When Nothing Fits Together

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Margaret

This morning in southwest Michigan, we awoke to an ongoing snowstorm and 8 inches of snow. Before the sun was up, my next door neighbors had turned on festive mini-lights above their deck, and the combination of snow and leaves falling together around them was magical. In my 68 years, I don’t ever remember such heavy snow coming so early in November.

As I cautiously made my way to our Tuesday prayer group, I couldn’t resist stopping repeatedly to take pictures of colorful leaves weighed down with snow, an impressive oxymoron. Was it a wintery-fall or a fallish-winter?

It isn’t unusual to encounter life-circumstances that don’t go together, a plus and a minus that are completely incompatible. This is especially true when we’ve asked God to be involved, and no matter how we try, we can never predict what he’s going to do.

Let’s say a poor man asks the Lord to strengthen his dependency on him, and then God answers by giving him great wealth. The man wasn’t asking for riches and is surprised (and delighted), but if ever there is a big-league test for personal dependency on God, that’s it.

Or maybe a wife prays for the Lord to influence her workaholic husband not to spend so much time at the office, and God answers by putting him in a hospital bed where he has plenty of time to think about his priorities.

Or a mother agonizes over her child’s drinking and asks God to take him off that slippery slope, but God allows him to drift into alcoholism. Years later, he finds Jesus Christ through Alcoholics Anonymous, and his life is revolutionized.

It’s important to ask ourselves if we can accept God’s interesting (and sometimes agonizing) answers to our requests. So often we rail against him for allowing things to get worse. And then, months (or years) down the road, he opens our understanding to the magnitude of change he had in mind. We learn his purposes for a life are always greater in scope than anything we prayed for.

But even more significant than accepting the incongruous connections between our prayers and God’s answers is the underlying principle that we must never pray with a mindset of telling God what to do. We can’t “put in an order” and expect him to follow our instructions.

Instead, after we’ve poured out our requests, if oxymoronic things start happening we should excitedly realize, “It’s God!” After all, the biggest oxymoron of all time was when he saved the whole world by crushing his only Son.

So, after we’ve prayed and nothing seems to fit together right, we should stop to recognize God and marvel at his work. In a small way it’s like stopping to take pictures of brightly colored leaves bowed low under the weight of an untimely snow.

“While Jesus was here on earth… God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.” (Hebrews 5:7)

Faking it.

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Margaret

Nate and I never planned to have 7 kids. When we did, it was fine by us, but with children spread over 17 years, our large family brought a few surprises. One was that we would be dominated by school schedules for 31 years (not counting college).

For most of those years, I had no trouble getting up in the morning, since babies and toddlers make good alarm clocks. But when the babies quit coming, getting up by 5:50 AM became a problem. So I began playing a trick on myself.

I hated the thought of such an early start each day, so I set my bedside clock 11 minutes ahead. When the alarm sounded, the first thing I saw was 6:01, which was world’s better that 5:50. Enlisting those digital clock numbers in my ruse seemed to solve my wake-up problem. But it also made me ask what other self-deceptions I had going for me.

All of us can talk ourselves into believing lies of our own making: “It’s such a little thing,” we say. “How much could it matter? It’s just a few… a few dollars… a few meetings… a few exaggerations… a few minutes. No one really cares.”

The idea of fudging just a little was well depicted on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, October 3, 1936. An elderly lady paying for a chicken by its weight is pressing up on the scale from beneath, while the proprietor is pressing down from above. A little cheating wouldn’t matter. What’s a few ounces? But both had deceived themselves into thinking deceiving someone else was ok.

I confess I’ve struggled with “full disclosure” to myself on countless occasions. That’s because not telling the truth inside my head is sometimes easier and often works well in the short run. For example, I might think, “I’m going to start eating healthy any day now, but not yet. Eating what I want helps me cope with stress.” But is that the truth?

Most of the world has heard the statement, “The truth will set you free.” But as always, this promise is part of an “if – then”. Scripture says if we “hold to the teachings of Christ” (John 8:31-32), then his truth will set us free. Ultimately, truth is always linked to the Lord.

So, what is Jesus Christ’s teaching about self-deception? He says that if we consistently tell “little white lies” to ourselves, we’re at risk for three problems:

small lies morph into bigger ones.
deceiving ourselves morphs into deceiving others.
regular lying morphs into trouble telling the truth.

As always, if we correct ourselves at the root of the problem (self-trickery), other more serious symptoms will fall into line. And eventually even our clocks can be set free to tell the truth.

“They all fool and defraud each other; no one tells the truth. With practiced tongues they tell lies…. They pile lie upon lie and utterly refuse to acknowledge me,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:5-6)

Summer, don’t go!

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Margaret

Although I wore flip-flops today, the comments of others made me realize I was pushing the season. In just a few days socks and shoes will be the norm, and my beloved flip-flops will have to go back into storage. It’s just one of the many mini-mournings of a summer person looking toward winter. Though the colored leaves have been stunning this year, in a short time they, too, will have put their summer fashions into storage.

Winter people are quick to mention the positives of their favorite season to us summer folk: the beauty of fresh snow, fires in the fireplace, soups on the stove, roasts in the oven, and 3 major holidays. We could argue over the seasons for quite a while and never come up with a clear winner.

But what does God think about our discussing which weather-season is best? Is he ok with that debate?

Actually, no.

So what does he want us to allow into our minds that comes out in conversation? What thoughts are above all others? Scripture tells us to put everything through a grid of 8 subjects. If we can honestly say a debate about the seasons falls under one of them, we can go for it. Here they are:

Truth
Honor
Righteousness
Purity
Beauty
Excellence
Worthiness
Praiseworthiness

Could a discussion of favorite seasons fall under #5? Of course we couldn’t make a case for one season being more beautiful than another. Maybe a better leaning would be toward gratitude for seasonal variety or a discussion about the great creativity of the Almighty. We might even recognize him for the faithfulness he demonstrates in causing the 4 seasons to come and go with such flawless consistency.

The above list of 8 is given in one short Bible verse, Philippians 4:8. The Message translation gives us the same list in a slightly different way:

“You’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

Whining about the waning of summer and the gloom of packing away my flip-flops doesn’t fall under the list in either translation. Although debating which season is best probably isn’t sinful, it sure isn’t taking the conversational high road, and that includes conversation inside our heads.

Despite the fact that we live in a fallen world, God has surrounded us with unnumbered items from that list of 8. When I ignore those to yammer away about things that aren’t on the list, I’ve missed an opportunity to please God and do life his way.

So, as I slip my flip-flops into their storage bin (without complaining), I should tell God how lovely his summer season has been, that I’ve noticed his extra-vibrant fall colors, and that I’m looking forward to the beauties of the winter he sends, no matter what the weather report will say.