From The Sheep Pen

For months now I’ve been working on a very long and very old writing project which I started over 20 years ago. I am starting to think of the book as my own “Never Ending Story” because of the length of time to finish. But it;s also about how God came into my life and is still coming into my life. He isn’t finished and neither am I. But books need to have an ending at some point. Happily I wrote the last chapters and am ready to move oon to the next thing.

There’s a small problem The writing needs serious, and I mean serious, editing which is to be expected since it’s been a work in progress for two decades. My writing has changed, there are numerous errors and I need to check my resources. Fortunately – and unfortunately I was an English teacher and will always be one. I love to use my red pen to mark spelling, punctuation and grammar errors, as well as writing cryptic comments to myself in the margins. Looking for repetitions is part of of my red pen treasure hunt. Now I am editing more than actually finishing up because I edit what I previously edited – more than once. Typically I’m stuck trying to say things perfectly.

We know that all of the Bible is inspired by God and breathed by Holy Spirit into men’s minds and hearts. I wonder how much editing the ancient authors and scribes did in the centuries before computers and throw away paper and pens. Looking at the discarded reams of paper littering the floor around my writing area, I question how did they write perfect drafts on scrolls of papyrus or parchment or even animal skins? I simply print out a chapter, do my editing thing and print a new one. The ancient ways were more efficient because writers had had to think through their ideas first – before they picked up a quill or stone. Because I’ve got almost unlimited resources, I’ve become slap dash about my work. The scribes old should instruct me in the economy of my own word, both those written and those spoken.

As writer I’m fascinated by God’s perfectly expressed Word throughout Scripture.
In the beginning …God. Genesis 1:1

God does not need a red pen to edit his Word. He speaks perfection because He is Perfection. God of Genesis through Revelation never second guesses, contradicts or takes back what He says. It is perfect in clarity, logic, nuance and meaning. No human writer has ever come close to the divine expression of God’s Word.

Jesus spoke three words on the cross (His words are always emphasized in red in modern Bibles) which I find the most beautiful words evero be heard on heaven or on earth. He spoke seven times, crying out to the Father, forgiving His enemies and entrusting His mother Mary to John – and then He said, “It is finished.” Nothing more was left to be said or done. His perfect life was perfectly sacrificed to God’s perfect will.

No red pen will ever edit our salvation.

Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

I’ve just returned from a week long silent retreat  at the monastery of St. Gertrude. Many people are unaware of this beautiful monastery and retreat center  located on a hillside three miles north of Cottonwood, Idaho. I read that “Come To the Quiet”  was being offered again at the end of January and decided to go. St. Gertrude’s is a Benedictine community which  offers and practices the ancient tradition of hospitality to the traveler and stranger. It was  just what I needed, a time and place to settle my troubled soul,   be welcomed  and most importantly, have  unfettered time with the Lord.

When I told friends where I was going, some were perplexed. “You mean you can’t  talk for a whole week? I could never do that.” Others were wistful, “Sounds great. I’d love to go.” This was not my first silent retreat so  I knew what to expect.  Yes, one  is strongly encouraged to keep silence for the entire time:  communal silent meals with other pilgrims; hours of solitude in my room or  walking;  watching the prairie sky;  exploring the library and art center; long evenings with no media; no  chirping text messages. One of the sisters mentors each person and for many like me who come with a broken heart, short conversations with her are as important as  personal quiet.

The entire point of the retreat is to  shut out  noise from the outside world and the chatter of  constant conversations  so that  you can hear the still small voice  of God whispering into the heart. It is not easy. We are incessantly  polluted by the world’s  noise which  distorts and separates us from the interior spiritual life of the Holy Spirit. After a time we don’t even notice.  We’ve accepted the devil’s clanging and  banging   in our eardrum so much we’re constantly distracted and exhausted.

At first I questioned whether I should even go. With Dan gone, there is too much silence in the house.  I now turn on the radio in the morning and the television  at night to fill up the spaces, to stop  mentally rehearsing  how life  turned on a dime. However, a friend encouraged me to go. I remembered the blessings of the last retreat.  Did not God speak to me in silent solitude then?  But  first I needed to seek God  for as  the prophet Jeremiah said, …And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13

I’ve discovered an oddity. What  words  can accurately define silence?  The dictionary definition is circular:  silence is the absence of sound, speech and noise.  It defines silence in terms of the  absence or lack of its opposite, like saying hunger is the absence of being hungry. Silence is different from quiet and solitude but both are needed.  In Psalm 46 God tells us to be still. God speaks  like a parent telling an overactive child to settle down, to quit  wiggling and to  be still. Calm down. Too much  noise! How can you hear anything I say?

Silence is not empty at all.   As I read and wrote and traipsed the beautiful  monastery grounds,  silence  poured into  the vast space of  my heart. There  God speaks His Word,   there I hear Him more clearly, and  therein He makes all things new. If God spoke  all creation and creatures out of  darkness with His Word,  when there was not yet  any sound but His own, what riches await us from the mouth of the Lord in blessed  silence.

… In a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1

I am not a water drinker by inclination or background. In my German family we had wine, beer or plain seltzer with dinner. If water ever made its way to the able, it came straight from the faucet, cool never icy.  There were no ice or water dispensers in the old, chunky 50’s Frigidairs, just  stiff aluminum ice trays designed  to hold on to the cubes with glacial tenacity. When my parents did go out to a restaurant, Mom would grab the waiter before she even glanced  at  the menu. “No ice. No ice, “ she’d warn all those in earshot. My father, ever the wag,  insisted that water was for bathing, not  for drinking.

I imagine  that potable water was problematic in Europe during their lifetime. Cities were centuries old and their  ancient water systems were corroded.  The water flowing from the Danube or Rhine into local towns would not have been desirable.  My family brought the “no water “ habit to America and it has passed on to me.

Unfortunately, as I get older it is a challenge to drink enough water to keep properly hydrated. Whenever I see people tethered to  gargantuan water bottles sipping water all day long I wonder at their capacity. How are they not in the bathroom all the time? My brother  Peter visited recently for a week and every morning he’d set out three quart containers to remind me to –  Drink water; drink water! I really tried because I love Pete and know he wants me to stay healthy. I just can’t  get that much  liquid into me so in discouragement, I don’t even try. The result is that I often wake up at night extremely parched and thirsty.  My mouth is dry and my tongue scratches like sandpaper.  I need  a drink of water. NOW!  So I gulp down  the glass next to my bed to quench my thirst and wait  for the bathroom routine to start.  No, I do not sleep well and yes, this nightly roundabout is on me.   

The problem is my waiting too long to drink water. Experts say that by the time you feel thirsty, it’s already too late.  Steady intakes of water  are critical to the body’s survival and health. Almost 60%  of our body weight is water and  the brain and heart are more than 70%; That equates to  7-12 gallons. I should remember that the next time my mind is foggy.  More importantly, most people cannot live more than two or three days without water and in extreme conditions, no more than a single day.We need water to survive.

I am writing about water and thirst because  a good friend taught me “as in the natural, so in the spiritual.” We are of body and of spirit but I wonder if the order isn’t reversed: “As in the spiritual, so is the natural“ as we live out our spiritual life in God.  Last night when I woke up  extremely thirsty again,  I  remembered  David’s cry  in the wilderness:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1

Similarly in Psalm 42, he desires  water like  a thirsty animal at a stream.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. Psalm 42:1

David’s thirst is spiritual, for God. His soul is so parched that only God can rehydrate him. Older translations  use the startling word pant,  a word for animals. When my  dog needs water on hot days, he pants and when in distress his tongue hangs out. It is also what women do in childbirth right before birthing when the womb has expelled the amniotic water and begins contractions.   It is an extreme, desperate reaction in the wilderness desert of the body and soul where  earthly things are beyond our control.  However, David’s pleas always end in praise and glorifying God. It is as if in the center of his “I’m about to die” desperation  he remembers God, hopes in God,  and praises God who alone slakes his thirst. Like water for our bodies, God designed us to thirst for Him when we’re in a dry land where there is no water.

It is the  Spirit of God who hovered over the waters in Genesis; Who watered the earth  before there was rain;  Who formed  man out of the dust and infused him him with 60-70% of waters e  needed to survive. It is God Who makes us pant for Him alone. It is the Father  Who gave us Jesus  and it is Jesus  Who who invites us to drink:

³ On the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me! ³⁸ Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart. John 7:37-38

Jesus was human like us. One of the barbaric torments of crucifixion was the person’s extreme thirst from loss of bodily fluids. Jesus was violently flagellated before being crucified and must have bled profusely. Poignantly, just before He gave up is spirit, on the cross Jesus said, ”I thirst.” As His tongue to clung to His jaws, the messianic prophecy of Psalm 22 was fulfilled. John writes that someone offered Jesus a sponge filled with sour wine which Jesus received. Obedient even to death, Jesus divinely thirsted for the souls of men, but was offered received sour wine instead.   To paraphrase a Johnny Cash song, does that not cause us to tremble?

God  designed humans to be water dependent. When I’m dehydrated I realize  it very quickly and get a drink. Likewise, my spirit  survives on the water of the Word.  On Jesus, the Word and His living water. Perversely too often I wait until I am completely desiccated and bone dry before crawling to the water’s edge. We dare not stay away from Jesus even for day. God created us to need Jesus much more than we need water bottles. Our thirst for the Lord is a survival thirst.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. Psalm 91.1

Once again I am devoting 21 days to prayer and hopefully, a more lasting fasting commitment.  Twice a year my church encourages us refocus on the Lord by seeking Him and spending time in His presence. January is the perfect   time to reflect and ponder God’s  gift of  my life. It is  a time of waiting  between the end of  old things and new beginnings.  January’s snow and cold which keep me inside are  never dark,  or boring or  dreary because I usually find  new pieces in the wintry landscape. I   delight how yesterday’s snow  defines the shape of tree branches, softens their stiffness  and fills in  empty spaces, like a child’s coloring pages. 

We began our 21 Days of prayer with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:  When you pray, go to your secret place, shut the door and you will find the Father already there waiting for you.  “  For 21 days God  invites  us to a secret rendezvous with Himself.  Jesus encourages us to find for ourselves how to well under the shadow of the Almighty of Psalm 91. If I could put this into a  Gabbert version, it might  be, “ Get out of your space and go  to God’s place. “ And shut the door!

When we had a young, active and noisy family and I needed time out, I’d retreat  into the bathroom, lock the door and take a bath.  Ever since I have  tried to find  the perfect secret spot in my home to meet with God, where I could shut a door and have  marvelous , spine tingling encounters with the Lord.  Sometimes it’s been  my cluttered office; sometimes it’s  the little library at the top of the stairs. This private nook doesn’t have a door, but I’ve hung quilts along the railing and it is like a nest for my soul. Unfortunately,  it’s so cozy I fall asleep instead of diligently seeking Jesus. Now that I live alone  I  wonder why  in the world do I need to close this secret door. Isn’t God ever present in time and space? Didn’t Jesus promise never to leave us alone so no matter where I am, the Father and He  already are.  Can’t I dedicate the entire floor plan as God’s secret place to dwell in?  

No, I can’t for the simple reason that Jesus doesn’t  agree with my assessment. He  said it very plainly. Go to your secret place,  shut the door and be with the Father.  But, I continue to argue with myself,  Jesus was addressing  men and women who lived in the first century in  heavily populated  Israel, in  crowded homes with few rooms and fewer doors.   Our spacious American homes (even smaller apartments) were non existent in Jesus’ time.  Privacy is a modern concept. Nevertheless,  Jesus spoke of shutting  doors  when we pray because He was teaching how to engage the Almighty Father intimately and personally away from everything else. What a radical idea! I wonder how his disciples reacted to this Word.   Peter mutters, “Lord, what door?  I’m a fisherman and spend more time on a boat than at home.”  A woman reminds Him, “ You see how many people I live with.  I can’t find even a corner to myself, let alone  shut a door, ” A Pharisee  looks down his nose and snarks,  “ Why Rabbi,  you’re always moving from one location  to another and have no place to yourself except those offered to you. “

No, Jesus did not have a roof over His head, but He knew the secret place of prayer and modeled it for the disciples. Weary and needing His Time Out with the Father Jesus would  often get away from  them,  from the incessantly  demanding  crowd and  the societal chaos to spend whole nights praying to the Father on the mountain.  The “door”  was  a symbolic act of  shutting out  everything  and everyone else but His Father. After Jesus spent  hours  closeted with His Father, He returned to  his friends to teach, preach and do o miraculous works. Prayer in God’s secret place precedes the Mighty Hand of the Lord  at work in the world.   

As an aside, and almost inexplicably for Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6, the very last prayers of Jesus were extremely public.  He prayed and instituted the  new covenant in the Upper Room and openly shared the Passover feast  with the disciples. He cried out to the Father  in Gethsemane , a place   well known to his enemies. He breathed His last forgiving prayer on the cross erected where everyone cold see and mock Him. He was placed in a tomb and a massive stone was placed to keep His body  in and his followers out.  But three days later the grave  was empty, Jesus was not in the tomb and the last  barrier between a holy God and sinful man was  demolished.  Jesus had shut the door to death forever and opened it wide for us to come to the Father.

Shutting the door is an intentional, symbolic act.  By His death and resurrection Jesus won for us the unheard of privilege  of direct entry  into  the Father’s secret place.  I shut the door  as an act of my will,  choosing  to exclude every  distractions and misdirection. I shut out the cell phone chirping  yet another message and I unplug from Google tempting me to  waste a lot of time on   rabbit trails. I leave behind my dog demanding a walk,  today’s dishes in the sink,  laundry piling up and fly specks on windows.  I shut out the unopened mail and unpaid bills,  new cobwebs trailing on the ceiling and the last  spam phone call. I  shut out  confusion about what’s next for me. When I shut the door to my secret place I can leave the loneliness and grief outside for a little while so that in His secret place God can comfort and  heal my broken heart.    Sometimes I have  to even shut  the  Bible chapter and verse I meant to  read earlier.    Shutting the door tells the Father I want to exclude  demanding  a piece of my soul  so that, so that,   I have exclusivity with Jesus alone. I exclude all else  for the joy of being exclusively His.

How can we refuse  the Lord’s  wonderful invitation abide with Him?  Enter in, Shut the door and stay a while longer. Isn’t such mystery and knowledge   almost too wonderful to bear?

 For many of us looking for last minute Christmas gifts, calendars are perfect. Who doesn’t like unwrapping and opening a brand new, clean  calendar,  turning the pages from January to December 2024 which are  unmarked and blank,  ready to be filled in with life’s appointments and reminders.  It’s like reading a book’s outline, wondering what story will be eventually be written in the little monthly squares. Additionally, if you  find a beautifully illustrated calendar or one unique to the  recipient’s interests, that’s just a bonus gift. I found one for my son with 12 NASA photos from the Hubble telescope. Chris isn’t particularly science minded  and keeps his calendar  on his phone. I loved the breath taking NASA photos  which attest to the grandeur, complexity and majesty of God. He who spoke Light into the world, spoke universes, our own planet and finally us. We appeared here on earth and now we create calendars  to mark our existence.

My daughter-in-law who teaches first graders asks for a calendar every year. When she opened the obvious calendar- shaped package, her kids teased, “Oh, WOW! It’s a Mom calendar! Surprise; surprise.”  She doesn’t care because she loves organizing and says it’s a favorite gift. In fact right after Christmas, she spent half the day calendaring whatever it is that first grade teachers and mothers of three teenagers need to do.

I’m not that organized and have learned  that dates, appointments and “ reminders”  are not always subject to my planning. Life happens; my  personal calendar can turn upside down quicker than I can find an eraser.  God loves to surprise us, shock us,  shake us  up and disrupt whatever we believe is more important than His perfect plan.  He keeps us in the dark about what He appoints for the ensuing months because He is merciful.  We do not need to know what 2024 will bring because knowing might be unbearable.  Had I known last January  that in June Dan would have heart failure, recover miraculously and then be gone in September,  how would I have endured all the weeks before and after? His mercy is a hidden blessing,  my deeply felt  gratitude  and hope for this year.

This morning I read something written for the New Year by a woman who has a busy ministry. Every new year she  consciously turns  the year’s  calendar over to God. She gives Him total control over every day, week and month and every appointment she has to schedule. That done, no matter the circumstances , she is assured that God’s plans for her life will prevail. God has never disappointed or failed to be in, with and through  her ministries. 

I don’t make new year resolutions which I never can keep anyway. But perhaps the Lord would look kindly at the 2024 calendar I’ve not yet bought and fill it in for me. I wonder what He will have  written at the end of this month,  later in June and  September and December. Whatever it may be, , let me say thank God for His mercy and say, “Yes.”

I am writing again after a long absence this summer, wondering what I can possible say with a broken heart. My husband Dan passed away   on September 11 after   a major heart failure in June when he  collapsed, coded and came back again.  He never fully recovered  from  the month long hospitalization and additional stress on his heart,  but  God  gave us Dan for  a precious while longer, for His perfect plans and purposes. Finally,   He called  Dan home.   His is a story about miracles and healing and  testifies to God’s loving, mysterious interventions in our lives. I was blessed to be   with him at the very end.

We celebrated  our 59^th wedding anniversary at St. Luke’s hospital and pored over our wedding album together, amazed  how very young we were, laughing over my bee hive hairdo and Dan’s serious bridegroom expressions. Since that day,   we’ve been together  through every season  and purpose under heaven. Now in this season to mourn I hope  for the time when all  mourning will cease.

It is the little things Dan has left behind which get to my heart.  I think of Dan’s hats. He always wore  a hat when he went out, a habit from youth because his skin was so fair and he sunburned easily. Whenever I go to my car I pass the hat rack in the garage where Dan hung  an assortment of hats.  They were usually crammed one on top of the other, stacked like nesting eggs along the wall: baseballs hats, cowboy hats, summer and winter hats, hats for the rain and hats for the sun. Big brimmed hats and  Japanese style bucket hats. Many  of them were old and beat up to my way of thinking, but I never dared throw one out because that would invariably have been his favorite. When the rack was full, he’d simply expand to the basket close by  and toss the extras in there. I never counted them up  and have no cause to criticize because I have my own collections of favorite goodies.

As a young lawyer and  product of  Chicago, Dan adhered to an unstated  professional dress code and wore a fedora, the kind worn  by 50’s movies detectives and gangsters.  He never seemed to care that it was no longer fashionable to do so. Dressed for the office and court, he wore a suit, starched shirt, traditional tie – and a dress hat (which no judge would permit before the bench!)   Most of those early hats are gone, except one so squished and  misshapen  which of course was the first one he’d grab. It was this stained green favorite to which he pinned photos of two grand daughters, Ava and Gretchen. Dan wasn’t  very partial to ball caps and had no tolerance for the young men  who wore them backwards. Or  inside a house. Or to church! His one exception was a blue and gold Boise State Bronco cap he wore when the Broncos played a game on tv.

In Idaho Dan started wearing cowboy hats and Stetsons. He discovered   Randy Priest a traditional hat maker in Donnelly and always appreciative of fine workmanship, Dan got several beaver or felt hats which every few years Randy cleaned and reshaped. I was taught never to place a hat right side up which was a challenge when we were in the car.  In restaurants, etc, Dan grumped when there were no hat racks. In all the years, he  only lost one cowboy hat and that was just recently.

The hat racks are pretty empty now.  I haven’t the courage to sort through the closet shelves where many of Dan’s hats are still stored. It will take time to do so and I am in no rush.  Dan’s hats  are snapshots  of who he was and what he enjoyed and whom he loved.  They’re a roadmap of this six decade  journey we’ve traveled , marking time and space we’ve experienced together.  For a little while longer I’ll l keep the hats  where they are, letting them speak to me as if with Dan’s voice. With God’s grace, it will do.

When Jesus saw him lying there …

The encounter  between Jesus and a crippled man takes place at the pool of Bethesda which was a bathing  complex north of the Jerusalem temple.  Two separate, rectangular shaped pools  were  enclosed by four covered columns  and shaded from the desert sun. A fifth column separated  the twin pools.  As  described in John 5,  the Pool of Bethesda was  “five roofed colonnades” beneath which “lay a multitude of invalids – blind, lame and paralyzed.” The waters of the pool were reputed to have healing and quasi mystical properties as evidenced by the many sick people who lay about, waiting to enter as soon as the waters  were  stirred. Some  translations of the story include  an angel  who stirs the waters of the pool so that   “whoever stepped in  first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever diseases he had.” (John 4 NKJ) More than likely the waters were stirred when the upper pool was opened to fill he lower pool.

There is evidence that the Greeks and Romans associated the pool areas  with healing  and the god Asclepius even before Jesus’ time.   Unlike the Pool of Siloam which was a ritual cleansing mikvah for the Jews, Bethesda was  a historically pagan site within Jerusalem which makes the story of Jesus’ visit to it more complex than meets the eye. In the second century  the Romans turned the pools and near by caves into asclepions, shrines to the Greco-Roman Asclepius, their healing god identified with snakes.  His symbol known as the “staff  of Asclepius” depicts  a serpent  coiled  around a rod  in the god’s hands. Those who came to the cave asclepions for healing were treated by snakes crawling about and over them! Today many medical individuals and organizations  have incorporated the ancient symbol  into their logos; a variation with two snakes beneath opened wings called the “caduceus”  is also used at times. Should one not question why  modern medicine identifies itself with  this symbol of an ancient pagan god?

Knowing the  historical background  of the pools I reconsider how well I’ve understood  the story which John recorded.  On one level this  is  one of many  healing incidents where   Jesus  encounters and heals  a sick, helpless person.  Jesus  sees  the man lying on his ragged pallet in one of the porches and  directs a question to the man. Do you want to be healed?  Instead of answering the Lord’s question, the invalid had a lot of excuses.

            Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I am going another steps down before me. V.7

Jesus cut right through 38 years of excuses with the command: Get up, take up your  bed and walk. The man was healed at once and did as Jesus told him. Of course since the healing  was on the Sabbath,  Jesus got  into it with the Pharisees once again.

Jesus’ walking through the Bethesda pools on the Sabbath to find that particular invalid was very deliberate.  Entering the pool area He saw  Satan’s handiwork, a multitude of the blind, the paralytics and  the lame  chained to their misery,  waiting day after day  “for an angel” to appear in the waters. He knew the demonic  association with Asclepius. He saw their misplaced hope in false miracles. The stirred up waters of Bethesda had no power to heal their sickness. Only the Son of God could do so. Jesus saw their desperation and ruthless scrabbling to get into the pool first. Surely  His compassion as well as His righteous anger was aroused as He approached the man. Jesus, the Light, illuminated the darkness around the man and within the man. Jesus already knew the man’s soul sickness infected by decades of physical and spiritual languishing  near the pools.

He gave the man  three commands: arise, pick up the bed of sickness you’ve become attached to, and walk out of this place. The man was healed immediately. The authority of the Word spoken by Jesus healed the man, not demi gods or religion or stirred waters mythological angels. Certainly not serpents! Later Jesus addressed the man again. “Sin no more”. I paraphrase  the Lord’s warning:  “Repent and don’t go back to your  poolside bed of rags and your false miracles   or it will be much worse for you.”

I see definite  personal applications from this story for  myself, especially these last months as Dan convalesces here at home with me. There are new challenges but  I’ve felt stuck,  lacking focus,  motivation and  energy. I too have  been waiting for something to stir up my spirit again  and get back into times of  intimacy with the Father, prayer, writing and service. It’s  easier to  find excuses like the invalid  did than dive head first into Christ’s living  waters. My soul’s health is endangered by prolonged languishing. The Lord who knows me also  addresses all my lame, self defeating excuses. Just recently I heard His  admonition ever so clearly: “ Do you want to be healed? Pick up your pen and write.”

Yes,  I do and so I have. 

Call to Me and I will answer you.

The miracles began on Monday June 12^th at 5:00 in the afternoon in Boise.

This summer has been extraordinary. Last winter had been very long and very cold. For six plus months  I’d been looking forward to gardening , to sunshine and  long, lazy days of summer  at the lake.  In the cool of the morning, I’d take long walks with our dog up the  hillside  into the woods. I’d spend the afternoons writing  or reading summer fiction.   I’d even get up earlier to spend more time with the Lord in my secret place. It was going to be  a perfect relaxing, stress  free summer. Dan had planned a cruise to Alaska in mid August for our 80^th birthdays and surprisingly, it grew into a family vacation/celebration which we were excitedly looking forward to.  

But God…had other plans for us.

On June 12^th while we were in Boise, Dan had a massive cardiac arrest. He’d gotten out of the car to walk the dog in a small park and collapsed. He stopped breathing and had no heartbeat.  The details are still very unclear and very mysterious. Simply put, they are miraculous! Someone called 911 and  performed initial CPR and had done so very professionally. However,  no one could say who that person was or where he/she  had gone after  the EMT’s  arrived.

For  God who loves us…

….will never leave us nor forsake us. I  know without a doubt that God  intervened and sent an angel to that parking to help  Dan.  A young woman held  our dog on his leash and when I walked over to her, I also noticed a silent young man standing  on the sidelines. Both tld me they were praying for us . Then they were gone from the scene.

The sight  of Dan lifeless on the ground  being worked on by the EMT’s  for a total of 45 minutes, of him being paddled several times to shock his heart and finally being taken away in an  ambulance to St. Luke’s cardiac emergency center  seared  my soul  as nothing  else  has or ever will.  In those  Moments of the Unexpected, fear, panic, confusion and waves of nausea umoored me into a void  trying to take  my husband, best  friend and   soul mate away from me.  Only God could pull us back.

And God did… … saying,

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine! When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isaiah 42.1-2

Because I believe His Word, because He has always been faithful to  me and to those I love, because Jesus is Lord and  I trust Him, because I couldn’t walk through this fire  on my own,  I  immediately asked our  family and friends to pray.  My friend  Dee Ann organized a prayer chain which grew  as others  heard about  Dan’s situation.  These hundred or so  “warriors”  prayed through every step, every new procedure, every step forward or slip backward for  the entire month  Dan was in  the hospital and in rehab.  Two months later he is at home with me, progressing  daily and we are doing well. He was dead and now he lives. He has  his  extraordinary testimony to share in the near future.

As for me, I am more than grateful for  the medical care Dan got, for the incredible technologies which were available and for the compassionate medical staff at St. Luke’s. Nevertheless I smile,   overjoyed that the professional cardiologists and physicians couldn’t quite figure Dan’s Unexpected Moment  which ends  very differently  from what they expected.

I pray that God, the Great Physician heals them as well! If I ever wondered about the reality of healing miracles  – (and I admit I have in the past)-  I no longer do. God showed Himself to me   that He can and does heal.  June 12^th  was the  burning bush of the Father inviting me up close and personal.  My  miracle   occurred inside   my mind and  my heart. I can’t ever forget. I can’t ever stop praising and thanking Him for life restored when the Unexpected Comes. 

I’d been searching the house  for half an hour but  couldn’t find the rewiring instructions for the television’s amplifier – just back from the repair shop in Boise. Dan and I had carefully  written down  how the jumble of wires from the tv was to reconnect. “Where did you put it,”  my beloved asked for the 10^th time  “Did you stick it in your journal?”  “If I knew where and how,”  I grumbled under my breath, “I’d  get it !”

You know how it is when you lose , misplace or just plain can’t find something important.  There’s an inverse law that kicks in for lost things:  the harder you search, trying to remember  “now where could it be”, the more stubbornly elusive it remains. So I stopped, took a deep breath and prayed: “Lord, please help me find the paper. You know exactly where it is but I do not. Thank You Lord for this small favor.”

As I came down the stairs,  Dan hollered, ”I found it!”  He held out a yellow legal pad and the lost instructions which he’d  written down and taken into his less than tidy law office . (No Comment!)  We were both relieved and I had to stifle a giggle.  This was not the first time God answered my prayer to find something. Not too long ago after a walk I lost my brand new phone. I retraced my steps but the phone was gone. My prayer was more tearful than eloquent as I thought about  the expense and hassle of getting another phone.  “Please, God help me to find it.”

Suddenly,  I had a mental picture of the phone under my bed, ran inside and sure enough, there it was where it had fallen out of my pocket.  Praise God! There have been other incidents:  a ring fallen into the library’s trash can; pearl earrings in a department store; my last phone in a bathroom stall.  No one will convince  me that these are coincidences. I believe  God speaks personally in this way  because too often  I am a skeptic and second guess God’s ways. He helps me find lost things because I simply cannot on my own power. And He likes to prove Himself in all of our prayers, the great and the small. I call Him, God of Lost Things,

You see there’s more to the story. We’ve had a week of family crises, of a loved one gone missing in Colorado and another one spiraling into darkness. Yes,  I  called other prayer warriors  for help in prayer. It took a while but God found the one and put her safely in jail.   Then at the exact time Dan and I found the legal pad, we got a call from Tennessee. The other lost sheep was rescued and in a hospital.

Jesus often talked and taught about “the lost”  in  His parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Each time it was to show how valuable we are to God  our Father who never loses sight of us.  His eye is on the sparrow and on rests on us. He knows the number of hairs on our heads and the exact  days of our lives. Luke 10:19   summarizes the sole purpose of Jesus’ ministry:

            For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

In His magnificent intercessory prayer  Jesus prays that

            …while I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. John 17:12

I am pleasantly surprised and overjoyed when the Lord helps me find  valuables.   But how much greater is  my gratitude to Him Who found me. For once I was lost in darkness and despair but  Jesus went after me even to the cross.  I’ve never gotten over that experience. 

Surely the same God who gives me a mental picture of  lost valuables will spotlight loved  ones who go missing.  So, God of Lost Things, help this dark, lost world and us who live here find whatever we have misplaced. I pray through Jesus we seek out our lost children, hopes, dreams and courage and have faith that they will be found  in You.  There is no darkness  or loss so great Your Light cannot shine into  their hiding places.

 This morning I am watching   intermittent rain clouds float over the sky  even as the sun tries to break through.  The light glistening on wet branches and leaves  creates   green jewels hanging on ever tree and shrub. Perhaps there will be a rainbow later stretching over  Meadows Valley. It would be fitting today. Birds come to the feeders. Mylar strips protecting the windows flutter in the slightest breeze and reflect light in endless bursts of colors. It is a beautiful morning and it’s all free to me through God’s generosity and mercy.

Today is a very special day for me, one of those memorial stones we are to plant alongside the road.  Today on May 22, 1950  my family arrived in New York harbor on the “Queen Mary”. The ocean liner had brought my parents, my brother Joe, my  older cousin Rosi – and me  from  post war Germany to the shores of America to begin anew.  There was nothing for my family  in Europe except hardship and struggles and bitter memories. We’d emigrated because my father and mother sought better  lives for themselves and us children . Like the Pilgrims of the past, we came for more than material benefits and provisions; we came for the good of our souls.

It was a seven day journey across the  north Atlantic in May so I’m pretty sure the seas were often rough.   American relatives  had paid for our passage so we had decent accommodations for the journey. I was six years old at the time and remember very little of those seven days. But   my mother described the luxurious ship and wonderful meals we had  in the dining room. She ate an orange for the first time in her life – and was partial to oranges from then on. My memory is triggered by a photo in which my mother, cousin, Joe and I stand at the railing of the ship . It is cold and windy and we children are huddled against my mother, like birds seeking shelter. The Statue of Liberty stands in the background. It is the symbol of everything my parents hoped  to find  in the New World: welcome, freedom, opportunity,  dreams and the means to achieve dreams.

It seems that early on in my life, God took me on a (then) long journey across vast waters and turbulent  seas to this promised land in which I’ve lived for  seven decades. Who else but   the Lord  took me out of  generations living in the same  place,  thereafter  completely destroyed by war. It was God who decided to plant me in new soil.  I often wonder. Who or what would I now be had my father decided to stay in Germany?  I cannot imagine such a possibility.

How seldom I’ve truly thanked  God for the blessings He has showered on me and my family since that May Day. It is the  blessings of  His freedom  which are the lynchpins  of life. Freedom allowed   me to grow and prosper and succeed as nowhere else on earth. So I’m thanking God today for every good gift from above, especially that I have lived free and not been under oppression.

Thank You God for bringing a little girl into your promises. Thank You for countless years of living free in this beautiful, promise filled country. Thank You for my knowing Jesus Christ, in whom I am and will always bee free indeed.

The basic  freedoms guaranteed by the legal frameworks underpinning  this country  can only be granted by God. It is the unique American freedoms  which my parents  never had in  “the former lands”  that  are  like oars we  use  to row through life.Foolishly  I’ve  taken much for granted. When I drive  to town or enter church or chooses a  restaurant or travel  or talk to someone in public or read a book or answer  phone call or  read a news article or browse the Internet or  make any plans at all –  I do not think  about my freedom to move about or make my own choices. Like  air,  I simply  inhale and exhale  freedom.  May it ever be so.  May God continue to look kindly upon this land and its people. May we repent for not guarding the blessings we  are given. May God have mercy and forgive our complacency.