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Will We Obey?

Posted on April 1, 2013 by jphilo

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Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and that He had said these things to her.
John 20:18

I love the resurrection story in John 20. Maybe because we’re both women, I identify with Mary Magdalene’s emotions.Her initial despair when she sees the empty tomb.
Her determination to carry Jesus’ body all by herself in a vain attempt make things better. Her joy when Jesus said her name, and she recognized the resurrected Lord. Her immediate obedience when Jesus commanded her to tell the disciples.

Then again, I’m not very proficient at the immediate obedience thing. If I’d been in Mary’s place, Jesus’ command to proclaim the resurrection of a man who three days ago had been declared dead, dead, dead would have stopped me cold. Because I would have made an excuse out of what Mary surely understood back in her day.

Without proof or the collaboration of other credible witnesses, no one would believe her claim that Jesus was alive. Besides, she was a woman, and before Jesus came along, women didn’t count for much. Especially not to the Jewish leaders who sent Jesus to his death and wanted him to stay dead, dead, dead.

How did Mary find courage to obey? I think the answer is found in verse 17 where Jesus calls her by name. “Mary,” he says, and she responds, “Raboni.” Then, she clings to the One who rose from the dead, the One who turned her despair into hope, the One who restored purpose to her life.

When the One who called her by name commanded her to spread the word, she held onto hope implicit in his resurrection. Clinging to hope, she made no excuses. She stood firm in the truth. She refused to water down the message.

She ran to the disciples and announced, “I have seen the Lord!”

Today, with Easter music still ringing in our ears, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection lifts us up. Jesus bids us cling to the hope found in the empty tomb. He calls each of us by name and commands us to announce the truth to a waiting world.

Jesus is risen!
The tomb is empty!
Death has lost its sting!
Our Savior lives!

In the wake of Easter, with the empty tomb behind us and a world perishing without hope before us, will we follow the example of Mary Magdalene? Will we obey and proclaim what we know to be true?

We have seen the Lord!
He lives!

Photo Credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net

Impatient People…Like Me

Posted on February 8, 2013 by jphilo

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This past Wednesday was not a good day.

First, I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee in the morning and because I’d written the time down wrong, got there a half hour late. Being an impatient person, I hate to keep others waiting.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

After working on a blog post for over almost two hours, it refused to come together the way I wanted. Impatient people like me don’t have time to ~~waste~~ spend almost two hours on a single blog post.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The google chat audio feature was malfunctioning on my computer, so I missed an online meeting in the afternoon. Impatient people have no patience with technical glitches.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

A publisher rejected a piece I wrote for a devo Bible being compiled by a friend. Not only that, the publisher wanted extensive citations (including book page numbers) for a half-dozen quotes for other pieces I’d written. Impatient people don’t enjoy skimming long books to find page numbers.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Hiram spent all afternoon trying to file our income tax with Turbo Tax. He’s usually pretty patient, but after several hours of online chats with Turbo Tax experts and two phone calls, he was a little cranky. Impatient people like me think we’re the only ones with a right to be cranky.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The cold Hiram’s been fighting for two weeks came back with a vengeance that night. He ran a temperature again and coughed all night. Which didn’t sit well with a woman who needs plenty of sleep in order to be patient.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst of it was this. I woke up Thursday morning and realized impatient people like me spend all their time looking at gray skies. We are so focused on the gloom, we don’t even see the gap in the clouds and the sun streaming through.

Impatient people like me forget they have
friends to visit,
blogs to write,
a computer that functions flawlessly 99.9% of the time,
writing projects to complete,
income tax refunds to file,
and a husband whose job provides sick leave and excellent health insurance.

Yes, that’s the worst of it.

Dear Father, forgive me for not slowing down to look for the gap in the clouds. Forgive me for focusing on the gloomy clouds and missing the joy of the Son. Please teach me to be patient…as quickly as possible. Amen.

More Filled with Faith or Doubt?

Posted on November 2, 2012 by jphilo

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But you can’t be serious!
    You can’t condone evil!
So why don’t you do something about this?
    Why are you silent now?
This outrage! Evil men swallow up the righteous
    and you stand around and watch!
Habakkuk 1:13

The boxes in our attic are ordinary enough. A mix of old, dusty cardboard boxes and plastic tubs. Some of them house my journals, years and years worth of innocuous spiral notebooks and speckled composition books filled with my deepest thoughts and prayers. No one but me has ever read them. That’s a relief because they also contain plenty of edgy questions for God, too.

Raw questions about why he allowed our newborn baby to suffer. Hard questions about why good people are punished for doing what is right. Uncensored questions about why God doesn’t stop airplanes from flying into skyscrapers. Not stuff I want other people to see. Except perhaps our kids once I’m gone, so they can see the real me–a woman filled with more doubts than faith when exposed to the grimy, gritty side of life.

A quick read through Habakkuk makes me wonder if the prophet intended for anyone to read what what he wrote after his vision of the invasion of Judah.

God, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen?
How many times do I have to yell, “Help! Murder! Police!” before you come to the rescue?
Why do you force me to look at evil, stare trouble in the face day after day?
So why don’t you do something about this?
Why are you silent now?

Would Habakkuk have written down these questions if he’d known his words would be read for several millenniums? Or would he have toned things down a bit?

I don’t know. But this I do know. We can be thankful Habakkuk recorded his questions, undiluted and uncensored. We can be more thankful that God saw fit to make Habakkuk’s raw, pain-filled words part of his holy Word. Because their presence in the canon of Scripture means our God welcomes our questions when life gets grimy and gritty.

In the rest of Habakkuk, God shows that he is big enough to handle our hard questions. Furthermore, he demonstrates that when we ask hard questions, he will give answers. Not always as quickly as we’d like. And not always the answer we want. Instead, he consistently gives the answers we need when we need them. And by his sovereign wisdom and power, he uses those unexpected, untimely, and sometimes unwanted answers to fill our hearts with more faith than doubt and to shape us into the real people he created us to be.

The House on the Rock

Posted on July 2, 2012 by jphilo

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Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them,
I will show you what he is like:
he is like a man building a house,
who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.
Luke 6:47-48

A few days ago, Hiram and I made a quick, midweek trip to Wisconsin to see our son and his wife. The weather was gorgeous, so while the young folk were at work, we explored winding country roads we usually passed by in a hurry. Finally, we had time to investigate the “scenic overlook” mentioned on cryptic road signs ignored during other visits. We parked the car and followed the path, expecting to see a lovely valley complete with a sparkling river, and perhaps one of the large mounds scattered throughout southwest Wisconsin.

Instead, in the distance we could see the famous House on the Rock clinging to the side of a limestone cliff. While I snapped several photos of this feat of engineering, something my dad used to say came to mind. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

We hiked back to the car and the the sight-seeing road again. But I kept thinking about the House on the Rock as a metaphor for our lives since Hiram left work early because of back pain in late May. One day he was training for a half- marathon. The next day, the pain was so bad, he couldn’t walk. He spent two weeks in bed. He followed the doctor’s orders and waited for the pain to ease. It didn’t get better, so it was back to the doctor for tests, more waiting for results, then a diagnosis, a referral to a neurosurgeon, and finally successful back surgery.

In the weeks leading up to the diagnosis and surgery, we prayed a lot. We talked a lot. We sat on the edge of our own persona cliff, peering into the unknown and asking God plenty of questions:

Why are you doing this, God?
Will Hiram have to live with this pain the rest of his life?
Will he be able to work again?
Be physically active again?
Should I look for a teaching job?
How will You bring good out of our family’s pain and sickness and unwanted change?

The night before surgery, Hiram said, “I’m ready for whatever the outcome is. Whatever happens, it will be good.”

When he said those words, we didn’t know the surgery would be successful. We were still sitting on the edge of the cliff. We were still peering into the unknown. But in those weeks of uncertainty we learned to cling to the promises and goodness of God. The more we did, the more the Rock beneath our precariously placed feet stood firm.

Immovable.
Unchanging.
Ever present.

Through it all, God impressed upon us a precious truth. Our cliff was not a fun place to visit, but upon the firm foundation of the Rock of Ages was and is the best place to live.

Small Mercies

Posted on December 12, 2011 by jphilo

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Small mercies.

Those are the words that come to mind to describe yesterday afternoon. Two other women and I went to Des Moines to visit a friend. Her husband collapsed on Thursday and was rushed to Mercy Hospital where he was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He’s been unresponsive ever since.

God, in his mercy, has not yet answered our prayers for healing.

Our friend and her husband have three sons. Just before we arrived, she sent the two older ones back to college for finals week. The family moved from our town to the Des Moines area this fall. So their younger son, a junior in high school, is still adjusting to a new high school and doesn’t have many friends there yet.

Where’s the mercy in that?

Our friend’s faith is strong, but her heart is broken. She is grieving, facing hard decisions during a week when she’d planned to wrap Christmas presents, plan meals, and buy groceries so her three sons could eat their parents out of house and home during Christmas break.

Instead, they face a grim and seemingly merciless holiday.

And yet, her sister’s family was with her at the hospital. Her mom flew from Arizona to be with her daughter. Her boss and her husband’s boss are compassionate men who have shown great kindness. Friends have been visiting, bringing food, giving hugs, praying, laughing, crying.

Small mercies.

Too small for the enormity of the decisions they must make. Too small for the changes they face. Such small mercies cannot be enough, I think. And then the image of the Christ child in the manger comes to mind. So small. So weak. So humble. So poor. The Son of God who would one day bear the sin and suffering and pain of the world.

Small mercy it seemed at the time. Yet, more than enough.

Dear God, by your people, continue to pour mercy upon this family. Give us and them hearts to trust your mercy to be enough and more than enough. Amen.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Posted on April 30, 2010 by jphilo

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Yeah, that’s me in the back row with the oh-no-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into expression. The other two are my brother and a cousin. There’s another cousin kneeling in front, but I can’t get her to show up. (Sorry Nell!)

When the good people at Discovery House Publishers emailed on April 13 to say they accepted my proposal for Different Dream Parenting: Raising a Child with Special Needs, my response was similar to the one in the picture. It was the day after we returned from our son’s wedding so my energy level and brain functions were nil at the time.

Needless to say, it took awhile for the news to sink in. Once the old brain cells revived, my first response should have been of the whoop-and-holler-of-joy variety. But no. It was more of the what-have-I-gotten-myself-into and why-did-I-think-I-could-write-a-book-on-this-subject variety.

After a few calming breaths and some positive self-talk, the panic subsided, at least until I printed off the chapter summary that was part of the original proposal. After reading the plan written last December, panic returned, along with self-doubt. I felt as poorly trained and utterly inadequate for the task at hand as I had each August of my twenty-five year teaching career.

But over the next several days, God calmed me down, patted my head, and held my hand. Every Bible passage I read was about how God prepares his people for his work. Every book I opened contained valuable resources. Visions of experts and parents I’ve met in the past few years – many since Different Dream was released – came to mind.

“Write them down,” a voice whispered inside my head. “Make a plan.”

I started a list of people, books, websites, and organizations. In minutes, the list was two pages long. Their expertise matched many of the subjects to be addressed in my book, though a few holes remained. In the next few days, previously unknown experts appeared on my radar screen. The timing was uncanny.

The voice in my head was clear and insistent. “You’re not in this alone. I’ve spent my life preparing you to do this. You take the logical next step and leave the rest to me.”

Living by faith. Writing by faith. That’s what I’ve gotten myself into.

Let the adventure begin.

‘Tis the Winter of My Discontent

Posted on February 1, 2010 by jphilo

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Despite my best Pollyanic efforts to remain positive about winter, a gloomy chill engulfed me last week. Our cold, snowy, icy, and foggy winter, which came early and shows every sign of planning to stay late, is the obvious culprit. But to be honest, I can’t wholly blame this glum funk on external circumstances.

Part of my Gloomy Gus mood is self-inflicted. In the dark of this cold winter, I’ve been chaffing against the quiet, ordinary tasks God has given me to complete. Day after day, He calls me to be faithful in the non-flashy, by myself stuff – writing blog columns and book proposals, collecting tax documents, answering emails, preparing for speaking engagements, and organizing things for church. Big days in January were the ones when I took Mom to the library to check out books by authors with careers much more successful than my own.

Which points to the crux of the matter. Much of this winter’s discontent is due to flat book sales. For weeks, I watched Different Dream’s Amazon rank sink lower and lower. Nobody emailed to order signed copies. The ones in the local book store were gathering dust. And all three January speaking engagements were postponed because of weather, eliminating any hope of book sales from that quarter.

Through it all, God whispered over and over, “Trust me. Just wait and trust me,” which I did, only because there’s nothing to do in the middle of January except wait for things to improve. The trusting part was harder. But once I realized the other option was to trust myself, which experience has taught me is risky at best, I let the book sales thing go and left it all in his hands.

What happened next? A few books sold on Amazon, the book store called and asked for two copies for their store and a stack to take to some conferences over the next few weeks. A woman wrote a review for her special needs newsletter, and a Detroit radio station asked for an interview. None of which will catapult sales into the stratosphere, but all of which remind me of truth in the winter of my discontent: God is at work in even the small things. He calls me to faithfulness in more small, non-flashy tasks on this winter day.

I look outside and see a frost-covered tree branch shaped like Gonzo’s nose. The thought of the Don Juan of Muppets and his flock of hens makes me smile. The gloom lifts a little, and I tackle the small things once more.

Tracks & Tunnels

Posted on December 8, 2009 by jphilo

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Even though snow is never my weather-of-choice, except on Christmas Eve when a maximum of 2 inches of snow can settle upon the landscape to create a picturesque scene for 24 hours only, the dusting of white stuff that greeted me Monday morning, put me in a philosophical mood.

I had just wrestled a new pair of gorilla treads onto my tennis shoes, and the tracks they created made me think of all the places I’ve been in the past year. One year ago, I was walking on a motel treadmill in West Virginia before delivering my son to the PTSD outpatient clinic. This week, Allen is in Wisconsin speaking at an organic farming conference. What a great distance he’s traveled, what a great distance our entire family has traveled, in the last 365 days. What a great God has guided us into this future we never expected.

I passed our garage, marveling at God’s faithful and unexpected work in our family, and a hole in the edge of the path I’d shoveled caught my eye. There was another hole about 3 feet beyond it, and another and another, all three feet apart, connected by what looked like a miniature mole tunnel, until the tunnel reached the corner of our garage.

I’d heard about mouse tunnels in the snow, but this was the first one I’d seen. I imagined the mouse busily excavating, then poking his head out for a breath of air, a progress check and a course correction. Then, down again to bravely plow through the darkness, until he found shelter from the storm.

This picture doesn’t do Mickey and Minnie’s tunnel justice and the thought of mice camping in my garage sets my teeth on edge. But for a few moments, I identified with the mouse. After years of dark tunnels with small comfort and few answers, after infrequent breaths of hope, little progress, and a multitude of course corrections, we have found sweet shelter and joy in God’s amazing healing and strength.

Call me a softie, but tonight there’s room for Mickey and Minnie in our garage…but if they get in the car again, they’re dead meat

Denzel Washington, My Hero

Posted on October 27, 2009 by jphilo

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Since his first appearance in St. Elsewhere, Denzel Washington has been one of my favorite actors. I haven’t seen all his movies, but his performance in Glory and The Great Debaters, which he also directed, are two of my faves.

A couple days ago, I listened to him on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and was impressed with his down-to-earth attitude about acting. Near the end of the interview, Terry asked Denzel about growing up as the son of a Pentecostal minister. Denzel’s response was one of the most gracious witnesses of faith I’ve ever heard.

But, do you think I can locate the interview? No matter how many times I search NPR’s website, it doesn’t show up. But, I did find the following interview at the Reader’s Digest website. While it doesn’t tell as much about the effect his father’s integrity had on Washington’s life, it’s a fair substitute.

Take a look the interview and see what you think. If you’re like me, you’ll be renting every movie he’s been in – perfect entertainment as the nights get longer and the days get colder.

And if you locate the link for the Fresh Air interview, send it to me, please. I’d love to post it so more people can hear it.

October Moon

Posted on October 7, 2009 by jphilo

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My heart was heavy Sunday morning. Our dear friend Lyle died Saturday afternoon, leaving behind a wife and two high school-aged sons. My heart grieved for them, even though Lyle’s Christian faith had been his confidence, hope, and joy since his lung cancer was diagnosed a year ago.

When my mind wasn’t on Lyle and his family, I thought about another dear friend. Her birthday was Saturday, the day her daughter was supposed to get married. But the previous weekend, her daughter called and said there were problems. My friend and her husband rushed to the city where she lived to counsel the young couple. In the end, they called everything off. My friend spent her birthday helping her daughter move into a new apartment.

Why did God allow such suffering and disappointment, especially to people like these, good people who serve Christ wholeheartedly? Why is he allowing young people such heartache so early in their lives? Angry questions whirled inside my brain as I trudged down the road. My head bowed under the weight of my doubts. My eyes stared at the muddy road, soft after three grey days of almost constant drizzle and rain, and my feet slipped.

Then a noise, I don’t know what, maybe a bird or a car driving by, lifted my head, and I saw the moon. It waited, full and bright, on the east horizon in the clear, pale morning sky, and it’s sad beauty spurred me to prayer.

Lord, let my friends see this moon, too. Show them the beauty behind their storms. Show them your face and heal their broken hearts. Be their ever-present hope in times of darkness. Amen.

Did God answer my prayer? Did the widow and her sons, the couple and their jilted daughter see the October moon? Did he show them his face? I don’t know. But one day, when God wipes away their tears and collects them in a bottle, the moon will still be there. And they will look up.