Category Archives: Life’s disappointments

Noggin Knocks

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Walking Jack around the neighborhood these days can lead to noggin knocks and goose eggs. It’s acorn time.

AcornsLocal squirrels are working high in the oak trees, chewing away the shells of acorns and collecting the nut-meats for winter. Chipmunks living under our front steps are doing the same. With oak trees everywhere, there’s plenty for all.

When we moved here full time, the sound of acorns banging on roofs, cars, and wooden decks took us off guard, mimicking gun shots. If we looked up, which was risky, a squirrel would inevitably be busy chomping overhead, causing clusters of acorns to fall.

My next door neighbor tells me getting bonked in the head is enough to make you wear a football helmet outdoors. Walking the roads can be perilous, too, with marble-like acorns all along the way. But acorn season can’t be stopped. God is busy sowing seeds.

I love his well-established, logical laws of sowing… and reaping. They apply to acorns and oak trees, but also to us. Erwin Lutzer summarized them well in a memorable sermon years ago:

  • Law #1, we’ll always reap what we sow.
  • Law #2, we’ll always reap in a different season than we sow.
  • Law #3, we’ll always reap more than we sow.

Oak treeOak trees produce acorns, which of course produce more oak trees, not maples or elms. (Law #1)

But it takes months for a buried acorn to put forth a seedling oak tree and over a decade before young oak trees produce acorns. (Law #2)

The big oak trees behind our cottage tower over 50 feet, but each had its beginning in one humble acorn. Today thousands of acorns are falling to the ground in our yard alone. (Law #3)

It’s easy to apply the laws of sowing and reaping to the humble acorn, and we nod with understanding. But applying them to ourselves is another story. Law #1 says, for example, that if we tell a lie, eventually we’ll be deceived ourselves. Law #2 tells us lying probably won’t catch up with us until later, but Law #3 says that when it does, our lives will be permeated with deception, cheating, and dishonesty.

We like to think of ourselves as the exception to every rule, believing if we take shortcuts around God’s laws, we can escape his consequences. So we plow ahead with our own ideas, not necessarily in rebellion but failing to understand God’s stated consequences.

Unfortunately, the biblical laws of sowing and reaping still apply. As lawyers are fond of saying, “Ignorance is no excuse.” Surely that statement originated with God.

BonkToo bad we don’t usually learn just by reading what we should and shouldn’t do. Sometimes God has to hit us over the head with it, sending acorns-to-noggins. But a few goose eggs are worth learning what we need to know.

“All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.” (Psalm 119:160)

Praising and Praying with Mary

Pray that I’ll stay as focused on God after good news as after bad, always looking to him for leadership and sustenance.

Who’s Who?

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All of us are curious about how we came to be. Why did we end up male or female, and how were we assigned to a certain family? How did we land first, middle, or last in the birth order? These are interesting questions without ready answers, but that doesn’t stop us from wondering.

The Nyman family was designed like this: boy-boy-girl-boy-boy-girl-girl. I say “designed” because I believe God puts families together purposefully. Whether born-into, adopted, originating as a frozen embryo, or arriving in some other way, the Lord considers all the factors in his decision-making about each birth:

  • which parents?
  • what sex for each child?
  • what position in which family?
  • what personality?
  • what physical appearance?
  • when in human history he/she should arrive?

Linnea and her brothers, and dadI remember our Linnea ap- proaching me at the age of four. “It isn’t fair!” she said, her freckled face full of fury. “You had four boys and only me for a girl!”

Before I could comment, she launched into a lecture, letting me know I had no business tipping the scales so heavily toward the boy side. “Why did you?” she cried.

I had to admit, it did seem unfair. If we were voting on babies, her impression was I’d stuffed the ballot box in favor of boys because I liked them four times better than girls.

The answer that came to me was, “God decided.”

Like it or not, that was the truth; the baby-buck had always stopped with him. I’ve been thankful on more than one occasion for his permission to use his omnipotence in debates with children, and as always when God shows up in authority, the argument ceases. Even a six-year-old knows she can’t win against The Almighty.

All of us have questioned at one time or another why we were born as we were. Because faith in God is the fulcrum of my life, I’ve  wondered why I was born to Christian parents who led the way to Jesus. What if Mom and Dad had been Muslim? Or Buddhist? Or Hindu? Would I have followed their lead? Or would I have found Christ another way?

We aren’t in a position to demand answers to those questions. But I believe one day in heaven we’ll be shown, and when we hear God’s explanation we’ll say, “Ohhhh. Now I get it.”

Linnea eventually accepted her feminine fate, and I worked harder to partner with her in family femininity. Once she accepted that it was God who made her and her siblings exactly as they were, she chose to partner with him in finding a solution to the problem of too many brothers: pray and ask him for a sister.

Linnea and her sistersShe prayed for 5 years, and lo and behold, God sent her two!

“I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment. And how happy I was with the world the Lord created; how I rejoiced with the human family!” (Proverbs 8:12,31)

 

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. I’m rejoicing tonight that my 3 scans today revealed no stray cancer cells!
  2. Chemo resumes on Monday (9 down, 9 to go) with an additional anti-nausea drug in the “cocktail.”

Does “Father Know Best”?

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God is full of surprises. He doesn’t think like we do, plan like we do, or respond to circumstances like we do. He has no limitations and never runs out of ideas. He never has to rack his brain or wonder, “What should I do?”

That’s because he’s God, in the top slot, in all categories.

Father Knows BestGrowing up in the 1950’s, my family didn’t watch much TV. Television was new, and there wasn’t a whole lot to look at. By 10:30 PM, the national anthem was played, and all programming ceased until morning. One show we did find to watch, though, was “Father Knows Best.”

Mary and I have sweet memories of our relationship with the Andersons, a family much like ours with two girls, one boy, a home in the suburbs and a daddy who walked in each evening wearing a hat and carrying a newspaper. Tonight we watched one of those black and white episodes from 1958. Just hearing the theme music was a thrill, and seeing our old “friends” again was a pleasure.

Saint PeterIn tonight’s story, the father, Jim, finds himself facing Saint Peter at heaven’s pearly gates. Peter is assessing whether or not Jim ought to “get in.” When he questions him about a decision he made, Jim says, “That was an especially difficult one.”

Peter says, “Naturally it was difficult. It’s part of our Master Plan. We do that purposefully. We keep throwing difficult choices in your path to test you.”

Without realizing it, this script line had made a scriptural point. And because of God’s perfect analysis of every person and what each needs, we can believe there are exceedingly important reasons for the “difficult choices” that are “thrown” at us.

I think back to 5 years ago at this time, when we knew nothing about Nate’s cancer but were about to find out. God had already decided on the test, had put the details in place, and had lit the circumstantial fuse. The difficult choices Saint Peter mentioned were barreling toward our family. The same can be said of Mary’s cancer just before it was discovered 5 months ago.

In each case, once we got the bad news, each day after that became a mini-test within the larger test, all of them exceedingly difficult. Television-Peter summed up the dilemma by saying, “It’s the decisions you make that shape you into what you are.”

While we knit our brows and wrestle with the tough tests, there’s a choice we can make up front that will facilitate the rest: choosing to believe each test does come from an all-wise God, a Father who always does know best.

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:12)