Saturday, March 30, 2013

TRASH PICK-UP
Yesterday it was finally nice enough for me to take a walk outside. I had previously seen some aluminum cans lying in the gutter near the subdivision entrance so I brought along a bag and picked them up, again. (A closet beer drinker in our neighborhood regularly uses this area for his or her trash dump). We try to recycle, so the cans go into the bin for later redemption.)
As I walked, happy at last to be enjoying the 40-some degree air after a very cold, snowy month, I noticed that, along with the beer cans, our pretty neighborhood was pretty sullied by a lot of debris that had accumulated over the winter. Funny, what snow can cover up! I hadn’t noticed the amount of accumulated human detritus that had been hiding under the frozen piles.
So, when it was time for a stroll today I grabbed a sturdy garbage bag and off I went. (No, I’m not bragging that I was a litter-lifter, a trash toiler or a garbage girl today – I live here; it’s my community, and therefore my responsibility to help out.) What a lot of yucky stuff was lying around: dirty plastic containers, liquor bottles, smooshed cigarette packs, an old bag of cashews (what a waste, in my cashew-loving opinion!), soggy, disintegrating newspapers and soaked cardboard boxes. And more beer cans. Who knew we lived in a garbage dump?
God did, that’s Who. When He made us, He made us to be able to make choices. Free will, it’s called. And the choices our first parents, Adam and Eve, made were wrong. Instead of choosing God’s perfect delight, they chose rubbish and the human race has been following along ever since. Like the snow that falls and covers over the trash, we then make all sorts of desperate attempts to cover over our personal trash, pretending our lies, our greed, our anger, our laziness, our envy, our sin - is not even there. But, as always happens, the cover-up melts away and leaves our garbage exposed, out in the open.
Good thing God knows just what to do with that stuff. He sent Jesus to take our junk, our debris, our filth. He doesn’t just pick it up and cart away to the landfill – He washes it away, makes it clean and new and just as if it were never even there. For real.
That’s why I love Easter. It’s an opportunity to ponder once again how much God loves me and what He did for me when He sent His Son for me, to pick me up and clean me up. Perfect redemption – radical recycling!
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” I John 1:9
 

Friday, March 29, 2013


THE NAIL

It was the nail that got me.
I had given the children’s Easter devotion before. There’s a very large Easter egg, big enough to contain a baby item, small cup, piece of bread, thorn, scented cloth and various other items associated with the re-telling of the story of why Christ came to earth, His death and resurrection. And there is a nail. A very big nail. A nail not unlike the one that must have been used to nail Christ to the tree for me.
My story nail is, according to my husband, actually a nail used to firmly affix a gutter to a house. It is heavy, about 8 inches long and perhaps as thick as my middle finger.  It gets the kids’ attention.
When I was little, my nail experience was limited to the tiny ones my dad used to put up pictures on the walls of our home or the 2-3 inchers I’d see him use to nail 2 x 4’s together. Every year when I’d hear the story of Christ’s crucifixion I could never quite “get” how that worked with such small nails. Sure, I knew  it must have hurt – after all, merely sticking yourself by accident with a pin hurts – but I thought there must be something I wasn’t quite grasping here.
And of course there was. Roman nails used at the time of Christ were apparently heavy, square shaped, tapered iron spikes, about 3/8“ in diameter and from 5-9 “ long. Romans used them in the execution of “slaves, foreigners, revolutionaries and the vilest of criminals,” (frugalsites.net).  Crucifixion was an excruciatingly painful way to die.
So, yesterday, as I was relating this both horrifying and amazingly marvelous story to a group of Christian school children, I happened to glance at the nail in my hand and the photo of it in my hand up on the big screen at the same time. The nail was in my hand, but the reality was it should have been in my hand.
God used that nail to remind me once again that He sent Christ to die for me, to make a way to Him for me. I am the slave, the foreigner, the revolutionary and the vilest of criminals.  He loved me so much that He suffered the nails meant for me. And so I sing, “Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul; Thank you, Lord, for making me whole; Thank you, Lord, for giving to me; Thy great salvation so rich and free.” (Seth & Bessie Sykes)
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:6-8

 

Saturday, March 9, 2013


MAKE THE MOST OF IT!

Adventure is what happens when you just did something stupid.” ~Professor Bernie

Ah, Professor, Bernie, is that what we had – an adventure? On a whim, we had decided to finish up our February Florida respite from the Wisconsin winter by paying a one-day visit to the Mouse, in Disney’s Magic Kingdom.

Apparently shocked that the old folks would actually take such a first-of-its-kind, no-kids-along excursion, one of our grown-up kids exclaimed, “What do you think you are, newlyweds?”

No, but who says the magic can’t still sparkle, even after 41 years? So, off we went to find some pixie dust in Disney’s new Fantasyland, we kids in our 60’s. Belle’s tales charmed us, the Little Mermaid’s tail tickled us and the Beast fed us in his ballroom.

And then we saw that there was only a 35 minute wait at Space Mountain. Fools that we are (as we have been unceremoniously dubbed by the “Disney experts” we gave birth to) we believed the sign and opted out of a FastPass. Though the promised 35 minutes ended up approaching 70, it was enough to convince us oldsters we could, indeed, catch up to our youth by hitching a ride on this roller coaster into the galaxies.

However, my youth used to be skinnier. And more agile. And limber. And why couldn’t I get my right leg unstuck from my left and down in place before the bar came down and I got sucked out into the black hole I knew was beckoning? “Ahhh…” I wailed to my terrorized inner-self, “I’m gonna die before I get to tell anyone I was stupid enough to go on this thing again!”

With eyes firmly cemented shut and every muscle tensed, around and around, uphill and down, side to side we raced and jerked and hurtled through the darkest dark. Positive I would not survive to tell this tale, the vehicle finally came to a blessed halt. Time to exit. Except I could...not...get...out. Oh, mortification. Would those mere whippersnapper “cast members” have to yank granny out of her spaceship? I gave it all I had to push all I have out of that thing and stumbled gracelessly out, injured left hip and strained neck notwithstanding. At least I was standing!  (And as Garrison Keillor once quipped, “It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”)

But I had conquered!  And I had lived! In Ecclesiastes 9:7 it says “Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, Drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure! Dress festively every morning. Don’t skimp on colors and scarves. Relish life with the spouse you love each and every day of your precarious life. Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange For the hard work of staying alive. Make the most of each one! Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. “
My hip still hurts—but I grabbed it and I did it!



 

 

 

 

Monday, March 4, 2013


 
 
BEWARE THE BLARNEY
 
Bill Clinton did it. He looked straight into the camera and said – well, you know what he said. Richard Nixon barely escaped impeachment because he did it, even though he claimed he was “not a crook.” Lance Armstrong lost endorsements and all his credibility because he did it. And Pinocchio? It was as plain on the long nose on his face when he did it.

“It” was lying. Jose N. Harris said, “There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.”

Sometimes we shade the truth of our lies. “I wasn’t really lying.” “It was just a little baloney” or a “bit of blarney.” Hmmm. Someone once said that The difference between ‘blarney’ and ‘baloney’ is this: “Baloney is when you tell a 50-year old woman that she looks 18. Blarney is when you ask a woman how old she is, because you want to know at what age women are most beautiful.” Yes, right. Sure.

Monsignor Fulton Sheen tried to explain further. “Baloney is flattery laid on with a trowel. Blarney is flattery laid on with the lips; that is why you have to kiss a stone to get it.”

That stone is in Blarney Castle, located in Blarney, Ireland, near Cork. It originally dates from before 1200. During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign of England and Ireland, she decreed that all properties must be given over to the crown. Owner Cormac MacCarthy was not about to just hand over Blarney Castle, queen or no queen. He sent several flowery letters to Her Majesty, chock full of praise and flattery and never actually ceded the castle to her. It went on so long it fried her patience and she (supposedly) exclaimed in frustration, “Blarney this and blarney that. He’s all blarney!” The actual world famous Blarney Stone can be found up several winding staircases, high in the castle’s battlements; to acquire the “Gift of Eloquence” from kissing the stone one must lean over backward and hang on to an iron railing from the parapet. That’s surely another word for it, the gift of eloquence! Friedrich Nietzsche wasn’t fond of such “eloquence” and told a friend who had disappointed him, “I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Whether someone “talks “blarney” or uses the “gift of eloquence” (saying things they don’t mean to gain a favor), spreads “baloney” or “just tells white lies,” God hates lying. In Leviticus 19:11 He warns, “You shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” Our “lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 12:22) and we delight Him when we “deal truly.” Dealing truly with one another—now that’s no blarney!