Simply Norma

People make such a fuss about the “new year.”

In reality, every day that we wake up is the start of a new year.  Every day we have choices.  We can:

Choose to be kind or unkind
Choose to eat healthy or unhealthy
Choose to be productive or lazy
Choose to clean or be messy
Choose to live or die, physically and spiritually

It’s all up to me what I choose and how I live the first day of the rest of my life.

Today I received a blog from a friend on worry and anxiety.  It touched my heart so I thought I’d share it with you.

Click here to read it.

When I would go hiking, I used to worry that a bear would creep up and maul me to death.  It never happened.  It has happened to other people but I have not been one of them.  How much time I spent worrying over something that MIGHT have happened instead of enjoying the walk that I was on.

I hope you enjoy my friend’s blog.

I’m not a fan of going to see movies at the theatre.  I’ve always felt it was a waste of money.  However, having company during the holidays, we went to see a movie called True Grit.

I had seen the original 1968 movie on TV when I was younger and never paid much attention to the word “grit” which means firmness of character.

The story is about a 14 year old girl whose father is killed and she hires the best U S Marshall to avenge her father’s murderer so the family can have justice.

I was surprised when the opening line of the movie started with a a Scripture from the Bible found in Proverbs 28:1 that says “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”

The proverb set the background to the movie.  When the music started the familiar tune I’ve heard in church services many times played “Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms.  Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.”

Leaning On The Everlasting Arms

Early in the movie, the girl states “You must pay for everything in this world.  Nothing is free but the grace of God.”  Amen to that!

I wasn’t expecting to catch glimpses of Scripture throughout the movie but again the girl quotes from Ezekiel Chapter 37 when she states how she feels during one scene — “as dried bones.”

The movie ends with the same classic hymn “Leaning On the Everlasting Arms.”

Much like the real world, the young girl who seeks revenge suffers physically for that journey in her life.

Overall it was a good movie although I do not enjoy people shooting other people nor bloodshed.

In reading today’s devotional from the book Conflict and Courage by Ellen White, it reminds me of a truth that seems clear to me but perhaps not to everyone.  The truth that the Bible is true, there is a Creator God and that our lives are transformed when we embrace Him.

I have to wonder why God would allow a book such as the Bible to be propagated in His name.

EW states it this way:  “It is a subject of wonder to many that inspired history should narrate in the lives of good men facts that tarnish their moral characters.”

Most of the stories are of seemingly uncaring humans who struggle with temptations and fall time after time.  Selfish humans.  Lying humans.  Adulterous humans.  Unforgiving humans.  Murdering humans.  Humans who are not a good witness to those God wants to reach.

Or are they?  If you want to understand the world of a pig you should get in the mud and roll in it with him.  I’m not calling humans pigs here — just a parallel.

When the first humans of the world, Adam and Eve, decided to disobey God’s instruction and follow their own hearts, the rest of creation in harm’s way and sent this world into a spiral that it has not recuperated from.

So here we are.  Weak fragile humans with the same inadequacies as the Bible people we read about.

What makes the difference is how some of the Bible people respond to a God calling out to them and how God responds back to them.

I have always marveled when reading the story of Adam and Eve because after their failure in obedience, God comes to them and asks “Where are you?”  fully knowing where they were, fully understanding what they had done and yet fully loving them.

This is the behavior we can emulate when those around us fail us.  We may  know of their misdeeds and their weaknesses and yet fully love them.

Yet we can only emulate this behavior if it exists in us.  And it can only exist in us if we have embraced the God who is perfect and who made us to be like Him.

And there’s where the rubber meets the road.

Whether the Bible is true or fiction should not depend on whether people can see the character of God in our lives.  There is plenty of nature and science that speaks to the creative power of a God in heaven.  However, weak and fragile though we be, the best witness we can have to those who can’t comprehend what all the fuss is about — a God or no God — is to allow His character to live in us.

When people see the transformation in my life perhaps they will look up to the heavens and say “surely there must be a God.”

Conflict and Courage

2010 – a year of change.

Started the year having to terminate a church employee.   One of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life yet I learned that I have the inner strength to do hard things.

In late June, I resigned the positions I held at our local church.  The church attendance was below 20.  In the fall, attendance went below 15.  By November, the church had voted to close its doors with fewer than 10 in attendance.  The last church service was December 25th.  Unfortunately, I was not able to attend as I had already moved to Minnesota.

The closure of a church is a great loss both to its members and to the community.  Churches want to grow but somehow this church had “grayed” and did not have the energy and/or the time to spend in that endeavor.

Two weeks ago, I attended a church in Minnesota.  When I entered, I was surprised to see 6-7 people studying the Bible.  But the situation appeared similar to the one I had left.  Another “graying” church.  No young people.  I was probably the youngest.

Is it that as churches we get set in our ways and aren’t flexible enough to bend with the culture around us?  Too stiff to reach out because we’re stuck in our knowledge and can’t understand how to reach “differented” people?

I don’t know what God has in store for me yet in our new home state of Minnesota.  I know I have gifts He has given me to share with others and I’m praying He will show me where it’s best for me to use them.

In June, my nephew passed away.  This was the first death in our family since my grandmother died over 20 years ago.  We still don’t know why he died.  He was young and talented and this world has a big loss because he is no longer here.  Later in the year, another nephew and an uncle passed away.  It was a tough year for our family with all these losses.

Our move to Minnesota was another huge change.  We started by looking outside the state of Washington for a job closer to family and found one in Minnesota — land of over 10,000 lakes.  We had approximately one month from when we accepted the job to the actual move to Minnesota, finding a place to live, selling our house and putting everything in storage.  Things moved quickly.  But again, I learned that I was able to rise to the challenge.

It was hard leaving the true friends I had made.  Some people I found to be less than true.  But that’s okay.  Weeding people out of one’s life is one of the processes of life.  Keep the good, and blow the rest into the wind like a dandelion on a summer day.

A new year starts and new challenges lie ahead — starting a business, finding a church to attend, buying a house, meeting new people and keeping in touch with those left behind, convincing the son who stayed in Seattle that Minnesota is a goodly state and perhaps he should join us.  And the first priority — keeping a strong relationship with the Creator of this universe, my Maker and my King.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you.”  1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

A quiet life is not easy to come by in this world.  With technology changing so quickly the mind can hardly keep up.

And yet, the Bible encourages us to make it our ambition to lead a quiet life.

I have heard of people who have taken “time outs” from their computers, cell phones, televisions and radios.  What do they do with their time?

We have friends who don’t own a television.  They have two healthy and very intelligent children.  The limited time they allow their children to be on the computer — 15 minutes a day — seems like nothing, and yet the children are well-behaved, obedient, and very creative.

Whenever we visit them, we take walks, spend time talking, visit other people, cook — yes, we actually sit at the dinner table together.  The last time we visited them we went canoeing on a very quiet lake with other people who took “time outs.”

It’s not easy to “lead a quiet life” but if one makes it a priority to quiet their brain for awhile, we would have a lot more happy people.

Just saying …

A story in the Bible is highlighted this week in a discussion on negative and positive emotions.  The story is about a young woman by the name of Tamar.

It’s found in 2 Samuel, Chapter 13.

Tamar’s half brother (they have the same father named David) whose name is Amnon in in love with her.  (Later in the story we see that it’s not really love but sexual desire.)

Amnon pretends to be sick and asks their father David if he could send Tamar to help feed him.

King David obliges.  After all, what parent doesn’t want to help their sick child.

When Tamar arrives, Amnon sends all the servants out and asks her to bring the food into his bedroom.  Then Amnon grabs Tamar.  Tamar begs him not to disgrace her but Amnon was stronger than her and he rapes her.

The story then takes an interesting turn.  At first, Amnon states he is in love with Tamar but after he rapes her the Bible says that he “hated her with intense hatred” and he tells her to get out.

Emotions.  The writer asks us to think about what emotions might be in play here.

Amnon was experiencing sexual feelings and did everything he could to get those satisfied – starting with deception.  What he experienced during the actual rape, I’m not sure.  Satisfaction?  Perhaps during the sexual act itself.  It says he experienced hatred towards Tamar afterwards but we don’t know why.  Guilt?  Again, the Bible doesn’t tell us.  Could it be he realized what he did was wrong and some of that hatred is towards himself?  Or he feels hatred towards Tamar because he thinks she provoked him in some way?

Tamar on the other hand probably experienced fear, shame, guilt, pain, betrayal.  Perhaps she’s asking herself “What did I do to deserve this?” or “What could I have done differently?”

The Bible doesn’t tell us that Tamar did anything to entice Amnon.  When grabbed, she said no and yet was raped.  It doesn’t matter what she was wearing or saying or thinking.  No has always meant no.

How does this story end?

We’re told that their father, King David, was furious when he found out.  But he did nothing about it.

Tamar lived “desolately.”

Later, Absalom, Tamar’s brother, gets his revenge and kills Amnon.  Interestingly, the Bible states that King David mourned for Amnon.  But outside of being furious with Amnon about raping Tamar, we’re not told that he spoke to him about it or that there were any consequences to Amnon because of it.

So much sorrow caused by one man who had to have his sexual desires met — by force.

This story makes me sad.  There are no positive emotions in this story.

Deception, rape, revenge.

I’m glad that when we get to heaven, none of these things will exist.

Comments?

Below is a link with comments from a friend comparing an anticipatory celebration in Superbowl 27 with Luke 10:17-20.

Watch the video.  Click on the link in the body of the comments.  This could happen to any of us —

Great job on the comparison William!

Read comments here