Category Archives: Hearing from God

Switching Gears

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Going on a trip is exciting. Beginning with the inception of the idea through the loading of the suitcases, even the anticipation is fun. Then airport greetings and animated car conversations are full of promise for a good time together.

But backtracking our steps at the other end of a vacation isn’t nearly as inspiring. Although arriving home can be satisfying, the minute we step in the door, we hear the “have-to’s” of shifting gears. Even before we take off our coats, the pile of mail shouts for our attention. “Pay these bills! Respond to these letters! Look who needs you!” Exclamation points pounce on us from everywhere. Even the calendar hollers with the commitments we wrote on it the week before we left. “Get ready! Your appointments are coming right up!”

The refrigerator calls, too. “The milk is sour! Your strawberries are shriveled! Your sandwich meat is past its expiration date!”

Today as I came home, everywhere I looked I saw another exclamation point. “Unload the dishwasher! Unpack your suitcase! Do the laundry! Get organized for church tomorrow!”

It’s difficult to go from one reality to another, but life offers endless opportunities to practice shifting gears. When we were kids, our Septembers brought a shift in classrooms. College was a shift in our homes and lifestyles, marriage a shift from single to double. Parenthood forced major gear-shifting, followed by empty nest shifts.

For me, widowhood has been the most traumatic shift I’ve been asked to make, a change the equivalent of unpacking after a thousand trips. But I believe God is especially close to us during each of our adjustments, small and large. That’s because he’s never had to gear-shift himself, not for any reason. He’s everywhere, always, in all capacities.

Scripture gives us a word picture to help us understand this, telling us God has no “shadow of turning,” a reference to our human shadows changing as the sun crosses the sky each day. Unlike us, the Lord is constant and sure, thus able to bring stability to the shifts we must make. After he’s helped us through, we can look back and say, “That wasn’t so bad.”

Today, with all the exclamation points of change poking at me for attention, I stood in the kitchen trying to figure out which one to tackle first. For no special reason I opened the utensil drawer where the odd-sized cooking tools were askew and absently began to rearrange things. Pretty soon the drawer contents were on the counter, and I was fingernail-scraping-off sticky old shelf paper.

Before I was finished, I’d hunted in the basement for plastic dividing bins and washed them, wiped out the drawer, put down new shelf paper, washed most of the utensils, set some aside for Good Will and completely revamped my former storage system. All the while my carry-on bag was still on the counter screaming, “Hey! Unpack me!”

But God, as creative as always, simply said, “Before you do anything else, let’s bring order to this chaotic drawer. When you’ve corrected that mess, the rest of your gear-shifting chores will be easy.”

And he was right.

“The Father… does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)

Skipping Communion

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Today was the first Sunday of the month. Churches I’ve belonged to over the years have traditionally served communion to their congregations on the first Sunday, and whenever I’ve had the chance, I’ve participated.

But this morning’s service was decidedly thought-provoking. Maybe it was because I was away from home attending Linnea and Adam’s church in Florida. Maybe it was because the two of them were managing the baby nursery today, and I was sitting alone in the auditorium. Maybe it was the pastor’s sermon. But when it came time to walk to the front for communion, I stayed seated. Never in the 50 years since I began participating have I skipped it, until today.

This morning before we left the house for church, I read a verse from the last chapter of Isaiah. God was speaking, and he said, “These are the ones I look on in favor, those who are humble and contrite in spirit and who tremble at my Word.”

As I sat down in church, I was still thinking about that verse and especially the word “tremble”. During the service I sensed God asking me some serious questions. “How do you handle Scripture? Are you taking it for granted? How do you choose verses for your blog post each night? With humility? A contrite heart? With trembling?”

I’ve often told my kids, “Your Bible is not like any other book on the planet. It’s supernatural, alive, powerful enough to change your life. Always treat it with enormous respect.” Had I been doing that?

I love Scripture. I’ve spent years furrowing my brow trying to understand it. I’ve been to a Bible museum and seen an ancient hand-written copy, stained with the blood of someone who was killed while protecting it. I know that emperors and kings have tried to do away with it unsuccessfully, and I know its been God who’s caused it to survive. He says it’s “eternal and stands firm in the heavens.” (Psalm 119:89)

But have I ever trembled in approaching my Bible? Suddenly I felt awful. God seemed to be saying, “When you post parts of my Word each night, I want you to have a more reverent, cautious attitude. Make sure it’s me choosing the verses, not you. After all, the words are mine.”

When it came time to have communion, the pastor encouraged us to “get clean before God” first. And as I bowed my head, my eyes filled with tears, and I felt dirty. I asked him to forgive me for treating Scripture without the humility and contrite spirit he demands, and for not approaching it with trembling. I want to use his Word in a way that pleases him, and I crave his favor, as the verse says. I pleaded for him to teach me how, and I know he will.

When I looked up, several hundred people had gone forward for communion and returned to their seats. The service was over. Although I hadn’t participated, I’d done something better: gotten clean with God.

“These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2b)

Q & A

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Flying from Chicago to Orlando is, as we used to say in the ‘60’s, a trip, and I don’t mean just the traveling kind. Airplanes are loaded with families headed for Disney World, and kids are riding high with excitement.

 I’m on the way to my grandson’s first birthday, which will take place tomorrow, but partying began early during today’s take-off. As our festive blue and red 737 lifted from the runway, it seemed to angle straight up, slamming us into our seats and eliciting applause and cheers from the children on board. They were pumped for a fun ride, and what they got was competition for Space Mountain.

It was a relief to get into the air after a couple of hours in the airport. Children don’t wait well, and parents all around me were working overtime to keep peace. Our plane arrived a bit late, which brought tension to the waiting area. Traveling is high-pressure for almost everyone, but adding diaper bags, pint-sized back packs and tired little ones turns up the heat considerably.

One little boy, about eight, was a non-stop question-machine, every sentence looking for an answer from his multi-tasking mother. The one I loved best was, “Did people used to not be able to go everyplace?”

It was a good question for a child on a trip. His mom’s response wasn’t as good. “Did you wash your hands when you were in the bathroom?”

Without answering, he repeated his question. “Mom, did people used to not be able to go everyplace?”

This time she answered with, “Is your zipper up?” He asked a third time, and she said, “Tie your shoe. You’re going to fall.”

But children are pros at outlasting parents, and because of his tireless repetitions, she finally answered him. “No.” The whole exchange was like a Jerry Seinfeld comedy bit.

Traveling is a nerve-wracking business full of questions without good answers. A relationship with God can be that way, too. He might ask me, “Did you do the right thing in that relationship yesterday?”

And I answer with, “Please bless my children.”

He repeats his question, and I say, “Help my husband at work.”

But God is every bit as persistent as an eight year old question-machine. And because he wants me to move steadily closer to righteousness, he’ll outlast me every time. My thoughts may be as scattered as the young boy’s mother when she was unable to focus on his question. But God will work on me until he breaks through my multi-tasking fog and gets my answer to what he asks.

There’s one acceptable way for me to dodge God’s questions, and that would be to ask a question back. But to be fair, my question would have to be related to his. If he asks, “Did you seek godly counsel before you made that decision?” I could then ask-back, “Would you tell me who I should talk to about it?”

There are no questions more important than God’s, and he is intensely interested in my answers, not because he didn’t already know what I was going to say, but because he wanted me to hear myself indicating where I stood.

That harried airport mother should have answered her son with a question of her own:

“What?”

After that, they might have made real progress.

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.” Luke 9:20)