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.”

Hidden Info

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After we’ve bought a certain kind of car, we feel a camaraderie with matching cars on the road. Although I’ve never owned a Toyota before, now my eyes land on them, particularly Highlanders like mine. “What a handsome vehicle,” my brain tells me. But before my purchase, I’d never even heard of them.

ToyotaThe other day I pulled up behind a Highlander at a red light. I was admiring its silvery color when I noticed something interesting about the Toyota insignia. The letters T-O-Y-O-T-A are all present in that one symbol. And suddenly it made perfect sense. The loopy design I used to think resembled a man in a cowboy hat was just a clever way to embed the company name into their emblem.

Before the stop light turned green, God put an interesting thought into my head. He, too, is hidden in a similar way, not the letters of his name but his touch, his influence and his wisdom, embedded in the world around us.

I think of God every time I see a flower with five perfectly arranged petals instead of four or six. It would have been easier to make it symmetrical. I see him hidden in the endlessness of outer space as the Hubble continues to travel and show us more of the heavens. Mankind thinks we’ll eventually see the end of it, but my guess is there is none.

God is hidden in the conception of a baby. With fertilization comes the full potential of a complicated human being. The invisible DNA, present from the first cell division, is so unique it can be trusted to finger a criminal and send him to prison.

The Lord has also hidden himself in the circumstances that come into people’s lives. Our family “saw” him again and again during Nate’s illness as coincidences became too numerous to be happenstance. We are seeing him in similar ways in Mary’s situation. He is also hidden in the unexplainable phenomenon of changed lives, of radical turn-arounds that defy logic.

God is hidden, yet he calls to us. “Come and find me!” And he intends to let us discover him. This invitation is, of course, the opposite of our M.O. We try to hide things from God, hoping he’ll never ask about them. It might be a deed we’re not proud of or a secret sin we don’t want to stop. It might be a way of thinking we know is wrong.

How ridiculous to think we can hide anything from the Almighty. He has the ability to see beyond x-ray vision right into our thoughts. Nothing can be hidden from him. We would do well to follow his example by telling him, “Come and find me.”

“ ‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:24)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Pray about 3 scans I’ll have tomorrow, Tuesday, to check for hidden cancer. Pray that I’ll be strong and courageous and respond in a way that glorifies God, no matter the outcome.
  2. I’m thankful today was my off-week: no chemo.