Off Track--On Track

It all began when I decided I must have a “today” word for what it means to “put the Lord your  God to the test”.  It’s the 2^nd temptation Jesus faces after fasting 40 days.  The devil states his nasty business by suggesting that Jesus needs some real proof of His exalted position and should jump off a roof and get rescued by God. That would settle everything. (See Luke 4)

But Jesus says, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” and sends the messenger from hell away on his heels.

I wonder, I’m not one to jump off buildings, so what do I do that puts my God to the test--today? 

After a few days, I hear within me the fateful words, “Drive the speed limit.  Drive the speed limit.” 

This is revolting.  My personal pet peeves are slow poke drivers.  They drive exactly the speed limit and keep 12+ drivers fuming behind them.  They lack basic consideration for others and contemplate life in their own sweet time. 

On the other hand, I am an appropriate, over-the-actual-speed-limit driver.  I drive eight to 10 miles over the speed limit on freeways and five or more over in cities.  It’s a generational skill inherited from my father and I do it well. I have no accidents.

But the truth soon dawns---the “today” 2nd temptation of Christ is parked right in my own driveway.  When I speed I expect God to keep me safe.    I’ve been “had” and I asked for it.  Yuk!

But now, weeks later, I am becoming a new woman.  I drive the speed limit and report the following:

1. I am always on time.  If I arrive after the scheduled start time of an event, the meeting is delayed and I am on time.
2. Stop lights and I are in a groove.  At the first stop light after a highway drive, the light invariably turns green just as I arrive and I pass the speedsters that are waiting in the other lane. 
3. I rest.  I notice houses, people, hills, animals, trails, etc.  Where were they before? 
4. I pull over to let drivers pass or I drive in the slow lane.  I have compassion on them and don’t want their tension darting into my rear view window.
5. I now rule over the race car driver to the point of her demise.  She is a liar and a cheat.  All these years I thought I needed to be “wherever” as quickly as possible.  On a 100 mile trek, I now arrive about 10 minutes later than before the slow down.  Hmm.  What did I do in those 10 minutes that made the world a better place?  Not much.
6. I’m in the Word. I now look forward to road trips, because I am at peace, not “working the road”, and can listen to the New Testament on CD, over and over again. 

But there’s more change emerging in other places of my life.  That race car demon had her hands into everything!  She’s now exposed into the light of day and declared a complete misfit. 

Devil you lose.  Jesus you win again.  The journey itself has become a destination.

The "Temp" Job

I did not know I could be a writer until I quit writing.  I felt all along that my participation in the work of social services as a grant writer and program developer was designed for someone else.  Since that someone failed to show up or just said “no” to the offer, God tapped me.  I sensed that the work was a “someone-has-to-pay-the-price” thing and that the Lord could not find anyone else to climb into the saddle of this race horse.  Since He knew I was available, he placed me in that fast-paced, firing-range type position doing a work that He simply needed to have done.

I raised millions and millions of dollars in the nation’s War on Poverty, but always felt like a fish-out-of-water.  I just showed up.  After all, my training is in Microbiology and Psychology, not English or Social Services.  But God accomplished a work in spite of me.  Truly a miracle!

The technical writing is over and I now write in a different way.  But I appreciate some things that I learned while engaged in that “temp” job that lasted 26 years. 

First, I came to the computer each morning desperate, since I felt that I knew nothing whatsoever.  For years the work day started with me calling out for God to be God in the weighty matters before me. I began one step at a time and things of importance came forth at the point of greatest need and only as I worked.

Also, I learned God’s intense care for persons experiencing poverty and homelessness.  This passion often gripped me so hard and strong that I paced the floor.  The office area was large and other staff came know the pacing as part of my workday.

I also learned to fight.  I sensed that often what was going on was out of sight and in another realm, so I came to work early in order to pray for this non-profit organization, and it became needed component of my day.  The writing continued, but prayer was my center point.  I learned that I was not alone, ever. 

 

I now write in a different way, but sometimes still cannot imagine that this writing life is for real and not just another “temp” job. Yet something is different.  I seldom resist the computer when my resident friend, desperation, is there.  I accept this “guy”, since he seems to partner rather closely with the living God.

I sense that I really do not need to know much of anything.  I just need to know Him. 

Close Encounter of a Natural Kind

I park my car, clicking the lock and trudging slowly toward a nearby trial that circles a small lake.  It is late Friday afternoon and a thin layer of clouds cover the sky.  As I turn onto the trail, every visible form of life clamors to escape my towering presence. Some gain altitude, some paddle away and others scoot along the water in a significant struggle to gain a safe distance from my intruding presence. 

The resident Great Blue Heron adds to the commotion.  He lets out a guttural, caw-caw complaint at my interference in his life and flies forward around the lake, guaranteeing yet another interruption of his sublime fishing expedition. 

I continue with eyes downcast in a steady pace, expecting my way to now be predictable; however, at the next bend in the trail, a fully-grown doe comes into view and stands her ground.  The doe’s jack knife ears zero in to examine and determine the danger factor of the upright movement 100 feet in front of her.

The doe continues to hold her position and in five minutes doe and I meet—two feet apart at most—head-to-head and heart-to-heart. 

Time then stands still.  I begin to share from my heart the difficulty of living life in the fast lane and the urgency of recovering from such at week’s end.  The doe listens intently, still motionless, responding with her significant understanding of underground matters of life. 

 

The doe then seems to whisper, “just be.”  She reflects back to me the steady rhythm of life on the lake in the quiet of the day, reminding me of her season of early summer and the need to plant and give birth at the right moment in time--not too soon and not too late.  The doe refers to that “monarch in the sky” and its dominion over her most important objective: giving and sustaining life.  I sigh and look up, noting that clouds no longer hide the sun and long shadows outline my doe. 

The doe is not finished, however, and I must receive several more minutes of deep counsel that is focused on the “work” of waiting in silence.  At last I sense the freedom to move on and turn back to the trail, noticing for the first time that I am in a secret garden: wild roses, myrtles, salmon berry vines, hawthorns and salal bushes form a halo over my head.  Their leaves brush against my arms as I continue my walk around the little lake. 

I now walk strong, tucking this mysterious encounter with wisdom and beauty in my hip pocket and dropping futile labors to the ground.  Such become trifles and cannot survive a day of life in this secret garden.

 

Indian Rest

Dawn peeps out, uncovering the mist over the fields and calling down the night.  Three young men walk along the highway nearby, singing at the top of their lungs.  Birds outshine the roosters in the tree top at the same time as some sort of shouting revelry erupts down the street. 

Who starts a soccer match at 6 AM?  It must be a Hindu religious event. 

The light is off at the latrine so it’s a good thing I brought my flash light, since I choose to hesitate before returning inside.   Walking decreases muscle stiffness, so I find the trail linking the latrine with the well and have a moment alone as the day dawns. 

Here in Northeast India I am a member of a team of four that includes a married couple and two women.  We feel like a brother and three sisters, bonded together in tight march formation, looking neither to the left or the right if it separates us from one another.  I am recovering from some sort of intestinal bout and have all the care needed to bounce back quickly. 

When one is sick, all of us are sick in India.

A well handle creaks and trucks roar above the house on the highway.  After a walk, I decide to rearrange my stuff inside our room.  It is a repeat performance from two days ago, but is needed to adjust toiletries in advance of a bath that will actually occur in the wash room in the back yard.  The route to completion of this task is complex. 

We are four persons in one room, all trying to find our various storage containers at the same time without stepping on each other.

The calling of the day continues:  yummy milk coffee, children off to school; 18-month-old old Jessica eating her egg; dishes clanging in the kitchen in route to the well for washing; dust getting pushed out doors; the sun showing up and my socks appearing out of nowhere.   

The Lord’s soft presence covers us in this sea of village “music”.

Next door a man splits bamboo poles, creating half round lengths for his quick-build fence, designed to keep the animals from the yard until monsoon washes it away. 

We receive an invitation to spend our rest day in the home of our interpreter, BeeNu, a lively woman who ministered nonstop with us the week before.  She arrives for us in a “Cooper” sized car and we pile in.  As the sixth one to enter the car, I spread out on the top of everyone in the back seat and hang on. 

Indians do not use seat belts. 

We arrive at her cottage and approach a table full of food located inside her bright yellow living room.   

We soon notice a woman standing in the shadows.  She eventually requests prayer.  She is a believer in Jesus for one year and faces threats from her Hindu husband, which is similar to 90 percent of new believers in India:  She suffers from continuous pain in her joints and shoulders and we pray and the pain and pressure leave her body and for the infilling power of the Holy Spirit.  The next day at church her huge smile confirms freedom from all pain. 

Another woman soon comes forward and we lead her through a difficult process of forgiveness.

In the middle of the afternoon, after a second meal, a bone-thin woman walks into the yard of BeeNu’s house, carrying a 20 pound bag of rice on her shoulders.  She smiles and hesitates before us as we hear her story.  She also is a new believer, coming to faith in God as a deaf mute.  She now hears a little and speaks for the first time in her life.  We pray and one of her ears opens quickly. The next day, before Kaju’s church meeting, we pray again and the other ear opens.

At dusk, we climb back into the “Cooper” car and return to Kaju’s home.  His bonfire is going strong in the cool of the evening and all nine of us gather around the fire for a pork rind roasting festival. 

God is so good.

Duckling Gold

The early June morning is different and I forget the ocean’s pretentious lordship over everything on the little lake in the Pacific Northwest.  Twelve newly hatched pintail ducklings emerge in military precision behind their mother.  She passes the admiring crowd around her: mallards, pintails, gulls and even the great blue heron nearby.  She is lord of this morning.  The ocean roar is silenced as they parade before the admiring crowd.  Even the clouds part and give way to sun on that glorious day.

The next day everyone pretends not to notice that 10 ducklings follow the mother.  The next day and the next day similar reductions occur.  And finally the mother does not appear because she also is dead.

Yet, one duckling remains.

The two-week old baby duckling scurries around the pond crying piteously for her mother who has died to keep her alive.  The baby still can be eaten in one gulp and only has two weeks of training from her mother beyond the instinctual knowledge she carries within her. 

 That afternoon a crow decides to have her for dinner.  She dives beneath the surface time and time again and eventually the crow leaves.  Later that day 15 pintail ducks give her hope of finding safety.  She swims frantically toward them, but the entire duck crew joins in a massive display of rejection.  She doesn’t seem to understand, “Perhaps they are my mother.  They certainly look like my mother.”  For several days, she approaches them, only to flee from their charge force.  Finally she understands that just because she looks like them doesn’t mean she belongs to them.  At three inches long and a weight of six ounces it is she against the world. 

It is now mid September. The Canada Geese come abruptly to the pond.  They assume complete control of the position once held by the pintail duck clan and fan out over the lake.  It is time for their fall convocation and they establish their own rules and regulations of conduct.  Early in the morning “Perky” the duckling--she now has earned the right to have a name--sees them and marshals her courage.  She scoots across the pond from her lonely outpost and paddles quickly to the very middle of this altogether goose gathering.  

Right into the center of the group she goes. 

She is not pushed away, so she swims in a narrow circle of her own in the very center of this goose club meeting. With geese on all sides, she feels so different, like being held in a huge goose container.  Two hours later she is still there, but she has stopped swimming and is still. She rests quietly, experiencing the peace that comes from being completely at home in the world for the first time.