Category Archives: God’s plans for us

Due Dates

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Today’s date, February 13, has been red-circled on my calendar for many months, because it’s our 6th grandbaby’s due date.

Of course Linnea is the key player in this big event, and the rest of us are taking our cue from her. She’s not counting on meeting the new baby today, based on the tardy arrivals of babies #1 and #2. But as with every labor and delivery since Eve gave birth to Cain, no one can be sure. Without the medical intervention of C-sections or inductions, due dates are merely ballpark figures. Even the most experienced obstetrician doesn’t have a clue what triggers labor.

Lots of other due dates chase us through life, too, sprinkled from birth to death, most with negative connotations. We have due dates for taxes, applications, bills, permits, assignments, and payments, each one dangling over us like a weight about to fall. Maybe that’s why a baby’s due date is special: it’s linked with great joy, and we’re eager for it to arrive.

God has a couple of other mysterious due dates, too: our death date, and the end of the age. Those three dates, birth, death, and Christ’s return, are secrets we’re not privy to, until God is ready to reveal them.

And that last one is especially critical, because no matter what birth and death dates we end up with, the day Jesus arrives on earth will be the only one of global import. When we meet him on that third date, whether sooner or later, the calendar number won’t matter as much as what we’ve done about him between dates one and two.

Meanwhile, God is patiently waiting for each of us to make preparations for that day. He wants us all to anticipate his coming with the same eagerness we feel in anticipating the birth of a baby. And God wants us all to be ready.

Linnea and Adam have done everything possible to prepare for their baby’s imminent arrival, whether it’s today or a week from today. Now it’s up to God. After all, he’s the one who holds the secret to the specific birth date.

And I have a feeling he’s going to let us in on that very soon.

“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come…” (2 Peter 3:8-10a)

 

New and Improved

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Back in 1971 when I was in grad school, one of my classes dealt with the legal ramifications of advertising claims. For example, no label could contain the word “new” or “improved” unless actual product change was measurable.

Companies worked hard to alter their merchandise just enough to claim they were new or improved, since advertising studies showed buyers were positively influenced by those words. But does new or improved always mean better? What’s wrong with a successful product staying the same?

On a recent shopping trip, new and improved became the cause for frustration. I don’t drink much coffee, so when I buy it, I spring for the good kind. But while standing in my regular grocery store in the coffee aisle, I suddenly had trouble finding my usual favorite. Eventually I saw why: new and improved packaging. Starbucks had forced me to spend extra time finding what I wanted, in the name of progress. Very irritating.

The next day I was at Walgreens in search of my calcium gummies and couldn’t find them, either. When I asked for help, the clerk pointed and said, “They’re right in front of you.”

“No,” I said. “They’re not,” I’d just spent several minutes impatiently scanning the shelves for the familiar kiwi green lid.

She reached for one of the bottles, but I shook my head. “That’s not it.”

“Yes it is,” she said, “just with a new label.”

She was right. New and improved. Maybe.

Is my reluctance to appreciate change a function of getting old? Young people see change as adventure. The unknown is a happy chance for a new beginning.

But is there such a thing as too much change?

We widows have been asked to embrace extreme change, a new single life that usually isn’t improved. How are we supposed to cope with that? God’s answer, like the answers to all questions, is in the Bible. We see he hasn’t changed from eternity past until now, and he’ll always be exactly like he is, because a way to make him new or improved doesn’t exist. He’s already perfect, just the way he is. So does he want us to follow his example and shun change?

The answer is no.

His Word says he’s eager to see change in us. When we embrace his plan of salvation, our change becomes radical. He makes us into new and improved people, bringing us closer to being who he intended us to be in the first place. So, despite his reality of never needing to change, he’s all for change in us.

As for all that new packaging? I’m trying to change my attitude.

 “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Rock or Sand?

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When we were kids, we used to sing a Sunday school song straight out of Matthew 7: “The wise man built his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumblin’ down.”

I always liked singing the 2nd verse better than the 1st, because it gave us a chance to make a loud noise: “The foolish man built his house upon the sand… The rains came down, and the floods came up, and the house on the sand went SMASH!”

The song quoted a teaching of Jesus when he used two word pictures taken from his listeners’ common experience. Anyone who’d ever built a house would have understood his analogy: rock makes a better foundation than sand, any day. Then Jesus introduced himself as the Rock.

I love rocks. My basement shelves are full of them, each one picked up along Lake Michigan’s shoreline and appreciated for its beauty. If I could build a house of those stones, I would. They speak to God’s vast creativity and are a powerful testimony of the remarkable earth he made.

Today at church I was challenged by Pastor Lindsay’s insightful sermon about stones, rocks, bricks and the church. Back at home, I found myself standing in front of our old stone fireplace, put together in 1938. The odd-shaped pieces, fashioned with chisel and hammer, had been fit together in a way that lets it rise through two stories and a roof, and reach even farther as a chimney. None of it has moved a smidgen in 74 years.

I can’t imagine the weight resting on those bottom stones, yet because they’re rocks, they’ve had no trouble holding up the whole structure. I thought of the shifting sands down at the beach today, continually changing shape in the wind, and the Sunday school chorus made perfect sense. Rock trumps sand for foundation purposes.

As I studied my fireplace, I thought of something our pastor said. Sand, when fused together, can be made into bricks, which can then be combined to build giant cathedrals. The unstable can become stable. After all, when inspected under a magnifying glass, sand is simply tiny rocks.

Christianity is all about many people becoming one family, one Church, and the unstable (sand) becoming stable (bricks). Every individual who loves and follows Christ is unified (and stabilized) through Jesus, who is called the cornerstone, the most important rock in any building. My father was an engineer/architect and used to tell us the cornerstone was insurance that the rest of the building would be “square with the world.”

And isn’t that exactly what Jesus did? He laid his life down and became the foundation, the cornerstone, on which the Church was built. Then he offered to change the rest of us from sand into sturdy bricks who together can build lives on him.

And when the storms come against his Church, against us, “The house on the Rock will stand firm!”

“You… are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22)