A Failure to Communicate

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men.” From the movie Cool Hand Luke

This week I had something interesting happen. It was a crazy day at work on Thursday. In the computer chip making business sometimes you have to be really creative and go to the next level. We had a defective chip go out so it was an “all hands on deck” kind of day. It was a twelve hour day with a small break in between. Right in the middle of it, a couple of engineering interns came in. They were new and someone had sent them in with questions. It was clear they had an agenda from somewhere else. I tried the nice approach. I tried to explain that it would be in their best interest and mine if they came back another day. They weren’t hearing me.

The phone was ringing, I was up to my ears in requests, and they still would not leave…….I kept thinking of the line from that movie. Finally, I appealed to the system that we all go by and said, “All engineering requests must go through my OM, so just shoot her an email and we will go from there.”

They finally left, but it was a frustrating experience for both of us. Was I not clear? Were they not? What could I have said differently? With any communication breakdown, we tend to evaluate ourselves. I do, anyway. A situation like that becomes a good opportunity to evaluate yourself and the situation; see if you could have done or said something differently. Try to see things from their perspective.

I did that. Then I prayed about it. I don’t like it when I feel like someone leaves unhappy. I feel like things are somehow unfinished. When I got to work today I asked my OM about it. She said, yes, they did in fact send her an email. She verified what I was thinking inside, they had no clue what they were asking of me. It was nice to get confirmation.  As usual I worried needlessly.

I got another thought this morning on the way to work. It used to be that certain things were just understood to be wrong, no argument. Now it seems that whoever has the best story wins. It used to be if someone was caught red-handed in a crime they were guilty. Now, if they can convince a lawyer to argue their case effectively, they get off. In politics it is the same way. Whoever can present the best case, tell the best story, make the most polished speech wins. Character is something that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in our society.

In God’s world it is never irrelevant and I am glad.

Draw comfort from this today. If you ever feel like you are not being heard clearly remember Jesus felt the same way.

“Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread?” Matthew 16:8-11

God is in Control

This is a repost from 2009, with all that is happening in the world right now, it seemed like the timing was right to post it again…..


 Image by Todd Haven

Psalm 8:3-9

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!

Ever have one of those nights? You know the kind, tossing and turning, riddled with worry. All your problems seem magnified and beyond solving, it seems hope is snatched away with the light of day. You feel almost like you are going insane. I have them every now and then…..my Dad has them often, he tells me. The other night he was restless, worried about things. He almost woke my Mom just to have her sit with him awhile……

He started praying and meditating and God gave him a picture in his mind of the earth and how it looks from space. Part of us seeming to go about our business on the top of the ball, some on the bottom, yet we are all walking around on flat ground.

He thought of this strange dance of the planets, and how if the sun was a fraction closer to earth we would be vaporized in flame, or too far and we would be frozen faster than we could blink. But it all keeps going; perfectly set in motion by God. Soon he found himself enveloped in a peaceful sleep, sleep that had so eluded him before.

Contrary to popular thought, we will not destroy the planet. God will not let us. He put everything in motion and He will be the one who decides when to stop it.

So next time you are having one of those nights, go outside. Gaze up at the moon, focus on the depth of space, the infinity of the stars, the deep silence that speaks of God. He is there, and He is holding it all together and will continue to do so until He decides it’s time to start again…..

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. Isaiah 65:17

Jonah’s Timeout

Then Jonah prayed to his God from the belly of the fish. He prayed: “In trouble, deep trouble, I prayed to God. He answered me.From the belly of the grave I cried, ‘Help!’ You heard my cry. Jonah 2: 1,2 The Message
Jonah had a tough assignment. This was no job for sissies. It wasn’t just a tough sales presentation where every word and action will be judged, critiqued, and torn-apart…..or the boss telling you to fire an employee when you know they need the job desperately. This was God telling Jonah to go to a very strong and prosperous nation, also a nation that was notoriously cruel and bloodthirsty. This was a people that would put hooks in the noses of their captives and lead them off to slavery. They were also a huge threat to Israel.
Jonah responded immediate by running the other way, as fast as he could. So would I.
Just imagine if God asked you to go preach on a street corner in Iraq!
One of my favorite poets, Robert Frost said this about the book of Jonah: “After Jonah, you could never trust God not to be merciful again.”
Jonah had an idea that the Ninevites would repent. He knew His was a God of mercy. But forgiveness is hard, and God knew that Jonah had some issues inside himself that he had to deal with. Jonah was actually not running from God but from himself. Ever run away, only to find that the issues you were running away from followed you?
God gave Jonah a timeout so He could really hear was God was trying to say. God had to take him to a place of desperation, darkness. All the way into the belly of a great fish. Sometimes God has to take us somewhere unpleasant, sometimes flat on our back, so that we can really hear what He is trying to say to us.
After three days Jonah came to a place of understanding:
“You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, LORD my God, brought my life up from the pit.” 3-6
Sometimes we need God to take us into the whale belly so we can remember who He is……..”Then the word came to Jonah a second time”, and this time he obeyed. After he preached to them the Ninevites believed God and the whole city declared a fast and called on the Lord. Here are the King’s own words:
“Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
God spared that great city…..Read Chapter 4 and you will see a beautiful picture of the great compassion of God and how He desperately wants people to turn to Him so that they can receive His forgiveness and love……..I love the discourse between God and Jonah after Jonah gets mad when the people repent.
Prayer: God, help me to learn from my “timeouts.” To remember that you love me, but you also love others and wish to show your compassion and love to everyone. Help me to remember who You are, and learn obedience when you call on me to show Your compassion and love to others, remembering that it is not up to me to decide who is worthy and who is not. Amen

This is how I write…….

“Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you. I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write……” 2 Thessalonians 3:16,17

I saw it laying on the table when I got home……a letter from my Dad. Again I thought, I will miss not seeing one of these, someday. So personal, handwritten letters. Like a bit of that person traveling across the miles. Their mark is on it, in their own handwriting. I call him before I read it, “He says to me, “Well, after you read it you may be sorry…..” I was not. Emails are great, they are instantaneous, they are convenient, but nothing beats a handwritten letter. There is much you can read in between the lines, you can sense the depth of their feelings and their emotions by how they form their letters, how big or small the writing is, how it scrawls across the page.

When someone sends a handwritten letter or card, they are saying to me:

“This is really important and I want you to hear what I am saying.”
“I want to show you how important you are to me.”
“I trust you with these feelings.”

It is hard for me to throw anything handwritten away……As I leaf through the pages of Dad’s letter, I feel that there are not so many miles between us after all.

A couple of times in my life I have gotten a long letter from my brother, one time very unexpectedly and at a time when I really needed it. I never forgot it, I remember riding somewhere on my bicycle with the precious cargo laying in my basket…feeling the strength from it.

Letters have tremendous power. In war times, letter carriers masqueraded as harbingers of hope or angels of death. We are all seen the bicycle-riding, telegram bearing scene in the movies, how everything and everyone stopped and held their breath, hoping that it wasn’t their house, their door……My Parent’s generation remembers those times.

Over and over in his letters Paul states……”I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand” He wanted there to be no mistaking his message or who wrote it.

Maybe someone specific is on your mind today. Their name keeps coming up and won’t go away. I encourage you to sit and write them out a note, a letter. Maybe you don’t mail it, just leave it where they can find it. Maybe they will do the same.

Counting along with the gratitude community today…….toward 1000 but not stopping there, grateful for all the ways God speaks to me:

In the written word of ones I love, in the sunrise and sunset, His salutation of love, His Spirit who prompts me to love others, sparks of spontaneous joy at unexpected times, in the words of gifted teachers of the Word, through kindness of strangers, through answers to specific prayers, through hope that never leaves, nature who always speaks loudly of His touch, through the community of believers called His church…..#622-632

holy experience

photo from google images

Imagining how it was…..

I was asked the other day if I thought Jesus sang…….like did He ever walk down the road and break into song? I said I thought He probably did. The Bible says He sang songs of worship with His disciples, and He was filled with the Spirit so, yes I believe there were times when He spontaneously burst into song. Just imagining that set my mind in motion. Can you imagine hearing Him sing, or laugh? Seeing His face light up with a smile?

I think sometimes it is hard for us to think of Jesus as fully human. But I love to imagine Jesus doing the simple things of life. Walking down the road with His friends, or maybe helping His Mom with a task around the house, sitting down to dinner with His family. It is hard for us, for me anyway, to imagine Him being silly or joking around. Did He tease His Mother? Pull a practical joke on His brothers or sisters? I like to think He did. He was after all, fully God but also fully man, and fully human. 

I like to imagine those simple times when He greeted His friends with a smile or put an arm around them while walking, lifting His face to Heaven while He prayed, or sang a song, swung a child around just to listen to them laugh.

I like this form of meditation, imagining Jesus and how it was….. I think that many times He probably felt very burdened when He looked out over the crowds, at the immensity of the need, the desperation. I think it made Him sad many times, when people just didn’t get the message, couldn’t grasp His love for them.

But I also think there were times when Jesus had to lighten the mood by cracking a joke.

Church Etiquette

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:14

Has something like this ever happened to you? You are sitting in church, trying desperately not to be distracted, but directly in front of you is a couple who can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. It happened to me this past Sunday. Now this was not a young teen aged couple, they should have known better. They were 30 something, maybe even 40. What made it worse was this was during communion. I elbowed Elaine, sitting next to me who I knew was trying just as hard as I was to keep focused. Usually I can focus. Rattling papers, whispering, people walking up and down the aisle, no problem…..I can pay attention.

It went on and on…….I had so many crazy thoughts. I was almost ready to wad up my program and toss it in their direction. Where is the mischievous little boy throwing spit wads in class? I wished he was there. C’mon, we are trying to have a Holy moment here! Concentrate, breathe……..focus. Even the Pastor, who was right in my line of vision and theirs, was looking at them.

He had his hand wound up in her hair, and she was making (as my Dad would say) cow eyes at him. She even puckered her lips at him, I swear! My mind twittered thoughts right and left…….”at least they could have sat in the back row…..don’t they have any clue about church etiquette? Why are they here? They really need to get a room.”

Finally, at a loss as to what to do, I prayed for them, and for me. I know it was Jesus idea. It did help, it diffused the irritation. Opened the channels to a bit of love and understanding…..everyone has to start somewhere after all.

What do you think? Was it good that they were there regardless of how they acted? Had something like this happened to you?

“What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” 1 Corinthians 14:26

Nothing to say?

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. ~e.e. cummings

Whenever I start to write anything, I notice two voices speaking at once. The one that says, yes this feeling is true, someone will relate to this, you have something to offer. And then there is the other rising up simultaneously…..Oh that will never do, you really have nothing to say today, who do you think you are, the nerve….what do you think you are, an authority? You are really making a fool of yourself with that one…..Then I remember, if God is moving in my life, there is always something to say. If I am alive, that is reason enough to write about it!

I look at this picture above and wonder who chopped that wood, and then I think of the time my Dad and I stacked wood together. Every now and then he reminds me of it. I look at the photographer’s name, Brunhilde Reinig and I hear my Grandmother’s voice speaking in German to her sisters, I remember that I love you in German is Ich Leibe Dich……and I wish that could have been said and done, instead of the Holocaust and I wonder again how it could have happened. I think of the German speaking people who did good, who hid Jews at the risk of their own lives…..

I think of the trip to the grocery store yesterday with my best friend and her Mom who is suffering with Alzheimer’s. It was sad, it was tragic, and yet there were some humorous moments. She always has to get three items no matter what….potatoes, ice-cream and hamburger…..And we always have to go in the same door. And she gets insulted if you tell her to make a list. My friend tells me even when she was in her right mind she was insulted if you suggested a list. Funny how disease touches some parts and leaves some parts untouched……

I think of she and her brother, each of whom have grieved both parents already, neither one are the person they were before. I think of the many divorced people out there who are grieving walking dead…..dead to them anyway. What heartache they carry. I think of how wonderful it is that little green shoots of love can bloom again in that same heart……love born again.

Yes, as long as there is life, there are words to say.
As long as there is God, there is Spirit movement……and hope.

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/ by Brunhilde Reinig

Clay jar or crystal pitcher?

“Give your entire attention to what is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matthew 6:34 The Message
I lost a day to worry. That opened the door to depression. Thinking about events on “the road ahead.” I was bogged down and I couldn’t see things clearly. I have touched on the fact that I am a worrier before. But Jesus commands us not to worry. This is a problem if I want to live for Him! I hate to think of the many moments and days I have wasted on events that may or may not happen. It all comes down to one thing…..When I worry I am living for myself and not for God. When I worry I am taking Him off the throne of my heart and life!  
Paul was having some discouraging moments dealing with the Corinthian church. He was right in the thick of things, not like me, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, he was fighting a real battle. I can imagine that he was in prayer, and God spoke to him about the clay jars lining the walls. I can imagine him feeling as humble and lowly as one of those jars. But God showed him how valuable he was and he spoke these very wise words……
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Paul knew where his strength was, I forgot for awhile. A few weeks ago out of the blue I thought of a song that I sang years ago. I had totally forgotten about it, but as I remembered it tears sprang to my eyes. That particular time, life was simpler (or maybe it just seemed so)……I was young and life was not so complicated. I had yielded myself to God and I saw His power work through me in a way that I never forgot.While I was thinking of that song a beautiful image came to my mind, an image of a crystal pitcher with clear water being poured into it. I have wondered about it ever since. Then this morning I read this:

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Revelation 22:1 

I think He was trying to tell me that He sees me as that crystal pitcher filling with the water of life……His life. Most days I feel just like that little clay jar, humble, weak and scarred; yet He has poured His pure Spirit inside of me and even now is turning me into that Waterford crystal vase, sparkling with His life, reflecting His light for all to see. He sees me as the finished product already and wants me to see myself that way too!

This is the comfort I bring today…….”For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

If Paul can carry on right in the thick of the battle, I can surely carry on when the things I am worried about haven’t even happened yet!

Faith takes over…….

Sometimes the words aren’t there, but the gratefulness still is.
Sometimes faith has to take over when you have momentarily misplaced hope.
Sometimes you have to be reminded that God is still God, and that
everything is going to be okay.

And things are still very good indeed, it is your mind that is
temporarily looking at things askew. Temporarily is the key.
Because things always turn around, I know that for a fact.

I am so thankful for those in my life that have surrounded me over the years,
when I have felt like this, come alongside and believed with me…..

Yes, it will be okay.

There are many more reasons for praise than for despair.
You start counting, and before you know it,
you are restored, I am restored.

Thank you to all of you……….you know who you are.
This post is dedicated to you today.

sun through clouds, voices of hope, hands grabbing mine, prayers sent with my name on them, smiling eyes over lunch, beautiful songs that leave you breathless, God in the silence listening always, listening, dawn breaking inside and knowing where it is coming from, blogger friends, friends old and new, memories that bring smiles, laughter in the midst of tears…….#609-621

The LORD is gracious and righteous;
our God is full of compassion.
The LORD protects the unwary;
when I was brought low, he saved me. Psalm 116:4,5

holy experience

photos: google images