in service of humanity regardless of ethnicity, nationality, or any other criteria, such as religious belief's or affiliation of those they help.
Franklin is an awesome, 'regular' guy who is not afraid to roll up his sleeves and pitch right in and serve with volunteers for the Christian aids organization, "Samaritans Purse" of which he is president and CEO.
Samaritan's Purse volunteers are first responders in crisis situations in some of the most remote and dangerous spots in the world. Neither is he ashamed of his faith in Jesus Christ who is first in his life. He is incredibly loyal to his friends, whether it makes him popular or not.
It is rare if ever you will hear from mainstream media regarding relief organizations like "Samaritan's Purse" and what they do, "Friendships," YWAM, or others like them that minister unselfishly to the poorest of the poor and those caught in extreme crises such as earthquakes, ethnic wars, hurricanes, sunamis, refugee camps, epidemics and you-name-it.
For Franklin and his entire family, I have the utmost respect and deepest regard. He would, by the way, not be ashamed to be called a shepherd (sheepherder guy), since his Lord and Master refers to Himself as, "The Good Shepherd." And that He is.
Friday, October 01, 2010
That the World May Know
The Holy Spirit connects the dots for us in scripture: when we ask, seek, knock, familiar verses may suddenly emerge in new light. When we ask, a willingness, or better yet, an eagerness on our part for more please entreats the Teacher to open up a kaleidoscope of new insight. When we seek, He loves to surprise us as a lover his bride with beatiful pearls and gems from His word. When we knock, God the Father delights to share with us, as he does with the Son, the things that belong to Him.
One of the richest truths Jesus longs to convey to all who seek Him is the mystery of our oneness in Him, in the Father, and in each other. Merely shadowed in the Old Testament, Immanuel, God with us, became reality in the new. Following the Passover meal on the night He was taken, Jesus opened up His heart to His disciples. He spoke of things that would shortly come to pass and began to prepare them for His departure from this world. Later on he would dispense His “Great Commission” to go and make disciples in all the world. But tonight Jesus “desired with great desire” a personal and intimate communion with His chosen band of followers.
In passing the baton, our Lord desired most of all to leave His disciples a legacy of love: to reveal how much the Father loved the Son, and how that love united the Father, the Son, and those whom the Father had given Him. But as an added blessing, it was given not only for their sakes alone, but also for those who would believe on Him through their word. In that hour the disciples could not possibly have grasped how much we, in ours, would bank on that promise. Neither did they anticipate the intervention of years from their day to ours.
In the gospel of John, following His going-away discourse to the disciples, Jesus leads directly into His homecoming prayer to the Father. Embedded in this prayer lies our gem of oneness; but it is one that would have held a startling, almost unbelievable concept for Jesus’ followers. For centuries the Jews had been schooled in God’s inapproachable holiness and inaccessibility to sinful man: it would take the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring to their remembrance and comprehension Jesus’ words and actions that night, as well as to shed light upon many of His teachings during His ministry on earth.
In the disciples’ world culture and tradition placed great emphasis on clout and authority. The lesser served the greater. Especially among the Gentiles who ruled over them was this true but even their own Jewish culture had diminished the original intent of God’s methodology. When Jesus washed His disciples feet, those who had often striven with one another, vying for position and preeminence, had their theology turned upside down. This is why Peter drew back from having his Lord perform the menial task of the lowest of the low: the foot-washing servant. “Serve one another, love one another, esteem one another better than oneself.” To His discples this was a foreign concept.
The oneness model for Chrisitians and His ‘new commandment’ to love one another are truly one and the same. They also have literally everything to do with fulfilling His command to spread the "Good News." In His “High Priestly Prayer” Jesus’ petition to the Father makes clear and perfects this lovely and vital truth: “…that they all may be one; as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” John 17:21 (KJV)
In verse 23 Jesus deems that last part worth repeating: “…I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
Can we grasp the significance of the joining of these several truths? Dot to to dot to dot. The lion’s share of our evangelization of the lost hinges on our fervent love one for another. Like a city on a hill our brotherly love shines as a beacon to the weary traveler. No matter the length and breadth of scholarly studies, this is pure Bible theology: straight ‘from His lips to our ears.’ Though there’s not space enough here to list them all, in the gospel and epistles of John alone scriptures abound that echo this vision of loveliness.
In large measure what the world sees in us is what the world will know it can have access to in Christ. In other words, brotherly love is our most effective testimony. The love of the father, the love of Jesus, is measured to the world in lowly us.
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” John 13:35. (KJV)
One of the richest truths Jesus longs to convey to all who seek Him is the mystery of our oneness in Him, in the Father, and in each other. Merely shadowed in the Old Testament, Immanuel, God with us, became reality in the new. Following the Passover meal on the night He was taken, Jesus opened up His heart to His disciples. He spoke of things that would shortly come to pass and began to prepare them for His departure from this world. Later on he would dispense His “Great Commission” to go and make disciples in all the world. But tonight Jesus “desired with great desire” a personal and intimate communion with His chosen band of followers.
In passing the baton, our Lord desired most of all to leave His disciples a legacy of love: to reveal how much the Father loved the Son, and how that love united the Father, the Son, and those whom the Father had given Him. But as an added blessing, it was given not only for their sakes alone, but also for those who would believe on Him through their word. In that hour the disciples could not possibly have grasped how much we, in ours, would bank on that promise. Neither did they anticipate the intervention of years from their day to ours.
In the gospel of John, following His going-away discourse to the disciples, Jesus leads directly into His homecoming prayer to the Father. Embedded in this prayer lies our gem of oneness; but it is one that would have held a startling, almost unbelievable concept for Jesus’ followers. For centuries the Jews had been schooled in God’s inapproachable holiness and inaccessibility to sinful man: it would take the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring to their remembrance and comprehension Jesus’ words and actions that night, as well as to shed light upon many of His teachings during His ministry on earth.
In the disciples’ world culture and tradition placed great emphasis on clout and authority. The lesser served the greater. Especially among the Gentiles who ruled over them was this true but even their own Jewish culture had diminished the original intent of God’s methodology. When Jesus washed His disciples feet, those who had often striven with one another, vying for position and preeminence, had their theology turned upside down. This is why Peter drew back from having his Lord perform the menial task of the lowest of the low: the foot-washing servant. “Serve one another, love one another, esteem one another better than oneself.” To His discples this was a foreign concept.
The oneness model for Chrisitians and His ‘new commandment’ to love one another are truly one and the same. They also have literally everything to do with fulfilling His command to spread the "Good News." In His “High Priestly Prayer” Jesus’ petition to the Father makes clear and perfects this lovely and vital truth: “…that they all may be one; as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” John 17:21 (KJV)
In verse 23 Jesus deems that last part worth repeating: “…I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”
Can we grasp the significance of the joining of these several truths? Dot to to dot to dot. The lion’s share of our evangelization of the lost hinges on our fervent love one for another. Like a city on a hill our brotherly love shines as a beacon to the weary traveler. No matter the length and breadth of scholarly studies, this is pure Bible theology: straight ‘from His lips to our ears.’ Though there’s not space enough here to list them all, in the gospel and epistles of John alone scriptures abound that echo this vision of loveliness.
In large measure what the world sees in us is what the world will know it can have access to in Christ. In other words, brotherly love is our most effective testimony. The love of the father, the love of Jesus, is measured to the world in lowly us.
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” John 13:35. (KJV)
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Shadow
just lift the edge
if you would like
the shadow’s edge
grasp it gingerly
with the fingertips
slowly
lift and peek beneath
to see what lies under
another world perhaps-
or nothing
impossible you say
but not if there is
wonder
imagination
vision
for mystery and life
keep secrets
if no oneever tries
and yet you may do so
by thinking it through
for where there is shadow
reality
where substance
shadow
attests to what exists
good evidence
not to be denied
if you would like
the shadow’s edge
grasp it gingerly
with the fingertips
slowly
lift and peek beneath
to see what lies under
another world perhaps-
or nothing
impossible you say
but not if there is
wonder
imagination
vision
for mystery and life
keep secrets
if no oneever tries
and yet you may do so
by thinking it through
for where there is shadow
reality
where substance
shadow
attests to what exists
good evidence
not to be denied
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