Monthly Archives: August 2013

Really? No rules?

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No rulesMy sister, brother and I grew up in a house with very few rules. Actually, I can’t think of even one. Our mom operated at the extreme end of lenient, and of course we kids were happy about that.

Recently I wondered if my advanced age might not have tilted the truth on that, so I asked Mary. Since she’s 2 years ahead of me, her childhood memories are inevitably more accurate than mine.

“No,” she said, thinking back. “I can’t remember a single rule.”

Not having any rules didn’t mean Mom wasn’t teaching us. For example, I recall one moment when I was 11 and had developed the sloppy bathroom habit of stuffing wet towels into the towel bar in a ball-like wad. Then one day Mom walked in just as I was stuffing.

Rather than chide me, she took the towel out of the bar, shook it out, and said, “I’ll be interested to visit your house some day when you’re an adult. All your bathroom towels will be wet balls.”

Neatly hung towelShe then carefully looped the towel over the bar, running her hand the length of it for extra smoothness. I stood there studying her work and realized for the first time why my towels had always been damp. But something else more important happened, too. I felt badly about stuffing my towel, because I’d been a disappointment to Mom.

Many years later I asked her, “Why didn’t you ever give us a list of rules or punish us when we did things badly?”

Her answer revealed her parenting philosophy. “Once you knew the right thing to do, I knew you’d do it…. because you loved me.”

Hmmmm.

I’ve often felt that same way toward God, wanting to please him with my daughter-behavior. When I fail, it impacts me greatly because of how much I love him. It’s interesting that after God set out 10 commands for his children to obey, Jesus condensed them into 2, both based on acting in love in response to his love for us. Maybe Mom had something there.

Nate and I raised our children with rules, insisting on regular chores, compulsory church attendance, spankings for defiant behavior, etc. Maybe we had to do it because there were so many of them. Or maybe the difference between our rules and Mom’s lack of them was that she was a kid-at-heart and we weren’t.

In any case, years after my towel-hanging exchange with Mom, I had acquired some bathroom towel bars of my own. And when she came to visit Nate and I, she always found neatly hung towels drying nicely.

Towels hooksBut then 7 children joined us, requiring endless towel-hanging exchanges with them that were no fun to have. So we finally eliminated the whole problem. We took down the towel bars and hung 7 hooks.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind and….  Love your neighbor as yourself….  The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Squeezing It In

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A small garageHans and Katy’s house in England was built nearly 50 years ago and has a small one-car garage. When Hans put his work van away each night, he had only 3” of wiggle room front and rear, and only enough side-room to barely squeeze himself out the driver’s door. I watched him back it in, appreciating the expertise it took to hit it just right.

With the purchase of his larger van, pulling in at all is no longer possible, which is both bad news and good. The bad news is having to arrange a secure parking place somewhere else. The good news is acquiring a bunch of new storage space in the empty garage.

One week ago when I was there, Hans and I were standing in the middle of the garage while he explained where new shelves would go, when I looked up and saw words of chalk written on one of the brick walls:

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

A practical promiseWhen I pointed to the words and asked about them, Hans said, “It’s the last thing I saw getting into the van to go to work every morning, and the first thing I saw getting out when I got home. Good stuff.” In the midst of a garage full of utilitarian items, this quote from Psalm 91 stood out as something special, a practical promise straight from heaven.

Lots of us complain about not having enough time to focus on God and his Word. Our lives are crowded with other things, good things, and squeezing in Scripture can seem impossible. But chalk and a brick wall offer one way to do it.

The Bible is immensely practical. If we’ll let it, its wisdom will get us through shaky days with steadiness, and squeezing Scripture into our schedules will pay off exponentially. We can write verses on mirrors, index cards, screen savers, refrigerator magnets, laundry walls, bricks, or anything else as a way to partake of God’s supernatural power, the power he offers to send through his Word.

He invites us to creatively squeeze it in.

Seeing the chalked words in Hans’ garage reminded me of another place Scripture was squeezed in. Years ago our house in Illinois had a well worn path just outside the kitchen door that led to the next-door-neighbors’ house. The non-stop footprints between the two houses wore away the grass and left a muddy trail instead.

Stepping stoneWanting to reduce the dirty footprints coming into my kitchen, I pressed a row of concrete stepping stones into the mud, and God provided a squeeze-it-in idea. We wrote one word of a footstep-verse on each stone so that young feet could absorb his wisdom as they ran between the houses: “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him.” (Psalm 37:23)

Like Hans, we were just trying to gain God’s wisdom by squeezing it in.

“Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words.” (Proverbs 4:5)

Growing Pains

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Early morningThis morning Nelson and I set off for the airport by 5:25 AM where he once again boarded a plane back to Youth With A Mission, this time in Montana . As we drove through the dark we enjoyed talking, knowing we wouldn’t have another face-to-face conversation until Christmas.

This morning’s exchange of ideas centered on our usual: God and how he does things. Nelson is facing a new teaching position that has him working diligently on complicated preparations. None of it is easy, and he vacillates between excitement and concern. I know he’ll do an excellent job, but that’s easy for me to say; I’m not in the hot seat.

Webinar.Yesterday, though, I experienced a similar leap of stress when an email arrived from my publisher describing an assignment he thinks I should take: a webinar on handling grief. My only response was, “What’s a webinar?”

[It’s a seminar online that lets participants see and hear the presenter(s) as they answer interview questions or conduct discussions. By way of the internet, listeners interested in the topic can participate live, if they wish.]

Not only is this foreign to me, it’s scary. My contact assured me I didn’t need to be an expert on grief in general, just on my own grief experience. The goal will be to encourage people who are struggling with sorrow, letting them know they’ll be able to move forward again one day with fresh joy in their lives.

Of course that purpose is valuable, just like Nelson’s teaching is, but for both of us these new challenges are intimidating. It would be easier to dwell in a “comfort zone” and stick with that as the ongoing status quo. Learning new skills and conquering feelings of inadequacy can really take it out of a person.

But as Nelson and I talked this morning, the bottom line always has to be, “What does God want us to do?” If any request comes because he sent it, a “yes” is the only good answer. We ought to acknowledge our own shortfalls and then quickly melt into his capability, knowing that’s the only way these challenging tasks can ever get done well.

Maybe that’s the reason God asks us to do hard things in the first place. He isn’t about setting us in places of comfort or ease but prefers we stretch and grow, not as much for our own benefit as for someone else’s. There’s another possibility, too. The current “new thing” he asks us to do may simply be his chosen way to lead us on to something else, i.e. Step A toward his Step B.

Or C.  Or D.  Such a thought is unnerving.

Last dinner together for a whileBut Nelson said yes, and I did too, so we’re both off and running….  straight to God.

“Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)