TRAMPLING THE SOUR GRAPES

“I thank my God every time I remember you.”  Philippians 1:3

W

hen I meditate on my cherished past experiences that I will very likely never get to repeat, I realize two important truths:  The first is that what I am looking at in the picture, whether it is an actual photograph I can hold in my hand or just a vivid sketch on the palette of my memory that I see with my mind’s eye, was just the first time I did that thing.  That moment frozen by the lens was just the beginning of the full experience.  Stop reading and just think about this a minute. 

 If you are like me, your favorite memories have been revisited over and over again in your mind.  I have rekissed my husband at the altar, rewalked the trails, reswum the oceans, retraveled the roads, re-eaten the meals, replayed the games, reskiied the slopes, rediscovered the waterfalls, reforded the streams, reheld my brand new babies for the first time, rerocked them and reread to them in the big, green recliner, and reheard each of my grandchildren say their first “Nana” many, many times.  Who knows how much I have colored the actual occurrences, but who cares?  Who’s to know?  As far as I’m concerned, the memory is more important than the reality, because the memory, not the real thing, is what travels companionably with me through the years. And that’s just the first important truth.

 Not only can we never lose the best part of all of our past experiences, we have also been forever affected, somehow eternally changed by each one of them.  By our experiences we have grown into who we have become.  So, this is another way we didn’t just eat those times like food that left us after a few hours: they are still a part of us, and not just when we remember them.  I believe that my mind that thinks and my heart that feels are for the most part composed of what I have taken with me from all those experiences.  I learned to think these thoughts in the way that I think them, to feel these emotions in the ways that I feel them because of all of my experiences.  These times whose loss I might be tempted to grieve are really not lost.  I am a walking reservoir of them, in more ways than one.  

We have no reason to believe that God, who has been faithfully growing us through the past, has plans to quit doing that now.  This might be a stiller, less exotic season, but I am confident, and I hope you are too, that God’s resources are not limited to the exotic and the expensive.

THE SOUR GRAPES MYTH

“I thank my God every time I remember you.”  Philippians 1:3

           

 I get the feeling when I read this verse that Paul enjoyed remembering these Christian friends in Philippi. He seemed to think of them with deep longing but still to be able to rest in the comfort of his memories. He didn’t seem in any way haunted or saddened by remembering them, even though he was writing this letter from prison in faraway Rome and had no guarantee that he would ever see them again to take up making more memories with these he loved so well.

            But this isn’t the way remembering goes always.  Some people hate remembering.

Are you in a season of life when, because of a leanness of finances or health, you can’t do some of the things you used to do?  Maybe you’ve lived a life of traveling here and there, seeing new places and experiencing a periodic freshness of vision that so often comes with vacating the norm and heading out for places unknown.  Maybe you cherish a history of hiking, mountain climbing, running marathons; perhaps your bookshelves are full of photo albums testifying to grand adventures and exotic experiences that you can, for one reason or another, no longer afford.  Even worse, maybe you have reached a place where you must realize that more adventures like these are not just up ahead around some foreseeable bend, but must truly now be tucked away and entrusted  into the arms of memory.

            Although we might at first feel discouraged, sad, even depressed at such a realization, I am beginning to understand that there is another way to approach such a seemingly sad situation with a certain kind of joy.  In fact, I am inclined to identify this kind of camouflaged joy as what Nehemiah meant by “the joy of the Lord.”

            There are two ways to approach those photo albums of times gone by. 

Our Enemy wants us to choose to leave them on the shelf and assign them to the dust.  He wants us to dread seeing evidence of “better” days and brighter moments, since now we are on this other side, looking at life in its plain, vanilla dullness with no chocolate anywhere on the horizon.  A dramatized, Hollywood version of what is happening to us might filter in tragic tones of doom and color the landscape in the somberness of dull, parched hues: a life that’s reached a dead-end road, a heart that is consigned to the pitiful existence of the haunting memories of beautiful fulfillment, eyes that strain for bygone inspiration that is getting smaller and smaller on the horizon.  This is the attitude that if I can’t still have it, it’s just too sad to think about.  Remembering only rips open the wounds. 

But there is another way to think about where we are now in relation to where we used to be.  If we think that the only good of all those sweet times came when they were actually happening, then of course we will bemoan having lost them.  But if we consider that such an idea is a lie of the devil, we might be able to open our minds to a different, clearer, truer way of thinking. 

It is true that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, (although that axiom has always made better sense to me when you turn it around and say, “You can’t eat your cake and have it too” because right up until the time you eat the cake, you actually do still have it!) This might very well be true for cakes, but what we’re talking about here is not cake.  Memories are not digestible things that go into our systems on one end and get spat out of the other end, like cake.  The places we have been, the wonders we have seen, the adventures we have experienced entered into our lives and stayed!  We didn’t just go there, do that, and then lose it all when we left.

God’s truth, as opposed to the devil’s lie, is that the highlights of our lives are not experiences that came and went.  We have no reason to mourn their loss. In a very real sense, the best of those times is yet to come.

 Just as age ferments wine into its prime, so does God use our past to enrich our future. We don’t have to let our sweet memories ferment into sour grapes.

WHISPERS OF HOPE

 

“Weeping may remain for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Psalms 30:5

I

t’s way too hot outside.  It has been for three or four months.  This is Texas, and that’s the way it is— summer for most of the year.  Not really, but it seems that way because what the heat doesn’t accomplish by quantity (meaning length of time here), it makes up for in quality. When I was a kid, even a forty-something, I could run for miles and conquer Six Flags with the best of them, but a few years ago (and by a “few” years, we’re talking twenty-ish of them), some heretofore veiled eyes sprang open and I realized how very, very foolish I had been to think that all those years of cavorting in the July sun were something that any sane person might call fun. I got sick and tired of all that fun a while back, and frankly, I’m pretty much done loving summer, at least in this Lone Star state I so proudly belong to.

            BUT (and aren’t you relieved to see that little conjunction right when you thought my heat delirium had robbed me of all ability to be positive and inspirational?) it is September, and so I can now shed my garments of disgruntlement,  put back on my peace and joy outfit, and venture valiantly out into the world, even though today the thermometer still  reads 100 degrees.

            I love September.  There are all kinds of reasons. It is the hopeful harbinger of autumn.  It conjures up in my memory schoolgirl days (okay, school-tomboy days) when my mother would take us to Shreveport to do our school-clothes shopping.  I recall fall-colored pleated, plaid wool skirts with matching sweaters, penny loafers and socks. (This was in the fifties when girls had to wear this kind of stuff.  My heart was set on jeans and t-shirts, but nobody would listen when I told them I had a vision that one day everybody would be wearing them.  They scoffed my prophecies and stuck to their guns.) On this annual shopping trip, my mother, sister, and I would go to Morrison’s Cafeteria where they served Jello cut up into blocks and tall, green drinks, probably just Kool Aid, but because we were in Louisiana that day and not Texas, I knew this had to be some far more exotic elixir.

          Fall meant band practice, and marching on the football field.  One random fall day, the cool breezes would make their way into East Texas.  Soon the chinaberry trees would turn yellow like gypsys’ petticoats exposing themselves garishly amidst the evergreens, people would bring their blankets to the football games, and everyone would get fiercely competitive about their chili. There would be hayrides and trick-or-treating and bobbing for apples and cakewalks.

            September has a different voice than the summer.  It is quieter somehow.  It is as though nature has packed up its loud summer toys and is whispering— even in the remaining warm winds still hanging on— that relief is just around the corner.  It foreshadows the autumnal promise of the deep breath of refreshment we get to take in and savor before winter blows in and takes it away.

            (And besides all this, finally a month with an “r” has arrived, and we can cast all caution to the wind and enjoy our oysters again with no trepidation!)

            So in any respect, if your night of weeping has lasted so long that your eyes have lost their light and you can’t imagine a morning of joy; if you are famished from the heat, weary and dry from a summer that has been too long, close to despairing that things will always be the way they are now, and refreshment and relief will never come, take heart! September has arrived at last.

 Listen to what the winds are whispering: God will not leave us in the darkness; He has not abandoned us to the desert. He is right this moment stirring up some yellows and oranges to pour over the aspens and brighten the parched landscape.

 And when He finishes that, He’ll stir up some warm apple cider and maybe even some egg nog! Oh, and oysters!  Let’s not forget the oysters!

                

           

FOCUSING ON THE BUNTING

                        Our farmhouse paradise

                                   in Belton

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  Proverbs 13:12

            A little over a year ago, Larry and I moved out of our home of sixteen years into a rent house.  It would be an understatement to say we are enjoying our stay in this location.  In fact, we believe it was picked out expressly for us and handed to us by no less that God Himself. It is a big, old roomy farm house with a warm and charming character surrounded by dozens of big oak trees that serve as a natural bird sanctuary.  Every morning we sit on our screened-in front porch and enjoy the vast array of feathered carolers singing cheery hymns to welcome the day. There are cardinals, chickadees, titmice, blue jays, woodpeckers, sparrows, finches, hummingbirds, and most rare of all, a family of painted buntings. 

            But recently the wildly colorful male bunting disappeared, and I can’t quit looking for him.  Every time I go outside or even look through a window, I am searching, relentlessly scouring the earth for a glimpse of my missing pied wonder.

            Today it hit me that this kind of focused searching belies something amiss in my spirit, a black smudge on my soul.  For here, as they have always been, are the cardinals, the titmice, the hummingbirds and all the other delightful creatures wooing me constantly with their unique songs and personalities.  I haven’t cared about this.  I haven’t even noticed.  I haven’t been paying attention. 

            Probably the birds don’t care that I haven’t noticed them.  The Lord cares though, I’m sure.  Surely He wishes I would not be so blasé or petulant in the face of His blessings just because I can’t have the one specific blessing I have ordered up for this season.

 But there is something even worse than blindly receiving the blessing of winged creatures in my yard…

            I have been doing the same thing with my husband.   Lately I have been on a dedicated quest to improve our communication and deepen the intimacy of our marriage.  As I told Larry, there are some aspects of our life together that have taken up residence on the east shores of the Jordan, as did some of the patriarchs of long ago.  Remember them?  They asked Moses if they might reside on the east of the river since they were shepherds and there was good land of sheep there.  “Okay,” Moses said.  “You go in and help us clear the land of the heathens, and then you can go back over there and live.”  And they did.  And there they survived and subsisted.  But that was not the Promised Land God had prepared for them.  That was not the land of milk and honey.  So I asked Larry if we might work on getting over to the West in some or our ways.  Might we still, even after forty years, change our minds, break camp over here in the east, and enter into the Promised Land?

            I was pretty sure I knew some of what it would take to get this thing done, and I shared fairly explicitly with him what those changes consisted of. He left on his job with the letter in hand for two-and-a-half weeks, hopefully to ponder and figure out how to do what it might take to help our move to happen.

When he returned, I watched expectantly for the thing I so desperately wanted to see.  I peered with ultra-focused eyes and sniffed the air constantly on the prowl for the change I dreamed of.  To tell the truth, though, I couldn’t see much difference.  I asked him if he had thought about my letter, and he replied, “Yes.  I have read it several times.  I keep it in my Bible.  Can’t you tell?”  What a surprise to me that was since no, the thing I was looking for was really nowhere in sight. 

            And then a few days later, I discovered my mistake with the bunting.  It was a word from the Lord .  The parable bore into my heart with precision.  The Word of God had come to me “sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrat[ing] even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; judg[ing]the thoughts and attitudes of [my]heart.”  The next verse tells us that “nothing 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). God had seen that I was blindly and ungratefully receiving the blessings of a contrite, dedicated man who was wonderful in so many ways just because I was on a mad, obsessive search for only one attribute.  All the sweet qualities he had always displayed plus some new ones were there before me to bless me, but the painted bunting I was looking for wasn’t visible so I could see nothing but its absence.

            Somehow we have to learn to catch ourselves when we begin focusing on what is missing rather than what is present.  This is not to say we shouldn’t work on improving and adding to what’s already there.  It’s just a gentle reminder to those of you who easily fall into obsessing (you know who you are!) that when we fail to give credit where credit is due, and when we fail to soften and widen our narrow, sharp, pinpointed focus, we could easily be distinguishing hope in someone we love.   It happens to kids when parents look at the report card with six A’s and one B and respond, “What happened in this subject?”  It happens with spouses who forget to notice or speak words of appreciation for forty years of good meals on the table or twelve-hour workdays to pay for the groceries and the air conditioning.

The Proverb says that when we lose hope, our hearts grow sick.  Sometimes the hope of pleasing another grows dim, and we doubt we can ever get it right.  We become heartsick.

            But getting it right is worth it, even if it has taken years to figure out how; it becomes “a longing fulfilled”; “a tree of life.” A tree!  What an apt metaphor to describe a blessing-giver for not only now but for generations to come.

            But really, I must go.  I’ve got a husband who needs a letter of encouragement and a bunch of sparrows in the front yard that need feeding.

A BAG OF WIND

A bag of wind.  Just a bunch of hot air.  Hypocrite.  Where does she get off thinking she has the right to…when we all know that she doesn’t have her stuff all that together? Do you hear these voices too?  Are you stymied from moving forward into what your heart longs to launch into because of these accusations which might be inaudible to the rest of the world but are certainly not to you?

It took me awhile to identify my reasons for shying away from writing lately.  It looked to me like a classic case of laziness.  I am all too familiar with the laziness that assaults me when it’s time to clean house or get at those weeds that, in spite of the triple-digit temperatures, continue to thrive.  But writing is something I generally enjoy doing; I have memory upon memory piled up of writing for hours, even days, on end.  Why would I suddenly find all kinds of excuses not to do the thing I most love doing? 

And then I finally got alone and still enough to recognize the voices in my head.  They had been doing their sinister job on me by whispering these accusations one at a time. So stealthy they were that I had failed to add them all up and realize their power and the number they were doing on me.

Driving my car, sitting in church, falling asleep late at night, the inspiration would hit; the excitement would build to write about all these things I’d been learning. The vision was so strong that I had no doubt that at my first opportunity— as soon as I drove into my driveway and could get into the house; as soon as I got home from church; as soon as I woke up in the morning—I would get to writing. It would be thrilling to get it all down in black and white.  It would be nothing less than exhilarating.

But then the faintest little accusation rubbed up against— ever-so gently— the most remote boundary of my consciousness. “You have no right! Who do you think you are?” 

It took a twelve-hour car trip and a nine-disc audiobook to wake me up to the reality of what was happening to me.  It might have happened, be happening, to you, too.  “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).  We are gifted by God, some to do this thing, others to do that one.  Most of us, if we are honest, know what at least some of those gifts are.  They are the directions we naturally lean, the things we do more instinctively than most, the music that, when we cannot be directly focused upon,  is always playing in the background of the rest of our lives, the colors that, when we aren’t totally swimming in them, most thoroughly saturate our peripheral vision.  God gave them to us to use lavishly,  not to horde and not to bury. 

That’s the cheery half of the story.  The other half of the story is much more sinister.  This is the dark part of the story that threatens tragedy and will have its way if we don’t pay attention and get a grip on reality.  Revelation 12 tells us about it.  When the dragon didn’t get to destroy the woman’s Son, he came— and still comes— after the rest of her offspring—“those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”  Our Enemy wants to deter us in any way he can from magnifying his Enemy, God.  Of course, he would attack our productivity.

And one way he attacks is to convince us that we are not worthy of spending our talents.  We are not well-behaved enough; we are not obedient enough; we are not consistent enough.  In fact, since we are still struggling with looking like Christians should, we are probably even confused about this thing being a gift from God at all. What does God have to do with this thing you do?  You are a fool deluded fool living in la-la land.

He is trying to rob us, and God, blind. Stealing is one of the things he does best, right up there with killing and destroying. 

Don’t let another day go by believing the lies.  Get on with the thing God has given you to do.  Yes, less-than-perfect you. Yes, inconsistent me.

“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master, I knew that you are a hard man…So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground’” (Matthew 25:24-25). (The end of the parable gets pretty rough, so I’ll just leave it up to you to read the rest of it in privacy.)