The Lord is the shade on your right hand

This morning the above words from Psalm 121 fairly leapt out at me, the image so clear that I glanced immediately to my right to see the shade; I almost thought I could.  Often what I read in the morning is gone by mid-day, but now, three hours later, I am still thinking, seeing, breathing the certainty that the Psalmist put those words down for me, for me.

If my God is shading me, he is not very far away at all.  In fact, he is right here beside me, ready to catch me if I fall, ready to protect me, ready to give me comfort, ready, with the touch of his hand, to keep me from saying something hurtful.  His presence here, with me, for always.  It’s another of those thin places in my day:  when the reality of the limitless nudges, even pushes over on its heels, my own flawed vision of the same.  Move over, child: here comes the actual, the powerful, the loving, the eternal.

This is Sunday:  don’t you need a little God-breathed thin place?

Christmas at the Post Office

It’s not what you think.  It is not about the long line (it was a long line but an employee was offering Hershey’s chocolates to sweeten the minutes); it is not about the half-hearted attempts to visually represent Christmas without really representing Christmas (the employees tried).  This is about a serendipitous happening, a joyous, whacky, and meaningful interchange between four strangers who a half hour later had become fast friends.

Carrie is a grad student from Pittsburgh.  Carol, Mary Ann, and I are grandmothers. We four stood in line today, eyeing the clock.  I don’t know how the conversation started; I entered midstream. Apparently Carol had asked if Carrie had found a church, which I think took courage in this wide-open, largely non-churched town.  Then Carol looked at me and said, “Don’t you go to First Pres?”  From there we whipped into frenzy of church suggestions for Carrie.  Mary Ann was best at this, for she, like Carrie, is a Catholic.  Much laughter, happy voices sharing; did the rest of the post office crowd hear, or care?

Still in the line, we barely knew when we moved up.  Never have I enjoyed waiting so much. 

Now the conversation shifted to the movie “A Christmas Story,” featuring a boy’s deep desire for a red air rifle.  How crazy was this?  I was the only one of the four who hadn’t seen it, and I began to think my boys with their long-ago BB gun fixation should see it, and my husband as well, for he keeps one of those rifles by the back door to discourage raccoons, foxes…(don’t share this in our animal-glorifying town).  Carol whipped the DVD out of her purse for she had bought it this very morning, before her daughter reported they already had it.  “Do you want it?,” she asked me, half joking.

Carrie, the grad student, has to be both the most polite and real young woman I’ve met in a long time.  She hid her shock at being almost swallowed by three gray-haired women, willingly shared our conversation.  Was she simply caught?  No, I don’t think so.

I now have three new friends. We are four who love Jesus, as Carol so succinctly expressed.  Will we meet at the post office again?  Heaven, perhaps?

A half hour packed with laughter and love, with a movie purchase for a bonus.  I’m going to watch it with my grandchildren.

Chaos, Cookies and Comfort

I admit I'm rather hum-buggy this time of year, when my heart should
be filled with joy and peace. Company, shopping, wrapping,
decorating, cooking, cleaning,baking and on and on! It seems never to
end! So much chaos in mind, body and spirit, this time of advent
sometimes gets lost. So I was thinking. What if I try to pray songs
every day, as the old hymns are often prayers in themselves. Here's
my prayer: O Lord of the Universe, with whom we can have an actual
relationship because of your grace and mercy, we sing to you this
prayer. What a friend we have in Jesus! You bear our sin and grief
when we carry everything to you in prayer. Great is your faithfulness
and how we have needed all your hand provides. We need you every
hour, most gracious Lord. Our desire is for a closer walk with you,
so have your own way in our lives. Melt the clouds of sin and sadness
and drive the dark of doubt away! Bring us comfort and joy as we seek
to bring comfort and joy to others in your name. Our faith looks up
to you and we surrender all we have and are. In Your name we pray,
Amen.

Blessed Christmas to you all.

Book Signings

How shamelessly we tell you of our book signing this Saturday,
November 16th at Flatiron Coffee, 2721 Arapahoe in Boulder,
1:00-3:00. Will we have the honor of meeting you there? You know
what they say...books don't scratch, bite, twist your arm or kick.
And neither do we.

Angels Are for Real

They walked in, big and burly some of them, some skinny and young, flesh and blood angels from heaven via Michigan and California and Maine and Thornton.  We expected two, or four; and got nine orange-shirted smiling, willing-handed beings. 

They said, “What first?  Where do you want this?”

That was our introduction to Samaritan’s Purse.  Franklin Graham would have been proud.

They emptied the whole flooded-now-dry downstairs, the downstairs of concrete, black glue-residued floor, dirtied baseboards.  They picked up beds, chairs, file cabinets.  They picked up unglamorous boxes overflowing with hockey sticks, Christmas paper, skateboards.  They hauled out piano music, guitar, old typewriter, tambourine. They mounded everything under tarps, under the carport.

They brought in a spray gun, aimed it at all the edges, said you’ll never have mold again.  We didn’t have it already, but who is to say no?

They said they’d come back Thursday to put it all back.  Then we stood with them in a hand-holding circle while they prayed.  They handed us a Billy Graham Training Center NKJ Bible that they all signed.  They said they loved the scones I’d baked.  I cut them in half when I saw we had a veritable army descending upon us.

I liked these angels I could see.  Angels with voices and hugs (forgot to mention those).  I wish now that I could see my own guardian angel (I’m told I do have one).  I wish I could see angels protecting children, angels whispering in people’s ears, angels averting accidents.  I’m quite sure my angel theology is somewhat hole-y. but you get the idea.  I keep reminding myself that what I can see will pass away; what I can’t see is the True Reality, the great I AM.  Some day. Closer all the time.  Hallelujah!

Give Me a Break!

You'll never believe what I saw the other day. A man on his roof
putting Christmas lights on his house! Come to think of it, I've seen
Christmas lights on trees around town since last Christmas, just
hanging around waiting for the holiday to come again. It's only
October, people! The leaves are barely turning in the city, although
in the mountains the colors are beginning to fade and some are
completely gone. Yes, there was a skiff of snow this morning on the
patio, a portent of things to come. But advertisements already about
Christmas sales? Stores opening on Thanksgiving? I think there
should be a law (hearthisCongressohIforgotyoucan'thearanything) that
first we let the kids enjoy Halloween. Then we let the rest of us
really give thanks at Thanksgiving before the word Christmas is
allowed to be uttered. Then in December, perhaps if we could only
reflect more on the abundant meaning instead of the abundant giving,
it wouldn't seem like the hassle it's become. Who will be able to
shop this year anyway with thousands out of work, floods and mudslides
devastating parts of Colorado, early blizzards in South Dakota, and
hardships everywhere in the world? I'm just pondering and venting.
Give me a break!

Five days after the Boulder storm

September 17. 2013

It is thundering, the sky is gray, raindrops have experimented on my back steps.  An ordinary occurrence, you say.  Well, that might be unless you were here last week when all the giant sky hoses had their taps on until the spigots were turned off after twenty-three, yes, twenty-three inches dumped, lambasted, and pelted us from Wednesday night until Sunday afternoon, with a deceptively dry interval on Saturday.  Like many others we had water in our finished basement.  Buckets and ditches and sandbags and more ditches and pieces of plywood couldn’t keep water from the foundation, water from the window wells, and finally our hands went up in surrender.

A tropical storm they say.  I’m thinking it was a perfect storm, like the one in the north Atlantic years ago.  Maybe I can write the book Perfect Storm Number Two and give you vignettes of the Lyons people, the Jamestown people, the Estes Park people, the eastern Colorado farmer people, the Longmont people, the Boulder people, the basement flooded people, the cars in the dirt people, the cars in the water people, and of course the guilty people (those who escaped all disaster and keep saying they feel guilty).  Or all the vignettes of neighbors digging ditches for neighbors, or carrying carpet out of basements, or bringing them soup.  Our own neighbor, Bill, walked over when things were at their worst and gave us an hour of swift, efficient labor, our son and grandson did their part, and the next day Bill appeared again to help us throw carpet out of the back of our van (onto a new geographical feature called Carpet Mesa).  Many hands made light work.

As a representative of the basement people I would like to report an amazing circumstance for many of us. No wailing.  Just a smile and a nod, the universal question, “Are you okay?”  We’re going on.  I stood in awe of the sunrise this morning.  I thought yesterday’s sun a new miracle. I admit to a few panicky moments, but only moments. My furniture moving muscles are getting stronger by the day, and I’m hearing from friends across the country, rejoicing in the sound of their caring voices or their words on email.

As I wrote the preceding paragraphs the thunder cracked a few more times, and whoops, now I hear a few more drips. Another perfect storm?