Unsettling

I started using Elisabeth Elliot's Keep a Quiet Heart today for my devotional reading. If there ever was a time when one needs the calming presence of God, it surely is now.

She cites Psalm 16:5 (NIV): "Lord, You have assigned me my portion and cup, and have made my lot secure.

She says "A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. ... My assignment entails my willing acceptance of my portion."

It reminds me of my post about the beggar's bowl.

My portion in the past few days appears to be illness. The glands in my neck felt swollen Saturday night. By Sunday morning my throat was scratchy. I had hoped allergens were causing my problems, but with the sore throat I was pretty sure it was a cold. Today I am moving into the sneezing phase.

While away in Michigan, we received word that my friend and Robin Hood neighbor who has metastatic cancer was hospitalized. Unfortunately, all of the drugs/meds that the doctors have used to keep her cancer in control have stopped working. There is nothing more to be done except stabilize and strengthen her enough so she can return home. I wanted to visit her in the hospital in Fort Wayne, but now I need to stay away since she has a compromised immune system.

We have three former acquaintances living in Houston. The couple who was part of our adult fellowship class in Dallas we have not kept up contact with in several years. The man who worked with us in the library, then moved to manage the library in the Houston extension campus, my husband has communicated with occasionally. We see on the Dallas website that the Houston campus has been shut down for this week at least. We do not know if it has been flooded.

This flooding brings back memories of Hurricane Katrina. One of the processing centers for evacuees was about half a mile from my house in Mesquite, Texas. I read on the internet that Dallas shelters have so far accepted about 1000 people who fled Houston. I suspect there will be many more. Helping these people to find temporary shelter and jobs is a tremendous responsibility. Those who were bussed in from New Orleans were more than government agencies could help. Charities and churches stepped in. We donated a twin bed we owned, then I bought kitchen towels and cookware which were distributed out of a warehouse owned by a church member. Our whole church pitched in.

I am limited in what I can do at this time. So I try to focus on helping somewhere else. I have started to purchase notebooks, pencils, other supplies on sale to put in my Operation Christmas Child box. I always like to include a big tote bag or purse. Usually I find it at Walmart or Kohl's. I don't feel up to shopping right now, but I have lots of time yet. At least I have started.

Saturday morning I went to the Farmers' Market to buy some sweet corn. The lady from whom I buy tomatoes was not there. She said last week that her produce would be at the Tomato Festival in Pierceton on the 26th. The money I normally spend on tomatoes I used to buy some flowers.

The color is fading some in the zinnias, but they are still nice. My whole kitchen smells like peaches today as they quickly ripen. I made a cobbler Saturday from a recipe from the internet. Too sweet though I reduced the sugar, and the dough baked up more like a fine cake and was sort of mushy. Do you have a good cobbler recipe?

I stayed home from church yesterday and am sequestering myself today to not pass on germs. My linen and storage closet in the hall is a jumbled mess. I rummaged through it to find paper goods for the family reunion and threw in the plates I bought that were left over. Maybe I will sort it out this afternoon, but first a little rest.

I'll Watch the Moon

Today we were going to Fort Wayne to shop, but when my husband's plans for yesterday afternoon changed, we decided to do our shopping excursion yesterday. The whole day unfolded differently than my original intentions.

The main goal was to find some athletic shoes for my husband at Fred Toenges. As you enter the store, you take a number and await your turn. We were there almost an hour, 30 minutes of waiting and 30 minutes of service. Luckily I had my ipad with me since we were going to Half Price Books on this trip. I wasn't planning to read any books this week, but I selected I'll Watch the Moon by Ann Tatlock so I would have something to do during the wait. This was my first time to read a novel by this author.

Though there were a few light moments in the narration, the book really had a somber feel about it. The thread running through the story was about suffering and loss and how they fit into God's plan and will. Parts of it brought me to tears (thankfully when I was home again, not in the shoe store).

Nova Tierney, the voice of the narration thru most of the book, lives with her mother Catherine and brother Dewey in Minnesota helping to run a boarding house where they also reside. Nine-year-old Nova's greatest wish is that her mother would marry and thus Nova would have a father again. Her father has been dead for 4 years.

The year is 1948. Folks depend on streetcars and trains, TV is a novelty in neighborhoods, and two of the boarders are retired vaudeville entertainers. The characters reflect back on the war, fear the Communists, and see how the scourge of polio effects their neighbors. Then Dewey contracts the disease.

As the book progresses we learn the backstory of Catherine, the suffering she has endured through childhood and into adulthood. She projects sadness and is a worrier. One of her worries comes true when fourteen-year-old Dewey becomes ill.

Dewey ends up in an iron lung in the hospital. He loved astronomy and his aspiration was to one day walk on the moon. Because all he can see in the hospital is the ceiling, Nova promises him that she will watch the moon for him every night.

We learn the story of Josef, one of the boarders, who Catherine comes to trust and to confide in. Polish Josef is starting a new life in the United States as a linguistics professor at a nearby college. He shares little about himself, but it comes out that he spent time in a Nazi concentration camp and that all of his family was killed by the Germans. Nova starts to think of Josef as a possible father figure.

There is an unexpected sad twist in the story. Though most of the characters find some happiness and faith is kindled or strengthened by the end of the book, it is a stark look at the realities of human life on a fallen sin-filled earth. There is some resolution, but I would not call it a feel-good book. The writing and character development are excellent, but you will experience heart ache.

Who’s Filling the Bowl?

Questions about suffering and loss and how they fit into God’s will enter our minds as we see what fills our beggar’s bowls. I have mostly operated under the idea that suffering is a consequence of living in a fallen world and/or a consequence of individual sin.

Trusting God by Jerry Bridges states that both calamities and good things come from God. He quotes Saint Augustine who said, “Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen: He either permits it to happen or He brings it about Himself.”

I feel bewildered to think of God directly causing suffering. How can He be good and loving if He wills pain for His people? Yet, His plan of salvation included suffering for His Son.

Authors like Philip Yancey try to distinguish among 3 types of “wills” in God’s plan. 1) Intentional (goodness); 2) circumstantial; and 3) ultimate. The Bible teaches God is good and His intent is good so the ultimate must also be good. God uses circumstances to serve His ultimate will. The ultimate will is His own glory and the good of His people.

According to Bridges, all occasions of pain and sorrow are under the absolute control of God. People’s sinful intents and actions serve the sovereign purpose of God, but He does not make them sin. They make the choices. God is not the author of sin.

John Piper in the pdf file available on the internet titled Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God discusses the man born blind in John 9. Jesus does not focus on the cause of the man’s blindness but on the purpose for the blindness, i.e., to demonstrate the glory of God, in this case thru healing. The explanation of the blindness does not lie in the cause but in the purpose.

Suffering can only have value and meaning in relation to God’s plan.

Bridges says the natural response to adversity is to seek relief, but our greatest need is not freedom from adversity, but freedom from the penalty of sin. If God’s love was sufficient for my greatest need, I need to trust it is sufficient for my lesser needs. Trust means not resigning ourselves to pain and heartbreak, but accepting it as part of God’s purposes and plan.

Most of the writings on suffering by evangelical Christians offer words of advice. Don’t dwell on the why, but focus on how God redeems the pain and uses it for ultimate good. Hard to do because sometimes the suffering lasts a long time, even a lifetime. Often we cannot foresee the outcome, the way God uses adversity.

No matter how limited our understanding of suffering, we do know God is always present with us and sees us thru our adversities. We have to quietly rest in Him and trustingly ingest the hard-to-swallow rations that fill our bowls (lives). I confess when I see no relief, I often fall into resignation. Let’s try to move to thanksgiving that God does have redemptive purposes.