The Thirsty of June

I've been rather earthly minded of late.  Distracted by all the to-do's of June, focused on very temporal cares, going about my business as if my business were about me.  I know, because I'm thirsty.  Not for a little sip of water, but for a good long drink, followed by a steady and lasting re-hydration.  Living water that is.

It's revealing, reading the Old Testament account of Solomon.  He started so strong, so determined to follow hard after God like his father David did before him...But the distractions of life (in his case, way too many beautiful pagan women), gradually degraded his passion for God's glory.  And I notice another thing about Solomon.  He didn't really have any hardships.  Of course there was some major drama in his family, particularly with his siblings, but most likely Bathsheba protected him from much of that.  And he never, ever knew want.  Contrast his life with his father's:  first, a shepherd in the hills, often alone, overlooked by his dad.  Later, he was perpetually on the run from enemies, hungry, thirsty, exhausted.  He lived in caves.  When he finally became king he had his own bout with Goliath-sized foolishness, evil even,  and distanced himself from God.  But you gotta love David.  He never did anything in halves, and he returned to God with all his heart. That era was followed by more pain and suffering via his screwed up children.  He died at age 70, full, so very full of years.

Seems trouble is a key ingredient in making a decent and passionate human being.

The only One who ever got it all right, of course, was Jesus.  Never did he separate himself from His father.  There was no secular vs. sacred with Him. Life was all about relationship: first with God, then with people.  He never lost touch with the why of life. He always made sure the main thing was to keep the main thing the main thing. He was, and is, the perfect man.  He was never distracted by what didn't matter.

Somewhere in the middle of making 25 pounds of potato salad for a graduation party, going on a job interview, spending too much time on facebook and figuring out our summer schedule I lost track of my real life.  This hollow feeling inside is a gift from God.  Time to dig deep into the truly beautiful, the truly worthy of life.  Time to sit quiet and hear the birdies and express my thanks for their song.  Time to laugh long and hard with my hysterical third child.  Time to look back on all the blessings of these growing up years with three beloved children.  Time to drink tea on the front porch. Time to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Lest I miss the lovely in the mundane.  Lest I chase after what will mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Don't get the idea that I'm promoting living in a cave as a mystic...(though that sounds surprisingly appealing right now, actually).  Seriously, I get it that there are cars to wash, children to buy bathing suits for, sauces to cook and freeze, litter boxes to clean out.  But there's an attitude of heart that can do those things with God given the right foot to start on.  First things first.  The ancient disciplines that bring freedom:  Prayer, the Word of God, worship, fellowship with the saints, repentence, solitude, quiet.  This is not a whack on the hand, it's a trail to the well.  As Billy Joel said : "I know what I'm needin',  and I don't wanna waste more time..."

Don't ignore that desert feeling.  Typically, it's a warning signal.  One Solomon ignored.  One David embraced.

Off the computer, into the Book.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Spiderman Tattoos and the Deeper Meaning

Ha!

I bet you thought this was going to be another one of those blogs where I find the metaphor in some life experience and sift through to the deeper meaning.

Nope.

This morning I woke up cracking up.  I mean this was loud and silly laughter, startling my husband (up hours before) who is usually the one chuckling around these parts.

I was dreaming.  I dreamed we were having a big back yard picnic, Smitty and I, except the back yard was not our real back yard.  But we did indeed live there.  You know how it goes in dreams.  There were tons of familiar faces in this dream.  Tons.  That's a bit more unusual for a dream of mine, which usually leaves me more often alone or with one other person.

So I go into my house (which isn't my real house) and I said to Smitty, "Oh no, when did they do this to me! Where did I get this tattoo on my leg?"  And lo and behold, my entire right leg looks like Spider-man's leg, blue and red and webby, an extraordinarily well done tattoo.  I was beside myself.  The tattoo was signed by 4 ladies in my church, one of whom I remember was the dear Pat Ellis, who is one heck of a woman but definitely not the sort to tattoo you in your sleep.

As I'm fretting over this inked leg, and trying like crazy to sort out how it all happened, our friends from Brooklyn come in the kitchen.  Hugh and Joelle take one look at the leg and the gales of laughter begin all over again.  My daughter's old boyfriend Joe howled in hysterics at my limb.  Soon a crowd has gathered to laugh.  And no sooner has my bewilderment reached critical mass when I realize  it's not a tattoo at all, but a pair of leggy pajamas with Spidey legs on them.

At this I roared with laughter, and woke up with my cat staring at me like I'm some kind of mad woman.  (Cats tend to do that anyway).  Stephen comes in, the man who loves to laugh, and I tell him the story.  I started parsing the dream, looking for some meaning in it, and finally concluded it was solely for my amusement, an extra, a respite in a tough world, simply a laugh.

I was reminded of last week, when my friend Susan, in her inimitable way, quoted the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes as he expounded on the superfluity of a rose:

"'There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,'" said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "'It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. 

"But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.'"

~Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It is only goodness that gives extras.

P.G. Wodehouse novels, red paint, chocolate chips, a good laugh...extras.  Scottish tea, poetry, Christmas carols, soft towels...extras.  Baseball, glass windows, Claude Monet's water lilies, the smell of rain...extras.

Life is full of trouble in a post-fall Universe.  It is also rife with beauty.

Perhaps there was a deeper meaning after all.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Changed in the Unchanging

"For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."  Malachi 3:6

Despite the sort of dry, dusty internal landscape of my soul right about now, there's a great spiritual truth that keeps appearing and reappearing to my mind, fading in and out of my consciousness like a mirage in  the desert.  My spiritual temperature may be cold, but this truth remains:  He is the Lord God, who changes not.

Women especially are vexed (and blessed) by a broad range of emotional ground, some of which is covered from west to east in an hour. (Ask my husband for references on that one).  For years in my travels with God, I believed if I felt good, if I was being "good", that the Father was good with me.  Conversely, when my darker, more arid times rolled in, my fouled up understanding of the nature of God lead me to think He was mad at me, or frustrated at least.  As if somehow this puny but beloved child of the Great One could upset the inner workings of the Absolute Supreme Master of the Universe. 

It's a great relief to stop taking oneself so seriously.

A whole lot of life is lived on the plain, and frankly the folks I respect and admire the most are first the ones who accept adversity and keep climbing, and second those who know how to live well in the mundane.  My friend Kate is that person.  For 20 years she has been patiently, kindly, cheerfully taking care of her dearly beloved, severely autistic son Timmy.  Twenty years of cooking him the same foods, (the few he'll eat), bathing him, diapering him, putting on the same Barney video for him, bringing him to Walmart for a change of pace, and ditto the next day.

The undulations of the pilgrim road are many.  Vexations without and within, comforts and pleasures, dealing with people, dealing with money, dealing with time...all things are constantly in flux.  It would be a fool only who would expect to feel the profound reality of God all the while.  He, of course, is never an inch away.  But our perception of Him is often impacted by the changing nature of our natures. Our perceptions can be trifled with by a sinus infection, or a low pressure system that won't budge.  To quote Ebeneezer Scrooge trying to make sense of why he was seeing his dead partner Marley:

“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Our senses are great servants but lousy governors.  If we acted on every whim of our emotions, or didn't act because of their lack, would those firefighters have climbed the stairs at the World Trade Center while everyone else was coming out?  Would any marriage make it past the first temptation?  Would Columbus have sailed the ocean blue?  Would Jesus Christ have gone beyond Gethsemane to Golgotha?  Would our faith grow in the plain, where there are no great revelations or experiences of the presence of God?

God too has emotions, powerful ones, but because He isn't subject to sin He can have feelings (in some cosmic way I can't begin to understand), but He can remain ever steady, reliable and trustworthy in them.  He has set His love upon His own, and that's that.  He loves us when we're good and He loves us when we're not.  And He is still loving us when the sail of our heart is sitting on a windless sea.  All is dull, but all is still well.  The grand emotions of a speck of God's presence are withdrawn, and in that void humility and true faith are forged.

"Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."  ~ Hebrews 11:1

The winds always change. Just keep doing the next right thing, whether you feel like it or not. We'll be moving again, sometimes under blue skies with the wind in our face, sometimes in the middle of a great storm.  No matter.  We change like shifting shadows.

"For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion."
~ Benedick to Claudio in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

 He is God.  He changes not.

Your friend on the currently windless pilgrim road,

Loriann

Happy Birthday, Hannah Mary Rejoice

Today she turned 18.

My baby girl, who entered the world like a freight train on the downhill, so quick from the dark to the wide world that her collar bone fractured on my pelvis.

We held our breath, as we waited for hers...

Finally, she inhaled, and we exhaled.

At 3 weeks old I wondered when they would begin...the colicky screams her older brother wailed for months on end.

They never came.

She cooed, she rested, she was content.  Even a little melancholy, like her Momma.

A girl.  All I had ever known was boys.  Brothers.  Husband. Son.  Here was someone like me, but not like me.  I was transformed by this child.  This double X chromosome with wavy hair and a poets soul.  I continue to be changed by her.  And I live in the fierce love for her that bears every pain, grasps every victory, and will never relent in hope for her future.

She talked early, and loved words from the beginning.  She wrote poetry even in first grade, delighting in the  cadence of the sounds.

She excelled in school, and though usually on the quieter side, could be goofy and loud with the best of them.

The ocean's rhythms delighted, and still delight this girl who ponders much.  The ice cold waters of Coast Guard Beach could not keep her out.  For hours, blue and salty, she dunked and splashed. She endured for the sake of joy.  Her father stayed with her in the waves, diving straight in to the mighty, frightening waters.  He stays with her still.

She spent the whole day, non stop, reading the last Harry Potter book.  She grew, and waxed beautiful.

At 13 she fell in love with Jesus, and found grace to be great.

And then, the sin of another bore down, and suffered her to suffer, and turned the tender days into difficult times.  When the man, intoxicated, plowed 2 tons of metal into her and her father, the world gave way and my heart sank, nearly drowned.  I held my breath, waiting for hers.  When they pulled the breathing tube from her young lungs, I stood outside, gasping for my own air.

All parents hope and pray for the safety of their children.  That they will live long, and prosperous, happy, fulfilling lives.  That every birthday will be all joy.  But into every life, sorrow and disappointment come.  And this one, who roared into life, was suddenly so still and wounded.

But there is mercy.

The years that followed, they were hard.  So very hard, and Momma spent and spends each day with knees bent for this beloved of my heart.  And she continues.  She perseveres.  She presses on.

She cannot see Him now, this God who adores her.  But He, oh He...sees her. Pain can bring a veil.  But veils are made to be lifted.

Jesus, who raised Jairus' daughter, raised her.  Continues to raise her.

And now, she drives a car.  She works a job.  She returns to the high honor roll.  She will go away to college in August, to study English.

She climbs a mountain only she can climb.  Except that I climb with her, silently beside her, though she doesn't know it. And her father, bearing his own load from a body broken by the day of disaster, he climbs too, and stays close like he did in the cold, crashing waves.

She doesn't know the little girl in french braids holding 15 stuffed animals in her bed is still her.  That when I wrap my arms around her, my daughter, taller than me, a million memories of joy and sorrow rise up like the waves of the sea. That the mountain she must climb is always in the sight of the one I too climb, and I am filled with a powerful love I cannot adequately express.

As her beloved William Shakespeare has said:

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

Hannah Mary Rejoice...Each part of that lovely name tells a piece of the story of her life.  Hannah:grace.  Mary, from the Hebrew for "Mara": bitter.  Rejoice...rejoice.

I wanted peace and light alone for this child.  She has seen days I could not protect her from.  I don't know why.  But He giveth more grace.

Happy Birthday to my darling daughter.  May the next 18 years give her back all, and more.

She will rejoice.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Double Indemnity

Being a big fan of movies of the 40’s (Smitty and I consider that time the golden era of film making , there is a genre of motion picture in particular that stands alone during those years of war and recovery: Film Noir.

The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo…if you haven’t seen them all, you must.  But there is one that I watch more than any other, one that always sets my heart a beatin’, and one that has a title that today sent an earthquake of revelation through my bones. 

Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and the inimitable Edward G. Robinson, Double Indemnity is my most beloved of the film noir.

For a trip through the corruption of a soul, down the alleyways of temptation and guilt, this dark masterpiece is the train you want to ride. 

A brief, non-spoiler synopsis: Walter Neff (MacMurray) is an up and coming insurance salesman.  In an effort to sell an accident insurance policy to a client, he instead is smitten by the man’s calculating wife (Stanwyck),  who wears tight sweaters and doesn't like her husband much.  As often happens with bad decisions, one leads to another, and Neff finds himself in a plot to deceive the husband into signing on for an accident insurance policy with a clause for “double indemnity”.  What that means is the beneficiary on the policy would receive double the payout on the death benefit under certain conditions.  For example, if the policy holder were to die by falling off a train, well, what are the odds of that?  So the insurance company sweetens the pot by offering a benefit that they will rarely, if ever, have to pay out.  From here on out you’re on your own.  Rent the movie, directed by the great Billy Wilder.  Nuf said.

This blog really isn't about the movie.  (I know, you’re shocked!)  But the title of the movie made its way into my consciousness this morning and nearly blew my head off.  I was thanking God, and out of my mouth came the words “thank you that I stand indemnified before you…”

I talk to God a lot, and when I do, I talk like I would to a friend, but with a whole lot more reverence.   Still, I don’t typically use big words with Him.  Especially ones I don’t fully understand.  But this word kept pressing on me, kept seeming so blasted right, and finally I got practical and pulled out the dictionary.

Indemnify: To protect against damage, loss or injury.  To be legally exempted from liability for damages.  To make compensation for damage, loss or injury.

This was exactly the word The Great One wanted me to see.  Wanted me to understand. 

The Fall brought with it every conceivable evil and heartache, and down the ages the damage, loss and injury has been devastating.  But for Grace, we humans would have been long gone, long ago.  Hatred, envy, strife, lust, avarice, gluttony, apathy, greed, sloth…and the mother of all, pride, have hurt every one of us, both as perpetrators and victims.  We've done them, and been done by them.  Here’s what the ancient word says of all this:

“The wages of sin is death…”  Romans 6:23

Kaput.  Done.  God would owe none of us an explanation.  He’s Holy.  He’s just.  Evil wasn’t in His plan, and since we insist on carrying on He could simply call it a day.  But the rest of the verse is as follows:

“…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Jesus Christ, lover of our souls, provided indemnity for us.  God the Father wanted all of us to know Him, to see His love for us, to find Him.  We are His glorious ruin, the heart of His heart.  He would satisfy perfect justice with perfect love through the perfect Son.  The death of Christ legally exempted us from liability for damages.  He not only provided justification from sin, but glorification too. An increasingly transformed life, destined for the joys of heaven.  Double indemnity.

This may seem like heavy theology, but it’s really not.  Still, don’t let this bollix you up.  If it doesn't help you love Jesus more, and love people more, send it straight to the recycle bin.  I just thought it was too marvelous to keep quiet about.

Christ plays in a thousand places.  Including movie titles.  Blessed be His name.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

PS:  Grace has left us with so much beautiful, yes?  In the darkness, so many shafts of light.  Thinking of the wonders of kindness in the midst of so much ugliness in Massachusetts, where I was born.  Boston’s pain makes the loveliness of charity so shine.  Love: a compensation for loss, damage and injury.

The Weasel Thingy

When I lived in the city, my vegetable gardens were productive.  Despite a teeny plot of ground with lousy, clay soil, I enjoyed tomatoes, cukes and even those rascally zuchinni that spread under the fence to my neighbor's yard.  When we pulled up our stakes and moved to the suburbs (though in my heart I will always be a city girl), I contemplated the magical veggie garden I would sport: lush, overflowing, Jack-n'-the-beanstalk even.  Ignorance, my friends, is decidedly not bliss.

The town we live in used to be farmland.  I rejoiced at the loamy dirty in my yard!  The folks who lived here before even grew grapes in the back.  I was already fixin' salad and zuchinni bread in my wild imagination.

Gardening is delightful and relaxing, said no one ever who has worked one... OK, maybe someone has said that, but no one as lazy as me.  My dear adopted dad came over with the tiller.  Weeds were pulled.  Planks were laid down in the geometry suggested by The Square Foot Garden.  Fertilizer was raked in, seeds planted, water sprinkled.  Sun shone.  Plastic fence was laced about the perimeter.

Plants grew.  Veggies formed.

And then HE came.

Because I really don't know what particular animal this was, I have opted to call him "The Weasel Thingy".  One afternoon, as I sat in my breezeway surveying all I had planted, he stood up.  In-the-middle-of-my-garden.  He was gnawing heartily on a young, beautiful zuchinni plant.  He looked right at me, bold and, I think laughing, there in broad daylight.  If I owned a gun I would have shot him on the spot.  (Apologies to my mother and sister in laws).

I ran shrieking into the yard (apologies to my very normal neighbors).  That varmint stared me down, vegetable in paws, till the last second.  Then, under the fence he scurried with my food.  I was madder than a wet hen.

The next day I went out to smile over my labors, forgetting the pain of the day before, only to find my entire garden plot completely decimated.  Not a blossom, not a baby cuke, not a tomato plant, not a pepper unscathed.  Weasel Thingy had been back overnight, along with Bambi and maybe Thumper too.  The whole garden was demolished. Ruined.  By critters both stealth and crafty, travelling in broad daylight and under the cover of darkness.

I tried to plant another garden the following year, but the Weasel Thingy remembered...  And that was that.  Too much work, no reward.  Done.

I was defeated by the Weasel Thingy.

So, as I over-spiritualise everything, I pondered this today...

I wonder what the Weasel Thingy is in your life.  What is it that steals your good fruit, that robs your joy, that takes the things you've labored to produce?

For me, it's always been fear.  But unlike my veggie garden, I can't simply be stripped over and over and expect to live the life I'm called to live.  I'm learning to fight back, to protect what matters, and to grow.

If I wanted it badly enough, I could grow stuff.  I could plant the fence much deeper to keep the diggers out, and I could make it much higher to keep the deer out.  I could tend the weeds better and use the chemicals that kill bugs and worms.  But I'm not willing to work that hard.  I'll get tomatoes from the farmer's market.

Life, however, doesn't work that way.  We can't get internal peace, freedom and victory from somebody else.  We've got to cultivate it ourselves.  There's no getting around the work.  The work of FAITH.  Of believing what God says in His word, and DOING it.  The good news of the gospel is this: God is on our side and wants us to bear much fruit.  He's got the good soil.  He's all about our killing the Weasel Thingy's of doubt and fear, and keeping out the pests of idolatry and pride.

Mt. 13:3-9
“A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Remember this:  The work of God is to believe.  Not to prove our goodness by our own effort.  Your life grows because it's protected from evil, and sits on good soil in a sunny, and sometimes rainy place.  Your job is to listen to God and cooperate with what He says.  He's the farmer, and he'll keep the Weasel Thingy out.  But not if you invite it in to dine.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Old Dogs, New Tricks, and the Futility of Regret

This I regret:  that I didn't memorize scripture more diligently as a young woman.  Here in the middle age of life, where I crave quick access to the life giving elixir of God's word to my soul,  I find the brick hard neurons of a non-compliant brain. An old dog not wanting to learn new tricks.  Desire for truth and light I have like a young man for a nubile young woman.  But the receptors are hard, friends, hard.  Like concrete.

I've been working my way through Isaiah 43 since last August.  I can replay verses 1-18 now.  Eighteen verses in 7 months.  At age 25 it would have taken me 7 weeks.  At age 12, 7 days.

Granted, this is not a full time occupation.  Obviously more time would generate more results.

And I didn't even have a relationship with God til I was 25 years old.  Looking back I wonder at that.  How could I have missed the Great and Mighty One for all those years?  Sleepwalking.  Thinking life was about one thing, when it was about something else entirely.  Lost years.

Isaiah 43:18-19
"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

I'd bet the house that everyone reading this has regrets about wasted time. About ill used time.  About the actual abuse of time devoted to sin. Get in line behind me.

This is one of the things I love so much about God: He has a full grip on that stuff.  He speaks directly to it: FORGET the former things, DO NOT dwell on the past.  He's giving us permission to leave it behind.

The burden of regret is one of the heavy weights Jesus took to Golgotha.  There it died with Him.

Let it die.

I didn't put as much of the word of God in this 3 pounds of gray matter as I wish.  In myself or my kids.  But concrete can be broken up. Trees have grown from cracks in the sidewalk.  Forget the former things.

I'll keep forging my way forward through Isaiah 43.  The wealth there makes the bank accounts of middle eastern sultans look like chump change.  Well worth forcing those neurons to fire, whether they like it or not. Cause I'm fixin' to be a rich woman.  Striking gold here in the middle years.

Philippians 3:13-14
^"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Gethsemane: The Linchpin

In Gethsemane
You wept for sin's sure toll on all things good.
Struggled, in clean white beauty 
the filthy horrors of perdition...
striving to destroy you, striving to destroy yours.
Your Father, firm to keep light for darkness.
Relentless with His "no" to your plea:
"Let this cup pass."

You bled through pores your own hand formed for cooling
While white hot fire from ugly death pressed, burned
shaking all your primal, human flesh.
All God, all man in the valley of decision...
The fate of every man
on One man.
Who can bear such loneliness?
"Let this cup pass."

The acid of distress, scalding, ablaze in your chest, your heart.
Fear, rage, murder, envy...all OUR vice laid hard on you.
Gethsemane, the linchpin of the ages...
where God meets God and all hope rests on this:
"Let this cup pass...
yet not my will, but Thine be done."

Onward to Calvary.

My gratitude for His reckless love and mercy is unbounded.  The God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, made His body the bridge to God.  Blessed be His name.

Perfect justice cannot tolerate sin.  Perfect love cannot tolerate separation. Jesus became sin, sacrificed Himself and endured the unmitigated monstrosity of separation from the Father, which no living soul has ever experienced.  In this, He satisfied the justice of God, so all men who rely on His righteousness can be ever satisfied in His GRACE.  That's what Good Friday is all about, Charlie Brown.

Thinking of you here on Holy Thursday.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Little Did They Know

Life unfolds in a "little do we know" way.  It can all feel so mundane sometimes, like we're treading water and going nowhere.  It can seem, despite our most fervent hopes and small, but strenuous acts of courage, that it all won't ever really mean much in the big picture.  The Book of Ruth, toward the beginning of that best selling compendium of all time, is a window into the "little do we know" drama of simply putting one foot in front of the other.

From the get go, there is a famine in the land.  Little did anyone know THAT was coming, or how it would alter the worlds of a pleasant Jewish lady, her husband and sons, and the foreign daughters in law who would be swept along by forces they did not control.  To cut to the chase, Elimelech and Naomi must face the reality of a lousy economy in Bethlehem, Judah.  They take their beloved sons and relocate to Moab, where, little did they know, Elimelech would die, followed by his two sons.  Naomi is left with Ruth and Orpah, the daughters in law who are both the kind I hope to get.  Ruth is the real gem, though, and one of the stars of this wild love story.

Naomi is returning to Bethlehem.  And without spelling out the whole, beautiful 1st chapter, here's the crux:  Ruth refuses to leave her mother in law, despite Naomi's urging that she stay and find a husband among her people.  This is where we get that famous biblical quote heralded at many a wedding:

"Where you go I will go, and where you stay, I will stay.  Your people will be my people, and your God my God..."  Ruth 1:16

Little did Ruth know that her devoted words to her grieving relation would be the truth spoken for thousands of years between men and women locked together in a no-matter what kind of love.

Naomi and Ruth are in pretty desperate straights there in the town that would one day birth the answer for every desperate heart to come.  Naomi's loss leads to bitterness, to the point where she tells her friends not even to call her Naomi ("pleasant") anymore, but to call her Mara ("bitter").  This can and does happen when sorrows so deep suddenly change the landscape of our days.  But little did Naomi know, that all of this trouble would be part of a master plan for God's glory and her good.

An empty stomach is a huge motivator.  Ruth takes advantage of one of the customs to care for the poor of her day and gleans grain behind the threshers in the field of a wealthy landowner. But little did she know this one act of desperate survival would lead to the salvation of the world...sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.

It turns out the owner of said field is Boaz, just about the nicest, most appealing man along the entire highway of scripture.  He's a middle aged guy, good to his workers, fair and decent, and a distant relative of Elimelech, Naomi's dead husband.  Boaz sees this poor, lovely young woman scraping up a living and instructs his men to leave her alone and his girl servants to keep her close.  He finds ways to provide her with extra grain without shaming her, and shows her the tenderness and affection every red blooded woman wants.  

Fast forward, and a grateful and loving Ruth offers herself as a servant to Boaz, in a custom involving sleeping at the man's feet and being covered by a corner of his blanket.  Today it sounds odd, but it was how it worked back then.  Boaz was a kinsman redeemer, and had the right (after the first guy in line let it go) to buy Elimelech's land and marry Ruth.

Little did Ruth know she would become a Jewess, and go from poverty to riches,  materially, spiritually and emotionally after a period of great loss, pain and separation from all she had known.  Little did she know she would be the great grandmother of the greatest earthly king ever (David), and the great, great, great.....and so on grandmother of the King of All Kings.

Little did Naomi know her bitterness would turn to joy as she held her grandson in her lap, restored to her homeland and in the company of a loving family.

Little did Boaz know that his acts of kindness would give him the woman of his dreams when he was getting gray in the temples, and land him smack in middle of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Little did any of the people in this story know that their lives would impact mine, 3,000 years later in an American suburb, where the hearts of all remain desperate for courage and hope and meaning and faith.

Keep doing the next right thing.  Practice loyalty like Ruth, perseverance like Naomi, and love like Boaz.  And know this:  God is always at work, in the unseen, in the unraveling, in the undoing.

The cross looked like the end.  Little did they know, that it was really just the beginning.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

This one is for my dear Pastor.  Little do you know, brother...

The Ship "Even God Couldn't Sink"

A Titanic replica cruise sheep.  Really?  Billionaire Clive Palmer must have lots of time on his hands, and an alleged 40,000 people have expressed interest in advanced tickets.  This whole thing seems so bizarre to me, but has served to get me thinking ("a dangerous pastime, I know" to quote Gaston from Beauty and the Beast), and examining myself and our culture once again.

I swore I'd never go on a cruise.  I get horribly seasick, and thought being on a ship in the middle of the ocean would make me feel like a caged rat.  I was picturing enclosed cells and ropes hanging everywhere, and miserable looking starved dogs...too much Disney "Pirates of the Caribbean" for sure.  Of course I knew that cruise ships were extravagant and luxurious, but the imagination can be more powerful than fact to the mind, hence my considerable hesitation.

After the devastating, exhausting experience of the car accident in 2009, and the subsequent fallout, we told our kids we were going to take a special celebration trip of their choice.  Our vacations have always been to our rented 2 bedroom Cape Cod cottage for a week every summer, so this was extravagance in the extreme for our family.  I wanted to drive the coast of California.  They wanted to cruise the Caribbean.  Guess who won.

We spent a week on the Allure of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world. No one was as surprised as I at how much I loved the experience.  My favorite part: the warm wind blowing through our balcony cabin every day in the middle of February.  This was a once in a lifetime trip.  Wildly expensive (we went during school break!) we felt like Solomon when we set foot on the sparkling Allure.  The whole thing was exceedingly restorative, with the sun shining down on the upper deck, a book in hand and rest for a little while from the world of hospitals, orthopedic surgery, brain injury and lifelong challenges and heartaches that must still be reckoned with.  I was grateful, grateful, grateful.  And a little uneasy.

There will always be, and I think always should be, a tension that comes with extravagance.  The truth is, there are people in this world who barely have enough to eat.  A cruise ship is an orgy of food.  There are folks in this world wearing rags.  The Allure hosted parties where people were wearing outfits worth more than my car.  There are men and women laboring without vacation time and for subsistence wages, while on a cruise ship money is gambled away, drunk away and thrown away.

I feel the tension as a Christian every day with all I have compared to what others lack.  Smitty and I evaluate and re-evaluate what God is calling us to give.  We must continue to do this, to find our way, to grapple with it, and to keep on giving.  C.S. Lewis, when asked about the subject of giving, challenges me again:  ”I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare…If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us,… they are too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditures excludes them.”

Clearly, wealth is not an evil, but a blessing.  The bible is replete with grave warnings about the LOVE of money, but some of God's most heralded children were the billionaires of their time.  Job.  David.  And of course, Solomon, whose discourse on the disappointment of riches is documented famously in the book of Ecclesiastes.

I will be turning this one over for the rest of my life, but it's a subject worthy of continual re-evaluation.  More important than what one gives, though, is Who one gives one's heart to.  This is the ultimate question for every life ever lived on planet earth. 

There is a scene in the movie Titanic which grafted itself into my consciousness-I hope forever.  (No offense to the hoards of people who loved the movie, but I found the narrative, well, dumb.  The stuff with the ship, however, was unforgettable).  Anyway, while Jack and Rose are off in some freezing cold hold of the sinking behemoth, there is a shot in the dining room that is a metaphor for the celebrity and glamour of this temporary world.  There in the 1st class banquet hall, where earlier the rich and richer nearly flamed with pride and arrogance, float the vestiges of vanity.  Gorgeous china dishes bob along littered waves of seawater, furniture crashes down in smashed, soaking heaps, elegant chandeliers flicker until they die out completely.  And God, who speaks in a thousand places, reminds me "Don't call the worthless precious or the precious worthless." 

I'd be a real pharisee, not to mention the world's biggest hypocrite, to imply that no one should ever enjoy a marvelous vacation.  But in America we've got this thing backwards.  We're living for vacations, living for comfort and ease, looking forward to the day we can finally put our feet up and relax for good.  While people are out there, neighbors, friends, strangers, or maybe it's you...without hope and without purpose and without God on this sinking ship.  Vacation is a week or two, not a life. 

Fame, fortune,pride,...they're all going down folks.  But what a real adventure to live the life Jesus said was the abundant life.  To find the ones who need your help, your money, your love...and give it to them in the everyday, right where you are!  Your coworker who's gasping for kindness.  Your next door neighbor who can't keep afloat and doesn't even have the strength to mow his lawn.  The kid  in Haiti who won't drown in ignorance or wear rags if you take the $40 a month you spend on coffee and send it to him.  (Samaritan's Purse or Compassion International can help you with this).  Oh, I love preaching to myself!

As for me, I'll skip the new Titanic. I'd have to ride in fourth class anyway, and I know I'd need to mainline Dramamine if I was stuck down there.   But mostly, this mind has to dwell on the lovely, or I'm sunk.  Thank God for His Son, my lifeboat, and the anchor in every one of my storms.  I'd rather ride a raft with Him through a hurricane than be king of the world.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann