Lone sheep

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a parable.  He poses the scenario of a shepherd and his flock of 100.  The shepherd loses 1 sheep, and Jesus asks the crowd to consider how they as shepherds would respond.  Will the shepherd remain in the field with the 99, or go search for the 1?  As readers today, we think this through, and in my course of personal decision-making, I realize my heart rushing to the lost sheep.  My head conjures an image of an animal panicked and prone to self-harm.  So readily do I identify with this sheep that I know my answer to Christ’s question has to be to leave the 99.  I know firsthand this sheep’s mental anguish.  Imagining it drifting toward danger and baa-ing to plead its desperation, I sympathize with its emotional exhaustion, for clearly I have wandered my own treacherous field.  It’s really the both of us needing a shepherd.  And Jesus proceeds to describe a shepherd who searches to the point of finding his sheep and lovingly putting it on his shoulders to carry home.  So now my perspective shifts from the sheep to the shepherd, and I'm humbled by a flood of introspective questions.  How well do I care for the sheep that the Lord entrusts to me?  Do I comfort those who appear nervous?  Do I take time to search out those missing?  Am I willing to sacrifice myself for their sake?  These opening verses inspire many lessons, and ultimately our Shepherd calls us to seek Him, to pray, to follow.  I’m so thankful to be in Christ's flock. 

Feverish feline

How does anything so sweet and cuddly have such capacity to draw ire?  A couple of weeks ago, I wondered.  We had one feverish feline, namely Sawyer, who had endless energy he didn't know how to use.  First he darted, then he climbed, then he sped down the hallway in chase of his sister.  Seeking bookshelves, chairs, tables, cabinets—almost anything fit in his path.  And while this athletic cat slowed occasionally for me to pet him, he quickly fell back into race car mode, hovering fast and low to the carpet.  And none of that was a problem really.  In fact, watching him plot to ambush Sally from around the couch made me laugh.  But the frustration began when his eyes changed.  His whole body tensed up.  Anxiety shifted back and forth in his eyes, and he reached up the arm of the couch to plunge in his front claws, but as he clutched the tweed, I stepped in, and he twisted up, over, and away.  From bedroom to living room to hallway and back, his wheels kept spinning, and whenever I glanced away the slightest bit, his claws took new aim.  Finally in defense of our furniture I was angry and scooped him up to put him in the garage.  But I felt sad for doing it.  Soon I thought differently, and I picked him up to pray.  Not only did he frustrate me, but he was uneasy inside himself.  “Lord, may Your peace wash over this cat.  I ask You to calm him from the inside.”  And what ensued was quite amazing.  Sawyer actually rested in my arms.  His body relaxed.  His eyes quit bouncing side to side.  I set him on a favorite blanket atop the couch, and he stayed still.  I kept staring at him, though unsure why exactly, except to realize my own near-disbelief at seeing the stark change in his countenance.  First Thessalonians 5:16-18 tells us, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”  And so this day, my praying over Sawyer was part of my praying continually.  How I love the Lord for being present in the details of the day.  Any problem is never ours alone.  May you be blessed to invite Him into your circumstances.

Not just playing opossum

Look at these opossums!  What a surprise when my neighbor found them behind her back gate!  One mom, at least 5 babies, all taking up residence in an empty flower pot underneath the yard tools.  Makes me think of a certain email the other day.  This email arrived a certain inbox of a certain sweet girl.  Her inbox looked to be nothing unusual, but having been quite stressed just the previous afternoon by the details of planning her wedding, and in particular the task of designing her invitations, this sweet girl was about to discover something huge within that little email.  That previous day’s frustration had led to prayer.  That previous day’s prayer led to those moments when we wait.  How would the Lord answer?  And yet here came this simple email that advertised some new fonts, with one specific font being a wonderful fit for solving her design woes.  The delivery was actually quite huge.  Such a steep precipice of blessing lends us toward humility all over again.  The impeccable timing is what often sets apart the works of God, and we just never know exactly how, where, and when we’ll see Him during the ordinary day.  Maybe in a family of squiggly baby opossums that prompts us to ponder.  Maybe when dredging the deep, dark, endless queue of emails that we thought we would dread.  Acts 1:7 says, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”  And I can see that I wouldn’t want to know everything ahead of time.  That inner gasp of amazement I wouldn’t want to lose.    

FM 3009

“Did that really just happen?  That animal’s body was BIG, with a whole rack of antlers!  Where did he come from?”  It took me a minute to realize I had hit him.  FM 3009 is a dark road that fells lots of deer, and at 5:30 AM, this buck suddenly stood square in front of me.  Abruptly he was there, and abruptly he wasn’t.  And a deluge of thoughts flooded my head.  (1) Do I continue driving or stop?  For several reasons, I opted to continue.  (2) I was sad for the deer.  (3) I was amazed at how the Lord protected me.  For the next couple of days, in almost disbelief, I kept staring at the clump of deer hair stuck at the crumpled part of the car hood.  Friends told me stories of how the collision could’ve caused severe injury if the deer had slid into the windshield or punctured the side window, yet in actuality he didn’t.  The Lord had guided me into prayer the night before and even in the moments immediately prior to the deer, and I felt keenly aware of the Lord with me.  I pondered the idea of how death for one could connect to any kind of wondrous experience for another, but then I thought of how God’s sacrifice of Jesus brought new and wondrous life for us.  The way the Lord brings good out of bad is a mystery, really.  And now each day that I put the key in my rent car while the collision shop repairs my Honda, I consider again the vast mysteries of the Lord.  I consider the greatness of His power and the depth of His love.  The mystery of godliness is great (1 Timothy 3:16). 

Battleground: deer, water, bones

My bones hurt.  I'm on edge.  I leave the room because the noise of the TV stirs my stomach.  The other day I was close to crying just driving down the road.  I’ve wondered about arthritis and fibromyalgia, but even more so I’ve considered these aches to evidence the throes of spiritual battle.  Certainly the story of Job shows that faith can lead us to encounter physical pain.  Now in recent weeks I have called on the Lord to carry me through.  And then came last Sunday.  I simply walked into church and heard 3 particular words.  Deer.  Water.  Bones.  Each spoke uniquely to me.  Our pastor talked of his trip to Montana and his view of some deer walking up to the water.  That water, he said, was a fountain of life for these animals.  That water led to a whole experience of replenishment.  Much more than a short sip of anything wet, that water nourished the depth of the animal’s whole existence.  Yet when the pastor initially uttered deer and water in the same sentence, my brain froze because I first thought of a song.  I'd been rehearsing some music with a friend, and one set of our lyrics sings, “As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee.”  Our road to rehearsing this music had encountered a very steep uphill climb.  It was a battle, it had been painful, pressure was tight, and so this Sunday in church my ears stood desperately attentive.  Next came the pastor saying, “The Lord can be health to our bones.”  And therein sat my third word.  God was using the pastor to speak into the aches of my body that felt more loudly pronounced every day.  All morning I kept hearing people speak words and ideas that I identified with.  River.  Thirst.  Running water that flows even where the land is parched.  With each new mention, I felt refreshed and immensely loved by the Lord that He would speak so specifically into my circumstances and let me know He knew what I was enduring and that He was with me.  This pain I withstood was of a different realm.  A different category.  People tell me I have a high tolerance for pain, yet my usual large doses of ibuprofen wouldn’t touch this.  The tension began to cleanse through my eyes, saturating one Kleenex after another to realize how each new conversation added into the blessing.  Jesus says in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  This was my real life and my real streams of tears flowing.  And by the time I heard my Spanish friend say the word alfarero, which only a couple days prior I had learned means “potter,” I could picture the Lord molding me at the potter’s wheel, moistening the clay along the way to stretch, reshape, and smooth out my edges.  And as my tears released, my fragility faded.  Though the pain would return later in the week, this Sunday the Lord had relieved and replenished to the depths of my soul.  Where I had struggled for words to explain to my husband, the Lord had reassured that He knew all the ins and outs of every inch of my pain.  Satan could fight all he wanted, but the Lord had given me rest and had held up the fight on my behalf.  To know Him in these moments was sufficient for me.  The Lord is enough.

Gecko at the door

This morning I awoke to a gecko dangling at the door.  We have oodles of those little pink guys, and they scurry into even the skinniest crevice.  Somehow this one didn’t quite make it over to the other side.  Used to be that our cat would chase down geckos, but he's 20 now and has long lost his urgency to embark upon too many chases.  This time I was on my own.  This gecko had shimmied into the doorjamb, and I had 2 black beady eyes staring at me, with 2 helpless front legs dangling from about 6 feet high on the door.  I could feel my heart softening for this creature that I normally wouldn’t want anywhere near me.  Was he alive?  If I pulled the door, could he loosen and squirm away?  I peered a bit closer for any signs of life.  He showed slight color in his head, though with salmon-colored skin, a little color is hardly anything.  It was the tremor in one of his legs that led me to want to loosen him from the door.  He was harmless, and though he has plenty of companions who make me squeal sometimes, I didn't want him to suffer needlessly.  I sidestepped behind and grabbed the doorknob and pulled back, and he dropped all the way down.  For a couple of moments, he lay motionless, maybe stunned, and then he ran.  For him having been so helpless a few seconds ago, looking so tortured and desperate, he seemed to regain life and energy in an instant.  Just like us.  One decision can leave us jammed.  Temptation slithers around, and if we consent to it, we might open the door to a huge, long line of consequences, and suddenly we're panicked.  Just one sloppy move.  But I don’t want to go there.  The Lord can surely rescue us, but I don’t want to grieve Him.  I don't enjoy feeling my heart race in fear, and I don’t want to hinder anyone else with that same feeling.  I don’t want to be that gecko jammed in the door.  And I pray to the Lord, who is our greatest protector, that He may free us up and make us ready and willing to move when He calls.  He loves us so completely that my body aches to consider the thought of grieving Him.  First Corinthians 10:13 reads, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” 

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 chicken in the road

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”  That question has headlined a whole series of jokes.  It’s blossomed into jokes about turtles crossing the road, and lawyers crossing the road, and rubber chickens, and just about anything you want.  But last week a chicken really was in my street, and it wasn’t simply crossing to the other side.  God had reason for that chicken being there.  I’d been intending to talk to my new neighbor for months.  In fact, it’s sad that my neighbor isn’t really new anymore, and until her chicken was in the street, I’d spent all this time harboring the notion of meeting her, yet I didn’t carry through.  This particular afternoon, I neared my house and saw my neighbor plunging into the street to grab what looked like a chicken.  Without hesitation, I hopped out of the car and walked across to inquire.  The Lord knew I would want to see my neighbor’s animals, and hence His wonderful creativity shined again.  I imagined Him saying, “Well, I’ve given Linda the notion and ample opportunity, yet she’s not carrying through, so I’ll make it happen.”  And what a very friendly neighbor I do have.  So nice to talk instead of just waving ‘hello.’  In Numbers 22, the Lord opened a donkey’s mouth to talk.  In Exodus 3, the Lord spoke from within a bush.  In Daniel 5, He caused the fingers of a human hand to suddenly write on a wall.  And here last week He used a brown-feathered fowl to arouse a much-anticipated conversation. 

A brown bird of hope

The Voice of the Martyrs writes that Asia Bibi has spent almost three years in a Pakistani prison on charges that she blasphemed Islam’s prophet Muhammad.  The Voice of the Martyrs writes also that Asia, who is a Christian, has felt blessed while in her cell on death row.  She’s encountered a regular visitor in the form of a brown bird who comes to sit near her for 10 minutes at a time, and they’ve become friends.  Having wondered on occasion why he comes, she’s concluded he’s a blessing from God and a messenger, as he’s brought her encouragement and peace.  And so I’ve pondered this idea of the Lord blessing a human by nonhuman means.  Is the notion of the bird too far-fetched?  This is not an animated Cinderella movie or Snow White or Bambi.  This is real life.  In 1 Kings 17:1-6, the Lord ordered ravens to deliver bread and meat to Elijah.  They came twice a day, just as now Asia’s brown bird comes in the morning around 4:00 and in the evening around 5:00.  Indeed all of creation is His and at His disposal.  Nothing can separate us from God's love.  And so we continue to pray for Asia.