Category Archives: Hearing from God

Squeezing It In

Posted on by

A small garageHans and Katy’s house in England was built nearly 50 years ago and has a small one-car garage. When Hans put his work van away each night, he had only 3” of wiggle room front and rear, and only enough side-room to barely squeeze himself out the driver’s door. I watched him back it in, appreciating the expertise it took to hit it just right.

With the purchase of his larger van, pulling in at all is no longer possible, which is both bad news and good. The bad news is having to arrange a secure parking place somewhere else. The good news is acquiring a bunch of new storage space in the empty garage.

One week ago when I was there, Hans and I were standing in the middle of the garage while he explained where new shelves would go, when I looked up and saw words of chalk written on one of the brick walls:

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

A practical promiseWhen I pointed to the words and asked about them, Hans said, “It’s the last thing I saw getting into the van to go to work every morning, and the first thing I saw getting out when I got home. Good stuff.” In the midst of a garage full of utilitarian items, this quote from Psalm 91 stood out as something special, a practical promise straight from heaven.

Lots of us complain about not having enough time to focus on God and his Word. Our lives are crowded with other things, good things, and squeezing in Scripture can seem impossible. But chalk and a brick wall offer one way to do it.

The Bible is immensely practical. If we’ll let it, its wisdom will get us through shaky days with steadiness, and squeezing Scripture into our schedules will pay off exponentially. We can write verses on mirrors, index cards, screen savers, refrigerator magnets, laundry walls, bricks, or anything else as a way to partake of God’s supernatural power, the power he offers to send through his Word.

He invites us to creatively squeeze it in.

Seeing the chalked words in Hans’ garage reminded me of another place Scripture was squeezed in. Years ago our house in Illinois had a well worn path just outside the kitchen door that led to the next-door-neighbors’ house. The non-stop footprints between the two houses wore away the grass and left a muddy trail instead.

Stepping stoneWanting to reduce the dirty footprints coming into my kitchen, I pressed a row of concrete stepping stones into the mud, and God provided a squeeze-it-in idea. We wrote one word of a footstep-verse on each stone so that young feet could absorb his wisdom as they ran between the houses: “The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him.” (Psalm 37:23)

Like Hans, we were just trying to gain God’s wisdom by squeezing it in.

“Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words.” (Proverbs 4:5)

Longing to Belong

Posted on by

When I was 3, my family moved from a close-knit Chicago neighborhood to “the country.” Today that “country” is just one of many Chicago area suburbs (Wilmette), but in 1948 it was still the wide open spaces.

Highcrest SchoolI wasn’t of school age yet, but my sister Mary was marched off to kindergarten at the small-ish country school a stone’s throw from our house. She was quiet and shy, not especially happy about being away from home, but Mom quickly became involved as the official Room Mother of her class, which helped. Mom was in and out of school on a regular basis (with me in tow), and I thought school was absolutely magical.

The kindergarten room fascinated me with its boxes of fat colored crayons, giant jars of sweet-smelling white paste, and wooden chairs that were just my size. Each student had use of a tiny square of carpet to sit on, and by secretly investigating the white chalk (crunch), I learned it was delicious.

Not ready for schoolWhen I pleaded with Mom to let me be a school-kid too, she always had the same frustrating answer. “When you’re ready.”

A year passed, and the next fall Mary went into 1st grade, but Mom still wouldn’t let me go. I thought I was more than ready, and since we lived just across a field from the school, it wasn’t long before I snuck over there on my own.

When I got to the kindergarten room, Mary’s former teacher recognized me and kindly asked if I wanted to sit on one of the carpet squares with the other children “before I went back home.” My dream had come true, though it was short-lived. In just a few minutes Mom was at the door.

All of us long to belong: to a classroom, a club, a family, a neighborhood, or any number of other groups. This longing is, I believe, put into us by God, since he values community and is an advocate of togetherness. So there’s nothing wrong with it.

At 3But longing to belong has its risks, too. It’s important to seek entrance into the right groups at the right time, letting God be the one to show us the which, the where, and especially the when. That includes everything from starting kindergarten to moving into a retirement home. It’s best if we wait till he has us ready.

There were many reasons why I couldn’t be a kindergartener at the age of 3, but eventually my time did come, and it happened just as Mom said: when I was ready.

Kindergarten(Front row, 4th from right)

Life will go much smoother if we wait for God’s readiness rather than push ahead of him on our own. It should always be his call, and in the mean time we should simply say, “I’m ready, Lord…. whenever you are.”

“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” (Matthew 6:33  The Message)

C’mon and dance with me!

Posted on by

Nate and I didn’t know how to dance. The first reason was that he struggled to find any sense of rhythm or beat. When he was in the Army, I remember attending a parade demonstration at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Hundreds of uniformed soldiers passed in front of us, marching in perfect step to the leader’s cadence…. except one. Despite all those soldiers wearing identical clothes, I found Nate immediately.

The second reason we were dance-ignorant was that I was raised to believe dancing was wrong. I had to sign a statement when I became a 16 year old member of my church, promising not to dance (among other things). Later when I chose a conservative Christian college, I signed a similar pledge.

Throughout my childhood, I wasn’t allowed to attend dance classes or school dances, nor could I listen to dance music. It mystified me, since Mom was adventuresome and loved music herself.

Then one day, while I was jumping around to “oldies” music at home, the real truth came out. Mom was watching me cavort to the beat and said, “It’s too bad we don’t believe in dancing. You’d be good at it.”

I realized then that all the no-dancing rules were just that: written rules she was trying to obey on the outside while on the inside she’d been dancing all those years. Though the policy didn’t change, figuring that out made me feel a lot better.

The bottom line was that neither Nate nor I ever learned to dance, not even after we decided it wasn’t really wrong. But we did learn to fake it enough to shuffle around a wedding reception dance floor, at least on the slower tunes.

All of us can get caught up in the letter of a law and then miss the spirit of it. That’s  a serious offense, as Jesus pointed out to the biblical Pharisees. Their 600 rigid religious laws had strayed far from what God had intended when he gave the 10 commandments. So Jesus straightened it out with 2 new commands that swept away all the pharisaical add-ons. “Love God, and love others.”

Those aren’t always easy to do, but they’re easy to understand. And if we put all our actions through that grid, the result will be lives lived in the gracious spirit of the law.

These days I still don’t know how to dance, but a year ago, my cousin Calvin and I decided to try our luck at jitterbugging. Jumping around a wedding reception dance floor in no particular pattern might not have been real dancing, but for the two of us non-dancers, it turned out to be an awful lot of fun.

“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. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)