Conundrums

I am exploring a mystery for the new book I am writing, and every time I think I have solved it, I find out something else that throws snares around my theory. I think I am on the right track, the quarry is in my net, but it is not certain I will bag it. I find myself yo-yoing wildly with elation and despair each time a new fact corroborates or refutes my supposition. I am learning a great deal about pursuing an elusive conundrum. Much of any success hinges on asking the right questions of the right authority. In this case, the eye witnesses are dead, so I must rely on ancient texts, if I can find them, and then on interpretation of the data from knowledgable sources I can trust. Many of my sources have told me my assumptions are wrong. I just keep digging anyway and some of my conclusions have been, in the end, correct. I am not there yet, but I am closing in.

How like the search for God this is! Just when I think I understand His reasons, His purpose, His plan...He wiggles away into a perplexing place I cannot quite reach. The eye witnesses to Jesus are all dead, and all I have left is the ancient text to corroborate the truth of what He claimed. The more I dig through the Bible, the more I understand, but my understanding is incomplete, and at times, dead wrong. But each search leads me closer to the Answer, to Truth. It is not a passive search. It is an active, exciting, and continual exploration. It is key that I ask the right questions of the right Authority, or all is lost. And through it all, the Search has become all consuming and perhaps even more important than the end result.

Job 28:11-12
They search the sources of the rivers
and bring hidden things to light. But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?

Proverbs 2: 4-6
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.





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Small Offerings

Hosting a bachelorette party for my friend Andi had two benefits- 1. I got to make a really nice human being happy, and 2. my house is completely clean for my son and wife arriving today and our upcoming beach vacation. I used to "entertain" more often when I was younger and more energetic. My house was cleaner in those days. And there was an unexpected third benefit: when the party ended,all the party-goers left the goodies they'd brought, and so I have a refrigerator full of hors d'oeuvres and three new bottles of wine for Matt and Karissa as well. I love killing two birds with one stone, especially when it is an odious bird, like cooking and cleaning. Funny how when the party ended, I had more than I had started with...clean house, full refrigerator, overflowing libations.

And preparing for the bachelorette party was surprisingly fun. I found a tiara with a veil and then leis for the bride-to-be to wear all in her purple and green wedding color scheme. Asherel came with me, and we both prowled the stores for inexpensive purple and green accents. I found purple and green candles, and at Goodwill, Asherel found a purple and green flower vase. Of course Party City had purple and green plates and napkins, and I found a purple wine glass at Goodwill for ten cents.

The whole experience reminded me of something I often forget. When you give, you often receive back more than you gave. Love and kindness works that way too. It seems those who are stingy with generosity, love, gentleness, and kindness get back even less, and the little they have dries up. Those who give all those things in abundance usually have more than enough and it flows out of them and envelops the world.

God knows this. He tells us reap and you will sow, cast your bread upon the waters and it will return, forgive and you will be forgiven, give generously and you will not be in want. It is counterintuitive, but it is nonetheless true. I have a confession to make...as I was buying for the party and cleaning for the party, and stressing over all the work of the party the day before my son arrived and three days before our family vacation, I was not feeling very good-hearted. I wondered why I was spending time and money I didn't have. I know. I am a wretch. But as the party unfolded, and those wonderful neighbors I don't see enough arrived, and as we laughed and ate the luscious goodies they had brought, and as the purple and green candles lit my little world, I realized how overjoyed I was that I had made that small offering to a beautiful friend.

Proverbs 22:9
The generous will themselves be blessed,
for they share their food with the poor.

Proverbs 11: 25-28
A generous person will prosper;
whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. People curse the one who hoards grain,
but they pray God's blessing on the one who is willing to sell. Whoever seeks good finds favor,
but evil comes to one who searches for it. Those who trust in their riches will fall,
but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.







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Rain

Rain rain rain. I am really happy I have finished up Jeremiah and Lamentations in my daily Bible reading. Those are weepy Bible books, and with the weepy weather, I could drown in dismal.

Now I have reached one of the strangest books of all, Ezekiel. I won't pretend to understand the really bizarre images in Ezekiel, but I read a verse that reminded me that even in the dismal rainy days, when the sun is blocked by clouds and the ground is a morass beneath me, God is guiding. My job, the verse told me is to stay on the course He is directing me. Go where He goes, do not turn aside no matter how torrential the flood that seems to be washing over me. Where He goes, I go; where He leads, I follow. It can only rain so long.

Ezekiel 1:12 (NIV)
Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went.

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What Becomes our Master

I am hosting a bachelorette party for my friend, A, Tuesday, so went to Walmart for some supplies and wine. As I was checking out, the cashier picked up the wine bottle and asked for ID.
"You're being proofed?" asked Asherel, "They don't think you are 21?"
"I look very young for my age. Thank you ma'am," I said, handing her my ID, "I haven't been proofed in thirty years."
"We're required to proof every one," she said. (OK, cross her back off the christmas list.)
Well, honestly, I knew it was either that or else she was blind as a bat, or she thought I dyed my hair grey, and used reverse anti-aging cream to add wrinkles since I am such a rebel.
"Do you need help out with your bags?" she asked.
Well which is it? Am I a nubile 21 year old, or a senior citizen wobbling on death's door step?
"I think I can manage," I said, handing the bags to Asherel.

I actually did need a little help. I had been breaking in the shoes for A's wedding and my feet hurt. And on top of that, my wrists which had been healing had taken a very bad turn for the worst. I think hoisting all the honeymoon clothes for my friend when I took her shopping re-strained the tendons. I am back to square one on the pain in the wrist.

So I was indeed wobbly and sore. I didn't feel even close to 21years old. When I got home, I propped my aching toes up. I opened my Bible and read these verses from Lamentations:
"her toes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins."

WHAT!? God could not have been more pointedly speaking directly to me. Here I sat with my tortured toes, bandaged and throbbing. My toes are my masters! I am in pain with blisters and bunions and old easily bruised heels because of my sins. I work hard each day to understand what God is trying to say to me, and now this...this....this stinging condemnation.

Then I blinked. It didn't say "toes". It said "foes". Maybe this verse wasn't targeted just for me....Or if it was, maybe it wasn't about the folly of shoes with heels. Maybe it had to do with something deeper. I thought about the verse and how foes can become masters. Anything that captures our attention and takes it away from God is our foe, in the largest sense. And anything that captures our attention becomes our master. It isn't even necessarily an inherently bad thing. Beautiful shoes with toe numbing heels can indeed become our foe, if we are spending so much time looking at them, that we forget to be looking up at God.

I told my husband, "Did you know I got proofed at Walmart?"
He laughed. (PS- not the right response, buckeroo)
"What do you think of that?" I challenged him.
"I think you are a hot chick," he said.
Ok, he is back on my Christmas list.

Lamentations 1:5 (NIV)
Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.

Romans 6:14
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

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Choose Wisely

I shopped with my friend, A, to outfit her for her honeymoon for 7 hours yesterday! I would run back and forth to the clothes racks and return with piles of choices for her which I stuffed into her dressing room. We had a few saleswomen helping too. Soon, she had such a backlog that she banned me from getting any more. So I sat in a chair in the dressing room alcove and each time she emerged in a lovely new outfit, I oohed and aahed. A few got the thumbs down, but most of them looked spectacular. Maybe I need a new career in personal shopping assistant. We moved on to the dress section after a rather unhappy stint in the bathing suit department. (Bathing suits tend not to be a favorite for most women, I have found). The dress department, on the other hand, was a bonanza. We found several fantastic dresses.

While A was trying on her dresses, another rather short stocky matron who spoke almost no english, came out of her dressing room in a dress that was clearly 3 sizes too small. The open zipper gaped, showing way more than I, a total stranger, wanted to see. In broken english, she asked me to zip it for her. There was NO WAY that dress was going to zip. I tried, valiantly. Finally the saleswoman came back and told her as gently as she could that perhaps the dress was too small.

I wanted to shout, "AND you look like a tart in it!" This was the mother of the groom and she was short and stout and at least 50 or 60. She should not have been in a lime green slinky dress that was held together by skinny straps across the back and bodice. She looked at herself in the three way mirror, and then looked at me, and sighed and said, "Fat."

At that point, I felt sad for her and wondered why she didn't choose a style that accentuated her good points rather than flaunt a body she probably never had...none of us ever had! She went back to her dressing room, and emerged again, in a new less revealing dress, still unzipped.
"Help me zip?" she asked.
This dress again was too small, but less wildly inappropriate for a mother of the groom. In fact, it was only mildly inappropriate. I managed to hoist the zipper up almost all the way. As she stood in front of the mirror, I told her, "That one is better."
She nodded, had me help her unzip and returned to the dressing room.

Then she emerged, with a dress with no zippers, that fit, and was gorgeous. In fact, it was the same dress my daughter in law's mother had worn at my son's wedding a year ago.
"That is gorgeous!" I told her, "And you didn't need help zipping it!"
She nodded again, and smiled as she looked at her reflection.

As she was leaving with her arms filled with three dresses, she held them out to me and said, "Which?"
"This one," I said, touching the last elegant choice, "Without a doubt. Don't even consider the others. Get this one." She smiled again, said, "Thank you," and was gone. The worried scowl on her face had disappeared.

Are we all that deluded, I wondered, as I watched her walk away? Do we all look in a mirror and see something we wish was there but it really isn't...never was? Are we all that pathetic, grasping at an image that only makes us ridiculous? Yet something had made her choose the wise choice, the perfect choice, the one dress that accentuated her lovely shoulders and pretty face, and dark complexion perfectly while draping nicely over the waistline that had seen many years of childbearing and living. Something inside of her yearned for the wrong things, but still knew what the right thing was. Dress number three gave me hope for mankind.

Joshua 24:15
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."




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Do This for Me

Spending some one else's money is fun. My friend A who is getting married in a week had run out of time to buy her honeymoon week clothes. She still needed a rehearsal dinner dress! She was really stressed as she hates shopping, and didn't have the time to fit it in on top of all the wedding plans and craziness. So I went to Belks, and found the PERFECT dress. It was her favorite color, her size, her style, and GET THIS: on sale! And then, I started prowling for outfits for her honeymoon. Since the economy is in such shambles, there are a lot of pretty stupendous half off sales going on. I began rummaging. A saleswoman appeared. Normally, I think of them as sharks, just trawling the shopping waters waiting for their next victim. But this time, I put them to work. I described my friend, her likes and dislikes, and soon, I had a whole herd of saleswomen adding to my growing pile. I had soon collected about 20 outfits. I had been there 5 hours when I noticed that I was about to pass out. It was well after lunchtime.
"Can you hold these in a separate room and me and my friend will be back at 10 a.m. tomorrow?" I asked.
The saleswoman who had been most invested in the adventure scowled.
"Oh, but I don't get in till 1! Can't you bring her in then? I want to see if she likes them!"
"I'll leave you a note!" I said with a smile.
Then I emailed A with the good news that all she had to do was hop in my car at 9:45 this morning, and her personal shopper would whisk her to her private dressing room where her honeymoon wardrobe awaited her. She said she was so relieved when she got my note, that she cried.

I have often thought this, but it struck me again as I considered my past week. I had had two friends cry on my shoulder, a lonely senior friend and his wife with Alzheimers enjoy fast food in my car while I drove them through beautiful areas of Charlotte, and taught one of Asherel's new friends to kayak. No one, NO ONE, should ever be bored or claim they have nothing to do. There is a weeping world out there just begging to be comforted. My mission field, I thought, is right outside my doorstep.

Luke 9:48
Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest."




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Looking at the Moon

We all look at the same moon every night, but we all see it differently. Some see it shrouded in clouds, mysterious and romantic. Some see it hung like a glowing jewel on a blue velvet sky. Some see it as a cold and distant place where life cannot exist. Some see it as a beacon of hope that reflects on waters connecting my shore to the purple mountains. The moon is always the moon, but from the place where I stand, it may look very different than from the place where you stand. It takes a gentle and compassionate soul that sees the moon with the eyes of the stranger on the other side of the mountain.

Job 25:2-5 (NIV)
“Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven. [3] Can his forces be numbered? On whom does his light not rise? [4] How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? [5] If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes,


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