Train Trips

I will tell you a funny story about the sleeper car.  In 2010 my Peruvian friend Constantina and I took the train from Galesburg to Chicago and then Chicago to DC.  When I bought the ticket on-line I saw a ridiculously low price for the sleeper train so I bought it.  Well, it turned out that it was only from Galesburg to Chicago, all in the afternoon.  I was so ignorant that I argued with the conductor who was putting us on the train when we changed in Chicago, but finally had to admit that I did not have a ticket for the sleeper.

I am by nature, I think, a “Pollyanna.”  (Do you know what that means?)  By that short experience in the sleeper car, I saw that it would not have been the best thing for us.  The little “bedroom” was so small that Constantina would have had claustrophobia.  And if she did sleep, I would not have been able to sleep, because she snores.  The hostess did not have much to do so she let us sit in one of the luxury rooms upstairs and that was a nice experience…it would be an OK way to travel if I had that much money.
However, I learned that the coach car has very interesting passengers….like, for instance retired school teachers making their first trip to Washington.  And a postal employee from California wanting to see the east coast, and a book author who was telling about some small endangered  animal in New Mexico that she had written a book about.  (I didn’t even talk to her; I just overheard her talking to the people across her table).  Oh, yes…and I also don’t take very much food because part of the fun is eating in the snack car, and one time I even paid the price to eat in the dining car, a fun experience also.
I have ridden in sleeper cars in Europe where the price is more reasonable.  Glenn and I rode from Mannheim, Germany, to Thessaloniki, Greece, when our kids lived there.  And Rebecca and I rode from Moscow to St. Petersburg on my first trip to Russia.

Jesus prayed for me

Shortly before his arrest, Jesus prayed, “now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  (John 17)  During this Christmas season I have been remembering Jesus the man, as well as remembering the baby in the manger.  In this same prayer, Jesus prayed for himself, for his disciples, and for everyone who would believe in him through the testimony of the disciples.  He prayed for me…and for you, if you believe in him through the testimony of his disciples.

False Prophets: Compassion or Criticism

No, the world did not come to an end last Saturday.  I didn’t think it would.

I still believe that “no one knows the day or the hour”

But I would be careful about sarcastic criticism of false prophets. There are surely honest seekers among them.  Most of their false conclusions have come from trying to interpret the books of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament.  Perhaps there are scholars who can accurately separate the literal from the figurative language in those books.  I cannot.

I trust in the historical reliability of the New Testament.

If you trust the media or a certain school of theology or philosophy, you may doubt or even scoff at that statement.

But let me tell you where it leads me:

In Jesus’ prayer recorded in John 17, he said,

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you,  the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

I know Jesus through the testimony of his disciples.  I trust the history and the prophecy in the Old Testament because Jesus did.  Many times he quoted from the Scriptures, and even said that the Scriptures cannot be broken.

If and how and when this world comes to an end, I just want whatever it is that the Creator of the universe has planned for those who believe and obey Jesus.

Serious Joy

January 27, 2011

This morning I awoke from a dream that affected my emotions, but at first I had only hazy, flimsy scenes in my retrievable memory.  I lay there quietly, consciously reigning in my thoughts until I remembered being in a large city in a vaguely familiar sector.  Perhaps I was there to visit a small church, or a small group gathering in a home.

When it was time to leave, I suddenly realized that I did not know how to return to the place where I was staying.  A girlfriend from the past joined me.  First she tried to give me directions, but she saw that I could not retain them in my mind, so she either went with me, or found someone else who was going that way.

The rest of the dream is lost, except that with the friend who accompanied me we had other city adventures.  I cannot identify her except that she seemed to be a composite of several of my close friends of the past.

As I was leaving the dream and coming into a more active mental state, my emotions were still telling me that there was something I wanted to grasp to give me resolution or a sense of completion before I left the alpha dream mode.

I didn’t expect a dream like Pharaoh’s predicting the seven good years and seven years of famine, nor of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who was warned in a dream to take the infant Jesus to Egypt.  But I wanted to do something with the dream before I got out of bed, because I knew that then the gossamer vestiges of the dream would disappear completely.

A few thoughts came trickling back, so I sat up to get the notebook and pen from the bedside desk.  I glanced at the clock and noticed that the numbers on the clock said exactly 6:33—“Seek ye first the kingdom of God…”

And I remembered my over-riding desire for this present noisy world.  Often I want to put my fingers in my ears and SCREAM , “ Oh, please retire to quiet places and be one of the disciples of Jesus.”

I have never been to Israel, but an experience I would love to have joined would have been to walk from Galilee to Jerusalem with Jesus and his disciples and the women who accompanied him, the ones that Luke mentions in his biography of Jesus.

To be just plain people, friends of Jesus, walking along between the villages, sleeping—where?  Did they have tents, or sleep in the open on pallets, or enjoy the hospitality of homes along the way?  Surely Jesus was teaching as they walked, and listening to him would have been a memorable experience, but I like to imagine the common every day scenes—the conversations, the camaraderie, the sweet fellowship of being with loving friends and family in the open air.

The camping enthusiasm of my maternal grandmother was lost in my generation in my family.  The circumstances were different, of course, but, mostly, camping did not seem to have been a part of my father’s background.

The experience came to me on my honeymoon.  My husband had brought his grandfather’s old tent, a newer borrowed camp stove, and a double sleeping bag for our trip from Iowa to his home in California.  I fell into camping like a fish back in the water.

What a contrast to the flat visual and audio world and bangy music of the present generation!  I want time and places to smell the roses, breathe the fresh air, look at the clouds.

And as I thought about the contrast, a seemingly contradictory phrase came to mind—serious joy—

Serious Joy…

Back again in my memories, this time not to my childhood or my honeymoon, but to the year 1957 when our small church in the Northeast was hosting a college professor and a team of students who reached out into the community to meet our neighbors and invite them to some special evening meetings.

Each morning I joined the group for their devotional time of singing and prayer.  One day they sang a hymn unknown to me—Hail Morning Known Among the Blest.

The words, written by Ralph Wardlow in 1803, describe the weekly meetings of the people of God.  The 5^th verse says:

“God’s goodness let us bear in mind,

Who to His saints this day is given

For rest and serious joy designed,

To fit us for the bliss of heaven”

I don’t remember singing that hymn in church…ever, but as the professor stopped to call the attention of the students to that one phrase, it was embedded in my heart to remain for all my life.

Serious joy—

How expressive of the life and work of Jesus.  In Isaiah’s prophecy he was called a “man of sorrows”—and he was.  But the author of the book of Hebrews wrote that he was the one, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross.”  Several times in Jesus’ last words to his disciples he spoke of “his joy” and in his prayer for them he said, “I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”

A “man of sorrows” with “his joy”—what better description could there be for “serious joy.”

In Bible times God used dreams to reach his people with things they needed to know and do.  How much and in what ways he does that today is not understood in the same way by all believers—but I was deeply touched today, and I want to say to this noisy world—“Oh, please retire to quiet places to listen to Jesus, to know him, and through him know our Father in heaven.”

My Mother’s Art

When I was very young I saw my mother’s tubes of oil paint and her unfinished correspondence art lessons one day when she was cleaning out her closet.  But I never saw her use them.  She used her talents in other ways.  She did the story of the three bears for me in water colors on cardboard from cereal boxes.  She made delightful stuffed animals.  She made beautiful visual aids for Sunday School classes.  She taught crafts to kids in our small town and at a Christian camp.  She even did a kind of art my practical father understood — she canned applesauce, string beans, cherries, peaches, even meat and other good things, and lined them up in colorful rows on shelves in the basement.  And she helped Aunt Pearl hang wallpaper for the townspeople.

She did get to take a few painting classes and painted a picture of my daughter’s rag doll before cancer ended her life too early, at the age of 55.  And like the story in a children’s book I have read, I, too, have often entertained the childlike fantasy that my mother helps paint the glorious sunrises, sunsets and wispy cloud formations I admire in the sky.

New Every Morning

“…his compassions they fail not.  They are new every morning:…”

Those words are the confident words that Jeremiah wrote right in the middle of the pessimistic book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible.

“They are new every morning” takes on a different meaning at my stage of life.  Did I do that yesterday?  Did I already answer that letter, or have I been composing it in my mind so often that it seems like I wrote it?  Did I unplug the hotplate before I left the house? (One of the two burners has the fault of turning itself on and off all day long if I don’t pull the plug).  Do I have my cell phone?  While walking down the hill to our mailbox, “did I bring the letters I intended to mail?”

I have lists and protective habits that help.  I have sticky notes to put on the door, if I remember.  I turn the thyroid extract pill bottle upside down and put it at the back of the counter after I’ve taken my pill.  I move it to the front at night before I go to bed.  And I think I have forgotten that medication only one time, when I forgot to take it with me when spending the night in my brother’s vacation condo in Solana Beach.  For years I have kept a list of letters I mail, but I don’t always remember to write the names down.  Writing letters is one of my very favorite hobbies.  I wonder how many people have received two copies of my newsletter this year.  Not many, because I haven’t sent out very many.  But it may be about to happen.

A Favorite Hymn – “Lord Speak to Me”

This was one of Glenn’s favorites:

1. Lord Speak to Me that I may speak     in living echos of Thy tone;

As Thou has sought, so let me seek     Thine erring children, lost and lone.

2. O strengthen me, that while I stand    Firm on the Rock and strong in Thee,

I may stretch out a loving hand    To wrestlers with the troubled sea.

3. O teach me Lord, that I may teach    The precious things Thou dost impart;

And wing my words that they may reach   The hidden depths of many a heart.

4. O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord,   Until my very heart o’erflow:

In kindling tho’t and glowing word,  Thy love to tell, Thy praise to share.

These words were written by Frances Ridley Havergal in 1872.  I like to imagine the historical background at the time of the writing of a hymn.  I read a short biography of Miss Havergal’s life in the book “101 More Hymn Stories” by Kenneth W. Osbeck.  She lived in England, at the same time Fanny Crosby was writing hymns in America.  Although the two never met, each was an ardent admirer of the other.

I know the thoughts in this hymn are an expression of Glenn’s heart.  Once when he was asked how he wanted to be remembered he said,  “By a pair of worn out shoes and a Bible.”  And today I am especially remembering little Peter Glenn, who is with his Grandpa in heaven.  One time when the children and I were having a devotional, 6-year-old Peter sighed and said, “I wish we could get some people here who don’t know anything about God so we could tell them about him….

The Right Step at the Right Time

Last year, I finally bought a small, inexpensive wall thermometer, so I could keep better control of the heat in my apartment.  I hung it by a light switch near the door between my two rooms.  It is a flimsy thing with a key-hole shaped opening that I hooked over a finish nail I pounded in the wall.

But often, as I walked through the door and reached around to turn on the light, my hand caught the thermometer and left it crooked, or even on the floor.  Yesterday, it went flying across the room, and that was the last straw.

I knew I must do something about it!

What would work?  Ah, a glob of wall tack stuck inside the hollow frame!

(Mind working…) I used to have a small package of that stuff, purchased about seven years ago when I was teaching a children’s class at church.  Many times I’ve run across that package and held it my hand with thoughts of passing it on to someone who could use it.  Do I still have it?

I went to the catch-all drawer where I had last seen it.  I found it there, way in the back, and with a few deft movements of my fingers the ball of tacky was formed and stuck to the inside of the frame.  I returned the thermometer to its place, and it hasn’t moved since, not even a millimeter.

Is there a lesson here?

Today, this being the Christmas season, I’m thinking of relationships. Our connections with one another trump almost every other good thing in our lives…just consider the popularity of the social sites on the internet.

Of extreme importance are our connection with our Creator, and our connections with important people in our lives. Sometimes those connections can be improved, if not healed, with the right small step at the right time.  I know relationships cannot be fixed with a piece of sticky stuff.   But sometimes a small step can bring a healthy helping of the peace that passes understanding.

Some times an actual connection with the other party is not possible, but I’ve never forgotten what my Aunt Lois told me about how she received healing from a conflict that was troubling her heart, even after the other person had died.  In the depths of her heart she said, “Wherever you are, I forgive you.”

Romans 12:18 – “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

 



Autumn in Southern California

A Word Picture

I sit in my recliner on a dreary day—

A gray television box sits quietly on one side of the sliding glass doors across the room.

When I shift my eyes slightly to the right, I see my picture.  I see a glorious, red–redder than yesterday–liquidambar tree towering above the houses in the next block.  I noticed it in an earlier stage when I took my walk about ten days ago, before I was grounded by a cold and cough.

Now I recover in my recliner with one of God’s simple gifts calming my soul.  Can you imagine the depth of my picture, with the curve of the green-leaved guava tree to one side and the leaves on the lower grapefruit tree nearby, standing across our yard about twenty feet away?  The double lines for the lower frame are formed by the table and bench of the aqua-colored metal picnic table sitting on the grass.  No, there are three lines.  The edge of the patio tiles is parallel to the picnic table lines.  And nearer still, the half-drawn Venetian blind forms the left side, the white bricks on the wall of the arch are fine for the right side, even though they curve over the top of my picture.

I don’t own a camera, nor have I learned to draw or paint quickly, but I am not sure if either of those genres could capture the scene I am seeing.

 

Recycling extreme?

I just turned a small paper bag wrong side out.  It’s the one my cough medicine came in.  I might want to use it as a lunch bag and didn’t want to have the pharmacy data on the outside.

While in the process, I was thinking that this does not seem a normal thing to do.  Is this what happens to old people like me?