Our times are in your hands

I remember learning a Bible verse when I was a little girl, "our times are in your hands." Of course at the moment I cannot remember exactly where in the Bible the verse can be found. Today we made the long trip to Houston and back again to visit my husband's father and his wife. My father-in-law is seriously ill and for the first time as he nears 90 he looks like an old man. He is in pain and not thinking clearly, and his wife is struggling to care for him. My husband seems to be taking this better than my sons at this point. They are worried about their grandfather, for all that he has not made a lot of effort to spend much time with them. He has made some effort over the years. My prayer partners are praying for the doctors to figure out what is wrong with him. His wife hopes once they figure it out, they will be able to make him better. My husband is not so sure. Probably that comes from being a doctor himself.

Coincidentally, not long ago I had a conversation with my own father about death. He will be 85 this year and is slowing down considerably. I've been amazed at how well he has coped with blindness these last few years, but his body is slowing down and he seems to miss my mom more with each passing year, even though she's been gone for 15 years now. Perhaps as the discomfort of pregnancy eventually makes labor and delivery seem less terrifying, so our aging bodies eventually make the promise of what a good pastor friend calls "the next adventure" seem less frightening.

I'm glad I remember the verse from my childhood, and I'm even more glad that I know in the depths of my soul that my times are indeed in God's hands. As one seminary professor said, they are good hands, you know. I hope I can remember that when it's my time to move on to the next adventure. As I told my dad, as my body continues to age, sometimes not at all gracefully, I am slowly learning that at some point it will not be such a bad thing to lay down this wonderful life for the one to come. I think that's what my dad was trying in his oblique way to tell me himself.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Back to the Beginning

My husband and I went to our first Conversational Chinese class last night, and we are going to learn more than conversation including some reading and some writing of Chinese characters. The teacher is a young woman from China, and her enthusiasm and encouragement are contagious. She believes we can do this, so I'm willing to suspend my own disbelief and charge ahead. My husband and I have actually been working for many months on learning to speak some Mandarin Chinese using CDs that our son loaned us. He's learning Chinese as well, but he has a wife who speaks it so he has an advantage we are lacking. We have good motivation, however, as our daughter-in-law is speaking Chinese to our baby suinzi (that's our grandson). We want to be able to understand him when he starts babbling. Hopefully we can learn enough to learn along with him when he starts talking.

As we headed out for class last night, I remembered something I'd not thought about in years and that is that my husband and I met as freshmen in college over 40 years ago. Standing in the bookstore line this morning waiting to buy the textbook for the class, I told my husband I had never pictured myself going back to college as a grandmother. Life does have a way of circling around upon itself, and God does have a wonderfully, wacky sense of humor. Even if I had thought about returning to school someday back when I was a college student, I would never in my wildest dreams have envisioned signing up for Chinese lessons!

But now I get to have two nights a week back at college with my college sweet heart, who's the only one who calls me Donna Sue. What a blessing, and something to make my heart sing an old almost-forgotten song.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Reading and Writing

I spent three days this past week with Christian writers from around the country at the annual writers' festival at the local university where I taught this past year. It was such an amazing experience to listen to these remarkable poets and authors read from their works, and to participate in workshops with them to try to improve my writing skills. If you have not encountered Angela O'Donnell, Alan Berecka and Anne McCrady's poetry, you are missing out. They write beautifully about life and about God. Spending that much time in the company of those who use the English language to create works of great beauty was a real privilege. It inspires me to keep working to hone my skills. That will give me plenty of work to do this in this New Year. Part of me wishes it were easier, but in my heart of hearts I also know that if it were too easy I would rapidly become bored.

On the reading front, members of our church are participating in a program to read through the Bible this year, something I've not sat down and done cover to cover, though I've read large chunks of it. I started this afternoon and am enjoying reading Eugene Peterson's The Message, which is a translation written in contemporary language. It was especially fun to read the story of Noah after having watched the movie Evan Almighty this past week. I could easily picture all the animals and laughed when I read the last verse in Chapter 6. After God has told Noah to collect two of every species of bird, mammal and reptile to save them from the flood, God then tells Noah, "Also get all the food you'll need and store it up for you and them." Even with a large ark that's a lot of food and a lot of grocery shopping! What a great story that has come down to us from centuries ago. I'm going to enjoy the reading assignments this year.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Hope

I've been working on a sermon for tomorrow on the text from Matthew 2:13-23, which tells the story of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. I've also spent some time researching Herod the Great, who was not called that because of his kindly nature. In preparation, I finally got around to watching the movie The Nativity this afternoon. While not the greatest movie I've seen, it does a good job of portraying life in Judea at the time of Jesus' birth. I'm actually going to talk about Matthew's report of the murder of children under the age of two in Bethlehem, which is pretty grim stuff, especially for a grandmother with grandchildren that age. I nonetheless kept finding myself pulled back to this passage in particular. I like Rev. Dr. William Willimon's take on this passage in his 1998 sermon as well as Rev. Joy Carol Wallis' in her sermon, Putting Herod Back in Bethlehem. This is the world that we live in, one where the innocent are violated regularly by the powerful. It's also a world where all of us have sinned and too often seek what we want when we want it, rather than trusting in God. Jesus came into that world, not into some sanitized Christmas card version, but a real world of suffering and pain. We have hope because Christ has overcome the powers of sin and darkness in this world, not some mythical, magical place, but the real sinful world in which we live. That's Good News to take into the coming New Year.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

And a little child shall lead them

We have been blessed once again with a grandchild, another little boy, born earlier this week. I'm not quite as tired as if I'd given birth, but tired enough. This grandmothering is exhausting, exhilirating work. As I held this tiny child and looked into his bright, eager eyes, I found it hard to believe how much time has passed since his daddy was born. For a time, we were not at all sure that his daddy would make it as he tried to come three months early. Fortunately with the help of good medical care and ten weeks of bed rest by his mama, he arrived safely. What a blessing to welcome his child into this world. I have found that grandchildren are even more of a blessing than I expected. They help keep me young and remind me of God's unconditional love with their trusting innocence and ready affection. So I don't find the passage from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 11, Verse 6, at all unbelievable: "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." I've been around small children a lot of late, and it could happen. Someday in God's good time I pray this whole weary world will be blessed with such peace.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Waiting

I suppose I've become a bit better at waiting thanks to my time at seminary, but that's only in comparison to my earlier even more impatient self. Now we sit poised between the past and the future once again as we await the birth of another grandchild. He was due today, but when we talked with his mama earlier, she said he seems to be happy right where he is. And so like Mary and Joseph, we continue to wait for the birth of a Christmas child.

I've learned my job as a grandmother is to wait, a hard assignment as I'm more of a woman of action. For now, however, all of us must wait for the miracle of this child, for God's timing. One thing I've learned in nearly 60 years of living is that it's always better to wait for God's timing. You think I would also have learned to be more patient in the waiting, and I suppose I have, but only in comparison to the past.

Now like the little girl I once was, I'm waiting excitedly for the birth of a child in this Holy season, a child who will change all of our lives, especially those of his mom and dad. I never had a Christmas present this exciting when I was a little girl, and at the moment I feel as impatient as I once felt as I waited for Christmas to come. It always seemed to take forever, yet somehow it always came. I'm sure this baby will come too, just not as soon as his waiting family had hoped.

May you too wait expectantly for the birth of the Holy Child who came in God's good time and changed all of our lives for the better.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue

Season of Hope

Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent for 2007, and Sumner and her family lit the candle of hope at the front of the sanctuary at the start of the worship service. Advent always seems to arrive each year just when I most need the reminder that this is still God's world with a lot of good things going on in spite of the bad news with which we are inundated on a daily basis. Advent arrives when I am in need of hope.

Emily Dickinson wrote something like: Hope is the thing without feathers that perches in the soul and sings the song without words and never stops at all. One of the Biblical writers wrote something like: Without hope the people perish. I know that without God in my life I would have no hope and my soul would shrivel up and die.

This past weekend, I personally participated in a bit of hopeful good news that will never make it onto CNN. My husband and I live in a remarkable neighborhood, where we know each other by name, and know the names of the kids and even the names of the pets. We are in short extended family here, even those like us who have arrived fairly recently. Saturday morning we had a neighborhood workday, which often means picking up the trash thrown along our private road. This time the workday meant yard work at the home of a recently widowed elderly neighbor with Alzheimer's.

For two hours, Scott with his gas powered hedge trimmer, and others with their clippers trimmed hedges and shrubs that had grown ragged and were trying to eat the mailbox, while others like me picked up the trimmings and stacked them for the next trash pickup. When one of the workers went to tell the woman we were finished, her response was "God bless you." What a blessing to be able to do yard work for someone who cannot. Then we gathered for a cookie swap and hot chocolate.

My heart was warmed by the experience of working with a group of neighbors who I know for a fact disagree with each other about many issues, especially in politics and theology. But we all agreed that our neighbor needed help. What a blessing to be able to play a small part in providing that help and to know others felt the same.

Each year I wait for that moment in Advent when God's kingdom breaks through the gloom once again to shine in my heart. This year I was blessed to experience that moment early, when neighbors came together with shared purpose. And the "thing without feathers" perched in my soul once again sang "the song without words." Thanks be to God that will be enough to see me through the new year until Advent once again arrives to remind me of God's eternal hope.

Grace and Peace,
Donna Sue