Category Archives: Submitting to God

Lookin’ Good!

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This afternoon Mary and I talked about “the ravages of time” on our old faces and the magic of plastic surgery. Not that we’d do it, even though the mirror says we should. (It’s easier just to avoid the mirrors.) But this afternoon we did get involved in a face lift of a different sort. The two of us put fresh upholstery on eight dining room chairs, a simple way to “lift” a room.

To be successful, however, requires the right tools. Factory-tightened screws can be difficult to loosen, and succeeding assumes you’ve got the right screwdriver. You also need a staple gun, a tool that doubles as a weapon of mass destruction. Keeping a hammer handy is good for staples that don’t go all the way in, and a box of Band-Aids isn’t a bad idea, either.

Doing something new is never easy, and trudging up the learning curve usually includes a measure of slip-backs: our chair corners ended up with too many folds; staples went in loosey-goosey and needed to be yanked out with pliers and redone; stray fabric peeked out from the chair frame, another re-do; one “staple-shot” grazed my finger and drew blood. But each chair we did got a bit easier and ended up looking a little nicer than the one before.

Isn’t that the way with life? When something new comes to us, particularly something we don’t want to do, we look for ways to procrastinate. When we’re finally forced into it, it’s often not as bad as we anticipated and might even become satisfying. Practice may not make perfect, as the saying goes, but working steadily at something does bring improvement.

God often asks us to do new things we don’t want to do, like love an unlovable person, suffer intense pain, surrender a spouse or a child, care for someone who doesn’t appreciate it, or wait “forever” to see our prayers answered. But we can get better at handling each of God’s assignments by simply cooperating with his tutoring, because he’s the great Supplier of know-how in every set of circumstances. As we tackle what he sends to us, practicing as we go, little by little we work out the kinks. Difficulties lessen, and satisfaction begins to peek out at us.

Of course God’s “chores” are far more complicated than fixing up old chairs, but Mary and I learned a few things today, too. When we started out, our confusion, misuse of tools and lack of knowledge caused us to lose 45 minutes on the first chair seat.

We decided we’d work to improve our time on the next one. There were set-backs and continued failures, but each successive cushion taught us better ways to do the same job. The last chair took us only six minutes, start to finish, and that included a staple refill. Now, gathered around the dining room table, our 22 year old chairs don’t show their age at all.

Hey! Maybe Mary and I could use our improved stapling skills to give each other face lifts!

Jesus said, “Blessed are all who hear the word of God and put it into practice.” (Luke 11:28)

Kind of Kind

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My friend Carole was visiting me in the Chicago ‘burbs a few years ago, and we were grocery shopping together. As we urged our loaded cart toward the exit door, another woman maneuvered her cart in front of ours, slipping out first. I didn’t think much of it, but that move made a mark on Carole. She shook her head and said, “I’m glad I live in North Carolina. People are actually friendly there.”

On the way home we talked about the head-down, rushing-around mood of most big cities. People are overloaded with commitments, running late continually and thinking elsewhere while pushing shopping carts. Carole, originally from the Chicago area too, has never succumbed to such cold behavior. For example, she’s friendly with the check-out girls where she shops, and they love to see her coming. She remembers their names, asks about their lives, and lifts their spirits with her laughter.

Today I got a chance to be Carole but threw it away. Shopping for fuses at Home Depot, I turned into the electrical aisle and saw an elderly man planted exactly in front of what I needed to buy. He was studying the small fuse boxes through bifocals and looked like he’d been at it for a while. Leaning on his shopping cart with both elbows, he had one foot propped on the bottom bar and a box of fuses in each hand.

I lingered at the other end of the aisle to give him a chance to move, but he didn’t. Finally I rolled my cart up to his, hoping to quickly reach around him for my fuses and be gone. He smiled brightly and said, “Boy, this stuff is confusing. And the print is mighty small.”

I managed a mini-smile with an “un-huh” but zeroed in on the shelf.

“What are you looking for?” he said.

“30’s.”

“Well, here you go then,” he said, extending one of his boxes toward me. “These are the last 30’s. I’ll take one, and you can have the other.”

He was being Carole. I was being a jerk.

Scripture has a great deal to say about being kind, first by detailing God’s kindness toward us, and second by lauding people who are kind to each other. Kindness is listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 and ought to be pouring out of every Christian. If I dodge opportunities, I’m in trouble. As a matter of fact, it’s worse than that.

Because God has exhibited the ultimate kindness in extending salvation to me, I ought to be jumping at every chance to be kind to others. If I don’t, it’s bad news:

“…Hezekiah’s heart was proud, and he did not respond to the kindness shown him; therefore the Lord’s wrath was on him.” (2 Chronicles 32:25)

Learning that it’s a bigger deal than I thought, I want to be more like Carole… and the man at Home Depot. After offering his box of fuses to me, a box he’d probably planned to buy himself, he said, “I’ve been to three other stores this morning, and this price is the best one. You won’t find a better deal.”

(…additional credit for his wanting to give one to me.)

I tried to refuse but ended up receiving his two-part gift: fuses and kindness. This stranger had shared what was rightfully his, had pleased God whether he knew it or not, and had taught me how to be Carole.

I wonder how many more tutoring sessions I’ll need before I finally get kind.

“ ‘I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 9:24)

As Much Fun as a Root Canal

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Although Nate had naturally straight teeth and no cavities, our children inherited my trouble-prone mouth. Five of the seven needed braces, and they’ve endured enough fillings to put the dentist in a Mercedes.

Today I got a taste of their futures, driving to the Chicago area to visit my regular dentist. Actually there’s nothing regular about him, since he’s a specialist in root canals. Normal mouths don’t have a “regular” root canal man, and I’m not proud to say today’s procedure was my sixth.

Admittedly, the process is less of an ordeal than it used to be in the ‘70’s with those pin-like screws being hand-turned into the nerve and then yanked out again and again. Today’s specialist labored behind magnifying goggles and worked on my tooth with power tools through the eye of a microscope.

After 90 minutes of having had my mouth open, I was finally standing at the front desk with the doctor. “Here are two packets of quadruple strength ibuprofen. Take one right now. Also, I’m giving you a prescription for Vicodin, should you need it. And because we found so much infection, you’ll have to take antibiotics for a while.” He shook my hand and told me to have a nice afternoon.

I thought about my poor, battered tooth. A back molar, it had faithfully done its job without complaint until a couple of months ago when a dull ache started calling for my attention. When I didn’t respond, the ache grew worse and swelling started in the gums, along with occasional sharp pangs. While I was still thinking I hadn’t flossed well enough, an abscess had taken hold. And today the raw truth came out.

Nothing stays hidden forever. God says he’ll bring everything into the open one day, all of our secrets. Nothing escapes his notice, and eventually he’ll prove it to us by showing us (and others) what’s been going on “in the dark.” How goofy to think we could ever pull the wool over God’s eyes or sneak under his radar.

Just recently I learned a friend’s husband had taken up with a woman at his office. He’d kept the relationship under wraps until recently when, against his will, the truth came out, breaking my friend’s heart and destroying their marriage. He thought he could live with one foot in each world, keeping secrets from both women.

To live uprightly when no one’s watching is God’s challenge for all of us every day. Just as he saw my abscess hiding deep in my jaw in its early stages, he sees every choice we make and each action we take, even “in the dark.” For some, the consequences of revealed secrets may be so severe, they’ll long for the simplicity of 90 minutes with the root canal doctor.

“Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, ‘Who sees us? Who will know’?” (Isaiah 29:15)