Life Is A Dash!

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (Eccles. 10-12)

"Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth..." Eccles. 12:1-5

They all seemed so young and happy. The line of animated young women talking enthusiastically, to each other, stretched down the long white baby shower table. Somehow, on each side, there was a gap between them and me. My green sherbet punch and I seemed to be on our own little island. But, my island was inhabited. A pleasant looking girl in her thirties sat across from me.

"Hello," I said, "I'm Betsy."

"And I'm Jessica," she responded.

Before long, I found myself in the midst of a very interesting conversation with my fellow inhabitant. She was married with two young boys, she had gone to mortuary school, and she now works in a funeral home. "I'm always on call," she remarked, "because you never know when somebody will die."

"Oh, do you go pick up the, uh er, bodies?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied quite cheerfully, "that's one of my jobs."

There we sat, a rather isolated little pair, talking about death in the midst of a baby shower celebrating life. Life and death. Two very significant words. In fact I've heard it said that the two most important dates in life are the birth date and the death date - with a dash in between. The meaning of that statement is clear: the dash is short and we need to make our swift earthly tenures count.

That's Solomon's point in today's scriptures. Do it now!

"Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And the years draw near when you say, "I have no pleasure in them":

Eccles.12:1

It will never be easier to give our days to the Lord, it will only become harder. We need to remember our Creator now, while we can.

The wisest man who ever lived, goes on to tell us what is going to happen in our futures.

"While the sun and the light, The moon and the stars, Are not darkened, And the clouds do not return after the rain;" 12:2

He warns that as we age we are more and more prone to depression. It's been proven that older bodies do not produce the serotonin that young bodies do. Anyone who has suffered depression knows about the dark clouds that hover and can return so easily.

"In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, And the strong men bow down;" 12:3a

The "keepers of the house" that tremble are the limbs and the strong men bowing down is a reference to the legs. After having a knee replacement, I can relate. Strength wanes as we add years. Parts start to wear out. Charlie told me that if a machine worked perfectly in a mill for fifty years the operators would cheer. We expect our "fearfully and wonderfully made" bodies to run smoothly much longer than that.

"When the grinders cease because they are few, And those that look through the windows grow dim;" 12:3b

In America we get our teeth crowned, but lots of people in other countries don't have this privilege and their teeth become few. We buy attractive reading glasses when we turn forty, but after while they don't seem to work right, and we consult our ophthamoligists more and more frequently.

"When the doors are shut in the streets, And the sound of grinding is low;" 12:4a

As I tried to hear my interesting new friend's voice, I thought, "I wish my hearing aids were working better! Her voice sounds awfully quiet." The older we get, the more we have to strain to listen. We have to really concentrate. Maybe that isn't all bad.

"When one rises up at the sound of a bird, And all the daughters of music are brought low;" 12:5

There is a reason for the term "sleeps like a baby." The older we get, the lighter we sleep and the earlier we wake up.

"Also, when they are afraid of height, And of terrors in the way;" 12:5a

This speaks of the fear of falling and breaking something - like a hip - necessitating a hip replacement. The older person has a constant battle with fear. It is more difficult to control imaginations.

"When the almond tree blossoms, 12:5b

The white hair of old age is described.

"The grasshopper is a burden," 12:5c

Have you ever watched the slow shaking gait of a very elderly person?

"And desire fails." 12:5d

Most of the ads on TV refer to this.

"for man goes to his eternal home, And the mourners go about the streets." 12:5e

And my new friend and her coworkers go to their funeral homes and take care of our bodies.

It was time to open presents. As we turned to watch, Jessica's final words were, "You know, most people are so unprepared for death to enter their lives. It's like, here in America, we don't expect to die. We live our lives forgetting that they will end. When death comes, we don't know how to deal with it!"

So we left our little island and joined the group oohing and ahhing over the beautiful presents bought especially for this new baby - that no one knows yet. We don't know this little child but God does. And we can pray - that he will remember his Creator in the days of his youth. We can lift him to the Throne of Grace and interceed for him to live for Jesus during the dash that will be his life. And, if he does that, when he leaves this earth, he will be prepared - for his Coronation Day.

A Lesson From A Jar of Pickles

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (Eccles. 3-6)

"To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to break down, And a time to build up; Eccles. 3:1, 3:3

"You Dummy. What a klutz you are." These words came flying out of my mouth as I surveyed the damage. The kitchen floor glistened with sugary syrup. Pickles, looking like little frogs scattered from their messy perches atop the broken glass, seemed to leer mockingly at me. They were everywhere! Pickles, glass, sticky....aghh!!

"What a mess to clean up. That was so stupid!" Who was I berating? My child, my grandchild, my husband? Nope! I would never talk to them like that. The disparaging words of condemnation were directed at myself. I was the one who reached into the frig and -ker bang - dropped the whole pickle jar. As it crashed to the floor and shattered into a bazillion pieces, I wailed those words about - myself, "You dummy, Betsy. What a klutz you are!"

Later, as I stood with my mop and surveyed the clean kitchen floor, I thought, "Well it really looks quite nice now. It actually needed a good mopping anyway." Then I reached into the pantry and brought out a fresh jar of pickles and reflected, "That other jar was pretty old anyway. It was probably time to replace it."

As I looked at the shining laminate, my friend the Holy Spirit came alongside and surveyed the kitchen with me. He smiled pleasantly and said, "It looks nice, doesn't it?" Then He asked me a question. "Betsy, why were you so hard on yourself? What would you have said to your friend if she had let the pickles slip through her fingers? Would you have called her a dummy and a klutz?"

"Uh,"I paused and reflected on His question. A light was going on in my brain called the illumination of the Holy Spirit. "Why," I answered, "I would have said, "Don't worry, everybody drops things. I'll help you clean it up. And then......well, we probably would have had a good laugh as we gingerly picked up pieces of glass."

He had made His point. There was no need for me to engage in destructive deprecatory self talk. I began to think, "Why am I so careless about the way that I talk to myself?"

My Wise Counselor went on. "Here is a scripture for you to think about. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." (Rom. 8:1) No condemnation, I reflected. Then why do I condemn myself? Why am I harder on myself than I am on other people?

I thought about it and thought about it. Then a long buried memory came to my mind. I remembered my mother stirring lemon pie filling on the stove. Suddenly it started to burn and the pleasant smell turned acrid. As I watched and listened, she began berating herself and berating herself over and over. How had she learned the art of destructive deprecatory self talk so well.? From her father? I'd never heard him say much positive to her. But then, he had run away from home at age 15. Why did he feel the need to do that? What was said to him that his home was not a place of refuge but a non safe place that he fled at an early age? Like an old tattered recipe, this kind of self deprecation had been passed down in our family from generation to generation.

When we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, we enter into a new way of looking at life. "He has born our griefs and carried our sorrows. We esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53: 4-5) God sent His Son to make atonement - to do a switch out for our sins. Jesus took away the condemnation that we were all under because of sin. He replaced it with love and no condemnation. But, as Christians, we have to learn to believe how worthwhile we are in His sight.

Old habits and weavings in families are often passed down from generation to generation. It is important to allow the Comforter, the Divine Paraclete, to come along side and "lead us into all truth." (John 14:26. He will help us sort through our behavior recipes carefully like we gently play a game of Pick Up Sticks. For me, a jar of broken pickles revealed a behavior pattern that needed to be removed and replaced with the biblical truth, "There is therefore no condemnation!"

How do you talk to yourself? What kinds of conversations do you have in your mind? Do you engage in destructive deprecating self talk over life's incidents or do you listen to the kind tender voice of the Holy Spirit as He reminds you that Jesus loves you and gave Himself for you?

I am not a dummy. I am not a klutz! I am a lady with a very clean kitchen floor.

"Sorry, Betsy" I said. "You are not a dummy. You are not a klutz. I'll try not to speak to you like that again." I accepted my apology and forgave myself with constructive self talk - this time.

"There is a time for every purpose under heaven..A time to break down, and a time to build up!"

You pray for me and I'll pray for you that we can break down the patterns of destructive deprecating self talk. Through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, let's build up the truths of how much our Savior loves us. Maybe we will learn to consistently speak to ourselves with constructive self talk - just like we try to do to our families and friends.

All My Life?

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (Prov. 20-22)

"Train up a child in the way he should go,

And when he is old he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6

"I wonder what we'll do with him for the next eighteen years?"

Charlie uttered these words as he looked down at our firstborn son wrapped tightly in his little blue blanket. We had just come home from the hospital and my husband and my mother and I were all gazing devotedly at our tiny new baby sleeping quietly in the bed.

Mom looked at Charlie incredulously and said, "Well, it will be a lot longer than eighteen years. It will be all of your life!"

Neither he nor I had been raised around babies. We didn't have a clue. We both stared at her blankly and wondered what we should do next. We didn't have to ponder long. Twenty four hours later, our morning delight had changed to late evening weariness. Ethan's brand new little outfits were in the wash, I was sore all over, and his diaper needed changing - again. There were three of us attending this little son and we were exhausted. One seven pound baby had turned our lives upside down. " All of our lives" seemed like a very long time.

Six weeks later, we novices were experts on this little fellow......

We knew his eating schedule and we recognized his different cries - "I am hungry, I'm uncomfortable, I need attention!" We could rock him just the way he liked to help him fall asleep. Our newly learned parenting prowess was exciting and satisfying. It's amazing to me that God gives young parents this ability to go from being clueless about babies to becoming uniquely knowledgeable about their own little child's physical needs very quickly.

Meeting our little one's physical needs was tiring but not that difficult. The true challenge was investing in his emotional and spiritual needs "training him up in the way that he should go." The word "train' doesn't mean a choo-choo. We learned that in the Bible the word, "train," has three ideas: dedication, instruction, and motivation.

First of all, we are to dedicate our child to God, recognizing that he is a gift that God has entrusted to us. Our dedication is an action that reflects our understanding that he belongs exclusively to God and we are to raise him as good stewards of this gift.

Secondly, we parents are to instruct our children in the ways of the Lord. We are to teach them how to please God. They are to study and learn and memorize His Word. It is our responsibility to place them under the influence of Godly people who will lovingly instruct them in His ways.

Thirdly, in Jewish writings, this word "train" means motivate. The meaning of this word in Arabic is likened to the action of a midwife who stimulates the palate of a newborn infant with dates or crushed grapes so that it will start sucking. Parents are to stimulate a taste within their child so that he is motivated in his heart to follow God, not by compelling him externally but by creating an inner desire for the Lord.

"Train up a child in the way he should go." Who are we to train up? A child. The word means "dependent" and as long as a child is dependent on his parents, he is to be the recipient of dedication, instruction, and motivation. There are many stages in a child's life and we are to do this throughout each stage.

If we do this, "when he is old, he will not depart from it" the proverb assures us. Old has the connotation of "when he is not dependent." As parents, we are to do the best that we can to dedicate, instruct and motivate our children while they are dependents. Then we are to rest in the last words of this beautiful exhortation trusting that God will bring it to pass in His way and in His time.

This son is a pastor in Alaska now. He and his family were here for the reunion. As he led our Sunday morning family service, it brought us great joy to sit under his wise teaching of God's Word. I looked at Charlie who was listening intently. and remembered, "What do you do with him for the next eighteen years?" We had learned, parenting lasts a lot longer - not eighteen years but for a lifetime. Christian parenting always involves dedicating, instructing and motivating and most of all trusting that "when they are old, they will not depart from it."

The Shining "Son"

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (Proverbs 4-7)

"But the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter until the perfect day." Prov. 4:18

The nurse must have had a bad night's sleep. She flipped through my chart and said rather irritably: "Didn't you know you weren't supposed to get pregnant right after your last miscarriage? You should have waited!"

I wasn't a Christian then, but I knew in my heart that this new little life growing inside of me was a gift of God...no matter what the grumpy nurse thought. Taking a deep breath, I smiled at her and said, "It will be all right."

And "it" was. God took care of my baby as we moved from Wisconsin to South Carolina and then to a new home twenty days before he entered the world. He was born on a scorching hot July day, but it was air conditioned and peaceful in the room where I labored - with a good nurse attending me. Later, as I held him in my arms, Charlie and I beamed at this amazing new creation and named him Theodore, a name that means "gift of God."

The years have flown. He is a man now about to send his firstborn off to college. I was watching him at our recent family reunion. He was organizing, encouraging, helping, and keeping us all laughing. As I watched two year old Joseph reach up his hands and call "Uncle Ted, Uncle Ted, pick me up!" I realized again that I had had no idea back in that first doctor's visit, how "all right" this new life would be. The joy and love and comfort our second son has brought to our lives and to the lives of so many is without limit.

Six years years after Ted was born, Charlie and I became Christians. We were drawn by God into a relationship with the true Son of Righteousness, Jesus Christ. As baby Christians, we had no idea of all the things the Son of God would become to us. But as the years have passed, Jesus has been all that His Word promised and so much more. Jesus has proved to be a very fine Savior.

My heart is filled with praise and thanksgiving as I write this morning. Praise for a wonderful Savior and thankfulness for another great son. Happy Birthday, Ted. May this verse bring you hope and direction for your new year of life, "The path of the just is like the shining sun, That shines ever brighter until the perfect day. May the true Son of God keep shining through you until we reach that perfect day.

In my very prejudiced opinion, forty plus years ago I spoke rightly when I said thusly, "It will be all right!"

A Short Pause

Dear Blog Friends,

I will not be writing my blog until July 26. Right now, our family is gathering for a family reunion and that is very exciting for me. Having everyone together is a rarity so that is my focus for a couple of weeks. But I'm sure there will be some fun stories to share with you when it is over.

Thank you so much for following this blog and being great readers with me as we go through the Bible. Lord willing, I will be back in force starting July 26.

In His wonderful grace,

Betsy

Tombstones and Flatscreens

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (II Kings 22-24)

Josiah was eight years old when he bcame king and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem.

And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left." II Kings 22:1,2

Nine year old Rachel and her two year old brother have been staying with us for the last three weeks while their parents and two older siblings are in Africa on a ministry trip for the Navigators. Grandpa and Grandma's lives have picked up a bit of speed. Things have been slow on the blog but fast around our house.

Rachel and I have spent some time at the cemetery watering flowers and sprucing up family graves. One day we took our Bibles and sat by my mom and dad's gravestone and read I Cor. 15 - the resurrection chapter. We shared about the new bodies that we'd get in heaven and all the people that we would see who were already there. I said that we would have a lot of catching up to do.

"Oh, No, Grandma," Rachel reflected, "They will already know all about our lives. I think that when we get to heaven there will be flat screen TVs and we'll be able to look at them and see what the people on earth are doing."

"I don't know about that," I laughed a little. "You know the Bible says there will be no tears in heaven, so it might make us sad to see all the things that everyone is doing. But, I sure would like to see the awesome flat screens that God made!"

"We wouldn't be sad at all!" she replied positively. "God would have the remotes set so that every time somebody sinned, we would switch channels."

I thought, "We might be switching channels a lot!" but I didn't say that because I was thinking about her nine year old mind and how sweet it is.

We walked around the cemetery reading the tombstones and discussing the brevity of some of the lives. Rachel remarked that she wished she knew more about the people who rested in each grave.

"Yes," I said to my young kindred spirit, "Every tombstone has a story."

Rachel was quiet as we drove home. Then she turned to me and said. "When I grow up, I am going to write about people in a book and illustrate it. Guess what the title is going to be?"

"What?" I said with great interest.

"Why," she responded, "Every Tombstone Has A Story" of course!"

Josiah became king of Judah at the young age of eight. His heart was turned toward the Lord and he "did not turn aside to the right hand or the left." What a neat guy! I wonder if he was watching us from heaven on a flat screen as Rachel and I strolled past the flower filled stones. Someday we'll meet him and ask him, won't we?

An African "Boodle!"

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 (II Kings 18-20)

“In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord; ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.’

Then he (Hezekiah) turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying,

“Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before you in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” II Kings 20: 1-3

The voice at the other end of the line was unintelligible. The man that I had reached knew what he was saying but I didn’t have a clue. He was speaking Zambian and I was communicating in English. He shouted something that sounded like “Boodle! Boodle!” When I asked for my daughter again, he raised his voice louder and shouted – “Boodle!!!!”

Have you ever tried to call someone in Africa? On their cell phone? It is a challenge that is almost unexplainable.

When Katie and Norman left for Zambia a week ago, they left us house numbers and cell phone numbers. Of course there are cell phones in Africa. Anyone knows that. (Actually I didn’t. When I thought of Africa, I thought of David Livingston talking about the smoke of a thousand fires.) The cell phones work – sometimes. The challenge is getting the bazillion numbers that you have to dial to go thousands of miles and reach the right person. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

The next day I tried again. To my surprise I heard my daughter’s voice on the other end of the line. “Mom,” she said sounding incredulous. “It is a miracle that you got me! We’re in a Jeep traveling on a dirt road in the bush!”

“Yesterday,” I said, “I got an African man who kept saying “Boodle” louder and louder!”

“Yes,” she answered from the jungle, “they speak very emphatically here. In the US we would think they are having an argument, but they’re not.”

Then the line clicked off. But I had spoken to my daughter in Zambia on her cell phone in Africa! A miracle of communication in today’s world.

King Hezekiah was dying. The prophet, Isaiah, had come to tell him that he should set his house in order because he was about to die. But the king wasn’t ready to die and so he turned his face toward the wall and prayed. He said, “’Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (II Kings 20:1-3)

That’s all he did. He turned his face toward the wall and prayed and cried. He didn’t dial any numbers or wait for a ring or get the wrong person shouting “Boodle.” He turned over in his bed and cried out to the Lord and immediately got an answer.

“Then it happened before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying,

“Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people. ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you.” II Kings 20:4-5)

Katie said it was a miracle that I reached her in the bush. It was. But the greatest miracle of all is prayer. I can wake up in the night and turn my face to the wall and pray for my daughter and family in Africa and know that God is saying to me, “I have heard your prayer!”

Wow! No boodles about that.