Category: Christianity in America

The Earth is like a library book

So last night I heard some rustling and murmuring coming from the direction of my nine-year-olds room. It was 10:37 pm, so right off, I am annoyed that I hear anything besides peaceful breathing. He’s been in bed for two hours – he should be asleep.

I march down the hall and see a gangly silhouette pulling itself up onto the bed it should have already been sound asleep in. Oh, that reminds me, I have to  let him know that he lost 5 minutes of computer time for being out of his bed for a reason other than using the bathroom or some other sort of emergency.

“What on earth are you doing?! Why are you not asleep?”

“You know that new library book I got tonight? Well it has this ‘MV’ sticker on it and it wouldn’t come off.”

“What! That is a library book!! You cannot take anything off of the book or put anything on the book! We don’t OWN it! It is NOT OURS!!”

“OKAAAYY!”

“We must bring the book back in the same condition that we borrowed it. I thought I told you this already! What are you thinking? Now lay down and don’t get up again until morning.”

“Okaaay.”

“I said, lay down. Put your legs out flat under your covers. Head on your pillow. If I see you up again or hear anything from you, I am coming with the spanking spoon.”

“Okay.”

“Now what did I say about the library books? We are not to put anything on them or take anything off of them. They are not ours, we are just borrowing them. We must return them in the same condition that we borrowed them. Good night.”

Thankfully I did not hear a peep or see even a shadow. He really is too old to spank, but I couldn’t think of anything else on the fly at quarter to eleven pm.

Then I realized, I probably hadn’t told him that he wasn’t allowed to add to or take something from a library book. We have been going to the library since he was a toddler and he was usually quite gentle with books, so I guess I didn’t ever give him the whole, “be careful with library books,” shpiel.

I had told him several weeks ago to stop ripping out the metal embedded stickers that the library puts in the books. However, since he has Asperger’s Syndrome like me, he didn’t generalize that to mean, “don’t rip anything off of a library book.” Oops, I should have known better. Well, he has the message now.

Later this morning I was thinking how the Earth is a bit like a library book. God gave the Earth to us to use and enjoy, just like authors write books to be read. And like a library book, the Earth is not ours to have, but just to borrow during our time here. Finally, we are to leave the Earth in the shape that it was when we started borrowing it.

That is not easy, just like it is not always easy to return a library book, especially a child’s book, in as good of shape as when it was first borrowed. But let’s all at least try.

How rational are we, really?

My husband was telling me yesterday about a class he is taking at work on how to bring about change in the workplace. The book he is reading for the class talks about the fact that people make decisions based on emotions more than they realize, and that this fact needs to be accounted for when encouraging co-workers to make changes.

The author of the book talked about how a group of professionals thought they were making rational decisions about their work, but the author didn’t think they really were. I could see the authors point a bit, but wasn’t so sure that the author didn’t jump to his own conclusions to satisfy his need for data. There were other examples presented in the book that clearly sounded like people were acting on emotion, but I was not so sure about this one.

This got me thinking about what is rational? In the western world we have come to define “rational” as coming up with decisions based on careful weighing of data that we can receive empirically. However, before God was kicked out of the picture several centuries ago, rational thought was considered to be decisions based on the careful weighing of what it was thought that God would want.

Which is truly more rational? To make good decisions you need to have as much true information as possible. None of knows what is really true about any situation, except for God.

In current western thinking it was not rational for Joshua to march around the city of Jericho once for 6 days, then 7 times on the 7th day. But it worked. Why, because he made his decisions based on all truth about the situation – he talked to the Guy who knew all.

If we all chose true rationality, which is the one thing that is supposed to set us apart from the rest of the creatures of this world, just think what a wonderful place this would be, and how great our lives would be.

Hmmmm, can anyone say, “Heaven”?…

“Without Him we are disabled.”

I love this quote from one of the leaders of our school’s Mom’s in touch prayer group. Today we focused on God being our enabler.

I laughed when I first heard her say that, not because I don’t think He is, but because we, as a society are constantly told, “don’t enable them.” This, of course refers to the need to not help out people in such a way that it allows them to remain in their bad habits. God definitely does not do that, quite the opposite as a matter-of-fact.

When I explained my sudden outburst of laughter, our leader said the title phrase. How true that is! And when you live with a medically-identified disability, you can appreciate that phrase even more.

I truly would be able to do virtually nothing in society if it weren’t for Him enabling me. Neurotypical people are not able to do anything worth anything eternally without God’s help, but they are able to do a lot that is looked at as good, useful by the world.

That is one of the blessings of being disabled by the world’s standards. There is no chance for me to get confused about how the good that I do has come about – it can’t be me, so it has to be Him!

Fisher’s of Men

Last week I couldn’t resist clicking on the Yahoo! post promising to list the 10 most dangerous jobs. Particularly intriguing was the note in the teaser that the most dangerous job also paid the least amount of money. Wow, if that isn’t an unfair situation!

When I discovered that this very underappreciated job was fisherman, I wasn’t terribly surprised – I had heard that statistic before, about fishing being one of the most dangerous jobs.

But what really got to me is the fact that Jesus promises his followers that he will make them “fishers of men.”

When I think of fishing, I think of a quiet time on a calm lake in a little aluminum fishing boat with a few of my favorite people, just holding a line over the boat and trying not to lose to much bait while at the same time hoping to catch at least one keeper crappie before the sun sets.

I guess introducing people to Jesus can be like that some days. But I think he wanted us to think more along the lines of the commercial fisherman, who risk life and limb to tell people (catch fish), who really don’t want to know at the time. And not only is the audience often not interested at first, there are many powers arrayed against our work.

I am thankful that He is making me into something, and that He promises to hold me when the sharks bite!