Category Archives: God’s plans for us

Oh Mama!

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In honor of Mothers Day, and because so many of you blog-readers love stories about my mom, here’s a bit of info about her. As you read between the lines, you’ll see how she came to be the colorful person she was.

 

Mom was born at home in 1912, arriving just before Christmas. Because she was due in 1913, she told everyone she wasn’t as old as they thought.

She was born too soon and was unhealthy, so the doctor told her parents not to name her. That way when she died, they wouldn’t be too attached. And so she remained “Baby James” through December and into 1913. By St. Patrick’s Day her father, a full-blooded Irishman, nicknamed her “Pat” after the holiday. He called her that for the rest of his years.

Eventually they officially named her Evelyn Pauline after an older brother, Everett Paul, who died at the age of 8 in a school yard accident.

Growing up during the Great Depression, she learned to squeeze a penny till Lincoln squirmed and made sure we could pinch him, too. She married a shy, 42 year old Swede when she was 29. Unable to wait until he popped the question, she did it herself.

When asked what she wanted as a housewarming gift, she said, “Toys for children who might visit us.” Before she had any of her own kids, though, she made friends with all the neighborhood children, and while in labor with her first baby passed out chocolate chip cookies before heading for the hospital.

After having two little girls born 20 months apart, Mom was expecting a third when she began hemorrhaging and was rushed to the hospital. After being given the wrong blood type from an inaccurately labeled bottle, she nearly died. But God had other plans for Evelyn Pauline Pat James Johnson.

Although doctors cautioned Mom not to become pregnant again, our brother Tom came along on Dad’s 50th birthday, a definite bonus to all of us. To this day I think Mom tricked Dad, since she’d wanted nothing more than a houseful of children. Eventually she got her wish with 17 grandchildren, all local and all in love with their grandma.

Mom viewed children as marvels to be cherished, protected and admired. She never encountered a child she didn’t approve of and although she rubbed off on them, her greatest joy came when they rubbed off on her.

She also loved music and practiced piano daily. In her teens she taught lessons, in her thirties played the four-keyboard organ for Moody Church, and in her prime accompanied enough weddings and funerals to put us through college, although she gave the money back to the bride instead.

Mom memorized entire books of the Bible, taught high school Sunday school for decades and conducted in-home Bible studies throughout her married life. But she also loved a good practical joke and made good use of her whoopee cushion, plastic vomit and artificial dog poop. No wonder kids loved her.

Dad used to say Mom was a risk-taker. Tomorrow I’ll tell you a story that proves it.

“A cheerful heart is good medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22)

Straight Talk

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In 1972, my brother-in-law taught me how to hang wallpaper. Before he started on our red and blue hounds-tooth paper, he made a plumb line using a metal tool shaped like a teardrop, inside of which was a coiled string sitting in powdered chalk. Bervin pulled out the string and dangled it from ceiling to floor, a small lead weight tied to its end. One quick snap of the chalky string made a perfectly straight start-line for our wallpaper.

Today in my Michigan cottage, Drew began laying floor tiles with a similar process. After measuring and studying the floor, he stretched and snapped his plumb line in three critically important lines.

First he found the exact center of the room by criss-crossing red chalk lines wall-to-wall in both directions, making four 90 degree angles. Then he snapped a perfect 45 degree angle across the other lines so his first row of tile would line up precisely straight.

Scripture references plumb lines in several places, and Jesus, if he was a carpenter, surely had one. Biblical plumb lines were usually synonymous with God’s Word, his standard of righteousness. (The word “righteous” actually means “upright”, very close to “straight up and down,” which is what “being plumb” means.)

In Old Testament days, God measured his people against the plumb line of his Word. He hasn’t changed since then, nor has the Bible. Come to think of it, human nature is the same, too. Righteousness is as unattainable for us now as it was for them. None of us can measure up.

In building our lives as we please, our plumb lines become wobbly and wouldn’t even be good for wallpapering a room or tiling a floor. And wobbly standards make for unstable lives. In the ‘60’s young people used to say, “If it feels good, do it.” That reasoning draws a wiggly plumb line, and taken to its farthest extreme, becomes Osama Bin Laden. This man’s plumb line was a self-created standard of right and wrong having nothing to do with our God’s unchangeable measurements of righteousness.

But God has kept the books on Bin Laden, just as he keeps the books on the rest of us. Although we see ourselves as better than this evil man, Scripture puts us all in the same category. “All… are under sin. As it is written, ‘None is righteous, no not one’.” (Romans 3:9-10)

Being righteous can’t be found in our opinion of what’s good or bad. The only chance we have is to accept the righteousness of the one person who did measure up to God’s plumb line: Jesus. He offered to share his righteousness with us by dying for our sins, an offer that stood for Bin Laden, too, though he rejected it in favor of his own shaky plumb line.

Thankfully, Jesus Christ will one day return to earth as our ruling monarch. When that happens, one snap of his plumb line and everything we’ve made crooked in this world will quickly be made straight.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line.” (Isaiah 28:16a,17)

A “B Plan”

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Just outside the front windows of our Illinois house was a small tree covered with springtime blossoms. One April day we noticed a bird’s nest tucked in its branches, topped with a mama blue jay. So we began bird-watching from a nearby window, checking every day for babies.

Our cat Kennedy was also watching, and several times I saw her stretching tall from the back of the couch, peering out at the mother bird. She had no interest in eggs, though, only what was inside them.

Kennedy had been a rescued kitten given to Hans on his 12th birthday, picked up while wandering across Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway. She was puppylike-friendly but morphed into a hunter every night, insisting on being let out as the rest of us went to bed. In the morning she’d often arrive with a gift, a dead mouse, chipmunk or small bunny dangling from her mouth. None of us liked this part of Kennedy but knew it was nature’s way.

Through the window, we worried about the baby blue jays but hoped their protective mama would keep Kennedy at bay. I remember the day the eggs hatched. We kept the cat indoors while several of us perched at the window to watch, but suddenly there she was, at the tree.

Hans bolted out the front door to grab her, but it was too late. She was already in the branches fighting with the mother blue jay, who appeared to be winning. Hans raced to the garage and reappeared with a board, shouting and swinging at his beloved pet, desperate to force her down. But within seconds it was all over, and Kennedy had had her way.

All of us were devastated, and my heart went out to the mama bird. She’d been faithful to her task, then was robbed of her reward. Although we were mad at Kennedy, we couldn’t blame her for doing what God had taught her to do.

Sometimes people-lives parallel that of mama blue jay. We meet our responsibilities, work hard and do the right things, but disaster strikes anyway. Money is diligently saved, then lost in a recession. A parent pours heart and soul into raising a child, who then turns against her/him. Someone leads a healthy lifestyle but gets sick anyway. A business is built on moral principles but goes bankrupt.

We usually can’t explain these misfortunes and wonder why bad things happen to good people, especially if “God is good.” But that’s where faith comes in. Do we really believe he’s good, and good to us? If so, we have to trust that even “bad” stuff has “good” purposes.

After Kennedy destroyed the mama blue jay’s future, I stayed at the window watching her. What would she do now? She sat on the porch railing nearby, focused on the tree, squawking intensely for about 5 minutes. Then she flew off in search of Plan B and never returned.

It’s often excruciating to surrender our A Plans. But when we’re ready, God’s B Plan is ready, too.

“The righteous… do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearless and can face their foes triumphantly.” (Psalm 112:6-8)