Category Archives: Life’s disappointments

Good Advice

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If I were you, I’d…
I think you should…
You ought to…
You’d better consider…

Some people are always offering advice, whether solicited or not.

A while ago, a long-time friend sent me two letters written by Nate. He’d mailed them to her and her husband in 1986, and she knew I’d appreciate “hearing from Nate” now. These friends of ours were going through a financial squeeze much like we were at the time, and Nate had been touched by their plight.

Two letters from NateThe first letter’s purpose was to encourage them. He quotes Winston Churchill’s statement, “Never, never, never, never give in!” and refers to Roosevelt’s speech about trying valiantly rather than giving up without a fight. Nate wrote, “Tough as it is, it’s much better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.”

In four handwritten pages, he gives only two short sentences of advice: 1) Keep your attitude up, and 2) call me if you want some free lawyer advice on your lawsuit.

It warmed me to see Nate’s large, loopy handwriting again, although I used to fuss at him for not writing more legibly. But better than the penmanship was his message. I remember those dark, worrisome days well. Nate was not only frustrated with his career plunge but felt like a personal failure to his family, which included 6 children at the time. Yet somehow he came up with 4 pages of uplifting words for our friends.

None of us can say why life has to include massive failures and disappointments. Maybe it has to do with our asking God to make us more like Christ. That never comes without suffering or pain, and hardship gives us that chance. Of course we can become angry about it, but that’s hardly fair if we’ve asked for Christ-likeness.

Trials push us to Scripture and prayer, which brings us closer to God. Coming closer to God results in rubbing shoulders with Jesus, which in turn makes us more like him. What begins as harmful can turn out well.

In Nate’s second letter, he relates the details of his own struggle. I sense that writing it out long hand somehow helped him. Our financial future was spinning like a tornado, and summarizing it on paper seemed to bring calm into his personal storm.

He ends with an invitation for these friends (who lived one state away) to come and visit us, writing out exact driving directions to our house. Although this couple now lives four states away, we are still “close”…

…close enough for them to know how much I would love receiving two letters from Nate.

“You are a letter from Christ… This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:3)

Believing the Truth

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Yesterday while grocery shopping, I bought a box of succulent strawberries. They were bright red, plump and had deep green “mustaches” that weren’t too big. Tonight, after thinking about those berries all day, I fixed myself a generous bowl-full.

StrawberriesAs I cut them up, I wondered how they could travel 1300 miles from sunny Florida to chilly Michigan and look like they’d been picked an hour ago. And then I took a bite. The berries were sour and tasteless, nothing like what they appeared to be. Even a spoonful of sugar didn’t make them go down very well.

It comes naturally to trust in what we see. Eating sour strawberries has no moral consequence, but the principle of believing that everything we see is reliably true can have devastating results. So how do we know what to do?

We need a measuring stick by which to evaluate the choices we make. I think of Nate and his fatal cancer. Although his health declined radically each day, he never once panicked over his approaching death. He was nervous about his escalating pain but made the choice not to question God’s plan for his life, and death.

Confidence in the TruthI find this extraordinary, but his peaceful demeanor wasn’t just an accident. It was the byproduct of a belief in the truth. He put his terminal prognosis next to the measuring rod of what God said, which was that he’d still be alive after he died physically, and that life would be good.

In Scripture there’s a the famous conversation between Jesus and Pilate shortly before Jesus was killed. Pilate, trying to figure out what the Jewish leaders were so upset about, sought clarification from Jesus:

 

Pilate: Are you the king of the Jews?Jesus with Pilate
Jesus: Is that what you think?
Pilate: I can’t think like a Jew.
Jesus: My kingdom is not of this world.
Pilate: So you are a king, then?
Jesus: I was born to testify to the truth.
Pilate: But what is truth?

Just when Pilate was about to get the critical answer, he terminated the conversation, giving the order to kill Jesus. If Pilate had been listening to Jesus’ teachings during preceding months, he would have heard him say, “I am… the truth.” (John 14:6)

And that’s where the buck stops. Right at Jesus. Nate believed in something, in someone, he couldn’t see, and that knowledge of unshakeable truth gave him a peace unexplainable by human standards. It wasn’t, “Maybe I’ll be ok after I die,” or “I sure hope I’ll be ok.” It was, “I know for sure I’ll be ok.”

Listening to Jesus and living according to biblical truth isn’t easy and almost always goes contrary to our natural instincts, but if we ­­­do it, the end-result will be even sweeter than a bowl of perfect strawberries.

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’.” (John 18:37)

Believing a Lie

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Soft ragsMy Mom was a hard worker, doing housework the old fashioned way. She used cloth rags instead of disposables and preferred her own cleaning potions to fancy sprays. She used to say the most practical gift any young bride could receive would be a bag of well-worn, soft rags. I didn’t have the heart to tell her a modern bride wouldn’t think they were a good gift or know what to do with them.

Mom scrubbed her floors on hands-and-knees and didn’t own a mop. “How can you get the corners?” she’d say. Using a rag made sweeping unnecessary, because she’d pick up bits of debris with her rag and rinse them out in her bucket (leftover wash machine water).

One day she was crawling along her kitchen floor, washing away the results of a visit from 6 preschool grandchildren. She loved cleaning up after these little people, calling the aftermath “a happy mess.” She’d scrub sticky Jello leftovers off the linoleum and remember the fun of making Jigglers with them. She’d scoop up Cheerios and think about the pudgy baby eating in the high chair.

Real raisinsOn this day she came across a stray raisin and thought, “Still in good shape,” and popped it into her mouth. One chew told her she’d made a huge mistake. It wasn’t a raisin at all but the product of a toddler’s diaper.

She dropped her rag and got to the bathroom as fast as she could. But brushing her teeth multiple times with lots of toothpaste couldn’t remove the taste from her mouth or the impression from her brain.

All of us have eaten food off the floor. Well, maybe that’s just our family. In any case, her “raisin” wasn’t a raisin at all but merely something that appeared to be. Appearances can be deceiving, and she’d been deceived.

Her experience is a memorable illustration of the way deception works. Our enemy, the devil, is the definitive master of disguises. He lies, cheats, and deceives with expertise, cloaking wickedness in goodness. “Go ahead,” he sweet-talks. “It’ll be even better than you think. No one has to know. You deserve to have things go your way for once.”

On and on he coaxes with endless patience, gently tugging us toward a slimy slope with complete devastation at its end. He never runs out of ideas and uses the exact disguises that are attractive to each one of us, an expert at his craft.

Before we have a chance to check if it’s really a raisin, we’re chewing it.

(Tomorrow: Believing the Truth)

“When the devil lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. There is no truth in him.” (John 8:44)