The Sylvr Pen

I read the question, How are you preparing for Christmas? Immediately it strikes a chord. I prepare for Christmas differently, nowadays.

“Preparing for Christmas” too often involves too much earth stuff and too little Christ. In fact, it can get so filled with distractions that we/I spend less time in communion with Him than usual! 

Two years ago (after Christmas), I realized how I’d cheated myself by not preparing well enough spiritually  for this special day. So, at the time studying John’s gospel, which seems to skip the nativity, I challenged myself to search for it between the lines.

I found it – a lot! – And I blogged about it a bit, but by then, Christmas was past, and the posts ran into January! Nevertheless, I thought, better late than not at all. My discoveries did make Christmas richer in retrospect.

Last year I got more ahead of the Christmas game. 

Then, this past spring, I approached Easter in a like manner. My self-challenge at that time: to search Old Testament books, one by one, for any pictures of or references to the coming Christ’s “Passion Week,” His death and resurrection. What a meaningful—and joyful––Resurrection Sunday that produced! The best ever!

So…

I’m deciding, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, to search for prophecies and foreshadowings of the Christ child, book by book. At first I worried that I might run out of material in a week! But some pre-poking into the Old Testament is already yielding exciting results. I have a sneaky feeling I might find more than I can post in a month. We’ll see, because…

Starting next Monday I plan to post (nearly) each weekday (leaving myself some margin) a short peek at some hint or promise of the coming baby who would make all the difference. Like the wise men, I’ll be Seeking the Christ Child, but in the Old Testament, and sharing what I find. I hope you’ll join me, because if it turns out as rewarding as my pre-Easter explorations, it could help make this one of the richest, most blessed Christmas seasons yet!

“What do you have that you did not receive?” -1 Corinthians 4:7

Today began so joyous I want to shout it out. (But as I write this, it’s still early hours, and the rooster’s disturbing neighbors too much already, just by himself. So I’ll “shout” it quietly on keyboard.)

How did such early morning joy come to this bleary-eyed earthling? It started with something someone said yesterday, in comment conversation on someone’s blog, and I don’t even remember which one. (Sometimes these conversations leave me feeling I’ve just enjoyed a true worship gathering of companions heart-deep in loving and venerating God and building each another up in faith. A community of faith. Well, that is, after all, what these blog hops really end up being for me… But I digress…)

Someone asked, have you seen the thing making the FaceBook/email rounds that asks something like, “What if you woke up tomorrow morning to find all you had was what you thanked God for today?”

Whoah! I thought. And realized how good intent can lead me astray, off a good path.

For years now, I don’t know how many, I’ve been purposing to come up with five new gratitudes daily: five things to give thanks for that I haven’t noted before. The reason: it’s too easy to get in a rote rut, thanking God repeatedly for the same handful of things.

However, focusing just on new things has veered me off a tad from constant thankfulness for all things, which is a sad thing from which to lose your way.

So today I woke up remembering that Facebook/email question, and decided to thank God for everything and anything that I wouldn’t want to wake up tomorrow and find gone!

As Husband was just lumbering out of bed and shuffling toward the closet for his clothes, I naturally thought of him first, and said, “I thank God for you.” What a reward! A big smile, a hug and a kiss! You can’t start your day much better than that! Yet it went gliding sweet and smooth up and upward from there, me thanking God, in silence and whispers, left, right, and center, as I began my day.

Yes.

Not one thing I have, material or spiritual or mental or inward and personal, not one do I have that I was not given, by “the Giver of all good things” (Jas 1:17).

By now I feel like a joyous sparkler shooting off thanks thoughts, little light-bright mini-explosions of gratitude, but instead of running out of sparks, my sparkler just keeps getting charged more!

Happy, happy Thanks Giving! Tomorrow, and today – or whenever you happen to read this. Or, no. Let me rephrase that to “Happy, Happy Thanks Living!” – both now and forevermore!

(What we have is not about us.)

*****

I could not see the stars this day-night, waking early.

Cover of cloud hid them.

I could not see the moon, 

Tucked behind the mountain.

I cannot see the sun now,

And yet I know it’s rising.

And should these eyes fog up completely, the subtle colors of the season still will be.

He goes ahead of me into the pasture of my day (although I cannot see Him)…

            as yesterday

            as days long past

            as days ahead

            as every day

            the same

Yet still with me, still present here, He shelters me beneath the shadow of His wing,

widespread and vast,

            as yesterday

            as days long past

            as days ahead

            as everyday

With the same old—very old—same old

            checed, agape love:

                        love unfailing,

                        mercy prevailing

                        abounding benevolence

                        sacrificial giving

                        compassionate care

            checed, agape:

                        words that know no synonyms,

                        whose meanings run too deep and strong for any words to tell

 The wondrously same-old-same-old never-changing Savior God,

steadier than sunrise timing,

moon phasing,

season changing, or

constellations’ constant configurations

            today

            yesterday

            forever.

Thanking God today for His faithful messengers, bringing their reminders of His ever-prevailing, never-failing love:

~the stars I could not see this morning early, all still there (faith says) in right formation, beyond cloud cover blackness

~the moon, His faithful witness, invisible but exactly stationed (faith knows), right where it belongs (Psa 89:24,37)

~the sun, arising once again, somewhere (faith discerns it) behind the grayness

~the season’s color changes (even if eyes go blind, faith will still be certain)

~and His clouds, reminders that we cannot always see what’s clearly there.

Great

is Thy

 [same old, same old]

faithfulness,

O, God.

(Lam 3:22-23 KJV)

Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind! In the cover of your presence you hide them from the plots of men; you store them in your shelter from the strife of tongues. Blessed be the LORD, for He has wondrously shown his steadfast love [checed] to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.” But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help. Love the LORD, all you his saints! The LORD preserves the faithful but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD.

Ps 31:19-24 ESV

*****

Linked to…

It echoes in my head sometimes. Ofttimes.

“Make yourself useful, and not just decorative!”

I don’t know that he ever said it more than once. I just remember—all too clearly—that he said it.

It was rebuke, as I stood at his side, waiting for orders, instruction, invitation…

One time or a hundred, he may as well have made a maxim of it,  printed it out bold and hung it on walls: livingroom wall, diningroom wall, hall wall, my bedroom wall…

Such power lies in parental words! It may have been but a fleeting phrase flung out in mindless impatience, but for some reason, it seems to have haunted me all my life.

The why might have more to do with the fleshly me than the dad who said the words. Nevertheless, here perhaps roots my idol of busy accomplishments: “Make yourself useful.”

And so I have endeavored.

By doing. Doing. Doing. All kinds of doing. “See what I’m doing? See what I did? Am I not useful?”

I want to be useful to the Father Who has loved and redeemed me at such painful price. It only follows from gratitude.

However, is all that doing what really makes me useful?

I am thinking of one very useful sheep.

Burdock. Yes, that’s his name. I wanted to pretend it was Barnabas. That sounds so much more useful. But, as God would have it, Burdock is probably more appropriate, because it classes him as an ordinary sheep that meanders where he ought not, fallible and blundering. But still… useful.

Unfamiliar with burdock? It’s … well, dock, with burrs! Those seeds that cling, more stubborn than Velcro, to clothes you wear in the field, and stick your finger when you try to remove them. Spinning wool filled with burdock can be torture.

But still, Burdock (the Sheep) is probably the most useful in his flock. Because Burdock is halter trained.

This means his shepherd can approach him in the pasture, halter in hand, and slip it over his head, fasten it in place, and lead him by it—all with no resistance.

Typical untrained sheep resist with gusto, skittering all over the field. And once you get the harness on them, they like to twist and turn and roll themselves over in the dirt, and maybe drag you along with them. The only way to lead them individually is with your arm crooked around their neck in a head lock, your hand forcing their face skyward. Somehow they can’t resist that and go where you strong arm them.

But… if you have one good sheep trained to the halter, pliable to the master’s hitching and leading, you can move the whole flock effortlessly.

The LORD is our Shepherd who leads us. Beside still waters. Out into green pasture. In paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Ps 23).

He led His people out of Egypt under Moses,

kept them, before that, in Egypt during famine, under Joseph,

led them within a kingdom under David…

And all these men, though fallible and failing, and sometimes prickery, had one thing in common: They were all halter trained to the Shepherd’s hand, submitted to His “yoke,” and followed meekly where He led. After them, the whole flock followed. And so all three became lead sheep. Leading by example.

Very useful indeed.

So there, I see, is how I make myself useful.

Lord, my Shepherd, please make me a very useful, halter-trained sheep.

*****

Linked to…

Right in the middle of putting together a 1 Peter Bible Study—which morphed into a discovery of  personal identity—I came across this great internet document, The Seven Snares of Worldliness. The way it meshed with the Epistle’s opening kinda rocked me: Peter giving the positives of Christian identity, and the net document the negatives of perceiving one’s identity by the world’s defining methods.

What rocked me more was how sharply (as in ouch!) one of the “seven snares” hit home, one identifier in the “I-am-_______” parts—as in the list below.

But you go first: Which of these strikes you as how you (secretly perhaps) perceive your identity (what makes you, you)?

“I am what I own…

I am what I do/produce…

I am the source of my own life…

I am what others perceive me to be…

I am whatever I want to believe…

I am sufficient to handle my affairs…

      I am okay because of my religious works and activities.”

If that’s too hard, you can check the full Snares article. Or, consider which, if completely lost, would make you feel your earthly life was over, done, shot. For instance, if you came to own nothing but the ragged clothes on your back? Or if you lost all ability to accomplish anything, create anything…

I need go no further for myself. For I know my snare: My secret self thinks it’s what I do that makes me me, that makes my life on earth worth offering up to Christ, to others, to myself.

Wrong. How wrong! I know that’s wrong. When I stop and think about it. I am not a mere amalgam of accomplishments. Completely paralyzed, I’d still be me. And yet, when hindrances and endings block my efforts to create, accomplish, compose, I struggle to see the point of my existence. I ask, what on earth am I doing here on earth? Or, rather, since I’m not doing, then why am I here?

Back to my own Sunday school lesson! Yes, mine. I composed it, studied out all its parts ahead, worked hard on it, put it all together, shared it with that women’s class. Did. an. accomplishment. Something. I. did…

But God…

does me favors:

He blesses me with hindrances. Like my net service lags and lags, and how will I ever get that post up, like I’ve purposed… to do? Or I get allergic to 70% of the herbs growing in my wonderful accomplishment of an herb garden. Or He starts turning down the dimmer switch on my eyesight so I may not long see those colors or threads to compose the pretty patchwork patterns or stitch the embroidery or post pleasant photos.

Or He gives me a test. He puts me in a situation where I must choose integrity or getting that Bible study book published as planned with those folks…

He’s showing me how charmed I can get by the idols of accomplishment—and how I couldn’t achieve a thing if He didn’t enable me (John 15:5). Yet, when He brings me up smack against the wall of realization and choice, by His good grace, He still enables me to choose what’s right. Even when my choosing right slams the door not just to publication, but also a lot of “ministry” accomplishments.

Or, could I say, it lays them on the altar of burnt offering? Because, when they go up in smoke, I smell sweet savor, and feel sweet peace.

And now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Except I blog, when I don’t get too bogged down, by blessed hindrances He gives.

I shift the focus and reconsider. My Life aim shouldn’t be accomplishing, but being! Being ever more His. Letting His life fill mine and make it more and more an expression of His (John 15:4; Gal 2:20)—whether I ever accomplish another accomplishment or not!

*****