Puzzles

Puzzles are fun. Word puzzles. Number puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. I like to be able to figure them out. The process, to me, is invigorating. The more challenging the better. Like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. My daddy had a book of 200 of them, and he'd only done through #91 before he died, so I am attempting to do the rest. So far, I've totally completed only four out of the twenty-four I've attempted. They're difficult, sometimes grueling, but oh, the sheer satisfaction of figuring them out and checking them off! And I'll keep going back to the ones I haven't finished because sometimes I'll have an AHA moment the second or third or fourth time around. Something will finally click, and then I'll be able to get another word and another.

I think that's the thrill. Finally getting something I didn't think I knew.

Life is a puzzle, full of situations that are puzzling and people who I don't get because they are so different from me and my little world. Why don't I get as excited about life puzzles as I do about Sudoku or Crytoquote or the New York Times Sunday crossword? Maybe because the stakes are so much higher. If I don't figure out the Crytoquote today, then oh well. But if I can't solve the puzzles of poverty and wealth, giving and saving, putting my neck out there and protecting my soul, being risky and being daring, etcetera, etcetera, then what does my life mean?

Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself " (Matthew 22:37-39). Paul said, "Love never fails! Everyone who prophesies will stop, and unknown languages will no longer be spoken. All that we know will be forgotten. We don't know everything, and our prophcies are not complete. But what is perfect will someday appear, and what isn't perfect will then disappear...Now all we can see of God is like a cloudy picture in a mirror. Later we will see him face to face. We don't know everything, but then we will, just as God completely understands us. For now there are faith, hope and love. But of these three, the greatest is love" (1 Corinthians 13:8-10, 12-13).

I guess the answer to my dilemma is to get excited about pursuing love. Not the thrill of answers and complete solution of the myriad of earthly puzzles, but the joy of loving as Christ loved me and gave himself up for me as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

It's a Boy!

Our daughter Heather and her husband Josh found out today that they are having a boy. Heather and I had been secretly rooting for a girl, each for our own reasons, but we were both really happy to find out that the baby is doing well, progressing perfectly, and already knows how to sit "Indian style." In other words, the technician found it pretty easy to determine the sex!

I hate to admit the reason I wanted a girl is the clothes. When I was looking for a cute Christmas outfit for Tyler, my almost 3-year-old grandson, I found one choice. In the same store were forty Christmas outfits for little girls. And bows and purses and tights and cute little shoes. And for later on, tiaras.

Which reminds me of something. May I start at the beginning?
Jesus became my personal Savior in 1961. Though only seven years old, I truly and tremblingly gave myself to Him and asked Him to live in my heart forever. In the years since I've heard many an outstanding testimony and sometimes have regretted making my profession of faith so early, before I committed some bad sins that could have really "beefed up" my testimony. I'm just kidding (sort of). But you know what I mean. I would sit there thinking, How bad could I have been at seven years old that Jesus would need to come in and completely change my life?

In all seriousness, though, every person, no matter his or her age, is just as "bad" as the next. Every person is born with a sin nature. Genesis 8:21 says, "The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, 'Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.'" From childhood. If you've ever been around infants or toddlers, you've seen the sin nature in its early stages. The moment a child realizes there are choices in life, he begins to assert his preferences. He fusses at not being able to do what he wants, when he wants. Or she gravitates towards the "no no's." The Toddler's Creed humorously illustrates another of the ugly truths in man's sin nature:
If I want it, it's mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it's mine.
If I can take it away from you, it's mine.
If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
If it's mine, it will never belong to anybody else, no matter what.
If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks just like mine, it's mine.

Sounds a bit like covetousness, doesn't it? Let me edit my earlier testimony just a bit. Jesus became my personal Savior in 1961 when I was just seven years old, and oh, how I needed a Savior. Selfishness, egotism and covetousness ruled my heart. I wanted all the pretties I saw: that girl's boxy red purse with the brass buckle, that friend's shiny black shoes, that boy's really sweet mama, that candy store's malted milk balls, that acquaintance's nifty bicycle horn, that neighbor's gleaming swingset with super slippery slide, that teacher's colored chalk, that library's date stamper, that... I think you get the picture. If mere desire could've made them mine, they would have been MINE.

I never felt that desire more profoundly, however, than when I first laid eyes on a tiara. I believe the occasion was a Girl's Auxiliary coronation service at my church. In those days, many Southern Baptist girls took part in GA's (Girl's Auxiliary), an organization with the purpose of teaching about missions work around the world. In view of earning badges and other symbols of accomplishment, each girl in GA's would work on memorizing scripture, participating in mission action projects and creating artistic expressions and symbols of the Christian life. Step by step and year by year a girl worked to become a Maiden, Lady-in-Waiting, Princess, Queen, Queen with a Scepter and Queen Regent. All the hard work culminated in a coronation service at the end of each school year. Well, before I was even old enough to be a GA, my older sister Anne became a Queen and was ready to be crowned at the coronation service. She and two other girls, dressed in long white dresses, hair styled into updo's, stood on the platform, and one by one their mothers placed tiaras on their heads, signifying they had reached the rank of Queen.

Immediately a burning desire came over me that was so great I can hardly describe it. I wanted to be up there in flowing white dress, but more than that, I wanted that tiara. Its glitz outsparkled anything I had ever owned, and the shape of it was divine, so triangularly did it point toward heaven. I knew for certain that if I had that tiara my life would never be the same.

Now here's the really cool spiritual lesson. No tiara could actually ever change my life, but when Jesus came into my heart, as the song says, "He changed me completely and a new life is mine." And, when you are saved, you become a tiara of sorts - a crown. Listen to Philippians 4:1 - "I love you and long to see you, dear friends, for you are my joy and the crown I receive for my work" (New Living Translation). Paul was saying that when someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a crown for the one who lead him to Christ. Here's a special note: That tiara my sister got for becoming Queen is long gone, but she led me to Christ so I am her living crown (tiara), and have been for 49 years. Thank you, Anne, for loving me that much.
Now, readers, let's go get some living tiaras.

Fishing

The lake was gorgeous after the cool of the early spring morning. Norma Jean and I stirred up lemonade and fixed a large thermos of coffee while the men retrieved the fishing rods from under the deck. When we women walked down to the beach area, I could hear Wally and his father mumbling a foreign language of crappie plugs, long jig shanks and minnows. Norma Jean, Wally's mother, set the drinks on a tiny garden table in the sand and motioned for me to follow her up under the deck. We found four ratty lawn chairs and soon were lining them up parallel to the water's edge. She sat in the far left chair, right beside the drinks table, and as I sank down beside her, she handed me a glass of lemonade, my preferred poison when I was that age, one month past twenty-one.

I sipped absentmindedly on the tart treat while watching Wally with my full infatuation. He baited a hook with a minnow, something I thought extremely cruel and yukky in principle, but when done by him seemed almost heroic. Then he walked towards me with the fishing rod. "Stand up and I'll teach you to cast," he said.
"Cast?" I was new at this fishing thing and not at all sure I wanted to learn to cast. After all, baiting the hook had been pretty disgusting.
"Yeah, silly, cast. You don't have to look so petrified - it's easy."
So I stood up and walked nearer to the water. I wondered if he would do the stand behind my back and put his arms around me to teach me kind of thing. I almost swooned thinking about it and then remembered his parents and said loudly, "I'm not scared. Of course it's easy."
"Shhh," the men rebuked. "You'll scare the fish away."
"And that would be bad?" I grinned just a little, tilting my head to see if his mother would grin, too. She did.
"Joy." Wally wasn't grinning. "Do you want to learn to fish, or not?" Of course, I knew what he really meant was I want you to learn to fish because I like fishing and fishing is fun and later you women can clean this fish and cook it for us.
"Yes, yes, I do," I fibbed.
So began the lesson on casting, and after about fifteen tries, I finally cast far enough out to leave the line in. Then I sat down in my chair like Mr. Irwin had done long before, right after his first cast landed way out there. As soon as I was settled, Wally threw his minnow-weighted line way out there, too, and slowly sat. I handed him a glass of lemonade and asked, "What do we do now?"
"Wait."
"For what?"
"For a fish to bite."
"How long do we wait?"
"Well, as long as it takes."
"How long is that? What do we do while we wait?"
"What do you mean, 'do while we wait'?"
"Well, I don't know. You're the one who fishes, not me."
"We just wait, quietly."
"Oh."
At this, I turned to Norma Jean who was staring into her coffee as if there might be some message from God in the bottom of the cup. She wouldn't look me in the eye, so I knew she had known all along I was going to hate fishing. She just hadn't had the nerve or the heart to tell me.

Just about that time, I felt a gentle tug on my fishing pole. "I - I think I got a fish," I stammered.
"Really?" Wally was incredulous. "You?"
"Yeah, look, it's pulling on my line!" My voice was rising even as I was rising out of my chair.
Wally hopped up beside me, softly barking instructions. "Give the rod a sharp jerk, and then reel the baby in."
I jerked on the line a little less than sharply so as not to hurt the fish too much Then I deftly turned about face while placing the rod over my shoulder like an infantryman's rifle. I marched up the beach towards the house, keeping my eye over my shoulder so I could see when the fish cleared land. When I had him up even with the chairs, I dropped the rod and raced back towards the others, yelling, "I caught a fish, I caught a fish!"
Norma Jean just stared at me with mouth agape, but the guys whooped and guffawed, slapped their knees and shouted.
"Shhh," I warned, "you'll scare the other fish away." Then I leaned down to take a look at my first fish ever. It was covered in sand but beautiful all the same.

Jesus said, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." We don't have to know how to do everything just right in order to tell someone about Jesus. We just need to do it because every soul is beautiful to Christ, even the sand-covered ones.

Bedbugs

Have you listened to the news lately? One of the stories from a few days ago was about the plague of bedbugs in densely populated areas. The news item spoke specifically about New York City, and I began to painfully recall...

A couple of years ago, my oldest daughter Grace and her husband, residents of New York City, began to notice itchy places on her arms and upper back. After several weeks of Grace being awakened in the early morning hours by increasing numbers of itchy spots, she and Jonathan began to do some research on the internet and discovered they had bedbugs. They weren't sure where the bugs had come from, although they had some suspicions. At that point, however, the origin was not the issue. They had to find a way to get rid of them.

They tried smothering them by putting plastic sheets on the mattress and box springs. They tried all kinds of self-helps found on the internet and elsewhere. Finally, though, they acknowledged that their efforts weren't working and they were on the way to going crazy. So they called an exterminator. It was their last hope. Still, there were a number of things they had to do to get ready for the exterminator to come. They had to clean their apartment from top to bottom and get rid of anything that possibly contained the bugs. They ended up throwing out their whole bed, sofa, a chair and many other items. At last, the exterminator could come. They vacated their apartment for three days while the powerful chemicals supposedly did their job. See, that's the thing. There was no guarantee that the bedbugs would not reappear.

Well, they moved back in, got a new bed and a new sofa and waited. After awhile, when they began to see a bug here or there, they immediately killed it. It was a miserable existence, waiting for the proverbial "other shoe" to fall. They wondered what would be good enough to rid them of the bedbugs for good.

There's a spiritual lesson in this. We all have bedbugs (sin) in our lives, and just as bedbug infestation is part of living in densely populated areas, sin is part of living in this world. Sometimes we notice the consequences of sin, but we still don't want to admit that we have sin in our lives. We may say, "I'm a good person, not a 'dirty' person." Yet sin still lies beneath the surface, hidden in places most people don't see: selfish or impure thoughts, etc. When we finally admit we have sin, we want to cast blame. If we get past that point, and many do not, we often believe if we just work on ourselves and try harder, everything will be okay. We buy all kinds of self-help books, read all the internet has to say about our problems, watch talk shows in which self-appointed gurus give possibly well-meaning advice. We may even succeed in 'cleaning up' some aspects of our lives. But underneath, hidden in the deeper places, causing us issues in our work, in our relationships, in our health, sin still lurks. And because of that sin, we are on our way to hell.

We need a Savior. Not just any Savior. We need Jesus. The wonderful news is that Jesus' blood works better than any exterminator's chemicals ever could. His blood cancels sin. Period. If we acknowledge our sin and ask Him to come in, He lives in us and as sin reappears, He is there to remove it. Psalm 103:12 says, "He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west."
Grace and Jonathan were very happy that their bedbugs did not return in full force. But their happiness cannot compare to the glorious joy we can have in knowing our sins are forgiven - eradicated, exterminated - and we're on our way to heaven.

Jonah and ...

The story is called "Jonah and the Whale," but that's a misleading name. The whale has more of a supporting role, so a more apt name would be "Jonah in the Whale," except Jonah is only in the whale for a fourth of the story. Other possible names:
"Jonah and God's Will"
"Jonah and the Ninevites"
"Jonah and the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very Bad Few Days"
"Jonah and Himself"

Perhaps I better stick with the name the Bible uses - "Jonah." Anyway, I was reading the story of Jonah this morning and noticing how it is different from the other books of the Bible called the Minor Prophets. Maybe it is so different because Jonah was so different. The other minor prophets listened to what God had to say and then shared it with the people God told them to. Jonah, on the other hand, heard what God had to say and then ran away. He didn't want to tell the Ninevites to repent and be saved. He was afraid they might do it and God would save them. I was reminded of the Game Show Network game called "1 vs 100." In this particular game, a contestant is pitted against 100 people. Everyone is asked the same question and given the choice of three answers. Each of the 100 vote secretly for what he or she believes is the correct answer. Then the contestant gives his answer out loud. If he is wrong, the 100 (the "mob") wins and he loses. If he is right, he wins and the "mob" loses.

Did Jonah think he was on "1 vs 100"? He seemed to think that if he told the Ninevites to repent and they did, that they would be the winners and he would lose. But if he didn't tell them, then they were the losers and he would win. Silly Jonah!! Salvation is a win-win situation. When we share with others, we lose nothing. In fact, we gain the joy of seeing people come to Christ, plus we please our Father, who is not willing that any should perish. If Jonah had only understood this, we could call the story "Jonah and a Whale of a Happy Ending."