Treasured Possession

You yourselves have seen what I did…how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.  Now if you obey me fully…you will be my treasured possession.  Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me…               from Exodus 19:4-6

Although these verses were spoken to the Israelites through Moses, I believe they apply equally to those who believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord.  I have snatched phrases out of the passage to increase the impact of this message for believers.

As I look back over 74 years of life, I have seen what he has done!  He has protected and preserved me.  He brought me to Himself.  At an early age, He spoke to my heart and mind, so that even as a child, I recognized that my need for Him was deep and undeniable.

Although I have at times struggled to obey Him, full obedience has always been my heart’s desire.  He recognizes my frailty…He remembers that we are dust and knows our hearts.  I am His treasured possession.  He purchased me at great price.  I am amazed that He would pay such a price, and that He values me.

Everything belongs to him.  Every life exists at His will.  Every breath of every person on earth is granted by Him.  He causes breath to cease on His timetable.  This applies to the most beautiful, the most talented, the most intelligent, the wealthiest, the most athletic, the most admired by others…and to the lowliest. 

I want to be for Him, and I believe that is what He has promised.

Making a Wastepaper Can

In the fall of 1964, I was a student at a hospital-based nursing program in a Chicago suburb.  It was my senior year.  One of the patients I cared for was a real character.  His diagnosis was “fever of unknown origin,” but there was clearly a secondary diagnosis of dementia.  He said and did things which made no sense at all.  I’m not sure the poor old guy had any idea where he was.  I never knew what they decided regarding the fever, and he was discharged.

A few weeks later, I was scheduled to spend six weeks at Cook County Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Hinsdale, Illinois, to learn about infectious disease as part of my nursing education. We all looked forward to that affiliation, because the sanitarium was in a lovely rural setting.  The grounds were beautiful, and the food served in the cafeteria was a cut above normal institutional food.    

One of my assignments was on a ward where things were pretty relaxed.  The patients did not have positive sputum cultures, and most were up and around their rooms and dressed in street clothes.  No isolation techniques were required, and there were no critically ill or surgical patients.  Lo and behold, my senile old friend was a patient there.  Apparently, they had determined that the unknown origin of his fever was tuberculosis.

In the room across the hall from senile Old Guy were two men in their 30s who had been partners in an undertaking business.  They had both contracted tuberculosis from a corpse with which they had not exercised proper precautions.  They were jokesters and a bit flirtatious with nurses.

One day I walked into the elderly man’s room and found him sitting in his chair.  He had the wastepaper can from his room between his knees, and he was carefully tearing small strips of newspaper and folding them over the edge of the can.  I asked him what he was doing.  He replied, “I’m making a wastepaper can.”

Next, I went in the room across the hall to check on the two guys over there.  They were craning their necks trying to see into Old Guy’s room and figure out what he was up to.

 “What is he doing?!” they asked.  

With a smile and a shrug, I explained that he said he was making a wastepaper can. 

They didn’t need anything, so I went on about my business with other patients.

Sometime later, I entered the room with the two careless undertakers again.  They were both sitting in their easy chairs with their wastebaskets between their knees, tearing strips of paper and folding them over the edge of the cans.

They looked at me gleefully.

I was speechless.  I hooted with laughter, spun around and left the room unable to say a word.

Raucous laughter from their room could be heard down the hall.

I guess when one is confined to a hospital for weeks or months, there are a variety of ways to amuse oneself and pass the time.

Provision

Here are the fire and the wood,

But where is the lamb?

I look to my father who tenderly speaks:

God Himself will provide the Lamb.

I carry the fire of guilt and the burden of sin,

Where is the sacrificial lamb of atonement?

I trudge upward with the heavy load,

Must I lose my life on the mountaintop altar?

It would not be an undeserved death,

My sin condemns me and demands payment.

I look to my father who tenderly speaks:

God Himself will provide.

Centuries pass with man heaping sin upon sin.

When will the crooked me made straight?

I look to my father who speaks through his tears:

I myself have provided.  My Son is the lamb.

God himself will provide the lamb.

God himself will provide.

God himself.

The Name of Jesus

What happens when you speak the name?  I suppose that depends on why you are speaking it, and the attitude of your heart. 

Several years ago, I stood between people speaking the name of Jesus for contrasting reasons. 

My husband’s family’s business, which manufactured drip irrigation, had begun in a converted greenhouse behind his parents’ home.  At a point where the business was moving to a new location, one machine was still in the structure behind his parents’ house, and one employee was working there alone with the shift foreman coming there to check on him during the evening.  The guy, for reasons beyond understanding, reach up under the guard meant to prevent entrapment and got his hand caught in the mechanism of the machine.  My mother-in-law was home alone and heard him crying out for help.  She called my husband, and as it happened, my mother was at our home that evening and could stay with our children, so that I could go with my husband. 

My husband called the factory manager who knew how to release the machine, but until he and the ambulance arrived, the man’s hand remain wedged in the machine.  I was standing behind him, and my mother-in-law was behind me.  The man repeatedly said, “Jesus, Jesus!”  He was NOT calling out for help from Jesus.  He was “using” the name.  My mother-in-law was whispering “Jesus, Jesus” prayerfully.  The contrast was striking.

I too have called out “the name” in such distress that I could not even pronounce it clearly.  Almost 20 years ago, I was awakened from a sound sleep having an allergic reaction to a prescribed medication I had taken at bedtime.  I had been on the medication for months without any difficulty.  But, this night my entire body turned bright red, and I had difficulty breathing.  I thought my mouth was dry and asked my husband to get me a drink of water.  Actually, my tongue had swollen and was filling my whole mouth.  Eventually it protruded from my mouth, and my husband and a first responder said it was blue.  

At some point, I realized just how much trouble I was in, and unable to speak clearly, I cried out, “Hep me. Theethus!”

An EMT arrived and prepared to put in an IV, but before the needle was in, I felt my tongue shrink back to its proper size.  At that point, I had been given some oxygen, but no other treatment.  My only explanation for the abrupt turn around in my condition is that Jesus understood my appeal even though I couldn’t speak his name clearly.

A Christian friend, who lived across the street from us at the time, happened to be up late and saw the ambulance at our house.  She called and asked my husband what was going on.  She told me later, that she got right down on the floor before the Lord and pleaded with him for my life.  My husband had awakened our son, who was a teen at the time, so that he could open the door for the emergency workers and direct them upstairs.  Our son later said that he had been praying as he waited and paced.

What happens when we speak the name of Jesus?

The name is sweet to the ear of a believer.

The name brings comfort.

How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in the believer’s ear.

It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds. And drives away his fear.

What happens when we call upon the name of Jesus?

The name is powerful!

Philippians 2:10-11  That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Memories before Birth

I have mentioned this topic before, but in view of the recent change in the New York state law regarding late abortions, I want to expand on it.

Both of my biological children claimed to have memories of being in my womb.  Both expressed these ideas between the ages of 2 and 3, and then apparently forgot them as they got older.

My daughter and I were looking at a magazine and talking about the pictures when she was about 2 and ½.  We came to a picture of a baby in the womb.  I said, “This is a picture of a baby in the mommy’s tummy.  The baby floats in water in there.”  She replied, “I remember.  I scratched my fingers to get out.”

This was startling, because late in the pregnancy, I often felt a fluttering sensation as though her fingers were tickling me from the inside.  I had always imagined that if the bag of waters broke, it would be near the opening of the cervix, but one night as I was trying to go to sleep, I felt a popping sensation on the right side of my abdomen in the area in which I normally felt the moving fingers.  I felt the warm liquid flowing down my right side toward the cervical opening.  I grabbed a towel and stuffed it between my legs just in time to catch the gush of the amniotic fluid.  Did she really remember this?

In my son’s case, there was no picture which triggered his comment.  One day, he marched into the kitchen and out of the clear blue declared, “When I was in your tummy, I could not hear your voice, but music fell on my head.”  I probably should have asked a follow-up question, but I was so surprised that I just stood there trying to wrap my head around his statement.  He did not describe this sensation in a way that made it likely he had heard a comment by someone else.  It was as though, he had felt a sensation in the womb, which he now recognized we call “music.”  During the pregnancy, I often sat down at the piano and played and sang.  I continued to sing in a choir and sing solos during that time.  He apparently could not hear distinct words, but he must have felt vibrations which were pleasant.

Suppose instead of pleasant vibrations, a child feels an assault that terminates his life?

I have read the argument that a woman should not be made to continue a pregnancy that is discovered not to be viable in the last trimester.  Just because it is not viable, does not mean the child cannot feel pain!  If my daughter knew she was trying to get out, and my son recognized music, might not any child feel agony as life is snuffed out?  Wouldn’t it be better, if the pregnancy was allowed to continue…perhaps with an early delivery?  If the baby didn’t start to breathe, his end would at least be peaceful.  If he lived briefly, he could be held and know love for a brief time. 

There is always the possibility that doctors are wrong too.  I know of a beautiful and intelligent college graduate, whose mother was advised to consider abortion.  I was over 40 when pregnant with my son.  I had to repeatedly refuse amniocentesis and was forced into genetic counselling.  The medical group said they had to be sure I wanted to continue the pregnancy.  Conditions which are treatable prenatally are found through ultrasound which I did not refuse.  The only reason for amniocentesis would have been if I was considering an abortion.  The pregnancy which was by medical personnel considered to be “high risk” due to “advanced maternal age” resulted in an exceptional son.  Doctors are not gods.  They are not always right.

How I wish music fell on every unborn baby’s head and with it the blessing of a mother’s love.  Every child may not be able to verbalize it before the memory is forgotten, but every child may be able to feel it.  Why run the risk of inflicting terror on a helpless baby who is your own flesh and blood?

Thoughts on "My Money"

I was reminded this morning in church of an experience I had over 50 years ago.  One of the assistant pastors announced an upcoming class on Financial Freedom, and it made me think how my attitude about money has developed over the years.

When I was in nursing school in the Chicago area, we could earn money by working on our days off.  We were classified as “nursing technicians.”  I don’t remember what the pay rate was, but in those days, I was dirt poor and trying to save money for my intent of going to college after nursing school.  Of course, nurses do have to work on Sundays, but I made it a practice never to work on a Sunday if I had a choice in the matter.  So, I might work on Saturday when I had the weekend off, but not on Sunday.  I would go to church faithfully on Sundays.  I got to church on a bus that the church sent around to local schools/colleges to gather up students who didn’t have cars.

After working as a nursing technician one busy Saturday, I went to the supervisor’s office to sign out.  She pretty much begged me to work again on Sunday.  She said they were going to be very short-staffed, and she would really appreciate it if I could work again the next day.  I breathed a quick prayer and said, “yes.”  As I thought about this later discussing it with the Lord, I decided that the Lord was asking me to give the pay for that day to him. 

At the time, my church was trying to raise funds to replace the bus that picked us up.  It was developing problems, and a new one needed to be purchased.  A well-to-do member of the church had agreed that if the congregation could raise half the needed amount, he would donate the other half.  When I got my paycheck for working that Sunday, I donated that day’s pay to the bus fund.

Several days later, the pastor of the church contacted me.  He thought I should know that it was my donation that tipped the amount over the halfway point and triggered the matching donation.  Giving that amount could have been viewed as a sacrifice on my part, but it honestly was not hard to do.  I felt very comfortable with the notion that God was going to provide for me.  He allowed me the delight of seeing that my contribution, though relatively small, was significant.

I have never argued with God about my money.  In fact, I don’t view it as “my money.”  Everything I have comes from his kind hand.  I am allowed to hold it temporarily and use it for him.  Having this underlying philosophy changes one’s attitude toward personal finances.  It eliminates anxiety and promotes a grateful heart.  If both members of a couple have this attitude, it totally avoids conflict over money.  I have seen His provision for me and us over and over.  He has met my needs and then some!

Looking to 2019

It must be miserable to live with one’s emotions being driven by the political scene or material well-being or even human relationships.  So many people in this world….even in our country….are suffering.  Some of that is needless.

Do I like every decision that our president has made…no.  Do I approve of everything congress has done…no.  Am I concerned about the “hot spots” in the world that could flare up into open conflict…sure…but I refuse to obsess over any of these.

Do I feel badly about children going hungry…yes….but I recognize I can only do what I can do.  I will try to be responsive to the needs that God puts in front of me.

Are there frightening possibilities beyond my control?  Well, let’s see…there are volcanoes and earthquakes and tornadoes and ice storms, and absolutely nothing I can do about any of them.  There are crazy people running around with guns.  Will I encounter one of them?

Not everyone likes me.  I have been gossiped about.  I have been left out of things I would have enjoyed attending.  As I have aged, certain of my prior skills have been diminished to the point that I can no longer do those things I once enjoyed.  Gee…maybe I should let myself sink into a slough of despond over no longer being included in these joyful activities.

Wait!  There are people in this world right now who are actually suffering!  There are Christians in countries where great oppression occurs daily.  Some are physically in danger.  They may be tortured or killed.  There are people all over the world…even some I know...suffering with disease that inflicts physical and emotional pain.  How dare I have a pity party? 

A new year is coming.  What will it bring?  I have no clue, but if I go on living, it can be guaranteed that some of what happens in 2019 will be “good” and some of it will be “bad.”  That is, by human standards some things will bring me joy and others will bring me grief.  But God is good all the time, and it is his intent to mold me into the person He wants me to be.  I will not be a lump of clay yelling at the potter, because I don’t like the way he is shaping me.  It is my intent to embrace the pain of being alive.

The outward man does indeed suffer wear and tear, but every day the inward man receives fresh strength.  These little troubles (which are really so transitory) are winning for us a permanent, glorious and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain.  For we are looking all the time not at the visible things but at the invisible.  The visible things are transitory; it is the invisible things that are really permanent. 

(from II Corinthians chapter 4, Phillips translation)