Frightening Footprints

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We widows like to tell ourselves we’re strong and aren’t afraid to live alone. But during a night when we can’t sleep, fear creeps around the edges of our minds, and we wish our men were still lying next to us. Not that they would have always known what to do, but two heads are usually better than one.

Last night as I was putting my head on the pillow, I heard an unfamiliar thump coming from downstairs. It was almost 1:00 am, too late for company, and Jack had been asleep in his doggie bed for an hour before I’d gone upstairs.

Unwilling to let myself get spooked by what might be nothing, I prayed, and God quickly reminded me he doesn’t ever try to scare us and can protect us from fright. I decided I’d abandon myself to his care, no matter what the noise was, and shortly thereafter fell asleep.

This morning as Jack and I were returning from a walk, we decided to use the front door instead of our usual back, and I got a shocker. In an inch of snow from yesterday, there were mysterious footprints walking up my front steps. They gave me a start, and I froze. Had someone tried to get into the house last night? Was that what I’d heard?

As I studied the prints, I noticed they had an interesting grid pattern. And then it hit me. The mysterious footprints were mine, steps made last night after walking Jack. And suddenly I felt foolish.

But this is how it goes with widows. As we practice living alone, we’re breaking new ground we never wanted to cover, and runaway thinking is one blip away from common sense. God knows this and has prepared a slew of promises for our use when panic hits. Sometimes he even lays the groundwork ahead of time for nights like last night.

For example, yesterday morning Louisa shared a valuable verse with me from Isaiah: “You [Lord] will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!” (26:3) Naturally, then, those same words rushed into my head when I was feeling vulnerable.

Our God is practical. He promises to deliver us when we need it, and when we’re nervous, he guarantees he’ll calm us if we ask him. That’s true for everybody, not just widows. He doesn’t want any of us to live on edge but does understand how emotions can get in the way of sound reasoning. It’s comforting to know he’s always got a battle plan in order and wants to see us victorious over nervousness and fear, whenever it strikes.

As for that strange noise during the night? After a thorough house inspection, I’ve decided I’ll never know. Maybe it was God simply giving me one more opportunity to trust him.

“If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you.” (Psalm 91:9-10a)

Rock or Sand?

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When we were kids, we used to sing a Sunday school song straight out of Matthew 7: “The wise man built his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumblin’ down.”

I always liked singing the 2nd verse better than the 1st, because it gave us a chance to make a loud noise: “The foolish man built his house upon the sand… The rains came down, and the floods came up, and the house on the sand went SMASH!”

The song quoted a teaching of Jesus when he used two word pictures taken from his listeners’ common experience. Anyone who’d ever built a house would have understood his analogy: rock makes a better foundation than sand, any day. Then Jesus introduced himself as the Rock.

I love rocks. My basement shelves are full of them, each one picked up along Lake Michigan’s shoreline and appreciated for its beauty. If I could build a house of those stones, I would. They speak to God’s vast creativity and are a powerful testimony of the remarkable earth he made.

Today at church I was challenged by Pastor Lindsay’s insightful sermon about stones, rocks, bricks and the church. Back at home, I found myself standing in front of our old stone fireplace, put together in 1938. The odd-shaped pieces, fashioned with chisel and hammer, had been fit together in a way that lets it rise through two stories and a roof, and reach even farther as a chimney. None of it has moved a smidgen in 74 years.

I can’t imagine the weight resting on those bottom stones, yet because they’re rocks, they’ve had no trouble holding up the whole structure. I thought of the shifting sands down at the beach today, continually changing shape in the wind, and the Sunday school chorus made perfect sense. Rock trumps sand for foundation purposes.

As I studied my fireplace, I thought of something our pastor said. Sand, when fused together, can be made into bricks, which can then be combined to build giant cathedrals. The unstable can become stable. After all, when inspected under a magnifying glass, sand is simply tiny rocks.

Christianity is all about many people becoming one family, one Church, and the unstable (sand) becoming stable (bricks). Every individual who loves and follows Christ is unified (and stabilized) through Jesus, who is called the cornerstone, the most important rock in any building. My father was an engineer/architect and used to tell us the cornerstone was insurance that the rest of the building would be “square with the world.”

And isn’t that exactly what Jesus did? He laid his life down and became the foundation, the cornerstone, on which the Church was built. Then he offered to change the rest of us from sand into sturdy bricks who together can build lives on him.

And when the storms come against his Church, against us, “The house on the Rock will stand firm!”

“You… are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22)

Messy Motives

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All of us have days when we work hard but accomplish little. One of my daily prayer requests is for God-prompted efficiency, but it doesn’t always pan out that way.

Today, my first day back from England, I’d hoped to get much accomplished and started the laundry first thing. It wasn’t long, though, before I got distracted by other chores, and inefficiency took over. When I finally got back to the wash machine hours later, I opened the lid and groaned. I’d forgotten to check my pockets, and the black wash was dotted with hundreds of tiny, sticky bits of wet Kleenex.

As I lifted the clothes from the washer, pieces of matted tissue flicked onto me and the rug, and also back into the wash tub. I stood and picked at the clothes for a long time before putting them in the dryer, berating myself for such inefficiency.

Then later, on the fourth load, the very same thing happened! Hundreds more pieces of wet tissue had to be picked off of more clothes, inefficiency on steroids.

Isn’t sin much like that? We tuck away a little something negative and figure we’ll take care of it later. It may stay hidden for weeks or even years without causing any trouble, and we may even have forgotten about it. Then suddenly it makes a reappearance that looks nothing like the original. It’s bigger, stickier, a problem multiplied to the point of requiring major damage control.

Most of us find it hard to always do things right. We’re better at cutting corners, fudging the truth, and enjoying corrupt thoughts. Even when we know we’re on a path we shouldn’t be, we’re reluctant to get back on track right away. We say, “Yes, I’ll definitely correct that, just not right now.”

I’d like to think that after we make enough messes, we’ll learn not to repeat our mistakes. But my wash day mayhem proves otherwise. Intentions are one thing, actions another.

Thankfully, God wants to help. He starts each of us off with a tender conscience and urges us to pay attention to it. If we ignore his promptings, we can count on extensive clean-up later.

But every new day offers another chance to do things well. Just as my dryer’s lint screen caught many of the tissue bits on my clothes, God makes sure our sin catches us, then sees that we deal with the consequences. But after we clean up our messes, his offer is always for a new chance to try for righteous living.

Maybe a good prayer at the start of each day isn’t a request for efficiency but for a passion to do things right the first time around.

“The Lord will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart.” (1 Corinthians 4:5)