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.)