Kicking and Screaming

True story.  I took my 3 year old granddaughter to Hobby Lobby.  The intent was to buy her some 'good stuff' to occupy her time while her mama convalesced.  I needed to get some shingle clips for my mr man and we walked by the huge display of glass ornaments on our way to the Christmas light section.  She saw all those sparkling figurines and such as 'toys' and decided she was getting out of the cart to play.  
Grandma said "No, you must stay in the cart.  Those aren't toys."  She was getting out anyway, because she could.  I set her down and stated my claim to dominance again.  This produced a series of earsplitting screams.   I told her she must sit in the cart for us to buy the special things.  She began to scream her demands and throw a kicking, accusing, uncontrolled fit.  I'd watched other children do that to the various adults in their lives and I remembered their humiliation and the non-effect their pleas and placations produced, so I felt empowered.  
I told her that if she did not sit down and stop screaming we would leave the store without anything.  Much as I expected, she continued the screaming, kicking fit.  I smiled and nodded and people cleared the path.  I took her out of the cart and put it back in its place when we got to the front.  I carried her screaming out the door.  Suddenly she stopped screaming and began to beg. My reply was "Nope. . . . Too late. . . . Wrong gramma."  
As I put her into her car seat, she informed me that she was just having a bad day.  I smiled and said "Well, we may try this again another day and see if we can have a better day."  She argued on.  I smiled and drove home. 
About halfway home, she said "I'm so sad.  You should take me to McDonalds."  
I had to laugh -it was required.  I reiterated, "Wrong gramma."
This was the first day she and I had ever really spent together.  I've been around her before, but was always so busy that I didn't really have time to interact one on one.  We did stop at Brahms for a few things before going home.  And we did find some things to do at Gramma's house.  We watched movies and she helped feed the fish and the day passed quickly.
The next day after her mother was settled in, I said "Now, I need to go to the store.  Grandpa needs some shingle clips to hang the lights and I need to buy some stuff that we can do while you are here."
She informed me that she was having a much better day and that she would stay in the cart.  It was a fun shopping trip without demands or fits, even when we went through the Christmas section and passed the huge selection of sparkling glass ornaments.  I don't plan on writing a grand-parenting manual any time soon.  I don't think I'm all that, but I have learned some things in life.  Beside the fact that I have raised 5 daughters, I am an observer of success and failure alike.  I'm glad that she is so intelligent.  We had a good time.
But I have learned one thing from it all.  Toddlers and immature people will scream anything to get you to submit to their desires and agenda, no matter how illogical or even harmful.  I have watched them threaten and disrupt, gathering disdain or sympathy until someone stops catering to their irrational behavior.  Sometimes, we must set aside our moment for the greater good and future peace.  Sometimes the answer is so simple it alludes us in the chaos.  The key is to watch, to learn and to listen to a greater voice inside.

Faith and Trust

^{Romans 3:3 NIV}   What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness?

^{John 1: 4 AMP} In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.

⁵ And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it [put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and is unreceptive to it].

Reading in Romans this morning –yes I’ve been stuck here for a very long time, but it is rich and begs comprehension- I wandered off on a side trail, though it is the truth of Paul’s discussion in that book that inspired my thought.

I grew up with parents that loved to camp.  By ‘camp’ I don’t mean a cottage in the woods, or even a pop-up or an RV in a cozy campground.  We did several weekend overnighters and holiday camps throughout the year.  But each summer, my parents would load enough food and equipment in our car, in later years in a panel van, to last our family of 6 two weeks.  We piled in with the dog and drove an hour or two into the rockies.  If it was late, I would crawl up into the window of that old car, put a blanket between me and the window’s cold and sleep mercifully until we reached our destination.

In the early years, we would spread out pallets of quilts under huge old spruce trees after cleaning off the rough dead branches from the lower trunk where the foliage had died off.  The denseness of the tree foliage would protect us from all but the worst rainstorms.  Often my dad would make us a lean to out of an old army tarp that smelled of treated canvas and years of use and storage –a smokey, musty, oily smell that I learned to appreciate somewhat.  This would protect our food prep and storage space from sap and bird droppings and give us a slight bit to huddle under against the frequent rains and occasional sleet.  Much of the living and cooking was done about a carefully crafted firepit.  Sometimes there were large ‘sitting’ rocks in the perimeter. Other times, we would place large old logs ‘round about for sitting.  Here we sang and ate and told and listened to stories until we were tucked in for the night under the trees.  Frequently I dosed off in my daddy’s arms and woke in my warm little nest in the morning.

Most mornings, we’d wake to the smell of breakfast cooking on the fire.  We’d fish or hike and explore during the days.  And then at night we’d have something warm to eat and drink and sit about again recounting the day’s fun and discoveries and then singing and telling stories until it was time to do it all again.

We lived that way for two weeks.  It is hard for my mind to reconcile with the spoiled commercial world that I now occupy.  The most curious part is how totally happy we were with the adventure.  But what has that to do with the issue of faithfulness or light?

Those family outings and sitting about that campfire in the cold Colorado nights had interesting similarities to the life of faith.  I’ll not hit on all of them here, but I will address the issue of interference and of faith vs. fear as it occurred to me this morning during my reading.

One of the most difficult arguments from those who have been wounded or wish to avoid the church and faith in general is that of unfaithfulness on the part of believers –most difficult, because it is most often true.  When you are the youngest in the family, and therefore the smallest, it is easy for others to block you from the warmth and light of the fire pit.  In a crisp Colorado air, where a passing cloud in the daytime can quickly make the warm earth frigid, nights are very cold.  Every bit of warmth is needed.  So just how should we handle people who interfere with our view of and connection to the light?  I don’t suppose they will ever go away –at least not on this earth.

Another issue is that of faith in the shadow of fear.  Camping in the mountains there was much to make you shiver besides the cold.  The wolves could be heard and the cows bawling because a calf had been taken by a wolf, bear, or mountain lion.  I knew calves.  I was smaller than they were.  There were lots of scary stories about.  And even if you ignore the natural predators, it’s a dangerous thing to run into an elk or moose in the dark.  I was taught early the stories that supported the deterring effect fire has on wild life.  My mom had lived for a time in the mountains when she was a girl and she always made sure there was a log smoldering safely in our camp site.  The fire literally never went out.  But when I found myself blocked away from the fire, fear would rage in young my mind.

But even as a young child I knew what to do.  My daddy was tall and he was strong.  He could lift me above the interference and the shadows.  He could put me on his shoulder where I believed I was safe.  Or he could hold me in his arms where his own protective warmth and mass made me know it was alright even if I could not see the light for a bit.

Yet I do understand not everyone has that picture or experience to use in the times when foolishness and evil become barriers to the light of God.  Yet God said he put the truth about himself into his creation.  When the sun is blocked, it remains true.  If immature believers block the light of God, He himself remains true and faithful.  It is not the believer who brings us light, but the Father.  Even when the shadow of the earth brings darkness, the light is faithful.  Even if we don’t really understand, the light is faithful.  And so His children can find his hand in the dark and He will lift them, in good time, to the light.  Faith is a gift; trust is a choice.

The Choice Revolution

People want me to join the whole ‘choice’ revolution: get behind things that I have not only been taught but believe in my spirit are wrong – sin if you will.  There is always someone who comments that their ‘sin’ is no more wrong than other sin such as gossip or judgmental condemnation.  Guess what.  You may offer me a choice of death by drowning, poison, disease, or even falling off a cliff.  But when it’s over, the truth is, the result is death.  If I take an overdose I will probably die or have medical problems the rest of my life.  If I jump off a bridge and live, it will be a physical and emotional disaster, etc, etc.

Spiritually, choosing to sin is destruction or disaster.  Yes, we all have our mistakes, our flaws and our failures, but that is a given.  Choosing to honor a mistake makes it no longer a mistake.  That applies to sin in general.  I choose life and I choose to pray for the redemption of those I love.  I will not choose to honor your sin any more than I choose to honor my own.  They all must pass under the blood of Christ and be washed away.  Choosing to honor sin is like choosing to take poison and expecting to live a normal, happy life and then getting mad at others or at God when you don’t get that result.

So you say I have no right to pass judgment on you.  I could not agree more.  But I do have a right to seek to have good judgment within myself.  And I am required to confess my own sin and not yours.  I am called to pray for and sometimes caution those God has given to me.  Yet you want me to say that ‘sin’ is every person’s private opinion.  I could not disagree more.  The definition of sin is in God’s mind and subject to God’s truth alone.  The law and the bible reveal sin as sin.  We can choose to discard that, but our rejection does not change God’s truth. 

Perhaps if we looked more closely at the reasons and the outcomes of our actions, we would find the definition of sin less confusing.  Perhaps if we seek a true relationship with our God and allow him to have the last word on sin, there will be no confusion at all.  But we all have our ‘want to’ when it comes to sin.  Paul said that a person was blessed if his heart did not condemn him in the freedoms he felt.  That same Paul said there were definite sins and God does not ‘humor’ them.  The wisdom is knowing in your own heart positively what is wrong and what is only a rule.  I think in a few –very few- instances that may be a personal thing. 

The apostles convened and gave this directive under the guidance of the Holy Spirit: abstain from things offered to idols, don’t drink blood, and avoid sexual immorality.  Other than that, we were to follow God with our whole heart and serve our brothers in Christ with humility.  Of course we can argue all day about what those things mean or we can take that as a directive for ourselves and begin to follow Christ.

It is in my nature –even my calling- to warn and caution people.  That does not make me a judgmental person.  Accept your own freedom if it truly is freedom but don’t destroy anyone else for it.  That caution is from the Bible.  If I warned you about traffic conditions, you might ignore me but you would not condemn me for doing that.  If I warned you about a safety issue, the same would be true.  But if I speak a warning about a spiritual issue, I have suddenly set my self as a self-righteous, condemning judge.  Why do that?  Enjoy your own freedom in Christ while you make your calling and chosen status before God certain.  And allow me the same right because sin is sin and grace is grace.