Up to Something Good?

Trying to make sense of the hairpin turns of life... I took this picture last month in the Columbia Gorge"My days just keep getting more and more interesting. God really must be up to something good to make Satan oh-so-angry."

I spotted the status update on Facebook recently, written by a student who dropped out of our university to go door-to-door witnessing. I have been musing ever since on the view of God represented in her comment. Some assumptions lurk there that make me really uncomfortable.

First of all, is God always up to something in our lives? Many of us like to think that God is in the mundane, but sometimes the mundane is just that--washing the dishes, scrubbing the toilet, pulling weeds out of the garden, cooking rice for supper. Sure, it can be done with a prayer in the heart and a song on the lips (or the other way around), but it's still mundane. God doesn't tend to be up to anything "interesting" when I'm doing these things. At least, not anything more interesting than the miracle of life going on in every cell of my body, and the ability for my neurons to fire off in connection with my thinking patterns and ideas.

Once you accept that God may not be active--but always present--in the mundane, you open the door a crack to a deistic view of events. God's there, but He may have set us ticking and gone off for quite a while, intervening only on rare occasion, if at all. I don't believe that, so that puts me somewhere on the continuum between "God in everything" and "God afar off." Where?

Then there's the issue of Satan. In the old testament Satan doesn't show up much. God gets the blame for blessings and the ills of life. People weren't saying, "When good is happening, God is doing it," or "When something bad is happening, Satan is doing it." This put God on the hot seat for a lot of blame. Then again, God still gets a lot of blame from people who believe that if there is a God, He has an awful lot of ugliness to answer for.

Another bothersome thing about the God-and-Satan thing is the picture most kids pick up; at least, my friends and I picked this up, and I think my former student whose quote provoked me to this post has picked up the same picture of God. This is the belief that God is strong, and Satan is strong, but God's at least a tiny bit stronger than Satan, so we needn't worry in the end. From there it's a little jump--supported by scriptures--to the idea that God is active in our world, and Satan is active in our world, and everything that happens to us (or in this world) is just one more event in the cosmic struggle between the two. People become quite intrigued with this concept of a "shadow war" between good and evil forces going on all around us. They don't see it, but they look to place every event into the context of this unseen battle.

Is every event really part of "the war?" When something is falling apart in my world, is that an indication that "God is up to something good to make Satan oh-so-angry?"

I don't believe that when I stumbled in the deep drainage ditch as a 12-year old and gashed my shin down to the bone, that either Satan was oh-so-angry, or that God was up to something. When I get the flu and I can't give as much to my work in a crucial time, does that mean that Satan is oh-so-angry? If something is going really well and my spiritual life is just popping with insights, does that mean I should watch out because God is up to something good, and I'd better be prepared for Satan to do something oh-so-angry?

I'm trying to put my finger on what it is that doesn't connect for me about this: "God must be up to something good to make Satan oh-so-angry." So let me put the logic of my former student's statements in bullet points.

• If bad things happen, Satan is angry.
• If bad things don't happen, Satan must be comfortable, and therefore you must not be close to God.
• If bad things happen, God must be at work.
• If God is at work with good things, watch out, because Satan will start to wreak havoc.

I have a really hard time accepting these inherent views of God and Satan. I think there are lots of reasons why some days "just keep getting more and more interesting," seeming like evil is threatening to destroy. Here are some of them:

• It's a dangerous world. You can get hurt by all kinds of things (speeding cars, drainage ditches that you don't see, walking into a chair in the dark and getting a bruise). That's just the nature of a physical world where things move...or won't move. It's not necessarily a supernatural act.
• It's a sick world. Cells mutate. Cancer spreads. Embryos experience incidents that cause them to develop abnormally. While I would buy the idea that something introduced sickness into the universe, I think illness has a way of taking on a life of its own without directly rising from a supernatural act. In other words, it can just show up without being a tool of Satan deciding in this particular instance to smite you.
  
• It's a world in which one act causes another. Load the top drawer of a filing cabinet or bookshelf first, and it's likely to fall over on you. Be mean to someone and they're likely to be mean back. Leave the milk products out too long before putting them into what you're cooking, and you may get food poisoning. These are not the results of supernatural acts.

Before I pick up some kind of ill-fitting label, let me say that I do think there are times when God intervenes. And I think there are times that evil intervenes. I just don't think we can say for sure, or even state a likelihood, as to when that is happening. Explaining this universe is not that simple. I hang on to the hope that someday, going into eternity, all will become clear. Because frankly, just like my former student, I'm ready to get some explanations.

Whose Hearts Made Them Willing

One of my favorite scenes in our valley; it has nothing to do with this postIn Exodus 35 I've been reading about the Israelites giving offerings to build the tabernacle in the wilderness. It's quite a story.

Here is a list of what they gave (it really makes me wonder how they could wander very much, lugging all this stuff around in the desert): brooches, earrings, signet rings, pendants, gold objects, blue and purple and crimson yarn, fine linen, goats' hair, tanned rams' skins, fine leather, silver, bronze, acacia wood (acacia wood? they were hauling acacia wood around in the desert?), onyx, gems, spices, oil, fragrant incense.

Good grief!

Then it says, "All the Israelite men and women whose hearts made them willing . . . brought it as a freewill offering to the Lord."

There's something about a heart willing to give that's wonderful. There's something about many hearts willing to give together to a common cause that's exciting! If I were to rate the "excitement coefficient" of giving, it would come in this order, with #1 being the most exciting:

1. Giving when you notice a need, but no one asked you to fill it, but you took care of it because your heart made you willing.
2. Giving in response to an invitation to fill a need that has been clearly described and is quickly taken care of by your giving (immediate satisfaction)
3. Giving over a long period of time to a really huge need, where lots of people have to work together, but you eventually see success
4. There might be other choices above this one, but the very last one is "Giving because you responded to someone strong-arming you, and you walk away feeling plundered or duped."
   

When our hearts make us willing and we respond by giving and then letting go of our control of what we gave, there's almost always great joy that comes with it.

And that's my thought for this morning.

Deceptive Salad

As I mentioned a while ago, I've been trying to eat with more of a view toward good nutrition. This was my recent salad; it's a deceptive one if you're trying to keep the calorie count down. On the other hand, it was just the thing for a warm, sunny day after a 7-mile walk!

Ingredients: Spring salad mix, feta cheese, tomatoes, green olives, roasted salted sunflower seeds, Baco bits, fat-free poppyseed dressing.

Yum!

Hope

The ancient Greeks, when trying to explain their world, came up with a story that caught people’s attention. Here’s how it goes:

The Greek god Zeus ordered the god of craftsmanship to create the first woman, which he did, out of water and earth. The gods gave her many talents: beauty, music, persuasion, and so on. Her name, “Pandora,” means “all-gifted.”

Pandora was given a jar (sometimes referred to as a “box,” but the original story is about a jar), and she was told not to open it, no matter what the circumstances. Does this sound familiar?

She was, of course, gifted with curiosity among all her other gifts, and she just couldn’t stand the suspense. When she opened the jar, all manner of evils escaped and filled the whole earth: disease, despair, malice, greed, death, hatred, violence, cruelty, war … they all got out even though she quickly closed the jar again. There was just one thing that still lay at the bottom of the jar, unnoticed by Pandora: HOPE.

Pandora did eventually let Hope out of the jar as well. As some tell the story, this is why Hope always arrives in our lives a bit late, after the disasters and evils have come and left us sore and injured.

The story of Pandora is just a myth, but it reminds me of another story, a story of a woman in Roman-occupied Israel who had been ill for years and years, ostracized and criticized by society because of her illness. And then she heard that Jesus was coming to town. She had heard of his healings, mostly healings of men, but hope sprang up in her heart. “If I can just touch the hem of his robe,” she said to herself, “I will be healed.”

When Jesus came to town, this woman was there, waiting with Hope in her heart. She worked her way through the crowd, unnoticed by anyone, bent down—perhaps as if to pick something up—and touched his robe. Still no one noticed, except Jesus. “Take heart, Daughter,” he said to her. “Your faith has healed you.” And indeed, she was healed.

You see, hope and faith are so closely related. It was her hope that fed her faith.

But there’s one more piece. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul connects three points in this equation: “Now these three remain,” he says, “Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” And indeed, it was the love of Jesus, God in human form, who healed the woman who had been made ill by the evils of the world.

Let’s go back to Pandora’s jar. In the end, her jar held Hope, which helped to heal the sores caused by the evils that had escaped. There is another container, a tomb, which held Hope. But that tomb is now empty because Jesus, our hope, has risen. Because of Him we have hope every single day of our lives. And in the end He will not only heal us from the illnesses and pain and loss caused by evil, but he will destroy the evil itself--wiped off the face of this earth when all is made new!

I can’t wait for that day!

Unexpected Combinations

I've always thought I knew which combinations would work. But as with much of what I thought I knew, the older I grow, the less I know. It's very humbling, this life-experience thing.

So we were visiting my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and nephews this past weekend, having dropped in for lunch with them in Seattle on our way to attend a funeral. Rob's a gourmet cook, and does most of the cooking in their house. But this time, Terri was tending the kitchen as well, working on her masterpiece to add to the lunch.

Here's what the masterpiece was: French bread. Add parsley pesto made from scratch. Add a slice of onion. Add a nice thick slice of fresh pear. Add fresh-grated parmesan cheese. Grill it in the oven.

I was dubious, to say the least. But I'll try anything as long as it's vegetarian, and I've never tasted anything at their house that wasn't delectable.

Delectable is exactly what it was. Wow. Who would have ever thought to make a combination like that? Who would have thought it would taste so heavenly?

Sometimes I see a man and a woman fall for each other, and I find myself shaking my head as if to clear out the cobwebs. Say what? They would work together? I don't think so. And actually, someone made that very comment once about Husband and me when we first started dating, and it got back to us (yes, you can bet she gets a squinty-eyed look from me each time I see her).

And yet... the combination works. I see the unlikely duo together years later, and they are delightfully gaga about each other, producing cute little offspring, going on fun adventures and feeling so blessed over what life has handed them.

You just never know, do you?

Blooming Through the War

This morning a friend told me a vivid story that is sticking with me, and I thought I'd retell it here. The story came out of the blue, just one of the stops on a wandering conversation about the stress an administrative or leadership job can lay at a person's doorstep.

"Sallie" grew up in Lebanon as the child of missionaries. When she was a young adult and the family was back in the United States, her family fell apart. Her parents divorced and stories emerged that caused the children shame and pulled them painfully back and forth between their parents' differing accounts of what the problems were and what had actually happened...and continued to happen.

Sallie ended up taking neither parent's side. It put her in a position to be vilified by the people in their community who had taken sides with one or the other of Sallie's parents, believing the other one to be lying. It was ugly. Sallie was not going to explain her stance with her parents to the community, and it left her feeling lonely and judged from all sides. Many years later and far away, she continues to be misunderstood by people who drew conclusions in the controversy over her parents' breakup.

Sallie went back to Beirut recently to visit her childhood home. As she walked through the mission campus, she observed, all the buildings still remained standing, but the windows were simply shattered, gaping holes. Shell holes pocked the walls. The place was deserted.

And yet the cyclamen--her favorite flowers of her childhood--were still blooming. Through war and peace, struggle and conflict and the devastation of the land, they keep coming up year after year, their ever-cheerful blooms beautifying their broken world.

And that, Sallie said, spoke volumes to her.

One-Room School

I went from first through eighth grades in a one-room school in Malaysia (I'm the girl with the very blond hair, above; click on the picture to see more detail). We never had more than eleven students in this school; that must have been a really busy year for the teacher, preparing lessons for students in most of the eight grades!

I had four teachers in all--one for first grade, the one pictured above throughout grades 2-7, and then two teachers during my 8th grade year (one the first half, and another the second half), which is the last year the school was open. After Barbara and I graduated from the 8th grade, our one-room school closed and the three remaining students on our mission hospital compound transferred to the local Christian & Missionary Alliance School, several miles away.

I've thought many times about the benefits and drawbacks of a one-room school. Overall, I'm struck by the intuitive sense that a one- or two-room school provides a better academic experience than larger schools do. But I'm not sure there's any good research that supports that, nor shows my perception to be wrong.

Many times it has struck me that the majority of my schoolmates who went to this tiny school with me over the years finished college and are contributing citizens in today's world. Julia, Barbara, and Bruce became nurses. Tim is a scientist at a research institute. Jamie is a lawyer who works on religious liberty issues and has visited the White House in that capacity. My brother is a radiation oncologist. Stephen is a PR director. I'm a university administrator. I would venture that much of our success was due to our family environments as the children of professionals: medical doctors and hospital administrators. But the other part of our success was due to our teacher who gave us individual attention, kept the standards high, held our feet to the fire in correcting our work, made us memorize tons of Bible verses, and always had something new and interesting for us to learn, or read, or see.

Therein lies the scary part of living in a community that is small enough to need only a one-room school. If you have a poor teacher, the students may languish with that teacher for several years and suffer the consequences. If there's a personality conflict between teacher and student, there's nowhere else to turn, no other options. If, as sometimes happens, the children pick on one particular student in the classroom, there may be no other classrooms or schools to which the parents can move that child. You're boxed in.

Assuming that you have an effective and personable teacher, however, there are many benefits in the one-room school. Children get more individual attention focused on their academic progress. The classroom can provide a family atmosphere with cross-age tutoring, the ability to move into a higher level of learning in certain subjects, and the opportunity for children to learn how to interact across age levels. I do think this separation of children into same-age "gangs" in single-grade classrooms can create unhealthy dynamics in a world where they need to be interacting across generations.

And then there are other benefits: you can go on cool field trips with only a few cars or a van needed for transportation. You can consider a garden plot with a space for each child to cultivate and observe and learn. Each child can get many more chances for leadership as they lead out in worships (in the case of Christian schools) or learning activities. Children develop skills of clarity in verbal expression as they have opportunity to teach concepts to the younger ones. And research does show that when an older child serves as "listener" to the young one who is reading, the reading skills of the older child also improve.

My husband and I, both educators, have shared a dream that we'll end our careers by teaching together in a one- or two-room Christian school in some interesting place. On a day when the problems seem big and complex, and you recognize your potential for interacting with hundreds or even thousands of people, it's nice to think of that little dream cocoon of the future, when we might be teaching ten or twenty kids, all with faces and stories and relationships and dreams for the future. Sometimes it's a nice thought, going back to Square One.