What you have, what you know, what is right in front of you

A young writer pilgrimaged from the deep South to New York City, a place where in her wild imagination, mediocre writers were instantly transformed into renowned authors, just by being there.  She wrote what she knew, little vignettes about life in the South, which seemed disconnected and a bit ridiculous in the glaring lights of this city.  But yet so very faraway, her upbringing in a rural culture and almost foreign ways of life still pulsed through her thoughts, even as she was surrounded by skyscrapers, crowds of strangers, sour smells of the city, and concrete sidewalks in all directions.

After almost eight years of trying to pull together something publishable, in a moment of despair, she opened the window of her small apartment and threw the manuscript out, pages flying every which way through the air, down to the busy city street below.  Immediately regretting her rash decision, she ran down the many flights of stairs and retrieved the typed sheets of paper from oblivion, dodging taxis and pulling her story out of puddles.

Then, over the next three years, she dissected what she had written, reworked what she had, adding more details and dialog, rebuilding from the foundations, and transforming it into her first book, published in 1960 and winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature the following year.

The 34-year-old author was Harper Lee.  And that manuscript, thrown out the window and then painstakingly revised, was her book To Kill A Mockingbird which has sold more than 40 million copies.

She wasn't just lucky.  That kind of accomplishment doesn't just happen.  The profound does not arrive on the doorstep with Amazon Prime.  What am I working hard on?

I read an interview this week about a multiple award-winning author who was once asked if she wrote every day.  She just shook her head incredulously and answered, "What do you think?"

In far more venues than writing, what do you have, what do you know, and what is right in front of you?  Work on it.  Work hard on it.  A downright mess, a bunch of loose unrelated ends, a rocky path instead of a shimmering open door?  What can I do with that?  

But as author Kevin DeYoung says, "Just Do Something."  Tape all the pieces together, work hard, and see what comes of it.  It may turn out to be nothing at all but training for something else, or even redirecting one's path.  Or simply bringing some beauty or sense into the world.  It may be a blessing to someone else you don't even know.  We cannot determine the outcome, but we can take the next step, and then another.

The pursuit is not about a prize.  But what is priceless is continually pouring into what the world may never even recognize as worthy of praise.  There is rarely an award ceremony at the end, but thick goodness in the journey.  A tangible achievement is no more valuable than the intangible.  More often than not, the relationships and what is invested in them are what produce pure gold.

Plant seeds.  Plant lots of them.  We never know which one grows into a towering tree.  We don't have a clue.

We may never see the forest our lives produces.  But I run through thick woods almost every day, awed by the vistas, thankful for the shade, and grateful to those who planted the trees a very long time ago, those who had that kind of vision.

God's glory lingers
         in what He has done.
May His beauty infiltrate
         in all we pursue.

Now to Him
who by the power at work within us
is able to do
       far more abundantly
than all that we ask or think,
to Him be glory...

              Ephesians 3. 20




Pray continually.
Live faithfully.
Love well.
Practice grace in this.
Bring the name of Jesus there.

One of the faithful ones

She was one of the last of her family and friends to get married, she was one of the first to lose a baby at birth, and then one of the first to become a widow, when her husband passed away after a long and debilitating illness, during the Great Depression.  As the mother of a five year old daughter, she was diagnosed at age 36 with rheumatoid arthritis and told by physicians that she would spend her life in a wheelchair.  I don't know how that conversation proceeded, but knowing her full resolve, she most likely told the doctor, "Not going to happen."  And it never did.

When there was no money, which was pretty much a daily occurrence, she was one of the most creative people on the planet.  As a single working mom, she did not offer condolences to her only daughter when college seemed laughably out of the question, but simply looked her in the eyes and said, "How can we make this happen?"  And they did.

She taught piano lessons to put food on the table.  For her students, she printed on the top of her lesson sheets, "It is not what you play, but how you play it."  That was the story of her life.

She left her home in Fort Worth, Texas, at 62, for a foreign country called New York City to be close to her married daughter, now a professional violinist, not to be cared for, but to care for them.   

When she entered a room, she brought ripples of joy into it.

I know, because for the first sixteen years of my life, she lived with our family.  We called her Mammy.  For many years, I didn't even know she had another name.  She was my grandmother and one of the most godly, loving, kind, and self-less women I have ever known.  Even now, I remember her vividly.  She would have been 131 years old today, and she passed from this life to the next, exactly fifty years ago on this day.

What did she love doing?  Whatever needed doing, not seeking happiness in what she did, but finding the LORD walking with her in how she did it.  Nothing but nothing was beneath her.

She hobbled a lot because of her rheumatism, and she leaned on God, even when circumstances were beyond explanation.  "Sometimes you just have to trust the LORD about it," she told me as a little girl, over and over, repeating it as if to say, if you remember anything, remember this. 

She was incredibly busy from before sun-up until long after evening set in.  As a child, it didn't appear that she ever slept. Sewing, cooking, painting, playing piano, loving four unruly grandkids, and listening.  She was always there, and always ready to put down what she was doing to listen.  Friends of ours and other young people flocked to her, because she loved them.  Not one had to ask if she was a believer.  She loved a lot of people to Jesus.  I am one of them.

The faithful ones do not grab the mike, nor command the spotlight, rarely found front and center on stage or a photograph, because they are just busy being faithful.  Even as a child, I often pondered about her life.  She was not famous or rich, nothing remarkable about her talents or appearance.  But she had a secret joy.  She knew exactly what she was doing.

I am convinced she knew that the decisions she had made, and every choice she was making, impacted not just her life, but her grandkids...and the children to the furthest generation. 

We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD,
                      and His might,
and the wonders which He has wrought.
...to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
         the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
  so that they should
                    set their hope in God.

                            Psalm 78. 4, 6-7


When I think about faithfulness to God, I think about her.  What does that look like?  What does that look like in my own life?

And Jesus said,
Love the LORD your God
with all your heart
and with all your soul
         and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment. 
And the second is like it:
      Love your neighbor as yourself.

                           Matthew 22. 37-39

Love God every way you can,
                  in whatever you do.
Love everyone around you
           as you have been loved by Him.

I watched that unfold daily in her life.
For that, she is remembered.
She was not well-known,
         but she was found in Him.
And I am grateful to God
             for her life.

Happy birthday, Mammy.

What Changes Us

One of our little three-year-old grandsons a few weeks ago asked for a banana on an ordinary  afternoon.  In trying to help him learn manners, we often pace him through the words "May I please have a banana?"  And after his request has been fulfilled, we ask, "What do you say?"  so he will know politely how to respond: "Thank you!"

On this particular afternoon, as I handed this tiny little guy his requested piece of fruit, he intentionally looked up at me and said spontaneously, "Oh, thank you so much for this banana," gazing right into my eyes, and quite frankly, right into my heart.  No prompts needed.

He was not just repeating a socially correct set of words.  But responding with gratitude.

We are often all-too-silent, rarely verbally expressing our thankfulness in heart-felt words to those who give, to those who have given to us, and to God who has given us everything.  How often do we acknowledge, "I'm really grateful for that."     

Words make a greater difference than we can know, not just in a social construct of being polite, nor in gushy sentiment.  But words of thankfulness and gratitude actually change our hearts, rewire our brains, change our vision in a situation, and ultimately change the trajectory of our lives.  What kind of person am I becoming?

Am I seeking to be polite?  Or am I grateful?

How -- and if --I express gratitude changes how I see God, transforms how I view circumstances, and changes my interactions with all those around me.  

Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines,
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food,
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls --
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer's feet,
And He will make me walk on my high places.

                              Habakkuk 3. 16-19

Our daily choices, habits and practices develop how we think, what we think about, on what we set our minds, impacting radically how we live, how we love others, and how we see God.

A mind that is always focused on what is lacking is never satisfied, always looking for something else and something more.  Taking a given set of circumstances, favorable or not, the difference is not between seeing my cup as half-empty or half-full. But when I see my cup as overflowing, as it states in Psalm 23, that gratefulness spills out even in the lives of others.  God does not just give.  God multiplies.   God is already here providing for us, even in unexpected ways and unlikely situations.  

Find one thing today to be thankful for.  Being grateful will not change our circumstances, but that little exercise in verbalizing it, that change of heart, that way of seeing, changes us more than we can know.

It's still just a banana.  But it tastes differently.

Rejoice always,
pray constantly,
give thanks in all circumstances.

               1 Thessalonians 5. 16-18