From The Sheep Pen

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.   

I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. John 10:11

What’s on your Instagram ? Nothing, to answer my own question!  I don’t have any social media accounts, except for an ancient, now out of date  Facebook   page when I was director of the local food bank.  In fact, I am pretty  ignorant  of  the concepts governing the  cyber universe  to which the popular culture is tethered.  “Social media  speak” is a foreign language to me and one I’m not sure I want to be bothered to learn. But the Lord  instructs us  to be wise as serpents  and to discern the times.  Language is the outermost exposed  layer of a culture’s inner moral and spiritual health.   In the Bible James says that  the tongue (and by extension language) has the power to speak life or death. So too do written words – and more subtly,  cyber  jargon which speaks to millions of people.    

I’ve recently come across the word “influencer”  which  describes individuals who rise to importance on social media through sheer numbers of their followers.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, to influence is “to  have effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something.” Therefore, an influencer is a person who has considerable  power over those who  logically can be influenced. They typically show up in social  media platforms, like Twitter, Instagram,, Tik Tok and You Tube. The target audience are the young and the impressionable.  Influencers operate by getting people to follow their accounts and by pushing products, ideas, personalities  or trends. The more followers they  generate,  the greater is their “influence” on others.  Influencers  receive payments from businesses  based on their followers.  Some of the biggest influencers are sports, actors, and media personalities. The Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Renaldo, has over five hundreds  million  followers.   That’s two and a half times the population of Chicago! His influence is huge. Dwayne Mulvaney, the transgender influencer, has almost two million devotees (almost the size of Chicago.)  His influence is also huge.  Well, except for Bud Light.

What should disturb all who pay  attention is  that influencers “effect the character, behavior, and development of others.”   If the influencer is after money and notoriety, what  effect does that motive  have on others?  What restraints does he put on himself to do no harm? If the influencer is an agenda driven  activist  like Mulvaney (among many others)  he becomes the sales rep for a lot more than  beer or  cosmetics. He’s shaping the behavior and character of impressionable people  especially  adolescents  already foundering in confusion and lies.  The influencers don’t care about the physical,  moral, emotional  and social well being of their followers.  They’re invested in self gain and self promotion. “Just click on the button (or whatever )  and become one of my mega  million followers.” 

If you’re a follower, you’ve chosen to walk behind someone.   Basically, you become  sheep in someone’s flock.  Or is it cult?   I’m convinced Influencers are  a type  of shepherd who will shape your  character, behavior and development. They will herd you into their  fallow fields, separating you from  more nourishing pastures and  clean waters.   They are the hireling shepherds Jesus warned about. They  will never call you by name, protect you or go after you when you’re lost.  How can  they? You’re just a virtual number, not a human person made in God’s image for His purposes.  

The hired hand is not the shepherd, and the sheep are not his own. When he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf pounces on them and scatters the flock. John 10:12

 It’s a very old story. Satan can’t come up with anything new so he mimics God’s Word with deception. His hoof prints  are all over this influencer craze, even  to appropriating Jesus’ words,  “Come follow Me.”  Jesus, our Good Shepherd  will make His followers disciples.  Something is required of us. Influencers make followers  more and more sheep like!  The Internet is vast and if I listen with my heart, I can hear the sad bleating of  millions of sheep  being led by pied pipers   dangerously into the thorns and thickets.  Who will  go after them if not us.?

Choose wisely whom you follow.  Choose who is your influencer. The time for the arrogant Influencer/Deceiver of the Age and Air is coming to its end. Jesus our Good Shepherd guards His flock of sheep and will never abandon us to wolves or  hirelings. He will return to claim His followers for Himself. To Him be the glory!

            Sometimes you run right into God!

            As I sat  at the traffic light, I saw the old man getting out of his car in the parking lot of Walgreen’s.  He could scarcely walk, inching one foot in front of the other and was obviously in a lot of pain. I looked at the 25  feet stretching from him to the front door as he balanced precariously,  fearing he’d fall down any minute.  How in the world would he make that short distance? Why didn’t he have a cane or walker with him?  I  made a decision.

            The light changed green  and I turned into the lot, but as I did so, a young woman approached the man and gave him a  shopping cart for his balance. The man smiled at her and tottered into the store.  I was ready to move on but then felt a familiar tug. “Go talk to that woman.” I pulled up next to her and rolled down the window. “That was a very nice thing you did for that man, “ I said, “I was afraid he’d fall down. Great idea with the shopping cart.”

            She smiled and then her eyes filled up with tears.  The first words out of her mouth were “the Lord.” “ The Lord told me to help someone today. I can at least still walk.”  And then she handed me a small card imprinted with a heart and the word “Isaiah”  and a website. She said her seven year  old son was born with a congenital  heart defect and was going for his open heart surgery in Salt Lake City. She was very worried because there were complications and the boy was frightened this time.

            I invited her into the car to talk some more.  She unburdened her heart about her little boy and her family who were Christians. Her husband had been a youth pastor in California and they now attended a large church in Boise.  She said that  the Lord also told her to keep a journal for Isaiah as he’s been under medical care because it would some day be his testimony for God’s love.  I was taken by her faith and her willingness to share her burdens with me, a total stranger. 

I listened to her as  she talked and didn’t say much  – unusual for me to say the least. Then I prayed for Isaiah, for her and the rest of her lovely family. I believe God has a special place in his heart where He embraces them and protects them. I believe Isaiah will  be healed and that he will have a miraculous testimony in the future. We met as strangers because of the elderly man struggling  to get to the pharmacy, but we left as friends and sisters.  She gave me permission to share her story and to ask for prayers  so I pass her request on to you. We  have the privilege to also become part of Isaiah’s ongoing testimony. 

www.caringbridge.org/visit/babywesson           

Reflecting on this encounter I’m amazed how God brought three ordinary people together in the parking lot to bless one another. His orchestration of time, place and  individuals   for  “the good of those who are called by His name” has stirred my own faith again to trust Him no matter the storms. He always places Himself exactly where we’ll run into Him!

I also wonder what would happen if the first words out of my mouth  in every joy and sorrow were  always like Isaiah’s mother: “The Lord…!”

            It’s the Monday after Easter and today promises to be a beautiful,  warmer day with temperatures  temporarily in the 60’s. After the  long, snowy winter and months of cloudy skies, I am welcoming a belated spring and overjoyed to see daffodil bulbs emerging alongside the garage wall.  

            It’s Monday morning as  I reluctantly put away the basket of  fragile, painted Easter eggs  some of which date back to the children. My hands were more steady then and I decorated blown out eggs for them. Over time  I’ve collected  and been gifted others, especially  intricate Ukrainian pysanki  eggs. I wonder which of our children will keep up the tradition one day. But now it’s time to put them away for another year.

            Since it’s Monday morning, most of the world will go back to …well, Monday morning and the same old, same old routines. For the   worldly culture Easter  (if  it hasn’t been cancelled yet by the woke Pharisees)   means nothing other than   filling baskets with fake grass and  year old chocolate rabbits.  This Monday is merely  a day on the calendar to mark off and trudge on to the next thing to capture their attention. Been there; done that; move on.

            However, the Monday after Easter is still Easter for Christians! The Resurrection of Christ celebrated for  2,000 years is not a one day extravaganza but an ongoing journey of our faith because Jesus, the living Son of God,  is not in the tomb. His bones are not interred in the earth. His  transformed  body lives on eternally. We may not be able to feel  His heart beating, but surely His love touches us  in very tangible ways.  I can’t audibly hear His blessed voice, but  I surely know when He speaks to me. As He lives, so can we through faith.  He is who He said He was.

            As I reflect today,  on the Fourth Day of Easter, it is not just another Monday because  the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus are imprinted in time over thousands of years. The somber events of Good Friday and the  deathly silence of Saturday leading  to the empty tomb and Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead are the anchor of our Christian faith. As has been  pointed about by C.S. Lewis and others,  if the tomb were  not empty, our faith would be deceptive and evil. If Jesus had not risen from the dead,  His life and death would  reveal  Him to be either insane or a liar.  But Jesus did rise from the dead. The prophecies  about Him as Messiah were fulfilled and it’s important to understand  that Jesus fulfilled His own Word.   On Sunday morning, the angel told the women, “He is risen just as He said.” The Son of God lives.

            It’s the Monday after unending Easters because instead of  death, the rotten fruit of the tomb,  we have  the hope of eternal life suffusing the empty tomb. Jesus gave  us back to the Father through His incomparable, selfless sacrifice on the cross.  How could that cosmic earth shaking sacrifice possibly stop on a Monday morning? Whether it be Monday or Tuesday or any other day yet to come,  Jesus’ Resurrection continues on in us for as it is written,

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you. Romans 8:11

Happy Monday in our Resurrected Lord Jesus!

So he, trembling and astonished, said, “Lord, what do you want me to do?”Acts 9:6

This week our church life group is studying the conversion of the apostle Paul.  I am sure that the discussion will be very spirited and more than likely, it will wander  off  on  rabbit trails – inspired of course by the Holy Spirit’s promptings. Since Lent begins this week, the subject of Paul’s conversion from persecutor to apostle is appropriate.

The story is written in Acts 9 and following. Paul’s dramatic, life changing,  divine  encounter with Jesus is told in  only six verses. How surprising that such a momentous event in Christian history is told  in six paragraphs.!  But such is the Word of God: direct, fearsome and needing no embellishments.  Saul the intelligent, fanatical, persecuting and brutal Jewish Pharisee has received permission to go to Damascus to apprehend  followers of the Way  and return them to Jerusalem for  punishment.  A sudden light surrounds him;  he falls to the ground blinded.  He hears Jesus identifying Himself as “the one whom you are persecuting.” Unable to see Saul is led by the hand to Damascus and into his new life as Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles.

I see Saul thundering towards Damascus seated  like a military general upon a  powerful stallion, both fierce for the blood of Christians. I see the blinding flash of light and then … Paul’s knocked  to  the ground.  Felled by God he staggers, blind, trembling and astonished.  The horse bolts away in terror.  Saul is literally  knocked “off his high horse.”

  Did the expression “high horse” originate in this Biblical encounter? Perhaps. Nevertheless throughout history men have gone to battle mounted on grand war horses  to symbolize their power and to intimidate their enemies. Our modern version might be the power brokers who sit behind massive desks while lesser men are humbled on smaller  chairs.  The expression refers to an arrogant person who claims moral superiority over another.  Saul certainly fits that description before  God  messed up his life and knocked him to the ground.

A modern  example of “high horse” is  a woke person  virtue signaling his “wokeness.”  Two years ago during the Covid craziness, I received a Christmas letter from once close Christian friends.  Included in the photos of family vacations and celebration were pictures of everyone with sleeves rolled up, being vaccinated.  It was a very sad and telling Christmas message devoid of Jesus. They couldn’t have shouted their moral  positioning  any louder.  I’ve not heard from them since.

As I return to the story of Paul, I wonder what “high horse”  shouts  my self righteous superiority?   Pride? Ambition? Education?  Justice without mercy? Love which tolerates sin?    I recall very clearly one time when the Spirit of God  revealed the high saddle I  sat upon.  I was driving home from a weekend retreat at the monastery in Cottonwood and came through Riggins. I was in a hurry to get home to my husband, wanting to share all that I’d learned. As I came through town a woman hobbled across the road, balancing on an old grocery cart. She was disheveled, old and walked at a snail’s pace. Mentally I hurried her along and chastised her for being herself.  The Lord spoke to my spirit. “That old woman has every right to live on this planet just as you do.”  I’ve never forgotten the woman or the admonition. We each have the right to live among one another because life is a gift from God and we are equally loved  by Him. I have no moral superiority over anyone else. Sometimes you need to get knocked off that high horse to see the gospel truth.

What  blinding encounter do we  need to humble ourselves before God? How deep will we wallow in he darkness before allowing Jesus to apprehend us as fully as Paul of Tarsus did? Without Jesus morality is a sham. . Without Jesus all  righteous  preening is …

…like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.  Isaiah 64:6

In contrast to the story of Paul riding a “high horse” to persecute the fledgling church, there is Jesus fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy.

Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Zechariah 9:9

The One whose power blinded Saul was Paul’s Messiah riding  into Jerusalem toward crucifixion. He  was seated not on a war horse, but on a lowly donkey’s colt.  His head was not raised high above the crowd. He never looked down at anyone, even his enemies.  Jesus was always on eye level with  those he’d come to save. As Jesus’ disciples, we are not called to personal greatness but to the humility of our Master,

            Ah, there it was! The book I was hoping to find was tucked  away on the closet shelf where I kept some of the old children’s books:  “The Little Engine That Could” written by Wally Piper.  How often I’d read it to the children. I still recall  the sing song lines: “Chug, chug, chug.” “I think I can. I think I can.” “I knew I could; I knew I could!”

            This was a different version from the original Little Golden books I remembered. It was larger  and exquisitely illustrated on every page. My husband remarked on some of the illustrations being very dated which admittedly they are, but  I thought they were charming.   I was happy to find the  book for a  resident at the care center. She is pretty new, hasn’t been there very long, and I don’t know much about her circumstances. But we connected and in conversation she told me she wished she could  have the story of the Little Engine. Obviously it means something important  to her.

            She was waiting in the activity room for Bible Study  and smiled when I came in.  “Close your eyes,” I said, “and don’t peek.” I placed the book next to her Bible. When she opened her eyes and saw the book, she couldn’t talk and kept looking at me and then at the book. Her eyes filled with tears;  I was pretty choked up myself. For the next half hour she pored over every page, admiring the pictures, reading the story and commenting. It’s been a while since I saw someone that happy over something so small. When she finished, I suggested she put her name in it. “But it’s yours,”  she questioned me.  No, Jenny, it’s yours and I inscribed it for her on the frontispiece.

            We went ahead with studying the next chapter of Luke which had to do with loving your enemy and forgiveness. I know the Lord was speaking deeply into her heart; He was certainly doing a work in mine. Later I wondered. Which was the better Bible Study,  Luke 5 or the lesson of a lost book found at the right time for the right person. Which words  illustrated  the love of Jesus more  vividly? Which was the greater gift?

             I think of Jesus’ three years of ministry. He performed miracles of healing, deliverance and restoration to publicly glorify His Father. He preached and taught and fulfilled every Messianic prophecy even to the cross and resurrection. He is God and these are the giant  miracles in the Gospels.  But I wonder. Jesus  was also a man. He walked and talked and touched and laughed and probably cried with real people in real time every single day?  How many rejects heard His voice on the fringes of the crowd? How many lepers just caught a glimpse of his face or merely saw His feet in the dust? How many ordinary people in the multitudes felt Jesus’ presence near them and simply “knew”  Him?  How many lost sheep were found, empowered, loved, forgiven and healed  because Jesus passed by?  How many awoke from sleep and death into  Christ’s Light shining all around them. We do not know about all the unrecorded miracles  wrought by  the Lord but I suspect that on the other side of the veil, we’ll be flabbergasted at the number.

However, John gives an insight at the end of his Gospel like this:

            Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.John 21:25

            It is not  hard to touch broken  people in  kindness, especially, more importantly, in the little  every day opportunities that come our way. Miracles are waiting to happen.