Yearly Archives: 2013

Hard to Focus

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It’s been snowing again in Michigan, bringing winter’s unique beauty to the landscape. In an effort to send a picture-text to my grandchildren, I’ve tried again and again to capture a blizzard-in-progress. But the camera, whether it’s my phone or the old fashioned kind, has trouble knowing what to focus on.

Unfocused snow

One picture will be of a distant tree with blurred snowflakes in the foreground. The next might highlight one snowflake with everything else unclear.

People can have the same problem, not sure what should be the main focus. A husband might zero in on his job, which then blurs his commitment to his family. A wife might make her children the focal point, which isn’t fair to her husband. And for those of us who are Christians, our main focus can easily stray from the Lord and his Word.

But how can we check ourselves against focusing on the wrong things?

The first step is to decide what our main focus should be, just like a camera chooses one small part of a complicated scene to hone in on. My iPhone camera has a focus feature that activates as I touch the part of the picture I want it to focus on. A small blue square pops up in response to my finger, and when I “click” the camera shutter button, that area of the picture comes out in sharp focus.

The problem with photographing snowflakes is that they’re always moving. A camera’s focus-feature gets confused when it can’t successfully zero in on one item.

That’s true for us, too. When everything in our world keeps changing, we get confused about how to keep the main thing the main thing. It may even be difficult to determine what the main thing ought to be. And that’s why it’s important we choose to focus on those things that never change. As far as I know, it’s a very short list: (1) God, and (2) his Word. If I let my focus wander from those, life can get blurry in a hurry.

We can know beyond all doubt that God is who he says he is and will do what he says he’ll do. He won’t waver, change, or back away from any of his promises. And the intense love he has for us will never lessen.

Five fingers

Back in the 1960’s when Dad took Kodachrome pictures on a manual-focus camera, he’d line up his subjects in an effort to get a family photo but would have trouble finding someone to focus on who wasn’t wiggling. So he’d say, “Someone hold up five fingers and keep them still!” He’d turn his lens until the fingers were perfectly focused and then click the shutter. Because the faces were gathered around the hand, the whole group was perfectly in focus.

It works the same way when we close in tight to the Lord. Finding the right focus is easy after that.

“The Lord’s plans stand firm forever; his intentions can never be shaken.” (Psalm 33:11)

Too smart for her own good.

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Yesterday I blogged about Penny, our well-loved Golden Retriever who had to be put down after her violent attack. Up to that point, however, she’d been a good family dog.

She was smart, memorizing tricks after only one or two tries, and seamlessly running through the whole lot of them with one command as if she was doing a gymnastics floor routine.

Penny

We wanted Penny to enjoy the expanse of our half-acre yard, so we installed an underground electric fence linked to her collar. If she crossed it, she’d get a jolt. We could regulate the level of what she felt from mild to severe, as well as modify how close she could get to the current before receiving the shock.

It wasn’t as cruel as it sounds. As Penny neared the wire, her collar would slowly click, ticking faster as she approached. If she obeyed the collar’s signals, she never had to feel a shock. During her first training session, the fence man said she’d figured it out faster than any dog he’d ever worked with.

All went well for several weeks until one day we came home to find Penny romping around the neighborhood. Gradually her wanderlust increased, and whether we were gone or in the house, every few days she’d escape from the yard.

None of us could figure it out. We called the fence guy who told us to “up” the current as an incentive for her to stay inside the wire. Although we did, she didn’t. The point of the electric fence was to give her as much freedom as possible without letting her run in front of a car or get lost. But she viewed it as confinement from which she needed to break free.

Sometimes we do the same thing with the protective parameters God puts around us. When he says it’s wiser if we don’t do a certain thing, our will immediately says, “But I want to!” That kind of rebellion began with Eve, was followed by Adam, and has been humankind’s M.O. ever since, despite the trouble that usually results.

But God loves us too much to give up on his parameters-program. He “ups” the current until we finally accept that his limitations are for our benefit.

As for Penny, she continued to escape, though none of us had ever seen her shoot through the current. Then one day the mystery was solved. Our intelligent dog had figured out not only where the wire was buried but how high the current reached. She was leaving the yard pain-free by jumping over an invisible fence that was only 24 inches tall.

In the end we outsmarted our smart dog though, increasing the current to 6 feet, and as the trainer said, “We finally put some religion in her.”

“Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.” (Romans 8:5)

Enraged

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TobyI grew up with a scruffy but loveable dog named Toby. We had him for 15 years, and he was an important member of my childhood family.

BaronThen when Nate and I were newlyweds, we adopted little Baron and loved him like a baby.

 

Penny, 9 weeksOther dogs have come and gone through the years, but when we bought a 4 week old Golden Retriever named Penny, we figured we had our long-term family dog.

In her 3rd year, however, something snapped inside her. It happened on a day when Nate and I had taken her to the beach, her favorite fetching place. While he walked the shoreline, I threw a stick for Penny, who never tired of retrieving.

 

Penny retrievesAfter 30 minutes, I leaned over to attach her leash as I’d done many times before, but this time she looked up at me, unexpectedly bared her teeth, and in a full blown attack clamped down on my hand, biting all the way through.

“Penny!” I shouted. “Stop! It’s me!” She and I had spent most days together, and I’d been the one who fed her, played fetch in the yard every morning after carpooling, and loved her wholeheartedly. But she was in a blind rage and didn’t know me. Intent on her attack, she released my hand and bit me again and again, moving up my arm toward my throat.

She pulled me to the sand, shaking me like a hunting dog shakes a rabbit, and I felt myself being dragged to the water. I remembered that if a dog ever attacked, the thing to do was jab your fingers in its eyes and it would quit. But Penny had been my friend, and there was no way I could do that. Thankfully, Nate came running back from his walk just then, shouting and waving his arms. Penny let go of me and ran, her strange attack over.

Once in a while we hear about people raging in a way much like Penny did, turning in unexplained fury on those they supposedly love. It’s impossible to understand and gives rise to anger within us when we think of the innocents they’ve harmed, especially if they are children. Our instinct is to want them to suffer exactly as they’ve made others suffer, which sounds fair. But God tells us vengeful thinking isn’t right.

Incredibly he says, “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling.” (1 Peter 3:9) Instead “be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Romans 12:2) He’s saying, “Let me give you a radically different way to think.” But of course we aren’t able to push away thoughts of pay-back without his supernatural power flowing through us.

He’s willing to give us that, though, if we’re willing to receive it. But vengeance must be left to him, he says, and in the end he’ll see to it that perfect justice will be done.

“When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)