Fear and Faith

The past ten days have been some of the longest in my life, longer even than the days of waiting for our oldest son to be born a week late. This waiting has not been so happy. Our oldest son's son has been gravely ill with high fevers for many days. He also refused to drink or eat much of anything.

I have learned again the exhaustion of prayer without ceasing. We finally got to see him this weekend, and I was able to hold him in my arms and not just in my prayers. It was hard to see him so thin and listless, like the little ones I used to rock in the local neonatal intensive care unit. He's always been such a happy baby with a joyous laugh. I've spent these many days beseeching God for healing for him, and for comfort for his parents. I realized, with great reluctance, that all I could do besides pray was to place him in God's good hands and trust that God would care for him, whatever the outcome. Not an easy thing for a grandmother to do.

I was helped by memories of a young woman I met among the evacuees from Hurricane Ike. She came to the arts and crafts room where I volunteered with her small children and created a beautiful piece of artwork out of construction paper. She made an apple tree, complete with bright red apples cut with a hole punch, and below the tree she wrote in Spanish, "Count the blessings God has given you." On a small heart, she wrote, "Jesus will not leave you alone and friendless. Live your faith." In the past ten days I have clung to the wisdom of this faithful young woman in her challenging circumstances as I've attempted to live my own faith in a difficult time.

Thanks be to God, our grandson finally seems to be making some progress towards health. His fever is gone, and he has started eating and drinking again and sleeping. So now I'm praying for his complete recovery. I want to see once again the happy, laughing little boy who brightened our lives. I'm still exhausted, but now with relief. I'm especially grateful to God for accepting my prayers and my fears and my hopes in such a dark time. God is good, even when a grandmother's heart has a hard time feeling that reality.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Glitter Glory

My husband and I spent a number of hours yesterday and today at a Red Cross Shelter for Hurricane Ike evacuees, who came in from the Texas coast. He spent most of his time doing sick call since he's a physician. I spent mine doing arts and crafts with the children, who were bored away from their normal activities. What a blessing it was to spend time with them. I got to practice my Spanish, as many spoke Spanish and some spoke little English. I had to ask some of the kids for help translating the words for such things as markers, scissors, hole punch, stapler, glue and glitter. They were not in my vocabulary.

The shelter is at a Jewish camp north of us. The director and his wife are good friends, so that is how we ended up volunteering there. We were there after Hurricane Rita as well, and I learned then that my rudimentary Spanish was most helpful. I joked with Loui, the camp director, that since Rita I'd learned a little Chinese. He commented that he didn't think I'd need that. Turns out he was wrong. Four-year old Jason, who's from Houston, heard me speaking Spanish yesterday, and told me he spoke Chinese. His eyes were huge when I told him I did too (an exaggeration though I can carry on rudimentary conversation). He giggled whenever I spoke to him in Chinese, and his big sister, Amy, gently corrected my pronunciation. She also gave me a picture of horses she drew, which I will treasure. Before they left after lunch today to go home to Houston, she took a picture of me with her brother, and he took one of me with his sister. I will miss them!

I actually owe Jason credit for the glitter escapade. Anna, the young rabbi and chaplain from Dallas who was at the camp, opened the art supply closet for us. It was a kid's dream. We couldn't allow the kids in, but Jason would stand at the door and make requests. He was the one who saw the glitter and asked for some. It turned out to be the most popular of all the art supplies. The kids had great fun with glue and glitter, which of course ended up everywhere! What's an art room for if you can't make a mess? My husband laughed when I joined him for lunch because I had glitter on my face. I also had some on my shoes and my clothes--bits of sunshine and rainbow glory in a dark and scary time, a reminder of the rainbow promise God gave Noah. God is good all the time. Even, and maybe especially, in the midst of a hurricane evacuation.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Computer blahs

Well, I'm not bored, and I'm not finding it easy to find time to write these days. I'm enjoying the Business Ethics class, but keeping up with the assignments is keeping me busy. I suspect my students would say the same thing. I've also spent more time than I would like so far wrestling with the university's computers. That has happened in the past at the beginning of each semester, but I was lulled into complacency since I was able to log on without problems this semester. Now for some unknown reason the messages I'm trying to send to the class are bouncing back, and I'm frustrated. When the technology works it's a blessing, but when it doesn't it's anything but. Of course I guess that's true with a lot of things in this world. All in all I prefer the simpler blessings, of which my life has a great abundance, a loving family, enjoyable work to do, plenty to eat, a safe place to live, freedom to worship, good health. Focusing on them makes it easier to forget the technological challenges that are part of life these days, at least for many in our culture. Better to focus on God and God's blessings. O, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. God is good. All the time. Even when the computers are not.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

For everything there is a season

This has been a week of ups and downs. I met my new class of Business Ethics students this morning, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better this semester. They seem like a great bunch, and several know each other already. They are all close to finishing college and stepping out into the world, though at least one is in college after a career in the military. From what I heard this morning, there is such a wide variety of experiences represented that I think we will have great discussions.

At the other end of life from these students on the brink of beginning their professional lives is my dad. My sister called to tell me his retirement home had called her today. He fell last night, and they've sent him to the hospital to be checked out. He's been struggling of late, and I had to gently tell my sister that at 85 it may simply be that his life is approaching the end. For now I've requested prayers from our church for him and for us as we struggle to know how best to care for him long distance. I'm grateful for my church community, and especially grateful for God's presence in this journey.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Hope

I am sad today that the Olympics are over. I love to watch people who are good at what they do, and Olympic athletes are very good at what they do. I'm not sorry to stop watching, because I will now have quite a bit of extra time (which I'm going to need as I agreed the end of last week to teach again), but I am sad that after two weeks of positive interaction among citizens of many of the world's countries, the world will now mostly go back to business as usual. That will involve lots of less than pleasant interactions among the world's countries.

I was touched by the comments of one of the newscasters at the very end of the last broadcast last night after the closing ceremonies. He wistfully said, if we can get along for two weeks, maybe we can do that for three weeks, or a month, or even longer. Wouldn't that be a blessing!

On the other hand, I would not discount the benefits that will flow from the interactions that occurred at the Olympics. It's a lot easier to hate people you don't know, and those that participated in and attended the Olympics now know people from other countries in a way they didn't before this event. That will inevitably color their perceptions of other countries and their people in the future, hopefully in positive ways.

Now if we could just work that same magic among the Democrats and the Republicans in this country.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Tis a gift to be simple

I fear I may be turning into a grumpy old woman, set in my ways and even more resistant to change than I was when I was younger. My husband is sitting at the breakfast table with a manual trying to figure out how to make his beeper stop sounding off at 7:40 a.m. each morning for no particular reason. I commented that it ought not to take the equivalent of a semester of college to figure out how to work each new electronic device. It seems as if everything new thing these days has an electronic chip implanted. It becomes wearying to my soul to try to figure them out.

I like the simpler things in life, though obviously I also like the computer and the wonders it has brought into my life. Perhaps in part my brain is simply full from too many years of learning many things, and I'm starting to become choosy about what else I want to learn. Simple is a blessing these days. I think one of our grandsons thinks so as well. I found a big plastic truck with little cars on top for his first birthday, and then worried when I saw all the flashing toys with their music and action that others brought to the party. Turns out he really likes the truck. He makes the noises and the motion himself. Hopefully he'll hang on to some of that impulse as he matures! For now the beeper is probably not going to sound every morning. And I'm going to go walk Moses and Zipporah. Dogs also like the simple things, which may be why I value their company. Somehow I think simple is in some mysterious way closer to the heart of God.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Finding Faith

I have been struggling yet again with scripture in preparation for preaching. I think this may be the toughest scripture yet, though I admit I've thought that in the past at times. I'm been wrestling with the story in Chapter 15 of Matthew's Gospel about Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman. She comes to him for help for her daughter, who's possessed by the demons of mental illness. Jesus at first is silent and then rebuffs her with a racial epithet common at the time before finally responding to her wit. It's a tough story.

The biggest part of the difficulty with this story for me is that the actions of Jesus portrayed by Matthew are simply out of character compared to the rest of the stories about Jesus. This was a man who regularly reached across the boundaries of gender and culture and even religion, and who got in trouble with his faith's religious leaders because of his association with the wrong sorts of people. Wiser minds than mine have also struggled with this story, and from what I have found in my research, there doesn't seem to be any consensus about the reasons for Jesus' uncharacteristic behavior. One commentator suggested Matthew was trying to appease two factions within the church, one of which was opposed to any mission to the Gentiles, and one of which was not. Some suggest Jesus was testing the faith of the woman, or of his disciples or both. Yet others suggest Jesus was being humorous in his interaction, which of course does not translate well on the written page. All of this of course began with writing that probably came from oral tradition and that has since been translated through several languages. Anyone who knows anything about translating from one language to another knows how imprecise that can be.

What is clear is that the Canaanite woman was possessed of deep love for her daughter, a love that made her willing to overcome any barriers, including those of gender, ethnicity and religion, to obtain help for her daughter. She also acted with reverence, responding to God's presence and promise in Jesus. She was persistent in seeking God's mercy and grace. Jesus responded to her love and faith, perhaps against his inclinations, perhaps not. In return her faith had to have been balm to his spirit, wounded by encounters with the religious leaders of his own faith. Matthew's story is a reminder that faith can be found in places and in people where we least expect it. It's also a reminder that the human created boundaries that separate us from one another are no barrier to God's love and grace and mercy.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue