Come and go with me

O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together. Psalm 34:3

There’s a new book out this year about children falling pretty far off from the familial apple tree, but that sure isn’t me, which was only confirmed by my brother Tom’s detailing his spiritual, emotional and intellectual journey as we sat sipping tea in Vermont.  We certainly share the same sturdy roots twisting into the same rocky soil with both core strengths and lots of room for growth and change.   

And I am pretty sure that I first memorized and wallowed in Psalm 34 because my mother loved it so.  She had that verse about magnifying the LORD with me hanging above her heaped-up-high desk at Calvary Missionary Press as her constant reminder about what she was all about, and then Scott mounted it on a sanded board and hung it over the living room entrance as a declared mission statement on living through one day after another in a place that she never imagined or hoped for.  

And I overheard a conversation she had with Heather last night at family dinner, about working outside of the home after the children were born.  And she said that she spent so much time reading and studying the Bible after she stepped into Christianity, that it might as well have been a full time job.  That’s the thing about my parents choosing Jesus as all-grown-up adults with no religious preconceptions to push through and overcome- they leapt into the Word as if it were indeed true and applicable with no qualifying habits of complacency.

So when my dad read: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, it was perfectly obvious that he needed to start The Mexican Christian Children’s Fund and gather and haul food and shoes to a veritable bevy of orphanages clinging to the squatter hillsides of Tijuana and Ensenada every other weekend, month after month, year after year.  And we children joined them in the blue push-button-geared station wagon every other Saturday, and gave the kids our Halloween candy and cleaned the rat-filled pantries and shaved the lice-filled heads of hair because that’s what is pure and faultless.  

And when my mom read: Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels, it was perfectly obvious that she should open up the kitchen table to all sorts of people, mostly very strange missionaries dressed in missionary-barrel shifts and boots and very strange people sitting alone in the back pew and very strange kids who got kicked out of their parents’ homes for staggering home drunk one time too many or for an awkward pregnancy or whatever.  And I know that I didn’t always appreciate sharing my bathroom and my time and space with these strangers and I promised myself that I would be different, but no, plop, I fell right under the apple tree because deep down inside I knew that it was good and made my life so very full and rich and bubbling over with flavor and grace.

And as I set out the trinkets from every possible bit of the world that clutter the fireplace mantel after neatly folding the Christmas stockings and stacking up the Christmas books swirled around the round plaster table by the front door and sweeping up the Christmas pine needles that found their way into every possible crevice, I know that this grace still bubbles, sending a sweet fragrance throughout my life.  No regrets, even after all the Moldovan Christmas jokes this season.  

So Jinsheng Wang arrived.  And he got the traditional welcome, Pippen wiggling unwelcomed at his feet, orange cat leaping onto his bed, a warm tasteful lunch with Jack and MaryAnne and the Alan Safari tour.  And after quite a few hand motions and careful, slightly too loud enunciation, I figured out that he would like some milk and sweetly handed him a glass...complete with one of those creepy brown cockroaches which fill me with continual despair and humiliation.  Drats.  

And who knows what the year will bring.  I will choose to not feel dismay with a very weary shell-shocked sixteen-year-old who doesn’t seem to be able to dig up any of his hard-learned English lessons.  I don’t know what any of it will look like, but from experience I certainly know that it will be unexpected and far more wonderful than I could have guessed.  That’s the good thing about being a bit of a Puddleglum.  It only gets better.  What I do know is that I want him to join in the picnic under that old apple tree, O magnify the LORD with me, let us exalt His name together.  

And yesterday, as Zach hugged me goodbye as he heads off to the big big world of not-falling-too-far-from-the-apple-tree, first stop Guatemala City, he hugged my jacket too.  The Mexico Outreach jacket.  Oh man, I think about that place often, he whispered.  I do too.  And one of the songs that I remember singing under the stars with thousands of tired but happy people was one with lots of jumping up and down and hand motions, 

Come and go with me to my Father's house.

It's a big, big house with lots and lots of room.

A big, big table with lots and lots of food.

A big, big yard where we can play football.

A big, big house, it's my Father's house.

All I know is a big, big house with rooms for everyone.

All I know is lots of land where we can play and run.

All I know is you need love, and I've got a family.

All I know is your all alone, why not come with me.

Perfectly obvious.