Here I go again. Agonizing over worship.
I recently found a blog by a man named Bob Kauflin. He seems to be genuine and sincere, intelligent and Biblically based. I really respect a lot of the things he says and most of what he stands for. He demonstrates humility and a burning passion for the glory of God.
He is a church musician, a.k.a. "worship leader." And therein is my stumbling block. The a.k.a. part, I mean.
It is so hard, so very, very hard for me to live with the idea that "my worship" is how I respond to the music in my church. There is something about this idea that just sits very badly in my spirit. It causes me no end of angst. I don't believe that Jesus meant for it to be this way.
I read Mr. Kaufman's blog and was impressed. I wondered if the Lord were convicting me of a wrong heart towards contemporary Christian music. I prayed and resolved to approach things at my church with a fresh perspective. I listened to samples of Mr. Kaufman's music (he writes a lot himself). I actually kind of liked a few of his songs. Some of them I did not care for very much, but I could recognize that concern for the centrality of Jesus' sacrifice and attention to theological detail had gone into the crafting of the lyrics. "Is God calling me to learn to like contemporary Christian music?" I wondered. If that's what God wants me to do, I need to be willing to do it, otherwise I am in disobedience, whether or not worship is more than musical expression in a corporate gathering.
On Sunday, I went to church with a hopeful attitude. Surprisingly, most of the songs on the program that day were older ones (from the 1990s) that I actually knew; they were not all new, unfamiliar ones. Although I can't remember what they were, I relaxed into the music and began singing in a looser way than usual, less binding up in my heart and throat.
I relaxed and sang, closed my eyes and let my head fall back. I felt good. And then, suddenly, I realized what I was singing: "In all I do, I honor You... In all I do, I honor You... In all I do, I honor You..." My mind kicked back in, and I realized, "I do not honor God in all I do. I should honor God in all I do. I hope to get to a point where, at least, I honor God in most of what I do. But I most certainly do not honor God in all that I do. I am lying. Over and over. In church. I am standing in church, repeating a lie over and over to the Lord." And that was the end of me being able to engage in the music for that morning.
What is vexing is this: I cannot even remember what song it was to look up the rest of the words. This is a thing that I really used to like about hymnals. If you blanked out for a moment and failed to concentrate, you still had the whole song on the page in front of you, and you could scan with your eyes to see what you had been singing about and how the words all worked together, even beyond the ones you were singing in that exact moment. When we only get a few lines or phrases at a time on a video screen, we can lose the meaning of the song quite quickly as words disappear. At least, I can, but perhaps I am unique in my propensity to have a mind-glich now and then while singing. Probably everybody else is completely overwhelmed by the glory of God, and I am just standing there, distracted because the video screen has an apostrophe in the wrong place, and I am just that nasty type of person who would notice. I remember once I was in an assembly, and we were singing a song, and we got to the end where we began to repeat the last line over and over and over, as there is a tendency to do these days. The line was, "Here I am." Over and over. Those were the only words visible on the screen. All around me, people were holding up their hands, weeping. I had no idea what was going on. "Here I am." Well, yes, there I was, desiring to focus on my Lord--the One who created me and redeemed me. But apparently all I was supposed to do was to tell Him, "Here I am," which, as far as I could tell, was just a painfully obvious fact. Painful, because my toes were freezing and the constant emphasis on my own presence was making me repeatedly aware of them.
I feel really bad about myself. But then, on the other hand, I wonder about all the other people who were singing, "In all I do, I honor You." Did they really believe that they do truly honor God in all that they do? Maybe they are all that much more sanctified than I am. I guess I am not supposed to judge. But really, aren't we all in this sanctification thing together, with responsibility to help and encourage one another and hold one another accountable? Aren't we? Or aren't we? Maybe the other people are just as "middle of the journey" on the path of sanctification as I am, and maybe they even know this about themselves, but then why would they sing those words? Is it an issue of mental (dare I say intellectual) disengagement?
I often feel that the goal of the song leader is--subconsciously of course--to get the singers to engage with the music and disengage from "life" (a.k.a critical thinking, and by that I mean critical in the sense of "involving skillful judgment as to the truth," not critical in the sense of "inclined to find fault"). Whenever I am walking in the grocery store and hear the song that goes, "Give me the beat boys, and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away..." it reminds me of the way I feel in church during the music, the uncomfortable, on-guard feelings that rise up in me when I sense that someone is telling me, "Let go... stop thinking... engage with the music..."
Jesus said, "God is Spirit and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth," (John 4:24). I think we've got the worship in spirit part down, but I really cannot quite relax about the truth part.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
A memory I had tried to repress
The other night I actually went to bed kind of early, with a book.
My husband came into the room, kissed my mouth and said, "You smell really good, and you look smart." This, people, is romance in your mid-forties.
I smelled really good because I had doused myself with essential oils as I always do in my bedtime routine. I do this because my peri-menopausal skin responds only to my own homemade concoction: grapeseed oil with lavender, sweet orange, calendula, and a drop of clove. Anything else either gives me a rash or makes me break out. That particular night, I think I had also massaged all around my hairline with pure lavender essential oil, because I had a headache coming on and lavender sometimes stops it.
I looked smart because I was wearing my reading glasses, the ones with black rims that I bought at Kinney Drug. Also my hair was in something that vaguely resembled a bun because I had wrenched it back with a scrunchy in order to get it out of the way when I was washing my face. But I really think it was the glasses and not the hair that gave me the scholarly appearance.
The reading glasses were there to help me read The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. My tenth grade English teacher, Oscar Johnson, had told me that I really needed to read that particular book. I have a very old copy of it; I'm not sure when or where I got it, but I think it was during college, and I do know that I got it because Mr. Johnson had told me to read it, and I was curious.
I've had the book for years and years, and never finished it. I guess it just isn't very good. It's by an American, after all. Now that I am old, I have read quite a bit of Dickens: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House (Bleak House was not my favorite, but I did finish it). I am actually old enought to appreciate Dickens. The Portrait of a Lady on the other hand, is not all that good, and also I have a terrible sense of foreboding as I read it, that it will have a Great Gatsby-ish ending, and I am not in the mood for that, ever.
I was trying to read it that night, though. I had picked it up a while back and made a fair bit of progress in it, but that "while back" was when I had my colonoscopy. I know this, because the instructions for preparing for the procedure were still in the book, my bookmark, in fact. Ugh!
I never wrote about the colonoscopy because (1) it was a fate worse than death and (2) I was incredibly embarrassed to mention it, which is exactly why it took me so long to get to the subject just now. Romance in your mid-forties. Yeah right.
My sister, and I love her anyway but I will never again take anything she says seriously, my sister told me, "I had a colonoscopy and it was fun!" She loved drinking the solution, it wasn't bad at all, she said. She loved feeling all clean on the inside and out. She said the anesthesia was gentle and effective, and she was completely unaware of the procedure itself. "It was fun!" she repeated, with a glowing smile.
That recommendation alone would not have induced me to go through with it, but I have been wanting my husband to have a colonoscopy for quite some time. "Those types" of cancer run in his family, and he has always been plagued with a tricky bowel. So I thought, "If I have a colonoscopy and show him how easy and pleasant it is, then he will have one, and we will be able to rest at ease about his intestines." Also, our insurance deductible had been met, so I thought I might as well get as much free stuff as I could before the turn of the year.
So, at the beginning of last December, I found myself in the kitchen with a huge jug of solution (four liters, I believe) that I had to drink. The ladies at my church were having a Christmas fellowship that evening. I was not, although I certainly did think of them on more than one occasion. Probably with covetousness in my heart.
My first indication that my sister is either out-of-her-mind insane (is that redundant?) or a pathological liar was when I poured myself the first glass of solution. The nurse had told me, "What do you like to drink? Do you like iced tea? Mix it with iced tea, or something like that." I thought, "My sister says it is delicious, and no problem at all." That was what I thought. Naively trusting my sister, I did not buy any iced tea, or lemonade or anything else. I poured up my first glass, approximately 8 of the 135.26 ounces that I had to drink before bed that day. I lifted it to my mouth and went to chug it down. Imagine my surprise when my body simply refused to take it in. It was the slimiest, vilest stuff you can imagine, and my gag reflex went into overdrive.
I felt panicked. What was I going to do with all this solution? How was I going to get it down? I poured it into a larger glass and cut it half and half with cranberry juice cocktail which enabled me to get it down, but I realized that there was no way I could double the amount of liquid for the whole amount and do it all that way. I would explode (oh wait, I was going to be exploding anyway...).
The worst of it was, you were supposed to drink a glass every ten minutes until it was gone.
I sent David to the store with my credit card to get a can of lemonade mix.
I will try to spare you the monotony of what ensued, but I found that stirring lemonade mix into the solution just before taking it, and then drinking it with a straw aimed at the back of my mouth, I could fulfill the instructions.
In the ten minute interludes, I read The Portrait of a Lady. It was a very long afternoon and evening. Nobody tells you how cold you get when you drink over a gallon of that solution. And on top of everything else, it didn't make me go to the bathroom. I just got fuller and fuller and fuller and colder and colder and colder. The family enjoyed a spaghetti dinner while I shivered next to the fireplace and vainly tried to warm myself with a down blanket (and, of course, kept downing the stuff).
I never had an urge to push when I was giving birth, and this solution apparently didn't work in my body, either. Well, it finally started to work a little bit, but not very well. I had heard horror stories about people being up all night with it. I was not up all night. I slept pretty well. Amazingly well. Far better than I would have slept had I any idea what else was in store.
The next morning I continued to empty at a very pokey rate. I hoped it was going to be OK. We went to the hospital, or whatever it was, the building next to the hospital where the butchery was to be performed.
When they took me into the surgical prep area, I was supposed to be clean and empty, but I was still needing to go to the bathroom on and off. So there I was, caught between chapters of Portrait of a Lady and trips to the lav. I had to wait a long time for my procedure, which was not reassuring.
The prep area was the same as the recovery room, a long hallway with many beds in a row, with thin cotton curtains pulled between them. As I sat in my bed, in my hospital gown, reading Portrait of a Lady, I heard strange noises, noises that sounded for all the world like compressing whoopie cushions. This gave me a very unsettled feeling.
At one point, I needed to get up and use the bathroom, but the one across from my bed was occupied, so the nurse told me to walk down to the one at the opposite end of the hall. Feeling odd, but knowing that necessity rules, I walked the length, and as I did, on my right, I passed bed after bed, each filled with an unconscious person slumped beneath a sheet, loudly passing gas.
Fear welled up in my heart. "This is not a good place," I thought. "I do not want to be here. I do not want to see these people and listen to their blasted puttering." It was then that I realized, "I am soon to be one of these people." Talk about abject terror. I finished my business and returned to my bed, averting my eyes, trying not to hear the repugnant sounds that assailed me. I picked up The Portrait of a Lady and tried very hard to concentrate on it. It was then that I overheard the nurse talking playfully with some man who had walked onto the floor, "Yes," she was saying, "This unit is doing very well financially. We got the contract with the prison to do all the prisoners' colonoscopies here, right here. It brings in a nice amount of work."
So it was me and the prisoners? Was this a bad dream? Unfortunately, there was no waking up from this one. I wondered if you could just get up and leave at such a point. I prayed to the Lord, I prayed something like, "Please, please help me. Please get me out of here if they are going to kill me."
At this point, I was still trusting that the actual procedure would be a breeze. I started to feel uncertain even about that when they finally wheeled me in, and there was only a doctor and a nurse. "Where is the anesthesiologist?" I asked. "Oh, we do it ourselves," they told me. I didn't panic, but I should have.
Basically, I experienced extreme pain and unbelievable cramping, but I was unable to speak, because, you know, I was anesthesized. When they eventually noticed that I was moaning and writhing, the doctor shouted something at the nurse that my scrambled brain could not decode, and everything finally went black.
In the end, they must have given me a lot, because when they dressed me to leave, I almost keeled over and they quickly caught me and put me back to bed.
Poor Shawn had a very long day in the waiting room that day.
When we got home, I was not right at all. I had intense pains in my side and my arm and shoulder that evening, really intense. I got on the computer and tried to figure out what was happening. I could hardly breathe. I shuddered at going to bed that night, fearing a most undignified death.
I could not eat for days. My digestive system was broken. It had been fine, and it ended up broken.
Now, the pain and discomfort have passed. But I am never going through that again. Never. And neither is Shawn. My entire plan backfired. If he didn't want a colonoscopy before, he will never, never have one now. And you know what? I don't blame him. I was an idiot.
Also, I still never finished The Portrait of a Lady. The other night when I started to try, it brought back not a few bad memories. The foreboding I used to feel when considering the book has been greatly magnified beyond a mere suspicion that it will hold an unhappy ending for a social ladder climber.
But I'm glad my husband likes the way I smell in my essential oils at night, even if I am not as smart as I might look.
My husband came into the room, kissed my mouth and said, "You smell really good, and you look smart." This, people, is romance in your mid-forties.
I smelled really good because I had doused myself with essential oils as I always do in my bedtime routine. I do this because my peri-menopausal skin responds only to my own homemade concoction: grapeseed oil with lavender, sweet orange, calendula, and a drop of clove. Anything else either gives me a rash or makes me break out. That particular night, I think I had also massaged all around my hairline with pure lavender essential oil, because I had a headache coming on and lavender sometimes stops it.
I looked smart because I was wearing my reading glasses, the ones with black rims that I bought at Kinney Drug. Also my hair was in something that vaguely resembled a bun because I had wrenched it back with a scrunchy in order to get it out of the way when I was washing my face. But I really think it was the glasses and not the hair that gave me the scholarly appearance.
The reading glasses were there to help me read The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. My tenth grade English teacher, Oscar Johnson, had told me that I really needed to read that particular book. I have a very old copy of it; I'm not sure when or where I got it, but I think it was during college, and I do know that I got it because Mr. Johnson had told me to read it, and I was curious.
I've had the book for years and years, and never finished it. I guess it just isn't very good. It's by an American, after all. Now that I am old, I have read quite a bit of Dickens: David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House (Bleak House was not my favorite, but I did finish it). I am actually old enought to appreciate Dickens. The Portrait of a Lady on the other hand, is not all that good, and also I have a terrible sense of foreboding as I read it, that it will have a Great Gatsby-ish ending, and I am not in the mood for that, ever.
I was trying to read it that night, though. I had picked it up a while back and made a fair bit of progress in it, but that "while back" was when I had my colonoscopy. I know this, because the instructions for preparing for the procedure were still in the book, my bookmark, in fact. Ugh!
I never wrote about the colonoscopy because (1) it was a fate worse than death and (2) I was incredibly embarrassed to mention it, which is exactly why it took me so long to get to the subject just now. Romance in your mid-forties. Yeah right.
My sister, and I love her anyway but I will never again take anything she says seriously, my sister told me, "I had a colonoscopy and it was fun!" She loved drinking the solution, it wasn't bad at all, she said. She loved feeling all clean on the inside and out. She said the anesthesia was gentle and effective, and she was completely unaware of the procedure itself. "It was fun!" she repeated, with a glowing smile.
That recommendation alone would not have induced me to go through with it, but I have been wanting my husband to have a colonoscopy for quite some time. "Those types" of cancer run in his family, and he has always been plagued with a tricky bowel. So I thought, "If I have a colonoscopy and show him how easy and pleasant it is, then he will have one, and we will be able to rest at ease about his intestines." Also, our insurance deductible had been met, so I thought I might as well get as much free stuff as I could before the turn of the year.
So, at the beginning of last December, I found myself in the kitchen with a huge jug of solution (four liters, I believe) that I had to drink. The ladies at my church were having a Christmas fellowship that evening. I was not, although I certainly did think of them on more than one occasion. Probably with covetousness in my heart.
My first indication that my sister is either out-of-her-mind insane (is that redundant?) or a pathological liar was when I poured myself the first glass of solution. The nurse had told me, "What do you like to drink? Do you like iced tea? Mix it with iced tea, or something like that." I thought, "My sister says it is delicious, and no problem at all." That was what I thought. Naively trusting my sister, I did not buy any iced tea, or lemonade or anything else. I poured up my first glass, approximately 8 of the 135.26 ounces that I had to drink before bed that day. I lifted it to my mouth and went to chug it down. Imagine my surprise when my body simply refused to take it in. It was the slimiest, vilest stuff you can imagine, and my gag reflex went into overdrive.
I felt panicked. What was I going to do with all this solution? How was I going to get it down? I poured it into a larger glass and cut it half and half with cranberry juice cocktail which enabled me to get it down, but I realized that there was no way I could double the amount of liquid for the whole amount and do it all that way. I would explode (oh wait, I was going to be exploding anyway...).
The worst of it was, you were supposed to drink a glass every ten minutes until it was gone.
I sent David to the store with my credit card to get a can of lemonade mix.
I will try to spare you the monotony of what ensued, but I found that stirring lemonade mix into the solution just before taking it, and then drinking it with a straw aimed at the back of my mouth, I could fulfill the instructions.
In the ten minute interludes, I read The Portrait of a Lady. It was a very long afternoon and evening. Nobody tells you how cold you get when you drink over a gallon of that solution. And on top of everything else, it didn't make me go to the bathroom. I just got fuller and fuller and fuller and colder and colder and colder. The family enjoyed a spaghetti dinner while I shivered next to the fireplace and vainly tried to warm myself with a down blanket (and, of course, kept downing the stuff).
I never had an urge to push when I was giving birth, and this solution apparently didn't work in my body, either. Well, it finally started to work a little bit, but not very well. I had heard horror stories about people being up all night with it. I was not up all night. I slept pretty well. Amazingly well. Far better than I would have slept had I any idea what else was in store.
The next morning I continued to empty at a very pokey rate. I hoped it was going to be OK. We went to the hospital, or whatever it was, the building next to the hospital where the butchery was to be performed.
When they took me into the surgical prep area, I was supposed to be clean and empty, but I was still needing to go to the bathroom on and off. So there I was, caught between chapters of Portrait of a Lady and trips to the lav. I had to wait a long time for my procedure, which was not reassuring.
The prep area was the same as the recovery room, a long hallway with many beds in a row, with thin cotton curtains pulled between them. As I sat in my bed, in my hospital gown, reading Portrait of a Lady, I heard strange noises, noises that sounded for all the world like compressing whoopie cushions. This gave me a very unsettled feeling.
At one point, I needed to get up and use the bathroom, but the one across from my bed was occupied, so the nurse told me to walk down to the one at the opposite end of the hall. Feeling odd, but knowing that necessity rules, I walked the length, and as I did, on my right, I passed bed after bed, each filled with an unconscious person slumped beneath a sheet, loudly passing gas.
Fear welled up in my heart. "This is not a good place," I thought. "I do not want to be here. I do not want to see these people and listen to their blasted puttering." It was then that I realized, "I am soon to be one of these people." Talk about abject terror. I finished my business and returned to my bed, averting my eyes, trying not to hear the repugnant sounds that assailed me. I picked up The Portrait of a Lady and tried very hard to concentrate on it. It was then that I overheard the nurse talking playfully with some man who had walked onto the floor, "Yes," she was saying, "This unit is doing very well financially. We got the contract with the prison to do all the prisoners' colonoscopies here, right here. It brings in a nice amount of work."
So it was me and the prisoners? Was this a bad dream? Unfortunately, there was no waking up from this one. I wondered if you could just get up and leave at such a point. I prayed to the Lord, I prayed something like, "Please, please help me. Please get me out of here if they are going to kill me."
At this point, I was still trusting that the actual procedure would be a breeze. I started to feel uncertain even about that when they finally wheeled me in, and there was only a doctor and a nurse. "Where is the anesthesiologist?" I asked. "Oh, we do it ourselves," they told me. I didn't panic, but I should have.
Basically, I experienced extreme pain and unbelievable cramping, but I was unable to speak, because, you know, I was anesthesized. When they eventually noticed that I was moaning and writhing, the doctor shouted something at the nurse that my scrambled brain could not decode, and everything finally went black.
In the end, they must have given me a lot, because when they dressed me to leave, I almost keeled over and they quickly caught me and put me back to bed.
Poor Shawn had a very long day in the waiting room that day.
When we got home, I was not right at all. I had intense pains in my side and my arm and shoulder that evening, really intense. I got on the computer and tried to figure out what was happening. I could hardly breathe. I shuddered at going to bed that night, fearing a most undignified death.
I could not eat for days. My digestive system was broken. It had been fine, and it ended up broken.
Now, the pain and discomfort have passed. But I am never going through that again. Never. And neither is Shawn. My entire plan backfired. If he didn't want a colonoscopy before, he will never, never have one now. And you know what? I don't blame him. I was an idiot.
Also, I still never finished The Portrait of a Lady. The other night when I started to try, it brought back not a few bad memories. The foreboding I used to feel when considering the book has been greatly magnified beyond a mere suspicion that it will hold an unhappy ending for a social ladder climber.
But I'm glad my husband likes the way I smell in my essential oils at night, even if I am not as smart as I might look.
Monday, April 5, 2010
my testimony
When I was two, I killed my baby cousin Lydia.
Not really, but I thought I did.
She was a tiny baby, fragile, translucent, with lavender-tinged fingers. They set her in her infant carrier under the windows in our dining room and told me sternly, "Do not touch the baby!"
I was so curious. The baby was nearly hidden beneath blankets and the little canopy over her carrier. I crept closer and closer, and nobody saw. Furtively, I reached out and pulled back the blanket so I could see her tiny purplish fingers. With my own two-year-old index finger I stroked her little, limpid hand. Then, filled with fear and guilt, I ran away.
A few days later when I heard that Lydia had died, I was filled with dread and guilt. "She had a heart murmur," they said. "She died in her sleep. Peacefully. Painlessly." That was what they thought, but in my heart, I was convinced that her death was a direct result of my disobedience.
Other cousins had also died. Betsy and another one whose name I can't remember (Nancy?). They were all baby girls. They all died peacefully in their sleep, or so it was said. But Lydia was the only one I had seen and touched before she died. It was my first brush with death, and it terrified me.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
They taught me to pray this prayer before I went to bed at night. "If I should die before I wake... If I should die before I wake." It would echo in my mind as I lay in my bed after they had tucked me in and kissed me and turned out the lights. I learned to fight sleep. I was a master at staying awake for hours, fearful of falling into the Great Sleep of no return.
When I was three, I remember Easter at church. This is my first memory of Easter at church, and there was an Easter breakfast. For some reason, I came with just my mother; my father and my brother and sister must have gone ahead earlier. The Easter breakfast was winding down, and the food was largely gone. My mother made me a plate of something which (I think) included scrambled eggs. There were no seats left in the fellowship hall, so she found me a seat at a table back in the corner of the church kitchen. She sat me next to a very, very old woman named Aurabelle Wyman. Then my mother disappeared.
Aurabelle looked vaguely like the wife of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, except she was better dressed. She was also tiny. I was only three, and my mother was only 5'4", but even from my perspective, Miss Wyman looked fantastically small. She was diminutive, wrinkled and frightening, and I don't recall that she smiled. I sat there and looked at the unappetizing food on my plate, which was also cold, and I knew I was not going to be able to swallow even one bite.
Miss Wyman leaned over with her sharp, birdlike face, pointed at me with a hooked, birdlike finger and said, "They killed Jesus, and they took his body and laid it in a tomb." I pictured a cold, hard place that was white and dark at the same time. I felt fear in my soul. I thought of death and how afraid I was of dying. I choked back tears of distress. Miss Wyman looked deeply into my soul with her cloudy black eyes. "His body lay in the tomb for three days, and then they went to look at it and do you know what they found in the tomb?" I was incapable of speaking , so she repeated herself: "Do you know what they found in the tomb?" I just wished my mother would come back. I was trembling.
Miss Wyman would not give up. She shook her finger in my face once more and told me, "They found nothing in the tomb! Nothing! And do you know why? Because Jesus had risen from the dead!"
I felt a vague sense of relief. I was afraid that Miss Wyman might die then and there, because she was so old. And I was afraid of my own death every night when I was supposed to go to sleep. But on that Easter, I was glad to hear that Jesus had risen from the dead, even though I was not sure exactly what it meant.
Over the next year, I learned a lot about Jesus. I learned that He healed sick people. I learned that He made blind people see and lame people walk. I learned about how He cared about little, short Zacchaeus, and how He saw him up in the tree and invited him to lunch. My favorite was how Jesus loved the little children and let them come to Him, how He held them in His lap and blessed them. I didn't figure I'd be scared of Jesus the way I was scared of Miss Wyman.
When I was four years old, Mrs. Winterfield was my Sunday school teacher. She was rather severe, but not malevolent. We sat at the round red table on the toddler side of the nursery and had stories and snacks. The snacks were usually round butter cookies shaped like flowers with a hole in the center, so we always put them on our fingers and ate them off. We also had red juice because it was 1969 and nobody knew that red food coloring caused ADHD and cancer.
One day as we-the-four-year-olds sat at the round table with our round cookies, Mrs. Winterfield told us, "There is a Lake of Fire. You will go there when you die, if you do not ask Jesus to be your Savior. It is a terrible place full of weeping and gnashing of teeth." I was riveted. Even if you are only four and have no idea what gnashing of teeth is, it sounds really bad, and scary.
I knew that lakes of fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth sounded awful. I also knew that everything I'd ever heard about Jesus was wonderful. He could heal and love and rise from the dead.
That afternoon, I went into my bedroom. I still remember how the sun streamed in from the west facing window. All by myself, I knelt down and asked Jesus, "Please be my Savior so I do not have to go to the Lake of Fire when I die." I felt a peace and reassurance as I finished my prayer. I knew He had heard me.
I went and told my parents what I had done. They were somewhat surprised and mostly pleased, although not particularly happy that Mrs. Winterfield had frightened me with accounts of the Lake of Fire. Nevertheless, it was true, and it worked, and I have belonged to Jesus ever since.
Also, He has relieved me of my guilt over the death of my baby cousin Lydia.
Not really, but I thought I did.
She was a tiny baby, fragile, translucent, with lavender-tinged fingers. They set her in her infant carrier under the windows in our dining room and told me sternly, "Do not touch the baby!"
I was so curious. The baby was nearly hidden beneath blankets and the little canopy over her carrier. I crept closer and closer, and nobody saw. Furtively, I reached out and pulled back the blanket so I could see her tiny purplish fingers. With my own two-year-old index finger I stroked her little, limpid hand. Then, filled with fear and guilt, I ran away.
A few days later when I heard that Lydia had died, I was filled with dread and guilt. "She had a heart murmur," they said. "She died in her sleep. Peacefully. Painlessly." That was what they thought, but in my heart, I was convinced that her death was a direct result of my disobedience.
Other cousins had also died. Betsy and another one whose name I can't remember (Nancy?). They were all baby girls. They all died peacefully in their sleep, or so it was said. But Lydia was the only one I had seen and touched before she died. It was my first brush with death, and it terrified me.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
They taught me to pray this prayer before I went to bed at night. "If I should die before I wake... If I should die before I wake." It would echo in my mind as I lay in my bed after they had tucked me in and kissed me and turned out the lights. I learned to fight sleep. I was a master at staying awake for hours, fearful of falling into the Great Sleep of no return.
When I was three, I remember Easter at church. This is my first memory of Easter at church, and there was an Easter breakfast. For some reason, I came with just my mother; my father and my brother and sister must have gone ahead earlier. The Easter breakfast was winding down, and the food was largely gone. My mother made me a plate of something which (I think) included scrambled eggs. There were no seats left in the fellowship hall, so she found me a seat at a table back in the corner of the church kitchen. She sat me next to a very, very old woman named Aurabelle Wyman. Then my mother disappeared.
Aurabelle looked vaguely like the wife of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride, except she was better dressed. She was also tiny. I was only three, and my mother was only 5'4", but even from my perspective, Miss Wyman looked fantastically small. She was diminutive, wrinkled and frightening, and I don't recall that she smiled. I sat there and looked at the unappetizing food on my plate, which was also cold, and I knew I was not going to be able to swallow even one bite.
Miss Wyman leaned over with her sharp, birdlike face, pointed at me with a hooked, birdlike finger and said, "They killed Jesus, and they took his body and laid it in a tomb." I pictured a cold, hard place that was white and dark at the same time. I felt fear in my soul. I thought of death and how afraid I was of dying. I choked back tears of distress. Miss Wyman looked deeply into my soul with her cloudy black eyes. "His body lay in the tomb for three days, and then they went to look at it and do you know what they found in the tomb?" I was incapable of speaking , so she repeated herself: "Do you know what they found in the tomb?" I just wished my mother would come back. I was trembling.
Miss Wyman would not give up. She shook her finger in my face once more and told me, "They found nothing in the tomb! Nothing! And do you know why? Because Jesus had risen from the dead!"
I felt a vague sense of relief. I was afraid that Miss Wyman might die then and there, because she was so old. And I was afraid of my own death every night when I was supposed to go to sleep. But on that Easter, I was glad to hear that Jesus had risen from the dead, even though I was not sure exactly what it meant.
Over the next year, I learned a lot about Jesus. I learned that He healed sick people. I learned that He made blind people see and lame people walk. I learned about how He cared about little, short Zacchaeus, and how He saw him up in the tree and invited him to lunch. My favorite was how Jesus loved the little children and let them come to Him, how He held them in His lap and blessed them. I didn't figure I'd be scared of Jesus the way I was scared of Miss Wyman.
When I was four years old, Mrs. Winterfield was my Sunday school teacher. She was rather severe, but not malevolent. We sat at the round red table on the toddler side of the nursery and had stories and snacks. The snacks were usually round butter cookies shaped like flowers with a hole in the center, so we always put them on our fingers and ate them off. We also had red juice because it was 1969 and nobody knew that red food coloring caused ADHD and cancer.
One day as we-the-four-year-olds sat at the round table with our round cookies, Mrs. Winterfield told us, "There is a Lake of Fire. You will go there when you die, if you do not ask Jesus to be your Savior. It is a terrible place full of weeping and gnashing of teeth." I was riveted. Even if you are only four and have no idea what gnashing of teeth is, it sounds really bad, and scary.
I knew that lakes of fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth sounded awful. I also knew that everything I'd ever heard about Jesus was wonderful. He could heal and love and rise from the dead.
That afternoon, I went into my bedroom. I still remember how the sun streamed in from the west facing window. All by myself, I knelt down and asked Jesus, "Please be my Savior so I do not have to go to the Lake of Fire when I die." I felt a peace and reassurance as I finished my prayer. I knew He had heard me.
I went and told my parents what I had done. They were somewhat surprised and mostly pleased, although not particularly happy that Mrs. Winterfield had frightened me with accounts of the Lake of Fire. Nevertheless, it was true, and it worked, and I have belonged to Jesus ever since.
Also, He has relieved me of my guilt over the death of my baby cousin Lydia.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Good news
David has finally turned a corner with the pneumonia he has had ever since his wisdom tooth extraction.
If you have a kid getting wisdom teeth out, and he comes down with a mild cold the morning of the surgery, take my advice: cancel the surgery. I am not kidding.
Anyway, a friend of mine gave us some powerful liquid vitamins, which seemed to help quite a lot. She also gave us a very good probiotic for him to take, given that he had been on something like five courses of antibiotics, and the current course is for twenty days.
Another friend of mine counseled us regarding natural health. She encouraged us to continue the probiotic and to take more and more each week until his body is literally flooded with it. She also instructed him to eat the juice and pulp of 1/2 a lemon in 8 oz. of water sweetened with stevia, every day. This alkalinizes the body, which seems strange, because lemon is an acid, but it alkalinizes the body system to make it a hostile environment for viruses and bacterium. She has David inhaling peppermint essential oil (which he doesn't seem to mind at all) and told him to cut all white flour and sugar out of his diet. She also explained why all this stuff works, but I won't get into that here.
I noticed today that David was no longer violently hacking up mucus morning and evening. He seems more energetic (probably due to the vitamins) and also less congested. The last time I put my ear on his back and listened to his chest, it was so alarming, I have been afraid to do it again, but I think I might try listening again tonight. Now my biggest angst is over whether I should have him finish all twenty days of this antibiotic. I don't think antibiotics are good for you. I think fourteen days should be quite sufficient.
Except for the fact that our insurance is denying coverage for the allergy and asthma doctor, I am feeling pretty relieved about this whole situation.
I'm so relieved, in fact, that I am thinking of other people I would like to introduce to my natural health friend, people who have serious health issues of their own.
I was thinking about how eager I am to share this good news with friends who could benefit, who could maybe have wonderful deliverance from symptoms that they suffer, and I thought, "Why am I not eager like this to share about Jesus with people who need to be saved from sin and death and eternity in hell?"
The answer came to me straightaway. I don't feel eager to share with people about Jesus, because by and large the people who need Jesus don't know that they need Him. My friends know that they are sick and suffering, so they would be eager to hear about natural help for their health problems. But people living apart from the Lord often have no awareness of their problem, and they generally don't appreciate being told that they have one.
So... how do you bring good news about a Savior to a world that has no idea that it needs salvation?
I'm not sure what the answer is. However, I don't generally think it's very effective to get into people's faces and tell them that they need a Savior. That is pretty much on the same plane as approaching an obese person and saying, "I have a diet plan that would work just great for you! You will lose weight, look better, feel better and live longer if you follow my diet plan! Can I tell you about it?" And all the person really hears is, "This woman thinks I'm fat." When we approach non-believers with the plan of salvation, all they hear is, "This person thinks I'm a lousy sinner." And even if they know it's true, they really are lousy sinners, they can't receive the message because of the bad feelings that arise within them.
At the same time, there is no purpose for salvation if people don't understand that they are in danger and need saving.
I really think it lies with the Holy Spirit. He touches hearts. He draws people into the Kingdom. We don't. Jesus said, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper [Holy Spirit] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment..." (John 16:7-8). So you see, awakening people to their sinful nature is not our job. It is the Holy Spirit's job.
We are useful. We can love people, feed them, listen to them, and even tell them about the Lord. But we can never draw them. That is a process begun by the Holy Spirit alone. He will draw them in His time and in His way. Ephesians 2:10 says that we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. We will be involved with the process. God has us here on earth in order that we may be His hands to the world. He laid it all out in advance; He knows in advance who will be saved, and He knows in advance whom He has tasked with bringing the message of salvation to each one. Colossians 1:24 says that we complete in our flesh what was lacking in Christ's afflictions, which means that we are the carriers of grace, messengers left in the world to work through the power of the Spirit to bring people into the Kingdom through the story of Jesus' perfect and complete work on the cross.
Colossians 1:29 says, "To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy which so powerfully works in me." We cannot do this alone. The Holy Spirit's power in our lives is absolutely critical to the worth of anything we ever do.
So, I think, the most important thing is to nurture our relationship with the Holy Spirit, our sensitivity to His leading, and our faith in God's promises. Our lives will be truly effective for Him when they are utterly bound up in Him and totally dependent on Him. John 15:5 says, "If a man abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing."
We need to nurture our relationship with Him first, feast on Him first, bask in His beautiful glory first. The Lord needs to be first. He can handle all the rest. He softens the heart before we arrive, and He births the new Christian into eternal life. We just stand by, pray, share some scriptures, and watch in amazement at what the Lord can do.
If you have a kid getting wisdom teeth out, and he comes down with a mild cold the morning of the surgery, take my advice: cancel the surgery. I am not kidding.
Anyway, a friend of mine gave us some powerful liquid vitamins, which seemed to help quite a lot. She also gave us a very good probiotic for him to take, given that he had been on something like five courses of antibiotics, and the current course is for twenty days.
Another friend of mine counseled us regarding natural health. She encouraged us to continue the probiotic and to take more and more each week until his body is literally flooded with it. She also instructed him to eat the juice and pulp of 1/2 a lemon in 8 oz. of water sweetened with stevia, every day. This alkalinizes the body, which seems strange, because lemon is an acid, but it alkalinizes the body system to make it a hostile environment for viruses and bacterium. She has David inhaling peppermint essential oil (which he doesn't seem to mind at all) and told him to cut all white flour and sugar out of his diet. She also explained why all this stuff works, but I won't get into that here.
I noticed today that David was no longer violently hacking up mucus morning and evening. He seems more energetic (probably due to the vitamins) and also less congested. The last time I put my ear on his back and listened to his chest, it was so alarming, I have been afraid to do it again, but I think I might try listening again tonight. Now my biggest angst is over whether I should have him finish all twenty days of this antibiotic. I don't think antibiotics are good for you. I think fourteen days should be quite sufficient.
Except for the fact that our insurance is denying coverage for the allergy and asthma doctor, I am feeling pretty relieved about this whole situation.
I'm so relieved, in fact, that I am thinking of other people I would like to introduce to my natural health friend, people who have serious health issues of their own.
I was thinking about how eager I am to share this good news with friends who could benefit, who could maybe have wonderful deliverance from symptoms that they suffer, and I thought, "Why am I not eager like this to share about Jesus with people who need to be saved from sin and death and eternity in hell?"
The answer came to me straightaway. I don't feel eager to share with people about Jesus, because by and large the people who need Jesus don't know that they need Him. My friends know that they are sick and suffering, so they would be eager to hear about natural help for their health problems. But people living apart from the Lord often have no awareness of their problem, and they generally don't appreciate being told that they have one.
So... how do you bring good news about a Savior to a world that has no idea that it needs salvation?
I'm not sure what the answer is. However, I don't generally think it's very effective to get into people's faces and tell them that they need a Savior. That is pretty much on the same plane as approaching an obese person and saying, "I have a diet plan that would work just great for you! You will lose weight, look better, feel better and live longer if you follow my diet plan! Can I tell you about it?" And all the person really hears is, "This woman thinks I'm fat." When we approach non-believers with the plan of salvation, all they hear is, "This person thinks I'm a lousy sinner." And even if they know it's true, they really are lousy sinners, they can't receive the message because of the bad feelings that arise within them.
At the same time, there is no purpose for salvation if people don't understand that they are in danger and need saving.
I really think it lies with the Holy Spirit. He touches hearts. He draws people into the Kingdom. We don't. Jesus said, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper [Holy Spirit] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment..." (John 16:7-8). So you see, awakening people to their sinful nature is not our job. It is the Holy Spirit's job.
We are useful. We can love people, feed them, listen to them, and even tell them about the Lord. But we can never draw them. That is a process begun by the Holy Spirit alone. He will draw them in His time and in His way. Ephesians 2:10 says that we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. We will be involved with the process. God has us here on earth in order that we may be His hands to the world. He laid it all out in advance; He knows in advance who will be saved, and He knows in advance whom He has tasked with bringing the message of salvation to each one. Colossians 1:24 says that we complete in our flesh what was lacking in Christ's afflictions, which means that we are the carriers of grace, messengers left in the world to work through the power of the Spirit to bring people into the Kingdom through the story of Jesus' perfect and complete work on the cross.
Colossians 1:29 says, "To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy which so powerfully works in me." We cannot do this alone. The Holy Spirit's power in our lives is absolutely critical to the worth of anything we ever do.
So, I think, the most important thing is to nurture our relationship with the Holy Spirit, our sensitivity to His leading, and our faith in God's promises. Our lives will be truly effective for Him when they are utterly bound up in Him and totally dependent on Him. John 15:5 says, "If a man abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing."
We need to nurture our relationship with Him first, feast on Him first, bask in His beautiful glory first. The Lord needs to be first. He can handle all the rest. He softens the heart before we arrive, and He births the new Christian into eternal life. We just stand by, pray, share some scriptures, and watch in amazement at what the Lord can do.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Still sluggish
I'm not sure what it is.
No, really, I have no idea.
I tried sleeping, but it didn't help at all. I was still tired. Still pookey.
I tried exercising. The weather was beautiful fairly recently, warm and sunny, and I took advantage of it and went walking a number of times. It just made me tired.
My head is fuzzy and my eyes hurt. Reading hurts. Also, I can't concentrate.
I really can't concentrate. I can't remember to do anything. Shawn reminded me that I had laundry in the washer today, and I was very thankful that he spurred me on to remember to put it in the dryer.
I can barely finish thinking a thought before I forget it. Rather scary, it is, in fact.
I miss being able to focus. I really, really miss it. Blech. Additionally, I am tired of having to keep going back to Wegman's to get the things I forgot the last time. I think I went there 7 or 8 times last week; I know there were a couple of days when I had to go twice.
Maybe I've just been reading too many books about ADD.
No, really, I have no idea.
I tried sleeping, but it didn't help at all. I was still tired. Still pookey.
I tried exercising. The weather was beautiful fairly recently, warm and sunny, and I took advantage of it and went walking a number of times. It just made me tired.
My head is fuzzy and my eyes hurt. Reading hurts. Also, I can't concentrate.
I really can't concentrate. I can't remember to do anything. Shawn reminded me that I had laundry in the washer today, and I was very thankful that he spurred me on to remember to put it in the dryer.
I can barely finish thinking a thought before I forget it. Rather scary, it is, in fact.
I miss being able to focus. I really, really miss it. Blech. Additionally, I am tired of having to keep going back to Wegman's to get the things I forgot the last time. I think I went there 7 or 8 times last week; I know there were a couple of days when I had to go twice.
Maybe I've just been reading too many books about ADD.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Rats
I tried to write something, and I just deleted it.
On purpose.
Because it was boring. I mean, it was even more boring than usual.
I hope my brain will start to work again some day.
On purpose.
Because it was boring. I mean, it was even more boring than usual.
I hope my brain will start to work again some day.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Brain dead
I am praying for my brain to come back.
I'm not sure what happened.
Stress? Fatigue? Burn out? Fear? Trauma?
I got to a point where I just couldn't focus. I can't focus. When I try to focus, I get a headache, not a migraine, but a dull, thudding sensation in my head. And then my eyes burn and my thoughts wander uncontrollably.
Today was beautiful, gorgeous, an unbelievable March day in Syracuse. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and it was about 63 degrees. I took David, Laura and Jonathan to Beaver Lake and we hiked the Lake Loop trail. Laura was taking pictures, and DJ and Jon were brother-bonding with walking sticks and a Frisbee. So I took off on my own and wandered into a time of praying and talking to God under the bare branches and all the bright sunshine that filters through them before they grow leaves. It was the first time I have felt balanced and focused in ages.
Ideas used to come to me, things I wanted to write about. I am in a dry spell: a dry, dull ache in the head-neck-shoulder kind of spell.
I did have a thought, while I was walking and looking at nature and communing with the Lord.
Often I feel guilty, because I am an introvert and I don't go out and tell people about Jesus. I don't even have any desire to "go out" and tell people about Jesus. I would love to chat with people about Jesus, people I know, over coffee, calmly. I would love for them to ask me questions and for me to be able to page through my Bible and help them find answers. I'd even be plenty willing to share life experiences with people, to open my heart to them and discuss the deep private things together. But I have absolutely no desire to "go out" and find random people to tell. And I don't like the idea of manipulating conversations toward religious matters when I am with people who don't know Jesus. I want to be able to wait for the Spirit to direct their hearts to ask about Him.
This is not the style of sharing the gospel that is necessarily encouraged these days. Modern evangelical Christianity is sort of a system for extroverts, and I am an introvert, so I often feel like I don't fit in, and I usually feel guilty in my spare time.
Today as I was walking and praying, I was also thinking about my kids, probably because I was praying for them. Thinking about Laura led me to think about her photography, and how she was at that very same time working on a photography assignment. I looked at the sights around me and tried to see them through a photographer's eye; I looked for things I thought she might notice and photograph. In so doing, it came to my attention that there was a lot of the same. The same bare trees, the same twiggy branches, the same small pieces of leaf on the ground. Although the sights I saw were varied in some senses, the colors and textures and backgrounds were remarkably similar; I thought Laura might struggle to come up with an interesting collection of pictures.
The thought occurred to me that God created the earth with cycles and seasons. There are times of blossom and times of decaying leaves; times of bright sun and times of darkness; times of cold and times of heat; times when we are asleep and times when we are awake. It occurred to me that God does not judge me for not witnessing in every season of my life, every moment of every day. Just as physical life has times when we work and times when we rest, times when the ground produces and times when it lies fallow, times when the animals explore, hunt, mate, and times when they hibernate, so it is with spiritual life. In our spiritual lives, we sometimes produce and sometimes we rest in between production, and that is fine. It is all part of the Lord's plan.
I used to be haunted by Ephesians 5:15-16, "So be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days." The point is not that we must constantly be drumming up opportunities to talk about Jesus with people. The point is that we must constantly live like children of God, serving and loving Him, and looking forward to seeing Jesus in all His glory. If we focus on His glory, He will take care of providing the right opportunities at the right times. 1 Peter 3:15 says, "Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks you about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it." Always be ready to explain to someone who asks. I think it is often best just to wait until the Spirit prompts someone to ask; that's the safest way to avoid throwing your pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
Colossians 4:5-6 says, "Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone." Again, making the most of opportunities is related to living wisely, living virtuously, living out our faith in such a way that our differences are apparent and cause people to question us: "Why do you have peace at a time like this?" or "Why didn't you get angry?" or "How could you be kind to a person like that?" We are called to live in such a way that our behavior provokes questions and then we are to be ready to give the right response to explain the hope that we have.
It isn't about memorizing a smooth system to explain the salvation plan. It's about real people who are truly redeemed, loving a real God who gave His Son for us, learning and living out the true Word of God. It's about a real Spirit who comes to dwell within us and change us. And because it is all real, alive and true, it will ebb and flow like all the rest of God's creation, and there will be times of activity and times of rest.
"...a time to be quiet and a time to speak." (Ecclesiastes 3:7b)
I'm not sure what happened.
Stress? Fatigue? Burn out? Fear? Trauma?
I got to a point where I just couldn't focus. I can't focus. When I try to focus, I get a headache, not a migraine, but a dull, thudding sensation in my head. And then my eyes burn and my thoughts wander uncontrollably.
Today was beautiful, gorgeous, an unbelievable March day in Syracuse. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, and it was about 63 degrees. I took David, Laura and Jonathan to Beaver Lake and we hiked the Lake Loop trail. Laura was taking pictures, and DJ and Jon were brother-bonding with walking sticks and a Frisbee. So I took off on my own and wandered into a time of praying and talking to God under the bare branches and all the bright sunshine that filters through them before they grow leaves. It was the first time I have felt balanced and focused in ages.
Ideas used to come to me, things I wanted to write about. I am in a dry spell: a dry, dull ache in the head-neck-shoulder kind of spell.
I did have a thought, while I was walking and looking at nature and communing with the Lord.
Often I feel guilty, because I am an introvert and I don't go out and tell people about Jesus. I don't even have any desire to "go out" and tell people about Jesus. I would love to chat with people about Jesus, people I know, over coffee, calmly. I would love for them to ask me questions and for me to be able to page through my Bible and help them find answers. I'd even be plenty willing to share life experiences with people, to open my heart to them and discuss the deep private things together. But I have absolutely no desire to "go out" and find random people to tell. And I don't like the idea of manipulating conversations toward religious matters when I am with people who don't know Jesus. I want to be able to wait for the Spirit to direct their hearts to ask about Him.
This is not the style of sharing the gospel that is necessarily encouraged these days. Modern evangelical Christianity is sort of a system for extroverts, and I am an introvert, so I often feel like I don't fit in, and I usually feel guilty in my spare time.
Today as I was walking and praying, I was also thinking about my kids, probably because I was praying for them. Thinking about Laura led me to think about her photography, and how she was at that very same time working on a photography assignment. I looked at the sights around me and tried to see them through a photographer's eye; I looked for things I thought she might notice and photograph. In so doing, it came to my attention that there was a lot of the same. The same bare trees, the same twiggy branches, the same small pieces of leaf on the ground. Although the sights I saw were varied in some senses, the colors and textures and backgrounds were remarkably similar; I thought Laura might struggle to come up with an interesting collection of pictures.
The thought occurred to me that God created the earth with cycles and seasons. There are times of blossom and times of decaying leaves; times of bright sun and times of darkness; times of cold and times of heat; times when we are asleep and times when we are awake. It occurred to me that God does not judge me for not witnessing in every season of my life, every moment of every day. Just as physical life has times when we work and times when we rest, times when the ground produces and times when it lies fallow, times when the animals explore, hunt, mate, and times when they hibernate, so it is with spiritual life. In our spiritual lives, we sometimes produce and sometimes we rest in between production, and that is fine. It is all part of the Lord's plan.
I used to be haunted by Ephesians 5:15-16, "So be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days." The point is not that we must constantly be drumming up opportunities to talk about Jesus with people. The point is that we must constantly live like children of God, serving and loving Him, and looking forward to seeing Jesus in all His glory. If we focus on His glory, He will take care of providing the right opportunities at the right times. 1 Peter 3:15 says, "Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks you about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it." Always be ready to explain to someone who asks. I think it is often best just to wait until the Spirit prompts someone to ask; that's the safest way to avoid throwing your pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
Colossians 4:5-6 says, "Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone." Again, making the most of opportunities is related to living wisely, living virtuously, living out our faith in such a way that our differences are apparent and cause people to question us: "Why do you have peace at a time like this?" or "Why didn't you get angry?" or "How could you be kind to a person like that?" We are called to live in such a way that our behavior provokes questions and then we are to be ready to give the right response to explain the hope that we have.
It isn't about memorizing a smooth system to explain the salvation plan. It's about real people who are truly redeemed, loving a real God who gave His Son for us, learning and living out the true Word of God. It's about a real Spirit who comes to dwell within us and change us. And because it is all real, alive and true, it will ebb and flow like all the rest of God's creation, and there will be times of activity and times of rest.
"...a time to be quiet and a time to speak." (Ecclesiastes 3:7b)
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