HEART SURGERY

"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." Hebrews 4:12-13

Heart surgery is a time-consuming and critical process. The sharp scalpel cuts deeply, and the bleeding is profuse. One could die in the midst of this procedure whose goal is to restore normal and safe living.

And yet, no shortcuts can be allowed; the entire tedious and painstaking distance must be accomplished to restore this life-sustaining organ to its original design and function. No shortcuts-- even though the healing process will take much longer and be much more painful when the cuts are the deepest, to repair the most serious damage. Some, being warned about the pain, the danger, and the long period of recovery and convalescence, choose not to go through it, though the doctor pleads, explaining in vain that a reasonably secure life cannot be had without it.

And although the doctor might even attempt sometimes to explain the malfunction and the procedures he will use to correct or alleviate the problems, the patient rarely fully understands, never having been a heart specialist or surgeon. She must decide whether to trust the doctor and submit, lie down on his table and be cut into, or decline, and limp through the remainder of her life in an unwhole and precarious condition.

It is all so easy to see when we put it this way. Most of us, after thinking seriously about the alternatives, choose to have the surgery. We choose to entrust our lives to basically a stranger who will cut into our organs and do whatever he chooses, rather than the alternative of having our lives cut short. But the Great Physician comes to us in His Word pleading His case for our spiritual health. Page after page he admonishes us to get that death threat we are harboring taken care of , to let His sharp scalpel cut out the malignant intrusion that is little by little, day by day, eating away the life of our spirits.

That's the way most people lose their spiritual health-- not in one huge leap off God's bandwagon but by sliding a foot off, then a leg, a hip, and finally lowering themselves another few inches onto the world's highway. Today come to the Doctor and ask to be diagnosed. Take the medicine, get the surgery, take the cure no matter how long and slow the healing process might be. The truth is that although our bodies will die, all souls live eternally. Hopefully, that is good news to you! If it isn't, the Doctor is in.

"knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." Matthew 7:7-8

-from Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel

COMING TO KNOW

"Keep climbing trees past forty."

Here's a poem I wrote to give my freshmen at the end of each school year to chew on during the summer. It's a preacherly teacher's disjointed and random potpourri of sermons to ensure that even though they survived my class, they would never be rid of me. Not the most eloquent of poetry, not even the most eloquent of my poetry; in fact, it barely deserves to be called a poem, but here it is. If the shoe fits, wear it.

With this bouquet of blunders I collect as I grow,
Oh, to come to live what I'm coming to know!

It's only real rest when it's respite;
Apart from real work, there can be no relief.
Until what I think is tested by fire,
I've no business calling it belief.

Compassion comes in all flavors.
Too varied to discover its lack.
Some show tenderness in the tears that they shed,
While others bear its load on their backs.

The softest-seeming ones of us
Sprout prickles that can tear others' hearts;
And the hardest of us whose tears may be few
Are the softest in some of our parts.

When we admire another so deeply,
We must always be careful still.
Or, as we emulate their light that breeds health,
We'll adopt, too, their struggles and ills.

It's bad to be petty and fragile
And something we should fight to undo,
But in that attempt lurks the danger
Of becoming insensitive too.

Most things are difficult before they are easy;
What we dwell on eventually comes true.
It takes longer to learn what we don't want to believe
Than it does to learn what we do.

When wringing your hands in frustration
For all you can't do for the many,
Remember it's better to save one starfish
Than to give up and not rescue any.

When you're stuck in the traffic, quote scriptures, say a poem,
Pick a flower, but never grow bored;
Be abundantly thankful at the break of each day;
Rejoice in the hope of the Lord!

Expect late doctors, slow trains, and long lines;
Stash a book and some paper and a pen.
And even when you're certain they won't be returned,
Don't silence love notes to a friend.

Don't praise for pay; don't keep tabs on your loans;
Don't rest of the laurels of your past.
Keep climbing trees past forty;
When approaching first base, run fast!

Play the piano by candlelight.
Believe in your visions' powers.
Savor the simplest pleasures;
Study the faces of flowers.

When you tell a person you love him,
The strength of that love won't feel true.
'Til you go to the trouble to tell him the why's
And give honor where honor is due.

When seeking to change to respond like another
Who doesn't gush or rush madly in,
Remember you're you, and what good is revealed you can do,
Not to do it is sin.

When your mouth starts promoting yourself, shut up fast;
Get alone with your motives and God.
Your silence is a treasure stored up for safe-keeping
In Heaven far away from earth's sod.

Words can do damage, just like sticks and stones;
Think carefully before they're begun,
But when affection begs to be spoken,
Your silence is as deadly as a gun.

Hoarded love never builds interest;
Study hands with your eyes and your touch.
Practice playing second fiddle.
Relinquish some things treasured much.

Learn from your garden: Weeds that sprout up
Will grow back 'til you dig out the root.
Fertilize steadily with God's rich Truth
To grow delicious and nourishing fruit.

When we walk with the wise, we, too, will grow wise;
When we sleep with the pigs, we will stink.
When you wash your white underwear with your red socks;
Don't be surprised when they're pink.

When vulnerability becomes such a burden to bear
That you doubt you'll survive one more fall,
Remember it really is better to have lost love
Than never to have known love at all.

Make peace with being resistible.
Don't insist on being a must.
Don't set your heart on receiving a crown
Down here where the best gold will rust.

Allow grace to burn through the parts you don't like;
Don't let the bad drown out the good.
Consider them not just for who they are,
But for who they would be if they could.

When someone's neglect has bruised up your spirit,
And their silence has cut to the bone,
Likelier than not, another close by
Walks in shoes that you're stepping on.

The first shall be last, and the last shall be first,
Most things are not what they seem.
Seek more to understand than to be understood;
Never take away more than you bring.

Don't assume those you cherish assume that you do.
Update often, so they'll never doubt it.
Strive not to take love that come easy for granted;
Think what you'd be missing without it.

Say "Please" and "Thank you" even to children.
Don't interrupt, though you're antsy.
Inviting folks over though your house is a mess
Says their house doesn't have to be fancy.

Love words! Collect them like daisies.
Don't lack one for any occasion.
This one to comfort a heart in its grieving,
That one to sing celebrations.

The path to true wisdom is to live and to learn,
Not to mess up and forget.
Pray to struggle in worthy pursuits,
And when it's something you can't change, don't fret.

APPLES OF GOLD: A LESSON FROM PARADISE

Although I am sure- being so blessed as I am- that I grow blase about multitudes of my blessings, there are some that my eyes seem to stay wide open to. Two of them are the natural beauty of God's creation and the heart-rending beauty of good friendships woven together by a mutual love of our Father. Friendship- phileo love- is a blessing I hope none that I love ever miss; and as far as it depends upon me, everyone in my family- parents, siblings, husband, children,and grandchildren- will get some of that treasured kind of liking from me in addition to my loving.

One of my favorite places on earth is Hawaii, and for the last five years, my four trips to visit Candy have sweetly commingled these two favorites of mine: God's palette of nature and His gift of delightful friendship.

Through open windows in Hawaii exclamation beckons- a chirping of overflowing life from streamlined, pointy-angled birds investigating green mangoes or papayas clustered in a cornucopia of voluptuous clumps. But if, when you look, it's not the birds, it's likely the ventriloquism of exotic geckoes whose voices cast giant fuchsia shadows to make up for their pale coyness of the flesh. Why are they so loud to the ear, as if to beg me to know them, while so quiet to the eye? (What do they fear we will find lacking in them?)

Life can't contain itself here. Everything aside from the visual presence of geckoes is elevated, magnified, amplified, multiplied, heaped up like rubies and emeralds in a cartoon-pirate's treasure chest. In some other setting, the abundant variety of color and texture would be gaudy like a lady gone blind, or maybe just pretending to have so that she could throw all caution to the wind and parade around town in green and yellow striped stretch-pants and a purple floral hat with orange silk tassels. And all these things, as though their vibrancy weren't enough, bear taste and/or fragrance! Its tantalizing energy grabs you without your effort.

It's a lazy, undisciplined kind of attraction that happens here. It requires none of the nobility of making allowances for weakness or the mercy of sifting through the hard edges of blemished flesh to find the pristine soul within. No, none of that; it is all just out there. Even a small-minded buffoon can find it and, with no effort whatsoever, can have it to put in his grimy, undeserving pocket! An overly-eager dog ever at his master's feet, it's the pearl-on-the-outside-of the oyster kind of beauty, unlike, say, the desert of West Texas that must grow and grow and grow on you always taking the costly gamble that your life won't last long enough to get you there. Here in Hawaii, you're already there. It takes nothing. All you have to do is be here. Just go outside, or sit in any house with open windows- which is all of them- and you are smack-dab in the middle of it. No gleaning is required.

Now I move from the voice of the gecko to the voice of good friendship. It is both more and less than I thought it was. And maybe more and less are not the right words, but some old scales are falling from my eyes, and like all scales that fall from eyes, I never knew they were there. Oh, I haven't changed my mind about how fine it is to the touch. It is still a satin pillowcase, powdered sugar, a cello's voice on a summer evening- fine and rich and soothing- calling me out of where I wish to leave into where I long to nest. It reaches ever so deep to scratch unfathomable, itchy regions. In this respect it can feel almost like the oxygen that we draw in mindlessly yet crucially. We are going along blithely through our lives doing it, breathing, and owning it, friendship, and then we lose our regulator forty-feet beneath the surface, or we move away or be moved away from, and we realize the vast worth of the thing. Gray has turned silver, pink has stretched into red, yellow has grown golden, nevermore to return to its paleness. It's the way danger which has always been foreign finally becomes real once we feel its hot breath on our necks. It jells into something solid. I'm thinking that most of the people I know are still in the liquid stage, waiting but not knowing they are waiting. Many die that way. It probably doesn't hurt. It's just a jewel they never mined. But once it jells and you understand that it is real and solid and indispensable, a lot like oxygen, well, you never can take it for granted again. You have learned something you can't unlearn. Hopefully, this is a blessing, but whether it is or not, this is the case.

So, yes, I have known all about the value of this deep-throated, velvet voice of friendship-love, and I haven't changed my mind. The thing I am seeing with a better focus than before is another facet of friendship that some might interpret as less, or at least shallower, than the oxygen aspect of friendship. Some might even say that this thing can happen just as well between two random hobos on a boxcar riding only from here to the city limits of the next town as it could between someone you would go so far as to call a friend. And here it is: Friendship's song is sometimes sung to us in the simple melody of noticing... A pretty perfume on your neck, the luxurious new sheets on your bed, the way you spoke so gently to the checker at the grocery store. Sometimes friendship is at its best when we simply lend generously the rare eye of appreciation. Of course appreciation for the good things you have done for me, but not just that. For your taste, for your uniqueness, for your God-given creativity that makes you different from her, and her, and him and me. For a tastefully-chosen well-cultivated flower by your front door, the nuances of flavor produced by just the right spices, the ingenious, harmonious placement of the pictures in your bathroom, for the aptly-spoken word, like "apples of gold in settings of silver," the perfectly curved cupping of a hand on the cheek, for a shared song, a book, or a movie that haunts your heart, for the magic glance speaking secret recognition of a shared memory sent to you from across the room. These simple acts of noticing and speaking our appreciation are all voices of friendship.

And it is not enough that the other person in the boxcar just sees what you see or even feels what you feel. She will jump off the train in the next town and bid you farewell. Don't say that friendship can be defined as the characterization of just anyone who can notice and appreciate. No. It is only when some tried and true, gentle caretaker of your history- someone whose decision to stay in the boxcar or jump off has a lot to do with your plans- graces your life, like salt on your food, with these less-than-crucial-than-oxygen deeds, can it be enough.

And it really can be enough-- deep enough, rich enough, solid enough. Sometimes, maybe simply because life suddenly tastes better, this feels as welcome as oxygen, and who knows why? I don't care why. I'm just glad that I have learned that it is so.

Why We're Not Invisible

My mother-in-law,Velva Doke, and Bryson,one of her great grandsons


Wonder why we're not invisible-
Unshackled by these shells;
Unencumbered by callous flesh,
Delivered from this spell
Of deciding worth by what we see,
Applauding only the skin,
Quickened to the temporary,
Blind to the eternal within...

Yet there must be some wisdom to this wrapping,
For each of us got one at birth;
And even in Heaven we'll get one anew,
So no doubt they must have some worth.

Are they given for our learning-
To struggle with purpose to see
All the way through the flesh to the bones
Down to the you and the me?
To teach our eyes to burn through the husk
To discover God's seed in the heart?
To fight the Foe whose dazzle bewitches
Then leaves us alone in the dark?

I have just returned from the hospital bad of my precious Mother-in-law, whose eighty-eight year-old body is failing her in more ways than her weary lungs have breath to tell. Her shell is so very weak and weary, and, having been sealed with the Holy Spirit of God for the day of her redemption, she would be pleased just to go ahead and trade it in today for the Heavenly one that awaits her; but alas, Her Creator continues to pump blood to and from her heart and bring air in and out of her lungs. She understands exactly what Paul meant when he encouraged the Corinthians about the outward part wasting away while the inward part was being renewed. And she has not lost heart! In all her struggles to generate enough energy to converse and to keep herself from nodding off, she still manages to grip firmly the hands of her children, gaze resolutely and lucidly into our eyes, and tell us with firm determination, "You are not to worry about me. I will be just fine!"

These bodies we were given are certainly not for keeps, and those who realize this and give preference to the nourishment of the inward parts over the outward trappings, can approach the years of "wasting away" with peaceful resolve and even anticipation. The rest of the world stands back and watches curiously: approaching death cheerfully is not natural to the ways of this world. It is other-worldly, supernatural.

Yet, though they will fade, God chose to give us these bodies for a while, and we are to take full advantage of them and use them faithfully as a training ground for Heaven.

A Greek man named Demosthenes wanted more than anything to be the world's greatest orator, so he filled his mouth with rocks and practiced until he could execute every syllable with precision and even eloquence over the impediments. Maybe learning to really see with this limited vision and really move upward against the world's unforgiving gravity is the reason God blessed with us with the frailty of flesh for a few years. For every rock that threatens to kill our hope of living eloquently, God breathes into us His power to overcome. The world knows such eloquence is too much for the flesh and moves in for a closer look. This is true evangelism.

"Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

A BED TOO SHORT AND A BLANKET TOO NARROW

Too short and too narrow! Maunawili Trail, Oahu


[This was my first blog, and I am re-posting it merely because I had the picture in the wrong place. When I fixed it, it deleted the whole thing from my blog. Sorry to you have already read it!]


"I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding place." Isaiah 28:17

In a recent reading of Isaiah, I came upon this chapter filled with beautiful but terrifying poetry. Isaiah is pleading with a stiff-necked Israel on behalf of the Lord, warning them of their impending captivity if they continue to honor their idols and superstitions over God. Already having described for them the "glorious crown"and "beautiful wreath" reserved for the remnant of His people, he now speaks to them in no uncertain terms about the alternative. They have become dangerously relaxed in a false refuge, believing that they have somehow made some sort of covenant with the grave that will exempt them from death. The lines of poetry flow rhythmically along employing images of floods and plumb lines when suddenly a pronouncement is made that jarred my senses , rocketing me from the days of Isaiah into my right here, right now world: "The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror. The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you" (v.20).

Having done my share of traveling-- riding long distances in cramped vehicles and being laid over in crowded airports-- I can identify with the discomfort of not being able to stretch out when in sore need of rest. And being a cold-natured person, the image of a blanket too small to bring any warm relief is all to familiar. Sleeping is a delicate thing with me, requiring near perfect conditions for the task to be accomplished: I have always been more than a little envious of those who can sleep anywhere. Had I been in Isaiah's original audience, this metaphor would be just the one I would have needed to hear to jolt me into some serious reconsideration.

Though I am not a member of his original audience, I am under his tutelage, even still. The Word of God is, after all, the Word of God. Though I do not adhere to some strange, pagan belief involving a covenant with death, could there be other beliefs that I do adhere to that might also be a bed too short and a blanket too narrow?
Do I believe that the things I can buy with money will really improve my quality of life?
Do I believe that flesh and blood have more relevant answers to my problems than God's Word?
Do I believe that just because I botched a thing up last time, I am sure to do it again?
Do I believe that just because someone's sister or brother or mother or father was a certain kind of person, that he/she is that kind of person too?
Do I believe that how a person feels about me is what makes me who I am?

Study your resting place, your security. Are there beds you are trying to rest upon that will not bring you true rest? Are there blankets you are trying to warm up in that hold no real warmth?

from Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel