I’m not a good question-asker.
An answer-finder, yes. And an answer-giver. I’ll easily spend days and hours to ferret out an answer from somewhere, or better yet, just have one at the ready to give and resolve the thing.
But to ask questions, this is a dangerous enterprise.
Asking questions means not knowing.
And admitting as much.
Mary was a slacker.
There. I said it.
Mary was a slacker and an underachiever and lacked ambition.
Oh, I know — don’t I know — that in side-by-side comparisons, it would be Martha who was found wanting. Martha, who planned and prepared and executed with perfection — He would peer straight through Martha’s heart and say, Your sister has chosen the better thing.
But Martha was the one who truly understood the importance of the Lord’s visit that day. She knew the social mores. She was deeply aware of the need to honor this guest with a proper meal, in a properly prepared home. This was a really big thing.
And she was the one that got that. The only one.
Mary, she was the flighty one. The one you’d find lying on her belly in the grass, picking daisies when there was the wash to do. Always talking about light and color and the moment.
Mary was all about the wonder.
And she never got a thing done.
Never mind how I got here.
We’ve long established that the road can be a little twisted and winding. What matters is that I ended up here, with the most delicious slice of chocolate cake between my tongue and palate.
Share a bite with me:
1 Contend, O LORD, with those who contend with me;
fight against those who fight against me.2 Take up shield and buckler;
arise and come to my aid.3 Brandish spear and javelin
against those who pursue me.
Say to my soul,
“I am your salvation.” (Psalm 35:1-3, emphasis added)
I had no interest in reading David’s complaint in 35. Not that day, anyway. But I wouldn’t get as far as the complaint. I’d stop at just the third verse.
And stay there.
An extra hand never hurts, so when she offered to hold the tape, I slid the one-inch end over to her behind the bushes. Besides, she needed something to keep her mind busy while we prowled around.
I wondered, as I watched her scale a small pile of debris, if I could come to dread the smell of campfire — that scent that most often means I’m outdoors, with folks I love, and at least for the moment, without a care.
In college, I always resisted washing a campfire-steeped sweatshirt for days, just to hang onto the time a little longer, if only in my head and my nostrils.
She wonders when she’ll stop waking to that smell and remembering it wasn’t a dream.
Seventy-some miles to the south of me, a farmer is looking out the window over his fields and wondering if I’m going to treat him fairly. He’s already told me he doesn’t expect I will.
He knows how we are, being insurance people and all.
Seems a few motherly cattle went looking for their little ones and trampled his corn and beans. We’re rained out here this morning, his dirt road just a little too soft with the overnight storms to let us get close enough to see how much damage these anxious mamas did. So I can’t yet put his mind at ease.
We’re not all bad, I tell him. He’s not convinced.
One of the creepier pieces of the puzzle beneath the headaches I don’t really have is a eyelid that doesn’t really close.
At least not all the way.
Well, at least that’s what my eye doctor says.
It’s handy at mealtime, where only a fool would pray with both eyes closed at my dinner table. When we say table grace, I keep that one creepy eye fixed on the spread. Because if I don’t watch the bowl to my right, I’m going to wind up on the short end of the mashed potato stick.
Meaning: I’m not so attentive during that prayer as I’d like to think.
In fact, I might be known to say Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, with more than a little indifference.
I don’t always expect Him to show.
:: : ::
What comes to mind when you hear the word rock?
A noun? A verb or some other part of speech? No, this is not a grammar test.
A Rolling Stones Concert?
A boxer named Balboa or Grazziano?
Elvis, the King?
Alcatraz?
Gibraltar?
Prudential Insurance?
Or if you are a hoops fan, a basketball?
The entrance to Jesus’ tomb?
The grand old hymns Rock of Ages or
My Hope is Built on Nothing Less?
Sandy Patti’s Upon This Rock?
Jesus’ promise to Peter in Matthew 16?
Psalm 18:2?
The wise builder’s foundation?
Jesus himself?
When David, as messed up in his sin as the day is long, sought to make his own way to redemption, he dug his hole deeper instead of digging his way out. To cover himself, he sent the husband of his newly manipulated mistress back to to war, with orders for the commander to put this man at the front of the battle where surely he would find the fighting to be most fierce.
It was David’s intent that Uriah be killed.
And so he was.
Curious then, it strikes me, how King Jehoshaphat formed the front line when he assembled his troops to defend a nation against an onslaught of vicious — and superior — armies.
He’s going.
She texted just those two words. I didn’t need more.
I knew.
Those two words ushered me into a most mysterious place, holy, where one could almost feel the outer edge of the wind that must have roared through a hospital room 500 miles away when the curtain between heaven and earth tore open just briefly.
In the 15-odd minutes that passed between that message and the next, the one that said he’d gone home, I hung suspended in time, between the mighty roar and the holy hush. Without further thought, I prayed.
When the edge of eternity sits so close as to feel the breeze, what else would we do?
I don’t know how I got here exactly.
Well, I do. I heard a guy on the radio right before I turned off the car, and he made reference to 2 Chronicles 20. The tiny bit I heard intrigued me. I thought I should go and check it out.
I’m supposed to be in 1 Samuel. But I’m distracted there with how a guy who loves his wife from his toes would see her, grieved to the point where she cannot eat, and give her double portions of food to console her. So I can’t get past the first chapter.
Already I digress.
So, 2 Chronicles. I went to read the story. And then I started reading backwards, because when I airlift into a passage I always have to trek back through the trees and see what happened before that.
And I got lost in the forest.
This Has Me Thinking
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