Category Archives: God’s plans for us

One Way

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All of us look for road signs telling us the right way to go, especially while driving. We also watch for signs warning us not to go the wrong way. Turning down a one way street facing oncoming traffic, for example, isn’t something I’d recommend, though I’ve done it many times.

In my neighborhood there are several “signs” that were “posted” 300 years ago when a Potawatomi Indian tribe lived here. Padding single file through the dense woods on moccasin-shod feet, they needed markers to let each other know where the good fishing and hunting was, or which paths led to good portage points for their canoes, or where to find mineral resources.

To accomplish this, they bent young saplings at right angles to the ground, strapping them down with vines or handmade ropes. As the young trees grew, they assumed the sharp angles, and when native eyes scanned the forests, horizontal lines of bent trunks stood out among the vertical trees. The tree elbow, then, was the pointing “arrow” of these unusual signs, and I’ve heard tell we have a couple of them left in our neighborhood.

Yesterday I found one. I think.

As I stood and looked at that tree trying to visualize these same woods 300 years ago, I couldn’t help but think of what the Indians must have looked like walking along the wooded dunes just like I was. I wanted to step back in time to see how they lived. Research says they wore buckskin clothes and feathers in their long hair. They killed game with bows/arrows and used spears to catch fish.

The women “wore” their babies and did most of the farming of grains and vegetables. It sounds like they all worked hard, and if I could live with them for a week, no doubt I’d learn a great deal about my neighborhood and how to exist in it without the benefit of stores, cars, or computers.

Of course I can’t travel back 300 years, but it’s a pleasant thought to remember that God lived in my neighborhood back then, loving the Potawatomi when they were here, just as he loves those of us currently in the neighborhood. He’s no respecter of persons, in that he longs to gather all of us into his family, regardless of where we sit on history’s time line.

I’m not sure what the Potawatomi knew about the “one way” signpost to heaven being Jesus Christ, but I’m confident God had custom-made signs in nature that showed any seekers the way.

I only have one question: would I look ok in buckskin?

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 3:1)

The Pet Nobody Wants

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Although life’s big problems can swamp us, sometimes it’s the little things that do us in. Married couples discover this when they learn they don’t squeeze the toothpaste alike. But all of us can get peeved at small stuff that eventually become our “pet peeves.”

I remember being at a couple’s party with Nate years ago where we played The Newlywed Game. One of the questions they asked me while Nate was out of the room was, “What is your husband’s pet peeve?”

I said, “Oh, that’s easy. Wasting time in traffic.”

When Nate came back in, they asked him the same question, and he said, “That’s easy. Cold toast.”

Though he’d probably told me many times, I never corrected the problem because cold toast didn’t bother me. Poor guy. No wonder it became his pet peeve.

Today I did battle with one of my own pet peeves. I’ve always been bothered by that last sliver of bar soap that’s hard to finish. It gets small, then won’t suds-up, and easily slips away.

After “losing” my paper-thin soap in the water multiple times today, I decided to toss it out. (When I did, I heard Mom say, “During the Great Depression we had to make our own! Don’t waste that!”) It didn’t feel good throwing it away, but it instantly eliminated my pet peeve. Besides, it sure was fun putting a plump new bar in the soap dish.

I’ll bet God has a long list of pet peeves about me. In studying Scripture I’ve seen what kind of person he wants me to be, and in a thousand ways I’m not. The Old Testament tells us about God getting peeved enough to obliterate the entire human race. Later he threatened to do away with all the Children of Israel, which amounted to millions.

No doubt he gets pretty peeved with the rest of us, too. And my guess is that his “Pet Peeves List” hasn’t changed too much in thousands of years. So do we have to worry about being zapped into oblivion? No, if we work at one thing: not getting him peeved.

But how?

Just as earthly parents appreciate their children’s’ desire to improve and then eagerly help them to do it, so God responds to our desire to change by rushing toward us to facilitate it. It’s like a young child asking his mother for money to buy her a Mother’s Day gift. Happily, she gives it to him. God hopes we’ll act in godliness, and when we say we want to, he’ll empower us to make it happen.

My only question now is, should I dig that soap-sliver out of the trash?

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:12-13)

A Happy Easter

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Worshiping on Easter Sunday morning at my childhood church in Chicago was a thrill for the senses. Moody Church was crowded with enthusiastic attendees, nearly 4000-strong, which encouraged us all to sing with extra enthusiasm. Our gusto might also have had something to do with the full choir and orchestra “backing us up.”

As we started my childhood favorite, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” I could almost taste the jelly beans. (Back in the 1950’s when we wore white gloves to church on Easter, Mom always said “no” to eating chocolate eggs in church, but jelly beans? They were ok.)

The messages in the old hymn were exhilarating on this Resurrection Sunday:

  •         Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
  •         Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
  •         Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
  •         Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

Plunging into the second verse suddenly got me into some tearful trouble, specifically the last line:

  • Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
  • Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
  • Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!
  • Christ has opened paradise, Allelulia!

A picture of Nate filled my mind as I visualized Jesus opening the door of paradise for him to walk in. While I sang that line, it was like a bubble of delight rose to the surface and burst forth in tears.

But isn’t that what Easter is? It’s our annual celebration of Christ’s bursting forth from his tomb when death couldn’t keep him there. As I batted back the tears, I thought of how dark and desolate Nate’s death would have been, had it not been for paradise awaiting him. As Pastor Lutzer said this morning, “At the moment of our earthly death, the devil shouts, ‘Gottcha!’ but right then Jesus is waiting to reject that, as he gives life eternal to the one who has just died.”

Nate lingered between earth and heaven for many hours before his death in the fall of 2009, and I like to think that on that last day God’s Spirit was speaking to him. Scripture tells us the Lord can communicate with us even as we sleep, and I believe a coma-like sleep is no exception. Maybe the Spirit said the same thing Jesus said to the repentant thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

I’m confident one day he’ll say the same thing to me and every other Christian as he or she dies. When that happens, giant bubbles of delight will burst forth big-time, and we’ll all be crying for joy.

And none of it would happen if it weren’t for his miraculous resurrection.

“Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)