Find. Solitude. Here.

At 9 am yesterday Pete and I got in our car in tiny Teasdale, Utah and headed back to LA. We had spent the week exploring some of the most spectacular scenery on earth. Zion and Bryce National Parks one expects to be amazing and they didn't disappoint. In spite of blowing snow and a high of 24 degrees on the day we spent in Bryce, we enjoyed every minute (although I will admit I had forgotten how quickly a wind chill of single digits will suck the heat from your body). Our off-the-beaten-path jaunt down to Kodachrome Valley State Park was another amazing day. The biggest-and-the-best, however, were two things we had never heard of until shortly before our trip.

"Scenic Byway" has to be the understatement of the century when applied to Utah State Route 12. The entire route is only about 122 miles long but it took us most of a day to drive it because we kept halting to take pictures and gape in awe. The route travels through the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument (GSENM), a decidedly unexciting name for 1.9 million acres of the most untouched and exciting land in America. We traveled from about 4000 ft elevation to over 9100 at the summit where the aspen and ponderosa pines were shrouded in snow. I can't begin to describe the unusual geologic formations and panoramas along the way. I think this road has to be the best-kept secret in America and perhaps it's a good thing. The visitor's centers throughout the national monument are also extremely informative and well-done.

Our other big discovery was another national park that was every bit as interesting and amazing as the more famous Bryce and Zion. Capitol Reef NP is a short jaunt from where Utah Rt 12 ends. We spent an entire day on the park's scenic drive and hiking on some of the trails, getting up close and personal with geology that leaves you speechless. It was a day I will never forget.

Our accomodation for the last two nights near Capitol Reef was a cabin in Teasdale, just a few miles from the park. Teasdale is a couple miles off the highway and has a population of about 200 people. There are 2 churches and no businesses in the village (unless you count the guy who does welding in his garage and has a sign by his driveway). There was nothing primitive about the cabins, though. The best feature was the wall of windows to the southeast, looking out on a rock hill...and on the best star show you can imagine! By shoving our bed about a foot toward the windows we could lie in bed, warm and comfortable, and watch the meteors, track Jupiter's progress across the sky, bask in the moonlight, and then once the moon had set and the sky was inky dark, be amazed at the brilliance of the stars. Pete got up around 4:30 and went out back to view with the telescope while I stayed in bed and used the binoculars, taking the term "armchair astronomer" to a new (lower) level.

One of the brochures that the state of Utah publishes has this motto on the front: Find. Solitude. Here. Nothing could have spoken to my heart more - solitude is exactly what I crave and our days there delivered on the promise. For the first time I can remember, I wasn't ready to go home when vacation was over. The entire population of Wayne County, UT is around 2500 people and there are about 2450 square miles of land in the county, giving them a population density of about 1 person per square mile. In contrast, Los Angeles County has just over 10 million people and an area of 4850 square miles, giving it a population density of over 2100 people per square mile. Each square mile in LA Co has about as many people as Wayne Co has all together! I know one person in LA County that would qualify as a displaced person - one who would feel much more at home up in Wayne county. Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam...

I'm not complaining about living in LA (well, not too much). I'm very thankful for the blessings of our life here and I have a long list of them. But times like last week remind me that my roots are in a very different kind of place and that the solitude and quiet of a different kind of life are my natural habitat. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded.

Sowing in the evening

Earlier this week I had a low moment. I can't remember exactly what the catalyst was. I do remember that I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense that investing in the lives of people seemed to cost a whole lot more than it returned. And I couldn't deny that little question niggling in the back of my mind: Is it really worth it?

In my more rational moments I realize that evaluating the returns lies totally outside of my domain. But once in a while, I can't evade the questions, "Why in the world is this so important to me? Why do I keep doing it? What would happen if I just stopped caring?"

The moment passed and I got on with life and doing the things I know really matter - building up people in the kingdom and helping glorify Jesus here on earth. I would have forgotten the incident completely except for something that happened today.

Out of the blue, an email came from someone I didn't have a close relationship with but with whom I had shared time in the Word in a fellowship setting. It has been over two years since we had seen each other and have had no contact at all since then. She shared simply and in just a few sentences that God had used our time in the Word to ignite in her a love for Him and the desire to pursue Him. And she's been doing that ever since.

As her words touched my heart a verse came to mind. The Preacher, in Ecclesiates 11:6, says this: Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good.

The farming analogy is used in Scripture for all kinds of labor. To me this spoke of the labor of sowing the Word in people's lives (see Mark 4:14 - not the shortest verse in the Bible but a close runner-up). As I thought about the verse I thought especially about the "do not be idle in the evening" part. This is certainly the "evening" part of my life and the words encouraged me to keep on sowing and not get weary. We do not know when the sowing will succeed. I had no idea that the seed was growing and bearing fruit in this dear sister's heart. The Lord, for purposes of His own, decided to encourage my faith by letting me see a tiny glimpse. For that I am thankful and by that, I am humbled.

Clueless

When the kids were little I noticed that occasionally my response to their needs was anger. I had to think about this and realized that my anger wasn't directed at them but stemmed rather from a sense of helplessness - I didn't know what to do about a particular situation and that made me angry. Lately I've been facing a situation where I don't know what to do and find that once again, it makes me angry. I suppose I could psychoanalyze myself and try to figure out why I have the need to "know what to do" in every situation. I thought it might be more helpful, though, to just skip the analysis for now and get right to the what-should-I-do-about-not-knowing-what-to-do? If that makes any sense.

As always, the Lord was there waiting for me with His answer. I was reading and studying Psalm 78 this morning. The Psalmist is recounting God's dealings with Israel - His grace and provision and miraculous deliverance of them. Sadly, in vs. 32 it says "In spite of all this they still sinned, and did not believe in His wonderful works." The lesson from the Psalm is, it doesn't matter if I don't know what to do. The point is, do I believe in and trust in His sovereign work in the situation, based on His wonderful works in the past? Keil & Delitzsch comment: "They tempted God by unbelievingly and defiantly demanding instead of trustfully hoping and praying. Instead of allowing the miracles hitherto wrought to work faith in them, they made the miracles themselves the starting point of fresh doubts."

I was reminded of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chron 20. The sons of Moab and of Ammon, together with some of the Meunites, came to make war against Jehoshaphat. His response is a model for me. "Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord." In vs. 12 the following words jumped off the page at me: "O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us, nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You." Wow. Powerless and clueless. But his eyes were on the Lord.

My mental cross-referencing immediately brought Jeremiah 17 to mind: "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind...and whose heart turns away from the Lord." And Psalm 123: "As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master...so our eyes look to the Lord our God." It's not about knowing what to do, it's about walking in faith, fixing my eyes on Him. How often in the past has God miraculously worked and shown His faithfulness. He's the same today and will be just as sufficient today. I would hate to have "did not believe in His wonderful works" as the sub-title to this chapter of my life. Clueless is ok - unbelieving is not.

Agenda

I tend to take life for granted. Most days see me getting up and getting on about life's business without a whole lot of conscious reflection about the meaning of it all. Recent internal and external circumstances, however, have kind of pushed that slumbering question to the surface again. And I've been thinking about it. "It" being the meaning of life. Or in my case, my life.

I won't bore you with the whole progression of my thoughts but I will put down a few of the conclusions I've reached.

1. It's not about me. One of those paradoxes of life but there it is. It's my life but it's definitely not about me. What a sentence of futility it would be, to be limited to my self. It's the grain of wheat falling into the earth and dying, so that it doesn't remain by itself alone. John 12:24

2. Every morning that I wake up is an invitation. It is an invitation to experience forgiveness and mercy. I arrive at this by backwards reasoning: "For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." Malachi 3:6 and "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning." Lamentations 3:22,23 As long as I am on this earth I will fall short of the glory of God and be in need of grace and forgiveness. As long as He gives me life, He has not placed me beyond the reach of His grace. By granting me the breath to wake up, God is granting me the invitation to drink deeply of His grace. Today.

3. My job each day is to learn to have a heart of wisdom. This one I also arrived at by backwards reasoning. "So teach me hourly to contemplate the fleeting character and brevity of my lifetime, that I may present to You a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12 If a heart of wisdom is what I need to have at the end of my life, then it logically follows that the minutes and hours of this day should do something towards arriving at that.

Get over myself. Drink deeply of His grace. Pursue a heart of wisdom. That's the agenda, today and every day. Nice and simple.

Tender Father of the Old Testament

Lately in my quiet time I've been reviewing and meditating on old verses that I have memorized down through the years. This is kind of like opening a jewelry box and once again studying the beautiful treasures I have in it. I don't review them often enough but fortunately, most of them are still there. Today I was stopped dead in my reviewing tracks as the truth of two of the verses overwhelmed me once again. The first one is a short passage from Hosea, chapter 11, verses 3 and 4 (God speaking): Yet it is I who taught Ephraim (I substituted my name here) to walk, I took them in My arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, and I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws, and I bent down and fed them."

Recently I was in a group where someone said that the God of the Old Testament was so cruel that this person didn't really even want to read the OT. I'm not sure we're reading the same OT because the God I see here is one of incredible -to me unfathomable- tenderness, patience and love. I am staggered by the picture of God we have here. Having just been through the weeks of seeing our grandson learn to walk I know with what tenderness one watches over the stumbling steps of the child. Here I see God watching over me and taking me in HIS arms, taking care lest I stumble and fall. Then He says He leads me/us with cords of man, perhaps a picture we don't understand so well. In Psalm 32:9 we see the unwilling, unmaneageable horse and mule being led with ropes but being led with cords of man is much different from that. It means being led like a loving parent would help a child over rough terrain, especially one uncertain on it's feet. The image of lifting a joke from the jaws is also a strange one to our ears. Keil and Delitzsch explain it thus: As merciful masters lift up the yoke upon the cheeks of their oxen, i.e. push it so far back that the animals can eat their food in comfort, so the Lord made the yoke of the law both soft and light. God then says that He "bends down and feeds us" or as K&D so beautifully translate the Hebrew, "and gently towards him did I give food."

My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude that I can know and follow a God who cares for me so gently, lovingly, patiently. May our hearts be moved to reciprocate His love and give Him our willing obedience.

The second verse I was awed at today will have to wait for another posting. Too much of a good thing to put both in one!

KKGO

I love country music. I haven't always loved it; the twang used to bother me. Now I love it. If you have to be barreling down the LA freeway at breakneck speeds, sharing the road with two or three million other drivers, well, there's something comforting about having Martina McBride belting out "Ride" from the radio. Or Chely Wright singing "Shut Up and Drive". Or Blake Shelton mourning the loss of the woman he thought would never leave him as he goes "flyin' down the highway" looking for her.

Country songs tell stories about a different way of life - porch swings, pick up trucks, country roads. Broken hearts aren't unique to country people but nobody sings about them like country singers do. It's a far cry from life here in a big city. Oddly, although there are 52 radio stations in LA, there is only ONE country music station.* It went off the air for a while, "when the station's parent company decided that country was not the most lucrative format for ethnically mixed Los Angeles (this, despite that Los Angeles is reported to be one of the top markets for country music CDs and concerts)".

I, for one, am glad for a little bit of country in the city. May KKGO live long and prosper.

I stand corrected: KFROG is also present here in SoCal - and fortunately the two stations have commercials at different times!

Give us THIS day...

As a teacher and a parent one of the things I've learned over time is the importance of teaching children how to solve problems. Instead of jumping in and giving them a solution or telling them what to do, it is far better to help them analyze the steps to solving it themselves. It starts when they are little and cleaning their room seems overwhelming to them. Helping them see that picking up the dirty laundry, then the books, then the toys, then making the bed are all manageable tasks in themselves. That impossible load of projects in high school or that research paper in college submits to the same process with the addition of budgeting time for each task and sticking to it.

Lately there have been a few problems that have cropped up in my own life that at first glance threaten to overwhelm me. I could see the "desired outcome" in each case but fell sadly short when looking at my own ability to achieve it. In some of the situations there really isn't anything I can DO to solve the problem but even praying for a solution seemed to require more faith than I possess. It occurred to me this morning that I need to back up and do the same thing I've preached to the kids for so long - one step at a time.

I don't have the wisdom to deal with some of the problems of life or the things my kids struggle with. I wish I could be the mom who always has the right answer or the woman who knows exactly how to deal with the renter who is out of work and can't pay the rent. But I can pray for the words to encourage today. I can pray for the wisdom to deal with that next phone call or that next situation. It occurred to me as I was mulling this over that that is exactly what Jesus taught us when He taught us to pray: "Give us this day our daily bread." He didn't say to pray for the ability to provide for our needs for the rest of our lives - He wants us to live in daily dependence on the Father's provision. He also said "Don't worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will have it's own share of problems." As we live this moment in faith and dependence on Him, He will tunnel the way through the problem. He doesn't even need me to figure out where that tunnel is leading!

My faith may not be big enough to move a mountain, but it is big enough to pray for that next spade-full of dirt.

Beauty or Blindness

It was a perfect spring day. The air was still and so soft it felt like a caress on my skin. The sky was blue, the sun shining and flowers blooming everywhere. Never mind that it was the day after Christmas and most of the country was locked in ice and snow. This is southern California and days like this are more the rule than the exception.

My Midwestern sensibilities, used to frigid temps at this time of year, are still not used to this glory and as Pete and I took our morning walk through the neighborhood I studied the faces of those we met to see if they, too, were glorying in the perfection of the morning. Everyone seemed preoccupied except for a single bike rider who pedaled along the street with a smile on her face. Perhaps it was due to some other cause - I don't know. I like to think she was enjoying the perfect morning, too.

A question that has been rattling around in my brain lately has to do with how we experience beauty. Is it possible to be surrounded by beauty and not even notice it? Shortly after this I received an email, one of those internet stories that goes around. I'm never sure if they are true or not and since this particular one was quite amazing, I checked it out on Snopes.com. Not only is it true, but I discovered that it didn't even tell half the story!

The story takes place in Washington, DC during the morning rush hour at one of the Metro stops. In an attempt to answer the question "What do people do when they encounter beauty in unexpected places?", the Washington Post had staged an experiment. They recruited Joshua Bell to get off the Metro train, position himself in the station and play his violin. They tried to figure out ahead of time what might happen and their predictions included trying to manage the crowds that they thought might congregate. So here's what happens: one of the greatest violinists in the world plays three of the most complex pieces of music ever composed on a $3.5 million Stradivarius, filling the Metro station with music for nearly an hour. Of the hundreds of people who passed during that time one man stopped to listen, one person recognized Joshua Bell and stopped and three different children tried to stop to listen but were hurried along by their parents. One person, stopped by a reporter and questioned later, could not even remember that someone had been playing the violin in the station.

The article that was written describing the experiment is archived at the Washington Post website. The title of the article is "Pearls Before Breakfast" and I highly recommend reading the entire article as the author won a Pulitzer Prize for the work. The interesting part is the evalution of the experiment - what does this really tell us? That we are oblivious of beauty? That the context of the beauty matters? Does it really tell us anything? Very thought-provoking writing.

Last night Pete, Becca and I went to Corona, CA, for a George Winston concert. The minute he touched the keyboard I was blown away by the beauty and complexity of his music. We've listened to his CDs for years but somehow hearing it "in person" is a different experience. Although the pleasure of the music is an experience, perhaps the greatest thing I carried away from the evening is a sense of awe at the things the human brain can do. I cannot imagine the neural connections that have to take place simultaneously for someone to produce that kind of music. Song after song on piano, guitar and even harmonica - all without a score, flowing out of his memory, controlling his muscles to produce that incredible music. I fall down in awe before a God that can create a talent like that. In all honesty, the ordinary things we do each day are no less wonder-full. Sometimes exposure to the greater wonder helps us extrapolate backwards to see the wonder of the lesser also.

Anne, lying in the sunshine on our balcony, just said, "Man, it is just perfect out here!" Time to grab my book and bask in the beauty. The economy may be crumbling and times are uncertain but there are still riches all around us. I give thanks to the Giver.