NO COINCIDENCES!

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:26-28

It is the end of January once again. And once again God has my attention. Eighteen years ago, January 25, I found the above scripture in the middle of the night after the awful day my husband was diagnosed with six weeks to six months to live. I typed the scripture and handed it to everyone who visited the hospital room in the next days. The scripture was a guiding, reassuring light to friends and family, and especially to me. One friend later wrote it out in calligraphy and had it framed for me. It still sits on my bookshelf here in my writing loft.

This January I have been struggling to find my way and purpose once again, certainly not with the urgency, sadness, and despair of 1993, but struggling still. On January 12 I wrote in my journal, “I am floundering, wondering and wandering around in a maze of obligations I cannot find meaning, or God, in. I am doing, not relating. I am done. I need space and I need to fill it with my relationship with God.” I started hoping once again that God would "give me a new heart and put a new spirit in me.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

And He did.

He led me right back to the eighth chapter of Romans. This last Monday, I was purging old teaching and consulting files and came upon some of the left over sheets I had typed on that far away desperate night in ’93. Okay, I accepted God was giving me a reminder here. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that I was totally jolted (see my “Star Surprises” blog entry) into realizing God needed me to listen to what he was saying. During my Companion class at church the leader handed out four Bible verses and asked four of us to read them aloud. I was the second reader and the second verse was Romans 8:26-27!

Hello God, do you want to tell me something here?

In all my screeching, searching, wavering and wandering the Holy Spirit continues to “help me in my weakness.” I may not know what to pray but “the Spirit intercedes for me with groans.” I can trust Him to lead me in discerning my own unique patterns of worship and service He has bestowed on me and I can share with others.

For right now I am listening. If I flounder again I am assured the Holy Spirit will pray for me and with me until I once again re-connect.

LETTERS FROM MY DAD: PEELING POTATOES

I stood at the sink in my son and daughter-in-law’s home peeling potatoes. A granddaughter stood on each side of me, peeling potatoes. They were giggling. I was savoring:  it was the day after Christmas and we were all together. My daughter hovered over the fried chicken, a family recipe from her deceased Dad, the only other one capable of carrying out the recipe to perfection.  I said a silent prayer for giving me family closeness. And I thought of my own deceased dad, sixty-seven years ago, peeling potatoes.
Sixty-seven years ago the dark and hideous gloom of World War II loomed over America and my young parents, who found their love story over shadowed also. Dad had been home on furlough the early part of December, but had been ordered to an Army Air Corps base in Salt Lake City. He left Dec. 10. No family closeness, savoring togetherness for him. Except by letter. My mother kept everyone: from basic training and gunnery schools in Texas, to mechanic school in Mississippi and now Salt Lake City. Airmen were sent to this base to wait for their real orders. Their schooling was finished and they were waiting for assignment to a crew and plane. Dad was there six weeks and he wrote eighty one letters just to my mother! Even for my dad, that was a lot of letters. But it was Christmas, he was lonely and lovesick and…there was not much to do in Salt Lake City but wait and write letters and peel potatoes.

December 30
Bob and I were on night K.P. It was from five o’clock until two in the morning…we had to peel 150 pounds of potatoes, fix them for French fries, sugar some donuts, wash some pans and mop the floor…

January 17
Last night I worked K.P. Six of us had to peel three hundred pound sacks of potatoes. Then we all fixed ourselves eggs and bacon around midnight.

January 25
We peeled a bunch of sweet potatoes tonight. I hate the very sight of them…

I am so thankful for this image…seeing my dad hunkered down over potatoes, sharing it with his beloved thousands of miles away.  His letters were full glimpses of his waiting days: passes to town, much movie viewing, lectures on malaria and sex prevention, going up in the pressure chamber, “detail” work other than peeling potatoes…delivering fish to mess halls, shoveling snow, anything the Army ordered them to do while they waited.

As my granddaughters and I put our peeled potatoes into the boiling water, soon to be mashed and spread with tasty chicken gravy we talked a little about their beloved grandfather frying chicken, who died before they were born and I mentioned my beloved father, their great grandfather, peeling potatoes in Salt Lake City, who died before I was born.

Sometimes we forget to appreciate the mundane as anything but a chore to finish. But when it becomes a connecting link between generations, it cannot help but become much more.  I will always think of peeling potatoes as just that.

STAR SURPRISES

You just never know when God will jolt your complacency. The first week of January church members traveled to Midwest Mission Distribution Center in Chatham, Illinois, for a week of packing layettes, health kits and school bags and building school desks for third world countries. Every evening after dinner out, one member gives a prepared devotion. On my evening, I deliberated on my devotion as we traveled back to the dorm after dinner along Old Rt. 66 and the cold corn fields of Illinois. Disembarking the church van I glanced skyward: The black velvet sky showed piercing pinpricks of rhinestone stars. And right above was Orion’s Belt turned vertically. I excitedly nudged my friends as they too descended the van. My entire devotion I prepared a week ago was built around Orion’s Belt! Now God presented the real image to ponder and reflect upon as I offered my humble words…

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshipped him. Matt. 2:9-11

The image of the Christmas star is always a constant for me: a softening glow above the manger or glimmering in the black sky with silhouettes of camels and kings caught in its brilliance. Every year it rises above tacky commercialism heralding God’s gift to a dark world all over again. I depend on that consistent image when my world turns dark. It’s like Jesus himself, always there for me, even when I have trouble finding him or discerning his desires for me.

But sometimes the star surprises us. I remember reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson for the first time to my own kids and then to classrooms full of kids in the 1970s. The reaction of the Herdmans, “absolutely the worst kids in the world,” to Christmas is priceless, beautiful and totally shocking. We talked about it this season again when friends took their grandchildren to see a presentation: the grandchildren’s total absorption and amazement as they discovered the story of Jesus’ birth all over again.

Remember the last lines of the book…

“When we came out of the church that night it was cold and clear with crunchy snow underfoot and bright, bright stars overhead. And I thought about the Angel of the Lord---Gladys, with her skinny legs and her dirty sneakers sticking out from under her robe, yelling at all of us, everywhere”
“Hey! Unto you a child is born!” (80)

Even beyond the Christmas season stars are still a constant I look for. After thirty years of Florida in springtime, I still dash to the balcony the first night to hear the Gulf’s crashing surf and view Orion’s Belt right in front of me welcoming me back: three stars parallel to the beach, illuminating consistency. Just like Jesus. But wait…over Christmas we stayed in a motel in Tombstone, Arizona. We were out viewing the night sky and my husband noticed with stargazer accuracy, Orion’s Belt, turned perpendicular to the Arizona desert. Surprise!!! Until this year I had never viewed Orion’s Belt anything but horizontally, tilted a little maybe in the summer sky over Lake Michigan, but never totally vertical!!!

God gives us surprise images to jolt us out of our comfort zone, our smug relationship with him so that we may discern a new direction, a new thought, a new action. But it is still our responsibility to recognize God’s jolt to our complacency. When I googled Orion’s belt I discovered the same three stars are known in Latin America as “The Three Marys" and there are many folk names for the Belt of Orion including Peter’s Staff, the Magi, and the Three Kings. What is God telling me now? Further Star Surprises await our discernment.