Life among the thorns

I got a call asking for a donation for the youth auction to fund a missionary trip they will be going on. Asherel cannot go because it is at the time of Matt's wedding, but every year I donate some art work. I never know if it sells. I don't want to know. If it doesn't sell, I will be depressed, and if it does sell, I might wish I had kept it. It is always a little agonizing, choosing the art to donate.  The artwork I create becomes a piece of me, almost like a child, and it is difficult to part with any of them. I fear I may never be able to draw like that again. So this year, I brought a few old favorites down from the attic and they watched me from their perch against the wall.
"So just like that, you are so willing to sever our relationship?" accused the ocean scene.
"It is not that I want to," I answered, "I  am doing a mitzvah."
"What's that?"
"I understand your confusion, since you see it so rarely from me. It is a good deed, a connection to God, with no hope of reward. You just do it because it is the right thing to do."
"You need more mitzvahs in your life," agreed the ocean scene, "But does it have to be at my expense?"
"Well what else am I going to do with you?"
"Save me for your son and future daughter in law. She seems to have good taste. I'll bet she would be thrilled to hang me on her wall. And what about your future grandchildren? Might they not want to remember when you had talent and produced beautiful things?"

So, in the end, I decided the ocean scene was correct. I instead took an old picture I had done of a rose, and let the Spirit guide my hand as I tried to create something beautiful. I knew the rose itself was somehow not enough. It was not complete.

When I finished it, I leaned it against the wall.
"Are you giving me up to the auction?" asked the rose, as it squirmed on its bed of thorns on the cross.
"Yes, I am afraid I have to. I have run out of time, and so you will have to find a new home among strangers."
"Well that is exactly where I belong!" said the rose, its perky petals blooming.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you already received my message. After all, you pulled it out of your subconscious to draw me. Now I need to go bless someone else."
I looked at the rose for a long time, and finally admitted, "The subconscious can be a deep and treacherous place. Can you tell me exactly what message I was supposed to be receiving?"
"No," said the rose, "Some things are better understood on your own."

Last night I had a dream that Asherel and I went on a bike trip. It was to be a trip where we would bike across a lovely countryside for a long time, and camp along the way. As we gathered to meet our team leader, I realized I had forgotten two things- our bikes.... and our camping supplies.  The two things I most needed for the journey, I didn't have.

Life is indeed a bed of roses....but not only roses. In the midst of that beauty and that fragrant life, there are thorns. And there is sacrifice. Without that, perhaps we miss the most important things. We may be in a good place....a beautiful place, but with no means to carry us to a better place, the best place.

As I handed the rose to the woman at the church collecting the auction donations, she smiled, "This is beautiful!"
"Thank you," I told her, "If it doesn't sell, may I have it back?"
The rose blushed. "Go in peace. You understand," she whispered.

Mark 15

 ¹ Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.  ² “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate.
   “You have said so,” Jesus replied.
 ³ The chief priests accused him of many things. ⁴ So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”
 ⁵ But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
 ⁶ Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. ⁷ A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. ⁸ The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
 ⁹ “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, ¹⁰ knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. ¹¹ But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
 ¹² “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
 ¹³ “Crucify him!” they shouted.
 ¹⁴ “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
   But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
 ¹⁵ Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

Isaiah 53:4-6

 ⁴ Surely he took up our pain
   and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
   stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.

Clouds as Ear Plugs

The next dog won't have one smidgen of terrier in it. It won't dig out of fences, bark at owls all night, chew apart heavy plastic crates, dissemble wire crates, or break little toes while playing tug with leash. If there is a next dog. Even cute and fluffy has its limits. Man does not live on cute alone, but on every minute of sleep that terriers deprive him of. I believe that is in the Bible, and if it isn't, it ought to be.

We set Lucky up with a nice fluffy soft bed in the bottom of his palatial plastic crate Carol had given us. We served him an appetizer to make his stay more pleasant, and turned back his sheets. We closed the door assuring him that room service would be back in the morning to serve him a complimentary full buffet breakfast.

And then, the sawing and pounding and clawing and grinding began. In the morning, a small slat of the thick plastic crate was pulverized. Plastic dust marked the demolition spot. The crate is not yet destroyed and useless, but one more night of the Terrier Take-down, and it will be. The donated wire crate was a little too small for Lucky, so under dire threat from Arvo who is losing sleep in buckets and is not at all happy about it, I went out to find an indestructible wire crate. It is him or the dog, he warned, and it isn't him that will be leaving our happy abode.  We donated both crates to Hollow Creek Farm where dogs are homeless, but not deranged.

I think this qualifies as one of those struggles in life where God is patiently trying to mold and shape me. It has been 8 years of trying to keep Lucky contained and civilized. Our expectations are not outrageous. We don't want him barking all night, and we don't want him escaping over the fence and heading off to busy suicide highways. I think we have tried everything we could, and now crating him, the dog who hates to be confined, is our last resort.

I have a few of these constant, ever present struggles in life. Paul of the Bible talks about a thorn in his side that despite constant pain, struggle, and prayer, the Lord saw fit not to remove. We all have them.  A sarcastic nature that wounds over and over again but can't be reined in, a rebellious child that we can't love into returning, a continual battle with mounting expenses and dwindling resources, a body that is growing weaker despite all our efforts to stop the flow of time, an algebra problem that we think is unsolvable though the text insists it can be done.....

Those little irritants sit like a tick in the back of our mind, growing and bloating as it sucks the life blood out of us.  God sees fit to let them remain sometimes. I have long since learned that "why" is a question God almost never answers. He never answered Job who begged to have counsel with Him over that very thing.  God only answers "how" with any consistency.  How  then are we to live, given these thorns that prick and bleed?
Turn your eyes to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, He tells us.
That's it? That's the best the creator of the Universe can offer?
It is. The Best. The Very Best. In the end, it is the Only thing.
When my eye is on Jesus, completely on Jesus, I don't see the dog eating concrete walls; I don't hear the grinding of canine teeth. I see my Savior, and the joy that one day will be mine... a good night's sleep with clouds as earplugs.

Hebrews 12:1-3 (New International Version)

¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.