Fear God

So far this year in my meditation-focused Bible reading times, I have read Psalm 93, Psalm 103, and most of Psalm 139. And because I spend so much time reflecting on a single verse, I've been able to almost inadvertently memorize these passages, which I just review when I blow dry my hair and sometimes in the car. I've never been very good at memorizing Scripture (well, not since they stopped giving me stickers for it), but this has come so naturally and it's been wonderful to be able to keep reflecting on the Scriptures when I have down time.

There are parts of Psalm 103 that, if I'm only kind of half-thinking about reciting it, I get mixed up. That's because three times it talks about "those who fear him." So it's easy to lead into the wrong next part when I get to one of those.

I remember as a kid being baffled by this whole "fear God" business. When you're a kid, fear only means one thing: being afraid. And I feared snakes, but not God. I loved God, why would I be afraid of him? I remember asking about this in 5th or 6th grade and learning that this kind of fear isn't the scaredy-pants kind, it is a reverence. Like the way Biscuit sometimes gets convicted after finding a dirty tissue and brings it to me as a confession of his sinful ways, rather than chewing it to bits. He knows he would get yelled at if he chewed it, but what he really wants is to make me happy. Because he has this profund awe and respect for me.

And if I can get that kind of respect, despite all my shortcomings, God deserves it so much more. Like, infinitely more.

So. Psalm 103.

"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him."
"As a father as compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him."
"But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him."


Great love. Compassion. Everlasting love. These are the blessings (or "benefits" as the Psalm sets out to list) associated with fearing God. And—and this is just a thought—it might not even be that he actually loves those who fear him more. After all, he sent Jesus for everyone, and that was the greatest act of love. It might just be that by recognizing how small we are and how big he is, we are better able to glimpse his great love and compassion.

Pastor

My church is looking for a new senior pastor. It's been quite some time, and a couple weeks ago we had a prospective pastor come preach. To the extent that I like preaching, which isn't much, I felt like he was great. Very different in style from what our church is used to, but I found him engaging and relatable, and I walked away personally challenged.

But what I really liked about this guy wasn't his preaching. Like I said, I'm not real into preaching period. What I liked was his heart. His character. He was authentic, humble, and genuine. He spoke earnestly about what he cared about and some of his failings. He had a passion for helping people seek God and live as part of God's kingdom, and I was so excited for that kind of leader.

Today we had a church vote on him. I didn't get to vote since I'm not a member, and we won't know the results until later this week. But before the vote people shared various opinions and questions. And one thing that several people mentioned was not being a fan of his preaching style.

Now I get that some people have different preferences than me, and prefer different styles. (But again...my real preference would be no preaching,  just a guy leading discussion that helps us draw out what the Scripture is saying. In fact in my sermon journal I write down ideas of experiences and discussions that could make the same teaching interactive and memorable. But I digress.)

But ultimately I just feel like preaching is not a big enough thing to say yes or no because of. I mean, it's 30 minutes a week of a full-time job. Sure, it's the most visible part...but that doesn't mean it's the most important. I think the most important thing about a pastor is that he can lead and manage the congregation with integrity. That he can help us grow closer to Christ and seek and serve him more.

I don't know how the people who didn't like his preaching voted, if that was enough to be a "no" for them. But I felt very discouraged sitting there and realizing how much emphasis many congregants were placing on preaching (which was just 1 out of 5 strengths our search team looked at).

So whether or not he gets the vote and comes to be our new pastor, I'm still discouraged. A church isn't made vibrant by 30 minutes of brilliant orating each week. A church is made vibrant when the people in it grow more and more in their love for God every day, support each other in community, and serve in unity. And the real job of a pastor is facilitating that and being an example of that.

God's Best

"People ruin their lives by their own foolishness,
and then are angry at the Lord."

- Proverbs 19:3 (NLT)

I recently had a simple realization. It probably isn't even very profound. But it was a lightbulb for me, so I decided to blog about it. The realization was this: If we want God's best for our lives, we have to live the way he says is best.

People sometimes see God as this dominating boss with a whole bunch of silly rules that don't make sense. But even when they don't seem to make sense, his rules are for our ultimate benefit. And when hardships come, it's often the result of sin. Not necessarily our own sin, but someone's sin. That's not always the case, but by and large the things that go wrong in this world go wrong because people aren't playing by God's rules. It affects them, and people around them, and people six degrees separated.

And then people get angry at God. I met a man recently who questioned why so many things had been going wrong in his life. And I don't know why each individual problem he had happened. But I got the impression that he might be kind of playing the victim.

It reminded me of this activity I wrote for a Buzz lesson where, to show kids the damaging effects of complaining, we had them list their favorite things and then find things to complain about regarding those things. So they might say "pizza can burn your tongue" or "basketball makes you sweaty." And the point is that when you start focusing too much on the negatives, soon that's all you see. And it's kind of what you expect. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you can ruin your life with these negative attitudes...which is foolishness.

One of God's "rules" is to be joyful always. To give thanks continuously. When we do this, we focus on the good in our lives until that becomes all we see. And when we get to that point, we're living God's best. There may be hard things in our lives (we'll always have problems), but we choose to focus on God's blessings and how we can help others experience his blessings too.

God has a lot of other rules. Hard ones. Like putting others first. Loving our enemies. Helping the poor. But if we want to live the good life, we do these things, knowing that God's the only one who has this figured out. And if he says that's the way to a good life, and we don't do it...well, there's no reason to be angry with him.

Presence

I've often heard people say (and I've thought this myself) that they're jealous of the people in the Old Testament who got to hear God speak to them directly. I mean, when God speaks to you through a burning bush, his voice and his plan are pretty clear.

But today as I was sitting in my red chair, reflecting on Psalm 139 and enjoying the presence of God, I thought about the role of the Holy Spirit. I thought about how even though God has always been everywhere, there was a time when to really enter God's presence meant to go to the Tabernacle or Temple. If you were lucky, you were permitted into the Most Holy Place on rare occasion. Moses had such special times in the presence of God there that his face glowed. Such encounters were unusual. Magnificent, extraordinary...but not common.

But with the Holy Spirit living inside of me, I am basking in the presence of God everywhere I go. His Temple now isn't some physical place I have to go. It's me. I'm his Temple. Wherever I go, God's presence fills me and goes with me. This is an amazing thing, radically different (and better) than the experiences the patriarchs had with God's presence.

I think that if Abraham or Moses or David had known what God's presence would be like after Pentecost...they would be the ones who would be jealous of us.

Peanut: A Big Dog in a Little Body

Peanut is about 11 pounds. And she looks even lighter than that. That's because a lot of her weight is leg muscle from the many adventures we have when she runs and hikes with me.

When we run or hike, people are usually surprised by her ability to do such vigorous exercise despite her small stature. We get comments like, "Can that little dog really get up to the top of the mountain?" or "Will she run like that all the way to the end of the race?"

Today in a 4-mile race, about .75 miles in, we passed a few guys who were running together, and I heard one of the guys say, "Oh no! Guys we gotta beat the cat that barks!"

That lit a fire under me. Because I knew without a doubt that Peanut could easily beat them. But I also knew I slow her down. So I was determined to run faster and try to beat those guys and show them just how tough my little girl is. I don't know if I beat them or not...but I was glad for the extra motivation!

Then there was this other guy who finished 10-20 feet behind me. Pretty close. His wife was waiting at the finish line and he told her, "I was trying to beat that little dog, but I couldn't do it." So I guess I wasn't the only one motivated to do better because of Peanut.

I love how Peanut doesn't let her size limit her. She runs and hikes just like a big dog, and no doubters are going to slow her down. And if you're smart enough to pay attention to her vibrant personality, you'll be inspired to be a better person.

True Value

There's this girl on this season of the Bachelor named Courtney. She's a 28-year old model who doesn't get along well with the other girls and says she's had a lot of guys date her but then get tired of her and cheat. She is agressive and rude, and that's why the other girls don't like her. She's portrayed as this season's villain.

As annoying as I find her, I have to feel a little bit bad for her. She is constantly using her body to get Ben's attention. She took him skinny dipping, invited him to her room, and distracted him from another girl by hanging around in her bikini. She considers many of the other girls "immature" for not using their sexuality to interest Ben. She wonders why they aren't showing interest in him when they have conversations with him rather than making out.

She's pretty, to be sure. But somewhere along the line it seems she got the message that's all she is. And so she uses her looks to earn a living. And considers her looks to be the only real key to winning a guy over.

Last night she said, "I want a guy who gets me, who treats me the way I want to be treated." And my heart just broke for her. How will she ever find a guy who doesn't treat her like a piece of meat when that's how she puts herself out there? How will she ever find a guy who values her, not her model's figure, when she acts like her figure is all she has to offer? Has she ever heard the phrase "no one wants to buy the cow when you're giving away the milk for free"?

Our culture is so wrapped up in physical appearance, especially for women. And while for many women this means never feeling attractive enough, never feeling like they live up to the 36-26-36 Barbie standard, there's another side of the coin. The Courtney side. Women who are physically attractive and confident in it, but believe that's all they have to offer the world. This saddens me even more than the size 10s who kick themselves for not being 6s. No one should feel like there's nothing they have to offer beneath their outer shell.

Processing

You may recall that one of my New Year's resolutions was to be me - to discover and embrace the person God created me to be.

I've been thinking about this a lot, letting God define me and reading a book on the topic, The Me I Want to Be by John Ortberg. All this got me thinking about how I process things best: by writing about them. (So now you get why I blog so much!) I even had a reading assignment in college where I asked the professor if I could submit a paper about my readings (which wasn't assigned), because I knew that without writing or discussion, the information would go straight out of my mind.

And then I started thinking about all my complaints about sermons, and how it's pretty unlikely that I am going to find a church that has interactive learning rather than passive listening in services. But that there is something I can do about this...based on the way I process.

So I bought a journal last week for use in church. Not to take bullet pointed notes and regurgitate what the pastor is saying in written form. Rather, the purpose is to take notes about my responses to the sermon. How does it challenge me? What does it make me think about? For instance, this week the pastor talked asked what we consider to be a good life. So I made a list of what I seek for a "good life." And I wrote that if we want to hire this prospective pastor we should give him a rose like on The Bachelor. That seemed important. And I wrote a challenge for myself to apply the sermon.

So, that's what I'm doing to help myself grow more from listening to sermons instead of letting it all slip out of my mind in a couple of hours.

Losers

A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of a baseball cap display of the two NY football teams: Giants and Jets. The Jets hats were all marked with a 50% off sign.

Our society certainly has a weird way of devaluing losers.

I mean I get that in the law of supply and demand, Giants hats (especially now that they won the Superbowl) are going to be in higher demand because more people want to be associated with the winning team. I get why the store does it.

What I don't get is why that's the case. I am a Duke basketball fan, whether they win or lose. (And yes, they often win, but I didn't know that when I started liking them.) I never would've gone out to buy a Duke hat just because they won the championship in 2001 or 2010, if I wasn't already a fan. It seems to me that if you're going to like a team, you should just like them. Always. Not just because they won the play-offs or the Superbowl this year.

The thing about winners and losers is that it can change on a dime. The Packers came into this season as 2011 Superbowl champs. They played a great season, with only one loss before the play-offs. They seemed like they were on a good path to repeating their victory this year. But just one game was enough to turn a very winning team into a "loser." (Disclaimer here: I didn't actually watch any football games, except half of the last quarter of the Superbowl. All my knowledge of football is from checking scores online and Facebook chatter.)

There was this guy Phil at my high school. Really little guy, about locker-stuffing size, carried a suitcase on wheels instead of a backpack...perfect for being picked on. And so he was perceived as a loser. I talked to Phil a couple times in lunch lines and he was a really nice guy. But because he was a "loser" in the eyes of the school, he was devalued. Might as well have been wearing a 50% off sign like those Jets hats.

It's interesting, then, to see the kinds of people Jesus hung out with. Not the rich; he turned that guy away. Not the well-educated Jews; he fought with them a lot. No, Jesus hung out with the B-list at best. Those fishermen he called disciples? They were fisherman because they hadn't made the cut to become rabbis, so they learned the family business instead. And that's the "coolest" of Jesus' companions. The cheating tax collectors, adulterers, Samaritans, and prostitutes were all the clear losers of Jesus' day.

But he flipped the winner/loser notion on its head when he said that the last will be first. That if you want to be first you should serve everyone. That he came to help the ones who need help, not the ones who think they're already good enough.

Now I'm not saying that the Pats were the real winners of the Superbowl. I mean, in sports you do have to get the most points to win. (Except golf. Don't do that in golf.) But winning or losing doesn't make you any more valuable. And being a "loser" in life means you're just the kind of person Jesus loved to hang out with.

Going Without

A couple weeks ago I noticed that the floor outside of my downstairs bathroom squished when I walked on it. I could hear sloshing water under the floorboards. So I called my landlord. He didn't return my call. But the sloshing sound kept getting worse and I wasn't sure where the water was coming from. There's the bathroom, but I hadn't seen any signs of leaky pipes in there. Was the washer just across the hall draining wrong?

Then last night when I took a shower after my run, I had to crank up the hot water all the way and it was barely luke warm.  Lightbulb! The sloshy floor was right next to the hot water heater closet! So I checked it out and sure enough, there was a bit of water on the floor around the water heater and it smelled weird in there. I called my landlord again with an update.

This morning...no hot water. Called my landlord again. Twice. Showered at work. Finally I got a call back around 11, he gave me the number of a plumber and a floor guy.

So I met the plumber at my house and he checked it out. Confirmed that I "had a leaker." Was showing me a valve to turn off when I wasn't using the hot water to reduce flooding and I said, "Well, it's not making any hot water so I'm not really using it." He hadn't realized that so he took off the front of the water heater to expose a control panel. The water had leaked on it and shorted out the power. He reset the power to it by flipping the switch in the fuse box, and then the water heater caught on fire.

When the fire first started the plumber watched it. "Well, now we have a little fire," he said calmly. I panicked inwardly. He stood and watched the fire grow. I panicked inwardly some more. "Well isn't that lovely?" he said again. Then he *finally* turned the fuse switch off and blew out the fire.

Later he said, "Did you see how excited I got when the fire started?" I hope he was being sarcastic.

Anyway, since it flames when it has power, I need a new water heater. Which is fine, I'm renting so it ain't costing me anything. (So glad I'm renting at times like these!) But I can't get it until Monday...which means four mornings (including today) without a shower at my house.

I am surprisingly not that annoyed by this. I consider it to be a minor inconvenience, but not a big deal. No power/heat all weekend? That would be a bigger deal. No water at all? Sure, I'd have a hard time. But I've got access to a shower at work, and now I have motivation to drive there and run in the mornings since I have to go there to shower anyway. Typically on the weekends I run outside if it's nice, or not at all if the ground is covered in snow like it is now. So I'm kind of glad for this motivation.

I do use hot water to melt the snow off the puppy paws, but realized my blow dryer would work just fine for that. My biggest concern is doing dishes but I can heat up water on the stove for that. I just can't bring myself to get too worked up about any of this. I think of all the things people go without around the world, and if I have to go one weekend without hot water it's really pretty small potatoes. My puppies and I are safe and warm, and that's the important thing.

And honestly? If the hot water hadn't stopped working, my landlord might never have called me back about the floor and that could have rotted out floorboards and caused a huge problem. So really there are a lot of up sides to this. Like my house not burning down. And the plumber's attitude makes for a great story.

Valentine's Day

Although I've shared the last five Valentine's Days with someone, 20 of the 21 before that were spent as a single girl. And the one exception was in seventh grade; that hardly counts.

And in all 20 of those single Valentine's, I never felt cynical or bitter like those anti-Valentine's people. (OK, no one probably cares at age two anyway.) I never felt the need to wear all black in protest. I never scoffed at the sappy cards or grew jealous at the bouquets that appeared for others. It was just a day that passed without too much thought, except the fact that on February 15 I knew I could a) get 50% off chocolate, and b) Cadbury Mini Eggs would go on sale for Easter. (And I looked forward to those same things in my married years! In fact last year Dan and I celebrated late so that we could get 50% off candy and cheaper flowers.)

But, having just filed for divorce and having a single Valentine's Day for the first time in several years, I wondered how I would feel when Valentine's started to show up. And last week, the true test happened: my city (very into Valentine's Day) launched its annual tradition of hanging up personalized wooden hearts along the main road that runs through the center of town. Romantics looking to surprise their true loves can pay to have their own hearts stenciled with loving messages and posted for all the town to read.

I've always loved this tradition, and this year was no different. As usual, I got a huge smile when I turned the corner and saw the first heart of the season hanging from a light post. So there it was: proof that divorce hadn't turned me into a Valentine's Day cynic. And here's to hoping I won't rear end someone reading all the hearts...

There is one day in February that I know will probably make me cry, but it isn't the 14th...it's the 13th. 13 years ago on the 13th, I adopted a beautiful puppy, who passed away last April. And this year will be the first "puppiversary" to pass without her in my arms. That's going to be hard. It's hard just to write about.

But I've got no qualms with Valentine's Day. I know I have plenty of people who love and care for me, two pups who worship me, and I'm perfectly content in my singleness right now. So bring on the 50% off chocolates and hang up more hearts!