Coming Home

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and blessed him. The son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, " Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." --Luke 12: 20-24

I live by necessity in two states--that of the humiliated repentant and that of the forgiven. You constantly forgive as I come to You humiliated and humble, but You also constantly rejoice over my restoration. I know at once sweet misery and welcome comfort. You live in me to the extent I open up the rooms of my soul for You to clean.

I may choose to live in the pig lot, but You will not. You wait patiently in Your courtyard for me, scanning the horizon for my return, looking for the smallest indication that I may be coming home. And the homecomings occur moment by moment as I acknowledge my sin before You.

Isn't then the most sensible request that to see all of my sin? After all, I can't come home, can't get anywhere near you, while sin still clings to me like sewage. This has to be the real joy of living in a fallen world--the repeated coming home, the collapse into your delighted arms, the restoration in Your overflowing grace. A state of humiliation before You is better than separation from You. You forgive quickly and completely and forever. This is the new morning You promise, full of mercy.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness--1 John 1:9

The First Thing

Last evening, I watched a Bible lesson in progress. Our friends Thad and Kim visited with their six little boys and we watched the children tumble over one another for about eight hours, delightful as puppies. At some point, one of the boys asked his dad whether he could go outside and shoot his BB gun. Dad told him to put on his shoes first. Young Aiden had a few more things to say about what he wanted to do next and how, something about a brother and a bullseye. Dad, however, simply told him, " How about you obey me first, and then we can talk about the rest?" Aiden did.

That's what You tell me. Every morning, events lay at my feet right next to my slippers. I have things I must clearly do, clear as putting on my shoes. These activities, small or large, encompass your clear instructions to me and I must simply do them without embellishment. When the phone rings, or mail arrives in my inbox, You are speaking in subtle whisperings, saying, "I love you. Just look at what I am going to let you do for me today."

I don't have look far. You may not put the subtleties of Your character or the intricacies of Your Word on the lower shelf, but You leave me no doubts as to what activities You require. You tell me simply and plainly. I just have to look at the lamp you have lit and walk.

This is love for God, to obey His commands--1John 5:3
Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path--Psalm 119:105

Who Can See the Wind?

A few years ago, our friend Virginia gave us some Westminster chimes. They hang outside all year, their long pipes ringing deep and round in all seasons. Last night, a gusty wind disturbed them--I could hear them through the open window-- and this morning, when, for the first time this year, dawn came gently enough to greet sitting outside in my favorite chair, the chimes hung silent. I found the clapper's string tangled in a nearby vine, and as I freed it, it struck the bells hard.

I could hear the sound they made, of course, rich and insistent, like an impatient call to church, but as I drew away my hands, I could feel its song, too, like something thick and fuzzy in the air around it, something that moved without substance, beyond sensory experience. I remembered that I heard once somewhere how, when Beethoven became deaf in the last days of his life, he would lay his head on his piano as he played it so, though he could not hear the music, he could feel its vibration through the soundboard. Today, those same vibrations came not only through the bells of my chimes, but into the air around them, real but invisible, impossibly alive without form or feeling.

The chimes remind me that our lives extend beyond what our sensory experiences register. Not one to think very often about otherworldly influences, spiritual beings like angels or demons, I don't usually recognize them when they pay us a call. Because they touch places not accessible to senses, I can't directly grasp their influence. Like subtle, indefinable warnings that someone is walking up behind me or a child is stealing a cookie from the jar in another room, I just know. Like the air changing around my chimes, like an invisible shallow breath, like the slow beat of life, I can't hold spiritual presences in my hand. I just have to trust the knowing.

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. --1Corinthians 2:13

Long Live the King

A lot of folks watched the royal wedding recently. I missed it, but am still fascinated by the whole concept of kings and princesses, crowns and curtsy. Modern kings kept all the pomp that fascinates, but have largely been stripped of what really makes them kings. Essentially, we don't mind bowing to them because it doesn't really mean anything. Kings still drape themselves in ermine, but they never lock weary wives in towers or whack off the heads of dastardly traitors anymore. Popes and presidents wield more real power. Kings may hold court, but no judgments occur there.

All of us have been raised in a democracy; we have no frame of reference for real monarchy. We do not know how to think as subjects. A real king commands and expects obedience without question. His proclamations may be righteous or evil. He may make them to rule properly to simply to amuse himself. The whole concept of bowing down and meaning it because if we don't, we will die, brings kingship into new light. A king commands and we obey. We must not only kneel, we must work, we must hand over money and property, we must hand over children, we must take up arms and risk our own lives. We do not vote about this. We get no say at all. Real monarchy breeds squalor, scheming, and rebellion. Still.

And men still want to be kings. You have known someone who held the scepter in your own life. In all probability, you helped hand it to them. I know I have. Then I learned what it meant to be ruled.

No man on earth can be a good king. We don't have the proper equipment. The best kings have occasional glimpses of brilliance, moments of justice and seasons of righteous victory. Goliath is still occasionally killed by a young David and Solomon still sometimes sees clearly enough to figure out that the baby needs to be divided, but no man can rule successfully over others.

You, Lord, knew that when You let the Israelites have the kings they begged for, and those kings turned out the only way they could have--badly. You gave us one King, the God and Man, Jesus Christ. And, while nominal royalty revels to chants of "Long live the King", all those earthly kings will die. You do not.

God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. --Acts 2:36
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."--Mathew 28:18

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