I Almost Missed It Too

No doubt about it!  God is good--
good to good people, good to the good-hearted.
But I nearly missed it,
missed seeing his goodnesss.
I was looking the other way,
looking up to the people
At the top,
envying the wicked who have it made,
Who have nothing to worry about,
not a care in the whole wide world.

Psalm 73:1-5, The Message


What a reminder, early this morning, as I sat on the too-small front porch of a house I want to sell as I looked out at two vans that just aren't quite as cool as the Land Rovers I see every day and listened to my too-close neighbors begin their days while their dogs bark incessantly.

Maybe it's a first-world problem, or maybe it's an American one, but I'm certain it's not just mine.  Isn't it easy to envy other people who seemingly have it made?  Isn't it easy to be discontent with the car I drive or the house I call home or the neighborhood where I live or the gifts and talents I have or everything else about my life that just isn't good enough?  Isn't it far too easy to feel like other people "have it made, piling up riches" while we are "stupid to play by the rules" (vs. 12 in The Message)?

I have often said that the greatest disservice my mother ever did me was to teach me that I wasn't any more important than anyone else.  It makes me wait in line longer than other people do, it makes me give money to church and to other people who need it, it makes me spend some of my free time working for others.  It forces me to be a little bit less selfish.

Yet, I still forget.  I still look at other people and all that they have and wonder if--how--I can get my hands on some of it.

And then I'm reminded.  Whether it's by a blown call in a football game, giving a touchdown to someone who must know he didn't score one, or an artist selflessly offering to create something to benefit other people, or a few verses from a Psalm that I've read many times before.  I'm reminded.

"No doubt about it!  God is good . . . But I nearly missed it."

God, today, please open my eyes.  Let me focus on the higher purpose.  Let my focus be You and Your goodness.

You're all I want in heaven!
You're all I want on earth!
When my skin sags and my bones get brittle,
God is rock-firm and faithful.
Look!  Those who left you are falling apart!
Deserters, they'll never be heard from again.
But I'm in the very presence of God--
oh, how refreshing it is!
I've made Lord God my home.
God, I'm telling the world what you do!

Psalm 73:25-28, The Message

The Thirty-eighth Sabbath

It was Mission India Sunday at church, and then my Sunday School class and I discussed missions.  Those teenagers are pretty smart, and they have some great ideas about what it can be like to be the Word of God to those we meet.  All of it reminded me of a song I remember listening to in my bedroom when I was their age.  It made me think that maybe the traditional means of missions--walking in to a culture and telling them everything they do is wrong, and they need to change it all to come to Jesus--wasn't good enough.  That was all more deeply confirmed in my reading of my favorite "How To" guide to missions: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (yes, I get that she wasn't really trying to teach us about missions, but she definitely got her point across with the bits about the river and the farming).  Later, the Blessings Tour further affirmed it, and yesterday's message continued it.

So, Missions 101:
* First help them experience love.  Then explain the Bible.
* Don't bring the Bible--BE the Bible.
* Missions are (is?) a reminder to Satan that we win, because Jesus already won.

Oh, the suffering souls
Crying out for love
In a world that seldom cares
See the hungry hearts
Longing to be filled
With much more than our prayers

And a young girl sells herself on Seventh Avenue
And you hear her crying out for help
My God! What will we do ?

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

All the desperate men
Are we reaching for the souls
That are sinking down sin?
Oh, cry for the church
We've lost our passion for the lost
And there are billions left to win

And another 40,000 children starved to death today
Would we risk all we have
To see one of them saved!?!

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

Why have we waited so long
To show them Jesus lives
To share salvation's song!

Why have our hearts become so proud
That we fail to see
To love them is to love God!

And a young girl sells herself on Seventh Avenue
Hear her crying out for help
What will we do?

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

"Don't Tell Them Jesus Loves Them" by Steve Camp and Rob Frazier

Getting Back On Track

Ah, the lazy, hazy days of summer.  A little too hazy and humid this year for my taste, but still, they were lazy days.  And, if I'm honest, they were way too lazy.

Summer is the break we all need, right?  For as long as I can remember, my life has been divided into "school year" and "summer break."  Even now that I've been out of college and working at a "real job" for 13 years(!), that hasn't changed.  Most years I welcome the break and the change in pace.  This year, it's thrown me for a real loop.

I began the year with wonderful and lofty goals.  Goals I've been longing to achieve for most of my adult life--writing more, reading my Bible more, eating better, losing weight.  They have always required more discipline than I could tap into in my feeble brain, so I've always failed.  This year was going to be different.

And it was!  For the first month, I did great.  The second and third months wavered, but I still tried and was still committed.

Then, those lazy, hazy days of summer arrived.  The kids got a break from their routine, and I took one too.

Now, I find myself nearing the last quarter of the year, weighing the same as I did when I started, eating poorly, my gym card gathering dust, my Bible reading plan crossed off through June, and my blog updated once a week . . . maybe.  (I am ahead on my book reading goals, but I'm not sure anyone other than the Grand Rapids Public Library should be proud of that.)

So now I find myself trying to get back on track.  A series of books I just finished, the Chaos Walking trilogy, truly does contain some perfect lines (thanks, Amy), and one of those weaves its way through each of the three books: "It isn't whether you fall down, it's whether you get back up."  So, here I am.  The measure of Beka in 2012 isn't whether I fell down.  I've fallen down every year that I've tried to better my life.  The measure of Beka in 2012 is that I'm getting back up.  I've never done that before with these goals.  The other measure is that I'm doing it bathed in prayer and begging God to drag me back up.  Maybe I learned more by falling down than I would have by staying on my own two feet.  Isn't that always the way?

So, here I am.  At the demands of my dear friend Julie (who won't read this, because she never does), I am not looking backwards at where I would be today if I hadn't fallen.  I'm looking forward at where I can get by keeping my hand in His and moving.  I have a plan to continue (and finish!) my journey through the Bible in 2012.  I will accomplish it, because I want to, and because when I don't want to, I'm begging God to make me want to.  I have a plan to write more--maybe on my blog or maybe on secret projects to get DearEditorFriend off my back--and I have a plan to eat better.  I need to make a plan (ie. a schedule, so I don't just sit and watch TV) to work out and still manage to get my house clean and my kids to school in time.

It's a busy life, to be a mother.  It's a busier life, to be a mother with a dream.  So when I fall down, I'm going to get back up.  Because it's a sad life to spend all your days in the lazy, hazy days of summer.

Book Seventeen

The Chaos Walking Series:
The Knife of Never Letting Go
The Ask & The Answer
Monsters of Men
by Patrick Ness

I've chosen to review all three of these books as one, just because it is a trilogy and it felt like cheating to actually call this books 17, 18, and 19.  Even though they are.  Because it's my prerogative.  :)

In the Chaos Walking series, Ness writes about a future New World, which is essentially a new planet much like Earth.  Because humans have destroyed Earth with our pollution and our fighting, colonists have taken to spaceships in search of a new plant to call home.  The settlers have come in waves, so by the time the series begins with The Knife of Never Letting Go, there have been humans on New World for a couple of decades.  The entire trilogy takes place during the few months between the scout ship's arrival on behalf of the new wave of colonists and the arrival of the convoy of ships holding thousands of those colonists.  I sort of felt like it took me about that long to read the trilogy, too.

Because the first group of colonists arrived years earlier and have had little access to education--their focus mostly on survival at the beginning and then on the drama created by their mayor--the language used by Todd, the narrator, was very hard to follow for me.  For the first third of The Knife of Never Letting Go, I faced a constant internal debate about whether to quit or continue.  Ultimately I decided to skim, which is a mortal sin of reading as far as I'm concerned.  It comes just before quitting a book altogether.  I ended skimming several sections until things settled in to a system that I could follow.  Then, and through The Ask & The Answer, the trilogy really got good.

There is action and a sweet friendship between a boy, a girl, and a dog.  Publisher's Weekly calls The Ask & The Answer grim and beautifully written, and I have to agree with that.  As Todd and Viola, on the run from an army built of men from Todd's hometown, progress on their journey to Haven and then, ultimately, settle in to their new roles in that town, they face a journey of hope and friendship and love and tension.  It truly is grim and beautifully written.  I found myself caring deeply about the fate of these two children-becoming-adults and wishing that fate would smile kindly on them and actually give them something for which to hope.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen--for Todd and Viola or for the reader.  By the time I settled in to Monsters of Men, I began to skim again and just wish it all would end.  Ness brings on another narrator in Book Three   (whose name I've intentionally left off so as not to spoil any of the story), and I couldn't stand reading those sections.  I felt preached at and judged.  This trilogy, which was that grim and beautifully-written coming-of-age story about hope became New Age-y and judgmental.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I invested the time in this trilogy, if only for the end of Book One and Book Two.  The messages of hope and love and forgiveness are lovely.  I just wish they'd been packaged with less judgment.