A Really Good Story

I’ve just finished reading Joshua. It was part of my daily Bible reading, following Scripture Union’s “Encounter with God” guide.

He dies at the end of the book.

One day I will try to write something about how special the death of a godly person is. But right now I want to look at something else – related, but different.

After his death, Joshua was called the Servant of God, the very title given Moses after his death.

More than half way through the “Think Further” section that goes along with the daily readings, I found this compelling statement:

“God calls us not merely to serve but to be servants. An important distinction here. If I serve, I decide when and how. If I am a servant, all personal choice is gone; someone else gives the orders.”

Does that challenge you as much as it challenged me?

I’m just learning to serve. Now I have to quit that and become a servant?

Yes.

But I have a great story to tell about what that looks like.

I shared this Beth Moore story with my friend, John, earlier this week and he asked me (told me firmly) to write it up in my blog.

But I didn’t get around to it – until I read that bit about servants.

Now I want to.

John didn’t know who Beth Moore is, never heard of her. So he didn’t know whether I told the story correctly or not.

Many of you do know who she is – a Bible teacher extraordinaire whose teachings are being used by groups all over the world.

You may have heard her tell this story, in which case I plead your forgiveness for even trying to convey is here. I will leave out so much and maybe even get a little wrong.

But I won’t miss at least one of the messages of that story.

She started her telling by explaining how she got “filled up” with worship by singing and dancing to praise music one day before leaving for the airport to begin a trip to somewhere she was supposed to speak.

Being so full of the Lord, she decided to spend her time on the first leg of the journey trying to memorize the first chapter of John. Her method is to read this chapter of the Bible aloud several times and then to look away and see how much of it she could recite. Somewhere during the process, when she paused to try to remember, the person in the seat next to her provided the missing words – with an edge to her voice.

But Beth persevered. In the next airport, waiting to board a plane so small she didn’t think the airlines had a name, she continued her memorization efforts. Sitting with the Bible on her lap and a row of other waiting passengers facing her, she tried to focus – until she realized they weren’t staring at her, but at something behind her.

It turned out to be a man in a wheelchair, who was pushed to a stop at the end of her row, a couple of seats away. A man who looked at least 136 year old and had long nails and white hair way down his back. It couldn’t be Howard Hughes, but that’s who it reminded her of.

Then she felt the Lord preparing to speak to her and she said, please don’t make me witness to that man. Please don’t make me.

And He said, brush his hair.

I’ll witness, Lord. Really I will.

Brush his hair.

So she got up and went over to him and quietly asked if she could brush his hair.

And he said, what?

So she repeated it a little louder.

And he said, If you want me to hear, you will have to speak up louder.

So she did.

And he said, if you want to.

She said, I do, but I don’t have a brush.

He did, in his zippered bag behind the wheelchair. So she knelt down and felt through his jimmies and found the brush and stood up behind him.

His hair was clean, she said, but very tangled. Full of snarls and matted.

I am the mother of daughters, she said. I know how to get tangles out. You start at the bottom and work your way up.

So she did.

When she was finished and his hair was clean and shining and tangle-free, she came around and knelt in front of him and put her hands on his hands and said, Sir, do you know Jesus?

He said, as a matter of fact I do.

And he told her that he had been in a medical facility for a long time after being very ill and his wife had not been able to visit him. But now he was going home.

And, he said to Beth, you have made me beautiful for my bride.

I cried. And I wasn’t the only one.

Forgive me if I didn’t get all the details right. Go get Beth Moore’s “Loving Well” teaching series and listen and watch her tell the story herself.

In the meantime, I don’t think I really need to tell you how this speaks to being a servant, not just serving.

Beth was specifically teaching about how to really love well, how to love like Jesus. She had spoken to us about how to love those who are a joy to us, how to love those who are testy and even those who are our foes.

But until we learn to love those who are far from us – either across the world or across an airport waiting room – whose who cannot love us in return – we will not really know how to love well.

And until we learn to let God order our ways, we will not know the incredible blessing of being part of God’s blessing on someone else.

I have a lot to learn about loving well.

I have a lot to learn about being a servant.

But I cherish the seed sown through the telling and hearing of this story and I pray that this seed may take root and grow in my life and bear fruit.

And in yours, too.

I Can't Do It Alone

I have struggled at times with Sahara-sized dry periods brought on by my inability (unwillingness?) to accept gracefully the circumstances in which the Lord has placed me.

I have been ashamed of that and have not wanted to write about it -- it seems such a poor witness. But I now see that when the Lord pushed me into admitting the truth, it was the first step toward a solution (healing?).

After identifying the problem for what it was – rebellion and resentment – I was able to tell the Lord that I wanted to dig that particular root of rebellion all the way out. At least I had the good sense to know that I didn’t want to knock the head of th plant off and look good on the surface. I wanted to get rid of the whole ugly thing.

So I asked the Lord to dig another shovelful of dirt away from the root.

Until that moment, I had been working on the premise that I had to conquer my rebelliousness by myself before God could possibly bless me. And I had refused to ask for help. I had forgotten that His saving grace is the only thing that can be victorious over my sinful nature.

Scripture says we are to transformed by the renewing of our minds. There I was trying to make myself a new person by renewing my own mind and that is something only God can do.

But when you give Him permission to work in your life, you can be sure He will.

His first response was to remind me of a simple, homely truth. It is easier to pull a root out of the ground when the soil is wet.

I had been, as it says in Psalm 63, like a dry and thirsty land. It is certain that I needed water, but I had been trying to water by digging a well all by myself.

Tears of repentance are the only water I can produce. And they are a necessary part of the renewing process.

But the primary source must be the spring of living water that wells up inside simply because Christ is there. As I let the barriers down, I began to experience the outpouring of His refreshing love.

He did not wait for me to deal with my faults. While I was still a sinner, He loved me.

Then I confessed my struggle to some in my church and asked for the help of their prayers.

How foolish I had been to go on so long alone. No sooner did they hear of my need than they began lifting me up. And everywhere I turned I found assurance of God’s saving initiative, of His love in action.

Then, when I was sure again of God’s love for me, a love deep enough and wide enough to wash away all my sins, He pointed out my specific problems to me. I identified jealously and selfish ambition at work in me.

I confessed this as sin and asked the Lord to forgive me – and to change me, to set me free from the power of those emotions so I might delight in His will for me.

It’s a process. It’s happening as I write. After all, He said he came to set the captives free and He keeps His Word.

What I Almost Saw

I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. I think if I had tried to look straight at it, I would not have seen it at all.

In fact, that may be what I’ve been doing all these years. – trying to look right at something that can’t be seen that way – at least not by me – at least not now.

I remember that before I had surgery to remove cataracts in my eyes, I would often see something more clearly just to the side of my vision. Actually it was more like catching it just as I looked passed it. I know it made reading the eye chart difficult. I could read the letters on the sides but not the ones in the middle.

But enough about that already.

Since I did not get a straight-on, clear image of this thing I saw, it is a bit hard to describe it. In fact, I don’t think I can, really.

But I will make a stab at it because the process of trying to find worlds may help clarify my vision.

What I think it was was the Body of Christ – the church universal – the Bride of Christ -- something like that anyway.

I have understood intellectually that there is such a thing as that. I had just never caught a glimpse of it before.

It’s like knowing in your mind that the church is not the building, but not quite being able to flesh out exactly what it is instead.

It’s all the believers.

All which believers?

Well, let’s not take a negative approach here. Let’s not focus on what I didn’t see, but on the little that I did see.

I saw something that I am a part of and that includes more others than I can count, and they come from everywhere – Africa, Asia, America, all over.

If I had seen it straight on, I think I could tell you exactly who they were. But I can’t – yet. I hope to later. I don’t know how much later.

But I saw that I am part of them and they are part of my. My prayers are for them and theirs are for me and each other. And my believing supports them and theirs supports me. And each other.

I think God can see it as One thing, while He still sees each individual in it.

I can’t see either the whole or the parts.

I just caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye.

But now I know it is there and I will be looking for more of it to be revealed. He has not shown me this glimpse for nothing.

We're Different

I went to lunch with John Cowart and his daughter-in-law, Helen, last week to talk about “the books.”

The books are collections of the columns I wrote to run on the Religion page of the Florida Times Union back when I was employed there.

But I don’t want to talk about the books, at least not right now. There is something else on my mind.

While John and I were driving to the restaurant to meet Helen, he commented that after reading my columns, he had decided we were very different kinds of Christians. Very different.

And he is quite right. We are different.

I’m older. He’s younger.

I talk and he acts.

I like music. He doesn’t.

I write sporadically. He writes daily.

We both believe in the Gospel as revealed by God in the Scriptures.

But I think the difference he was referring to is that I talk about feeing God’s presence and he says he doesn’t.

I talk about having faith and he wonders if he has any.

I think he’s just a much more humble Christian than I am.

I have experienced some dark nights of the soul, one that lasted several years. He has lived most of his life in a darkness that relies on knowledge that God is, but not on experience of Him.

I have led a few retreats, spoken to a few women’s groups and taught a few Bible studies. He has done all that and served meals at places that feed the hungry and delivered clothes to places that clothe the not quite naked and responded to requests for all kinds of help. He has stood on street corners and taught about the Lord with stick drawings. He has also taught a blind man how to do the same thing by making a board with nails on which colored string can be strung to make pictures.

All based on a firm conviction that God is and that the Bible tells us so.

I think John finds my emotional relationship with God quite “other.”

Years ago I worried about his lack of a warm and fuzzy relationship with God. According to my haphazard journal keeping, I even spoke to Ginny about this. Fortunately I can’t remember the conversation now. I just noted at the time that she said quite nicely that I shouldn’t worry.

My relationship with my Lord is not just warm and fuzzy. It is painful and joyful, life-giving and death over-riding. Most of what I have learned about being a follower has come through painful encounters with the truth of who I am and Who he Is.

I don’t know how to describe John’s except as I did above – you know Him by what John does.

John serves Him continually. It why he does whatever he does.

It’s why he has put in hours turning my thoughts about trying to actually BE a child of God into a book. He thinks there are a lot more Christians like me out there in the world and that they could benefit from reading about my efforts, failures and successes, my failing and getting up to try again.

I hope he is right.

It would never have happened if it depended on me. I told him I couldn’t deal with the articles any more. That time was past for me.

So he told me to bring it all to him and I did.

He has put an enormous amount of himself into getting the books made. I would never have done it. And I really would like his efforts to be rewarded. Especially if he is right and the columns can still minister to people.

I actually pray that the books will be successful, that people will want to read them and in doing so will find ways to draw nearer to the source of all joy.

I also pray that people will read John’s blog, Rabid Fun, and learn some other ways of doing the same thing.

Relatives

My grandson is 28 years old now, but he was much younger when he helped me learn something important about God. I wrote about it at the time this way:

My grandson, Russell, asked me a question recently that pointed up how far the world is from fulfilling God’s plan for the family – and how great his mercy and love are in forgiving and renewing us.

I was taking care of my two grandchildren while my daughter and her husband had dinner with her father and some of his relatives. The children would have gone, too, but Russell had chicken pox.

Russell, who is 6, asked me why I hadn’t gone to the dinner.

I said something about that being another part of the family and families being like that today.

It triggered another question, one I believe he must have been pondering all along because the words came so quickly.

Russell asked if his stepfather was my stepson.

I answered, “No, he’s my son-in-law.”

He stared at me, a puzzled look on his face. After a brief pause, he tried again.

“He isn’t your stepson?”

“No, Russell,” I replied. “I don’t have any stepchildren. The only children I have are your mother and your Uncle Nathan. Your daddy is my son-in-law.”

He grew very still, very serious. It was almost possible to hear the wheels of thought turning around in his head.

“Then what am I?” he asked, with as much challenge as question in his voice.

“You are my one-and-only, very precious grandson,” I said.

My delight in that fact must have been conveyed by my expression and tone of voice for he raced to me and gave me a big hug.

“I’m your chicken pops grandson,” he shouted with pleasure.

He repeated the hug, then turned to pick up a toy.

Life goes on.

So did my thoughts – on to the difference between our lives and the lives of so many people I know and the intention of God for families as expressed in the Bible.

How many men and women I know are no longer married to their first husband or wife. How many children have step parents and stepbrothers and half brothers.

How many opportunities we have missed for knowing God’s blessing through obedience to his word.

It made me very conscious of the pain we have caused each other and of the burden of guilt we bear before the Lord for making such a mess of things.

Without Jesus’ death for us on the cross, we would have had to bear that burden for ever.

I am so grateful for the forgiveness which God made possible for us through his great love. I am enormously thankful for the fact that he can bring blessing even out of such failures.

Russell has parents and stepparents, a half sister at his mother’s house, a stepbrother and hal brothers at his father’s and a couple of extra grandparents.

All of us love him dearly, but not one of us singly or all of us together can give him righteousness, peace and joy. Only his heavenly Father can do that.

Good or Bad News?

I’m writing from a position of extreme ignorance – I only know what I heard on a TV newscast.

According to the news clip, Mother Theresa was not sustained in her ministry to the poorest of the poor by a warm, comforting relationship with her Lord. In fact, she wrote to a friend saying she was not sure she had any faith at all. And had not been sure for a long time.

.The guy on the television said this revelation might change the way we thought about Mother Teresa. He said it with a studiously neutral voice. I have no idea whether he thinks we will think better or worse of her.

But I don’t really care what he thinks. And it doesn’t really matter what I think about it unless it affects the way I live when I can’t feel my faith.

Perhaps she did not feel it, but she lived it anyway.

This morning I came across something I wrote 20 years ago. I wrote it after a time of dryness and lack of any feeling of contact with the Lord. I’m not comparing my life to hers, my brief dark trying of my soul to her long painful years. I wouldn’t dare.

But perhaps your lives are more like mine than they are like hers, so maybe this will speak to you, too.

This is what I wrote;

I had some good news and some bad news last week.

The good news was a note from Reader’s Digest saying it was thinking about running an anecdote I submitted – maybe three years ago!

The bad news was that my air conditioner had to be replaced.

The wires melted. And for a time it appeared that the damage might be even more extensive.

After calling the air conditioning repairman – and making the decision to replace the central unit – I opened windows, turned on a floor fan in my bedroom and went to sleep.

Sometime in the night I woke to the sound of rushing wind. For a moment I thought it was beginning to rain and prepared to hop up and close the windows. Then I realized it was just the fan – just the fan acting very strange.

It would slow down, come almost to a stop, then start again with a rush.

As the fan stopped entirely, I glanced at the digital clock by my bed to see if it was still working. Its dark face confirmed that the problem was electrical.

My next thought was that bad wiring must have burned up the air conditioner and was now about to burn up everything in the house – if not the house itself.

I turned off the fan and checked the house to see what else was or was not working.

The refrigerator was acting just like the fan. The sound of the starter motor grinding away conjured visions of more melted wires -- which sped me on my way to the circuit box to flip a breaker or two.

With half the house shut down, I went back to bed, but I must confess, not back to sleep.

The electrician, when he came, said a “bad” wire at the meter box was the culprit. He replaced it, checked the circuit box, charged me a very reasonable fee and left.

A new three-ton air conditioner is expensive, but it could have been much worse.

The amazing thing about both the good news and the bad was that neither disturbed a deep, joyous peace I felt within. That peace had been mine ever since I confessed my rebelliousness and anger to my Lord in the presence of a friend and she prayed for me that I would be able to delight in all he had for me.

If that notice from Reader’s Digest had come before I asked him to deal with my jealousy and selfish ambition, it would have been fuel to that fire within. But coming as it did after that confession, I was able simply to delight in the possibility that they might print something I wrote.

And I was wakeful the night the electrical wiring in my house acted up in case something else might go wrong, but deep down inside, I was still happy. When someone asked later how I was doing, I said, “Great!” and meant it. I could not have done that without God’s peace in my heart.

Surrender and obedience sound like such grim things to do. But when that surrender and obedience is to the Lord, this is not true. Then it is the beginning of something wonderful and the fruit is that peace which passes understanding and joy beyond measure.

What can I say?

My friend John Cowart says it’s more important right now for me to paint book covers than to retype columns.

Boy, am I relieved!

I wrote those things years ago and I can’t even read the small type now, especially on yellowing newsprint.

John says he thinks that, put together, the columns will amount to a spiritual classic.

If so, it’s true that God can use anything or anyone He wants anyway He wants to. Singly, which is the way I wrote them, they were reflections on my spiritual journey, the rocks I tripped over, the ditches I fell in and the oases that turned out to be just more sand – and the occasional moments of peace and joy and fulfillment given to those who try to follow.

I sat with John as he scanned in just one column. I was overwhelmed by the process, the amount of detailed – DETAILED – steps involved. And he has done all these steps hundreds of times

When I retired, I stopped writing. It felt all burned up inside of me. I had nothing left to say.

Or so I thought. And I may have been right.

But John has put my fingers back on the keys and I press them down one at a time, prayerfully, waiting to see if the Lord has anything He wants me to say.

Like thank you.

Not, thank you, John, for all the work you are doing to make books of my columns. There is no way to do that. Besides, I don’t actually think somehow that he is doing it for me.

But Thank You, Dear Lord, for reminding me of all the trials and all the joys and all the in-between moments of the life which You have given me and in which You have been with me.

Bless those who labor in Your vineyard, Lord. I ask for a special blessing on those who are working on this book because they believe it will bring glory to Your name.

Their labors already do that.

So I’m off to the other labor, painting pictures for book covers. I am as skilled at this as I am at doing all those other things You have ask me to do, Dear Lord.

So go with me, please. And thank You.