pieces and ponderings

     I am a part of a Community Bible Study class and we are studying the Gospel of John this year.  I love studying God’s Word…it’s one of my favorites.  

     When we did the lesson on the first half of John 2, I came to a deeper appreciation of the first public miracle of Jesus, even though the public that beheld the sign of Jesus turning water into wine, was a small and limited public.  I love the idea of Jesus being at a wedding with family and friends.  I love the idea that Jesus engaged with people on many different kinds of occasions.  It got me thinking about the many things Jesus did when He became flesh and lived among people.  I wrote some of the things down and here they are.

Jesus, the God for All Occasions

Jesus went to parties.  (John 2:1-11)

Jesus crashed funerals. (Luke 7:11-15)

Jesus hosted picnics.  (Luke 9:14-17)

Jesus took friends fishing. (Luke 5:4)

Jesus grilled out. (John 21:9)

Jesus rode in boats. (John 6:21)

Sometimes Jesus went to sea and didn’t bother taking a boat. (John 6:19)

Jesus calmed storms. (Luke 8:24)

Jesus sent to synagogue. (Luke 4:15-16)

Jesus went to prayer meetings. (Luke 11:1)

Jesus took walks. (Luke 19:1, 4)

Jesus liked gardens. (Mark 14:32)

Jesus hung out by the pool. (John 5:2-7)

Jesus worked. (John 5:17)

Jesus paid taxes. (Matthew 17:27)

Jesus forgave sins. (Mark 2:5)

Jesus played hide and seek. (Luke 19:5, 10)

Jesus held children. (Mark 10:16)

Jesus wrote in the dirt. (John 8:6, 8)

Jesus never stoned anybody. (John 8:11)

Jesus remodeled houses. (Luke 5:18-20)

Jesus got tired. (John 4:6)

Jesus got thirsty. (John 19:28)

Jesus took naps. (Luke 8:23)

Jesus got up early. (Mark 1:35)

Jesus stayed up late. (John 3:2)

Jesus healed the sick. (Luke 4:40)

Jesus raised the dead. (John 11:43-44)

Jesus talked to priests. (John 18:19)

Jesus talked to lawyers. (Luke 10:25-37)

Jesus loved His enemies. (Matthew 5:44)

Jesus confided in His friends. (John 15:15)

Jesus wore sandals. (John 1:27)

Jesus washed feet. (John 13:5)

Jesus ate supper. (John 13:2)

Jesus cooked breakfast. (John 21:12)

Jesus folded His laundry. (John 20:7)

Jesus was a man of few words. (Matthew 27:14)

Jesus was a man of many words. (Matthew 5-7)

Jesus laughed. (Luke 10:21)

Jesus wept. (John 11:35)

Jesus touched the untouchable. (Luke 5:13)

Jesus loved the unlovable. (Mark 5:2-20)

Jesus loved His mom. (John 19:26-27)

Jesus missed His Dad. (Mark 15:34)

Jesus was born in a stable. (Luke 2:7)

Jesus died on a tree. (Mark 15:37)

Jesus rose from the dead. (John 20:17)

Jesus took a direct flight to Heaven. (Mark 16:19)

And Jesus said He would come back for us soon. (John 14:3)

Jesus loves you and Jesus loves me. (John 3:16)

Jesus is the God for all occasions. (Matthew 28:20b)

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     Yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon, I baked the first loaves of pumpkin bread for my family for this fall season.  Pumpkin bread is one of my family’s favorites this time of year.  As we munched on our Sunday lunch, my kids got to talking about the food they enjoy this time of year… anticipating Thanksgiving and the Christmas season.  (And we talked about the pumpkin smoothies that I had attempted the week before, which were less than successful.)

     My daughter, who was home from college for the weekend, decided that her momma (me) should bake some pumpkin bread before she headed back to school,  so she could take a loaf with her.

The pumpkin bread recipe that I use comes from my momma.  My momma always baked her loaves in round metal coffee cans.  As the bread bakes the loaves rise well beyond the rims of the coffee cans and when it is done baking and has cooled, it looks great in its cylinder shape as you remove it from the cans.

So bake some pumpkin bread I did.  It made the house smell wonderful and brought memories rushing back of pumpkin bread baking through the years.

My daughter did get her loaf to take with her, this one remaining week before Thanksgiving break.  Three of our sons and I cut into one of the other loaves as a  tasty dessert treat after supper that night.  It was still warm and the texture was just right.  The first loaves are the best, I’m pretty sure.

This Monday morning, I thought about that yummy pumpkin bread as I read a devotional about holiday foods and not going overboard on indulging in them AND the way physical hunger can actually be a sign sometimes of spiritual hunger that we may not be in tune with.

I read a quote from Chris Tiegreen, “Deep in the soul of every man, woman, and child is a void that nags us for attention.  We think it’s a sign of dysfunction, and we try to heal it ourselves.  Some of us fill it with food, but the sense of taste is only satisfied for a moment…One day, if we’re spiritually sensitive, we understand:  It’s a holy hunger, and only God can fix it….Those who have quenched their hunger with the things of this world have settled for empty calories; they’re ultimately unsatisfied.  The blessing of the true hunger leads us to Jesus, the Bread of Life.”

After reading this quote, I began thinking about some symptoms in my thoughts and actions that might indicate that I am hungry for what only God can supply.  I thought about wrong thinking in just the last 24 hours:  anxiety, worry, jealousy, fear, envy, anger, pride, to name a few.  Yuck!

Then I read some verses in John 6 that tell about a crowd that followed Jesus because He had done an incredible miracle the day before and fed them all with multiplied fish and bread.  Jesus told them not to “work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life,” which the Son of God can give.

“I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty,” Jesus said.  He wasn’t talking about an endless supply of physical food; though, He knows that physical food is necessary for life.  But Jesus taught that spiritual food is also necessary for life.  Spiritual food is necessary for my spiritual life that will affect every other aspect of my day-in-day-out living:  my physical body, my relationships, my work, my play, my everything.

So my prayer today, for myself, for my husband, for my children, as we go about our regular daily activities that involve working for food, preparing food, eating food,…that we will realize and put in right perspective our greater need for the spiritual food that Jesus and God’s Word has to offer AND that will decide to take in the spiritual nourishment God has for us today.

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I realize that my last blog entry was about warnings…I don’t think I’m on a “warning” kick…not a kick I like to be on anyway…but maybe I am and just don’t realize it yet.

Anyway, yesterday,  after a wonderful Saturday with all of our children in Montgomery, Alabama, the city where our second-born is in college, our three youngest sons and their dad (Bryan Darling) and their mom (me) drove up to a state historic site located near the Tallapoosa River and just walked around the fort sites there and along the river and had a great time being surrounded by nature and a lot of Goldenrod, which is also nature I realize…but which I am also highly allergic to.

I love hiking around in wooded areas and meadows and along rivers…it’s just one of my favorite things in the whole wide world, even when Goldenrod is present.  It was fun even though it rained occasionally and we walked with umbrellas…a very un-hiking-like thing to do…but I wanted to walk around and enjoy nature and didn’t want the rain to stop us…so it didn’t.

On our drive to the historic site I saw some caution signs along the road…they reminded me of some caution signs I had observed a couple of years ago and wrote a devotional about.  This morning, back at home, I looked up my devotional thoughts.  What follows is taken from what I had previously written.

“On the road that I travel every day to my children’s school, there is work being done by the utility company.  The power company workers have cleared trees and erected these giant poles, which hold up a lot of wires.  It’s been a process to get the work done and I’ve spent some time thinking about the road signs that they have placed along the road to alert drivers to their presence and caution them to drive safely.

The first sign that I noticed was a “men working” sign, which I thought conveyed a good message in light of today’s economy.  It’s a good thing to have a job, especially when there are a lot of folks that don’t have jobs right now.

The ‘men working’ sign got me to thinking about God working.  What if, as we went about our daily lives, we saw bright orange signs that told us where God was at work?   I think we might be surprised at some of the places these signs might show up.  It’s a comforting thought to me that God is always at work, likeJohn 5:17tells us, ‘Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too, am working.’

So every day I drive to and from school, sometimes multiple times and I think about men working and God working, especially the God working part, and then one day a new sign popped up.  It read, ‘Be prepared to stop.’  That simple message got my attention.  Not only did it tell me to be aware while I’m driving because I might need to stop, which means I don’t need to be driving too fast, but it got my attention in relation to the way God works.  I felt like God was using a caution sign to relay a message to me.  I need to be prepared to stop when God tells me to stop.

I wonder if we’re more used to God saying, ‘Go,’ rather than God saying,  ‘Stop.’  Sometimes I think it’s easier for me to just keep on going; and then God decides it’s time for me to stop for a while.   He might say, ‘Stop.  You need to rest.’  Or He might say, ‘Stop,’ when He wants to point us in a different direction.  Or He might say, ‘Stop,’ when we’re focused more on activity than on just being with Him.

I know that there have been times when God has told me to stop.  I didn’t see the stops coming, and that’s ok, God knew where all the stopping places were.  But I think that God has been teaching me over the last few years in various ways to be prepared to stop if that’s what He wants me to do.

Since March 28, 2009,  I have been living and going and preparing to stop all at the same time.  On March 28, 2009, our family came to a huge stopping place when my daughter, Amy, had her first seizure.  Life as we knew it stopped in many ways.  Even now we stop and go a lot.  Sometimes that is so hard, but God is right there, step by step, saying, ‘Go’ or ‘Prepare to stop.’  He has been very gracious in that way.

I remember reading a devotional which spoke about how George Meuller, a great man of faith, had made a notation in his Bible concerning Psalm 37:23.  The verse reads, ‘The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when He (God) delights in his way….’  George Meuller added, ‘The steps and stops of a man are established by the LORD….’

That notation is now in my Bible also.  I have found it to be true.  God directs us when we are to go and when we are to stop. Psalm 31:15a tells us, “My times are in Your (God’s) hand.”  I think that includes times to go and times to stop and that is a great comfort to me.

God has going times and stopping times. God sometimes tells us when to stop, and sometimes He may send a bright orange sign to tell us that we need to prepare for just that.”

Even though the road signs informed us yesterday on our way to Fort Toulouse that we needed to be prepared to stop, there were never any road workers that actually appeared on the road we were traveling to tell us to stop.  We paid attention to the signs, but we kept on going…driving cautiously… just in case we needed to stop our car we were prepared to do just that.

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So I just finished reading the book of Joshua recently and I’ve been thinking about warnings because the last couple of chapters in Joshua have some pretty stiff warnings for God’s people, Israel.

Joshua had followed God’s instructions throughout his life. He had been careful to obey God’s commands and Joshua wanted the Israelites to continue following God’s commands. He warned them of dire consequences that would result if they turned away from the LORD and embraced the idol worship of the pagans around them: “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.” (Joshua 23:12-13)

The warning was clear, the consequences were clear…and they weren’t good consequences.  Sometimes we might receive a warning and know that there might be harmful or bad consequences that could result from our decisions, but we might not know the extent of the harm that could come.

One day this past summer my family had been out somewhere and returned home in the evening, after dark.  We must have been in two vehicles because my husband and our sons got home before I did.  I remember walking into our garage and seeing my husband and our fourth born child looking around the garage.  My son asked me to close the garage door and I asked them what they were doing.

“Dad is trying to catch a stray cat,” my son informed me.

My first thought was that this might not be a good idea.  We have a cat and our cat’s food dish was located in the garage and evidently a stray cat, actually a wild cat, had come into our garage and helped himself or herself to our cat’s food.  When my husband and son had arrived home, they had stumbled onto the cat eating and they decided to try and catch the cat.

Now, my husband is an intelligent man.  He is also an animal lover and likes cats in particular.  While my son had been explaining to me what was going on in our garage, my husband had cornered the wild cat in a closet in the garage.  I was hearing very strange and terrible sounding cat noises coming from the closet.  My son continued to ask me to close the garage door, so the cat could not escape.

My second thought on this matter was much like my first, “This is not a good idea.”

I called to my husband and he assured me that he would be careful…more low pitched, growling cat noises came from the closet.  I closed the garage door after warning my husband again that this didn’t seem to me to be the best of ideas.  I left the two cat wranglers in the garage and went inside.

My husband and son came inside after a little while and told me that they had decided to let the cat go.

The next day, I was headed into town and my husband called from work and asked if I could pick up a prescription at our pharmacy for him.  I wondered what kind of prescription he needed, but didn’t ask when he called.  He informed me when I took the antibiotic to him at his office that he had stopped in to see our family doctor that morning on his way to work.  Then he showed me a very red and swollen and warm-to-the-touch index finger, the result of a cat bite from a wild stray cat which was trying to get past the crazy man that had him cornered in a garage closet.

The cat had not only bitten my husband’s finger, but had bitten through work gloves that my husband had been wearing and still left a deep puncture wound in my husband’s finger.

I just looked at my husband with his boyish, “Oops” grin AND I reminded him that he is a grown man who should know better than to corner crazed wild stray cats, which are emitting low-sounding growly noises.

After one round of antibiotics, my husband’s finger was still red and swollen. He was prescribed more antibiotics and then he was sent to a hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic.

My husband would wind up having numerous appointments with the hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic.  He took three rounds of antibiotics.  He received two different steroid injections from the hand specialist at the orthopedic clinic and they talked about possible surgery if the inflammation didn’t go down.

Thankfully, the second steroid shot seemed to help enough that my husband decided not to forego the surgical procedure.

Like I said, my husband is an intelligent man; he knew some of the risks involved in trying to catch a wild cat, but evidently he didn’t know ALL of the risks involved in trying to catch a wild cat.  He went against the warnings of his wife AND  his own common sense and unfortunately had to suffer the consequences of a wild cat’s fury.

Warnings are good.  Warnings have a purpose.  Joshua gave the Israelites warnings because he cared about them. God gave the Israelites warnings because He cared about them.  God gives us warnings also…because He cares about us.  And most of the time, probably ALL of the time,  it is just a good and wise idea to heed the warnings.

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I fixed a pot of coffee this morning in my coffee pot that I love (see earlier post)…and because it’s Friday and the end of the week, I decided I had better add a little of the caffeinated variety of coffee to my regular decaf variety. I could smell it brewing as I prepared lunches and breakfasts and let the cat in and the dog out.

I looked forward to my first cup…knowing that it would probably lead to a second cup after everyone had left the house except for me and the dog and the cat. So as the morning progressed and my boys and husband left for school and work, and I downed the last bit of coffee in my cup before I took a shower…I spit what I had just drunk into my bathroom sink.

“Yucky!!” I exclaimed in my head. The last gulp of coffee had contained a bunch of coffee grounds…which are so gross if they end up in your mouth. Now the coffee grounds were scattered all over my bathroom sink. I turned on the water and rinsed the yucky little coffee grounds down the drain.

I had noticed a couple of little…very little…black dots floating in my coffee when I had first poured it.  I had carefully removed them with a spoon, but I didn’t see any more than those couple of little…very little…coffee grounds…so I didn’t think any more about it.

After I spit the coffee grounds into the sink, I went and checked my coffee-maker and sure enough the filter had gotten folded up in it’s little filter basket and there were coffee grounds outside the filter that had also been washed down into the carafe.

“Ahhh…bummer,” I thought.  I dismissed the thought of having a second cup. Finding coffee grounds in a last swig of coffee just isn’t pleasant and I didn’t want that to happen again.

I considered that I could be very careful and drink the second cup s-l-o-w-l-y…NOT drinking the last little bit in the cup and leaving Herman the fish (see earlier post) covered with the half-decaf-half-caffeinated beverage.

Maybe that would work? Then I had an idea…light bulb!

Maybe I could place a filter in my cup and pour the coffee through a filter a second time?  It just might work.

So that’s what I did.  I got out another coffee filter and placed it in my washed-out-coffee-grounds-free cup and began to pour coffee down through it.

It took a little time, and a bit of effort and patience. But…it worked…for the most part.  In fact, my second-cup-of-coffee-for-the-day-in-my-Herman-the-fish-mug is sitting on a coaster on my desk as I write.

Even with the second filtering process having been implemented…there were still a couple of little black dots…very little black dots…floating around in the coffee as I removed the filter from my mug.  I know what that means…so I will not be gulping down that last little bit of coffee for fear of coffee dregs lurking beneath the surface.  Drinking the top half of the coffee in my mug will do me just fine.

As I was re-filtering my second cup of coffee this morning, I thought about filters and their importance.  For coffee lovers everywhere…filters ARE IMPORTANT! And I thought about other filters that serve important functions in our lives…fuel filters…air vent filters…internet filters…all the other filters that I don’t know about or can’t think of right now.

AND I thought about other kinds of filters in my life…filters for my spiritual life…filters for my conscience…filters for my thinking.  What happens when the filters that I’ve put in place in those areas get bent out of shape or moved out of place and can’t completely serve their function any more?

What kind of yucky dregs wind up in my thinking…in my emotional life…in my heart?  Filters…they are good things to have.  Filters…they serve a good purpose.  Filters…we need to make sure they are in their proper places so they can function at their best.

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Child number 4 is on his high school’s varsity football team.  This past Friday night they had their fourth game of the season.  After winning their opening game, they had lost the next two.  They needed a win to keep up morale.  But their opponent for game number 4 was the favorite.

Throughout last week, when child number 4 would come home all hot and sweaty from football practice, I would ask how practice went and if he thought his team would be ready for Friday night’s big game.

“Practice was good,” he would say.  “I think we’ll be ready on Friday; we’ve got a plan,” he would comment, but he would not share what “the plan” was.

So Friday night came and my husband and I and children, numbers 3and 5, all loaded into our SUV and headed to the away game.  When we got there, we saw our team sitting behind one of the end zones waiting for the game to begin…the players sat in a big huddle and the coaches stood in a smaller huddle.  We went and found seats on the visitors’ side bleachers.

When the opposing home team entered their domain, they ran from their locker room down through the home stand and onto the field below, with their fans cheering like crazy.  It was inspiring…it was intimidating, and I think that was the point.

Our guys crashed through our team banner first as the visiting team, and then the home team took the field…looking bigger…looking undefeated this season.

As the game began, I thought I noticed something a little different about our team than in the previous few games…they had a spark…they had a heart about them…they seemed to want to win.

It was a hard-fought game…and our guys certainly fought hard.  They made plays that looked impossible.  They survived yardage lost on penalties and made first downs anyway.  They were enthusiastic…they were driven…they played with heart.

We fans did our part…we cheered…we yelled…we stood up on important downs and waited to see what would happen.  The cheerleaders seemed amazed because the crowd was actually cheering in response to their “cheer-leading.”

And during one of those cheering moments…as we watched one of our players run the ball AND continue to keep moving forward with three opposing team members hanging on him…the crowd went wild and I heard a young man to my right yell, “That’s my best friend!”

The cheering guy who had just yelled out the remark is a senior and he was cheering for his senior buddy on the field grinding out yardage against the odds.  He was so proud of his friend…he wanted everyone to know.  Throughout the rest of the game, I would hear his cheering…”Way to go, buddy!”…”Yeah!”

We won!  We won by two touchdowns!  Our players were ecstatic…the cheerleaders were ecstatic…the crowd…the moms and dads and friends and students were all ecstatic!  It was a sweet victory!

Our after-the-game snack at Dairy Queen was all the sweeter because of the win.  My football-playing son informed me the next day that Saturday felt even better because of having won.  I’ve tucked away some good memories from the evening’s events, and one of the memories in the fore-front is the guy cheering for his best friend.

I can be a crazy kind of fan when my children are playing sports…I can yell really loud and clap and jump up and down in the stands and feel as if I can will them to make plays.  I can be an over-zealous fan.  I’ve also been told by my children who play these games that they usually don’t hear my cheering…my going crazy in the stands on their behalf.

When I first heard this news that they couldn’t hear my cheering I was surprised…I was disappointed…surely they had heard their mom making a fool of herself in the stands…and then I accepted that ok, they probably hadn’t most of the time (I still hold out for maybe they heard me a few times) but, this knowledge didn’t stop me from cheering for them.  I still get excited when one of my kids is on the field or on a court.  I still end up on my feet about half-way through a game…yelling, clapping, and cheering.  I can’t seem to help it…it just happens that way when you are a passionate person.

So I thought about the young man cheering for his friend…being so proud of him…and I thought about my kids and me cheering and being so proud of them…and I wondered how my cheering is for those I love when I’m not seated in bleachers on a field…when I’m just going through life…am I cheering just as loudly?  Am I cheering in a way that they can actually hear me?  Am I letting the people I love know that I’m proud of them…that I think they are doing a great job?  Am I doing some cheering every day…not just on game nights?

I hope I am, but Friday night’s game was a good reminder to cheer on those around me…and to cheer really loudly so they can hear me.

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Yesterday I sat with my two youngest children and watched video from September 11, 2001.  We watched footage of the first plane crashing into the first tower of the Twin Towers.  We looked at pictures taken of President Bush by the White House photographer, Eric Draper, only moments after the president heard the news of the first crash…thinking like so many of us, “What a terrible accident.”

And then a second plane flew directly into the second tower and the realization that this was no accident began to dawn on people across our land.

We watched the news footage of a reporter giving the timeline of the morning’s horrible events.

We watched footage of President Bush standing on a heap of rubble at ground zero speaking into a megaphone, “I can hear you” and telling those first responders that soon the world would be hearing them also.

I looked at this video footage and choked back sobs…and I remembered.

I remember dropping off three of my kids at school that morning and hearing on the drive home the first reports on the radio giving the details of the first plane crash.

I remember going to my weekly Bible study…still wondering exactly what was going on.  I remember talking to my husband who was working on a military post at the time and him telling me that the base was under a lockdown.  I remember feeling like maybe the world was about to end.

Our two sons that watched the footage with me yesterday were only 5 and 1-years-old at the time of the 9/11 attack on our nation…too young to remember.  We watched several news stories together and I recalled to them the events of the day and the courage displayed by numerous men and women.  I remembered the way our nation rallied together.  I remember the way many people turned to God, crying out in pain…crying out for help.

One of the pictures that we looked at yesterday was a photograph of a badge worn by a New York Port Authority officer who had died in the Twin Towers on 9/11.  The badge was given to President Bush by the officer’s mother.  The article said that the President carried that badge with him in his pocket throughout the remainder of his presidency…so he would remember…so he could remind others of all that had happened on that day.

And I remembered that Tuesday afternoon on September 11, when I pulled into my driveway with all my children with me and watched the gate in our neighborhood close behind our car.  I wished as I watched that closing gate in my rear view mirror, that I could close out the fear that was rising up within me…the fear of the unknown…the fear of what might  happen in our homeland after those attacks…the fear that perhaps there would be more violence to come.

But the attacks had happened…the violence had been committed…our nation had been violated…an irreversible change had occurred.

Yesterday as I remembered with my children…I was thankful to be reminded of the atrocity…of the victims…of the many heroic acts.  I was thankful to be reminded that no matter what happens in this world…no matter how tragic…my God is still enthroned in Heaven…He is not caught off-guard…and He is not fearful…He is still at work…loving people of all nations…revealing Himself in big and in small ways so that we might call out to Him and desire His peace in our hearts.

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This morning I aided my husband in rescuing a turtle.  The turtle, a big guy over 12 inches long, was caught in the volleyball net in our front yard, which had blown down during a storm.  Bryan noticed the turtle as he was driving down our driveway.  He called out to me that I would need to help a turtle and then thankfully decided to see to the task himself.  I’m glad he did.

I watched at a distance as my husband bent over the turtle and worked to loosen the net from the turtle’s legs.  What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t only the turtle’s legs that were caught…the net was also twisted around the turtle’s neck.

Bryan asked me to fetch a pair of scissors.  When I reached Bryan and the struggling turtle, I was surprised by what I saw.  The turtle had foam gathered around his gaping mouth and from the turtle came deep gasping noises…the net was choking him.

Bryan Darling was calmly and carefully untwisting net strings and talking to the turtle.  Without help from the scissors there would have been no way to free the turtle from the snare.

The turtle was gasping for life-giving air and Bryan was working with the scissors.  I was gripped by the scene before me.  This big man bending over a foaming and struggling animal…fighting for life.   The compassion that I saw was overwhelming…this compassion also welled up within me.  We had to save the turtle…it was a life…it mattered.

Finally, Bryan was able to work around the turtle’s legs and head, that would try to disappear into the turtle’s shell, and cut him free from the net.  We carried him to some water so he could drink.  I tried to rinse the foam away from his mouth.  As soon as my husband placed him back on the ground the turtle was off…moving quickly toward the direction of his turtle hole.

The whole scene has stuck with me as I’ve tried to go about the day…the struggle for life and the compassion of a man.  I thought of a verse in the Psalms, actually two verses.  Psalm 103:13-14 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.”

This turtle was not near as important as a child to my husband or to me…still the compassion we felt was so strong…the desire to help overwhelming.  If we can feel so strongly about a creature…how much more must the Heavenly Father, our Creator, feel compassion toward His children when they find themselves ensnared…struggling…gasping for air and desiring life.

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The other night child number 3 and I made the most delicious fried apple pies.  It was a culinary success and we celebrated with high-fives.  As I reached upward to slap my hand against his, I was amazed at how small my hand looked…dwarfed in size by his large hand.

Wait a minute…I used to close my fingers around his hand as we walked through a store…or to his Sunday school class at church…or across a street…now my hand looked like that of a child’s compared in size to his.

The hands of people in our lives tell stories…they conjure up memories.

I remember clinging to my father’s hand when my hand was so small that I could wrap all of my fingers around his big index finger.  I remember walking that way,  side by side, holding on to him and knowing that I was with the one who could protect me better than anyone else.

I remember other hands too; my infant sister’s hands that seemed so small compared to my big four-year-old hands;  J.J. Johnson’s hand that I held for the first time back in fourth grade; my momma’s hands that were always busy doing for others, the way they look like my own, except more experienced with all kinds of know-how.

I remember hoping as a young teen that I would have a husband one day who always wanted to hold my hand and I think of the many, many times and situations that Bryan Darling has laced his fingers between mine.  I remember all of my babies’ hands and watching them grow, until all but one of them now have hands bigger than my own.

I remember my grandmother’s hands, long and graceful looking, and the way she held them on her lap, fingers interlocked, pointer fingers extended like making a church steeple in a children’s finger play.  I remember my other grandmother’s hands that could snip a branch off of any tree or plant and get it to re-root and grow on its own.

You remember the hands in your lives too.  Hands that belong to childhood playmates, mothers, fathers, teachers, grandparents, spouses, children, and best friends…we all have memories of hands in our lives.

A devotional quote I read says, “The clinging hand of His (God’s) child makes a desperate situation a delight to Him.”  I think about holding on to my strong father’s hand as a child.  As tightly as I thought that I was holding on to him, I now know something that only growing up would teach me.  I could never have held on to my father’s hand as tightly as he could hold on to mine.  When I have held the hands of my children in certain situations, times when I thought their safety might be at stake, I held on to them in such a way that it would be difficult for their hand to slip from mine.

When I experience times that make me afraid…when I’m faced with seemingly desperate situations, like the devotional quote talked about, fear can easily sweep away rational thoughts until anxiety rules my heart and mind.  That’s when I need to remember that my Father God is right there to hold my hand.  Isaiah 41: 10says, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

Verse 13 continues, “For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you.’”

And as tightly as I may think that I can hold on to the hand of my Heavenly Father, the truth of the matter is that He is the One holding on to me.  And He can hold on to me in such a way that nothing can remove me from His grasp.

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