Category Archives: God

The Parable of a Floor

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The floor lay beneath Berber carpet for years–maybe fifteen, maybe twenty. I am sure it was pretty when it was new.

When the carpet came up the floor was exposed, rough with bits of carpet underlay and glue. I sanded off the glue and bits of carpet. We all pried up staples.

Other jobs intervened–xeriscape, painting, and my husband’s amazing carpentry.

I spent this weekend scraping the floor, staining it, and then applying the first layer of polyurethane.

It felt like archeology–the floor went from bare wood to rich beauty. It is now my favorite floor in the house–every detail, every sign of age has taken on a rich patina of grace.

Real. It is real and because it is real it is lovely. You can imitate real, you can buy it for a price, but when it is a transformation you are allowed to participate in, the picture stays with you–a beautiful history.

Where are you going?

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My father was a straight talker.

He was raised in a baptist church by the parent who attended, but he was also raised in the south during a time when it was hard to miss the hypocrisy (is it ever far from us?)

He walked away. When I first knew him he did not believe in God. Even when other members of our family became flamingly involved with Jesus, my dad stayed back.

He did not take the leap until a conversation with a fire-and-brimstone type who pointed out that his hereditary baptist background suggested that the alternative to the yoke of Jesus was a bit warm.

Warm apparently worked. I say this because I never really felt it was even necessary to bring hell into the conversation. Who needs to know they are escaping a one-way trip to a dump if the alternative is an all-expenses-paid trip to paradise?

Where are you headed?

And who or what is leading you there?

Paper Love

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I see an image of the word love written beautifully by a young woman I know who actually wouldn’t know real love if it walked up to her and slapped her in the face with a fish.

Not that love would ever do that, of course…

My point is: love is a potent magic. Actually, love is more than that. Love is a Person.

I know this because for years and years and years I have lived on a diet of scraps when it comes to human love. Many of us do.

Humans see our faults, boss us around, prefer second-hand shoes to our hearts and minds.

Humans: a rum bunch.

So I type in “God’s love” and begin to read the verses–I am on a quest for love.

I immediately feel the iron. God speaks to us of love as though it is the chicken wire that keeps out the wolves, the walls holding back the storm, a strong fortress against assaulting armies.

This kind of love is tough die-for-your-sins stuff.

Look-into-the-face-of-hell-then-dive-in-to-save-me love.

Yup. No flowers and chocolates here. Something stronger instead. They say if you bury gold for a thousand years it will not rust. They say honey never decays. We’ve all had loves that walked out or faded.

But this guy Jesus. He is gold and honey love. Tough as nails. The nails that pinned him down to the Cross…for me.

Worth the world entire.
The world in His eyes.

Love the Island

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You can imagine me
Being dumped
On a nearly deserted island
just for talking too much

And you can also
See me chafe
Not so much for myself
(I am quite capable of talking to flora, fauna, and God, thank you, very much)

No.

For the children in my boat
They don’t deserve this–
The extreme isolation
So many freaking
Hot piña coladas!

No.

They deserve community
Friends who see them through
A voyage through calm seas

I tell myself this
Too much
Until I remember a wee bit of sage advice–

If you are going to burn your bridges
You better love the island

Love indeed
Beautiful survivors

I Have Lost You.

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I would have written this as a letter
I would have used the proper
Format:

Dear You,

Only…
That is the point
Dear you, not me
Not God Himself, quite real

Your appetite for bacon
Recalls to me the reason
Why?

We are not family anymore
Friends with the devil
Need to count the flies
Attending him

I speak the oblique
Because you have a right to be angry
We all do
But only on the pallet in hell
we lie down…

So close to Jesus.

Fear

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My children have led me into courtrooms, hospital rooms, doctors offices. Psych wards. Juvenile detention centers. Places of both extreme light and extreme darkness.

Some of them look like me, others don’t. Some don’t even live with me anymore. Some may have never known I was their mother.

I was a foster mother. Hard. I adopted kids: hard as well. I lost children, hardest of all.

But this weekend my tallest son taught me how to paint on an extension ladder. He is nearly a foot taller than I am, so he makes it look easy, but what impressed me was his success in teaching me to challenge my fear.

He taught me by doing it–first and better than me, then by walking me through my fears (and why) then how to overcome them.

We both know from experience that I am a crabby old dog, disinclined to new tricks. But love will prevail.

After all it is love, they say, that casts out all fear.

Good news when it is a long flight down.

Unquenchable Fire

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Luke 3:17 (NIV)
His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

God is a patient guy, but we would all be prudent not to confuse patient with impotent or sloppy. He will not wait forever to fix what we have broken.

And it will take a very long time to burn all the trash we have amassed…in our hearts alone.

Make no mistake–

We will all be salted with fire.

Pentecost.

Authentic Friend

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I imagine the room is in a church basement. Worn wood, a coffee pot on a table, styrofoam cups, a rows of folding chairs.

Sparsely attended. I cannot see the faces of the other attendees. I know like mine, theirs will be worn, washed of something. Artifice. No room for that here.

I stand and tell them my story. All of it, unadorned, shocking. Only here, in this circle of (imaginary) truth it will not be held against me–my pushy honesty, my tenacious insistence on the whole story. Uncomfortable, impolite. I know. I got it.

Most places now I tell myself, shut up, you know now they don’t wanna hear this.

That is why I return to this picture in my head–a simple circle of truth, where every secret thing is revealed. So no one is shocked when the truth is what it is—

We all
Underestimate
Jesus.