kind words
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“Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24
The glory of the longing heart
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by John Fischer I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11).
It is part of the supreme wisdom of God that he made us and put us here on earth to seek him, and perhaps find him, though he is not far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.
In light of what it takes to find the truth, a longing heart is our most prized possession. And it is important to realize that seeking isn’t over once you find. In truth it has only just begun.
The Longing Heart
O the glory of the longing heart
O the aching of the wind
The groping fingers straining in the dark
To know what lies beyond the end.
Eternity is trapped in time
Beauty tarnished by the beast
Hope expires at the finish line
Where the universe is creased.
State the answer; don the uniform
Throw conclusions at the soul
Cash the question; kill the unicorn
Press neatly at the fold.
But still it opens at the budding rose
Still it wonders at the child
Still it knows what it refused to know
Who makes wild horses wild?
O the glory of the longing heart
Casting questions to the wind
Let it carry the soul searching far
Let it bring it back again.
But not so far that it will lose its way
Not so near that it will scorn
Near enough to give itself away
Far enough to know it’s torn.
So give the longing heart room to roam
Let the truthful seeker speak
For in the seeking it will find its home
And in the finding it will seek.
O the glory of the longing heart
O the aching of the wind.
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Slam sandwich
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by John Fischer I bet I’m the only guy to ever slam the door on himself. Literally.
We live close enough to open hills that we get frequent visits from wild critters — mostly skunks, raccoons and possums — all of which come out at night. In fact we wage a running battle with them over the tender plants in our garden that they love to dig up for the grubs they find camped underneath. We have tried everything from radios set on white noise to chicken wire to coyote urine, none of which seemed to make any difference. Our only respite this year has been that they love my neighbor’s garden now more than ours. I feel sorry for him, but secretly I rejoice.
Because of the close proximity of these animals, you never know when you might encounter one, especially late at night. That was the case when, upon leaving my garage office to walk back to the house, I opened the door on a skunk just three feet in front of me. I was so shocked that my first reaction was to slam the door. The only problem… I left me head in the doorway. Yes, I failed to pull my head in the door before I slammed it, making my head into a slam sandwich.
Aside from the pain, I felt so totally dumb. I mean who’s ever slammed the door on himself? This must be a first. I’m just so glad there was no one there to see me being this stupid. My kids haven’t stopped laughing about it since I told them the story, however. For reasons I don’t want to know, they had no trouble envisioning me doing this. Maybe it has something to do with the time I slammed the nearest door to make a point in an argument only to realize that I had shut myself in a closet.
I’m sure that God has something to do with these little escapades that have the end result of making sure I do not take myself seriously. Now every time I start to get a big head, I can remember it got so big once that I couldn’t get it in the door in time.
“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18) Which translated means: if we don’t take ourselves down, God will.
Stay humble. Jesus said to choose the lowest place so that if God wants to upgrade you, he will. Stay faithful in the little things, and he will lift you up.
Kind words
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“Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24
Reflections on a spent shaving cream tube
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by John Fischer
It’s just an ordinary morning in the bathroom … but this morning I find myself reflecting on my crumpled, almost spent, Gilette brushless shaving-cream tube.
As I study this twisted mass of metal, hardly recognizable anymore as a useful toiletry, I’m impressed with a simple observation: This isn’t my doing. I don’t treat tubes like this — any tube. I push the contents up from the bottom, even roll up the empty part, to keep a nice, neat mass of shaving cream readily available near the top where it belongs.
It’s obvious that this poor tube has been indiscriminately grasped in someone’s hand and crushed beyond reason. What’s more, a significant amount of its contents has been expelled, certainly far more than the sparing amount I usually extrude to shave with every day.
I have reason to suspect my wife.
I look in the bathtub and my suspicions are confirmed. Large lumps of waterlogged shaving cream clog the drain like cottage cheese in a kitchen sink. It looks like three, maybe four of my shaves have been luxuriated on her legs. Years of continuous lectures on the use and abuse of shaving cream have obviously fallen on deaf ears.
Shouldn’t I be over this by now? And yet, I find myself scheming once again over where I might hide my own personal tube. Shouldn’t I have a right to my own stuff? I mean, let’s not get too carried away with this oneness thing. God said that in marriage, two become one. Well, fine, but that doesn’t mean we have to use the same shaving cream tube!
Or does it?
Maybe the real issue is bigger than this. Maybe this tube is just a symbol of something deeper … that there is more than one way to do something, and my way isn’t necessarily the right way. It’s just … my way. And is that what I want? Just to do things my way? Well I did that years ago when I was single, and I don’t want to go back to that. No sir.
You know, this mangled up tube is starting to look better to me all the time. It’s starting to represent everything that complicated my life when I decided to share it with someone. So? Any commitment brings complications, just as responsibility brings sacrifice.
So go ahead, complicate my life. I can take it. Love is worth it.
(I wonder what it was like for God before we came along.)
EMPTY……………Refrig……………….FOUND
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“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:17-18
Some people use the church like a refrigerator: to preserve themselves as they already are.
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever! Amen.” 2 Peter 3:18
God can always be found right where you left Him.
“‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you’, declares the Lord.”
The Best
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“But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.” Proverbs 1:33
Empty
Posted by John | Filed under Uncategorized
“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:17-18
I fought the law and the law won
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“Good” people wielding the law here and there to either judge others or improve themselves are using the law for something for which it was never intended.
I discovered this, of all places, in my Bible, and I wonder why it took me so long to see this. Because when you use the law for anything other than what it was intended, it blinds you into thinking you are better than you really are. “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly,” Paul wrote to Timothy. “We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels.” (1 Timothy 1:8-9)
And what does the law do for lawbreakers and rebels? It shows them that they are lawbreakers and rebels. And who are the lawbreakers and rebels? Where do we find these people?
In the mirror.
Think about the Pharisees — the religious leaders of Christ’s day — they were experts in the law, and they used it to mark out everything they were supposed to do and not do. The law, for them, was like a manual for how to do right. They walked around with scriptures sewn into the sleeves of their robes and stuffed into little boxes that hung around their necks and dangled from their foreheads. These scriptures dictated their every move, and if they followed them perfectly, they could rest assured that they were righteous.
What irony! The very law that was meant to show them their sin was defining their sainthood. If those scriptures they carried around could speak, they would be crying out “Lawbreakers!” “Rebels!” all the while they were measuring out their calculated steps of righteousness. This is why the law in the hands of a good person is a dangerous thing. When you use the law to make yourself good, it blinds you into thinking that you are.
The law is useful in that it wakes us up to what is good, and even may cause us to desire it, but at the same time, it shows us how far away from that goodness we are. And where does that leave us? With a whole bunch of lawbreakers and rebels who know they need Jesus.
