Not My Gift

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Margaret

In recent days we battled a couple of field mice in the house, so I’d called the Orkin man. He pointed out various cracks and gaps tiny mice were squeezing through to get in. “Fill up those spaces,” he told me. “And do it soon, since colder weather makes mice hunt for warmer places to winter.”

I know lots of people who “winter” in warmer places, traveling from Michigan to Arizona or Florida, and I didn’t want any mice arriving to winter with us.

So I went to Home Depot and asked for advice. A man in an orange apron led me to a spray can of something called insulating foam sealant “for large gaps and cracks.” It sounded perfect.

Normally I’m not a label reader, but the salesman had told me goggles and gloves were a must, so I decided to read: “Warning/danger! Is combustible and may present a fire hazard. Protect eyes, skin, and surfaces.“ I pulled on rubber gloves, and vowed to squint hard.

“You won’t need much of this stuff,” the man had said. “It expands.”

And boy, was he right. After I applied a long line that resembled bathtub caulk, in an instant it had morphed into something like marshmallows gone berserk. And then it hardened like rock.

As I stood back and looked at four foam-filled areas, I knew I never should have tackled the project without counsel from someone who knew his way around a can of foam. Thankfully the gaps I filled were in the back of the house under a long-neglected soffit. I just hoped no other human would ever see what I’d done.

Not all of us have the skills to do everything well. Each of us has been given giftings or bents that make it easy to accomplish certain things and impossible to do others.

That’s true spiritually, too. The Bible details God’s gift-giving system, explaining that not everybody has all the gifts. He arranges it that way on purpose, wanting us to need each other. We’re to learn to give of ourselves but also to take what others give to us. It’s a good system, unless we’re bent on independence (like I was with the foam). Then it all breaks down.

I was foolish not to acknowledge my lack of gap-filling skill and know now I shouldn’t have done it alone. As for no other human seeing the mess I’d made, the very next day Mr. Orkin returned and made a beeline to those four mouse-gaps. I cringed as he inspected my foam overload, but his response was gratifying:

“Well,” he said, “there’s not a mouse in this neighborhood that’s ever gonna get through that.”

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6)

Who do you trust?

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Margaret

Years ago I read the story of a medical doctor who donated his time once a week to trim the toenails of elderly folks, because they couldn’t get the job done themselves. Some had neck or back troubles and couldn’t bend. Others had toenails that were so calcified and thick, they needed professional equipment to cut them.

As I remember the story, his service took place at a local library, and the doctor refused any payment. Surely handling one pair of old feet after another wasn’t pleasant, but week after week he showed up with his clippers, helping just because he wanted to, no strings attached. He was both dependable and trustworthy.

After thinking about this man and his honorable undertaking, I tried to remember the last time I did something quietly righteous like that. I came up empty. I did remember a couple of times when I offered to help strangers but received negative responses: “That’s ok. I can handle it. Thanks anyway.” The general rule of thumb is, strangers can’t be trusted.

It’s interesting that today’s general public is suspect of anyone offering help. Most will walk away as if they didn’t hear the offer, careful not to make eye contact. It reminds me of a vignette from the sixties TV show “Laugh In” when a stranger offered to help Ruth Buzzi (dressed as an old lady). She beat him back with her handbag.

That was funny 45 years ago, mostly because it was the opposite of what people usually did back then. Believe it or not, most accepted help from strangers. These days, rejecting acts of kindness is the norm. For example, if you volunteer to help someone load groceries into her car or even ask if you can take her empty cart back for her, typically she’ll say, “No thanks.”

When I was growing up, a stranger might ask to hold a baby while her mother checked out at the grocery store, and the mother would smile and say, “Oh, thank you so much!” Today that’s unthinkable. Our trust in each other has been eroded by too many experiences of broken trust and its painful consequences.

Maybe that’s why some people find it difficult to trust God. If they’ve never known a trustworthy relationship, then trusting him seems like just one more risk they don’t want to take. If they got to know him, however, they would discover he is trustworthy to the nth degree.

When he offers to help, he means it and will always follow through. Of course we have to give him the chance. If we say, “No thanks. I can handle it myself,” he’ll probably let us. But if we accept his help, we can completely trust him without reason to fear. All the proof we need is in his flawless track record.

To put it in practical terms, we can trust him to help us much like the toenail-cutting doctor helped those oldsters, without asking for payment, and doing it just because he wants to.

“The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does.” (Psalm 145:13)

Waiting Patiently?

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Margaret

One of my favorite family photos is this one of Klaus and Hans, our children #4 and #5. We were on a family trip to Florida in 1985 when these two little guys, ages 3 and 4, were demonstrating patience. They were waiting for the perfect wave to lift their mini- surfboards off the sand and take them on a smooth, danger-free ride atop the ocean. They’d done everything they knew to do and were waiting for the water to do what they could not.

It’s a perfect picture of faith. We wait; God acts.

Today is the 4^th anniversary of Nate’s death. Although I don’t know if he’s marking time the way we are, sometimes I get impatient to find out. Whether he’s looking forward to our reunion or not, there are days I long for it with everything in me, just like the boys longed to ride an ocean wave. It’s not that I have a death wish; life holds many good reasons to go on living. I’d just like to be with him again.

My children don’t like it when I talk about joining their father, but my desire isn’t to leave them. It’s that we all leave. In other words, my longing is for Jesus to come and scoop us up for an exit from this world and an entrance into the next. And it’s difficult to be patient.

No matter how hard any of us wishes for that day, however, we can’t hurry it along any more than a gardener can force a seedling to sprout. These things are up to God.

Today a handful of my children and I talked about their father at lunchtime. Their spoken memories of him were like gifts to me, and we shared our feelings about this anniversary day. Talking about how difficult it was to be in Nate’s presence when he died didn’t make us regret being there. It was deeply meaningful to experience those holy moments as a family, expressing love to the one who was dying as well as to each other.

My Spurgeon daily devotional book has a simple note written on this day, November 3^rd. It says, “Nate died today,” a bare-bones statement of fact. Maybe I should have written, “Nate went to heaven today,” or something more positive. But when he died, my heart was so swamped with loss, those were the only words I could come up with.

That November 3^rd devotional happens to be about waiting for God’s timing. Spurgeon wrote, “We are in a hurry, but God’s time is the best time.” The last paragraph is a note to himself: ”Come, my soul, canst thou not wait for thy God? Rest in him, and be still in unutterable peacefulness.”

My little boys waited peacefully at the shoreline, hoping for the best, and since I can’t do anything to hasten my reunion with Nate, I can only do the same.