Writers In The Storm

I’m tired today: tired of the news, the people making it, the people reporting it, the people ignoring it. Some days, I want only to skim the surface, to delve no deeper that my personal reach. Being light and salt in this world is hard work that requires constant vigilance. I’m not up for it today. Today I’m better off staying away from others, so my inadequacies won’t reflect on my Savior.

Humanity is a messy, cranky, ill-tempered, fickle lot that defies my understanding. I wonder why God bothered with the Ark to save eight. Ultimately, it served His good purpose. But if I were God, I probably would have gone to plan B.

Individually, it’s a different game. Plucking a person out of the crowd requires glimpsing life through their eyes, if even for a moment. Up close, one-on-one, personal, that is where God wants us. That’s one of my prayers. I ask God to let me see others as He sees them.

Through His eyes, in His strength, I can imagine the soul behind the short temper, snotty remarks, or blazing glare. Let me see that person, that human being, created in His image, let me see that person as God see him, then my only response can be love. Even when I’m tired.

I wish life were easy. I wish it for me. I wish it for my loved ones. I even wish it for my enemies. It might make them less hateful.

But it isn’t. The tough things in life have the deepest impact. Good. Bad. Either way.

It’s easy to sit back and observe the difficulty of another’s life picking and choosing what should stay or go. The effort isn’t mine. I won’t pay that cost. The fallout won’t settle on me.

In teaching my wonderful son about the bible, he is often dismayed at the behavior of people. It’s easy to judge Adam and Eve as foolish. The Hebrews as stiff-necked. The Sanhedrin as short-sighted. Judas as a traitor. These guys saw a bush burn, the sea part, and the dead get up and walk. Now me, I would have chosen to stay in the Garden of Eden. He only held back one little tree.

I have my own list of poor choices. Always made with the intent to make my life easier, in some way, and never in consultation with my Creator. Nobility, righteousness, grace were given little consideration in my processing. Consequently, my life became more difficult.

Ah, sweet irony.

Now that I try to live on God’s frequency-more righteous, more noble, more gracious, though I often fail miserably-decisions for myself are more clear. In my walk with Him, I have my own examples of bushes burning, seas parting, and my previously dead soul that now dances. I don’t want what he chooses to keep from me.

Now the hard thing, is less the decisions, but the enduring. The knowing that the world is fallen and won’t get fixed before He returns. It grieves me, but it also frees me to keep a heavenly perspective.

But there may be decisions-not passive, non-decisions-but hard, tough, difficult decisions that require nobility, righteousness, and grace in quantities I am ill-equipped to offer in the natural. I know He will be there with me. In His protections, with His love, and through His strength, I can do that hard thing for His glory, whatever my role may be.

As the child of parents raised during the Depression, I credit both Mom and Dad with my resilience. While my father tended to tough out everything, even some of the should-be-fun stuff, Mom offered thanks for her basket of lemons and proceeded to stir the pitcher of lemonade. A genuine Minute Maid, that one, nothing kept her indefinitely low.

This characteristic has served me well as I have journeyed up the hills and through the vales of my life. If I fell off the horse, I got back up there and rode the beast.

Tenacity. Persistence. Determination. Good stuff, eh?

But on occasion, the horse I was determined to ride more resembled a merry-go-round. Somewhere along the way my fixation on achievement, finishing a job, or seeing something through, slipped into a personal goal of avoiding failure, stubbornness, or headstrong stupidity serving only to perpetuate my continued misery. Pride blinded my judgment.

The goal, whether unhealthy, unwise, or simply out of my reach became my personal white whale. Do, or die. In these cases, my resilience served only to see just how far I could sttretttccchh. Before I-

Snapped!

I rarely ascribe my decisions to God’s will. A couple of times I have clearly felt His nudging. And when He nudged, some things took place that sure felt like heavenly grease on the skids. He can give me a run-down on the actual event later. Until then, I pray for guidance. And obedience.

It’s tough for Christians, who genuinely look to God for answers, to have certainty in every situation. Moses had a hot line to God. There was no ambiguity in what God told him. Yet, he still doubted, groused, and occasionally got it wrong.

That’s where I cling to Romans 8:28.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, those who have been called according to His purpose.

The bible has countless examples of a bumbling human trying to act only in God’s will, yet blowing it big time. I’m grateful that He watches my feeble efforts to honor Him and still, somehow, finds a way to love me. That, my friends, we call grace.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

“Oh my, I wouldn’t have the courage to do that.”

“Better though, isn’t it?” my husband deposited the thoroughly cleaned keyboard back at my waiting fingertips.

I collected all the debris that exited the keyboard while he vigorously shook it, pounded on it and whacked it against my desk. A shred of paper, lots of bread crumbs, a grain or two of rice, several hairs, a sliver of metal…it made for a fairly substantial pile.

I was content with running my finger between the keys in my efforts to “clean” my keyboard. I had no idea so much yuck lay hidden deeper inside.

As I head into 2009, I wonder how much crud I have hiding in the crevasses of my heart. I don’t have the courage to turn my life upside-down and give myself a good thumping. It might hurt. I might do more harm than good.

But, when “those” days come (you know what I mean…the days you think will never end) I have the feeling God means to clean-out some of the messier build-up in my life. After all, no one likes a sticking “i” key. I..i..i..i..i..i…

My mother, an English major and history minor, enjoyed tossing around old sayings. “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” She used that one with one of my feistier friends. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” None of us kids took that one too seriously. If someone was mad, she’d say, “They can get glad in the same shoes they got mad in.” Happiness and anger are both choices.

Mom had other phrases for angry people, especially those that whined when they were verbally one-upped by someone-”If they can’t stand the heat, they need to get out of the kitchen,” or “Those who live in glass castles shouldn’t throw stones.”

Agreed. Those who have their own failings, their own sets of frailties, and their own areas of vulnerability, incompetence, and deficiency shouldn’t be casting stones. They’d be wise to step back and take a look at their own life before pronouncing judgment on others.

Jesus had His sayings, too. Hypocrites “strain gnats” in your life while they “swallow camels” in their own lives. They’re more than willing to point out the “speck” in your eye while they have “logs” floating in their own eyes. And those who carry a whole arsenal of stones to cast your way don’t seem to hear Jesus’ admonition, “He who is without sin may cast the first stone.” Or maybe they’ve heard the words and truly believe they’re justified in rock throwing. Other sayings probably apply to them.

Difficult people are a fact of life-we’ve all encountered those who are harsh, critical, eager to be angry. Like the “pot calling the kettle black” they will be oblivious to their own failings while they magnify our inadequacies. One of life’s certainties is that we will encounter stones hurled our way, and it helps to be equipped with more than just a few clever sayings.

So, when someone tries to hurt you… when someone hurls a verbal spear your direction. When someone takes aim because you didn’t meet their expectations. When someone scoffs at your pain. When someone triumphs at your mistakes or blames you for their insufficiencies, you have a choice.

Instead of flinging back the stone in a return volley, leave it on the ground. Don’t pick it up, don’t roll it around in your hand contemplating the damage you could do in return-choose grace instead. Look at it, yes, recognize and acknowledge the pain it caused, then choose to leave the stone where it lies. Let the stones fall. Let them heap up to become a monument to the grace you’ve chosen to live in, the freedom of forgiveness you’ve experienced and can now bestow on those who hurt you, and the peace of releasing your antagonist to God’s realm. You can choose to rest in the confidence that God is good and He freely bestows grace, to you, as well as to the stone-thrower.

As Mom would probably say, grace is just a stone’s throw away.

 
“Do not be eager in your heart to be angry…” (Ecclesiastes 7:9).