Butter me up!

Last night’s walk with Jack was like a worship experience. After an overcast day, the sky had cleared and the stars were brilliant, making me catch my breath and thank God. I was glad I owned a dog, because without him, I wouldn’t have been out strolling at midnight.

I usually enjoy walking Jack, but not on days like today when it was raining, and I’d just finished doing my hair for church. On those days we walk a new way: I drive, he runs alongside. Through the window I encourage him to stay nearby, and off we go on the quiet neighborhood streets.

This morning I drove to the beach and back while Jack loped next to the car. He got his exercise, and I kept my hairdo.

A while ago, however, Jack and I were driving-walking when he saw a group of white-tail deer in the woods and gave chase. I never worry about the deer, because they bound up sand dunes in massive leaps that quickly leave short doggy-steps behind. What concerns me is getting Jack back.

He knows the way home, but what kind of trouble might he find en route? This day when I called him, he emerged from the woods with what resembled a big cigar in his mouth. As he came closer, I saw it was a full stick of butter.

I don’t know where he found it, but I got a quick visual of diarrhea in the basement and knew I needed to take it away from him. I got out of the car, grabbed a plastic bag from under the seat and rattled it like it was lunch meat. “Jack! Mmmm! Yummy! How ‘bout a treat?” He came right to me and dropped the butter (for his treat) just long enough for me to reach around and grab it. Poor Jack. His prize got stolen, and he was duped in the process.

This is a perfect illustration of the way we reject God’s counsel in favor of our own. He says, “You’ll be sorry if you ‘eat that butter’.” But we grab it like a magnet grabs the fridge, thinking we know better. So he takes a step back and says, “Ok. Have it your way.”

As we run off, we barely hear him say, “I’ll be here if you need me.” And of course we always do.

On “Butter Day,” I put a dejected Jack into the car and drove him home. But first thing, I gave him a double treat, the doggie kind, wanting to make good on my word.

God never fails to make good on his word. After we’ve “eaten our butter,” in the midst of a belly ache and a sincere vow to heed his advice next time, he lets us begin anew.

Then after we’ve had enough butter and belly aches, finally we learn.

”The simple are killed by their turning away… but whoever listens to Me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.” (Proverbs 1:32-33)

April Fool!

By now you know that my mother, a joke-teller with the best of them, was also a joke-player, and April 1st was prime time for her to “fool around.”

Dad married Mom in 1941, and on their first April Fool’s Day together, he must have wondered what he’d gotten himself into. Being the dignified, quiet Swede he was, he would no more have played a joke on someone than have jumped off a tall building.

Mom fixed Dad’s breakfast as always that day (one hard boiled egg, two pieces of toast, orange juice and coffee). Since Dad always salted his egg and sugared his coffee, she decided to fool him by switching the salt and sugar. He stirred a big spoon of salt into his coffee and shook sugar on his peeled egg. When he took that first sip and spit it out, Mom laughed with gusto. “April Fool!” she said.

The next year she did it again, along with the 48 April 1sts after that. Dad never remembered and went through the breakfast misery every year. Whether or not he got a kick out of seeing Mom’s delight in fooling him, we’ll never know. In his wisdom, Dad may actually have anticipated the joke but then willingly “played the fool” for her pleasure. We’ll never know that, either.

Mom loved to laugh, and Dad’s salt-sugar-switch aside, she loved to see others laugh, too. I’d say she pulled some foolish tricks questing after giggles, but she was definitely not a fool, at least not by biblical standards.

Scripture has a great deal to say about genuine fools. (I repeat: Mom was not one of them.) Here’s a sample of true foolishness:

  • A chattering fool comes to ruin.
  • A fool’s heart blurts out folly.
  • Honor is not fitting for a fool.
  • Fools hate knowledge.
  • The way of fools seems right to them.
  • The mouths of fools are their undoing.
  • Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
  • Fools die for lack of sense.

A biblical study of the word “fool” causes me not to want to be one. So how can I be sure I’m not? The Bible gives two good clues:

  • Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent.
  • Those who trust in themselves are fools.

If I keep my mouth shut (or at least refrain from babbling), and if I trust in God rather than in myself, I have a head start toward avoiding genuine foolishness.

Mom was no fool, and I’m sure of that, because every biblical reference to fools includes their disdain for the Lord and his wisdom, which Mom loved. But she was good at fooling people. Even in her departure to heaven, she came close to pulling a good one. She died on April 5, 2005, but all of us know she was really shooting for April Fools Day.

”The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to [Mom and] us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

Cry No More

Half of me is in heaven, the Nate-half. Many of my thoughts have followed him there, and my questions seem never to end. It’s encouraging to know the answers will one day come, and in the mean time, I’m trying to keep my ears and eyes open. Just this week I learned something significant.

We all love the verse in Revelation that says, God will wipe away our tears. The same passage tells us he will also do away with sorrow, pain and death. But there’s one thing about this thrilling statement no one ever mentions. Scripture says the wiping away of tears will happen at the time of the new heaven/earth, and that won’t be our dwelling place until the end-times battles are over and Satan has been permanently defeated.

In other words, not yet. So Nate isn’t living in that new heaven but is definitely living with Jesus. It’s probably the place Jesus referred to as “paradise” when he was on the cross. I’m not worried about Nate, but I do wonder, has he been crying?

It’s very possible.

If God is going to wipe away tears, there will have to have been crying first. What would Nate be crying about? He no longer has cancer and has been freed from back pain. He’s living with the Lord, experiencing the ultimate in security and joy. So what would reduce him to tears? I may be off base, but the answer might be “himself.”

Technically I can’t speak for Nate, especially now that his life has been so dramatically altered, but I can speak for myself. When the Lord confronts me with my own mistakes, failures and deliberate sins now, before I’ve gone to paradise, I’m devastated and am often brought to tears. How will it be to have Jesus looking at me while I’m feeling like that? I know I’m eternally forgiven for those things, but I’ll be acutely aware of the lack of righteousness within me. Surely that’ll make me cry.

Scripture says Jesus will be the one to present me to God the Father as completely sinless because of his having taken all the punishment that should have been mine. Without him, I was destined for the God’s dreadful wrath. So, in that interim period between earthly death and the new heaven/earth, between arriving into Christ’s presence and being presented to God, I wonder if my tears will freely flow.

How could I look at the numerous scars my sin inflicted on Jesus, scars from whips, thorns, nails and a sword, and not feel like weeping?

The more I get to know Jesus, the more I’m sure those stinging tears will serve a positive purpose, because he promises to bring good from everything, even pain and sorrow.

So if Nate has been crying in paradise, and if some day I will too, I know it’ll all be for a good reason.

God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain…” (Revelation 21:4)