From Carolyn...

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY — FEBRUARY 5, 2017

The first thing I saw was the tiger. I was scurrying through a newly renovated grocery store searching for a couple of items I needed. Our Super Bowl party started in a little over an hour and I still had to pick up the pizza.

When I stopped for a minute to consult my list, I glanced up and came nose to nose with the tiger. It was a huge furry stuffed animal with a friendly grin. The big guy carrying it could barely get one arm around the tiger while he juggled his cart with his other hand, which held the strings of some high-flying balloons.

Such an unexpected sight made me smile and I casually said, “Looks like someone’s gonna be pretty happy.” I was expecting a return smile and perhaps a “Yep” as he moved on. That’s not what I got.

This man with his arms full of tiger and balloons stopped, turned to me and in a strong but kindly voice said, “My cousin is a long-haul truck driver. While passing through Boise he had a stroke and has been in the hospital for a week. I’m from Seattle and have come to be with him. I’ve been here the whole week. My cousin is a huge Patriots’ fan so I’m taking these balloons and this big ole stuffed tiger over to the hospital to cheer him up as we watch the Super Bowl together.”

It took me a moment to digest what I heard and to ponder what I would do next. Shoppers were hurrying by as we stood in the middle of Albertsons. I no longer saw the tiger or the balloons. I saw a person who had opened up to me just a bit about a very hurtful situation in the life of someone he carried about. And in his life.   I said, “I am so sorry. This is really hard. May I pray for your cousin and you?” He responded with, “Yes, thank you.” I prayed, we chatted a moment more and then I started pushing my cart again. He bid me good-bye and said as I left, “God bless you Ma’am.”  I turned back and repeated his words, “And God bless you.”

As I was leaving the store a pleasant clerk stopped me and she whispered, “You have your jacket on wrong-side-out.”

I chuckled, rearranged my jacket and took my things through the wind to the car. It was then I noticed how wild my windblown hair looked. I laughed again and started thinking. In the store it had not mattered to the well-groomed man from Seattle who was wearing an Air Force cap, that a person so different from him, an older white woman from Boise with wild hair and her jacket on wrong-side-out, had offered to pray for his cousin and for him. I think he saw someone who listened and cared enough to respond, not to what was in his hand but what was on his heart. I was blessed by our “chance” encounter and I trust he was too.

Super Bowl Sunday was really super for me. I learned two things—

Even when I’m not at my best God can use me to listen and show His compassion to another.

Not everyone carrying a balloon is going to a party.

Warmly, and cheering you on,

Carolyn

P.S. In reflection, I also learned that because of the man in the hospital recovering from a stroke who was a huge Patriots’ fan there was at least one good reason for the Patriots to win the Super Bowl, contrary to the opinion of several at our Super Bowl Party!
 

The Legs of a Man

His delight is not in the strength of the horse,

nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,

but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,

in those who hope in his steadfast love.— Psalms 147:10-11

As most of you know, I have a neurological condition that has put a hitch in my get-along. I'm learning to live with it—more or less.

I started using a cane a couple of years ago. Now I use a three-wheel walker when I'm out and about. [I also have an "off-road" walker for rugged terrain.] No doubt, I'll be in a wheelchair before long and Carolyn be pushing me around. (Please, no remarks from my friends about retributive justice.)

I came across a George MacDonald story a few months back, that encouraged me greatly. Perhaps it will encourage you as well.

“I shall get rid of my lameness there (in Heaven), Margaret, shall I not?” said Euphra, one day, half playfully.

“Yes, dear.” “It will be delightful to walk again without pain. Perhaps you will not get rid of it all at once, though.”

“Why do you think so?” asked Euphra, with some appearance of uneasiness.

“Because, if it is taken from you before you are quite willing to have it as long as God pleases, by and by you will not be able to rest, till you have asked for it back again, that you may bear it for his sake.”

“I am willing, Margaret, I am willing. Only one can’t like it, you know.”

“I know that,” answered Margaret. She spoke no more, and Margaret heard her weeping gently. Half an hour had passed away, when she looked up, and said:

“Margaret, dear, I begin to like my lameness, I think.”

“Why, dear?”

“Why, just because God made it, and bade me bear it. May I not think it is a mark on me from his hand?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Why do you think it came to me?"

“To walk back to Him with, my dear.”

—George MacDonald, David Elginbrod, Ch 22.

David Roper

1.26.17

Rock Solid

Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be moved, but abides forever.

—Psalm 125:1

"Temptations to sin are sure to come," Jesus said (Luke 17:1). We're encouraged to follow every impulse that prompts us, enticements to go with the flow. The call is imperious. "You better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone" (Dylan). 

Wickedness is always looking for something or someone to corrupt. Anyone with a scrap of self-knowledge knows that his motives are always mixed; everyone who searches his conscience can find no end of fresh sins to face. But we can become like Mount Zion: Untouched, unmoved by wickedness. Rock solid!

Oh, it won't happen at once and not right away, but in due time our struggle against sin will come to an end. The "scepter of wickedness" will not rest or rule there (on Zion)" (125:3). Put another way, "sin will not have dominion over you" (Romans 6:14).

There will be growth in this life, but the finale awaits Heaven. Soon, quite soon, we'll be done with sin. Forever! 

David Roper

12.5.16

A Painful Grace

"But as grace operates, it cannot (save through a miracle of that same grace) be other than painful."

—Francois Fénelon

C. S. Lewis, in his chronicle, The Horse and His Boy, tells the story of a Calormene noblewoman, Aravis, and her conversion from arrogance and selfishness to humble and compassionate nobility.

 



The story begins with Aravis’ escape to Narnia and the North to avoid an arranged marriage to Ahoshta Tarkaan, a repulsive, elderly tyrant. To flee, she drugs a servant girl who was in league with her wicked stepmother. 



“And what happened to the girl—the one you drugged?” Shasta, her companion (the “Boy”), asks when he hears her story.



“Doubtless she was beaten for sleeping late,” replies Aravis coldly. “But she was a tool and spy of my stepmother’s. I am very glad they should beat her.”



“I say, that was hardly fair,” Shasta responds in reaction to her indifference to human suffering.



Is it good to be glad that another human being suffers harm, even when they have harmed us? Should we be happy about it? No, because it’s always wrong to repay evil for evil: “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing,” an Apostle reminds us, “because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). 



But this is merely the word. How do we come to know this? In Aravis’ case, Aslan himself must teach her that indifference to human suffering is wrong. 



As Lewis tells the story, a great lion attacked Aravis outside the gates of Anvard and “jabbed at Aravis with its right paw. Shasta could see all the terrible claws extended. Aravis screamed and reeled in the saddle. The lion was tearing her shoulders.” Shasta was able to rescue her by driving away the beast, but Aravis’ wounds were deep and painful and required much time to heal.





Much later, when Aravis and Shasta reached Narnia, Aslan called the young princess to him: “Draw near, Aravis my daughter. See! My paws are velveted. You will not be torn this time.”



“This time, sir?” said Aravis.



“It was I who wounded you,” said Asian. “I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?



“No, sir.”



”The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.”



It’s always wrong to take pleasure in another person’s suffering, even when that person has wronged us deeply. Aslan does not argue his case; he simply shows Aravis that her gloating is wrong. Now she knows what her servant girl felt like, for she herself has felt great pain. 



This is the mercy of God: In his love he allows us to experience profound suffering that we may grow in humility, tenderness and mercy. Our pain, however severe, is a means of grace: it is meant to make us kinder, more compassionate children. 





David Roper2.2.17

The Cobra

"Some trust in chariots...but we trust in the name of the LORD our God" (Psalm 20:7).

One of the tellers at my bank has a photograph of a Shelby Cobra roadster on his window. (The Cobra is a high–performance automobile built by the Ford Motor Company.) One day, while making a deposit, I asked him if that was his car. “No,” he replied, “that's my passion, my reason to get up every morning and go to work. I’m going to own one someday.”

I understand this young man’s passion. A friend of mine owned a Cobra and I drove it on one occasion. Believe me, it’s a mean machine! 

But a Cobra, like everything else in this world, is a wasting asset: It's value depreciates over time. It cannot, of itself, complete our happiness.

That's because we were made for God and nothing else will do. “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in," C. S. Lewis said. "Aim at earth and you will get neither." Earth thrown in? Perhaps a Cobra to drive? Who knows. But it is demonstrably true, a truth we validate in our experience every day: Nothing on this earth, of itself, completes the joy that we seek. 

"God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself," Lewis concludes. "There is no such thing."

David Roper
1.24,17