Earthquakes and Assurance

On April 18th, 2008 at 5:39 a.m. an earthquake shook the ground at our home in Greenfield, Indiana. I was on my knees in prayer at the side of our bed when I heard the closet doors rattling. I heard the things on our dresser and night stands rattling as if something was shaking the floor. Startled, I looked up and searched the darkness of the room, expecting to see our dog scratching herself vigorously as she often does. But almost instantly I realized that it was an earthquake.
I had awoken earlier that morning and was too restless to go back to sleep. I got up, made the coffee, ate a piece of toast and came back to our bedroom. Then I did something that I don’t do very often, but regularly do when I am troubled or anxious about some event or circumstance in my life. I got down on my knees at my bedside and began to pray.
In the days and weeks before that morning I had become acutely aware that my prayers, especially my bedside prayers, always began with the words “Lord Jesus, I”. And then I began crying out to God about my trials and failings as a husband and father. Or pouring out my heart about the difficulties facing me at work, or about my disappointment and anxiety about our finances. And I know that God wants to hear about my struggles and fears and heartache. I absolutely believe and trust that he cares for me and wants to hear my voice, but my prayers were always about me and my feelings and my needs. I determined to begin my prayers by focusing my heart and mind on Jesus. Every time I began my prayer with the words “Lord Jesus, I”, I would stop and restart by praying “Lord Jesus, You”, and then devote some time praising him for who he is. And I know that he knows who he is, but I take comfort in remembering his love and sacrifice for each of us and his promises to all who call on his name. His blessings and provision and calling are such a marvelous reality!
And on that particular morning as I knelt in prayer, restless and burdened with some object of guilt or grief or pain I began with the words “Lord Jesus, You” and even as I began my prayer of praise and adoration, I paused a moment in my mind and thanked God for turning my heart to him and the glory of his personality and character. And as I focused on him and what precious little I know about him my problems and pain shrunk away.
Before I finished my prayer that morning I arose to embrace the day with the blessed assurance that the God who shakes the earth is the same God who calls me to my knees.

Saplings, Brambles and Woody Weeds

I was “mind-surfing” while driving home from my mom’s house recently. I was browsing memories about the few precious minutes spent with my brother the day before. I remembered shivering as I helped him unload feed for his cattle and store it in the old pump house, which was the headquarters for my early morning chores 40 years ago. I was searching for topics to write about in my blog. And I was out of my body exploring the shallow ravines, frozen creekbeds, and brushy fencerows that populate the landscape along the northern Indiana highway. In the winter you can see the elegant and intimate details of the unmown and uncultivated margins and corners. The saplings and brambles and woody weeds stand exposed to the elements with last summer’s leaf cover shriveled around their frozen feet. But if the stories told by these minor members of the plant kingdom are light poetry, you can read a novel in the form and structure of the old trees that stand alone at the edge of a wood or in the middle of an abandoned farmstead. Some of these trees are tall and majestic. Their trunks split into several balanced limbs. And these limbs subdivide repeatedly until they end in the tender little vessels that interact directly with the atmosphere and process the elements of life. Every season of their life has been another chapter in an epic of progress and endurance. Storms weathered with grace, pestilence repelled with impunity, new life thrust forth and supported from within. Other trees are characters in a much different story. They may have a limb that was scorched and permanently stunted by a random stroke of lightning from a sudden summer storm. Some bear the deep and indiscriminate gouges of chain saws claiming canopy space for power lines. Others have branches that are irreparably broken or grotesquely twisted by the dreadful weight of ice and snow. The underlying character of every tree is exposed by the harsh realities of winter. Majestic strength and organic symmetry are on display for all to admire. But your eye may also be drawn to the cruel scars and violent damage that many of the trees display. I praise God, the creator of all living things for the grace and beauty of the tall, straight and majestic citizens of the wooded landscapes. When he made them on the third day of creation he called them good. And I praise him for the ones with deep scars and twisted limbs. The ones who have endured the effects of sudden storms and dreadful burdens have a unique nobility and they remind me that Gods grace is sufficient for me.

Wheat Straw, Cracked Corn and Rabbit Fur

Winter was my favorite time of the year when I was young. With a hot breakfast in my belly I would bundle up every morning and go outdoors to do my chores. We always had some combination of chickens, rabbits, hogs, and maybe cattle that needed water, feed and bedding. The air was so cold that nothing weak or dirty could live in it. The morning darkness held no fear for me like the darkness of nighttime did. And the sun always came up from behind the denuded woods in a spectacular display of brightly blended watercolors shining through the pen and ink forms of trunks, limbs and branches.
The small stock were always reluctant to be handled, but would tolerate my touch while they took their first long drinks of water after a long night of frozen thirst. The larger animals would initiate contact in their eagerness for fresh water and food. The hogs were always vocal and almost articulate in the morning as they roused themselves from their slumber piles.
The hardship of winter, the beauty of sunrise and the fellowship of farm animals, combined with the morning solitude to provide refuge for my adolescent anxieties. The colors and textures of sunrise, snow, wheat straw, cracked corn and rabbit fur fueled my foraging imagination. I experienced a great blessing of joy and peace in those fleeting moments between breakfast and boarding the school bus. But that was a long time ago.
In my Freshman year of High School I wrote an essay describing my great love for winter mornings outdoors. My English teacher submitted it to the local newspaper without my knowledge. I remember being more embarrassed than proud when they printed it. I had embellished just a little for effect, added some multi-syllabic adjectives that weren’t completely necessary and described some things about myself that I never expected anyone but the teacher to read. My mom clipped it from the newspaper 36 years ago. She gave me the clipping, along with some other “treasures” recently.
That little essay was the first and last thing I ever had “published”. I’ve got a great deal of catching up to do.

Vulgar Insults and Other Nonsense

One of the reasons why I hesitate to do so many of the things that I want to do is because I think about it so long that I imagine so many things that could go wrong and then I decide that I better not do whatever I was thinking about doing. Pathetic, I know. But that’s why I thought about writing a blog for so long before I finally began.
I’ve been thinking about my last blog entry and wondering if something worse than I had imagined actually happened. I feel like I often observe or experience something that connects with other stuff or fills in a place that I didn’t actually know was empty. And that’s fascinating to me. I just don’t often know what it means. I’m sure it means something but I’m afraid if I fill in the blank or connect the dots I’ll move on to something else and someday revisit the topic and find out I was wrong. And I know that sounds like nonsense, and maybe it is, but what I’m trying to say is that I see more value in questions than in answers. And that’s not an original thought; I once heard someone else say something very similar and it made a lot of sense to me.
Many people I know agree that God speaks to us. I have told some of them that God speaks to me in object lessons. My gps was as reliable, and as correct, when I thought I knew best, as it was when I acknowledged my ignorance. The conviction that struck me first, when I realized that, is that I treat God the same way. I am obviously an idiot. I get all giddy and sing happy songs when I turn to Jesus in my despair and he “sets my feet upon a rock”. But then I ignore him and insult him when he bids me continue to follow him.
I drove for another hour that day wondering how many times I’ve taken the long way or done laps around a strange little town when I could have trusted my way to the expert navigator and map maker. How much further down the road would I be today?
And as I write these words I realize that all this introspection and self-castigation is vain indeed if I don’t come to repentance and submission.