For Him

In my quiet time with the Lord this morning I suddenly felt incredibly tired, and unbearably sad. The dispassionate analyst in me looked on and wondered why. I concluded there were many possibilities–sad for my country, sad for the world at large, sad for my people. I knew there were many reasons to grieve in this moment in time. But this sadness was deeper, wider and more profound than anything as fleeting as the  regret over the demise of a nation, the world or a finite people. Eras, countries, cultures rise and fall, come and go. A thousand years is but one day...

In my introspection I paused to consider that perhaps I was just indulging in a bit of personal self pity. There are all sorts of reasons I could go there, if I were made of different stuff. But I am not. Many times I’ve earnestly tried but I simply cannot feel sorry for myself, at least not for long. If I ever dare to try, in very short order I hear the still small practical voice, “Oh puleezzzz! Get over it!” And then, resoundingly ashamed, I move on.

But moving on didn’t explain the source of the grief this morning. So, in a bold move, I asked God, “Will You tell me why I am so so sad?” And the answer came, not like a brilliant revelation but more a resolute sigh. 

It wasn’t my sadness I was feeling–it was His.

Overcome by this realization, all I could think to do was imagine myself in a garden quietly sitting next to God, making a lame human attempt to comfort Him, pledging to stay with Him no matter who else deserts Him. I promised, even though I am nothing and no one, that I would stay with and for Him, for what that offer was worth.

Like a bewildered child, I really didn’t know what to say so instead, I sat with Him in a sorrowful hush where that which is unsaid speaks so much more than words ever could express. 

Then, that pesky analyst in me started counting all the reasons He could be sad. I am not presumptuous enough to claim to know how to read God’s mind but I know He created us in His image, mysterious triune beings comprised of Body, Soul and Spirit and I certainly can relate to how it feels to be rejected, ignored and rebuked. I know how I feel when I encourage and reach out to help someone else and that someone does not see the blessing as an opportunity coming from God, so there is no compulsion to take the blessing [talent] and multiply it. I found myself burdened with empathy for how it must feel to be weighted down by a zillion wasted blessings given over the course of eons. 

I also know how it feels to be invisible and irrelevant. I know how it feels to offer a truth and watch as the message is dismissed or distorted and bent to fit someone else’s agenda. I’ve been used, more than once, to further another’s self-serving purpose. I know what it feels like to speak and not be heard. I have suffered the disappointment of disingenuous words spoken that failed in the doing. The list is never ending and I can say that I understand, at least in small part, why God ought to be sad with one exception–I have never had to sacrifice my child so that the sinful, ungrateful, self-idolizing reprobated world might not perish. I can’t even begin to know what that feels like and I very much doubt that I could even survive it if I could know.

All I can do is say, in as many ways as I am able, to anyone who might have an ear to listen and understand, it seems to me that God is in the final stages of His grief. What does this mean to us? The Scripture asks, if He be for us, who can be against us?

Personally, I think it is well past time to ask, who is for Him? 

For Christ,

Meema

(Romans 8:28) And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, [even] to them that are called according to [his] purpose.  (8:29) For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren:  (8:30) and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.  (8:31) What then shall we say to these things? If God [is] for us, who [is] against us?  (8:32) He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?  

Trouble, Tribulation and Tragedy

While waiting in the school lobby to collect my grandsons I listened as a group of bus drivers discussed a recent tragedy that had occurred several days earlier. A young mother had suddenly, without warning or indication of trouble, killed herself. She left a husband, a sixteen year old daughter and younger son behind forever damaged by her desperate if not selfish act. She also left a note wherein she admitted her cowardice and her great failure. No one, especially not her husband and children, understood that cryptic declaration of self-incrimination.

The women I sat with hashed over the known details and pondered on the unknown. The wife/mother had lived in a lovely home, had no discernible problems, either in her marriage, finances or health. In the weeks before her suicide, she had stocked the refrigerator and pantry, paid bills, spread mulch in the garden, attended functions, prepared meals and lived in exactly the same orderly, unstressful way she had always done. 

The dichotomy between the outward appearances of her life and what must have been unbearable internal conflict was the big question that gave rise to much speculation but no answers. Then one off-handed comment was added that I picked up on, that made me draw my own conclusions.

This lovely family had no faith. It was at the insistence of the grieving son that his father found and called a chaplain to come council them. Did this mean that not only did they have no religious beliefs, God was nothing to them? They were neither agnostic nor atheists, they were non-theists? The concept of God was nowhere in their thoughts or habits, either for or against? 

It is entirely possible because this is common now–nontheism. 

In truth, I don’t know this family so I cannot presume to say they had absolutely no concept of God at all. I simply put two and two together and the sum speaks to the age we live in now more than their personal lives. There was a recent article online about the increasing rate of Americans just snapping and killing themselves or doing other bizarre things. Whatever the official explanation for this phenomenon, I can easily reduce it down to lack of faith, which is the foundation of hope that people are able to cling to in times of trouble. When faith is effectively decreased, suicide naturally increases. Two plus two always equals four.

I finally spoke up and remarked that I had a theory. The women all turned to look at me as if to say, okay, what? I said that we battle with dark principalities now and that there is a sickness spreading like a virus claiming victims, devouring whomsoever is most vulnerable. I stopped just short of warning that it would get worse. I knew that some of the women were Christians and understood what I was saying but I am reluctant to speak as though I am a prophet, which I am not.

But I don’t have to be a prophet to read the signs. And what I see is that trouble is building and soon will be full-fledged Tribulation. Will those who are determined to ignore the warnings understand that the tragedy that befalls them was attributable to their own folly? When the door is shut will the foolish stand and wonder what happened?  Who or what will be blamed? In the age of blame-shift, it’s not likely, in their blindness, that they will know or understand what happened. 

For Christ,

Meema

(Isaiah 40:27) Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and the justice [due] to me is passed away from my God?  (40:28) Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding.  (40:29) He giveth power to the faint; and to him that hath no might he increaseth strength.  (40:30) Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

Terminally Myopic

myopia |mīˈōpēə|

noun

nearsightedness.

• lack of imagination, foresight, hindsight or insight: the modern view is almost always myopic because it never factors into its short-sighted vision what has been proven workable or not workable in history.

Years ago, while volunteering in the grade school my grandchildren attended, I was given the dubious honor of representing the school in meetings of a group called, the Superintendent’s Council on Community Affairs. SCCA for short. This prestigious assemblage of highly educated, influential power-brokers (plus me) met in the Education Administration building at noon five times a year to discuss topics of importance to the county school system. The Superintendent presided over the agenda, which almost always was centered on explaining SPLOST tax fund raising and clever ways to manage millions of dollars so as to get the maximum amount of bang for the buck. The long range plans included the building of dozens of new schools over the course of a decade.

I, being the least qualified to contribute anything of value to these discussions, mostly kept my mouth shut, wisely observing. I did once brazenly speak out about my concern over 45 pound back packs that grade school and middle school age kids were forced to lug around on their as yet not fully developed backs, citing the potential long term damage that could be predicted using the smallest amount of common sense. No one seemed interested. Money, how to make it and spend it, was the focus of this group, not back health for children. Summarily dismissed, I spent the remainder of the boring hour imagining the Superintendent being forced to walk around all day with a backpack that weighed half his body weight, wondering if he would object or just suck it up like the kids had to do.

It was in that same meeting I also discovered, to my great disappointment, that the Superintendent was a proponent of 45/15 which is an informal reference to year round school. His rationale was that it would be the best solution to “help those kids who were lagging behind to catch up.”  I wanted so badly to stand and ask if the esteemed Superintendent thought he had been educated well enough back in the dark ages to be given the letters behind his name, his credentials and the position he held and how that could be possible given that he probably had the summers off to regroup and just be a kid. 

Fortunately, I remained silent and didn’t make a fool of myself. It was clear that if no one could see the probability of kids having back problems down the road from toting heavy back packs, they would not likely have had an epiphany over comparing educational ideology then and now.  The truth is, I believed then as I do now, modern education is no better than it was decades ago; in some ways it is way worse. More of the same piled higher and deeper, teaching to the test, shoving data in to get data out to insure funding is not education. It’s torture. But more importantly this approach to education not only destroys the joy of learning, natural curiosity and critical thinking, it ultimately disables common sense. More often than not it causes flaming burn out so many drop out before graduating high school and just as many that do graduate do poorly in college because all they want to do is party. 

Information is a fluid, ever changing commodity but it is not education. If you asked ten highly educated, respected individuals to make a list of 5000 things a child should learn in twelve years of schooling, you would get ten different lists. But which one would be correct? Which list should be adopted as a curriculum guide? 

The problem with myopia is that it doesn’t know it can’t see beyond a very small circumference. All manner of good sounding arguments can be made for making agenda based choices for the best way to educate our children, but education is not knowledge. The only way to acquire knowledge is to first  learn how to learn, not how to memorize information in the short term. Secondly, you have to want to learn and that is a motivation that comes from inspired teaching, not information shoveling. Unfortunately there is little room or time for inspired teaching nowadays. 

I am officially retired from volunteering in grade schools now. I had already come to this decision for a number of reasons anyway but was pushed over the edge this year because the edict went out that all volunteers were required to take a sensitivity class in order to be permitted to work with the children. Forty years of experience was insufficient qualification. 

The modern view says rules rule, however myopic. 

So this is where we are now. Information on a list, in a rule, a regulation, a curriculum,  takes precedence over teaching our children the life-long love of learning, the fundamental skill sets for acquiring any knowledge and the common sense to successfully, productively use it. 

For Christ,

Meema

(Eccelsiastes 9:11) I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.  (9:12) For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.