Choose today whom you will serve

Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.  I John 3:7

It is a happy thing to see someone practice doing well.  That old Giovanni bought a guitar after he had been here a few weeks noodling around on one of Alan’s.  And he pulls up songs on YouTube, and listens to them over and over, and tries to get his fingers just right.  And he sings loudly and with confidence.  And to my famously untrained ear, his singing sounds way off-key, but it is so full of joy that you just want him around, even in your living room, because it’s a happy thing. And it’s just fine to have him plug the guitar into the amp and screech away, because it’s a happy thing.

One of my old Wildcat students was facebooking last night and I could not, or did not stop myself and I must stop it because it is really annoying, and I corrected his spelling of its, and he was just fine with it.  And then we started talking about school and grades and how it has been his dream to go to the University of Arizona and would he be able to hack it academically.  And he can do, with practice, is what I said.  You have to practice being a great student and doing great student things like going to bed early, getting your homework done first, if you don’t understand something, get help, those sorts of things.  It’s not a push-button instant brilliance, but rather it is a long series of small and doable steps.  And he is coming over Sunday afternoon and we are going to work on his college essays that he has started but has no one to help because he doesn’t know anyone who has gone to college.  And I am sure he will call me “Miss” all day long, and I will be happy.

And righteousness is not a push-button instant brilliance.  And we get to choose those small and doable steps.  Practicing walking a son or daughter of light.  And then maybe we will find ourselves running, running with patience the race that is set before us.  Or biking.  Nicole is packing up her little bag to bike up Mt. Lemmon right now.  And when she or Dustin pull that off, it is not a matter of hopping on one’s bike and peddling off into the rising sun.   But because lots and lots of days they wake up, shake the sleep out of their brain, and head out the door.

So step by step, stride by stride, I make those choices.  Over and over, until I become like Him.  Or him, the one who is the Father of Lies.

By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.  Ah, yes, love.  That too.

And righteous comes from Old English, and doesn’t mean full of right, which I guessed, but is a mixture from Old English rihtwīs, from riht,noun, right + wīs wise.  Happy are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

A lovely promise for a new day.  

little idols set up on every street corner

Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2

Who is this God I serve? Somehow, implied in this Scripture is the idolatry that haunts every single person across the globe. We all have created gods in our own image, each has gone astray. And it has become a mad twisted childhood fable, of tigers chasing themselves around a banyan tree, until they turn into a pool of butter.  

Yet I am His beloved child even now, in the process of becoming.  Each of us wandering sheep. And the curtain will be ripped away. The veil which was torn in two will be banished forever. And we will see the Holy of Holies as He is.  And most mysterious of all, we shall be like Him.  

I cannot but believe for all of our posturing in fancy fine clothes of our own making or borrowing or stealing, that deep down we know the Truth.  I do. The flashes of bright unspeakable joy that pierce the fog and gives me hope.  That show me the next step on the path because His footprint is pressed into the loose sand.  Jesus said to Pilate: “I have been born and have come into the world for this reason—to testify to the Truth. Everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to my voice.”

And so once again, I determine to turn away from the mud pies of my own making and to listen.  To look.  Open my eyes, that I may see.

A long winter lies ahead

His new day now enfold 

Me in your loving hold 

You are the star of the morn 

You are the day newly born

Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2

It is reassuring to know that I am in the process of becoming, unfurling in the same sense of a bright green leaf in spring or the wrinkled wing of a larvae that has completely pupated.  That sounds exactly like the sort of word that describes how I feel right now.  Pupating. A word full of hope in a peculiar sort of way.  

Softly she sings, I'll love you forever

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. 1 John 3:1

This is something that I certainly know with every fiber of my body, the love one has for one’s children.  Certainly there is nothing more ferocious.  I worried about it a little bit.  I had certainly never been much of one for small children, and certainly not babies.  I was the most mediocre and disengaged of babysitters, well worth my twenty-five cents an hour.  As I watched my first swelling belly grow I was vaguely distressed- and was dutiful about, well the big thing then was to play classical music to the womb, rather than emotionally engaged.  Until the moment the doctor slid Nicole across my chest that is.  Bam.  I loved that child no ifs, ands, or buts.  Ferociously.  And once again, I fretted over Child Two, as I hand-pieced together a quilt, knowing that it would be absolutely impossible to squeeze another love into my bursting fullness.  Until bam.  And Heather slid across my chest and straight into my heart.  And Miss Pink Light, born in Navojoa, Mexico, when the doctors and nurses started whispering nervously and wouldn’t let me see her, I surge of joy and pride swelled upwards and outwards, and I knew no matter what, she was the most beautiful child ever.  

And as I walked Nicole up and down the hill outside our little house in the garbage dump, under the bright, bright stars, humming, “I love You, LORD, and I lift my soul to worship You,” for the very first time ever I knew I had a tiny glimpse of His love for me.  Until then it had all been Sunday School Jesus Loves Me theoretical, distant and abstract.  I didn’t know it.  

And really the more those little tossled blonde babies cost me, the more strands wrapped around and around.  Counting rehydration drops in Pinosol-drenched hospitals, scrubbing diapers on a cement slab, even those nights lying awake listening for crunching gravel in the driveway all painted darker stripes on my she tiger love. 

And loving those three little girls opened my heart door for more.  I learned to love my students with that love by acting like they were my own kids until it was true.  And those who wandered through our front door fit inside too.  And even, even the person powerwalking next to me around Reid Park, or standing behind me at Fry’s, or filling up his car at Circle K with the scent of weed roiling out the open car door and his dangling chains and saggy pants and clinging girlfriend.  And really, I am pretty much a basket case, my heart is so swollen and lumpy it wobbles reading about Haitians after Sandy or Syrian atrocities in small neighborhoods. And don’t even bother to watch any sort of shoot-em-up movie with me.  I can’t believe it’s pretend.  

Jesus loves the little children of the world.  All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.  

Phoenix is already rumbling in the distance

And they argued this way among themselves, ‘If we say heavenly, he will retort to us,“Then why did you refuse to believe in him?”; but if we say human, we have the people to fear, for they all hold that John was a prophet.’ Matthew 21:25

Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all who dwell in the world stand in awe of Him.  Psalm 33:8

Whom do I fear?  Let me not fear man, nor keep half an eye to who is watching.  Let me not fear circumstances which are in His hand.  Let me not fear myself, quick to speak and slow to hear, for I am both beloved and forgiven.  Rather let me stand, at rest and in wonder of Him.

Thank You for the stillness of the morning. A fresh and unspoilt day lies before Us, You and me, me abiding in You.  And You are my rock and my salvation, whom shall I fear?  May I step forward in peace and confidence, full of gratitude for yet another day to notice Your hand, to stand in awe in Your presence.  Because You are with me.  In Me.  And may You be through me.  

All I wanna do is be in the light

Whoever says, “I know Him” but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him:  whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. 1 John 2:4-6

One of the last things Jesus told His disciples is, “Abide in me, and I in you.”  

Cause me to hear Thy loving kindness in the morning,

for in Thee do I trust.

Cause me to know they way wherein I shall walk

for I lift up my soul to Thee.

Couldn't cinch it too tightly

But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  I John 1:7

So I spent my formative middle school years right smack dab in the middle of the buckle of the Bible Belt, which for those who do not know, is a long swath of King James only country running across the southern half of the United States, a stone’s toss away from the Scopes Monkey Trial courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, right across the wrong side of the railroad tracks.    

And the big controversy at our public middle school was how to phrase the dress code to state that girls’ shirts had to be untucked and cover the derrière.  Well, and the time I skated with a colored boy at the school skating party.  And on weekends I competed across the state in Bible Quiz, where we leapt off chairs with buzzer pads on them with answers to the minutiae of The Gospel According to St. Matthew. And I was on the all-State team.  And every Sunday a gangly and awkward clump of us would march up to the front of Morgantown Baptist Church and publicly perform the Salute to the Bible.  After we pledged allegiance to both of the flags up front, the American flag and the Christian flag.  

We would stand tall and erect and say, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. Isaiah 40:8,” and then we would hold the Bible firmly to our chest and declare, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11,” and then we would turn the Bible into a flashlight, and hold it out onto our invisible path, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Psalm 119:105.”

And what is true, is that these verses probably leak into my day, every day at the oddest moments.  I don’t know so much about the not sinning bit, but the Word is sure in mine heart.  And this morning they bubbled out again, as I imagined another clump of the Fellowship of the Unashamed, walking in the light, and He is in the light.  And we would be paying attention to that circle of light right in front of us for the next step.  And there would be joy and encouragement and strength and comfort and unity because He is with me.  With us. And nothing else would matter.