A Tub of Legos and the Order of God -- Inktober 16 #Grungy

Walking into the playroom, we were greeted by another huge mess. On this particular occasion, an entire tub of Legos was dumped and scattered across the floor. It appeared as a total disarray, but somehow, our grandson saw something different.  Not grungy and disordered, but responding to it with "Just watch what I'm making."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We just couldn't see it yet.  Neither did he, until he started working, assembling, taking apart, adding a new shape or two, forming new ideas in the very work itself.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the [mess.]  Genesis 1.2 

Something was about to happen.  Something is still about to happen.  God says, "Now watch this." He pours His order over it.  What is beautiful is about to spring out of the barren ground. 

For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... Colossians 1. 16

May we not shy away from chaos, but instead like a child with a tub of Legos, see the messiness and confusion before us as an opportunity full of great and impossible designs and creations.  In the process of moving the pieces around, connecting them, first one way and then another, we bring some kind of order to it.

And sometimes in that free-for-all, we discover a pattern we never saw before, a way through, two or a thousand unrelated items that go together after all, or something we thought was forever lost, that rolled a long time ago under the dresser.  It was there the whole time.

As we draw closer to Him, God changes our eyesight. How can we view this with a fresh heart?   In the book Every Moment Holy, two liturgies were written even for the sacred work of changing a diaper. Even the grungiest task can be redeemed into something new.

My grandmother was a master in handling a drastic need or huge mess. "Well, what can we do with this?"  She navigated through the most difficult and grungy situations differently not just because she approached it differently.  But, I think, because she actually saw it otherwise.  Not as an untouchable mess, but something new coming to the surface, connecting the unrelated pieces buried in the disorder.

She knew from personal experience that God redeems, even the grungy stuff.

 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God... Psalm 73. 16

The Things We Miss --- Inktober 15 #guidebook

 

My husband and I love to explore our favorite trails, over and over, where cathedrals of trees rise up around us, and rushing creeks sing endless ancient choruses. But even on those familiar trails, something new always emerges, the seniority of an old growth tree towering overhead, or suddenly, the sun's rays slicing through the thick canopy like a prophetic vision of God.  And we return to civilization with a story or two, and sometimes the resounding silence of the woods even follows us inside.

A few years ago, we hiked a trail we did not know, realizing that the beginning of a familiar trail is in hiking a new one. Our now-preferred routes were once strangers too.

This trail was on our way to see some herds of elk, gathering at Cataloochee for a little autumn party. A little side hike was a welcome break after navigating fifteen miles of potholes on a lonely gravel road. 

The carved wooden sign at the trail head stated in bold print:  Mount Sterling Trail 2.3 miles, a morning's journey, not daunting at all. Another trail would intersect in a half mile.  All I knew from my limited experience was that when the trail name includes the word "mount," count on it being steep.

Immediately, the path started upward. We were on our way.  "Do I need a heavier long sleeve shirt?"  I asked Bill, as I shivered in the early morning coolness.  "Not likely," he said. I was still skeptical.

In the first quarter mile of the ascent, I was down to a tank top.

When we reached the other trail branching off, the sign repeated:  Mount Sterling Trail 2.3 miles.  The same as a half mile ago.  Hmmmm. Not what our map said.  What else don't we know?

The path became even steeper.  Sometimes a little ignorance is a grace, I justified. But the truth was  we hadn't read the guide book.  We hadn't asked anyone about it.  We didn't know the "story" about this trail. It was another mile longer than expected, not unbearably steep, but it was a continuous climb. Each switchback vaguely promised a break, but as we climbed and approached yet another turn, the path was relentless.  It will flatten out at the next bend, I lied to myself   But no rest area was to be found.

Just keep on, I said to myself. Think about the view from the top!  That is always worth it. The rocks and the roots threatened to trip me on every step, but gradually I began to see them as footholds, at times almost like steps carved into the side of the mountain. 

We came around yet another bend, and quite suddenly, that was it, the end of the trail.  We looked around us, and then, at each other.  There was no view.  There was nothing but some scrub trees and another trail sign that pointed down the mountain in two opposite directions.

A mountaintop experience without a view?  We climbed all this way, and there was nothing here.  "I can see why this is not a popular trail," I said to Bill.

"Well, it was a nice hike on a beautiful day," he said.  And indeed it was, view or not.

On the way down, back to the car, we passed quite a few hikers on the way up.  "Should I tell them there is nothing there?" I whispered to myself.  They looked so excited.  I hated to discourage them.

And of course, as we hiked down, my mind began to find a story in this journey.  Don't climb for just a view.  There may be some other purpose in it.  It may just be about the conversation, the being together, the just getting out and trying new paths in life.

That could have been the tale on this hike, the purpose for this trek.  But I should know better than to guess how the story turns out when I'm still in the middle of a saga.

A young high schooler was coming up the trail towards us, keeping quite a pace as she ascended.  She obviously didn't know about how her hike was going to end.  About twenty yards behind her was a man with two teenage boys, evidently her father and brothers.  As we passed them, the father asked us excitedly, "Was it so amazing at the top?"

Ummmm.  "Well," Bill said.  "There really wasn't anything there."

"Isn't this the Mt. Sterling Trail?"  Yes.

"There is an historic 60-foot fire tower at the top," the man said with great anticipation in his voice, sweeping his arm upward, "the tallest fire tower east of the Mississippi."  Like, didn't you see it? They proceeded in their excitement upward and onward.

We shook our heads. There was nothing there.  Boy, are they going to be disappointed.

But later,we discovered that indeed there is a 60-foot historic tower, standing tall less than a quarter mile from where we lingered at the top. If it had been alive, it would have bopped us on the head.  If we had read the guidebook, if we had explored the summit even a few dozen yards, if we had even looked up, we would have had a much different experience.  No doubt about it.  We missed out.



There was more than a view at the top, but a panorama. God designs the awe.  I can look at the images on my computer screen, but that is nothing compared to what is real.  We missed out on the poetic view.  We missed out on the wonder.


It was a gentle reminder that there is an incredibly strong connection between what I know and what I see, what I read and discover in God's Word, what I pray, and what I end up doing that day.  Over and over, Scripture profoundly influences my vision and orders my day-- what I see around me, who I notice, how I respond, and Who I'm walking with.  It matters.  It matters a lot.  Read the Guidebook.

What else don't I know?  That which God has placed right before me. 

God's faithfulness helps me know that the wilderness is a place of flourishing, not despair.  Silence is a place of His fathomless Presence, not His absence.  And that reality takes my breath away.

Same trail, different outcome. Ordinary day, extraordinary day.  His Word does not just influence my expectations, but helps me watch for the unexpected that God Almighty always brings.

Thus says the LORD:
"Stand by the roads,
             and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is,
and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls."

                  Jeremiah 6. 16

Oh, Give Me A Home Where The Children Roam --Inktober 14 #roam

 When I was a little girl, children played outside most of the day.  We walked to school through snowdrifts and rain.  We traveled in packs like wolf cubs roaming throughout the neighborhood.  And while this was a time before cell phones, texting, and surveillance cameras, an even more powerful communication system was set on alert, an unofficial pact among neighbors that held us accountable and responsible for our actions.  The backup system was generated by the ever-present tattling prevalent among multiple siblings.  There were no secrets back then.

As a middle child, I was never alone, one brother older, another right under me, and my baby brother safe at home with my grandmother who resided with us.  The neighborhood kids all had traveling routes, roaming through the backyards of our block, sometimes even on our bikes, knowing the weak links in the fences and where the mean dogs waited in the shadows. 

There was an enormous rock at the end of our street, a boulder that I can clearly remember climbing and falling off, sometimes imagining riding a horse or scaling a mountain, depending on what I was pretending at the time with my brothers or my friends.  It was huge. My schoolgirl knees were continually scraped. When I was not even ten years old, my family moved from that yellow brick house, but the memory of that rock grew legendary in my thoughts.

As an adult, I finally had the opportunity to visit the old neighborhood again.  Our block looked so plain as if the color had been drained from an old photograph. The mammoth arch of elm trees had been felled by Dutch elm disease decades ago.  The small brick and clapboard houses had aged and were filled with strangers.  It felt like the stories of my childhood had been evicted.  I did not see even one boy or girl playing on the sidewalk, let along a swarm of kids among the ancient trees and overgrown shrubs, scampering between houses, building forts and hideouts, and roaming through our childhoods before the streetlights came on. Our blue jeans may have grown too short, but never our imaginations.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.  Zechariah 8. 5

And the boulder?  Where was it?  I drove past twice before I realized that what I remembered as massive and insurmountable was only a colossal figment of my imagination.  It appeared ridiculous.  I was enamored by a rock not even two feet high. 

Wherever You Go, There You Are --- Inktober 13 #horizon

 I am mesmerized by sunrises and sunsets, the spectacular bookends of the day.  When we are camping or taking a long road trip, I stay attentive as the sun creeps closer and closer to the horizon, the point when the earth meets the sky. Each moment reveals even more beauty than the moment before.

The horizon is also the point just outside our field of vision, beyond what we know and have experienced yet.  And that is where faith fits in.  Trusting God is going toward what or where we cannot yet see, the cusp of what was, and is, and is to be.  Wherever we go, there we are.

It is not for us to just gaze at the horizon from where we are right now and hope that things will work out (future tense with a smiley face).  But knowing God is already working all things out, past, present and way out there.

Because when we are walking with God, we stand right now where was once the horizon.  His glory extends on both sides, before and behind, His faithfulness visible even to the naked eye.

As we navigate through this present moment, God is preparing us for that horizon where He is bringing us, beckoning us to come, sowing His Word, and being faithful even on this little patch of ground beneath our feet.  Even in this desert place, this miry bog, these unrelenting hills.

And what we discover along the way is that God is not far off after all.  Wherever we are, there He is. 

 

...as we look not to the things that are seen

but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient,

but the things that are unseen are eternal.

                  2 Corinthians 4. 18

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away....Or Not ---Inktober 12 #remote

When I was working for a homebuilders' magazine way back in the late 1970s, I had an hour and a half commute each way from my apartment in the suburbs to my office cubicle in downtown Chicago. I walked a mile to the bus stop, rode the bus, caught the train, and then trekked another mile across town to the office.

I wrote most of the day not on a screen, but paper scrolled into an electric typewriter.  And then, at the end of the day, I slipped back into my walking shoes (or boots) and reversed my course.

One day I asked my boss, if I could work at home a day or two a week, to get the copy done.  "You want to do what?" he asked incredulously. "In what galaxy do you think people would work from home?"

Needless to say, the term remote working would not enter our vocabulary for many decades later.  I continued to commute.

And then, everything changed radically.  We moved from Chicago to small town Jackson, Tennessee in the early '80s.  The magazine still needed me to write on assignment. And we discovered not if I could write from home, but how.  Federal Express was in its infancy.  As long as I got my floppy disk to the small airport by 8 pm, Fed Ex would deliver my copy to the office by 10 am the next morning.  Imagine that!  And then another decade down the road, the internet anchored my freelancing while we raised four daughters, in several more remote locations.

Remote working, remote learning, TV remotes (no, we didn't have one of those either), and now since covid, even remote tele-doctor appointments.

But there is one thing not remote, never has been, and never will be.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?"  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?"  But the Word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.     Deuteronomy  30. 11-14

God is not remote.  He has given us His Word on that.