All Things New

A Moment's Notice: 

Striving for Awareness of Each Moment, 

Reflecting on Events of the Moment

Our church’s worship leader and his family said farewell to our congregation Sunday.  He’s moving on from his unpaid position at our church to follow his long-held dream of becoming a minister: this week he starts serving his new church family as a youth pastor.

Dreams don’t come cheap or easy.  The security and benefits of a full-time job were set aside, and the family will have to enter a new circle of fellowship.  Still, this couple and their children seem eager to start this adventure, confident that they’re following a path illuminated by their Lord.

The title for this entry is taken from the sermon our now former worship leader delivered yesterday.  The phrase comes from Revelation 21:5:  “Behold, I am making all things new.”  The Bible passage describes Christ’s return and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.  But if Jesus exists inside and outside of time, the same yesterday, today, and forever, can He make things new now?  

I think so.  The real question is, am I willing to be remade?  This blog is my modest effort at a new thing, but it can only be a good thing, a true thing, a thing that rises above my limitations if I remain open to following the One Who knows me best.

I hope I never become too old to become new.

Lost and Found

A Moment's Notice: 

Striving for Awareness of Each Moment, 

Reflecting on Events of the Moment

 

This morning I went through my usual go-to-work checklist.  Bottle of water: check.  Watch: Check. Earrings: Check.  Engagement ring: -----.  Engagement ring?  Engagement ring?!

Every night I slip off my rings and put them to bed: Right hand ring in the oval jewelry box, engagement ring in the tiny heart shaped ring holder.  As a creature of habit I do this without thinking, one of a long list of auto-pilot activities I engage in daily.

But the auto-pilot must have been on strike last night, because this morning the ring was not in its proper place.  I’d like to say that I’m always ready to walk out the door at least 15 minutes early each and every morning, waiting expectantly on the bench by our back door, meditating on the glory of the new day.  I’d like to say that.

Reality: I require as many minutes as I’ve allotted myself every single day.  If I wake up at 7 a.m. I can be ready by 8.  If I wake up at 5 a.m. I can be ready by 8.

After all, there are so many decisions to be made.  The granola bar or the yogurt or both?  Dare I have chips today?  The green shirt with the blue pants and floral jacket?  The green shirt with the white sweater?  The green shirt is horrid.  Let’s go with the pink blouse…

This is why I will never get a tattoo.

I digress.  The point is I discovered my ring was AWOL with approximately 4 and ½ minutes to spare.  I dumped out the oval jewelry box, looked under a larger box on my dresser where things have been known to hide, ran into the kitchen, ran back to the bedroom, time to go.  

I drove to the school where I was scheduled to work as a substitute without striking any mailboxes or small animals.  I talked to myself throughout the trip, comforted by the fact that if any other motorists noticed me they’d assume I was talking to someone on my cell phone.

I conducted a self-interrogation.  I had worked at the same school the day before in the office.  I took off the ring yesterday morning to apply some hand cream; had I put it back on?   Wouldn’t I have noticed it on the desk when I left at the end of the day?  Wouldn’t I have felt the ring’s absence when I applied hand sanitizer?  Did the other secretaries notice me wearing it?  

As desperate as I was to find my ring I was reluctant to ask my friends about it.  The noble reason is that I didn’t want to worry them, sweet ladies that they are.  The truth is that I thought my predicament made me appear silly and scatterbrained, and the notion of admitting a mistake is anathema to a recovering perfectionist.  

I managed to lock my pride in the glove compartment and asked about the ring as soon as I arrived at school.  The other secretaries immediately started looking on, under, and around the desk where I had worked the day before.  They offered sympathy and search suggestions simultaneously.  In addition, my classroom aide peppered me with ideas throughout the morning.  The team on “CSI” is not as determined as a group of women in search of a missing engagement ring.

“Did it fall in a drawer?”

“Did it fall in the file cabinet?”

“Did you look in the trash can, all the way to the bottom?”

“Dump out your purse; you might have dropped it in there.”

Had I not worked with kindergarteners I might have flown apart like a white dandelion.  Being with them forced me to set aside my rising panic and focus on the sounds made by “ch,” “sh,” and “th.”  I also enjoyed some sunshine on the playground and read a book filled with finger plays.  It’s hard to be crazed when singing “This Old Man.”

My assignment was for the morning only, and as I left at lunchtime my cadre of searchers reassured me that the ring was somewhere in my house and asked me to call if I found it.  I had already decided I wouldn’t call if I didn’t.  I’d be in a corner seeking solace with a box of Raisinets.

When I returned home I dropped my purse and tote bag at the door and renewed my search.  I was not optimistic; I expected I’d only find confirmation of my carelessness. 

I retraced the steps taken that morning.  On the kitchen island? No. Oval jewelry box?  No.  Under the hexagonal box?  No.  Hmmm, didn’t check this little ceramic box before.  Yes!

So, what was lost has now been found.  I resolve to apply hand lotion only in the security of my bathroom, to give myself more than 4 and ½ minutes to spare in the morning, and to thank my quartet of detectives profusely.

Well, one of out of three ain’t bad.

 

The Three-Minute Novel

A Moment's Notice: 

Striving for Awareness of Each Moment, 

Reflecting on Events of the Moment

When the ratio of wrinkled blouses to pressed ones becomes shamelessly close I finally pull my iron off the wire shelf in my bedroom.  I unfold the ironing board with its characteristic squeal (which all such boards possess---test this in any hotel room) and set to work.

I usually watch TV as I iron, putting my hands on auto-pilot as my conscious brain unravels a mystery on “NCIS” or figures out how the boy will get the girl (or vice versa) at the end of a Hallmark Channel movie.  Straighten out the collar, back and forth then back again, move on to one sleeve. 

This morning I had time to iron only the blouse I planned to wear today so I didn’t haul the iron and board in front of the TV; I listened to my iPod instead.  And so I stumbled upon the concept of the three-minute novel.

Allison Krauss and Union Station told me a story of love finally found and soon to be lost.  Ms. Krauss gave voice to a woman who begs her beloved to stay---hasn’t she built her world around him?  Can’t he see he is the foundation of her world, even if she doesn’t occupy that same place in his heart?

At least the heartbroken protagonist of that tale lived to tell it, even if not happily ever after.  The narrator of Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” wasn’t so lucky.  Another love story, this one unrequited from beginning to end---that bewitching Felina didn’t even seem to care that the cowboy loved her with all of his heart.  He loved her so much that he was compelled to shoot a handsome stranger for flirting with her.  The storyteller then describes his frantic escape on a stolen horse and his equally frantic return to Felina, a return driven by his overwhelming ardor.

Our cowboy is killed of course; whether it’s for the murder of the handsome stranger or the theft of the horse is not clear.  But just when I’m ready to dismiss Felina as a cold-hearted wench she rushes to him and cradles him as his arms as he dies.  At least he did get one kiss out of the whole mess.

One sleeve then another.  Now on to the front , then turn the shirt around to the back, and finally complete the rotation.  The wrinkles disappear beneath the iron’s steaming sole plate as the singers weave their stories.

There is much to be said for the novelists I’ve enjoyed in my youth and adulthood: Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bernard Malamud, Justin Cronin, and Susan Howatch, to name a few.  But they have tens of thousands of words to develop characters, advance a plot, and put together a seamless conclusion.  Songwriters have a few dozen at most, but that’s more than enough for the most talented among them.

My favorite song of the moment is “Something That We Do,” recorded by Clint Black and written by Black and Skip Ewing.  It doesn’t lend itself to mental movie making as “El Paso” does but I think it does give an accurate definition of love in the real world, and that’s no small thing.

What is your favorite song?  Is it a novel or a poem?  Let me know in the “Comments” box below.

Finding the Light Amid the Darkness

A Moment's Notice: Striving for Awareness of Each Moment, Reflecting on Events of the Moment

Once again our routines have been split wide open with news of violence committed by persons unknown for reasons inconceivable. Lives come to an unnatural end every day, but those losses escape our notice in their one-by-one occurrence. The massacres, though, linger in our collective memory, identified by name: Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook, and now the Boston Bombing.

You’re getting ready for work, making a meal, driving to an appointment or walking through an airport terminal when you hear the first news reports of sudden death and horrific injury. We want the world to make sense, to be fair, to work in an orderly way. Death visited on children in a day care center or school, on college students in a French class, and on runners and spectators at the finish line of a marathon unsettles us by its randomness. The innocence of the victims forces us to face the fact that their fate could have been our own.

In the coming days we may learn who planted the bombs in Boston and why. We may not. Questions will hover over those who lost friends and family members as well as the victims who must cope with life-altering injuries. All Americans will wonder how secure a free society can really be. 

I can’t offer shortcuts through the painful journeys ahead for so many, and I don’t have a five-point plan that would stop future terrorist attacks. I have my own questions about the evil abroad in our world, and I don’t expect answers this side of Heaven.
What I do have is a Friend like no other Who weeps beside those who mourn and wraps His loving arms around those who suffer. Jesus Christ stands at the door of the human heart, waiting patiently for an invitation. Once welcomed in He shares the Light that overwhelms the darkness of the world.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:37-39 (NIV)