Saturday, January 10, 2015

 TEARS IN A BOTTLE

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.”  ~Golda Meir

If you’ve never heard someone weep with their whole heart you’ve never been the one on duty when a precious little one year old falls and bonks her face into your table. And on your watch.

I allow my granddaughter to mess around in my recliner-side magazine bucket. (It’s a grandmotherly prerogative to allow one’s daughter’s child to do the messing around one didn’t allow the daughter to do!) Anyway, the bucket contained an especially enticing little red plastic notebook and Spencer crawled away with it – over toward the living room coffee table. She stood up on teetering little legs and proceeded to topple over. The resulting “thump” of the topple sounded worse than I guess it was as no mountainous lump erupted on her baby head. She did, however, have marks on her baby face where the now offensive notebook apparently smacked her soundly.

At first there was no sound. Then…and then…and then...wailing! Sobbing! And that was just Nana! Well, kinda. We were both crying, if the truth be known. Her tears were of the “oh, I bonked my face and I am surprised and it hurts” kind and mine were of the “oh, my baby girl bonked her face and now my heart hurts” kind. This drama was followed by the hiccupping, sucking air thing babies do after a face-plant or similar result of gravity, followed by the back patting, cooing and rock-a-by-ing that Nanas do to remedy the situation.

Spencer was left with a bit of a swollen lip and a couple red spots on her cheek, but I don’t think her beauty will be marred forever. I suspect that the incident is over and done with in her mind. But not in mine. I will remember her first real “owie” and the pain of those dripping tears. For a long time. They fell deep into my heart and imbedded themselves there. This baby girl is that important to me.

Which made me remember a Scripture about God remembering my tears. In Psalm 56:8 (NLT) the writer says to God, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” Wow. Imagine that! I am—and you are - so important to Him, among the billions and billions of people alive now and the billions and billions and billions of those who have ever lived, that He collects our tears in bottles! He writes them down in a book! (The heavenly bottle factory and book binding businesses must be quite the booming industries up there!).

It’s so comforting to realize that God is aware of our sorrow and that it matters to Him. In Isaiah 38:5, God told the prophet to go to King Hezekiah and say, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears.” And one day, God tells us, He Himself will just eliminate them: “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:17, ESV).

How we long for that day! (And until then, you should know that, as a precaution, my coffee  table was moved to the bedroom!)












Thursday, January 1, 2015

NO MISTAKING IT!
"Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” wrote Lucy Maude Montgomery,     author of the Ann of Green Gables books.

The same goes for beginning a brand new year. On New Year’s Eve many of us reflect on the past 365 days, perhaps lamenting the mistakes we made, planning to do better as the calendar flips over, and beginning again with fresh, blank pages.
The first thing I do each year with a new calendar’s blank pages is to fill in the birthdays and anniversaries of family members and special friends. I still love receiving good wishes, so I still send them out as well. I’m much less likely to make the mistake of forgetting to address them, stamp them and send them on their merry way if I’ve first made sure to mark down          everyone’s special dates.

Appointments go down next, those twice yearly medical and dental visits.  I admit that I’d sometimes like to “accidentally” make the mistake of forgetting those, but that would be a mistake with one’s health.

As the year progresses, volunteer  obligations are put on the calendar. If you make a promise to do something, taught my parents, you’d better follow through for sure. Disappointing someone who is counting on you is a big mistake.

It’s great fun to take a bright red marker and fill in some of those empty squares with much-anticipated opportunities like lunch dates with friends and maybe even vacations in warm places on those pages of “burrrr” months! Can’t mistake those!

While attempting to organize myself and my new year with a new calendar is a great help in keeping my mistake level down, it’s clear I am unable to completely mistake-proof myself. Sometimes mistakes just seem to find me, sometimes it appears I just seek them out and then there are the times my “mistakes” aren’t mistakes at all, but just plain sin.

As a fundamentally directionally impaired person, I will admit to having made the mistake of turning into a “don’t turn in here” traffic lane. As a sinful human being (albeit a forgiven one) I will also admit to losing my temper and using unkind words, something that is not just a mistake but   sinful behavior. There is a difference. Mistakes are unintentional errors in judgment. Sin is more than that—it’s a deliberate choice to do something I know isn’t right.
God’s Word declares that we all sin (Romans 3:23). We choose to do it. For that, I deserve death, but He gives me eternal life through Jesus (Romans 6:23). I like the way Ezekiel said it: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (36:26-28). In 2015, I long to be a better decree-follower and more careful law-keeper of His. There’s no mistaking it—a  happy 2015 it will be with God in me!