Monthly Archives: April 2012

Messy Business

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While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.

Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example,  spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.

Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.

And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.

Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.

God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.

Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.

If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.

“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)

Emergency on Board

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Although I haven’t flown in planes too much, I’ve done enough to be at ease during take-off and landing, and nothing unusual has ever occurred.

Until today, that is.

Flying to Florida to spend time with Linnea and her active family of 5, I settled into an aisle seat bound for Orlando. About an hour before our destination, as beverages were being served, flight attendants began scurrying up and down the aisle with uncharacteristic urgency. Then suddenly the drinks were aborted, and one of them made a plea on the P.A. “Is there a doctor on board? Or a nurse? Maybe an EMT?”

We were in the middle of a medical emergency.

Toward the back of the plane a young woman had been reading when without warning she’d slumped into unconsciousness. Her seatmate, a stranger, alerted flight attendants, and she received quick attention. Staff rushed to the front of the plane and opened the overhead compartment closest to the cockpit, exposing a veritable hospital: an oxygen tank, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, defibrillator, first aid kit, and more.

Grabbing all she could hold, an attendant raced back to the patient as a nurse-passenger cleared out the adjoining seats to make a bed on which the woman could lie down. Passengers became quiet except for one observer who said, “She turned an awful shade of green.”

None of us knows what’s right around the corner. When this woman dressed for her travel day, she had no idea she’d end up sprawled across 3 airline seats strapped into an oxygen mask. When we leave home each day, none of us knows if we’ll return.

Scripture says God watches over our comings and goings. I think that means from home to work to shopping to school to anyplace else. I also think it means coming and going on an eternal scale: we go from earth and come to paradise. We come to death but go through to new life.

It might also mean coming and going in and out of relationships, emotions, circumstances. In all cases, God is watching over us, and not just watching but guiding and guarding, too.

And how about the airline patient? Did he watch her sink into unconsciousness and do nothing about it?

He did watch her, yes, and he sent a nurse, made sure the proper equipment was on board, and had paramedics waiting at the open end of the jet-way when we landed. I watched 5 of them kneel in front of her ministering medically and encouraging emotionally. As the rest of us paraded past, headed for baggage claim, she was hedged in by protective care: a team of paramedics, plus God.

And just before we exited the plane, the flight attendant made one more announcement: “Sorry about the beverages, but thanks for understanding. We hope you fly with us again soon.”

“The Lord himself watches over you! The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.” (Psalm 121:5,8)

 

 

Hand-crafted

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These are the developing hands of a 14 weeks-along baby, Birgitta’s little him-or-her. During the ultrasound picture-taking session, this tiny child whose hands had been against his/her cheeks for the first photos suddenly reached toward the camera, fingers splayed, as if to say, “Mama! Look what I have!”

Birgitta said that when these miniature hands flashed on the screen she began giggling so hard the baby joined in on the fun with an enthusiastic wiggle-dance. I like to think it was God’s uncontainable joy bubbling within Birgitta and flooding into her little one.

Being allowed to take a peek at what the Creator is doing inside my daughter’s womb is to get a glimpse of the wonder that God is. It was his idea to design hands as he did, making them useful tools we usually take for granted.

Hands are pretty remarkable. They’re flexible but can be stiffened to hold up something heavy. They can swing a hammer with force or caress a loved one with gentleness. Hands can shake each other in greeting or lend-a-hand as needed. They can cheer someone by clapping approval or reach toward heaven in prayer.

When God gave us hands, he also provided a hand-book. Scripture cautions us to be careful with our hands, to use them as he instructs. Jesus used his hands to touch the untouchable, the diseased, the contaminated. And he allowed his hands to be nailed to a cross for our benefit. One day we’ll get to see evidence of that when he shows us his hands and the scars he wears.

But what are regular people supposed to do with their hands? Birgitta’s child has hands that can’t do much of anything right now, though they’ve already gifted a young mama with joy. One day, though, they may play the piano or paint a picture. Maybe they’ll mold clay or repair computers, perform surgery, write books. We don’t know, but the Lord does, so he’ll help Birgitta coax her little one in the right direction.

But what about the rest of us? In response to God’s profound love, we ought to follow his hand-book to a T. It says we should “do good… be rich in good deeds… generous and willing to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18) He gave us hands to facilitate accomplishing this, and even told us how to handle those deeds: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

In October our family will get to touch the dimpled, feather-soft hands of a new baby. We may just all start giggling in a fresh outburst of joy at what God has done.

“Can a mother… feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)