Learning from work

It has been very intense at work since July. And most of the kids who would stop by to talk to me are gone now. And I work in a cinderblock room with no windows (or as I call it, the Batcave). So it has been very intense without much human interaction.

It is not good for the woman to be alone. I am a highly individualistic person. I have often thought this office setup is perfect because then I don't have to deal with people much, but without dealing with people much at all, it is very easy to forget that anybody besides me is working. Doubly so on days when it seems like nobody is answering my emails or voicemails. It is good for me to get out and talk to people and remember I'm not the only person left on earth. (Especially after I found myself thinking about what is possibly the most classic episode of The Twilight Zone, "Time Enough at Last," and thinking that in a post-apocalyptic world you would surely be able to find another pair of reading glasses without too much trouble.)

This job, with all its busyness, is also bringing out the messiah complex. In a pre-apocalyptic world, there are a lot of things that need to be done and a lot of people who have different perceived needs than I do about what those things are. Frustrating though it has been, there have been moments of realization and growth in this, too. Here are a few that stuck out.

1) I have been doing a lot of seething over the fact that people haven't been listening to me, not doing what I told them to do even though I've repeated it over and over and tried to impart the urgency of the situation, the negative consequences of NOT doing what I tell them, and the sense that I am only telling them because it is so important. And it's not like I just stood up in meetings and told them what needed to be done (I have), I've told them in writing, so they have that to reference. But sometimes even when they want to reference it, they can't seem to perform a search of their emails.

On some of these days I get angrier and angrier, less and less friendly towards even the people who are following my directions. And I am so glad that God is not like that. I think part of the problem people have with believing that a loving God would ever send people to Hell might be that we often think that we are loving people. When push comes to shove, though, how many people have been saved from our wrath?

Give me a few days of people forgetting or ignoring what I say and I have to be praying really hard not to blow up at them. But God is not like that. God is patient. God does not give up on me when I don't follow through on what He asked me to do. God does not throw lightning bolts at people who ignore Him ("not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance"--2 Peter 3:9). He not just okay with telling all of us, again and again, what we need to be saved from the negative consequences of ignoring His words, He is passionate about it. The lightning we need is the lightning of God's face (Daniel 10:6)--it strikes and it saves, and the ones who look to it are blinded only to see more clearly, like Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).

2) What has been frustrating me the most this year is that a lot of people who have no idea what they are doing are rarely asking me about how to do it, or if I could help them. Sometimes they have been asking other people for answers, people who don't know or who have requested that questions come through me. The ones who do ask are apologetic about it.

"For everyone who asks receives," Jesus says in Matthew 7:8, and because He is patient He doesn't add what I would have added, "so for crying out loud, stop trying to figure it out yourselves and do it all yourselves when I want you to ask, when I love it when you ask!" He does want us to ask. And He does love it.

We will never, ever bother God by asking unabashedly for His help, and by doing it through Jesus, the appointed mediator for all our questions and requests.

3) I'm no Jesus. If I don't have a pristine office and a clear inbox and a fully checked off to-do list, do you know what happens? I come back tomorrow. You know what would happen if I couldn't come back tomorrow? Somebody else would pick up where I left off and figure out how to do it.

There is already a Savior for the world, and it isn't me. I don't have to rush around like crazy trying to make everything perfect. I can't even when I try.

4) I need Jesus as much as I ever have, and more than I will ever know.

Oh, help....

Today, 12 hours at work. Tomorrow, a stack of confusing paperwork and a glut of emails to tackle before my 5:00 PM departure deadline, in the hopes that when I leave I will be more prepared for the Wednesday due date of the Giant Count Day Project.

I am feeling completely overwhelmed and like an idiot for many reasons, not least of which is that I put an offer on a house now, of all times.

I'm torn between thinking that I rushed into this whole thing, and thinking that God just isn't on my schedule. On the one hand, I may be making a terrible mistake in taking action. On the other, the mistake could be in not trusting God enough to be involved enough to thwart ill-conceived plans.

Or maybe I think that God is a lion and I am a mouse, instead of a lion cub.

(Maybe you should just sit and stop thinking so much.)

I put an offer on the house last Tuesday, the owner countered on Wednesday, and I sat on it over the weekend. My mom and I spent Saturday packing, just to get a start on things. We packed for five hours and there is a ton more to pack. Then we looked at paint tip cards to get ideas for what I might paint a future house, and there are a lot of decisions there.

I counter-countered today, and he accepted the counter-counter. Next steps: signing it, then inspection.

And packing. I'll need boxes for that.

And cleaning and painting and figuring out furniture placement and breaking my lease and still working and having two major holidays coming up and snow coming soon and....

And breathing.

Breathing would be good.

Things I Am Wondering This Morning

1) Proper capitalization of small words in titles (not that I care enough to check...this is one of my few grammar blind spots).

2) Why my allergies seem to have gotten worse after the frost.

3) How much effort it will take to dismantle and thoroughly clean a bird cage of approximately 5'x6'x6', and where the inhabitant of the cage would stay until that was done and the cage reassembled.

4) How much it would cost to have Squeaker's old cage shipped from Pennsylvania, and if it would just be easier to do that than to deal with Frodo's current cage.

5) If my insurance would be at all helpful for a tonsillectomy.

6) If constant dull tonsil irritation outweighs the inconvenience and cost of tonsil surgery (the laser kind, not the cutting kind).

7) How much I should counter the owner's counter on the house I put an offer on last Tuesday. (Or his three counters, each lower than the last, that have come as I have been thinking about it.)

8) If anybody else besides me is planning to do laundry on a Saturday morning. (And now I should go so I can get there before other people. Something I won't have to do when I have a house.)

Introducing Mr. Frods

This is Frodo, often known as Mr. Frods.

He was my dad's bird. Technically, of course, he belonged to both parents, but pretty much ever since his cagemate died over ten years ago, he bonded with my dad.

Dad would get him out and sit with him while watching TV, or take a walk around the property with him, or play tug-of-war with him with a pair of old socks. Frodo bit through more than one button on Dad's casual shirts, and bit through skin a few times, too.

Mom doesn't get along with Frods so well. She was talking for a while about getting rid of him, finding him a nice place with somebody who would pay more attention to him.

Every time she did, it felt like she was talking about giving away a piece of my dad. And I feel I've lost more than enough of him. So once this plan to buy a house became more solid in my mind, I decided I would take his bird with me when I moved.

I started spending more time with Frodo, talking to him while he was in his cage and sitting with him after tricking him off Mom's hand. Once I took him over to the refrigerator to show him the picture of him with Dad, and he started moving up and down excitedly. Even after a year, he still got hyper seeing his old friend.

There was one thing I was curious about. Would I be able to get him up off the floor in the middle of his playtime? To test this, we let him down on the ground for the first time in months. He went running straight to my parents' room, where he usually played, and stopped in front of the closet, out of which Dad had sometimes come to surprise him. He waited for a bit, but nothing happened.

He walked down to the bathroom, stopping to say, "Hi, Frods!" to his reflection in the hall mirror a few times. He turned the corner into the darkened bathroom, and Mom and I heard him start talking to himself under his breath.

Frodo has done this for years, this muttering that seemed ALMOST like words. We've never been able to figure it out.

We heard the click of nails against tile as he climbed onto the step of the shower.

"Hi, Frodo," he said quietly. "Hi, Frods." And he started his mumbling, which echoed in the enclosed space.

As I sat there listening, I thought I must be hearing things. But when I made eye contact with my mom, she looked startled, too, and she said what I'd been thinking: "He sounds like your dad!"

All this time, he has been trying to copy the voice of his favorite person. (We should have known earlier. My dad was always mumbly.) It was still indistinct, still like hearing Dad from across the house...but it was like hearing him.

This past visit, we let him go talk into the shower again, because the sound is enhanced in there, and we tried to pick out phrases. This time, I caught a few.

"Frodo. We're gonna go outside, Frodo. We're gonna go outside."

"What's in here? What's in here, Frods? What's in there?"

My dad used to say those things to him.

No way this bird ever leaves the family now.

Are There House Yentas?

After ten years of renting and mounting frustration with the apartment complex staff, who increasingly remind me of Dolores Umbridge, I am in the market to purchase a house. I've done a little looking around on GRAR.com, but am overwhelmed by options. And nothing jumps out at me. No house has been love at first sight (except maybe the one that turned out to be on the corner of a busy street...alas).

I want a real estate search site like eHarmony. I can't stand the thought of the latter in general, but I could go for the real estate version.

"Crazy bird lady seeking home for future years/decades. Nice neighborhood, off main roads, within 15 minute radius of both work and church, and with adequate driveway and street parking. As much brick and/or character as possible. House cannot smell like mildew, mold, smoke, or cats. Need good plumbing, insulation, and HVAC, basement should be dry as possible, if not dry AND finished. Prefer attached garage, neutral decor, few needed repairs, limited use of tile in bathrooms, no sliding doors or deck (may be willing to consider houses outside these preferences). May consider condominium if the price is right and the parking/neighborhood/insulation criteria are met (house will be home to two crazy birds as well as the crazy bird lady). Please send pictures with your response, as well as compelling arguments for why she should choose you."

Failing eHousemony (which doesn't even make sense), I would accept any recommendations from local house yentas.

Young people can't decide these things for themselves.

Recharging

I once read that the main difference between an extrovert and an introvert wasn't in how they related to people, but in how they recharge: extroverts feel energized by company, introverts by solitude. I enjoy people, and have a lot of great friends I want to see, but every once in a while it is nice to have an evening or a whole day completely to myself.

It is also nice to have time to myself because when I am at work or church or out socializing there is nobody cleaning my apartment or doing my ironing or dishes or reading the books I want to read or writing or anything. And physical disorder eventually catches up with me and adds to mental disorder.

Today was a nice long Saturday with nothing in it.

I woke up at 8:00, thought "I can sleep a bit more," and woke up again at 9:30. I finished reading a book and by 10:30 had started moving. There were three straight hours of accomplishment, followed by a few hours of more reading, and then a few more hours of accomplishment, and no computer until after 6:00. (Much more relaxing that way...why don't I leave the computer off for longer periods of time?)

So it was a good day, but it's been a sad day, too. I really wanted to call my dad and tell him how much I'd gotten done in those first three hours, hear him say something like, "Well, don't just keep yammering to me, you have 8 more hours to accomplish things before you have to go to bed." And then I went to take some trash out, and it was a nice day so I walked to a dumpster one building over from the one I usually go to, and I had been thinking about also taking a walk out to the recycling, but just the extra walking-for-the-sake-of-walking made me miss him so much that I didn't do it. (Walking often makes me sad now because I think about how great it used to be to go walking with him. He probably wouldn't like that.)

And now I'm going to turn off my computer again and get back to...whatever else I feel like doing around here. Lovely.

Even with the sad parts, I wish I had more days like this.

Endless is not pointless

It's been three months since my last post.

Writing is difficult. It seems both momentously weighty and vastly less important, somehow, since last June. My heart is full, and the field is crowded. Everybody with anything to say, or nothing to say, has a forum in which to say it. Other people write better than I do, and more frequently (or at least as well as and as often), and what is the point of adding my words to the towering stack when there is so much to be done in life and so little time to do it?

That's how I feel about a lot of things, lately. So much to be done...so little time...what's the point in doing them? Which things are important? If I die as suddenly as my father died, or my cousin, or countless others, what will be the things I should have done?

Realistically, I know I can't figure that out. But maybe a desire to do something factors in there, and when I'm not writing something, I don't feel right. No matter if it's been said before, no matter if nobody reads it except for me, I miss it when I'm not writing.

("The writing of many books is endless," the Preacher pointed out in Ecclesiastes 12:12. But he wrote it anyway.)

"I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep."--Charlotte Bronte

You know That Person who always has drama going in her life, who always has a set of stories that are irritating because they make you feel like she doesn't care about whatever you want to complain about, or because it seems like she's just trying to pull sympathy out of everybody around her? I'm kind of afraid I'm in danger of turning into That Person.

My dad died a little over 11 months ago, and although nobody's told me that I should be over it by now, I feel like there must be something a little boring about somebody whose honest answer to "How are you" hasn't been "everything is going great" for a while. Maybe there isn't. Maybe I just miss being able to say it.

I don't know if I haven't read enough grief books to come across this, or if this is actually a weird thing, but I'm tired of it. Grieving. Let's be done. I feel like the way it should work is that on the anniversary of my dad going into the hospital and our lives changing forever...he comes back. That's how it should work. Way to stick it out for a year, everybody! Back to normal!

Or if that doesn't work, at least grieving should be uncomplicated. One thing at a time. No dragging up memories of past losses. No adding losses or adding complications. I wanted a year off from everything, and what I got was a year of "Suzanne, you are not in control." Of anything, on the most basic level, and especially not of hearts.

I couldn't keep my dad's heart beating.

I couldn't change the hearts of the young kids in my school.

I couldn't keep my own heart on track.

In fact, right about now my heart feels like it's been turned upside down and shaken for a year. I feel empty. I have nothing to give anybody.

And I know that if I'm empty it is a great opportunity to be filled with the fullness of God. I know it will be good. I am not excited about it now, but I know it will be exciting and beautiful, and I strain against my present feelings into the overarching reality of that knowing. (Hope is a thing with battle scars.)

I don't believe in Christ because He makes my life fluffy and simple. "How hard could it be?" Pastor Dale asked of following Christ, and answered his own question: "It's as hard as dying--and if you think that can't be true, you haven't tried it."

I believe that His dying, and this dying of ours that follows, is the only way to what it really means to live. (I want to be that Person.)

Sobering Reminders and Thrilling Promises

I was thinking about Ezekiel 33:11 today, after I read of so many people excited about the death of Osama Bin Laden. (This is not really going to be a post about the pros and cons of a standing army, or the war on terror, or whether or not it is ever okay to be glad about a military victory. This is a post inspired by the verse that popped into my head after reading the news.) Since I didn't know it was Ezekiel 33:11, and just remembered part of it, I looked up the passage this evening.

I saw that it contained more than a statement of truth about the heart of God--there are some sobering reminders to people who claim to follow Him, and some thrilling promises to those who turn to Him, no matter what they've done.

I was going to post the verse, but found I couldn't post anything less than Ezekiel 33:10-20. (I've bolded some of my favorite bits, but I love it all.) The speaker in this passage is God, addressing the prophet for whom the book is named.

____________________________________________________

Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus you have spoken, saying, "Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?"

Say to them, 'As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, 'I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'

And you, son of man, say to your fellow citizens, 'The righteousness of a righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble because of it in the day when he turns from his wickedness; whereas a righteous man will not be able to live by his righteousness on the day when he commits sin.'

When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes which ensure life without committing iniquity, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he shall surely live.

Yet your fellow citizens say, 'The way of the Lord is not right,' when it is their own way that is not right.

When the righteous turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, then he shall die in it. But when the wicked turns from his wickedness and practices justice and righteousness, he will live by them.

Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not right.' O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.

____________________________________________________

I want to meet people in heaven who used to be like Osama Bin Laden--people who hated Jesus Christ passionately, and perhaps persecuted His people just as passionately, but who turned from enemies into family. (Besides the one I know is there, whose name is Paul.)

"We were wretched excuses for human beings," they will say. "We squandered so many opportunities to do good. We are utterly amazed at the undeserved grace and power of our amazing God."

"Me, too," I'll say.

To all of it.

What Will Be, Is Now

Nobody called it Good Friday that day, of course. That day was the worst day ever. Many of them had spent three years as this man's constant companions. At least one had known him his whole life. That day they watched him, their friend and son and teacher, the man who they were hoping was going to be the redeemer of Israel...die. Horribly. They listened to his enemies mock him, heard his cries of anguish, saw the pain on his face and were not able to do anything. Anything but stay there with him. (They probably didn't think until later about how much had already changed since Gethsemane.)

The holy week calendar just calls the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday "Holy Saturday." To them, it must have been Blank Saturday. Or maybe "What now?" Saturday. It was the Sabbath, so they gathered together, and they rested, but the excitement and promise and life were gone. God only knew where they would go from here.

He did know. He had even told them this was coming. When Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus, he laid the whole story out for them, and they must have felt like the fools he called them when they realized they'd just spent three days mourning when they should have been waiting with bated breath in expectation of the great things to come.

The fact that Good Friday once felt like the most soul-crushing, dream-dashing day ever bodes well for all of our bad days from here on out. The fact that Holy Saturday was a confusing blank frees us from having to know exactly how God is going to act, because the main thing is that he's going to act.

Offer your pain and your frustration and your confusion as a sacrifice to God, and rejoice even when it feels like you're being burned with the sacrifice. Because Easter Sunday is a fact, too.

Christ the Son of God rose from the grave in triumph over death, to lead those held captive to the fear of death out of that prison (don't cling to the prison instead of the person). He fulfilled the promises entrusted to the prophets, proving that God is trustworthy. The promises entrusted to the apostles built on those of the prophets, and all point to the fact that God is active in this world, and that horrible things precede things so glorious that they transform the ugliest past into something beautiful. Do you believe this?

Faith is looking at the world that is now through the filter of the world that is promised.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."--Romans 8:18

An Honest Mistake

Imagine you're the king of a region in the Middle East. You are married, but you've also got a bit of a harem going. You've heard rumors about a woman in a group of nomads who settled within your territory. Rumor has it she is beautiful, and better yet, beautiful and unmarried. Seems the leader of the nomads is her brother.

In addition to being somewhat of a connoisseur and collector of beautiful women, as a ruler you know the value of creating alliances. Taking this woman into your harem? Win-win.

Something starts feeling a little off, though. While the women of the harem are putting the new recruit through orientation on local culture and household expectations, which can take a while, there are no new pregnancies. This is against pattern in an unsettling sort of way, but you don't connect it to the woman's arrival.

That is, until you dream that God Himself is issuing you a warning. "Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is married."

This is a shock on two major levels. 1) You were repeatedly told she was not married. Even the leader of the nomads, her brother, reported that she was unmarried, and shouldn't he know? 2) You haven't even touched this woman. Which is also against pattern, now that you think about it, but for some reason it's been enough just to look at her as she walks around your house...somewhat mournfully....

Suddenly the final goodbye between that leader and his "sister" rises into your mind and you have never felt so duped.

"Lord, will You slay a nation, even though blameless? Did he not himself say to me, 'She is my sister'? And she herself said, 'He is my brother.' In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this."

In the dream God replies, "Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her."

And everything starts to work itself out from there.

Why is this story in the Bible? (Genesis 20, check it out.)

Yes, it shows Abraham's lack of faith in God's protection, and God's persistence in protecting Abraham and Sarah anyway. Yes, it shows that the child to come, Isaac, was definitely the son of Abraham and not some foreign ruler.

But it's also about the king, Abimelech. And it's mostly about God.

A God who lets us make mistakes, even grievous mistakes, but keeps us from sinning in them. A God who responds to honest cries of "I didn't know this would happen" and "I thought I was doing the right thing" with "Yes, I know; and I was protecting you the whole time."

Which makes it a story about us, too. Thankfully.

Breaking and Burning

This weekend my mom was in the hospital. She's out now, but it was a rough weekend. Yesterday when I got back in to work, I was exhausted and emotionally fragile.

The big thing that kept me breaking into tears at intervals throughout the morning was that people kept asking me how I was doing, and how my mom was doing, and meaning it. This afternoon, two coworker-friends who have been keeping tabs on me closely since Sunday came in and sat in my office, which they had never done before. A voice inside my head said, "You don't have to keep checking on me. I'm not broken." And then another voice said, "Yes. I am."

Laurie R. King writes of a woman who has been carrying a weight of grief and snaps, completely breaks down in front of someone she was trying to look good for. In looking back on the incident, the woman says that "[he] had seen me in that despicable state and burnt me with his compassion." That's how I feel when people keep coming, even when I have nothing to give them.

I hate being burnt. I hate being broken. Tonight at prayer meeting, I thought of this verse: "As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down" (Luke 21:6). I feel like that's me, like one stone after another is being knocked over. Part of me grieves that, but part of me is waiting to see what I will be afterwards (1 John 3:2).

When my dad was in the hospital, I felt like I was doing really well, really praying it out of the park and exercising faith like nobody's business. When my mom was in the hospital, my internal prayer went more like, "God, I have no idea what you're doing. I don't even know what to say to you right now. I'm a little afraid of you, and a little angry about this, and I just don't know." But that's a prayer the Spirit translates (Rom. 8:26).

I have nothing. But everything.

"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."~~2 Corinthians 4:6-7

The more chips there are in a jar of clay, the more worn out it is with use, the more what is inside of it is revealed. So I want to stop trying to seal the broken places, trying to distract everybody from seeing them, trying to pretend they aren't there. I want people to see that light.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted

And saves those who are crushed in spirit."

~~ Psalm 34:18

"How are you?"

Tonight our associate pastor preached on how Christians should pursue honesty, even in the answering of socially conventional questions like "How are you?"

I've always had trouble with that question. It's always been much too complicated to answer. And on Sundays, it's even harder. It's not that I'm trying to hide so much as that I feel too confused by the transition-between-weeks nature of Sundays to be able to answer "How are you?" with any clarity. Especially on Sunday nights, when my brain has started to process what I need to do in the week ahead, I am likely to stare at you blankly if you ask how I am.

Also, "missing my dad" will be a given for any answer to that question for the rest of my life. Even if the rest of the answer is "really excited/happy," I'll still be wishing Dad could be part of it, too. But who wants to hear that all the time? That's not new or fun. And although lately I've been missing him more, for several reasons, there have already been and there will be more times when missing him isn't something I'll be distraught about. It'll just be there, a reality to live with. (C.S. Lewis aptly compared the death of a close loved one to the amputation of a leg.)

There's some good stuff coming up this week. The completion of my giant work project that took up last week; visits with friends; my mom coming to town and in to work with me (I know one boy there who is looking forward to this about as much as I am); possibly bringing Apollo it to work for show-and-tell of sorts; seeing a play.... I'm looking forward to it. It should be a good week. I miss my dad.

(When I was with him in the hospital, I would tell him that even though he might be wishing I would stop talking for a minute, I was just going to keep talking to him until he was able to talk back to me. When I see him next, I should keep that promise. No matter how much I have stored up to tell him by then.)

Pressed, but not crushed. That's how I am.

Crying in the darkness

Words stick in my head even if they aren't set to music, looping over and over, especially when they seem relevant to my current situation. This afternoon on my way home, these were the words on repeat: "You have removed lover and friend far from me."

It is the penultimate line of Psalm 88, the bleakest song in the whole book of songs.

"You have removed lover and friend far from me." Not circumstance. Not fate. You. You, the God I have been serving all of these years. You, the One I love above all, deny me other loves. You have removed my dad far from me. You are slow, as some count slowness, to come to the aid of children I have grown to love. You confound me, in more than one sense of the word.

God doesn't sweep in at the end of the psalm to deny any of it. Not His agency, not the pain of the supplicant. In fact, elsewhere He confirms it: "When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?" (Amos 3:6); "The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these" (Isaiah 45:7).

And in case that should be mistaken for an Old Testament God-of-wrath thing, centuries later Jesus confirms that "In the world you have tribulation" (from John 16:33, NASB), which is translated in other versions as "you will have tribulation" (ESV) and "you will have trouble" (NIV). Will. For certain. And God is sovereign.

I love God for standing while the psalmist pours out the darkness of his heart at His feet, and I love Jesus for not saying, "In the world you have tribulation, but keep smiling."

Instead, He says, "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage ["take heart" (ESV); "take heart!" (NIV)]; I have overcome the world." He gives us a reason to keep going, while not discounting the pain. He tells us that this world is a place of tension: tribulation and the victory of Christ coexisting.

The psalmist of Psalm 88 isn't forgetting the victory. The psalm that ends "You have removed lover and friend far from me; my acquaintances are in darkness" begins "O Lord, the God of my salvation, I have cried out by day and in the night before You."

And I am not forgetting the victory. It is because of the victory that I can be sure that when I cry in the darkness, there is somebody who hears.

O Lord, "my soul has had enough troubles" (Psalm 88:3a).

Letter of Comfort from Guido de Brès to His Wife

Pastor Dale read part of the letter below in church tonight. It was written more than 450 years ago by a Belgian who was in prison and about to be martyred for his faith, but in many places it feels like it could have been written by my dad. I guess that's because, even though separated by centuries and an ocean, my dad and this man were brothers. So it's not a surprise that they resembled each other.

I didn't get to hear my dad say goodbye, or to hear him explain what was going through his head as he lay there in the hospital, knowing that life would never be the same and then knowing that he was going to die. My dad wasn't the sort of person to write long letters as a general rule, but I believe he would have assented to this letter as heartily as he would assent to that more famous work of which Guido de Brès was the main author, the Belgic Confession.

Thank you, God, for allowing the words of your servants to comfort others throughout history.

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The grace and mercy of our good God and heavenly Father, and the love of His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, be with you, my dearly beloved.

Catherine Ramon, my dear and beloved wife and sister in our Lord Jesus Christ: your anguish and sadness disturbs somewhat my joy and the happiness of my heart, so I am writing this for the consolation of both of us, and especially for your consolation, since you have always loved me with an ardent affection, and because it pleases the Lord to separate us from each other. I feel your sorrow over this separation more keenly than mine. I pray you not to be troubled too much over this, for fear of offending God. You knew when you married me that you were taking a mortal husband, who was uncertain of life, and yet it has pleased God to permit us to live together for seven years, giving us five children. If the Lord had wished us to live together longer, he would have provided the way. But it did not please him to do this and may his will be done.

Now remember that I did not fall into the hands of my enemies by mere chance, but through the providence of my God who controls and governs all things, the least as well as the greatest. This is shown by the words of Christ, “Be not afraid. Your very hairs are numbered. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall fall to the ground without the will of your Father. Then fear nothing. You are more excellent than many sparrows.” These words of divine wisdom say that God knows the number of my hairs. How then can harm come to me without the command and providence of God? It could not happen, unless one should say that God is no longer God. This is why the Prophet says that there is no affliction in the city that the Lord has not willed.

Many saintly persons who were before us consoled themselves in their afflictions and tribulations with this doctrine. Joseph, having been sold by his brothers and taken into Egypt, says, “You did a wicked deed, but God has turned it to your good. God sent me into Egypt before you for your profit.” (Genesis 50). David also experienced this when Shimei cursed him. So too in the case of Job and many others.

And that is why the Evangelists write so carefully of the sufferings and of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, adding, “And this was done that that which was written of Him might be accomplished.” The same should be said of all the members of Christ.

It is very true that human reason rebels against this doctrine and resists it as much as possible and I have very strongly experienced this myself. When I was arrested, I would say to myself, “So many of us should not have traveled together. We were betrayed by this one or that one. We ought not to have been arrested.” With such thoughts I became overwhelmed, until my spirits were raised by meditation on the providence of God. Then my heart began to feel a great repose. I began then to say, “My God, you have caused me to be born in the time you have ordained. During all the time of my life you have kept me and preserved me from great dangers and you have delivered me from them all – and if at present my hour has come in which I will pass from this life to you, may your will be done. I cannot escape from your hands. And if I could, I would not, since it is happiness for me to conform to your will.” These thoughts made my heart cheerful again.

And I pray you, my dear and faithful companion, to join me in thanking God for what he has done. For he does nothing that is not just and very equitable, and you should believe that it is for my good and for my peace. You have seen and felt my labours, cross, persecutions, and afflictions which I have endured, and have even had a part in them when you accompanied me in my travels during the time of my exile. Now my God has extended his hand to receive me into his blessed kingdom. I shall see it before you and when it shall please the Lord, you will follow me. This separation is not for all time. The Lord will receive you also to join us together again in our head, Jesus Christ.

This is not the place of our habitation – that is in heaven. This is only the place of our journey. That is why we long for our true country, which is heaven. We desire to be received in the home of our Heavenly Father, to see our Brother, Head, and Saviour Jesus Christ, to see the noble company of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and many thousands of martyrs, into whose company I hope to be received when I have finished the course of my work which I received from my Lord Jesus Christ.

I pray you, my dearly beloved, to console yourself with meditation on these things. Consider the honour that God has done you, in giving you a husband who was not only a minister of the Son of God, but so esteemed of God that he allowed him to have the crown of martyrs. It is an honour the like of which God has never even given to the angels.

I am happy; my heart is light and it lacks nothing in my afflictions. I am so filled with the abundance of the richness of my God that I have enough for me and all those to whom I can speak. So I pray my God that he will continue his kindness to me, his prisoner. The One in whom I have trusted will do it, for I have found by experience that he will never leave those who have trusted in him. I would never have thought that God would have been so kind to such a poor creature as I. I feel the faithfulness of my Lord Jesus Christ.

I am practicing now what I have preached to others. And I must confess that when I preached I would speak about the things I am actually experiencing as a blind man speaks of colour. Since I was taken prisoner I have profited more and learned more than during all the rest of my life. I am in a very good school: the Holy Spirit inspires me continually and teaches me how to use the weapons in this combat. On the other side is Satan, the adversary of all children of God. He is like a boisterous, roaring lion. He constantly surrounds me and seeks to wound me. But he who has said, “Fear not, for I have overcome the world,” makes me victorious. And already I see that the Lord puts Satan under my feet and I feel the power of God perfected in my weakness.

Our Lord permits me on the one hand to feel my weakness and my smallness, that I am but a small vessel on the earth, very fragile, to the end that he would humble me, so that all the glory of the victory may be given to him. On the other hand, he fortifies me and consoles me in an unbelievable way. I have more comfort than the enemies of the gospel. I eat, drink and rest better than they do. I am held in a very strong prison, very bleak, obscure and dark. The prison is known by the obscure name “Brunain.” The air is poor and it stinks. On my feet and hands I have irons, big and heavy. They are a continual hell, hollowing my limbs up to my poor bones. The chief constable comes to look at my irons two or three times a day, fearing that I will escape. There are three guards of forty men before the door of the prison.

I have also the visits of Monsieur de Hamaide. He comes to see me, to console me, and to exhort me to patience, as he says. However, he comes after dinner, after he has wine in the head and a full stomach. You can imagine what these consolations are. He threatens me and says to me that if I would show any intention of escaping he would have me chained by the neck, the body and legs, so that I could not move a finger; and he says many other things in this order. But for all that, my God does not take away his promises, consoling my heart, giving me very much contentment.

Since such things have happened, my dear sister and faithful wife, I implore you to find comfort from the Lord in your afflictions and to place your troubles with him. He is the husband of believing widows and the father of poor orphans. He will never leave you – of that I can assure you. Conduct yourself as a Christian woman, faithful in the fear of God, as you always have been, honouring by your good life and conversation the doctrine of the Son of God, which your husband has preached.

As you have always loved me with great affection, I pray that you will continue this love toward our little children, instructing them in the knowledge of the true God and of his Son Jesus Christ. Be their father and their mother, and take care that they use honestly the little that God has given you. If God does you the favour to permit you to live in widowhood with our children after my death, that will be well. If you cannot, and the means are lacking, then go to some good man, faithful and fearing God. And when I can, I shall write to our friends to watch over you. I think that they will not let you want for anything. Take up your regular routine after the Lord has taken me. You have our daughter Sarah who will soon be grown. She will be your companion and help you in your troubles. She will console you in your tribulations and the Lord will always be with you. Greet our good friends in my name, and let them pray to God for me, that he may give me strength, speech, and the wisdom and ability to uphold the truth of the Son of God to the end and to the last breath of my life.

Farewell, Catherine, my dearly beloved. I pray my God that he will comfort you and give you contentment in his good will. I hope that God has given me the grace to write for your benefit, in such a way that you may be consoled in this poor world. Keep my letter for a remembrance of me. It is badly written, but it is what I am able to do, and not what I wish to do. Commend me to my good mother. I hope to write some consolation to her, if it pleases God. Greet also my good sister. May she take her affliction to God. Grace be with you.

At the prison, April 12, 1567.

Your faithful husband, Guy de Brès, minister of the Word of God at Valenciennes, and presently prisoner for the Son of God at the aforesaid place.

Muzzled Roaring

today's lunch visits were punctuated

with territory squabbles

the larger stepping in front of the other

(kicked from behind)

moving off and back moments later

in front of a still larger this time

(body checked into the door

before both were bustled out

for everybody's safety)

I love to be loved fiercely,

albeit selfishly and thoughtlessly, too,

and oh, my young lions,

there are days I also

feel trapped

and powerless

The Same Old Jesus Stuff

For me, the Sunday School lesson book about the life of Christ is the hardest book to teach through. By the age of six, many of these "church kids" may have already heard the story of angels appearing to shepherds dozens of times. And of course, at six, you're beginning to be old enough to know how much you know, and not yet far enough along to realize that it really isn't everything.

"Today's lesson is about Jesus...." I began once, only to have a student cut me off with, "Boring!"

The journey, the inn, no room, the manger, the baby, the shepherds, the angels. "Church adults" have heard and read all this even more often than the kids have. How do we keep from echoing that student's statement, at least in the privacy of our own minds?

I am not the best teacher. I do not have the best ideas on how to reach these young students. But I know the answer to how we keep the Bible from boring us.

Love Jesus.

That's it. That's really it. Sound too easy?

Think back to the start of a romantic infatuation, no matter how lasting it was. Do you remember how everything about that person was significant? Every word, every glance, was fascinating? How many times could you hear the same story from that voice? How many times could you read over a letter in that handwriting?

Love Jesus!

Love makes empathy easier, and empathy is a form of imagination. So start imagining....

Imagine being a young woman about your ordinary, everyday chores (likely not lounging on a settee as the paintings more frequently depict). Maybe your hands are full of laundry or covered in cooking grease (doesn't God love to catch us off guard?), and you turn around and are having a calm conversation with the archangel Gabriel about how your life, how every life, how the world changes now. And then when he's gone, maybe you have to finish making dinner for the family before asking for permission to visit your cousin for a while.

Imagine being a man getting a summons to register for a census, and it isn't a neat little form mailed to your house to send back or people will knock on your door, it's a command to go back to your home town and sign yourself in (and you'd really better not dodge this, the Roman government gets especially touchy about conquered people groups ignoring them). Maybe for a while you're too busy worrying about your very pregnant wife to feel anything but annoyance at Caesar's horrible timing, and then maybe when you hold the baby in your arms for the first time you remember the prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and you laugh because God is using a government you heartily disagree with in ways they could never suspect.

Imagine being on the outside as an enemy and invited to lay down your weapons and enter the house as a much-loved child.

It's the "same old Jesus stuff" that still, every day, makes people like me new, morning by morning. And it's His power, not mine, that reaches to the hearts of His children.

Great is His faithfulness!

Whose message?

Peter is on the roof, probably enjoying the coolness and snoozing as he waits for lunch, when the sheet comes down from the sky, filled with all types of unclean animals. A voice asks him to choose his dinner from amongst them, but Peter knows that God had forbidden His people from eating such things, so he is ready with a swift and confident refusal to comply. Test complete, right? But the voice asserts that Peter is not to call unclean what God has called clean.

Maybe he could have written it off as a weird dream if it had just happened once, but it happens three times, and Peter has a thing with the number three.

So after the third time, Peter, an apostle who had walked closely with Jesus, who has been visited by the Holy Spirit, who will write words inspired by God himself...is really confused.

How can he tell who sent this vision, and why? Is it a trial from God to prove Peter's steadfastness one more time, or is it a temptation from Satan, who may have seen Peter inhale a little more deeply as he walked by a Gentile dwelling in which pork was being prepared?

Is this a legitimate extension of freedom (there is precedent for this [Matt. 12:1-12]), or the chance to prove that following God was more important to him than following his baser instincts (precedent exists for that, too [Matt. 26:69-75])?

Would Peter have ever figured it out if visitors hadn't shown up that very afternoon and made it clear that vision wasn't mainly about food, after all?

Through my whole life, no matter what thoughts and feelings swirl in my head, may I always receive such clear guidance when I am meant to move on them, and may I be willing to sit on confusion on the roof forever if such clarity does not present itself. (God grant me the grace and wisdom for both.)