A Strange Goodness

Hot wind burned the panting ground, stabbed as pitchfork and plowed like the new-fangled John Deere tractors that rode over depleted topsoil till it had nothing left to give but to give itself up all "dusty ol' dust," as the 1930's saying went, till dust rose and roiled and rolled over itself with the momentum and power of a rogue wave at sea that mounts upward of several thousand feet and then sprays higher.

This dust didn't float; it lumbered. It didn't catch the sunlight; it grabbed the sun in a black fist and ripped light right out of the sky. It wasn't smudge, but indelible blot on the flesh fabric of those who woke in the mornings and saw the silhouette of their heads on the pillow case, the only thing not blanketed in dust that fell though the night.

Documentaries of the Dust Bowl record the dust appearing as a cloud ten-thousand feet high. "Nobody knew what to call it. It was thick like course animal hair; it was alive."


Dust. Just sand and dirt ground up like powder till it became strange black ranges of mountains that grew and moved in the wind because none of them were rock, but dust.


I catch dust and cat hair in the feathers of my duster and I sweep it from the keyboard.

Cat and Mouse

Some say it was the wrath of God. I wonder. What if there wasn't the greed and lust for more? What if we were content, thankful even, for what we have? What if we didn't eat through, chew up, strip down what we have until it's all used up and we move on westward because "There's gold in them thar hills," and there's a rush on land as virgin as what we just raped and left wallowing in dust? Maybe there wouldn't have been the Dust Bowl, the Great Crash, and the Great Depression.


I've done things like that before. Youth tends to. Young people, young nations and maybe it's because the lust of the eyes and the pride of life scream against this truth that's stood rock solid through all the ages and nations; "Foolishness is tangled up in the heart of a youth" (Proverbs 22:15). And maybe worse than the blind leading the blind are the foolish leading the foolish because a blind heart can learn from past stumbles and warn others, but foolishness is insanity.


Maybe we wouldn't have personal dust bowls, great crashes, and great depressions if we gave the kind of greatest praise and thanksgiving that's called "the sacrifice of praise," and "the sacrifice of thanksgiving," to God.


Seems we've categorized the consequences of foolishness. If the consequences are uncomfortable, we say we've gotten what we asked for; but if the consequences are completely out of our control, we say it's God's wrath.


What if we reasoned from the perspective the cross gives? Wasn't God's wrath satisfied there? And how much clearer could He have demonstrated the truth that His good plans for us have everything to do with Him, and that we merely benefit, because He is good.

He is good. Period. He can't help it, and we can't earn it.

 Many are just stripped by blast after gust. Some turn their backs on God while others manage a scratchy "thank You" in, not for, in it.


The raspy "thank you" comes from the tried and true saint; from the likes of Stephen who counted the praise that God will have, for He will, worth every stone hurled at him. And it came from Jesus, Savior of every saint, when He spoke the sacrificial "thank You" at Eucharist table.


"How?" I wonder. "How do people praise You when all that is as stone flies right at them? How do they thank You when dust is falling from their sky, or when the literal sky itself seems to be falling like a ceiling crumbling and there's pain and even death? Just how?"


Thing is, I do know how. It's by a desire that surpasses every desire to become Christ-like. To be thoroughly Christian, knowing that the word "Christian" means, "Christ-like." And I know, too, that just as Jesus was thoroughly the Christ, there is no such thing as a Christian who isn't thoroughly Christian.

Feather Dusting

I'm listening to myself; and to God whose saying, "Ok hon, 'nough with the 'we/they' language."

It's impossible to hide behind I.


So, will I thank Him when I don't understand what He's doing?

Will I praise Him though my sky looks to be falling and I'm crawling on my knees to Him for shelter?

Will I sacrifice the hard praise? The labored thanksgiving? The, "I trust what You're doing more than I trust what I want" and "I will accept even this as from Your sovereign goodness"?

Isn't this where humility begins? With just one breathed "Thank You" and an unapologetic, "Everything is primarily about the praise You will have"?

Sacrifice like this and there's no more, "Surely this isn't from God" excuse as if some things are beyond His good reign.

I'm thinking about these things. Seems to me the praise and thanksgiving offered when God's come through in ways that I understand, and answered my prayers the way I want Him to is a beautiful praise, but it costs me nothing. Seems to me this isn't half as beautiful as the sacrifice of praise.


"I choose to praise You whether the ground is firm beneath my feet or is oddly mounting in the sky and raining dust that I'll need more than a feather duster for." I say it like this to God.

"Bring Me your heart." He wants my heart. Maybe He wants it because I'm being refined, threshed, pressed, and isn't silver dross, wheat chaff, or dry mesocarp basically dust? And isn't dust itself evidence of the power of purification? Evidence of pure silver? Pure wheat? Redemption, dustless and eternal?


It's a strange goodness that nailed the sovereign Savior to the cross, yet gave Satan power as prince of darkness. Yet, God is King of heaven and earth and all that is in it. King. Not prince. And He is omnipotent over all. All. As in just flippin' and spinnin' all.


Well, He wants my heart. Maybe He wants it because it pumps life blood and strength into this bit of flesh and because soul life and soul strength and the purpose of heart, soul, and strength is for loving Him.


"Do You see the dust clogging up my heart, soul and strength? It's just falling off of me!" I ask Him knowing that He does, but unsure of what it's going to cost me to give Him my heart like this.

Pig-Pen Personified

"I made all things to praise Me." He's all about His praise, and some wise saint once said, "I'm most satisfied when God is most glorified." It's true. I don't know how it works, but it's true.


I remember God saying that the rocks themselves will praise Him. No wonder. Jesus is the Rock; and maybe the earth itself sometimes peels back and rises up as course black dust because when the people don't offer sacrifices of praise to the Rock, the rocks will sacrifice for it and the people will feel it. I

It was felt in the 1930'and is felt today. Perhaps it'll be felt for as long as earth keeps spinning because dust is the fallout of refinement but praise and thanksgiving are most beautiful when given from a dusty broken spirit and a contrite heart. God seems to prefer the prayer shed from a spirit that chooses to thank Him in life's pain and to praise Him in dust storms over a "Good job, God," pat on the back,

"Make my heart to praise You, Lord." It's courageous prayer for me. I know what I'm saying. I've said it before, but I guess I need to repeat it when I'm shedding dust like Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown.


I wave the feather duster, "Make my heart to praise You!"











written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

He Washes My Feet Till My Soul Smells Like Honeysuckle

Pink handled broom is loosing its bristley head. Its just not screwed on right anymore. I sweep the front walk and the head wobbles swivel because maybe its just stood in the pantry corner too long staring at the spice rack where dried basil, thyme, and oregano are crushed into glass spice jars, and cans of tomatoes and a jar of minced garlic from the supermarket line shelves and don't breathe.

Soil and mulch has hopped garden bed and walks up the walkway. The pink broom comes outside with me and her head swivels as if she can smell the garlic breathe alive. We sweep past garlic in purple bloom and the garlic nods a welcome.

I screw the bristled head back into place and sweep this curious pink broom but, "Oh," she swishes against the pavement and the head swivels a loose left because there the basil in terra-cotta pots breathes and its breath smells spicy in morning sun. I pinch off a leaf and chew it just because it's there. I screw the bristled head righty-tighty into place again and sweep the welcome mat.

A glass pitcher rests between the basil and the welcome mat. It's filled with water from the garden hose and the sun catches glass and water till light splashes with joyful abundance and I pour abundance over life all basil. It grows like this at the welcome mat and this summer I haven't once screwed off the lid on the jar of basil in the pantry. Instead, I've pinched, watered and washed basil leaves, carried the fragrance over the welcome mat and the scent just always breaks open full abundance when minced on the wood cutting board.

It's abundance on the wood, I think to God and myself. And it bleeds fragrance there. With the blade of the mincing knife, I  push the abundance into the pot of olive oil and minced garlic and is there anything richer than fresh basil and garlic minced into oil extracted from the olive which is the same oil that lights lamps in this lacking world?

I drizzle the pasta, starch of life, with this fragrant abundance of life I that washed carried over the welcome mat. And just like that, abundance oh so fragrant rich supplies the flavor plain pasta lacks.

Garlic

His abundance supplies our lack. My lack. He was rich, yet for my sake He became poor.

"For my sake?" I cannot begin to know the extent of what this means. I only know it as I see it; as I read it again and again on pages of Holy writ. I only know that I can't see the whole of His abundance, or of my lack, but that I can believe and hope it is as He says.

"You say," I repeat what He says back to Him because I need to hear it out loud, "that Your abundance supplies my lack; that You were rich beyond what I can fathom and became poor with a poverty I cannot comprehend. And You did this for my sake?"

"And Mine," He adds.

"And Yours." This stirs  me because the abundance that is mine isn't supplied by the blood of sacrificial lambs offered annually, but by the blood of the Sacrificial Lamb offered once lest He would have had to suffer as often as sin has been committed since from the beginning of time.

And I gain remembrance of not my poverty, not my lack, but of my Savior. And isn't this remembrance a portion of the grace of the diligence of Christ?

The empty tomb profoundly lacks when sin's diligence is destroyed because Christ's diligence to do what He had in mind to do, and that to "put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself," is profoundly abundant. (Hebrews 9:26).

"You had it in mind to put away sin by the sacrifice of Yourself; and You did it," I worship at His feet, aware that mine are soiled but also remembering that He's washed the sole of my soul and here I take the eucharist to heart.

"This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me," He says the ancient words to me and they never come up lacking. Then, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you" (John 22:19-20). He spoke so to His disciples at table.

Then He washed their feet.

So was He born in a poor man's stable? That's how I picture it. And was there a donkey in the stable? I only wonder because a donkey low was a poor man's beast of burden and transport; and a donkey would transport Jesus.

The Lamb rode a donkey. The thought comes and takes my breath. Swivels my soul. The clean and spotless lamb rode the back of the unclean.

Some called, "Hosanna in the highest" and laid down palm branches, symbols of strength, for Him to be transported over. Others laid down their cloaks, symbols of what covers nakedness.

If I give palm and cloak, they are as dirty rags under the feet of unclean donkey. I'm putting some things together. What if, I remember my pastor's sermon, I return to Christ what I have received from Him? Returning is different than giving. What increased abundance do I have when I lay down the palm and cloak as rags and return to Him what is His? Abundant life, me thinks.

He knows my thoughts and, "If you return to Me what you have received from Me, all is redeemed."

Ah! The Lamb rode a donkey! The Lamb redeems, makes worthy, the humbled, burdened and unclean. My thoughts kind of plow like this.

Love is transported by humility to redeem the unclean. I put it together.

Humility increases as love washes the feet of humility and then finds its transport by those feet. Maybe it's something like that.

"Humility is as welcome mat for love to be transported over." This is how I hear it and I cheer softly,

"It's an abundance!"

The Lamb Rode a Donkey

The way I see it, the road to the holy city was littered with palm branches and clothing and, "This is what the narrow road to the pearly gates must look like. Littered with strength laid down and with cloaks of self to cover more self; masks, attitudes, props, till the "have's" and the "have not's" are equal."

Few lay down their strength; few lay down what cloaks the soul. Fewer still lay palm and cloak down for the Burden Bearer riding the burden bearer. The way is narrow.

What if I broke off timidity and peeled off the strength of my flesh and the cloak of my soul for love and love alone because the beautiful burden of Love is carried on the back of humility?

Wasn't Love stripped of His strength?

Wasn't a foreigner in the land by the name of Simon of Cyrene called on to carry the burden of the cross on his back? And isn't that what it means to be a stranger in a strange land, a foreigner of this world, called to carry the beautiful burden of love to the world?

Wasn't the thready robe that clothed Christ's sinewey flesh bartered for while He gave up the Ghost?

Wasn't Love bared naked except for a cloth covering the loins of Love because the Father of Love will keep sacred the seed of Love?

Seems humility shoulders love, and love's always got the back of humility. "It will hurt," Love promises rugged, "but I've got your back."

Humility responds, "I lay down all palm and cloak for You alone;" for love is transported humbly like that.

"Lord?" I've got a question. "How do I lay down my life for the sakes of others without enabling them to use me up?" I want to be humble transport for Love, but not a doormat.

"I washed their feet; and became a welcome mat." His answer spurs another question.

"What's the difference?" I ask, but the answer comes before I get the question all the way out. "Oh," I'm getting it, "a door mat isn't the same as a welcome mat."

"Couldn't this Man who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?" I read it in John 11:37 and recognize the speech. It's spoken, "I believe that God can, but will He?" I've heard it because I've said it. And now I wonder where the likes of me is looking when I speak so. Am I looking, really looking, at the One I'm talking to? Or am I talking to Him, but focusing on me? I know what that feels like. It feels like manipulation.

Well, it was said at Lazarus' grave site. I wonder, How many there noticed that Jesus was weeping? Groaning in Himself? How many were really looking at Him?

Was He weeping and groaning inwardly because He was attending a type of what the Father would command on His behalf, and ours? Wrenching, I'm sure, to witness a foreshadow of those who would mourn for Him; of the stone that would roll away from the mouth of His borrowed grave, of the coming resurrection. Maybe He wept and groaned because this was hitting real close to home.

People were wiping their feet on Him, and it scraped out "You should not go where Lazarus lays because, if You recall, the Jews there have been trying to stone You." The disciples pulled their feet back like that. And then Mary and Martha scuffed, "Lord, if You had been here, then our brother wouldn't have died.

What exactly did they, have I, tried to wipe off the bottoms of our sandal shod souls? Fear? Misjudgement? Flesh mire?

What if they, if I, entered the work of Jesus as He entered His work? Isn't humility the entrance of His work? Hasn't love always been carried, cradled, transported, and delivered by humility?  Isn't humility the only transport and support for God-ward love? What if they, if I, laid my frondy strength and the garments my soul would wear, down to welcome the Lord?

Some door mats say, "Welcome" on them. Others are stiff as bristle. Bristle at humility and bristle at Jesus. Bristle, "Don't go at this time," as the disciples did, or "Why didn't You come sooner," as Mary and Martha did and, yeah, the feet wipe back and forth as sandal-shod souls would scrape against Jesus and I can hear the rough swish-wipe.

I know what it sounds like. My own soul has wiped its feet like that, as if Jesus were door mat, and then this soul of mine declines His invitation, "Welcome," and somehow doesn't see the bowl of water and towel He's holding.

He Washed Their Feet

Well, Jesus is welcome mat who washed feet gently.

May I be that kind of mat! Not doormat. Not bristle stiff. But welcome mat and soft wash towel. May I welcome those who will let me wash their feet.

The disciples let Him wash their feet, once they understood. And they've passed that understanding on to me. It's written. Explained. Demonstrated. Mary and Martha, and many of the Jews who had come to their side in their mourning believed in Jesus. For He casts nothing but the glory of God to those who believed. "Father," He said almost apologetically, "I thank You that You have heard Me. I know that You always Hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me." I can hear Love speak past the lump in His throat and speak love through tear dampened lips to the One whose will He came to do.

Love piggy-backs humility.

There were those who would cast stones to kill Him, but He rolled stone away to bring forth life.

There were those who would have bound Him in grave clothes, but He commanded, "Loose Lazarus."

There were those who would have kept Him dead and bound up behind grave stone, but He commanded, "Roll the stone away! Loose Lazarus!" I'm sure Lazarus went straight into Jesus' arms.

I guess a welcome mat must wait to receive those who want to be welcomed. And an impatient welcome mat whose heart aches so much for those it longs to welcome with a bowl of cool soapy water and soft wash towel may bargain, but will be rubbed the wrong way in the bargain till the water to wash the feet is spilt on the mat and the towel dirtied; and the bargainer bristles kind of pink and stiff in the spine because it's not possible to sweep up offering that's spilt because it's not wanted.

I want to be a patient welcome. "Help me wait till the one I long to welcome, whose feet I long to gently wash, wants to be welcomed and washed," I pray. It's hard, even feels negligent sometimes, to wait like that.

I have bowls in my kitchen. One aluminum, four glass, one purple ceramic. I also have soft wash towels in the linen closet. "It's silly, Lord." I do feel a tad silly, but  I'm fixin' to fill my large aluminum mixing bowl with water from the garden hose.

I find the wash towel, the white one, while hose water groans through the pipes. It's cantankerous and we've fought at the spigot. I sicked a wrench on it some time back, so now it turns on and off without spitting, but we still have water fights. I turn the spigot off. It sprays me and gets the last word, but my bowl is full.

I carry it sloshy to front door and place it beside the "Welcome" stamped across the cheerful red and yellow flower on the mat there. A wind chime sings from the shepherd's hook at the entrance, and I drape wash towel there.

I admire my soul work at the welcome mat and, "Oh! I need a bar of soap!"

I place honeysuckle essential oil soap, gift from son and daughter-in-law who know how to welcome the rough worn, on wooden green painted step ladder too rickety old to be more than decoration. It stands on all fours, legs "v'd" and the second step supports a bar of honeysuckle soap.

I'm a wanna-be,getting-there welcome mat. But I still bristle stiff when I'd rather smell like honeysuckle. "How do I do this this, Lord?"

"Spend time with Me." He's all welcome mat.

I sit with Him in the morning sun, and my leather bound Bible sticks hot to my bare legs. I dangle my own mired feet in cool pool water.

He washes my feet till my soul smells like honeysuckle.


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

No More Logs in the Eye, Please and Thank You

She's slow to wake up full. Slow to open eye round bulging. Slow to lift lid shadowed by night sky. But she does. The moon slits the lid open after one full night a month of shut eye, and crescent light shines a little sleepy.


I stand where backyard grass peels back and tilts away down into night shade, and I do the same. Peel back my head till nose tilts straight up at the night sky. And the moon is wide-eyed glory.

Wide-eyed glory. It's what I want.


"Fill my sight with Your glory tonight," I pray it silent, open, and maybe right now I can feel a little of what Moses felt because, like him, I'm tucked into a cleft on this rock called earth and asking to see God's glory.


From cleft I gaze out and a glory full and white in indigo night fills my eyes because somehow the sun strolls long across the sky and kisses me goodnight before it steps down from the horizon; and God strolls by, too.


I can't look straight at the sun, and I can't look straight at God's glory; but I look at the moon and as surely as moon follows sun, and moonlight glows with sunlight after the sun's gone down, I know that I, too, must follow God if I want to glow with the light of His glory. And I do want. And more. I want to be full of His glory, and to glow round and full like the moon at full term.


My open eyes fill with wide moon and I wonder to God, Why did You blot the moon with shadows? I wonder what the moon would look like without them.


He hears my wondering. "The moon looks like the way you see," He explains.


"Blotchy." That's how I see.


"Yeah," He chuckles kind of amused, "blotchy."


The moon just glows a little blotchy, and so do I. "But God," a pinch of its-not-fair nips me, "the moon doesn't cry."


He knows I know that tears don't wash away blotchy vision. Only the blood of the raw Truth does that. But still, tears are cleansing. They are. And sometimes my sight is improved after tears have rinsed where my heart's been scrubbed clean as repentance.


Yeah, I've been scrubbed like that recently. Seems that where I've been rubbed the wrong way by others is where I've required a good right scrubbing by God. Seems, too, that what things I've complained against are those things I must confess and repent from; and that the blotchy spots in my vision are craters larger than those on the moon and are certainly larger than splinters.


I'm told there's a log in my eye. God says so. And the log in my eye recognizes the offending splinter in another's eye because the splinter's of the same wood as the log. An unrepentant gossip is more offended by a gossip than a repentant gossip; and an unrepentant busy-body is more offended by a busy-body than a repentant busy-body. An unrepentant sinner is more offended by the sins of others than a repentant sinner because the unrepentant sinner orbits toward the wane, but the repentant sinner presses open to wide-eyed wax and begs, "I see!" and "Lord have mercy" in the next breath.

Moon with Craters

"The Beginning of Knowledge." That's the subtitle heading Proverbs, chapter one, in my Bible. The verses are pen-marked and I remember marking them decades ago. The ink is faded now, and I seem to have skipped underlining the phrase, "receive the instruction." I mark it now. "Receive the instruction of justice, judgement, and equity" (Proverbs 1:3).


I want to know what the words "justice, judgement, and equity" mean because I'm told to receive the instruction of them and, as the verses progress to include what I really need, the fear of the Lord, don't I need some instruction before I know much of anything about that? Oh, I do.


I go to Merriam-Webster on my iPhone. Justice-the process or result of using laws to fairly judge crimes and criminals.


I read it slowly, several times, because the understanding I'm wanting is an understanding that just opens wide in slow phases.


"You're saying, 'Receive the instruction of the process and result of Your laws?'" That's how I read it, and it's different than receiving the instruction of His law.


He lets me think. And I'm thinking that when I complain against this and that in another, may I have the presence of mind to say, "Oh! My vision is blotchy! I must have a log in my eye." And the rest is easy. I don't have to wonder what the log is called because it's usually called by the name of the splinter in the other's eye that offends me till I repent.


"How," I ask God, "can I co-operate with the process and result of removing the log?"


"Go back to the tree." He knows that this morning I tugged a chewed up leaf off the pecan twig above me because it reminded me of what I would look like if Jesus hadn't hung, just chewed up, on the tree as if the crime was His and the law was mine.


I finger the leaf. "How is it fair that You were chewed up by the jaws of sin, the worm of man, and hung on the tree?" I hold up the leaf to make sure He really sees this. "How is it fair, when You committed no crime?"


It sounds a little accusatory, and I don't mean to accuse God. "I don't mean it the way it sounds, God," I confess. "I'm beyond grateful, but," I venture carefully, "how is it fair?"


Lyrics spring into my head that song writers would roll their eyes at. It's not a song I've sung before, but the words sum up the message of a hundred worship songs that I have sung.


It should have been me crucified on that tree,
But He died in my place and I'm saved by His grace.


I would sing them now, except that I'm thinking justice is saying something diffferent. I'm not hearing, "It should have been me." I'm hearing, "Accept as fair use of My law what I say is fair use of My law."


Silence, again. Then, "How?" I have no idea where to begin. I feel like a child learning how to ride a bike and not knowing how to turn it around without skinning my knees on the pavement.


"Do you receive the instruction of justice?" He's asking me if I'll get on the bike.


"But how do I turn it?"


"Sweet girl," my Father's hand steadies the bike, "just turn around every time I say, 'Turn here.'"


"I hope You've got a large box of band aides, 'cause I'm gonna spend a lot of time on skinned knees," I laugh; sort of.


And the lyrics turn here.


Strange to say, "It was fair that Jesus hung on the tree;
That justice was served in an unheard of way and
The sinless One died in the criminal's place."


Strange to say, "It was fair that the blood on the cross wasn't mine;"
If I'd said, "I'll pay," sin would've had it's way,
But the sinless One died in the criminal's place.


"Do you receive the instruction of justice?" He wants an answer.


"Yes! Yes, I do!" I raise my hands in exuberance.


"Whoa there!" He steadies the bike. "Keep your hands on the handles and turn here!"

Bike Riding

I type the word "judgement" in the search box at Merriam-Webster. Judgment: "a divine sentence or decision."


"Ah! Just Ah-ha!" I hear His word different than ever before. Is it because I'm receiving His instruction of justice? Me thinks so.


Receive the instruction of the process and result of His law, and receive as fair the divine sentence His law requires.


It's not instruction for good behavior with warning for bad behavior. It's way more than that. It's His divine sentence carried out, hammered in, nailed down by nails that resemble exclamation points. They do, when they're upside down. And isn't it fitting that the hammer pounded the head of the long sharp exclamation point into the hands and feet of the One who carried out God's justice, and Who would be risen, that I might be upright exclamation pointing to His divine justice?


"Do you receive the instruction of judgement?" He asks.


I know what the instruction is. It's to be an upright exclamation pointing to His justice, not mine.

"Your decisions are better that mine," an understatement if there was one. "You know what should be done, and have done it." I recall all that Jesus did. "Yes," I say it with the daring courage only the humbled possess. "Yes. I receive the instruction of judgement."


Equity.


I type the word,"equity." It means, "the value of a piece of property (such as a house) after any debts that remain to be paid for it have been subtracted."


My breath catches because I am His piece of property. His house. Decades ago I underlined the truth of equity in the light blue Bible with my name inscribed in gold script in the lower right corner. I snap it open, gift from life-long friend of mine who led me on my thirteenth birthday to this God I love so dearly. The ink is faded beneath the words, "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price..." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).


My value has everything to do with holy subtraction. The subtraction of the debt that remained to be paid, but is now paid in full by the One who owns me and lives in me. After the debt for my sin was paid, subtracted off the books, I owned not myself. What a relief! I became nothing to become the holy temple in which God's Holy Spirit dwells. I became the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus when He subtracted my sin. Yeah, I'm still clay on the Potter's wheel, but this lump belongs to Him now and His hands are pressing me just wide-open glory from the inside outward, into the mold of His holiness.


This is the instruction of equity.


"I want to be soft to Your touch, Lord. I want to yield easily." I say it true as can be and I say it with some fear, too, because I know that if I'm soft to any touch but His, I'll be like a moon out of orbit that should be full wide-eyed open, but is sleeping at the wrong time. If I yield to any touch but His, I'll be like a woman with child who aborts because she's afraid of a pain more complicated than labor.


"I want to yield to Your touch, Lord," I say it again because He will fill me with His life till I glow round as full moon and then press outward what He's formed inward-His image. Holy DNA.


I don't want to be asleep when I should be awake. I don't want to be empty as a moonless night when I should be full of glory.


"Lord," I say it delicate, "mold me into a vessel fit to carry Your life. I open the womb of my soul to You. May I carry Your life to full term." It's prayer, shocking prayer, but I mean it because I want wide-eyed glory.


I look at the moon in fullest phase tonight. I have just enough fear of Him to know that He wants me full of Him, too, and that this lump of clay can be a re-do. Does that sound harsh? I think it probably does, but it doesn't have to be. After all, didn't He already follow His own instructions for justice, judgement, and equity? And isn't He the One getting my mud on His hands? All I have to do is let Him. Co-operate. And hold the shape He gives me because that's the shape that will house His life and I don't want to be a re-do.


"I receive the instruction of equity." I say it before He has the chance to ask the question. I'm after wide-eyed glory. No more logs in the eye, please and thank you."

Pregnant Woman

Silence. Selah; true and so still that it seems the whole world's stopped spinning. My soul's waxed full and, "Can I stay like this? Can I stay wide-eyed glory?"


He shakes His head, "No," then smiles, and it would be a mixed message except that I know instructions are meant to be followed to the last page. And I've botched enough do-it-yourself projects by now to know that I need step-by-step instructions and even then I'll mess up and I'll have to go back where the mess up began.


"Follow the instruction of justice, judgement, and equity," He repeats His word. I try it on and it fits like a maternity dress over a belly that's not yet round enough.


"I want Your word to fit, Lord." And I cry. I do. Because I want to feel full of His life, not mine. And I know that there are logs in my eyes just as surely as there are craters on the moon. I cry because the knowing hurts. The knowing comes when something reveals the log, and usually that something is an offensive splinter in the eye of an offender that I recognize because the splinter's of the same wood as the log. And I cry because I know that my vision is obscured and I know that there's a wide-eyed glory brighter than a full moon on a clear night, but I don't see that way yet.


I'm bent low. Forehead presses into the yellow life-preserver I store beneath bed and kneel on each morning.


I cry. I confess. I repent.


My knees are skinned. My make-up's tear smear. My head's spinning from too much thinking, and I choose to embarrass myself sheer humble making amends, and then hope that they will be graciously accepted with no further discussion yet, "Even that," I confess to God, "even if I'm shorn with questions and humbled further," I venture where I've not gone before and sometimes it feels like the back side of the moon to go the belly of the soul, "You say the entrance into Your kingdom is like going through the eye of a needle and there ain't no way I'm getting through with an expecting soul and enough wool for two sheep."


"Ha!" Yeah, He appreciates my humor. I just know He does.


And then? Well, this of river tears dislodges the log and it floats away. Just floats out of sight and it seems ridiculous to me that I didn't see that log before.


And then? The tears stop. And I begin pouring thanksgiving all over Him. "I see Your mercy!"


He's poured His mercy all over this.


I see mercy in the quoted prayer a sister-in-Christ emailed me this morning.


I see mercy when this joyous life-guard daughter of mine who works ten hour shifts under the blazing, bleaching, browning sun parallel parks the family van with perfection and passes her driver's test with a 97% score.


I see mercy in the cheerful woman at the DMV counter who twinkles out, "What happened? Did the instructor fall asleep? Because no one passes with a 97!" Twinkley eyes line with laughter at her own joke and, "Congratulations!"


I see mercy in the celebratory donut the lady at the corner coffee shop gave the newly liscenced driver. "Here's the iced mocha you ordered, and here," she presents a white paper bakery bag, "is a celebratory donut!"


"Thank you!" We laugh because this is just so fun!


And I say it and mean it for God. "Thank You for the donut."






















written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

When Water On Road, Turn Around! Don't Drown!

"If Water On Road, Turn Around! Don't Drown!" replaced for a season the lit signs above the freeways that flashed, "Stage Three Drought." And where ice sheeted pavement till schools shut, the sun beats out heat while I beat eggs because I'm going to fry them on the hood of my car. I once heard of a woman who baked cookies on a cookie sheet she placed on the seat in her car. Yeah, this is summer fun in the south. No wonder fried food is the hottest competition going at the Texas State Fair each year. I didn't know what a chicken fried steak was till I moved here. I learned years ago in North Dakota that there's no such thing as a jackalope, though the gas stations sell jackalope postcards; and I've learned that there's no such thing as a chickasteer. And fried Dr. Pepper? Yeah, there's such a thing.


There's a question the psalmist asks about God in Psalm 147; "Who can stand before His cold?" I read it now and wonder the flip side, "Who can stand before His heat?" Seems to me real answers are needed lest we freeze stiff, or fry crisp; drown in water, or dry up for lack of it.

"Who?" The question is there in black and white on pages thinning yellow but bearing the weight of the glorious words written on them.


"Who?" The question would be asked by the likes of me because this skin of mine is thinning, too. It happens kind of crinkley with age and I don't notice till I look at a brand new Bible, or daughters' hands and necks and the delicate supple skin just under their eyes.

I would ask Him, but the answer is given in the preceeding verses before the question is asked.

Who? Seems it's those who know the thin and the stiff; those who've been shut out in the cold and given ice to warm themselves, and those who've been in the frying pan beneath the sun hotter than summer in Texas because they are those who know what it is to be outcasts of Israel, brokenhearted, wounded, uncounted, un-named, humbled. When these can sing praises to God with thanksgiving, then the answer is, "Praise the Lord! The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy" (Psalm 147:1, 11).

So I haven't needed to ask the "Who" question; but I have needed to ask, "How?"

"How? Lord, really, just how?" I've asked on my own behalf till I knew His answer by heart; and in heart, and then saw the answer just blaring in those bright yellow lit-up freeway signs, "If Water On Road,Turn Around! Don't Drown!" Isn't that pretty close to another way of saying,"Repent"?

Freeway Sign

I practice how. And turning around is what I do when life merges into the fast lane and comes at me like a flash flood on the freeway. I've prayed, "Lord, give me a sign telling me to turn around before I'm forced around."


He did; and when I sped past this flashing sign, I couldn't help praising God, "Hallelujah! I'm turned around!"


I used to get swept under and gasp for air, but then I guess I got turned around so many times that I lost myself to repentant life.


Now I ask the "How to stand" question because I need an answer for those who know my story and are reading my Pisteuo! books, and stopping me in the grocery store to ask me, "How?"

It happened like this yesterday between the bread and sport's drink isles. "I know your story. I don't know how to do this. I'm told to trust God more, and it'll go away. But it's not. There's more to it than that, isn't there," She smiled the plea. "Oh, I know there is, but I don't know what." She and I would have abandoned our shopping carts and gone to straight to the coffee shop where the real beans are spilled and the bitter is sweetened. But we couldn't. Not just then.


It's hard work. And the energy needed doesn't come from Muscle Milk or Gatorade or carbs in the bread isle, but only from this Bread that we remember daily and from the cup we remember to drink from because He ran the race and praised God every step of faith; and He endured for the joy of what He hoped for. He was shunned, fried, dried, cut up, un-named, and uncounted.

And He knows how to stand because He's done it.

Sometimes we know how to do it, only by doing it.


Maybe part of the answer to the question, "Who can stand before the hard cold that God has given, scattered, and cast out," is on this open page of Bible before me. Maybe those who can stand are those who learned how to stand, before God rebuilt them. Before. Because that's when a heart's prone to get a little tough proud. Before any rebuilding by God, we may begin to reason that since it seems God isn't making it go away, then we will. Somehow.


Maybe those who've learned how to stand are the same who've learned how to be humble; before God put them together, healed them, and counted them because they counted His humility worthy.

And could the other part of the answer be that the God who sends the hard that freezes the blood in our veins is the same God who sends out His word and just melts the hard till it pools and flows away?


But when we stand in a grocery store isle just hoping to get home before we fall to pieces, that's when we ask the how with a contrition that realizes there's more to this than pat answers; and too much of this for any help less than supernatural.


The answer is on this aging page of scripture and it's not "Trust more," as if our trust initiates His work. No. Seems the answer is that He sends out His cold, and who can stand it?

And that He sends out His word and melts the cold.

I wish I had this to share yesterday. I'd say something like, "His mercies are tender in the tough, and tough to make us tender."

I used to say, "I wish I could reach inside you and just turn your heart right around." I'd say it to a flushed little face on the dark green couch because, well, maybe he got frustrated with older brother, and maybe he threw a lego at him and it might have hit him.


He did; and it did.

And the boys would be reminded of alternatives to throwing legos.


Somehow the conversations with hot and sweaty little boys, faces all flushed with tears, didn't change much. Somehow the details of who did what to whom just never required a different speech. Truth was truth on that dark green couch, and the details never changed that. Oh, the details would be heard. The, "He did, and he said," had to be heard so that the response could be given. Again.

The truth was always, " I can't reach inside you and turn your heart around; only God can do that." Seems the truth always has something to do with turning around. With repentance.


The little offenders' chins would tremble in my cupped hand. I would hold their eyes with mine and somehow the truth is never rejected by contrite hearts.


The boys would listen like that, then lower their eyelids because maybe they felt like I could see into their hearts just by looking into their eyes. So they'd lower their eyelids. But I'd tilt my chin down and tilt theirs up, and our eyes would meet in the middle and hold just there.


"What your brother did," I'd say, "belongs to him. What you do, belongs to you." I'd pause and watch the stiff shoulders soften a little. Isn't that what happens when we stop carrying the offenses of others on our shoulders? They lower a notch?


"Now," I'd continue, "what did you do?"


"I," and the confession would tremble out.


"Do you remember," I'd prompt, "what you can do differently?" Seems we're prone to forget options when emotions run rough shod. Seems we need rehearsals till we know the script by heart.


"Come to you," he'd remember.


"Why?" I'd ask because it's important to know why. And to remember it's not to tattle.


"So that I won't throw legos at him?"


"Exactly." And I'd think to myself about the legos I've thrown. The words. The attitudes. The "if looks could kill" glances. They're all legos.

Only God can melt the hard with a single word, and only His Spirit can blow as warm wind till the waters flow down the cheeks of a lego thrower with good aim. I happen to know, as a repentant lego thrower myself, and as the mother of a couple of repentant lego throwers, that there's usually a wee bit o' smugness when the aim's right on; but also a smidgen of guilt when the target cries out because legos sting like hail when they hit tender skin. 

Legos

"He sends out His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly," I read what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 147:15.

"What is Your command?" I ask Him because His answer will further define for me just who He is. "Is it this? That You give snow, and scatter frost, and cast hail stones?"

"I give, scatter, and cast the cold that you can't stand before." He gives no excuse.

"You give it?" I want clarification, because many don't agree with that. Many say that He allows it. It's supposed to be comforting to those who are in the hard cold that's as stinky as wet wool, and as ashes that remind us of a time when we were glowing happy warm by the fire, and as  ice-ball morsels to eat.

"I give it." I hear Him respond somewhere between the isles of  "The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him," and "He takes pleasure in those who hope in His mercy." I'm reminded of yesterday when I stood between the bread isle and the sport's drink isle because bread, after all, is first threshed. And the likes of the kernel of wheat that I am fears the thresher. And I know a young man who used to throw legos, grew to drink the hope Muscle Milk offers, and now he hopes in the strength of God's mercy.

No one can stand before His cold. Is that why He sends it? So that someone would would fear Him for real as the One who does more than allow the hard, but as the One who commands it? So that someone would feel reason to hope in His mercy? And isn't this kind of language learned by those who repent before His cold? Who turn around before His cold because they know they can't stand before it?

I don't have to ask Him where the comfort is in this, because it's written in the very next sentence. "He sends out His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow," Psalm 147:19-20). And when it flows, I best have turned around when I had the reason smack in front of me all uncomfortable.

We make the choices when the hard and the cold are in front of  us. And the choices we make will determine if we turn, run in fear, and continue lobbing legos; or if we turn because we fear the same God from whom we also hope for mercy.

Sometimes the fast lane happens in a roar of revved up emotions and legos fly. But I read a plaque recently that said, "Repentance means-'to turn away from sin and start to follow God completely.'"

The boys and I learned this script of truth by heart, and in heart, by way of throwing legos and then by finding the off-ramp to repentance. The by-ways are the in-roads, and "Turn Around!" flashes above the off-ramp while legos speed by.

"I want to wake up every day at the foot of my bed." He knows what I mean and I remember as a little girl waking just that way. Only I woke lost at the foot of my ginormous Coleman green plaid flannel-lined sleeping bag.

"You want to wake up  turned around!" He and I have our own humor.

"Yeah, I do."

I want to wake up repentant.

That's a good place to loose myself.




written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

When Storms Spin Life Into Potato Puree

I wrote on a scrap piece of paper, "I won't say what shook me big and hurt me deep. I won't. It's not worth remembering. It's just detail, really. But, 'What, Lord, to do with this detail?'"

Sometimes this is the question when we're in the blender, and the detail not worth remembering is how the "blend" button was pushed and who pushed it. The date on the piece of paper was a month ago today and strangely I can't remember the details. I guess what isn't repeated isn't remembered.

Divine forgetfulness; it's a mercy and a grace. What's worth remembering is the conversation with the Lord after the question, "What do I do with this fact that the button's been pushed and the blender's
on?"
 I read my own handwriting asking for wisdom in furious scrawl. Then I read, "I turn my heart toward Yours." The letters forming the scripted cry are just unsteady blend of long and short hand.

Potatoes are boiling. Texan beef sausage is frying in the cast iron skillet and leeks are diced and heaped green on the bamboo cutting board with the non-skid rubber at the corners that every cutting board should have.

The potatoes are soft and the leeks sauteed. The sausage is cooked crisp; and is there anything that smells better than leek sautee and crisp sausage?

I ladle leeks, potatoes, and hot potato water into the  blender and, I confess, I always get nervous before blending boiling hot in a glass blender with a rubber lid that has a removable stopper because what if the glass brakes? Or what if the stopper pops off?

Steam is a powerful force and I can see a weather pattern beginning to form inside the blender. It's hot and humid in there and that's storm popping weather in these parts. And in my kitchen. It's happened before. My kitchen's been taken by storm before. It's been splattered by hot, leek-potato blend all green before. The stopper's popped off my blender before.

I like storms as long as I'm not under the illusion that I can control them. I like them outside. I can't press them down, put a lid on them and keep the stopper stopped. I know I can't, so I trust God in the big ones that cover the sky and rattle the windows. But in my blender? I get a little anxious about that. And in my life? Well, sometimes storms churn life into a puree and just blend me up till I can empathize with this soup in the blender.

I don't like storms that splatter puree onto kitchen cupboard, counter, and floor; and I don't like storms that churn me into a puree and pour me out like blended leeks and potatos into the soup pot.
I don't like feeling as blended green soup; even less, looking like it and winning a few askance glances. But sometimes I'm in the soup pot. I just am.

I spoon leeks and ladle potatoes and potato water into the blender. The kitchen towel hangs on a hook by the sink. I reach for it, wad it up, and press it between the stopper and my hand. Just in case. A hot potato storm's about to rotate at the speed of a tornado just blending everything into a puree.

"Be anxious for nothing" goes through my head as I step back as far as my arm is long, press the blend button and potatoes boiled soft and leeks sauteed limp churn green so violent fast that they are soup in less than ten seconds.

I pour it into the soup pot. A green puree. And just like that the three ingredients are blended into one and forever changed. I think I know what that feels like.

 

Blender with Potatoes and Leeks

Thing is, when we go through the blender, we come out changed. We look different and our lives take on a different spin and shade. And the questions we ask change. Go through the blender and somehow the "why" and "who" questions don't matter much anymore. What matters when we're reeling and maybe feeling a little green is, "Do I believe that God pressed the blend button? And what matters are, "How sovereign is sovereign?" And, "What does God's love really look like? What does His love do to me?" The questions are asked frantic when "Watch out! I'm about to blow!" is churned out dizzy nervous because the starch of life and everything living all leeky green is as spinning funnel and the the eye is blurry just, "Where is the center of the universe anyway?"

I turn back to my scrap piece of paper where I've written, "God is the center of the universe. He is the eye of the storm."

It's true. He is the center. I can live as if He's not. I can live like that even when I feel like I've been spooned into the blender; but that doesn't make it less true. I can cry out as if I am the center of the universe, and people who love me more than they love God will move everything in their power to rescue me and for all their kindness, "Thanks, but no thanks." I don't need the reinforcement of my self-centered nature. Honestly, I don't want to be self-centered, but God-centered; and I need fewer rescues by those who love me more than they love God; who trust their rescue of me more than they trust the strange sight of God's love for me.

Then there are those people who claim to love me, but they don't. Not really. They flatter themselves, saying, "I love her enough to be tough." It's this thing called "tough love" and is this much different in the end than those who flatter me with their rescuing version of love? Both versions end up displacing God. Both versions forget the fact that God says He is sovereign over everything in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that no one and nothing, neither angel nor demon, neither man nor woman nor circumstance can thwart His purposes.

God has reasons for pressing the blend button and maybe one reason is to let centrifugal force spin me away from the center of my life. May I be pushed to the outer edge, and may God be the center of my life. May He be the eye and may I begin to see Him through His eye, not mine. See God through His eye and begin to see everything differently.

See like this and love differently.

Tough love. I don't think He'd define it the way most do. I google, "What is tough love?" I want to know what this term is supposed to mean, and find that it's meant to "encougarge self-help by restricting benefits" (North American Web). Is this right?

I ask because it's been tried and doesn't seem to work. I ask because it didn't work when I tried it, and because I've been in rooms full of others who've tried it and it hasn't worked for them, either. I ask because doesn't Christ encourage us toward helping others? Isn't it by seeking to aid others that we find aid for ourselves? And isn't the help that we all need, but can't get for ourselves, the help that Christ gave not by restricting benefits but by benefiting us through the restrictions He put on Himself?

I press the puree button on my blender. Potatoes boiled soft and leeks sauteed limp spin so fast that in ten seconds they are soup, and I marvel at the Savior who left Heaven's peace. He left the holy still power and came to this spinning blender called human life on earth where a mother fears for her daughter; a wife fears for her husband; friends fear for friends; parents fear for their son because these need help and everything tried just isn't working. They aren't seeking the help they need and the restrictions care-takers offer seem to benefit no one; not even themselves.

I press the stop button.

Maybe it could be said, "Tough love doesn't work; but Trust Love does."

Trust Love.

It was said long ago; "Lean not on your own understanding, but trust in the Lord with all your heart" (Proverbs 3:5).  Is this Trust Love?

 

Earth Spin

Jesus stepped onto this rotating earth that spins at one-thousand miles per hour and where great wheels of ocean streams and air currents churn in circles by the very energy of his spinning orb that's seventy-one percent water. I think it to myself as I lift the blender from the base and, "You placed Yourself into this blender" is the whisper of a marvelous thought.

I pour the soup into the soup pot, place a second batch of soft and sauteed into the blender, and before I can press the start button I hear Him speak to me; "I created this blender with my Father and our Holy Spirit." He's talking about the very beginning when God said, "Let there be light" and the earth began to spin.
 
"The spin started before the sin started," I stare at the green puree in the blender and just let this thought churn, because there's something spiritual here. It churns out, "You started the spin and then said, 'Peace. Be still and know that I am God.'"

It's scary to watch loved ones fall down so many times that they can't think straight enough to walk straight no matter how much they want to. It's scary to wait , just wait because of Trust Love, while God's patience begins to seems like negligence.

Tough to trust Love while a life hangs in the balance. The friends of Jesus, and Jesus' mother knew about that as He shouldered the sins of the world in the hang.

Tough to trust Love to revive and resurrect.

Tough to trust the generous kind benefits of Love who offers birth before death and life instead of it.

I practice Trust Love.

The blender may puree a loved one till my insides turn to soup and everything in my understanding wants to lean hard on the "stop" button, but I practice Trust Love because God's proved faithful to press the "stop" button and when He does, I see that God understands with a patience I don't possess outside of trusting Him.

The kitchen is quiet. A holy pause. Just the blender, God, and me.

He whispers and I hear Him; "I stepped into the blender with you and your loved ones. I mixed with you so that you may be one in Me as I am one in the Father. I pray that you may be one in Us. I pray that the love with which the Father loves Me may be in you, and Me in you." I recognize His words from the Book of John, chapter seventeen.

We stand side by side, staring at the blender on the counter. More silence. Then I dare the whisper, "I step into Your love. Your love is the true blender."

I dare the speech because what I mean is that I long with a heart turned soft because I've soaked in the Living Water; I long to be blended, no, pureed, till all of Him is in all of me and I'm made into soup meant to be ladled into the empty bowls held out in cupped hands of the poor who hunger enough to line up at the soup kitchen on this spinning earth. Yeah, that's what I mean.

I press the start button. The blender whirs out the last batch of potato-leek soup; and Love confesses, "I pressed the start button. I pressed it in the beginning, and I pressed it when my mother Mary pressed Me into Joseph's hands and they held the Love that would put them through the blender and shred their hearts because that's just part of Love's sacrifice for the sins of the world. And I pressed it when the thorny crown was pressed onto My head, but the blood that soaked the earth at the foot of the cross soaked the thorns of the crown first. They meant to mock, but love won't be mocked because it's tougher than thorns."

Trust Love endures for the sake of the offender's freedom.

Trust Love wears the thorns, but His blood soaks them.

Trust Love bears the shame, but doesn't own it.

Trust Love is misunderstood and maligned, but will never displace God.

Trust Love is tough enough to press the blend button and then speak, "faith, hope, love; these three abide; and love is the greatest" over the whir of the blender.

I add the crisped sausage to the soup pot. As an after-thought, I slice up fruit for a side dish because love is a fruit of the Spirit and tonight that's what I'm serving.

Potato-Leek Soup with sausage because my husband's a meat and potatoes German who's lived in Texas cattle country for twenty of his fifty years.

The side dish? Well, I didn't plan on slicing fruit, but I do it real quick because love is a fruit of the Spirit.

And that's what this meal's all about.


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

I'm Sipping On It

She pulls herself up to a sitting position as if sand bags held her down because sometimes sleep is heavy. But I'm waving a mug of fresh brewed Texas Pecan coffee and there must be essence of caffeine wafting in the steam rising under her nose because she's upright. I fill the mug just shy of brimful so that she has to stay awake enough to keep from spilling it.

Last night, yellow therapy dog sniffed evening essences, nose to the ground, while I pointed my nose upward as if to breathe the essence of the stars themselves just wafting light from the deep mug of straight up black sky. I sipped the night sky like this. Black, with stars sprinkled as sugar and stirred.

"It's so deep," I marveled upward. My chest expanded with a heart brimful of star light and, "Pull me up into Your heights, God," spilled out. "Take me into Your depths where it's too dark to see me and dark enough to see only the lit path to You;" because surely the stars are arranged beyond the constellations we've figured out. Surely the stars are ordered as the solar lights I have lining the path to my front door; only His solar lights would line the path to His front door.

My eye caught the blink of a firefly and I watched it zig from pecan branches spilling over the pool and zag into the open garage and, "There! Your solar lights look all ziggy-zag to me, but they must lead to the inside of where You're parked!"

An owl hooted wide-eyed somewhere nearby and I'm certain I heard a duck in the distance quacking nasal like they do. Must have been a coyote sticking its nose into a nest.

And somehow in the dark there's a lit path, and somehow there's something organized in zig-zag, and something ordained about night owls and nesting ducks who quack through their noses when waken by a coyote smelling duckling for dinner.

So, my night owl daughter balances the mug. Sleeping in the bed next to hers is my sand-runner who sprints like an ostrich till she falls on her neck just pillowed; and in the crate is my yellow therapy dog stretched out but eyeing me hopeful for a morning walk. She'll keep her nose to the ground, zig and zag and sprint to leash end through the mud. I know she will.

Coffee in Bed

                                                                                            
She does. I don't. We walk and I wonder why she must muck through mud, drink mud puddles and chase bunnies for breakfast. "I'll have to wash her feet," I sigh to the One walking with me; "and she doesn't like getting her feet washed."

"Neither did Peter," says He.

How does He do this? How does He go from muddy dog feet to the holy act of washing the disciples' feet without blinking? "Hmm. Well," I say as we tend to say when we don't know what to say, "I guess it's humbling to have our feet washed. I guess it means we've been mucking through mud."

"But only your feet," He assures. "The rest of you is clean."

I remember that conversation. Peter didn't want Jesus to wash his feet, but Jesus told him, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me" (John 13:8). Peter then asked for a complete washing and learned from Jesus that the only washing he needed was a foot washing.

We continue walking. The song, "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!" runs through my head.

It's true. I'm washed by the blood of Jesus. But I also walk through this world. I carry mugs of morning coffee upstairs to my night owl. I sip the stars from a mugful of night sky from the back patio. I loose track of a sand runner, and I leash a yellow mud mucker, and sometimes I eat anxiety for dinner and worry for breakfast and track through wastelands to find an ostrich who has disappeared.

I need my feet washed because, yeah, I track through sand and mud and worry and sometimes I put my nose where it doesn't belong and end up quacking nasal. I need my tough and tender feet washed; and I need to learn how to wash others' feet with a tough and tender love like Jesus' love.

Tough love. I'm not convinced that what we've been told about tough love is what Jesus would say about it. Isn't the tough in love the, "I will lay down my life for you, but only when you want me to"? And maybe the tough is a combination of the heart going out to the one loved, but not extending beyond the will of Love Himself.

I think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Prodigal means to spend wastefully and recklessly, and that's what the son did. He was old enough to go his way; old enough to know better, old enough to figure out possible consequences, but chose to think he was different and that these things wouldn't happen to him. He was like we've all been.

I think about his father. Somehow he knew the wise difference between watching for his son and searching for him. He had the wisdom to retain daily life, though his heart may have dropped out, and to restrain himself from dropping out of his life to search for a son who didn't want to be found just yet. Was it tough love to give his son the inheritance he asked for, watch him walk away to certain destruction, and then turn back to the house and work the fields as one whose life is laid down because his heart is wrapped somewhere around his ankles and he stumbles over it every step?

I think about Jesus and His disciples, and Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus who was meant to die to be brought to life so that something holy would be accomplished in the followers of Christ up to this very day by a divine will that extends beyond any reach our hearts can make.

Was it tough love for the father to believe, trust and hope that one day he would say, "This is my son who was dead and is alive again"? And for the sisters to say the same about their brother? It was tough; and it was love, and they did say those words.

I think of my life word, pisteuo. The Greek verb I discovered and wrote a book about. Pisteuo-to believe, to trust, and to always hope in Love Himself.

So I'm a guardian of a prodigal and, yeah, there's still some prodigal in me. I still spend too much on misguided love and I still pisteuo too little in Love Himself. But not as I did before I suffered. 

Seems there's a suffering that exceeds what comes at us. It's the internal suffering experienced when we choose to be manipulated by the lusts of others. The Bible says it, and so do those who have suffered like this, and then discovered the will of God.

"He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his life in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God" (1 Peter 4:1-2). I'd like to understand this more than I do now.

I'm sipping on it.

"You suffered in the flesh for me." I speak the part of His word that I understand, and wait for Him to take the cue.

He does. "Therefore," He begins, "arm yourself also with the same mind."

I sip.

I wonder, Does He mean to suffer in the flesh for others? It doesn't make sense to me, because the next thing He says about this is, "Don't live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men."

I have to ask Him. "What do You mean?"

The answer is right in front of me. "Live the rest of your time in the flesh for the will of God."

I sip.

I'm a repentant prodigal, and a guardian of a prodigal who still has wanderlust, and I wonder if this verse is where tough and love come together.

Tough when a loved one is a prodigal.

Tough to love as the father of the prodigal son loved; and as the Father loves His prodigal sons and daughters.

Tough to restrain giving the prodigals more of ourselves than we should, but if we're short on pisteuo then we'll give our souls and spend our livelihoods searching for, finding, and dragging our prodigals home.

This is misguided love. It's a love that believes, trusts, and hopes in our persuasive, might I dare say manipulative, efforts. I know about this misguided love because I've loved so.

Misguided love doesn't help the prodigal. It just makes a prodigal out of the wife of a prodigal, and who hasn't seen it make a prodigal out of the mother of a prodigal daughter, or the father of a prodigal son?

Misguided love. It's the kind that lacks faith and hope in the Son who saves, and it will accuse Him of being prodigal. I can hear Mary and Martha, Lazarus' sisters, "Lord, if You had been here, our brother wouldn't have died." I read between the lines, "If You had dropped everything when we sent word rather than acting the prodigal;" and misguided love accuses ugly and out of line.

It's hard for me to draw the line at serving another, especially a loved one, in time of need and crossing not at all that line.

It's hard to simply serve; but cross the line and become the prodigal who misunderstands and misuses the legacy of the Father's love. This is a suffering in the flesh that exceeds a suffering that comes at the flesh. But live for the will of God and, yeah, cease from sin. Tough love comes together here. The father of the prodigal son must have known this because he didn't become prodigal himself in striving effort to bring his prodigal home.

It's a mystery, but maybe only a prodigal gone bankrupt, a prodigal starving for the Father's mercy, a prodigal returning repentant, and a prodigal learning pisteuo in the return can understand something of the mercy of Love Himself.  Sometimes it's a long journey back and maybe it's long enough to get pretty good at the pisteuo step. It goes something like, "I'm trusting." Step. "I'm believing." Step. "I'm hoping." Step; and nothing but, "Have mercy on me" speech just daring hope till the prodigal is embraced by Love and the Father says, "I only need to wash your feet. The rest of you is clean."

Well, I'm still learning pisteuo steps. My heart isn't dropped down around my ankles anymore. Perhaps pisteuo is for this messy life, because faith will be seen; hope will be fullfilled, but love is greater.

Washing Feet

I wash muddy paws on the patio till they're happy yellow again. While washing, I worship the One who washed the disciples' feet; and the wash cloths are still in the water bowls because His legacy lives on.

He's left the legacy of serving the needs of another without becoming controlled by those needs.

I'm learning how to wash another's feet without becoming the towel used as a bathmat. I'm learning the difference between a wash cloth and a towel. One washes and the other absorbs.

I stand under stars that burned out long before I was born and I worship in the light they shone because their legacy extends far and long.

I stand under the upper, outer layer of lit up atmosphere that covers this dark side of earth and, "Oh. Oh!" I exclaim. "The Light of the world shone bright as the morning star and the Morning Star hasn't burned out, but lives!"

Starlit worship service happens at patio.

The patio is starlit once again tonight. I stand looking up. "It's just so deep," I marvel at what's beyond as far as I can see. It's the upper, outer layer that somehow validates believing, trusting, and hoping.

"It's the epi part of pisteuo." The author in me recalls that epi is the Greek preposition meaning "upper layer, outer layer."

"Ha!" God barks out laughter. "Epi-pisteuo!"

Epi-pisteuo. Our new word. It means, "The upper, outer layer of faith and hope."

Faith on faith; hope on hope. Epi-pisteuo.

I breathe the essence of star light, and the poet in me remembers that God rides the wind and that the clouds are the footprints He leaves.

"You ride the highest solar winds that are a mystery to men," I worship upward. "You walk starlit pathways through galaxies that look like cloud mass to us and, Oh! Only starlight can wash the feet of a star-treader."

I open my heart to the Light of the World; to the bright and morning star who lives, to love that is greater than mine, to love that will never be filled up full because it's uncontained.

I lift up my heart to Love Himself.

I sip.


written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig

Confession Is Like Dishwasher Detergent

Oatmeal simmers hot over low flame. Chipotle chicken sandwich leans against the water bottle in the brown paper lunch sack just waiting to be stuffed into the worn out backpack, slung over the shoulder of this third-year high school daughter, and she and her backpack have senior-ites a year early. 

I turn and yank open the tight-lipped dishwasher door while she runs late, and I think over yesterday's conversation with one not so laid back. She runs like a punctual ostrich and runs wound tight. Sweet and striving. Too afraid to soar like an eagle; too controlling to let the wind carry her. She's like a bird that cannot fly. Ostrich-like. 

She runs. And when she can't run anymore, she "buries her head in the sand." Come to find out, ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand but press their long necks to the ground. They feel invisible like this and I wonder if sand grits because isn't that what it feels like when our insides swish and steam builds behind lips sealed like rubber lining on a dishwasher door and we just want to hide?

"I'm going upstairs," she gritted honest frustration at day's end, "to hide."

And she did. Pressed her neck to the pillow and is still there like that this morning; and I long for her to stop running and gritting. To stop manipulating her direction, kicking like an ostrich, pressing and gritting. 

Confession, I think to myself,  is like dishwasher detergent. 

"I want to go back to yesterday's conversation with her," I confess to the One who made eagles and ostriches, "and unload truest clean words." I'm unloading drinking glasses from the top rack of the dishwasher. "I'd fill my lips with thirst quenching words and offer them to this thirsty runner with grit between her teeth." I place glassware in kitchen cupboard.

"How often do you yank the dishwasher door open?" He asks me as I'm ready to close it.

"Every day, Lord." As if He didn't know.

"Sometimes the thirsty own lips like the rubber seal edging the dishwasher door; watertight however," He's always  just a "however" away from hope and His next words overlap mine, "confession is like dishwasher detergent."

"I confess, Lord." I choose to leave the dishwasher door open a crack. "I didn't speak about You in the way a friend speaks about her best friend. You are my best friend." 

Ostrich

The high-school junior with senior-ites slung over her shoulder, shoes tucked under arm, a bowl of breakfast in one hand, and a glass of water in the other, is ready. She swallows water so free and easy. She's late, yeah, but she soars like an eagle.

I drive. 

She ties her shoes and eats breakfast as if there were no clocks measuring out time and no such thing as tardiness. She drinks last swallow before closing the car door with her hip, shifts the backpack and yanks open heavy high-school doors.

I pull away and continue my confessing words. "Sometimes fear suctions lips tight shut; and mine were. " I break at the intersection. "I feared mentioning Your name yesterday when the conversation pressed gritty."

Yesterday's conversation. So many things I could have said, but my lips were sealed and she was prone on her pillow a little ostrich-like. I checked on her at bedtime last night. I wanted to speak. Wanted to quench her thirst. But she wanted to be invisible and her bed may as well have been a desert of sand grit, her pillow a suffocating dune.

"I love you." Maybe the words quenched a little, and maybe the hug lifted her neck an inch above the dune.

I padded soft down stairs and laid my head on my own pillow. It's feather downy, not dune. It's everything flight and soar and nothing ostrich. 

"How to reach her?" I sighed to the God who can give ostriches eagle's wings, who can turn deserts into oasis, and who can give streams of living water to the thirsty. 

He gave me a recipe for Peace Cake.

I texted it into my iPhone. 

Peace Cake

1 c. hope

1/2 c. thankfulness

2 c. love

5 TBS gentleness

1/2 c. kindness

1 c. joy

3 tsp. understanding

1 1/2 c. honesty

Mix the ingredients together. Pour them into a cake pan and bake at 350 till risen and fragrant. 

I texted it from my pillow to hers upstairs. "I'd serve you a big slice of it for breakfast with a fresh cup of Texas Pecan coffee with local honey."

"Thank You." He has the best recipes; and maybe Peace Cake strengthens the ostrich with courage to lift the head high. Maybe one cup of joy can give flight. Maybe Peace Cake every morning can transform an ostrich into an eagle. Maybe.

"Shake the sand from your feet." I hear Him now, and it feels kind of hard-hearted. 

"It does, Lord." I confess it out loud. "It feels hard-hearted to shake the sand from my feet." I love this ostrich.

"It's hard-hearted to forsake wanna-be eagles for the sake of an ostrich." How He speaks! It takes my breath in sharp.

"Yeah but, I love this ostrich!" I flap my lips kind of too hard.

"So do I," He replies. "I love eagles, too."

I gasp. I gasp because the conversation just took a turn. "I'm an ostrich becoming an eagle." I speak the realization slow.

"Hmm," He nods.

I've been ostrich-like. I remember when my pillow was sand dune. 

I've been a runner and kicked up sand. I remember when I pressed my neck to the mattress because I wanted to disappear, and gritted sand between my teeth.

I've tried to hide from an enemy, no, an army called fear with too many troopers to name. I remember hiding till I learned that God is the lifter of my head and my hiding place.

And I've lifted my head from the dunes and shaken the sand from my sandals.

And I've looked up from the desert dunes.

I've also been a wanna-be eagle.  

"Shake the sand from your feet," He says. It's an age-old recipe for wanna-be eagles who, in turn, wanna rescue ostriches. Two shakes of sand, one for  each foot. That's the first step. The second is, "Find wanna-be eagles," because two shakes of sand isn't a complete recipe and not all ostriches wanna be eagles.

Well, I did. And I know others do.

And guess what? Yeah, I'm mounting up on eagle's wings and finding other wanna-be's.

History repeats itself; only now I have a recipe to work with. 

Wanna-Be Eagle Cake

Two shakes sand

1 oz. waiting

1/8 tsp. tears (optional)

Mix until crumbly.

Bake in desert.

Look up until you can fly.

Wanna-Be Eagle Cake

I want the healing of the gospel truth; and so do others.

I want to lift them up from the dunes and say, "Look up till you can fly!" I do; because I've packed sand like brown sugar, sifted grit like flour, rinsed soul bowls filled with mixed up thinking like mixing bowls filled with baking soda and vinegar.

Now I have a better recipe; and this ex-ostrich is swallowing the gospel in gulps so desperate that the word just overflows and dribbles down my chin. My neck.

I hear God's words to the disciples when He sent them off in Luke chapter nine, "Heal them, and they will mount up on wings like eagles."  It's a sentence and a breath beyond "shake the sand from your feet." 

"Don't forsake them because you're trying to dig an ostrich out of the sand." I get what He's saying, and I laugh at the image only because maybe it wasn't so funny when the image looked like the ostrich I was and the eaglet I became just angled all odd at the neck staring at the ostrich I wanted to dig out but couldn't. Before I looked up.

The story's like this: a fascinated ostrich and an eaglet press their necks to the ground and stare at each other like that. The ostrich fears for her life; the eaglet fears for the ostrich. The ostrich sees the eaglet in an unnatural position and thinks, "How wonderful! She's staying by my side." But the eaglet is getting a kink in her short neck and cramps in her long wings, and she's thinking, "Lord, I can't leave her here but I can't stay here. I can't bear to see her run and spread those rudders she calls wings till she steers herself right back into the dunes." And the eaglet's sense of loving care is confused; manipulated by displaced duty and misplaced mercy.

He, the Maker of the ostrich and eagle, assures me, saying,  "I see the ostrich." 

"I know You do." My neck is bent odd angle. It's an old habit I still haven't completely shaken.

"Get off your neck and mount up!" He commands.

Well, I received the recipe for Wanna-Be Eagle Cake somewhere between ostrich sprint and sand grit. And I offer Peace Cake now, too. I offer it, but I don't do ostrich anymore to get the cake accepted. 

The recipes are for wanna-be eagles with an ostrich in their lives, and for ostriches who wanna be eagles. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig