Life Below DingleBurn: Concerts , cucumbers, and love, actually

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Concerts , cucumbers, and love, actually

Three lessons this week-- well, Saturday to Tuesday. Whatever you want to call that.
1. Via the experience of the first Rosie and the Posers concert on Saturday, I came to feel the event had a coordinator. We could ask this coordinator questions like, "Okay, what next?" "Where should this go?" And state things like "We're out of this." "So-and-so needs this much of that." And then expectantly await the answer. Which always came. It wasn't our job to make everything work! Hallelujah and praise Jesus!!! Since then my propensity to worry has dropped off dramatically. Lesson: it's not my gig. I'm not in charge. It's Somebody else's problem. And He's not sitting there with a Cheshire grin saying, "What now?"
2. I took a very small lemon cucumber to work with me for lunch. I ate it with my tuna and when it was gone I thought, "Oh. I love lemon cucumbers. I wish that had lasted longer." Three hours later when I was hungry and groggy, my dear sister-in-law stopped by, handed me a bag from the farmer's market and said, "Hungry?" In it were snap peas, beans, and-- yeah-- a lemon cucumber bigger than a regulation baseball. I rolled my eyes and He grinned at me. He pays better attention than my mother! Lesson: nothing is impossible. He can pull lemon cucumbers-- or nation-wide transformation-- out of thin air.
3. During in-service training at the Care Center this evening, "Love never fails" was quoted from Cor. 13. Now maybe I'm just dumb, but for my entire life, I have taken that to mean, "If you are loving correctly, it won't fail. If failure happens, you weren't loving correctly." It was a negative. But tonight God snapped something in my brain and suddenly I was looking at it the right way round: "love doesn't ever not work. Love always works! It never fails." It's a promise. Lesson: even though lately the emphasis has been on faith, it does say the greatest of faith, hope and love is love. And if love always works (never fails), I can see why it's the greatest. And I can see why Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord and your neighbor as yourself. And I can see why He makes a point of making a new commandment to love each other. And I can see why we shall be known as Christians by our love. It always works.

So. When in doubt, love. Believe Him. It will work.

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"he [Eleazar] stood firm, and smote the Philistines until his hand was weary, and his hand did cleave unto the sword; and the LORD wrought a great victory that day; and the people returned after him only to strip the slain." ~ 2Sam. 23:10 ~

"If I am not myself, who will be?" ~ Pirke Avot ~

“We [the ACLU] are for socialism, disarmament and ultimately for abolishing the state itself...we seek the social ownership of property...and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.” ~Roger Baldwin (Founder of the ACLU)~

"...God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame." ~ E.B. Browning ~

"If you're hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the Senate. You'll get the same kind of feeling and you won't have to pay." ~ Bob Dole ~

"He has also set eternity in their hearts, without which man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end." ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11 ~

“We know the worth of dead, or rather lifeless treasures, but who knows the worth of living treasures?... But though all things are of God, yet all things are not alike to Him: children are more of God than houses or lands.” ~ Joseph Caryl, from Charles Spurgeon's Treasury of David ~

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” ~ G.K. Chesterton ~

“People need good stories just as they need home-cooked meals, clean water, spiritual peace, and love. A good story is part of that process. It affirms divine order in the universe and justice in human affairs and makes people better than they were before they read it. If artists are more gifted than ordinary mortals (we keep hearing that they are), they should find order and harmony in human experience. That's what Bach and Handel did. Artists should nourish the spirit, not poison it.” ~ John Erickson, (author of the Hank the Cowdog series in WORLD Magazine) ~

"Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?" ~ Lillian Hellman ~

"He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. So then, my brethren, live." ~ G.M. Hopkins ~

"There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." ~ Ursula K. LeGuin ~

"You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it’s going to be too difficult for grownups, you write it for children." ~ Madeleine L’Engle ~

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no words left when you want to talk about something really infinite." ~ C.S. Lewis ~

“Just as the smart man knows he is stupid, so the awake Christian knows he/she is a ragamuffin.” ~ Brennan Manning ~

"Absense in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes is." ~ Hanah More ~

"Faith is the memory of the future." ~ Elisabeth Netjes ~

“If her [a woman's] influence is limited to her immediate family, she knows that nothing is more important than building the family…If circumstance and talent extend the scope of her influence to her club or school or business or community or state or nation, the Positive Woman accepts the responsibility.” ~ Phyllis Schlafly ~

"Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always." ~ Albert Schweitzer ~

"The Christian is a Holy rebel loose in the world with access to the throne of God. Satan never knows from where the danger will come." ~ A.W. Tozer ~

"You cannot be a successful dictator and design women's underclothes. One, not both." ~ Bertie Wooster ~