Category Archives: Outdoor world

A Perfect Match

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I love the beach 365 days a year but especially on a day like today: 75 degrees, a light breeze, whitecaps and blasting sunshine.

While working from an old but comfy beach chair, God brought a distant memory to mind. Mom and I were walking together on the same stretch of sand, looking up at the dunes topped with greenery. It was a day like today except that it was 1955. The sky was then (just like today) a perfect example of “sky-blue.”

Without realizing it, Mom and I were thinking the same thing. “People say blue and green don’t go together,” she said. “But look what happens when God does it.”

If I’d known how to properly use the word “Amen” as a 10 year old, I would have. As it was, Mom planted one of those valuable line-on-line nuggets of wisdom in my young heart, and God’s Spirit caused it to take root. In the years since then, those roots have nourished an important idea:

God can do what people can’t.

It’s easy to apply that logic when mother and child are enjoying the scenery, but does it pertain to the monster-size crises of adulthood?

 

Examples abound:

  • An addict surrenders to a “higher power” and learns his name is Jesus, committing to sobriety and spreading that good news.
  • An abandoned child comes to Christ and grows up to lead a ministry dedicated to rescuing children from abuse.
  • An imprisoned criminal becomes a Christian, and hatred morphs into love.

These are real-life examples of people I know. In each case God combined two “colors” that wouldn’t rationally “go together,” and the results were spectacular:

  • Addiction/sobriety
  • Abandonment/rescue
  • Criminal behavior/loving actions.

So, what about the challenge of widowhood? The trouble-list is long: loneliness, fear, separation, sadness, and unwelcome change. What unlikely “color combinations” might God make available?

As we look at our list, we already know:

  • Loneliness/companionship
  • Fear/safety
  • Separation/togetherness
  • Sadness/joy
  • Change/assistance

The trick is to open ourselves to these out-of-the-ordinary combos, to actively look for them. Before our husbands died, loneliness wasn’t a problem; we had their companionship. If we were afraid, they protected us. We were together, and it was joyful. But now our men are gone and can no longer be these things for us.

And so we look to God. And what we see is his gentle, steady bringing of the things we miss. He provides the positive counter-balance to every negative, meets our needs and brings a “green” to enhance every “blue”.

The alternative is to refuse his help, which leaves us stuck in the misery of loneliness, fear, separation and sadness. That would be like Mom and me walking home from the beach with our eyes on the asphalt.

“My God shall supply all your need…” (Philippians 4:19)

I didn’t know…

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Nate used to say, “Ignorance is no excuse,” and of course most of us agree with that. The trouble is, when we’re dealing with complications like filling out tax forms or answering questions we haven’t researched, pleading ignorance is a handy escape hatch.

While driving home from Iowa last weekend, a sign on the highway reminded me how ignorant I really am. It said, “CELL PHONES ILLEGAL IN WORK ZONES.”

I knew about work zone speed reductions, massive fines for hitting a worker and jail terms for doing damage, but never had I heard about the cell phones. What else don’t I know?

When I was a child, people marveled that the knowledge of the world had actually doubled in 50 years. By the time I was in college, knowledge had doubled again in only 5 years. Today the speed of knowledge-increase may not even be calculable.

The internet has taken the place of Encyclopedia Britannica, and teachers no longer ask students to memorize answers to questions but rather teach them which questions to ask. The answers are too numerous to learn.

Scripture has a great deal to say about knowledge. It’s often linked with wisdom and understanding, a triple fail-safe for correct thinking. We’re encouraged to get as much of them as we can.

God criticizes the simple-minded for not wanting to gain knowledge and doesn’t accept their excuse of ignorance kindly. His judgment of those who hate knowledge is severe, because God himself is the stepping-off point for gaining it. In a sense, if we don’t want a knowledge-increase, we don’t want him.

Dictionary.com tells us knowledge has to do with facts, truth and principles, and Scripture is loaded with them. Learning what they are is our first step toward right living, and to work at it is stepping toward God. So how do we do it?

One way is to notice sunsets, storms, stars, the sun and moon. Psalm 19 tells us the heavens “pour forth speech that reveals knowledge.” It sounds like God is making it easy for us.

Another way is to have a healthy fear of the Lord. Proverbs 1 tells us not only is this the start of being wise, it’s also the source of knowledge. Proverbs also says that if we study the Bible to gain knowledge of God, we’ll have a leg up on understanding, too. And another tip from him:  it’s a good idea to steer clear of people who don’t value knowledge. Better to hang out with those who do.

God actually wants us to have knowledge, along with all its benefits, and he reveals many of his knowledge-secrets as we quest after them. (Matthew 13:11) The end result is godliness, something we’d all love to have.

And now that we know how, I guess ignorance is no excuse.

“This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” (Philippians 1:9-10)

Snowing in June

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Here in the Midwest the first days of June can resemble the first week in January. Fluffy “snow” fills the air as cottonwood trees release their seeds, each one a tiny parachute of new life. When that happens, I always think of Dad. One of his quiet comments about the cottonwood made a permanent mark on my 8 year old heart.

Dad wasn’t an outdoorsman. In 92 years he never suffered a sunburn, deliberately walked in the rain, or slept outside just for fun. He didn’t like yard work, but for the sake of his wife and kids, uprooted himself from the familiarity of Chicago and moved to the “countryside” of 1948 Wilmette. This committed him to mowing an acre yard, tending a fruit orchard, pruning a grape arbor and weeding a vegetable garden.

Our yard had a massive cottonwood, important because of the tire swing Dad hung from a branch 25 feet up. One good underdog push would keep the Goodyear whitewall sailing for a long while. He set a 6 foot ladder just far enough away so we could stand on the top step, leap onto the tire and fly birdlike in big swooping arcs.

One spring when the cottonwood “snow” was especially prolific (clogging screens and accumulating in drifts), neighbors complained about the pesky nature of these trees. But Dad said, “Look how generous God is. Instead of supplying one seed per tree, he gave each one 10,000.” His comment planted a significant seed in my little-girl heart: God is generous.

Not everyone, however, shares my love of the cottonwood tree. Last week a man who detested the annual “snowstorm” of his next-door-neighbor’s cottonwood was convicted in court of killing the tree. A year earlier he’d secretly bored holes down into its roots, then poured in an overdose of Round-Up weed killer. Gradually the flourishing tree had deteriorated, a mystery to its owners.

The tree-assassin figured the law would be on his side since the holes he drilled were on his own property. But the court ruled otherwise, saying the roots of the tree next door, though growing beneath his lawn, belonged to his neighbor. Had this man been blessed with a father like mine, he might not have “murdered” so lightly.

Dad, a structural engineer by profession, consistently directed our attention to the structure within God’s world. As we grew older, our appreciation for what he showed us in nature transferred from the created things to their Creator, which of course was Dad’s underlying intention. An added benefit was our catching on to the great respect he had for God as the structural Designer of it all, which also transferred to us.

Today as I felt “snowflakes” brush past my cheek, I was thankful for a God who demonstrated his charcter through the cottonwood tree and for a father who pointed past the nuisance of fluffy seeds to the generous God behind them.

“Since the creation of the world his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made.” (Romans 1:20)