Obey before you Play

       His tiny hand had to reach up to touch the door knob. I'd told him that he could play on the front porch after he picked his lincoln logs up off the floor. He stood with his hand on the doorknob glancing up into the kitchen at me. What a strange puzzled look on his three year old face.

      From where I stood doing the dishes I couldn't see that he hadn't obeyed. Finally, I realized his dilemma. He was counting on Mother to tell him, “Obey before you play.” He felt jared and insecure because he couldn't trust me to correct him, and put boundaries around him.

     When I saw the lincoln logs on the floor I told him that he could not go out until he picked them up. His face showed relief and almost joy as he bounced toward them.

     The world tell us there is no right or wrong. There is no standard to live by. No conscience. As I thought about my son I realized that I, too, felt great joy and relief to know that God gave me rules. It was wonderful to know that I could trust God. What he said is what he meant.
     If I lived a certain way I would have the fruits of the spirit...love, joy, peace. I could count on God to protect me and hedge me in by his rules. I could also trust him that he would give me the desires of my heart. He was consistent in all his ways. His word was a true as the law of gravity.
     Oh, how I love a God who means what he says. It made me smile to realize as His child I was also expected to, “Obey before I play.”

French Fry Fraud

          Coney Island hotdogs are my diet of choice. On a long overdue visit back home I was delighted to find my downtown eatery still intact. It was like walking back into a movie set of my childhood. Same stools. Same booths with Formica tops. I patiently stood in line behind a hippytype. He smiled through a missing tooth and tossed his long gray pony tail around proudly.

Customers at the bar stools observed up close all the smells and creations being mass produced.  Extra onions. Ketchup only.  A dozen to go. The pungent greasy odor from the deep fryer combined with the sauce and onions. People from all walks of life were equal here.

A man in a fancy suit left his booth and I grabbed it quickly. It was like finding an opening at a four star restaurant. Pulling napkins out of the holders I wiped the table clean and stacked the dishes. I smiled at the table like an old friend. Memories were flying. Most Saturdays my sister and I rode the trolley downtown to see a movie and eat Coneys and fries. If we had gum in our mouths it usually ended up stuck under the table.

Instinctively I put my hand under the table and immediately pulled it back. Mine might still be there.  I took a hand wipe from my purse and reminded myself I was eating on the top not the bottom of the table

Lost in my childhood visions I ordered a Coney, fries and a coke in a bottle. When the young waitress dropped my food in front of me and scurried away I was jolted out of my fun thoughts and into the now. What was this? What had they done to my perfect reenactment of my past? I had been betrayed.

Grandma's One Room School

Grandma would tell us stories of her childhood like it happened last week.
"I learned the three R's."Reading 'riting and 'rithmetic taught to the tune of a hickory stick."
She loved to tell us about her days spent in a one-room school with twelve grades.  We knew the kid who pushed her off the swings, and the kid who washed her skinned knees. How similar to life.

As Christians in the school of life we learn the three G's. They come continuously one right after the other. As predictable as the sun rising and setting we see the three G's of Grief, Grace,and Glory cycle thru our lives.

Grief leads the team and often comes without warning. The Doctor gives a prediction. Relationships are estranged. Guilt and regret knock on our door. Someone gets pushed off a swing and we pick them up, or sometimes we get pushed off and Jesus picks us up. As long as we are on one planet filled with good and bad children we will have trouble.

Plant Your Sorrow

Recently my thoughts returned to a lesson on sorrow that the Lord taught me.
"Plant your sorrow." This was what the Lord said to me about six months after my husband's death. I was indignant.

"Lord, I know if you plant corn you get corn. I don't need any more sorrow. Thank you."

Very graciously he explained, "No, this is different. If you'll plant your sorrow I will give you an anointing to heal the broken hearted. You plant a natural seed and it is raised a spiritual seed." Later I realized he was refering to the end of I Corinthians 15.

Not knowing how, but knowing who I agreed.

A few years later the Lord again showed me that sorrow needed to be planted. I was travailing for a friend's unborn baby that the doctors said could not live. I asked him to help me to understand. He showed me a beautiful tree with a growth on the one side.

"What is that?"

Answer: "A planting of the Lord."

I knew somewhere in the Bible I had read that phrase so I searched for it.

In Isaiah 61 we see Jesus's statement from Luke 4 about why he came.
"...to comfort all that mourn..
to give them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning,
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord,
that he might be glorified.

I began to realized that he took our sins and our sorrows when he endured the cross. When we plant our sorrow we are agreeing that he borne our grief and sorrow. (Isaiah 53) We don't have to fake it or do anything. This allows him to raise it (change it) into a spiritual seed.

My friend's baby died a few minutes after birth. A newborn baby miraculously came to them within weeks, and they have raised him for the Lord. When I look at him I think of the growth on the side of the tree I saw. I consider him a handsome planting of the Lord raised from a tree of great sorrow.

Prayers Mixed with Perfume

Do you wonder what happens to your prayers?  I do. Where do our prayers go when we pray. To God? To an altar in heaven?

The Bible writes that they have an eternal essense about them. They do not dissipate like the vapour from an aerosol can. They are more like radio waves that remain. Revelations 5:8 says that "the prayers of the saints" are stored in golden vials (bowls) and presented at the throne room of God before the Lamb.

But first our prayers are mixed with incense (perfume) and then they ascend like smoke before God.(Rev.8:3-3). Perfumed prayers. Now that's a thought.

The Old Testament was familiar with this picture. The psalmist wrote in 141:2 "Let my prayer be set before you as incense." All of Exodus 30 deals with building an altar of incense and the composition of the perfume for the atonement prayer.

Expensive perfume lasts a long time. It's a new thought to realize that true prayer mixed with incense will last longer than our mortal bodies.