Hallmark Mothering

Folks gotta love Hallmark, they really do. Hallmark makes a way for us to tell each other about subjects hard to express every day, like love and respect and commitment. I am grateful for them on days like this, when pink envelopes lie on my morning countertop, bearing sweet inscriptions and promising shy, otherwise unspoken sentiments.

Hallmark, unintentionally, also reminds me of shortcomings. I am human and easily slide into mothering errors, too often falling short of the loving mother cards describe. I have lost patience, judged too quickly, forgotten, ignored, and abandoned. Somehow, through it all, though, my sons and my fine forgiving husband love me back. Just like You, my sweet Father in heaven.

My own mother fell short, too, and probably hers, and down through the generations, ad infinitim. Mothers are as much examples of our fallen human condition as anyone else, but we do not surprise You. You brought us into the world as children so that we could understand the sweetness of simple, trusting love. Later, you allow us to mother and father so that we can understand Your own love for us. Here, in knowing You, lies the real grace not only in today, but in every day.

Thank you, boys, for your generous loving. Thank you, Hallmark, for helping them express it. Above all, thank you, Savior and Lord, for gifting men with the ability to love, to forgive, and to hope.

What Goes Up

I seem to have forgotten how much of what I take for granted needs to be learned. We spent some sweet time at a playground yesterday, following a four-year-old and a seven-year-old in their aimless adventures and play. I discovered that I can still swing pretty well, and hold my own on a kid-powered merry-go-round, but am completely outclassed on both monkey bars and a teeter-totter.

In the case of the monkey bars, my major malfunction related directly to age and ability. I had the age, but the short ones had all the ability. The seesaw, however, limited us by the rules of physics, plain and simple. It doesn't work when a someone five-plus feet tall occupies one side and someone two feet tall the other. And then there is the question of weight and mass. There was no way that little four-year-old Emma could make her side go down while I sat firmly on the ground across from her. She kept pushing and squirming, believing that desire could overcome the laws of physical resistance, but it didn't work.

Eventually, we gave up and I switched places with a convenient two-year-old, confident that the substitution would solve our problem, but it didn't. We had satisfied the demands of physics, but not of experience. Little Emma, with her partner high in the air, pumped her legs mightily and propelled herself up and the toddler down, but they stuck there, unable go back over because the little guy just didn't know what to do. "Push!" we urged him, but he just looked confused.

We finally gave it all up as a bad job and moved on to something else, but I can't help but think now about how everything I know about life goes back to the principle of the seesaw. Fall, and get up. Give, and take. Push, and resist. Action and reaction. But there's more, and You showed me this morning how important this lesson really is.

As far as the East is from the West, He has removed our transgressions from us. --Psalm 103:12

When I sin, I have learned what will happen. The action of sin has a predictable result--punishment. Sometimes it gives a good whack immediately, and sometimes bides its time, but punishment never rests until it satisfies the laws of spiritual physics. Unless....

Sin can produce another reaction, one that heals rather than destroys, but I have to act. You gave me this happy news when You taught me that the laws of action and reaction include sin followed by repentance. That way, I can access Your promise to remove my sin to a place no one can see. Like the seesaw, my repentance tips the balance in perfect rhythm. Rather than the cycle completing in misery, it completes in restoration.

I have not always recognized it, but You always sit in the other side of the seesaw. You will punish when you must, but You much prefer to bless. My repentance is the just the push You need to do it.

Echoes of Eden

5AM. I open my eyes to a spreading blush on the horizon. The new day exhales gently through an open window. Two birds trill in bright duet, one with pert chirps in the foreground and another providing long notes of counterpoint behind it. The first tulips uncurl in emphatic cream and fire. A calico cat stretches and leaps from its bed in the flowerpot. Single notes ring deep and clear from the chimes, slow in even counts like Your footsteps falling one by one as you walk in the cool of the day. Even my own thoughts sing--sweet Hosannas rise in comforting repetition.

It feels like Eden. In a few moments, though, I know that a rude truck or a neighbor's bad muffler will break the serenade. Sometime later, the flowers will wilt and drop. Certainly, at just the opportune moment, the cat will reach up for a bird and assassinate it just for fun. And my own mind already drifts and clouds with self-concern.

Even as serene echoes of a world at one time surely perfect slide away like brilliant leaves escaping in swirls on a giggling brook, they both sadden and console. Once, in the beginning, this day's beauty would not have broken. Once, relentless entropy would not have held sway. I would rise from a fragrant bed confident and without regret. That will not happen today. While I yet live, it will never happen.

But in this moment, my world shares Eden's lovely memory. The pattern of creation still bears sweet marks of Your pronouncement that it is good and You still reach into it with glory. A rising sun lays its bright glow on the topmost branch of the old oak where a single blackbird sits as sentinel, red epaulets on both shoulders. I hold my breath. Don't go just yet. Stay with me a little longer. I watch the bird, only clean blue behind him, as raises his eyes to heaven, tips his head back, and opens his throat to sing.

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. Genesis 1:31

Detours

Some people plan ahead for almost everything they do, particularly important, potentially life-changing things. The Bible supports this--remember the ant, after all. But planning has pitfalls, too. Somewhere among the to-do lists, and appointment books, and the calendars lurks a growing dependence on the assurance that plans protect us, that they truly determine how life's circumstances work out.

We have this game we play when we are trying to make decisions. It's called the "What's the worst that could happen?" game. We puzzle through hard circumstances, then we spread them out before us and ask ourselves to identify the worst thing that could happen if we implemented the plan we'd just devised. This method works pretty well to pinpoint flaws in our thinking, and helps to prepare us in advance for adverse circumstances, but we rarely think of all eventualities. Often, circumstances take a completely different turn.

Advance thought and planning can help avoid some of life's pitfalls, but we just can't out-plan You. I can build strong-looking towers of preparations, but if I depend on them to take me to safety, without understanding Your dominion over them, the worst will happen. In practice, this whole dangerous procedure starts with me being what looks for all the world like faithful. I study my Bible and pray for guidance. I glean as much understanding as I can, then use what I learn to start sketching little flow charts. If I do this, then so-and-so might do that... This is where the ant starts dragging crumbs into the anthill for winter. Of course, Your character and commandments figure into the dragging. God's Word says this, so I have to do that... Eventually, I've laid out a road to go down and am confident that I am following you on it.

I keep forgetting this method's biggest flaw, however. I am not You. I can reason through some of your wisdom, but never all of it, which means that, unless I have heard Your audible word, when I lean too heavily on my tower, it will fall. And it crashes loud and hard. I get hurt, I get mad, I accuse You of failing me when I have simply not let You be the only thing You can be--perfect. I have substituted my plan for trust. I keep forgetting what You told me:

I have loved you...Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends. --John 15:13-15

Plans help, but I cannot value them more than You. They help organize thinking and even ease practical concerns, but they do not protect. You lay down your life for me. I can trust You.

Balance Beam

I want life to work out as perfectly as a math problem. I find soothing satisfaction in an equation, the perfect balance that exists on either side of an equal sign. I want work to equal reward as perfectly as 2+2=4. I want suffering to equal punishment as neatly as 3x3=9. It doesn't. In life, someone completely uninvolved often suffers for another's crime. A drunk driver kills an two-year-old. A retired mailman loses his life savings in a scam. A drug addict's baby is born with cerebral palsy. It's not fair.

How can I not bleed for these situations? I cry for justice, but it doesn't come. The two-year-old stays dead. The mailman moves in with his son. The baby lives in an institution. No punishment meted out to the criminal changes the results. Where is the balance? Not here.

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. --Ephesians 6:12

OK, I get that part. Only by adding eternal measures to the light side of the scale does it balance. Only You can make it even. Hence, the cross--the one You climbed on, the same one you tell us to pick up and carry every day and, eventually, to climb onto ourselves. I try to do this, and sometimes can, but I am no hero. I am willing sometimes to suffer for someone else's sake, someone who has had a bad break, someone I love or even who loves me. I see their misfortune or sickness or grief, I look at You, and say, yes, I can do this for them.

But You did more. You suffered not for those who loved You or even knew You. You suffered for those who hated You, who intentionally hurt You, and not only for their sake. By suffering, you not only bought them a chance to take advantage of Your life, Your promise, Your presence, but you also did something way beyond that. You used your suffering to defeat evil in the heavenly realms. The earthquake that shook Calvary had its epicenter in hell. You transferred all power and the very foundations of the earth back to Yourself that day. Those You freed may or may not ever know it, but Evil certainly knows. And we are called to join You in both works, that of suffering and that of battling evil.

This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved--and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him. --Phillipians 1:28-29

And this is the job You give to those who believe--to follow You to the cross and participate in what You do in the heavenly realms. I don't usually feel privileged to do this, but my cowardice sprouts from my own burden of sin. Suffering for what I did not do at the hands of those who neither know or care is how I follow You and by this you can, even through me, defeat evil. This is how You perfect the balance. I just have to trust and act.

In a Word

I sin. I believe I sin every day. The commandments, "You shall have no other gods before me, You shall not make idols, You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain, Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, Honor your father and mother, You shall not commit murder or adultery, steal, bear false witness, covet"(Exodus 5) convince me easily enough of that, but then the New Testament brings additional conviction. "Greed amounts to idolatry." (Colossians 3:5) " Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:28) "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." (1John 3:15)

I'm a human being. Although I am supposed to care first for You, I don't. Welcome to my world: Me front and center. My world. My life. My desires. My pleasures. As long as I cling to them, all I get is them. A life that builds up myself but leaves the destruction of the people I love in its wake. Satisfied desires that eventually collapse upon themselves into dust. Pleasures that bloom for a moment, but wilt and rot way too soon.

I've learned to recognize the danger zone--that quick vitality of wanting, that surge of adrenalin that says, This time it will work. This will be fun. This will make me happy or easy or beautiful. That point is the recognition of temptation. If I don't run away screaming, closing my eyes and ears and mouth, binding my hands from action and my mind from imagination, that is the moment sin begins.

There is only one cure. Recognition of sin is not enough, not nearly enough. I must experience hurt, that is, real damage to my own pride and ego. Then I must finally see the horror that is my sin in Your eyes. I must understand sin's gravity and humiliate myself before You. I have to shed desire and pride like the rags they are and stand uncovered before You. Only after I am humiliated can I achieve humility. Humiliation signals the end of myself. Humility brings me properly before You.

Hurt followed by horror. Humiliation followed by humility. Not pretty thoughts to have on a beautiful, sunny morning. When I think about the sure struggle against sin that is before me, though, I remember that you have promised to help, to wait, and to catch me before I am ruined. You have done it already, more times than I can count. You will do it today because You never fail. So I cast myself into Your lap today, the only place of rest I know.

Stark Alternatives

I do not understand how it is possible to know You and not worship You. Knowing You includes comprehending, at least to some extent, Your perfect wisdom and justice. Knowing You includes acknowledging Your mighty power and infinite grace. Knowing You includes accepting Your covenant and sacrifice. You cannot be known apart from any of them, but if You are known, Your worthiness to be worshiped must follow and our awe for You is a forgone conclusion.

Observing this in myself, however, does not allow me to judge it in anyone else. I must take a merciful view of both sin and knowledge of God in other people and a strict view of it relative to myself. You have firmly satisfied and established salvation for everyone in perfect righteousness, but its judgment is for You alone. I cannot judge even my own salvation, much les any else's. I can, however, take responsibility for my own actions, for my attitudes, and for my obedience. Doing this, in fact, is mandatory.

It is often said that loving is Your first command. So it is. Loving You above all, which is the natural outgrowth of knowing You, then loving people. Take me captive, Lord. If I cannot cast myself into your lap, I have no hope for anything. My judgment of other men and my concern regarding my position before them is a grievous sin. Let me today care only about my position before You.