Shifting My Gaze

A couple of weeks ago, my pastor was sharing about Jesus being in the Garden at Gethsemane. Jackie’s message that Sunday was about the Lord’s Prayer, and he was pointing out parallels between that prayer and the one Jesus prayed in the garden the night before His arrest and crucifixion. It was insightful, but something else caught my attention about Jesus’ prayer that last night.

His heart was heavy, because He knew the time of His death was drawing nigh. He asked His disciples to stay nearby and pray. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” He shared with them. “Stay here and keep watch with Me,” (Matthew 26:38). Jesus walked a bit farther and fell with His face to the ground. He was in agony. He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42).

An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him, just as they did at the beginning of His ministry, following His time of temptation in the wilderness. “And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44). No clearer picture of affliction has ever been presented. So great was His anguish, His blood vessels burst, mingling with sweat, dropping like tears to the ground.

I’ve always thought this anguish was because Jesus knew He would soon bear the sins of the world when He would be nailed to the cross and die. Surely that was true, but this time, as I read these verses and looked at the scene they described, I wondered more than ever, what was it that caused such distress?

When I lived on my aunt and uncle’s farm, I often sat on the back porch, looking out across the pasture and pond. Most of the time, the black angus cows slowly made their way around the pasture with their heads down, munching grass. If they were ever standing with their heads up, it got my attention. And if they all had their heads up and were looking in the same direction, I knew there was something out there that I couldn’t see, like a fox or coyote. When the cows stood at attention, I knew to shift my gaze in the direction they were looking.

In the same way, as I looked at these verses about Jesus’ anguish, I knew that to learn more, I needed to shift my gaze in the direction He was looking: toward the Father. And it struck me that maybe there was more to His misery than our sin (not that that’s not enough). I think the other source of His pain was knowing that bearing our sin meant not just dying, but descending to hell, which meant being separated from His Father.

Jesus said in John 10:10, “I and the Father are one.” He had been with the Father forever. He knew that our sins would separate Him from God (Isaiah 59:2). This separation agony was echoed when Jesus was hanging on the Cross and cried, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Seeing His agony over being separated from the Father then made me think, ‘What does that say about the love of the Father?’ Then I wondered how often I take this amazing love for granted–all too often. I get up in the morning and walk right past it, just like I walk past my couch on the way to the kitchen. It moves me to tears to think of how carelessly I carry His love, when Jesus treasured it above all else. Do I truly grasp that God loves me with that same love–a love so great that being separated from it was the worst thing that Jesus ever experienced? Who knows what really happened during His death, but my own opinion is that the hardest part of Him securing our salvation was not cloaking Himself with our sin, but the fact that it separated Him from His Father.

Just before Jesus died, darkness came over the whole land (Mark 15:33). Not only did the sun disappear, but the Son disappeared as well, and maybe those clouds weren’t just about His leaving, but were also about the Father grieving.

I’m thankful for this fresh perspective on not just Christ’s sacrifice for me, but for the Love that was behind it all, especially as I turn my thoughts to Easter. When I survey the wondrous Cross, I will also consider the amazing Love that was behind it, beside it, underneath it, above it, before it and after it. “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell,” so goes the hymn. As you think about Easter, think about not just Jesus’ actions, but the object of His affection. It wasn’t just us; it was His Father as well.

Cain and the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

I recently read The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, and I loved it. Anytime that I’ve read or heard anything about the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the focus has always been on the younger son, who demands his inheritance from his father, squanders it on wild living, and then, when he hits bottom, has to swallow his pride and go back home.

But there was another brother in this story, as Keller focuses on in his book. The older brother had done everything right, he thought, and he resented it when the dad rolled out the red carpet for the younger son to welcome him back home. One of Keller’s main points of the book is that each brother represented a different way to be alienated from the Father. The older son may have looked like he had it all together, but he didn’t.

My friend Rhonda and I are going to study this book together, and it looks like I’ll be leading a women’s group at my church in a study on it as well, so this afternoon I was re-reading the first chapter and then digging a bit in Scripture for more material. When it comes to biblical brothers, Cain and Abel are maybe the most well known, so I turned to Genesis 4 to read their story again. To correlate with Luke 15, Cain is the older brother–Abel the younger. Their story takes a BIT of a departure, though, when Cain, angry that God the Father is more pleased with Abel’s sacrifice, kills his brother, Abel.

What struck me as I read about them is that several times, God talks to Cain. “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry?….” “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?” “The Lord said, ‘What have you done?” The Genesis account doesn’t include any responses from Cain to God. The Lord is talking to Cain, and on the other side of the conversation … crickets.

Each time God spoke to Cain, He asked him a question. AS IF He didn’t already know the answers. So why is He talking to Cain, asking him this stuff? Maybe because He’s trying to maintain their relationship. They clearly had one, because the punishment for Cain’s sin is to be a restless wanderer, cut off from God. Finally, a response from Cain: “Today You are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from Your presence. I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” He’s worried about his life, but I think he’s also sad that he’s going to be separated from God.

The Lord assures Cain that if anyone does kill him, they will suffer some serious vengeance, and He actually puts a mark on Cain so that no one will kill him. Cain still had to bear the consequences of his sin, but the Lord protected him.

I just love it that God kept the dialog going, or at least tried. In a similar way, the father in Luke 15 went to both of his sons, not just the younger one, inviting them to the celebration banquet. What a loving Father. He doesn’t want us to be restless wanderers; He wants us to rest in Him and wonder at His grace.

Bible Thoughts

I haven’t blogged much lately (obviously, seeing as how my last post was more than a year ago). Today I was thinking that if I wrote about insights/thoughts I get as I read the Bible, it would help me be more accountable to be in the Word and to write more.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m supposed to be doing. I used to think writing was my thing, but then when I changed jobs and wasn’t a full-time writer anymore, I felt a bit lost. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I still think like a writer most of the time and have writerly thoughts, so this gives me an outlet for that. I pretty much always need encouragement to stay faithful to reading God’s Word (unfortunately), and it helps with that as well. These won’t be anything huge, just random little thoughts. I hope you readers (both of you) enjoy and can find some encouragement.

Thought no. 1:

John 1:19,20: “Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, ‘I am not the Christ.’”

As I was pondering the ‘why am I here?’ question, I read this and was inspired by John the Baptist. Maybe I should try his take on things and start off by naming what I’m pretty sure I’m NOT here to do. The process of elimination can be a good thing. Plus, it’s probably a good practice to just remind myself every so often that there is a God, and I’m not Him.

My Two Political Cents

I don’t like politics and try to stay as far away from it as I can, usually. But all the health care hubbub that’s going on now, the economic uncertainties we still face, all the strained race relations in our country and the world, plus some of the international situations that have occurred in the past few months, have got me thinking.

I’ve been thinking about how typically the traits that are a person’s strongest, or a nation’s, can also tend to become their weaknesses when taken to the extreme. Someone may be very giving, for example, and people will love them for their selfless acts toward others. But that means that some people will probably take advantage of that generosity, which can make it a weakness. For our country, I believe one word sums up our strengths and weaknesses: more. We were founded to build a country based on religious freedom. We were also founded as a Christian nation, and our founders wanted the citizens of this country to be able to worship God in whatever way they saw best.

We were founded in a land brimming with resources, wide open with opportunity. One settlement led to another, and another. One denomination led to another. Growth sparked trade and entrepreneurs. Our leaders continued to place their faith and trust in God, like explorers staking a flag at the North Pole. And more was good.

And now we find ourselves trying to dig out and recover from greed, basically. More became a weakness as loans were approved for people who really couldn’t afford them. Deals were made between institutions that were shaky at best. And our house of cards fell in. So what has more really gotten us?

As we all try to endure and even make the most of these challenging economic times, so many people have gotten back to the basics of life. Instead of going on vacations, families have stayed home, having BBQs in the back yard, traveling to local atractions. Neighbors have helped neighbors, family members have helped each other. Many of us have really re-evaluated our lives, trying to figure out what we really need and what we can do without.

And it seems like we need to do that as a nation. The healthcare debate surely shows that people are worried, nervous, on edge, and it seems like many members of our government seem to be ignoring us, trying to ignore our outcries by downplaying them or just plain ignoring them by taking cell phone calls when they should be listening to the citizens standing before them. A few have acknowledged that many people are upset, but “they aren’t representative.” How many public forums is it going to take? How much outcry does there have to be?

But I don’t want to get stuck on healthcare, because that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because I think we need to get back to our basics. We need to tear down the house of cards and get back to the foundation. I just watched a video of a speech by Congressman Randy Forbes from Virginia, and to me it just cuts to the heart of the whole thing. You do not have to be a Christian to be an American–because of the freedoms our country was formed upon, you can choose to worship the God or a god however you choose–but you cannot deny the importance of the God–the only God–that our country was built upon. “Our Constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other,” John Adams, 2nd President of the United States.

And that’s the way it was …

I was sad to learn that Walter Cronkite had passed away. I remember watching him on CBS, at a plain desk with the countries of the world on the wall behind him. As a kid in the ’60s, I watched him then and throughout his career. He retired in 1981, the year I graduated from high school. I’ve read articles recently about how trusted he was. I was young, but I trusted him, and in a way he helped teach me about right and wrong.

Before the age of talk shows and pundits and endless coverage of events, there was the nightly news. One broadcast. One opportunity to inform viewers about what had happened in the world that day. He was a professional, and yet he seemed like one of us. As Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote in the New York Times, “His job was to appear unfazed, unchanged by the events he described. But from time to time — reporting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, reporting from Vietnam, reporting that first step on the moon — he made it clear that the news of the day had changed not only us but him.”

My maternal grandparents were all about CBS. I’m not sure why they never really watched any other network, but they didn’t. So if we were ever over there in the evening, we definitely watched Walter Cronkite.

One memory that still sticks out in my mind is having supper with Mamaw and Papaw one night. I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I was in elementary school and probably in the 2nd or 3rd grade. Parts of the memory are sketchy. I think Papaw may have been working, because it seems like it was just Mamaw there, and we were eating at the little table in the den. Mr. Cronkite was telling us that there had been severe flooding in Bangladesh or somewhere–I don’t remember the exact place. A typhoon or monsoon or some kind of ‘soon’ had hit, and hundreds of people were without homes. Some had died.

Mamaw had no idea where Bangladesh was–didn’t know anything about it at all. But she did know that many of these people had lost everything they owned in this storm. And as we watched black and white footage of homes and huts washed away, Walter gave us the story about what had happened and how many people were affected. Mamaw cried. And I learned from him and her what it meant to have compassion, empathy and sympathy for others.

If Mr. Cronkite reported on a burglary or a murder, Mamaw again showed compassion for the victims and talked about how wrong it was for the suspects to have done what they did. And I learned more about right and wrong.

“Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a world-changing war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it. Walter Cronkite’s gift was to talk to us about what he saw, and we are very lucky to have been able to listen.” Verlyn Klinkenborg.

Go rest high on that mountain, Mr. Cronkite. Thank you for being such a positive influence in my life.

Some good things about not having air conditioning

I’m trying to be a positive, glass-half-full kinda gal, although as Coldplay says, Don’t ask neither how full nor empty is your glass. So maybe I should be grateful that I just have a glass. Anyhoo, this laptop is scorching my already-toasty legs, so let me just get to the point:

• My house probably needed to be aired out anyway.
• Having to raise the windows has forced me to clean all the spider webs and stuff in and around them.
• Most every room has a ceiling fan (thank you Jesus, Aunt Betty and Uncle Johnny).
• Hopefully having said fans cranked up on high will knock the dust off those blades. (Is it becoming obvious that I’m sorely lacking in my dedication to cleaning house?)
• Having the windows up and fans on reminds me of when I was little and air conditioning was a luxury. Yes, I’m old. But I did not walk to school barefoot in the snow–I”m not that old.
• It reminds me of the end of 3rd grade, when I got the chicken pox and stood in front of our window unit a/c, slathered in calamine lotion, trying not to scratch.
• At night I can hear the big ole bullfrogs croaking down at the pond. This is probably my favorite “perk” so far.
• The old unit has had troubles every summer for the past three years at least, so maybe getting a new unit will mean it will be a long time before I’ll have to go without cool air again.
• Sweating is good for my pores.
• That’s all for now, but if it takes a few more days before the new unit can be installed, I may come up with more.
• Oh yeah, it makes me very grateful when I’m in a place that does have cool air.

Gobsmacked

Hopefully by now you’ve watched the video clip of Susan Boyles’ performance on “Britain’s Got Talent,” where she completely wow-ed the audience and judges with her incredibly wonderful performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.

Susan has been described as frumpy, middle-aged, even a hairy angel. All of these describe perceptions of her physical appearance. I admit that when I watched her clip for the firs time, I was probably like most other people who’ve watched it—I focused on her looks and had pretty low expectations of her singing abilities. What one has to do with the other, I don’t know, except that here in America we are bombarded daily with news of celebrities and “beautiful” people (at least according to some), so it’s hard not to focus on that right off the bat. Plus, just as a human being, the first thing we learn about another person, provided we have sight, is what they look like, and it just seems ingrained into our nature to automatically start making impressions and judgments based on what we see.

So now the bandwagon, which is rolling quickly and picking up a lot of followers, is that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I saw a Susan Boyle fan site tonight that’s offering pins and mugs that say, “I Dreamed a Dream,” and “Never judge a book by its cover.” The song title and lyrics were a perfect fit for Susan to sing, as she’d carried this dream of being a singer for so many years. And it’s true that we shouldn’t judge people by their looks. I mean, really, who are we to declare the beauty (or non-beauty) of a fellow creation? Yet we do.

While I think it’s a valid lesson to try and keep our hearts and minds open to people, that’s not the main thing that has touched me the most about Susan’s story. After I watched her performance for the first time, I was awed and wanted to learn more about her. A search revealed a link to STV, a Scottish TV station, who brought Susan, a fellow Scot, onto one of their shows for a brief interview.  http://video.stv.tv/?bcpid=1610699553&bctid=19521357001 .

What I keep focusing on is Susan saying, “Basically I wanted to fulfil a wish to my mother that I wanted to do something with my life. Not only that but I felt like I had a bit more to offer.”

A bit more, yes, you could say that. Quite a bit more.

I think there are several reasons why Susan’s performance has resonated with so many of us: none of us want to be judged by our looks either; we admire her courage to sing on TV and in front of judges and so many people; she is the quintessential underdog and we love it when the underdog wins. Her performance has stuck with me more for the way her dream and her desire for more–to have more and to do more–overcame her fear. I have felt many times like I wasn’t being given a chance, was overlooked and underutilized, but a variety of fears kept me from doing anything about it.

I read online today that the female judge on “Britain’s Got Talent,” Amanda Holden, said, “I won’t let Simon make her go to his dentist and I certainly won’t be letting her go to his hairdresser. I think she needs to stay exactly as she is because that’s the reason we love her. The minute we spoil her by turning her into a glamourpuss is going to be when it’s spoilt.” I was happy to read that.

But when asked about a makeover, Susan told one US show: “I’d like that!”I would say the same thing. I just hope they don’t Hollywoodize her so that she becomes a creation of man rather than a creation of her Creator.

Susan cared for her ailing mother, is a devoted cat owner, and according to townspeople a wonderful friend, neighbor and fellow citizen. But she does have more to offer, and I’m so glad she found the courage to share some of it with us. Obviously we need it, since her performance has been watched almost 17 million times! (At least 8 or 10 of those are mine.)

Susan’s story has touched me so much not just because she has an incredible voice—it’s because she wanted more in her life, more from life, and she actually did something about it. Maybe some of the millions of us who are so inspired by her will follow her example.

The Value of Life

I am troubled by so many recent reports of murders. The recent one in New York was terrible, especially knowing the gunman barricaded the back door to prevent anyone from getting out, then walked in the front door with guns blazing. How terrifying. Or the policemen in Pennsylvania and California who were brutally murdered just trying to do their job. Especially distressing are the stories of family members murdering family members. Fathers killing their wives and children. Brothers brutally killing their sisters.

Some of the troubling stories don’t involve murder but are distressing nonetheless, such as the mom who really wanted to have a child with her boyfriend but wasn’t able to because she’d had a hysterectomy, so she decided to let her daughter have the child, and tried to get the daughter drunk and drugged so the boyfriend could rape her. How in the world did that idea ever make any sense?

The current headline on msnbc.com asks if America has become numb to tragedy. I think a more appropriate question to ask is, have we lost our sense of the value of life? I’m afraid that’s what we’ve become numb to. And I fear that until we can get back to honoring the gift of life, it’s only going to get worse.

On the iPhone and Some Randomocity

I don’t know if randomocity is a word or not, but I’m going with it.

This weekend I ported my number from AT&T to Verizon. I switched from a first generation iPhone to a BlackBerry curve, and I love it. I’m a Mac and loved everything about my iPhone except the actual phone part. AT&T just has terrible service in the places I need it most: home and work, and I decided I didn’t want to wait till the end of June when my contract is up, so I’ve been reading and researching and trying to decide what kind of device to get. Verizon has the best coverage around here, and they’re what I had before the iPhone, so I knew I’d go back.

I went with the BlackBerry Curve and love it. E-mail is super fast, I can use voicedialing again (I know there were apps for that on the iPhone but it wasn’t the same), and I can use my iPhone like an iTouch. The best part is that while I had no service or maybe one bar with AT&T while sitting in my recliner, I now have four bars, so I can make calls without losing the connection, plus I can hear the other person and they can hear me much clearer. Oh happy day!

From my own experience and what I’ve read online, if Apple and Verizon ever get together on a phone–watchout! They will gain some serious market share.

Next topic: Super Bowl. Wow–way to go, Jennifer Hudson. I’m sorry your family couldn’t be there to see and hear you sing the national anthem, but I’m sure they would be incredibly proud. God bless you. The game was good; I was pulling for the Cards because they seemed to be the underdog and it was such a shock that they made it that far in the season, but it’s fine that the Steelers won. I think they made a great choice in Mike Tomlin for their head coach. The commercials seemed a bit blah to me. The NBC lmao cracked me up, and I love those E-Trade commercials with the talking toddler.

One last thought: I went to the assisted living place this afternoon to visit my 93-year-old grandmother. She’s lived there just over a year; prior to that, she lived alone in her home. She’s fallen several times the past few years, and last fall she fell and broke her hip. She made it fine through surgery and rehab, and physically has done really well. Mentally, things are slipping. She knows who we are still, most of the time, but she doesn’t really make much sense when she talks.

She was OK at first today, but then, for whatever reason, she got into this funk. Her voice got weak and shaky, she seemed really confused, asking where her family had gone while we were all sitting around her, and then she began to talk to the Lord, asking Him what she was gonna do, who was gonna take care of her. Then she wondered why He didn’t just take her on. She’s said this a few times before, but today it just broke my heart. I have no idea how much longer she’ll be with us, but I feel her utter exhaustion and think it may not be much longer. It’s like she’s absolutely, completely exhausted and is just almost at the point where she can’t, and maybe doesn’t want to, go on. I think it’s a blessing and a curse to live such a long life.

When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers

I voted today, because it’s such a privilege. Then I determined I wasn’t going to watch the election coverage, because I just can’t take it. We’ve even got turmoil here in my hometown with our mayoral election, which is a huge mess because the guy who won can’t be certified as mayor because he didn’t turn in all his paperwork on time. So even though he won the majority of votes, he’s out of luck. I understand he didn’t follow the rules, and while I hate it for him, I understand that it’s fair for him to bear the consequences. What I’m not OK with is that the new city council was deemed to have the right to choose one of its members to serve as mayor. I didn’t vote for any of them for mayor, nor did any of the other residents here. It’s a huge mess, and I don’t think anyone is going to be happy with anything unless we all just get to vote again, but I don’t see that happening. So the next 4 years are going to be strange ones locally, and now it looks like they’ll be the same nationally as well.

Obviously I’m a Republican and I voted for McCain/Palin. I am bummed about Obama winning, not because of his race–that wasn’t even a factor for me. I heard so many people talking about Palin’s lack of experience and that she was just too much of a gamble, but to me, Obama was the bigger gamble, because he seemed to be trying to be all things to all people, saying whatever he thought they wanted to hear. I deal with that with my dad, and I don’t think I can say clearly enough that I hate it. It’s lying, flat out. Since the beginning of the campaign, every time I thought of Obama, I thought of MGM Studios at Disney World. When you walk into the park, it looks like you’re in New York City. As you walk down the streets, the buildings look like the ones in the Big Apple. It even sounds like the Big Apple. But behind all that, it’s empty.

Obama made some great speeches and got everyone all excited. So excited that they ignored any information that portrayed him in any kind of negative light at all. “Change!” they cried. “We want change!” Well, now we’ve got it, and now we’ll see if he’s really NYC or just MGM.

When I saw online that McCain had conceded the election to Obama, I thought of the Karen Blixen quote from Out of Africa: “When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.”

I believe in the One, True God—not gods. And I believe that God is loving, not hateful and punishing. And I also know that when His creation chooses something other than Him, He will let them. He did it when the Israelites wanted a king, and that surely didn’t turn out all that great.

I don’t mean to say that McCain is all good and Obama is all bad. Nothing is ever all one or the other. We are all flawed, sinful, broken. I pray that Obama’s Christian faith is real, although I question it when I see some of the things he supports that seem so against what love and faith stand for.

In the last couple of presidential elections, at least, the outcome has teetered right at the top of the fulcrum and could have gone either way, but tilted just barely toward the more conservative side. It was just a matter of time, really, till it tilted the other way. I just wonder if most people really knew what kind of change they wanted. Did they have specifics for what they haven’t liked, and is it really the Republicans fault? Or did it all just sound good because it was different and therefore it had to be better? I guess we’ll see.

This was not my prayer, but it is now reality. May God’s truth prevail in the hearts of men, no matter what and no matter where—whether it’s NYC or MGM.