Changing...in the Car

Dear friends,

Here’s a quote from an article I read today in Prodigal Magazine.  To read the whole story, click on the link: http://www.prodigalmagazine.com/living-is-the-hard-part/

“Living isn’t all suffering by any means, but a life lived fully unto Christ ultimately leads to the kind of suffering that Christ experienced. It only makes sense. We follow a man who was beaten and disowned.”

I cried in the car today.  In fact, my beautiful van, a 2010 Grand Caravan – the newest, most splendid car I have ever owned- has housed a great many tears since it arrived on our driveway last fall.  I am grateful for car crying.  I find it private, purging and sweet with the presence of Jesus.  Unfortunately, I never remember to keep tissues in the car.  So my upholstered seats get kind of wet from wiping my tear dripped hands on the only source of dry. 

I cried for sadness and grief and heartache, but I also cried for joy of the unexpected.  How it is that I never knew before this testing how near the Savior sits right there in the passenger seat, He himself “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  Trouble has become my teacher…of those things I could not, or would not know otherwise.  To see all my life in its true light…a life meant to be lived with the Gethsemane Man who showed the way through His great sufferings, through my “light and momentary trials….

I don’t want to have to have my hands pried open.  Driving past the refracted light dancing on the Hudson, I want to take my hands off the steering wheel and open them to say “This is your world; I am yours, save me from my fearful, tottering, wavering, ignorant self!”  Somewhere along this pilgrim road I have begun to see.  Just begun, and I think I will still be saying that on the day I die.  I hear the persistent pound of anxiety, and my long time companion discontent, and a world of other unfocussed defaults, banging for entry in my moving tabernacle, and I choose to turn my back.  For today.  Today is all I can do, I make no promises for tomorrow, I only believe on the One who owns tomorrow and owns me.  I acknowledge the pain and my ferocious self will which dies so hard. O, but the blessedness of that death.  Who surrendered more than He who said “Not my will, but thine be done”.  He opened his hands and side and all His God/Man to my grief and sin and all yours and the world’s a billion, billion times over.  For the joy set before Him!  Joy!

The beaten and disowned one is beside us in the car, at the sink, with keys under our fingers and grease under our nails and trays in our hands, from the stars in the sky, to the depths of the ocean floor. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH1cGsH74Js

To suffer our tiny drops of sorrow here, to gain from them, to find with Him the joy set before us…the very longing is more precious than all the world’s mere dollar store trinkets.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Pogo Ball!

Dear friends,

This was my pure, unadulterated joy today!  David plays basketball on pogo stick.  

I'm telling you, my cup runneth over!

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Extraordinarily Ordinary

Dear friends,

What I really want to do is something ordinary. 

When I was in film school at NYU, just about everyone, when asked “what is your career goal?” answered “I want to direct.”  No one would ever say “I want to bring the props back to the studio at 2am” or “I want to help the sound man by carrying his equipment” or “I want to fetch coffee for the producer.”  Those were “ordinary” jobs. Aspiring to direct was a much loftier, much more satisfying goal.  How vastly different is the upside down Kingdom of God.

We live in an age of celebrity and pleasure seeking.  Even for we followers of the All Time Hero, there is a temptation to elevate the things that scripture would refer to as a hill of beans (well, maybe in The Message translation anyway), and to overlook the really astonishing, regular (yes those 2 words can go together) stuff that is at the heart of true discipleship.  You already know the story:

Luke 17:7-10

 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’?  Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get your self ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’?  Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?  So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

When we have done everything we were told to do….

Here are just a few of the things ALL followers of Jesus are told to do:

Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

Love neighbor as self.

Pick up our cross and follow.

Forgive, and then bless our enemies.

Give extravagantly.

Be willing to leave all, forsake all, suffer all for His sake.

Do without earthly security.

Trust the One we cannot see.

Know, without a doubt, that we are totally, relentlessly, zealously loved by our Father.

Pray like there’s no tomorrow (because there might not be).

Find joy in God in every little minute of every little day.

And so on, and so on.  The ordinary Christian life is supposed to look like this.  The Holy Spirit enables even the weakest among us to live this way.  But our limited, worldly perspective makes us recoil from these other-oriented goals.  We want to hold fast to comfort, security and acclaim. We strive for what so temporarily satisfies.  Living a dull, sub-ordinary life, God’s very own miss out on the vast eternal pleasures of His presence in exchange for what amounts to 10 minutes of cheap, passing gratification.    We laud those who make a big noise and live in big houses and are all pomp and glitter.  We act like this is our party, and not God’s, to which we have graciously been invited.  

Lest you think I’m saying don’t be all you can be, I’m not.  Our earth bound vocation is a part of God’s workings in our brief sojourn here.  What I’m saying, mostly to myself, is that our eternal calling is really far richer, and much greater than striving for some worldly attainment.  By simply doing our duty, humbly accepting whatever the hand of a Loving God brings, with thanksgiving and without complaint, by looking outside ourselves we find the lives we’ve lost. Turns out the ordinary isn’t the norm for the church at all.  Nobody puts it like Brother CS Lewis:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  

The ordinary Christian, if we could but find one, would only be doing his duty.  Only serving the Awesome God, only receiving grace upon grace, only overflowing with love and mercy, only suffering all manner of trouble with endurance and hope, only showing the face of Jesus to a lost, corrupted, needy, dying world, only caring for the least of these, only doing what the Great One told him to do.

The stunning thing is this: Jesus took the servant role to show us the way.   He is God, and He prepared our supper and looked after our fields and washed our filthy feet.  The furthest Person from ordinary proved that ordinary isn’t ordinary at all.  Makes me want to bend these knees and repent.  It would be the ordinary thing to do.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

PS:  I am broken, and so are you.  We can only live this way in the midst of our brokenness so long as we stay close to Jesus and let Him heal and help and forgive us every hour, every day.  Don’t think I don’t get it that living the true life of a disciple is messy business.  Really messy.  I write this with longing in my heart to fulfill it.  Not because I’ve figured it out. With a limp, pressing against the sub-ordinary, I continue up the pilgrim road, by His grace.

The Persevering God

Dear friends,

God is zealous.  He perseveres.  (Is that why He puts such a high premium on endurance, to make us more like Him?)  He presses.  He nudges.  He makes plain.  If you wish, He will allow you to go around a stubborn heart problem again and again, but that is not His want.  His stated goal: Freedom.  No chains on His kids.  Total, reckless, glorious trust that brings bold liberty.  He provides the fertile soil of circumstances to test the reality of our faith in Him.  All the lip service, bible quoting, and church attendance in this wide world don’t mean a thing if the heart is still pulled up short by unbelief.  It’s a mercy, really, the pain of trouble.  It’s like the rubbing wound on an animal chained up too long in the same spot.  It starts to really hurt, and finally gets the poor creature the attention it needs. 

It was in my youngest days as a little tomboy from Indian Orchard, Massachusetts that the infection of fear began dividing cells that have festered over many years.  Perhaps it started when my mother was taken away in a straight jacket and began what would become the remainder of her life as a captive to full blown schizophrenia, lost to her home, her family and even herself.  I was in grammar school when the terror began: the acid drip into my stomach, the tightening of my jaw, the potent, ferocious self reliance and determination to protect my 2 younger brothers.   No one can be trusted.  Nothing is reliable.  Mother is gone.  Father works 3-11.  It’s my job to take care of these boys.  Alone.  Afraid. At 10 years old.  So began The Great Insecurity.  Survive or die.  So was forged the first link in a very long chain of anxiety and mistrust. 

A few weeks ago, dear husband Smitty lost his job and became one more among the millions of casualties of a rugged economy.  But there is nothing random about this trial:  We believe in the 100% sovereignty of God.  There are issues in both of our fallen natures that are being wrested out by this particular suffering.  Going through dear daughter being missing in January (that’s another story), and going through the continued fallout of the car accident 2 years ago (that’s another story too…see

http://www.steveandhannahsmith.blogspot.com/), we are familiar with pain. But here’s the thing…the twisting, the churning, the dread, all these are the incarnation of the captivity within, the imprisonment God has zealously worked to free me from lo these many years. I’ve been around this mountain way too many times, and I’m tired of it.  I know my Jesus is God of all…Lord Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, All Powerful.  So what the heck am I doing living in anxiety?  It’s no coincidence that I’m studying the book of James right now.  Listen to this profound truth:

“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.”  James 1:12

And I think… I think I may be getting it.  What the enemy of my soul is working hard to thwart, God is doing by His gracious hand.  Today I was able to look up at the sky, and feel the warm day on my skin, and be grateful.  I am not saying I never roil, but there is something releasing in me.  Ironically, I’m almost afraid to make it public lest I fall on my face again.  But I must declare the goodness of God in this hard place.  Because if He is not God here, He is not God at all.  James also says:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  DO what it says.” (capitals mine).  James 1:22 

The word says not to be anxious about anything.  The word says to trust in my Faithful Creator.  The word says my God shall supply all my needs.  The word says fear NOT.  If I want the freedom my Sweet Jesus died for me to have, I must do the word, not talk about it.  This is an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.  His will for me and you is total and complete liberty.  He is zealous.  He perseveres.  And so must we.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann 

Default to Babylon

Dear friends,

Computers are strange birds.  Ours suddenly began defaulting to some obscure search engine called “Babylon.com”.  Probably one of my boys downloaded something of a gaming nature and Babylon snuck in to take over as the first port of call.  Default.  Having no idea what to do with these inventions of microchip and mind, I’m no match for the thing.  I’m stuck with Babylon when what I want is AOL.

Today I was lamenting to my husband about my own “soul default”.  My tendencies to fear and negativity were hardwired both by DNA, and the "software" of the events and relationships that have formatted my life, in particular those tender years of childhood.  It occurred to me, most likely because God put the “aha” connection in my head, that my default could also be called Babylon because of all that word means to a child of the living God.

Babylon became a powerful ancient empire, and in the year 587 BC the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah were forced into exile, far from their beloved promised land and under the thumb of a first rate tyrant, King Nebuchadnezzar.  It would be many years before Judah would return to Israel, and in the meantime the holy city of Jerusalem would be seized and utterly destroyed by pagans.  For the Jews: Captivity.  Bondage.  Again.  The children of Israel must have harkened back to a theme they knew well from their grandmas and grandpas, from their Passover remembrances and their Torah.  Perhaps they suffered more this time, recalling the 400 years they bent their backs for the pagan worshipping Egyptians. 

Babylon was no place for the chosen people.  God never intended for His own to live in captivity to liars, abusers, and tyrannical despots.  And He doesn’t mean for us to live that way now.  Of course in a free nation our captivity is spiritual.  Still, is prison any less miserable when it’s inside of a heart instead of a city?  But how does one live otherwise, when the default position is so diabolical and deep.  How to change?  How to truly change…

I’m wrestling this one out day by day, friends.  I open my eyes in the morning, and each day I know I have a choice.  I am a free woman because of the nail scarred man of Nazareth.  I have a choice to boot up my mind and leave it on the default setting of anxiety and pessimism, or I can go to manual and set my own disposition for the day…the hour…the minute.  I have to be extraordinarily intentional or it’s Babylon for me.  I have to have the word of God planted in my mind and the Spirit of God coursing through my veins or I will be a slave to the horrors of self.  If I look down the barrel of my problems, (and believe me the past 2 plus years have been replete with them, but that’s another story), I am sorely tempted to go to default. If I take seriously the words of Jesus: “Peace I give you, my peace I leave with you…” I find I can choose a different setting.  I will have to fight for it, but it’s SO worth the battle.  By the power of that Divine Spirit within us, we can ship out of Babylon every morning, and go rebuild our cities.  Go home to the place we were born for.  Go home to “the life that is truly life”.  Not pain free.  But meaningful.  Peaceful.  Dare I say…beautiful.

We cannot do it without Jesus, and we cannot do it without one another.  Praise God for His mercy, we don’t have to.  We may be “strange birds” too, but we are not computers.  We have the power to choose.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

The Great Consolation

Dear friends,

The Consolation of Israel…that’s what Simeon was waiting for.

Reading the account in Luke of Simeon’s encounter with the infant Jesus is like witnessing someone opening the best Christmas present ever.  Simeon had been waiting his whole life to meet the Messiah.  The Holy Spirit communicated an astonishing truth to him at some point…maybe while he was playing stick ball on a dusty Jerusalem street…maybe when he was polishing up some brass candelabra for the temple…maybe when he was reading the scrolls in “Hebrew school”.  This prophet who bridges the chasm between the old covenant and the new got the revelation:  “He’s coming, Simeon.  And you won’t die until you see his face.”

I’m not sure, but somehow I don’t think Simeon was expecting the Christ to be unwrapped from the particular package he arrived in.  Most Jews of the time thought Messiah would appear as an earthly king.  Powerful.  Wealthy.  Stunning.  When an ordinary Jewish carpenter and his young wife entered the temple with their baby, it had to be God Himself once more communicating with Simeon.  Perhaps the old man heard this in his prophetic ears: “Here he is, son.  Look upon the face of your deliver…” 

However it all went down, this was the seminal moment of Simeon’s life.  I can just imagine it.  He takes Jesus in his arms, and blesses the one who was his consolation.  Consolation for all the darkness, sadness, loss and fear Simeon carried as a result of the Fall.  Consolation for the 400 years of silence between God and his fickle, wandering people.  Consolation, indeed, for the whole world, including the pagan Gentiles.  How I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the temple.  Mary and Joseph (who have already had some wild prophetic visions of their own) are finding out for the first time that Jesus is not only going to be the salvation of the Jews, but of THE WHOLE WORLD.  Luke says that “Mary and Joseph marveled at the things which were spoken of Him.”

The recorded encounter of Simeon with Jesus Christ is concluded with Simeon hinting to Mary of her future suffering, and declaring that this simple child from the tribe of Judah will precipitate the fall and rising of many in Israel, and be a sign that will be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.  If you really think about all of that, your brain will explode.  In this helpless, dependent, fully human being there will be such an intimacy with individual people, that the innermost thoughts and intents of their hearts will be known by this God-Man. 

Jesus did not come to save the masses.  He came to save you.  And me.  He came for all the individual hearts that make up the many.  He didn’t leave one soul out of the mix in His mind boggling plan of redemption and glory.  He entered this broken world to make “the crooked straight and the rough places plain.”  He was not only the consolation of Simeon, and the consolation of Israel, and the consolation of the Gentiles…but your consolation.  He did not come as a rich monarch from heaven (which He is, by the way), but as a humble Judean kid actually wrapped up in rags and sleeping in an animal’s feeding trough.  God understood it would be no consolation to us to have a Savior unacquainted with the hardships, struggles, irritations and disasters of this life.  No, a true consoler is one who knows…one who shares the burden...one who enters in to be a help.

In eternity yet to come, we will no longer need consolation.  There, far from the days of sin and darkness, Jesus will be revealed as the Mighty One of Israel, and all will be joy every minute of every timeless day.  But while we continue to walk the pilgrim road to home, what a Christmas present it is all the time to be loved by the Great Consolation Himself.  I pray God will cause each of us to “marvel at the things that were spoken of Him.”

Merry, Merry Christmas.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Shall We Accept God from God, and Not Trouble?

Dear friends,

Somewhere, in the bleakness of this early December morning, with my crab apple tree stripped and naked, with the cold drizzle leaking from a monotone gray sky, with a heart broken and yet unhealed by a calamity of November’s past, a question hangs in the a shadowy corner of my consciousness. 

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  Job 2:10

Here is that cosmic dilemma once again.  Here again, that question that has ripped from good men their fragile, emerging faith.  Here is that question that we who love God play tennis with all the time, hitting the ball back into the other court, hoping to avoid its insistent clamor, only to find it returning again to be considered by our limited perspective, by our shallow understanding.

In the pediatric icu, the question hangs heavy as a mom and dad wait for their brain injured son, hurt in a car accident, to die as his brain stem shuts down.  In the apartment of Burman refugees, wrapping toothpaste in aluminum foil for Christmas, the question hovers.  It is there too in the midst of an ugly divorce, and wears like a cloak on the parent waiting for the prodigal to return.  Everywhere there is suffering, the theological debate rages invisibly on… Where does the free will of man, often resulting in evil, and the sovereignty of God intersect?  Does He indeed bring trouble to those He most vehemently claims to love “with an everlasting love.”

As I wade through my own losses, digging ever deeper (despite my lack of spiritual skill) into the mine of God’s word I find some consolation.  I turn this thing around a thousand times in my head…the car accident, the fallout, the pain and suffering that continue down unfamiliar roads I didn’t see coming…and it is this word that remains: Emmanuel.  God with us.

Job writhed in anguish of body and soul.  He railed, he complained and he suffered profoundly.  He volleyed that ball back and forth with his God many times.  Read his account, so very human…one moment faithfully hanging on, the next wanting to die, the next madder than a wet hen.  All the while The Great One stays with Job.  Like the faithful friend at the bedside of the feverish, He will not let Job go on alone, even though Job can’t see him there in his misery. 

God replies to Job’s sufferings with Himself.  In that famous speech from the pulpit of heaven, the Ancient of Days points out to the poor man in a myriad of metaphors just how limited human perspective can be.  In the end, Job finds the “God with him”.  He finds Emanuel.  But it’s messy business.  Not a neat tidy story.  And lest you forget, Job never got those dead children back.  He would have to continue on accepting not only good from God, but trouble also.

There is so much more to say.  As I write these words I think of the value the word of God places on suffering to bring great good.  I think of the deliverance and joy that are also splashed across the painting of a life bearing the smudges of evil and grief.  And I see a Savior born in a smelly barn, asking a similar question in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  ‘If it is possible, could this cup possibly pass me by?”

Thankfully, He accepted trouble to bring us good.  Sins forgiven.  Sorrows consoled.  Death defeated.  Emanuel.  God with us.  Hold on in your suffering.  Before we know it, it will be Christmas and Easter every day.  We  will see all the spiritual cancer the Surgeon’s knife cut loose in our pain.  And like Job, we will simply stand awestruck, and the question will no longer matter.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

October Musings

Dear friends,

Don't miss October.  With all the distractions and vicissitudes of life, please don't miss it.  I asked the Great One not to let ME miss it.  This little ditty combines some of my childhood memories and my current observations.  Hope it makes you smell the dry leaves and feel the nippy wind.  Get outside!  Embrace it before it's gone...

 Sweet October

In October I am five, crunching cross' the sidewalks

Pulling up my itchy, wrinkled tights

Mary janes are scuffed from skipping round and round the block

Spitting out the skins from apple bites

In October I love wind, blowing way' my sorrow

Pumpkins smile despite their pending doom

Library smells of chestnuts and the books I'll borrow

Swoosh of leaves succumbing to the broom

In October strength is givn' for November's losses

Hearts can store up all that's warm and gold

The axis of the Earth is daylight's restless posse

Chlorophyll's auctioneer barks finally "Sold!"

In October tea tastes better, pies' a wonder

Perfection's found in street boys' football spirals

Brides and grooms forbid to ever "put asunder"

Microbes fear the latest anti virals

Hear October! I am grown, but still I crunch

Cross' the sidewalk, through the spunky breeze

In the sorrows, in the sweetness, in the autumn

My hope clings brilliant, like the maple trees

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Places vs. Things

Dear friends,

I’ve always said if I struck it rich (as Jeeves would say “the contingency is a remote one, sir”), I would love to travel extensively.  I’m not the least bit interested in owning a big house, driving a fancy car, or wearing designer clothes.  It’s not that I’m ultra humble, or that I don’t like nice things, but I’m pretty content with the “stuff” of my life.  Sometimes I walk around my house in utter astonishment muttering “thank you Jesus, for my palace!”  I recognize the obvious disparity between my possessions and those of ninety percent of the world.  On my best days I’m practically overwhelmed with gratitude. 

No, what I covet on my worst days and dream of on my better ones is to see the places that decorate this blue ball in the universe.  Mind you, I’ve been blessed with more travel than the average Joe.  Back in my career days with Reading Rainbow I traversed the big 48, and even spent a month in Hawaii.  I wondered at the waterfowl and complex ecosystem of the mighty Chesapeake Bay.  I watched in awe as millions of bats left their guano laden cave at dusk to consume billions of mosquitos somewhere near the Mexican border.  I hiked the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park Montana on the 4^th of July and stood face to face with a papa big horn sheep and his harem.  I cried overlooking a vast chasm on the way from Estes Park, Colorado to Aspen.  I’ve met interesting people, from a model train expert in New Jersey to the pig wrastlers at the Pomona County Fair in California.  I stood on the eye of the Statue of Liberty while it was being restored back in the 1980’s. 

Places have personalities.  Much like people, you have to get to know them a little bit to find out the lovely things about them.  Some wow you immediately, some grow on you, and some just aren’t your kind of ice cream.  But I sure would love to try a few more flavors.

For example, I want to visit Dulwich College in England where Ernest Shackleton’s 23 foot whaler, the James Caird is on display.  (That open wooden boat travelled 800 miles in the Arctic Sea and was a vital tool in the rescue of Shackleton’s men from their ordeal near the frozen South Pole – but that’s another story).  In all my travels I still haven’t seen the Grand Canyon.  More than anything, I want to set my feet in the Holy City of Jerusalem.  That, my friends, is one piece of real estate lots of people seem to want to get their hands on…

Alas, I haven’t struck it rich, and right about now with 3 teenagers in the house and the ongoing recovery from a wildly perilous car accident, I won’t be trompsing about in my wayfaring boots anytime soon. 

There is one place that captures my heart more than any other.  That place is heaven.  Some of my my most dearly held secrets contain my thoughts about that celestial homeland.  Our ancient father Abraham’s feelings about that promised land mirror my own: “For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”  Hebrews 11:10  The appeal of heaven is hard to overstate.  John the Revelator tries to use human language to describe something that defies words. Images foreign to our 21^st century imaginations seem weird.  Some folks would have you believe that heaven is not really a place, but a state of mind.  I don’t buy that one.  Rivers, cities, streets…these are all the stuff of places.  No, it will be a real, solid, substantive whereabouts alright.  This world will seem like the wispy shadow land.  That place will team with life and love and freedom. (For a great fictional story about the “realness” of heaven, try C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce).

In the long run, it’s places I prefer to things.  But honestly, I couldn’t care less if heaven were a barn.   The appeal of heaven is my Jesus.  Without Him, it’s not heaven at all.  The most beautiful place in the world is hopelessly boring and sterile without the key ingredient: Relationship.  And eternally speaking, relationship with God is the passport to the wonder and joy of heaven. 

For now, I’m hoping to make this broken place just a wee bit better for some of the other dwellers on this planet.  But when my ticket home comes through, watch out for the woman that’s like a “short, brunette streak of light” (to paraphrase Cary Grant in “Arsenic and Old Lace”).  My pilgrim road days will be over.  My true travellin’ days will have just begun!   

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

The Blind Leading the Blind

Can a blind man lead a blind man? Luke 6:39

What a picture that verse stirs up in my mind. 

I have a precious friend who is blind.  She astonishes me regularly with her capacity to do things I would kill myself doing with my eyes closed.  She cooks complete meals, washes dishes, runs on her treadmill, does laundry, and takes outstanding care of her husband who has an acquired brain injury.  (I still have no idea how she toilet trained her two girls...)  Joanne is a joy, a delight and a wonder.  But I wouldn't want her to drive me to the store or lead me through a labyrinth of booby traps.  Without physical eyesight, one is in no position to lead anyone anywhere. 

Of course, Jesus wasn't discussing physical sight in this passage from Dr. Luke's gospel.  Right after what seems like an obvious question, The Savior begins his famous plank/speck sermon.  You remember the gist: Don't judge, don't condemn, forgive and stop trying to take the speck out of your brother's eye when you've got a piece of wood the size of Manhattan in your own.  Pondering this familiar passage, here's what I'm thinking:

I see people every day through the lens of my own sensibilities. Someone claims to be spiritual, yet gathers material wealth in a way I don't like.  Judgement.  I am slighted or hurt by someone, so I label them insensitive or nasty.  Judgement.  Someone is suffering because of their own sin.  I shrug my shoulders.  Judgement.  And while I judge, I feel the darkness close in on myself.  My own failures, sins and folly, far more grievous than the ones I pick at in others, rise up to haunt me.  Perhaps that's what Jesus meant when He said "judge not, lest you be judged..."  He knew the natural result of blind judgement is the weight of our own wreckage.  Oh how beautiful is the sting of the word of God!  It pulls us from our shipwrecked souls into the light of understanding, repentance and mercy! 

The truth is, we are unable to even recognize our own darkness, never mind that we arrogantly try to grasp the vast, unsearchable heart of another human being.  Never mind that we have no idea what sorrows, loads or injuries they bear.  When we judge another man, we are the blind leading the blind, bumping around and getting hurt and hurting others along the way.  What does the Great One say to us in the face of this?

"You hypocrite (ouch), first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the SPECK from your brother's eye."  God, it seems, doesn't want anyone blind.  Not from a plank.  Not from a speck.  Once we deal with our own judgemental, self righteous, crummy attitudes, then we can very gently, as you would with a little kid, try to get that annoying piece of dirt out of someone else's eye.  Not to hurt them.  But to help them.  So both can see.  So both can love.  So the blind don't lead the blind. 

I am so very grateful for the continued speech of the living word of God.  When that blind man in me takes to judging, my sweet Jesus takes to correcting.  He takes to healing me, so I can maybe, tenderly, help someone else.  Via the pilgrim road of love...not the blind alley of judgement.

On a lighter note, my cats have become killing machines lately.  The tally of chipmunks, rabbits and moles is rising.  Wish I had a nickle for every carcass in my yard...

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann