Abandoned, but not by God

Wrong again.  Actually glad again.  I’ve had an unusual patch of negativity lately, and I was happy to be dissuaded.  Sundays have been a long-time source of inspiration, yet lately the aura of a certain 2-hour span has infected my thinking to the point of dread.  And directly into the core of this dread on one particular morning, the Lord inserted a wonderful dose of inspiration.  His creativity was in full bloom.  He walked my feet into what’s becoming my favorite breakfast nook, and there sat a friend with whom I hadn’t talked in a while.  My friend mentioned recently praying in a new way for his family, including for his wife who abandoned him.  In his mind, he and his wife are still married, though she took their daughters and has been moving them from house to house, all across town, staying with different people often far away.  My friend’s been exhausted in the constant effort to track them down and stay in touch, and in desperation he threw his hands up, pleading for the Lord to show him what to do.  And blessing did come.  News arrived that his wife had found yet another house, and to his amazement, this one appeared to be longer-term, and it was near him and near the church.  No longer would he drive all the miles that had stretched him even beyond the city limits.  Perhaps no longer would his daughters cry to think of him far away.  In the telling of the story, I witnessed his eyes moistening to talk of the magnitude of the blessing and the depth of his gratitude to the Lord.  The story triggered memories of mountaintop experiences the Lord has graciously granted me, even after I’ve felt on the brink of some deep despair that I stirred up myself.  This Sunday morning, the Lord reminded me to never dread because He can always breathe life into what seems dead and gone.  I ask you as the reader today, “Are you like me?  Do you have something you’re dreading?  Something setting you up for a negative attitude?”  Ephesians 2:4 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”  And may you and I both remember to ask Him to lift us out of the muck and mire. 

Pizza & the man alone

Pizza is good.  The buffet at Double Dave’s is craaaaaazy good!  The particular location near us seems to flourish, and it must have something to do with the guy who bakes the cinnamon sticks.  His mix of cinnamon, sugar, and butter ranks way high in my book.  Put that next to Dave’s salad bar, and anytime my husband consents to going, I’m fast into the car.  The salad bar has sunflower seeds, boiled eggs, ham, green peppers, and lots more, and we have all those ingredients at home, but it tastes different at Dave’s and it’s fun.  The cashier asks if we want a certain type of pizza, and with great glee I request the barbecue chicken that quickly appears on the buffet line.  And to top it all off, they post a 2-for-1 coupon where you can buy 2 buffets and 2 drinks for $11 total.  For San Antonio prices, that’s pretty good.  Yet as fabulous as Dave’s is, something I witnessed there a couple of weeks ago bears greater praise than all their good food.  Dave’s hosts lots of baseball parties and all kinds of team events, and on this Saturday a young girls’ team entered.  One of the dads chose an empty table next to ours while most of the girls stayed to themselves.  For maybe 5 minutes, this dad sat alone and quiet until another dad asked, “May I join you here?”  The first dad looked up, seeming refreshed and quite open to the idea of company.  I'd seen the second dad change his mind on where to sit after noticing the first dad sitting solo.  It was a simple gesture yielding the grandest effect, and suddenly a memory triggered for me.  I’ve sat in that same seat of loneliness.  I remember how it can creep in and exhaust and debilitate without warning.  Even today as my husband and I sat at the kitchen table to sort through some papers, we saw an ad for an ice cream social and entertained the idea of attending until we realized we might not know anyone there.  Yet I thought of the dads at Double Dave's and have asked the Lord to lead us as to whether we should go after all to this event and share some ice cream and some conversation.  Perhaps He will connect us with someone in need, just as He has rescued me in my loneliness and desperation many times.  According to 2 Corinthians 1:4, the Lord is the one “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."

Gosnell & the fallen bird

 

I saw a strange white spot in the front yard grass, and it was an odd shape.  I bent down for a closer look and realized this spot was a bird.  Was he alive?  What could I use to softly nudge him?  I found a gray-and-white feather lying nearby, and it would serve to allow me to check on him gently, yet soon I realized he couldn’t move.  I wondered if he had a sibling anywhere, and a couple of feet away I saw his brother.  Nudging him with the same feather, I was intrigued to see this brother was still alive.  I called my mom because she loves birds and studies them and possibly she’d know what to do, yet she said sometimes there’s not a lot you can do except hope that the parent bird will come.  Years ago I rescued a fallen bird and put him in a box that I tied to a tree branch near his nest, and it seemed that he lived.  My predicament today, though, was different because this bird was younger, and the mountain laurel branches that held his nest looked too flimsy to support a box, and for me to put him back in his actual nest was impossible because it was too high.  I did use a cloth to gently move him into the shade.  I took him a little plastic lid of water and kept trying to touch it to his beak.  One time I stepped away from him and heard the telephone ringing in the house.  It was my husband calling to say the jury in the Gosnell trial had just now declared him guilty of murdering 3 babies and “involuntarily slaughtering” an adult life.  All morning the whole issue of life had been running through my head with these little birds.  Life is precious.  It’s fragile.  And as plainly as the latter verses of Deuteronomy 30 tell us to choose life, somehow our society has come to dispose of it rather flippantly.  This little bird today stretches his neck and squirms with his wings to try and find his way.  He fights to live in a world he can’t even see because he’s too young for his eyes to open.  He doesn’t know why he’s struggling to survive, but his nature is to not quit, even already having suffered the terror of a 10-foot fall from a tree, which especially for a tiny bird is a thought that makes me shudder.  Into the afternoon and now the evening, I’ve kept checking on my little bird, and I tip his plastic lid of water, seeing his mouth open to sample more moisture.  I prayed early on for the life of this young one, yet in the beginning I had to honestly address the issue of how much effort I would put into trying to save him.  I concluded that whether this bird lives minutes, hours, or days, the Lord has used him to illustrate the beauty of life.  Even the youngest have a desire to live that compels them to fight.  How I thank the Lord for giving me a day unconstrained that I would find this bird and work to provide for his life. Yet the question remains:  To what extent do we stand up for life?  We have opportunity daily to encourage our world to uphold it.  Ultimately Jesus Christ is our way and truth for all that lives.

A worldwide bookshelf

Today is introduction day.  In the last month, this blog has hosted visitors from France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, and the USA.  Most of these are parts of the world to which I’ve never traveled, all in turn making this blog connection extra sweet!  It’s like a worldwide library with all of us walking up to the same bookshelf to check out the same book of stories.  Recently a friend suggested acknowledging the breadth of readership here, and so today I officially welcome you to this blog!  To the readers in all 8 countries this last month, may you take pleasure in knowing each other's company, and I'm so glad you're here!  You are not simply a statistic, nor are you a casual passerby.  You are someone for whom I pray, and you are one whom Jesus Christ loves dearly.  I never know the exact addresses of readers, so don’t worry about privacy issues.  All I know is the name of the country wherein someone’s computer sits.  I think of Mark 16:15, where Jesus is telling the apostles, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”  Each of us today experiences the Lord in our separate parts of the world, yet we come together through Jesus and the Bible and in the reading of this blog.  Your country may send missionaries to my country, and mine may send missionaries to yours.  Yet according to 1 Peter, we are one nation.  As he addresses Believers who are scattered throughout the countries, Peter says in 2:9 that we are a “holy nation, a people belonging to God, that [we] may declare the praises of him who [calls us] out of darkness into his wonderful light.”  I look forward to welcoming next month’s readership too.  How I would be elated as well to hear your stories of the Lord anytime.