Bitter cold

It is the last day of January, and I think about how the compassion of God must have influenced our calendar, that the passage of the first month of the year is such a marked blessing and relief.

We've been setting records for cold, apparently, although the winter of 1996 was at least this cold, when we went to Minnesota for Shawn's sister Wendy's wedding.  My memory is that it was -50, with windchills of -80 that year, and it made me almost thankful that we had moved to New York.

Five years ago, our first winter here, it was cold enough to freeze the drainpipes from our washing machine, and when my wash load went to spin out, water flooded into the laundry room, channeled down the heat vent, and pooled in a duct in our storage crawl space, where it seeped out onto the things we had stacked on the shelves, mostly in plastic bins, so the actual damage was minimal.

At any rate, I haven't been brave enough to wash any laundry for the past few days, which is unfortunate, because there is an accumulating pile of old towels, soiled because of the sad fact that our small dog does not like to go outdoors in these arctic temperatures.  Currently, he is crying in his crate, but he has proven himself untrustworthy, and I am tired.

[aside-- Here's a random question:  Why are weeks seven days long?  Our entire number system is based on fives and tens, because of the number of fingers and toes we have (presumably).  Yet our calendars and clocks are based on sevens and twelves, Biblical numbers.  I wonder about that.  It seems to lend credence to the truth of the Bible, the seven days of creation that started everything.  Not that I need convincing, but for those who do, it is a point worth pondering, I think.]

The night before last was the record setter for central Illinois.  I think it was about -25 degrees, with a roaring wind that must have lowered the felt temperature considerably further.  Throughout the night, I heard the wind howling, and the house cracking, which was more alarming than the wind.  I'm not sure what, exactly, was cracking, but there were ongoing creaks and pops and groans, punctuated with a sharp, shuddering crack every now and again.  Nonetheless, the structure still stands.  I've taken to bumping the heat up to 72 in the evenings; I guess I'm old enough for that now.

Yesterday I had a skin excision, which was more invasive than I'd expected, and that's all I will say about that.  It's nothing to worry about, except that the bills will be significant, and probably also the scar.  Heaven will be free from bills and scars, and for that I am thankful.

After the excision, I went to Walmart to stock up on bandages and petroleum jelly for wound care.  Since it was so cold, I decided to take the opportunity of being in a large store to walk a few laps (it is not weather for exercising outdoors).  After walking as much as I dared, fearing that someone would mark me as a lunatic the third time they saw me whirl my cart through Automotive, I went to check out.  As I made ready to scan my items through the self-check, I realized that I had lost one of my gloves.

So, I circled the store yet again, searching without much hope, just a vague sense of annoyance and a dread at going outside with one bare hand.  Miraculously, though, I found my glove on the floor in the wide aisle between Grocery and Women's Fashion, in front of a display of icy pink velour ladies' pajama pants.  It was a dark glove, the kind that I always lose, not one of my pink striped ones, which I ought to have worn.

All this happened before the novocaine wore off from my excision.  I picked up Jon and brought him home for dinner, which was a sausage and potato soup that I made up out of my imagination, and it was good, as things usually are when the stakes are fairly low.  After we delivered Jon to work the night shift at FedEx, I was resting on the sofa when small Duffy pranced across my belly, planting a tiny paw directly on my incision site, through layers of clothing and bandages, of course, but still.  It's been hurting pretty significantly ever since, although I slept decently last night, and did not hear the wind howl, whether or not it did.

I'm sorry that this is a worthless post, just stupid, simple things from my completely unexceptional life.  I am finally now coming to terms with the fact that I am, indeed, unexceptional, and it is okay, even good, to be unexceptional.  It is a protection to have the privacy of insignificance, a blessing.  Yet, I hope that in my ordinariness I can somehow be pleasing to the Lord, to radiate His love where He wants me to.  I am so afraid of people.  The Lord needs to teach me to love my neighbor.

Wow.  Looking back at that last paragraph, I see God's hand, because I can identify that, in letting myself go to "stream of consciousness," He has guided me to a beginning of work on my words for the year: Humility, Love and Acceptance.  You may choose to believe that I did this on purpose, but all I can say is that I didn't.

Accepting what He has created me to be and to do, and learning to love the people in my sphere of influence.  This is my job.  May God help me.

My Favorite Coleslaw

I want to write about all sorts of things that are rolling around in my head:

...forgiveness, my revulsion at "Jesus and Coffee" merchandise (or is it "Coffee and Jesus"?--even worse, if possible), how the necessity of an absolute standard of goodness proves the existence of God, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good--like Brussels sprouts and roasted asparagus, not like rainbow colored candies...

For now, I'll just be thankful to have thoughts again, finally.  Someday I might have a chance to codify them.

I discovered this salad over the past month or so.  It is crunchy, juicy, refreshing and satisfying.  I've been meaning to get the recipe down for posterity, but I always seem to eat it up too quickly to get a photograph, and that puts me off.  I think I could literally eat the whole recipe in one shot, although it would surely make me sick if I did.

Cranberry Orange Coleslaw

• 1 bag coleslaw mix or angel hair shredded cabbage
• 1 can mandarin oranges
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries (Craisins)
• 1/3 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 cup salted and roasted sunflower kernels
• honey mustard salad dressing (approximately 1/4 - 1/3 cup)
• bleu cheese crumbles (about 3-4 tablespoons)

Use a large bowl.  Drain most of the juice off the mandarin oranges, but leave them moist and juicy (it will help the honey mustard dressing spread through the salad).  Mix all ingredients together.  Serve immediately, or chill and serve later.

I first made this without the bleu cheese crumbles.  It was very tasty, but a bit juvenile.  The bleu cheese adds a depth and contrast that is magically delicious (to quote an old breakfast cereal ad, but really, it is).

Colorless

Today as I was driving, I noticed that the sky was particularly gray, a deep, heavy gray.  It hung thickly above rooftops covered with white snow, contrasting with odd celestial darkness for 9:00 a.m.

As I pondered the gray and whiteness, the first thought to cross my mind was, "Why do people want their kitchens to look like this?"

Now, if you lived in a cloyingly hot, humid jungle, full of saturated green moss, shining red snakes, stunning blue lagoons and stupendous yellow flower blossoms, I can see where you might like to escape to a cool, pale, monochromatic decorating palette inside your home.  But if you live in a place where winter descends with snow, ice and bitter winds lashing endlessly from a completely desaturated sky, I would think you'd like a little bit of warmth in your home decorating.

Just because it feels like a lovely room in Florida doesn't mean it's lovely in Alaska.  There are places where you honestly need your brick to be a cheerful red, your wood to be warm brown, and your window treatments to have thermal properties.

However, I think the white trends are here to stay for much longer than one would have guessed, based on the average seven-year design cycle.  I've been trying to wait it out, but I had a revelation the other day, which made me realize my waiting is probably in vain.

Here's the deal:  Virtual reality is overtaking real reality.  People live on their devices.  Life is experienced through photographs on social media.  It makes no difference what the left half of your room looks like, if the right corner is photo-worthy.  Everything you do, you do for the purpose of taking a picture, and it's all about the picture.  If the picture puts up a good front, nothing else matters.

[Aside:  Do you know that my 20-something daughter--who is a teacher--told me kids don't even talk to each other at school anymore?  They just bury themselves in their phones.  When she has a study hall, the students sit and scroll through their phones and don't interact with the kids around them at all.  She isn't even that old, but she says, "When we were kids, we buddied up in study hall and worked on homework together, or talked and joked around.  Now they just stare into their phones."  This is both heartbreakingly sad, and bone-chillingly frightening.]

So to make my point about white decorating... here you go.  Regardless of how anyone might feel about living in a monochromatic white and gray setting, it undeniably makes an attractive background for photographs.  And since people care more about their photographic presence on social media than about their real lives, I predict that the white decorating trends are here to stay for quite some time.

So... you might as well move south, where at least you can get some warmth and color outside, if you can't have it inside.  Right?

Is God for our joy?

Recently I read somewhere: "God is for your joy."

I wondered whether I believe that.

It must be true.

Romans 8:31 says, "If God is for us, who can be against us?"  It's a rhetorical question.  It means: "Since God is for us, no power can prevail against us."

We know that God is for us.  But does that mean He is for our joy?

I think it does.  Jesus said, "I have told you this so that my joy may in you, and that your joy might be complete." (John 15:11)

Apparently Jesus--who is for us, on our side--aims for His joy to fill us in order to complete our joy.  To that end, He told us something... "I have told you this so that my joy might be in you, and your joy might be complete."

What did Jesus tell us would fulfill our joy?  To find out, we must go back two verses:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Now remain in my love. 
(John 15:9)

We will experience joy when we know the love of God and remain in it.

How do we do that?  Jesus tells us.  Jesus does not want to make this hard for us, so He tells us:

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in His love.
(John 15:10)

And what are the commands we are to obey?

Throughout the New Testament, the Apostle Paul makes such a big deal about not being under the Law, we sometimes think it doesn't matter what choices we make or how we behave.  Paul was trying to help Jewish believers break free from the legalistic self-righteousness that they had come to depend on, following hundreds of picky rules developed as corollaries to the Law of Moses.  Paul was trying to help Jewish believers understand that the righteousness they could attain through the Law was only a pale substitute for the true righteousness that Jesus had bought for them with His blood, the righteousness Jesus empowers us to experience through the indwelling presence of His own Holy Spirit in our hearts.

For clarification, we need to look at what Jesus said about this.  The teaching of Jesus stands over the teaching of Paul.  Jesus is God, and Paul was merely an apostle.  So, if something seems not to agree between what Jesus said and what Paul said, we always obey Jesus first, and then work to fit what Paul told us into the parameters previously given by Christ.

Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-39)

Jesus was not saying that we don't have to obey the Law and the Prophets.  Earlier, He had said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17)  I might add, for clarification, that Jesus not only came to fulfill the law, but also to give us the capacity to keep the law by becoming truly righteous in love.  When we love God with all our hearts, and we love our neighbors as ourselves, we will live in righteousness . . . "that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us," writes Paul (Romans 8:4).

Jesus did not come to say that righteousness does not matter!  Righteousness absolutely matters.

He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, 

so that we might die to sins 

and live for righteousness; 

by His wounds you have been healed.

(1 Peter 2:24)

Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, to provide the true and complete remedy for sin and make us truly righteous, from the inside out, transforming our hearts by His Spirit.  (See Ezekiel 36:26-27)

The Mosaic Law was a temporary measure to provide a form of righteousness that would show us the difference between righteousness and sin.  Additionally, keeping the Law provided protection from some of the immediate effects of sin, in surprisingly practical ways, until the real cure (the atoning work of Christ) came to pass.

Humanity was utterly unable to live in obedience to the Law before the ministry of Christ.  The Old Testament demonstrates this over and over, and the Apostle Paul shows it again in Romans 7 when he brings up the question of coveting.  "Do not covet," says the tenth commandment.  So, assuming you were actually able to successfully obey all of the previous nine commandments (crazy assumption), you still come upon the tenth: "Do not covet."  Don't think about wanting anything that someone else has.  That's impossible.  Flat impossible.

The only way you can keep from coveting is (1) to trust that God loves you perfectly and is faithful to provide everything you need, and (2) to be more interested in the good of others than in your own good, so when other people receive something that you don't have, you simply rejoice that God has blessed them, and turn back in trust towards God, waiting for Him to meet your needs, according to His wisdom and grace, and believing that He will.

In other words: love God and love your neighbors.  If you do, you are keeping Jesus' commands.  He promised that if we keep His commands--loving God and loving our neighbors--we will remain in His love, and our joy will be complete.  But remaining in His love is the secret.  We need to abide in the Holy Spirit and welcome the Holy Spirit to abide in us.  Without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).

You will be able to love God and selflessly serve others if--and only if--the Holy Spirit restores your heart, and He abides in you, and you abide in Him.

It's kind of simple, yet tremendously difficult.  He does virtually all of it, but we must surrender to His work.

Yes, God is for my joy.  He knows what will bring me joy.  However, until I undergo some holy renovation, the things I think will bring me joy are probably not exactly what God knows will bring me joy.  Therein lies the rub, the hurdle that so many of us struggle to clear.

God is for my joy, and I need to humble myself to trust Him with this.

My joy will be wrapped up in loving God and loving my neighbors.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13

Epiphany

All day, I've been thinking it was January 6 today, and feeling guilty.

I felt guilty because I usually try to take down my Christmas decorations on the weekend after Epiphany, which is January 6.

But, grace upon grace, it is not January 6 today.  It is only January 5.  And tomorrow is Sunday, which is not an appropriate day to schedule major home projects.

So we can enjoy our Christmas decorations for one more week!  And by then the days will be longer, because we are past the winter solstice.  In fact, even today, as I sit here typing, it is nearly 5 p.m. and the sunset is still flooding golden light into my study window.  By the time we take down the tree next week, I will hardly even miss the tree lights!

2019 Words of the Year

In 2018, I chose Power and Glory as my words for the year, listing them and stating, "But I also want to grow in humility."

On 1-8-2018, I wrote:

I am desperate to see the power and glory of God, and I want to see it this year, now, soon.  I don't want to wait and watch evil have its heyday before God reaches out His hand to do an awesome deed of righteousness.

So (I'm owning this, my brokenness, my flawed strategies), I decided to adopt "Power," and "Glory," as my words for this year.

I'm sure there is a root here, where I am trying to control, manipulate the very God of the Universe.

Dear Jesus, I'm sorry.  I'm so very sorry.  It's just that I am desperate to see your hand work.  You probably want me to seek humility this year, but I beg instead for you to show me your power and glory.  I am in favor of humility, I know it is a treasure I need to seek.  But I desperately crave the unveiling of your power and glory.  Please forgive me and make your power perfect through my weakness.

Perhaps ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, Humility became the major theme of my year.  God knows what I need, and He is gracious to give it to me if I have any receptivity at all.  By January 19, 2018, I had tacitly accepted Humility as one of my year's words.  By February 8, 2018, I was overtly writing about it.  And thus it went.

So it may be no surprise that I've decided to keep Humility as one of my words this year.  I want to explore how humility is accomplished through growing in concern for the glory of God and the interests of others . . .  how humility is, in large part and perhaps ultimately, the expression of pure love.

In that vein, I am also going to take Love as a word for the year, lofty as it sounds.  Anyway, seeking love can't be any loftier a goal than seeking humility.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).  Apart from Him, I can do nothing (John 15:5).

Humility leads to joy.  I've written about this before, but I need to examine it more.  Joy comes directly from gratitude, and we are grateful for what we recognize we do not deserve.  Humility helps us accurately comprehend the undeserved blessings God bestows on us.  It's a chain:  Humility leads to a clear comprehension of how gracious God is to us, and a clear comprehension of grace leads to deep gratitude, and deep gratitude leads to fullness of joy.

So, I considered taking Joy as my third word, but I think I will save Joy for next year.  I'll focus instead on a step along the path to Joy: Acceptance.  I need to accept humbly and gratefully what God has given me.  Sometimes it is easy, like when I think about my forgiveness, my salvation, and my sure hope of eternal life in paradise.  Sometimes it is hard, like when I think of how far I exist from virtually all of my family, and how I am missing out on the daily growth and development of my amazingly beautiful, brand new grandson, who lives approximately 450 miles away.  I crave joy, but I obviously need to work on having an attitude of acceptance.  If I can attain it, perhaps I will be surprised by joy (didn't C.S. Lewis write a book with that title?).  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, right?  That's a promise, isn't it?  And God is faithful.  God is faithful.  I'm not exactly feeling optimistic about this, but I'm trying to trust in what I know is true, rather than letting my feelings drag me down.

So those are my words of the year:  Humility.  Love.  Acceptance.

I've got two scriptures to go with them.  For Love, I picked a verse we've already learned in our 1 Corinthians Bible study:

Let all that you do be done in love.  ~1 Corinthians 16:14.

For Humility and Acceptance, I picked this:

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.   Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.  ~James 1:19-21

Okay then.  Onward 2019.  We have a lot of work to do.