Faster, Higher, Stronger
Recently Carl and I, along with a younger couple, prepared to teach a prison Bible study. We discussed how, as we endeavor to follow the Lord, the path is growing ever more narrow. That concept was the theme of our evening with the women in white.
Today I found this column, written in 1996, and realized how well it applies to today. Perhaps it will bring clarity to some issue that’s a struggle for you; you wonder why you don’t feel quite right about doing some things that formerly didn’t bother you at all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Due to increased security measures, airlines recommend passengers arrive at the gate at least ninety minutes before scheduled departure.”
Calling to confirm my ticket and to verify that my flight home to Dallas was scheduled to leave at the regular time, I listen to the same recorded announcement I’d heard when getting ready to leave for Milwaukee a week before.
Rumor had it that the people at the x-ray machines might check through everyone’s carry-on baggage, but when I left for Milwaukee I was waved on through. Obviously I don’t fit the profile of a terrorist, I thought, congratulating myself that for once looking like a middle-aged midwestern grandmother was an advantage.
Just then the guard instructed the person behind me, also a fairly ordinary looking woman, to empty the contents of her purse into a basket.
Now I’m not so sure. Apparently the desperately average are subject to the same scrutiny as the suspiciously distinctive.
In a world of terrorist bombings, airplane crashes, pipe bombs in public parks, drive-by shootings and angry drivers carrying handguns, we tolerate delays while airport security people search our luggage, but I draw the line at having complete strangers scrabble through the disparate bits and pieces in my handbag. I decide I’d better prepare for this flight before we leave for the airport.
“Why are you cleaning your purse now?” asks six-year-old Hanna.
My granddaughter looks over my shoulder as I dig through candy wrappers, charge slips, hair pins, ball point pens, lipsticks and the magnifying mirror I need to apply them, combs with two or three gray hairs (who borrowed my comb?) and a few other items which I don’t recognize.
“You sure have a lot of junk in there.”
I thank her for caring and explain that this is unusual; I’ve been traveling for a week now, and things tend to collect in my purse. Under normal circumstances it is quite neat, I assure her.
“Yeah, right.” she says.
The television plays in the background, and announcers are interviewing Olympian Michael Johnson. He has broken another record and won another gold medal, the ultimate prize for one who set his heart, mind and body to go “faster, higher, stronger.”
Hanna brings me a paper grocery sack, and I divest myself of everything I don’t need to have in my handbag.
Before we leave for the airport I also go through the rest of my bags, those I’ll carry on the airplane and those I’ll check through to Dallas, and put them in order. I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed or unnecessarily detained if airport security personnel should decide to turn my stuff out on a table in full view of God and everybody.
The prospect of having everybody see what’s in my suitcase is far less appalling than the sure knowledge that God knows very well what I’m hiding and I’ve already been warned there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.
“It’s for your own good.”
I’ve never liked the sound of that, but I know the increased security measures are for my own safety. I’ve grown to understand, too, that the increased scrutiny God seems to be bringing to bear my life is part of His plan to shepherd me into freedom and wholeness.
Fashion trend observers at the Olympics noted that runners’ spandex costumes are getting progressively more brief. Olympic athletes understand the principle behind Hebrews 12:1 in which Christians are exhorted to throw off anything that would slow us down and delay our progress toward the goal.
Paul wrote to Timothy about the race set before us, and about our righteous Judge who will award a prize far better than a gold medal. There is in store for us, and all who have longed for Christ’s appearing, the crown of righteousness.
As I run this race, the path seems to grow more narrow, the climb steeper.
The Holy Spirit is intensifying the call to obedience, focusing scripture’s beam on issues that didn’t seem to make much difference before.
I sense God saying, without binding me to a new legalism, “Others may but you may not –it’s for your own good.”
The clock is running. I need to throw off anything that might hold me back or slow me down, and in doing so I find I am free to run this race faster, higher, stronger. By dealing with obedience issues now I am free of concern about what will be revealed in the pure light of His presence.
So I press on. As I seek His truth, His light, His ways, I know the exquisite reality of the words to an old hymn. While day by day the path narrows and grows brighter, steeper, my life is “richer, fuller, deeper. Jesus love is sweeter…sweeter as the years go by.”
“…I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14
Sweatin’ the Stuff
Wayne sounded articulate enough. Frankly I was surprised, since my erudite Texas friends were having a good time making aspersions on Arkansas culture and I didn’t expect the sales representative for Speedy Possum Moving and Storage in Holiday Island, Arkansas to be as professional as he sounded during my initial call.
He obviously worked from a check-list as he asked how many of what items we planned to move. His price quote for the move was even more astonishing, and based on the sound of his voice and a friend’s recommendation, we decided to quench the occasional notion that the price was too good to be true and made the appointment.
“We’ll be there first thing Tuesday morning,” he told us, “and probably start back to the Ozarks the same day.”
I reminded him that we had lots of boxes, tables, chairs, pictures and mirrors to be packed, and that I was concerned he’d bring enough truck for the job.
“Oh, we’ll bring plenty of truck,” he assured me.
Every year we drive our minivan thousands of miles, and my heart swells whenever I see a mammoth moving van rolling down one of this country’s great highways. There’s something grand and romantic and, well…American about it all.
I fancied our move to our new home in the Ozarks: a colossus of a truck, blue and white in my minds eye, rolling out of Plano on 75 Central Expressway.
Loaded to its vast capacity with all our priceless treasures, it would roll on past other, less shiny trucks and beat-up pick-ups, through Oklahoma, climbing grandly up and around narrow mountain curves, stopping finally, with a splendid hiss of air-brakes, at our house, impressing our new neighbors with what classy folks we are.
It was a fine dream.
Wayne’s “Bright and early Tuesday morning” turned out to be 1:30 in the afternoon. By then Himself and I, with Gail who was helping us for the day, were strung tighter than Texas fiddles, and when we saw Wayne’s “plenty of truck” it is safe to say we were not reassured.
Wayne’s helper, Larry, stepped down from the passenger side, looking for all the world as if he’d come down out of the hills just this morning, probably taking a day off from his regular job tending the family still. Skinny to the point of being frail, and hairy, he didn’t talk much. Wayne, who also wasn’t what I’d call husky, did the talking, after he hopped down from the driver’s side of his elderly yellow truck.
Hopped is the right word here, as he walked with a pronounced limp. I don’t fault him for his infirmity–I sometimes use a cane myself, but these people were here to move my piano!
Our moving van was not the gleaming road transport of my vision, either. Not the usual semi-trailer rig one usually expects, this two piece contraption more closely resembled the traveling style of my frontier ancestors. Speedy Possum mover’s equipment was a reasonably large closed truck of indeterminate vintage, towing a trailer or, one might say, a covered wagon, with ropes holding down the canvas top.
Throbbing blood vessels in the temples of the one I’d promised to love, honor and move anywhere with constrained me from running howling down Legacy Drive.
Gail, incredulous, loudly announced “there’s no way those guys are ever going to get the job done.”
She got into her old Ford Galaxy with Himself and drove to East Plano where she negotiated in fervent Spanish to hire two young, strong men who knew something about moving. Without them we might still be there.
It was a long afternoon. The two young men did whatever Gail told them to do, which included taking to the trash bin some of the old furniture and junk we shouldn’t have been keeping anyway.
As box after box was loaded, and I considered the old, worn and useless stuff we were going to have to unpack at our destination, I conceived a new fantasy: Wayne and Larry could accidentally drive Old Yellar and the Covered Wagon into the Red River, we’d collect the insurance, and buy all new things when we needed them.
They finished loading at 10:00 p.m. and headed back north. Himself passed the brave little convoy in Durant, Oklahoma at 7:30 the next morning.
By Wednesday night Speedy Possum Movers had us unloaded and began packing another household here on the Island.
We saved a significant amount of money, nothing was broken, and nothing was lost but a whole lot of anguish we could have spared ourselves if we’d simply remembered where we were moving, and that we are retired now.
We probably won’t need to hurry again until the next time we’re in Dallas.
Plaster Pearls in the Pigstye
The Velvet Room is a trendy bar just off Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee. My eyes adjust from noonday brightness and see that the couches, club chairs, bar stools—even the walls are covered in plush velvet. Mauve, teal, taupe, black, dark brown—whatever the color, the velvet seems to soak up as much light as it absorbs sound. The grand piano is silent. Cigarette smoke hangs motionless in the air.
Vikki enters, swinging her arms with a certain athletic grace, and greets the hostess. She’s apparently a familiar figure here. We met here at her suggestion and greet each other warmly. We see each other once a year or less, but we still love each other. We have history together.
Our conversation begins with menu choices, and finishes when it’s time for her to go back to work in an architectural firm and I return to the downtown hotel conference I am attending. Our lunch together provides little real communication.
She brags about the class she is teaching at the art school, reveals that she finally threw out the alcoholic boyfriend she’s been living with since she left her husband and two sons in the suburbs.
She hasn’t found a church yet, she says. “I try, but I get so turned off by the dogma. Hey, I’m an intellectual, ya’ know? I gotta find a place that feeds my soul.” She throws in an occasional profanity, to impress me, I suppose.
Perhaps I should be offended. Mostly I’m embarrassed. Claiming to be an intellectual while using wretched grammar, complaining of dogma while swallowing whole the empty humanistic ideology of her art school, posing as a caring mother when she abandoned her boys. I can’t help thinking that in her pursuit of education she’s lost at least 20 I.Q. points.
She should know better.
Vikki was a real blood-washed, sold out, on fire trophy of Grace. She testified in those days “Jesus lifted me out of a deep, dark pit and saved my life.”
We used to enjoy sitting at each other’s kitchen tables drinking Diet Coke while poring over our Bibles, rejoicing in this truth, marveling at that promise. We were so proud of our kids and how they really “got it,” as we used to say when they comprehended some Kingdom truth.
What happened?
I remember the Bible story of the prodigal, and how he left his father’s house to find his own way in the world.
My generation of young adults left home “to find themselves.” I think the prodigal had pretty much the same idea.
The riches he’d brought with him from his father’s house procured all the bright and shiny things he desired and assured him the company of glamorous people whose lifestyles he admired. He played hard, grabbed all the gusto he could get, and lived “the good life.”
In time his riches ran out, his new friends vanished, and reality came crashing in: he was only suited for work in the pigsty. There he found himself, a young Jew from a prosperous household, sharing food with swine, eating nutrient-poor cornhusks the pigs had overlooked.
Scripture says, “He came to himself” and went home to his father.
In every generation young people leave home, often for college, and when they do it is not unusual for repressive parental boundaries to get lost in the move. Drunk with independence and full of themselves, one of them might take up the study of genealogy in an effort to discover how her peasant parents could possibly have produced the exquisitely intelligent and cultured specimen of Homo sapiens she turned out to be.
I remember our children the summers after the first year away at school. I realized then that, despite my deep sorrow at letting them go, I didn’t want them back. Kids, even your own kids, are obnoxious at 19 or 20. It’s even more unattractive when a thirty-something woman falls into the “sophomore syndrome” and doesn’t seem to grow out of it.
Vikki, pregnant and married right out of high school, thought she’d missed so much. She became a Christian because of the prayers and witness of her husband’s notably conservative, straight-laced parents, and sometimes it seemed to her as if the heathen were having all the fun.
A talented artist, she enrolled in art school when she was 34 years old and a whole new world opened up to her.
Now she’s living “the good life.” She talks about the wonderful relationship she has with her ex-husband and the boys. She’s justifiably proud of her work in the art world. She claims to be relatively happy and content with her new life.
We part with hugs and promises to stay in touch, and I return to my Christian conference.
As I enter I am awe-struck at the almost palpable love in the hotel ballroom. Jesus is here! He’s healing broken-hearted people, dancing over us with singing! The light of His presence warms us and fills us with joy. No darkness here, no shadows, no thick veil devours His radiance. This is Father’s House, and I belong here!
Weeks later, I sit on my porch here at home, and for the last hour shadows have been gathering and I hadn’t noticed, until at last it is too dark to read, and it’s getting chilly. It’s time to go inside. Supper is ready.
Is it like that for Vikki? Has she wandered so far from Father’s light that she doesn’t realize it’s getting dark and cold? I’d hoped she might want to come home, but she’s not ready.
I cry about Vikki and pray for her. I still contend that the God of all Creation, who created Vikki and gave her talent, can handle the deepest scrutiny of the very finest of His created beings–even an intellectual like Vikki. I still believe she’ll come home to Father. He’s still waiting and watching. So am I.
