Messy Business

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Margaret

While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.

Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example, spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.

Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.

And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.

Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.

God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.

Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.

If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.

“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)

Hand-crafted

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Margaret

These are the developing hands of a 14 weeks-along baby, Birgitta’s little him-or-her. During the ultrasound picture-taking session, this tiny child whose hands had been against his/her cheeks for the first photos suddenly reached toward the camera, fingers splayed, as if to say, “Mama! Look what I have!”

Birgitta said that when these miniature hands flashed on the screen she began giggling so hard the baby joined in on the fun with an enthusiastic wiggle-dance. I like to think it was God’s uncontainable joy bubbling within Birgitta and flooding into her little one.

Being allowed to take a peek at what the Creator is doing inside my daughter’s womb is to get a glimpse of the wonder that God is. It was his idea to design hands as he did, making them useful tools we usually take for granted.

Hands are pretty remarkable. They’re flexible but can be stiffened to hold up something heavy. They can swing a hammer with force or caress a loved one with gentleness. Hands can shake each other in greeting or lend-a-hand as needed. They can cheer someone by clapping approval or reach toward heaven in prayer.

When God gave us hands, he also provided a hand-book. Scripture cautions us to be careful with our hands, to use them as he instructs. Jesus used his hands to touch the untouchable, the diseased, the contaminated. And he allowed his hands to be nailed to a cross for our benefit. One day we’ll get to see evidence of that when he shows us his hands and the scars he wears.

But what are regular people supposed to do with their hands? Birgitta’s child has hands that can’t do much of anything right now, though they’ve already gifted a young mama with joy. One day, though, they may play the piano or paint a picture. Maybe they’ll mold clay or repair computers, perform surgery, write books. We don’t know, but the Lord does, so he’ll help Birgitta coax her little one in the right direction.

But what about the rest of us? In response to God’s profound love, we ought to follow his hand-book to a T. It says we should “do good… be rich in good deeds… generous and willing to share.” (1 Timothy 6:18) He gave us hands to facilitate accomplishing this, and even told us how to handle those deeds: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

In October our family will get to touch the dimpled, feather-soft hands of a new baby. We may just all start giggling in a fresh outburst of joy at what God has done.

“Can a mother… feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)

Ignorance is bliss.

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Margaret

Recently in the news we learned of a 17 year old boy so eager to own an ipod and ipad he was willing to sell one of his organs to get them. Through an internet chat room he arranged to sell one of his kidneys for the equivalent of $3500 and underwent major surgery without telling his parents.

In China where he lives, organs are highly prized and going like hot cakes through a well organized black market. Wang’s kidney sold for $32,000, and most of that money went to pay off a gambling debt. I’d say the biggest gamble was buying a youth’s kidney and hoping not to get caught. All 5 people involved are under arrest for illegal organ trading and unintentional injury.

As for Wang, he recuperated in the beginning without too much trouble, and his mother was none the wiser until she saw him working with his new Apple products. When she quizzed him about his money source, he ‘fessed up. Today, one year after his surgery, Wang is struggling with kidney failure and overall poor health. His prognosis isn’t known.

Young people aren’t the only ones who make bad decisions. All of us occasionally succumb to our emotions and choose poorly, usually bringing a heap of misery on ourselves in the process. If we wrote down all the cause-and-effect relationships in Scripture, the list would be as long as toilet paper off a roll. But ignorance is bliss, and often we’d rather not know. That kind of bliss can be costly.

Sometimes God saves us from our own foolish choices, but other times not. When he decides to let us take care of our own risk management, he does it with our eventual good in mind. I can imagine him smiling at the complicated messes we make, knowing that when it’s finally all been cleaned up, we won’t soon forget what we learned through pain and suffering.

When Nate and I were poor newlyweds and he was still in law school, the local blood bank paid $25 for a donated pint. We were in there as often as allowed, usually signing up to give again before the compulsory 6 weeks between donations had elapsed. If we’d seen an ad for kidney purchase, we probably would have signed up for that, too.

In Proverbs 12 we read, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” With hindsight being 20/20, we all know the truth of that. But foresight? That’s a little harder to come by.

And besides, it always seems like such a good idea at the time.